Professor Sherrilyn Ifill gives us some ideas for responding to political catastrophe in the new Nadir

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There is something uniquely powerful about a simple truth, plainly spoken.

Last week, I spoke with Sherrilyn Ifill, the Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University, and the founder of the 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy at Howard Law School. We discussed the Nadir—the period following Reconstruction when Black people faced violent attacks from Southern states. They endured lynching, the brazen destruction of their wealth, segregation, inescapable discrimination, and the strategic elimination of rights that were supposedly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. It was an indisputably bleak period in American history for Black people. However, as Sherrilyn has always said, and which she reiterated in our conversation, “Black people have never done

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