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Ahmaud Arbery’s Three Murderers Sentenced to Life in Prison

Ahmaud Arbery’s Three Murderers Sentenced to Life in Prison

By goodblacknews on January 8, 2022

Judge Timothy R. Walmsley sentenced father and son Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan Jr. to life in prison for their felony murder of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick, GA in February 2020.

Bryan will be eligible for parole in 30 years; the McMichaels have no possibility for parole. As he sentenced the murderers, Judge Walmsley had the courtroom sit in silence for one minute to have everyone present get a feel for at least a fraction of the five minutes Arbery was chased and terrorized by his now-convicted killers.

(l to r) Travis McMichael, William “Roddie” Bryan, Jr. and Gregory McMichael

“When I thought about this, I thought from a lot of different angles,” Walmsley said, “and I kept coming back to the terror that must have been in the mind of the young man running through Satilla Shores.”

These thoughts were likely never far from Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones,  his father Marcus Arbery, or the rest of his family.

To quote nbcnews.com:

Arbery’s parents and sister, who spoke before the sentences were handed down, asked the judge to show no lenience.

“The man who killed my son has sat in this courtroom every single day next to his father. I’ll never get that chance to sit next to my son ever again. Not at a general table. Not at a holiday. And not at a wedding,” Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery, said before the sentence was announced.

“His killers should spend the rest of their lives thinking about what they did and what they took from us and they should do it behind bars because me and my family have to do it for the rest of their life.”

Attorneys for all three of Arbery’s murderers have said they intend to appeal the convictions.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/three-men-convicted-murdering-ahmaud-arbery-sentenced-life-prison-rcna10901

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/07/us/judge-timothy-walmsley-minute-of-silence-arbery/index.html

Rest In Power Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 90, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Human Rights Activist

Rest In Power Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 90, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Human Rights Activist

By goodblacknews on December 26, 2021

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who helped lead the movement that ended apartheid, the unjust system of white rule in South Africa and won a Nobel Peace Prize, passed away today in Cape Town, the country’s president Cryil Ramaphosa confirmed Sunday. Tutu was 90.

Ramaphosa stated: “[A] leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical insight that faith without works is dead.”

The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation said the cause of Tutu’s death was cancer, adding that Tutu died in a care facility. The archbishop was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997, and had been hospitalized several times in the decades since.

To quote from the New York Times:

As leader of the South African Council of Churches and later as Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, Archbishop Tutu led the church to the forefront of Black South Africans’ decades-long struggle for freedom. His voice was a powerful force for nonviolence in the anti-apartheid movement, earning him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

When that movement triumphed in the early 1990s, he prodded the country toward a new relationship between its white and Black citizens, and, as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he gathered testimony documenting the viciousness of apartheid.

“You are overwhelmed by the extent of evil,” he said. But, he added, it was necessary to open the wound to cleanse it. In return for an honest accounting of past crimes, the committee offered amnesty, establishing what Archbishop Tutu called the principle of restorative — rather than retributive — justice.

His credibility was crucial to the commission’s efforts to get former members of the South African security forces and former guerrilla fighters to cooperate with the inquiry.

Archbishop Tutu preached that the policy of apartheid was as dehumanizing to the oppressors as it was to the oppressed. At home, he stood against looming violence and sought to bridge the chasm between Black and white; abroad, he urged economic sanctions against the South African government to force a change of policy.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/26/world/africa/desmond-tutu-dead.html

 

Former Minnesota Police Officer Kim Potter Found Guilty of Manslaughter in Death of Duante Wright

Former Minnesota Police Officer Kim Potter Found Guilty of Manslaughter in Death of Duante Wright

By goodblacknews on December 23, 2021

Kim Potter, the former Minnesota police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright when she drew her handgun instead of her Taser during a traffic stop in April, has been found guilty on two counts of manslaughter.

Jurors deliberated since Monday before coming to a unanimous verdict. Potter, who had served as an officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota for 26 years, will be sentenced at a later date.

To quote npr.com:

Prosecutors did not dispute that the shooting was an accident. But they said that in her 26 years on the force, Potter had undergone extensive firearm and Taser training, including how to avoid confusing the two. They turned to use-of-force experts and the police department’s policy handbook to argue that the use of a Taser was inappropriate to begin with.

“She drew a deadly weapon, she aimed it, she pointed it at Daunte Wright’s chest and she fired,” Assistant Attorney General Erin Eldridge said during the state’s closing argument on Monday.

“This was no little oopsie. This was not putting the wrong date on a check. This was not entering the wrong password somewhere. This was a colossal screw-up, a blunder of epic proportions,” Eldridge said. “It was precisely the thing she had been warned about for years, and she had been trained to prevent it.”

