Black in America, VI

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/senator-warnock-slams-trump-for-attack-on-harris-rac...
Senator Warnock Slams Trump For Attack On Harris’ Racial Identity: ‘People With No Vision Traffic In Division’

https://deadline.com/2024/08/simone-biles-black-job-donald-trump-olympics-123602...
“I Love My Black Job”: Simone Biles Seemingly Takes Swipe At Donald Trump After Olympic Triumph

Simone Biles has celebrated her latest Olympic triumph with an apparent swipe at Donald Trump.

The decorated gymnast won her second gold medal at Paris 2024 — and the sixth of her career — in the individual all-around event, cementing her self-embraced status as the GOAT (greatest of all time).

On Friday morning, she reflected on her latest moment of glory with a post on Twitter/X that read: “I love my black job.”

This has not been picked up yet by any other news organization. I will continue to look for it.

Driving truck in Henderson, NC

Javion Magee, truck driver from Illinois, was found hanging from a tree in North Carolina
Local police are ruling it a suicide and not allowing family to see the body.
https://thencbeat.com/woman-on-tiktok-says-her-cousin-was-found-hanging-from-a-t...

A Tale of Two Divestments: South Africa, Sudan, and Howard University (African Studies Review)

Abstract

The anti-apartheid movement and Save Darfur campaign were important moments of African American activism towards Africa. Howard University played a central role by divesting from both South Africa and Sudan. This article examines each divestment within Howard University’s history of engagement with Africa. While each divestment was linked by a concern to support oppressed African peoples, the roles of race and racism operated differently in each action. Such an analytic provides space to reconsider the role of US higher education in African-facing human rights activism during the age of Black Lives Matter.

These types of messages are popping up in social media already

https://www.instagram.com/p/DCEwPUKJ02s/?igsh=Ymk1Mjl5cTR6cGl1

A Dozen Black Inmates Reportedly Self-Immolated at Virginia Supermax Prison to Escape 'Intolerable Racism, Abuse, and Inhumane Conditions

https://www.latintimes.com/dozen-black-inmates-reportedly-attempted-self-immolat...

Meet 6 Black Catholics on the Road to Sainthood (ACI Africa)

November is National Black Catholic History Month in the United States, a time to honor the history, heritage, and contributions of Black Catholics across the nation. The National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus (NBCCC) first established Black Catholic History Month in 1990. Here are six prominent Black Catholics on their way to sainthood... Pierre Toussaint... Henriette DeLille... Mary Lange... Augustus Tolton... Julia Greeley... Thea Bowman...

And 2/3 of these are black women.

Appeals court hears case that could dilute Black voters’ power in Louisiana (Guardian)

A federal appeals court heard arguments Tuesday in a case that could further erode voting rights protecting minority voters or solidify that Louisiana’s legislative maps diluted Black voters’ power. The fifth circuit court of appeals, which hears cases brought for appeal from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, will weigh in on Nairne v Landry, a case in which a federal judge in Louisiana ruled the Republican-controlled legislature had violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act with its newly created maps. Section 2 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in voting processes and ensures electoral procedures are “equally open to participation” for people regardless of race. When states redistrict every 10 years, they often face legal challenges for hindering the voices of minority voters...

US Air Force removes lessons on black WWII pilots from training (BBC)

Donald Trump's move to block diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives has led to the US Air Force reviewing material on the role of black and female pilots during World War Two from its training programmes. A military official on Saturday said "immediate steps" were taken to remove material to "ensure compliance" with the US president's order, the BBC's US news partner CBS reported. But on Sunday, military officials clarified that certain curriculum will not be removed from basic military training. This includes lessons highlighting the Tuskegee airmen and Women Air Force Service Pilots, which will remain in the programme...

Jury convicts West Virginia couple accused of neglect, forced labor involving their adopted children

https://apnews.com/article/west-virginia-couple-adopted-children-neglect-trial-6...

A West Virginia jury has convicted a couple who were accused of neglect and forced labor involving their adopted children, including locking some of them in a shed, forcing them to sleep on the floor and use buckets as toilets.

The couple, who are white, were accused of mistreating their children — all of whom are Black. They went on trial in mid-January on more than a dozen felony counts each that included forced labor, civil rights violations, human trafficking and child neglect.

