Featured
Alabama will mark the 60th anniversary of the 1963 church bombing that killed four Black girls. By The AP and NBC News
Alabama on Friday will mark the 60th anniversary of one of the most heinous attacks during the Civil Rights Movement, the 1963 bombing of a church that killed four Black girls in 1963.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the nation’s highest court, will give the keynote address at the remembrance Friday morning at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. On the morning of Sept. 15, 1963, dynamite planted by Ku Klux Klan members exploded at the church, killing the girls and shocking the nation. The large, prominent church was targeted because it was a center of the African American community and the site of mass meetings during the Civil Rights Movement. Read more
Justice Jackson urges Americans to confront ‘uncomfortable lessons’ about race. By and
“I know that atrocities like the one we are memorializing today are difficult to remember and relive,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Friday in Birmingham, Alabama. “But I also know that it is dangerous to forget them.”
“If we are going to continue to move forward as a nation, we cannot allow concerns about discomfort to displace knowledge, truth or history. It is certainly the case that parts of this country’s story can be hard to think about,” Jackson said. “We cannot forget because the uncomfortable lessons are often the ones that teach us the most about ourselves. … We cannot learn from past mistakes we do not know exist,” she added. Read more
Related: 60 years after 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham. By Debbie Elliott / NPR
Political / Social
DeSantis, Florida lawmakers blamed for racism, hate, by protesters. By marc Ramirez / USA Today
A group of Florida faith leaders said they have had enough of what they call a hateful political climate in their state, one they say laid the foundation for the racially motivated killings of three Black people in Jacksonville on Aug. 26.
This weekend, they plan to march on Jacksonville’s City Hall and a call to state leaders – specifically Gov. Ron DeSantis – to end the divisive language and legislation they say has targeted Black people, immigrants, transgender people, educators and others for political gain. Read more
Biden polling: Why Biden is struggling with Black and Latino voters. By Christian Paz / Vox
A recent spate of polling paints a bad picture of declining support for the president from voters of color. But just how worrisome is it?
Those recent surveys, from CNN and the Wall Street Journal, have shown Biden and his likely Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump, essentially tied or with a narrow Trump lead. Polling averages reflect the same dynamic. None of it should be surprising — though Democrats have openly or anonymously been torn about just how much to be worried by these polls. Read more
The Trials of Aurora: A Colorado City’s Deep Divide Over Policing.
After Elijah McClain died in 2019, the case seemed to be closed. The George Floyd protests — and the backlash to them — would change everything.
Aurora’s painful, conflicted journey over the past four years would raise uncomfortable questions about the meaning of public safety and illuminate both the promise and the limits of reform. There were real achievements — new legislation and restrictions from the city and the state, and in both the Police and Fire Departments — hard-fought and eked out with public pressure, but not always as fast or far-reaching as activists may have wanted. Read more
Diversity is for show; Harvard study shows Harvard is for rich people. By Jason Weisberger / Boingboing
The bias towards wealth seems colorblind, however, as affluent minorities are also far more likely to join the Ivy ranks than poorer people with similar ethnicities—these schools really like money.
A July 2023 study from a think tank ironically hosted at Harvard, Opportunity Insights, shows that low-income students have terrible chances of being accepted into Harvard. The commitment of the “Ivy Plus” group of universities covered in this study shows that almost two-thirds of the student population comes from the top 20% of the wealth pool, while only 5% comes from the bottom. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
After the Birmingham bombing, a Rosh Hashana sermon to remember. By Mark Silk / RNS
On the eve of Rosh Hashana 60 years ago, Rabbi Milton Grafman stood up before his packed congregation at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama, and confessed that he had no prepared sermon to deliver.
Just three days earlier, on Sunday morning, Sept. 15, 1963, four Ku Klux Klansmen had dynamited the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham’s first Black church, killing four girls. Grafman had been so involved in the aftermath, he said he’d all but forgotten about the holiday. And so he would speak extemporaneously of things that were on his heart. What followed was a true cri de coeur. Read more
Related: Hate Does Not Belong in Our Community. By Jamie Beth Cohen / The Progressive
Wheaton College Releases Report on Its History of Racism. By Daniel Silliman and Kate Shellnutt / Christianity Today
Wheaton College embraced racist attitudes that “created an inhospitable and sometimes hostile campus environment for persons of color,” according to a 122-page review of the school’s history released by trustees today.
