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Remembering Selma 1965 and The March That Changed America

The Editors — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:53:57 +0000

By The Editors Friday, March 5, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) marked the 45th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma in the spirit the marchers of that day would have appreciated—by working with the citizens of Selma and other communities to ensure the voting rights won that day remain secure.

Passing the Torch, Assessing the Toll: The FAMU Jail-In 50 Years Later

The Editors — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:38:50 +0000

By Tananarive Due Fifty years ago, my mother, Dr. Patricia Stephens Due, and my aunt, Priscilla Stephens Kruize, were among five Florida A&M University students who spent 49 days in jail after being arrested for ordering food at a Tallahassee Woolworth lunch counter—the first “jail-in” in the fledgling civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Census Bureau Gives States New Option on Counting Inmates

The Editors — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:09:28 +0000

By The Editors This month the U.S. Census Bureau issued new guidelines that could significantly alter how inmates in state prisons are counted for the census. That, in turn, could affect whether voting districts across the country gain or lose population in advance of the 2011 Congressional and state legislative redistricting.

Temporary Protected Status for Haitian Immigrants One Step in Right Direction

The Editors — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:08:11 +0000

By Olympia Duhart Shortly after the earthquake, the Obama administration granted temporary protected status, or TPS, for at least 100,000 Haitian immigrants living in the United States without proper documentation. The special status would also extend to about 30,000 Haitians who had been ordered deported. The status is only offered to Haitians in the United States as of January 12, 2010, the day the earthquake struck.

The Tea Party Convention: What if it were us … and why it’s not

The Editors — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:06:58 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels As it happened, the Tea Party Convention, which began last Thursday and ended Sunday, was bracketed by two documents which cast in sharp relief the true nature of the political struggle that burst into the open when Barack Obama won the Democratic Party nomination for President and then captured the White House.

Obama, Race and Representation

The Editors — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:06:43 +0000

By Manning Marable Early on in their deliberation process, the Obama pre-campaign group recognized that most white Americans would never vote for a black Presidential candidate. However, they were convinced that most whites would embrace, and vote for, a remarkable, qualified Presidential candidate who happened to be black.

The (Missed) Opportunity of a Lifetime

The Editors — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:38:35 +0000

By Leslie Proll When President Obama took office last January, hopes were high that the right wing’s long stronghold on the federal courts had come to an end. LDF and other civil rights advocates were eager for a new day when fair and impartial judges would once again be nominated and confirmed in large numbers.

Naming Names: What Will We Call Ourselves Next?

The Editors — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:53:20 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels As someone who was born a Negro – that’s what it says on my birth certificate -- I wonder how anyone who has any understanding of black Americans’ history could think that the term “Negro,” or any of the other historical names black Americans have called themselves during their four-century sojourn in America, are demeaning or dishonorable.

The Word “Negro” and the 2010 Census Form

The Editors — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:21:08 +0000

By the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Political Participation Practice Group Recent online polls and news reports have raised a question about the use of the word “Negro” on the 2010 Census form. The brewing controversy focuses on the derogatory history of the term and its connection to racial segregation.

Federal Court Strikes Down Washington State’s Felon Disfranchisement Law in Landmark Voting Rights Case

The Editors — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:55:52 +0000

By The Editors In a precedent-setting decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today struck down the state of Washington’s law barring felons from voting. It ruled that the law violates the federal Voting Rights Act because of widespread racism, racial discrimination and bias in the state’s criminal justice system.

Blacks ‘Cannot Afford’ Not to be Counted in the 2010 Census

The Editors — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:21:50 +0000

By The Editors On December 16, the LDF launched Count on Change 2010, a strategic, collaborative, national public education campaign designed to substantially improve the inclusion of the Black Diaspora in the 2010 Census. “The 2000 Census overlooked 1 million people of color, more than 600,000 of whom were African American,” said John Payton, Director Counsel and President of LDF.

Leading Atlanta in Black and White: And the Winner Is…

The Editors — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:45:58 +0000

By TaRessa Stovall On December 1, in a contest described in the media as “one of the tightest political contests in decades,” 30 percent of Atlanta voters elected Reed, 40, as the city’s sixth consecutive African-American mayor since the late Maynard Jackson made history as the first African-American to lead a major Southern city in 1973.

Better to Have Reproductive Rights and Not Need Them: The Scary Truth About the Stupak-Pitts Amendment

The Editors — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:50:32 +0000

By Rev. Susan Newman One of the best lessons my mother taught me as a child is “It is better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.” This is how I feel about the looming threat of abortion restrictions being reintroduced in the Health Care Reform bill when debate begins on the Senate floor.

