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Civil rights movementRobert Parris Moses, civil rights activist, dies aged 86Moses was beaten and jailed in Mississippi in mid-1960s‘Second chapter’ saw foundation of Algebra Project in 1982 A More
Joe Biden’s promise to nominate an African American woman to the supreme court for the first time holds broad symbolic significance for Darlene McDonald, an activist and police reform commissioner in Salt Lake City, Utah.But McDonald has specific reasons for wanting a Black woman on the court, too.When Chief Justice John Roberts asserted in 2013 that federal oversight of voting in certain southern states was no longer needed because “things have changed dramatically” since the civil rights era, McDonald said, he revealed a blindness to something African American women have no choice but to see.“I believe that if Chief Justice Roberts had really understood racism, he would never have voted to gut the Voting Rights Act,” McDonald said, adding that hundreds of voter suppression bills introduced by Republicans in recent months suggest things have not “changed dramatically” since 1965.“Myself, as an African American woman, having that representation on the supreme court will be huge,” McDonald said, “especially in the sense of having someone that really understands racism.”The gradual diversification of US leadership, away from the overwhelming preponderance of white men, towards a mix that increasingly reflects the populace, was accelerated by the election last November of Kamala Harris, a woman of color, as vice-president.Black women have been overlooked in terms of their values and what they have to bring to society as well as to the benchNow enthusiasm is building around a similarly historic leap that activists, academics and professionals expect is just around the corner: the arrival on the court of a justice who would personify one of the most historically marginalized groups.“Black women have been overlooked for decades and decades in terms of their values and what they have to bring to society as well as to the bench,” said Leslie Davis, chief executive of the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms. “We should be able to look at our highest court in the land and see the reflection of some of the folks who have made America great. And that absolutely includes Black women.”Out of 115 justices in its history, the supreme court has counted two African American justices, one Latina and just five women. The court has no vacant seats but calls are growing for Stephen Breyer, a liberal who turns 83 this year, to retire. Last month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s campaign commitment to nominating a Black woman “absolutely” holds.“This is a big moment in the making,” said Ben Jealous, president of People For the American Way, which recently launched the Her Fight Our Fight campaign to support and promote women of color in government and public service roles.“The presumption is that whomever Biden nominates, the first Black woman to the supreme court would be filling both the shoes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall,” said Jealous.The late Ginsburg, a pioneering lawyer for women’s rights, was succeeded last fall by the conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett. Marshall was succeeded in 1991 by the George HW Bush appointee Clarence Thomas, who “is anathema to everything that the civil rights community stands for”, Jealous said.“It would be both glorious and a relief to have a Black woman on the supreme court who actually represents the values of the civil rights community, and the most transformative lawyers in our nation’s history.”Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a civil rights historian, dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and professor of constitutional law, said having qualified federal judges who “reflect the broad makeup of the American public” would strengthen democracy and faith in the courts.“It’s an important historical moment that signifies equal opportunity,” Brown-Nagin said. “That anyone who is qualified has the chance to be considered for nomination, notwithstanding race, notwithstanding gender. That is where we are. In some ways, we shouldn’t be congratulating ourselves, right?”Brown-Nagin pointed out that a campaign was advanced in the 1960s to nominate Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to sit as a federal judge, but some Democratic allies of President Lyndon Johnson opposed such a nomination because they saw it as too politically risky.“This moment could have happened 50 years ago,” Brown-Nagin said.Daniel L Goldberg, legal director of the progressive Alliance For Justice, said to call the moment “overdue” did not capture it.“It is stunning that in the entire history of the republic, that no African American woman has sat on the highest court in the country,” Goldberg said. “For way too long in our nation’s history, the only people who were considered suitable and qualified for the court happened to be white males.”The first Black woman supreme court justice is likely to be nominated at a time when a renewed push for racial justice brings renewed focus on the court, which has played a key role in enforcing desegregation and reinforcing anti-discrimination laws.I would like to see someone like Sherrilyn Ifill or Lia Epperson – a woman who comes out of Thurgood Marshall’s old law firmThe killing of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, by a white police officer outside Minneapolis last weekend during the murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin has sharpened cries for a national answer to serial injustice at the local level – precisely the kind of conflict that typically lands before the supreme court.“As we sit here today, and watch the trial of Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, that precipitated a summer of protests for the lives of Black people to matter – it feels that it is time for there to be a Black woman on the supreme court, because of the moment that we are in right now,” said McDonald, the Utah activist.Davis said it was “imperative” the country make strides toward racial justice after the invasion of the Capitol in January by white supremacists intent on overturning the 2020 presidential election, goaded on by a former president.