Whitefeather and Lantz adopted the five siblings while living in Minnesota, moved to a farm in Washington state in 2018, and then brought the family to West Virginia in May 2023, when the children ranged in age from 5 to 16.

>9 John5918: Not just Blacks, US Military Academy eliminated clubs for Blacks, women, Asians, Hispanics, Native Americans, LGBTQ. All religious ones remain. Diversity, equity, and inclusion in the time of Trump...

Fred Wellman ‪@fpwellman.bsky.social‬ | February 5, 2025 at 9:27 AM
Host of 'On Democracy with FPWellman' on MeidasTouch and the ‘On Democracy Channel’ and 'On the Line with VoteVets.' National Chairman, Forgotten Democrats. Army Iraq veteran. Political consultant. Pro-Democracy Advocate.

The United States Military Academy has just eliminated all Cadet clubs and activities for POC. Most of these have existed for decades like the Society of Black Engineers. They were there when I was a Cadet in 1987. All of the religious ones remain. This isn’t DEI. It’s white Christian Nationalism.

A memo listing all of the clubs eliminated by USMA. 4 Feb 2025
https://bsky.app/profile/fpwellman.bsky.social/post/3lhgrpuz4vc2o
----------------------------------------------

West Point disbands 12 cadet organizations in response to DEI directives
JOHN VANDIVER STARS AND STRIPES • February 5, 2025
https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/2025-02-05/west-point-identity-group-ban-1...

Westlake, Ohio

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGoSTEyyFDz/?igsh=MWV1cmNvMzhiNnh1bA==

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2025/02/video-shows-tense-confrontation-as-westla...

https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/cuyahoga-county/westlake-woman-viral-vid...

Herman Carpenter Has now been released and has retained an attorney.

Pregnant black woman ticketed for walking on the wrong side of the road in Texas just feet from her own home

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/pregnant-black-woman-t...

If a sidewalk is not provided, according to the Texas Transportation Code, a pedestrian must walk on the “left side of the roadway” unless that side is obstructed.
...
Texas police ticketed a pregnant Black woman for allegedly walking on the wrong side of the road while she was looking for her dog in an incident she calls “an excessive force of power,” according to reports.

Akia Townes was trying to retrieve her dog just two houses down from where she lives, walking on the right side of Madison Boulevard in Groves on Wednesday when police approached her.

"Two cops stopped me. They walked out with their hands on their guns, and then they asked me to see my ID," Townes told KFDM.

Brad Townes, her husband who is white, started filming his wife’s exchange with law enforcement on his phone. “Can’t walk while Black in Groves,” he can be heard repeatedly saying in the video as he captured officers talking to his wife.
------------------
They did not ticket her husband or the dog.

September 15, 2025

Delta State University is in mourning after the body of a student Demartravion “Trey” Reed was found on campus. The 21-year-old was found on Monday morning, prompting an investigation involving multiple law enforcement agencies. Reed's cousin has alleged that he was beaten and bruised, adding both his arms were broken and he had a broken leg.
…
The DSU police chief suspected that there was no foul play involved with Trey Reed's death and ruling it as a possible suicide

https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/global-trends/us-news-delta-state...

A second person was found to have died by hanging in Mississippi on Monday morning.

According to the Vicksburg Police Department, officers were notified that a man was hanging in a wooded area of Washington Street near the area of the Ameristar Casino. The deceased has been identified as Cory Zukatis, a native of Brandon. Zukatis was believed to be homeless.

https://www.supertalk.fm/police-investigating-death-of-man-found-hanging-near-vi...

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTM17xxa5/

The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Also Javion Magee from last September.

Demetrice Moore found hung September 14, in a shed in Arkansas

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMhS7rnr/

Just this week, police released a first statement calling it a suicide

https://www.deltaplexnews.com/local-news/pine-bluff-police-report-demetrice-moor...

Javon Maurice Givan, dead by hanging in Albuquerque New Mexico

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMhU36BY/

I can’t find this news anywhere but on social media

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1504794210838129&id=1000392269...

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMhyPr5g/

Run down by Baltimore police officer, Robert A. Parks in his patrol car. Officer Parks is on administrative duty, not arrested for attempted murder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsKLQQWQIcs

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMVLQYfH/

Not sure what information the bodycam can add.

