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Education Department Opens Investigation into Harvard’s Legacy Admissions

Maria

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Jul 26, 2023

Education Department Opens Investigation into Harvard’s Legacy Admissions

By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — Opening a new front in legal battles over college admissions, the U.S. Department of Education has launched a civil rights investigation into Harvard University’s policies on legacy admissions.

Top colleges’ preferential treatment of children of alumni, who are often white, has faced mounting scrutiny since the Supreme Court last month struck down the use of affirmative action as a tool to boost the presence of students of color.

The department notified Lawyers for Civil Rights, a nonprofit based in Boston, on Monday that it was investigating the group’s claim that the university “discriminates on the basis of race by using donor and legacy preferences in its undergraduate admissions process.”

An Education Department spokesperson confirmed its Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation at Harvard. The agency declined further comment.

But White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden has “made clear that legacy admissions hold back our ability to build diverse student bodies.”

The complaint was filed earlier this month on behalf of Black and Latino community groups in New England. The group argued that students with legacy ties are up to seven times more likely to be admitted to Harvard, can make up nearly a third of a class and that about 70% are white. For the Class of 2019, about 28% of the class were legacies with a parent or other relative who went to Harvard.

“We are gratified that the Department of Education has acted swiftly to open this investigation,” the group said in an email statement. “Harvard should follow the lead of a growing number of colleges and universities — including Amherst, MIT, Johns Hopkins, the University of California, and most recently Wesleyan — and voluntarily abandon these unfair and undeserved preferences.”

A spokesperson for Harvard on Tuesday said the university has been reviewing its admissions policies to ensure compliance with the law since the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action.

“As this work continues, and moving forward, Harvard remains dedicated to opening doors to opportunity and to redoubling our efforts to encourage students from many different backgrounds to apply for admission,” the spokesperson said.

Ending legacy preferences is “one of many steps that Harvard and other universities can take to increase access, diversity, and equity in admissions,” said Jane Sujen Bock, a board member of the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard, which includes alumni, student and staff.

Last week, Wesleyan University in Connecticut announced that it would end its policy of giving preferential treatment in admissions to those whose families have historical ties to the school. Wesleyan President Michael Roth said a student’s “legacy status” has played a negligible role in admissions, but would now be eliminated entirely.

In recent years, other schools — including Amherst College in Massachusetts, Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University in Maryland — also have eliminated legacy admissions.

Legacy policies have been called into question after last month’s Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action and any consideration of race in college admissions. The court’s conservative majority effectively overturned cases reaching back 45 years, forcing institutions of higher education to seek new ways to achieve student diversity.

NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said he commended the Education Department for taking steps to ensure the higher education system “works for every American, not just a privileged few.”

“Every talented and qualified student deserves an opportunity to attend the college of their choice. Affirmative Action existed to support that notion. Legacy admissions exists to undermine it,” he said.

Sarah Hinger, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, said she did not know the specifics of the Harvard program but “as a general matter, legacy admissions tend to benefit disproportionately, white people and wealthy people.”

“Systemic racism and inequality has allowed some people to build legacies across generations of their family in the same way that systemic racism has left many families of color out of opportunities in the educational hierarchy. In a way they’re two sides of the same coin,” she added.

A study led by Harvard and Brown researchers, published Monday, found that wealthy students were twice as likely to be admitted to elite schools compared to their lower- or middle-income counterparts who have similar standardized test scores.

The study looked at family income and admissions data at Ivy League schools as well as Stanford, MIT, Duke and the University of Chicago. It found that legacy admissions policies were a contributing factor to the advantage high-income students have at these schools. Athletic recruitment and extracurricular credentials, which are stronger when students attend affluent private high schools, were the other two factors.

Experts: California Needs Information and Infrastructure Upgrades to Connect Millions More to Broadband

Maria

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Jul 26, 2023

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Experts: California Needs Information and Infrastructure Upgrades to Connect Millions More to Broadband

By Antonio Ray Harvey, California Black Media

A report the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) released in June found that access to fast and reliable home internet continues to increase in the Golden State, but many households eligible for broadband access assistance are still without service.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) estimates that at least 3.7 million California households are eligible for digital-access funding, but as of March 2022, only 1.2 million households were participating in programs created to offset high access costs for low-income households.

Therefore, the FCC says it is seeking community-based organizations connected to local communities to engage in outreach and education.

“We have issues nationwide with access, availability and affordability,” Sanford Williams, Special Advisor to the Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and Deputy Managing Director of the Federal Communications Commission, said at a PPIC virtual conference on July 18.

“The one thing we’ve found on the government level is that folks listen to us, but they trust people they know. So, the biggest thing for us, from my perspective and the FCC, we get community organizations involved to get the message out,” he added.

Williams was one of the panelists at a three-day virtual conference the PPIC hosted from July 18-20 to discuss internet access, California’s unprecedented investments in broadband, and barriers to digital access across California’s diverse communities. The conference looked at how deficits in both infrastructure and information keep Californians disconnected from the internet.

According to PPIC, the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), found that 85% of California households had high-speed internet at home in 2021– a slight improvement from 84% in 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since 2019, access to broadband at home has become more common for most demographic groups. But racial and ethnic gaps persist: 81% of Latino, 83% of Black, 87% of White, and 88% of Asian households reported having broadband access at home in 2021, the PPIC shared.

PPIC explains that in 2021, slightly fewer California households (10%) did not have access to a desktop, laptop, or other computing devices at home than in 2019, when 11% lacked access.

