Featured
How the 1876 presidential election enabled Jim Crow. By Tom Hanks and Jeffery Robinson / Wash Post
Actor Tom Hanks narrates this animated short film about the contested 1876 presidential election. (Video: Emily Kunstler, Sarah Kunstler/The Who We Are Project/The Washington Post)
Take the presidential election of 1876, which was resolved by the Compromise of 1877. If you don’t remember the details, you’re not alone. This pivotal event is scarcely more than a footnote in most U.S. history classes. But its narrative provides lessons we need to fight the onslaught of truth-canceling legislation being introduced across the nation and already implemented in Florida.
In 1876, the Republican Party (then the party of Abraham Lincoln, who had kept the Union together) nominated Rutherford B. Hayes to be president. Democrats (then the party of white supremacy) nominated Samuel Tilden. In one of the closest elections in U.S. history, Tilden won the popular contest, but the electoral votes of four states were in dispute. Neither side would concede. What happened over the days, weeks and months that followed became known as the Compromise of 1877. It boiled down to this: The Democrats agreed to accept a Republican president if Northern troops were withdrawn from the South. Read and watch here
Political / Social
Alvin Bragg proves skeptics wrong: Trump’s 34-count felony indictment is serious business. By Amanda Marcotte / Salon
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference following the arraignment of former U.S. President Donald Trump April 4, 2023 in New York City. (Kena Betancur/Getty Images)
To the surprise of absolutely no one, from the moment Donald Trump was indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — really, long before that moment — Republican politicians were declaring Trump is innocent. The emptiness of the posturing was built in. It’s not just that Republicans don’t believe their talking points — no one does. Trump’s selling point to the GOP base has long been his criminality. The MAGA base was compelled by the idea that only a true villain could get them what they want because he would flout all rules and laws in his pursuit of their authoritarian goals. So to claim Trump is “innocent” is not to deny that he committed a crime, so much as it is to assert that he should be above the law. Read more
Related:Treating Trump like Jesus: Indictment proves MAGA is a cult. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Related: New York Already Knows a Lot About Donald Trump. By Mara Gay / NYT
Progressive Brandon Johnson wins Chicago mayor’s race. By Natasha Korecki / NBC News
The Cook County commissioner had the backing of the powerful Chicago Teachers Union and ran on a platform of addressing racial and economic disparities.
Brandon Johnson will be the next mayor of Chicago, NBC News projected Tuesday, marking a stunning turn for a staunch progressive and former teacher whose campaign leaned into messages of racial and economic disparities and who overcame blowback over past comments about decreasing police funding. Johnson defeated the well-financed, tough-on-crime moderate Paul Vallas, a former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools who promised to immediately bulk up the Chicago police ranks to curb a crisis of gun violence. Read more
Wisconsin Chooses a Progressive Justice in the Most Important Election of 2023. By John Nichols / The Nation
Janet Protasiewicz’s victory matters not just for Wisconsin but for any American who cares about democracy, fair elections, voting rights, and much more.
“Tonight, Janet Protasiewicz won the most pivotal State Supreme Court election in Wisconsin history!” said Robert Kraig, the executive director of the progressive group Citizen Action of Wisconsin. “But the real winner is democracy in Wisconsin.” Read more
Who’s Afraid of Integration? A Lot of People, Actually. By Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
A school bus driving into Charlotte, N.C., from the suburbs, in 1973.Credit…Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group, via Getty Images
Three economists, Stephen Billings of the University of Colorado, David Deming of the Kennedy School at Harvard and Jonah Rockoff of Columbia Business School, tapped into a gold mine of data in 2012 to write “School Segregation, Educational Attainment and Crime: Evidence From the End of Busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.” What did they find ? First, they wrote that “the resegregation of schools widened inequality of outcomes between whites and minorities. The increases in crime, according to the authors, “are driven entirely by poor minority males who are assigned to schools with higher shares of poor minority students.” Read more
The diversity, equity and inclusion backlash, explained. By Gene Marks / The Hill
When George Floyd was murdered, many Americans wanted to do something. Some protested; others pushed to defund the police. The business community, looking to do its part (and receive favorable media attention), went on a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring spree, bringing on highly-paid executives – mostly racial minorities – to create programs to make their workplaces more attractive for minorities. But then the economy began to slow. Want to guess what happened next? According to a survey from job site Glassdoor, investment in DEI programs increased to 39 percent in 2020 and peaked at 43 percent in 2021. That number then fell to 41 percent in 2022 and is expected to fall further in 2023. Read more
By 2040, 70% of net new homeowners will be Hispanic. What that means. By Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy / USA Today
“Hispanics are going be a huge driving force in terms of homeownership over the next couple of decades because the number of white homeowners is actually going to decline as the boomers die off,” says Laurie Goodman, founder of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute.
