Featured

Saving democracy at home and abroad requires, and required, diversity and inclusion. By Herbert M. Berkowitz / Tampa Bay Times

Members of the 6888th battalion stand in formation in Birmingham, England, in 1945. The Women’s Army Corps battalion made history as the only all-female Black unit to serve in Europe during World War II. (U.S. Army Women’s Museum via AP, File)

My wife and I revisited the National World War II Museum in New Orleans this recent Memorial Day weekend and came away heartened, not just by our history but with hope for the future. We were reminded again and again that our greatest strength is our willingness to work individually and collectively for the greater good. We returned home from this true national treasure with some questions for Florida.

The museum recounts not only the war and the seemingly endless list of battles, but also makes a point of explaining the circumstances leading up to the rise of fascism and Nazism and the great struggle between freedom and democracy on the one hand and authoritarianism and fascism on the other.

As the National World War II Museum so capably teaches, we did it more than once. By teaching our children about our inherent diversity, our comprehensive inclusivity, and our varied and rich culture, we give them the tools to, as Roosevelt said, “to finish the job.” Read more

Political / Social

How White People Stole Affirmative Action — and Ensured Its Demise. By Evan Mandery / Politico

If elite colleges owned up to their racism, the Supreme Court might rule differently.

Elite colleges and universities — which I have criticized in my book and elsewhere as drivers of social inequality — made a conscious, self-serving choice to maintain an absolute focus on diversity and inclusion rather than the more difficult topics of race and exclusion. And a strategy that may have worked at the Supreme Court back then almost certainly won’t today. The bottom line is that elite institutions’ collective refusal to reckon with their racist conduct has left affirmative action on a rickety constitutional foundation that will ensure its doom. It didn’t have to be this way. Read more

Obama bashes Nikki Haley and Tim Scott on race relations: ‘Long list of minority candidates in GOP who say everything is great. By Ryan King / New York Post

Obama told Democratic strategist David Axelrod that “there’s a long history of African-American or other minority candidates within the Republican Party who will validate America and say, ‘Everything’s great, and we can make it.’”

“I’m not being cynical about Tim Scott individually, but I am maybe suggesting the rhetoric of ‘Can’t we all get along,’” Obama added. “That has to be undergirded with an honest accounting of our past and our present.” Read more

Most Black Americans believe US racism will get worse in their lifetime: poll. By Jared Gans / The Hill

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll released Friday showed that 51 percent of Black respondents said they expect racism will get worse, while 37 percent said they expect it will stay about the same. Only 11 percent said it will get better.

This was mostly consistent across age groups of Black respondents. Those 50 to 64 were the most likely to say they expect racism to get worse, with 57 percent saying so, while those 30 to 39 were the least likely, with 43 percent saying so. But no more than 13 percent of any age group said they expect racism to get better. Read more

Tennessee Democrats expelled over protests win primaries for their old seats. By Adam Edelman / NBC News

Tennessee state Reps. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, and Justin J. Pearson, D-Memphis, walk out of the West Wing of the White House after a meeting with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on April 24.

The two Democratic state representatives in Tennessee who were expelled by Republicans over gun violence protests won their primary races for their old seats Thursday night. Justin Jones won in Nashville, and Justin J. Pearson won in Memphis. Read more

Feds find multiple civil rights violations by Minneapolis police. By Martin Kaste / NPR

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday accused the Minneapolis Police Department of a pattern of bias and excessive force, the product of a wide-ranging federal investigation into the department following the 2020 killing of George Floyd.

With regard to racial bias, Garland says the Department found MPD officers “stopped Black and Native American people nearly six times more often than white people in situations that did not result in arrest or citation, given their shares of the population.” Read more

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez announces he’s running for president against Trump in 2024. By Hannah Demissie and Will McDuffie / ABC News

Suarez told co-anchor George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he represents “generational change,” but he repeatedly avoided answering about Trump’s indictment or whether the former president had done anything wrong.

When pressed by Stephanopoulos if he had read Trump’s indictment documents, Suarez pivoted, focusing on former Vice President Mike Pence and President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents. Read more

Grand jury indicts Daniel Penny in chokehold death of NYC subway rider Jordan Neely. By AP and NPR

A man charged with manslaughter for putting an agitated New York City subway rider in a fatal chokehold has been indicted by a grand jury, an expected procedural step that will allow the criminal case to continue.

