I cannot think of a more fitting replacement. #BarbaraJohns is an American hero. At 16, she defied school leaders and led a walkout at her segregated HS in Virginia. Her action led to the Virginia Brown v Bd case. Learn abt this extraordinary activist pbslearningmedia.org/resource/bf10.…
Whew! Tears. #BarbaraJohns did what great activists often do - pushed the civil rights attys at @NAACP_LDF to file the Va. Brown case before they felt ready. Her HS in Va. is now a museum, regarded as the birthplace of the modern civil rts mvmt motonmuseum.org
Simple Justice by Richard Kluger is the quintessential account of the development & execution of the Brown v Bd litigation. But among my favorite passages is the awakening of teenager #BarbaraJohns as an activist: “the man who drove the bus I took...was also my history teacher.”
“...some of the boys in the vocational program visited the shop at the white school...the comparison made me angry. I kept thinking about it all the way home. I thought about it ....that night, and I was still thinking about it the next day.” An activist was born. #BarbaraJohns
After the first day of the strike John’s came home & told her Grandmother abt the walkout. Her grandma said: “you reckon you done the right thing?” #BarbaraJohns replied: “I believe so.”
To understand the system Johns, those Black students & parents, & the @NAACP_LDF attys were up against, remember the 5 yrs after the Brown v Bd SCOTUS decision the Prince Edward County School Bd closed the county schools FOR 5 YRS rather than integrate.

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More from @Sifill_LDF

22 Dec
Why isn't there a serious, public demand for access to remdesivir for ordinary ppl? It is unconscionable that ordinary, ill Americans don't have access to this therapeutic. Trump taunts us w/his "recovery," when his privilege has insulated him frm the reality of COVID.
The focus on the vaccine is important. But saving lives is also important. A great way to build Black support for taking the vaccine, is to equitably provide access to remdesivir & other therapeutics to Black & Brown patients disproportionately suffering & dying from this virus.
So let’s do both. Push for vaccine equity and access and demand the same for therapeutics.
Read 6 tweets
20 Dec
Recently I spoke w/@AnandWrites about the need for institutions to take responsibility for their own role in America’s democratic decline. Like this. The @KCStar taking responsibility for its failures in reporting (or not) fairly & adequately on the Black community.
This is not the first of this kind of broad self-accountability exercise by a newspaper. In 2004, the Lexington Herald-Leader apologized for its failure to report on the local Civil Rights Mvmt - publishing articles & developing film that had languished. washingtonpost.com/archive/lifest…
Read 6 tweets
30 Nov
Pieces like this are so harmful. What so many, including this reporter sadly, cite as Republican cj efforts are just...not. Example: citing grants of clemency as accomplishments of criminal justice reform. An act of mercy toward an indiv is the exact opposite of systemic reform.
Mr. Trump did not keep the two issues separate. His Superbowl ad lifting up his personal release of a grandmother serving an overlong harsh sentence from prison sits firmly alongside his denunciation of grassroots demands for police accountability.
It is part of the project to hijack the concept of systemic criminal justice reform and to rebrand it.
Read 5 tweets
22 Nov
THREAD: Civil rights advocates have been ringing the alarm on this since the pandemic struck. Here’s the @southerncenter appealing to the DOJ in Sept about the desperate conditions in Georgia jails: schr.org/schr-calls-on-…
Our litigation filed in April challenging COVID conditions in Arkansas jails is ongoing: @NAACP_LDF
naacpldf.org/press-release/…
Lots of attention on the rise of COVID in South Dakota where the irresponsible Governor has stoked COVID-denial and eschewed mask mandates. Not enough attention to what this means for prisoners in South Dakota. eji.org/news/nearly-ha…
Read 7 tweets
20 Nov
UPDATE on Barr’s illegal Law Enforcement Commn. Oct 1 a fed ct found the Commn violated FACA. This week the ct issued a ltd use injunction allowing Barr to release the Commn’s report but only w/a printed disclaimer indicating that the Commn violated law. The disclaimer must read:
My statement about the potential release of a report marked w/a scarlet D (disclaimer) indicating that the Commn that authored the document was convened illegally:
naacpldf.org/press-release/…
Meanwhile, yesterday yet another prosecutor resigned from participation on Barr’s embarrassing Commission, saying that the work had been “smothered by a pernicious political agenda.” reuters.com/article/us-usa…
Read 6 tweets
8 Nov
With respect, this not the time for healing. We have not properly diagnosed the sickness or cleaned the wound. We have not begun to investigate why the illness it was allowed to fester so long or identified those who withheld early treatment.
We have not addressed the fundamental and systemic weaknesses that made our democracy so vulnerable. We have not agreed on a course of medicine or the proper dosage or length of treatment.
We have not determined whether we have in place the specialists needed to course correct should we find the treatment requires refinement and deeper study. We have not ensured that there is a circle of support for our ailing democracy w/i our institutions.
Read 4 tweets

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