Featured
The real message behind expelling the Black members of the ‘Tennessee Three.’ By Jemar Tisby / CNN
In the late 19th century, White, Southern Democrats (then the party of White supremacy and segregation) dubbed themselves the “Redeemers,” a group whose goal was to “save” the South from Northern carpetbaggers and newly freed Black people. Shown is the swearing in of Hiram Revels first Black U.S. Senator, 1870 (Mississippi)
The so-called Redeemers took over state legislatures with the primary goals of disenfranchising Black voters, barring Black people from holding political office, and establishing a politics that would render the White power structure impervious to disruption. When Republicans in the Tennessee House of Representatives voted this week to expel two Black members — Justin Jones and Justin Pearson — they revealed their resemblance to the anti-democratic, authoritarian Redeemers of more than a century ago. Read more
Related: Expelled Tennessee House Democrat Justin Pearson Reinstated. By Sebastian Murdock / HuffPost
Political / Social
The Clarence Thomas revelations are the last straw. It’s time for Congress to act. By Julian Zalizer / CNN
The most recent ProPublica story about Justice Clarence Thomas is a powerful reminder that we need a code of conduct for the Supreme Court. Although surely most Americans would hope that justices can be trusted to act ethically, Thomas’ behavior suggests otherwise.
The revelations about Thomas’ many luxury trips have raised inevitable questions about his judicial independence. It doesn’t help that the ProPublica report comes after Thomas failed to recuse himself from cases linked to causes for which his wife has advocated. Given the Supreme Court’s ongoing crisis of legitimacy, this latest report is yet another blow to both the highest court and the republic. Read more
“The first of a series of indictments”: One week after historic Trump indictment, experts reflect. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
It has been one week since Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned in a Manhattan courthouse for crimes connected to hush money payments he made to his mistresses during the 2016 presidential campaign
In an attempt to make sense of Trump’s arrest and arraignment in Manhattan, what it reveals (or not) about the country’s democracy crisis, and how Trumpism and ascendant neofascism continue to poison America’s political health and political culture, I asked a range of experts for their insights and concerns about this next chapter in the Age of Trump. Read more
Related: The Racial Element of Trump’s Attacks on His Prosecutors. By Jill Lawrence / The Bulwark
Blinded by hate: Republicans too busy to notice plummeting poll numbers for Trump and GOP. By Amanda Marcotte / Salon
Voters hate Trump, hate GOP abortion politics, hate the racism, but Republicans keep doubling down
Perhaps it’s a sign that they’re still traumatized by the 2016 election. Or, more likely, it’s just that elite members of the pundit class have subconscious anxieties when they see rich people actually held to account for their crimes. But far too much media chatter after Donald Trump finally faced indictments got caught up in a hand-wringing contest over who was most fearful this would somehow help him electorally. Well, score one for common sense over the received wisdom of the punditocracy: A new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows Trump’s already low favorability ratings have plummeted even further, to 25%. Read more
Tim Scott Set to Announce Presidential Exploratory Committee for 2024. Maya King and Goldmacher / NYT
Mr. Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, said his decision to form the committee was born out of the weeks he has spent touring early primary states.
The announcement, which was first reported by The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., opens an all-but-declared presidential campaign for Mr. Scott. An exploratory committee will allow the senator, who would enter the Republican primary with nearly $21.8 million on hand in his Senate account, to raise money directly for a 2024 campaign and garner more national attention before a formal presidential announcement. He will host a donor retreat in Charleston this weekend, where he is expected to update his top donors on his plans. Read more
How Ron DeSantis waged a targeted assault on Black voters: ‘I fear for what’s to come.’ By Sam Levine / The Guardian
In gerrymandering voting maps and gutting one of the biggest expansions of voting rights, the Florida governor seeks to dilute Black political power. Shown is Al Lawson who was easily re-elected in 2018 and 2020. Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images
In Congress, Lawson was a low-key member known for delivering federal money for things like new storm shelters to help his northern Florida communities. He was easily re-elected to the House in 2018 and 2020. But when he ran for re-election in 2022, he lost to a white Republican by nearly 20 points. Lawson’s loss was nearly entirely attributable to Governor Ron DeSantis. The governor went out of his way to redraw the boundaries of Lawson’s district to ensure that a Republican could win it. Read more
Langston University clears over $4.5 million in student debt balances. By Jianna Cousin / ABC News
The historically black institution will, for the second time, use funding from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) to cancel student account balances. The first time Langston University canceled student account balances was in August 2021, with a clearance amount of $4,654,112.
