Featured
The story of four Black NFL players who changed the face of the game. CBS News
As the NFL is prepared to crown a champion Sunday night during Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles, it is mired in a lawsuit over equal representation in the coaching ranks. There is a dearth of Black coaches, while African-Americans make up about 70% of NFL players. There was a time when Black people were kept out of the league altogether — until four men changed the face of the game. That long-forgotten part of the NFL’s history is the subject of a new book, “The Forgotten First,” which looks at the lives of Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Marion Motley and Bill Willis. Former NFL player Keyshawn Johnson and award-winning NFL columnist Bob Glauber co-wrote the book to tell the story of the four men, who broke the NFL’s color barrier. Read more
Related: The NFL had the Brian Flores discrimination lawsuit coming. By Jamil Smith / Vox
Political / Social
No, America is not on the verge of another civil war. But that doesn’t mean it can’t learn from its last one. By Henry Olsen / Wash Post
America is always on the verge of a second Civil War, according to one pundit or another. Such heated claims have become especially popular over the last year in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. So let’s first acknowledge that another civil war in the United States is highly unlikely — not least because today’s federal government possesses too many military and intelligence assets for any uprising to resist them for long. Nevertheless, on the eve of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on Saturday, this is a good moment to draw lessons from the Civil War on how we can avoid our nation’s divisions from turning into violent affairs. Read more
The US supreme court is letting racist discrimination run wild in the election system. By Carol Anderson / The Guardian
The court has approved or tolerated massive voter roll purges, extreme gerrymandering and election laws that have a disparate impact on minorities.
The US supreme court, in a 5-4 decision, used the ruse that it was too close to an election – three months away – to scrap a racially discriminatory, Republican-drawn legislative map in Alabama. A lower court had previously ruled against the state because its gerrymandered congressional districts diluted the voting strength of African Americans by ensuring that 27% of Alabama’s population would garner only 14% of the state’s congressional representation. But that reality didn’t faze five justices; the US supreme court was just fine with letting a policy designed to disfranchise Black voters unfurl and do its damage in an oncoming federal election. Read more
In a flawed system, a Black prosecutor wonders if she’s pursuing justice or being complicit. By Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. / Wash Post
Coates’s book, “Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor’s Fight for Fairness,” stands out among a growing confessional literature regarding the role of Black prosecutors in a criminal legal system that disproportionally investigates, arrests, charges and imprisons African Americans. While most works in this genre read as elaborate apologias, Coates immediately strikes a different tone. With brutal honesty and descriptive precision, she reveals the complex moral universe in which prosecutors live but far too many refuse to confront. Read more
Teaching Black history is not an attack on White Americans. By William J. Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove / CNN
Since the murder of George Floyd sparked mass protests across the country, many conservatives have responded by appealing to White Americans’ fear and suggesting that collective efforts to address systemic injustice are anti-White. But this is the big lie White supremacy has always told to sustain itself, and history shows the fight for equality is not a zero-sum game. Americans must learn Black history if for no other reason than to understand that Black political power has been good news for many White Americans. Read more
Related: The Anti-C.R.T. Movement and a Vision For a New Right Wing. By Jay Caspian King / NYT
Related: Tennessee Parents, Teachers Push Back Against ‘Maus’ Removal. By Kimberlee Kruesi / HuffPost
Related: Teachers Tackle Black History Month, Under New Restrictions. Jacey Fortin and
Affirmative Action and America’s ‘Cosmetically Diverse’ College Campuses. By The Arguement / NYT Podcast
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases, one involving Harvard and the other the University of North Carolina, that could reshape college admissions. Both schools are being accused of race-based discrimination in their admission practices. In the coming year, the court will examine whether it’s lawful for college admissions offices to consider a student’s race. These cases and others have brought into focus the role affirmative action plays in higher education, and whether it helps or impedes the overall goal of achieving racial equity on college campuses. On today’s episode, the Opinion writer Jay Caspian Kang sets the stage by sharing with Jane his view that affirmative action policies merely make for “cosmetically diverse” campuses, rather than contributing to broader social justice initiatives. Listen here
Amid nationwide enrollment drops, some HBCUs are growing. So are threats. By Lauren Lumpkin, Nick Anderson and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel / Wash Post
Related: HBCU bomb threats: Students, faculty reminded of anti-Black violence. By Claire Thornton / USA Today
Basic income champion Michael Tubbs launches nonprofit to end poverty. By Alejandro Lazo / Recordnet
Former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, who made a political name championing a guaranteed income program, is hoping to take his policy ideas statewide by launching a new nonprofit aimed at reducing poverty in the Golden State. Tubbs, who relocated to Los Angeles after losing reelection in 2020 and now serves as an economic adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom, will lead End Poverty In Californiaa (EPIC), which he said will advocate for a broadening of California’s safety net, as well as making changes to statewide housing, criminal justice, workplace and wage policies that he argues contribute to inequities in the state. Read more
New doc explores the disparities that fuel Black maternal mortality. By
“We don’t want people to walk away from this film scared to give birth. We want them to feel empowered,” said filmmaker Paula Eiselt.
