As the end of the summer approaches, Congress returns to Washington, and the November elections move into their stretch run, it seems a good time to try to assess where exactly we are in terms of this second Trump administration…
Chinese civil rights lawyer remembered 9 years after disappearing
Nine years after Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng disappeared, his wife still has no answers about whether he is alive, where he is being held or when their family might see him again. For Geng He, the anniversary of…
Teaching Black history in the Trump age
Since assuming power, the Trump administration has aimed to guard the myth of America’s history as uniformly inclusive, above critique, and unifying, and it has protected the sensibilities of its predominantly white political base along the way.
NBCUSA opens advocacy center in DC
A historically Black denomination has opened an advocacy center in the heart of Washington, D.C., to protect civil rights, champion religious freedom and to be a voice for the poor and marginalized. The National Baptist Convention USA Inc., announced the…
Trump faces barrage of lawsuits, loses hundreds of cases
President Donald Trump says courts are “highly politicized” and judges treat him “so unfairly.” It’s true that no previous president has been the subject of so many lawsuits in the first 18 months of a term, but no previous president…
The Black Church cannot remain America’s emergency moral infrastructure
On Sunday mornings across America, many Black pastors stand behind pulpits carrying far more than sermon notes. Some are preaching only days after burying another teenager lost to gun violence. Some are trying to comfort congregations anxious about layoffs, housing…
Coalition says Trump admin allows lenders to discriminate
A coalition of consumer protection groups filed a federal lawsuit to stop implementation of a new rule that would dismantle decades of safeguards against discrimination in lending practices. The rule issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would weaken the…
SPLC pleads not guilty to feds’ fraud charges
The Southern Poverty Law Center pleaded not guilty to 11 fraud-related charges and is tentatively set to face trial Oct. 5 in an Alabama federal court. SPLC Interim President Bryan Fair entered the plea May 7 to the indictment handed…
SPLC fights back claiming Blanche lied to grand jury
The Southern Poverty Law Center filed two motions in federal court in response to a federal indictment accusing the civil rights organization of fraud. The U.S. Department of Justice claims the group, which tracks and reports on hate groups, misled…
She’s not a Muslim, but she’s working to defend them in Oklahoma
Going to work for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma was a natural fit for civil rights attorney Veronica Laizure, despite the fact she isn’t Muslim. “I consider it sort of an adoptive community to myself as a nonreligious…
We’ve lost one more person who could say, ‘I was there’
On Friday, our nation bid its final farewell to a Civil Rights icon. As thousands of mourners poured into House of Hope Baptist Church in Chicago to remember Jesse Jackson Sr., I was reminded of my own powerful moment with a…
‘If you want to honor my father, then do what he did’
“If you want to honor my father, then do what he did,” Jonathan L. Jackson told the opening session of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference in Chicago Feb. 23. The son of Civil Rights leader Jesse Jackson brought the crowd…