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      Amid a Fraught Process, Penn Museum Entombs Remains of 19 Black People

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      Skulls from a collection used to further racist science have been laid to rest. Questions surrounding the interment have not.There was very little that could be said about the 19 people who were eulogized on Saturday morning in a service at the University of Pennsylvania. Their names were lost, and not much about their lives was known beyond the barest facts: an old age spent in the poorhouse, a problem with cavities. They were Black people who had died in obscurity over a century ago, now known almost entirely by the skulls they left behind. Even some of these scant facts have been contested.Much more could be said about what led to the service. “This moment,” said the Rev. Jesse Wendell Mapson, a local pastor involved in planning the commemoration and interment of the 19, “has not come without some pain, discomfort and tension.”On this everyone could agree.The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, like cultural and research institutions worldwide, has been grappling with a legacy of plunder, trying to decide what to do about artifacts and even human bones that were collected from people and communities against their will and often without their knowledge.Human remains, which are in the repositories of institutions all across the country, present a particularly delicate challenge. The Samuel G. Morton Cranial Collection, which has been at the Penn Museum since 1966, is an especially notorious example, with more than a thousand skulls gathered in furtherance of vile ideas about race.Drummers at the start of the commemoration service at the Penn Museum on Saturday.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesThe museum plans to repatriate hundreds of craniums from all over the world, but the process has been fraught from the beginning. Its first step — the entombment at a nearby cemetery of the skulls of Black Philadelphians found in the collection — has drawn heavy criticism, charged by activists and some experts with being rushed and opaque.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Target Pulls Magnet Kit That Misidentified Three Black Leaders

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      In a widely viewed TikTok video, a high school history teacher highlighted the errors, which appeared in a “Civil Rights Magnetic Learning Activity.”Target has pulled from its stores an educational magnet collection that misidentified three Black leaders, after a high school history teacher called attention to the errors in a TikTok video.In the video, the teacher, Tierra Espy, said she bought the “Civil Rights Magnetic Learning Activity,” a tin case of 26 magnets and informational cards featuring illustrations of Black leaders and slogans from the civil rights movement, for Black History Month, which is celebrated in the United States in February.“I noticed some discrepancies, like, as soon as I opened this,” she said in the video, pointing out that a magnet labeled Carter G. Woodson, a scholar of African American history, actually pictured W.E.B. DuBois, the sociologist and author of “The Souls of Black Folk.”“Peep the ’stache,” she said, referring to a picture of DuBois on the internet with the same mustache as the figure in the magnet mislabeled as Woodson. “They got the name wrong.”She also pointed to a magnet that was mislabeled as DuBois. It actually pictured Booker T. Washington, the business leader and founding president of the college that became Tuskegee University. Similarly, a magnet labeled Washington actually depicted Woodson, she said.Ms. Espy said the accompanying cards also misidentified Woodson, DuBois and Washington.“I get it, mistakes happen, but this needs to be corrected ASAP,” Ms. Espy said in the video.In an interview on Saturday, Ms. Espy, 26, who teaches 11th-grade U.S. history at Cheyenne High School in North Las Vegas, said she bought the tin of magnets for her children, ages 4 and 6, as an educational tool for Black History Month.Ms. Espy said she was alarmed to discover the mistakes.“I was upset because I was like, how does this get to so many people, so many levels, and put into stores, and I caught it in 10 seconds?” she said. “Whoa, this is not OK.”Bendon Publishing, which produces books of stickers, dress-up dolls and other magnet kits, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but on Saturday, the magnet kit was not listed among its titles on the company’s website and Amazon page.Target said in a statement that it would no longer sell the kit online or in its stores, and that it had “ensured the product’s publisher is aware of the errors.”Black scholars initiated a project to share and celebrate Black history in the early 20th century after Reconstruction.Black History Month began as Negro History and Literature Week, spearheaded by Dr. Woodson, known as the “father of Black history,” in 1924. It was officially recognized by President Gerald Ford in 1976. More

