During the 1870s, more than a half a million Black men voted for the first time in their lives. But this wave of progressive change did not last long. By Rebekah Barber and Billy Corriher, Facing South — One hundred and fifty years ago, a Congress dominated by “Radical Republicans” — mostly former abolitionists who represented Northern states — mandated that Southern states rewrite their constitutions, ratify the 14th amendment, and grant…
Sundiata Cha-Jua, The News Gazette — In recent years, the U.S. government has demonstrated a commitment to passing largely meaningless symbolic legislation designed to sanitize the country’s history of racial wrongs. The recent introduction of bills in the House and Senate apologizing for lynchings continues this timorous tradition. In 1997, President Bill Clinton apologized for the Tuskegee Experiment, the U.S. Public Health Service’s Nazi-like study of the effects of syphilis…
By Brian J Purnell, The Conversation — A southern city has now become synonymous with the ongoing scourge of racism in the United States. A year ago, white supremacists rallied to “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville, protesting the removal of a Confederate statute. In the days that followed, two of them, Christopher C. Cantwell and James A. Fields Jr., became quite prominent. The HBO show “Vice News Tonight” profiled Cantwell in an episode and…
Marijuana reform can help black communities. That doesn’t make it “reparations.” By P.R. Lockhart — New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon is facing criticism after suggesting that giving black people access to marijuana licenses could serve as a “form of reparations” for black communities. The controversy started after Nixon, who is challenging current Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the state’s upcoming Democratic primary, appeared at the NYC Cannabis Parade on May…
How Kanye’s ignorant comments fortify the most pernicious lies of white supremacy. By Clint Smith — This past week, in an interview with TMZ, Kanye West claimed that slavery was a choice. “When you hear about slavery for 400 years … 400 years? That sounds like a choice,” he said. Much has already been written about West’s recent exploits on and off Twitter. In the past week, he has publicly embraced…
Kanye West wants freedom—white freedom. By Ta-Nehisi Coates — I could only have seen it there, on the waxed hardwood floor of my elementary-school auditorium, because I was young then, barely 7 years old, and cable had not yet come to the city, and if it had, my father would not have believed in it. Yes, it had to have happened like this, like folk wisdom, because when I think of that…
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…
Anti-fascist volunteer Canute Frankson explained his motivation in a letter home in 1937: “We will build us a new society—a society of peace and plenty. There will be no color line, no jim crow trains, no lynching. That is why, my dear, I’m here in Spain.” By Peter Carroll, BlackPast.org — Approximately 90 African Americans fought in Spain during the civil war that engulfed that nation between 1936 and 1939.…
These women didn’t stand on ceremony; they accepted the risks of activism and fought for worlds where others might have freedoms that they themselves would never enjoy. By Janet Dewart Bell — During the civil-rights movement, African Americans led the fight to free this country from the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow. Though they all too often were—and remain—invisible to the public, African-American women played significant roles at all…
William A. Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. The focus of his work is on inequality based on race, class, and ethnicity. He has been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and most recently Jacobin Magazine. He is currently co-writing with…
“The New Jim Crow” has been banned from some of the state’s prisons. By Julia Conley, Common Dreams — Civil rights advocates denounced New Jersey’s prison system on Monday after learning that the book The New Jim Crow, about race and mass incarceration in the U.S., has been banned from some of the state’s prisons. “The DOC—and every player in the criminal justice system, from police officers and prosecutors to judges…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — During the 2004 presidential campaign then Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry mildly protested the towering hurdles to ex-felon voting in dozens of states. Kerry raised the issue for a good reason. He was trying to unseat Republican incumbent President George Bush. He remembered what happened with the last Democratic candidate, Al Gore, in the 2000 presidential contest. Gore disputedly and arguably lost Florida to Bush…
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