It should have been a happy visit: a newly acquired French Bulldog puppy in for a first checkup. It was a relief to see it on my schedule as the last appointment of a busy day. As soon as I entered the room, however, I noticed the grim faces of the clients, and when I saw the little female dog, I knew why. The pup, skinny and pot-bellied, was less than half the size she should have been. She weighed just two pounds; I was shocked to discover that she had been trucked from Kansas to Massachusetts just three days earlier.

The couple, who had paid a considerable amount of money for her, did not believe she was from a puppy mill. They had carefully chosen the breeder, they explained, who had been recommended by a friend. The breeder had sent them photos and even videos. But the pup had been purchased online—which to me had become a warning sign that meant: from an online puppy mill, a sinister new frontier in the fight against commercial dog-breeding.

Puppy mills are factory farms that mass-produce dogs. Pet stores rely on puppy brokers to act as distributors and source animals from various puppy mills. Now, with pet stores facing criticism for selling these puppies, puppy mills and brokers have shifted online, where they can maximize profits by selling directly to consumers. Welcoming websites showcase a cornucopia of pups, both purebred and mixed-breed “designer dogs” replete with bows and bandanas, photographed on adorable blankets flanked by seasonal décor like pumpkins or beach balls. “Avoid scams and puppy mills,” these websites proclaim. “Our breeders are reputable and adhere to high standards!” They know what prospective buyers want to hear, and rely on what the Humane Society calls “puppy mill doublespeak,” coded language to convince consumers they are purchasing a quality product well worth the substantial price tag: a healthy, friendly puppy who’s had a good start in life. Yet all too often, the opposite is true.

Read More: The U.S. Has a New Favorite Dog Breed—and It’s Controversial

While the websites create an illusion of family-raised pups frolicking on grassy lawns, the animals are typically allowed on grass only for brief photo-ops. As described in journalist Rory Kress’s book The Doggie in the Window, they are treated like livestock, not pets; the licensing regulations touted online are so basic the ASPCA terms them “merely survival standards.” Prospective buyers see an image of the animals’ lives that is carefully curated, unless they visit the puppies’ birthplace themselves, which puppy mills don’t allow. While most puppies are sold and leave, breeding stock can languish in cages for years, until they are no longer useful and are euthanized or (if they’re fortunate) sent to rescues.

The puppies that are born at the mills are not blank slates; like children, their personalities are affected by their surroundings. Rescues, shelters, and reputable breeders identify the temperaments of animals and try to match them to prospective families. While online puppy descriptions appear individualized at first glance, reflecting claims of pups being socialized and “spoiled,” upon closer inspection the phrases are generic and repetitive, the equivalent of bad dating ad copy: “I enjoy long walks on the beach, romantic dinners, and snuggling by the fire on cold winter nights”; “I’m a sweet puppy just waiting for you to choose me; I love to play and snuggle; I can’t wait to meet you; I’ve got a great personality!”

Facilities often have dozens of dogs on site and multiple litters at a time; no one has time to socialize puppies or adult dogs, exercise and play with them, or learn their personalities to see whether they are high-energy or more relaxed, shy or outgoing. A lack of socialization is a recipe for anxiety, and many grow up to become anxious dogs. A Golden Retriever puppy I saw who was purchased online was so fearful he had to be carried into the veterinary clinic, where he cowered under the table.

Puppy mills also breed without screening for genetic diseases, and neglect to consider health or temperament when choosing breeding stock. Most veterinarians wouldn’t recommend breeding an anxious dog, or one with severe allergies, genetic heart disease, or hip dysplasia, but puppy mills aren’t picky.

There are truly reputable breeders, who wouldn’t dream of selling their puppies online to any random person with a credit card. They love their chosen breed and are devoted to their dogs, who are properly screened for breed-specific genetic health problems. Breeding dogs are well treated, not overbred, and typically live in the home, not a kennel or cage. Breeders also take an active role in puppy rearing, learning the temperaments of each individual and matching them to families. A great deal of care and attention goes into planning and raising each litter. As a result, the puppies are not mass produced, and these breeders may not have puppies available, might have a waiting list, and, like animal rescues and shelters, often ask prospective buyers an annoying number of questions to ensure their pups will go to a good home. That pup with the markings you fell in love with? She may be shy, and only allowed to go to a home without young children. They may ask if you’ve had experience with the breed, and what your plans are for veterinary care. This can be especially important for breeds prone to chronic medical problems, like French Bulldogs, who often suffer from Brachycephalic Airway Obstruction Syndrome (BAOS) and may require expensive surgery just to breathe comfortably. Now the most popular breed in the U.S., Frenchies are often described as low energy dogs well suited to apartment living; due to indiscriminate breeding, many simply cannot take in enough oxygen to be energetic for very long.