Within days of giving birth to her son, 30-year-old Shamony Gibson experienced difficulty breathing. The issue, which she alerted her doctors about, went untreated. Two weeks after her son, Khari, was born, Gibson died from a pulmonary embolism. In a new documentary, “Aftershock,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, her family blames racism at the hospital for her death. Shown is Shawnee Benton-Gibson, Shamony Gibson’s mother, and Bruce McIntyre III, Amber Rose Isaac’s partner. Read more
Calif. sues Tesla over alleged rampant discrimination against Black employees. By Deepa Shivram / NPR
California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing is suing Elon Musk’s company Tesla over racism and harassment toward Black employees at Tesla’s plant in Fremont, Calif., according to a lawsuit filed by the state this week. The company has called the lawsuit “unfair.” The lawsuit follows three years of investigation into Tesla and alleges that Black and African American employees at the company’s Fremont plant are “segregated to the lowest levels.” The lawsuit describes multiple instances of racist language and drawings toward Black employees, penalizing Black employees more harshly than white employees and denying Black employees career advancement opportunities and equal pay for work similar to that of other employees. Read more
The growing movement to save Black cemeteries. By Char Adams / NBC News
Historical Black burial sites are a reminder of the ways Black humanity is devalued in life and in death. Now, a movement for redress and preservation is growing across the country.
Greenwood was maintained by members of the founding family well into the late 1970s before it was sold and underwent “severe neglect, abuse and vandalism,” according to the association. A group of locals formed the Friends of Greenwood in 1999 to preserve the cemetery. But, in the years that followed, many had grown too old to care for the land and it fell into disrepair once more. Overgrown fields and woods — and vandals — have since damaged grave markers. In some areas, severe erosion has exposed human bones. Read more
Black FedEx Driver Says He Was Chased, Shot At By 2 White Men In Mississippi. By Ryan Grenoble / HuffPost
Driver D’Monterrio Gibson “was simply Black while working,” his lawyer said. A white father and son have been arrested.
A Black FedEx driver says two white men chased him in a truck and shot at him as he was making deliveries in a small Mississippi town last month. Two men were charged a week later. D’Monterrio Gibson, who wasn’t physically hurt in the attack, told the Mississippi Free Press he’d just delivered a package on the evening of Jan. 24 in Brookhaven, about 60 miles south of Jackson, when a white truck drove toward him while honking and repeatedly tried to cut him off. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Christian nationalism drove Jan. 6: Now it’s embraced the Big Lie, and wants to conquer America. By Kathryn Joyce / Salon
America has a choice between democracy and Christian nationalism, says author of new report: “We can’t have both.”
Earlier this week, a new Pew survey found that the share of Americans who believe Donald Trump was largely responsible for the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, has declined by nearly 10 percent over the past year, while the percentage of people who think he bears no responsibility has increased by almost as much. On Wednesday, the Freedom from Religion Foundation and the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty released a new report that helps explain that shift: The same Christian nationalism that served as the unifying principle behind the Jan. 6 insurrection is also driving efforts among the faithful to rewrite the history of that day. Read more
Separation of church and state? Let’s get real — that’s over. So what do we do now. By Jacques Berlinerblau / Salon
During oral arguments in the case of Shurtleff v. City of Boston, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch made a pointed reference to “so-called separation of church and state.” What precisely this aside was meant to convey is unclear. Yet Gorsuch’s dismissive comment laid bare what many have known for some time: “Separationism,” as a judicial and legislative doctrine, is on life support. Courtesy of the Christian right, it languishes in a theologically-induced coma. Read more
Desmond Tutu showed me what a soul-centered Christian life could look like. by Marybeth Christie Redmond / NCR
On an unremarkable day, a most remarkable interview would reroute the trajectory of my life.
