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Criminal Justice Reform

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We're working to reform the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems so they operate fairly and equitably; to ensure the dignity and humanity of those interacting with these systems; and to reduce the population of jailed, detained, and incarcerated juveniles and adults in the United States.

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The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other nation in the world. The increase in the jail and prison population from less than 200,000 in 1972 to 2.2 million today has led to unprecedented prison overcrowding and put tremendous strain on state budgets. The United States has 5 percent of the world's population but nearly 25 percent of its prisoners.

In the 1990s, as lawmakers campaigned to "get tough on crime," America built a new prison every two weeks and still could not meet the demand for prison beds. Violent crime has fallen by more than 51 percent since 1991, and property crime has decreased by more than 43 percent. Although the crime rate has dropped steadily to about half of what it was in 1991, spending on jails and prisons reached nearly $81 billion in FY 2010. Today, nearly seven million people in this country are incarcerated, on probation, or on parole.

The politics of fear and anger fueled "tough on crime" policies-including mandatory minimum sentences, extraordinarily harsh and racially disparate penalties for even minor drug offenses, and the explosion in life sentences without parole-that led to the unprecedented and unparalleled incarceration rate in America today. Private prisons operated by for-profit corporations multiplied from five in 1998 to a hundred in 2008, and profits have increased more than 500 percent in the last 20 years, creating perverse incentives and hindering efforts to reform sentencing laws, emphasize rehabilitation goals, and reduce the prison population.

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The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other nation in the world. The increase in the jail and prison population from less than 200,000 in 1972 to 2.2 million today has led to unprecedented prison overcrowding and put tremendous strain on state budgets.

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10 Points

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On October 15, 1966, Newton & Bobby Seale drafted the Ten-Point Program [or Ten-Point Party Platform]. It established the direction and goals of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

NUMBER ONE
WE WANT FREEDOM; we want the power to determine the destiny of our black community.

NUMBER TWO
WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE. That's what the brothers and sisters out on the block tell me. I say whats happening? They say, I need a job, that's what's happening. I say right on, so do I, maybe we can work together.

NUMBER THREE
WE WANT AN END TO THE ROBBERY BY THE WHITE MAN OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY. Wait a minute, that doesn't sound right. Not everybody ripping off the black community is white, A lot of them are black. We're not anti-white, we're anti-wrong. Let's do a little revision on number three and just say that WE WANT AN END TO THE ROBBERY BY THE CAPITALISTS OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY. Capitalists, can you put that in upper case? I'm not sure how you spell it; I think it stats with an A C.

NUMBER FOUR
WE WANT HOUSING; WE WANT SHELTER, WHICH IS FIT FOR HUMAN BEINGS. A lot of people running around town don't have a roof over their heads. The rain comes down they get all wet up. It's a simple human need, to have a roof over your head when the hard rain fall and the hard rain is definitely gonna fall just like the Bob Dylan song say.

NUMBER FIVE
Any suggestions? You want education? What kind of education do you want? An education which what? Reveals the true nature of this decadent American society? That's what I thought you said. WE WANT AN EDUCATION WHICH TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT DAY AMERICAN SOCIETY. Put a semi-colon in between the first part and the second part cause a lot of young people will be reading the ten points; we don't want to be accused of bad punctuation.

NUMBER SIX
I think we should deal with Vietnam cause thats going on and just say straight up - WE WANT ALL BLACK MEN TO BE EXEMPT FROM MILITARY SERVICE. How can you have a black man going over there to fight a yellow man for the white man who stole his land from the red man? That makes a nice rhyme but no political sense whatsoever.

NUMBER SEVEN
We dealt with Vietnam, I think we should deal with Oakland and just say - the murder of black people. STOP THE MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE. I got vamped on by some pigs on my way over here this evening. That's right, I call them pigs cause a pig is a rather lowlifeted animal. Pig had the audacity to ask me what I'm doing with my gun, I said pig what you doing with yours? You know, tonight's pig is tomorrow mornings bacon. That's why I could never be a black Muslim - I love my bacon to much.