Between 2020 and 2040, 70% of net new homeowners will be Hispanic, according to the Urban Institute. That is because about one-third, or 17.9 million, of the nation’s Hispanic population is younger than 18 compared to 22% of the overall population and will be aging into the prime years for household formation in the coming years. Read more
It’s hard living in a state where the politicians hate people like you. By Perry Bacon Jr. / Wash Post
Demonstrators gather at a rally to protest the passing of SB 150 on March 29 in Frankfort, Ky. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
As Black educators, we endorse classical studies. By Angel Adams Parham and Anika Prather
Teacher Marva Collins with a student at her Westside Preparatory School in Chicago in 1980. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
Angel Adams Parham is a sociology professor and senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Anika Prather is director of high-quality curriculum and instruction at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. They are the authors of “The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature.” Read more
Dr. Xavier A. Cole Appointed First Person of Color President of Loyola University New Orleans. By Arrman Kyaw / Diverse Issues In Higher Ed
Dr. Xavier A. Cole will become president of Loyola University New Orleans, effective Jun. 1, making him the first person of color, the first Black person, and second layperson in the role.
Cole is currently vice president for student affairs at Marquette University. Before Marquette, Cole was vice president for student affairs and dean of students at Washington College and assistant vice president at Loyola University Maryland. Read more
Stacey Abrams to join Howard University in role focused on race, politics. By Susan Syrluga / Wash Post
The activist, author and former gubernatorial candidate will take an endowed chair at the HBCU
Ethics / Morality / Religion
MLK’s vision of social justice included religious pluralism – a house of many faiths. By Roy Whitaker / The Conversation
In an age of polarization, it is worth remembering that one of the pillars of King’s philosophy was pluralism: the idea of multiple communities engaging one another, acknowledging their differences and shared bonds, and striving to create what King called a “Beloved Community.”
As an African American philosopher who studies comparative religion, I am especially interested in what role religious pluralism played in King’s fight for civil rights in the United States of America and human liberation around the world. King’s worldview was deeply nurtured by his experiences in the Black Church, where the Bible’s stories of freedom and oppression are central. Read more
How Jewish racial identity in the US has shifted over time. By Harmeet Kaur / CNN
The resurgence of overt antisemitism has once again surfaced questions about American Jewish identity.
When Zack Galifianakis asks Paul Rudd about his Jewishness in “Between Two Ferns: The Movie,” the actor responds with a quip. “I’m not a practicing Jew,” he says with a smirk. “I perfected it.” Rudd’s now widely referenced line nods to a sentiment felt by many Jews: There isn’t any one way to be Jewish. Judaism is one of the world’s oldest surviving religions. But Jewishness is more than that. Jews have shared customs, traditions and histories. People can be Jewish and secular. They can convert into the faith. There are Jews who consider themselves White and Jews who are people of color. At various points in time, the Jewish people have been characterized as a nation, an ethnicity and a race. Read more
How Black clergy are reframing approach on abortion with congregations. By Amethyst Holmes / RNS
Even as some of the largest Black denominations oppose abortion, Black clergy face the reality that their congregations are disproportionately affected by lack of access to reproductive health services.
For the Rev. Irene Prince, discussions around reproductive choice start in Bible study. Prince, pastor of Mount Olive AME Church in Emporia, Kansas, has taught on the biblical concept of free will in connection with choice — a connection she hopes will move her congregation to “demonstrate the love of God” by being kinder and not passing judgment on how people decide to live their lives. A recent Pew Research survey found that two-thirds of Black Protestants (66%) believe abortion should be legal or mostly legal in all cases — a sharp contrast to the 74% of white evangelicals who believe it should be illegal or mostly illegal in all cases. Read more
This North Carolina church used to be multiracial. Then came Jan. 6. By Yonat Shimron / RNS
Sandy and Tin-Lup Wong resigned from Chapel Hill Bible Church in March, saying the church racially discriminated against them. They are pictured in their Chapel Hill home on March 14, 2023. RNS photo by Yonat Shimron.