Tutu minced no words, branding apartheid an evil system that robbed the dignity of God’s children. He was calling for a mass activation of global citizens to take up this moral struggle and be on the side of justice, humanity and compassion. I recall echoes of his message, “Freedom is coming.” But what has stayed with me through 36 years was his laser-like truth telling delivered through the mesmerizing intensity of his loving spirit. Despite years of resistance, intimidation and death threats, here was a man speaking truth to power with no anger or bitterness. Read more
Black Christian Faith: Perennial Decline, Respectability, and “the back of the church.” By Vaughn A. Booker / AAIHS
The sunny South–a negro revival meeting–a seeker “getting religion,” William Ludwell Sheppard, 1873 (Library of Congress)
The perceived decline of Afro-Protestantism justifies a call for Black churches to “modernize,” whether through cultural reforms, home missions, or organizing and advocating pressing social/political/economic concerns. There is no shortage of irony: since the twentieth century, polling Black religious life has persisted alongside narratives of Black Christianity’s decline, which also coexist with the growth of Black Christianity that such statistics may, in part, spur. Read more
Related: Changing Faces of 21st Century Black Churches and Politics. By Nicole Myers Turner / AAIHS
Study: Clergy feel ill-equipped to help Black and Latino congregants with mental health. By
Pastors, whether they want to be or not, ‘are on the front lines of this mental health crisis,’ said an author of the study.
Black and Latino Christians often turn to their pastors for mental health care, even when those clergy have limited expertise in working with those who are mentally struggling, according to a new study by the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University. Daniel Bolger, a doctoral candidate at Rice University who co-authored the report, says pastors, whether they want to be or not, “are on the front lines of this mental health crisis.” Read more
Historical / Cultural
‘What Took Us So Long?’: Black Caucus Members Propose Awarding 200,000 Black Civil War Vets Congressional Gold Medal. By Nicole Duncan-Smith / Atlanta Black Star
Two politicians, descendants of enslaved African-Americans, are proposing that hundreds of thousands of Black people who fought for the nation during the Civil War be honored. The legislators state that these soldiers should receive “the recognition they deserve.”
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), both members of the Congressional Black Caucus, introduced a bill on Friday, Feb. 4, that proposes to posthumously award approximately 200,000 Black men the Congressional Gold Medal. These fighting men, though all not legal citizens, took up arms to protect the Union both in the Army and the Navy and fight for the liberation of millions of people of African descent living under the conditions of slavery in the South and Midwest. Read more
University of Alabama removes name of Klansman from a campus building. By Nick Anderson / Wash Post
The University of Alabama is removing the name of an early 20th century governor who was also a Ku Klux Klan leader from a building on its campus in Tuscaloosa, under a plan approved Friday that reserves the naming honor exclusively for the university’s first Black student, Autherine Lucy Foster. Read more
“American Reckoning”: 55 Years After KKK Murder of Mississippi NAACP Leader, Case Remains Unsolved. By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now
This month marks 55 years since the assassination of an NAACP leader. The new documentary “American Reckoning” seeks justice in the cold case of murdered civil rights activist and local NAACP leader Wharlest Jackson Sr. in Natchez, Mississippi. No one was ever charged with his 1967 murder, despite evidence pointing to the involvement of the inner circle of the local Ku Klux Klan. It’s one of many unsolved crimes targeting civil rights activists. Watch here
This Early Film Depicting Black Love Went Hidden For Years. By Brittany Wong / HuffPost
The 1898 short silent film was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry for its historic significance.
