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Ketanji Brown Jackson Confirmed by Senate as U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Ketanji Brown Jackson Confirmed by Senate as U.S. Supreme Court Justice

By goodblacknews on April 7, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

History was made moments ago when the U.S. Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson 53-47 to become the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Jackson is the first African American woman to serve on the court and the 116th Associate Justice overall.

President Joe Biden nominated Jackson over a month ago to take over the seat of retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, for whom Jackson once clerked.

Associate Justice Jackson was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Miami, Florida. Her parents attended segregated primary schools, then attended historically black colleges and universities.

Both started their careers as public school teachers and became leaders and administrators in the Miami-Dade Public School System. When Justice Jackson was in preschool, her father attended law school.

In a 2017 lecture, Justice Jackson traced her love of the law back to sitting next to her father in their apartment as he tackled his law school homework—reading cases and preparing for Socratic questioning—while she undertook her preschool homework—coloring books.

Justice Jackson stood out as a high achiever throughout her childhood. She was a speech and debate star who was elected “mayor” of Palmetto Junior High and student body president of Miami Palmetto Senior High School.

But like many Black women, Judge Jackson still faced naysayers. When Judge Jackson told her high school guidance counselor she wanted to attend Harvard, the guidance counselor warned that Justice Jackson should not set her “sights so high.”

That did not stop Judge Jackson. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, then attended Harvard Law School, where she graduated cum laude and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Jackson went on to clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court, serve as a public defender, become a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Columbia and then a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Justice Jackson lives with her husband, Patrick, and their two daughters, in Washington, DC.

U.S. House of Representatives Passes “The Crown Act” Banning Discrimination Based on Hair Texture or Styles

U.S. House of Representatives Passes “The Crown Act” Banning Discrimination Based on Hair Texture or Styles

By goodblacknews on March 20, 2022

According to nbcnews.com, the United States House of Representatives passed the CROWN Act, which would ban hair-related discrimination on Friday.

Measure H.R. 2116 passed 235-189 in a vote along party lines. It was introduced by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J.

“CROWN” stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair, and the act prohibits “discrimination based on an individual’s texture or style of hair.” The bill now heads to the U.S. Senate for consideration, debate and a vote.

To quote nbcnews.com:

The legislation states that “routinely, people of African descent are deprived of educational and employment opportunities” for wearing their hair in natural or protective hairstyles such as locs, cornrows, twists, braids, Bantu knots, or Afros.

“Here we are today, standing on behalf of those individuals — whether my colleagues on the other side recognize it or not — who are discriminated against as children in school, as adults who are trying to get jobs, individuals who are trying to get housing, individuals who simply want access to public accommodations and to be beneficiaries of federally funded programs,” Watson Coleman said in remarks on the House floor Friday morning.

This demonstrates the bill’s necessity, she said, because there are people in positions of authority “who think because your hair is kinky, it is braided, it is in knots or it is not straight and blonde and light brown, that you somehow are not worthy of access to those issues.”

“Well,” she added, “that’s discrimination.”

“There’s no logical reason that anyone should be discriminated against on any level because of the texture of their hair or the style of their hair,” Watson Coleman said.

Without naming him, she referred to Andrew Johnson, a Black varsity high school wrestler in New Jersey with dreadlocks who was forced in 2018 to make a choice: cut his hair or forfeit his match.

“This bill is vitally important,” she said. “It’s important to the young girls and the young boys who have to cut their hair in the middle of a wrestling match in front of everyone because some white referee says that your hair is inappropriate to engage in your match.”

The Biden administration this week said it “strongly supports” the Crown Act. More than a dozen states, including Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, have passed versions of the Crown Act. California was the first state to do so.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/house-passes-crown-act-banning-discrimination-black-hairstyles-rcna20617

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is Nominated by President Biden to Serve on the U.S. Supreme Court

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is Nominated by President Biden to Serve on the U.S. Supreme Court

By goodblacknews on February 25, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has been selected by President Joe Biden to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Stephen G. Breyer‘s impending retirement. When confirmed, Jackson will become the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court of law.

Jackson, 51, a U.S. appeals court judge in Washington, has been the front runner for the Supreme Court seat ever since Justice Breyer, 83, announced last month he was retiring. Jackson was, fittingly, a Supreme Court law clerk for Breyer.

