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The Revolution Is Socialized: Organization ‘Live-Tweets’ Watts Riots on 50th Anniversary
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Watts rebellion (Aug. 11-17, 1965), the California Endowment’s Sons and Brothers Campaign, in partnership with the Community Coalition of South Los Angeles, is “live-tweeting” the uprising, drawing clear parallels between the raw revolution of Watts, a South Los Angeles neighborhood, and its grandchild, the uprising in Ferguson, Mo. It hasn’t been marked with the pageantry…
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‘What the Hell Is Going on in Ferguson?!’ How #MikeMike Changed Our World
It’s hard to believe it’s been one year since then-Ferguson, Mo., Police Officer Darren Wilson’s bullets plowed through the body of 19-year-old Michael Brown Jr. One year since the teen’s slain body was left lying in the middle of Canfield Drive in the sweltering heat for four hours, his warm blood trickling down the pavement,…
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#SandySpeaks: ‘I’m Here to Change History’
As I watched 28-year-old Sandra Bland assert her humanity by refusing to roll over and play slave for white Officer Brian Encinia, who had grown increasingly agitated by that refusal, the words of Zora Neale Hurston rang in my head through the numbness: “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say…
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An Art Exhibit Revictimizes Michael Brown
Traditionally in black American communities, when someone dies, before the spirit-filled homegoing service and solemn funeral procession to the final resting place, there are those quiet moments in the embalming room between the deceased and the mortician, the dead and the artist. If death was by stroke and the face of the deceased is disfigured,…
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Silence Around Who Is Burning Black Churches Speaks Volumes
There is something both sinister and cowardly about trying to destroy Black Jesus. Black churches in North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida and Tennessee have burned in the weeks following the terrorist attack on Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., that killed nine people. In response, agents of the state and mainstream media have attempted to…
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Meet the (White) Press: Racism in ‘Progressive’ Media Spaces
If more evidence were needed of how black bodies are pawns in political chess, look no further than Sunday’s episode of Meet the Press. Just days after nine African Americans were murdered inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., in what many agree was an act of anti-black terrorism, Chuck Todd and his producers decided…
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On 'Liberty' and Lies: U.S. Flag Also Symbolizes Anti-Black Terrorism
In the wake of the terrorist attack on Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, a social media campaign has emerged to #TakeItDown, urging South Carolina to remove the confederate flag from the South Carolina State Capitol building. Dylann Storm Roof, the 21-year-old white supremacist responsible for the attack, holds deep hatred for Black…
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‘Things Fall Apart’: On Mother Emanuel and White Terrorism
Zion Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Natchez, Miss., the church of my youth, was established in 1866, approximately 50 years after Emanuel AME Church, referred to as “Mother Emanuel,” in Charleston, S.C. It is the intertwining legacies of these two institutions that came to mind when I first heard that Emanuel’s pastor, the Rev.…
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Let’s Not Question Blackness Because a White Woman Says So
I’ve spent much of the last few days crying real tears over black Twitter’s brilliant and hilarious responses to Rachel Dolezal’s shenanigans. Seriously, search #AskRachel and #RachelDolezal if you need a pick-me-up. Then the conversations turned serious. I saw how much pain she was causing sisters like me who have been demeaned for the very…
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This Father’s Day, Let’s Shatter the Myth About the Absent Black Father
Black men are present and engaged fathers who love their children. Black men are present and engaged fathers who love their children. I needed to write that twice, in hopes that it cuts through the racist and patently false narrative amplified by mainstream media that the majority of black fathers are scurrilous beings who are…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
