Saturday, December 21

Tag: civil

Viral videos of racism: how an old civil rights strategy is being used in a new digital age
No Comments
Journalism

Viral videos of racism: how an old civil rights strategy is being used in a new digital age

After a black bird-watcher filmed a white dog-walker on May 25 calling the police on him in response to his request she obey the dog-leash laws in the Ramble woodlands area of Central Park, New York, the video went viral. “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life”, Amy Cooper informed Christian Cooper (no relation) before she called 911 and made a deliberately dramatic false accusation. Melody Cooper, discussing her decision to post her brother’s footage online, told hosts of American talk show The View that she “wanted to shine a light on” Amy Cooper’s weaponisation of racism “so that no other black person would have to go through it from her”. Over half a century ago, African Americans viewed the potential of the newest development in communications te...
Read More
How Civil Rights Leader Wyatt Tee Walker Revived Hope After MLK’s Death
No Comments
IN OTHER NEWS

How Civil Rights Leader Wyatt Tee Walker Revived Hope After MLK’s Death

Four years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the novelist James Baldwin would write on the pages of Esquire magazine, “Since Martin’s death, in Memphis, and that tremendous day in Atlanta, something has altered in me, something has gone away.” Baldwin wrote about how “the act of faith” – that is, his belief that the movement would change white Americans and ultimately America – maintained him through the years of the black freedom movement, through marches and petitions and torturous setbacks. After King’s death, Baldwin found it hard to keep that faith. Nearly two weeks after King’s funeral, in April of 1968, King’s confidant and former strategist Wyatt Tee Walker tried to renew this faith. Drawing on a tradition of black faith, Walker encouraged a grieving communit...
Read More
No Comments
Journalism

Black folks get quizzed on the Civil Rights Act of 1866

Byron Allen’s racial discrimination case will be heard in the Supreme Court on November 12th. The media mogul who owns Entertainment Studios, The Weather Channel and theGrio, alleges that Comcast Corp. and Charter Communications are discriminating against him due to being a Black man. This factor is in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which prohibits racial discrimination in contracting. Due to an amicus brief filed by Comcast, the case has gone from being about Allen’s racial discrimination allegations to challenging the entire Civil Rights Act of 1866. According to legal experts, Comcast’s interpretation of the law would require plaintiffs to prove discrimination was the sole reason they were denied business or contracts. Allen has explained this case is bigger than his perso...
Read More
No Comments
SOCIAL JUSTICE

Civil Rights Tours Draw in New Generations

The current political landscape is inspiring more people from the U.S. and abroad to visit the sites where the civil rights movement made history. For decades, Tom Houck has taken people to landmarks of the civil rights movement—places where organizers strategized, demonstrators protested, and where both tragedy and triumph transpired. But it wasn’t until 2015 that the friend and aide to the late Martin Luther King Jr. established an official civil rights tour in his hometown of Atlanta. Houck estimates that close to 20,000 people have taken his three-hour bus tour since the inception of Civil Rights Tours Atlanta, with about 40 percent of participants coming from out of town. He hosts weekly public and private tours of key civil rights sites like the Martin Luther King Jr. ...
Read More
No Comments
SOCIAL JUSTICE

Lawyers Turn to Activism as Civil Liberties Come Under Attack

A new generation of social justice attorneys has risen to defend against the hard-line policies of the Trump administration, from immigration and abortion access to voting and gender rights. To train a new generation of lawyers to fight for the rights of immigrants after the 2016 elections, Claire Thomas started an asylum clinic at the New York City law school where she taught. In Seattle, Michelle Mentzer retired five years early as an administrative law judge so she could volunteer as an attorney with the ACLU. And in Texas, Anna Castro traded her full-time job for contract work so she could prepare to attend law school to better serve her community. The country is seeing a wave of legal activism as attorneys and attorneys-to-be have risen to defend civil liberties from the polic...
Read More
US civil rights icon Rosa Parks’ home is up for auction
No Comments
Journalism, VIDEO REELS

US civil rights icon Rosa Parks’ home is up for auction

Other rare historic African-American artefacts up for auction include Jackson 5's original recording contract, and several chapters of original typed manuscript for Malcolm X's biography. Guernsey's in New York is auctioning off "African American Historic & Cultural Treasures", and included in the auction will be civil rights activist Rosa Parks' Detroit home, along with dozens of other African American rarities. by Gabriel Elizondo Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo reports from New York.
Read More
Linda Brown: US civil rights icon dies aged 75
No Comments
Journalism, VIDEO REELS

Linda Brown: US civil rights icon dies aged 75

Linda Brown was nine when she was denied entry to a white school, becoming the focus of a landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v Board of Education, that declared school segregation unconstitutional. Linda Brown, whose father won a famous 1954 Brown vs Board of Education racial discrimination case against an all-white school in Kansas, has died at the age of 75. She was a major figure in the civil rights movement and central to efforts to end segregation in US schools 60 years ago. Al Jazeera's Rob Reynolds reports from Washington, DC.
Read More
Is the Charlottesville Riot the Start of a Civil War in the USA?
No Comments
Journalism

Is the Charlottesville Riot the Start of a Civil War in the USA?

One has only to look at the degree of hate in the country to understand that a civil war is imminent. It won't go away either because racial intolerance has too much support from high places. As the nation faces problems on many fronts the last thing it can afford is for an eruption of this nature at home. With most armed to the teeth with deadly weapons once it starts there will be no stopping it until the country is torn to shreds. Is this the price of democracy or something else - slavery? The most persecuted are those who have served America as forced labour in one form or another. Their sweat and tears built the country into what it has become today. Now those who see themselves as better are hell-bent on proving their superiority by ridding their regions of those to whom they owe so...
Read More
Book Review Of Black Civil Rights In America
No Comments
Journalism

Book Review Of Black Civil Rights In America

In chapter one, Kevern Verney, begins with explaining about growth of urban population in American society in the last decades of 19th century by internal migration and mostly overseas immigration. Between 1880 and 1921 most of the immigrants arrived from southern and eastern European countries, but in the world war period because of wartime condition and also legal restrictions, European immigration fell and industrial growth led to great migration (1915-1925) in which 7 million African Americans escaped from racism in rural southern United States into cities. In fact they were offended from southern cities for some reasons such as suffering economic condition, and on the other hand boom in industrial productions created job opportunities for blacks in north. Their situation in north was...
Read More