NUMBER EIGHT
WE WANT ALL BLACK MEN IMMEDIATELY RELEASED FROM FEDERAL, STATE, COUNTY, CITY JAILS AND PENITENTIARIES. That's right, because their constituitional right have been violated. They have no been tried by a jury of their peers, so let them go free.

Let's elaborate on this for NUMBER NINE
AND JUST SAY THAT WHEN BLACK PEOPLE ARE BROUGHT TO TRIAL IN THIS COUNTRY WE WANT THEM TRIED IN A COURT OF LAW NOT OUT ON THE STREET BY SOME PIG BUT IN A COURT OF LAW BY A JURY OF THEIR PEERS AS SPECIFIED BY THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. It's a simple constitutional right to be tried by your peers.

NUMBER TEN
Let's do a summation; this will be the last one, ten out of ten. Now what do we want? WE WANT LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING. I know you want, a black leather jacket; don't worry we gonna get you one. LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE? Always looking for justice. Went to death row looking for justice, and that's just what I found, just us. LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE, AND WE WANT SOME PEACE. Yeah, I got your peace; rest in peace.

Bobby Seale delivering the 10 Point Party Platform in his speech at the Huey Newton Birthday Rally in Oakland, CA, February 17, 1968.

Copyright 2002 Luna Ray Films, LLC. All Rights Reserved

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A Huey P. Newton Story - Actions - BPP Platform | PBS

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A companion website to the feature film on the founder of the Black Panther party

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History.com

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Contents

1. Black Panthers Origins and History

2. Political Activities And Social Programs

3. Black Panthers Violence And Controversies

4. The FBI And COINTELPRO

5. New Black Panther Party

The Black Panthers, also known as the Black Panther Party, was a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against the African American community.

Dressed in black berets and black leather jackets, the Black Panthers organized armed citizen patrols of Oakland and other U.S. cities. At its peak in 1968, the Black Panther Party had roughly 2,000 members. The organization later declined as a result of internal tensions, deadly shootouts and FBI counterintelligence activities aimed at weakening the organization.

Black Panthers Origins and History

Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale met in 1961 while students at Merritt College in Oakland, California.

They both protested the college's "Pioneer Day" celebration, which honored the pioneers who came to California in the 1800s, but omitted the role of African Americans in settling the American West. Seale and Newton formed the Negro History Fact Group, which called on the school to offer classes in Black history.

They founded the Black Panthers in the wake of the assassination of Black nationalist Malcolm X and after police in San Francisco shot and killed an unarmed Black teen named Matthew Johnson.

Originally dubbed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the organization was founded in October 1966. The Black Panthers' early activities primarily involved monitoring police activities in Black communities in Oakland and other cities.

As they instituted a number of social programs and engaged in political activities, their popularity grew. The Black Panthers drew widespread support from urban centers with large minority communities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. By 1968, the Black Panthers had roughly 2,000 members across the country.
READ MORE: How the Black Power Movement Influenced the Civil Rights Movement
Political Activities And Social Programs

Newton and Seale drew on Marxist ideology for the party platform. They outlined the organization's philosophical views and political objectives in a Ten-Point Program.

The Ten-Point Program called for an immediate end to police brutality; employment for African Americans; and land, housing and justice for all.

The Black Panthers were part of the larger Black Power movement, which emphasized Black pride, community control and unification for civil rights.

While the Black Panthers were often portrayed as a gang, their leadership saw the organization as a political party whose goal was getting more African Americans elected to political office. They were unsuccessful on this front. By the early 1970s, FBI counterintelligence efforts, criminal activities and an internal rift between group members weakened the party as a political force.

The Black Panthers did, however, start a number of popular community social programs, including free breakfast programs for school children and free health clinics in 13 African American communities across the United States.

Black Panthers Violence And Controversies

The Black Panthers were involved in numerous violent encounters with police. In 1967, founder Huey Newton allegedly killed Oakland police officer John Frey. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1968 and was sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. An appellate court decision later reversed the conviction.

Eldridge Cleaver, editor of the Black Panther's newspaper, and 17-year old Black Panther member and treasurer Bobby Hutton, were involved in a shootout with police in 1968 that left Hutton dead and two police officers wounded.