Nationally, approximately 40% of Black American households— as opposed to 28 % of White American households—don’t have high-speed, fixed broadband, according to the Mckinsey & Company article, “Closing the Digital Divide in Black America,” published on Jan. 18, 2023.

Sanford Williams, Federal Commission of Communications // CBM

One of the first federally funded initiatives, the FCC’s Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program, launched in 2021, offered a discount of up to $50 per month for broadband services to eligible households.

The EBB expired on Dec. 31, 2021, and was replaced by the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which offers long-term support for households. The maximum monthly ACP benefit is $30, and eligibility criteria expanded to include a household income at or below 200% of the federal poverty line.

Dr. Nicol Turner-Lee, another panelist that participated in the “Bridging California’s Digital Divide,” virtual conference, warned that the ACP funding will eventually run out and could present more access problems for low-income and rural households.

“The ACP came out of the emergency broadband program, a pandemic-relief program that has had exponential growth,” Tuner-Lee continued. “I think 19 million have subscribed across the U.S., but there are challenges. When it expires in 2024 or when it runs out of money, the same 19 million people that subscribed will have these same challenges.”

Turner-Lee’s portfolio includes leading research and policy work at the Brookings Institution. Her book on the digital divide titled “Digitally Invisible: How the Internet is Creating the New Underclass” is scheduled to be published in 2024.

“We have to keep talking about affordability, but we need to talk about it in a more permanent way,” Turner-Lee said. “It’s not necessary to give people access to shiny objects and devices but to connect them to a world of opportunities. That should justify and validate why this has to be a long-term program.”

PPIC is a nonprofit organization that provides objective and nonpartisan research to guide California’s public policy. Its aim is to produce high-quality analysis that promotes dialogue and inspires sustainable policy solutions.

“We looked at the research on what’s barring folks from enrolling in the ACP and one of those barriers is just simply being aware that the ACP exists,” Ji Soo Song, Digital Equity Advisor for the US Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology said during a session at the PPIC conference.

“It seems like in low-income households, less than 50% knew that it existed. That’s why we’ve been working with the FCC to launch a national campaign online to make sure that folks take advantage of it,” Song told the panelists.

On the final day of the virtual conference, panelists discussed the importance of digital equity in enhancing access outcomes across various sectors, including education, healthcare, and the economy.

The panelists agreed that building a digital infrastructure based on equity is crucial for an inclusive recovery from the pandemic. But Mei Wa Kwong, the Executive Director of the Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP), the federally designated National Telehealth Policy Resource Center, said equity won’t be a “one-size-fits-all” solution.

“It’s going to take us a while to get there because when you are talking about digital equity, there’s a lot of infrastructure involved,” Kwong said. “Infrastructure does not move that quickly. It takes a while to build up things.”

Only a third of eligible California households receive federally subsidized internet. Most eligible households have not received the ACP internet subsidy, PPIC reports. Only 36% of over eight million eligible households had enrolled by April 2023, according to the California Department of Technology.

“Part of this conversation around affordability is not about whether people can get access to competitive providers but more so whether or not people understand the relevance of broadband in their lives,” Turner-Lee said.

“It’s important that we connect the dots to improve the outcomes for people,” she added.

Racist Text Scandal at Northern California Police Department at Center of Court Hearing

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Jul 25, 2023

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Racist Text Scandal at Northern California Police Department at Center of Court Hearing

By JANIE HAR, Associated Press

MARTINEZ, Calif. (AP) — A court hearing to determine whether Northern California police officers who traded racist text messages violated a state law aimed at eliminating racism in the criminal justice system adjourned Friday without any officers taking the stand to answer questions about the scandal that has roiled the San Francisco Bay Area city.

Defense attorneys for four men charged with murder and attempted murder in a 2021 shooting had subpoenaed the Antioch police officers to testify about heavily redacted text messages made public in April by the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office.

The attorneys were expected to argue before Judge David Goldstein that their clients, two of them mentioned in the text messages, were unfairly targeted based on their race. The state’s Racial Justice Act prohibits the state from pursuing or securing criminal convictions or sentences on the basis of race, ethnicity or national origin.

But the judge spent much of Friday’s hearing ruling on motions and not on evidence, and none of the officers testified. The hearing will continue in late August, and the underlying criminal case is on hold.

In addition to nine police officers subpoenaed and who were available to take the stand Friday are five others who were subpoenaed but claimed they were injured on the job and not medically cleared to testify.

In all, 17 Antioch police officers have been named for sending texts that discuss falsifying evidence and beating up suspects, that make racist and homophobic remarks, or that use sexually explicit language. Most of the messages were sent in 2020 and 2021 and go far beyond the case up for discussion in court.

Antioch Police Chief Steven Ford was also subpoenaed to testify, but Goldstein ruled Friday he did not need to appear because his testimony was not relevant to whether officers showed racial bias or animus. Ford was not the police chief at the time the text messages were sent.

Carmela Caramagno, attorney for one of the four suspects, argued that Ford’s testimony was critical so the court could get a broad feel for the internal workings of the department and devise an appropriate remedy.

Caramagno said she also wanted to ask Ford why he signed off on declarations stating that five officers had suffered an “industrial injury” and could not appear, when an investigator for the defense had seen some of them looking “quite healthy,” “having pool parties,” and “walking briskly.”

