By Vesla M. Weaver — Two new books, including National Book Award nominee ‘Locking Up Our Own,’ address major blind spots about the causes of America’s carceral failure. Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman, Jr.; Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform by John F. Pfaff
A US Army Special Forces sergeant oversees the marksmanship training of a Niger Army soldier during Exercise Flintlock 2017 in Diffa, Niger., Christopher Klutts/US Army Using the “lily pad” strategy…
It’s an idea that has stirred controversy over the years: reparations to Americans harmed by U.S. government policies such as slavery and internment. On Saturday, Gesu Catholic Church’s Beloved Community…
By Tanvi Misra — This will “give us a better sense of who black people are, where we are, and what we hope and dream for,” says Alicia Garza, the…
The Enduring Impact of President Johnson’s Crime Commission Elizabeth Hinton, Boston Review — In his televised speech following five days of civil unrest in Detroit during the summer of 1967, President Lyndon Johnson announced the creation of the Kerner Commission to evaluate the uprisings there and in other cities, and to prescribe policies to suppress future disorder. The American public also demanded insight into why cities burned and what drove…
Where a divided nation stands, half a century after Martin Luther King’s death By The Data Team, economist.com — FIFTY years ago, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, America was a…
A controversial pact, in which the US military wants to invest $20 million and get access to Ghana’s runways and communications, set off rallies in the West African nation, with people chanting their country is “not for sale.” Thousands of people flocked to the streets of Accra, the capital of Ghana, to protest a military deal the government recently signed with the US. As part of the agreement, Washington would…
Hari Jones discusses some of the most interesting facets of the Underground Railroad prior to and during the Civil War, including the role of African Americans in the war itself….
By Rabbi Sharon Brous — There is 2,000-year-old rabbinic dispute over what ought to be done if a palace is built on the foundation of a stolen beam. One rabbi, Shammai, argues that the whole structure must be torn down, the beam retrieved and returned to its rightful owner. No home can flourish on a foundation built illegally and immorally. Another rabbi, Hillel, offers a different take: What sense does it make to demolish it? Let the thief pay for the beam, considering its full value as the foundation of what is now a beautiful home. Neither argues that you can pretend, year after year, generation after generation, that the beam wasn’t stolen.
The American Dream, should be one of equality and inclusion, with fundamental rights of all Americans guaranteed. Unionization as a seamless aspect of democratic society; universal collective bargaining and full…
Some see the monument as “the largest shrine to white supremacy in the history of the world.” By Debra McKinney, Southern Poverty Law Center — From its north side, Stone Mountain is a formidable sight. Staggeringly steep, nearly five times as high as Niagara Falls, it rises from Georgia’s wooded landscape like a rogue wave. This anomalous, igneous dome east of Atlanta is the centerpiece of a state park that draws 4 million visitors a year. Forty stories above ground, front and center on the gunmetal-gray face of the stone, is the largest bas-relief carving on the planet, a Civil War memorial to Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. These leaders of the Southern rebellion against the United States sit astride their steeds, hats over their hearts, on a three-acre backdrop etched into the mountainside.
During the Civil War, the jails that held the enslaved imprisoned Confederate soldiers. After, they became rallying points for a newly empowered community By Jonathan W. White, Smithsonian — For decades before the Civil War, slave markets, pens and jails served as holding cells for enslaved African-Americans who were awaiting sale. These were sites of brutal treatment and unbearable sorrow, as callous and avaricious slave traders tore apart families, separating…