Featured
How the Negro Spiritual Changed American Popular Music – and America Itself. By Vann R. Newkirk II / The Atlantic
In 1871, the Fisk University singers embarked on a tour that introduced white Americans to a Black sound that would reshape the nation.
One story in particular stood out, from the diary of a young woman named Ella Sheppard. In the summer of 1871, she was stuck waiting for a train home, in a hotel somewhere in the middle of Tennessee. She was traveling with a group of students, also Black, back to Nashville after singing at a concert in Memphis. Traveling in the South was dangerous for any Black person, let alone for a coed group of students making their way through the state where the Ku Klux Klan had recently been founded.
According to Sheppard’s diary, the presence of the Black singers did indeed attract attention. A mob of local white men, engaged in what another source euphemistically described as “electioneering,” began to threaten the students. As Sheppard recalled in her diary, the troupe left the hotel with the mob still in tow and walked to the railroad stop, where the choir began to sing a hymn. The mob melted away. As the train approached, Sheppard wrote, only the leader of the mob remained. He “begged us with tears falling to sing the hymn again.
The group did not yet have renown or even a name, but the encounter at the train stop was an omen. In time, the choir would become the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers, and the diary written by Sheppard, who served as the group’s pianist and composer, preserves its origin story. ” Read more
Related: How Black Americans Kept Reconstruction Alive. By Peniel E. Joseph / The Atlantic
Political / Social
Republicans Are Fighting a War on Democracy All Over America. By David Rothkopf / Daily Beast
State-level GOP legislators are actively trying to overturn the will of the people. The new Speaker is a far-right extremist. And Trump sounds more like Hitler every day.
That sound you hear, which sounds suspiciously like jackboots, is the Republican Party marching out of the closet and proclaiming its opposition to democracy. After decades of promoting minority rule—but dressing up their intentions with a fig leaf of respect for America’s history, values, and tradition—the GOP has now dropped any pretense of caring about our Constitution or the principles upon which the United States was founded. Read more
How Trump and His Allies Plan to Wield Power in 2025. Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman and / NYT
Donald J. Trump and his allies are already laying the groundwork for a possible second Trump presidency, forging plans for an even more extreme agenda than his first term.
Former President Donald J. Trump declared in the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign: “I am your retribution.” He later vowed to use the Justice Department to go after his political adversaries, starting with President Biden and his family. Beneath these public threats is a series of plans by Mr. Trump and his allies that would upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he regained the White House. Read more
Related: Trump Isn’t Merely Unhinged. By David A. Graham / The Atlantic
Tim Scott’s Run For President Was Never Real, And Neither Was He. By Stephen A. Crockett / HuffPost
Most of Scott’s political experience was ultimately centered on being Republicans’ Black best friend.
On Fox News’ “Sunday Night In America with Trey Gowdy,” a show watched only by Republicans, Scott announced Sunday that he is no longer running for president. To understand Tim Scott is to understand America’s relationship ― more specifically, white America’s relationship ― with the Black friend. Since the beginning of time, there has always been a Black friend, sometimes as a guardian (think Jim in “Huckleberry Finn”), or the voice of God (again, Jim in “Huckleberry Finn”), or just literally God (think Morgan Freeman in “Bruce Almighty”). Read more
Related: Tim Scott Suspends ’24 Campaign, as His Sunny Message Failed to Resonate. Maggie Haberman and
Less than a quarter of Asian Americans support either Haley or Ramaswamy, new poll finds. By
Despite a shared ethnic background, Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy are viewed favorably by only 23% and 18% of Asian American voters, respectively.
Though they’re now two of the most prominent Indian Americans in politics, Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy are still largely unknown to Asian Americans, according to a new survey. Read more
Black voters showed their power in 2023. Here’s what it means for 2024. By Sudiksha Kochi / USA Today
A core part of the Democratic coalition, Black Americans appear to be more in play than ever after a recent poll showed former President Donald Trump pulling support from a shocking 22% of Black voters in six key battleground states.
Though President Joe Biden won 92% of Black support in 2020, a September Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that only 66% of Black voters would choose him if the 2024 election were held that month. But last week’s election results show that Black voters are still performing for Democratic candidates and issues. Read more
Overturning Roe Changed Everything. Overturning Affirmative Action Did Not. By Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
What do the strikingly different public responses to two recent Supreme Court rulings — one on abortion, the other on affirmative action — suggest about the prospects for the liberal agenda?