Mathew Martinez, a lawyer for one of the defendants, said the officers were subpoenaed so they could explain in court why they sent the texts. But “they’re all unavailable, indefinitely,” he said.

The hearing comes two days after Ford, who is Black, made a surprise announcement that he would retire next month. He leaves after only a year serving as interim and permanent police chief. He did not respond to emails requesting an interview.

Lawyers representing eight of the nine other subpoenaed officers were also present in court Friday.

The four men represented by the defense attorneys were charged with murder and attempted murder in a March 2021 drive-by shooting that prosecutors say was gang-related.

The Racial Justice Act allows defendants to petition the court for relief. If a violation is found, a judge could dismiss enhancements to charges or reduce charges. Goldstein in May threw out gang charges against the defendants after historical data showed county prosecutors disproportionately targeted Black people with enhancements leading to longer sentences.

Two of the defendants, Trent Allen and Terryon Pugh, were the subjects of some of the released text messages. Officers joked about kicking their heads and shooting them in the neck and buttocks. They also shared photos of Allen and Pugh injured in their hospital beds.

Shirelle Cobbs, Allen’s mother, said she wants the officer who boasted about beating up her son in jail.

“He kicked him in the head. He talked about it. That’s a crime. He put it in text messages,” she said outside the courthouse. “And they talked about it. He needs to be under the jailhouse right now.”

The embattled police department serves a racially diverse city of 115,000 residents about 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of San Francisco.

The text messages came out as part of an ongoing joint investigation launched in March 2022 by the FBI and the Contra Costa district attorney into a broad range of potential offenses by officers with the Antioch and nearby Pittsburg police departments.

The city of Antioch faces a federal civil rights lawsuit over the text messages and in May the state attorney general’s office launched a civil rights investigation into the police department.

Drought Is Hitting Black Farmers Hard

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Jul 25, 2023

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By Maya Richard-Craven, Word in Black

With the phrase “heat dome” entering our vocabulary and more than 2,300 heat records smashed so far this summer, extreme temperatures are endangering our lives. And for farmers, the scorching hot, dry weather also threatens their livelihoods.

According to the United States Drought Monitor, 22.57% of the United States and Puerto Rico are currently experiencing drought. And, as of July 2023, 40 states were in some level of drought, ranging from “abnormally dry” to “exceptional drought.”

It’s no wonder that in 2022, 75% of farmers in the United States said drought impacted their harvest. As climate change worsens, it’s getting tougher for Black farmers, who are only 1% of all farmers in the United States — and were rejected for USDA loans more than any other demographic — to protect their crops, livestock, and livelihoods.

A Struggle for Water

PJ Haynie, a fifth-generation farmer based in Reedville, Virginia, says drought has a greater impact on Black farmers.

“It hits Black farmers even harder because we do not have as many irrigated acres as our white neighbors,” he says.

Haynie is one of the founding board members of the nonprofit National Black Growers Council, and his family co-owns Arkansas River Rice Mill, the first and only Black-owned food-grade certified rice mill in the United States. He says he has taken extra measures to protect his crops from the impacts of drought.

“We are irrigating where we can to help with crop production,” Haynie says. “Where we cannot irrigate, we are using practices like cover crops and not till farming practices to help retain and conserve as much moisture in the soil as possible.”

Dealing With Drought in the Golden State

California, the state that produces almost half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, made headlines this past winter for its torrential rainstorms and record snow accumulation. But the deluge of precipitation followed the “driest three years on record,” which brought “devastating drought impacts to communities across the state,” according to the California Department of Water Resources.

For Black farmers in California like Sam Cobbs, drought can lead to spending more money on upkeep. Cobbs started growing dates in 2002 and has his own date farm in Desert Hot Springs, about 100 miles east of Los Angeles. It’s naturally hot and dry in the area, with an average rainfall of just 6.6 inches annually. But in 2022, the area received a mere 1.37 inches of rain. The year prior? 1.18 inches.

When water is farther down, it is more expensive to pump out.

SAM COBBS

To keep his crops from dying, Cobbs says his farm uses “irrigation water management techniques that are designed to monitor soil moisture and its dryness for proper plant root health.

During the dry summer months, it’s common for California farmers to pump water from underground aquifers. However, Cobbs says that’s been more difficult during the state’s drought years because the groundwater level drops so much — and that impacts his bottom line.

“When water is farther down, it is more expensive to pump out,” he says.

Bone Dry in the Nation’s Breadbasket

According to the United States Drought Monitor, drought is currently the most extreme in the Midwest, with nearly 60% of states in the region in drought. That’s why Black farmers like Cleveland, Ohio, resident Jennifer Lumpkin are struggling to stay afloat.

“The recent three-week drought in Ohio was felt by growers like myself who water crops naturally. I become more aware and in tune to the real change in climate,” says Lumpkin, the lead grower and founder of My Grow Connect, an organization that connects growers with sustainability practitioners.

We’ve learned to keep our hands in the soil and ourselves in community

JENNIFER LUMPKIN

As part of My Grow Connect, Lumpkin grows crops on shared land on the east side of Cleveland. She says she’s made major changes to survive the drought.

“I grow crops that are drought resistant. I have shifted my focus to certain resilient crops as a commodity,” Lumpkin says. “I had to hire help to water and maintain my crops, which was predicated on training and educating the support staff. This requires time, knowledge, resources, and capital.”

Lumpkin, who also has a full-time job that helps her sustain her land during drought, believes Black farmers are “collectively adjusting by applying much of the challenges [they] see in communities to the challenges in our environment.” However, it takes time and money to continue caring for at-risk crops due to the effects of climate change.