“That shows that there are folks who are intentional about not seeing diversity, equity and inclusion thrive,” Davis said. “Now is the time for us as a country to recognize that until we value the voices of everyone, including Black women, we are silencing a very important part of the fabric of America.”‘A significant pool’The percentage of Black women who are federal judges – a common stepping-stone to a high court nomination – is extraordinarily small.According to the federal judicial center, the US circuit courts count only five African American women among sitting judges out of 179. There are 42 African American women judges at the district court level, out of 677.Those numbers are partly owing to Republican obstruction of Black women nominated by Barack Obama, including former seventh circuit nominee Myra Selby. She was denied a hearing in the Senate for the entirety of 2016 – a year later Republicans filled the seat with Donald Trump’s nominee: Amy Coney Barrett.“There is a significant pool of lawyers, law professors, public officials who would be viable nominees for the federal courts,” said Brown-Nagin. “The problem is not the pool.”Last month, Brown-Nagin co-signed a letter to the Senate judiciary committee supporting the nomination of district court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the court of appeals for the DC district, sometimes informally referred to as the second-highest court in the land.“Her resumé virtually screams that she is an ideal nominee for an appellate court or even the supreme court, and that is because she has the combination of educational and professional experience on the federal courts that feasibly fits the mold of typical supreme court nominees,” Brown-Nagin said.“I would say it goes beyond what we’ve seen, frankly, in recent nominees to the court.”Jealous, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said he would like to see a nominee “who cut their teeth defending the people, not corporations”.“I would like to see someone like Sherrilyn Ifill or Lia Epperson – a woman who comes out of Thurgood Marshall’s old law firm, the NAACP legal defense fund, with a courageous commitment to defending the rights of all Americans,” he said.McDonald said having a Black woman on the supreme court would mean American history had “come full circle”.“I feel in my heart that it’s time,” she said. “Everything takes its time. And everything happens at its time. I was raised in a church, so I’m just going to say it like that.” More
Ramsey Clark, who was attorney general in the Johnson administration before becoming an outspoken activist for unpopular causes and a harsh critic of US policy, has died. He was 93.Clark, whose father, Tom Clark, was attorney general and a supreme court justice, died on Friday at his Manhattan home, a family member announced.After serving in President Lyndon B Johnson’s cabinet in 1967 and 1968, Clark set up a private law practice in New York in which he championed civil rights, fought racism and the death penalty and represented declared foes of the US including former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. He also defended former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.The New York civil rights attorney Ron Kuby, who worked with Clark on numerous cases, said his death was “very, very sad in a season of losses”.“The progressive legal community has lost its elder dean and statesman,” Kuby said. “Over many generations, Ramsey Clark was a principled voice, conscience and a fighter for civil and human rights.”Clark defended antiwar activists. In the court of public opinion, he charged the US with militarism and arrogance, starting with the Vietnam war and continuing with Grenada, Libya, Panama and the Gulf war. When Clark visited Iraq after Operation Desert Storm and returned to accuse the US of war crimes, Newsweek dubbed him the Jane Fonda of the Gulf war.Clark said he only wanted the US to live up to its ideals. “If you don’t insist on your government obeying the law, then what right do you have to demand it of others?” he said.The lanky, soft-spoken Texan went to Washington in 1961 to work in John F Kennedy’s justice department. He was 39 when Johnson made him attorney general in 1967, the second-youngest ever – Robert Kennedy had been 36.Supreme court justice Tom Clark, Harry Truman’s attorney general before he joined the high court in 1949, swore in his son, then retired to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest.Ramsey Clark said his work drew him into the civil rights revolution, which he called “the noblest quest of the American people in our time”. He also maintained opposition to the death penalty and wiretapping, defended the right of dissent and criticized FBI director J Edgar Hoover when no one else dared take him on.As Johnson’s attorney general, Clark had the job of prosecuting Dr Benjamin Spock for counseling Vietnam-era youths to resist the draft, a position with which he sympathized.“We won the case, that was the worst part,” he said years later.The Dallas-born Clark, who was in the US Marine corps in 1945 and 1946, moved his family to New York in 1970 and set up a pro bono-oriented practice. He said he and his partners were limiting their annual personal incomes to $50,000, a figure he did not always achieve.“Money’s not an interest of mine,” he said, but at the same time he was meeting steep medical bills for his daughter, Ronda, who was born with severe disabilities. He and his wife, Georgia, who were married in 1949, also had a son, Thomas, a lawyer.Clark took one shot at elective office, losing a 1976 Democratic Senate primary to Daniel P Moynihan.Clark’s client list included such peace and disarmament activists as the Harrisburg seven and the Plowshares eight. Abroad, he represented dissidents in Iran, Chile, the Philippines and Taiwan, and skyjackers in the Soviet Union.He was an advocate for Soviet and Syrian Jews but outraged many Jews over other clients. He defended a Nazi prison camp guard fighting extradition and the Palestine Liberation Organization in a lawsuit over the killing of a cruise ship passenger by hijackers.There were usually two to three dozen active cases on Clark’s legal calendar, and about 100 more in the background. Capital punishment cases were a staple.“We talk about civil liberties,” he said. “We have the largest prison population per capita on Earth. The world’s greatest jailer is the freest country on Earth?” More
Alcee Hastings, a fiercely liberal Florida congressman who was dogged by an impeachment that ended his career as a federal judge, died on Tuesday. He was 84.
