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Kayla Reed was born in a predominantly African American section of St. Louis where, like her own kin, many Black families had been transplanted out of the Deep South. After the death of her grandmother, Reed moved with her father from the city to a St. Louis County town located within one mile of Ferguson, Missouri, where 10 years ago, a Black teenager's fatal shooting by a white police officer changed Reed's life and shook awake a nation. "It was like in my backyard," she recalls. "I don't really feel like I considered myself much of an...
When President Joe Biden signed a proclamation Tuesday establishing a national monument honoring Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, it marked the fulfillment of a promise Till's relatives made after his death 68 years ago. The Black teenager from Chicago, whose abduction, torture and killing in Mississippi in 1955 helped propel the Civil Rights Movement, is now an American story, not just a civil rights story, said Till's cousin the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. "It has been quite a journey for me from the darkness to the light," Parker...
In suburban Detroit, it was a lost 14-year-old looking for directions. In Kansas City, it was a 16-year-old who went to the wrong house to pick up his younger brothers. There was the 12-year-old rummaging around in a yard in small-town Alabama, the 20-year-old woman who found herself in the wrong driveway in upstate New York and the cheerleader who got into the wrong car in Texas. All of them, and dozens more across America, were met by gunfire. Some were injured, some killed. In a nation where strangers are all too often seen as threats and...
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — The sound of the djembe drums started as a low tremble and grew more distinct as the musicians drew closer to the hundreds gathered inside the Memphis church. "We love you, Tyre," the drummers chanted, referring to Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man whose beating by five police officers led to his death and this funeral on the first day of Black History Month. By the time the procession reached Nichols' black casket draped in a large white bouquet, the congregation in the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church was on i...
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Tyre Nichols' family and friends remembered him with songs of faith and heartfelt tributes Wednesday, blending a celebration of his life with outraged calls for police reform after the brutal beating he endured at the hands of Memphis police. Nichols' mother, RowVaughn Wells, fought back tears as she spoke lovingly of her son. "The only thing that's keeping me going is that I truly believe that my son was sent here on assignment from God. And I guess now his assignment is done. He's gone home," she said, urging Congress t...
Zakiya Sankara-Jabar's cellphone buzzed relentlessly as a deadly storm system that spawned tornadoes throughout the U.S. South laid waste to relatives' homes and churches across a part of Alabama known as the Black Belt. Text messages and calls from loved ones, many of them hysterical, provided her with devastating updates of Thursday's storms, which tore through her native Dallas County, including the history-steeped streets of Selma. Family in the city synonymous with the civil rights movement saw their homes damaged, but they remained...
The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation launched a new relief fund Monday aimed at Black college students, alumni and dropouts overburdened by mounting education costs and the student loan debt crisis. The foundation said it set aside $500,000 for the fund and plans to award more than 500 recipients with relief payments ranging from $750 to $4,500. A public application process opened on Monday, and recipients will receive their money in January if selected. Details about the fund were shared with The Associated Press ahead of the...
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Relatives of the 10 Black people massacred in a Buffalo supermarket pleaded with the nation Thursday to confront and stop racist violence, their agony pouring out in the tears of a 12-year-old child, hours after the white man accused in the killings silently faced a murder indictment in court. Jaques "Jake" Patterson, who lost his father, covered his face with his hands as his mother spoke at a news conference. Once she finished, Jake collapsed into the arms of Rev. Al Sharpton, the veteran civil rights activist, and c...
"In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States." With those words, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson acknowledged both the struggles and progress of Black Americans in her lifetime. Her words, delivered from the South Lawn of the White House on Friday, one day after her historic Senate confirmation, were a tribute to generations of Black Americans who she said paved the way for her elevation to the nation's highest court. "I have now achieved something far beyond anything my grandparents...
NEW YORK (AP) — "Senator," she said, letting out an audible sigh. In that singular moment, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson spoke for countless Black women who have had to gather all the patience, strength and grace within to answer insinuating questions about their credentials, qualifications and character. It was Day One of questioning at the Senate Judiciary Committee as the Harvard-educated Jackson, the first Black woman to be nominated for the nation's highest court, was making history. The federal judge had to endure hours of p...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — He was at a crossroads, his life stretching out before him, his troubles largely behind him. He had enrolled at South Georgia Technical College, preparing to become an electrician, just like his uncles. But first, he decided, he would take a break. College could wait until the fall. To help keep his head clear, he ran, just about every day. Off he'd go, out of the doors of his mother's house, down the long street toward Fancy Bluff Road. Then would come the right turn onto the two-lane road lined by oak trees draped w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans plan to forcefully oppose race and diversity curricula — tapping into a surge of parental frustration about public schools — as a core piece of their strategy in the 2022 midterm elections, a coordinated effort to supercharge a message that mobilized right-leaning voters in Virginia this week and which Democrats dismiss as race-baiting. Coming out of Tuesday's elections, in which Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governor's office after aligning with conservative parent groups, the GOP signaled that it saw the f...
