Athlete and his partner, sprinter Bianca Williams, were stopped and handcuffed two years ago
An athlete who was allegedly racially profiled during a stop and search two years ago has said he was pulled over for a second time by “seven armed officers” while driving home in London at the weekend.
The Portuguese sprinter Ricardo Dos Santos published a series of tweets and video footage of him being pulled over and questioned by police.
Continue reading...Recently emerged book sheds new light on lynching after grand jury declined to charge Carolyn Bryant Donham
By her own telling, Carolyn Bryant Donham received preferential treatment rather than prosecution by Mississippi authorities after her encounter with Emmett Till led to the lynching of the Black teenager in the summer of 1955.
Instead of arresting Donham on a warrant that accused her of kidnapping days after Till’s abduction, an officer passed along word that relatives would take her and her two young sons away from home amid a rising furor over the case, Donham said in a 2008 memoir made public last month. The sheriff would later claim Donham, 21 at the time, could not be located for arrest.
Continue reading...Appropriate adults were often absent during the search, and the majority of children were innocent
The children’s commissioner for England has denounced the Metropolitan police’s record on child protection after new data revealed that 650 children were strip-searched over a two-year period and the majority were found to be innocent of the suspicions against them.
Dame Rachel de Souza said she was not convinced that the force was “consistently considering children’s welfare and wellbeing” after police data showed that in almost a quarter of cases (23%) an appropriate adult was not present during the search, despite this being a requirement under statutory guidance.
Continue reading...City council in small community of Vincent votes to terminate police chief, assistant and then whole department
The small city of Vincent in Alabama has voted to disband its police force after the revelation of racist text messages exchanged between two of its officers.
In the exchange, which recently surfaced on social media, one user named “752” asked: “What do y’all call a pregnant slave?” To this, one person who is not identifiable through the text, responded with question marks.
Continue reading...University of Pennsylvania houses remains at Penn Museum, where they form collection once used to justify white supremacy
The University of Pennsylvania is moving ahead with the reburial of the cranial remains of at least 13 Black Philadelphians whose skulls have been kept for almost two centuries in a notorious anthropological collection used to justify white supremacy in the run-up to the US civil war.
The Ivy League university is petitioning the Philadelphia orphans’ court for permission to rebury the skulls in the city’s historic African American Eden cemetery. Should the ceremony go ahead, it would amount to one of the most significant restorative processes for Black remains in America in the wake of the racial reckoning following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
Continue reading...Civil rights activist led 1963 protests paving the way for passing of UK Race Relations Act
The civil rights activist Roy Hackett, who was one of the lead organisers of the Bristol bus boycott, has died at the age of 93.
The 1963 campaign, which lasted four months, mobilised people across the city to stop using Bristol Omnibus Company buses because of its refusal to hire black and Asian people. At the time, a “colour bar” in Britain meant that people from minority ethnic backgrounds could legally be banned from housing, employment and public places.
Continue reading...Beating in broad daylight of Alika Ogorchukwu in Civitanova Marche sparks outrage and protests
An Italian man has been arrested on suspicion of murdering a Nigerian street seller, whose beating in broad daylight was reportedly filmed by onlookers and which has sparked outrage and protests.
Alika Ogorchukwu, 39, was killed in the centre of Civitanova Marche on Friday afternoon.
Continue reading...Hungary’s far-right prime minister says countries where races mingle are ‘no longer nations’
Hungary’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has lashed out against the “mixing” of European and non-European races, in a speech that immediately drew outrage from opposition parties and European politicians.
“We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race … and we do not want to become a mixed race,” said Orbán on Saturday. He added that countries where European and non-Europeans mingle were “no longer nations”.
Continue reading...Footage shows victim fleeing after police arrived in unmarked car and drew their guns
Police in San Bernardino, California, fatally shot a 23-year-old man on Saturday as he was fleeing, according to surveillance footage that shows an officer firing just seconds after arriving in an unmarked vehicle.
Security camera footage from a parking lot in San Bernardino, a city an hour east of Los Angeles, shows two officers driving up in an unmarked car about 8pm as Robert Adams stood in the lot. As soon as two officers exited the car, Adams turned away from them and ran. It appeared that roughly five seconds after they had stepped out of the car, one of the officers fired at Adams from a distance, seeming to hit him and causing him to collapse to the ground.
Continue reading...Carolyn Bryant Donham, 87, mentions in her unpublished book that she didn’t wish Till any harm nor could she protect him
The white woman who accused Black teenager Emmett Till of making improper advances before he was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 says she neither identified him to the killers nor wanted him murdered.
In an unpublished memoir obtained by the Associated Press, Carolyn Bryant Donham says she was unaware of what would happen to the 14-year-old Till, who lived in Chicago and was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was abducted, killed and tossed in a river. Now 87, Donham was only 21 at the time.