Yes, locating a pup from a rescue, shelter, or breeder can take more work, time, and patience than purchasing one from an online puppy store. But it can result in a healthier, happier dog that is a better fit for your family. It can also help end the abuses of puppy mills, support more informed breed choices, and ensure better care for animals. Anyone considering a puppy should avoid an “impulse buy,” something online sellers rely on. An array of breeds to choose from is a definite indicator of a puppy mill, as is a simple “add to cart” option or the ability to choose a pup solely by color and markings. Purchasing a puppy shouldn’t be a quick process involving a few mouse clicks. Rescues, shelters, and breeders have screening processes because they want to ensure the animal goes to a “forever home”; puppy mills just want money.

After examining the tiny puppy, I explained to the clients that I didn’t know what was wrong with her. I was unsure whether she’d recover, or if she might need surgery to fix an as-yet-undiagnosed problem. What I could tell them, though, was that they currently had a special-needs puppy on their hands, one who required extra care and who faced an uncertain prognosis. If they chose to return her, she might not survive being shipped back to the breeder, who would likely euthanize her.

A sickly puppy is a risk breeders take, but only an industry which puts profits before puppies would sell and ship an animal in such poor condition and pocket thousands of dollars. Puppy mills are taking advantage of both people and animals with misleading websites and false claims. We cannot fall for them.

After half a year of delays and more delays, the film industry appears to be cautiously creaking back to life this fall. Many of the blockbusters that were supposed to arrive this summer, from Mulan to No Time to Die, are already or will soon be available; they’ll will be joined by a number of streaming dramas that hope to take advantage of a thinned-out awards race. Meanwhile, movies continue to be pulled from the calendar and postponed, including Black Widow, Wed Anderson’s The French Dispatch and Wonder Woman 1984. Here’s when the most anticipated movies of fall 2020 are set arrive.

Also check out TIME’s most anticipated TV shows and books coming out this fall.

Robin’s Wish (Sept. 1 on-demand and digital)

Three months after Robin Williams died by suicide in 2014, doctors discovered that he had been suffering from Lewy body dementia, which causes a sharp decline in thinking and reasoning abilities. This documentary, created alongside his wife Susan Schneider-Williams, explores his final days, and the subsequent search for answers around his passing.

Tenet (Sept. 3 in theaters)

Originally scheduled to hit theaters on July 17, Christopher Nolan’s latest mind-bender faced a series of coronavirus-related delays before debuting internationally on August 26 ahead of a September 3 release in North America. The thriller stars John David Washington as an unnamed C.I.A. agent who embarks on a time-twisting mission to prevent the start of World War III alongside a mysterious new partner (Robert Pattinson). That’s all we’ll say for now, since, as Nolan purists will tell you, the less you know going in, the better.

Mulan (Sept. 4 on Disney+)

In the span of half a year, Mulan has turned from a surefire smash into a nerve-wracking experiment for Disney: will customers pay $30 on top of their Disney+ subscription to stream a war blockbuster that looks tailor-made for the big screen? (The movie will become free for subscribers in December.) Whether Niki Caro’s non-musical remake of the beloved 1998 animated Disney film succeeds in this new environment could set the tone for how movies are released in the coming months. Liu Yifei stars as the titular warrior and is flanked by Donnie Yen and Jet Li.

Read More: The Controversial Origins of the Story Behind Mulan

i’m thinking of ending things (Sept. 4 on Netflix)

With scream queen Toni Collette playing the seemingly unhinged mother of master onscreen sociopath Jesse Plemons, Netflix’s new psychological thriller has all the trappings of a can’t-miss horror hit. Written and directed by Academy Award winner Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), i’m thinking of ending things follows a young woman (Jessie Buckley, literally credited as Young Woman) who begins to have second thoughts about her relationship with her new boyfriend (Plemons) after embarking on a snowy road trip to his parents’ remote farmhouse. Judging by the acclaimed 2016 Iain Reid novel on which it’s based, the metaphysical fright flick suggests a chilling exploration of identity, memory and the fabric of reality itself.

Read More: I’m Thinking of Ending Things May Be Based on a Novel, But It’s All About Charlie Kaufman

Cuties (Sept. 9 on Netflix)

In August, this low-budget French awards-season hopeful got the worst kind of attention: a widespread cancellation campaign, after Netflix released a promotional poster and trailer that many deemed sexually exploitative of underage girls. Netflix apologized—and many who saw the film at its Sundance Film Festival premiere say that the ad campaign did not reflect the film’s nuanced handling of its young subjects. Well-received upon its release in France, the film follows an 11-year-old Senegalese Muslim girl, growing up in a poor area of Paris, who becomes intrigued by a group of young dancers in her neighborhood.