Minnesota’s  sentencing guidelines recommend approximately seven years for the first-degree charge and four years for the second-degree charge, though prosecutors are likely to advocate for a longer sentence.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1066012247/kim-potter-trial-daunte-wright

Florida Law School to Open Benjamin L. Crump Center for Social Justice in 2022

Florida Law School to Open Benjamin L. Crump Center for Social Justice in 2022

By goodblacknews on December 3, 2021

The St. Thomas University College of Law in Miami Gardens, FL plans to open The Benjamin L. Crump Center for Social Justice in 2022.

The center will support a program for law students interested in civil rights and social justice, offering need-based financial aid, a speakers series and pro bono service placements for new lawyers, school officials said.

In the past decade, attorney Crump has risen to prominence by representing the families of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and most recently, Ahmaud Arbery.

“Our country went through a national reckoning in the spring and summer of 2020,” said David. A. Armstrong, the president of St. Thomas University. “Ben Crump was at the center of that as the living civil rights attorney icon here in our country.”

Over the years, Crump has won financial settlements in close to 200 police brutality cases and has pushed cities to ban so-called no-knock warrants, in which police serve warrants at homes without warning.

“Lawyers can be the social engineers,” Crump said in a statement Thursday. “This Center will serve as a pipeline for historically marginalized students to get their law degrees and give back to society, following the legacy of my personal hero, Thurgood Marshall.”

To quote nbcnews.com:

Crump’s friendship with Tamara F. Lawson, the law school’s dean, who wrote the book Mainstreaming Civil Rights in the Law School Curriculum, meant the Florida campus was a natural site for the center.

The law school’s racial diversity also was a draw, school officials said. Black students were 7.57 percent of all incoming law students in the U.S. in 2019, according to the American Bar Association. At St. Thomas, 8.3 percent of students last year were Black and 64.9 percent were Latino, according to a report by PublicLegal, a research project founded by the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

While the law school encourages all students to take on social justice work, special efforts will focus on marginalized students who can bring more diversity to the legal profession, Armstrong said. Crump said he hopes the center will pave the way for students looking for new opportunities in the field of law.

“My mother was a hotel maid who cleaned the rooms for the likes of many people who may be seated in this auditorium,” Crump said Thursday at the new center that bears his name. “And I just remember her and my grandmother, these two Black women who believed with everything in their heart that the American dream was for their children, too.

“We need a whole army of warriors to go out into the community to give a voice to those who have no voice, to say things in the world that are not being said, to take on challenges that others are afraid of,” he said.

To read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/benjamin-crump-social-justice-center-open-florida-law-school-n1285254

All Three Men Found Guilty of Murdering Ahmaud Arbery

All Three Men Found Guilty of Murdering Ahmaud Arbery

By goodblacknews on November 24, 2021

The verdicts have just come in.

Jurors found Travis McMichael guilty of murder Wednesday for chasing and fatally shooting Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, as he jogged last year through a neighborhood in Glynn County, Georgia.

Ahmaud Arbery

McMichael now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Jurors convicted him of one count of malice murder and four counts of felony murder.

Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael’s father, has been found guilty of felony murder.  McMichael now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

William “Roddie” Bryan Jr., one of three men, who filmed what they did to Arbery, has been found guilty of felony murder.

Bryan now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.  Jurors convicted him of felony murder but acquitted him of the malice murder charge.

Any other outcome would itself been criminal.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/ahmaud-arbery-killing-trial-verdict-watch-11-24-21/index.html

American Psychological Association Apologizes for Role in Promoting, Perpetuating, and Failing to Challenge Racism in U.S.

American Psychological Association Apologizes for Role in Promoting, Perpetuating, and Failing to Challenge Racism in U.S.

By goodblacknews on November 13, 2021

The American Psychological Association recently issued a detailed statement owning up to and apologizing for not only for its own role in perpetuating systemic racism in the U.S., but for the role the field of psychology as a whole has also played in systemically denigrating people of color for decades.

“APA is profoundly sorry, accepts responsibility for, and owns the actions and inactions of APA itself, the discipline of psychology, and individual psychologists who stood as leaders for the organization and field,” a portion of the statement reads.

“In addition, recognizing that many existing historical records and narratives have been centered in Whiteness, APA also concluded that it was imperative to capture oral history and the lived experiences of communities of color, so commissioned a series of listening sessions and surveys, which also inform this resolution.

“The narrative that emerged from the listening sessions, surveys, and historical findings put into stark amplification the impact of well-known and lesser-known actions. It leaves us, as APA leaders, with profound regret and deep remorse for the long-term impact of our failures as an association, a discipline, and as individual psychologists.”

