Clayborne Carson

Growing up in the predominantly white town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, Clayborne Carson learned about the civil rights movement from the news: school desegregation, lunch counter sit-ins, the Freedom Riders. But in 1963, he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—Black rights activists who “exemplified the rebelliousness and...

When Stanford historian Clayborne Carson was a young college student and activist, he traveled to the nation’s capital to participate in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the largest civil rights rallies in American history. As he listened to Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of...

The killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers continues to incite mass demonstrations around the nation. As these turbulent protests surface in a multitude of cities throughout the U.S., our national political leadership is sadly adrift, glaringly oblivious to the core issue at hand. So eager for a bit of poised insight...