“There are two things we should all care about: never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over,” stated Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977), a towering figure in the Black Freedom Movement of the 60s.
The students attended the private Tougaloo College, just north of Jackson, when they staged a nonviolent sit-in at the city’s main library that was reserved for white people.
A Tennessee chapter of the NAACP is urging officials to remove a statue of a Confederate general from in front of a county courthouse, echoing similar efforts throughout the South.
In 2012, a Los Angeles Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence indicated former Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca was negligent and largely insulated by his staff from the problem of excessive use of force against inmates in county jails. Baca resigned in 2014. On May 17, 2017 he was sentenced to three years in federal prison for obstructing an FBI investigation of abuses in county jails.
Tennessee is taking a tentative step toward acknowledging its legacy of lynching and other civil rights crimes. State lawmakers are weighing whether Tennessee should establish a commission that can investigate cold cases ignored during Jim Crow and decide whether to prosecute perpetrators if they’re still alive.
Relatives of Emmett Till speak out after woman’s confession
The 2016 presidential election was a massive backlash to Obama’s legacy itself. One can only assume that Donald Trump will focus on dismantling Obama’s policy achievements.