DETROIT (AP) — As an American leader, Colin Powell's credentials were impeccable: He was national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs and secretary of state. But his legacy as the first Black person in those roles is murkier, with some African Americans saying that his voice on their behalf could have been louder. Powell, who died Monday of COVID-19 complications, spent 35 years in the Army and rose to political prominence under Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. His stature fueled persistent s...
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — On a recent Sunday, Ernestine Alpha Gibbs returned to Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church. Not her body. She had left this Earth 18 years ago, at age 100. But on this day, three generations of her family brought Ernestine's keepsakes back to this place which meant so much to her. A place that was, like their matriarch, a survivor of a long-ago atrocity. Albums containing black-and-white photos of the grocery business that has employed generations of Gibbses. VHS cassette tapes of Ernestine reflecting on her life. E...
NEW YORK (AP) — Monifa Bandele became a community organizer in the late 1990s, after New York City police fatally shot a young, unarmed Black immigrant named Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. In the two decades since, she repeatedly witnessed police reforms that failed to stop Black people from dying at the hands of officers. Some of those reforms are now part of federal legislation being negotiated in the name of George Floyd, the Black man whose murder under the knee of a white Minneapolis officer last year sparked worldwide protests. For i...
NEW YORK (AP) — The foundation widely seen as a steward of the Black Lives Matter movement says it took in just over $90 million last year, according to a financial snapshot shared exclusively with The Associated Press. The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is now building infrastructure to catch up to the speed of its funding and plans to use its endowment to become known for more than protests after Black Americans die at the hands of police or vigilantes. "We want to uplift Black joy and liberation, not just Black death. We w...
During one of the most politically divisive years in recent memory, the number of active hate groups in the U.S. actually declined as far-right extremists migrated further to online networks, a move that has made it harder to track adherents of white nationalist and neo-Nazi ideologies. In its annual report, released Monday, the Southern Poverty Law Center said it identified 838 active hate groups operating across the U.S. in 2020. That's a decrease from the 940 documented in 2019 and the record-high of 1,020 in 2018, said the law center, which...
CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — After a third review failed to uncover enough evidence to charge the officer who fatally shot Black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, some prosecutors and civil rights leaders agree it's time to focus on changing the laws that shield police. In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said legislators need to take a hard look at laws that offer protection against prosecution for police officers that regular citizens aren't afforded, pushing a message t...
NEW YORK (AP) — Spurred by broad public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, thousands of Black activists from across the U.S. will hold a virtual convention in August to produce a new political agenda that seeks to build on the success of the protests that followed George Floyd's death. The 2020 Black National Convention will take place Aug. 28 via a live broadcast. It will feature conversations, performances and other events designed to develop a set of demands ahead of the November general election, according to a Wednesday a...
NEW YORK (AP) — Ahead of the Juneteenth holiday weekend's demonstrations against systemic racism and police brutality, more than 4 in 10 Americans say they expect recent protests around the country will bring positive change. A majority say they approve of the protests. Despite headline-making standoffs between law enforcement and protesters in cities nationwide, the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds a majority of Americans think law enforcement officers have generally responded to the protests a...
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — George Floyd's brother pleaded for peace in the streets Monday, saying destruction is "not going to bring my brother back at all," while President Donald Trump berated most of the nation's governors as "weak" for not cracking down harder on the lawlessness that has convulsed cities from coast to coast. The competing messages — one conciliatory, one bellicose — came as the U.S. braced for another round of violence at a time when the country is already buckling because of the coronavirus outbreak and the Depression-level unempl...
NEW YORK (AP) — As the coronavirus crisis took hold, Akeil Smith's employer slashed her work as a home health aide to 25 hours per week. Her $15-an-hour salary no longer provided enough to pay her $700 monthly rent, and she had to visit food pantries for groceries. While millions of U.S. workers have already received a quick relief payment from the federal treasury through direct deposit, Smith is among millions of others without traditional bank accounts who must wait weeks for paper checks. When the checks finally arrive, this d...
