Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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BlacKkKlansman – a spycops’ survivor’s perspective
Spike Lee's film is a fun but often fanciful treatment of undercover infiltration, with little regard for the women targeted by the state's spies, writes 'Alison'
A Ku Klux Klan gathering in Muncie Indiana in 1922
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
I WASN’T sure what to expect from Spike Lee’s new film set in the late 1970s based on the memoir of ex-undercover police officer Ron Stallworth.
All I knew was that it included an intimate relationship between the protagonist cop and a black female activist and that it had provoked some online debate about Lee’s representation of racism in the police.
Like Peter Moffat’s undercover police drama for the BBC last year, Lee’s film explores the dilemmas faced by officers employed in these duplicitous roles. And like Moffat’s hero, his undercover policeman is black.
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