Sometimes a kiss is more than just a kiss. That’s certainly the case with the lip-lock in “Something Good – Negro Kiss,” an 1898 short silent film that was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in December for its historic significance, alongside such films as “Jurassic Park” and “The Shining.”The clip ― showing a couple playfully kissing and clasping hands ― is free of the demeaning racist tropes seen in other depictions of Black people at the time. Watch here
10 years after Whitney Houston’s death, what have we learned about her — and ourselves? By Allison Stewart / Wash Post
Two new books — ‘Didn’t We Almost Have It All’ and ‘Young Whitney’ — explore the making and unmaking of the ’80s pop sensation
To Marshall and Kennedy, Houston is forever trapped in amber, a lost soul ill-suited to the time in which she lived. Whether she might have fared better in today’s climate is anybody’s guess. Likely, we would have torn her down anyway, but we might have felt worse about it. “We know better now,” Kennedy writes, “but should have known better then.” Read more
A Black Music collection dedicated to our loves and lovers, on Valentine’s Day and all year round. By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos
In 2021, this series featured love and Valentine’s Day offerings from Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Arthur Prysock, Nat and Natalie Cole, Miles Davis, and Ben Webster. Truthfully, I could probably write a story every day and never scratch the surface of the plethora of songs about love (and heartbreak). From my perspective, nothing is sexier than a saxophone, so rather than opening today’s offerings with singers, let’s sit back and bask in the sheer heart and power of Houston Person’s entire 1998 album, My Romance. Listen here
Why Toni Morrison Books Are Frequent Targets of Book Bans. By Olivia B. Waxman / Time
Morrison’s works are a regular fixture on the American Library Association (ALA)’s annual list of the top 10 most challenged books. The Bluest Eye has appeared several times, in 2006, 2013, 2014, and 2020. Beloved, Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 novel, is also on the 2006 and 2012 lists. And in the mid-1990s, Song of Solomon was repeatedly challenged in school districts in Colorado, Florida, and Georgia for “inappropriate” and “explicit” material. Scholars say one of the reasons Morrison’s books in particular are controversial is because they address, unabashedly, centering on dark moments in American history that can be uncomfortable for some people to talk about. Beloved, for example, is inspired by the true story of an enslaved woman, Margaret Garner, who killed her daughter in 1856 to spare her from slavery. Read more
Sports
‘Going At It the Wrong Way’: Deion Sanders Says You Can’t Convince Old Billionaires Already Stuck In Their Ways to Hire a Black Coach, So He Offers Another Option. By TSL Contributor / Atlanta Black Star
Jackson State head football coach and Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders spoke about the lack of diversity in the NFL’s leadership positions recently. In a league where over 70 percent of its employees are Black, there are only two Black coaches. He’s also of the belief that the only way to get Blacks hired fairly is to add three new expansion teams and only allow them to be sold to Black owners. Read more
Related: Brian Flores, Other Insiders Speak on Addressing Racism in the NFL. By Shaun Harper / Rolling Stone
Related: Can the Rooney Rule Survive? Should It? By Ken Belson / NYT
‘We don’t look like them’: Black figure skaters face barriers to entry from a young age. By
Figure skating has long excluded Black athletes. This disparity can be seen from youth competitions all the way up to Team USA.
From formal gatekeeping to high barriers to entry, the sport has a long history of excluding Black figure skaters. There aren’t any Black skaters on the U.S. team competing at this year’s Olympics, and the last time an African American skater competed at the Games was 16 years ago. There aren’t many Black fans, either. U.S. Figure Skating, the sport’s national governing body, found that only 2 percent of fans were African American. This disparity can also be seen throughout the sport. Shown is Olivia Alexander. Read more
Related: Fast Sleds, Black Women and Two Decades of Medals. By Jonathan Abrams / NYT
Faith Leaders Demand NFL Move Next Super Bowl From Arizona For ‘Racist’ Vote Crackdown. By Mary Papenfuss / HuffPost
“The Ballot or the Blackout” campaign against Arizona steps up after federal lawmakers fail to pass national voting rights protections.
A coalition of more than 400 religious leaders and others from around the nation have called on the National Football League to change the planned location of next year’s Super Bowl from Arizona because of the state’s series of “racist” “voter suppression” laws. Coalition members, including Dr. Cornel West and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, have also called for a meeting with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Read more
Twitter Users Invoke Colin Kaepernick After Aaron Rodgers Wins MVP. Kimberley Richards / HuffPost
People noticed how the league has treated the Green Bay Packers quarterback, as compared to the activist and former San Francisco 49ers player.
Sirius XM radio host Joe Madison called out the honor on Twitter on Friday, comparing Rodgers to Kaepernick, who famously began kneeling during the playing of the national anthem at NFL games in 2016 to protest racial injustice. “Aaron Rodgers gets rewarded with MVP even after lying to the entire country,” he wrote. “Colin Kaepernick will probably never play in the NFL again for speaking the truth.” Read more
Her dad died. So her favorite NFL star took her to the father-daughter dance. By Sydney Page / Wash Post
Can NBA draft prospects at Overtime Elite disrupt college basketball? By Erin Richards / USA Today 
NBC’s Mike Tirico travels 12,000 miles to pull double-duty, hosting Olympics and Super Bowl. By Sam Fortier / Wash Post