Continue reading...Wednesday declared day of mourning in Akron, Ohio, two weeks after Black man, 25, was killed by officers after chase
Hundreds of people filled a theater and passersby sounded horns in sympathy as family and friends shared their memories of Jayland Walker, the 25-year-old Black man killed in a hail of police gunfire in Akron, at his funeral on Wednesday.
Mourners passed his open casket during the viewing at the Akron Civic Theatre, some wearing T-shirts that said “Black Lives Matter” or “Zero Threat, Zero Violence, Justice for Jayland”.
Continue reading...Photos dating back to 1800s made free to allow telling of black history stories beyond enslavement and colonisation
A collection of almost 30,000 rarely seen images of the black diaspora in the UK and the US, dating from the 19th century to the present, has been launched as part of an educational initiative to raise awareness of the history of black people in the UK.
The Black History & Culture Collection includes more than 20 categories of images including politics, hair, education, female empowerment and LGBTQ+.
Continue reading...Officials brace for fresh protests after 25-year-old Black man was killed running from officers during a traffic stop
Authorities in Akron, Ohio, have released chilling police body-camera video in the shooting death of Jayland Walker, a Black motorist who was gunned down after running from officers during a traffic stop on Monday.
The video, which shows a fast police chase of Walker’s vehicle, culminates with several officers surrounding the 25-year-old in a parking lot, attempting to Taser him and then opening fire. Walker was accused of firing a handgun at police from his vehicle before leaving the pistol in the driver’s seat and trying to run from officers.
Continue reading...Flag was outside Florida home of the Uhuru movement, a Black international socialist group
A person using a flamethrower set fire Saturday to a Pan-African flag flying on a pole outside the headquarters of the Uhuru Movement, a Black international socialist group based in Florida.
Security video released by the group shows the driver of a white Honda sedan pulling up outside the group’s St Petersburg headquarters, removing a flamethrower from the trunk and shooting a tower of fire at the flag flying about 30ft (9 meters) above the ground.
Continue reading...Fifteen black former or current employees allege they faced racial abuse and harassment at carmaker’s factories
Fifteen black former or current employees at Tesla filed a lawsuit against the electric carmaker on Thursday, alleging they were subjected to racial abuse and harassment at its factories.
The workers said they were subjected to offensive racist comments and behaviour by colleagues, managers, and human resources employees on a regular basis, according to the lawsuit filed in a California state court.
Continue reading...The settlement also includes changes in police policies and training involving traffic stops
Authorities in Brooklyn Center, a city in the suburbs of Minneapolis, have agreed to pay $3.2m to the family of Daunte Wright, a Black man shot dead by a police officer who said she confused her gun with her Taser.
The tentative settlement also includes changes in police policies and training involving traffic stops like the one that resulted in Wright’s death, according to a statement from attorneys representing Wright’s family.
Continue reading...Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, testified how Trump and his allies fueled harassment and racist threats
In powerful and emotional testimony about the sinister results of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a mother and daughter who were Georgia elections workers described how Trump and his allies upended their lives, fueling harassment and racist threats by claiming they were involved in voter fraud.
Testifying to the January 6 committee in Washington, Shaye Moss said she received “a lot of threats. Wishing death upon me. Telling me that I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’”
Continue reading...Congolese independence hero’s gold-capped tooth returned as ex-colonial power faces its bloody past
Belgian authorities have returned a tooth belonging to the murdered Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba, as the former colonial power continues to confront its bloody past and look toward reconciliation.
The restitution of the relic took place after Belgium’s King Philippe expressed his “deepest regrets” this month for his country’s abuses in its African former colony, Congo, 75 times the size of Belgium.
Continue reading...Writer and broadcaster says teaching about the past must not be a way of making people feel good about themselves
Britain’s relationship with history is “not fit for purpose”, according to a leading historian who said too many pupils are still taught a “dishonest version” of the nation’s past that left out uncomfortable truths.
David Olusoga, the writer and broadcaster, told school leaders that Britain often saw its history as “recreational … a place that we go for comfort, a place to make us feel good about ourselves”, leading to ignorance about the history of its empire, and to immigration scandals such as Windrush.
Continue reading...The actor, who received an honorary Oscar this year, spoke out against the producers’ handling of the in memoriam section, as well as the choice of presenters
Samuel L Jackson has criticised this year’s Oscars ceremony for its handling of the death of pioneering actor Sidney Poitier, as well as their attempts to reach a wider demographic by expanding the pool of presenters.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Jackson said he was “still a little ticked that the greatest actor we had in Hollywood died and they gave him, what, 10 fucking seconds. No. It should have been a whole Sidney Poitier section.”
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