Read More: ‘This Film Is Sounding an Alarm.’ What Cuties Director Maïmouna Doucouré Wants Critics to Know About Her New Film

The Devil All the Time (Sept. 16 on Netflix)

Spanning the 20-some years between World War II and America’s entry into Vietnam, Netflix’s highly-anticipated Midwestern gothic thriller from Antonio Campos, based on Donald Ray Pollock’s 2011 novel of the same name, follows a sprawling cast of characters living in the Bible-thumping southern Ohio town of Knockemstiff and its neighboring backwoods. At the center of it all is young Arvin Russell (Tom Holland), a good Christian boy who begins to suspect the new traveling preacher in town (Robert Pattinson) of sinister motives. A stellar cast also includes Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Sebastian Stan, Haley Bennett and Mia Wasikowska.

Blackbird (Sept. 18 on-demand and digital)

After deciding to end her battle with ALS on her own terms, terminally ill matriarch Lily (Susan Sarandon) gathers three generations of her family for a farewell weekend in Roger Michell’s (Notting Hill, My Cousin Rachel) remake of the 2014 Danish film Silent Heart. The star-studded tearjerker, which boasts Kate Winslet and Mia Wasikowska as Lily’s daughters and Sam Neill as her husband, premiered to mixed reviews at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, with critics calling it both a “quality enterprise with numerous rewards for adult audiences” and a “lifeless death drama.”

Antebellum (Sept. 18 on-demand)

From the producers of Get Out and Us comes a social thriller about the state of race relations in America, which casts Janelle Monáe in the dual roles of a successful modern-day author and a woman enslaved on a plantation in what appears to be the pre-Civil War South. Jena Malone, Jack Huston, Kiersey Clemons and Gabourey Sidibe also star in writer-director duo Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz’s first feature.

Enola Holmes (Sept. 23 on Netflix)

Millie Bobby Brown is one of Netflix’s brightest stars as Eleven in Stranger Things. She partners with the platform again for a starring film role as Sherlock Holmes’ little sister, Enola. Based on the books by Nancy Springer, the movie follows Enola after her mother (Helena Bonham Carter) disappears, her famous brother declines to help, and the young novice decides to take on the case herself.

Agents of Chaos (Sept. 23 on HBO and HBO Max)

The documentarian Alex Gibney has previously burrowed into Silicon Valley, Scientology, and Enron. His newest feature investigates the Russian hacking of the 2016 election. He probes into Russian troll farms and the deep web, and talks to Americans who became caught up in Putin’s plot as well.

Kajillionaire (Sept. 25 in theaters)

Acclaimed independent filmmaker Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know, The Future) paints a captivating portrait of a dysfunctional family of scammers in this heist satire. Evan Rachel Wood stars as Old Dolio, the oddly-named daughter of small-time con artists Theresa (Debra Winger) and Robert (Richard Jenkins) whose life is thrown for a loop by a chance meeting with a kind stranger (Gina Rodriguez).

The Glorias (Sept. 30 on digital and Amazon Prime Video)

Following Rose Byrne’s turn as Gloria Steinem in Hulu’s Emmy-nominated Mrs. America earlier this year, Academy Award winners Alicia Vikander and Julianne Moore take up the mantle of the face of the women’s liberation movement in a new biopic from Julie Taymor (Frida, Across the Universe). Based on Steinem’s own memoir, My Life on the Road, The Glorias follows Steinem from her girlhood in 1940s Ohio through her rise to national fame as a feminist leader—alongside contemporaries like Dorothy Pitman Hughes (Janelle Monáe), Flo Kennedy (Lorraine Toussaint), Bella Abzug (Bette Midler), Dolores Huerta (Monica Sanchez) and Wilma Mankiller (Kimberly Guerrero)— in the ’60s and ’70s, and beyond.

The Boys in the Band (Sept. 30 on Netflix)

The Tony-winning cast of the 2018 revival of Mart Crowley’s landmark play reunites for a Ryan Murphy-produced Netflix adaptation directed by Joe Mantello. Jim Parsons stars as Michael, a boozy screenwriter who invites a group of his closest gay friends (played by Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells, Tuc Watkins, Michael Benjamin Washington and Robin de Jesús)—along with a hapless hustler (Charlie Carver)—to his apartment for their buddy Harold’s (Zachary Quinto) birthday party in 1968 New York. Things quickly go off the rails when Michael’s straight college roommate (Brian Hutchison) also shows up.

