Emmett Till Bullet-Proof Memorial with Surveillance Cameras Opens in Mississippi

The sordid, scarred American story of Emmett Till’s lynching in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi opened a new chapter on Saturday, with the installation of a bullet-proof memorial for the civil rights martyr. Members of Till’s family gathered at Graball Landing, the spot where the pummeled and brutalized, horrifically-disfigured body of the 14-year-old Chicago boy was pulled from the Tallahatchie River after his murder in 1955.

The staggeringly-brutal attack was the result of Till allegedly offending a white woman Carolyn Bryant in her family’s grocery store. Decades later, Bryant disclosed that she had fabricated part of the testimony regarding her interaction with Till, specifically the portion where she accused Till of grabbing her waist and uttering obscenities; "that part's not true.”

Till’s murderers led by Roy Bryant, husband to Carolyn Bryant, and J.W. Milam were absolved of all crimes by what can only be described as a kangaroo court, adding fuel to the historic event largely seen as the catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.

From left to right, Ole Miss students Ben LeClere, John Howe, and Howell Logan posing with guns by the bullet-ridden plaque marking the place where the body of murdered civil rights icon Emmett Till was pulled from the Tallahatchie River. The photo was posted to LeClere’s Instagram account in March.

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Could Climate Change Fuel the Rise of Right-Wing Nationalism?

Could Climate Change Fuel the Rise of Right-Wing Nationalism?

By Joshua Conrad Jackson, Doctoral Student, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Michele Gelfand, Distinguished University Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland. First published on The Conversation.

Two trends have defined the past decade and both have been on display at this year’s session of the United Nations General Assembly.

One has been the escalating effects of climate change, which were the focus of the United Nations’ Climate Action Summit. Forest fires, floods and hurricanes are all rising in their frequency and severity. Eight of the last 10 years have been the warmest on record. Marine biologists warned that coral reefs in the U.S. could disappear entirely by the 2040s.

The other trend has been the surge of right-wing nationalist politics across Western nations, which includes Donald Trump’s election in the U.S., and the rise of nationalist political parties around the world.

Indeed, the first four speeches of the United Nations general debate were given by Brazilian right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro, Trump, Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and far-right Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

Central Park Women's Suffrage Monument Redesigned to Include Sojourner Truth

For nearly a year, the proposed Central Park statue honoring women’s suffrage in America has been plagued in controversy. It’s difficult to believe that in 2019, planners of the monument could be so tone-deaf to the race-related arguments swirling around America’s women’s rights history.

The Women’s March 2017, organized by a group of women who refused to honor legendary women’s rights Hillary Clinton, after her defeat by Donald Trump, signaled a new day for setting the record straight — the truth and also new lies and distortions — about the history of American feminism.

The original design by sculptor Meredith Bergmann visually elevated two prominent white women — Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton — over a scrolling list of 22 other women, seven of them women of color. AOC disagrees with the complaint that Anthony and Stanton were metaphorically “standing’ on the other women.” But they certainly look like boss ladies at a time when younger people are rejecting hierarchy and white superiority, along with a nonexistent recognition of the contributions of people of color — and slaves specifically — in building America.

For context, there is NO statue of any nonfictional female of any skin color in Central Park and around New York, writes the New York Times. The park currently features no historical women but statues of fictional girls like Alice from Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and Juliet from William Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet.’

While a new visual of the proposed statue to be erected on Central Park’s Literary Walk by 2020 is not available, it’s a miracle that the proposed design was aborted at all. Women including Gloria Steinem helped turn back the design against the nearly insurmountable rules and regulations that defined its artistic creation initially and the legitimate controversy that ensued.

“Our goal has always been to honor the diverse women in history who fought for equality and justice and who dedicated their lives to fight for Women’s Rights,” Pam Elam said in a statement. The president of the Monumental Women’s Statue Fund, the group financing the sculpture, added: “It is fitting that Anthony, Stanton, and Truth stand together in this statue as they often did in life.” via Hyperallergic.

Related: Central Park Women's Suffrage Monument by Sculptor Meredith Bergmann Unveiled AOC She

"Isolated" Societies, a Tourist Fantasy and Bringing Jesus to their Inhabitants

ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA. PHOTO BY PAU CASALS ON UNSPLASH

"Isolated" Societies, a Tourist Fantasy and Bringing Jesus to their Inhabitants

In November 2018, John Chau was killed in the Andaman Islands, wanting to access the island of Nord-Sentinel for, he said, "bring Jesus" to its inhabitants.

