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As The Citadel confronts racist past, a Black cadet shares his truth through fiction
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Ken Gordon never kept a journal during his time at The Citadel. But no one, he explained more than 35 years later, can forget hell. When Gordon reported to the Charleston campus in August 1984, he found a South that refused to let go of its past. Confederate battle flags waved in the stands during home football games. Cadets marched to "Dixie" during Friday afternoon parades. Eighteen years had passed since Charles DeLesline Foster broke the color barrier in 1966 to become the first African American to join the Corps of Cadets. Yet Gordon, an 18-year-old Black freshman from ...
The State (Columbia, S.C.)
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Trial to begin for US policeman charged with George Floyd death
Minneapolis (AFP) - Nine months after George Floyd's death laid bare the racial wounds in the United States, the white policeman charged with murdering the 46-year-old Black man is going on trial. Jury selection begins in Minneapolis on Monday in the case against Derek Chauvin, who was filmed with his knee on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes as the handcuffed man struggled to breathe. The shocking footage of Floyd's May 25 death sparked a wave of "Black Lives Matter" protests against police brutality and racial injustice across the United States and in capitals around the world. Chauvin's ...
AFP
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Report: Racial, ethnic disparities continue for Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers
ATLANTA – When Keondra Williams went to her first support group meeting for Alzheimer's caregivers in Cobb County, she felt more alone than ever. All the caregivers in the meeting where older white women. Williams, who was in her early 40s at the time, was Black and a mother of one then-teen and two adult children. "I didn't feel that my story would be heard," said Williams, two years later. "I didn't feel like they could relate." When she voiced her concerns, she was told that there may be more African Americans in caregiver groups in places like Decatur. Williams' experience illustrates some...
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Black ‘Superman & Lois’ writer Nadria Tucker opens up about being fired after pushing back on racist and sexist storylines
“Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!” Or just more racism and sexism in Hollywood? On the heels of last week’s series premiere and its immediate season two renewal, The CW’s “Superman & Lois” is being blasted for its alleged toxic work culture that promoted racist and sexist tropes. Nadira Tucker, who was recently fired as a writer on the superhero series, is on a mission to expose what she experienced in hopes to seek full accountability. “In the grand scheme of things that have happened to people in the course of working in Hollywood, I have not experienced a fract...
New York Daily News
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Ku Klux Klan flag display 'despicable' but not crime: prosecutor
Washington (AFP) - A Michigan man who displayed a white supremacist Ku Klux Klan flag facing his Black neighbor's home committed a "despicable" act but not a crime, the county prosecutor said. "Unfortunately" no charges could be filed against the 31-year-old white man, who was not publicly identified by the authorities, Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy said Tuesday. JeDonna Dinges, a 57-year-old Black woman living in Grosse Pointe Park, a suburb of Detroit, complained to police last month after viewing the Ku Klux Klan flag in her neighbor's window. "The flag was clearly visible to Ms. Dinge...
AFP
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US civil rights lawyer Vernon Jordan dead at 85
Washington (AFP) - Vernon Jordan, a civil rights lawyer who worked on landmark cases desegregating schools for African-Americans and became a towering figure in Democratic politics, has died, his family said Tuesday. Jordan's death in Washington on Monday at the age of 85 was announced by his daughter, Vickee Jordan. Jordan, who was seriously wounded in a 1980 assassination attempt by an avowed white supremacist, was a leading figure in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s and in the Democratic Party. A close advisor to former president Bill Clinton, Jordan served as chairman of his 1992 pre...
AFP
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US Supreme Court hears voting rights case
Washington (AFP) - The Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday in a case that could have an impact on voting access for minorities, one of the ongoing political battles in US history. The case, Brnovich vs Democratic National Committee, involves two Republican-backed electoral laws in the southwestern state of Arizona and is seen as a test of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The act was designed to prohibit discrimination against African Americans at the ballot box and is considered one of the landmark achievements of the civil rights movement. It prevented state and local authorities, for example...
AFP
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Climbing the ladder of success remains a difficult chore for Black women firefighters
There was nothing subtle about the pushback when Toni Washington — a Black woman — landed her first job with the East Point Fire Department in 1995. “It was in my face, a combination of both sex and race,” recalled Washington, now the fire chief for the city of Decatur, Georgia. “There was no hiding how people felt. When we went into the firehouses, the men wouldn’t dare talk to us. How they felt, they were unashamed to show it. It was by any means necessary to push us out.” Twenty-one years into the new millennium, Washington is now in her 12th year atop the department. But it’s lonely at the...
New York Daily News
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‘A country that liberated slaves.’ Hawley minimizes racism’s role in US history
Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley pushed back against the national reckoning over systemic racism in a speech Friday, presenting the U.S. as a nation that had “liberated slaves” and positioning himself as leader of a new nationalist movement. Hawley addressed the American Conservative Union’s annual CPAC conference in Orlando and urged the crowd to embrace “a new nationalism” during a speech likely meant to serve as an audition for a future presidential run. He launched a critique of the reckoning that has taken place nationwide in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis last year....
The Kansas City Star
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In civil lawsuit, mother alleges conspiracy to protect Ahmaud Arbery's killers
ATLANTA — Racism, alleges a new federal civil rights lawsuit, played a pivotal role in the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery. The cover-up that followed was nearly as sinister, claims the complaint, filed on behalf of Arbery’s mother. Wanda Cooper-Jones’ suit, which seeks more than $1 million in damages, comes one year to the day of her son’s death. Defendants include the three men, Greg McMichael, Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan, charged with felony murder for chasing down and killing the 25-year-old as he ran through their subdivision just south of Brunswick. Their deadly pursuit s...
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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