Conflicts within the party often turned violent too. In 1969, Black Panther Party member Alex Rackley was tortured and murdered by other Black Panthers who thought he was a police informant.

Black Panther bookkeeper Betty Van Patter was found beaten and murdered in 1974. No one was charged with the death, though many believed that party leadership was responsible.

The FBI And COINTELPRO

The Black Panthers' socialist message and black nationalist focus made them the target of a secret FBI counterintelligence program called COINTELPRO.

In 1969, the FBI declared the Black Panthers a communist organization and an enemy of the United States government. The first FBI's first director, J. Edgar Hoover, in 1968 called the Black Panthers, "One of the greatest threats to the nation's internal security."

The FBI worked to weaken the Panthers by exploited existing rivalries between black nationalist groups. They also worked to undermine and dismantle the Free Breakfast for Children Program and other community social programs instituted by the Black Panthers.
READ MORE: How the Black Panthers' Breakfast Program Both Inspired and Threatened the Government
In 1969, Chicago police gunned down and killed Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, who were asleep in their apartment.

About a hundred bullets were fired in what police described as a fierce gun battle with members of the Black Panther Party. However, ballistics experts later determined that only one of those bullets came from the Panthers' side.

Although the FBI was not responsible for leading the raid, a federal grand jury later indicated that the bureau played a significant role in the events leading up to the raid.

The Black Panther Party officially dissolved in 1982.

New Black Panther Party

The New Black Panther Party is a black nationalist organization founded in Dallas, Texas, in 1989. Members of the original Black Panther Party say there's no relation between the New Black Panther Party and the original Black Panthers.

The United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center have called the New Black Panther Party a hate group.

Sources

5 things to know about the Black Panthers. USA Today.
Black Panther Party. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Black Panthers: Revolutionaries, free breakfast pioneers.

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The Black Panthers made up a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against African Americans. Dressed in black berets and black leather jackets, the Black Panthers organized armed citizen patrols of Oakland and other U.S. cities.

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Marxist Theory

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A history of the Black Panther Party, with original documents, described from a marxist perspective

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"White Tears"

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast

subscribe to Code Switch podcast

Talking about race is hard. It often involves hurt feelings and misunderstandings. And the words and phrases we use can either push those conversations forward or bring them to a standstill. One such term: white tears.

The phrase has been used to gently tease white people who get upset at things they think threaten their white privilege. It's been used to poke fun at white people who think that talking about race makes you a racist. Or that Barack Obama's presidency marked the end of America. Or that it's a crime against humanity when a formerly white character is portrayed, or rumored to be portrayed, by a person of color. (Think Spider-Man. Annie. James Bond. Hermione. The Human Torch. Dorothy.)

Rather than spend time earnestly engaging with people who refuse to believe a fictional character could be someone who isn't white, it's easier (and way more fun) to just roll your eyes, dub their reaction "white tears" and move on.

"Sometimes it feels good just to make fun of racism and of racists," says Damon Young. He's the editor-in-chief of the blog Very Smart Brothas, a columnist at GQ and the author of the upcoming book, What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker.

Young says that when white people use their emotions as a weapon against people of color, it's a form of white supremacy. One way to combat white supremacy is with humor. "Obviously there's a place for anger and outrage and protest and resistance and all those things," he explains. "But I think sometimes humor is a necessary tool, too."

Young knows that when he makes jokes about white people who lose it over Serena Williams winning a tennis match, or who think their college acceptance was stolen by undeserving people of color, the response will be - you guessed it -white tears.

Now he's got a strategy: "I just take a big bucket outside and I use them to make Kool-Aid. ... You've never had a better glass of red Kool-Aid than one that's made with white tears."

The first time I heard the phrase, I was a student at Pomona College. My professor was Valorie Thomas, who teaches English and Africana Studies. Thomas says she's been dealing with the topic in her classes for years.

Part of her job, she explains, is to teach students from different backgrounds to have productive conversations about race. And, like Young, she believes one of the most effective tools for doing that is humor:

"Humor is not a throwaway skill. Humor actually helps us to balance our emotions and to endure. There's certainly a kind of mean humor that's dismissive, and that's dehumanizing even."