In the same archipelago, on the southern and central Andaman Islands, the Jarawa are in a situation almost opposite to that of the Sentinels, known to live in complete isolation.

There, on the other hand, attempts to ban the presence of tourists - regarded as carriers of an unhealthy curiosity and harmful influences - are more or less total failure since they have access to island communities and behave with them. like the Europeans of XIX th century during the colonial exhibitions even throwing them bananas .

Emmett Till Memorial to Be Replaced With Bulletproof Sign Due to Repeated Vandalism

Emmett Till Memorial to Be Replaced With Bulletproof Sign Due to Repeated Vandalism

In 2007, a sign was erected along the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi, marking the spot where the body of Emmett Till was pulled from the water in 1955. The murder of Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who was brutally killed by two white men, became a galvanizing incident of the Civil Rights Movement. But over the years, the memorial commemorating his death has been repeatedly vandalized—first stolen, then shot at, then shot at again, according to Nicole Chavez, Martin Savidge and Devon M. Sayers of CNN. Now, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission is planning to replace the damaged memorial with a bulletproof sign.

This will be the fourth sign that the commission has placed at the site. The first was swiped in 2008, and no arrests were ever made in connection with the incident. The replacement marker was vandalized with bullets, more than 100 rounds over the course of several years. Just 35 days after it was erected in 2018, the third sign was shot at as well.

The third memorial made headlines recently when Jerry Mitchell of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, in conjunction with ProPublica, revealed that three University of Mississippi students had been suspended from their fraternity house after posing in front of the sign with guns, in a photo that was posted to the private Instagram account of one of the students. The Justice Department is reportedly investigating the incident.

The sign has now been taken down, and a new one is “on its way,” Patrick Weems, executive director of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission, said last week, according to CBS News. Chavez, Savidge and Sayers of CNN report that the replacement memorial will weigh 600 pounds and be made of reinforced steel. It is expected to go up by the Tallahatchie River in October.

“Unlike the first three signs, this sign calls attention to the vandalism itself,” the commission noted. “We believe it is important to keep a sign at this historic site, but we don’t want to hide the legacy of racism by constantly replacing broken signs. The commission hopes this sign will endure, and that it will continue to spark conversations about Till, history, and racial justice.”

The Forgotten History of Segregated Swimming Pools and Amusement Parks

The Forgotten History of Segregated Swimming Pools and Amusement Parks

By Victoria W. Wolcott

Summers often bring a wave of childhood memories: lounging poolside, trips to the local amusement park, languid, steamy days at the beach.

These nostalgic recollections, however, aren’t held by all Americans.

Municipal swimming pools and urban amusement parks flourished in the 20th century. But too often, their success was based on the exclusion of African Americans.

As a social historian who has written a book on segregated recreation, I have found that the history of recreational segregation is a largely forgotten one. But it has had a lasting significance on modern race relations.

Swimming pools and beaches were among the most segregated and fought over public spaces in the North and the South.

White Nationalist James Fields Jr, Heather Heyer's Charlottesville Assassin Sentenced To Life In Prison

White Nationalist James Fields Jr, Heather Hyer's Charlottesville Assasin Sentenced To Life In Prison

James Fields, Jr., the white supremacist who murdered Heather Heyer and injured dozens of others driving his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017 has received a life sentence in federal prison.

Prosecutors had argued that Mr. Fields’s racist, anti-Semitic beliefs motivated his decision to attend the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville and use his automobile in an act of domestic terrorism. Thomas T. Cullen, the United States attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said after hearing the sentence that the case set a precedent for future instances of domestic terrorism.

Mr. Fields was one of hundreds of young white supremacists who swarmed Charlottesville in August 2017, marching with tiki torches shouting “The Jews will not replace us.”

‘Willful Recklessness’: Trump Pushes for Indefinite Family Detention As Sanitary Crisis Mounts

‘Willful Recklessness’: Trump Pushes for Indefinite Family Detention As Sanitary Crisis Mounts

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) has been tracking about 40,000 expedited family cases “regardless of whether they reflect a priority designation” in order to ensure they are completed “without undue delay” at ten immigration courts in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, and San Francisco. Nearly 8,000 of those cases have already ended with removal orders. These are some of the migrants ICE agents could now target.

