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"Hi! This is the Voter Assistance Hotline. How can I help?"

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"Hi! This is the Voter Assistance Hotline. How can I help?"

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Have a voting related question?

Click here for voter hotlines for the state of California.

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Voter Hotlines :: California Secretary of State

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View information regarding California voter hotlines here.

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Opinions of a Wolf reviews "Jaws" by Peter Benchley

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Opinions of a Wolf reviews "Jaws" by Peter Benchley

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"When we meet Sheriff Brody, he mentions a problem they had the previous summer where a Black gardener sexually assaulted six white women, none of whom would press charges. The only point of this from a narrative perspective is to demonstrate how the police department will keep things under wraps in order to protect the summer season. But it’s a hatefully racist way to establish this, narratively. Even if I charitably imagine that this is supposed to be pointing out the racial divide in Amity that is later even clearer in the book, there are better ways to do that than to play into this horribly racist myth of the serial Black assaulter of white women."

https://opinionsofawolf.com/2023/07/14/book-review-jaws-by-peter-benchley/

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Get ready for shark week with this 1970s classic! Summary:A great white shark starts terrorizing a coastal town just as the money-making summer season begins. The classic, blockbuster thriller of m…

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"Watching Roots on TV in the fifth grade and then reading the book. Staying after Mrs. Gazlay's guitar class to learn the chords to "Follow the Drinking Gourd."

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"Watching Roots on TV in the fifth grade and then reading the book. Staying after Mrs. Gazlay's guitar class to learn the chords to "Follow the Drinking Gourd."

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"Also acting out the voices in her own childhood copy of "Little Black Sambo." I forgot about that."

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"Also acting out the voices in her own childhood copy of "Little Black Sambo." I forgot about that."

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https://ia903407.us.archive.org/10/items/storyoflittlebla1903bann/storyoflittlebla1903bann.pdfhttps://ia903407.us.archive.org/10/items/storyoflittlebla1903bann/storyoflittlebla1903bann.pdf

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"Kiss me. When I'm being fucked I like to get kissed!"

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"Kiss me. When I'm being fucked I like to get kissed!"

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"The GI Bill: great builder of the American Middle Class... for some people, but not for others."

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"The GI Bill: great builder of the American Middle Class... for some people, but not for others."

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Not all WWII veterans benefited equally from the GI Bill

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Research from Heller’s Institute for Economic and Racial Equity finds that discriminatory implementation ripples through the generations.

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Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (aka the GI Bill)

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Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (aka the GI Bill)

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Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 22, 1944, this act, also known as the G.I. Bill, provided World War II veterans with funds for college education, unemployment insurance, and housing. It put higher education within the reach of millions of veterans of WWII and later military conflicts.

While World War II was still being fought, the Department of Labor estimated that, after the war, 15 million men and women who had been serving in the armed services would be unemployed. To reduce the possibility of postwar depression brought on by widespread unemployment, the National Resources Planning Board, a White House agency, studied postwar manpower needs as early as 1942 and in June 1943 recommended a series of programs for education and training.

The American Legion designed the main features of what became the Serviceman's Readjustment Act and pushed it through Congress. The bill unanimously passed both chambers of Congress in the spring of 1944. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law on June 22, 1944, just days after the D-day invasion of Normandy.

American Legion publicist Jack Cejnar called it "the GI Bill of Rights," as it offered Federal aid to help veterans adjust to civilian life in the areas of hospitalization, purchase of homes and businesses, and especially, education. This act provided tuition, subsistence, books and supplies, equipment, and counseling services for veterans to continue their education in school or college.

Within the following seven years, approximately eight million veterans received educational benefits. Under the act, approximately 2,300,000 attended colleges and universities, 3,500,000 received school training, and 3,400,000 received on-the-job training. The number of degrees awarded by U.S. colleges and universities more than doubled between 1940 and 1950, and the percentage of Americans with bachelor degrees, or advanced degrees, rose from 4.6 percent in 1945 to 25 percent a half-century later.

Unfortunately, not all veterans were able to take advantage of the benefits of the G.I. Bill. Black vets were often unable to get bank loans for mortgages in Black neighborhoods, and they faced prejudice and discrimination that overwhelming excluded them from buying homes in "white" suburban neighborhoods.

By 1956, when the G.I. Bill expired, the education-and-training portion had disbursed $14.5 billion to veterans-but the Veterans Administration estimated the increase in Federal income taxes alone would pay for the cost of the bill several times over. By 1955, 4.3 million home loans had been granted, with a total face value of $33 billion.

In addition, veterans were responsible for buying 20 percent of all new homes built after the war. The results rippled through the rest of the economy; there would be no new depression-just unparalleled prosperity for a generation. The G.I. Bill has been extended several times. Nearly 2.3 million veterans participated in the program during the Korean War era and more than eight million during the Vietnam era.

Transcript

AN ACT
To provide Federal Government aid for the readjustment in civilian life of returning World War II veterans.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the "Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944".

TITLE I
CHAPTER I-HOSPITALIZATION, CLAIMS, AND PROCEDURES

SEC. 100. The Veterans' Administration is hereby declared to be an essential war agency and entitled, second only to the War and Navy Departments, to priorities in personnel, equipment, supplies, and material under any laws, Executive orders, and regulations pertaining to priorities, and in appointments of personnel from civil-service registers the Administrator of Veterans' Affairs is hereby granted the same authority and discretion as the War and Navy Departments and the United States Public Health Service: Provided, That the provisions of this section as to priorities for materials shall apply to any State institution to be built for the care or hospitalization of veterans.

SEC. 101. The Administrator of Veterans' Affairs and the Federal Board of Hospitalization are hereby authorized and directed to expedite and complete the construction of additional hospital facilities for war veterans, and to enter into agreements and contracts for the use by or transfer to the Veterans' Administration of suitable Army and Navy hospitals after termination of hostilities in the present war or after such institutions are no longer needed by the armed services; and the Administrator of Veterans Affairs is hereby authorized and directed to establish necessary regional offices, sub- offices, branch offices, contact units, or other subordinate offices in centers of population where there is no Veterans' Administration facility, or where such a facility is not readily available or accessible : Provided, That there is hereby authorized to be appropriated the sum of $500,000,000 for the construction of additional hospital facilities.

SEC. 102. The Administrator of Veterans' Affairs and the Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy are hereby granted authority to enter into agreements and contracts for the mutual use or exchange of use of hospital and domiciliary facilities, and such supplies, equipment, and material as may be needed to operate properly such facilities, or for the transfer, without reimbursement of appropriations, of facilities, supplies, equipment, or material necessary and proper for authorized care for veterans, except that at no time shall the Administrator of Veterans' Affairs enter into any agreement which will result in a permanent reduction of Veterans' Administration hospital and domiciliary beds below the number now established or approved, plus the estimated number required to meet the load of eligibles under laws administered by the Veterans' Administration, or in any way subordinate or transfer the operation of the Veterans' Administration to any other agency of the Government.

