1960s protests vs. 2024 protests

Plus: the Met Gala and the Kentucky Derby |

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By Made by History / Produced by Olivia B. Waxman On April 30, New York police officers raided the Gaza Solidarity Encampments on the campuses of Columbia University and City College of the City University of New York, arresting hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters. The protests themselves, and the police responses to them, seemed to many to echo the tumultuous civil rights protests of the 1960s. In fact, the civil rights movement has been frequently discussed in recent weeks—but many of the commentators invoking the movement have gotten the history wrong, argues distinguished professor Jeanne Theoharis in Made by History. A distorted view of the civil rights movement, she writes, is being used to oppose the protest movement of the present. But in the 1950s and 1960s, now venerated figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. were criticized for their disruptive tactics and refusal to accept the racial status quo. Yet students at the time and since have demonstrated their commitment to helping forge meaningful changes on college campuses and beyond.

HISTORY ON TIME.COM The Surprising Face of German Anti-Immigration Policies By Christopher Ewing / Made by History Between the German left and right, a troubling consensus has emerged on immigration. Read More » It’s Not Just This Year’s Met Gala Theme. All Art Is About the Passage of Time By Camille Davis / Made by History For centuries, art has represented the passage of time by depicting the social and political dynamics of American society. Read More » Racing Needs to Reckon With the Kentucky Derby’s Roots in Slavery By Jemar Tisby / Made by History Churchill Downs is named for—and built on land owned by—slaveholders. Read More » To Address the Teen Mental Health Crisis, Look to School Nurses By Sherrie Page Guyer / Made by History For more than a century, school nurses have improved public health in schools and beyond. Read More » How Jazz Became the Voice of Revolution By Larry Tye Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie reshaped the soul of America, writes Larry Tye. Read More »

FROM THE TIME VAULT This week in 1946: Elizabeth Arden, makeup entrepreneur Boris Chaliapin The May 6, 1946, cover of TIME "Nobody had to look far to find the favorites in this week's 72nd Kentucky Derby.* They were two—Lord Boswell and Knockdown —and both belong to fluttery Cosmeti-queen Elizabeth Arden Graham, whose Maine Chance Farm Stable has the winningest ways in U.S. turfdom....Says Elizabeth Arden: "A beautiful horse is like a beautiful woman." An ugly horse doesn't stay long in Arden's barn, even if he can outrun Satan. About two mornings a week she shows up at the track to make sure her "darlings" don't get too much fresh air, or too little. She worries about flies biting them, and orders screens. Her horses once came down with a misery, and Arden ordered them rubbed down with her Ardena skin tonic instead of horse liniment, which, she said, smelled terrible. The trainer told her the stuff was no good for horses. He got fired." Read More » This week in 1974: Merle Haggard, country star Eddie Adams The May 6, 1974, cover of TIME "After half a century of condescension, neglect and even ridicule, country in all its guises—bluegrass, heart songs, western ballads, rural blues, delta white soul, Memphis honky-tonk and of course the familiar pop hybrid known as the Nashville Sound—is in the midst of an astronomic growth and gives no signs of stopping...Up in the hills behind Bakersfield [California], Haggard has a $700,000 mansion surrounded by 180 acres of grassland and tan, windswept vistas. The property includes an electrified gate, a moat, a swimming pool and a barbecue pit of roughly bullring dimensions...He is happiest, however, tinkering with his $50,000 model railroad: 250 freight cars, 35 locomotives and a scale replica of the Bakersfield terminal. Its main line is a kid's dream that runs through the living room, across the sun deck, through the sauna, a bathroom and a bedroom, and then out onto a trestle high above the rear patio." Read More » This week in 1990: Curse words in pop culture TIME The May 7, 1990, cover of TIME "Stranded in the middle are the majority of Americans. They wonder at the effluence of raw language and worry about its impact on old-fashioned notions of civilized discourse. Is there room for subtlety and gentility in a culture overrun by expressions of gross intolerance? And what impact will this culture have on the first generation to grow up within it? Does this stuff have artistic merit? Is it tonic or toxic? Can we dance to it or comfortably laugh at it? Should we march against it or just sit back and enjoy it?...Entertainers shouldn't have to act as baby- sitters or Sunday school teachers. And the government should quit playing hall monitor to blue comics, metal defectives, rap randies -- and the real artists among them who, through subtlety or obscenity, will help us navigate our trip into the 21st century." Read More »

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