On the Rocks (October 2 in theaters, October 23 Apple TV+)

It’s been 17 years since actor Bill Murray and director Sofia Coppola teamed up for the widely revered Lost in Translation. In their reunion On the Rocks, Murray plays the charming and inquisitive father of Laura (Rashida Jones), who suspects her husband of having an affair.

Once Upon a River (Oct. 2 in virtual cinemas)

The lone man on the river has long loomed large in the American mythos, from Paul Bunyan to Huckleberry Finn to the stories of Ernest Hemingway. This time, in a film based on the novel by Bonnie Jo Campbell, it’s a woman who makes her way downstream: Margo Crane (Kenadi DelaCerna), a Native American teenager who is forced to fend for herself after the death of her father. Wielding a gun and plenty of survival skills, Margo explores the Michigan woods in search of her estranged mother and a place where she belongs.

The Forty-Year-Old Version (Oct. 9 on Netflix)

Writer-director Radha Blank makes her feature debut with a semi-autobigoraphical comedy about a burnt-out New York playwright (played by Blank) who turns to rap to rediscover her voice as she turns 40. “It’s my love letter to NY and its struggling artists as well as the NY artistic institutions that raised me – Hip Hop and Theater,” Blank said of the black-and-white Sundance standout.

Time (Oct. 9 in theaters, Oct. 23 on Amazon Prime Video)

Garrett Bradley won best director for U.S. documentary at Sundance for this film, a damning portrait of the American prison-industrial complex. The film follows a woman’s tireless two-decade fight to free her husband from a 60-year prison sentence.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Oct. 16 on Netflix)

Many have drawn a connection between the social unrest of 2020 and that of 1968, when Vietnam War protesters stormed the streets the summer before a pivotal election. Aaron Sorkin’s latest drama depicts the tension that summer in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention, when police attacked protesters and charged a group of organizers with conspiracy to incite a riot. Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II star.

American Utopia (Oct. 17 on HBO and HBO Max)

David Byrne, the onetime frontman of the Talking Heads, has proved himself time and time again an electric, inimitable live performer with his quavering tenor and skittish dance moves—most recently in his Broadway show American Utopia, a powerhouse concert of new and classic songs. On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Saturday Night Live, he’s proved that his unique act converts well onto the small screen—and now audiences get to take in a recording of the Broadway show in full.

Rebecca (Oct. 21 on Netflix)

Fans of Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel who have dreamed of going to Manderley again are finally getting their wish. The forthcoming Netflix remake sees Lily James take the lead as du Maurier’s unnamed narrator, the new bride of wealthy widower Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer) who can’t seem to shake the feeling that her husband’s late first wife is still present at his eerie English estate. Of course, Ben Wheatley’s (High Rise, Free Fire) take on the gothic thriller has big shoes to fill considering Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 adaptation, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Over the Moon (Oct. 23 on Netflix)

Based on the Chinese legend of the Moon Goddess Chang’e, this family-friendly animated film centers on Fei Fei, a young girl who dreams of going to the moon to reunite with her lost mother. Sandra Oh, John Cho, Ken Jeong and other Asian-American stars serve as voice actors; the late Audrey Wells, who died of cancer in 2018, wrote the script, while Glen Keane, a Disney Animation mainstay, makes his full-length directorial debut.

Those Who Wish Me Dead (Oct. 23 in theaters)

In this adaptation of bestselling author Michael Koryta’s 2014 novel, Angelina Jolie stars as a survival expert tasked with protecting a teenage murder witness from a pair of killers hunting him through the Montana wilderness—all while a raging forest fire wreaks havoc on the landscape. Nicholas Hoult, Jon Bernthal, Tyler Perry, Finn Little and Aidan Gillen also star in the thriller from director Taylor Sheridan (Wind River).

Bad Hair (Oct. 23 on Hulu)

This Sundance horror-comedy from Justin Simien (Dear White People) centers on a demonic weave and finds laughs and scares in the plight of Black women regarding the various pressures and judgments surrounding their hair. The cast includes Elle Lorraine, Lena Waithe, Blair Underwood and Jay Pharoah.

Read More: Dear White People Creator Justin Simien on ‘Navigating Other People’s Guilt’

Ammonite (Nov. 13 in theaters)

After famed British fossil hunter Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) reluctantly takes on a new apprentice (Saorise Ronan) to work beside her on the shores of 1840s England, the two begin a passionate love affair that changes both their lives forever. This romantic period drama is the latest from God’s Own Country writer-director Francis Lee.

