Thanks to our friends at Exile On Moan Street for locating this really high quality Youtube upload of the Gil Scott-Heron documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

Directed by Don Letts for BBC television, this is a superb piece of film making. With commentaries from Chuck D, Mos Def, Richie Havens, Clive Davis and more.

The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) conducts research and supports policy initiatives on anti-civil rights violence in the United States and other miscarriages of justice of that period. CRRJ serves as a resource for scholars, policymakers, and organizers involved in various initiatives seeking justice for crimes of the civil rights era.

Archaeologists want to know more about plates found as part of #africanamerican burials in a few locations: #pubarch

Cheryl Contee, who blogs under the name Jill Tubman, talked about rising influence of black political blogs and social media. She also responded to questions from the audience.

This report released by The Civil Rights Project at UCLA finds that for the first time in three decades, the South is in danger of losing its leadership as the nation's most integrated schools. The report examines the effects of the dual processes of racial transformation and resegregation on the educational opportunity of students, as well as the relationship between race and poverty and its implications in light of the recent Supreme Court decisions. The report concludes with recommendations for school districts.

David Dante Troutt is a native New Yorker, raised on the border of Sugar Hill, Harlem and Washington Heights and currently living in Brooklyn with his wife and two children. Troutt has been writing creatively most of his life, authoring a few unpublished volumes of poetry, three unpublished novels and a variety of non-fiction and journalistic works. A proud father, husband, writer, scholar and activist on a range of issues, Troutt’s work often embodies themes involving cities, racial identity, the quest for equity and the redemptive psychology of everyday life.

A graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School, Troutt pursued various law and advocacy-related efforts in both inner-city poverty as well as intellectual property before joining the Rutgers Law School (Newark) faculty in 1995. In 1998, he joined his literary identity with his legal and political interests in the publication of a thematic collection of short stories, The Monkey Suit – and other short fiction on African Americans and justice (The New Press). In 2006, he edited the collection of essays entitled, After the Storm: Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane Katrina (The New Press) and authored the lead essay, “Many Thousands Gone, Again.” The next year, he published his first novel, The Importance of Being Dangerous, a literary thriller. Meanwhile, Troutt actively writes political essays and analysis for a variety of national periodicals and websites, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, the Crisis, the DailyVoice.com and the Washington Independent.com. He is currently professor of law and Justice John J. Francis Scholar at Rutgers Law School-Newark.

Eyes on the Prize is a 14-part series which was originally released in two parts: Eyes I in 1985 and Eyes II in 1988. This series, which debuted on PBS stations, is considered to be the definitive documentary on the Civil Rights Movement. “Eyes on the Prize” won more than twenty major awards and attracted over 20 million viewers. These interviews are part of the Henry Hampton Collection housed at the Film and Media Archive at Washington University Libraries. Each transcript represented the entire interview conducted by Blackside including sections which appeared in the final program and the outtakes. For more information, on the various formats of each interview, please contact the Film and Media Archive.

You may also browse and search the Eyes on the Prize Interviews I (1985) and Eyes on the Prize Interviews II (1988) individually.

As a matter of long-term politics, though, I worry about this categorical support for Democratic candidates; the longer Democrats don't have to worry about losing African American voters, the longer Democratic representatives can take advantage of their black support. Unfortunately, there's not much of an alternative. Republicans don't need black votes to win, and as such, have no real stake in advancing African American interests. The only conceivable strategy is for black voters to sit out an election, but that's just as likely to inspire enmity as it is to force engagement with their interests. African American voters are in a tough spot, to say the least.

For Buford Posey, a white man raised in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the Second World War had a civilizing influence. "When I was coming up in Mississippi I never knew it was against the law to kill a black man," he says. "I learned that when I went in the Army. I was 17 years old. When they told me, I thought they were joking."

For several decades Posey's assumption about the relative value of black life was effectively borne out by the state's judiciary. Among others, the murders of 14-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till, in Money in 1955; the state's NAACP chairman Medgar Evers, in Jackson in 1963; the three young civil rights workers--James Chaney (21), Andrew Goodman (20) and Michael Schwerner (24)--in Philadelphia in 1964; and civil rights supporter Vernon Dahmer, in Hattiesburg in 1966 all went unpunished.

NATCHEZ — Denise Ford and Wharlest Jackson Jr. say they will never forget their father’s ultimate sacrifice, and the Miss-Lou community shouldn’t either.

Wharlest Jackson Sr., 36, died on Feb. 27, 1967, when a planted bomb exploded in his Chevy pickup. Jackson, a black man, had recently been promoted at the Armstrong Tire Factory to a job that had been traditionally done by whites.

Jackson’s killers were never found.

Forty-three years later, Jackson is hailed as a civil rights hero who pushed for economic equality through faith and hard work. Ford and Wharlest Jr. want to honor their father’s legacy by placing a marker at the site of bombing on Minor Street, and are soliciting donations from the community.

We find it ironic that in the one hundred years of USDA’s history of discrimination, not a single white person has been dismissed for discrimination, however, a Black women who is doing her job well is falsely accused of discrimination in an altered video and you decide that she can no longer do a credible and nondiscriminatory job of dispensing USDA rural development programs and must resign.