Though the flagship evangelical institution was founded by abolitionists, over the next century and a half it turned away from concerns about racial equality. Even when the school’s leadership knew what was right, they frequently lacked the courage to “take a more vocal role in opposing widespread forms of racism and white supremacy,” the report says, and too often “chose to stay silent, equivocate, or do nothing” about racial injustice. Read more
The Resilient Voice of Justice: The Role of the Black Church in Response to the Affirmative Action Ruling. By Antonio L. Ellis / Diverse Issues In Higher Ed
Through turbulent decades marked by civil rights battles and social justice movements, the Black Church has consistently championed the cause of justice, equality, and equity. Today, as we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of affirmative action ruling, the Black Church’s role remains pivotal in ensuring that the fight for racial equity endures.
According to diversity, equity and inclusion expert, Dr. Shaun Harper, “While the discontinuation of race-conscious admissions policies and practices will negatively affect students of color across a range of racial and ethnic groups at predominantly white institutions (PWIs), Black applicants will be most devastated.” In this contentious debate, the Black Church emerges as a moral compass, providing guidance and resilience. Read more
Catholic clergy abuse survivors of color endure compounded trauma. By Katie Collins Scott / NCR
As Kevin Johnson recalled an encounter with an abusive priest, the image of George Floyd on the ground, a knee to his neck, came to mind. Decades earlier Johnson, too, gasped for air during moments of terror.
He was 16 then, a Black teen daydreaming in a church-run community pool, when a white, Josephite-order priest who’d befriended him years prior allegedly molested him underwater. “He dragged me under, where there was no oxygen, wrestled and assaulted me,” Johnson told NCR. “I would eventually be allowed to return to the surface and breathe. It was not a knee to the neck but a hand down the front of the trunks.” Read more
Historical / Cultural
What Does America Owe the Victims of Racial Terrorism? By Charles M. Blow / NYT
I met Sarah Collins Rudolph, a small woman nestled into a corded khaki sofa, last month in her darkened living room in Birmingham, Ala. The room is something of a shrine, commemorating the 1963 act of terrorism that killed four little girls but spared a fifth.
Responding to Mrs. Rudolph’s demand for restitution, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama wrote a tepid apology in 2020 — addressed not to her but to an attorney — full of platitudes and hedging about any possibility of restitution. The Rudolphs also see themselves as victims of an act of terrorism — how else can you see it? — that the State of Alabama and the country have acknowledged but have refused to provide compensation for. This raises a very real question: What does America owe the victims of the country’s past racial terrorism? Read more
The Monticello Plantation Hides Secrets About the Thomas Jefferson Mystery. By Linda Edwards / Showsnob
The historic Monticello property located in Virginia was a Thomas Jefferson’s plantation estate that is considered an important part of the US history.
Today, this site is considered a national landmark studied by students across the States and worldwide. There was plenty of evidence and documentation regarding the Virginia plantation but none of it ever mentioned the recently discovered secrets on the property. Thanks to archaeologists and great efforts put into this discovery, we now know more about Jefferson’s life, property, and secret children than ever before. This discovery has left historians shocked with the recently revealed truth about President Thomas Jefferson. Read more
Unforgettable: The Sad Day In 1965 That We Lost Nat King Cole. By Paul Sexton / Discover Music
The voice of one of the greatest singers of the 20th century, also a much-loved pianist, was silenced by lung cancer on February 15, 1965.
Nathaniel Adams Coles, as he was born, emerged first as the leader of his jazz group the King Cole Trio, which at a time of racial segregation, was a huge achievement in its own right. Born in 1919, he was performing by the mid-1930s. While he always sang (contrary to the convenient publicity line that he discovered his vocal talents almost by accident), Cole was primarily an instrumental pianist in his early days. He was accompanied in the trio by guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley Prince, later succeeded by Johnny Miller. Read more
Hip-Hop Is the Music of Vinyl Librarians. By Dan Charmas / NYT
Of all the clichés about hip-hop we’ve endured over 50 years, the idea that hip-hop is the product of the streets — with all the attendant implications about what and who is and isn’t authentic — remains the most tiresome. In reality, hip-hop is largely the product of kids who stayed inside.