The administration has buttressed its push to detain more families by arguing that few of them show up for their immigration court hearings if they are released. At a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on June 11, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan said “family units” accounted for two-thirds of migrants processed at the Southwest border in May, and that 90 percent of families the EOIR was monitoring didn’t appear for court hearings. Several reports contradict this claim.

One case-by-case study of immigration court records showed “as of the end of May 2019 one or more removal hearings had already been held for nearly 47,000 newly arriving families seeking refuge in this country. Of these, almost six out of every seven families released from custody had shown up for their initial court hearing.”

The study further noted that “multiple hearings are [usually] required before a case is decided. For those who are represented, more than 99 percent had appeared at every hearing held.”

The Resilience of Barbados Counters Trump’s ‘Sh-thole’ Remarks

The Resilience of Barbados Counters Trump’s ‘Sh-thole’ Remarks

By J.M. Opal, Associate Professor of History and Chair, History and Classical Studies, McGill University. First published on The Conversation.

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, former attorney and future inmate Michael Cohen revealed some of the uglier things Donald Trump said to him during their many years together.

Among the alleged quotes: “Name one country run by a Black person that’s not a sh—hole.” (One wonders how Trump characterized the United States when Barack Obama was President.)

Rarely stated so bluntly, this racist trope is widespread. As always, Trump gives vulgar expression to quiet prejudice, making him sound “honest” to about 40 per cent of Americans no matter how many lies he tells. As Sarah Huckabee Sanders noted after a similar revelation last year, Trump’s straight-shooting bigotry is one thing his fans love about him.

Those who don’t love him need to fight back with specific examples from the real world. Time and again, we need to highlight the big, complex reality that Trump and many of his supporters call “fake news.” Otherwise, his twisted version of the truth will continue to displace objective reality.

Why Blackface? A Scholar Weighs In On Why Blackface Is Part of American Culture's DNA

Covington Catholic High School Students carry on blackface tradition at 2012 basketball game.

Why Blackface? A Scholar Weighs In On Why Blackface Is Part of American Culture's DNA

By Michael Millner, Associate Professor of English and American Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell . First published on The Convervsation

Blackface is part of American culture’s DNA.

But America has forgotten that.

For almost two weeks, conflict has raged over the use of blackface by two current Virginia politicians when they were younger. The revelations have threatened the men’s jobs and their standing in the community.

The use of blackface is now politically and culturally radioactive. Yet there was a time when it wasn’t.

I teach the history of blackface in the United States. Like much of America, my undergraduate students suffer from a kind of historical amnesia about its role in American culture. They know little about its long history, and they haven’t considered its prevalence and significance in everyday American life.

Most of all, they’ve never asked themselves, “Why blackface?”

Michaela Coel Launches Hugo Blick Netflix Drama 'Black Earth Rising' About Rwandan Genocide

Michaela Coel Launches Hugo Blick Netflix Drama 'Black Earth Rising' About Rwandan Genocide

The February 2019 issue of Vogue US touches base with writer and actor Michaela Coel in a small cafe near her London apartment. AOC first met up with the Bafta-winning actor Coel in the February issue of British Vogue. Her essay ‘Flight Or Fight: Michaela Coel On Why We Need To Talk About Race’ was calming, as she dug deeper into the topic of ‘white privilege’ and racial stereotypes than the usual talking heads. I can learn from Michaela Coel.

"We are not campaigning for you to hand over your money, job, Upper Class flights and land... rather it’s the freeing of your minds from history we want"

Coel, now 31, rose to fame in Britain in the “semiautobiographical and widkedly funny TV series ‘Chewing Gum’. After dropping out of university twice, Coel ended up in drama school. So totally disenchanted with the roles offered to her, she wrote her own one-woman theatrical show, one that eventually became ‘Chewing Gum’.

‘Black Earth Rising’

Her latest TV project ‘Black Earth Rising’ is an eight-part drama by Hugo Blick, in which Coel plays Kate Ashby, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. The series will debut on Netflix January 25.

Kate is raised as the adopted daughter of Eve (Harriet Walter), a British barrister, who joins forces with her colleague Michael (John Goodman) take on the prosecution of an African warlord who played a role in ending the genocide.

In the series, Kate has to reevaluate her ideas of right and wrong, which is perhaps why she wrote such an insightful essay on race a year ago. “This role changed me as a person,” she says.

