Tennessee legislature approves $3.2M for civil rights monument in Oak Ridge
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (WATE) — The Tennessee General Assembly approved $3.2 million in funding for a Civil Rights monument honoring the Scarboro 85.
The monument is planned to go in A.K. Bissell Park. The funding was included in the state budget for 2025-2026. Of the $3.2 million, $2.7 million will go toward design and construction.
'Scarboro 85' who desegregated Oak Ridge Schools to be added to TN academic standards
The Scarboro 85 were a group of Black students who went to Oak Ridge High School and Robertsville Junior High School in 1955, marking the first public schools in the Southeast to be desegregated. This happened one year before the Clinton 12 desegregated Clinton High School in 1956.
Community rallies behind Hamblen County deputy, wife after house fire
This year marks the 70th anniversary of these historic first steps toward school integration in 1955. The project is backed by Governor Bill Lee.
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Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
‘Where was God?' The Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting 10 years later.
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up This was quite remarkable, because less than 48 hours earlier, on the night of June 17, 2015, Sanders had just closed her eyes in benediction — during Bible study at her beloved Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church — when she was jolted by an explosion of gunfire. The 57-year-old woman, a fourth-generation member of 'Mother Emanuel,' the oldest A.M.E. church in the South, dove under a table and pulled her 11-year-old granddaughter down with her. She squeezed the child so tightly she feared she might crush her, instructing her to play dead as a 21-year-old white supremacist methodically assassinated nine of the 12 Black worshippers in the basement fellowship hall. Those she watched die included her 26-year-old son, Tywanza Sanders, who had tried vainly to distract the shooter, and her 87-year-old aunt, Susie Jackson, who was shredded by 10 hollow-point bullets. At one point, Sanders smeared her legs with the blood pooling at her feet so that the killer might think he had finished her off. It worked. What happened in court two days later, a procession of forgiveness by Black victims for a remorseless racist murderer, both awed and befuddled the world. Many found it to be the purest expression of Christianity they had ever witnessed and could not imagine ever being graced in any such way. With the help of a soaring and melodic eulogy for the victims by President Barack Obama, the church known as Mother Emanuel soon became an earthly emblem of amazing grace. FILE - Tyrone Sanders and Felicia Sanders comfort each other at the graveside of their son, Tywanza Sanders, on June 27, 2015, at Emanuel AME Cemetery in Charleston, S.C. (Grace Beahm/The Post And Courier via AP, File) Grace Beahm/Associated Press Now fast-forward to December 2016. Felicia Sanders is back in court, the lead witness in the death penalty trial of Dylann Roof. She is under cross-examination by Roof's attorney, who is trying to establish that Roof threatened to kill himself that night, a desperate stab at a psychiatric defense. This time there is no nod by Sanders at forgiveness, no prayer for the soul of her son's unrepentant executioner. 'He say he was going to kill himself, and I was counting on that,' Sanders responds coolly in her Lowcountry lilt, glaring at Roof from the stand. 'He's evil. There's no place on earth for him except for the pit of hell.' Roof's lawyer, blindsided, tries once more to prompt Sanders about Roof's suicidality. She is having none of it: 'Send himself back to the pit of hell, I say.' Had something changed about Felicia Sanders? Had she, in the 18 months between the Emanuel murders and the trial, forsaken the commitment to forgiveness that was such a hallmark of her faith and that had so moved the world? Not in the slightest, I concluded, while researching a book about the history of Mother Emanuel and the meaning of forgiveness in the African American church. To the contrary, Sanders and other church stalwarts helped me understand that the forgiveness expressed toward Dylann Roof had not been for Dylann Roof but rather for themselves. Those who appeared at Roof's bond hearing did not speak for everyone in the congregation, or even in their families. A decade later, some still describe the path to forgiveness as a journey they travel at their own pace. But the grace volunteered in June 2015 grew organically from the fiber of African Methodism, a denomination two centuries old. It obviously had deep scriptural roots — 'Forgive us our trespasses' and 'Forgive them, for they know not what they do.' But it also was an iteration of a timeworn survival mechanism that has helped African American Christians withstand enslavement, forced migration, captivity, indentured servitude, segregation, discrimination, denial of