For five decades, beneath all the bluster and braggadocio, behind every park jam, party, stage show, flashy album cover or video, there were hours upon hours spent in a room, alone or with friends — amid dozens, sometimes hundreds, of records — experimenting, practicing, in spirited study. The records are the key to it all. Read more
Media Mogul Byron Allen Places $10B Offer For Disney Networks Including ABC And FX, Report Says. By Ngozi Nwanji / Afrotech
According to Bloomberg, the media mogul put in a $10 billion offer to Walt Disney Co., to acquire some of its networks, including ABC TV, FX, the National Geographic channels, and local stations.
The new bid comes after Allen was reportedly interested in purchasing a majority stake in the BET Media Group, as previously reported by AFROTECH. The potential offer was shut down due to Paramount announcing that “a sale wouldn’t result in any meaningful deleveraging of its balance sheet.” Read more
Sports
Colorado Rallies Back To Beat Colorado State In Double Overtime Thriller. By Pat Graham / HuffPost
Fans rushed the field after Deion Sanders’ Colorado team beat Colorado State early Sunday in front of a full house packed with famous names.
His mom gave the pregame speech. His defensive-back son started the scoring with an 80-yard pick-six. His quarterback son won it with a 98-yard drive for the ages and an overtime not soon forgotten. It was quite a day for Deion Sanders. With a bunch of celebrity friends in town, too, to take it all in. Read more
Why Deion Sanders was beloved by MLB teammates: ‘He wasn’t Prime Time all the time.’ By Cody Stavenhagen and C. Trent Rosecrans / The Atheletic
It was the summer of 1995, and on one side of his double life, the time couldn’t have been more prime for Deion Sanders.
He was coming off a Super Bowl victory with the San Francisco 49ers, and he had established himself as more than a sideshow on the baseball field. He was then, as he is now, a flashpoint and lightning rod in the sports world. The two-sport star lived up to his nickname and, like NBC’s Thursday night lineup at the time, all eyes were on him. Read more
How Stephen A. Smith Got His Revenge. By Zito Madu / The Nation
His memoir, Straight Shooter—a reflection on his life, his victories, and his defeats—gives an inside look into how the ESPN personality remade sports journalism in his image.
Humiliation is the central theme of Stephen A. Smith’s memoir, Straight Shooter. Underneath the fame, the chart-topping sports shows, the controversies and arguments, and the ability to talk and talk about all things for so long that his interlocutors can barely get a word in, there exists a man who still remembers—and carries with him wherever he goes—all the ways that he was humiliated as a child. Read more
Vikings’ Alexander Mattison racially abused by fans after Eagles loss. By Jesse Yomtov / USA Today
Minnesota Vikings running back Alexander Mattison revealed some of the abusive and racist messages that he received after a 34-28 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Thursday night.
Mattison, who ran for 28 yards and lost a fumble in the game, shared screenshots of messages and comments from fans that included racial slurs.”I hope the 60+ people who decided to come at me with disgustingly disrespectful messages tonight in DMs and comments really reflect on WTF you say and how it could truly affect someone under my helmet,” Mattison wrote on Instagram. “I am a human, a father, a son. This is sick.” Read more
Who are the Highest-Paid Black Athletes in the World? By Noah A. McGee / The Root
Superstar athletes such as Lewis Hamilton, Anthony Joshua, and Stephen Curry are some of the wealthiest Black celebs in the world in 2023.
Believe it or not, the most talented and gifted athletes in the world are making more money than they ever have before. Don’t take it from me, take it from Forbes and their list of the world’s highest-paid athletes. Even more impressive, of the 50 stars named, more than half of them are Black. Meaning that Black people in basketball, football, soccer, boxing, and auto racing are making a lot of bread. Here are the richest Black athletes in the world. Read more
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