Hastings’ death was confirmed by his chief of staff, Lale Morrison. The Democrat announced two years ago that he had pancreatic cancer.
Hastings was known as an advocate for minorities, a defender of Israel and a voice for gays, migrants, women and the elderly. He held senior posts on the House rules committee and the Helsinki Commission, which works on multinational issues.
But his impeachment remained a nagging footnote. It was repeatedly invoked in news accounts and seen as derailing his ambitions for a greater leadership role.
“That seems to be the only thing of significance to people who write,” Hastings said in 2013, predicting that the impeachment would be in the lead paragraph of his obituary.
Hastings was passed over for chairmanship of the House intelligence committee when the Democrats took Congress in 2006.
“Sorry, haters,” he said then. “God is not finished with me yet.”
Under Florida law, Governor Ron DeSantis will now call a special election to fill the vacant seat.
Hastings’ district is overwhelmingly Democratic – he received 80% of the vote in November. But his death lowers the Democrats’ majority to 218-211. The narrow margin is forcing the party to muster nearly unanimous votes to push legislation and bolstering Republican hopes for 2022. There are six vacancies, four from seats that were held by Democrats, two by Republicans.
Hastings was born on 5 September 1936 in Altamonte Springs, Florida, a largely black Orlando suburb, the son of a maid and a butler. He attended Fisk University and Florida A&M. After a law degree he went into private practice, taking on civil rights cases. He made a bid for the US Senate in 1970, then earned a state judgeship.
In 1979, Jimmy Carter named him to the federal bench. He was the first Black person to hold a federal judgeship in Florida since Reconstruction.
His career was marked by controversy. His harsh criticism of Ronald Reagan, his appearance at a rally in 1984 for the then presidential candidate Jesse Jackson and other moves raised questions about his impartiality. He insisted he was doing nothing wrong.
“Outside the courtroom, I speak out because I’m a citizen and I have the interests of a great number people of this country at heart,” he said. “I think it’s better to have public officials express themselves. I don’t think being a judge means I’m neutered.”
It wasn’t long before he became the first sitting US judge tried on criminal charges. Along with the Washington lawyer William Borders Jr, Hastings was accused of soliciting a $150,000 bribe from two racketeers seeking to shorten their sentences.
Borders was convicted and sentenced to five years. Hastings contended Borders acted without his knowledge and was acquitted but a judicial panel accused him of fabricating his defense. The House impeached him in 1988 and the Senate convicted him in 1989.
A federal judge reversed the impeachment, saying Hastings was improperly tried by a 12-member panel instead of the full Senate, but his exoneration was short-lived. Ruling in the case of another ousted judge, the US supreme court decided 7-2 that courts could not second-guess the Senate’s power to remove federal officials.
By then, Hastings had won a seat in Congress. He won the seat after two bitter runoffs fueled by accusations of racism in the largely Black district. At one point, in his heated race against Lois Frankel, he snapped to a reporter: “The bitch is a racist.” He went on to win and was re-elected time after time.
Frankel earned her own ticket to Congress 20 years later, as a Democratic colleague.
Hastings remained no stranger to controversy. In 2011, a former aide filed a sexual harassment lawsuit, claiming he hugged her against her will and suggested they go to his hotel room. Hastings called the accusations “ridiculous, bizarre, frivolous”. The House ethics committee cleared him.
“I’ve enjoyed some of the fights, and even the process of being indicted and removed from the bench,” he said in 2013. “All of those are extraordinary types of circumstances that would cause lesser people to buckle. I did not and I have not.” More
The University of Alabama at Birmingham has removed the name of four-term governor and presidential candidate George C Wallace from a campus building, over his support of racial segregation.
A resolution unanimously approved by trustees on Friday said Wallace rose to power by defending racial separation and stoking racial animosity. While noting that Wallace eventually renounced racist policies, the resolution said his name remained a symbol of racial injustice for many.
