July 21, 2020 The Honorable Steven Reed, Mayor, City of Montgomery 103 North Perry Street, Montgomery, Alabama 36104 Mr. Ernest Finley, Chief, Montgomery Police Department 320 North Ripley Street Montgomery,…
July 20, 2020 The Honorable Steven Reed Mayor, City of Montgomery, AL Mr. Ernest Finley Chief, Montgomery Police Department Dear Mayor Reed and Chief Finley, Well over 40 years ago,…
SOS and Black Lives Matters Leaders Voluntarily Appear to be Arrested. All Five SOS and Black Lives Matter Turned Selves in to Montgomery Police Montgomery, AL, July 20, 2020 –…
“Why would $300 keep me from voting?” asks Robert Peoples of Mobile, Alabama. By Dana Sweeney, Facing South — Robert Peoples remembers when African Americans won the right to vote…
By Dr. Maulana Karenga — (Remembering, reflecting and recommitting.) We cannot say it too often, stress it too much and certainly must never downplay in any way the definitive, determining…
Source CNN — The first monument in the United States honoring the victims of lynching has become a must-see civil rights attraction in Montgomery, Alabama, and now it’s been expanded. The Equal Justice Initiative opened its new Legacy Pavilion on Saturday — just in time to welcome visitors to the Alabama state capitol for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend. The Legacy Pavilion features a new memorial recognizing more than…
By Jay Reeves, Associated Press — MOBILE, Ala. — Alabama steamship owner Timothy Meaher financed the last slave vessel that brought African captives to the United States, and he came…
By Sandy Mazza, USA Today — ATHENS, Ala. – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was born about 40 miles from his great-great-grandfathers’ Alabama cotton farms, worked by slaves 100 years before. Like so many long-standing Southern white families, McConnell’s forebearers built their wealth with free slave labor and cheap land. Two of his great-great-grandfathers owned more than a dozen slaves, census records reviewed by the USA TODAY Network show. The…
The US is becoming more diverse and progressive, but white men’s grip on power is being exercised via the courts, gerrymandering and dark money in politics. By Tom McCarthy, The Guardian — The exercise of political power by legislative majorities of white, male elected officials in ways that disproportionately exclude or harm women and people of color is such a familiar part of the American political landscape that it sometimes…
Human Rights Watch report blames restrictive insurance policies, lack of physicians and poverty for failure to treat cervical disease. Jessica Glenza, The Guardian — Cervical cancer, a disease researchers believe is on track to be eradicated within 20 years in some industrialized nations, is killing a disproportionate number of women across the American south. Black women in Alabama are dying of cervical cancer at more than twice the national average, a trend…
Toure Remains in Jail Protesting the Unjust and Illegal Actions of the City of Selma Against Her and Other Selma Residents Statement of Senator Hank Sanders, Toure’s Attorney and…
By A.T. McWilliams — While visiting the newly opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama — a hallowed and harrowing enshrinement bearing the names of over 4,000 black people lynched in the Jim Crow South — I was reminded of stories my grandparents told me as a child. Stories of my great-grandfather, once chased by Ku Klux Klan members on horseback before swimming to safety, preferring possible death by drowning…