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      Ron DeSantis’ academic restrictions show he hopes to change history by censoring it | Francine Prose

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      Ron DeSantis’ academic restrictions show he hopes to change history by censoring itFrancine ProseFlorida’s Stop Woke Act and ban on African American studies will only deprive students of the right to think and learn For some time now, conservative groups have pressured libraries and classrooms to remove certain “controversial” books from their shelves and their syllabi. These are texts that tell uncomfortable or unpopular truths about our nation’s origins, including inequality, race, history, gender, sexuality, power and class – a range of subjects that a small but vocal group of Americans would prefer to ignore or deny.Ron DeSantis bans African American studies class from Florida high schoolsRead moreThese efforts achieved one of their most notable successes last April when the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the Stop Woke Act, which prohibits in-school discussions about racism, oppression, LBGTQ+ issues and economic inequity. Books that have not been officially vetted and approved must be hidden or covered, lest teachers unknowingly break an ill-defined law against distributing pornography – a felony.On 1 February, these pernicious restrictions on academic freedom spread beyond Florida, when the College Board announced its decision to severely restrict what can and cannot be taught in the newly created advanced placement class in African American studies. Cut from the curriculum (or in some cases made optional) was any discussion of Black Lives Matter, mass incarceration, police brutality, queer Black life and the Black Power movements of the 1960s and 70s. Writers who have been removed from the reading list include bell hooks, Angela Davis and Ta-Nehisi Coates.These decisions are alarming and disturbing on so many levels that it’s hard to decide which aspect is the most damaging and insidious. At risk are our foundational principles of free speech, our conviction that educators – and not politicians – should be writing up our lesson plans and deciding what transpires in our classrooms, our belief that students can (and need to) consider complicated issues.As someone who has taught for decades, I can hardly imagine abruptly cutting off class discussions that have veered (as they inevitably will) into these now forbidden areas. Must we fear that our students will report us as insurrectionists and felons for having mentioned the grotesque racial disparities in our prison populations? I believe that education not only involves the transmission of hard information but also helps students to think for themselves, to weigh opposing arguments and to make informed decisions. How can these goals be accomplished when we are being told to (quite literally) whitewash our nation’s history, to deny that we are walking on appropriated land in a country built by kidnapped and enslaved people, when we are being encouraged to lie about the very ground beneath our feet?Students aren’t as stupid as the Florida legislature seems to think, and by adopting these new regulations, we are only encouraging them to distrust their teachers and the system that so blatantly misrepresents the realities they so clearly observe around them.In the past, authoritarianism – and the indoctrination that sustains it – has used educational systems to further its agenda. We can recall images of first-graders wearing little red kerchiefs and saluting the eastern bloc dictators, of students let out of class to welcome the Führer to town. We know that democracy depends on the free and open exchange of ideas, on conversations that begin early in the life of its citizens – and that fascism thrives when only one point of view is permitted. DeSantis’s rulings, and the campaigns that have engendered them, are inherently anti-democratic.We cannot change history by censoring it. We cannot pretend that we were never a slave-holding society, that racism ceased to exist when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. We cannot erase the past, or influence a young person’s gender and sexuality by removing a book from the library. Students are not political pawns or ideologues-in-training. They are our future and it’s frightening to imagine a future populated by citizens who were forbidden to argue and debate, to hear about a historical event from multiple perspectives and to learn to make the critical judgments and necessary distinctions that will help them navigate our increasingly complex and challenging world.It’s been noted that Ron DeSantis graduated with a degree in history from Yale, where he was presumably encouraged to engage in – and to learn from – the open debates that he is now attempting to stifle. Presumably, too, he learned what a good education is, what it means to be taught to think – and that is precisely what he is denying students who are less privileged than he and his Yale classmates.It’s a political decision designed to win over the Trump supporters that the governor will need in his bid for the presidency – that is, white working-class Americans who don’t understand that their own children are also being denied the education that will help them overcome the class divisions that perpetuate our economic inequality. Private school students will still be able to study history in depth, to learn to reason, to process and assess the accuracy of what they are being told. It’s the public school kids who will be funneled into the low-paying jobs, the dim futures for which their schooling has (not accidentally) prepared them.‘We’ve moved backwards’: US librarians face unprecedented attacks amid rightwing book bansRead moreUltimately, what’s most troubling about the new restrictions and proscriptions is that historical facts are being recast as snowflake propaganda. The truth is being distorted or omitted at a moment when we, as a nation, have never so desperately needed to maintain our grip on reality.Without being taught to distinguish truth from fiction, without being asked to think, without learning how this country evolved – a history not just of heroism and noble principles but of theft, brutality and crime – our students will be easy prey to every conspiracy theory that comes along. They will find it far more difficult to imagine and implement the important ways in which we hope to become a more equitable, less racist – and better educated – society.
      Francine Prose is a former president of Pen American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
      TopicsLibrariesUS educationUS politicsRace in educationRaceBlack Lives Matter movementcommentReuse this content More