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      in Elections

      Members of a Championship H.B.C.U. Basketball Team Fight for Recognition

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      Surviving members of the all-Black Tennessee A&I basketball team have fought for recognition since they won three back-to-back national championships at the height of the Jim Crow era.In 1957, the men’s basketball program at Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State University in Nashville had all of the makings of a great team: a coach dedicated to the fundamentals of the game and a fast-breaking offense that applied relentless full-court pressure.“We felt that if we stayed focused, there was nobody else who could beat us,” said Dick Barnett, a shooting guard for the team.That was true, three times over. The Tennessee A&I Tigers would become the first team from a historically Black college or university to win any national championship, and the first college team to win three back-to-back championships.The Tennessee A&I Tigers in 1957. Dick Barnett, wearing No. 35, is at center in the second row.Live Star EntertainmentBut the team, caught in the headwinds of the Jim Crow South, has struggled for recognition ever since.Barnett, now 87, who went on to play for the two New York Knicks championship teams in the 1970s, has spent the last decade working to correct that. He has spent years campaigning for the Tigers to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and is teaching a new generation of basketball players at Tennessee State University, as the school is now known, about the barrier-breaking team.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In South Carolina, Biden Tries to Persuade Black Voters to Reject Trump

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      President Biden sought to energize his base in the state that propelled him to the White House, but some local leaders said he needed to do more to highlight his achievements.Hoping to revitalize the momentum that propelled him to the White House, President Biden told a largely Black audience on Saturday night that “you’re the reason Donald Trump is a defeated former president,” in what was effectively his first appearance related to the Democratic primaries.Mr. Biden made clear in his remarks at a South Carolina Democratic Party dinner in Columbia, S.C., that he viewed the forthcoming week as not just a contest but a pivotal moment to energize a frustrated base of Black voters across the nation. And in the run-up to the state’s Feb. 3 Democratic presidential primary, which the party’s national committee selected last year to be the first in the nation, Democrats believe they have entered an opportune time.With former President Donald J. Trump having won both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary for the Republican nomination, Mr. Biden’s allies plan to emphasize not just the president’s record but also the urgency of the moment: The general election effectively starts now, they say.“He has made it known what he’s going to do if he gets back into office,” Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, said of Mr. Trump in an interview. “And to see that blooming as a possibility and see him running as well as he is in the polls, I’m concerned about it.”“Do what you did before,” Mr. Clyburn said in an appeal to the Black electorate. “Turn that election around and save this democracy.”The sense of urgency is rooted in rising concerns over polls showing Mr. Biden underperforming among Black voters in battleground states, particularly among men. Some Democrats are also concerned that the high death toll in Gaza resulting from Israel’s offensive against Hamas will fuel frustration among younger voters. Twice during Saturday’s event, protesters shouting the number of civilian casualties in Gaza were removed, as attendees chanted over them, “Four more years!”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      in Elections

      Jackie Robinson Statue Is Stolen From Kansas Park

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      A bronze life-size statue of the baseball player who broke racial barriers in 1947 was cut at its ankles, leaving behind just its shoes and the statue’s base.The authorities in Kansas are searching for the vandals who stole a life-size bronze statue commemorating Jackie Robinson, the first Black Major League Baseball player, after they cut it off at the ankles, leaving behind just the statue’s shoes and base.The police in Wichita were notified of the theft around 12:50 p.m. on Thursday after getting a call from League 42, the Little League nonprofit that installed the statue in McAdams Park, Andrew Ford, a police spokesman, said on Saturday.He estimated that the statue weighed at least 100 pounds.“I don’t know what the motivation is,” Mr. Ford said. “All considerations are being looked into.”The police in Wichita, Kan., said the bronze statue was removed from McAdams Park by thieves who used a truck.Wichita Police DepartmentMr. Ford said the police had surveillance footage of the statue being cut down and being placed in the bed of a truck that was pulled up or parked “at least in a way where it can be, you know, discreetly hidden.”He said that at least two people were believed to be involved. Mr. Ford said the theft occurred early on Thursday morning. He declined to specify what was used to cut the statue because that was part of the investigation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      The U.S. Lacks What Every Democracy Needs