In case the name Oscar Grant is unfamiliar to you, he was the victim of a police shooting in the Bay Area, sometimes known as the BART shooting. The shooter, former officer Johannes Mehserle, was arrested on suspicion of murder, which was a reasonable charge to anyone with an internet access and a functional sense of decency. Kevin has video of the incident here, to which I direct you with a strong trigger warning. It is very upsetting to watch.

The prosecution was never able to convince the jury of intent, which is a requirement for convicting a defendant of second-degree murder. The jury's instructions stipulated that second-degree murder occurred if, "When the defendant acted, he had a state of mind called malice aforethought." Malice aforethought was defined for jurors as "a mental state that must be formed before the act that causes death is committed."

Of course, this understates the case a wee bit. Mehserle, along with several others BART cops, had Grant pinned face first on the ground when he very deliberately pulled out his gun and shot Grant in the back. Mehserle's defense is that he meant to pull out his taser but mistakenly pulled out his gun instead. This is, needless to say, pretty hard to accept, and there's little question that there's a jury anywhere in the country that would have bought this story from anyone who wasn't a police officer. You can judge for yourself in the cell phone video taken by a witness (the clearest view starts around the 1:45 mark).

SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division will investigate a white former transit officer who was convicted in state court of killing an unarmed black man - a verdict that touched off angry protests and more than 80 arrests in Oakland.

In a move reminiscent of the Rodney King beating case in Los Angeles, the federal government said it intends to investigate Johannes Mehserle, who was found guilty Thursday in state court of involuntary manslaughter in the death of 22-year-old Oscar Grant.

The Root spoke to the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton about what it takes to defuse the ongoing tension between the police and the black community.

A mere three months after the officers in the Diallo case were exonerated, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band rolled into New York for a ten night stand at Madison Square Garden. It was here that they would play, for only the second time ever, a new song called “American Skin (41 Shots).” The song had been debuted at a show in Atlanta, Georgia right before the New York shows and it takes a mesmerizing and heartbreaking look at the Diallo case. The officers involved had fired 41 shots at the unarmed man and it’s this phrase that becomes the repeated mantra for the song. The song is not, despite the protests that were mounted by police organizations, a blatantly anti-police song. It delves into the shades of grey of the case and even sympathetically portrays one of the officer’s reactions immediately following the shooting. Ultimately Springsteen bemoans the fact that whatever American skin you wear, whether it’s the officer’s uniform or the immigrant’s work clothes, it’s possible that you could be killed for it. “We’re baptized in these waters and in each other’s blood…you get killed just for living in your American skin.”

With this verdict, the jury essentially affirmed their belief that Mehserle, while guilty, had made a "mistake".  As someone who has observed juries deliberate, the idea this jury could reach a concensus so quickly in such a complicated case makes me wonder how many of the people sitting in the jury box actually listened to what they heard.

Tracking and reporting on pre-trial, extra-judicial death penalty, because it's 21st century lynching, by another name.

He was just trying to teach the little bastard a lesson by swearing at him and then shooting him full of electricity while he was already on the ground. People have to learn to obey transit police officers unquestioningly and when they curse you out and threaten you out of the blue you have an obligation as a citizen to take whatever they mete out --- including death if they accidentally pick up their torture device instead of their killing device. Shit happens.

Taser International Inc. is no stranger to lawsuits, but it got zapped with a zinger this time. According to the Las Vegas Sun, the Scottsdale, Arizona manufacturer is getting sued in a taser lawsuit by the family of a Las Vegas doctor who died in 2008. A Nevada Highway Patrol officer allegedly tasered him when he got pulled over on his way to work in Interstate 15 which allegedly caused him to turn blue at the scene and die. He was only 33 years old. The lawsuit serves as another example of what some see as a risk of death posed by taser use in certain situations.

Like so many other Oakland residents, I've waited anxiously all week to hear whether justice would be served for Oscar Grant, the 22-year-old black youth who was shot by a BART officer last year. And now our answer's arrived. The verdict for Johannes Mehserle — the officer who shot him — is in: involuntary manslaughter. Crowds are gathering downtown to protest the outcome, and Bob Marley is getting wafted over speakers to try and keep folks calm.

I am clear that Mehserle must be held accountable. But that alone is not justice. Locking him up won't give Oscar Grant's daughter her father back. It won't give his mother the chance to see her son continue to grow. And it won't take away the terror in the hearts of black and brown boys when they are stopped by police officers this summer. A guilty verdict for Mehserle won't make up for decades of police brutality, racism, unequal justice, exploitation, racial profiling, or socio-economic systems that are rigged against the poor.

I'll be ducking in and out of the Oscar Grant-shooting trial in Los Angeles as it unfolds over the next few weeks. Yesterday was day four, and it was dominated by testimony from law enforcement training and weapons experts as the prosecution tried to chip away at the idea that Johannes Mehserle's shooting of Grant was an understandable mistake.