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      Mississippi Republicans pass bill to create separate, unelected court in majority-Black city

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      Mississippi Republicans pass bill to create separate, unelected court in majority-Black cityMayor of Jackson, Mississippi, calls proposed law ‘some of the most oppressive legislation in our city’s history’ The Republican-dominated Mississippi house of representatives has passed a bill to create a separate, unelected court system in the city of Jackson that would fall outside the purview of the city’s voters, the majority of whom are Black.The bill, which local leaders have likened to apartheid-era laws and described as unconstitutional, would also expand a separate capitol police force, overseen by state authorities. The force would expand into all of the city’s white majority neighborhoods, according to Mississippi Today. Jackson’s population is over 80% Black.‘This is no way to live’: Mississippians struggle with another water crisisRead moreSpeaking after House Bill 1020 passed on Tuesday evening, Jackson’s mayor Chokwe Lumumba branded the proposed law “some of the most oppressive legislation in our city’s history”.“It’s oppressive because it strips the right of Black folks to vote. It’s oppressive because it puts a military force over people that has no accountability to them. It’s oppressive because there will be judges who will determine sentences over people’s lives. It’s oppressive because it redirects their tax dollars to something they don’t endorse nor believe in,” Lumumba said.The bill passed largely along party lines in a 76-38 vote and will now travel to the state senate, where Republicans also hold a significant majority. The passage was preceded by an intense, four-hour floor debate in which members of the state’s Black caucus made impassioned pleas to reject the legislation and compared the bill to the state’s Jim Crow-era constitution of 1890.The legislation was proposed by house Republican Trey Lamar, who is white and represents a district in the state’s north-west, which is majority white.Lamar, who does not live in Jackson, has cited county court backlogs and crime rates in the city as his motivation for the proposed law. During floor debate, Lamar was asked if any of his constituents had asked for the bill. He replied: “I don’t live in Jackson … but you know what I like to do … I like to come to Jackson because it’s my capital city.”The bill, which is over 1,000 pages long, would expand Jackson’s existing capitol complex improvement district, which is patrolled by the state’s capitol police and currently covers parts of the city’s downtown that house state government buildings. The district’s expansion would cover areas in the city’s north, which, according to local press, include entertainment and shopping neighborhoods.The new court district would feature two judges directly appointed by Mississippi’s supreme court chief justice, Michael K Randolph, who is white. There would be two prosecutors, appointed by the state attorney general, Lynn Fitch, a white Republican. And two public defenders appointed by the state defender’s office.Proposed amendments offered on Tuesday included calls to make the judges residents of the Jackson area and to compel elections for the positions. Both amendments failed.The proposed bill is the latest in a line of extreme legislation in the state, which last year introduced a sweeping anti-critical race theory law, which met vocal opposition from the state’s Black caucus.Jackson has also suffered from a series of water outages due to ailing infrastructure, which has been chronically underfunded by the state for years. Black residents in the poorest parts of the city have been disproportionately affected.In November last year, the city’s water system was taken under federal government oversight after the Environmental Protection Agency found the city in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act.TopicsMississippiRepublicansUS politicsRacenewsReuse this content More

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      Schools and universities are ground zero for America’s culture war | Moira Donegan