A UAB building named after Wallace in 1975 will now be called simply the Physical Education Building. Removing Wallace’s name “is simply the right thing to do”, trustee John England Jr said in a statement.
Wallace, who at his 1963 inauguration famously vowed “Segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”, was paralyzed in an assassination attempt while running for president in 1972. He used a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
One Sunday in 1979, Wallace went to Dexter Avenue baptist church in Montgomery, once home to Martin Luther King Jr, to ask for forgiveness.
“I have learned what suffering means,” he said. “In a way that was impossible, I think I can understand something of the pain black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask your forgiveness.”
Wallace was elected to a fourth term as governor in 1982, with support from Black voters. He died in 1998. Multiple buildings around the state bear his name.
England said Wallace has a “complex legacy” that includes an apology to the late congressman John Lewis, who was beaten by Alabama state troopers while trying to march for voting rights in Selma in 1965.
“That said, [Wallace’s] stated regret late in life did not erase the effects of the divisiveness that continue to haunt the conscience and reputation of our state,” England added.
An online petition urged Auburn University to rename a building honoring Wallace last year, as protests against police killings and racial injustice swept the US. No action was taken. Wallace’s son, George Wallace Jr, wrote an open letter opposing such a move, which he said would fail to recognize his father’s change late in life.
In a statement released by UAB, Wallace’s daughter, Peggy Wallace Kennedy, expressed support for change on the Birmingham campus.
“It is important to the university to always seek positive and meaningful change for the betterment of students, faculty and the community,” she said. More
How did you first meet?I first met John Lewis about 30 years ago at the airport in Atlanta. He came over and said: “You’re the young man representing people on death row.” And I said: “Yes, I am, and it’s such a thrill to meet you.” And he said: “I just want to encourage you to keep doing your important work.” It meant the world to me that he would do that. This was at a time when support for the kind of work I do was not very prevalent. That casual encounter just energised me for months.I was inspired by him long before I met him and I feel really privileged to have spent time with him in the last few years.How influential was he on your own activism?I grew up in a poor rural community. No one I knew had gone to college, very few people had graduated from high school. So I was fascinated by his growing up in Pike County, a rural community of sharecroppers. As a teenager, he imagined a life for himself that he actually hadn’t seen. He heard Dr King speaking on the radio and just wrote to him. And Dr King wrote back to him and invited him to Montgomery. That was incredibly inspiring to me.He was someone who carried that lived experience of segregation with him throughout his life.John Lewis had experienced the injustice and segregation in the Jim Crow era and it shaped his world view. That lived experience is very challenging to overcome. If you have actually seen those Whites Only signs, you understand that they were not directions, they were moral assaults that created real injuries. You damage people when you tell them they are not good enough to go through the front door, to marry someone of a different race, to attend school with white children, to be on the beach with white kids. That lived experience motivated him to fight injustice wherever he saw it.He was part of a generation that were incredibly courageous in terms of their dedication to non-violent direct action.He was courageous in ways that we rarely see. In the early 1960s, he was one of the original Freedom Riders and he was badly beaten by the police. Just two years later, in 1965, he was at the head of the march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, being beaten and battered again. What a lot of people don’t appreciate is that he and his fellow protesters would put on their Sunday best to go to these places and then get on their knees and pray knowing that they were going to get battered and beaten and bloodied by the police. There was an absolute expectation of violence and yet they went. That is what was extraordinary about the courage of John Lewis and the generation he represents. What he and people like him did back then required an incredible commitment. It could have cost them their lives.How important was his Christian faith to his activism?It was incredibly important to him as it was to Dr King. They both knew that they shared a faith with many of the people that were oppressing and abusing them. They both believed that they had an obligation to challenge people who were dishonouring that faith because bigotry and segregation are contrary to Christianity and the Gospels. They saw themselves as committed Americans trying to push this country to live up to its values and ideas. In many ways they were the living proponents of what we now call liberation theology. They were protesting with a flag in one hand and a bible in the other.When John Lewis entered Congress, how important was that for you?Incredibly so. When I was a child, there were no black congressional members. We did not see people of colour in positions of power and influence. That all happened during the course of John Lewis’s life. You have to understand that in the United States, we have never had a real change in power. The people who sustained inequality and injustice, who turned their backs to thousands of black people being lynched, who did not intervene to end segregation are the people who are still in power. So, a black person being in Congress and advocating for racial justice as John Lewis did, is not easy. It is not comfortable.How would you sum him up?John Lewis was a visionary. He taught me that justice is a constant struggle, that we never really arrive, we have to always keep fighting against the things that are undermining equality and justice and to protect the things that represent equality and justice. He shared his incredibly generous spirit and his capacity for love and encouragement directly with me. He would always say: “Be brave, Bryan. Don’t let anyone cause you to not be brave.” That kind of affirmation is priceless. I can’t even articulate the value of it.He was courageous, committed and compassionate. And, he had an instinct for doing the things that had to be done, however challenging and uncomfortable. His life was remarkable and unparalleled in many ways. He inspired people to do difficult things in the service of justice. Very few people have done more to make the world a better place. Interview by Sean O’Hagan More