“If you do not have an automated watering system, you spend more time watering and maintaining crops,” she says. “You are using more water and capital to pay for both manpower and resources as dry weather and heat usually make these things cost more under these extreme weather and climate conditions.”

Lumpkin says with the right practices and substantial capital, some Black farmers will be able to maintain their land through the drought — and she believes Black farmers “are doing the work of connecting challenges with solutions.”

“We’ve learned to keep our hands in the soil and ourselves in community,” she says.

Judge Says She Won’t Change Ruling Letting NFL Coach’s Racial Discrimination Claims Proceed to Trial

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Jul 25, 2023

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Judge Says She Won’t Change Ruling Letting NFL Coach’s Racial Discrimination Claims Proceed to Trial

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge said Tuesday that she’s not changing her decision to let NFL coach Brian Flores put the league and three of its teams on trial over his claims that he and other Black coaches face discrimination.

Judge Valerie Caproni’s written ruling in Manhattan federal court came after both sides in the case asked her to reconsider her March decision.

The judge ruled then that claims by two coaches who joined the Flores lawsuit after it was filed early last year must proceed to arbitration, where NFL Commission Roger Goodell will presumably serve as arbitrator.

She said Flores can proceed to trial with his claims against the league and three teams: the Denver Broncos, the New York Giants and the Houston Texans.

In February 2022, Flores sued the league and several teams, saying the league was “rife with racism,” particularly in its hiring and promotion of Black coaches.

When she ruled in March, Caproni wrote that descriptions by the coaches of their experiences of racial discrimination in a league with a “long history of systematic discrimination toward Black players, coaches, and managers — are incredibly troubling.”

“Although the clear majority of professional football players are Black, only a tiny percentage of coaches are Black,” she said.

She said it was “difficult to understand” how there was only one Black head coach at the time Flores filed his lawsuit in a league of 32 teams with Black players making up about 70% of the rosters.

In her ruling Tuesday, Caproni rejected an effort by the NFL to argue that a contract Flores signed last year with the Pittsburgh Steelers prevented him from taking any claim to trial because it contained language that would apply retroactively to claims against any NFL team.

She said the copy of the contract that the NFL submitted to her before she ruled in March contained a signature line for Goodell that was blank and the contract was not “valid and binding” unless signed by all parties.

The judge rejected a signed copy that was submitted after her ruling, saying “a motion for reconsideration is not a means to mend holes in the record with neglected evidence.”

Caproni also rejected arguments by lawyers for Flores who claimed that the arbitration agreements between the NFL and some of its coaches are “unconscionable” because Goodell would be a biased arbitrator.

She said the lawyers must wait until the arbitration occurs to decide whether their fears were warranted and whether Goodell “gave them a fair shake to prove their claims.”

She said the lawyers were asking her “to fashion a specific rule out of whole cloth to protect them from potential arbitrator bias that may never manifest itself.”

Lawyers on both sides, along with a spokesperson for the NFL, did not immediately comment.

Last year after filing his lawsuit, Flores said he believed he was risking the coaching career he loves by suing the NFL, but he said it was worth it for generations to come if he could succeed in challenging systemic racism in the league.

In March, the judge noted that Flores had recently been hired as the new defensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings.

Jamie Foxx Tells Fans in an Instagram Message that He is Recovering From an Illness

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Jul 25, 2023

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Jamie Foxx Tells Fans in an Instagram Message that He is Recovering From an Illness

By KEN MILLER, Associated Press

Academy Award winning actor, singer and comedian Jamie Foxx said in an Instagram video that he is recovering from an undisclosed medical condition.

“I went to hell and back, and my road to recovery has some potholes as well, but I’m coming back,” Foxx, appearing thin and wearing a dark pullover shirt, said in the three minute, 15 second video. “I’m able to work.”

Foxx, 55, was hospitalized in April with what his daughter, Corinne Fox, described at the time as a “medical complication” and Foxx did not disclose the nature of his condition in his first public comments since being hospitalized.

“I just didn’t want you to see me like that … I didn’t want you to see me with tubes running out of me and trying to figure out if I was going to make it through,” Foxx said, thanking his daughter, sister, God and medical professionals for saving his life.

“I went through something that I thought I would never, ever go through,” Foxx said.

“Every once in a while I just burst into tears … because it’s been tough, man, I was sick … but now I’ve got my legs under me so you’re going to see me,” Foxx said.

Castmates of Foxx’s recent movie “They Cloned Tyrone” — David Alan Grier, Teyonah Parris and Tamberla Perry — told The Associated Press at the Los Angeles premiere of the movie on June 28 that they miss the star.

“Just praying that he gets better and takes whatever time he needs to heal,” Perry said.

Foxx, born Eric Marlon Bishop in 1967 in Terrell, Texas, was a stand-up comedian before breaking into television with various roles on Fox TV’s musical-comedy “In Living Color” in 1990.

Foxx won the Academy Award for best actor for his portrayal of Ray Charles in the 2004 biographical film “Ray” and a Grammy in 2010 for the song “Blame It.”

His other credit’s include “The Jamie Foxx Show,” “Collateral,” and “Django Unchained.”