Mitch Landrieu Launches E Pluribus Unum Fund For Racial Reconciliation With Backing By Emerson Collective

Mitch Landrieu Launches E Pluribus Unum Fund For Racial Reconciliation With Backing By Emerson Collective

The removal of the statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in New Orleans, was the second of four Confederate monuments scheduled by then New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu for relocation in advance of the city’s 300 anniversary. The larger-than-life image of Davis atop an ornate granite pedestal roughly 15-feet high was erected in 1911, nearly 50 years after the end of the war, and commissioned by the Jefferson Davis Memorial Association.

A month earlier workers dismantled an obelisk that was erected in 1891 to honor members of the Crescent City White League who in 1874 fought in the Reconstruction-era Battle of Liberty Place against the racially integrated New Orleans police and state militia.

Two other works were also removed in the summer of 2017: a bronze statue of Gen. Robert E Lee that has stood in a traffic circle, named Lee Circle, in the city’s central business district since 1884, and an equestrian statue of P.G.T. Beauregard, a Confederate general. 

Former Alabama Senator and Attorney General in the Trump Administration Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III bears the Confederate general’s name.

Protests on both sides of the Confederate statue debate were fierce, prompting Mayor Landrieu to make an eloquent, emotional and gifted speech on the subject of removing the Confederate monuments on Friday, May 19, 2017.

The full text of Landrieu’s speech was published by The New York Times. I consider it to be one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard — from its sweeping beginning to its soul-wrenching end.

Thank you for coming.

The soul of our beloved City is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way — for both good and for ill. It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans — the Choctaw, Houma Nation, the Chitimacha. Of Hernando De Soto, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the Acadians, the Islenos, the enslaved people from Senegambia, Free People of Colorix, the Haitians, the Germans, both the empires of France and Spain. The Italians, the Irish, the Cubans, the south and central Americans, the Vietnamese and so many more. Read on.

Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith Celebrates Mississippi Confederacy At Every Opportunity

“I ENJOYED MY TOUR OF BEAUVOIR. THE JEFFERSON DAVIS HOME AND PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY LOCATED IN BILOXI,” HYDE-SMITH WROTE IN A CAPTION ON THIS PHOTOS POSTED TO HER FB PAGE IN 2014. DAVIS WAS THE CONFEDERATE PRESIDENT DURING THE CIVIL WAR. HIS FORMER ESTATE NOW SERVES AS A MUSEUM AND LIBRARY IN HIS HONOR.

“THIS IS A MUST SEE,” HYDE-SMITH WROTE. “CURRENTLY ON DISPLAY ARE ARTIFACTS CONNECTED TO THE DAILY LIFE OF THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER INCLUDING WEAPONS. MISSISSIPPI HISTORY AT ITS BEST!”

Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith Celebrates Mississippi Confederacy At Every Opportunity

U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith attended and graduated from a segregation academy that was set up so that white parents could avoid having to send their children to schools with black students, a yearbook reveals. Hyde-Smith enrolled her own daughter at Brookhaven Academy, another Mississippi segregation school founded in 1970, the Jackson Free Press reported.

The latest race-related battle around Tuesday’s Mississippi Senate race with Democrat Mike Espy follows a recent leaked tape in which Hyde-Smith said that she would gladly attend a “public hanging” is one of her supporters invited her. The statement was outrageous, given Mississippi’s history as the lynching capital of the United States.

One of the most famous lynchings in Mississippi was the savage and brutal death of 14-year old Chicago child Emmett Till.

Hyde-Smith is very proud of Mississippi history and has no hesitation to celebrate the segregated south, saying that the Confederacy represents “Mississippi history at its best.”

I thought of Hillary Clinton, when reading this story. At considerable personal risk to herself, then 24-year-old law student Hillary was working for Marian Wright Edelman, the civil rights activist and prominent advocate for children. Mrs. Edelman had sent her to Alabama in 1972 to help prove that the Nixon administration was not enforcing the legal ban on granting tax-exempt status to so-called segregation academies, the estimated 200 private academies that sprang up in the South to cater to white families after a 1969 Supreme Court decision forced public schools to integrate.

Hillary posed as a young wife, telling the guidance counselor of a seg school that her husband had just taken a job in Dothan, that they were a churchgoing family and that they were looking for a school for their son.

Like many white activists from the North who traveled south to help on civil rights issues, Mrs. Clinton confronted a different world in Dothan, separate and unequal, and a sting of injustice she had previously only read about.