To quote from npr.org:

The APA’s apology also admits that it should have come sooner, but stated that many in the field have failed to take responsibility, even amid continued discussions.

The resolution comes after the APA last year launched an number of projects intended to delve more deeply into the effects of systemic racism in the field of psychology throughout history, work that was done in preparation for writing an informed apology.

One endeavor was a chronological history of racism in the field of psychology, which has been made available online.

“In offering an apology for these harms, APA acknowledges that recognition and apology only ring true when accompanied by action; by not only bringing awareness of the past into the present but in acting to ensure reconciliation, repair, and renewal,” the resolution reads. “We stand committed to purposeful intervention, and to ensuring that APA, the field of psychology, and individual psychologists are leaders in both benefiting society and improving lives.”

The APA passed two other resolutions: one describes the work the APA and the field of psychology must engage in to dismantle racism in society, while the other announces its commitment to eradicating inequality in health and healthcare.

APA President Jennifer F. Kelly, Ph.D. (photo via apa.org)

APA President Jennifer F. Kelly, PhD, acknowledged in a press release that, despite the steps that have been taken, there is much more work to be done.

“For the first time, APA and American psychology are systematically and intentionally examining, acknowledging and charting a path forward to address their roles in perpetuating racism,” Kelly said.

“These resolutions are just the first steps in a long process of reconciliation and healing. This important work will set the path for us to make real change and guide the association and psychology moving forward.”

Read more: https://www.apa.org/about/policy/racism-apology

VETERANS DAY: Honoring WW II Sgt. Isaac Woodard, Whose Beating and Blinding by a South Carolina Police Chief Lead to the Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces

VETERANS DAY: Honoring WW II Sgt. Isaac Woodard, Whose Beating and Blinding by a South Carolina Police Chief Lead to the Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces

By goodblacknews on November 11, 2021

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (IG: @lorilakinhutcherson; Twitter: @lakinhutcherson)

Sgt. Isaac Woodard enlisted and fought in World War II, defending democracy as part of a segregated combat support unit. During his time in the army, Woodard earned a battle star, the Good Conduct Medal as well as the Service Medal and World War II Victory Medal.

As he headed home to North Carolina by bus in 1946, hours after being honorably discharged, Woodard was beaten and blinded by police chief Lynwood Shull in Batesburg, South Carolina after a dispute with the bus driver over stopping for the restroom.

Thrown in jail and fined for being “drunk and disorderly,” the NAACP took up Woodward’s case, and national publicity followed, including radio programs by Orson Welles and songs by calypso artist Lord Invader (“God Made Us All”) and folk artist Woody Guthrie (“The Blinding of Isaac Woodard”).

The incident and outcry led to the U.S. Justice Department trying the case in federal court, where Shull was acquitted even after admitting to blinding Woodard.

Afterwards, President Harry S. Truman met with the NAACP and formed a Council on Civil Rights and established the Civil Rights Commission by Executive Order 9808 to study racial injustice and inequity and the need for civil rights to be enforced by the federal government.

This lead to Truman introducing the 1948 civil rights bill and issuing Executive Order 9981 to desegregate the Armed Forces. To learn more about Woodard, you can read Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring (2019) by Richard Gergel, or check out the PBS American Experience film The Blinding of Isaac Woodard, which aired earlier this year. You can watch the teaser above and see the full film here.

(paid link; featured image via pbs.org)

Families of Charleston Church Massacre Victims Reach $88 Million Settlement with U.S. Justice Department

Families of Charleston Church Massacre Victims Reach $88 Million Settlement with U.S. Justice Department

By goodblacknews on October 28, 2021

The U.S. Department of Justice announced today it has reached an agreement to settle the civil cases arising out of the June 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.

Nine people were killed when 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof entered Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church during Bible study and began shooting the congregants. He later confessed, saying he acted in hopes of igniting a race war.

Plaintiffs agreed to settle claims that the FBI was negligent when it failed to prohibit the sale of a gun by a licensed firearms dealer to Roof, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, who specifically targeted the 200-year-old historically African-American congregation.

The settlement provides $63 million for families of those killed in the shooting rampage and $25 million for survivors, according to lawyers involved in the agreement. For those killed in the shooting, the settlements range from $6 million to $7.5 million per claimant. For the survivors, the settlements are for $5 million per claimant.

The parties have been in litigation since 2016, including before the district court and the federal court of appeals.

“The mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church was a horrific hate crime that caused immeasurable suffering for the families of the victims and the survivors,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “Since the day of the shooting, the Justice Department has sought to bring justice to the community, first by a successful hate crime prosecution and today by settling civil claims.”

On June 17, 2015, Mother Emanuel congregants welcomed a stranger who had entered their church. They invited him to participate in their Wednesday night bible study.