Exploring questions of tone, or "to learn about the point behind somebody saying something" like white tears, she adds, can enrich the conversation.

White tears can be a pointed but lighthearted way of asking someone to set aside their defensiveness for a moment and take part in the conversation at hand. "It's basically satire," Thomas says. "So if you understand satire, and the use of satire, you get that when people say, 'Oh, could you stop with the white tears?' or 'Do we have to take time out in order to indulge the white tears?', what's really being said is, 'Could you stop the violence right now that is happening in the conversation?' "

In her classes, Thomas sees a familiar scenario: She will introduce a topic related to racism - maybe income inequality, or the disproportionate way that black children are punished in schools. Then students learning about these issues for the first time take it personally. They respond defensively, with a range of emotions: powerlessness, confusion, guilt.

She says it's normal for students to feel those things. The problem comes when those emotions prevent the lesson from moving forward. When a student starts crying, for example, the conversation comes to a screeching halt.

"I'm not denying that people have pain," she says. "What I'm saying is that you can sit with discomfort. And the discomfort of the conversation is not equivalent to the kinds of violence that are going on in the world, [which] we're responsible for as community members and allies and citizens."

Thomas knows that some people will be offended by the phrase white tears - even though it's meant as satire. To that, she says, "I do want the people who are offended ... to pause for a moment and breathe with it, and see if it's really damaging them and hurting them."

Then, she hopes, those people may begin to hear the term as a critique: "I mean, it can be a stinging critique, but it's an invitation to see other people's humanity."

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast subscribe to Code Switch podcast Talking about race is hard. It often involves hurt feelings and misunderstandings. And the words and phrases we use can either push those conversations forward or bring them to a standstill. One such term: white tears.

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Welcome to Britannica School, a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

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An ongoing project to chronicle the extraordinary efforts of local people who organized to combat Mississippi's Jim Crow segregation, as well as the complex network of white resistance trying to maintain it.

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Rev. George Washington Lee, one of the first African Americans registered to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi since Reconstruction, used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote. Lee was head of the Belzoni, Mississippi NAACP.

History News Network reports in " The Grim and Overlooked Anniversary of the Murder of Civil Rights Activist the Rev. George W. Lee ":

In April, Lee was one of the speakers at the Council's annual meeting, which drew a crowd of more than seven thousand to the all-black town of Mound Bayou. Simeon Booker of Jet, observed how Lee's "down-home dialogue and his sense of political timing" had "electrified" the crowd. "Pray not for your mom and pop," Lee suggested. "They've gone to heaven. Pray you can make it through this hell."

Less than a month after this speech, on May 7, 1955, a convertible pulled alongside Lee's car just before midnight. An unidentified assailant fired three shot-gun blasts shattering his jaw and driving him off the road. Lee died before he could make it to the hospital. The attack came days after he had received a threatening note demanding that he drop his name from the voting rolls. An autopsy extracted lead pellets from his face that were consistent with buckshot. The sheriff, who wanted to call it a traffic accident and close the case, claimed that they were dental fillings torn loose by the impact of the crash.

Here is background from the Mississippi Civil Rights Project website:

A savvy businessman, Lee exemplified an earlier generation of activists who solidified successful businesses and then used this as a launching pad for community activism. As the Pastor of a Baptist Church, an operator of a printing press, and an active member of the NAACP, Reverend George Lee made his mark on the community once referred to as "Bloody Belzoni."

He was also the first African-American to register to vote since Reconstruction in Humphreys County, where blacks were a majority of the population. In 1953, Lee and Gus Courts co-founded the Belzoni branch of the NAACP. As early as 1954, Rev. Lee was heavily involved in the local voter registration drives. Working along side Courts, who was elected NAACP president, they successfully registered 92 new African-American voters. Both Courts and Lee also ran small grocery stores.

After years of attempts, both Courts and Lee were allowed to pay poll taxes and sign the register, once the county sheriff feared federal prosecution.

George Lee also served as the vice president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, a leading black organization advocating a message of self-help, business, and civil rights. Headed by T. R. M. Howard, one of the wealthiest blacks in the state, the Council staged a successful boycott of gas stations that refused to install restrooms for blacks. Medgar Evers worked as an organizer.

