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It was the road sign that made it real.

Josh Venkataraman was returning to the University of Florida, where he is a senior, from Orlando earlier this year when he saw it. "Groveland," it said.

He had read what happened there in Gilbert King's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Devil in the Grove, for a class a few years before "and it touched me." But seeing that sign did more; bringing home to him that Groveland was a real and tangible place where a real and tangible atrocity unfolded beginning in 1949. That, he says, was when he knew "I really wanted to get involved and change history, essentially."

So Venkataraman, who, as a high school student, won a Silver Knight, a service award given by The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, sought out Carol Greenlee, a 65-year-old consultant in Nashville. Her father, Charles Greenlee, was the last of the so-called "Groveland Four." He died in 2012.

She admits she was skeptical of this 21-year-old kid and questioned him closely. But when Venkataraman asked for her support in mounting a petition drive on behalf of her father and the other men, she gave it. "I'm in the mode of trying to get my father exonerated," she explains, "and I need all the help I can get."

The two of them want one thing from you: your name on their petition. It's at www.change.org/p/richard-scott-exonerate-the-groveland-four. To reiterate: They're not asking Florida Gov. Rick Scott for a pardon. They want exoneration - recognition that these men were not just innocent of the crime for which they were charged, but that the "crime" itself never happened.

King details in his book how a young white woman named Norma Lee Padgett concocted a tale of gang rape by four black men. A doctor's exam turned up no evidence of sexual assault. Neighbors who saw Padgett right after the alleged attack said she was neither disheveled nor panicked. They scoffed at the idea she was raped, but refused to testify for the defense. "Wouldn't do to be called nigger lover," one said.

In Klan-infested postwar Florida, Padgett's flimsy claim was enough for police to essentially start rounding up black men en masse: Walter Irwin, Samuel Shepherd, Ernest Thomas and Charles Greenlee. The men didn't all know each other. No forensic evidence tied them to the "crime." But again, this was Florida in 1949.

Before it was over, a white mob would rampage through an African-American community, one man would be killed trying to escape, three would be beaten and tortured, the sheriff would summarily execute one man, and the remaining two would be convicted.

Carol, born shortly after her father's arrest, says she grew up feeling a "cloud" over the Greenlee name. When she was young, her mother used to take her to visit him weekly "until he couldn't take it to see me anymore and he told my mother not to ever bring me back there again." She didn't see him again until he was paroled. She was 11 by then.

I'm still looking for justice for my father who was wrongfully imprisoned for something he didn't do.

Carol Greenlee, daughter of 'Groveland Four' victim

Here's why this matters: Some people like to pretend the world sprang into existence yesterday. In an era of mass incarceration and epidemic police misbehavior, they earnestly wonder why African Americans often don't trust law enforcement. Here, then, is an instructive reminder, past tapping present on the shoulder - justice denied for 66 years and counting.

"You still have innocent people," says Carol Greenlee, "innocent black men, every day being rejected, being dejected and being put in prison for things they have not done. So we've got to find a way to correct the injustice that a group of people have been experiencing for years. I'm 65 years old and I'm still looking for justice for my father who was wrongfully imprisoned for something he didn't do and really didn't happen. Why don't you correct that?"

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Leonard Pitts Jr.: "Groveland," an injustice that has never been corrected

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It was the road sign that made it real. Josh Venkataraman was returning to the University of Florida, where he is a senior, from Orlando earlier this year when he saw it. "Groveland," it said. He had read what happened there in Gilbert King's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Devil in the Grove, for a class a few years before "and it touched me."

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"To me," she said in a statement, "this has never been a gay or lesbian issue. It is about marriage and God's word. It is a matter of religious liberty."

It's telling that Kim Davis chose those words to defend herself last week. Davis, the clerk of Rowan County, a rural, impoverished and previously obscure patch of northeastern Kentucky, made international headlines for her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She had, should it need saying, not a legal leg to stand on, the Supreme Court having ruled in June that states may not bar such couples from marrying. On Thursday, Davis was jailed for contempt. The thrice-divorced clerk had said she was acting upon "God's authority" and fighting for "religious liberty."

The political right has long had a genius for wrapping noxious notions in code that sounds benign and even noble. The "Patriot Act," "family values," and "right to work." are fruits of that genius. "Religious liberty" is poised to become their latest masterpiece, the "states' rights" of the battle for a more homophobic America.

A few months ago, you will recall, "religious liberty" was claimed as the rationale for failed laws in Indiana and Arkansas that would have empowered businesses to refuse service to gay people. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Georgia lawmakers will introduce a new "religious liberty" bill there next year. Last week, Mike Huckabee praised Davis for "standing strong for religious liberty." Chris Christie, while conceding the need to obey the law, spoke of the need to "protect religious liberty,"

As if religious liberty were seriously in danger in one of the most religiously-tolerant nations on Earth.