Bronny James, Son of LeBron, in Stable Condition After Cardiac Arrest at USC Basketball Practice

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Jul 25, 2023

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Bronny James, Son of LeBron, in Stable Condition After Cardiac Arrest at USC Basketball Practice

By GREG BEACHAM, AP Sports Writer

Bronny James, the oldest son of NBA superstar LeBron James, was hospitalized after going into cardiac arrest while participating in a practice at the University of Southern California, a family spokesman said Tuesday.

The spokesman said medical staff treated the 18-year-old James on site at USC’s Galen Center on Monday morning. He was transported to a hospital, where he was in stable condition Tuesday after leaving the intensive care unit.

“We ask for respect and privacy for the James family and we will update media when there is more information,” the spokesman said. “LeBron and Savannah wish to publicly send their deepest thanks and appreciation to the USC medical and athletic staff for their incredible work and dedication to the safety of their athletes.”

USC spokesman Jeremy Pepper declined a request from The Associated Press for comment or additional details, citing student privacy concerns. The AP also left a message seeking comment from the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who suffered cardiac arrest during an NFL game last season, tweeted his support: “Prayers to Bronny & The James Family as well (prayer emoji) here for you guys just like you have been for me my entire process.”

Bronny James announced in May that he would play college basketball for the Trojans, whose campus is less than two miles from the downtown arena of his father’s Los Angeles Lakers. USC’s basketball team is holding offseason practices in preparation for a two-week European tour next month.

His father is the leading scorer in NBA history and a four-time champion, but Bronny James is an elite talent in his own right, ranking as one of the nation’s top point guard recruits before he chose the Trojans late in the commitment cycle.

With his family fame and huge social media following, Bronny James has the top name, image and likeness valuation in sports at $6.3 million, On3.com estimates.

Bronny’s decision to stay close to home was a coup for USC, which is expected to have one of college basketball’s most compelling teams next season after making its third straight NCAA Tournament appearance last March.

LeBron James has spoken frequently about his desire to play a season in the NBA with Bronny, the first of his three children with his wife, Savannah. The elder James recently confirmed he will play his 21st NBA season in the fall with the Lakers, his home since 2018.

Bronny, whose name is LeBron James Jr., was one of the top college prospects in the country last season as a star guard at Sierra Canyon School in suburban Chatsworth. His younger brother, 16-year-old Bryce, played at Sierra Canyon last season before transferring to Campbell Hall School in Studio City for the upcoming high school season.

Bronny James was stricken just over a year after USC freshman 7-footer Vincent Iwuchukwu collapsed during a practice, but he survived and returned to play for the Trojans in the second half of the season.

Iwuchukwu, one of the nation’s top college basketball prospects a year ago, went into cardiac arrest on July 1, 2022, with athletic trainers using an automated external defibrillator to revive him. Iwuchukwu had a battery-powered pulse generator known as an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator implanted in his chest, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Iwuchukwu made his Trojans debut Jan. 12 and eventually appeared in 14 games, including five starts. He will return this season to USC, which is expected to have a powerhouse team.

For Emmett Till’s Family, National Monument Proclamation Cements His Inclusion in the American Story

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Jul 25, 2023

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For Emmett Till’s Family, National Monument Proclamation Cements His Inclusion in the American Story

By AARON MORRISON, AP National Writer

As President Joe Biden signed a proclamation on 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, will be seen as more than just a cause of that movement, said Till’s cousin the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr.

“We are resolute that it now becomes an American story and not just a civil rights story,” Parker told The Associated Press, ahead of a proclamation signing ceremony at the White House attended by dozens, including other family members, members of Congress and civil rights leaders.

With the stroke of Biden’s pen, the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, located across three sites in two states, became federally protected places. But Till’s family members, along with a national organization seeking to preserve Black cultural heritage sites, say their work protecting the Till legacy continues.

They hope to raise money to restore the sites and develop educational programming to support their inclusion in the National Park System.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday that the Till national monument will be the Biden-Harris administration’s fourth designation that reflects their “work to advance civil rights.” The move comes as conservative leaders, mostly at the state and local levels, push legislation that limits the teaching of slavery and Black history in public schools.

The Democratic president’s administration “will continue to speak out against hateful attempts to rewrite our history and strongly oppose any actions that threaten to divide us and take our country backwards,” Jean-Pierre said.

Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said the federal designation is a milestone in a yearslong effort to preserve and protect places tied to events that have shaped the nation and that symbolize national wounds.

President Joe Biden hands a signing pen to Marvel Parker, after he signed a proclamation to establish the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, in the Indian Treaty Room on the White House campus, Tuesday, July 25, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

“We believe that not until Black history matters will Black lives and Black bodies matter,” he said. “Through reckoning with America’s racist past, we have the opportunity to heal.”

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has provided $750,000 in grant funding since 2017 to help rescue sites important to the Till legacy. With its partners, the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Lilly Endowment Inc., Leggs said an additional $5 million in funding has been secured for specialized preservation of the sites.

Biden’s proclamation protects places that are central to the story of Emmett Till’s life and death at age 14, the acquittal of his white killers by an all-white jury and his late mother’s activism.

In the summer of 1955, Mamie Till-Mobley put her son Emmett on a train to her native Mississippi, where he was to spend time with his uncle and his cousins. In the overnight hours of Aug. 28, 1955, Emmett was taken from his uncle’s home at gunpoint by two vengeful white men.

Emmett’s alleged crime? Flirting with the wife of one of his kidnappers.

Three days later, a fisherman on the Tallahatchie River discovered the teenager’s bloated corpse — one of his eyes was detached, an ear was missing, his head was shot and bashed in.