The Climb (Nov. 13 in theaters)

This buddy comedy was well-reviewed out of the Cannes Film Festival last Spring, with Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com calling it “thrilling and charming in a way that very few comedies ever are.” Michael Angelo Covino directs and stars in the film as Mike, whose bond with his best friend Kyle is put through the ringer due to romantic entanglements.

Happiest Season (Nov. 25 in theaters)

In this holiday rom-com from writer-director Clea DuVall (whom Veep fans know as Marjorie), Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis play girlfriends on the verge of engagement, with conservative parents standing in their way. Mary Steenburgen, Alison Brie and Aubrey Plaza co-star.

Mank (TBA on Netflix)

Award-winning director David Fincher (Gone Girl, The Social Network) turns his camera on 1930s Hollywood for a biographical drama about journalist-turned-screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and his battle with Orson Welles over screenplay credit for Citizen Kane. Gary Oldman stars as Mankiewicz alongside Tom Burke as Welles, Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies, Lily Collins as Rita Alexander, and Tom Pelphrey as Mank’s brother in the black-and-white Netflix drama.

In July, Robert Chelsea became the first African American to receive a face transplant after his face was disfigured in a harrowing car accident. His remarkable before-and-after photos were published in TIME alongside a story titled “The Face of Change.”

While that title describes Chelsea quite literally, it’s befitting of many of the portraits TIME commissioned this year. As startling structural shifts took place around the world, TIME was there to capture both the leaders and the followers of the movements driving them — as well as those on the sidelines whose lives were forever changed.

In Stockholm, Greta Thunberg posed in a resplendent green dress with well-worn sneakers peeking out from underneath the hem, a nod to her travels around the globe demanding that leaders take action on climate change. (She was later named TIME’s 2019 Person of the Year). In Washington, the new class of congresspeople, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Lauren Underwood, were captured in kinetic dialogue, foreshadowing the tenacity and iconoclasm they would bring to their jobs on Capitol Hill.

In portraits of unexpected newcomers who came to dominate the cultural conversation, including Lil Nas X, Lizzo and Naomi Osaka, the subjects stare defiantly into the camera, as if daring anyone to tell them they don’t belong at the top of their respective fields.

These images include both well-known figures — like the Dalai Lama, Margaret Atwood and Donald Trump — and faceless unknowns fighting against injustice. Some depict everyday people in mundane situations that speak to the state of the planet in 2019, as in one photograph of two ice-sellers pausing from their jobs on a sweltering day in Jacobabad, Pakistan, one of the hottest cities on earth.

Each portrait assignment is an opportunity for TIME to create an original and lasting visual. The success of that mission depends on factors like how much time we get with the subject (about five minutes with French President Emmanuel Macron); what they may do or wear in front of the camera (Lil Nas X wore a custom suit); and which photographer we choose to execute it all. How will they take command with the subject? Do they need an hour, or can they nail it in just a few minutes?

Sometimes it all goes according to plan. Sometimes everything changes when the subject walks into a room. Each time — and each year — brings something new. Below, see TIME’s best portraits of 2019.

George H.W. Bush, who died Nov. 30, 2018 at the age of 94, served the government in various roles before he was elected president in 1988.

In 1971, Bush had recently lost a bid for election to the Senate, and was serving as President Richard Nixon’s ambassador to the United Nations, a role he filled until 1973.

It wasn’t an easy job: when LIFE Magazine caught up with him, it was at the tense moment that the United Nations decided to admit “Red China” as a member in place of the Nationalist government based in Taipei. Bush, then 47, was an advocate of the “two-China solution,” of keeping both governments in the international organization. Bush was hissed at and booed by other ambassadors, and LIFE reported that even his wife, Barbara Bush, who died at 92 on April 17, 2018, was “sneered at” as she sat crocheting in the gallery.

For observers, however, Bush’s attitude in the face of the significant setback was telling. Though some had doubted whether he was appropriate for the U.N. job—his diplomatic experience at the time of his appointment was pretty much zero—Bush had quickly shown that he made up for that gap in “wit, stamina and enthusiasm.”

“In trying to save Taiwan’s seat,” the magazine noted, “he had set what must be a U.N. track record for personal effort.” His attitude every day was a model of go-get-‘em, as he raced to and from meetings, collapsing at the end of a long day knowing that even though he was sometimes so tired that he said he wanted to cry, he would do it all over again tomorrow.

The magazine ended up only publishing images of Bush at work, but photographer Leonard McCombe also captured the balance of Bush’s life—the home and family that he left behind when he went off to New York to the United Nations. As these images make clear, the future President whose “wit, stamina and enthusiasm” impressed the international community had no shortage of enthusiasm for the rest of life as well.

