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      A Century Later, 17 Wrongly Executed Black Soldiers Are Honored at Gravesites

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      More than a century ago, 110 Black soldiers were convicted of murder, mutiny and other crimes at three military trials held at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. Nineteen were hanged, including 13 on a single day, Dec. 11, 1917, in the largest mass execution of American soldiers by the Army.The soldiers’ families spent decades fighting to show that the men had been betrayed by the military. In November, they won a measure of justice when the Army secretary, Christine E. Wormuth, overturned the convictions and acknowledged that the soldiers “were wrongly treated because of their race and were not given fair trials.”On Thursday, several descendants of the soldiers gathered at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery as the Department of Veterans Affairs dedicated new headstones for 17 of the executed servicemen.Just before he was executed, Private Hawkins wrote a letter to his parents, telling them: “Although I am not guilty of the crime that I’m accused of Mother, it’s God’s will that I go now and in this way.”Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesThe new headstones acknowledge each soldier’s rank, unit and home state — a simple honor accorded to every other veteran buried in the cemetery. They replaced the previous headstones that noted only their name and date of death.(The families of the other two who were hanged reclaimed their remains for private burial.)The headstones were unveiled after an honor guard fired a three-volley rifle salute, a bugler played “Taps” and officials presented the descendants with folded American flags and certificates declaring that the executed soldiers had been honorably discharged.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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      Support for Teaching Gender Identity in School Is Split, Even Among Democrats

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      Americans are deeply divided on whether schools should teach about gender identity, two polls found. But there was broader support for teaching about race.Americans are deeply split over whether gender identity should be taught in school, according to two polls released this week that underscored the extent of the divide on one of the most contested topics in education.Many groups, including Democrats, teachers and teenagers, are split on whether schools should teach about gender identity — a person’s internal sense of their own gender and whether it aligns with their sex assigned at birth, according to a survey by researchers at the University of Southern California and a separate survey by Pew Research Center.But on issues of race, another topic that has fueled state restrictions and book bans, there was broader support for instruction. That extended to some Republicans, the U.S.C. survey found.The results highlight nuances in the opinion over two of the most divisive issues in public education, even as the American public remains deeply polarized along party lines.The U.S.C. survey polled a nationally representative sample of nearly 4,000 adults, about half of whom lived with at least one school-age child, and broke responses out by partisan affiliation.Democrats were by and large supportive of L.G.B.T.Q.-themed instruction in schools, yet were split when it came to addressing transgender issues for younger students in elementary school.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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      Karine Jean-Pierre and John Kirby Share an Uncomfortable White House Spotlight

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      The White House heralded Karine Jean-Pierre as a trailblazing press secretary. But it has increasingly relied on John Kirby, a longtime Washington hand, to spread its message.On the day she was named the first Black and first openly gay White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre said she hoped her appointment might inspire other people who, like her, never imagined occupying the pre-eminent role in political communications.“I think this is important for them to see this,” she said in May 2022.Americans are seeing less of her lately.Since the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, Ms. Jean-Pierre has yielded the spotlight to a lower-ranking official, John F. Kirby. For months, Mr. Kirby has regularly co-hosted her daily briefings, often fielding more questions from journalists than she does, and appeared more frequently on major political news programs as the administration’s spokesperson.Mr. Kirby, 60, a retired Navy admiral who previously worked at the Pentagon and the State Department, is better versed in foreign affairs at a time of war in Ukraine and the Middle East. He evinces a clarity and comfort at the lectern that can sometimes elude Ms. Jean-Pierre, 49, a more rote public speaker with less experience tussling with an adversarial press.The White House attributes Mr. Kirby’s larger role to the flurry of international news and says he will brief less often once the Middle East crisis ebbs. But the perception in Washington that President Biden has allowed Mr. Kirby, who is white, to upstage a Black woman as the face of his White House has turned their double act into a third-rail subject.“Can’t think of many topics I’d like to opine on less,” said one Biden supporter and Democratic strategist, who deemed the subject too politically and culturally sensitive to discuss with their name attached.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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      Aurora, Colo., Pays $1.9 Million to Black Family Wrongly Detained by Police

