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Just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, North Carolina has a new law to require photo ID at the polls and to shorten early voting. Proponents say the law will stave off voter fraud. Opponents say it will effectively quash the vote of many poor minorities.

In 1857, John Brown liberates 12-year-old Henry from his master. There's only one problem: Brown is so wrapped up in his freedom mission, he thinks Henry is a girl. James McBride delivers a portrait of Brown and his friend Frederick Douglass as Henry sees them.

Grandparents with grandchildren were among the tens of thousands gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial Saturday to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the civil rights movement's March on Washington. The rally is among many events around the nation's capital over several days marking the historic march.

This Labor Day weekend, more than 1,000 athletes have gathered in Washington, D.C., to play a street version of volleyball known as "9-man." The game became popular generations ago in Chinatowns across the U.S. and Canada. Only players of Asian descent are allowed to compete in the national tournament.

Taking care of an aging relative is often portrayed as a angst-laden misery. But the evidence on that is all over the map. A new study says that family caregivers actually live longer than their noncaregiving counterparts. Looking after someone with dementia can be stressful, but that's not always the case.

A brutal corrective to gauzy portrayals of the antebellum South, this true story of a man kidnapped into slavery took home the top audience prize at the Toronto Film Festival. NPR's Bob Mondello says it emphatically deserved the honor. (Recommended)

Solomon Northup, an African-American musician from New York, was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. He was eventually freed and wrote about his experience in Twelve Years a Slave, a memoir that has inspired a new film adaptation. But by the end of the Civil War, he dropped off the public record.

The trumpeter and bandleader premiered his gospel-jazz Abyssinian Mass back in 2008. But now, accompanied by a 70-voice choir, he's taking the sprawling work on the road and into African-American churches — whose services were the inspiration for the piece.

The conglomerate is launching new networks — targeted at diverse audiences and run by Sean Combs, Magic Johnson and Robert Rodriguez — to satisfy an agreement made with the FCC when the company merged with NBCUniversal.

The editor in chief of Newsweek and the Daily Beast joins NPR's Steve Inskeep to talk about women taking on big cultural challenges, and the stories of how they got there.