Till-Mobley demanded that Emmett’s mutilated remains be taken back to Chicago for a public, open casket funeral that was attended by tens of thousands of people. Graphic images taken of Emmett’s remains, sanctioned by his mother, were published by Jet magazine and propelled the civil rights movement.

At the trial of his killers in Mississippi, Till-Mobley bravely took the witness stand to counter the perverse image of her son that defense attorneys had painted for jurors and trial watchers.

Altogether, the Till national monument will include 5.7 acres (2.3 hectares) of land and two historic buildings. The Mississippi sites are Graball Landing, the spot where Emmett’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River just outside of Glendora, Mississippi, and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Emmett’s killers were tried.

There is already the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, which received philanthropic funding to expand programming and pay staff who interface with visitors.

At Graball Landing, a memorial sign installed in 2008 had been repeatedly stolen and was riddled with bullets. An inch-thick bulletproof sign was erected at the site in October 2019.

The Illinois site is Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago, where Emmett’s funeral was held in September 1955.

In a statement emailed to the AP, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin saluted Mamie Till-Mobley’s courage to have the nation and the world bear witness to the scourge of racial hatred. The monument, he said, helps “ensure that Emmett Till’s story is not forgotten.”

The Till national monument will join dozens of federally recognized landmarks, buildings and other places in the Deep South, in the north and out west that represent historical events and tragedies from the civil right movement. For example, in Atlanta, sites representing the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., including his birth home and Ebenezer Baptist Church, are all part of the National Park Service.

The designation often requires public and private entities to work together on developing interpretation centers at each of the sites, so that anyone who visits can understand the site’s significance. The hiring of park rangers is supported through partnerships with the National Park Foundation, the park service’s official nonprofit, and the National Parks Conservation Association.

Increasingly, the park service includes sites “that are part of the arc of justice in this country, both telling where we’ve come from, how far we’ve come, and frankly, how far we have to still go,” said Will Shafroth, the president and CEO of the National Park Foundation.

That’s where Leggs’ African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and the Till family’s work remains — to raise enough money so that the sites are properly maintained and have the staffing needed to educate the public.

For Parker, who was 16 years old when he witnessed Emmett’s abduction, the Till monument proclamation begins to lift the weight of trauma that he has carried for most of his life. Tuesday is the anniversary of Emmett’s birth in 1941. He would have been 82.

“I’ve been suffering for all these years of how they’ve portrayed him — I still deal with that,” Parker, 84, said of his cousin Emmett.

“The truth should carry itself, but it doesn’t have wings. You have to put some wings on it.”

Biden Introduces New Rule to Strengthen Mental Health Parity Requirements and Improve Access to Mental Health Care

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Jul 25, 2023

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Biden Introduces New Rule to Strengthen Mental Health Parity Requirements and Improve Access to Mental Health Care

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

To help ensure better mental health care access for millions of Americans, President Joe Biden has unveiled a new proposed rule to strengthen mental and physical health parity requirements.

The rule seeks to bridge the gap between mental and physical health care benefits, a bipartisan priority for almost 15 years.
The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) was a landmark law enacted in 2008, calling for equal provision of mental health care benefits by health plans compared to physical health care benefits.

However, despite bipartisan efforts, the White House said many Americans still face challenges in finding and affording the mental health care they need.
According to a Fact Sheet, studies show that less than half of adults with any mental illness received mental health care in 2020, and only a tiny fraction of those with a substance use disorder received treatment.

“A common issue individuals face with private health coverage is the difficulty in finding an in-network mental health provider,” White House officials wrote.
“Many people are forced to seek care out-of-network, leading to significantly higher costs or even deferring care altogether.”
The proposed rule highlights that insured individuals are more than twice as likely to go out-of-network for mental health care than for physical health care.

In response to these challenges, the White House said Biden’s comprehensive national strategy aims to transform how mental health is understood, accessed, and treated across healthcare settings.
The 150 million Americans with private health insurance will have better access to mental health benefits thanks to the newly proposed rule, which builds on MHPAEA’s objectives.

The key provisions of the proposed rule include:
1. Requiring Health Plans to Provide Adequate Access: Health plans will be required to conduct meaningful comparative analyses to ensure that mental health and substance use benefits are not more restrictive than medical benefits. This includes evaluating provider networks, out-of-network payment rates, and prior authorization requirements. Plans failing to meet these requirements will have to improve access to mental health care to comply with the law.

2. Setting Clear Guidelines for Health Plans: The rule will provide specific examples to make it clear that health plans cannot use restrictive prior authorization or narrower networks for mental health and substance use disorder benefits compared to medical benefits.

3. Closing Existing Loopholes: The proposed rule will require non-federal governmental health plans to comply with MHPAEA, closing a previous loophole. Over 200 additional health plans will be impacted, providing crucial protections to 90,000 consumers.

The White House said the administration expects the rule to increase mental health and substance use care utilization and ensure comparable payment for mental health care professionals.
Officials believe this could also serve as an incentive for more people to join the mental health workforce.

According to the White House, the Biden administration has been actively addressing the mental health care crisis through various measures, including expanding access to services in Medicare and enhancing crisis response.
The recent investment of nearly $1 billion in strengthening the 9-8-8 suicide and crisis lifeline further demonstrates the commitment to improving mental health care, officials stated.

