Feature – A Lynching Memorial Is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opens Thursday on a six-acre site overlooking the Alabama State Capitol, is dedicated to the victims of American white supremacy. And it demands a reckoning with one of the nation’s least recognized atrocities: the lynching of thousands of black people in a decades-long campaign of racist terror. Read more Also see,  A Lynching’s Long Shadow 

Confederate Memorial Day: when multiple states celebrate treason in defense of slavery. Monday is Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama, one of three states that still set aside a state holiday — meaning government offices are closed — to honor those who fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. The others are Mississippi, which will celebrate Confederate Memorial Day on April 30; and South Carolina, which celebrates on May 10. Read more 

Listen – How America’s White Power Movement Coalesced After The Vietnam War. In her new book, Bring the War Home, Belew argues that as disparate racist groups came together, the movement’s goal shifted from one of “vigilante activism” to something more wide-reaching: “It’s aimed at unseating the federal government. … It’s aimed at undermining infrastructure and currency to foment race war.” Terry Gross interviews her on Fresh Air. Read more 

The disparities in how black and white men die in gun violence, state by state. Between 2008 and 2016, black men were more likely to die by guns in homicides, whereas white men were more likely to die by guns in suicides, and for both groups, the rates of those types of death varied widely by state, according to the study. Read more 

Race and football: why NFL owners are so scared of Colin Kaepernick. I reached out to Ben Carrington, a professor of sociology and journalism at the University of Southern California and the author of Race, Sport and Politics. I asked him why NFL owners (virtually all of whom are white) are so scared of Kaepernick, and why he considers sports the “most racially tinged spectacle in modern society.” Read more 

New Federal Data Shows How Black Students Are Getting Pushed Out Of School. At the same time, the Department of Education is considering scrapping the guidance that’s designed to help protect these students. Read more 

The Strong and Stressed Black Woman. She is a cultural icon, born of black women’s resilience in the face of systemic oppression that has dismantled families and made economic stability a formidable challenge. She is self-sufficient and self-sacrificing. She is a provider, caretaker and homemaker. And often, she is suffering. Read more 

Where Can We Be Black? African Americans are often made to feel as though we are uninvited guests in our own country. We are excluded from environments great and small, at times by force and often because of irrational fears and unconscious biases. From Starbucks to Coachella to the Pulitzers, White America needs to get used to having us here. Read more 
The Selfless Servant Leadership of the African-American Women of the Civil-Rights Movement. These women didn’t stand on ceremony; they accepted the risks of activism and fought for worlds where others might have freedoms that they themselves would never enjoy. Read more 

The Last Poets, Rap Forefathers, Talk Black Lives Matter, Playing Basketball With Wu-Tang. Emerging from the Black Power era of the late Sixties and early Seventies, experimenting with street poetry and percussive sound, the music of Harlem’s Last Poets helped lay the groundwork for hip-hop. Their first album since 1997, the reggae-tinged ‘Understand What Black Is,’ pays tribute to Prince, Biggie, and victims of gun violence. Read more 

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