Authors & Essays

For Black people in the United States, the American Dream has often remained elusive. The promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” has, throughout much of the nation’s history, functioned more as an aspiration than a lived reality.

The False Promise of the American Dream My grandfather James Thomas Scott was born on December 24, 1920.

When I was a kid, it didn’t take long for me to figure out what I wanted more than anything in the world: to buy my mom a house with a garage.

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, there is renewed attention to the idea of the American Dream and the promises attached to it. For many Black Americans, those promises have always been unevenly realized.

On March 7, 1965, millions of Americans watched footage from Selma, Alabama, as state troopers attacked peaceful civil rights marchers attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. What had begun as a local struggle over voting rights suddenly became a national story.