The amount of debt cleared through the new initiative is $4,587,485. The two debt clearance initiatives, August 2021 and March 2023, total over $9.2 million in cancelled funds. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
‘Healing the healers’ with the restorative wisdom of the Black church. By Joshua Stanton / RNS
The Rev. Jennifer Bailey believes Americans’ divisions are experienced as grief and loss, and looks to provide rituals to help us heal.
The Black church is one of the most visible institutions in American life, its national leaders’ names nearly synonymous with the civil rights movement from the 1960s to the present day. It’s a powerfully unifying force, with 74% of Black adults identifying as Christian. Before the pandemic, some 40% of those Christians reported attending a church service in the prior week. Read more
Howard Thurman’s Biographer: An Author Interview with Peter Eisenstadt. By Tejai Beulah Howard / AAIHS
Tejai Beulah Howard, Ph.D., a senior editor of Black Perspectives, interviews Peter Eisenstadt on his work as a biographer of Howard Thurman.
He is an independent scholar and an affiliate member of the Clemson University History Department. Against the Hounds of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman, the first comprehensive biography of its subject, was the culmination of a long-standing scholarly interest. Read more
Related: Beyond Faiths and Race in Interfaith, Interracial Worship. By Dorsey Blake / AAIHS
While He’s America’s Bishop, T.D. Jakes’ Business Acumen Proves He’s Not One-Dimensional — ‘I Wasn’t Born With A Bible In My Hand.’ By Josh Rodgers / Yahoo News
America’s Bishop, T.D. Jakes has an out-loud coming-of-age story. It started from pulpit, progressed across several business industries, and has rested in the love and support of his community.
Born in South Charleston, WV, Thomas Dexter “T.D.” Jakes is probably most known as the leader and pastor of the Dallas, TX, megachurch The Potter’s House. Serving there with his wife, Serita Jakes, The Potter’s House imprint has expanded to several campuses, with two of its locations led by his daughter and son-in-law Sarah Jakes Roberts and Touré Roberts. Read more
Why Christian women are key to ending the criminalization of Black girls in schools. By Emily Jones / RNS
While all children deserve the presumption of innocence and to be viewed through the lens of grace, Black girls are regularly subject to adultification and mistreatment within the education system.
Certainly, there are Black women academics and advocates (Monique Couvson, formerly Monique Morris, and Brittany K. Barnett, Ellen Reddy and Kimberlé Crenshaw, to name a few) who have made it their life’s work to uplift Black girls. I celebrate them. But Christian women — and especially white Christian women, who make up the plurality of many American churches, including our United Methodist Church membership in the United States — could do far more to support their efforts. Read more
Florida Latino religious groups alarmed by DeSantis-backed immigration bill. By Suzanne Gamboa / NBC News
Shown is a group who assembles care packages that are distributed to organizations that help new migrants and those that are homeless, on Feb. 21, in Doral, Fla
Backlash from Latino evangelicals and others who minister to immigrants is growing against a bill that would make it a felony to transport people who may be in the country without legal status. The legislation is part of an immigrant crackdown by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republicans in the state. But the bill’s transportation provision has religious leaders and groups worried about how they will carry out their pastoral work and live their beliefs. Read more
Historical / Cultural
The Man Who Knew Exactly What the F.B.I. Was Doing to Martin Luther King Jr. Jonathan Eig and
We have long known about the F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover’s animus toward the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hoover built an extensive apparatus of surveillance and disruption designed to destroy King and to drive a wedge between King and President Lyndon Johnson.
But historians, journalists and contemporary political leaders have largely portrayed Hoover as a kind of uncontrollable vigilante, an all too powerful and obsessive lawman, and Johnson as a genuine civil rights partner until King broke with the president over the Vietnam War. In reality, as new documents reveal, Johnson was more of an antagonist to King and a conspirator with Hoover than he has been portrayed. Read more
States Were Adding Lessons About Native American History—Then Came the Anti-CRT Movement. By Lourdes Medrano / The Nation
Educators worry new efforts to teach Native American studies could be undermined by legislation to restrict discussion of race and ethnicity.
When the debate over teaching race-related concepts in public schools reached Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart’s home state of South Dakota, she decided she couldn’t in good conscience send her youngest daughter to kindergarten at a local public school. “I knew that the public school system would not benefit my child without the important and critical history and culture of Indigenous people being taught,” said Tilsen-Brave Heart, a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Read more
Remembering Paul Robeson: ‘I Had No Alternative.’ By Paul Von Blum / The Progressive
125 years after his birth, the civil rights titan remains a role model for battling racism and fascism.