Nothing in the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, as amended, or any other Act, shall be construed to prevent the transfer or detail of any commissioned, appointed or enlisted personnel from the armed forces to the Veterans Administration subject to agreements between the Secretary of War or the Secretary of the Navy and the Administrator of Veterans' Affairs: Provided, That no such detail shall be made or extend beyond six months after the termination of the war.

SEC.103. The Administrator of Veterans' Affairs shall have authority to place officials and employees designated by him in such Army and Navy installations as may be deemed advisable for the purpose of adjudicating disability claims of, and giving aid and advice to, members of the Army and Navy who are about to be discharged or released from active service.

SEC. 104. No person shall be discharged or released from active duty in the armed forces until his certificate of discharge or release from active duty and final pay, or a substantial portion thereof, are ready for delivery to him or to his next of kin or legal representative; and no person shall be discharged or released from active service on account of disability until and unless he has executed a claim for compensation, pension, or hospitalization, to be filed with the Veterans' Administration or has signed a statement that he has had explained to him the right to file such claim: Provided, That this section shall not preclude immediate transfer to a veterans' facility for necessary hospital care, nor preclude the discharge of any person who refuses to sign such claim or statement: And provided further, That refusal or failure to file a claim shall be without prejudice to any right the veteran may subsequently assert.

Any person entitled to a prosthetic appliance shall be entitled, in addition, to necessary fitting and training, including institutional training, in the use of such appliance, whether in a Service or a Veterans' Administration hospital, or by out-patient treatment, including such service under contract.

SEC. 105. No person in the armed forces shall be required to sign a statement of any nature relating to the origin, incurrence, or aggravation of any disease or injury he may have, and any such statement against his own interest signed at any time, shall be null and void and of no force and effect.

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EnlargeDownload Link Citation: An act to provide Federal Government aid for the readjustment in civilian life of returning World War II veterans, June 22,1944; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789-1996; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.

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"...this website has the actual maps created bythe Homeowner's Loan Corporation in the 1930's and 40s."

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"...this website has the actual maps created bythe Homeowner's Loan Corporation in the 1930's and 40s."

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"Because it definitely seems like where I live must have been segregated somehow. Ojai is like 80% white." 

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"Because it definitely seems like where I live must have been segregated somehow. Ojai is like 80% white." 

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"That said property shall not, nor shall any interest therein, at any time be leased, sold, devised or conveyed, or inherited by...any person whose blood is not entirely that of the Caucasian race..."

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"That said property shall not, nor shall any interest therein, at any time be leased, sold, devised or conveyed, or inherited by...any person whose blood is not entirely that of the Caucasian race..."

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Inga Selders, a city council member in a suburb of Kansas City, wanted to know if there were provisions preventing homeowners from legally having backyard chickens. So she combed through deeds in the county recorder's office for two days looking for specific language.

At one point, she stumbled across some language, but it had nothing to do with chickens.

"I heard the rumors, and there it was," Selders recalled. "It was disgusting. It made my stomach turn to see it there in black-and-white."

What Selders found was a racially restrictive covenant in the Prairie Village Homeowners Association property records that says, "None of said land may be conveyed to, used, owned, or occupied by negroes as owners or tenants." The covenant applied to all 1,700 homes in the homeowners association, she said.

"There's still racism very much alive and well in Prairie Village," Selders said about her tony bedroom community in Johnson County, Kan., the wealthiest county in a state where more than 85% of the population is white.

The racially restrictive covenant that Selders uncovered can be found on the books in nearly every state in the U.S., according to an examination by NPR, KPBS, St. Louis Public Radio, WBEZ and inewsource,a nonprofit investigative journalism site. Although the Supreme Court ruled the covenants unenforceable in 1948 and although the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed them, the hurtful, offensive language still exists - an ugly reminder of the country's racist past.

"I'd be surprised to find any city that did not have restrictive covenants," said LaDale Winling, a historian and expert on housing discrimination who teaches at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

While most of the covenants throughout the country were written to keep Blacks from moving into certain neighborhoods - unless they were servants - many targeted other ethnic and religious groups, such as Asian Americans and Jews, records show.

In this moment of racial reckoning, keeping the covenants on the books perpetuates segregation and is an affront to people who are living in homes and neighborhoods where they have not been wanted, some say. The challenge now is figuring out how to bury the hatred without erasing history. In some instances, trying to remove a covenant - or its racially charged language - is a bureaucratic nightmare; in other cases, it can be politically unpopular.

For Maria Cisneros, it was painfully difficult. Cisneros, the city attorney for Golden Valley, a Minneapolis suburb, found a racially restrictive covenant in her property records in 2019 when she and her Venezuelan husband did a title search on a house they had bought a few years earlier.

"I was super-surprised," she said. "If anyone should have known about this, I should have. I'm an attorney."

Cisneros, who is white, said she wanted the covenant removed immediately and went to the county recorder's office. What she thought would be a simple process actually was cumbersome, expensive and time-consuming. She took time off work and had to get access to a private subscription service typically available only to title companies and real estate lawyers. There were forms to fill out that required her to know how property records work. She also had to pay for every document she filed.

"It took hours - and I'm a lawyer," she said. "I don't think any non-lawyer is going to want to do this."

In the end, Cisneros learned that the offensive language couldn't be removed. That is often the case in other cities if officials there believe that it's wrong to erase a covenant from the public record. Instead, the county agreed to attach a piece of paper to Cisneros' covenant disavowing the language.

"A lot of people don't know about racial covenants," she said, adding that her husband and their four children are the first nonwhite family in their neighborhood. "A lot of people are shocked when they hear about them."

After her ordeal, Cisneros started Just Deeds, a coalition of attorneys and others who work together to help homeowners file the paperwork to rid the discriminatory language from their property records.

"It's complicated stuff," she said.

It's impossible to know exactly how many racially restrictive covenants remain on the books throughout the U.S., though Winling and others who study the issue estimate there are millions. The more than 3,000 counties throughout the U.S. maintain land records, and each has a different way of recording and searching for them. Some counties, such as San Diego County and Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, have digitized their records, making it easier to find the outlawed covenants. But in most counties, property records are still paper documents that sit in file cabinets and on shelves. In Cook County, Illinois, for instance, finding one deed with a covenant means poring through ledgers in the windowless basement room of the county recorder's office in downtown Chicago. It's a painstaking process that can take hours to yield one result.

Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough, whose office houses all county deeds, said she has known about racial covenants in property records since the 1970s, when she first saw one while selling real estate in suburban Chicago. She called them "straight-up wrong."

