You might be surprised to learn that same sex marriage bans have nothing to do with hating on gays, but that’s the audacious argument gay marriage opponents are making to the Supreme Court. Tierney Sneed with a reminder — as if one were needed — on the origin of gay marriage bans and why it matters so much to the outcome of the Supreme Court case, where a decision is expected any day now.
In their on-going effort to fight racism, Kansas Republicans are debating expelling a black female member of the state legislature for calling one of their bills “racist.”
Jon Stewart: “I honestly have nothing, other than just sadness once again that we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other and the nexus of a just gaping racial wound that will not heal yet we pretend doesn’t exist. I’m confident though that by acknowledging it, by staring into that and seeing it for what it is, we still won’t do jack shit. Yeah. That’s us.”
This story is, painfully, much more timely than when we first assigned it. But it’s a must-read on several levels. Tomorrow is Juneteenth – a predominantly African-American holiday commemorating the end of slavery – and the 150th anniversary of the event it celebrates, the arrival of the US Army at Galveston Island on June 19th 1865. Read this piece and it will change your understanding of just how slavery really ended and why.
Obama’s remarks on the Charleston church shooting were pained and angry. As I indicated earlier, he put the shooting into the larger historic context of this particular church’s role in the civil rights movement, of violence against black churches generally, and of the scourge of gun violence in America. Watch.
With Hillary Clinton in Charleston Wednesday and Jeb Bush scheduled to be there today, national political reporters were already on the ground when the shooting occurred at Emanuel A.M.E.
A great quote from a piece we’re publishing later today on the history of Juneteenth and the critical role of the US Army in ending slavery. “Freedpeople, as [former slave Felix] Haywood’s quote reminds us, did not need the Army to teach them about freedom; they needed the Army to teach planters the futility of trying to sustain slavery.”
President Obama just spoke about the Charleston church shooting and rightly noted the broad sweep of American history in which this particular church has a especially significant role. We’ve just published at TPMCafe a brief history of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, its place in the history of Charleston, the anti-slavery movement, and perhaps most fascinating to me, the creation of what came to be known as the Citadel, the crown jewel of Southern militarism, which was born from white fears of slave rebellion triggered by this church. It’s worth your time.
We now have reports that Dylann Roof, the alleged assailant in last night’s Charleston church massacre has been captured in Shelby, North Carolina.
As he shot, Dylann Roof allegedly told his shooting victims “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country and you have to go.”