alabama
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Welcome Home: $50 Million Amistad Paintings Returned to HBCU Talladega College
Talladega College, an Alabama-based historically black college, will be the new home for a collection of paintings that recount the story of the Amistad slave ship mutiny. ABC News reports that the murals, valued at approximately $50 million, were originally commissioned by the school in 1938 and painted by artist Hale Woodruff. For nearly 70…
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Deathstreaming: U.S. Army Vet Whose Son Was Killed on Facebook Live Says ‘Violence Has to Stop’
Could you imagine how it feels to have served in the military and then work a quarter of a century for the Department of Corrections to learn one day that your son has been murdered while broadcasting on social media—of all places? That is what happened to Roosevelt Rankins, Sr., whose 34-year old namesake was…
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Judge Orders Alabama City to Pay $850,000 in Legal Fees for School Segregation Plot Gone Wrong
Gardendale, Ala., is an interesting place. I’ll allow The Root Senior Writer Michael Harriot to do the honor of explaining why that is, at least in part, as previously reported here: A judge told a mostly white suburb near one of the blackest cities in the country that—after reviewing all of the facts—she believed the…
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Alabama Supreme Court Upholds Confederate Monument Law
On Wednesday, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the city of Birmingham violated Alabama’s monument protection law when it placed a plywood screen around a Confederate monument in a downtown park on August 18, 2017. According to NPR, the 9-0 ruling by Alabama’s high court reversed a ruling by the lower Jefferson Circuit Court…
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Jury Convicts White Cop for Killing Unarmed Black Man
Although the heinous 2016 police shooting only garnered marginal national attention, eight judges refused to try the case. The trial venue was changed from a majority-black city to a rural, mostly white county…in Alabama. The defendant was a white cop who shot and killed a black man…in Alabama. Still, in less than two hours of…
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Beloved Alabama Sheriff Killed While Confronting White Teenager About Loud Music
“You heard ‘bout Big John?” In 2018, I ventured to Alabama’s Black Belt to see how a hookworm epidemic only found in Third World countries had made its way to Lowndes County, Ala. While searching for someone who knew the community and its residents, everyone I spoke with pointed me in the direction of the…
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Everyone Knows Why Inmates Are Dying in Alabama Prisons. No One Knows How to Fix It
Alabama runs the most violent prison system in America. Inmates in Alabama’s prisons are killed at nearly nine times the national rate. Families have been devastated. The state doesn’t seem to have answers. A study by a criminal justice and civil rights organization concluded that money won’t fix it. Even Donald Trump’s Justice Department called…
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Trump Is Reportedly Heading Down to Alabama to Watch the Footballs. They Need to Boo Him Down There, Too
In what seems to be an ongoing quest to not get booed at a major sporting event, Donald Trump will head down to Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Saturday to watch the Crimson Tide face off against its SEC rival and the current top-ranked college football program in the country, Louisiana State University. Shortly after Trump’s trip…
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#WorkingOutWhileBlack: Alabama Cops Kill Man in Front of Wife and Daughter After Someone Calls Cops on Them for Not Committing a Crime
Five Alabama police officers are on leave and one man is dead after the deceased man’s family reportedly witnessed cops shoot him at a local gym. AL.com reports that two police officers shot and killed 39-year-old Dana Sherrod Fletcher outside of Planet Fitness in Madison, Ala., around 4:30 p.m. on Sunday. Police say they shot…