Do the dissimilar responses to the court decisions ending two key components of the liberal agenda, as it was conceived in the 1960s and 1970s, suggest that one of them — the granting of preferences to minorities in order to level differences in admissions outcomes — has run its course? Read more
Related: Conservatives’ Favorite Legal Doctrine Crashes Into Reality. Matt Ford / The New Republic
SCOTUS Rejects Appeal For Man Who Spent Years In Solitary Confinement Without Exercise. By Taiyler S. Mitchell / HuffPost
The Supreme Court’s liberal justices opposed the decision, calling it an “indisputable legal error.”
The Supreme Court on Monday decided against hearing the appeal of an imprisoned man in Illinois who was locked in solitary confinement for three years straight without any access to the outdoors or opportunities to exercise. Michael Johnson, who has been incarcerated since 2007 for a conviction related to home invasion and assault, was punished with solitary confinement after being involved in “countless” instances of prison violations, according to The New York Times. Johnson has been diagnosed with multiple mental health conditions, including severe depression and bipolar disorder. Read more
Poor men south of Richmond? Why much of the rural South is in economic crisis. By Peter A. Cocianis and Louis M. Kyriakoudes / The Conversation
Yes, the South is actually in crisis
First, let’s back up. One might be tempted to ask: Are things really that bad? Hasn’t the Sun Belt been booming? But in fact, by a range of economic indicators — personal income per capita and the proportion of the population living in poverty, for starters – large parts of the South, and particularly the rural South, are struggling. Read more
How inheritance data secretly explains U.S. inequality. By Andrew Van Dam / Wash Post
Assuming you’re not John D. Rockefeller Jr., left, your chances of an inheritance might not be as good as you want them to be. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images)
A little over 1 in 5 U.S. households had received an inheritance at some point in their lives as of 2022, according to the Federal Reserve’s remarkable Survey of Consumer Finances. The inheritance rate jumps to 2 out of 5 if you look only at folks in their 70s, who have had more time for their parents and favorite aunts to meet a regrettable but timely demise. But even those folks are in the lucky minority. Read more
This school tried to keep kids safe. Then graduation ended in gunfire. By Sabby Robinson , Hannah Natanson and Moriah Balingit / Wash Post
Virginia’s capital is facing an epidemic of youth gun violence. In the past three years, almost 30 Richmond students died in gunfire, according to the school system. The city’s rate of young people killed by guns spiked to three times the national average in 2017. In 2022 alone, there were 22 children under 18 injured by gunfire and five shot to death, according to Richmond police.
It’s not just Richmond — it’s a national problem. Since 2020, guns have become the leading cause of death among children and teens, with Black youths dying in firearm homicides at the highest rates. Read more
Inside Tribal Leaders’ Call To Action To Address The Fentanyl Crisis. By Ian Kumamoto / HuffPost
The opioid crisis has plagued the U.S. for almost a decade — and for vulnerable populations such as Native Americans, the devastation goes largely ignored.
Last Wednesday, Native American tribal leaders turned to Congress to seek support from the federal government regarding the fentanyl crisis in their communities. In their call to action were asks for adequate funding for addiction treatment centers, mental health resources and more authority for tribal law enforcement to help stop fentanyl-related deaths, according to Colorado Newsline. Read more
What It Means to Be a Texan Is Changing in Surprising Ways. J. David Goodman, Edgar Sandoval and Gebeloff / NYT
White people make up a declining minority in Texas, even among those born in the state. And all those people moving in? They’re as likely to be Black, Hispanic or Asian.
Understanding the reality of Texas matters. With a population of over 30 million, Texas is increasingly shaping the cultural and political direction of the country. Its economy is one of the largest in the world, growing faster than the nation’s as a whole. The state has long been defined by demographic change, particularly its growing Hispanic population. But the nature of those changes, and how profound they have become, has often been misunderstood, even by those who follow the state closely. Read more
A Black Woman’s Rise in Architecture Shows How Far Is Left to Go. Margolies / NYT
They have worked for decades to make their way in a profession that remains overwhelmingly white and male, but there are signs of change.
