An interracial group of women and men founded the group that would soon become known as the NAACP in 1909. A coalition of white journalists, lawyers and progressive reformers led the effort. It would take another 11 years until, in 1920, James Weldon Johnson became the first Black person to formally serve as its top official.
Neither party has stood up for American descendants of slavery when it comes to racial disparities in environmental, social and economic policies. Co-founder Leo Carney writes that ADOS of MS are seeking reparative justice that is a pathway for statewide and federal reparations for American descendants of slavery in Mississippi and across America.
This is an opportune time for us to work together to shed light on little known civil-rights people and places, to record oral histories of activists still living in our communities, and to explore collaborative proposals for national funding opportunities.
Unita Blackwell was one of the heroes who joined SNCC and brought the vote to Mississippi, courtesy of the Voting Rights Act. Its passage by Congress in 1965 was bought with the blood of martyrs and the untold suffering of thousands more.
Embattled University of Mississippi sociology professor James Thomas has obtained prominent Jackson attorney, Rob McDuff, as legal counsel. Mississippi State Auditor Shad White recently targeted Thomas, contending that the academic broke the law when participating in a teach-in event called Scholar Strike. McDuff says the auditor is misreading the statue, which clearly doesn’t apply.
Auditor Shad White’s subpoena of James Thomas’ emails shows he wants to prove the UM professor went on a work strike. But does the statute against employment strikes apply to efforts to educate students about racial and social justice?
Mike Espy, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Mississippi, is worried that as many as 600,000 Mississippians could lose health-insurance coverage as President Donald Trump continues his effort to remake the U.S. Supreme Court.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mike Espy raised more money on Saturday than any Mississippi candidate for federal office has raised in any one day in history, the campaign said. The record-breaking flurry of campaign donations came in the wake of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and President Donald Trump’s vow to appoint a replacement.
University of Mississippi football players marched in Oxford and others in Tallahatchie County on the 65th anniversary of Emmett Till’s murder: “We have to be able to show love even when hate is brought to us. We have to be able to create change where this is no change.”
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