Daniel Penny was charged by Manhattan prosecutors last month in the May 1 death of Jordan Neely, a former Michael Jackson impersonator who struggled in recent years with homelessness and mental illness. Neely was shouting at passengers and begging for money when Penny pinned him to the floor of the moving subway car with the help of two other riders. Penny, a former U.S. Marine, then held Neely in a chokehold that lasted more than three minutes. Read more

Fred Gray set to receive American Bar Association’s highest honor. By Cody D. Short / Birmingham RT News

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., left, and Tuskegee attorney Fred Gray break into laughter at a joke told by a speaker at a political rally in Tuskegee, Alabama, April 29, 1966. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell)

Civil Rights icon and Montgomery native Fred Gray is set to receive the 2023 ABA Medal, the highest honor from the American Bar Association. The award is given to a member of the bench who has “rendered conspicuous service in the cause of American jurisprudence.” During the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. looked to Gray as his “chief counsel.” He was also a key legal strategist for several moments during the struggle for equal rights such as representing Rosa Parks, leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and representing marchers during the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights marches of 1965. Read more

Ethics / Morality / Religion

New poll shows racial issues divide Americans. But people of faith can help unite us. By Audrey Price / USA Today

Americans have reached a consensus about one thing. Racial issues are dividing the nation. We need help agreeing on identifying, defining and solving those challenges. A new Public Agenda/USA TODAY Hidden Common Ground poll offers a snapshot of how Americans from all walks of life, including spirituality, view the issues.

As a public theologian and cultural critic who identifies as a Black woman, I glean hope from this data. Americans of every faith tradition can confront structural racism and its historical and ongoing harm to our society. They need a lens allowing them to see the problems clearly and the power to resolve them. Survey results revealed interesting insights about intersectionality of American life and racial injustice in our society. Nearly two-thirds of our neighbors say religious or spiritual people should speak out about racism. An equal number say faith leaders and institutions should fight racial injustice. Read more

My Church Was Part of the Slave Trade. This Has Not Shaken My Faith. By Rachel L. Swarns / NYT

For more than a century, Catholic priests in Maryland held Black people in bondage. They were among the largest slaveholders in the state, and they prayed for the souls of the people they held captive even as they enslaved and sold their bodies.

So after the Civil War, the emancipated Black families that had been torn apart in sales organized by the clergymen were confronted with a choice: Should they remain in the church that had betrayed them? I am a professor and a journalist who writes about slavery and its legacies. I am also a Black woman and a practicing Catholic. As I’ve considered the choices those families faced in 1864, I have found myself pondering my faith and my church and my own place in it. Read more

Should white Christians celebrate Juneteenth? By Chuck Mingo / RNS

Juneteenth, the newest U.S. federal holiday, will be commemorated nationally for just the third time on Monday (June 19). Juneteenth honors the day in 1865 when previously enslaved persons in Texas were informed by Major Gen. Gordon Granger that slavery had been effectively ended by presidential proclamation after the surrender of the Confederate Army.

As the Apostle Paul wrote in his Letter to the Galatians, “It is for freedom that Christ (Jesus) has set us free.” Seeing Juneteenth in this light means that the day should be an opportunity to celebrate the freedom that is coming to all Americans, regardless of the racial and ethnic makeup of your church. Read more

The families enslaved by the Jesuits, then sold to save Georgetown. By Rachel L. Swarns / Wash Post

In 1838, leaders of the Catholic order faced opposition from their own priests but pressed forward with the sale of 272 human beings anyway

The sisters, Louisa Mahoney and Anny Mahoney Jones, had been sold, along with scores of other Black people enslaved by the nation’s most powerful Jesuit priests. The leaders of the Catholic order were convinced that the sale was the only way to save Georgetown College, the nation’s first Catholic institution of higher learning, from being crushed by its debts. Even opposition from many of their own priests did not deter them from the steps they were about to take. Read more

Historical / Cultural

Who was Fort Bragg named after? The South’s worst, most hated general. By Ronald G. Shafer / Wash Post

The enslaving Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg suddenly has become a Republican primary rallying cry, after Fort Bragg in North Carolina was renamed to Fort Liberty earlier this month.

“We will end the political correctness in the hallways of the Pentagon, and North Carolina will once again be home to Fort Bragg,” former vice president Mike Pence told a state GOP convention. “It’s an iconic name and iconic base, and we’re not gonna let political correctness run amok in North Carolina,” vowed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Bragg was a “merciless tyrant” who had an “uncanny ability to turn minor wins and losses into strategic defeat,” wrote Sam Watkins, who served under the man historians call the South’s worst and most hated general. Read more

Celebrating Racial Justice and Equality on Juneteenth. By Alaysia Hackett / The Progressive

The holiday is an opportunity to learn from our history, celebrate our progress, and carry both forward.