Chapel Hill Bible Church seemed perfectly positioned to attract a diverse membership. And for many years it did — boasting that 20% of people attending were nonwhite. “Sadly, we came to the realization that our church gives lip service to diversity but fails to engage and empathize in a real way with people of color,” Young and Sarah Whang, a Korean American couple, wrote in their resignation letter last year. Read more
Indigenous call Vatican’s repudiation of Doctrine of Discovery ‘only a step’. By Aleja Jertzler-McCain / NCR
A teepee stands in front of Parliament in Ottawa, Ontario, Aug. 21, 2021. When Pope Francis visited Canada in July 2022, Indigenous Canadians called on him to reject the Doctrine of Discovery. (CNS photo/The Catholic Register/Michael Swan)
Indigenous people in the U.S. and Canada had mixed reactions to the Vatican’s repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery, a series of 15th-century papal bulls that legitimized colonial exploitation, but they agreed the statement should be followed with further action. On March 30, the Dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development released a joint statement that declared that the Catholic Church “repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery.’ ” Read more
Historical / Cultural
W.E.B. Du Bois and the Legacy — and Betrayal — of Black Soldiers. By Matthew Delmont / NYT
In “The Wounded World,” Chad Williams examines the scholar-activist’s struggle to complete a book about Black troops’ experiences during World War I.
“I felt for a moment during the war that I could be without reservation a patriotic American,” Du Bois said. “I did not believe in war, but I thought that in a fight with America against militarism and for democracy we would be fighting for the emancipation of the Negro race.” This hope soon gave way to disillusionment. Du Bois traveled to France after the armistice to interview Black troops. “I saw the mud and dirt of the trenches; I heard from the mouths of soldiers the kind of treatment that Black men got in the American army,” he said. “I was convinced and said that American white officers fought more valiantly against Negroes within our ranks than they did against the Germans. I still believe this was largely true.” Read more
The Klan was not confined to the South. Nor were its foes. By Timothy Egan / Wash Post
The Ku Klux Klan parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington on Aug. 8, 1925. (AP)
When at least 35,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in August 1925, the surprise was not just the size of the crowd but the people in the parade. They were shopkeepers, clergy, bankers and teachers — and most were from the Midwest or North, not the heart of the Old Confederacy. It’s an astonishment — still — that the visible face of the “Invisible Empire” at the height of its power was Main Street. And nowhere was the Klan more popular than Indiana, where 1 in 3 White males took an oath to “forever uphold white supremacy.” Read more
How King’s assassination changed D.C. in 1968. By Michael McGill / Wash Post
Storefronts on H Street NE in D.C. after riots in 1968. (Matthew Lewis/The Washington Post)
The April 2 Retropolis article on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last sermon in D.C., “55 years ago this weekend, King gave a last sermon in D.C.,” was very well done. I had the good fortune to attend that inspiring sermon, as well as the not-so-good fortune to witness the events that ensued. Washington was a far different place after the events of the first week in April 1968. Much of downtown was devastated. Nearby neighborhoods were terrorized. Many small businesses closed forever. White flight from the city accelerated. The United States was different, too, deprived of the eloquence and passive resistance against racism that King espoused and burdened with the war in Vietnam for five more years. Read more
‘I’m Gonna Take as Much of It as I Can’: Tyler Perry Aims to Bring Black Ownership Back to BET In Potential Acquisition as Majority Stakeholder. By Niko Mann / Atlanta Black Star
Filmmaker Tyler Perry says he’s “beyond interested” in making Black Entertainment Television (BET) “black-owned again.”
