Civil Rights

The early 1900s saw an influx of racism and discrimination in the Midwest, from anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant, and anti-African American sentiment, to race riots in Springfield, Chicago, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Ku Klux Klan became a force in central Illinois. Segregation grew in Bloomington-Normal and what had been a thriving black middle class was gradually destroyed.

A sports historian said a Normal native's nomination to the Pro Football Hall of Fame nearly a century after he helped break the NFL's color barrier shows the league hasn't fully reckoned with the racism that's plagued it for generations.

A progressive group that's been staging vigils in Bloomington every month for the last three years plans to continue its demonstrations because organizers feel their efforts are making a difference.

America has a long history of torture. From enhanced interrogation during the Iraq War all the way back to the Salem Witch Trials, torture has featured prominently in the story of the country.

The question of why it happened is a question of power and fear.

Editor's note: This is part of a five-story series reported at the Housing Action Illinois conference in Bloomington on Oct. 24-25. The stories ran Wednesday, Oct. 30, on WGLT's Sound Ideas.

Community planners used U.S. Census data to shed light on racial and ethnic disparities in McLean County during the Town of Normal's Daring Diversity racial equity conference.

Last year, “Green Book” hit the big screen and shocked the world with an accurate depiction of what life was like for African Americans in the U.S. before the Civil Rights Act.

Dr. Eugene Covington was the first and only African American physician in McLean County in the early 20th century.

An LGBTQI+ poet and scholar looks to indigenous people in North America for broader gender definitions that can help modern society as the current culture struggles over accepting multiple identities.

The Bloomington-Normal and Illinois State University communities gathered Thursday evening to mourn and rededicate themselves to good in the wake of the temple shootings in Pittsburgh.

Federal administration immigration policies will soon start to hurt the agriculture sector in a big way, according to the head of the National Immigrant Justice Center.

Award-winning cartoonist Keith Knight's focus on racial profiling, police brutality, and race relations have many pegging him as a social activist.

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader’s legacy continues to loom large through such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, as well as affirmative action hiring and educational practices.

The head of the ACLU of Illinois says racially imbalanced police enforcement is a problem statewide.

The Trump administration is not just changing the civil liberties landscape in well publicized ways such as the Muslim ban and efforts to deport so-called bad hombres.

Anti-immigration voices are growing stronger around the U.S., and an advocate for tolerance and education said the best way to combat that kind of speech is by introducing immigrants to their neighbors.

The final draft of a police citizen review board may leave advocates on both sides of the issue feeling like they have lost something.