On Monday, Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, N.Y., swings open its doors to tennis fans, as the first round of the 2018 U.S. Open tournament begins. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the stadium’s namesake becoming the first African-American man to win a Grand Slam title.

When Ashe defeated Tom Okker of the Netherlands on Sept. 9, 1968, it was an exciting game to watch, to say the least; the 25-year-old Richmond, Va., native served 26 aces throughout the match, 15 of them to win the first set, which went all the way up to 14-12. (Tiebreakers were introduced in 1970.)

Even so, the record $14,000 prize money for the match went to Okker, who was the last professional player standing that year; Ashe got a $20 per diem as an amateur. But things were changing for Ashe — by year’s end, he would be ranked the No. 1 tennis player by the United States Lawn Tennis Association — as well as for the world around him. Fifty years later, Ashe’s win stands out as not only a milestone in tennis history, but also a milestone in the civil rights movement.

One of the many people watching tennis history be made that year was longtime TIME and LIFE photographer John G. Zimmerman, whose images from that day were included in LIFE’s cover story the following week, about Ashe’s achievement — but many of Zimmerman’s pictures were never published in the magazine. The new book Crossing the Line: Arthur Ashe at the 1968 U.S. Open, from which the images above are drawn, brings together those pictures 50 years later. The book includes hundreds that have never before been seen publicly, some of which are included in the gallery above.

Zimmerman shadowed Ashe during much of the 36 hours in before, during and after the U.S. Open that year. The pictures show the surprisingly ordinary events that led up to his extraordinary achievement, such as the solitary subway ride from his hotel in Midtown Manhattan to the match in Forest Hills.

The Sept. 20, 1968, cover of LIFE magazine would describe his style of keeping it cool on the court as “icy elegance.” But he didn’t hold back at all when it came to talking about the impact of his playing within the larger fight for racial equality.

“I can make my protest heard by winning,” he told LIFE. “People don’t listen to losers.”

And win he did. By the time Ashe died in 1993, after contracting HIV from a blood transfusion following heart bypass surgery, he had won 33 singles titles and 14 doubles titles. When he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, President Bill Clinton remarked that Ashe had an “inner strength and outward dignity” that “marked his game every bit as much as that dazzling crosscourt backhand.”

The movie SuperFly that comes out this week shares a name with the 1972 film Super Fly, though “they serve different audiences, they serve different worlds,” as TIME’s film critic Stephanie Zacharek puts it in her review. But, even with all those differences, both movies also share a link to an important part of American history — and the history of LIFE Magazine.

The original Super Fly was directed by Gordon Parks Jr., whose father Gordon Parks, who died at 93 in 2006, was the first African-American staff photographer at LIFE and a co-founder of Essence magazine.

In the autobiographical novel that inspired 1969’s movie The Learning Tree — which made him the first African-American director of a major Hollywood movie — Parks Sr. summed up why he became a photographer. He wrote that he sought to portray “how certain blacks, who were fed up with racism, rebelled against it.” After joining LIFE in 1949, in between photographing subjects as varied as the Paris fashion scene and Benedictine monks, he worked to convince African-Americans readers that they could trust the magazine to tell their stories, even though most of its staffers were white. At the same time, by default, he served as a translator of black life for many of LIFE’s non-African-American readers.

“There is this pressure to make good for your whole people,” he told TIME in 1953. “If you fail, they give you a black eye.”

Some of his most famous photo essays depicted black Muslims — with guidance from Malcolm X — and the life of the Fontenelles, a typical Harlem family; so many readers were moved by the family’s struggle to make ends meet that they sent in enough money to help the family move into a bigger home in Queens. As photographer Andre D. Wagner recently wrote for TIME, “It’s the dignity of the people that he was able to capture and his ability to get below the skin that made his pictures undeniable.”

How Gordon Parks’ Photographs Implored White America to See Black Humanity

But it was a different venture from the elder Parks that opened the door for Super Fly: Shaft.

Along with its sequel Shaft’s Big Score, the movie launched a “wave of eminently commercial movies by blacks about the black experience,” TIME reported in the April 10, 1972, issue. As TIME reported back then, Shaft cost $500,000 to make, but grossed an “astonishing $13 million in the U.S. alone,” making it “one of three movies that made any profit for MGM” in 1971. The success showed that “Hollywood finally took note of two basic facts: first, with movie theaters clustering in big cities and whites moving to the suburbs, the black sector of the moviegoing public was growing rapidly (an estimated 20% in the past five years),” TIME reported. “[S]econd, the black audience was hungry for films it could identify with, made by blacks, with black heroes, about black life. Now every major studio is making a play for the big black market.”