Of course, like all good code, this one hides its true meaning in the banality of its words. Most of us would likely support the right of Native Americans to ingest peyote in their religious rituals, or Jewish or Muslim inmates to grow beards. Some of us even believe no religious order can be required to ordain a woman, admit a congregant of a proscribed race or, yes, perform a same-sex marriage. We understand a core American principle that, within certain broad parameters, one's right to practice one's faith as one pleases is inviolable.

But "religious liberty" as defined by Davis and her supporters is about what happens in the wide world beyond those parameters, about whether there exists a right to deny ordinary, customary service and claim a religious basis for doing so. And there does not.

Davis is wrong for the same reasons Muslim cabbies in Minneapolis-St. Paul were wrong some years ago when they claimed a right not to carry passengers who had alcohol on them and Christian pharmacists were wrong when they claimed a right not to fill birth control prescriptions. You have a right to your religious conscience. You do not have a right to impose your conscience upon other people.

And if conscience impinges that heavily upon your business or your job, the solution is simple: Sell the business or quit the job. Otherwise, serve your customers and keep your conscience out of their affairs.

Taken to its logical conclusion, it is not just gay men and lesbians who are threatened by the "religious liberty" movement, but all of us. Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that most of us probably run afoul of somebody's reading of their religion in some way or another? Who would welcome a future where you couldn't just enter a place and expect service but, rather, must read the signs to determine if it caters to people of your sexual orientation, marital status, religion or race?

We tried something like that once. It didn't work.

Sadly, if people like Kim Davis have their way, we may be required to try it again. They call it "religious liberty."

It looks like intolerance from here.

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Leonard Pitts, Jr.: 'Religious liberty' cloaks intolerance

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"To me," she said in a statement, "this has never been a gay or lesbian issue. It is about marriage and God's word. It is a matter of religious liberty." It's telling that Kim Davis chose those words to defend herself last week.

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This is a column about three words of moral cowardice:

"All lives matter."

Those words have risen as a kind of counter to "Black lives matter," the movement that coalesced in response to recent killings and woundings of unarmed African Americans by assailants - usually police officers - who often go unpunished. Mike Huckabee raised that counter-cry last week, telling CNN, "When I hear people scream 'black lives matter,' I'm thinking, of course, they do. But all lives matter. It's not that any life matters more than another."

As if that were not bad enough, the former Arkansas governor and would-be president upped the ante by adding that Martin Luther King would be "appalled by the notion that we're elevating some lives above others."

"Elevating some lives." Lord, have mercy.

Imagine for a moment that you broke your left wrist. In excruciating pain, you rush to the emergency room for treatment only to run into a doctor who insists on examining not just your mangled left wrist, but your uninjured right wrist, rib cage, femur, fibula, sacrum, humerus, phalanges, the whole bag of bones that is you. You say, "Doc, it's just my left wrist that hurts." And she says, "Hey, all bones matter."

If you understand why that remark would be factual, yet also, fatuous, silly, patronizing and off point, then you should understand why "All lives matter" is the same. It's not about "elevating some lives" any more than it would be about elevating some bones. Rather, it's about treating where it hurts.

And as for Dr. King: I cringe at his name being invoked by yet another conservative who has apparently never heard or read anything King said with the possible exception of the last few minutes of the I Have A Dream speech. No one with the slightest comprehension of what King fought for could seriously contend he would be "appalled" at a campaign geared to the suffering of African-American people.

Whose rights did the Montgomery bus boycott seek to vindicate? For whose freedom was King jailed in Birmingham, punched in Selma and stoned in Chicago?

In his book Why We Can't Wait, King answered complaints that we shouldn't be doing something special for "the Negro" by noting, "our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years." Does that sound like someone who'd be "appalled" by "Black lives matter?"

No, that cry would likely resonate for him for the same reason it resonates for so many others. Namely because, while police abuse is not unknown in other lives, it is disproportionate in black lives. This is what Huckabee and the "All lives matter" crowd quail at recognizing. To treat where it hurts, one must first acknowledge that it still hurts, something conservatives often find hard to do because it gives the lie to their self-congratulatory balloon juice about how this country has overcome its founding sin.

That sort of willful ignorance has, unfortunately, become ubiquitous.

Which is why, for me, at least, the most inspiring sight to come out of Charleston following the racial massacre there was not the lowering of the Confederate battle flag, welcome as that was. Rather, it was a march through town by a mostly white crowd chanting, "Black lives matter! Black lives matter!"

To see those white sisters and brothers adopt that cry was a soul-filling reminder that at least some of us still realize we all have access - c onnection - to each other's pain and joy by simple virtue of the fact that we all are human.

God love them, they did not slink guiltily from that connection. Instead, they ran bravely to it.

And you know what, Mike Huckabee? Martin Luther King would have been pleased.

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Leonard Pitts Jr.: Why 'Black lives matter' resonates

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This is a column about three words of moral cowardice: "All lives matter." Those words have risen as a kind of counter to "Black lives matter," the movement that coalesced in response to recent killings and woundings of unarmed African Americans by assailants - usually police officers - who often go unpunished.

