Featured
60 years on, King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ relevant as ever, say faith leaders. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
It’s been more than half a century since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on scraps of paper, but faith leaders say his response to white clergy critics endures as a “road map” for those working on justice and equal rights.
Recent events and exhibitions tied to its anniversary have revealed the ongoing interest in and relevance of King’s letter, in which the civil rights leader proclaimed: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Read more
Related: The Phone Call Between Belafonte and King That Changed Both Men’s Lives. By Jonathan Eig / NYT
Political / Social
Joe Biden and the Struggle for America’s Soul. By David Brooks / NYT
Joe Biden built his 2020 presidential campaign around the idea that “we’re in a battle for the soul of America.” I thought it was a marvelous slogan because it captured the idea that we’re in the middle of a moral struggle over who we are as a nation.
I want to dwell on the little word “soul” in that sentence because I think it illuminates what the 2024 presidential election is all about. What is a soul? Well, religious people have one answer to that question. But Biden is not using the word in a religious sense, but in a secular one. He is saying that people and nations have a moral essence, a soul. Because humans have souls, each one is of infinite value and dignity. Because humans have souls, each one is equal to all the others. We are not equal in physical strength or I.Q. or net worth, but we are radically equal at the level of who we essentially are. Read more
Related: Biden is inviting us to argue about freedom. We should. By E.J. Dionne Jr. / Wash Post
Related: How to weaponize Republicans’ words. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
The ‘Woke Mind Virus’ Is Eating Away at Republicans’ Brains. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
Biden’s biggest advantage has to do with the opposition — the Republican Party has gotten weird. It’s not just that Republican policies are well outside the mainstream, but that the party itself has tipped over into something very strange.
Not only do Americans not care about the various Republican obsessions — in a recent Fox News poll 1 percent of respondents said “wokeness” was “the most important issue facing the country today” — but a large majority say that those obsessions have gone too far. According to Fox, 60 percent of Americans said “book banning by school boards” was a major problem. Fifty-seven percent said the same for political attacks on families with transgender children. Read more
Related: Ron DeSantis’s Vision of Freedom Is Unconstitutional. By Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic
Related: Cornell, Stanford and Harvard professors show how to stop the woke wars. By John Avlon / CNN
What I’ll Remember Most About Tucker Carlson? His Ability to Unleash the Haters. By Elie Mystal / The Nation
Like so many others, I still bear the psychic scars of Carlson’s drive to stir up his base. But that drive had nothing to do with why Fox fired him.
Whenever Carlson would show a clip of me and claim that my support of protests against one thing or another was a call for “violence” against white folks, my social media accounts and e-mail inbox would fill with people who use American flags and/or guns as their avatars, assuring me that I would one day reap whatever they’d been told I was sowing. Read more
Related: Lawrence Jones Named Tucker Carlson’s Next Temporary Replacement. By Kattie Hawkins / Daily Beast
Culture wars intensify as legislators face censures, expulsions. By Kiara Alfonseca / ABC News
Censures and expulsions in some state legislatures have become a growing consequence of the intensifying culture wars across the country.
Democratic legislators have been expelled from their legislative seat, barred from the House floor, or removed from their committees for a variety of reasons, including allegedly violating parliamentary procedures in the course of their dissent. The country is facing an increasingly polarized political climate, with debates around transgender rights, gun violence, race, and more continuing to lead the national conversation. Read more
Related: Tennessee Republicans Are Showing Exactly How Deep American Racism Goes. By Elie Mystal / The Nation
Black Va. lawmakers, NAACP demand ouster of Youngkin’s diversity chief. By Ian Shapira / Wash Post
Martin D. Brown generated outrage by declaring ‘DEI is dead’ at Virginia Military Institute last week
Voting Rights Group Sues Florida For Registration Process That Sets Former Felons Up To Fail. By Kaila Philo / TPM
A voting rights group is suing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R-FL) administration for its “byzantine” voter registration process, which has led to the arrests of dozens of formerly incarcerated people who accidentally voted illegally.
The League of Women Voters of Florida filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) for allegedly failing to comply with federal requirements for voter registration. Their complaint cites the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), a 1993 statute that outlines minimum standards for the process to increase registration and enable state governments to promote, rather than impede, eligible citizens’ rights. Read more
Newly Right-Wing N. Carolina Supreme Court Reverses Its 2022 Gerrymandering Decision. By Kate Riga / TPM
The North Carolina Supreme Court became much more conservative after the 2022 midterms. On Friday, the newly minted justices flexed that power to overturn the court’s own months-old decision knocking down maps that were egregiously gerrymandered by the Republican state legislature.
