by Elizabeth Ofosuah Johnson | August 2018
Selma Burke was born on December 31, 1900, and was the 7th of ten children to her parents. Her father worked in the railway service and was a church minister, while her mother was a stay at home mom. At a very young age, Selma showed artistic skill and would often draw or carve objects out of used paper and cardboard. … In 1943, Selma entered a national competition which she won. Sponsored by the Fine Arts Commission in Washington D.C, the competition was to create a profile portrait of the then U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt with a granted commission. Selma then wrote a letter to the president and was invited to the White House to do her sketch.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Art & Culture] [Silencing POC] [Myths] [Black Lives Matter] [Denial] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy]
by BLACKTHEN | February 2021
Don’t let the sun set on you in a sundown town. That’s what signs at the city limits of all-white communities warned when African-Americans were not allowed to live there or even visit after the sun set. This method of exclusion was often held by an official policy or restrictive covenant-. The practice of excluding blacks from American towns was so prevalent that, by 1936, it became the impetus for Harlem civic leader Victor Green to pen the Negro Motorist Green-Book, a guide designed to help African-American travelers avoid places where they could be harassed, threatened, or even killed. Today, it is illegal for sundown towns to exist on paper due to the 1968 Fair Housing Act, but some believe that communities remain sundown by reputation and reluctance to diversify.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Racial Covenants]
by blacknews.com | June 2019
The sentencing came two days after Noor’s lawyers asked the judge for no jail time or even just “less time than what sentencing guidelines call for.” They claimed that Noor showed a rather good attitude and sense of remorse during trial. Noor, who is a 33-year old Somali-American, was responding to a 911 call of a possible assault near the caller’s house. Noor was with his partner, Matthew Harrity, when they arrived on the scene and he saw a woman in a pink shirt with blond hair outside of Harrity’s window. Noor said that when the woman raised her right arm, he was threatened and his initial reaction was to fire one shot. “My intent was to stop the threat and save my partner’s life,” he said. Afterwards, he said he immediately realized that he had shot an innocent woman. The woman named Justine Damond is an Australian and she was the one who called 911 at that time. He remorsefully said on the stand, “I felt like my whole world came crashing down. I couldn’t breathe.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Justice System] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [White Privilege] [White Culture]
by Jennette Barnes | February 2021
Students of color in the Falmouth Public Schools received 45 percent of the suspensions in the last school year, even though they make up only 21 percent of the student population. The Falmouth School Committee examined the data Tuesday, following recent complaints about racial disparities in school discipline. School Committee…
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Teachers] [Indigenous] [Accountability] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Black Lives Matter]
by Chuck Armstrong | February 2021
The Historical Society reports that during the colonial period of our country, 41 percent of households in New York City owned slaves, compared with 6 percent in Philly and 2 percent in Boston. “Only Charleston, South Carolina, rivaled New York in the extent to which slavery penetrated everyday life.” In a lot of ways, the life of the enslaved African in New York City looked different than in Charleston or elsewhere in the South; according to The New York African Free School, “Although New York had no sugar or rice plantations, there was plenty of backbreaking work for slaves throughout the state. Many households held only one or two slaves, which often meant arduous, lonely labor. Moreover, because of the cramped living spaces of New York City, it was extremely difficult to keep families together. It was not uncommon for owners to sell young mothers, because they did not want the noise and trouble of children in their small homes.”
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [History] [Slavery] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Anti-Racism] [Justice System] [Denial] [Racial Covenants] [Black Lives Matter]
by Daniele Selby | February 2021
The legacy of slavery, racist Jim Crow laws, and hateful lynchings has translated into modern-day mass incarceration and the disproportionate imprisonment of Black people. No where is that seen more clearly than in prisons like the Mississippi State Penitentiary — also known as Parchman Farm — and Louisiana’s Angola prison, which were built on and modeled after slave plantations and where several Innocence Project clients have been incarcerated. Racial discrimination and bias has been ingrained in the criminal legal and law enforcement system from its earliest days and continues to pervade every level of the system today. The Innocence Project, with your support, is committed to addressing these injustices. These eight statistics highlight the ways in which racial inequality persists in the criminal legal system today and contributes to wrongful conviction.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Slavery] [Justice System] [History] [Prison System] [Systemic Racism] [Social Justice] [Racial Bias] [Black Lives Matter] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [Accountability] [-ing While Black] [Racial Terrorism]