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Zach Bonner as a 7 year old founded this organization to aid homeless children. Look at what happens when kids care and take action! So inspiring.

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A campaign for gender equality

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How FTSE 100 companies can make a positive impact on the lives of domestic violence and abuse survivors through workplace support

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He for She Campaign

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From Denver North High created this power point

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http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A4563C

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Hate crime is a disturbing phenomenon that is the subject of constant debate, discussion, and legislation. This book helps readers understand the complex issue…

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http://www.nycore.org

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http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/doc/resources.csp

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Double click in the background space. Write your name in the title (orange) and type your reaction to this session in the space below.

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Doing work that matters

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Lesson plans, games and resources to teach rhetorical analysis and writing. Many of these lessons are linked to contemporary songs and other aspects of pop culture.

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Teach Argument | Maximize Learning, Engage Students, Save Time

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Get our FREE and AWESOME lesson plans in your email all year long! Engage your students, heighten rigor, and save time!

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Personal stories told live on stage.

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Snap Judgment. with Glynn Washington. Mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, and dramatic radio. Hosted by Glynn Washington.

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This might be too edgy for high school but would work for college students.

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Lady Gaga - Til It Happens To You (Official Music Video)

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A public dialogue about belief - one essay at a time | This I Believe

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A public dialogue about belief - one essay at a time

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Inspiring ideas for making our schools places that matter to students AND the world

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A community dedicated to creating a world that works for all.

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Vol. 44-2/3
Neoliberal Confinements: Social Suffering in the
Carceral State
edited by Alessandro De Giorgi & Benjamin Fleury-Steiner

This special issue aims to provide a cartography of some of the forms of social suffering experienced by marginalized and oppressed populations in the US carceral state. The contributors extend their gaze beyond the prison and its ancillary institutions to include spaces of confinement produced at the crossroads of racialized carceral regimes, hyper-policed neighborhoods, and widening zones of social abandonment.

Vol. 44-1
Ethnographic Explorations of Punishment and the Governance of Security
edited by Robert Werth

This special issue highlights the growth of ethnographic examinations of penal governance, emphasizing the possibilities of ethnography as a methodology for studying penality. By analyzing phenomena as varied as pre-trial incarceration, parole and reentry, female incarceration, immigrant detention, and mental health courts, these articles explore the diffusion of penality throughout society and its entanglements with other sociocultural, political, and economic forces.
SJ'S SPECIAL SERIES ON THE POSSIBLE FUTURES OF THE US UNDER TRUMP: CLICK HERE (free ebook available VOL. 43-4

Articles on realism and idealism in critical criminology, solitary confinement in California, torture and abuse in US prisons, sovereignty and LGBT refugees, and asylum seekers in Ireland.
Vol.43-3
Articles on global capitalism and education, stop-and-frisk, Indigenous people and restorative justice, compulsory welfare measures, and higher education on prison.

Vol. 43-2
Articles on neoliberalism and homelessness, death in prison, settler colonialism and Indigenous resistance, policing the police, and due process and privilege.

Articles on prisoner reentry, judicial override in capital cases, self-determination for African descendants in Brazil, reintegrating deported migrants in Jamaica, the global war on drugs, and the Chilean New Song movement.

Vol. 42-3/4
Mexican and Chicanx Social Movements edited by Maylei Blackwell & Edward J. McCaughan

This double issue brings together the work of scholars and activists from Mexico and the United States, including indigenous women and queer activists, to discuss current trends in the scholarship and practices of Mexican and Chicanx social movements.
Editors' Introduction [free pdf download]

Vol. 42-2
Beyond Mass Incarceration:
Crisis and Critique in North American Penal Systems
edited by Alessandro De Giorgi

After decades of vertical increases in imprisonment rates, the US carceral system is in a state of structural crisis. This issue analyzes the carceral field in the US and Canada to decode current trends and anticipate future developments.
Editor's Introduction [free pdf download]

UPCOMING SPECIAL ISSUES

Our quarterly journal online makes available all of our editorials and tables of contents dating back to 1974. Many of our issues and single articles dating to 1986 can be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat (pdf). Please browse our archive to read the introductions and abstracts for each issue. Researchers may put together collections of articles specific to their interests using the search window at the top the page; similarly, educators may order custom classroom readers that students can download from our site. Publishers and copy services wishing to reprint or reproduce this material in any form should contact Social Justice for permissions instructions.

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We also hope you will subscribe to our journal. We strive to keep our prices affordable and rely on our subscribers to remain strong and independent.

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Vol. 44-2/3 Neoliberal Confinements: Social Suffering in the Carceral State edited by Alessandro De Giorgi & Benjamin Fleury-Steiner This special issue aims to provide a cartography of some of the forms of social suffering experienced by marginalized and oppressed populations in the US carceral state.

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Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times, often writes about social justice.

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Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times Op-Ed Columnist, writes about human rights, women's rights, health, global affairs.