Featured
Invoking Struggle and Faith, Biden Reaches Out at Morehouse. By Katie Rogers and Maya King / NYT
Addressing graduates of the historically Black college in Georgia, Mr. Biden spoke to a crucial segment of the electorate and sought to distinguish himself from Donald J. Trump.
“It’s natural to wonder if the democracy you hear about actually works for you,” he said in a half-hour commencement speech. “What is democracy when Black men are being killed in the streets? What is democracy when a trail of broken promises still leave Black communities behind? What is democracy when you have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot?” Read more
Related: Biden vows to fight ‘poison of white supremacy’ at Morehouse speech. By Victoria Bekiempis / TheGuardian
Related: Biden Tells Morehouse Graduates He Hears Their Voices Of Protest Over War In Gaza. Darlene Superville, Matt Brown and Bill Barrow / HuffPost
Political / Social
Revisiting Brown v. Board of Education’s Legacy in a New Era of Massive Resistance. By Brandon Tensley / Capital B
“It’s not people carrying racist picket signs. It’s political leaders passing legislation that’s intellectually ridiculous,” one expert says.
Exactly 70 years after some of the greatest Black legal minds in the U.S. challenged racial segregation in public schools, the assault on diversity in the classroom and beyond is gaining fresh momentum. Cornell William Brooks former president and CEO of the NAACP: In a real sense, we’re in the middle of another movement of Massive Resistance. The response to Brown by much of the country wasn’t, “Thank you for reminding America of our democratic ideals and then holding us accountable for our sake and for the sake of our children.” Much of the country responded with massive resistance. And here we are in 2024 with a kind of revisionist, retro massive resistance. Anti-DEI? Massive resistance. Efforts to ban books that reflect Black life? Massive resistance. Efforts to defund, de-legitimize, and stigmatize public education? Massive resistance. Read more
Related: Marking 70 Years of White Flight From School Integration. By Ed Kilgore / New York Intelligencer
Related: Brown vs Board Of Education: Kimberlé Crenshaw Talks 70 Years. By Matthew Allen / Newsone
How Black teachers lost when civil rights won in Brown v. Board.
Before Brown, Black teachers constituted 35% to 50% of the teacher workforce in segregated states. Today, Black people account for just 6.7% of America’s public K-12 teachers, even as Black children make up more than 15% of public school students.
As researchers focused on education policy, teacher diversity, critical research methods and teacher quality, we believe this is an important piece of unfinished business for a country still reckoning with systemic racism. In our view, the best way to fulfill Brown’s promise and confront the national teacher shortage is to hire more teachers of color. Read more
Related: Brown v. Board Of Education: Vouchers Threaten Public Schools. By Deena Hayes-Greene / Newsone
Biden announces grants to further desegregate schools on Brown vs. Board anniversary. By Fritz Farrow / ABC News
President Joe Biden on Friday announced new grants aimed at further desegregating magnet schools, as he marked the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that desegregated America’s public schools.
“My Department of Education is investing $300 million, including another $20 million announced today to support diversity in our schools,” Biden said in remarks at an NAACP event at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The $20 million in new grants is for school districts in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina and Texas, to create magnet programs geared toward “attracting students from different social, economic, ethnic and racial backgrounds,” the White House said. Read more
The White House: FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Announces Record Over $16 Billion in Support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
This new reported total is up from the previously announced over $7 billion, and captures significant additional actions already undertaken.
The total of more than $16 billion includes over $11.4 billion between FY2021 and FY2023 through Federal grants, contracting awards, and debt relief for HBCUs; over $4 billion between FY2021 and FY2023 for HBCU-enrolled students through federal financial aid and educational benefits for veterans; and, so far in FY 2024, over $900 million has been secured for Department of Education programs strengthening HBCUs as institutions. Read more
Related: The Economics of HBCUs. The White House
Related: Joe Biden reaches out to Black voters amid waning enthusiasm. By Mike Memoli / NBC News
Related: Biden has installed the most non-White judges of any president. By Nick Mourtoupalas / Wash Post
Supreme Court restores Louisiana voting map with majority-Black district. By Patrick Marley ,Justin Jouvenal , and Ann E. Marimow / Wash Post
The court had been asked to resolve uncertainty over which map Louisiana will use, with just months to go before the 2024 election.
The Supreme Court restored a congressional voting map in Louisiana on Wednesday that includes an additional majority-Black district, handing a victory to African American voters and Democrats less than six months before the November election. Read more
“‘Modern-Day Form Of Slavery’: Lawsuit Alleges Alabama Denies Parole To Use Prisoners For Forced Labor.” by Sharelle Burt / Black Enterprise
A group of current and former Black prisoners have filed a class action suit against Alabama leaders and major companies whom they accuse of denying parole on the premise of forced labor.