citizenship, and the constant threat of racial and sexual violence with their souls and their sanity still, somehow, intact. One year after the shootings at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., relatives and friends of the slain gathered to honor their lives. Grace Beahm/Associated Press Churches like Emanuel, which has roots in antebellum Charleston, have long served as physical and spiritual refuges from the scourges that confront Black Americans. Its own long history, a two-century cycle of suppression and resistance, illuminates the relentless afflictions of caste in the city where nearly half of all enslaved Africans disembarked in North America and where the Civil War began. Emanuel's predecessor congregation, which formed in 1817 after a subversive walkout from Methodist churches by free and enslaved Black Charlestonians, faced immediate harassment from white authorities. The police raided services and jailed worshippers by the scores. When an incipient slave insurrection plot was uncovered in 1822 and traced back in part to the church, 35 men were led to the gallows, nearly half of them from the congregation. The wood-frame building was dismantled by order of the authorities and the church's leading ministers forced into exile. Emanuel's founding pastor after the Civil War, Richard Harvey Cain, used its pulpit as a springboard into politics, winning seats in the state legislature and Congress in a career that mirrored at first the heady hope and then the stolen promise of Reconstruction. During the depths of Jim Crow, Charlestonians assembled at Emanuel to voice outrage over lynchings and jurisprudential travesties. Its civil rights era pastor, Benjamin J. Glover, also led Charleston's NAACP, staged peaceful protest marches from the church, and was repeatedly jailed. Congregants were urged to action there by Booker T. Washington (1909), W.E.B. DuBois (1921), and Martin Luther King Jr. (1962), and then, a year after King's assassination, by his widow, Coretta Scott King (1969). She came to support a hospital workers' strike that bore eerie echoes of the sanitation workers' strike that had drawn her husband to Memphis. Nearly five decades later, the first person shot by Dylann Roof on June 17, 2015, was the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a remarkable prodigy who had been the youngest African American elected to South Carolina's legislature and was serving his fourth term in the state Senate. A horse-drawn carriage carried the casket of the late South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney past the Confederate flag and onto the grounds of the South Carolina State Capitol in Columbia, S.C. on June 24, 2015. REUTERS The weight of it all takes the breath away. And for many, forgiveness might seem an inadequate response, given available options like anger, bitterness, hatred, revenge, retribution. A more natural one, perhaps a more human one, might even be 'Where was God?' But in interviews over the years, each of the six family members who spoke mercifully toward Dylann Roof explained that they did so for their own spiritual release. They depicted the moment in mystical terms — unpremeditated, unexpected, the words just flowed, it was God talking. But none said they meant for their words to be read as a grant of exoneration or a pass from accountability. No slate had been wiped. Indeed, some did not care much whether Roof lived or died (he remains on federal death row in Indiana, one of three inmates whose sentences were not commuted to life in prison by President Joe Biden at the close of his term). Rather, the mothers and children and widowers of the dead described their brand of forgiveness as a purging of self-destructive toxins, a means for reversing the metastasis of rage, and at its most basic a way to get out of bed each morning in the face of it all. It served as an unburdening, not an undoing, a method not only of moral practice but of emotional self-preservation. Because the choice to forgive was one dignity that could not be taken away, it also served as a path to empowerment. It might be mistaken for submission, but in Charleston it resurrected agency for victims who had been robbed of it. 'He is not a part of my life anymore,' the Rev. Anthony Thompson, the widower of Bible study leader Myra Thompson, told me in explaining his forgiveness of Roof. 'Forgiveness has freed me of that, of him, completely. I'm not going to make him a lifetime partner.' This may be disconcerting for some white Americans who found reassurance in the notion that those who forgave Dylann Roof were, by association, also forgiving — or at least moving beyond — the four-century legacy of white supremacy that contributed to his poisoning. They decidedly were not, and the question of whether we make serious progress toward eradicating the psychosis of race in this country and the inequities it bequeaths in wealth, education, housing, justice, and health, not to mention hope, awaits an answer on the 50th or 100th anniversary of the massacre at Mother Emanuel.