When Kimberly Dowdell becomes president of the American Institute of Architects next month, her ascent will be noteworthy. Ms. Dowdell, an architect in a profession that is overwhelmingly white and male, is a Black woman, the first to fill the post in the group’s 166-year history. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Bibi Netanyahu’s Bible lessons: How he pushes Gaza war to Jewish and Christian far right. By Ariel Gold / Salon
Netanyahu deploys the biblical tale of Amalek, a story of violent revenge, with very specific audiences in mind
You must ‘remember what Amalek has done to you,’” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admonished on Oct. 28, as he announced the “second phase” of Israel’s war in Gaza, the ground invasion that is now underway. To many non-Jewish people around the world, the reference likely seemed obscure or meaningless. In the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, Amalek is a nation whose soldiers ambushed the Israelites as they made their way to the Promised Land. Following the attack, which the Israelites were able to beat back, God instructed them never to forget the near-catastrophe, and to wage an eternal war until no trace of Amalek’s existence remained. Read more
Related: Erase Gaza’: War Unleashes Incendiary Rhetoric in Israel. By Mark Landler / NYT
Mike Johnson’s “biblical” economics: Using Christian nationalism to “enhance plutocratic wealth.” By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Newly minted Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has been generously described as a “Christian Nationalist in a nice suit.” The Louisiana Republican wants to nullify the Constitution in order to make America into a White Christian theocracy. A White Christian Nationalist flag hangs outside of Johnson’s office in D.C. as (further) proof of his loyalty to that cause.
As part of that project, Johnson wants to take away women’s civil and human rights, end the right to privacy, and criminalize gay and lesbian people. Johnson’s “Christian values” also include giving even more money to the very richest Americans and corporations and destroying the country’s already threadbare social safety net. Read more
The Social Gospel movement is changing our politics and reshaping our perspectives. It has nothing to do with whiteness or nationalism. By John Blake
Just days before he would lead an unprecedented strike against the Big Three automakers, Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, did something extraordinary.
Fain started talking about his Christian faith. He cited scripture, including Matthew 17:20–21, where Jesus told his disciples that if they have faith the size of a mustard seed they can move mountains because “nothing will be impossible for you.” He said that for UAW members, organizing and making bold demands of automakers was “an act of faith in each other.” Read more
Maria W. Stewart and a Womanist Theological Tradition. By Amber M. Neal-Stanley / AAIHS
Stewart’s religious fervor inspired her to radical action, and she became “a strong advocate for the cause of God and for the cause of freedom.” She could not imagine a God who was not intimately concerned with the spiritual, emotional, and sociopolitical needs and desires of Black people and, more specifically, Black women. Joyce Durst performs at Peter’s Catholic Church. (L.A. Faille/Shutterstock)
She admonished the restrictive conditions in the US that continued to suppress educational opportunity for Black people, prompting her to educational advocacy. In her 1831 tract, Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build, Stewart inquired, “How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles?” She called to conscious the stringent domestic labor that defined life for many Black women and brought to light the specificity of Black women’s experiences, as regularly defined by both gender and racial oppression. Read more
Historical / Cultural
New museum honors untold stories of enslaved Africans through genealogy. By Anne Azzi Davenport and Geoff Bennett / PBS
This is all part of the Center for Family History at the International African American Museum. Museum officials say they have the broadest collection of genealogical records of any institution in the U.S. and one of the most vast in the world.
Some 400 million records are searchable here, including those from before the 1870 census, the first after the Civil War to include African Americans by name. The legacy of slavery makes it so difficult for so many African Americans to track their family history, certainly before the 20th century. Read more
Dozens of Black soldiers were sentenced to life or hanged after the 1917 ‘Houston Riot.’ The Army has now overturned their convictions. By The Grio Staff
The Houston melee was a violent brawl that saw Black soldiers march into the city after receiving word that a white police officer had pistol-whipped and killed a Black corporal.