Ten former and current inmates within the Alabama Department of Corrections have named Gov. Kay Ivey, the state attorney general, the prisons commissioner, parole board leaders, cities, and companies who they claim rely on forced labor. Some of the companies that were named include KFC, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s franchisees, Hyundai supplier Ju-Young, and beer distributor Bama Budweiser of Montgomery. Read more
Racism simmered in a Texas school district. Culture war made it boil. By Rachelle Hampton / Wash Post
Journalist Mike Hixenbaugh’s book “They Came for the Schools” is a propulsive account of the controversies that swept through a North Texas suburb.
Hixenbaugh, along with his NBC colleague Antonia Hylton, was among the first journalists to take note of the battle fomenting in Southlake, an ostensibly idyllic North Texas suburb. This razor-sharp book is the masterful culmination of years of reportage. Read more
Related: Ohio reviewing diversity scholarships after affirmative action ruling. By Sarah Donaldson / NPR
Byron Donalds Is Considering A Run For Florida Governor And Has The Support Of Donald Trump. By Sharelle Burt / Black Enterprise
In September 2023, Donalds confirmed he was eyeing the governorship in the Sunshine State. However, Donalds said that, for now, his main focus is getting the former president back into office before moving on to “that other stuff.” “I’m committed to making Biden a one-term president,” Donalds said.
“We’ll focus on that other stuff after President Trump gets inaugurated.” Read more
57% of Black women ages 15-49 live with little to no abortion access. By Char Adams / NBC News
Nearly 7 million of the country’s 11.8 million Black women of reproductive age live in states with abortion restrictions or plans to implement them, according to a new report from a pair of reproductive rights organizations.
The report illustrates the number of Black women affected by abortion restrictions across the country. It was released Wednesday by the National Partnership for Women & Families, or NPWF, and the organization In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda. Read more
R. Derek Black’s new book: A convert from white nationalism has a warning for the left about antisemitism. By Molly Olmstead / Slate
When R. Derek Black was a child, they were considered the heir to the white nationalist movement in America. Their father, Don, a former Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, had created Stormfront, the legacy white supremacist website.
But Derek’s life changed when they enrolled in New College of Florida. In 2013, Black publicly renounced their former ideology and now speaks out publicly against it, while also pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Chicago researching proto-racism in early medieval intellectual history. This singular life story is now the subject of Black’s memoir. The Klansman’s Son: My Journey From White Nationalism to Antiracism, which covers their childhood in the movement, their ideological transformation, the fallout, and their political awakening with the rise of Donald Trump, came out on Tuesday. Read more
Texas Governor Pardons Ex-Army Sergeant Convicted Of Killing Black Lives Matter Protester In 2020. By AP and HuffPost
Texas Gov. Greg Abbot has issued a full pardon to a former U.S. Army sergeant convicted of murder for fatally shooting an armed demonstrator in 2020.
Abbott announced the pardon just minutes after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles disclosed it had made a unanimous recommendation that Perry be pardoned and have his firearms rights restored. Perry has been held in state prison on a 25-year sentence since his conviction in 2023. A jury in Austin had convicted Perry of murder in the death of 28-year-old Garrett Foster, an Air Force veteran who had been legally carrying an AK-47 while marching in a Black Lives Matter protest. Perry was working as a ride-share driver in July 2020, when he turned his car onto a street crowded with demonstrators and shot Foster before driving off. Read more
World News
Forget Biden’s “pause”: Israel is destroying Gaza with a vast arsenal of U.S. weapons. By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / Salon
Hundreds of U.S. warplanes, and thousands of U.S.-made bombs, are being used in Israel’s obliteration of Gaza
Many people have been asking the U.S. to halt weapons to Israel for seven months, and of course Biden’s move comes too late for 35,000 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza, mainly by American weapons. Read more
Related: U.N. Court Will Hear Arguments from South Africa on Israel’s Actions in Gaza. Gaya Gupta and
Related: The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel. Ronen Bergman and
Related: The Pro-Palestinian Movement Finds Its Footing As Biden Inches Left. By
Chris Hani, National Liberation, and Apartheid’s Murderous Legacies. By Navid Farnia / AAIHS
Chris Hani Monument in Ekurhuleni, Boksburg (Wikimedia Commons/Sabata Mcatshulwa)
On April 10, 1993, the anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani was assassinated on the driveway of his suburban Johannesburg home by white supremacist Janusz Waluś. Hani’s death, which sparked nationwide demonstrations, changed the course of South African history both in the immediate aftermath and in the post-apartheid era. Read more
With Haiti cut off from the world, supplies are dwindling and its crisis is getting worse. By Giles Clarke / CNN
As photojournalist Giles Clarke walked through the maternity ward of a hospital in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti, he asked a doctor why it was so dark.
