ALT Photo of James Talarico, who is running for U.S. Senate in Texas.

ALT Press photo of Owen Whitfield during the 1939 Missouri Sharecropper Roadside Demonstration. Whitfield was a visionary who fused economic justice, labor organizing and civil rights decades before the modern Civil Rights Movement. At a time when the Jim Crow system used racial division to keep wages low and labor weak, Whitfield engineered an unbreakable, multi-racial alliance. By proving that Black and white sharecroppers shared the same economic enemy, he shattered the Southern playbook of “strikebreaking by race.” He also revolutionized the role of the Black church in social movements. Today, Whitfield is remembered not just as a labor leader, but as a brilliant strategist who weaponized the visual power of protest to turn a hidden rural crisis into an unavoidable national reckoning. He established a model for cross-racial coalition building that remains a masterclass in labor organizing.

ALT Graphic supporting Jon Ossoff for U.S. Senate, Georgia.

ALT Dorie Miller wearing his Navy Cross in May 1942. Miller’s extraordinary valor during the attack on Pearl Harbor forced a reluctant Navy to award him the Navy Cross. However, the myths and structural segregation that relegated Miller to the Messman Branch persisted after Dec. 7, 1941. Miller’s actions gave civil rights activists an undeniable symbol to fight for institutional equality. It took a coordinated campaign by activist networks to force the government’s hand. While the Navy tried to compartmentalize Miller’s award as an isolated exception — even keeping his rank restricted to the mess deck — the activist momentum could not be stopped. His visibility forced the Navy to begin opening up general service training to Black sailors and commissioning Black officers. Ultimately, the public discourse surrounding Miller’s valor laid the foundation for President Truman’s Executive Order 9981, desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces in 1948. Photo credit: Naval History and Heritage Command.