welcome home everything is politicalCapital B’s weekly news, culture and politics newsletter!
This edition covers two Virginia schools renamed after Confederate generals, a Texas county’s fight for fair voting maps, the killing of a black airman in Florida, and an Alabama town. Learn about the Black mayor’s fight to govern and the Trump campaign’s campaign strategy. Black political power.
Tomorrow also marks 70 years since the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, which declared that there is no such thing as ‘separate but equal.’ To learn more about the legacy of this incident as the United States weathers a new wave of mass resistance, see Cornell William Brooks Professor of Public Leadership and Social Justice Practice at Harvard Kennedy School Check out my interview with
Now let’s get on with the show.
The Confederacy rises again in Virginia
Talk about a U-turn.
In 2020, the Shenandoah County, Virginia, School Board changed the names of Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Lee Elementary School to Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School to distance themselves from the legacy of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. It was decided to change to. Lee and Turner Ashby – both Confederate leaders.
But this month, the school board, now made up of different members, voted to revert to the previous name. For black residents in particular, this reversal was a slap in the face.
“People don’t take the time to think about students like me who aren’t proud to graduate from a school named ‘Stonewall Jackson,'” one black girl said at a school board meeting. Ta. “He fought for slavery as a constitutional right.”
This attack on the dignity of marginalized groups is nothing new in Virginia. Since taking office in 2022, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has attacked education about race and other “divisive concepts” in public schools and rolled back transgender-inclusive policies.
As my colleague Adam Mahoney reported in February, the movement to rename schools that fetishize Confederate figures is a growing movement led by Black and Indigenous advocates who stand up against abhorrent parts of our nation’s past. It’s part of a larger movement.
Galveston County’s fight for fair voting maps
Lucille McGuskey, a black community organizer in Galveston County, Texas, feels like she’s stuck in a time machine that only goes backwards.
She was integral to the 1991 push to give majority-minority districts to diverse communities. The change will allow Black and Latino voters, who make up 58% of the county’s population, to elect candidates to represent their interests on the five-member commission, the county’s central governing body. Ta. For 30 years, the district’s commissioners have directed resources to vulnerable Gulf Coast communities during a variety of crises, including Hurricane Ike, COVID-19, and a once-in-a-lifetime deep freeze.
“But now they’re taking away our seats at the table,” McGuskey told me.
The entire 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers the state and is known for its ultra-conservative leanings, heard a major voting rights case Tuesday. The lawsuit stems from a lawsuit filed by Black and Latino residents, civil rights groups, and the U.S. Department of Justice, which states that Galveston County’s district map, redrawn by Republicans in 2021, will make a diverse county a majority-majority district map. They argue that incorporating into white districts dilutes minority votes. The county must use McGuskey’s subdivision map while the court hears the case.
Residents fear that even if the courts ultimately side with black and Latino voters, the county’s Republican leaders will run out the clock this election cycle by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. I am concerned that this may be the case.
I’ll keep an eye on the incident. In the meantime, revisit my article from last December that tells you everything you need to know about what’s going on in Galveston County.
murder of roger fortson
Responding to a call of a “disturbance in progress,” Florida sheriff’s deputies on May 3 opened the apartment door to a 23-year-old black airman with a legally owned gun in his hand. -Shot Fortson multiple times.
An investigation is underway to determine whether the lawmaker’s actions were justified. But experts say the mere presence of a gun does not justify the use of deadly force. Fortson’s family says the deputy was in charge of the wrong situation. When the deputy arrived, the young man was playing video games and talking on the phone with his girlfriend, police said.
For many, the killing is a reminder of the racial politics surrounding gun ownership, the fact that guns in the hands of Black Americans are seen as a threat rather than a right.
“The Second Amendment gives Roger the right to own a gun; [wield] It was for their own protection when they didn’t know who was on the other side of the door,” Ben Crump, the Fortsons’ attorney, said in a press release. “It is clear that this police officer must be investigated and held accountable for Roger’s execution. We will not rest until justice is served for Roger and his family.”
In 2021, Emory University historian Carol Anderson said, Part 2: Race and guns in a deadly unequal America This graph shows how, over the centuries, black Americans have been excluded from the right to bear arms by Jim Crow laws and the persistent belief that black people are an inherent threat to own guns. It shows how far you have come. If you want to know more about the historical background of this recent tragedy, I recommend reading this book.
New Bern mayor faces setback
Patrick Braxton’s fight against the white town’s leaders hits a roadblock.
Braxton, the first black mayor of New Bern, Alabama, claims that his white predecessor, Haywood Stokes, and the all-white town council are preventing a legitimate new mayor from seizing power. But a federal judge on Monday rejected Braxton’s request to be allowed to take office immediately, saying Braxton is likely to prevail at trial in September.
The white leaders’ plot reportedly included changing the locks on City Hall, destroying important documents, and refusing to hold a mayoral election. According to Braxton, these actions violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
My colleague Ariya Wright brought Braxton’s plight to national attention. As she awaits her trial in September, let’s revisit her emotional story from her trip to New Bern last year.
Movement to disenfranchise black voters
Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump’s campaign filed its first lawsuit of the 2024 election cycle, targeting mail-in voting rules in Nevada, a battleground state that President Joe Biden narrowly won four years ago.
The lawsuit, also brought by the Republican National Committee and the Nevada Republican Party, seeks to invalidate mail-in ballots that were cast in a timely manner in the Silver State but arrived after Election Day. Because counting these votes would “compromise the integrity of the election.” state. “
The RNC is pursuing a similar legal challenge in Mississippi. The action appears to be part of a broader strategy to undermine mail-in voting rules and, in turn, limit black political power.
Voting by mail was uncontroversial until 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced significant numbers of Black Americans and other people of color to vote by mail. . It was only then, as officials at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice observed, that the practice “came under fruitless attack as ripe for fraud.”
There is no question that the RNC’s actions perpetuate this long-standing attack on the black vote.
looking for Second On my bookshelf,
Brandon Tensley
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