Author: Carma Henry

       Local Black farmers in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, one of the state’s largest Black American farming hubs, say they are being pushed out of their jobs by white South African farmworkers.

        UPDATE (Friday, May 1): Israel and Max Makoka were released from ICE custody on Thursday (April 30), according to their host mother, who spoke with WAPT News Jackson.

       Florida students will once again be required to learn cursive writing in elementary school under a sweeping new education law signed by Governor Ron DeSantis.

        America is often introduced to us through poetry and song: amber waves of grain, purple mountain majesties, a nation crowned with brotherhood from sea to shining sea. It is a beautiful image. Yet for many whose history has been shaped by struggle and survival, a quiet question remains: beautiful for whom?

   The Voting Rights Act, which has long been situated as “one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history,” outlawed literacy tests and provided for the appointment of federal examiners (with the power to register qualified citizens to vote) in those jurisdictions that were “covered” according to a formula provided in the statute. Section 5 required designated areas to get federal approval before changing voting practices, and Section 2 mirrored the 15th Amendment (1870), banning the denial of voting rights based on race or color. Although the 24th Amendment (1964) ended poll taxes in national elections, the Voting Rights Act gave the Attorney General the authority to challenge their use in state and local elections, with the goal of ending Jim Crow’s discriminatory hold on Southern politics.

    Perhaps theologian Walter Wink can help us understand Pete Hegseth, America’s self-declared “secretary of war” and spokesman, for God’s sake . . . for God. At a recent prayer service at the Department of Defense, for instance, Hegseth, after calling the Iranians “barbaric savages” who deserve no mercy, called on the citizens of his country to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

    Two days before this year’s, a friendly neighbor asked, “Going to Thunder over Louisville, Russ?” My smart-ass reply was rhetorical—“No, how many of the thousands will consider thunder over Tehran?”—but his puzzled look led me to clarify my antipathy to military prowess parading as family fun.

       The Caribbean community in Brooklyn is mourning the passing of Rodrick F. Daley, the Jamaican-born chair of Community Board 17 (CB17), who died on April 13 at the age of 54.

Learn about the landmark people, places and legal cases that built Broward County in History Fort Lauderdale’s newest exhibition, “Justice from The Sea to The Sawgrass: A History of the Broward County Judiciary.” This free exhibition will be on view at the New River Inn (231 SW 2nd Ave. in Downtown Fort Lauderdale) from May 1 – 30 before it moves to its permanent home in the Broward County Courthouse.

   This Fourth of July marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of The Declaration of Independence in 1776. In commemoration of this historic milestone, professor, author and legal historian Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is spearheading a movement to designate the day following Independence Day as Martyrs Day. Envisioned as a national day of remembrance, Martyrs Day would honor the protesters who gave their lives in the ongoing struggle for justice and equality in the United States.