"I see them and I just shake my head," she said in an interview with NPR. "Those things should not be there."

While the covenants have existed for decades, they've become a forgotten piece of history.

Desmond Odugu, chairman of the education department at Lake Forest College in Illinois, has documented the history of racial residential segregation and where racial covenants exist in the Chicago area. He said he was stunned to learn "how widespread they were."

"The image of the U.S. I had was a post-racial society," said Odugu, who's from Nigeria. "But as soon as I got to the U.S., it was clear that was not the case. I had a lot to learn."

Odugu said he has confirmed 220 subdivisions - home to thousands of people - in Cook County whose records contain the covenants.

"It only scratches the surface," he said.

A dark history

When the Great Migration began around 1915, Black Southerners started moving in droves to the Northeast, Midwest and West. Their hope was for a better life, far away from the Jim Crow laws imposed on them by Southern lawmakers. Blacks soon realized, though, that segregation and racism awaited them in places like Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, particularly in housing. They often were forced to live in overcrowded and substandard housing because white neighborhoods didn't want them.

Chicago, which has a long history of racial segregation in housing, played an outsize role in the spread of restrictive covenants. It served as the headquarters of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, which was a "clearinghouse" for ideas about real estate practice, Winling said.

"This was kind of ... like a nerve center for both centralizing and accumulating ideas about real estate practice and then sending them out to individual boards and chapters throughout the country," he said.

In 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local governments could not explicitly create racial zones like those in apartheid South Africa, for example. But another Supreme Court case nine years later upheld racial covenants on properties. In Corrigan v. Buckley, the high court ruled that a racially restrictive covenant in a specific Washington, D.C., neighborhood was a legally binding document between private parties, meaning that if someone sold a house to Blacks, it voided the contract, Winling said. That ruling paved the way for racially restrictive covenants around the country. In Chicago, for instance, the general counsel of the National Association of Real Estate Boards created a covenant template with a message to real estate agents and developers from Philadelphia to Spokane, Wash., to use it in communities.

"So we see a standardization and then intensification of the use of covenants after 1926 and 1927 when the model covenant is created," Winling said.

Chicago also was home to one of the earliest landmark restrictive-covenant cases in the country: Hansberry v. Lee. Carl Hansberry, a Black real estate broker and father of playwright Lorraine Hansberry, bought a home in the all-white Woodlawn neighborhood on the city's South Side in 1937. After a neighbor objected, the case went to court - ultimately ending up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Hansberry prevailed. The 1940 decision eventually led to the demise of the racist legal tool by encouraging more legal challenges against racial covenants. The family never returned to the three-story brick home now known as the Lorraine Hansberry House, and renters now occupy the run-down property. The city designated it a landmark in 2010.

Meanwhile, in south St. Louis, developers baked racial restrictions into plans for quiet, tree-lined subdivisions, ensuring that Black - and in some communities, Asian American - families would not become part of these new neighborhoods.

That all changed in 1948 when J.D. and Ethel Shelley successfully challenged a racial covenant on their home in the Greater Ville neighborhood in conjunction with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The family, like countless other Blacks, had come to St. Louis from Mississippi as part of the migration movement. After buying a home from someone who decided not to enforce the racial covenant, a white neighbor objected. The man sued the Shelleys and eventually won, prompting them to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the state could not enforce racial covenants. The landmark civil rights case became known as Shelley v. Kraemer.

But things didn't change overnight.

"After Shelley versus Kraemer, no one goes through and stamps 'unenforceable' in every covenant," said Colin Gordon, a history professor at the University of Iowa. "They just sit there."

About 30,000 properties in St. Louis still have racially restrictive covenants on the books, about a quarter of the city's housing stock in the 1950s, said Gordon, who worked with a team of local organizations and students to comb through the records and understand how they shaped the city. Another 61,000 properties in St. Louis County continue to have the covenants, he said.

Dealing with the past

Past the heavy wooden doors inside the Land Records Department at St. Louis City Hall, Shemia Reese strained to make out words written in 1925 in tight, loopy cursive. Time has relegated the document to microfilm available only on the department's machine. She used her finger to skim past the restrictions barring any "slaughterhouse, junk shop or rag picking establishment" on her street, stopping when she found what she had come to see: a city "Real Estate Exchange Restriction Agreement" that didn't allow homeowners to "sell, convey, lease or rent to a negro or negroes." The covenant applied to several properties on Reese's block and was signed by homeowners who didn't want Blacks moving in.

Reese, who is Black, said her heart sank at those words, especially because buying her home in the JeffVanderLou neighborhood in north St. Louis 16 years ago is something of which she is proud.

"To know that I own a property that has this language ... it's heartbreaking," Reese said. "This is the part of history that doesn't change. And so when people say, 'We don't have to deal with our past,' this right here lets you know that we definitely have to deal with it."

To Reese, that means having hard conversations about that history with her children, friends and neighbors. She plans to frame the covenant and hang it in her home as evidence of systemic racism that needs to be addressed.

"People will try to say things didn't happen or they weren't as bad as they seem," Reese said. "It's always downplayed."

But other St. Louis homeowners whose property records bear similar offensive language say they don't understand the need to have a constant reminder.

"It bothers me that this is attached to my house, that someone could look it up," said Mary Boller, a white resident who lives in the Princeton Heights neighborhood in south St. Louis. "I want to take a Sharpie and mark through this so no one can see this."

Gordon argues that racially restrictive covenants are the "original sin" of segregation in America and are largely responsible for the racial wealth gap that exists today.

"And the fact that of similarly situated African American and white families in a city like St. Louis, one has three generations of homeownership and home equity under their belt, and the other doesn't," he said. "It's a huge difference to your opportunities."

Gordon said the covenants are not mere artifacts of a painful past. They laid the foundation for other discriminatory practices, such as zoning and redlining, that picked up where covenants left off.

Gordon found that covenants in St. Louis were primarily used between 1910 and 1950 to keep Black residents from moving beyond the borders of a thriving Black neighborhood called the Ville.

In the surrounding neighborhoods north of Delmar Boulevard - a racial dividing line that bisects the city - the St. Louis Real Estate Exchange frantically urged white homeowners to adopt a patchwork of racially restrictive covenants or risk degrading the "character of the neighborhood." The covenants eventually blanketed most of the homes surrounding the Ville, including the former home of rock 'n' roll pioneer Chuck Berry. Most of the homes with racially restrictive covenants in north St. Louis are now crumbling vacant buildings or lots.

"Protected for Particular People"

California was at the forefront of the strategy to use restrictive covenants to keep neighborhoods white. In the Bay Area, real estate developer Duncan McDuffie was one of the first to create a high-end community in Berkeley and restrict residency by race, according to Gene Slater, an affordable-housing expert who works with cities and states on housing policies.