FBI agents sue after being fired for kneeling during racial justice protest (NPR)

Twelve FBI agents who were fired this year for taking a knee during racial justice protests in the heated summer of 2020 are suing the Bureau and its director, alleging unlawful retaliation. The former special agents—who together have nearly 200 years of experience—once received awards for helping disrupt mass shootings, expose foreign spies and thwart cyber attacks...

'The most famous black person in America': How the 1950s 'Red Scare' erased a US icon (BBC)

Paul Robeson was a superstar of the stage and screen, a talented football player and a music hitmaker. Then, amid the "anti-communist fervour" of the US in the Cold War, came a dramatic fall from grace... Robeson spent much of his rise to fame educating himself, and becoming increasingly outspoken, on the broader context of the black struggle. In Europe, he performed benefits for Welsh miners, Jewish refugees and Republican fighters in the Spanish Civil War. He studied African languages and Marxist writings, and visited the Soviet Union. Back home in the US he refused to perform for segregated audiences, joined union picket lines, and, in the 1948 presidential race, campaigned for Henry Wallace's Progressive Party. Yet all these causes proved relatively undamaging to Robeson, prior to a speech he gave in Paris on 20 April 1949. The World Congress of Partisans for Peace was a gathering of some 2,000 scientists, teachers, activists and artists from 75 countries, convened to condemn the Cold War arms race and what it saw as US aggression against the Soviet Union... In her book Many Are the Crimes, Cold War historian Ellen Schrecker argues that "probably no other individual was as heavily censored" as Paul Robeson. And in some ways he did present a unique threat. Not as a spy, but as an outspoken black socialist. Someone who linked the African American fight for civil rights to the cause of the working classes worldwide, from the Welsh valleys to West Africa, from Mississippi to Moscow. And of all those blacklisted, from Hollywood screenwriters to civil servants and academics, none were as high profile or once-beloved. As Schrecker says: "The most charismatic black actor and singer of his generation had become a non-person"...

A few more interesting things about Paul Robeson, from the Wiki entry on him:

"During the Second World War, Robeson initially opposed Allied war efforts and US entry into the conflict during the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, but became a highly vocal supporter of the war efforts after the German Invasion of the Soviet Union. His history of supporting Soviet policies brought scrutiny from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). After the war ended, the Council on African Affairs was placed on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations. Robeson was investigated during the McCarthy era. When he refused to recant his public advocacy for the Soviet Union, the U.S. State Department withdrew his passport, and his income plummeted ..."

In other words, he was a supporter of Joseph Stalin.

>20 Doug1943: so did the US during WWII - so what?

Kyle Bassinga found hanging from a tree in Marietta, Georgia
Missing posters found online, but no news stories.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZThVAvYE1/

Los Angeles city council president explains why he missed a committee meeting.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZThvkE3XV/

Stories of Black and Indigenous patriots come into focus as US remembers the American Revolution (AP)

As America prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, Estabrook and other patriots of color are being celebrated through programs nationwide that aim to tell a more complete story of the birth of the nation... Museum exhibits, documentary films and lectures have traditionally focused on the white leaders of the American Revolution, such as Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere... But in recent decades, “a more accurate view of the past” has emerged that showcases the diverse collection of men and women who played critical roles in the fight for freedom. “There were Black men in the ranks who were fighting in Concord and Lexington and fought on Bunker Hill,” he said. “They knew all of the work that women were doing to support the revolutionary effort. The fact that we didn’t know that is more of a sign of our lack of curiosity and the need for greater research.” The National Park Service estimates that by the end of the Revolution more than 5,500 patriots of color — including Black and Indigenous people — served on the colonial side, while many runaway slaves fought for the British... The stories of Black patriots cannot be told without mentioning slavery, which was legal at the time in all 13 Colonies. Some Blacks who fought were enslaved and others fought in the hopes of gaining freedom. Indigenous soldiers made similar calculations, even as tribes fought for their very survival. But despite the documented military diversity of that time, efforts to promote such stories are under pressure. The Trump administration has ordered the removal or censorship of some exhibits highlighting the history of slavery and enslaved people, the Civil Rights Movement and the mistreatment of Indigenous people. Roger Davidson, Jr. an associate professor of history at Bowie State University, said failure to recognize that important part of history can impact communities of color today...