Juneteenth commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas—home, at the time, to 250,000 enslaved Black people—and announced that the Civil War was over, slavery had ended and that Black Americans everywhere were free.

The raising of the Juneteenth flag is a symbol of solidarity and pride among Black Americans. The flag consists of a star representing freedom, a burst representing a “new beginning,” and an arc representing a “new horizon”—all set in the colors of red, white and blue, noting that enslaved people and their descendants were and are Americans. Read more

A Grad Student Found the Largest Known Slave Auction in the U.S. By Jennifer Berry Hawes / Propublica

Lauren Davila made a stunning discovery as a graduate student at the College of Charleston: an ad for a slave auction larger than any historian had yet identified. The find yields a new understanding of the enormous harm of such a transaction.

“This day, the 24th instant, and the day following, at the North Side of the Custom-House, at 11 o’clock, will be sold, a very valuable GANG OF NEGROES, accustomed to the culture of rice; consisting of SIX HUNDRED.” A sale of 600 people would mark a grim new record — by far. Read more

Denmark Vesey Revolt: How House Slaves Betrayed Their Own. By D.L. Chandler / Newsone

A Denmark Vesey monument is seen in Hampton Park in Charleston, South Carolina on June 23, 2015. | Source: The Washington Post / Getty

The North American Slave Revolts are often centered on the most well-known rebellion of African captives rising against their captors: The Nat Turner-led revolt of 1831. But the Denmark Vesey conspiracy, however, is also notable if for nothing else than the sheer number of slaves involved and how a simple, cowardly confession from fearful members of the revolution foiled Vesey’s epic plot. On June 16, 1822 — 201 years ago today — thousands of African slaves were betrayed by their own after the plot was revealed, resulting in dozens of executions. Read more

Reparations debate: Mending the past, forging the future. By Peter Grier / Christian Science Monitor

Does the United States owe Black Americans compensation of some kind for the brutality of slavery and the lingering effects of segregation and other forms of racial discrimination?

That question has divided U.S. politics and public opinion since the end of the Civil War, when Gen. William Sherman authorized the distribution to formerly enslaved Black people of 400,000 acres of land seized from white slave owners, only to see his order rescinded by President Andrew Johnson. Read more

Gorsuch echoes ‘woke’ historians in railing against injustices. By Lawrence Hurley / NBC News

Gorsuch, appointed by former President Donald Trump, differs from his conservative colleagues on some key issues, including Native American rights.

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative appointed by Republican former President Donald Trump, but in a series of recent cases, he has spoken up about historical injustice in a way that seems at odds with Republican attacks on “woke” history’s being taught in schools. That included his opinion Thursday when the court rejected a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act, a law intended to keep Native American families and communities together when children are in the adoption or foster care process. Gorsuch’s concurring opinion was part history lesson and part explanation of his full-throated support for Native Americans. He wrote about how Native American families were torn apart by federal and state officials’ attempts to assimilate them into Anglo-centric American society by eliminating their cultural ties to their tribes. Read more

The Blackening’ Review: Race Against a Killer. By Lisa Kennedy / NYT

With more jokes than jump scares, this comedic horror film is as tartly amusing as it is provocative. From left, Antoinette Robertson, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler and Dewayne Perkins in “The Blackening.”Credit…Glen Wilson/Lionsgate

There are two games at play in “The Blackening,” a comedic horror film with more jokes than jump scares. The first is the titular race-baiting board game with the grotesque Jim Crow-style figurine that Morgan (Yvonne Orji) and her boyfriend, Shawn (Jay Pharoah), discover as they explore the cabin they have rented for a reunion of college friends. The rest of their crew will arrive soon for a celebratory Juneteenth weekend of recreational drugs, card playing and — once they learn where Shawn and Morgan have disappeared to — trying to survive the night, initially by answering trivia questions such as: Which Aunt Viv was better on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”? In theaters. Read more

If You Read One Book This Juneteenth, Make it Zora Neale Hurston’s “Barracoon.” By Angela Johnson / The Root

Zora Neale Hurston’s book is the perfect reminder of why we celebrate.

Written by novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston in 1927, “Barracoon” was published posthumously in 2018. The title comes from the term “barracoon,” used to describe structures built to hold African people who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. While most of those captured were eventually transported to Europe and the Americas, many died while waiting for ships to arrive and load. Read more

Black Music Sunday: Celebrating Horace Silver and ‘Song For My Father.’ By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos

Join me today in a memorial tribute to Silver, and to his music.