The right-wing majority cloaked the decision in highfalutin language, but the decision is nakedly political. Now the Republican legislature knows that it can continue to manufacture its way into a permanent majority — regardless of the will of its voters — and that the state’s highest court won’t stop it. Read more
South Carolina Democratic Party elects first Black woman chair. By AP and NBC News
Christale Spain, a longtime party operative, will lead the organization in what will be the Democrats’ leadoff presidential voting state in 2024.
Spain was elected during the party’s convention Saturday in Columbia. She takes over in a wave of changes across state Democratic parties for 2024. With her election, and thanks to the party’s recent revamp of its primary schedule, four of the five states in which Democrats will vote first next year — Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina — now have Black women chairing their state parties. Read more
Howard University names scholar of the African diaspora as its new president. By Nick Anderson / Wash Post
A historian of the African diaspora in Latin America who heads academic operations at a research university in Cleveland will become the next president of Howard University at a time of expanding influence for one of the nation’s most prominent historically Black institutions.
Ben Vinson III, provost at Case Western Reserve University and a former administrator at universities in D.C. and Maryland, was announced Tuesday as Howard’s 18th president since its founding in Washington shortly after the Civil War. He will take the helm on Sept. 1, succeeding Wayne A.I. Frederick, who is stepping down after leading Howard nearly 10 years. Read more
From TikTok to ’90s rap, Jamaal Bowman is learning to raise his voice in Congress. By Scott Wong / NBC News
The New York progressive is everywhere lately — yelling at Republicans about gun control off the House floor and drowning out Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in his hometown.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s booming voice — and even bigger personality — is becoming ubiquitous on Capitol Hill and beyond. In a normally staid institution, where even mortal enemies refer to each other as “my friend,” Bowman is using a brash, confrontational approach to drive his progressive policy message in Congress and push back on Trumpism and the Republican Party. Read more
Roy Wood Jr’s Surprisingly Personal and Scathing White House Correspondents’ Dinner Roast. By Jennifer M. Wood / The Daily Beast
‘The Daily Show’ correspondent took jabs at Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, Biden’s age, Trump’s scandals, and more—all while threading his own unique story through the jokes.
Roy Wood Jr. wanted to accomplish two things during his White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech Saturday night: laughs and reparations, as he told NPR earlier this week. He got half his wish. On Saturday evening, Wood took some mainly innocuous shots at Joe Biden, largely targeting his age (“When the retirement age went up two years to 64 [in France] they rioted because they didn’t want to work till 64. Meanwhile in America, we have an 80-year-old man begging us for four more years of work.”) But he really rode roughshod over several newsmakers who weren’t in the room at the Washington Hilton Hotel to smile awkwardly as the camera panned to capture their discomfort. Read more and listen here
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Bishop T.D. Jakes Announces $1 Billion Partnership With Wells Fargo to Create Mixes-Income Housing Developments. By Sharelle Burt / Black Enterprise
Bishop T.D. Jakes is on a mission to keep Black people and other minority groups ahead of the game.
During an interview with CBS Mornings, Jakes announced a new partnership with Wells Fargo that creates communities for people at all different income levels. Wells Fargo and the T.D. Jakes Group has committed up to $1 billion to spearhead various projects to foster community development. Jakes feels the time to help minority groups is now. “The future looks very bleak, particularly for minorities,” Jakes said. “Black people, brown people and also poor white people who are finding it difficult, workforce people, to find a job, to find opportunities to get housing, to get upward mobility.” Read more
Caste discrimination laws remain fraught. Here’s why they shouldn’t be. By
Caste is one of the least visible yet most pernicious sources of anti-Asian hate in the US. Shown is Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant who speaks to supporters and opponents of a proposed ordinance to add caste to Seattle’s anti-discrimination laws rally at Seattle City Hall.
‘Anti-Asian Racism’ names the sin of white supremacy in Catholic Church. By Clarissa V. Aljentera / NCR
Servite Fr. Joseph Cheah is hopeful that telling Asian American-centered stories will help communities and individuals begin to understand the ways in which racism and white supremacy have shaped history. In his latest book, Anti-Asian Racism: Myths, Stereotypes, and Catholic Social Teaching, Cheah takes a wide and integral view on how Catholic social teaching can inform the way Catholics engage in the work of anti-racism in the context of Asian American communities. Read more
From poverty to fame, Harry Belafonte never lost his moral compass. By Michele L. Norris / Wash Post
Historical / Cultural
Confederate Tributes Are Losing Their Patron Saint. By Brent Staples / NYT
It stands to reason that Woodrow Wilson would be the president to bring us Army bases named for traitors who waged war on this country with the goal of preserving slavery. He took office in 1913 with a team of white supremacists who announced themselves by requiring separate white and colored bathrooms in federal buildings. The Wilsonians inflicted a neo-Confederate regime on the capital that was felt in far corners of the nation.
