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Black America Web
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Black America Web
Louisiana Senate Vetoes Retrial Bill For People Convicted By Split Juries
Source: HPphoto / Getty The Louisiana Senate reaffirmed its commitment to Jim Crow-era practices this week by vetoing a bill that would've allowed incarcerated people convicted under split jury verdicts to seek a retrial. According to AP, the bill failed on a 9-26 vote that fell along party lines. The bill was authored by state Sen. Royce Duplessis (D) and would've added split jury convictions to the list of claims an incarcerated person could seek a retrial. There are an estimated 1,500 men and women currently incarcerated in Louisiana as a result of split jury convictions, 80 percent of whom are Black. 'If we choose to vote down this bill, we're saying that justice has an expiration date,' Duplessis told his colleagues during debate over the measure. 'We have an opportunity in Louisiana to remove this stain, because right now we are the only ones wearing it.' Split jury convictions were found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2020, which acknowledged the racist origins of the practice and found it violated defendants' constitutional rights. At the time of the ruling, the only states that still allowed them were Oregon and Louisiana. For its part, Oregon's Supreme Court voted in 2022 to allow the then-400 people incarcerated through split jury convictions to seek a retrial. Conversely, the Louisiana Supreme Court voted to reject retroactively applying the Supreme Court's decision that same year. Split jury convictions were a cornerstone of Jim Crow policies and were inherently designed to uphold white supremacy. This isn't an opinion; split jury convictions were introduced in 1898 in the Louisiana State Constitution, a framework explicitly designed to 'reestablish the supremacy of the white race,' after the Civil War. Source: Kansuda Kaewwannarat / Getty Split jury convictions in particular were implemented to ensure that even if Black people were on a jury, their voices wouldn't sway the outcome of a case. This was a multilayered tactic as it allowed Black people to be convicted of felonies under questionable circumstances, which in turn would strip them of their voting rights. These verdicts were and still are used to strip Black people of both their freedom and political power. Knowing that history, it's hard not to look at the Louisiana Senate with a significant amount of side-eye. Their arguments against the measure were incredibly shallow, stating that they didn't want to overburden the courts and district attorneys. They choose not to rectify an explicitly racist, unconstitutional tactic…because of court scheduling. I would respect it more if they stopped playing in our faces and just said the quiet part out loud. Those in favor of the bill countered that it wouldn't automatically allow for a retrial; it simply would've provided a pathway for those incarcerated under split jury convictions, and that retrials would be granted under the discretion of the district attorneys. The fact that this move came as the Louisiana House of Representatives passed an anti-DEI bill that was widely viewed by the Black caucus as racist just goes to show how regressive the Louisiana state legislature is across the board. Making the veto even more egregious is the fact that a recent poll showed that the majority of Louisiana voters were in favor of the measure passing. So this clearly wasn't about doing what was in the best interest of their constituents. It was about reminding Black people how little their freedom matters to those in power. Whether it's 1898 or 2025, the playbook remains the same, and sadly, Louisiana will have to continue wearing this stain. SEE ALSO: Trump Administration Targets DEI Initiatives at Colleges California Teen Spurs Outrage With Racist Promposal SEE ALSO Louisiana Senate Vetoes Retrial Bill For People Convicted By Split Juries was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
UPI
24-05-2025
- General
- UPI
On This Day, May 24: 1st telegraph sent in United States
1 of 6 | A worker with the United States Military Railway Service repairs a telegraph line during the American Civil War in 1862. On May 24, 1844, the first U.S. telegraph line was formally opened. File Photo courtesy of Library of Congress On this date in history: In 1844, the first U.S telegraph line was formally opened -- between Baltimore and Washington. The first message sent was "What hath God wrought?" In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was opened to the public, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York City. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI In 1935, the first night game in Major League Baseball was played at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. The Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1. In 1943, Josef Mengele, the so-called "Angel of Death" became the new doctor at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. He fled Germany at the conclusion of World War II and died in 1979 in Brazil. In 1958, United Press and the International News Service merger was announced, forming United Press International. In 1962, Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter became the second American to orbit Earth, circling it three times. John Glenn was the first, earlier in the year. In 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled private religious schools that practice racial discrimination aren't eligible for church-related tax benefits. In 1987, 250,000 people jammed San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge on its 50th anniversary, temporarily flattening the arched span. File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI In 1991, Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia. In 2007, the U.S. Congress voted to increase the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years -- from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 over a three-year period. In 2018, President Donald Trump posthumously pardoned Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion, for his conviction under a Jim Crow-era law. In 2022, a mass shooting at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school left 19 students and two adults dead. Law enforcement officers fatally shot the gunman. File Photo by Jon Farina/UPI
Axios
09-05-2025
- General
- Axios
How Pope Leo's Creole roots in New Orleans tell "an American story"
Pope Leo XIV may have been born in Chicago, but he has Creole roots in New Orleans. Why it matters: The new pope, formerly known as Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, has a family history that tells a uniquely American story. Catch up quick: Once Prevost was elevated to Pope Leo XIV on Thursday, Historic New Orleans Collection genealogist Jari Honora got curious and immediately researched his family background. Based on the name Prevost, Honora tells Axios New Orleans, "I honestly was not looking for an immediate Louisiana connection. ... But on his mother's side, they are definitely from New Orleans." Honora's research shows that Pope Leo's maternal grandparents were Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié, who lived in the 7th Ward. They married at Our Lady of Sacred Heart Church in 1887 before moving to Chicago between 1910 and 1912. That move makes Pope Leo's family part of the early, Jim Crow-era Black diaspora from the American South known as the Great Migration. During a stretch of time between about 1915 and 1970, about 6 million Black southerners left the Deep South, according to historian Isabel Wilkerson in her book "The Warmth of Other Suns." "The Great Migration would become a turning point in history," she wrote. "It would transform urban America and recast the social and political order of every city it touched." Chicago was a common landing place, according to Wilkerson, with its Black population expanding from about 44,000 to more than 1 million people. In other words, as Honora says, Pope Leo's story "is absolutely an American story." The intrigue: For some migrants, leaving the South also meant a chance to change how they presented, which Prevost's family did, Honora says. "Fairly consistently, they are listed in census and other records in New Orleans as Black and 'mulatto,'" he says. "But once they migrate to Chicago, those identifiers are all switched to white." In New Orleans, there's a Creole term — " passé blanc" — for people of color who can "pass" for white. "That's just not surprising for families that are in the process of passing. I don't fault them at all," Honora says. "I see it as a decision to safeguard their livelihoods, and an economic decision both to leave New Orleans and go to larger cities in the North, as well as to shift racial identities." What he's saying: John Prevost, the pope's brother, tells the New York Times that his family did not discuss their Creole ancestry. "It was never an issue," he said. Fun fact: New Orleans Archdiocese records indicate that Pope Leo's maternal great-grandmother Eugenie Grambois was baptized at the St. Louis Cathedral on Jan. 8, 1840. She later married Ferdinand D. Baquié on Sept. 19, 1864 at St. Mary's Church on Chartres Street, church records indicate. What it means to be "Creole" Flashback: New Orleans has been culturally diverse since its founding as a French city, and its complicated history includes periods as being both the home to one of the largest populations of free people of color and as the site of one of the largest markets for enslaved people. New Orleans' Creole population was born of that history. "Most people link 'Creole' to being mixed race, or they link it to something related to race as a whole, and it is not," Honora clarifies. "It's shared by people who are white, who are Black, indigenous or any combination thereof." To be Creole, says Honora, who counts himself as such, is to be "solidly rooted in Latin-based, Roman Catholic cultural practices in the New World, and particularly Louisiana."