Missouri School District Reverses Anti-Racism Resolution Amidst Growing Political Backlash

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Jul 25, 2023

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Missouri School District Reverses Anti-Racism Resolution Amidst Growing Political Backlash

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

Three years after George Floyd’s tragic death sparked a national reckoning on racial injustice, the Francis Howell School District in a St. Louis suburb has faced controversy over its response to the call for addressing racial discrimination.
In 2020, protesters took to the streets, urging the primarily white school district to take meaningful action against racism.
In response, the school board passed an anti-racism resolution, vowing to promote racial healing and denounce all forms of discrimination.

However, the recent shift in the board’s composition, with new conservative members elected since last year, has led to the revocation of the anti-racism resolution.
The resolution, which encompassed a commitment to speak out against racism, discrimination, and violence based on race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and ability, will now be removed from school buildings.

The trend of reversing progressive policies has been seen in several parts of the country, particularly in school board elections.
Political action groups have actively campaigned to elect candidates who promise to counter teachings on race and sexuality, ban certain books deemed offensive, and oppose transgender-inclusive sports teams.

The Francis Howell district, comprising approximately 17,000 students, 87% white, found itself amidst this contentious political battleground.
The Associated Press reported that the recent vote to rescind the anti-racism resolution occurred during a heated board meeting, with several individuals opposing the revocation.

Demonstrators held signs reading, “Forward, not backward,” as they voiced their concerns about preserving the district’s commitment to equality and inclusivity.
One of the main arguments made by board members in favor of the resolution’s removal was that terms like “systemic racism” lacked precise definitions and were open to various interpretations by different stakeholders.

The debate further highlighted the challenges in addressing racial issues in educational settings.
The composition of the school board has significantly changed since the resolution’s adoption, with only two members remaining from the original panel.

The election of five new conservative members, who received support from the political action committee Francis Howell Families, played a pivotal role in the resolution’s reversal.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been at the forefront of these debates, with some mistakenly associating it with the content of the anti-racism resolution.
School administrators have clarified that CRT, a scholarly theory focusing on systemic racism in institutions, is not part of the K-12 curriculum.
Nonetheless, misconceptions have fueled the controversy surrounding initiatives promoting equity and combating discrimination.

Meanwhile, racial tensions continue to be sensitive in the St. Louis region, particularly following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old Black man, by a police officer in Ferguson nine years ago. The incident led to widespread protests and became a defining moment for the national Black Lives Matter movement.

The revocation of the Francis Howell anti-racism resolution has drawn criticism from community leaders, who fear it sets a precedent for further changes that may undermine progress toward a more inclusive district.

Zebrina Looney, the president of the NAACP in St. Charles County, warned that this action might only be the beginning of the new board’s larger agenda.
Randy Cook, the board’s vice president, insisted that there were no immediate plans to adopt the conservative political action committee’s alternative resolution.
He told the AP that he believes the board should focus on its primary role of educating students and refrain from getting entangled in divisive national politics.

Kimberly Thompson, who is Black, attended Francis Howell schools in the 1970s and 1980s, and her two children graduated from the district.
She described several instances of racism and urged the board to stand by its 2020 commitment.

“This resolution means hope to me, hope of a better Francis Howell School District,” Thompson said, according to the Associated Press. “It means setting expectations for behavior for students and staff regardless of their personal opinions.”

Click here to see a discussion about the district’s reversal on the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s live morning show, Let It Be Known.

Biden will Establish a National Monument Honoring Emmett Till, the Black Teen Lynched in Mississippi

Maria

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Jul 25, 2023

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Biden will Establish a National Monument Honoring Emmett Till, the Black Teen Lynched in Mississippi

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will establish a national monument honoring Emmett Till, the Black teenager from Chicago who was abducted, tortured and killed in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi, and his mother, a White House official said Saturday.

Biden will sign a proclamation on Tuesday to create the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument across three sites in Illinois and Mississippi, according to the official. The individual spoke on condition of anonymity because the White House had not formally announced the president’s plans.

Tuesday is the anniversary of Emmett Till’s birth in 1941.

The monument will protect places that are central to the story of Till’s life and death at age 14, the acquittal of his white killers and his mother’s activism. Till’s mother’s insistence on an open casket to show the world how her son had been brutalized and Jet’s magazine’s decision to publish photos of his mutilated body helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement.

Biden’s decision also comes at a fraught time in the United States over matters concerning race. Conservative leaders are pushing back against the teaching of slavery and Black history in public schools, as well as the incorporation of diversity, equity and inclusion programs from college classrooms to corporate boardrooms.

On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris criticized a revised Black history curriculum in Florida that includes teaching that enslaved people benefited from the skills they learned at the hands of the people who denied them freedom. The Florida Board of Education approved the curriculum to satisfy legislation signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate who has accused public schools of liberal indoctrination.

“How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Harris asked in a speech delivered from Jacksonville, Florida.

DeSantis said he had no role in devising his state’s new education standards but defended the components on how enslaved people benefited.

“All of that is rooted in whatever is factual,” he said in response.

The monument to Till and his mother will include three sites in the two states.

The Illinois site is Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Bronzeville, a historically Black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Thousands of people gathered at the church to mourn Emmett Till in September 1955.

The Mississippi locations are Graball Landing, believed to be where Till’s mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Till’s killers were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury.

Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi when Carolyn Bryant Donham said the 14-year-old Till whistled and made sexual advances at her while she worked in a store in the small community of Money.

Till was later abducted and his body eventually pulled from the Tallahatchie River, where he had been tossed after he was shot and weighted down with a cotton gin fan.

