I dream a New Years Wish for my fellow black brothers and sisters, one steeped in my yearning for a country that truly is committed to the mythical land of “liberty and justice for all” we Americans pledge loudly and proudly in classrooms and public gatherings.
I just wish we actively pursued such ideals.
Now, I realize that we, like all other “individual” citizens of the country, can rise and shine and fulfill the loftiest of hopes and dreams. [Read more…]
Rhiannon Giddens’ instrument of choice is the banjo, but not a typical banjo. As she explains in an interview with NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, she plays a replica of an early version of the banjo designed by Levi Brown in 1858 made today by Jim Hartel. This model of the banjo has a deeper sound than the standard contemporary versions.
The song was inspired by an ad for a slave being sold whose nine month-old child was described in the ad as a purchasing “option”. [Read more…]
On December 18th, 1944 the U.S. Supreme Court in deciding against Fred Korematsu, upheld the constitutionality of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19th, 1942. The order designated certain areas as military zones from which those of Japanese ancestry could be excluded. The court ruling upholding the constitutionality of the Order did not explicitly address the issue of how the order was implemented—the incarceration of those excluded—but the practical effect was to permit the internments of those targeted by the order. Constitutional scholars now consider the Korematsu decision to be in the category of Dred Scott v. Sanford and Plessy v. Ferguson decisions as examples of egregious Supreme Court judicial errors. [Read more…]
In Alabama on Tuesday, Democrat Doug Jones won 49.9% of the vote to Republican Roy Moore’s 48.4% in a special election to replace Jeff Sessions, who resigned his Senate post to become Trump’s chief elf and Attorney General. The other 1.7% wrote in someone else’s name.
Republicans in Alabama have typically been winning elections in recent years by a half million votes. Jones won by 21,000. Turnout for the special election was projected to 25% of registered voters. Double that number showed up at the polls. Moore lost 12 counties that Trump won in 2016. Republicans won this particular Senate seat in 2014 with 97% of the vote.
This was a huge victory, and let’s give credit where credit is due. Black voters showed up, despite being systemically obstructed from access to the polls. [Read more…]
As the narrator reads excerpts from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, images depicting the Civil Rights struggle are displayed.
When I hear “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.” I detect echoes of Frederick Douglass’ “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” [Read more…]
From our Normalize This! file: The Washington Post reports that five days before the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Mississippi, Trump announced that he would be attending the Saturday event. This Friday, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba (D) and a slew of other civil rights veterans announced they will no longer be attending. Lewis and Thompson in their joint statement note that “President Trump’s attendance and his hurtful policies are an insult to the people portrayed in this civil rights museum.” The NAACP announced that it will be holding a separate event on Saturday to honor civil rights heroes. [Read more…]
Words have no meaning without context. Once stated, it seems obvious, but in certain situations this truism appears to be forgotten. During a Family Action Network event with Evanston Township High School while on tour for his newest book, We Were Eight Years In Power, Ta-Nehisi Coates responds to a question from the audience on the issues of the use of the N-word. With examples he reminds us of how we know the importance of context to be true. In his low-key conversational delivery he then extends the analysis to explain the contexts at play in the use of this hot-button vocabulary item. [Read more…]
In the next few months we will have a new San Diego Chief of Police and I hope that whoever gets the job can do something, for me, no one has been able to do: create an environment wherein I don’t find myself squirming a bit every time a police officer rolls up behind me or next to me. I just can’t help it, though, with my life’s experiences.
Now, hey, don’t get me wrong, I’ve known some good police officers — parents at my schools, guys I grew up with, dudes I’ve toked and toasted with, played ball with — it’s just that the bad seeds among them can be downright scary at times.
Police-community relations have concerned me enough that I’ve tried, every now and then over the years, to make our police department more humane. [Read more…]
This is going to be a bad week for progressives. Like a cornered rat, Trump and his minions are lashing out in all directions. While the chattering class discusses Senator Bob Corker’s tactical differences with the administration, its strategies remain the same, no longer burdened with any pretense of bipartisanship.
The President has issued–via email–a list of preconditions guaranteed to end discussions with the Democratic congressional leadership regarding a deal extending DACA. An executive order to be issued this week will significantly undermine what remains of the Affordable Care Act, as insurers are signaling they’ll no longer wait for stability in the marketplace.
Unbridled racism wrapped in the flag continues to play a significant role in the administration’s agenda, as evidenced in the Vice President’s pre-planned stunt at an NFL game costing taxpayers upwards of a quarter million dollars in transportation costs. [Read more…]
By Dorothy Smith
“I pledge allegiance to the flag ….”
Under that flag, as a young child, I saw the Ku Klux Klan burn a cross on our lawn because my father advocated for the right to vote.
Under that flag, my father had to carefully plan our road trips because it was dangerous for black people to travel through certain towns at night and sometimes stations would not sell us gasoline.
Under that same flag, in the 1950s and ’60s, many ads for jobs in the major Memphis newspaper stated, “No Negroes need apply.” Still today, many Black people are unemployed, and those who do have jobs often find themselves as the only token Black person working in a department or a company all across the United States.
Under that flag, In 1950, just two years after the 1948 order to end segregation in the U. S. Military, I saw my brother drafted just out of high school into the still-segregated US Army to fight in the Korean War. [Read more…]
Or as John Dingell says: “Heck of a job, Brawny!” [Read more…]
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” This single, sinister question, asked over a sepulchral-sounding musical score, was rhetorical; for after a dramatic pause and a malevolent cackle, the narrator smugly informed the audience: “The Shadow knows.”
And so it was with this somber admonition on September 26, 1937, that the gritty, crime-fighting character dubbed “The Shadow,” whose exploits had previously been limited to pulp fiction magazines, burst into American consciousness with his own radio program. The uber-successful first episode called “The Death House Rescue” would lead to a run of 664 more installments over 18 seasons.
Exactly 80 years later another story about a scheduled execution, this time one that is all too real, is playing out; but, unlike that first episode of The Shadow, there is little chance of a tidy and fair resolution (much less “a death house rescue”). Indeed, absent an unlikely intervention, the state of Georgia will execute death row inmate Keith Tharpe by lethal injection on September 26, 2017.
Also, unlike the condemned man in The Shadow’s fictional “Death House Rescue,” no one is arguing that Tharpe is innocent. Nevertheless, Tharpe’s attorneys argue he shouldn’t be put to death because, as has been widely reported, after Tharpe’s conviction and death sentence, Tharpe’s lawyers secured a prejudice-laden sworn affidavit from a now-deceased juror by the name of Barney Gattie. [Read more…]