In response to their voter registration efforts, Lee and Courts soon became prime targets of the Belzoni Citizens' Council. Refusing to bow down to intimidation, Lee once refused an offer of protection extended by white officials on the condition that he cease his voter registration efforts. Similarly, Courts was ordered by his banker to turn over all NAACP books or leave town. Courts stood his ground, and went on to testify before a Congressional Committee about voter intimidation by the Citizen's Council and his experiences.

One of the people sent to investigate his murder was Medgar Evers, who was murdered on June 12, 1963.

Lee's widow, Rosebud Lee, decided to hold an open-coffin ceremony for her late husband. This decision planted the seeds for a similar decision by Mamie Till Mobley, Emmett Till's mother.

See the 43 minute documentary, the Rev. George Lee Case on Vimeo by Keith Beauchamp and read the Mississippi Freedom Trail Waymarker.

Jet Magazine Article, May 26, 1955: "Is Mississippi Hushing Up A Lynching? Rev. George Lee Murdered in Belzoni"

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May 7, 1955: Murder of Rev. George W. Lee " Zinn Education Project

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Rev. George Washington Lee, one of the first African Americans registered to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi since Reconstruction, used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote. Lee was head of the Belzoni, Mississippi NAACP. History News Network reports in " The Grim and Overlooked Anniversary of the Murder of Civil Rights Activist the Rev.

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Song with lyrics.

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Confederate Song - I Wish I Was In Dixie Land (with lyrics)

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After more than a half-century of living a lie, Carolyn Bryant Donham decided to tell the truth. Emmett Till never grabbed her by the waist and said, "You needn't be afraid of me, baby I've (done something) with white women before."

She can't remember now if the 14-year-old Chicago youngster even whistled at her on his way out the door.

Her confession to historian and author Timothy Tyson in 2007 may have helped clear Donham's conscience and bring her to this place of "tender sorrow" she says she now feels for Till's deceased mother.

But for African-Americans and many others who are just learning of this revelation in Tyson's new book, "The Blood of Emmett Till," it does nothing.

We already knew her story was a lie. So did the judge who presided over the murder trial of her husband and another man in 1955. So did most of the people who lived in the tiny town of Money in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. But the all-white jury acquitted them anyway.

So we will not spend a moment lamenting what should happen to this now 82-year-old woman who, years after the statute of limitations has expired, may have perjured herself by lying to the judge.

For us, Carolyn Bryant - her name at the time - will remain merely a footnote in history, yet a modern testament to the racist and iniquitous legal system that has long refused to give African-American men fair judgment.

We will not elevate the status of her lie by calling it a catalyst for the civil rights movement. We will not ask her to step forward tomorrow and warn America about the consequences of hatred. After this, we will not bother to think of her again.

Instead, we will use the courage and wisdom of Mamie Till-Mobley to drive us forward.

If there is a single incident that ignited the spirit of a fledgling civil rights movement, it was Emmett Till's mutilated body lying in an open casket in a South Side mortuary.

Few of us could have endured the pain of having a son's battered, disfigured face on display for thousands of people to line up and see the way Till-Mobley did. The world would also see what Jim Crow had done to her only child when Jet magazine and the Chicago Defender published pictures of the open casket.

Till-Mobley realized something back then that was not as obvious as it is today. In order to achieve things worthwhile, there must be sacrifice. So when it came to her son's legacy, she gave, and gave and gave until her own death in 2003.

Since he was slain in 1955, Emmett Till's story has been shaped by the lie that Bryant told. While his murder has been used to highlight the atrocities of the Jim Crow South, it has also painted Till as a clueless teenager who was killed because he didn't understand the social mores of the Deep South.

This is how history has told it:

The teenager had gone down south, as many northern black kids did during that era, to spend the summer with relatives. While standing around outside a corner store with his cousins, Till started bragging that he had a white girlfriend back in Chicago.

His cousins didn't believe him, so they dared him to ask the white woman working behind the counter for a date. Till went inside to buy two cents worth of bubble gum and on the way out, he turned to the woman and said, "Bye, baby."

