Monthly Archives: February 2024
1741 Benjamin Franklin begins publishing “The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America”
Black Farmers – If You Don’t Know, Now You Know | The Daily Show
1964 Mississippi … a repost
On
June 2,1964 3 men were abducted and murdered, on June 20,2016 the case was closed and in 2018 Killien died in custody … The grim story of folks wanting to register fellow Americans in a campaign for Civil Rights is below:
Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney had only just begun working on the Freedom Summer campaign to register black Mississippians to vote when they suddenly disappeared.
Schwerner and Goodman were two Jewish men from New York—they had been there less than a week—and Chaney was a local black activist. They had just finished investigating the bombing of a nearby church when they were taken into custody under false pretenses, and never again seen by their fellow volunteers. The disappearance of these three men sparked national outrage, and the FBI converged on Mississippi to investigate.
They discovered that on June 21, 1964, immediately upon being released from custody, the young activists had been brutally beaten and murdered by a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob. The FBI’s investigation led to the first successful federal prosecution of a civil rights case in Mississippi.
The anniversary of the day we lost these brave defenders of civil rights.
Please Register People to Vote for Joe Biden
The circumstances under which we fight may have changed, but our values remain constant. All Americans, regardless of income or the color of their skin, must be able to freely exercise their constitutional right to vote.
The work of civil rights activists to protect this right did not stop when Freedom Summer ended, or even with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As long as there are legislators fighting to keep our most vulnerable populations away from the polls, our work and our struggle continues.
Join your voice with your fellow champions of civil and human rights. Take just one minute to do these things:
Pledge to exercise your hard-won right to vote in November.
In solidarity,
Lorraine C. Miller
Interim President and CEO
NAACP
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Tell Randolph County school board to reverse its ban on “Invisible Man” a repost – Black History
Black literature is under attack. Demand Randolph County reverse its ban on Invisible Man at tonight’s meeting. |
It took just one letter from an angry parent to convince a North Carolina school district to remove Ralph Ellison‘s Invisible Man from school libraries in the county. A short board meeting prompted by a single letter — describing one of the most significant pieces of Black literature in American history as “filthy” — was all that five members of the Randolph County Board of Education needed to feel justified in voting to ban the novel last week.1 It’s just the kind of quiet injustice — and officially-sanctioned bias — that happens behind closed doors in towns across the country all of the time. But this time, we have an opportunity to push back.
Just days after Randolph’s decision made national headlines, the school board called an emergency special meeting for tonight regarding the ban.2 If a couple of bad press hits is enough to make Randolph reconsider, imagine how powerful thousands of our voices can be.
This isn’t the first time in recent months that books by Black authors depicting American racism have been attacked. Earlier this month, the president of the Ohio Board of Education called Toni Morrison‘s The Bluest Eye “pornographic.”3 And in July, a Detroit-area school district came under fire for dumping a collection of over 10,000 volumes of invaluable Black books and artifacts.4 Enough is enough.
Banning Black stories not only alienates Black students, it denies all students the opportunity to engage with and discuss important themes like racial enmity in society and the development of personal identity. For elected officials concerned with the education of our young people, it’s particularly perverse that Randolph’s school board failed to recognize the irony of banning a book that’s about silencing critical voices and the ways in which racist culture restricts individuals from reaching their full human potential.
Thanks and Peace,
–Rashad, Arisha, Matt, Kim, Hannah, Johnny and the rest of the ColorOfChange team.
September 25th, 2013
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References
1. “Invisible Man Banned: Ralph Ellison’s Landmark Novel Banned From School Libraries,” Huffington Post, 09-19-13
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/2956?t=9&akid=3136.1174326.F-YN-i
2. “Board to reconsider its ‘Invisible Man’ ban,” Asheboro Courier-Tribune, 09-20-13
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/2957?t=11&akid=3136.1174326.F-YN-i
3. “ACLU to Ohio schools leader: Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye’ not porn,” News Channel 5, 09-12-13
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/2958?t=13&akid=3136.1174326.F-YN-i
4. “Discarded Black history books incite protests in Detroit,” Amsterdam News, 08-10-13
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/2959?t=15&akid=3136.1174326.F-YN-i
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