Elaine Brown was the first and only woman to lead the male-dominated Black Panther Party. She looks back on Jean Seberg, COINTELPRO, and internal divisions within the organization.
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Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
Friendship Is Complicated
Art, commerce, and the battle for the soul of My Little Pony.
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
Escape from Jonestown
15-year-old Tommy Bogue was sent to a promising new church settlement in Guyana—run by a charismatic leader named Jim Jones.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘Mecca Today Is a Microcosm of Its Own History Replayed as Tragedy’
It seems only a matter of time before the house where Prophet Muhammad was born, located opposite the imposing Royal Palace, is razed to the ground, and turned, probably, into a car park. During most of the Saudi era it was used as a cattle market; the Hijazi citizens fought to turn it into a […]
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
Interview: Kiera Feldman on Oral Roberts, God and Journalism
In our latest Longreads Exclusive, Kiera Feldman and Tulsa-based magazine This Land Press went deep into the downfall of the Oral Roberts family dynasty—how Richard Roberts went from heir to the televangelist’s empire, to stripped from his role at Oral Roberts University. Feldman, a Brooklyn-based journalist, and This Land Press have worked together before—her story […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Welcome to the Real Space Age
Despite fears that NASA and the United States have given up on space exploration, the focus has simply shifted to private companies like Virgin and SpaceX, which are preparing for commercial space travel: “This was the International Symposium for Personal and Commerical Spaceflight. It had been co-founded eight years earlier by a New Mexico State […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
I, Nephi
A history of Mormonism and how it has evolved: “Yet how much do specifically Mormon beliefs matter to contemporary Mormons? Brooks’s story, give or take a Nephite or two, could unfold in any fundamentalist community that provides comfort and meaning if you’re prepared to park your critical intelligence in the lot outside the church door. […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Consequence
In 2007, Eric Fair wrote an article in the Washington Post describing his experience as an interrogator in Iraq. He has had trouble finding a way to move on. “I tell my professor I am sick. I put away verb charts, participles, and lexicons, board a train for Washington, D.C., and meet with Department of […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Year After the Non-Apocalypse: Where Are They Now?
Radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted the world would end on May 21, 2011. It didn’t. A look at what happened to some of Camping’s followers: “I was struck by how some believers edited the past in order to avoid acknowledging that they had been mistaken. The engineer in his mid-twenties, the one who told me […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Is That All There Is?
These are theological questions without theological answers, and, if the atheist is not supposed to entertain them, then, for slightly different reasons, neither is the religious believer. Religion assumes that they are not valid questions because it has already answered them; atheism assumes that they are not valid questions because it cannot answer them. But […]
