civil rights
March 2026
FREEDOM LOST, FREEDOM WON: American History Through a Black Family’s Story
The American story is often packaged as a linear climb toward a “more perfect union”. But for many Black families, history feels less like a ladder and more like a pendulum—swinging between hard‑won breakthroughs and the inevitable backlashes that follow. Join Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and commentator Eugene Robinson for an exploration of this rhythmic history.
January 1985
Rev. Jesse Jackson: “Happy Birthday, Doctor King”
A birthday present to Dr. King, featuring the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was by the side of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during many of the historic civil rights marches which inspired the nation during the 1960’s. Herbert Vetter, Director of Cambridge Forum introduces this broadcast on the occasion of a 1985 memorial service in commemoration of Dr. King, on his birthday, at the Memorial Church, Harvard University.
August 2021
N***er: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word
Randall Kennedy takes on not just the N-word word, but our laws, attitudes, and culture with references that extend from the Jim Crow south to Chris Rock and the O. J. Simpson trial.
February 1999
I’ll Make Me a World
Filmmaker and co-executive producer of the PBS television series, I’ll Make Me A World: A Century of African-American Arts, Sam Pollard talks about his dedication to chronicling the Black experience in America.
March 2006
Epic Journeys of Freedom
Historian Cassandra Pybus traces the lives of the runaway slaves who absorbed the dreams of liberty from their masters during the American Revolution and fled to the British to find freedom.
May 1987
Eyes on the Prize
Henry Hampton, the driving force behind Eyes on the Prize and Blackside, speaks in 1987 at Cambridge Forum about his vision of the remarkable human drama that was the Civil Rights Movement.
February 1993
Mississippi: Then and Now
Bob Moses, a veteran of the civil rights struggle, draws an analogy between the early voter registration drives in Mississippi during the 1960s and an innovative school curriculum called The Algebra Project.