In San Diego, at the turn of the 20th century, the city began to see many of its neighborhoods grow with racial bias and discrimination that wasn't just blatant - it was formalized in writing.

This desire for exclusivity and separation embraced the notion that discrimination was an asset, a virtue that made certain communities desirable. A 1910 brochure, printed on delicate, robin's egg blue paper, advertised a neighborhood, then named Inspiration Heights, this way: "Planned and Protected for Particular People. For those who Want the Best."

Today, the neighborhood is known as Mission Hills. The gently curving roads and stately trees persist, as does the cachet: Homes there today sell for millions of dollars.

Another brochure promised that deed restrictions "mean Permanent Values in Kensington Heights." Yet another touted San Diego as the "Only White Spot on the Pacific Coast."

"For the developers, race-restrictive covenants, they were kind of a fashion," said Andrew Wiese, a history professor at San Diego State University. "In a way that gates were a fashion, or maybe are still a fashion, or other kinds of amenities were a sales fad."

He said white builders and buyers deemed segregation and white supremacy as trendy. Once it was in vogue, people put it in their deeds and assumed that that's what their white buyers wanted. The repetitive language of these deeds, which seems nearly identical from one deed to the next, suggests that racial restrictions were boilerplate clauses.

Michael Dew still remembers the day in 2014 when he purchased his first home - a newly renovated ranch-style house with an ample backyard in San Diego's El Cerrito neighborhood, just blocks from San Diego State University.

It took years of scrimping and saving, but the then-35-year-old finally had accomplished what his mother had wanted for him.

"My mother always felt that homeownership is the No. 1 thing that I should pursue in my life outside of my college degree," said Dew, a third-generation San Diegan. "It's a roof over your head. It's an established home."

Dew's house is just a few blocks away from his paternal grandfather's house in Oak Park, the "Big House," where he often visited as a child. A few years ago, Dew decided to look at that home's 1950 deed and found a "nice paragraph that tells me I didn't belong."

"That neither said lots or portions thereof or interest therein shall ever be leased, sold, devised, conveyed to or inherited or be otherwise acquired by or become property of any person other than of the Caucasian Race."

"I've been fully aware of Black history in America," said Dew, who is Black. "I wasn't surprised it was there, but it's just upsetting that it was in San Diego County."

There's no way to determine the exact number of properties that had these restrictions, but no part of the county was exempt. Our examination found restrictive covenants from Imperial Beach, a mile or so north of the U.S.-Mexico border, to Vista, about 50 miles north. Since they were attached to deeds, these restrictions could impact many kinds of real estate, from single-family homes to broad swaths of land that would later be developed.

A review of San Diego County's digitized property records found more than 10,000 transactions with race-based exclusions between 1931 and 1969. The majority of those were recorded in the 1930s and 1940s, but many others went into effect in the decades before, when San Diego's population swelled, and are still on the books today.

An uphill battle

Amending or removing racially restrictive covenants is a conversation that is unfolding across the country.

Nicole Sullivan and her husband decided to move back to Illinois from Tucson, Ariz., and purchased a house in Mundelein, a onetime weekend resort town for Chicagoans about 40 miles northwest of the city.

After closing, they decided to install a dog run and contacted the homeowners association. She was surprised when it told her that the land covenant prohibited erecting a fence. The covenant also prohibited the selling, transferring or leasing of her property to "persons of the African or Negro, Japanese, Chinese, Jewish or Hebrew races, or their descendants." The house could not be occupied by those minority groups unless they were servants.

"It made me feel sick about it," said Sullivan, who is white and the mother of four.

She was so upset that she joined the homeowners association in 2014 in hopes of eliminating the discriminatory language from the deeds that she had to administer.

"We were told by the [homeowners association] lawyers that we couldn't block out those words but send as is," she recalled. "Yes, it's illegal and it's unenforceable, but ... you're still recycling this garbage into the universe."

Sullivan knew the only way to rid the language from the record was to lobby elected officials. She teamed up with a neighbor, and together they convinced Illinois Democratic state Rep. Daniel Didech to sponsor a bill. The lawmaker found an ally in Democratic state Sen. Adriane Johnson. The bill allows property owners and homeowners associations to remove the offensive and unlawful language from covenants for no more than $10 through their recorder of deeds office and in 30 days or less, Johnson said. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, signed the bill into law in July. It takes effect in January 2022.

"I just felt like striking discriminatory provisions from our records would show we are committed to undoing the historical harms done to Black and brown communities," Johnson said in an interview with NPR. "For far too long, we've been dealing with this."

Johnson, who is Black and lived in Chicago as a child but later moved to the suburbs, said she didn't know racial covenants existed before co-sponsoring the legislation.

Illinois becomes the latest state to enact a law to remove or amend racially restrictive covenants from property records. Maryland passed a law in 2020 that allows property owners to go to court and have the covenants removed for free. And in September, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed a bill that streamlines the process to remove the language. Several other states, including Connecticut and Virginia, have similar laws.

In Marin County, Calif., one of the most affluent counties in that state, officials launched a program in July that aims to help residents learn the history that forbade people of color from purchasing homes in certain neighborhoods, which also prevented them from building wealth like white families in the county did, according to Leelee Thomas, a planning manager with the county's Community Development Agency. The program includes modifying their deeds to rid them of the racist language.

So far, 32 people have requested covenant modifications, and "many" others have inquired, Thomas said. When they learn their deeds have these restrictions, people are "shocked," she said.

"This is an interesting time to be having a conversation about racially restrictive covenants," Thomas said. "With the Black Lives Matter movement, many people in Marin and around the county became more aware of racial disparities."

In Missouri, there's no straightforward path to amending a racial covenant. It takes hiring an attorney like Kalila Jackson, who has done it before.

"If you called a random attorney, many of them probably would say, 'Oh, well, this isn't enforceable. You can just ignore it,' " Jackson said. "But I think we know that's only half the story."

Ending racial covenants was one of the first things on her agenda when she joined the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council nearly a decade ago. She's passionate about the work, and her organization provides services pro bono.

In 2016, she helped a small town just north of St. Louis known as Pasadena Hills amend a Board of Trustees indenture from 1928. The residents of what is now a majority-Black town had pushed for decades to remove a provision barring Black and Asian people from living in the neighborhood. Eventually Jackson and city leaders persuaded the trustees to adopt a resolution to strike the racial restriction.

"It was one of those rare moments where you really see truth spoke to power," she said, adding that she hopes Pasadena Hills serves as a model for other towns across the country with such covenants.

Geno Salvati, the mayor at the time, said he got pushback for supporting the effort.

