The time between when AIDS was first recognized as an epidemic and when President Reagan finally publicly acknowledged it was approximately four years. When it was first publicly acknowledged by the White House staff in 1982, the Press Secretary, Larry Speakes, took the opportunity to crack a homophobic gay “joke” rather than answer the question professionally, and asking the reporter,…
“Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society…In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way…
What is the War on Drugs? The war on drugs is not a war in the defense of public health; it is, from its very foundation, a racist political agenda created to control non-white people by creating laws to strip them of their rights. In the 1970s, towards the end of the Vietnam war, anti-war protestors were becoming…
Dred Scott was an enslaved man who fought for his freedom, all the way up to the Supreme Court. Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, filed lawsuits against their enslavers for their freedom, fearing that continued enslavement put their two daughters at risk of being sold to other families and taken away from them. The…
What Were the G.I. Bill Benefits? The G.I. Bill Benefits were meant to help support World War II veterans successfully return to civilian life, but Black veterans found it difficult to access their benefits. On June 22, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, aka the GI Bill, to provide a variety…
Emmett Till What Happened to Emmett Till? In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was beaten, shot in the head, and thrown in a river with an old cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. Who was responsible for this violence? Emmett Till lived in Chicago, Illinois, but was in Money, Mississippi visiting family….