That's when 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant apparently began formulating her lie. She claimed that Till had grabbed her, made sexual advances, flirted with her and then wolf-whistled at her as he walked out the door.

Three days later, her gun-toting husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, went to the home of Till's great uncle, Rev. Moses Wright, rousted Till from bed and drove off with him in their truck. Days later, Till's mutilated body was found in the Tallahatchie River with a 75-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck.

After their acquittal, Bryant and Milam admitted to the killing in an interview with Look magazine. But to believe the depiction of what happened at the store, you'd have to also believe that Till was ignorant about the caste system that existed for blacks in the South. You would have to believe that he didn't have a clue that something as mundane as whistling at a white woman could get a black child killed.

And you would have to believe that someone as smart and socially conscious as Till-Mobley would have left that sort of thing to chance. She always insisted that she had not.

Just as black mothers and fathers today teach their sons how to act when stopped by the police, parents in the 1950s told their sons how to behave around whites who had the freedom to issue their own justice upon blacks. We have learned enough about Till-Mobley over the years to know that she would have had that talk with her son.

Bryant's admission proves that Emmett Till was not a naive kid who did a stupid thing. He was a black kid who paid the price for a scared white woman's lie.

Carolyn Bryant Donham doesn't deserve any accolades for finally telling the truth. She was a coward then and she's a coward now.

If you want to know what courage is, look at Till-Mobley. She was brave enough to use her sorrow to reignite a movement.

In the PBS documentary, "The Murder of Emmett Till," filmed prior to her death, Till-Mobley told how she came to the decision.

"I decided then that I would start at his feet and work my way up, maybe gathering strength as I went. I paused at his midsection, because I knew he would not want me looking at him. But I saw enough that I knew he was intact. I kept on up until I got to his chin and then I - I was forced to deal with his face. I saw that his tongue was choked out. I noticed that the right eye was lying on midway his cheek, I noticed that his nose had been broken like somebody took a meat chopper and chopped his nose in several places. As I kept looking, I saw a hole, which I presumed, was a bullet hole and I could look through that hole and see daylight on the other side. And I wondered was it necessary to shoot him? Mr. Rayner (the funeral director) asked me, he said "Do you want me to touch the body up?" I said, "No, Mr. Rayner, let the people see what I've seen." I was just willing to bear it all. I think everybody needed to know what had happened to Emmett Till."

She fought long and hard to keep her son from becoming a forgotten victim of Jim Crow South. Till-Mobley made sure her son would be remembered as a martyr.
dglanton@chicagotribune.com Twitter: @dahleeng

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America always knew woman's Emmett Till story was a lie

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After more than a half-century of living a lie, Carolyn Bryant Donham decided to tell the truth. Emmett Till never grabbed her by the waist and said, "You needn't be afraid of me, baby I've (done something) with white women before."

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About the author Frank Walker and why he wrote Turn me Loose.

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Frank X. Walker's New Book, Turn Me Loose, Brings Voices of Civil Rights Movement Back to Life by Harriet Staff

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When almost none of Frank X. Walker's students knew who Medgar Evers was, he decided to bring the civil rights leader's struggle into the present. From National Public Radio-- A...

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Read the short Bio.com article.

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Byron De La Beckwith killed civil rights activist Medgar Evers in 1963. After two trials had hung juries in 1964, he was finally convicted of the crime in 1994.

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A new book of poetry narrates the life and death of civil rights leader Medgar Evers through a series of imagined monologues. Evers was the first NAACP field secretary in Mississippi. In that role, he organized boycotts, investigated and brought attention to the murder of Emmett Till, and helped James Meredith integrate the University of Mississippi.

Evers was gunned down in his Jackson, Miss., driveway by KKK leader Byron De La Beckwith in 1963. But it took more than 30 years for De La Beckwith to be convicted of his murder.

Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers uses the imagined voices of people in Evers' life to re-create one of America's most volatile time periods. The characters include those closest to Evers - his widow Myrlie Evers and his brother Charles Evers; and those who hated him - De La Beckwith and his first and second wives, Willie and Thelma De La Beckwith.

Author Frank X Walker tells Celeste Headlee that he wanted to "present both sides of this story in a way that people who didn't know this story really understood it on an emotional level."

