He was a sharecropper’s son who transformed the very foundations of modern popular music, with “Lucille” and his influential, innovative sound.

Fifty years ago this week, thousands in the Civil Rights movement set out from Selma, Alabama, to march to Montgomery, and this time, triumphantly, they made it.

The racist violence in Selma, Alabama, 50 years ago lives in history as ‘‘Bloody Sunday,’’ but do not forget the February night of vigilantism in Marion that inspired the Selma March.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s efforts to eliminate the poll tax would in the end help poor whites as much as it did disenfranchised blacks.

A reminder that Washington has been toying with and lying to Americans for a long, long time.

In 1964, Martin Luther King became the youngest man ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. When he accepted the prize, he delivered a speech that has been unfairly ignored because his delivery was so muted. Read 50 years later, it is electrifying.

The talented British actor discusses playing a complex terrorist in the new film Default, his awards bait turn as MLK in the upcoming biopic Selma, and his long road to the top.