Ryan Paul Haygood

In recognition of the fifty-first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a case often cited as the milestone in America’s march towards racial equality, I recently discussed the legacy of Brown with students at Bragaw Avenue School in Newark, New Jersey. I explained to the students that before…

William Faulkner, a Mississippi author known for his incisive writings about the American south, once wrote: “The past is never dead. In fact, it’s not even past.” We are reminded of Faulkner’s observation as a number of voter identification bills that will erect new barriers to minority political participation make their way through state legislatures,…

The tragic, history-making events of “Bloody Sunday,” on March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama, ultimately freed the vote for millions of African Americans. Forty years later, as we reflect on the march that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we are also reminded that more than two million African Americans continue…

“Genocide is the crime of destroying national, racial or religious groups. The problem now arises as to whether it is a crime of only national importance, or a crime in which international society as such should be vitally interested. Many reasons speak for the second alternative. It would be impractical to treat genocide as a…

The past is never dead; in fact, it’s not even past. – William Faulkner In an incredible (and true) story, a 19 year-old New York University undergraduate student was recently arrested and charged with committing three felonies, including criminal sale and possession of a controlled substance, and criminal sale of a controlled substance on or…

Ralph Ellison immortalized “Juneteenth,” the annual celebration of the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when the enslaved Africans in Texas were actually emancipated, in his posthumous novel of the same name. Ellison’s title refers to the date when Union General Gordon Grander rode horseback into Galveston, Texas and announced to nearly 250,000 slaves that President…