Category: Law

  • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) 2002 Richard Wormser, Series producer, Co-writer Jim Crow was not a person, yet affected the lives of millions of people. Named after a popular 19th-century minstrel song that stereotyped African Americans, “Jim Crow” came to personify the system of government-sanctioned…

  • Who is Ismael Ozanne, Wisconsin’s prosecutor in Tony Robinson’s death? Cable News Network (CNN) 2015-05-12 Michael Martinez, Newsdesk Editor & Writer (CNN) Ismael Ozanne wiped a handkerchief across his forehead, nervously tapped a stack of papers on the podium and slowly cleared his throat. It wasn’t the first time he’d made history; that happened in…

  • Movie about Va.’s now-defunct ban on interracial marriage to be shot in state The Washington Post 2014-05-14 Laura Vozzella, Richmond Bureau Reporter RICHMOND — Virginia has landed a movie project about Richard and Mildred Loving, the real-life Virginia couple arrested in 1958 for violating the state’s interracial marriage ban. The Lovings filed a lawsuit that…

  • No Charges for Wisconsin Officer in Killing of Unarmed Black Teenager The New York Times 2015-05-12 Richard Pérez-Peña (@perezpena), National Desk A Madison, Wis., police officer who killed an unarmed black man in March, in one of a spate of similar incidents that have set off protests around the country, will not face criminal charges,…

  • New Bill Would Let New Yorkers Identify As Multiracial On Official City Forms The Huffington Post 2015-05-12 Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias), New York Reporter New York City has the largest population in the United States of people who identify as multiracial. Even its mayor, Bill de Blasio, and its first lady, Chirlane McCray, have two multiracial…

  • “There is nothing ‘black’ about rioting”: Actor Jesse Williams unloads on Baltimore critics in passionate Twitter essay Salon 2015-04-28 Joanna Rothkopf, Assistant Editor (Credit: DFree via Shutterstock) The “Grey’s Anatomy” actor wrote about the prevelance of rioting throughout history On Monday evening, as Baltimore was rocked by violent and nonviolent protests alike, actor Jesse Williams,…

  • President Obama Condemns Both the Baltimore Riots and the Nation’s ‘Slow-Rolling Crisis’ The New York Times 2015-04-28 Julie Hirschfeld Davis, White House Correspondent Matt Apuzzo WASHINGTON — President Obama responded with passion and frustration on Tuesday to the violence that has rocked Baltimore and other cities after the deaths of young black men in confrontations…

  • Will Police Killings of Blacks be the Defining Crisis of the Obama Presidency? NewBlackMan (in Exile) 2015-04-24 Mark Anthony Neal, Host and Professor of African & African American Studies Duke University, Durham, North Carolina Duke University University Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, author of the classic Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality…

  • You’re the Model Minority until You’re Not David Shih Wednesday, 2015-04-08 David Shih, Associate Professor of English University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire As a Chinese American, I know that my racial identity occupies a space in the cultural imagination somewhere between white and black. I know that white supremacy often works in my favor to…

  • The Trouble With Race Foreign Affairs March/April 2015 Gideon Rose, Editor Everybody knows that racial tensions have been at the center of American political debate in recent months, but the story of racial and ethnic division is actually a global one, with a long and tortured history. For the lead package in the March/April issue,…