If you’ve studied white supremacist lynch mobs then what we are seeing is devastatingly familiar - including the defiance vs. law enforcement. When the MD Gov called the National Guard to arrest the men who lynched George Armwood in 1933 another mob formed to challenge the Guard. Image
This stand-off is in the town of Salisbury, MD a month after Armwood was lynched. The mob even turned a fire hose on the the Guardsman who were there to arrest the suspected lynchers of Armwood. This is what lynch mobs were like. Are like. Image
Is it still a lynch mob if they don’t succeed in lynching? Yes. I wrote about the near-lynching of George Davis in 1932. Lynch mobs went to 4 different county jails on the Eastern Shore of MD looking for him after a white woman alleged Davis attempted to assault her. Image
Davis survived only because he had been taken to #Baltimore City. Those who stormed the Capitol hoping to lynch Speaker Pelosi & VP Pence should be treated as members of a lynch mob. Or they will do it again. Just a few miles away Armwood was lynched a year after Davis escaped.
On The Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century. amazon.com/Courthouse-Law…

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More from @Sifill_LDF

10 Jan
I know there’s a lot to absorb tonight, but please read and share this. buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanu…
Read 4 tweets
31 Dec 20
Thinking over the moments that motivated me this year & how powerfully & clearly this country revealed itself. It was confirmation of all I have known, but I also learned so much more. The clarity with which I see the challenges we face has strengthened my resolve beyond measure.
It started with one of the best days ever. My journey with the #USPS this year has been kind of “how it started...how it’s going.” First, the unveiling of the #GwenIfillForever stamp in January. So grateful for this honor from the @USPS.
By November we were in a pitched battle w/the #USPS to ensure that absentee ballots were delivered on time after new postal leadership imposed measures that resulted in delivery delays in major cities. msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/sh…
Read 24 tweets
22 Dec 20
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.”
Read 6 tweets
22 Dec 20
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 20
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 20
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

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