In addition to being the first Black female justice, Jackson would be the first justice on the Supreme Court to have previously worked as a public defender, something progressive groups, according to the Los Angeles Times, hope will help the court offer a different perspective.

Judge Jackson, who graduated with honors from Harvard Law School,  was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Miami, Florida. Her parents attended segregated primary schools, then attended historically black colleges and universities. Both started their careers as public school teachers and became leaders and administrators in the Miami-Dade Public School System.

When Judge Jackson was in preschool, her father attended law school. In a 2017 lecture, Judge Jackson traced her love of the law back to sitting next to her father in their apartment as he tackled his law school homework—reading cases and preparing for Socratic questioning—while she undertook her preschool homework—coloring books.

By Lloyd DeGrane via Wikimedia Commons

Judge Jackson stood out as a high achiever throughout her childhood. She was a speech and debate star who was elected “mayor” of Palmetto Junior High and student body president of Miami Palmetto Senior High School.

But like many Black women, Judge Jackson still faced naysayers. When Judge Jackson told her high school guidance counselor she wanted to attend Harvard, the guidance counselor warned that Judge Jackson should not set her “sights so high.”

That did not stop Judge Jackson. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University as an undergraduate, then attended Harvard Law School, where she graduated cum laude and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Judge Jackson lives with her husband, Dr. Patrick Jackson, who is a surgeon, and their two daughters, in Washington, DC.

Read more: https://www.whitehouse.gov/kbj/

[Photo: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson via thecrimson.com]

Dr. Jessica Watkins Set to Become 1st Black Woman Astronaut to Spend Months in Space (VIDEO)

Dr. Jessica Watkins Set to Become 1st Black Woman Astronaut to Spend Months in Space (VIDEO)

By goodblacknews on February 5, 2022
[ASA astronaut Jessica Watkins poses for a portrait, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020, in the Blue Flight Control Room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls]

This April, NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins is set to become the first Black woman to live and work on the International Space Station for an extended mission.

This will be Watkins’ first trip to space following her selection as an astronaut in 2017.

To quote from npr.org:

She will arrive there onboard a SpaceX capsule and then spend six months on the ISS as part of NASA’s Artemis program, a multi-billion dollar effort designed to return humans to the surface of the moon in 2025.

“We are building on the foundation that was laid by the Black women astronauts who have come before me,” Watkins told NPR’s Morning Edition. “I’m definitely honored to be a small part of that legacy, but ultimately be an equal member of the crew.”

Watkins will cover a lot of ground on her mission: earth and space science, biological science and human research into things like the effects of long-duration spaceflight for humans. That’s when the astronauts themselves become “the lab rats,” Watkins told NPR.

Watkins said the journey to space has wide-ranging implications on everything from medical research “with direct impacts into our daily lives,” to international collaboration. Even amid tensions here on Earth between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine, she notes, the U.S. portion of the ISS is docked to the Russian segment.

“We are all coming together to accomplish this really hard thing that none of us would be able to do on our own,” Watkins said. “I think that is just such a beautiful picture of what we can all do if we come together and put all of our resources and skill sets together.”

Of the roughly 250 people who have boarded the ISS, fewer than 10 have been Black. Prior to the inception of the space station, Mae Jemison, an engineer and physician, became the first Black woman to travel to space in 1992. Other Black women have followed, including NASA astronauts Stephanie Wilson and Joan Higginbotham.

Watkins joins NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Robert Hines, as well as ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, as a crew member for the Crew-4 mission.

Watkins was born in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and considers Lafayette, Colorado, her hometown. She earned a bachelor’s degree in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University and a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Watkins conducted her graduate research on the emplacement mechanisms of large landslides on Mars and Earth. She began her career at NASA as an intern and has worked at the agency’s Ames Research Center in California and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

At the time of her astronaut selection, Watkins was a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology, where she collaborated as a member of the Science Team for the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity.

For more than 21 years, humans have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station in low-Earth Orbit, advancing scientific knowledge, demonstrating new technologies, and making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth.

Through the Commercial Crew Program and broader commercial efforts, NASA is working with private industry to develop human space transportation services and a robust low-Earth orbit economy that enables the agency to focus on building spacecraft and rockets for deep space missions to the Moon and Mars.