Parks Jr., who was also a photographer and got his start in film by watching his father make The Learning Tree, died tragically at the age of 44 in a plane crash in 1979 in Nairobi. But the film genre that he and his father pioneered endured and became controversially known as “blaxploitation.” TIME defined the genre in 1984 in a story about the dearth of roles facing black actors:

But the moment faded in the 1980s, leaving many African-American actors struggling to find good roles.

Part of the reason for that shift was the controversy that surrounded the genre. TIME said as much a decade earlier in its original review of Super Fly, which the magazine headlined “Racial Slur.” The review argued that the film only exacerbated the problem of perpetuating stereotypes because its characters were “diddy-boppers or street-corner hustlers,” and that Super Fly and movies like it “demean the audiences they are made for.”

Representation of minorities in films and in all ranks of the film-making process is still an issue. While the 2018 SuperFly has a slicker and “practically bourgeois” feel, TIME’s Zacharek writes in her review, the real world outside the fictional movie has similar problems to those faced in earlier decades. “Racial inequality has perhaps shifted forms, but has in no way eased,” she writes. “We might enjoy [the 2018 SuperFly] more if we weren’t stuck in such a place of uncertainty and anxiety.”

Think of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson or Richard Nixon. Each, in his own way, is firmly set in a certain era of American history. Yet as vibrant as they were at the peak of their power and influence, none of these men could easily slip into the contemporary political world. Their leadership was unique to their time and place.

That does not ring true for my father, Robert F. Kennedy, who was killed 50 years ago. His appearance is ever modern: the shaggy hair, the skinny ties, the suit jacket off, the shirt sleeves rolled. Beyond appearances, what is striking about RFK are the themes he returned to again and again — themes that still energize the debate and resonate in our own time.

Think of the headlines over the past few years and it is easy to hear Robert Kennedy’s voice and imagine him speaking out in our country — on the madness of gun violence, the shame of police brutality, the need for compassion in welcoming immigrants and refugees, the urgent need to defy the call to war and, where war has broken out, the moral necessity of seeking peace. One imagines him urging us to focus not only on stopping terrorism but also on understanding and addressing its root causes. He would encourage us to focus on the destructive force of hate, the disillusionment of young people, the inherent injustice of a criminal-justice system that discriminates based on race and class and sends thousands to jail simply because they are too poor to make bail — the new Jim Crow. And it is easy to think of RFK reminding us of the duty to address the struggles of those who are not in the headlines, the most vulnerable among us: farmworkers, small farmers, factory workers, people who have seen the jobs that once supported them replaced by cheap labor or technology. He would also remember our duty to Native Americans and those suffering in the hollows of Appalachia, on the Mississippi Delta and in the most destitute slums of our great cities.

In the 1950s, he spent much of his time on the Senate Committee on Investigations fighting the excesses of its chair, Joe McCarthy, and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn — two figures who echo in the news today. He later caused Cohn’s resignation and led to the end of McCarthy’s reign of terror. Asked a decade later by Peter Maas how he could have worked for McCarthy, Kennedy responded, “Well, at the time, I thought there was a serious internal security threat to the United States … [and] Joe McCarthy seemed to be the only one doing anything about it. I was wrong.”

But to leave it at stopping the bullies would not do him justice. On that terrible night when he told a crowd in downtown Indianapolis that Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered, he included in his remarks a quote from Aeschylus: “To tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of the world.” Indeed, my father focused much of his life taming the savageness, and he made gentle the life of the world.

There was no quality my father admired more than courage, save perhaps love. I remember after dinner one night he picked up the battered poetry book that was always somewhere by his side and read aloud Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” We listened aghast to the story of a group of soldiers whose commanding officer orders them to ride into an ambush, knowing they will be slaughtered — yet they still obey the command. My father then explained that he and my mother were going on a trip and challenged us to a contest to see who could best memorize the poem while they were away. I did not win that contest _ my sister Courtney did — but one stanza still remains with me:

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die,

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred

Why would a father ask his ever-expanding brood of what became 11 children to memorize a poem about war and slaughter? I think there were three reasons: He wanted to share with us his love of literature. He wanted us to embrace challenges that appear daunting. But most of all, he believed it was imperative for us to question authority, and to learn how those who fail that lesson do so at their own peril. Now, coming upon 50 years after Robert F. Kennedy’s last campaign, those are among the lessons I think he would have liked to impart to all Americans. We face daunting challenges both nationally and globally. But we must rise to those tasks armed with courage, faith, love and an abiding commitment to justice, yet girded with a healthy sense of skepticism.