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      The family of five was stopped at gunpoint in 2020 by officers in Aurora, Colo., who mistook their S.U.V. for a stolen vehicle.Five members of a Black family who were wrongfully detained at gunpoint in Aurora, Colo., in 2020 by police officers who mistook their S.U.V. for a vehicle that had been stolen received $1.9 million to settle their lawsuit against the city, the family’s lawyer said Monday.The family — Brittney Gilliam, 29 at the time, her daughter, who was 6, sister, who was 12, and two nieces, 17 and 14 at the time — had gone to get their nails done when Aurora Police Department officers ordered them to lie on the ground and handcuffed two of the girls, the authorities said at the time.A widely shared video of the episode showed four children lying on the ground in a parking lot, crying and screaming as several officers stood over them, sparking further outrage over a department already mired in controversy over the 2019 death of a Black man and its use of excessive force.The settlement was reached several months ago but remained confidential because there are children involved, David Lane, the lawyer, said by phone Monday. It is divided equally among Ms. Gilliam, her nieces, sister and daughter, he added, noting that the younger children will need to wait until they turn 18 to be able to access their share.The settlement, Mr. Lane said, both helped to avoid re-traumatizing the children in a deposition or trial, and to bring attention to the costly nature of settling similar cases — which the city has done several times in recent years following accusations that its police officers had used excessive force.From 2003 to 2018, the city settled at least 11 police brutality cases for a total of $4.6 million, according to the A.C.L.U. of Colorado. In 2021, the city agreed to pay $15 million to the family of Elijah McLain to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit over the police confrontation in 2019 that ended his life.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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      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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      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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      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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      Mocking Haley, Trump Adds to His Long History of Racist Attacks

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      Donald J. Trump first established his connection with the largely white Republican base more than a decade ago by stoking discomfort with the election of Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president — the beginning of the so-called birther movement.In the years since, he has continued to pile up accusations of racism on the campaign trail. This week, Mr. Trump lobbed his latest racially charged attack at former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, the daughter of Indian immigrants and his closest competitor in the New Hampshire primary, by repeatedly flubbing her given name, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa.On Friday, Mr. Trump referred to Ms. Haley as “Nimbra” in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform, three days after facing criticism for dubbing her “Nimrada.” Ms. Haley has long gone by her middle name, Nikki.Both are racist dog whistles, much like his continued focus on Mr. Obama’s middle name, Hussein, and add to a long history of racially incendiary statements from the campaign trail.Ms. Haley told reporters on Friday that Mr. Trump’s attacks revealed his own insecurities about the presidential contest.“If he goes and does these temper tantrums, if he’s going and spending millions of dollars on TV, he’s insecure — he knows that something’s wrong,” she said. “I don’t sit there and worry about whether it’s personal or what he means.”At a rally for Ms. Haley in Manchester on Friday, supporters said they were glad the former governor was countering Mr. Trump’s accusations.“This is a continuation of the bullying and the third-grade behavior that should have him grounded,” said Kathy Holland, 75, a retired business owner. “We deserve leaders who act grown up.”Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said that those raising concerns about Mr. Trump’s handling of race were themselves guilty of “faux outrage racism.”“They should get a life and live in the real world,” Mr. Cheung said.Mr. Trump’s history with the subject dates back years before his formal entry into politics.In February 2011, Mr. Trump started pushing the racist lie that Mr. Obama was not a U.S. citizen when he was testing the waters of a potential presidential campaign. Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, discussed the so-called birther issue on almost a nightly basis that April, until Mr. Obama showed reporters his birth certificate later that month.By then, a CNN poll showed Mr. Trump tied for first in a hypothetical primary. While Mr. Trump opted to return for another season of “The Celebrity Apprentice” as the reality television show’s host instead of running for president, he ran in 2016 on similar themes.That year, he questioned the citizenship of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the first Latino senator from the state, who was born in Canada. Mr. Cruz’s mother is American, which automatically conferred citizenship.During his failed 2020 re-election bid, he falsely claimed that Kamala Harris, who would become the first woman and first person of color to be elected vice president, did not meet the country’s citizenship requirements.This month, he returned to that familiar playbook by accusing Ms. Haley on social media of not being a real American eligible for the presidency — even as he was defending his own legal eligibility for the ballot under the Constitution.“I’ll let the president’s social media post speak for itself,” Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said last week at an event hosted by Bloomberg News.After the New Hampshire contest on Tuesday, attention in the Republican primary will turn mostly to South Carolina, Ms. Haley’s home state, which has its own history of racially charged politics.In February 2000, after Senator John McCain won a come-from-behind victory over George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary, he was the target of a smear campaign in South Carolina. The attacks falsely claimed that Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, was a drug addict and that the couple’s daughter Bridget, whom they adopted from Bangladesh, was the product of an illicit union.“Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president,” some voters were asked in phone calls, “if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate Black child?”Michael Gold contributed reporting. More