**Jeet Heer**: [The New Republic’s Legacy on Race: From Du Bois to the Bell Curve](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120884/new-republics-legacy-race): “Between the late ’30s and the mid-’70s…>…*The New Republic* was one of the best magazines outside the black press in its coverage of the rise of the civil rights movement. Thomas Sancton, Sr., managing editor from 1942–1943, was a particularly radical advocate, holding FDR’s feet to the fire for his compromises with the Jim Crow South, and doing brave reporting on the Detroit race riots of 1943…. [But when] the country’s conversation about race turned to more ambiguous debates over busing, affirmative action, and overcoming economic hurdles. The owner who would oversee that new era was Martin Peretz…