Last month, it was first reported that Perry — who has been partners with the network and its parent company Paramount since 2017 — was in talks to buy a majority stake in BET. He also helped launched the streaming platform, BET Plus, as a joint venture between BET and Tyler Perry Studios in 2019. Read more
‘Big George Foreman’ Trailer: Boxer Gets New Movie From Sony – Variety. By Ej Panaligan / Variety
The official trailer has dropped for the George Foreman biopic, titled “Big George Foreman:
The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World,” from director George Tillman Jr. It explores the life of the legendary boxer turned minister. Forest Whitaker portrays Doc Broadus, the boxer’s longtime trainer who introduced him to the sport, while Khris Davis will portray Foreman. Sullivan Jones will play Muhammad Ali, as the two boxers had iconic bouts during their careers, including the Rumble in the Jungle match in Zaire. The film is set for theatrical release on April 28. Check out the full trailer below. Read more
5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Mary Lou Williams.
We asked a dozen musicians, scholars and critics to help take us on a tour of the music and mind of a pianist whose decades-long career made her a Mount Rushmore figure in jazz.
But as artistically successful as she was, life for Williams never really got easy. Things have rarely been simple for genius Black musicians in America, but for a woman in jazz, the complications were especially rife. She rarely recorded for a major label, and did not typically receive star billing. In 1954, while living in Paris, she stepped away — literally, midperformance — from jazz. She converted to Catholicism and stayed away from the music for three years. Read more
Smithsonian’s Afrofuturism exhibit explores the funk of outer and inner space. By Lonnae O’Neal / Andscape
From Phyllis Wheatley to George Clinton, National Museum of African American History and Culture celebrates radical Black imagination. Shown is George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic perform on Saturday Night Live on May 24, 1986. Alan Singer/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Image
There is an expansive feel to the new Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. It travels back and forth through time. It roams geographies and the universes of Black thought to make connections between worlds both cosmic and interior. As a cultural expression, Afrofuturism manifests itself in music, literature, film, fashion and activism. It reclaims the past to reframe the present, which reseeds the future. And it habitually contemplates migration to faraway places where people are safe to be as Black as they want to be. Read more
Sports
Biden press secretary clarifies White House invitation is for LSU’s women’s team. By Jonathan Franklin / NPR
First Lady Jill Biden takes her seat before the start of the NCAA Women’s Final Four championship basketball game between LSU and Iowa Sunday, April 2, 2023, in Dallas.
It’s customary for the winner of the NCAA women’s basketball championship to receive an invitation to visit the White House. But earlier this week, first lady Jill Biden was all in to host both Louisiana State University and the University of Iowa following Sunday’s game — even though LSU won. Now, the first lady has walked back her apparent dual invitation, following lots of negative reactions across social media and television. A particularly strong objection came from LSU star player Angel Reese, who called the dual invite “A JOKE” in a tweet. Read more
‘Air’ shows huge impact of Black mothers. As Kevin Durant’s mom, it’s a role I know well. By Wanda Durant / USA Today
The movie ‘Air’ depicts Nike’s courting of Michael Jordan, and it busts the narrative of the athlete’s mom, particularly Black moms, in such a beautiful way.
Athletes’ mothers are often their biggest supporters but rarely is that celebrated despite the fact that many players, including my son Kevin, lovingly tell the world about the impact their business-savvy mothers have on their careers. Nuanced depictions of Black mothers on big and small screens aren’t much better. When we’re not shown sobbing over injustice toward our children, we are portrayed as angry, aggressive, loud women who harshly discipline our babies instead of hugging them. So you can imagine the pleasure I derived when I recently sat down to watch the new movie “Air,” which comes out Wednesday and tells the inspiring story of how Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) signed Michael Jordan to a deal in the 1980s, just before his meteoric rise in the NBA. Read more
Steph Curry to Star in NBC Comedy Series ‘Mr. Throwback.’ By Daniel Chavkin / Sports Illustrated
Basketball has come so easy to Stephen Curry that he is apparently taking his talents to a new challenge: television. Deadline’s Peter White reports that Curry will co-star in a new NBC comedy show titled Mr. Throwback alongside actor Adam Pally.
According to the report, the series will be about a sports memorabilia dealer who reunites with Curry, his sixth-grade basketball teammate. Curry, of course, will play himself, while Pally will likely play the memorabilia dealer, and the show will be in a mockumentary style. “Making the natural transition from behind the camera to center stage opposite Adam Pally, we can’t wait for the world to see what we have in store,” Curry said, via Deadline. Read more
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