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      Schools and universities are ground zero for America’s culture warMoira Donegan It’s easy to get people riled up and panicked about kids, about a changing culture and about lost innocence. That’s exactly what the right is doing You could be forgiven for losing track of all the lurid and inventive ways that Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor with presidential ambitions, has attacked education in his state. Last year he signed the Don’t Say Gay bill, a nasty little law that bans classroom discussion of sexuality or gender identity issues – effectively forcing children and teachers alike to stay silent about their families and lives, under the threat of lawsuits. The bill caused confusion and controversy, frightening gay students and teachers, leading to preemptive compliance in some sectors and defiant disobedience in others – and, not coincidentally, drawing quite a bit of culture-war attention to DeSantis himself.Since then, the Florida governor has repeated the playbook in increasingly ambitious fashion. Last April, DeSantis signed the exhaustingly titled “Stop Woke Act,” which restricts lessons on racial inequality in public schools. The bill prohibits the teaching of material that could cause a student to “feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress,” due to US racial history – the implication being that these are not appropriate responses to an encounter with this history, or that protection from such emotions is more important than a confrontation with the facts.In mid-January, DeSantis’ Department of Education issued new guidance to educators, saying that all books that have not been approved by a state compliance censor – euphemistically termed a “school media specialist” – should be concealed or removed from classrooms. Because the law deems some books “pornographic” or “obscene,” it also creates the possibility that teachers who provide books that feature LGBT content to students could be given third-degree felony charges. The guidance prompted teachers in several populous counties to remove books from their classrooms altogether. Photos of bare shelves in classroom libraries went viral; other teachers hid the books from students’ view, draping them behind ominous curtains of paper. There were reports of children crying, and begging for the books back.DeSantis has also set about narrowing the scope of inquiry for all students – not just those in Florida – by picking a very public fight with the College Board. The private organization runs much of America’s standardized testing regime, as well as the nationwide Advanced Placement, or AP, program, a series of courses that allow high school students to receive college credits at a lesser cost.Last month, DeSantis announced that he would ban the AP African American studies course, saying that the course, which had initially included readings on Black feminism, the Black queer experience, and the Black Lives Matter movement, violated his Stop Woke Act, and was “pushing an agenda on our kids.” In response, the College Board almost immediately dropped the offending material from their curriculum, eliminating instruction in the work of Black feminist thinkers like bell hooks, Angela Davis, and Audre Lorde, and making study of the Black Lives Matter movement “optional.” Instead, the course now encourages research into Black conservatism. The changes to the curriculum are not localized to Florida – they apply to students nationwide. DeSantis’ war on education, it seems, is now a national affair.As for the activities that are still permitted in schools, DeSantis seems determined to make them as invasive, dangerous, and unpleasant as possible. His administration is weighing whether to require all girls on school athletic teams to answer detailed questions about their menstrual periods in order to participate in sports. The interrogations could come as DeSantis fights to keep trans girls out of sports, and as his Florida Republican party moves to tighten Florida’s abortion ban from an already-strict 15 weeks, to six. The questions would likely discourage sports participation for teenage girls, who would be made to face invasive, intimate, and embarrassing inquiries from prurient adults as a precondition of their athletic lives.And that’s just DeSantis’ agenda for K-12 education. Last week, the governor announced a sweeping agenda to overhaul the state’s public universities, aiming to make their curricula more conservative by eliminating tenure protections for progressive faculty and requiring courses on “Western Civilization.” He’s started with the New College of Florida, a small liberal arts honors college with an artsy reputation. There, DeSantis installed a new board made up of Christian college administrators, Republican think-tank denizens, and the right-wing online influencer Christopher Rufo. The board promptly fired the college president, and has set about reshaping the mission and instruction of the college in DeSantis’ image.Much of the right-wing culture war that has emerged since the onset of the pandemic has focused on schools, and in crass political terms, it’s not hard to see why DeSantis has chosen to attack education. Schools are spaces where lots of voters – and crucially, lots of the white, conservative voters that DeSantis needs to mobilize – feel they have a stake. It’s easy to get people riled up and panicked about kids, easy to pray on people’s protectiveness towards their children as a way to exploit their anxieties about the future, about a changing culture, about lost innocence. And frankly, it’s easy to get people to be mad at teachers: you would be surprised how easily grown men can be prodded into reviving an old adolescent resentment of a teacher’s scolding authority.But there is a more foundational reason why DeSantis and the far right are attacking education: it is the means by which our young people are made into citizens. Schools and universities are laboratories of aspiration, places where young people cultivate their own capacities, expose themselves to the experiences and worldviews of others, and learn what will be required of them to live responsible, tolerant lives in a pluralist society.It is in school where they learn that social hierarchies do not necessarily correspond to personal merit; it is in school where they discover the mistakes of the past, and where they gain the tools not to repeat them. No wonder the DeSantis right, with it’s fear of critique and devotion to regressive modes of domination, seems to hostile to letting kids learn: education is how kids grow up to be the kinds of adults they can’t control.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS newsOpinionUS politicsFloridaRacecommentReuse this content More