Why are Harvard’s slavery researchers quitting or being fired? (Guardian)

The school’s $100m project to examine its slave ownership in Antigua is mired in controversy as academics allege obstruction...

>21 alco261: No, the US allied itself with Joseph Stalin. Robeson believed Stalin was the head of a higher form of society, which he hoped to reproduce in the US.

By the way, I'm not condemning Robeson for this. I can completely understand why an intelligent Black person in the US at that time -- when the Soviets were officially championing racial equality, while Blacks were being lynched in America -- would become a Communist.

>25 Doug1943: This strikes me as a case of extreme hair splitting - in >20 Doug1943: you said he was a supporter of Joseph Stalin so was the US during WWII.

>26 alco261: Hmmm ... can you not see the difference between making a military alliance with a totalitarian country, on a "lesser of two evils" basis -- Stalin vs Hitler -- versus thinking that this totalitarian society was a good one which ought to be reproduced everywhere. Communists like Paul Robeson wanted to bring Communism to the US.

Now, I repeat, I'm not condemning him for this. In fact, a lot of very good people fell for that belief. At the time, the Soviets seemed to be the only serious power really resisting Hitler. And the Great Depression made capitalism, even 'democratic capitalism', look pretty bad, while the Soviets enjoyed full employment. (The parents of two of my previous wives were CP members during the 30s and 40s, along with nearly a hundred thousand other Americans. The Communist Party played a leading role in organizing the industrial unions, and was vehemently opposed to the shameful system of Southern racial segregation. See, for example, its role in the "Scottsboro Boys" case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottsboro_Boys It also had a decent position on 'the woman question', decades before the feminist movement.)

Anyone who's interested in this fascinating bit of American history should try to get a hold of Howe and Coser's The American Communist Party - A Critical History. https://www.amazon.com/American-Communist-Party-Critical-History/dp/B000XIXP9C

>27 Doug1943: Whatever

I contend that the GOPs decision to inject racism via a SCOTUS decision into the 2026 election cycle is meant to be a resounding backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement and a way to distract voters from the poor economic conditions they face in this country on a daily basis.

And ~

I wonder how many Confederate Flags will be waving on the sidelines of the demonstrations that will be taking place across the south going forward?

>27 Doug1943: So, given that you think it's just fine for Robeson to have been a supporter of the Soviet system, and you accept that many thinking people agreed with him at the time, what is it that makes that fact "interesting" for you?

It's a fact that anyone interested in American history should know.
Isn't that obvious?

I believe that very few ordinary people are monsters of evil. When they support something that we -- or you -- believe to be evil, we can condemn that fact, while also trying to understand what made them do it, starting with the assumption that it was not just pure evil intentions.

The people who supported Stalin, like Paul Robeson, mostly -- I believe -- did not, in their heart of hearts, want to see an America with slave labor camps and firing squads. Certainly that would not at all have described my two sets of in-laws who were Communist Party members in the 30's and 40's.

About 30% of Germans, in the last free elections they had before Hitler took power, voted for the Nazis. I'm sure that among them there were some very nasty people. But I'm also sure that there were many who simply had the prejudices against Jews which were, and are, still common everywhere, combined with an angry nationalism, something which is also very common around the world.

So, yes, we should know about the political past of prominent people: Paul Robeson was strong Communist sympathyzer, Senator Robert Byrd, later a strong advocate of civil rights for Blacks, began his political career as an Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan. Life is complicated. People are complicated. Makes it interesting.

Clarence B. Jones, civil rights activist who helped write MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, dies at 95 (NBC)

Jones was one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the epic speech and helped push for passage of the Voting Rights Act... Until his death Friday at an assisted living facility in Cupertino, California, Jones remained a keeper of King’s legacy and a vocal critic of attempts to undermine the gains African Americans have made since the civil rights battles in the 1960s. Just last month, Jones criticized President Donald Trump’s push to redraw congressional maps as an effort to weaken Black voting power. “The problem is Trump is living in a world that doesn’t exist anymore,” Jones said...