“We only have a few lights working and rely on generators, which are expensive to feed,” said Dr. Petit-Frere Arabella, the resident maternity doctor at the Justinien University Hospital. “We also have no running water, as the main hospital pump is down.” The hospital staff, like many in Haiti right now, are doing the best they can with what little they have. The Caribbean nation, struggling with an epidemic of deadly gang violence and political instability, is facing a humanitarian crisis. Supplies are scarce as little is getting into the country. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Brown v. Board: The Momentous School Desegregation Decision. By Earl Warren / The Atlantic April 1977 Issue
On October 4, 1953, Earl Warren was conducted to the seat of the Chief Justice of the United States, a high-backed chair in the center of a raised bench in this nation’s most majestic courtroom.
The former California governor and state attorney general had never before presided over a courtroom, knew little about Washington affairs, and was largely unacquainted with other members of the Court. Even so, he inherited and rapidly brought to resolution a series of cases that profoundly altered the course of American history. Read more
Related: Read Thurgood Marshall’s powerful argument in Brown v. Board. By Chalbeat Staff
Preying on white fears worked for Georgia’s Lester Maddox in the ’60s − and is working there for Donald Trump today. By David Cason / The Conversation
In January 1967, after a gubernatorial election that saw neither candidate gain enough votes to win, the Georgia Legislature was faced with a vital decision: the selection of the state’s 75th governor during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.
Legislators chose the candidate who earned the least number of votes and was an ardent segregationist – Democrat Lester Maddox, owner of a chicken restaurant and a perennial candidate. That transformation of Maddox from racist, eccentric business owner to governor was a historical note amid a backdrop of Southern politics and the region’s resentment of Black political gains. Read more
Beyoncé Just Covered the Beatles in the Most Authentic Way: By Honoring Black History. By Garrison Hayes / Mother Jones
The “Blackbird” cover is an ode to Paul McCartney’s true intentions.
Beyoncé’s new genre-defying (but country-forward) album Cowboy Carter dropped overnight. The internet is now poring over track choices, hidden meanings, and symbolism to add to Beyonce Lore. One such choice is the cover of the Beatles’ iconic song “Blackbird”, from the White Album, as the record’s second track. Trust Beyoncé to reissue a song so redolent with Black history: The song was written about the Black Liberation struggle of the American civil rights movement. Watch: Read more and watch here
Watch “Black Women’s Embrace of Natural Hair Is About More than Style. The New Yorker / You Tube
Lindsay Opoku-Acheampong’s film “Textures,” follows three Black women through the private and meaningful rituals of caring for their hair. Watch here
Sports
Rick Brunson, Jalen Brunson and the line between father and son. By William C. Rhoden / Andscape
New York Knicks assistant coach admires his All-Star child for the talent he’s become
Early in New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson’s athletic journey, his father, Rick Brunson, established what would become the rock-solid foundation of their relationship. No matter how accomplished Jalen Brunson became, no matter how great his celebrity, the boundaries between father and son would be drawn clearly. Read more
Community rallies to replace a Jackie Robinson statue after it was stolen from a Kansas little league park. By and
League 42 has raised nearly $200,000 to rebuild the memorial by August.
Last week, Ricky Alderete, 45, pleaded guilty to helping steal the statue — along with charges of aggravated burglary, aggravated criminal damage to property, interference with law enforcement, criminal damage to property, making a false writing and identity theft. He could face more than 19 years in prison when he’s sentenced July 1, according to ESPN. But his punishment goes only so far. League 42 needed to replace the monument. And thanks to supporters around the country, that’s exactly what’s happening. Read more
Simone Biles launches Olympic year with dominant win at U.S. Classic. Wash Post
For years, the brightest spotlight in gymnastics has followed Simone Biles everywhere. This weekend, the gargantuan expectations traveled with Biles here to XL Center, and under the immense pressure of an Olympic year, she delivered a spectacular performance.
Shrieking fans, mesmerized by Biles’s every move, filled the venue, and Biles’s name was all over the arena via posters made by hand in the arena concourse. With 37 world and Olympic medals, her fame extends beyond gymnastics and beyond sports. The attention is inescapable, and it intensifies in an Olympic year. But here, Biles was at her best, a positive sign as she heads toward the Paris Games. Read more
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