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      Congress struggles with police reform: Politics Weekly America podcast

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      While attending the funeral of Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old man beaten to death by police in Memphis, Tennessee, this week, Kamala Harris called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed in the House in 2021 but failed in the Senate.
      Jonathan Freedland speaks to Dr David Thomas, of Florida Gulf Coast University, about why lawmakers find police reform a difficult issue to legislate on

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      Archive: MSNBC, CBS, NBC, PBS Listen to our episode on the special counsel investigation into Joe Biden’s keeping of classified documents. Buy tickets for the Bernie Sanders live event here. Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com. Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts. More

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      Tyre Nichols funeral: Kamala Harris condemns ‘violent act not in pursuit of public safety’ – latest

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      “We are here to celebrate the life of Tyre Nichols … Mrs Wells, Mr Wells, you have been extraordinary in terms of your strength, your courage and your grace,” Harris said to Tyre Nichols’ parents in an address at the funeral..css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“We mourn with you and the people of our country mourn with you. We have a mother and a father who mourned the life of a young man who should be here today. They have a grandson who now does not have a father…
      When we look at this situation, this is a family that lost their son and their brother through an act of violence at the hands and feet of people who had been charged with keeping them safe…
      “This violent act was not in pursuit of public safety… When we talk about public safety, let us understand what it means in its truest form. Tyre Nichols should have been safe…
      We demand Congress pass the George Floyd Policing Act … Joe Biden will sign it … It is non-negotiable,” she added.“There is no substitute for federal legislation,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said as she told reporters on Thursday that president Joe Biden will continue urging Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would combat police brutality, racial profiling and excessive force by police officers.At White House briefing. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: The president told Tyre Nichols’ family he would keep pushing Congress to send the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to his desk. “There is no substitute for federal legislation.” pic.twitter.com/lfiWG4kvQW— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) February 1, 2023
      The funeral service of Tyre Nichols has concluded with Nichols’ family exiting the ceremony first while other attendees stood and waited for their turn.Flower arrangements were also removed.Singers sang the 1964 song A Change Is Gonna Come by American singer-songwriter Sam Cooke, as well the 2009 song Oh How Precious by American gospel musician Kathy Taylor.“Tyre was a beautiful person and for this to happen to him is just unimaginable,” said Tyre Nichols mother RowVaughn Wells as she wept at the podium while delivering her address..css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“The only thing that’s keeping me going is the fact that I really truly believe my son was sent here on an assignment from God and I guess now his assignment is done. He’s been taken home…”
      “I want to thank all the community activists for being there for my family…the chief of police for acting swiftly, the district attorney, the state of Tennessee…I want to thank my lawyers…
      I just need…that George Floyd bill…passed. We need to take some action because there should be no other child that should suffer the way and all the other parents here that lost their children. We need to get that bill passed because if we don’t, the next child that dies, their blood is going to be on their hands.”Nichols’ stepfather Rodney Wells similarly called for justice for Tyre Nichols, saying, “We have to fight for justice. We cannot continue to let these people brutalize our kids…”.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“What’s done in a dark will always come to the light, and the light of day is justice for Tyre, justice for all the families that have lost loved ones to brutality of police or anybody,” he added.One of Tyre Nichols’ sisters recited a poem she wrote at the funeral service called “I’m Just Trying To Go Home.”“I’m just trying to go home.Is that too much to ask?I didn’t break any laws along this path.I’ve skated across barriers designed to hold me back.I’m just trying to go home where the love is loud and the smiles are warm like the sunsets that comfort me in the coldest of my storms.I’m just trying to go home.I hear the sirens,I hear the flashing lights.The directions are clear.Black skin go left, blue skin go right.I’m just trying to go home.Don’t I deserve to feel safe?Batons, badges, blue lights against my face.I’m just trying to go home.Does anyone hear the pain in my cry, the struggle in my breath?God replied, ‘Come home my son, now you can rest.’”Attorney Ben Crump said that Texas Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee has pledged to introduce a Tyre Nichols clause to the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that seeks to combat police brutality and racial bias in policing.Tyre Nichols and Breonna Taylor were born on the same day and the same year – June 5, 1993 – civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in his address.Crump asked the crowd of attendees to acknowledge Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor who was killed on March 13, 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky by police during a botched raid.