In the days of Jim Crow law and custom mandated racial segregation, physical signs of separation included placards over drinking fountains, separate entrances at movie theaters, and train cars dedicated to one race or another. It took a costly movement for civil rights in the mid-twentieth century to bring down those barriers and allow racial […]
On Friday, white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville in a rally full of racist iconography. They marched at night, carried torches, and chanted “We will not be replaced!” But deplorable incidents like this rally are only the most visible displays of the white supremacy that are allowed to flourish in mundane ways all across the country. […]
As someone who does race work, every so often someone makes the comment, “All you talk about is race.” I usually keep it moving and avoid making any response, but the statement frustrates me–mostly because it’s not literally true. I talk about a lot things. But I do talk about race a good bit. Here […]
For most minorities, especially African Americans, “Independence” Day always comes with quotation marks around it. That’s because the document that declared “all men are created equal” did not include people of African descent. No. They had no rights. They were not people. They were property. Frederick Douglass put it like this in his address, “The […]
Note: This article originally appeared in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. An Emmett Till marker has been vandalized yet again, and the form of vandalism symbolizes a larger story. While defacing a marker is nothing new, this is the first time a sign has been erased. Clarion-Ledger journalist Jerry Mitchell quoted Davis Houck of the Emmett Till Memory […]
The recent not guilty verdict of the officer who killed Philando Castile has added to the pain of being black in America. As I’ve pondered the events, as well as the dashcam footage that authorities released after the decision, I thought, “If Philando Castile was a threat, then black people are never safe.” To recap, […]
On June 19 (Juneteenth!) Jemar Tisby, president and co-founder of the RAANetwork, conducted his first-ever #TisbyTakeover. Tisby took over the RAAN Twitter account for an hour to answer questions about race, religion, education, and culture. The event was a success in every way. Followers asked insightful questions and the exchanges exposed to people to the […]
Juneteenth is the oldest celebration of the end of slavery in the United States. It is recognized on June 19th every year. In Texas, where it is a state holiday, slaves learned of the Emancipation Proclamation on June 19, 1865, two and a half years after the initial announcement. A Broadside Announcing Emancipation A broadside, […]
June 17 marks the anniversary of the murder of the Emanuel Nine. A white supremacist sat through a Bible study at the historic Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina and then he started firing. In the end, nine black believers lay dead. We say their names: Rev. Clementa Pickney (41) Cynthia Hurd (54) Rev. […]
The bullet that killed Medgar Evers didn’t stop in his chest. It ripped through his body, through the wall of his home, and lodged in the refrigerator inside where his wife and three children were still awake. Fortunately, the Evers family had trained for just such an occasion. They immediately dropped to the ground for […]
June 9 marks a grim anniversary in the history of civil rights. On that date in 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer, a poor sharecropper from Mississippi, endured a vicious beating orchestrated by white police officers. Three books— The Senator and the Sharecropper by Chris Myers Asch, God’s Long Summer by Charles Marsh, and I’ve Got the Light of […]
James Meredith has always been his own man. You have to be if you’re going to be the first black student at the University of Mississippi. In 1962, Meredith integrated that bastion of white supremacy in the South. White rioters spent the night in bloodshed and destruction that left two people dead. Nevertheless, Meredith graduated […]
Nothing demolishes the idea of American exceptionalism more thoroughly than an honest account of how people of color have been treated in this country.
Someone spray-painted ni**er on the front gate of a home in Los Angeles belonging to LeBron James. In a moment of intentional vulnerability he let his feelings about the event be known before the watching world. Most people reacted to James’s situation with empathy. Not Jason Whitlock. On a FoxSports 1 television show, Whitlock said […]
On the eve of the NBA finals conversations typically hover around how long the series will go, whether a certain player will come through in the clutch, and which sportscaster’s predictions will play out. But in an interview on Wednesday, the conversation veered from basketball to racism. Someone scrawled the n-word across the front gate […]
Memorial Day is a day of remembrance. By setting aside a time to recall soldiers who died fighting for this nation, American citizens rightly honor their sacrifice and that of their family and friends. What often gets overlooked in the observance of Memorial Day, though, is the different experience of African American soldiers. In one […]
Recently a congressman from Mississippi, Karl Oliver, posted a comment on his Facebook page that encouraged lynching as the consequence for removing Confederate memorials. His ridiculous post reminds us that lynching should never be taken lightly. The full post, which has since been removed, said: “The destruction of these monuments, erected in the loving memory […]
Officials across the South have decided to remove Confederate monuments in several cities amid heated rallies and demonstrations. In New Orleans, the city council voted to remove four monuments prominently displayed in the city. The contractors who removed the statues had to wear masks and flack jackets under the cover of night due to threats […]
My index finger paused above the ‘enter’ button on my keyboard. I had just finished creating the Facebook page for the Reformed African American Network, and in that moment I sensed something important was about to happen–something over which I would have no control once it got started. I hesitated because I wasn’t sure I […]
The goal today is this: to untangle race, religion, and politics so that divisions in the world don’t cause divisions in the Church.
