Fifty-nine years ago on Thursday, white state troopers brutalized voting rights protesters as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Footage of the carnage — one officer cracked 25-year-old John Lewis’ skull with a billy club — enraged the country, and galvanized widespread support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, […]
Politics & Policy
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy
Why Super Tuesday Is a ‘Dress Rehearsal’ for the General Election
Kristin Powell vividly remembers watching the Super Tuesday returns in February 2008 and being consumed by a single question: Can he actually make it? A college student spending a semester in Italy at the time, Powell was referring to Barack Obama, the youthful U.S. senator from Illinois who was challenging the establishment darling Hillary Clinton […]
Posted inInside Capital B, Politics & Policy
Introducing Everything’s Political From Capital B
Whether it’s the subjects we learn in school, the hairstyles we wear to work, or the art we make about our experiences, Black people in America are regularly reminded that our lives are lived under the influence of politics. In our new politics and culture newsletter, Everything’s Political, Capital B reporter Brandon Tensley will go […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Voting
How the Legacy of a Reconstruction-Era Massacre Shapes Voting Rights Today
Shauna Sias, 48, has lived in Opelousas, Louisiana, almost her entire life. And thanks to her father, a civil rights advocate who battled racial segregation in the Deep South, she’s always known about the massacre that shattered the small Louisiana city during Reconstruction. Over the course of around two weeks beginning on Sept. 28, 1868, […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
60 Years After the Civil Rights Act, Equal Opportunity Is Under Attack
There’s too much at stake with constant assaults on civil rights — and a new report is calling on Black Americans to organize and “fight for the soul of America.” The National Urban League’s State of Black America report comes just months ahead of the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Why Some Black South Carolinians Aren’t Responding to Nikki Haley’s Message
Kym Smith is passionate about a wide range of causes, from pushing for South Carolina public schools to include Black history in their curricula to bringing adequate health care to Black communities. But rarely, if ever, does Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley grapple with issues of deep-seated racial inequality, said Smith, a 36-year-old mother and […]
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy
‘New Literacy Test’: The Black Organizers Waging War on Disinformation
Every time an election looms, Baton Rouge resident Ashley Shelton notices the red flags — the signs sprinkled around the city and other parts of Louisiana that give the wrong information about when voters can cast their ballots. She doesn’t know who the bad actors are. But whenever she sees one of these signs — […]
Posted inPartner Content, Politics & Policy
New York Could Elect the Second Black Republican Woman to Congress
Originally published by The 19th Mazi Melesa Pilip, a Jewish, Ethiopian-born immigrant and mother of seven, is campaigning to keep New York’s swingy 3rd Congressional District red in a special election on Tuesday. If elected, she would be the second Black Republican congresswoman. The relative newcomer is facing Democrat Tom Suozzi — who previously represented […]
Posted inPartner Content, Politics & Policy
For the First Time, Black Women Are Leading Democrats in Early Primary States
Originally published by The 19th President Joe Biden faces no serious threat to the Democratic nomination as he seeks a second term. But the Democratic presidential primaries, beginning with South Carolina on Saturday, offer the first real window into his strength with the Black voters who make up his key voting base. An endorsement from […]
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy
‘A Lot to Be Concerned About’: Jim Clyburn on the Stakes of the 2024 Election
Black South Carolinians saved President Joe Biden’s struggling 2020 White House bid. Now, on Saturday, in this cycle’s first sanctioned Democratic primary, the state’s Black electorate will have an opportunity to set the tone of the 2024 race and center the issues that matter most to Black communities, including the right to vote, health care, […]