“I want to acknowledge Tamika Palmer… I know you said it brought back so many memories and pain so if you would stand up so let us at least acknowledge Breonna Taylor’s mother,” Crump said as the crowd clapped and stood up.Civil rights attorney Ben Crump calls for “equal justice” in his address at Tyre Nichols’ funeral..css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“It really is a plea for justice…it is a plea for Tyre Nichols the son…for Tyre Nichols the brother…for Tyre Nichols the father but most of all, it is a plea for justice for Tyre Nichols the human being,” Crump said.
      “Why couldn’t they see the humanity in Tyre?” Crump said of the five Memphis police officers who beat Nichols to death.
      “We have to make sure they see us as human beings and once we acknowledge that we are human beings worthy of respect and justice, then we have have the God given right to say ‘I am a human being and I deserve justice not just any justice but equal justice.’”“All he wanted to do was get home,” Reverend Al Sharpton said of Tyre Nichols..css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Home is not just a physical location. Home is where you are at peace. Home is where you’re not vulnerable. Home is where everything is alright…
      “He said, all I want to do is get home. I come to Memphis to say the reason I keep going is, all I’m trying to do is get home… I want to get where they can’t treat me with a double standard — I’m trying to get home. I want to get where they can’t call me names no more — I want to get home. I want to get where they can’t shoot and ask questions later — I’m trying to get home. Every black in America stands up every day trying to get home.”“You don’t fight crime by becoming criminals yourself,” Reverend Al Sharpton said of the five Black police officers who beat Tyre Nichols to death..css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Why do they go ahead? Because they feel that there is no accountability. They feel that we are going to angry a day or to and then we’re going to go onto something else. But some of us do this everyday. Some of us believe…the dream has to come true. Some of us are going to fight…
      I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but we won’t stop until we hold you accountable,” Sharpton said as he called for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to be passed.
      “We’re not asking for anything special… we’re asking to be treated equal. And to be treated fair.”“In the city where they slayed the dreamer… what has happened to the dream?” Reverend Al Sharpton said, referring to Martin Luther King Jr who famously delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech. “What is happening to the dream in the city where the dreamer laid down and shed his blood?” Sharpton said.“The reason…[why] what happened to Tyre is so personal to me, it was that five Black men that wouldn’t have had a job in the police department, would not ever be thought of to be in elite squad…in the city that Dr. King lost his life…you beat a brother to death,” said Reverend Al Sharpton who visited the Lorraine Hotel earlier this morning where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed 55 years ago..css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“There’s nothing more insulting and offensive to those of us that fight to open doors that you walked through those doors and act like the folks we had to fight for to get you through them doors. You didn’t get on the Police Department by yourself. The police chief didn’t get there by herself. People had to march and go to jail, and some lost their lives to open the doors for you. And how dare you act like that sacrifice was for nothing,” Sharpton said.“We are here to celebrate the life of Tyre Nichols … Mrs Wells, Mr Wells, you have been extraordinary in terms of your strength, your courage and your grace,” Harris said to Tyre Nichols’ parents in an address at the funeral..css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“We mourn with you and the people of our country mourn with you. We have a mother and a father who mourned the life of a young man who should be here today. They have a grandson who now does not have a father…
      When we look at this situation, this is a family that lost their son and their brother through an act of violence at the hands and feet of people who had been charged with keeping them safe…
      “This violent act was not in pursuit of public safety… When we talk about public safety, let us understand what it means in its truest form. Tyre Nichols should have been safe…
      We demand Congress pass the George Floyd Policing Act … Joe Biden will sign it … It is non-negotiable,” she added.Reverend Al Sharpton has called on vice president Kamala Harris to share a few words at the funeral.Reverend Al Sharpton has opened up his address by recognizing the families at the funeral who have lost their children to police brutality, including those of Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.Vice president Kamala Harris is seen greeting and joining the family of Tyre Nichols at the funeral.@VP Kamala Harris joins the parents of Tyre Nichols here at the funeral in Memphis. #TyreNichols pic.twitter.com/SjQMAAdXnx— Reverend Al Sharpton (@TheRevAl) February 1, 2023 More