"There are people who are still mad at me about it," said Salvati, who is white. "They didn't want to talk about it. They didn't want to bring up subjects that could be left where they were lying."

Missouri is a state that tried to make it easier to remove restrictive covenants, but failed.

A bill was introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives during the last legislative session that included a small provision to make it easier and free for people to insert a document to officially nullify a racial covenant. The bill stalled in committee.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt has spoken out about his commitment to rooting out racist language from homeowners association bylaws across the state over the last year. But he hasn't addressed the hundreds of subdivision and petition covenants on the books in St. Louis.

Schmitt, through a spokesman, declined to be interviewed. He said in a statement that "it would be too premature to promise action before seeing the covenants, but we do encourage people to reach out to our office if they find these covenants."

Jackson, the Missouri attorney, is helping resident Clara Richter amend her property records by adding a document that acknowledges that the racial covenant exists but disavows it. She said it would be easier if the state adopted a broader law similar to one already in place that requires homeowners associations to remove racial covenants from their bylaws.

Without a law or a program that spreads awareness about covenants, or funding for recorders to digitize records, amending covenants will continue to be an arduous process for Missouri homeowners.

"History can be ugly, and we've got to look at the ugliness," said Richter, who is white. "We can't just say, 'Oh, that's horrible.' I feel like it [covenants] should be in a museum, maybe, or in schoolbooks, but not still a legal thing attached to this land."
Former NPR investigative intern Emine Yücel contributed to this story.

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Racial covenants, a relic of the past, are still on the books across the country

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Racial covenants made it illegal for Black people to live in white neighborhoods. Now they're illegal, but you might still have one on your home's deed. And they're hard to remove.

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 A quick look at the history of U.S. immigration policies

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 A quick look at the history of U.S. immigration policies

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A look at the history of U.S. immigration policies that led to today's complex system

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Although millions turned out to commemorate the Statue's unveiling on October 28, 1886, not everyone was enamored with the new colossus.

Many women's groups protested the bitter irony of celebrating the image of a female Liberty while women in the U.S. were denied the right to vote. Adding to this, just two women were among the 2,500 guests on Bedloe's Island that rainy October day - Bartholdi's wife, Jeanne-Emilie, and Tototte de Lesseps, the teenage daughter of Ferdinand de Lesseps, who'd served as head of the Franco-American Union. Even the wives of the American Committee were left to watch the proceedings from a boat anchored off Bedloe's Island.

The nation's Black community also felt the harsh sting of reproach. When conceptualizing a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States, Laboulaye was honoring the long-standing relationship between the two nation's as well as America's centennial. He was also greatly inspired by the recent emancipation of enslaved people, symbolized by the broken shackles at the feet of Lady Liberty. Yet freedom and equality were far from realized.

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Liberty 135 | Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island

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Although millions turned out to commemorate the Statue's unveiling on October 28, 1886, not everyone was enamored with the new colossus. Many women's groups protested the bitter irony of celebrating the image of a female Liberty while women in the U.S. were denied the right to vote.

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Home - German American Internee Coalition

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The German American Internee Coalition was formed by civilians from the U.S. and Latin America interned by the United States during World War II.

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Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar

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Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar

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Search Results: "" - Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (Library of Congress)

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The Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) contains catalog records and digital images representing a rich cross-section of still pictures held by the Prints & Photographs Division and, in some cases, other units of the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress offers broad public access to these materials as a contribution to education and scholarship.

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"...arrested and interned in prison camps, like Manzanar."

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"...arrested and interned in prison camps, like Manzanar."

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interned in prison camps, like Manzanar.

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Densho: Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment

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How Japanese Americans Fought to Make Sure We Never Forget Manzanar’s History

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Manzanar was the first of the concentration camps where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during WWII to become a National Historic Site.

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Issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, this order authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to "relocation centers" further inland - resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Between 1861 and 1940, approximately 275,000 Japanese immigrated to Hawaii and the mainland United States, the majority arriving between 1898 and 1924, when quotas were adopted that ended Asian immigration. Many worked in Hawaiian sugarcane fields as contract laborers. After their contracts expired, a small number remained and opened up shops. Other Japanese immigrants settled on the West Coast of mainland United States, cultivating marginal farmlands and fruit orchards, fishing, and operating small businesses. Their efforts yielded impressive results. Japanese Americans controlled less than 4 percent of California's farmland in 1940, but they produced more than 10 percent of the total value of the state's farm resources.

As was the case with other immigrant groups, Japanese Americans settled in ethnic neighborhoods and established schools, houses of worship, and economic and cultural institutions. Ethnic concentration was further increased by real estate agents who would not sell properties to Japanese Americans outside of existing Japanese American enclaves and by a 1913 act passed by the California Assembly restricting land ownership to those eligible to be citizens. In 1922, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Ozawa v. United States, upheld the government's right to deny U.S. citizenship to Japanese immigrants.

On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan attacked the United States at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii. The attack launched a rash of fear about national security, especially on the West Coast. This combined with economic competition, distrust over cultural separateness, and long-standing anti-Asian racism turned into disaster for Japanese Americans.

Lobbyists from western states, many representing competing economic interests or nativist groups, pressured Congress and the President to remove persons of Japanese descent from the west coast, both foreign born ( issei - meaning "first generation" of Japanese in the U.S.) and American citizens ( nisei - the second generation of Japanese in America, U.S. citizens by birthright.) During congressional committee hearings, Department of Justice representatives raised constitutional and ethical objections to the proposal, so the U.S. Army carried out the task instead.

The West Coast was divided into military zones, and on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that authorized military commanders to exclude civilians from military areas. Although the language of the order did not specify any ethnic group, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command proceeded to announce curfews that included only Japanese Americans.

General DeWitt first encouraged voluntary evacuation by Japanese Americans from a limited number of areas. About seven percent of the total Japanese American population in these areas complied. Then on March 29, 1942, under the authority of Roosevelt's executive order, DeWitt issued Public Proclamation No. 4, which began the forced evacuation and detention of Japanese-American West Coast residents on a 48-hour notice. Only a few days prior to the proclamation, on March 21, Congress had passed Public Law 503, which made violation of Executive Order 9066 a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and a $5,000 fine.

In the next six months, approximately 122,000 men, women, and children were forcibly moved to "assembly centers." They were then evacuated to and confined in isolated, fenced, and guarded "relocation centers," also known as "internment camps." The 10 sites were in remote areas in six western states and Arkansas: Heart Mountain in Wyoming, Tule Lake and Manzanar in California, Topaz in Utah, Poston and Gila River in Arizona, Granada in Colorado, Minidoka in Idaho, and Jerome and Rowher in Arkansas.

