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Randall Kennedy

Randall Kennedy has been a contributing editor of the Prospect since 1995. He is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard University. His several books include The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency.

Recent Articles

Martin Luther King Jr.: The Prophet as Healer

Whether by example or by strategy, Dr. King always looked for opportunities to build bridges.

Randall KennedyApr 03, 2018
AP Photo/Charles Harrity
AP Photo/Charles Harrity Addressing the press in Chicago, March 24, 1967 This article appears in the Spring 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . I n August 1967, in a sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr. observed that he and the congregation were living in “evil times.” His remark was brutally punctuated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, when King was assassinated. What should we focus upon in marking the 50th anniversary of this somber landmark? I suggest three things: the particulars of King’s achievements as a liberal dissident; the trying circumstances he faced at the end of his life; and the virtues of his principal strategy and aim—coalition politics in the service of a decent, egalitarian, multiracial society. King was a great man—not a pseudo-hero but the genuine article, one of the most remarkable dissidents in American, indeed world, history. He was at the forefront of three campaigns that defined...

The Forgotten Origins of the Constitution on Campus

Foes of hateful speech should remember how free expression was protected on campus in the first place—through the civil rights movement.

Randall Kennedy | December 28, 2017

Despair Is Not an Option

Randall KennedySep 20, 2017
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert Graduate members of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity pray during a social action prayer vigil across the street from the Jefferson Davis monument in New Orleans, prior to its removal. This article is a preview of the Fall 2017 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . D evotees of racial justice continue to be appalled by the Trump administration. Heather Heyer, the anti-racist demonstrator murdered in Charlottesville, was right: “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” A great many Americans, especially African Americans, are in a mood of despair upon witnessing a president of the United States winking at neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klansmen, and doing everything in his power to expunge the achievements of his predecessor, a man who came to be known less for his race than for his decency, dignity, and honor. Yet despair is not an option. And in fact, good people of all races are putting their anger to good use through...

State-Enforced Segregation and the Color of Justice

Jim Crow was the descendant of Southern slavery. More shocking is the legacy of government-enforced racism in the North.  

Randall Kennedy | July 24, 2017

The Case for Resistance

There is no common ground to be had with the Trump administration.

Randall KennedyDec 14, 2016
AP Photo/Jeff Roberson
AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File Protesters hold signs as they prepare to march in opposition to the election of President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday, November 13, 2016, in St. Louis. This article will appears in the Winter 2017 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . D onald J. Trump will be the next president of the United States. That is sobering because he is glaringly unsuited for any significant public office, much less the most important in our country and indeed the world. Nothing about his pre-candidacy record recommends him. To the contrary, it is so lacking in relevant achievement, so marred by embarrassment, that many onlookers thought that his run for the presidency was nothing more than a publicity stunt. Then his campaign itself was so repulsive, so saturated with bigotries of various sorts, so ostentatiously crass, so glaringly demagogic, that it prompted many leading figures in his own party to repudiate him. The conservative New Hampshire Union Leader...

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