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      The history of voting in the United States shows the high costs of living with an old Constitution, unevenly enforced by a reluctant Supreme Court.Unlike the constitutions of many other advanced democracies, the U.S. Constitution contains no affirmative right to vote. We have nothing like Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, providing that “every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein,” or like Article 38 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, which provides that when it comes to election of the Bundestag, “any person who has attained the age of 18 shall be entitled to vote.”As we enter yet another fraught election season, it’s easy to miss that many of the problems we have with voting and elections in the United States can be traced to this fundamental constitutional defect. Our problems are only going to get worse until we get constitutional change.The framers were skeptical of universal voting. The original U.S. Constitution provided for voting only for the House of Representatives, not for the Senate or the presidency, leaving voter qualifications for House elections to the states. Later amendments framed voting protections in the negative: If there’s going to be an election, a state may not discriminate on the basis of race (15th Amendment), gender (19th Amendment) or status as an 18-to-20-year old (26th Amendment).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Biden’s Appeal to Black Voters Needs an Overhaul

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      Let’s start here: A second Donald Trump presidency is a disaster scenario.And if, in 2024, Joe Biden is the only thing standing between Trump and the White House, then Biden’s success may well be the last hope for the country as we know it. In that case — the most likely one at this point — America needs Biden to succeed. That’s why it’s so distressing when he comes up short in his appeals to the voters he’ll need to win re-election.This week, Biden delivered a speech at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C. — Mother Emanuel — a historic Black church that was the site of a massacre, carried out by a white supremacist, in 2015.It was one of Biden’s attempts to reach out to Black voters, a constituency from which he desperately needs enthusiastic support but that is going soft on him and, polls have shown, a part of which may even be drifting to Trump.The president’s speech was a chance to offer a vision for his second term, but there was hardly any vision in it. It focused on what his administration has done and not what it will do. It landed like someone coming to collect a payment for services rendered rather than to celebrate victories with a partner before mapping out future plans.This stands in contrast to Trump, who is offering a vision for America, albeit the darkest, bleakest vision imaginable. Part of that contrast may be the nature of the relationship of challengers — change agents — to incumbents, continuity proponents.But Biden needs to find a better balance.In a speech two weeks after he was sworn in, Biden said: “Racial equity will not just be an issue for one department in our administration. It has to be the business of the whole of government in all our federal policies and institutions.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      In South Carolina, Biden and Harris Test Policy-Heavy Pitch to Black Voters

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      The president’s re-election campaign is looking to rekindle support among a group that was pivotal to his 2020 victory, in a state that revived his candidacy.As Democrats amplify their concerns about President Biden’s status with Black voters, South Carolina has emerged as a proving ground for his campaign: one where he can test his message to a predominantly Black electorate and use it as a largely ceremonial launchpad for his re-election.At events over the last few days, both Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris offered reverential, policy-heavy re-election pitches to largely Black audiences and celebrated the Black organizers and community leaders who helped deliver the White House to Democrats, starting with those in the Palmetto State.They also drew a contrast with former President Donald J. Trump and other Republican leaders, whose election denialism and efforts to “whitewash” history, they said, threaten the progress that Black Americans have spent generations fighting for.Black voters have expressed frustration with the Biden administration for falling short on key campaign promises, and have shown less enthusiasm for Mr. Biden’s re-election in polls and interviews. But in South Carolina, both Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris aimed to highlight the lesser-known victories their administration has notched over the last three years, and they argued that a second term would allow them to achieve even more. Black voters’ disaffection with Democrats, campaign aides and allies argue, is rooted in their lack of awareness of the White House’s accomplishments rather than in fundamental flaws with the Biden-Harris ticket.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More