Nearly 70,000 of the evacuees were American citizens. The government made no charges against them, nor could they appeal their incarceration. All lost personal liberties; most lost homes and property as well. Although several Japanese Americans challenged the government's actions in court cases, the Supreme Court upheld their legality. Nisei were nevertheless encouraged to serve in the armed forces, and some were also drafted. Altogether, more than 30,000 Japanese Americans served with distinction during World War II in segregated units.

For many years after the war, various individuals and groups sought compensation for those incarcerated. The speed of the "evacuation" forced many homeowners and businessmen to sell out quickly; total property loss is estimated at $1.3 billion, and net income loss at $2.7 billion (calculated in 1983 dollars based on a congressional commission investigation). The Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act of 1948, with amendments in 1951 and 1965, provided token payments for some property losses. More serious efforts to make amends took place in the early 1980s, when the congressionally established Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians held investigations and made recommendations. As a result, several bills were introduced in Congress from 1984 until 1988. In 1988, Public Law 100-383 acknowledged the injustice of the incarceration, apologized for it, and provided partial restitution - a $20,000 cash payment to each person who was incarcerated.

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Executive Order 9066: Resulting in Japanese-American Incarceration (1942)

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EnlargeDownload Link Citation: Executive Order 9066, February 19, 1942; General Records of the Unites States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives. View All Pages in the National Archives Catalog View Transcript Issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, this order authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to "relocation centers" further inland - resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

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Dorothy Whitney Yamashita, 98, speaks to fellow residents of Harvest Hill Assisted Living in Lebanon, N.H., on Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2024, about the experiences of her husband Kanshi STANLEY YAMASHITA family in Japanese internment camps during World War II. 

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Dorothy Whitney Yamashita, 98, speaks to fellow residents of Harvest Hill Assisted Living in Lebanon, N.H., on Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2024, about the experiences of her husband Kanshi STANLEY YAMASHITA family in Japanese internment camps during World War II. 

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Out & About: In honor of Day of Remembrance, woman shares late husband’s story of internment

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Dorothy Whitney Yamashita pointed to black-and-white photographs of her late husband, Kanshi Stanley Yamashita, on screen.There he was, as a child on Terminal Island off the coast of California. There he was with his siblings. Their idyllic…

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"And then they tell us the cadaver storage vault? It is the stop on the Underground Railroad."

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"And then they tell us the cadaver storage vault? It is the stop on the Underground Railroad."

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Mount Zion Cemetery’s Underground Railroad Shelter

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People escaping slavery may have hidden inside a corpse vault.

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"The "Avondale Riot." That's what Piper was talking about."

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"The "Avondale Riot." That's what Piper was talking about."

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Advocate at 200: The Cincinnati race riots from 1967

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This week’s story appeared on the front page of the June 14, 1967 edition regarding rioting in Cincinnati in a year that saw multiple similar events.

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"...prehistoric burial mounds that seem to be a source of local pride."

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"...prehistoric burial mounds that seem to be a source of local pride."

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Prehistoric Peoples of Indian Hill - Indian Hill Historical Society

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"1830, Congress passes the Indian Removal Act"

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"1830, Congress passes the Indian Removal Act"

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The U.S. Government used treaties as one means to displace Indians from their tribal lands, a mechanism that was strengthened with the Removal Act of 1830. In cases where this failed, the government sometimes violated both treaties and Supreme Court rulings to facilitate the spread of European Americans westward across the continent.

As the 19th century began, land-hungry Americans poured into the backcountry of the coastal South and began moving toward and into what would later become the states of Alabama and Mississippi. Since Indian tribes living there appeared to be the main obstacle to westward expansion, white settlers petitioned the federal government to remove them. Although Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe argued that the Indian tribes in the Southeast should exchange their land for lands west of the Mississippi River, they did not take steps to make this happen. Indeed, the first major transfer of land occurred only as the result of war.

In 1814, Major General Andrew Jackson led an expedition against the Creek Indians climaxing in the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend (in present day Alabama near the Georgia border), where Jackson's force soundly defeated the Creeks and destroyed their military power. He then forced upon the Indians a treaty whereby they surrendered to the United States over twenty-million acres of their traditional land-about one-half of present day Alabama and one-fifth of Georgia. Over the next decade, Jackson led the way in the Indian removal campaign, helping to negotiate nine of the eleven major treaties to remove Indians.

Under this kind of pressure, Native American tribes-specifically the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw-realized that they could not defeat the Americans in war. The appetite of the settlers for land would not abate, so the Indians adopted a strategy of appeasement. They hoped that if they gave up a good deal of their land, they could keep at least some a part of it. The Seminole tribe in Florida resisted, in the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) and the Third Seminole War (1855-1858), however, neither appeasement nor resistance worked.

From a legal standpoint, the United States Constitution empowered Congress to "regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes." In early treaties negotiated between the federal government and the Indian tribes, the latter typically acknowledged themselves "to be under the protection of the United States of America, and of no other sovereign whosoever." When Andrew Jackson became president (1829-1837), he decided to build a systematic approach to Indian removal on the basis of these legal precedents.

To achieve his purpose, Jackson encouraged Congress to adopt the Removal Act of 1830. The Act established a process whereby the President could grant land west of the Mississippi River to Indian tribes that agreed to give up their homelands. As incentives, the law allowed the Indians financial and material assistance to travel to their new locations and start new lives and guaranteed that the Indians would live on their new property under the protection of the United States Government forever. With the Act in place, Jackson and his followers were free to persuade, bribe, and threaten tribes into signing removal treaties and leaving the Southeast.

In general terms, Jackson's government succeeded. By the end of his presidency, he had signed into law almost seventy removal treaties, the result of which was to move nearly 50,000 eastern Indians to Indian Territory-defined as the region belonging to the United States west of the Mississippi River but excluding the states of Missouri and Iowa as well as the Territory of Arkansas-and open millions of acres of rich land east of the Mississippi to white settlers. Despite the vastness of the Indian Territory, the government intended that the Indians' destination would be a more confined area-what later became eastern Oklahoma.

The Cherokee Nation resisted, however, challenging in court the Georgia laws that restricted their freedoms on tribal lands. In his 1831 ruling on Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that "the Indian territory is admitted to compose a part of the United States," and affirmed that the tribes were "domestic dependent nations" and "their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian." However, the following year the Supreme Court reversed itself and ruled that Indian tribes were indeed sovereign and immune from Georgia laws. President Jackson nonetheless refused to heed the Court's decision. He obtained the signature of a Cherokee chief agreeing to relocation in the Treaty of New Echota, which Congress ratified against the protests of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay in 1835. The Cherokee signing party represented only a faction of the Cherokee, and the majority followed Principal Chief John Ross in a desperate attempt to hold onto their land. This attempt faltered in 1838, when, under the guns of federal troops and Georgia state militia, the Cherokee tribe were forced to the dry plains across the Mississippi. The best evidence indicates that between three and four thousand out of the fifteen to sixteen thousand Cherokees died en route from the brutal conditions of the "Trail of Tears."

