Black History Soundtrack

Sparked by outrages on the southern border, The Rev. William Barber will speak in Raleigh, North Carolina tomorrow where he’ll aim to update Frederick Douglass’s most famous speech: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of the July?” Rev. Barber’s address is titled: “What to the Immigrant and People of Color is the Fourth of July?” He’ll be speaking at the Pullen Memorial Baptist Church and the name of that institution reminded me of a hero of black music who grew up in Raleigh’s Baptist community. Don Pullen made blue-black music as profound as Douglass’s testament.

For Rev. Barber (and every citizen), three shots of Pullenspiration…

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MC/DC (Biden Now)

Although the rain had thoughtfully let up, midday remained overcast and chilly on Wednesday 1 May, so it wasn’t the weather that brought me, one of my Boys, and a couple hundred other people to an Iowa City brew-pub located in a non-site, amidst building construction and a city-park-in-progress. And it wasn’t to celebrate International Workers’ Day, either. No, we were gathering to hear “Middle Class Joe” Biden.

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Betomania

“First’s” new, ah, Iowa correspondent follows up here on his first pass at Beto.  This reporter will look to provide close-ups of other Democratic  candidates as they roll through Iowa in the coming months…

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Omar and the Magic Jew

Is Ilhan Omar an anti-Semite? I don’t know. I can tell you that some of the things she’s written and said resonate with anti-Semitic tropes, and those who deny it should know that very well. But Omar may not have understood why images of Jews as disloyal, unjustly wealthy, or vested with magic powers that can “hypnotize the world” are bigoted. After all, she spent the formative years of her youth in Somalia, where such ideas linger below the surface of awareness.

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Fed Up and Fired Up: William Barber’s Latest Acts of Witness

Rev. Barber got hot during his Martin Luther King Day address at Tennessee State University. About 19 minutes into his sermon, he ripped Vice President Pence for equating King’s agenda with Trump’s and called out G.O.P. politicians, including Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, who was sitting directly behind him. Barber took off his coat then, signifying he was warmed up. A couple minutes later, he amped up his truth attacks again. (Click on 28:40 below if your time is tight.)

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The Groveland Four’s Story Bends Toward Justice

Last week, Florida’s governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, accepted the unanimous recommendation of the state’s clemency board and issued pardons to the “Groveland Boys”—four African Americans—Earnest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin—who were wrongly accused of raping a white women seventy years ago. Back then, they became victims of Jim Crow injustice and, in particular, of a Southern sheriff, Willis McCall, who made “Bull Connor look like Barney Fife.” To quote Gilbert King who uncovered quashed evidence collected by the FBI of McCall’s crimes against the Groveland Four, including the extra-judicial killing of Samuel Shepherd and attempted murder of Walter Irwin. King’s book, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America (2012) informed a citizens’ movement that pressed Florida’s officials to act.

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Devil in the Grove (Redux)

In 2013 I published an essay (sparked by Obama’s public responses to the killing of Trayvon Martin) that took in Gilbert King’s Devil in the Grove–the book behind last week’s pardons of the Groveland Four. What follows is a Devil-centric excerpt from that 2013 post. 

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