Silver was born in Norwalk, Connecticut on September 2, 1928. His father had immigrated to the United States from Cape Verde—and that island nation’s Portuguese influences would play a big part in Silver’s own music later on. When Silver was a teenager, he began playing both piano and saxophone while he listened to everything from boogie-woogie and blues to such modern musicians as Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. As Silver’s piano trio was working in Hartford, Connecticut, the group received saxophonist Stan Getz’s attention in 1950. The saxophonist brought the band on the road and recorded three of Silver’s compositions. Read more and listen here

Bill Cosby sued by 9 more women in Nevada for alleged decades-old sexual assaults.

Nine more women are accusing Bill Cosby of sexual assault in a lawsuit that alleges he used what they call his “enormous power, fame and prestige” to victimize them

A lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Nevada alleges that the women were individually drugged and assaulted between approximately 1979 and 1992 in Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe homes, dressing rooms and hotels.One woman alleges that Cosby, claiming to be her acting mentor, lured her from New York to Nevada, where he drugged her in a hotel room with what he had claimed to be non-alcoholic sparkling cider and then raped her. Read more

Sports

Michael Jordan’s Hornets sale leaves NBA with no Black majority team ownership. By Marc J. Spears / Andscape

Only two people of color, Sacramento’s Vivek Ranadive and Brooklyn’s Joe Tsai, remain as majority owners

Hornets Sports & Entertainment announced Friday that Jordan reached an agreement to sell his majority stake in the NBA franchise to the Buyer Group led by Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall. The NBA legend’s sale of the Hornets is subject to the approval of the NBA Board of Governors. Jordan, who served as the Hornets’ chairman, was the only majority African American owner in the NBA. Read more

Grizzlies’ Ja Morant suspended for 25 games by NBA. By Tim MacMahon / ESPN

The Grizzlies suspended Morant from team activities May 14 after a video on social media circulated showing the All-Star brandishing a firearm. The NBA suspended Morant for eight games following a similar incident in March, when he was seen on Instagram Live holding up a handgun while intoxicated at a Denver-area club.

“Ja Morant’s decision to once again wield a firearm on social media is alarming and disconcerting given his similar conduct in March for which he was already suspended eight games,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. Read more

Jackson State reveals first installment of Diddy’s $1 million pledge. By J.T. Keith / Clarion Ledger

The Deion Sanders Effect is still being felt at Jackson State even after he departed as football coach. Sanders became the coach at Colorado in December 2022, but his celebrity friend, Sean “Diddy” Combs, has made good on his promise to give $1 million to Jackson State.

On June 26, 2022, Combs pledged $1 million to Howard University, the HBCU in Washington, D.C., that he attended. The pledge was made during the Lifetime Achievement Award at the BET Awards. After leaving Howard, Combs became an intern at Uptown Records before going on to huge success as a platinum-selling hip-hop artist and record executive. “Before I leave, I want to donate $1 million dollars to Howard University,” Combs said during his speech. “Also, I’m going to drop another million dollars on Deion Sanders and Jackson State because we should play for us.” Read more

US Open 2023 reflects golf’s missed opportunity: No Black players. By Josh Peter / USA Today

Tiger Woods, recovering from ankle surgery, won’t be at the U.S. Open that starts Thursday. Neither will the impact on golf many thought he’d have.

In 1997, Woods stoked imaginations when he became the first Black player to win the Masters. At just 21, he was the superstar some hoped (and others predicted) would revolutionize the sport by attracting more Black people to the golf course and inspiring the development of top Black pros. Now look. More than 26 years later, the 156-player field at the U.S. Open to be played at The Los Angeles Country Club has a clear void: no known Black players. Read more

The League: A Documentary on Negro League Baseball. By Sam Pollard and Ahmir Questlove / Tribeca Film Festival

Baseball is known as America’s pastime, but for many years, non-white people were socially and professionally excluded. Director Sam Pollard and executive producer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson shed light on that history with The League, revealing how the dynamic style of Black baseball players came to define the way the game is played today. With the eye of a historian, Pollard delves into how Black professionals formed Negro League baseball, building a unique sporting culture and community of their own.

Utilizing newly discovered archive footage and interview recordings, The League offers a fresh avenue through which to appreciate Black American history. At the same time, there’s a lot that will appeal to fans of baseball, whether a casual follower of the sport or the most ardent fanatic with an encyclopedic knowledge of stats. The film’s approach to baseball history is comprehensive and approachable, making it an unmissable sports documentary.––Jarod Neece. See Official trailer here

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Important Current Stories On Race In America

Race Inquiry Digest (Jun 19) – Important Current Stories On Race In America

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