With the exception of a small number of Seminoles still resisting removal in Florida, by the 1840s, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, no Indian tribes resided in the American South. Through a combination of coerced treaties and the contravention of treaties and judicial determination, the United States Government succeeded in paving the way for the westward expansion and the incorporation of new territories as part of the United States.

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Milestones: 1830-1860 - Office of the Historian

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"The Southern Ute Boarding School. Right, I remember now."

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"The Southern Ute Boarding School. Right, I remember now."

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now.

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Southern Ute archivist dives into boarding school history

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A research effort launched in 2022 by the state of Colorado to better understand the physical and emotional toll federal boarding schools had on the Native American population kicked off a dialogue on…

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US Indian Boarding School History - The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition

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The truth about the US Indian boarding school policy has largely been written out of the history books. There were more than 350 government-funded, and often church-run, Indian Boarding schools across the US in the 19th and 20th centuries. Indian children were forcibly abducted by government agents, sent to schools...

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"Indian Health Clinics are promoting voluntary sterilization."

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"Indian Health Clinics are promoting voluntary sterilization."

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A study by the U.S. General Accounting Office finds that 4 of the 12 Indian Health Service regions sterilized 3,406 American Indian women without their permission between 1973 and 1976. The GAO finds that 36 women under age 21 were sterilized during this period despite a court-ordered moratorium on sterilizations of women younger than 21.

Two years earlier, an independent study by Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, Choctaw/Cherokee, found that one in four American Indian women had been sterilized without her consent. PInkerton-Uri's research indicated that the Indian Health Service had "singled out full-blooded Indian women for sterilization procedures."

Theme

Federal-Tribal Relations

Region

California, Great Basin, Great Plains, Northeast, Northwest Coast, Plateau, Southeast, Southwest

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Government admits forced sterilization of Indian Women

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A study by the U.S. General Accounting Office finds that 4 of the 12 Indian Health Service regions sterilized 3,406 American Indian women without their permission between 1973 and 1976. The GAO finds that 36 women under age 21 were sterilized during this period despite a court-ordered moratorium on sterilizations of women younger than 21.

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"Okay, so, the suffragists -- brave, persistent, a mixed bag."

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"Okay, so, the suffragists -- brave, persistent, a mixed bag."

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My 94-year-old great-aunt, Paralee Wilmer - we call her Aunty Lee - voted for the first time after moving to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1944. Born to no-nonsense, small farmers in Millers Ferry, Alabama, and the youngest daughter of 12 children, Aunty Lee was one among many African Americans who moved from the South to the North in search of better job opportunities and greater freedoms during the The Great Migration. These freedoms included the right to vote without intimidation or any other hindrance.

Aunty Lee's memory is a bit cloudy regarding whether the first time she cast her ballot was in an election for local politicians or a presidential race, but one thing she knows for sure is her pastor at the time inspired her to exercise her constitutional rights and fulfill her civic duties. He said, "When it's time to vote, make sure you vote. When it's time to do grand jury, make sure you go."

At age 20, Aunty Lee understood the magnitude of her pastor's advice, given the disenfranchisement of Black folks that she witnessed growing up in Millers Ferry - including poll taxes, literacy tests, and outright violence and intimidation that prevented Black people from voting. To be a Black citizen in America but denied full citizenship rights epitomizes the hypocrisy of American democracy. This is a sad truth that I repeat like a blues refrain to my students.

This summer - as the nation celebrates the 170th anniversary of the first major convention for women's rights at Seneca Falls and the 98th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which granted women the right to vote - how do we reconcile widespread narratives of a triumphant, steady march towards women's enfranchisement with the more complicated and painful reality of my great-aunt's lived experience as a young, Black woman in Jim Crow America?

One word: intersectionality.

Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw argues that racism and sexism intersect in a manner that compounds Black women's oppression. Although the above historical events occurred long before Crenshaw articulated intersectionality, this insightful theory should be applied to all historical narratives that do not fully engage with the lived experiences of African-American women.

What do we notice when we take an intersectional view of the events that transpired at Seneca Falls? How does our understanding of the history of all women's political empowerment in the United States change?

When suffragists gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848, they advocated for the right of white women to vote. The participants were middle and upper-class white women, a cadre of white men supporters and one African-American male - Frederick Douglass. The esteemed abolitionist had forged a strong working relationship with fellow abolitionists and white women suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. No Black women attended the convention. None were invited.

Although women of color were profoundly absent at Seneca Falls, a greater degree of cultural inclusion was on the horizon. In May 1851, African-American abolitionist Sojourner Truth spoke at a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio. During her famous speech on the abolition of slavery and the promotion of women's rights, Truth allegedly bared her breast and proclaimed, "Ain't I a w oman?"

It was a melodramatic act and statement, but as historian Nell Painter argues, it never happened. Instead, it was a quaint fiction crafted by convention organizer Frances Dana Gage and other white feminists who depicted Truth to white audiences as a genuine albeit primitive ally in the fight for women's rights. Thus, the 1851 convention marked a modicum of progress, but this progress is tainted by white suffragists' attempts to control Truth's voice.

By the turn of the 20th century, Black suffragists such as Mary Church Terrell represented intersectional feminism at its best. Born to former slaves in Memphis, Tennessee, Terrell earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from Oberlin College and served as president of the National Association of Colored Women. In February 1898, Terrell spoke at the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in Washington, D.C.

Her speech forced powerful white women attendees to reflect on the compounding oppressions and systemic violence that Black women endured during slavery. She ended on a more optimistic note - praising the sheer grit and intellect of freed women. Terrell's rhetorical style echoed the American ethos of self-made men and women, but she oversimplified the historical reality that the paths to racial and gender equality are long, jagged, and still unwinding.

The history of women's suffrage in America is not nice or neat, because the impact of white supremacy is broad and human nature is messy. Furthermore, a nation built on stolen land from Native Americans and stolen labor from African slaves is flawed from the start. We must constantly acknowledge this truth and engage in an intersectional celebration of women's rights activists and landmark events.

In addition to celebrating the passage of the 19th Amendment, let's celebrate the upcoming birthday of African-American suffragist Mary Church Terrell, who would be 155 on September 23. Let's celebrate the lives and legacies of the true Sojourner Truth, abolitionist and suffragist Harriet Tubman, and Shirley Chisholm - the first Black woman elected to Congress and to seriously run for president.

