“I am deeply saddened by the untimely passing of my friend and colleague, Rep. Hastings of Florida,” Texas Democratic Congressman Al Green wrote in an email to the Black Press and posted to Twitter.
An annual highlight of the conference was the 2020 NNPA Publisher Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented to The Dallas Examiner’s distinguished publisher, Mollie Finch Belt.
In 1965, Lewis and fellow activist Hosea Williams led what was planned as a peaceful 54-mile march through Alabama from Selma to Montgomery. The march, a protest of the discriminatory practices and Jim Crow laws that prevented African Americans from voting, would be remembered in history as “Bloody Sunday,” one of the most dramatic and violent incidents of the American Civil Rights Movement.
Delucca “Lucca” Rolle, the 15-year-old high school student who was punched and had his head slammed against the concrete by law enforcement officers last month, joined his attorney and several prominent civil rights activists in a peaceful demonstration in Florida to denounce police brutality. Rolle and others chanted, “Justice will be served,” as they marched toward New Mount Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale. Attorney and activist Ben Crump, Broward/Fort Lauderdale NAACP president Marsha Ellison, National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., Westside Gazette Publisher Bobby Henry and the late Trayvon Martin’s Mother Sybrina Fulton,
“We need to make sure we convey the message that the only crime committed on that day was not from the young man, the black children that were there, but from the two deputies and the way they manhandled those kids,” said local NAACP President Marsha Ellison.
With one of pop music’s most profound voices performing during a ceremony that included a video tribute featuring tributes from a mayor, a congressman, a school superintendent and a university president, Tennessee Tribune Publisher Rosetta Miller Perry clearly was the star of the night.