On June 12, 1956, Paul Robeson testified defiantly before the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). His exchange with Congressman Gordon Scherer of Ohio is a fitting preface to commemorating the 125th anniversary of the birth of America’s quintessential genius on April 9:
Scherer: Why do you not stay in Russia?
Robeson: Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I’m going to stay here and have a part of it just like you. And no fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? Read more
A Navy ship named for a Confederate victory now honors a Black Union hero. By Quil Lawrence / NPR
The USS Chancellorsville has been renamed the USS Robert Smalls, to honor the enslaved man who stole a Confederate battleship in the Civil War and delivered to the Union forces, loaded with weapons. The USS Robert Smalls is shown here off the Japanese island of Iwo To, on its way to honor the fallen service members of the World War II battle of Iwo Jima.
The U.S. Navy has finally shed the last two ship names that honored the Confederacy — and renamed one of them in honor of a man whose life story reads like an action movie hero. “It is a move much more consistent with the Navy’s values,” said Capt. Edward Angelinas, who commands the ship. “Going from a Confederate victory to this incredible story of a former slave, who commandeered a Confederate ship and turned it over to the Union Navy.” Read more
How I came to see the beauty in my heritage — and myself. By Ling Ling Huang / Wash Post
Ling Ling Huang is a writer and violinist. Her debut novel is “Natural Beauty.”
For a long time, I was a devout follower of what the sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom calls the “prophets” of beauty — those who determine and enforce what is pleasing to the eye. I grew up in a small suburb near Houston, and until I was 7, I could count on one hand the number of people I saw who looked like me. So I supplicated at the mirror, hands clasped to my face, applying creams and, later, toners and acidsto tame the Chinese features that kept me from belonging. Read more
As Her Music Is Reconsidered, a Composer Turns 135. Again. Samantha Ege and
The work of Florence B. Price is having a renaissance, and new, foundational details about her life and racial identity are still being discovered.
Seven decades since her death, and nine since the groundbreaking premiere of her Symphony in E minor, her luminous music is enrapturing audiences worldwide. Most recently, the London-based Chineke! Orchestra highlighted that symphony on its debut North American tour, which has included stops at Lincoln Center and Jordan Hall in Boston, where Price herself performed as a New England Conservatory pupil. Read more
Solange Curates Powerful Performances of Black Joy and Pain at BAM. / NYT
Angélla Christie, right, performs at “Glory to Glory (A Revival for Devotional Art)” at BAM on Friday night.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
When the alto saxophonist Angélla Christie strode onstage on Friday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, she was joined only by a piano player. But Christie, one of the more prominent instrumentalists in contemporary gospel, was at full throttle from the very first note — playing in high-gloss, reverb-drenched ostinatos — and within moments, the crowd had become her rhythm section, clapping along on every off-beat. Read more
Sports
True story of a bisexual boxer who killed his rival in the ring heads to the Met Opera. By Elaina Patton / NBC News
Shown is Ryan Speedo Green as young Emile Griffith in Terence Blanchard’s “Champion.”
This spring, the Grammy-winning and Oscar-nominated composer and jazz musician Terence Blanchard is bringing his opera “Champion” to the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The “opera in jazz,” as Blanchard describes it, is based on the extraordinary life of the late bisexual, Hall of Fame boxer Emile Griffith, who tragically beat Benny “Kid” Paret so badly in the ring in 1962 that Paret died days later. In “Champion,” which premiered in 2013, Blanchard recounts how an environment of hyper-masculinity and homophobia led to that fatal night at Madison Square Garden and how Griffith was haunted by it for the rest of his life. Read more
Spencer Haywood: the NBA star who opened the door for generations of prodigies. By Jacob Uitti / The Guardian
The basketball legend whose legal case improved the landscape for generations of young stars may finally be getting his due in history with a forthcoming biopic
‘U bum’: LeBron James book shows how he took on Trump and found his voice. By Timothy Bella / Wash Post
James’s evolution into a voice for political and social change is documented in “LeBron,” the new book from Benedict that was released Tuesday.
James and Trump would engage in a very public back-and-forth when the man who once called James “my friend” moved from his Manhattan tower to the White House. From there, James called the president of the United States a “bum,” which was later followed by Trump claiming the basketball star wasn’t smart. The rivalry built on social media and TV interviews made headlines during the course of Trump’s presidency, pitting arguably America’s most recognizable current athlete against the commander in chief. Read more
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