Source: Drew Anthony / facebook In May 1916, in Waco, Texas, 17-year-old Jesse Washington was convicted of murder and rape during a one-hour trial in which his feckless attorney offered no defense. The courtroom had already done its work and named him guilty after deliberating for only four minutes. But Washington’s conviction and death sentence […]
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Source: Anadolu / Getty Voting is the linchpin of our democracy. But as the nation nears its 250th birthday, it is appropriate to question not only the strength of the franchise, but whether we are now living in an illusion of democracy itself. To assess democracy in this moment without the benefit of a spiritual […]
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Source: Ladanifer / Getty In November 1910, one year after its founding, the NAACP launched its official communications hub, The Crisis magazine, which documented lynching, disenfranchisement, segregation, racial terror, and the everyday humiliations of Jim Crow. Its founding editor, the civil rights activist and child advocate W.E.B. Du Bois, featured a drawing of a Black […]
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Source: Robert Prange / Getty I’m writing to you, Naomi Osaka and Taylor Townsend, as a Black woman who has spent the bulk of my career doing all I can to carve out spaces where Black people and stories get told and elevated. Along the way, I’ve come to understand something that aligns with the […]
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Source: SAMUEL CORUM / Getty Another day, another southern state announcing its desire to bring back the days of Jim Crow. On Wednesday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called a special legislative session to draw a new congressional map. CBS News reports that Kemp signaled he would trigger a redistricting effort shortly after the Supreme Court […]
Read MoreSource: peshkov / Getty When does the federal government protect us, and when does it get in the way? Whatever the right balance is, the Trump administration and its yes-men in Congress and on the Supreme Court are doing the exact opposite. The proposal they are pushing on AI proves how far backward they want […]
Read MoreSource: Apparently, there’s a competition going on for the most racist state, because Tennessee is doing its damnedest to win it. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Tennessee Republicans passed a map that disenfranchises the state’s Black voters, on Tuesday, they announced that every state Democrat will be removed from their committee assignments. WSMV […]
Read MoreSource: State of Louisiana / State of Louisiana The next time white Republicans — or anyone, for that matter — accuse Black people of being on a “Democratic plantation” because we refuse to vote for the current party of white supremacy, remind them that the gutting of the Voting Rights Act came as a result […]
Read MoreSource: Brandon Bell / Getty In 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the members of his state’s Department of Education rejected an Advanced Placement course covering African American Studies, which they justified by claiming the course “significantly lacks educational value,” by which they meant it was of no value to white people who would rather stick their heads in […]
Read MoreSource: Nikki O’Keefe Images / Getty So when the modern Republicans were talking about making America great again, we can now safely assume they were talking about the Jim Crow era. In the wake of the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act, Tennessee’s Republican-led state legislature has passed a new congressional map that completely […]
Read MoreSource: Michael M. Santiago / Getty The only thing worse than white people wanting to be oppressed as badly as they do is rich white people wanting to be oppressed. And the only thing worse than rich white people wanting to be oppressed is rich white people wanting to be so oppressed that they would […]
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Source: Al Drago / Getty Welp, it appears that the Trump administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is still scouring the U.S. in search of white men who are pretending to be victims of systemic racial discrimination, so that the administration can get in on the action of turning white fragility into legal precedent. On Tuesday, […]
Read MoreWhile the complaint began as a general look at the newspaper’s hiring and promotions, the case, personally handled by EEOC Chair Andrea Lucus, soon became a specific question over whether the white employee did not get a deputy editor job. On April 21, the EEOC told the newspaper that the case had been referred to […]
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The GOP shifted from a civil rights party to one using racially coded language, alienating many Black voters. Black GOP leaders like Brooke, Scott, and Donalds have taken diverse positions, drawing both praise and criticism. The future of black republicans in the house remains uncertain as some high-profile figures depart. Source: Photo by Michael M. […]
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Restricting SNAP benefits does not solve hunger or improve health; it polices low-income families under the guise of ‘public health’. Alabama has high rates of chronic illness, but lacks investment in solutions like Medicaid expansion and strengthening local food systems. Policies targeting low-income and Black communities reflect a history of using control over resources to […]
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Source: OLIVER CONTRERAS / Getty In today’s episode of Nah, But Seriously, The Trump Administration Is A White Supremacist Organization, Secretary of Defense — or War, or whatever — Pete Hegseth is still on his mission to de-woke the U.S. military, and, apparently, that means blocking Black people and women from getting promotions and firing […]
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Source: Al Drago / Getty Look, we all knew from President Donald Trump’s first day back in office, when he signed an executive order to limit birthright citizenship, that his war on birthright citizenship was just an extension of his white nationalist, vehemently xenophobic war on immigration in general. The president is a racist bigot, who […]
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Source: Mississippi Department of Public Safety / MDPS So, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety says it stumbled across a Ku Klux Klan robe, handbook, membership lists, and propaganda while cleaning out a closet for a move. The items were packed inside a small blue suitcase that had been tucked away and forgotten, as if […]
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Source: PHILIP MICHAEL WILLS / Getty There are bad ideas, there are terrible ideas, and then there are ideas so aggressively, almost artistically misguided that you have to wonder if someone in the room actively hates Black people—or at the very least assumes we won’t notice. Social media has actually been floating the idea of […]
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Source: Anadolu / Getty Somewhere in the afterlife, the ancestors are sitting at a long mahogany table. Harriet Tubman has her arms folded like she already knows this meeting is about to be stupid. Frederick Douglass is rubbing his temples the way you do when you realize you escaped slavery just for people to still […]
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