Woke – Los Angeles Sentinel

Woke

Fighting to Keep Blackness

March 7, 2025

A group of African American people protest racial injustice. Photo courtesy of NNPA By April Ryan As this nation observes the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, the words of President Trump reverberate. “This country will be WOKE no longer”, an emboldened Trump offered during his speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. Since then, Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell posted on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter this morning that “Elon Musk and his DOGE bros have ordered GSA to sell off the site of the historic Freedom Riders Museum in Montgomery.” Her post

Religion

Words of the Week – Stay Woke

Rev. Dr. Kelvin Calloway, Contributing WriterAugust 24, 2023

Scripture: I Thessalonians 5:1-11 The phrase stay woke has been present in African American Vernacular English (Ebonics) since the 1930s. It is referred to as an awareness of social and political issues affecting African Americans. The phrase was uttered in recordings from the mid-century by my wife’s great uncle, folk singer Huddie Leadbetter (Lead Belly). He used the phrase as part of a spoken afterword to his 1938 recording of his song “Scottsboro Boys,” which tells the story of nine teenagers falsely accused, convicted and jailed of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. Erykah Badu admonished her post