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      ‘We may have lost the south’: what LBJ really said about Democrats in 1964

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      ‘We may have lost the south’: what LBJ really said about Democrats in 1964Bill Moyers was there when Lyndon Johnson made his memorable assessment of the Civil Rights Act’s effects The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in American history, giving protections and rights long denied to Black Americans. Like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Medicare for senior citizens, it was a pillar of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.LBJ OK? Historian Mark Lawrence on a president resurgentRead moreThe Civil Rights Act also had a profound effect on the American political landscape, triggering a reshaping that still influences the fortunes of Democrats and Republicans, particularly in the south.A brilliant political analyst, Johnson foresaw the consequences of his civil rights legislation on the day he signed it into law. He is said to have remarked: “We’ve lost the south for a generation.”Indeed, the south has become steadily more Republican since then, the victories of Joe Biden and two Democratic senators in Georgia in 2020 and 2022 rare blue successes in a Republican stronghold.But did Johnson really say it? He didn’t mention it in his memoir – and he died 50 years ago on Sunday, aged just 64. In his absence, historians debate and write.So the Guardian went to the source: the legendary journalist Bill Moyers. Now 88, he was Johnson’s special assistant when the Civil Rights Act passed.Moyers responded with a detailed e-mail.On 2 July 1964, “the president signed the Civil Rights Act around 6.45pm. Before he went into a meeting in his office with some civil rights leaders and [the deputy attorney general] Nick Katzenbach, he pulled me aside and said, sotto voce, ‘Bird [Johnson’s wife] and I are going down to the Ranch. I’d like you to come with us … I practically ran to my office to pack.’”Moyers made it to the airport in time.“When I boarded the Jet Star, the president was reading the latest edition of the Washington Post. We took off around around 11pm … I sat down across from him. Lady Bird was in the other seat by him … the papers were celebrating what they described as a great event.“I said, ‘Quite a day, Mr President.’ As he reached a sheaf of the wire copy he tilted his head slightly back and held the copy up close to him so that he could read it, and said: ‘Well, I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime – and mine.’“It was lightly said. Not sarcastic. Not even dramatically. It was like a throwaway sidebar.”To Moyers, “all these years later”, Johnson’s remark seems “maybe … merely a jest, lightly uttered and soon forgotten”. But after Moyers “repeated it publicly just once, it took on a life of its own.“Unfortunately, various versions appeared: ‘for a generation’, ‘once and for all’. I couldn’t keep up. I finally stopped commenting.”And so a legend grew.As Moyers pointed out, in summer 1964, Johnson’s “immediate concern was to carry the south in his own election for president”, against the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, a hard-right senator from Arizona.“He briefly threatened not to go to the Democratic national convention in Atlantic City, because he was very tense and uneasy about the fight over seating the Mississippi delegation, and especially the role of Fannie Lou Hamer.”Hamer was a legendary civil rights activist, beaten and shot at for registering Black voters in Mississippi. At the convention, she mesmerized a national audience when she testified in an unsuccessful effort to get the new Freedom Democratic Party seated as the official delegation from Mississippi.“As we all know,” Moyers wrote, “Johnson went on to the convention and lapped his nomination … Now he seemed fully in the game and determined to carry the south.“He called meetings with his campaign team, over and again. He talked often to our people on the ground, from Louisiana to North Carolina. He made the campaign south of the Mason-Dixon Line his personal battlefield. He wanted to win there. And he did – in five states.”Johnson won in a landslide. In the south, he took Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.Moyers remembered that “on election night, as the results rolled in, [Johnson] was elated. His dreaded private vision of losing the south … would have cost [him] the election.“I think he had doubled down on not handing Republicans the south. That would come with [Richard] Nixon’s southern strategy, four years later. For now, [Johnson] was spared what would have humiliated him.”TopicsBooksCivil rights movementUS politicsUS domestic policyRaceDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Biden honors Martin Luther King Jr with sermon: ‘His legacy shows us the way’