As the U.S. Army attempts to acknowledge and remedy its past wrongs, it has reversed the convictions of 110 Black soldiers found guilty of mutiny, assault and murder in the largest trial in military history. According to Military.com, Army officials announced Monday at the Buffalo Soldier Museum in Houston that historians discovered many “irregularities” in the way charges were leveled against the Black soldiers of the Third Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, who were involved in the 1917 “Houston Riot.” In response, the Army has vacated the men’s convictions, and the service members’ records will reflect honorable discharges. Read more
HBCU Grad Makes History as First Black President Of The Academy of Physicians in Clinical Research. By Black News
Dr. Leonard Weather, Jr, RPh, MD, FAPCR a New Orleans and Shreveport, LA distinguished gynecologist was recently elected President of the Academy of Physicians in Clinical Research (APCR). Dr. Weather assumes the role of the first African American to hold this esteemed position in the organization’s history.
Dr. Weather’s extensive academic background includes a Pharmacy degree from Howard University and an MD from Rush Medical College in Chicago, IL. He further honed his expertise through comprehensive training, completing his internship, residency, and fellowship in gynecology and obstetrics at the renowned Johns Hopkins University Hospital. Read more
The enduring allure of Jay-Z’s ‘The Black Album.’ By Justin Tinsley / Andscape
The Black Album, released 20 years ago on Tuesday. But for me, someone who has always found the evolution and contradictions of Jay-Z’s life beguiling, the connection lies in emotion.
Listening to The Black Album, the only things more apparent than Jay-Z’s lyrics were his intentions. By the fall/winter of 2003, Jay-Z was hell-bent on “retiring.” He had released an album every year since his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt. His star power rose with each project, peaking with The Blueprint in 2001. Yet, platinum albums, millions of records sold and a record label he helped build from the ground up weren’t enough. Read more
Tupac Shakur could win his first Grammy almost 30 years after his death. By Lisa Respers France / CNN
The rapper, who died after being shot in Las Vegas in 1996, was one of three late artists who were nominated last week in best music film category.
Shakur received the nod for the FX five-part docuseries “Dear Mama,” which takes its name from his 1995 single of the same title.Shakur is competing against two other late artists – David Bowie for “Moonage Daydream” and Little Richard for “I Am Everything” (which premiered on CNN.) Bowie died following a battle with cancer in 2016, and Little Richard died in 2020, also of cancer related causes Read more
Sports
Meet People magazine’s sexiest Black male athletes. By Haniyah Philogene / The Grio
From Stephen Curry to Jayson Tatum to Jimmy Butler, these men have been crowned the sexiest men in sports.
In honor of People magazine’s annual “Sexiest Man Alive” issue, which features Jamie Foxx, Usher, and Lenny Kravitz, the publication has shared its top picks for the sexiest men in sports. From dazzling touchdowns to courtside charisma, these 21 athletes aren’t just scoring points in the game – they’re setting hearts ablaze. Amongst the list of athletically and genetically gifted men were a number of Black athletes, including Simone Biles’ new husband, Jonathan Owens. Read more
Deion Sanders and the Past and Future of College Football. By Zack Helfand / The New Yorker
To some, his work is a spectacle. He sees it as a calling. But it’s clear Coach Prime is changing the game.
Football coaches, as a rule, are not the world’s greatest talkers. There are exceptions (Reporter: “What do you think of your team’s execution, coach?” John McKay, purportedly: “I’m in favor of it.”), though most have mastered the art of empty blather. Bill Belichick sometimes just grunts. But I would happily listen to Deion Sanders, the most exciting college football coach to come along in years, talk about almost anything. Read more
Black Hockey Player In Fatal Freak Accident Has Become A Target For Racist Tweets. By Candace McDuffie / The Root
Matt Petgrave, the hockey player whose skate fatally cut Adam Johnson’s neck, has been subjected to a slew of racist hate online since the tragic incident. The collision between Petgrave and Johnson happened Saturday during a game in England’s Elite Ice Hockey League.
Petgrave, who is Black and from Toronto, has been trending on X/Twitter as racists have used this opportunity to show their putrid hatred of Black people. One of the most disgusting posts shows a picture of Petgrave next to George Floyd with the caption: “Matt Petgrave is the low impulse control N who murdered Adam Johnson in a violent racial hate crime. Petgrave angled his skate blade upwards and intentionally hit Johnson in the neck. Petgrave has the exact same blank stare as career violent criminal and drug addict George Floyd.” Read more
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