Civil Rights & Social Justice
The Jackie Robinson Museum Officially Opens In NYC
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: New York Daily News / Getty A new museum honoring the late baseball & civil rights icon Jackie Robinson officially opened to the public in New York City, after years of anticipation and planning. On Tuesday (July 26th), a ribbon-cutting ceremony occurred at The Jackie Robinson Museum, located just above the Tribeca neighborhood in New York City. The ceremony was attended by Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s widow and founder of the Jackie Robinson Foundation along with her son, David Robinson, and daughter Sharon Robinson. Also in attendance was Della Britton, the president and CEO of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, tennis legend Billie Jean King, filmmaker Spike Lee and former MLB pitcher C.C. Sabathia. Good Morning America ho...
Unpublished Memoir of Liar and Emmett Till Accuser Carolyn Bryant Donham Made Public
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Bettmann / Getty A memoir written by the woman who was at the center of the murder of Emmett Till has surfaced. The discovery, coupled with news of an unserved warrant from that time has raised calls to reopen the case. According to NewsOne, an unnamed source provided a copy of a 100-page memoir from Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman who made the false accusation against 14-year-old Emmett Louis Till in Mississippi in 1955. Her claim led to the boy’s abduction, savage beating, and lynching. Till’s grotesquely disfigured face was published in JET Magazine, spurring many to mobilize within the Black community and serving as a flashpoint for the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The document, entitled “I Am More Than A Wolf Whistle”, was apparentl...
Ketanji Brown Jackson Sworn In as First Black Woman on Supreme Court
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: The Washington Post / Getty Today (June 30) at noon, Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Jackson was nominated after Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement earlier this year. Jackson once clerked for Breyer. His retirement will also be effective today. Related Stories “It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, but we’ve made it! We’ve made it — all of us,” Jackson said in remarks at a White House event the day after the Senate vote, per NPR. She added, “I have dedicated my career to public service because I love this country and our Constitution and the rights that make us free.” The 51-...
White Cop In Patrick Lyoya Shooting Charged With Second-Degree Murder
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: The Washington Post / Getty The police officer who was involved in the high-profile shooting of Michigan resident and Congolese refugee Patrick Lyoya two months ago has been charged with second-degree murder by prosecutors. On Thursday (June 9th), the prosecutor for Kent County announced that Grand Rapids, Michigan police officer Christopher Schurr was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Lyoya. In response to complaints about the length of time it took to make this charge, Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker said “he wanted to be thorough.” He informed Lyoya’s family before speaking to reporters. “These things take time,” he said at the press conference. Related Stories Lyoya, 26, was shot in the back of the head on April 4th during a traffi...
More Of The Same On The 2nd Anniversary Of George Floyd’s Death
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Guy Smallman / Getty It has been two years since the horrific and senseless death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, which was captured on video and shocked the world into protest. The unfortunate reality is that Black death at the hands of law enforcement still persists, with a few striking cases as examples. On the two-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, recent statistics underscore a grim truth – since his death, Black people accounted for 27 percent of the 1051 Americans who were killed by law enforcement in 2021 according to data compiled by the nonprofit group Mapping Police Violence. The same study also showed that Black people were three times more likely to be killed by police, yet 1.3 times more...
Rap Lyric Usage In Court Limited By New NY State Senate Bill
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: ANGELA WEISS / Getty A bill limiting rap lyrics being used in criminal trials against defendants in New York State is one step closer to becoming law thanks to the state’s senators. On Tuesday (May 17th), the State Senate of New York approved Senate Bill S7527 which would limit the usage of song lyrics and other forms of “creative expression” by prosecutors as evidence in criminal cases. While the bill doesn’t outright ban prosecutors from presenting lyrics and other materials to juries, it does require that they show that the work is “literal, rather than figurative or fictional” and that “evidence of criminal conduct, not the provocative nature of their artistic works” is what defendants should be tried by. Related Stories Those tactics have l...