Adapted from Robert F. Kennedy: Ripples of Hope by Kerry Kennedy (copyright 2018). Used with permission from Center Street, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Barbara Bush, the fierce and beloved matriarch of the Bush family, died at the age of 92 on Tuesday.

The former First Lady had the longest marriage in presidential history — she was married to President George H.W. Bush for 73 years, dropping out of college to follow along as her childhood love grew in his career. The couple met when Barbara Bush (then Barbara Pierce) was a 15-year-old girl on Christmas break.

It was 1941 at a Christmas dance in Greenwich, Conn., when George Bush, a recent Andover graduate, asked fellow guest Jack Wozencraft if he knew the “strikingly beautiful girl” in the red and green holiday-themed dress, Jon Meacham writes in Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush. Wozencraft told Bush that the girl was Barbara Pierce, a Rye, N.Y., native who was a senior at the boarding school Ashley Hall in Charleston, S.C., and the daughter of the publishing executive Marvin Pierce. Wozencraft asked if he wanted to meet her and Bush recalled saying, “That was the general idea,” so he introduced George by his nickname Poppy.

After winter break, Barbara Pierce went back to school in the South, but the two became pen pals. They wouldn’t see each other again until spring break, when they went on a double-date to Citizen Kane. He asked her to Andover’s senior prom, where he kissed her on the cheek, “in front of the world,” as she later recalled the moment.

In the summer of 1943, they made it official, as TIME explained in 1989:

Here, take a look back at their love story.

Prince’s ballad “Sea of Everything” — from 20Ten, his 35th album — begins by evoking the power of an image. “I see your picture wherever I go / I’m not here to lecture, just letting you know,” the ballad begins. “I know you’re busy, the world’s calling you…”

The world, it seems, will always be calling for Prince — and for any new pictures of him.

In music’s never-ending search for authenticity and genius, few can match Prince’s talents as a musician or songwriter. As LIFE observed in 1992, his music “sprang from that fundamental basement playroom where all rock is gestated. He drew into a single voice the various sounds of James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Funkadelic, which he pressed into the thunder of Purple Rain. Prince remembered two basic facts about rock: It’s dance music, and its signature emotion is longing, romantic yearning.”

Although Prince passed away two years ago this April, his contributions to culture continue. In a recent interview with the Guardian, Janelle Monáe said that her new album Dirty Computer (set to release on April 27) features sounds she was “collecting” with her friend Prince. And on her new single, “Make Me Feel,” with its synth hook and yearning lyrics, that influence is clear.

This week, LIFE combed through its archives of hundreds of candid Prince photos to give a closer look at the beloved Purple One. LIFE photographer Gjon Mili once wrote that the best portrait is when the subject is “free and easy…in the line of the body.” By that logic, it was impossible for Prince to take a bad picture.

This gallery was produced in partnership with Spotify as part of their year-long “Black History Is Happening Now” platform. Click here for curated playlists, videos, podcasts and more that celebrate Black achievements and culture beyond Black History Month.

Pop, rock, funk, R&B, psychdelia – the man from Minneapolis was a true original and earth-shattering performer. Hear Prince Rogers Nelson’s best right now. Listen here:

It was at his home at Montreat, N.C., that the Rev. Billy Graham, “the father of modern Christian evangelism” and “spiritual advisor” to U.S. Presidents, died Feb. 21 at the age of 99.

In 1955, LIFE photographed him when that 200-acre mountainside home was being built among the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, near the farm he grew up on in Charlotte. It was a sacred place for him — and only fitting that a man who would preach about God’s presence in nature would recharge in such a place between his crusades worldwide and media appearances.

The above photos, most of which were never published in LIFE magazine, show outtakes of the Baptist minister at home. They’re images that Ed Clark had taken for a special issue that came out during the Christmas week that year, at a time when Graham was “the most famous U.S. religious leader,” as the magazine put it. The feature, “Resting Up to Save Souls” (Dec. 26, 1955), showed the “boyish-looking” 37-year-old seeking “seclusion” with his wife Ruth (pictured below, from left) — who “knows the Bible better than he does” — and children Franklin, Virginia, Anne and Ruth, plus the family dog.

See more: LIFE With Billy Graham: Rare Photos From the Early Years of His Career

In addition to reading the Bible while relaxing on a hammock, and going on hikes with his family, he played golf with “an unorthodox crosshand grip,” as the magazine observed. Graham told LIFE that the Lord won’t let him play the game well, because if He did, “I’d spend too much time at it.”

TIME’s new special edition Billy Graham: America’s Preacher is available now in the Meredith shop and at Amazon.