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      Biden honors Martin Luther King Jr with sermon: ‘His legacy shows us the way’ President gave sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and spoke about the need to protect democracy Joe Biden marked what would have been Martin Luther King Jr’s 94th birthday with a sermon on Sunday at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, celebrating the legacy of the civil rights leader while speaking about the urgent need to protect US democracy.There’s one winner in the Biden documents discovery: Donald TrumpRead moreBiden said he was “humbled” to become the first sitting president to give the Sunday sermon at King’s church, also describing the experience as “intimidating”.“I believe Dr King’s life and legacy show us the way and we should pay attention,” Biden said. He later noted he was wearing rosary beads his son, Beau, wore as he died.“I doubt whether any of us would have thought during Dr King’s time that literally the institutional structures of this country might collapse, like we’re seeing in Brazil, we’re seeing in other parts of the world,” Biden said.In a sermon that lasted around 25 minutes, the president spoke about the continued need to protect democracy. Unlike some of his other speeches on the topic, Biden did not mention Donald Trump or Republicans directly.The GOP has embraced new voting restrictions, including in Georgia, and defended the former president’s role in the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.“Nothing is guaranteed in our democracy,” Biden said. “We know there’s a lot of work that has to continue on economic justice, civil rights, voting rights and protecting our democracy.”He praised Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who noted at a ceremony after she was confirmed it had taken just one generation in her family to go from segregation to the US supreme court.“Give us the ballot and we will place judges on the benches of the south who will do justly and love mercy,” Biden said, quoting King.Biden preached in Atlanta a little over a year after he gave a forceful speech calling for the Senate to get rid of the filibuster, a procedural rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation, in order to pass sweeping voting reforms.“I’m tired of being quiet,” the president said in that speech.A Democratic voting rights bill named after John Lewis, the late civil rights leader and Georgia congressman, would have made election day a national holiday, ensured access to early voting and mail-in ballots and enabled the justice department to intervene in states with a history of voter interference.But that effort collapsed when two Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, refused to get rid of the filibuster. Sinema is now an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.Since then, there has been no federal action on voting rights. In March 2021, Biden issued an executive order telling federal agencies to do what they could do improve opportunities for voter registration.The speech also comes as the US supreme court considers a case that could significantly curtail Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 law that was one of the crowning achievements of King and other activists. A ruling is expected by June.Biden’s failure to bolster voting right protections, a central campaign pledge, is one of his biggest disappointments in office. The task is even steeper now Republicans control the House. In advance of Biden’s visit to Atlanta, White House officials said he was committed to advocating for meaningful voting rights action.“The president will speak on a number of issues at the church, including how important it is that we have access to our democracy,” senior adviser Keisha Lance Bottoms said.Bottoms, who was mayor of Atlanta from 2018 to 2022, also said “you can’t come to Atlanta and not acknowledge the role that the civil rights movement and Dr King played in where we are in the history of our country”.This is a delicate moment for Biden. On Thursday the attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced the appointment of a special counsel to investigate how Biden handled classified documents after leaving the vice-presidency in 2017. The White House on Saturday revealed that additional classified records were found at Biden’s home near Wilmington, Delaware.Biden was invited to Ebenezer, where King was co-pastor from 1960 until he was assassinated in 1968, by Senator Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor. Like many battleground state Democrats in 2022, Warnock kept his distance from Biden as the the president’s approval rating lagged. But with Biden beginning to turn his attention to an expected 2024 re-election effort, Georgia can expect plenty of attention.Warnock told ABC’s This Week: “I’m honored to present the president of the United States there where he will deliver the message and where he will sit in the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Jr, Georgia’s greatest son, arguably the greatest American, who reminds us that we are tied in a single garment of destiny, that this is not about Democrat and Republican, red, yellow, brown, black and white. We’re all in it together.”In 2020, Biden won Georgia as well as Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Black votes made up much of the Democratic electorate. Turning out Black voters in those states will be essential to Biden’s 2024 hopes.The White House has tried to promote Biden’s agenda in minority communities, citing efforts to encourage states to take equity into account under the $1tn infrastructure bill. The administration also has acted to end sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses, scrapping a policy widely seen as racist.The administration highlights Biden’s work to diversify the judiciary, including his appointment of Jackson as the first Black woman on the supreme court and the confirmation of 11 Black women judges to federal appeals courts – more than under all previous presidents.King fueled passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. Members of his family attended Biden’s sermon. The president planned to be in Washington on Monday, to speak at the National Action Network’s annual breakfast, held on the MLK holiday.TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS voting rightsUS politicsCivil rights movementMartin Luther KingRacenewsReuse this content More