Virginia Karen Komplains Critical Race Theory Has Her Biracial Son Refusing To Do Chores Because, Racism
HipHopWired Featured Video By all indications, there’s a white mother in Charlottesville, Virginia, who is using her biracial son’s newfound appreciation for his Blackness as an excuse to be racist AF and express her long-held belief that Black people invoke racism to evade accountability, not because we actually experience racism all the damn time. Or at least that’s my best guess for why she’s out here claiming her son is calling her racist because she makes him do chores. “We didn’t have issues before. He is in eighth grade,” Melissa Riley told Fox News. “He’s seeing himself just as a Black man. He’s seeing things that don’t go his way as racism. And he is finding safety in numbers now.” Riley is among other plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit against the Albemarle County School Board in Dec...
Black Teen Barred From Texas School Over Dreadlocks Hairstyle
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Screenshot / Click 2 Houston The absurdity of school districts creating a stigma over Black hairstyles is back in the news, as a teenager has been barred from attending a Houston-area school over having dreadlocks. According to local reports, a mother in East Bernard, Texas was shocked when a school official told her that her son, Dyree Williams, cannot enroll because he has dreadlocks and his mother refused to cut them. “The boys cannot have hair past their ears. I explained to her that my son has locks in his hair, and well, she was like, ‘Well he’s going to have to cut those,’” the boy’s mother, Desiree Bullock, said to the local news station. They had relocated to the area from Cincinnati, Ohio in February. The East Bernard ISD student handbook does s...
GA Students Protest After Black Student Suspended For Slapping White Student Who Called Him N-Word
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Marilyn Nieves / Getty When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock over a tasteless but relatively soft joke at the expense of Jada Pinkett-Smith, a lot of Black folks were suddenly on team “violence is never the answer. Well, I’d wager most of those Black people would feel differently about a Black student in Georgia who slapped a white student for calling him the N-word, reminding us that sometimes—people just need to be slapped. According to 11 Alive, it all started at Locust Grove High School in Locust Grove, Ga. The Henry County high school is investigating the incident in which a Black male student slapped a white female student for calling him the racial slur. The Black student involved in the incident, which was caught on camera, was suspended over th...
Video Shows Michigan Cop Shooting Black Man Patrick Lyoya In Back Of The Head While He Was Face Down
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Anadolu Agency / Getty On April 4, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 26-year-old Patrick Lyoya, a Black man from the Democratic Republic of Congo, was fatally shot in the back of the head by a police officer who had him face-down on the ground following a traffic stop that reportedly ended in a brief foot chase and a struggle over a police taser, the Associated Press reports. On Wednesday, four videos, including footage taken by the passenger in Lyoya’s car, were released to the public despite the objection of the prosecutor who will decide if the officer will be charged. “I view it as a tragedy… It was a progression of sadness for me,” said Eric Winstrom, who became Gand Rapids’ new police chief in March after serving for years as a high-ranking Chicago police ...
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves Designates April As Confederate Heritage Month, Says Systemic Racism Isn’t Real
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Pool / Getty How does one claim that systemic racism doesn’t exist while also dedicating a full month to the celebration of a thing that only existed because white people wanted to keep Black people in chains? Well, we can pose that very question to Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R). For three decades, Mississippi Republicans have been celebrating the Confederacy in the month of April. According to the Mississippi Free Press, Reeves, for the third year in a row, declared that April is Confederate Heritage Month. “April is the month when, in 1861, the American Civil War began between the Confederate and Union armies, reportedly the costliest and deadliest war ever fought on American soil,” he stated in this year’s proclamation. The proclamation—which is the...
Chris Wallace Doesn’t Think Young Civil Rights Era White People Were Racist, Nikole Hannah-Jones Sets Him Straight
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: OLIVIER DOULIERY / Getty Booooy, CNN+ host Chris Wallace should’ve just stayed his a** at Fox News because he just doesn’t fit the brand when it comes to non-conservative platforms where “not all white people” arguments just don’t fly. Recently, Wallace sat down with historian and creator of The 1619 Project Nikole Hannah-Jones and really tried to whitesplain to this scholar of African American studies that during and even before the civil rights era, it was only really old white people who were racist. Now, obviously, this isn’t even a debate worth having. We’ve seen the iconic photos of school-aged white people verbally and physically attacking Black students like Ruby Bridges who integrated into their schools. The white people pouring liquid over the h...