Tragically, at the close of the bible study, Roof shot and killed Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Tywanza Sanders, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Daniel L. Simmons, Ethel Lee Lance, Myra Thompson, Rev. Depayne Middleton-Doctor and Mother Emanuel’s pastor, Reverend Clementa Pinckney, also a South Carolina State Senator.

The families of the Emanuel Nine, as well as the five survivors who were inside the church at the time of the shooting, sued the government. They sought to recover for wrongful death and physical injuries arising from the shooting.

Plaintiffs asserted that the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Checks System (NICS) failed to timely discover that the shooter was a person prohibited by federal law from possessing a firearm. Plaintiffs alleged that because of this delay, the shooter was able to purchase the handgun that he used to commit the atrocity.

The families sued after the FBI revealed that its system for conducting background checks failed to catch a fact that should have blocked the sale of the gun Roof used in the shooting. He bought the Glock 41 two months earlier at a shopping mall in West Columbia.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/28/1050035997/charleston-church-shooting-doj-settlement-families

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-multi-million-dollar-civil-settlement-principle-mother-emanuel

New York City Public School District to Implement Black Studies Program for All Students in Grades K-12

New York City Public School District to Implement Black Studies Program for All Students in Grades K-12

By goodblacknews on September 30, 2021

The New York city school district announced a groundbreaking curriculum change yesterday to teach all children in grades K-12 in all five boroughs about the history and contributions of Black Americans, according to abc7ny.com.

The initiative will teach children about the early African civilizations, the Black experience in America and the contributions and accomplishments and contributions of the African diaspora.

To quote abc7ny.com:

“It was not until I stepped foot onto the campus of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, a historically black all women’s college, that I gained that deeper knowledge — not just the beginning of slavery in America,” said  City Council Member Adrienne Adams, co-chair of the Black Latino and Asian Caucus.

The BLAC secured $10 million in next year’s budget for the program. That money will go to a handful of organizations including the Black Education Research Collective at Columbia University and the Eagle Academy Foundation who will help craft the curriculum.

“In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the ensuing social unrest, and the calls for racial justice that followed the need for a systemic approach to cultivate a better a deeper appreciation of the contributions of black people within New York City Schools was more pressing than ever,” said Jawana Johnson with the Eagle Academy Foundation.

“I am so proud to be a chancellor who ushered our children back into school, but what I know is in ushering them back, they have to see and experience themselves every single day in the curriculum,” said Chancellor Meisha Porter.

The program is expected to be implemented next year.

Read more: https://abc7ny.com/amp/nyc-public-schools-black-studies-americans-african/11061658/

[Photo via video screen capture at abc7ny.com]

Artist Kerry James Marshall to Create Racial Justice-Themed Stained Glass Art for Washington National Cathedral to Replace Confederate Iconography

Artist Kerry James Marshall to Create Racial Justice-Themed Stained Glass Art for Washington National Cathedral to Replace Confederate Iconography

By goodblacknews on September 25, 2021

Washington National Cathedral recently announced it will replace its stained-glass windows that formerly featured Confederate iconography (removed in 2017) with racial-justice themed windows created by world-renowned artist Kerry James Marshall.

The Cathedral’s commission represents Marshall’s first time working with stained-glass as a medium, and the windows are expected to be his first permanent public exhibition anywhere in the country. 

In addition, celebrated poet, author, and scholar Dr. Elizabeth Alexander has agreed to create a new poem that will be inscribed in stone tablets alongside Marshall’s window installation, overlaying the previous stone tablets which venerated the lives of Confederate soldiers.

Completion of both Marshall’s new windows and the stone tablets featuring Dr. Alexander’s new poem is expected in 2023, at which time they will be permanently installed at the Cathedral.  

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander (photo via elizabethalexander.net)

The Cathedral removed windows featuring Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson – which were located along the southern face of its nave, or its main worship space – in September 2017, following the white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In the summer of 2020, amid the historic movement for racial justice following the police killing of George Floyd, the Cathedral began collaborating with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to plan the public exhibition of the Robert E. Lee window. 

“For nearly 70 years, these windows and their Confederate imagery told an incomplete story; they celebrated two generals, but they did nothing to address the reality and painful legacy of America’s original sin of slavery and racism. They represented a false narrative of what America once was and left out the painful truth of our history,” said The Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith, dean of Washington National Cathedral.

“We’re excited to share a new and more complete story, to tell the truth about our past and to lift up who we aspire to be as a nation.”   

Marshall—the artist and professor whose paintings depicting Black life in America have been sold, viewed, and showcased across the world for decades—will design the stained-glass windows that will replace the Lee/Jackson windows.