Follow Watkins on Instagram throughout her mission and get the latest space station crew news, images and features on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-assigns-astronaut-jessica-watkins-to-nasa-s-spacex-crew-4-mission

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/31/1077009955/jessica-watkins-nasa-astronaut-international-space-station-artemis

Rihanna’s Clara Lionel Foundation Donates $15M to Black, POC, LGBTQ+ and Women-Led Nonprofits Focused on Environmental Justice

Rihanna’s Clara Lionel Foundation Donates $15M to Black, POC, LGBTQ+ and Women-Led Nonprofits Focused on Environmental Justice

By goodblacknews on January 30, 2022

Music superstar and cosmetics entrepreneur Rihanna‘s Clara Lionel Foundation (CLF) recently committed $15 million to eighteen organizations working on climate change justice across the U.S. and Caribbean in partnership with #StartSmall, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey‘s philanthropic initiative.

The grants from the Barbados native’s foundation will support entities focused on and led by women, youth, Black, Indigenous, people of color and LGBTQIA+ communities.

Climate disasters, which are growing in frequency and intensity, do not impact all communities equally. Under-resourced countries, communities of color, and island nations are facing the brunt. To combat this inequity, funders like CLF are building partnerships with organizations, acknowledging their deep understanding of what is necessary to achieve climate justice in their own communities.

The announcement of this multi-million dollar donation comes barely two months after Rihanna was named a National Hero in Barbados. In the recent past, Ms. Fenty has donated $11 million to social justice organizations and gifted 4,000 tablets to youth in her native country to address the digital divide during the pandemic.

The entities supported by CLF’s latest philanthropic outlay are listed below:

Black Feminist Fund

Serving as the first global hub for Black feminist philanthropy and led by activists from across the African and Caribbean diaspora, the Black Feminist Fund (BFF) significantly increases the resources available to Black feminist movements globally, contributing to strengthening their sustainability and resilience and supporting Black women’s claim and access to resources, including land, food, water, shelter, work and income. 

Black Visions Collective

Black Visions Collective is a Black-led, Queer and Trans centering organization whose mission is to organize powerful, connected, Black communities and dismantle systems of violence. Black Visions Collective is led by the guiding belief that all Black people deserve autonomy, that safety is community-led, and we are in the right relationship within our ecosystems.

Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN)

CYEN is dedicated to improving the quality of life of Caribbean young people by facilitating their personal development and full involvement in environment and sustainable development. CYEN’s work spans addressing youth unemployment, enriching climate resiliency, water resource management, notably their “Stay Alive and Thrive” Climate Action campaign to raise public awareness about the urgent need to mitigate and adapt to climate change across the Caribbean and around the globe.

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

R.I.P. bell hooks, 69, Acclaimed Author, Activist and Poet

R.I.P. bell hooks, 69, Acclaimed Author, Activist and Poet

By goodblacknews on December 15, 2021

[bell hooks at The New School. Photo: Spencer Kohn, 2013]

Professor, author, and activist bell hooks, who explored and dissected social, political, gender and interpersonal issues in addition to intersectionality in works such as All About Love, Bone Black,  Ain’t I a Woman, The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity & Love,  Feminist Theory and Communion: The Female Search for Love, died today at 69.

She passed at home in Berea, Kentucky after an extended illness, according to a family statement from William Morrow Publishers and Berea College in Kentucky, which houses the bell hooks Institute.

Named Gloria Jean Watkins at birth, hooks was internationally known by her lowercase pen name ever since she published her 1978 collection of poems, And There We Wept. hooks took the name to honor her great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. (She was told often as a child that her quick thinking and outspokenness was like that of “Granny Bell.”)

To quote from Los Angeles Times:

She attended segregated schools in Kentucky’s Christian County, then went to Stanford University. She later earned a master’s degree in English at the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate in literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

She also founded the bell hooks Institute at Berea College, which “celebrates, honors, and documents the life and work” of its namesake. hooks also served as a distinguished professor in residence in Appalachian studies there.

In 2017, she dedicated her papers to Berea College so that future generations would know her work and the impact she had on the intersections of race, gender, place, class and sexuality, the school said. The following year, she was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

Read more:

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