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      Ex-Trump aide Sanders defends critical race theory ban as Arkansas governor

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      Ex-Trump aide Sanders defends critical race theory ban as Arkansas governor Sarah Sanders, a former Trump press secretary, says move is preventative and ‘to make sure we’re not indoctrinating our kids’ The new Republican governor of Arkansas, Sarah Sanders, said the move to ban critical race theory in public schools in her state was a preventative measure.“It’s incredibly important that we do things to protect the students in our state,” she told Fox News Sunday. “We have to make sure that we are not indoctrinating our kids and that these policies and these ideas never see the light of day.”The daughter of a former governor Mike Huckabee, Sanders is the first woman to govern Arkansas.She is also a graduate of the Trump White House, where she was the second of four press secretaries.Sanders made headlines this week when she kicked off her first term with a series of executive orders.One targeted critical race theory, an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society. Republicans across the US have successfully used CRT used as an electoral issue despite it not being taught in most public schools.Another Sanders order banned the use in state documents of “Latinx”, defined by one expert proponent as “a gender-neutral term to describe US residents of Latin American descent”.Such opening gambits – “hyped executive orders that looked like something important but weren’t really”, according to a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette – attracted national attention.On Sunday, echoing Republican language in other anti-CRT campaigns often fueled by anger over the 1619 Project, a New York Times series that cast US history in light of the history of slavery, Sanders insisted: “We should never teach our kids to hate America or that America is a racist and evil country [when] in fact, it should be the exact opposite.”Though Axios and other outlets responded to Sanders’ CRT order by reporting that CRT was not taught in Arkansas schools, Huckabee said: “Our job is to protect the students and we’re going to take steps every single day to make sure we do exactly that.“And that’s the reason I signed the executive order. I’m proud of the fact that we’re taking those steps and we’re going to continue to do it every single day that I’m in office.”Sanders’ host, Shannon Bream, asked if teachers in Arkansas could “still have the uncomfortable conversations about the sins of our past, about the things this country has gotten wrong”.Sanders said: “Our teachers absolutely need to teach our history but they shouldn’t teach our kids and our students ideas to hate this country and to give a false premise about who we are and what we’re about. And that is something that we have to make sure we protect our students from.”Speaking to Axios this week, Derrick Johnson, president and chief executive of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said: “Much of the debate around critical race theory is as much a distraction as it is a strategy.”Johnson said the NAACP believes “accurate history is the history that should be taught”.TopicsArkansasDonald TrumpUS politicsUS educationRepublicansRacenewsReuse this content More