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Amid housing affordability crisis, Texas House votes to take some power from NIMBYs
As Texas faces a housing affordability crunch, state lawmakers sent a signal Monday to residents who try to stop new homes from being built near them: It may get a lot harder to do so. The Texas House voted Monday to advance a bill that defangs an obscure state law that property owners use to stop new homes from going up near them. House members gave preliminary approval to House Bill 24, a key priority of House Speaker Dustin Burrows. The bill, which must clear a final vote, is part of a Republican slate of bills aimed at tackling the state's high housing costs — chiefly by making it easier to build homes. Texas needs about 320,000 more homes than it has, according to one estimate. That shortage of homes, housing advocates and experts say, has played a key role in driving up home prices and rents amid the state's economic boom. Burrows and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have made tackling the state's affordability crunch among their top priorities this legislative session. Lawmakers have advanced bills to relax local restrictions on what kinds of homes can be built and where and make it easier for housing developers to obtain city building permits. HB 24 — authored by state Rep. Angelia Orr, R-Angelina — tackles a Jim Crow-era state law that makes it more difficult for cities to allow new development if enough neighbors object. If a builder seeks to rezone a property and 20% of neighboring landowners object, the city council needs a supermajority to approve the zoning change. A group of Austin homeowners used the law a few years ago to convince a judge to kill a citywide zoning plan intended to allow more homes to be built. The law drew renewed ire this year when neighbors near a proposed affordable housing development in San Antonio — a development touted by Gov. Greg Abbott — used the law to help stop the development. The project then failed to get enough votes on the City Council to move forward. Critics of the law have argued the law deters developers from building much needed housing for fear that pushback from neighbors will kill their projects. Opposition to the law has created unlikely alliances with the Texas Municipal League, a lobbying group that represents more than 1,200 cities, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the influential conservative think tank, as each call for the law to be changed. HB 24 would raise the petition threshold for objecting property owners to 60%. Even then, it would only take a simple majority of city council members to approve the rezoning. The bill also prevents property owners from using the law to block citywide zoning changes. For example, if a city council sought to change zoning rules to allow more homes in existing single-family neighborhoods, opponents couldn't use state law to stop the change. State Rep. John Bryant, a Dallas Democrat, argued the bill would eliminate homeowners' ability to stop commercial and industrial uses from going up next door to their homes. 'A simple majority vote could take away the zoning that they relied on when they made their biggest investment in their home,' Bryant said Monday. 'Suddenly, they have an industrial or commercial use right next door.' Orr said she thinks it's highly unlikely that cities will enact citywide zoning plans that put industrial uses next to neighborhoods as a result of the bill — which is intended to allow more affordable housing and multifamily housing development. A city council, she noted, 'already makes a multitude of decisions based on a simple majority.' Monday's vote was a crucial test of how the broader Texas House would approach the housing affordability crisis this session. House members last week approved a bill — House Bill 23, another Burrows priority — that intends to make it easier for developers to secure building permits if cities don't approve them quickly enough. It's unclear how House members will handle a slate of potentially more controversial bills that would relax local zoning rules to allow more homes to be built. The Texas Senate has advanced bills to allow smaller homes on smaller lots, additional dwelling units in the backyards of single-family homes and homes and apartments in places they aren't currently allowed. Those bills haven't come up for a vote on the House floor yet, and similar proposals died in the House two years ago. Tickets are on sale now for the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, Texas' breakout ideas and politics event happening Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
CBS News
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
"Sinners" earning praise from Boston filmmakers and bringing crowds to theaters
Boston filmmakers and filmgoers are praising the box office hit "Sinners," the newest movie by director Ryan Coogler starring Michael B. Jordan that's set in the Deep South. "The period piece for me was what made it really, really unique. Going back in time," filmmaker David J. Curtis said. Horror-thriller set in Deep South Jordan's on double duty playing twin bothers in the horror-thriller that meshes Jim Crow-era politics, Southern blues and vampires. It's an interesting mix that just works, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema's Jordan Fussell told WBZ-TV. "The vampire storyline that goes on throughout it is very entertaining," said Fussell. "And, as a horror fan as well, it does drive forward on that. It's not cringey at all. It serves a purpose." Coogler's artistry is a hit among members of Boston's Secret Society of Black Creatives, a group dedicated to empowering Black filmmakers. "The sounds, the music. The music always draws you in," Secret Society of Black Creatives member Nerissa Williams Scott said. Moviegoers will notice that the format of Sinners is wider, creating a grand experience at the theatres. "It's wider format, 70 it was shot on film," filmmaker David J. Curtis said. "I could talk forever about this kind of stuff." Representation onscreen Perhaps what stunned movie lovers the most is the representation onscreen and behind the camera that allowed the themes of culture, race and music to really shine through. "When the people are behind the scenes look like the people who are in front of the camera, representing a people that are going to come out and see it in droves, what else is better?" Williams Scott said. "The ending was incredible," Fussell explained. "I cried like multiple times."