When Minnijean Brown-Trickey looks back at old pictures of 4 September 1957, she remembers the day her courage kicked in. “I look at the photos of the nine of us, standing there, in contrast to those crazy people,” she says. “And what I say is that they threw away their dignity and it landed on us.”Brown-Trickey, now 79, was one of the Little Rock Nine, the first group of African American children to go to the city’s Central high school in September 1957 – and in doing so, desegregate it. On the teenagers’ first day at the Arkansas school, white residents were so furious they amassed in a 1,000-strong mob at the gates. In preparation, eight of the teenagers had been instructed by Daisy Bates, the leader of the Arkansas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to meet at her house, so they could travel to the school in a group. But one of the nine, Elizabeth Eckford, had no telephone and so was not told of the safety plan. Instead she was forced to run the gauntlet of the mob’s hatred alone. The pictures of the young girl encountering the baying crowd is the enduring image of that day for many. But to Brown-Trickey, despite its power, it cannot completely capture all nine children’s fear. “Still photos cannot show how we are shaking in our boots, sandwiched between the Arkansas National Guard and a mob of crazy white people,” she says.As they tried to walk into school, the children were subject to verbal abuse, spat on and denied admission. Three black journalists watching were also attacked. One, L Alex Wilson, was hit on the head with a brick, developed a nervous condition and died three years later aged only 51.It took a further three weeks for the students to actually step inside the building, thanks to fierce resistance from the Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, who used the mob as a pretext for barring the nine, putting the state’s National Guard in their way. Brown-Trickey recalls how he warned of “blood in the streets” should the children be allowed to go to school. More
Washington, November 25The Inter-state Commerce Commission ruled to-day that racial segregation on inter-state trains and passenger buses must end by January 10, 1956. It also ruled that segregation of inter-state travellers in public waiting-rooms is unlawful.These two rulings put an end to the “separate but equal” doctrine which had guided the commission’s rulings for many years. Two months after the commission was established in 1887 it had its first case on racial discrimination. It then held that segregation would be most likely to produce peace and order and to promote “dignity of citizenship” in the United States.In to-day’s opinion the commission said that “it is hardly open to question that much progress in improved race relations has been made since then.” When the Supreme Court outlawed compulsory segregation in state schools it ruled that segregation in itself excluded the concept of equality and imposed an inferior status on these American citizens. It is this new concept which has now prevailed with the commission.In to-day’s ruling the commission said:“The disadvantage to a traveller, who is assigned accommodations or facilities so designated as to imply his inherent inferiority solely because of his race, must be regarded under present conditions as unreasonable. Also, he is entitled to be free of annoyances, some petty and some substantial, which almost inevitably accompany segregation even though the rail carriers, as most of the defendants have done here, sincerely try to provide both races with equally convenient and comfortable cars and waiting rooms.”Commissioner Johnson, of South Carolina, in a dissenting opinion, said “It is my opinion that the commission should not undertake to anticipate the Supreme Court and itself become a pioneer in the sociological field.”Precautions in GeorgiaIt should be understood that to-day’s rulings apply only to travel between states. The rulings have no effect on travel within a Southern state. Mr Eugene Cook, Attorney-General for Georgia, said he would try to use all legal procedures to maintain racial segregation “on travel within Georgia itself.” He conceded the difficulties because it is often hard to separate inter-state travellers from those travelling within the state alone. However, he had asked his legal staff to study this problem while giving first priority to Georgia’s continued resistance to a unified public school system in the state.The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People also tried to have the commission end segregation in the lunch room at the Union Station in Richmond, Virginia. The commission said that this room was operated under lease by the Union News Company, which is not itself engaged in transportation, and therefore does not come within the commission’s jurisdiction. The commission also dismissed a complaint against the Texas and Pacific Railway Company because the evidence failed to show that the case involved inter-state travel.Ten years ago, the commission authorised Southern Railways to serve Negro passengers in the dining-car behind a curtain in seats reserved exclusively for them. This method of segregation aroused intense public criticism and it was finally outlawed by the Supreme Court in 1950. To-day’s rulings are a notable advance of those started by the Court in 1950. More