After a swift but dramatic three week trial, a Los Angeles jury will likely begin deliberating today in the trial of ex-BART cop Johannes Mehserle, who has been charged with murder for shooting the unarmed Oscar Grant in the back on New Year's Day 2009. The jury will now decide whether the shooting was a tragic accident, as Mehserle argues, willful murder or something in between.

Cheryl Contee

During the month of February, Black History Month historically centers around names like Fredrick Douglas, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X, Rosa Parks, Huey Newton, Angela Davis, Muhammad Ali, Langston Hughes, Gordon Parks and so many others — and from now on, history will also celebrate President Barack Obama.
Today, however, I want to honor the nameless African American faces of Missoula, Montana’s 25th Infantry, who changed history in their own special way — by riding a bicycle.

In February 2006, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) enacted an initiative to identify and closely examine all unsolved hate crimes resulting in death that occurred prior to 1970. A review of cold case civil rights matters that met the above criteria was conducted and, with the help of our federal, state and local law enforcement partners, as well as community leaders and civic organizations, numerous cases of unsolved violent crimes from the Civil Rights era are now being thoroughly examined and reinvestigated.
 
The Jackson Division of the FBI, which covers the state of Mississippi, was assigned 43 such cases. We are actively assessing each one to determine whether any new information can be developed which will help resolve these matters or lead to the identification and prosecution of responsible individuals if evidence indicates a crime was committed. While it is realized not every case will be resolved and, in some cases, the perpetrators may no longer be alive or there may be no federal prosecutorial jurisdiction, the Jackson Division is aggressively moving forward in investigating these cases while utilizing the updated analytical and forensic tools available to law enforcement today.
 
The names of the following deceased individuals represent the possible unsolved hate crime casesoccurring during the Civil Rights era which were received by the FBI’s Jackson Division:
 

i am a 27 year old filmmaker and doctoral student currently stationed in chicago.

On February 23, 2009, veteran Black Freedom movement leader Ruby Sales had a conversation with Vera Leone, SOA Watch organizer, about state violence and white violence against people of color in the United States, and the implications of that historical and present context for our continuing organizing to close the School of the Americas and dismantle the racist system of violence and domination which it represents.You can listen to the audio file here .

These are the names of 74 men and women who died between 1952 and 1968 under circumstances suggesting they were the victims of racially motivated violence. The information below was gathered by the Southern Poverty Law Center as it planned a timeline of killings and other civil rights era events for the Civil Rights Memorial. The Memorial, dedicated in 1989, includes the names of 40 civil rights martyrs who were slain during that era. The names below were not inscribed on the Memorial because there was insufficient information about their deaths at the time the Memorial was created. They are, however, identified in a display at the Civil Rights Memorial Center as "The Forgotten."

. Really cogent article about ongoing racism w/r/t "exclusive" neighborhoods & Nat Hist Trust. Ht Orangexw

You may recall that I created the Obama Inauguration cover for The Nation magazine... It's been a while and I've been busy on the poster for that cover. I'm almost finished... (I've added over 30 new figures to the artwork), but I could still use your advice... Updated artwork and more below the fold...

As she demonstrated in the video, using the example of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, this experimental tool from Google can be used to learn more about events that surrounded your ancestors' lives. If you know that one of your ancestors participated in a specific event, or was affected by one, use the tool to learn more about that event.

Philadelphia, MS elects first black mayor in runoff

"Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow" stories of Jewish refugee teachers and their black students #black #jewish #relations

still black, a feature length documentary, is an experimental portrait of six black transgender men living in Chicago, Mass, Ohio, and Missouri. The black-and-white film shot with multiple cameras and accompanying visual effects, offers viewers a complex

The most amazing thing about the 2008 presidential race is not that a black man is a bona fide contender, but the lukewarm response he has received from the luminaries whose sacrifices made this run possible.

Courtesy photo MARJORIE CHANCE tells JJHS student Jaclyn Myers how she began a scrapbook on the Kennedy assassination more than 40 years ago. Myers said, "I learned a great deal from Mr. (Herman) Wright about the types of questions that should be used whi

Retired Navy diver James Bladh testified Wednesday that his team found a human skull, railroad rails and other objects in a Mississippi River backwater in October 1964, nearly six months after two black teenagers disappeared.

Roland Mitchell, a deputy sheriff for Madison Parish, La., at the time of the killings, testified that he was among those who went out on what's known as the old Mississippi River near Tallulah, La., on July 12, 1964, when the lower torso of a human body

Natchez man wants museum to honor slaves who endured market

"Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry: 1891-1922" (Archeophone)

Ralph E Powe

jubiliee gospel

good web library of articles on the subject

The beginning of 2004, a presidential election year, is a good time to take another look at Emory Douglas's work as a graphic designer, illustrator, poster artist, political cartoonist, and master craftsman of the Black Panther Party's visual message

We are a coalition of national and community-based organizations who have come together in a collective show of strength, will and determination to ensure Black America’s voice

When the Ayers case was filed in 1975, times were different for black students. What the lawsuit sought and what has transpired over time is also different.

The black vaudevillian Bert Williams was one of the early masters. He wasn't just ahead of his time; he's in the vanguard of ours.