Educators calculate their risks in class as states escalate anti-DEI pressure

  At Miami Norland Senior High School in Miami Gardens, Florida, Renee O’Connor continues to teach students about Ida B. Wells, James Baldwin, and The 1619 Project in her African American history class.  

  She does this despite the ban on teaching the Pulitzer Prize-winning reexamination of African American enslavement and legacy in the state’s public schools, in a state regulation implementing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2022 “Stop WOKE Act.” The law aims to restrict educating children and others about the U.S. legacy of racism in schools and workplaces. 

  O’Connor isn’t defiant. She cites an obligation to her students.  

  “I teach a factual education based on documented proof,” O’Connor said.   

Voting Rights Impaired: Alabama man fights voter suppression of people with disabilities

  Eric Peebles can do so many things.  

  He runs his own successful consulting business with a nationwide reach. He held a university faculty job and holds seats on two statewide boards. He gives advice to health care and consumer officials across his home state of Alabama, even though he struggles to breathe when he talks because of a condition called spastic cerebral palsy. 

  For all the things he can do, there is one important thing he cannot, and that is to vote – at least not easily, simply, and privately. Especially during a pandemic. 

Celebrating the Freedom Riders

  On May 4, 1961, seven Black and six white civil rights activists known as the Freedom Riders boarded a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C. to travel through the Deep South to test the 1960 Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia – a ruling that found segregation of interstate transportation, including bus terminals, was unconstitutional.

'They served their time. Their voices could make a huge difference.'

  Lorena Barnum Sabbs was just 11 years old when she was arrested.

  She was trying to integrate the local movie theater in Americus, Georgia. But when the group of 30 girls refused to leave the balcony, police arrested them and drove them almost an hour away to the Leesburg Stockade. They slept on the cells’ cement floors. They were threatened. A snake was thrown into their cells. Some were held as long as 45 days.

  Their parents didn’t know where they were until a local dogcatcher spread the word. No one could get them out until the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee sent a photographer. Sabbs told the story of her 1963 arrest to Susan Chira, who interviewed more than 50 black women during a voter mobilization bus tour across Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi last week.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1604: Come share with me!

  Come share with me. If you participated in the 25th Bridge Crossing Jubilee in Selma, then you can remember with me. If you didn’t participate, you can share vicariously with me.

  The Bridge Crossing Jubilee was massive. The 2018 theme was "Many More Bridges To Cross". There were more than 50 events over a four-day period. Not every event is officially sponsored by the Bridge Crossing Jubilee. However, more than 40 of the 50-plus events are official Jubilee events. Still, all events are part of the Jubilee in spirit. The great majority of these events are free.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1540: Jeff Sessions cannot do justice as head of the Justice Department

  It was March of 1986. I was in Washington, D.C. before the Senate Judiciary Committee testifying against the nomination of Jefferson Beauregard Session for Federal District Judge. His nomination was not confirmed. Now, some 30 years later, we are faced with his nomination again. This time, it’s for United States Attorney General to head the U.S. Justice Department. This governmental agency helps pick all nominees for federal judges, U.S. attorneys and some other positions. More importantly, the Attorney General is charged with doing justice for all. In my opinion, Jeff Sessions cannot do justice as head of the Justice Department.

Gene Policinski: Julian Bond — A voice of reason, a call for change

  In a nation beset for more than 50 years by racism, divided by war, and brimming with confrontation, anger and violence — there was the voice of Julian Bond: soft spoken and serious, reasoned but no less passionate, and always, always, challenging.

  Bond, 75, was a renowned civil rights activist, vocal anti-Vietnam War protester, a former board chairman of the NAACP and a former Georgia legislator and university professor. He died Aug. 15 after a brief illness.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1468: The Voting Rights Act at 50 and the Legal Defense Fund at 75

  The Voting Rights Act at 50; the NAACP Legal Defense Fund at 75: Landmark Law That Transformed America. I was one of four panelists at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D. C. On this special occasion. I had planned what I was going to say, however, I did not say what I had planned because the format was different than I expected. It was a question and answer session throughout that was streamed live on the Smithsonian’s web site. The session will also be airing on C-SPAN in August. The following is what I had planned to say.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1438: Young people are powerful

  We forget that young people are powerful in so many ways. They change things culturally. They change things socially. They change things economically. They change things educationally. They change things technologically. We forget that young people are powerful in changing things.

  The many ways young people change things are far too numerous to explore in this Sketches. Therefore, I want to review just one front on which young people profoundly changed things. I know that Dr. King is given the credit for changes wrought during the American Civil Rights Movement. And he deserves great credit but not all or most of the credit. We forget that it was young people who were truly on the front lines in changing things.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Echoes of George Wallace in Shelby County

  The 1960s was a tumultuous time in southern politics. Race, segregation and voting rights were the paramount issues.

  George Wallace came on the scene and won the governor’s office with the most anti-integration rhetoric in history. He threw down the gauntlet with his January 1963 inaugural speech declaring, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.” White Alabamians shouted their approval.