The Archives

1963

“A culmination of the summer of revolt, a solemn, massive sacrament in which thousands of Negroes and their white friends in churches, unions and liberal circles could share the revolutionary passion born last spring in Birmingham,” Newsweek reflected about the protest in which 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to further civil rights and where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech. After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, thousands gathered at the same site to protest police brutality and racial inequality as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.

1986

“More and more couples are painting a new kind of American family portrait— one with just two faces, the husband’s and the wife’s,” Newsweek reported as the U.S. birth rate plummeted to its lowest since 1976. After steadily rising the next two decades, it has again dropped—falling 2 percent annually since 2014 and 4 percent last year.

2012

“If Armstrong used banned substances, he was leveling the playing field,” Newsweek wrote right before the U.S. Anti-doping Agency alleged he took performance enhancing drugs throughout his career. Recently, sprinter Sha’carri Richardson’s Olympic dreams were squashed when she tested positive for marijuana.