Associated Press
4 hours ago
- Associated Press
What to know about 'No Kings' protests against Trump's policies on Saturday
Opponents of President Donald Trump's administration are set to rally in hundreds of cities on Saturday during the military parade in Washington for the Army's 250th anniversary — which coincides with Trump's birthday. The 'No Kings' protests are set to take place to counter what organizers say are Trump's plans to feed his ego on what is also his 79th birthday and Flag Day. The Army birthday celebration had already been planned. But earlier this spring, Trump announced his intention to ratchet up the event to include 60-ton M1 Abrams battle tanks and Paladin self-propelled howitzers rolling through the city streets. He has long sought a similar display of patriotic force. Why is it called No Kings? The 'No Kings' theme was orchestrated by the 50501 Movement, a national movement made up of everyday Americans who stand for democracy and against what they call the authoritarian actions of the Trump administration. The name 50501 stands for 50 states, 50 protests, one movement. Protests earlier this year have denounced Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk, the now former leader of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, a government organization designed to slash federal spending. Protesters have called for Trump to be 'dethroned' as they compare his actions to that of a king and not a democratically elected president. 'They've defied our courts, deported Americans, disappeared people off the streets, attacked our civil rights, and slashed our services,' the group says on its website, referring to the Trump administration and its policies. 'They've done this all while continuing to serve and enrich their billionaire allies.' Why are they protesting on Saturday? The No Kings Day of Defiance has been organized to reject authoritarianism, billionaire-first politics and the militarization of the country's democracy, according to a press release from No Kings. It is happening to counter the Army's 250th anniversary celebration — which Trump has ratcheted up to include an expensive, lavish military parade. The event, will feature hundreds of military vehicles and aircraft and thousands of soldiers. It also happens to be his 79th birthday and Flag Day. 'The flag doesn't belong to President Trump. It belongs to us,' the No Kings website says. 'On June 14th, we're showing up everywhere he isn't — to say no thrones, no crowns, no kings.' Where are the protests? Protests in nearly 2,000 locations are scheduled around the country, from city blocks to small towns, from courthouse steps to community parks, according to the No Kings website. No protests are scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C., however, where the parade will be held. The group says it will 'make action everywhere else the story of America that day.' No Kings plans instead to hold a major flagship march and rally in Philadelphia to draw a clear contrast between its people-powered movement and what they describe as the 'costly, wasteful, and un-American birthday parade' in Washington, according to the No Kings website. What is planned at the No Kings protests? People of all ages are expected to come together in the protest locations for speeches, marching, carrying signs and waving American flags, organizers said in a call Wednesday. On the group's website it says a core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action, and participants are expected to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with them. Weapons of any kind should not be brought to events, according to the website. How many people are expected to participate? The No Kings Day of Defiance is expected to be the largest single-day mobilization since Trump returned to office, organizers said. Organizers said they are preparing for millions of people to take to the streets across all 50 states and commonwealths.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Poll shows low-profile New York City comptroller race narrowing in the home stretch
NEW YORK — A new poll shows the race for New York City comptroller tightening, with Justin Brannan narrowing the gap in a contest still led by Mark Levine. And with less than two weeks until the Democratic primary, nearly half of New Yorkers remain undecided in the race to be the city's top fiscal watchdog, according to the poll Brannan's team commissioned and shared in full with POLITICO. It was conducted by Public Policy Polling, and queried 573 likely primary voters between June 6 and 7, with a 4.1 percent margin of error. Levine, the Manhattan borough president, led Brannan — the City Council finance committee chair — 30 percent to 19 percent among likely Democratic voters, according to the poll. That same survey showed state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani leapfrogging Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary. The 11-point gap was smaller than a May 27 survey from Honan Strategy Group that had Levine at 38 percent and Brannan at 13 percent, a shift that left the Brooklyn lawmaker's team feeling bullish. Both surveys found 44 percent of likely voters undecided. 'A race that was once considered locked up is now anything but,' Brannan campaign adviser Alyssa Cass wrote in a campaign memo shared with POLITICO. 'As nearly half the electorate remains undecided, Brannan is the candidate with the most room to grow and the clearest path to an upset.' Brannan's team believes the tides will continue to shift in his favor. They cited the smaller gap that came after 10 days of going on air with a television ad along with a niche stat from their poll: Of voters who had seen Brannan's ads, they preferred him 40 percent to 37 percent. Those viewers, however, made up a small slice of the electorate at 23 percent. And it was unclear how many of those people knew of Levine or his campaign. Levine's camp countered that the polls have consistently shown him ahead of Brannan by double digits. And they touted the endorsement Wednesday night of a major municipal labor group. 'Mark has all the momentum in this race. We just earned the endorsement of the United Federation of Teachers, representing hundreds of thousands of NYC public school educators — adding to the 180-plus elected officials, faith leaders, labor unions and community groups backing our campaign,' Campaign Manager Matt Rubin said in a statement. 'Right now, we're focused on connecting with New Yorkers where they are — on the streets, at subway stops and at their doors.' A person on Levine's team also took issue with the survey methodology, suggesting it over sampled Brannan's home borough of Brooklyn — especially with affluent voters — and under sampled Black voters Levine is doing better with. The Public Policy Polling showed few New Yorkers have barely tuned into the contest: More than half of those surveyed had no opinion about the favorability of the two candidates, and around half of the likely Democratic primary voters had not seen an ad for either. Brannan and Levine were the only two comptroller candidates to qualify for a pair of televised debates, which mainly showcased how little they differ on policy. During their first meeting, they engaged in several back-and-forths over President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, but had a conspicuous aversion to talking about Andrew Cuomo, who at the time had been leading the mayoral Democratic primary in every poll.