Megyn Kelly's 'Blackface' Comments Leave Her NBC News Future Very Cloudy

Megyn Kelly's 'Blackface' Comments Leave Her NBC News Future Very Cloudy

I missed this Megyn Kelly 'blackface' stupidity from Tuesday. The NBC face been on thin ice anyway, as Kelly's ratings have not been great. Her audience is 35% or more people -- largely women -- of color.

She still hasn't recovered from her run-in with Jane Fonda, choosing to ask Fonda about plastic surgery rather than her activism, which was the scheduled topic. Fonda abruptly ended the interview.

So Megyn Kelly, who already has a track record over objecting to black Santas, wonders out loud -- in the midst of this Trump crisis -- why whites can't wear blackface on Halloween. If the woman wanted to get her contract cancelled, she just delivered her own knock-out punch.

Kelly’s off the air Thursday and everything is up in the air at NBC. Rumors are intense that her departure is in negotiations. Given the outrage among her own colleagues over her ‘blackface’ remarks, it’s difficult to understand how Megyn Kelly can survive.

What was she thinking!!! Just last night I wrote a terse pushback over Instagram and Twitter outrage that Kendall Jenner was wearing frizzy curls in a photoshoot. Generally I feel that our culture has become way too politically correct. However, blackface??? Are you out of your mind Megyn Kelly? Because I refuse to buy the dumb blonde moniker, being one myself.

Architect Sir David Adjaye Curates Artist Lina Iris Viktor For Wondereur.com

Sir David Adjaye curates artist Lina Iris Viktor

Spectacular paintings by artist Lina Iris Viktor are on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art until Jan. 6, 2019. Introduced to her work via Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, further investigation about Viktor brought me to Wondereur.com, an outstanding website curating artists by other credentialed creatives.

New York based Viktor is profiled by Sir David Adjaye, a leading figure in the architecture world, and lead designer of the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. In 2017, TIME magazine named Adjaye as the world’s most influential architect. He was also knighted by the British government in 2017, an opportunity for Adjaye to reiterate the responsibility and potential of architects “to effect positive social change.”

Thelma Golden, the director and chief curator of the Adjaye-designed Studio Museum in Harlem wrote in TIME: “His work – deeply rooted in both the present moment and the complex context of history – has envisioned new ways for culture to be represented and reflected in the built environment. Nowhere is this more evident than in his recent triumph on the National Mall.

"How can a design acknowledge, and embody, the weight of this monumental history and yet transcend it right before your eyes? How can a building be true to the earthbound burdens of centuries of oppression and struggle, while at the same time displaying the faith, joy and triumphs of African-­American life, so that the structure soars into the light?

“In his epoch-making design, David made us aware of those questions and brilliantly solved them, with a singular gesture.”

In his curator’s statement for Wondereur.com about Lina Iris Viktor, Sir David Adjaye describes her work:

“Lina’s work is as evocative as it is strikingly beautiful. Her explorations with gold possess incredible intelligence, drawing out at once powerful connections to global indigenous heritages, opulent futuristic visions of black beauty, and vast philosophical notions of cosmology, geometry, and atomic matter. Her work crosses confidently across a landscape of science, technology, culture and identity with a timeless elegance and a casual defiance that is definitively modern.”

At New Orleans Museum of Art, Lina Iris Viktor Explores Blackness As A Source Of Energy and Creation

ELEVENTH. 2018. LINA IRIS VIKTOR. PURE 24-KARAT GOLD, ACRYLIC, GOUACHE, PRINT ON CANVAS. 65 X 50 IN. COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND MARIANE IBRAHIM GALLERY, SEATTLE

At New Orleans Museum of Art, Lina Iris Viktor Explores Blackness As A Source Of Energy and Creation

New York artist Lina Iris Viktor

At New Orleans Museum of Art, Lina Iris Viktor Explores Blackness As A Source Of Energy and Creation

“Usually I am more about trying to bridge divides of thought where people think things are in very defined spaces,” artist Lina Iris Viktor tells Harper’s Bazaar Arabia from her studio in New York. “I am all about making bridges.” The painter and conceptual artist is preparing new work for her first solo museum exhibition now open at the New Orleans Museum of Art entitled Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred.

Known for large-scale black and gold works on paper and canvas, the sculptural surfaces of Viktor’s pieces shimmer opulently with densely patterned iconography. There is something searingly original and contemporary about her almost cosmic composition of hieroglyphic elements that recall myriad forms, from Aboriginal Dreamtime paintings to West African textiles.

