memorial

As the nation takes a day to memorialize its military dead, those who are living are facing a deadly risk that has nothing to do with war or conflict: the coronavirus. Different groups face different degrees of danger from the pandemic, from the elderly who are experiencing deadly outbreaks in nursing homes to communities of color with higher infection and death rates. Veterans are among the most hard-hit, with heightened health and economic threats from the pandemic. These veterans face homelessness, lack of health care, delays in receiving financial support and even death. I have spent the past four years studying veterans with substance use and mental health disorders who are in the criminal justice system. This work revealed gaps in health care and financial support for veterans, eve...

It offers a place of reckoning for generations of racial trauma. When she saw the name Ed Bracy on a placard in the The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, 68-year-old Sophia Bracy Harris felt goosebumps. “I just went frozen for a moment,” she recalls. This was the relative she remembers hearing about as a child growing up in Elmore County, just north of Montgomery, Alabama. The story goes, Ed Bracy was hanged for his work organizing tenant farmers in the mid-1930s. “In that moment, I was aware that this was a family member, that this was a direct connection to me,” she says. More than 4,000 African Americans were lynched from 1877 to 1950, giving rise to The Great Migration—as over 6 million African Americans left the South to resettle in the North and West. African Ame...

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Memorial Day: Why veterans are particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic

Memorial for Lynching Victims a First Step Toward Reconciliation