Frederick Douglass' Bold Stand: Should Blacks Celebrate July 4th?

As a minister/preacher and school professor, I’m used to spending time on my “soapbox” sharing each data and a sprinkle (nicely, most likely greater than only a sprinkle) of my private opinions.

So, in fact, I benefit from the alternative to pen op-eds (‘Affiliate Editor’s Message,’ and so on.) for the Defender and our trustworthy print version readers and web site guests. And since that is the time of 12 months when all people “and so they momma” are trying again on the prime this and prime that of 2023, I believed I’d do the identical with my rants (excuse me… phrases of unbelievable perception).

Is Gov. Abbott touched or simply merciless and weird?

Greg Abbott being a headache. (Credit score: AP/Eric Homosexual)

We already know the reply to this. Each. However in case you’re nonetheless unsure, simply examine his file, cash. If it’s anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-worker, anti-environment, anti-education, anti-gun reform, it’s pro-Abbott.

Ought to Blacks have fun the 4 th of July?

Frederick Douglass circa 1852. Daguerreotype picture. (Credit score: Samuel J. Miller)

We all know Frederick Douglass’ place on this. However why does he say “Hell no’? And what about bruhs and hoe women who “rock wit” the 4th? What’s their causes?

Mississippi Goddamn

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba speaks throughout a press convention in Jackson, Mississippi. (Credit score: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Pictures)

Mississippi has moved in a number of methods to unashamedly destroy democracy, making a GOP playbook for taking us again to the 1680s.

Three the laborious method: Fascism American model

Tennessee State Consultant Justin Jones calls on his colleagues to move gun management laws from the nicely of the Home Chambers in the course of the legislative session on the State Capitol in Nashville, Tenn. (Credit score: George Walker IV /The Tennessean by way of AP)

Mississippi ain’t alone in crushing the voice of the folks and stealing the vote and voice of Blackfolk. Take a look at these three state examples, so we are able to gameplan on what we have to do to let these people know that once they come for Blackfolk, they’re coming for the improper ones.

Affiliate Editor’s Message: A willingness to defend

A member of the state militia faces off towards an African-American veteran in the course of the 1919 Chicago Race Riot. July 27, 1919.

With white home terrorism on the rise, if we care about our well-being and the security of our family members, we as people and as members of collective households and communities have to arrange ourselves to defend ourselves.

Have a Black AF vacation season

At a time when our story is below assault and Black authors and intellectuals and social commentators and their works are being banned, right here’s a ebook – “Black AF” – that can greater than make-up for all of the Black historical past they’re taking out of faculties.

This vacation season, why not give the reward of information?! And since information about our historical past, books written by our authors and social commentary coming from our views are being banned and attacked, it’s all of the extra motive we must be sharing “Our Story” in all its types and flavors. One suggestion: Michael Harriot’s New York Occasions best-selling ebook, “Black AF Historical past: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America” is mos def the reward that retains on giving. Trus!

There’s one thing to that adage “Suppose globally, act regionally.” And once we breathe new life into our households and communities, we assist course-correct a world heading in a loopy route.

Battle breast most cancers on your Norma Jean

Norma Jean Walker. (Photograph by Carstell A. Walker Jr.)

I like and miss my mother, Norma Jean Walker. Most cancers took her life, however solely after she kicked most cancers’s ass for 37-plus years. And since Black girls are taking the brunt of the breast most cancers assault, we’re all linked to a Black lady or three who’re someplace alongside that journey. We owe it to them (the Norma Denims in our lives) to battle towards this illness.

Affiliate Editor’s Message: Voting 9-1-1

If voting didn’t make a distinction, them people wouldn’t make investments a lot time, cash and power into suppressing our votes, closing polling locations, storming US Capitols and insurrecting, and so on. Shedding the chance to vote (which is them of us’ final aim) would give us an up shut and private really feel for that Gaza Strip life – no vote, no voice, no rights.

Affiliate Editor’s Message: What would Jesus do?

Jan 6 revolt (Credit score: AP Photograph/Julio Cortez – The Shreveport Occasions by way of AP File/Val Horvath)

In instances like these, we should be asking ourselves that query each day. All I do know is, the Black Messiah was about turning over tables and chasing the money-changers out of God’s home; telling his those who he hated oppression; declaring his total mission to be about preaching excellent news to the poor, recovering sight for the blind and liberating the captives; getting his folks to get up to their divine value; and difficult them with these phrases: “What I can do, you are able to do, and even larger issues shall you do.” So, whereas we’re questioning what Jesus would do, Jesus is questioning what the hell are you and I gonna do.