Born to Liberian parents, Lina Iris Viktor lives in London and Johannesburg, travelling and studying widely. The artist is not inspired by a specific location. Rather “It’s about experience and worldliness and understanding that there is no centre.”

Killer Mike Joins Atlanta's High Museum Board, Talks Arts Education & Inclusivity

Kerry James Marshall's 'Past Times' 1997 Image, private collection of rapper and Atlanta High Museum Board Member Michael Render

Killer Mike Joins Atlanta's High Museum Board, Talks Arts Education & Inclusivity

Atlanta’s High Museum of Art has been unusually successful in attracting young people and people of color to the museum in recent years. Now, Killer Mike, the 43-year-old rapper, who is a committed activist and father of four, is the newest member appointed to the board

Killer Mike, whose given name is Michael Render, is known for hard-hitting, hip hop rhymes about income inequality, police brutality, and systemic racism, topics that also infuse his political commentary and activism. The rapper garnered headlines with Democratic progressives in 2016 with his embrace of Bernie Sanders. Render has become a sought-after contributor on the news and political panels, and a guest lecturer at some of America’s top colleges and universities with his articulated views on the intersection of art and culture.

Beyond the headlines, Killer Mike has deep roots in the visual arts (he turned down several fine art scholarships to pursue a career in music), his appointment to the board of Atlanta's major American museum is uncharted territory for the Atlanta native. Killer Mike is up for the challenge.

In a conversation with artnet News, the rapper outlined his goals to increase African American and working-class attendance at the High. Render also touched on the importance of arts education, the role of public schools, and the convergence of the art world and hip hop in recent years.."

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL’S PAST TIMES (1997). IMAGE COURTESY OF SOTHEBY’S.

CEO Alison Ettel, AKA #PermitPatty, Throws Her White Woman Weight Around With 8 Yr. Old Black Girl Entrepreneur

CEO Alison Ettel, AKA #PermitPatty, Throws Her White Woman Weight Around With 8 Yr. Old Black Girl Entrepreneur

In Oakland #PermitPatty met a strong wall of resistance to her domineering, white ways with 8 yr. old Jordan, who was selling water on the street on a hot day.

This is public shaming of the best kind, and CEO Alison Ettel will surely wish that she had just stayed in bed that day. Better yet, she should have used one of her own products to chill out. This is a good read about social justice with a bad ending for #PermitPatty!!!

Queen Elizabeth II & Ghana President Nkrumah In A 1961 Diplomat Foxtrot Watched In Black & White

Queen Elizabeth II & Ghana President Nkrumah In A 1961 Diplomat Foxtrot Watched In Black & White

In consenting to a foxtrot -- yes, it happened for real -- with Nkrumah, Elizabeth II achieves more in a few minutes than British diplomats dealing with the young nation have managed to achieve in weeks. The dance scene itself is quite dazzling, as Elizabeth finds her Jackie-O side. Comparing the images from 'The Crown' above and the real-life photos below,  there is more physical space between the couple in the real-life dance -- if these images don't distort the truth. And we must always remember that 'The Crown' is a fictionalized account of history, viewed through the lens of the British Empire and Britain's crumbling monarchy.  

In reality, the Akosombo Dam was completed in 1965, in a project jointly financed by Ghana, the World Bank, the United States and the United Kingdom. Few sources -- even those who write that 'The Crown' is racist ( well SURE it is, given that colonialism was racist) -- debate that this foxtrot between Elizabeth II and President Kwame Nkrumah -- The Lion of Africa --was a diplomatic success on multiple fronts.

Charlottesville Car Killer James Alex Fields Jr. Charged With First Degree Murder

Charlottesville Car Killer James Alex Fields Jr. Charged With First Degree Murder

Self-professed neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr., 20, has been charged with first-degree murder Thursday, after being jailed on lesser charges since the Aug. 12 for the death of Charlottesville protester Heather D. Heyer. 

Fields had been charged with second-degree murder, punishable by five to 40 years in prison. WaPo writes:

Authorities had initially said that 19 people were injured, in addition to Heyer, when Fields allegedly rammed his 2010 Dodge Challenger into another vehicle on purpose on a crowded street. But testimony at the preliminary hearing revealed that there were many more victims. Besides first-degree murder, Fields, who lived in Ohio before his arrest, is charged with eight counts of “aggravated malicious wounding,” meaning that at least eight of the 35 people who were hurt suffered what Virginia law describes as “permanent and significant physical impairment," writes the New York Times.