Two white men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, were tried on murder charges about a month after Till was killed, but an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted them. Months later, they confessed to killing Till in a paid interview with Look magazine. Bryant was married to Donham in 1955. She died earlier this year.

The monument will be the fourth Biden has created since taking office in 2021, and just his latest tribute to the younger Till.

For Black History Month this year, Biden hosted a screening of the movie “Till,” a drama about his lynching.

In March 2022, Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into law. Congress had first considered such legislation more than 120 years ago.

The Justice Department announced in December 2021 that it was closing its investigation into Till’s killing.

Calif. Atty Gen. Rob Bonta Takes Action to Protect Section 8 Renters

Maria

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Jul 25, 2023

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Calif. Atty Gen. Rob Bonta Takes Action to Protect Section 8 Renters

By Lila Brown, California Black Media

It took authorities in Los Angeles 12 years to process and approve Delsean Keys’ Section 8 housing application.

After finally being accepted into the federal government’s Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program for low-income households, the 41-year-old Keys was informed that he had only 90 days to find an apartment before his housing voucher would expire.

“Most landlords wanted to do a background and credit check along with income verification,” Keys, who lives in the Wilmington neighborhood of Los Angeles, told California Black Media (CBM).

After securing Section 8 housing at his current residence, where he’s lived for five years, Keys’ challenges did not end.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, our landlord tried to raise rent, but we as tenants petitioned against it, pushing back that they couldn’t do that,” Keys said. “We were facing a global pandemic at no fault of our own. Many of us were on unemployment and they even attempted to receive back rent.”

Keys eventually accepted a minimal rent increase due to a change in his income which is allowed as income must be reported to the local Housing Authority.

For many tenants like Keys, who receive rental assistance through the HCV program, the California Department of Justice (DOJ) reports that it is common for landlords to raise their rents in violation of the law, while adhering to established rent caps for renters who pay market rates.

On June 30, California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a letter to all housing authorities in the state, reminding them that tenants who receive Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers are protected under California’s Tenant Protection Act (TPA).

According to the DOJ’s Housing Justice Team, there have been numerous complaints about some local housing authorities approving rent increases that exceed the TPA’s rent cap.

Landlords receiving approvals for rent increases may think they are in compliance with state and local law, but Bonta clarified in his letter that any rent increases outside of the guidelines of the TPA violate state or local laws and are “plainly wrong” and that the DOJ is taking those violations seriously.

Bonta emphasized that recipients of Section 8 vouchers are equally protected under laws that establish rent caps.

“As California grapples with an unprecedented housing crisis, it’s critical that we work together to protect those most at risk of losing their homes,” said Bonta. “Section 8 recipients are some of the most vulnerable of California’s tenants and subjecting them to illegal and burdensome rent increases is unfair and may contribute to homelessness.”

In the letters, Bonta explained that California’s TPA, which bars landlords from raising rent for most tenants by more than 5%, plus inflation, or 10% total each year, whichever is lower, applies to recipients of the Section 8 Housing Choice vouchers and other similar housing assistance programs.

“Unfortunately, there are some shady landlords who are not in compliance with how Section 8 operates,” says Joel Green, 38, a landlord who provides permanent and supportive housing for the elderly at Abode Communities. “Some private landlords discriminate, or they judge tenants based on their previous experiences, which is not fair. We need to shine light on what’s actually going on with those landlords who are doing things that are not compliant with Section 8 rules.”

The federal government’s Section 8 HCV program – whose waiting list is currently closed for public registration due to a backlog of applicants — is the country’s major program for assisting very low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled to afford safe and sanitary housing in the private market. Since housing assistance is provided on behalf of the family or individual, participants are allowed to find their own housing. The participant is free to choose any housing that meets the requirements of the program.

Housing choice vouchers are administered locally by public housing agencies (PHAs). The PHAs receive federal funds from

the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to administer the voucher program.

Housing subsidies are paid to the landlord directly by the PHA on behalf of the participating family. The family then pays the difference between the actual rent charged by the landlord and the amount subsidized by the program.

Another landlord who spoke to CBM off the record said sometimes landlords do not intend to increase rents, but “problematic” tenants give them few options.

She said those tenants sometimes ill-treat or damage the properties they rent, which leads to “harsher-than-normal wear and tear, leading to host to exorbitant maintenance and repair costs.

As more cities across the United States struggle with the housing affordability and availability, the federal Housing Choice Voucher Program is in high demand. In densely populated cities such as Los Angeles, the waitlist can be abnormally long, authorities point out.

Recently, Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass pleaded with local property managers and private landlords to take at least one to two vouchers during the city’s State of Emergency against homelessness, which she declared in January. California’s housing affordability problem is a major contributing factor to the state’s homelessness crisis, which is having a disproportionate impact on Black Californians. About

30 % of the state’s approximately 160,000 homeless people are African American. Blacks make up less than 6 % of the state’s population.

Last week, Bonta provided legal guidance to local governments, warning them that the DOJ is willing to take legal action against cities that “frustrate” the state’s efforts to increase housing supply by enacting “emergency zoning ordinances.”

“Under California law, urgency zoning ordinances can only be enacted if a high bar is met. Unfortunately, we are seeing urgency zoning ordinances that fall short of meeting that high bar,” said Bonta. “Every community must do its part to build housing. I encourage local governments to take a good look at their urgency zoning ordinances for compliance.”