Let us celebrate and support current-day Black Lives Matter founders and organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, three queer Black women committed to "placing those at the margins closer to the center" of political leadership. Last but not least, let's celebrate the lives of everyday people like my Aunty Lee - a Black woman born and raised in Jim Crow Alabama who sought out a better life in Ohio and has religiously exercised her right to vote for the past 74 years. Let us celebrate these Black women while recognizing that the struggle to vote without obstacles continues.

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Celebrate Women's Suffrage, but Don't Whitewash the Movement's Racism | ACLU

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My 94-year-old great-aunt, Paralee Wilmer - we call her Aunty Lee - voted for the first time after moving to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1944. Born to no-nonsense, small farmers in Millers Ferry, Alabama, and the youngest daughter of 12 children, Aunty Lee was one among many African Americans who moved from the South to the North in search of better job opportunities and greater freedoms during the The Great Migration.

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"...this one photograph that catches my eye, of a Black woman named Angela Peoples."

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"...this one photograph that catches my eye, of a Black woman named Angela Peoples."

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"About mortality for Black women during childbirth"

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"About mortality for Black women during childbirth"

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Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2022

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"...murder rates for Indigenous women..."

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"...murder rates for Indigenous women..."

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Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) - Native Hope

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We’re facing a crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) in the United States. Here’s what you need to know about it.

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"It takes 20 years for them to become The Exonerated Five"

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"It takes 20 years for them to become The Exonerated Five"

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By Lisa Herndon, Manager, Schomburg Communications and Publications

After the unveiling of the Gate of the Exonerated at Central Park, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, and Raymond Santana Jr. spoke at the Schomburg Center about their journey to exoneration and their lives today.

"It's amazing to see 'Gate of the Exonerated,'" said Kevin Richardson, one of the members of the Exonerated Five, in a conversation at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture shortly after the gate's unveiling. "It's not just about us, even though we are highlighted in this. It's about everybody that's been done unjustly."

For the first time since 1862, New York City's Central Park renamed one of its entrances to the park in December 2022. Gate of the Exonerated is located along 110th Street between Fifth Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard.

Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana Jr., and Korey Wise were all teenagers when they were wrongfully convicted and served time for the 1989 brutal rape of a white female jogger inside Central Park, which became known as the Central Park Jogger case. The teenagers were called the "Central Park Five." In 2002, all were cleared after another man admitted to the crime and DNA evidence confirmed his confession.

The Schomburg Center's online and in-person materials offer an in-depth look at the Exonerated Five. The archives include a copy of the invitation to the gate's unveiling and a historic conversation with Richardson, Salaam, and Santana, Jr. a few hours after its unveiling. Plus, there are books about the court case and books written by Yusef Salaam.

The Road to Exoneration: A Discussion with the Exonerated Five

"It's the representation of people who were considered outcasts-people who are eaten up by the system, and then spit out, and then just left for dead," Santana, Jr. said. "This gate becomes bigger than the five because it represents a brotherhood that nobody wanted to be a part of."

The three spoke with Dr. Brian Jones, director of The New York Public Library's Center for Educators and Schools, and Mieasia Edwards, educator and activist. The evening also marked the 20th anniversary of the court reversing their convictions.

The Central Park Conservancy, Community Board 10, and Justice 4 the Wrongfully Incarcerated produced the talk in collaboration with the Center.

Books About the Case

The Center's Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division holds books in its collection providing a detailed look at the case.

The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of City Wilding (2011)by Sarah Burns offers an in-depth account of the case, intertwining stories of the five young men, police officers, district attorneys, victim, and Matias Reyes, who years later confessed to committing the crime and being the sole attacker.

Etan Thomas' s Police Brutality and White Supremacy: The Fight Against American Traditions (2022) includes interviews with athletes, activists, artists, and journalists such as Steph Curry, Fred Hampton, Jr., Chuck D, and Jemele Hill. The text examines police brutality, white supremacy, and the struggles for racial justice. Thomas, a former player with the National Basketball Association (NBA), includes a conversation with Santana, Jr. The book also contains interviews with retired police officers about their efforts to change policing and their experiences with addressing racial injustice with their peers.

Invitation to the Dedication

The Center's Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division holds a copy of the invitation to the unveiling of the Gate of the Exonerated in its collection.

The Schomburg Center's Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division holds a copy of the invitation created by the Central Park Conservancy to the dedication.

The invitation includes a list of Community Board 10 members, supporters, and organizations who took part in bringing the idea to fruition.

One inserted page of the invitation includes a listing of leaders such as Community 10 Board Chair Cicely Harris and New York State Senator Cordell Clare, activists Rev. Al Sharpton and Iman Al-Hajj Talib Adbur-Rashid, plus Central Park Conservancy President and CEO Betsy Smith and poet Abiodun Oyewole who spoke during the ceremony.

Another page insert includes information about the Park's exhibit, which tells the story of how the Gate of the Exonerated came to be, plus a QR code to scan and register for the Schomburg Center's discussion with Richardson, Salaam, Santana, Jr.

Books Written by Exonerated Five Member Yusef Salaam

In addition to his activism, Salaam is a bestselling author. His books are in the collection of the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division.

"They didn't know who they had," writes Salaam in his 2021 memoir, Better, Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice. He discusses the women in his family who raised him, his nearly seven years of wrongful incarceration, and how he channeled those experiences into a life of activism speaking out against racial injustice, police brutality, and calling for prison reform.

Punching the Air, which Salaam wrote with award-winning author Ibi Zoboi, is geared toward young adult readers. The 2020 novel tells the story of Amal Shahid, a teenager wrongfully convicted of a crime, and how he keeps his humanity and dignity in a system designed to tear him down.

During the 2022 Schomburg Center Literary Festival, Salaam moderated a conversation with Abiodun Oyewole, a founding member of The Last Poets. The discussion was a listening session and conversation around Oyewole's new CD Gratitude, a solo spoken word project.

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The Exonerated Five: An In-Depth Look at Their Journey to Justice | The New York Public Library

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Explore the Schomburg Center's online and in-person materials on the Exonerated Five.

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The Birth of a Nation - Full Movie - (1915) HD - The Masterpiece of Racist Cinema

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The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of violence, is the oldest and most infamous of American hate groups. Although Black Americans have typically been the Klan’s primary target, adherents also attack Jewish people, persons who have immigrated to the United States, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

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"The creature David Attenborough is looking for, who takes the big evolutionary leap from sea to land."

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"The creature David Attenborough is looking for, who takes the big evolutionary leap from sea to land."

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Signs of the Evolutionary Step From Land to Sea (Published 2014)

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Ichthyosaurs, which loosely resembled dolphins, have long been an evolutionary mystery. Now, researchers say they have recovered an early Ichthyosaur fossil that may fill in the blanks.

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Tiktaalik and the Fossil Record — HHMI BioInteractive Video