Congress finally parted company with the myth of the noble Confederate in 2021. It overrode a presidential veto to order the Defense Department to rid its assets of “names, symbols, displays, monuments and paraphernalia” that commemorate the Confederate States of America. The legislation established a commission that brought forward new names for nine Army installations in the South. The main event of the renaming project unfolds on Thursday in Virginia, when Fort Lee is rechristened Fort Gregg-Adams. Read more
Black Resistance and Lynching Memory: An Interview with Mari N. Crabtree Part I. By Menika Dirkson / AAIHS
Black Perspectives’ regular contributor, Menika Dirkson, interviews Mari N. Crabtree on her most recent book publication, My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching (Yale University Press, 2022). Crabtree is an associate professor of African American Studies at the College of Charleston. She also has published essays in Raritan: A Quarterly Review, Rethinking History, Contemporaries, Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere. Read more
Emmett Till’s accuser, Carolyn Bryant Donham, has died – here’s how the 1955 murder case helped define civil rights history. By Davia W. Houck / The Conversation
Carolyn Bryant Donham, left, reads newspaper accounts of the Emmett Till murder trial in 1955. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Nearly 68 years after Till was kidnapped, brutally tortured, murdered and then dumped into the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi, the case continues to resonate with audiences around the world because it represents an egregious example of justice denied. As a historian of the Mississippi civil rights movements, I quickly learned that most Mississippi civil rights history leads back to the widespread outrage over the Till case in the summer of 1955. Read more
Related: Carolyn Bryant Donham Dies at 88; Her Words Doomed Emmett Till. By Margalit Fox / NYT
AP course in African American Studies brings Black history to life for these Tulsa students. By Nicquel Terry Ellis / CNN
This school teaches African American history course rejected by DeSantis
Williams is one of two teachers at the school teaching the Advanced Placement course in African American Studies that is being piloted by the College Board at 60 schools in 33 states across the country. Forty-five students are currently enrolled in the class at McLain, which Williams says covers a range of topics including the resistance and rebellion of African Americans, the lynching of Black people, slave breeding farms, prominent figures in Black history, and the Afro-Latino movement. Read more
‘Dear Mama’ is Tupac and Afeni Shakur’s beautiful, tragic opus. By Justin Tinsley / Andscape
The FX docuseries details the tell true story behind the mother and son
Afeni Shakur and her son, Tupac Shakur, lived nearly 35,000 days combined — and very few of those days seemed to have brought either one of them real peace. In Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur, FX’s sprawling new five-part docuseries directed by Allen Hughes, we get a look at the trials and triumphs of the mother-son duo who fought — against racist systems, cops, their own demons, and rivals — for the majority of their lives. Read more
Related: In Afeni’s Shadow: the Impact of Trauma on a Revolutionary Life. By Cheryl X Dong / AAIHS
Cleopatra was not Black, Egypt tells Netflix ahead of new series. By and
“Queen Cleopatra,” which is released May 10, features Adele James in the lead role, a casting decision that the streaming giant says is “a nod to the centuries-long conversation about the ruler’s race” but which officials in Cairo have dismissed as “blatant historical fallacy.” The government statement issued Thursday marked an escalation in a feud that has sparked demands for the show’s cancellation, amid a broader debate over representation in popular culture. The eight-episode docudrama is executive produced by Jada Pinkett-Smith. Read more
What Little Richard Deserved. By Hanif Abdurraqib / The New Yorker
The new documentary “I Am Everything” explores the gulf between what Richard accomplished and what he got for it, and between who Richard was and who he let himself be.
Because the story of Little Richard is inextricable from the story of what other artists took from him, it can be tempting to forget that he, too, absorbed and emulated the talent that came before him. One virtue of the moving and expansive new documentary “I Am Everything,” directed by Lisa Cortés, is how thoughtfully it catalogues the influences that shaped his artistry. Read more
What John Blake discovered when he met the White mother he never knew. By John Blake / CNN
John Blake, left, was raised by Black family members and had no contact with any of his White relatives until a surprise meeting with his mother, right, when he was 17.