Gone With The Wind: The Race to Lead Atlanta, Then and Now

The Editors — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:13:43 +0000

By Mark Lassiter On Tuesday, December 1, a potentially historic mayoral election will take place in Atlanta, Georgia. The November 3 election led to a runoff between City Councilor Mary Norwood, a white woman running as an Independent, though some say she’s Republican; and Georgia State Senator Kasim Reed, a Democrat who has the support of both the local hip-hop stars and the old-school civil rights veterans.

Update: Skewing The Census: Senate Defeats Disruptive Amendment

The Editors — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:21:31 +0000

By The Editors After nearly a month of wrangling, on Thursday the U.S. Senate shelved an eleventh-hour attempt to add a new question—about citizenship and immigration status—to next year’s Census population survey.

Racism – Without Disguise

The Editors — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:07:58 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels I want to thank two people in the trans-Atlantic Anglo-American community—Rush Limbaugh here in the U.S., and Nick Griffin, head of Britain’s major white-supremacist party—for their bracing directness.

Skewing the Census: Senate to Vote on Disruptive Amendment

The Editors — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:53:44 +0000

By Doug Miller Opposition to an eleventh-hour change in a Census Bureau funding bill is building. Minority legislators and a widening array of civil rights advocacy groups have voiced concerns that a proposed amendment by U.S. Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Robert Bennett (R-UT) will have a chilling effect on Census participation and unnecessarily add hundreds of millions of dollars to the process.

Is the Supreme Court Broken?

The Editors — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:09:42 +0000

By Stacey Patton The Supreme Court’s function is to solve important questions of the law by resolving cases and controversies. So what happens when it decides to hear fewer cases? And what happens when the Court hears even fewer cases on civil rights claims?

Who Are We the People: John Payton on the Constitution and Democracy

The Editors — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:54:09 +0000

By The Editors Most Americans undoubtedly consider America’s Constitution, that set of principles and regulations set down by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1787, as essentially a static document. It was, after all, the foundation of the nation. But that’s “a mistaken notion,” John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told a rapt audience of students, faculty and others September 16 at the Constitution Day convocation of Oberlin College.

Working for Freedom: “The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement”

The Editors — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:59:08 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels Writing with an easy command of a mountain of material that encompasses six decades of enormous changes in America, Sullivan shows how critical the NAACP, now celebrating its centennial, was to the Civil Rights Movement’s ultimate legal and legislative victories that made the United States a democracy in fact not just in rhetoric.

Justice Department Moves to Reinvigorate Civil Rights Division

The Editors — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:56:39 +0000

By The Editors The effort of the Obama administration to restore the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division as an agent of the nation’s civil rights laws has apparently shifted into high gear.

STATEMENT OF THE NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND ON THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY

The Editors — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:04:48 +0000

LDF is deeply saddened by the passing of our colleague, friend and hero in the Senate—a voice once thunderous in the cause for justice is now silenced forever. At the same time, we are heartened by reflecting on the grand legacy of his life’s work, and the vision and hope he left us for a more just society.

“For the Dignity of Man and the Destiny of Democracy”: Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Voting Rights Act

The Editors — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:49:46 +0000

By Elliot Morrison “Today is a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield.” President Lyndon Baines Johnson spoke those words on a sweltering August 6th in the Capitol Rotunda forty-four years ago, prior to signing one of the most momentous legislative acts in all of American history: the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson declared that the Act’s purpose was to guarantee a right “which no American, true to our principles, can deny.”

Will They or Won’t They? They Did.

The Editors — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:00:05 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels Will they or won’t they? That question about the black vote—about whether black voters would show up at the polls on election day—hung over the bitter final months of last year’s presidential campaign like a looming thunder cloud. The answer was resounding, of course, and now, thanks to recent reports by the Census Bureau and the Pew Research Center and the Pew Hispanic Center, we have a wealth of data to quantify just how historic for black America and America November 4, 2008 was.

Detroit Diaries: Standing Up for Justice at The People’s Summit

The Editors — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:24:13 +0000

By Desiree Cooper The summit, which was held June 15 to 17, and may soon be traveling to a city near you, is a convocation of activists who have watched the bail-out of the financial institutions and the reorganizing of America’s auto industry, while wondering when any of the changes were going to trickle down to the average worker.