Liette Gidlow
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profgidlow.bsky.social
Liette Gidlow
@profgidlow.bsky.social
Historian of US politics, voting rights, women, race, 19thA
Wrote TheBigVote & Obama,Clinton,Palin
Radcliffe Fellow@Harvard. Swam in RFK Sr's pool
Pinned
No time for cryin'
We got work to do
-- Mavis Staples

mavisstaples.com

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7m-...
Mavis Staples - "No Time For Cryin'" (Live)
YouTube video by ANTI- Records
www.youtube.com
100% this

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White Americans keep looking to 1930s Germany for lessons on authoritarianism, but they ignore Black Americans who have survived it here.

Slavery, Jim Crow, and racialized state violence are forms of American authoritarianism.
January 15, 2026 at 6:33 PM
Reposted by Liette Gidlow
I really think people are *really* underestimating the depths of misogyny in US society
January 10, 2026 at 12:55 AM
#Detroit gonna Detroit
Trump yells “fuck you” and flips off an auto worker in Michigan who yelled “pedophile protector” www.tmz.com/2026/01/13/t...
January 14, 2026 at 1:34 AM
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“Maybe by telling my story — something I was afraid to do for a long time — kids will have a better understanding about what the civil rights movement was about.”🗃️
Claudette Colvin, Who Refused to Give Her Bus Seat to a White Woman, Dies at 86
www.nytimes.com
January 14, 2026 at 1:30 AM
Applied history: use history for good
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Just because I love history, literally no other reason 😇
January 14, 2026 at 1:28 AM
Reposted by Liette Gidlow
"I could not move, because history had me glued to the seat. . . It felt like Sojourner Truth’s hands were pushing me down on one shoulder & Harriet Tubman’s hands were pushing me down on another shoulder, & I could not move." — Claudette Colvin

Claudette Colvin ¡Presente! has died at age 86. 💔
March 2, 1955: Claudette Colvin Refuses to Give Up Her Bus Seat
At age 15, Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman in Montgomery, Alabama.
www.zinnedproject.org
January 13, 2026 at 10:40 PM
Reposted by Liette Gidlow
It is impossible to properly calculate the depth and breadth of the courage and sacrifice of those prepared to confront white supremacy and assert their right to full citizenship.

We - and by that I mean ALL Americans - owe them a great debt. Rest in Peace & Power Claudette Colvin.
"I knew then and I know now, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.' And I did."

Rest in power, Ms. Claudette Colvin.

The fight for equality continues.

❤️
January 13, 2026 at 11:21 PM
Reposted by Liette Gidlow
Oh, my heart… RIP, Ms. Colvin, and thank you for everything.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Claudette Colvin, whose refusal to move seats on a segregated bus helped spark the civil rights movement, dies at 86.
January 13, 2026 at 11:29 PM
If you see this, post an Archer
#Detroit
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January 11, 2026 at 10:45 PM
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#NAACP
Today’s march took the same Fifth Ave route as the 1917 anti-lynching Silent Parade, one of the first American civil rights protests. Both started at 59th, by General Sherman’s statue, and headed downtown. For more on the Silent Parade: hyperallergic.com/naacp-silent...
January 11, 2026 at 8:40 PM
It's officially out! @burnidge.bsky.social and I are so excited and thankful to all of the authors who wrote such fantastic chapters!
www.routledge.com/The-Routledg...
January 11, 2026 at 7:52 PM
Wayne State has fencing because a fencer named Bela De Tuscan fled Hungary after World War I, landed in Detroit, caught on as a phys-ed instructor at Wayne State, met and married Normaleen Richardson, taught her to be a champion fencer, & together they created a culture of fencing in SE Michigan
January 11, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Liette Gidlow
This is what courage looks like 👇
January 11, 2026 at 2:26 AM
💯

and of course, "artists" includes writers 🗃️
Artists, throughout history, have often shown more courage than politicians, corporate leaders, and lawyers. And they often have much less power and more to lose.
Last year began with cowardly law firms. This year is starting with courageous banjo players.
January 7, 2026 at 1:11 PM
Reposted by Liette Gidlow
Any restaurant recs for downtown Chicago/Loop area?
#AHA26
January 6, 2026 at 12:57 PM
Any restaurant recs for downtown Chicago/Loop area?
#AHA26
January 6, 2026 at 12:57 PM
#AHA26

See you there!
January 6, 2026 at 12:56 PM
#AHA26 returns to the Palmer House

please, no wagering
Unedited 16mm footage of boxing matches set up in a ballroom at the Palmer House on Nov 30, 1977.

📽️ From the Frank Koza Collection.
January 6, 2026 at 12:53 PM
totally outrageous arrest of an opponent of US military action while she speaks to a reporter
#Michigan
What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids?

Watch this activist get arrested *mid-interview* for speaking out against U.S. action in Venezuela.
January 5, 2026 at 11:09 PM
💯 ⬇️

"This act of war [in Venezuela] is about regime change in the United States."
Trump is weak at home, and he can be stopped – so long as the domestic political logic of foreign intervention is recognized and turned against him. This act of war is about regime change in the United States. It only succeeds if Americans allow it to do so.
snyder.substack.com/p/venezuela-...
Venezuela: The Precedents
And America: The Future
snyder.substack.com
January 4, 2026 at 5:13 PM
Reposted by Liette Gidlow
Oh you’re so close, old man. Just a little farther and you’ll get it
January 3, 2026 at 9:20 PM
looking forward to this one!
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Cover reveal. It's about how & why colonies/states controlled international & domestic migration until 1888, why in the late 19th c the feds took over, & what it was like for politically disfavored groups to live under that arrangement of power. You can't understand voluntary migration history 1/
January 2, 2026 at 4:52 PM
love this
#Michigan
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For more info see www.castlemuseum.org/post/a-famil...
December 31, 2025 at 5:56 PM
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The tragic yet all too familiar story of Robert Lewis: a Black man falsely accused and lynched by a white mob of 2,000 in 1892.

No arrests. No accountability. And for Port Jervis, NY... decades of silence.

Watch: youtu.be/BY3X7RnBDDI
A LYNCHING IN NEW YORK: The Truth They Tried to Hide [AAHIAH Ep. #113]
YouTube video by African American History Is AMERICAN History
youtu.be
December 31, 2025 at 3:26 PM
At the Library of Congress, a bullet casing fell out of a file detailing the near-lynching of Thurgood Marshall in Columbia, Tennessee. Made my heart stop.

www.tba.org?pg=Articles&...

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I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.
December 23, 2025 at 12:59 AM