I don’t remember what I said because I was too shocked to respond. But I remember where I stood when it happened. I was 17, just months away from leaving home for college, when my father called me into his bedroom one afternoon. He was sitting up in bed with his shirt off, his belly spilling over the waist of his greasy dungarees. Pall Mall cigarette butts were mashed in a nightstand ashtray, and “The Price is Right” was playing on a black and white TV. “Do you want to meet your mom?” he asked me. His tone was matter of fact. But we both knew that his question was anything but casual. Read more
Sports
Phil Jackson’s insults about Black athletes are nothing new. By David Dennis Jr. / Andscape
The Hall of Fame coach’s comments are just the latest in a string of problematic statements
Phil Jackson is one of basketball’s great minds. He’s won 11 championships as an NBA coach, and two as a player with the New York Knicks. Jackson is a student of the game, and has been lauded for his ability to teach it to others. So it might be surprising to hear that he hasn’t watched the NBA in three years because it’s “too political.” However, to people who know Jackson’s history of uttering anti-Black sentiments, his reasoning should be expected. But it should also be an indictment of Jackson’s legacy as someone who has had no problem profiting off of the same Black people he’s spent so many years insulting. Read more
In ‘Air,’ Michael Jordan’s silence speaks volumes about the marketing of Black athletes. By A. Joseph Dial / The Conversation
The film “Air,” which tells the story of Nike’s signing of Michael Jordan, isn’t actually about Michael Jordan at all.
It’s about the beauty of design and the seduction of marketing. It’s about power suits, purple Porsches and Rolexes. It’s about white men languishing through midlife crises who salivate over the branding potential of a star basketball player. As for Jordan? Audiences just see his back as he strolls into the Nike offices and his hands as he admires the Air Jordan prototype – but never his face. In the entire film, he utters only three words. Much has been made about Michael Jordan’s representation or lack thereof in “Air.” How could a film about one of the most famous Black men in the world obscure his presence? Read more
Black quarterbacks make NFL draft history, land in ‘ideal’ spots. By Jason Reid / Andscape
Alabama quarterback Bryce Young is chosen by the Carolina Panthers with the first overall pick during the first round of the NFL draft on April 27 in Kansas City, Missouri. Jeff Roberson/AP Photo
After two Black quarterbacks last season faced off in the Super Bowl for the first time, three Black passers for only the second time were selected Thursday night during the opening round of the NFL draft in Kansas City, Missouri. Former college stars Bryce Young (Carolina Panthers), C.J. Stroud (Houston Texans) and Anthony Richardson (Indianapolis Colts) joined the rapidly growing fraternity of young Black men whom NFL franchise owners have entrusted to lead their teams. As expected, Young was the draft’s first overall pick. Stroud went second and Richardson fourth. Read more
Larry ‘Gator’ Rivers, Longtime Globetrotter Legend, Dies At 73. By AP and HuffPost
Larry “Gator” Rivers, who helped integrate high school basketball in Georgia before playing for the Harlem Globetrotters and becoming a county commissioner in his native Savannah, has died.
Rivers was a sophomore on the all-Black Beach High School team that won the first Georgia High School Association basketball tournament to include Black and white players in 1967. He blossomed into an all-state player, graduating from the Savannah high school in 1969 and going on to be a small college All-American at Moberly Junior College in Missouri and an all-conference guard at what is now Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph. He went on to play and coach for 16 years with the Harlem Globetrotters, reuniting for a time with high school coach Russell Ellington. Read more
Ralph Boston, Who Leaped 27 Feet and Landed in History, Dies at 83. By Glenn Rifkin / NYT
A dominant long jumper in the 1960s, he first shattered a 25-year-old record set by Jesse Owens before becoming the first to break the 27-foot mark.
Boston dominated the long jump through much of the 1960s by breaking or tying world records six more times over that span. A tall and sinewy Mississippian, he won a gold medal in the Rome Olympics in 1960, a silver medal in Tokyo in 1964 and a bronze in Mexico City in 1968. Read more
Black American female runners are blazing a new trail in the marathon. By Kelyn Soong / Wash Post
Erika Kemp ran the 2023 Boston Marathon — her debut in the distance — in 2 hours 33 minutes and 57 seconds. (Gavin Doremus)
Systemic racism created barriers for Black American women to compete in distance races, but a new documentary is bringing attention to their stories. By finishing her debut marathon in 2 hours 33 minutes and 57 seconds, the 28-year-old Kemp now tops an exclusive list of Black American female marathoners to break the three-hour barrier. The stories of these runners, and the fact that relatively few Black American women have broken the three-hour marathon barrier, have received renewed attention because of the recent documentary, “Breaking Three Hours: Trailblazing African American Women Marathoners.” Read more
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