Interview Highlights
On why the book is called Turn Me Loose
"Turn me loose" was actually the last phrase or set of words that Medgar uttered. He sat up on the hospital bed and said, "Turn me loose," and then collapsed, and that was it for him. I already made a decision that I would not have him speak through a poem in this collection, but I wanted him to still be present, and that was, for me, a nice frame to put his voice into and to let it drive the story and the narrative.
On imagining the voice of Byron De La Beckwith
It's hard to imagine or even try on the skin of somebody who hated everything that I am. ... It was really important to me to make sure that he didn't come across as one-dimensional. I really wanted him to be human. I wanted him to be so human that other people could, you know, find out how far away or how close they were to him.

Excerpt from Turn Me Loose
"Sorority Meeting" - imagined voice of Myrlie Evers speaking to Willie and Thelma De La Beckwith
My faith urges me to love you.

My stomach begs me to not.

All I know is that day

made us sisters, somehow. After long

nervous nights and trials on end

we are bound together

in this unholy sorority of misery.

I think about you every time I run

my hands across the echoes

in the hollows of my sheets.

They seem loudest just before I wake.

I open my eyes every morning

half expecting Medgar to be there,

then I think about you

and your eyes always snatch me back.

Your eyes won't let me forget.

We are sorority sisters now

with a gut wrenching country ballad

for a sweetheart song, tired funeral

and courtroom clothes for colors

and secrets we will take to our graves.

I was forced to sleep night after night

after night with a ghost.

You chose to sleep with a killer.

We all pledged our love,

crossed our hearts and swallowed oaths

before being initiated with a bullet.

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Civil Rights Turmoil In Verse: Retelling Medgar Evers' Story

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Turn Me Loose captures the life and death of civil rights leader Medgar Evers through poetry. The collection of poems is told in the imagined voices of the people in Evers' life, including his killer. Author Frank X Walker shares how he tried to connect readers to one of America's most volatile times.

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Equity and Inclusion

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After allegations of a toxic workplace culture that discriminates against women and people of color, the Southern Poverty Law Center is trying to emerge and chart a way forward. Turmoil in the civil rights organization last month resulted in the firing of its famous founder, and the resignations of its longtime president and legal director.

Karen Baynes-Dunning, an African-American woman, was then appointed to run the organization as its interim president. She spoke publicly about the path forward this week for the first time with NPR.

Founded in 1971, the SPLC is known for its work tracking and suing hate groups, and waging legal battles over issues like same-sex marriage, immigrant rights, and treatment of prisoners.

Baynes-Dunning is a former juvenile court judge and had been on the Center's board for a little over a year when fellow board members selected her as interim president and CEO to steer the organization through this crisis.

Her first order of business is clarifying the scope of the problem. The shakeup revealed long-simmering complaints of alleged gender and racial discrimination, and sexual harassment.

Baynes-Dunning spent her first days on the job meeting with staff to hear their concerns both at the group's headquarters in Montgomery, Ala., and at field offices around the South.

She would not talk about specific allegations, citing personnel policy, but generally acknowledges there's work ahead.

"We failed to be deliberate about focusing on these issues that we fight for every day inside the organization," she said. "Any organization out there that is not deliberate oftentimes leads to issues around equity and fairness. And so that's what we're trying to uncover."

SPLC has also hired an outside consultant to analyze its workplace culture and make recommendations for reform.

Conversations with current and former SPLC employees reveal how the organization, which is focused on social justice, has wrestled internally with a lack of inclusion, and a management structure that concentrated power.

"While there might have been increased diversity over the years there was still not equity and there is still not inclusion," said Dana Vickers Shelley. She was a director of public affairs at SPLC from Nov. 2012 to March 2014 and is now executive director of the ACLU of Maryland. "You can hire faces. You can say look we're diverse but if the decisions are still being made by the white people in leadership then you do not have inclusion."

Shelley says the SPLC's brand promise is broken.

Baynes-Dunning says her work will start inside the organization, by first acknowledging what went wrong.

"I'm acknowledging the fact that we didn't pay attention to the internal culture," she said. "You know ... as a woman of color I realize that, in my own experience, we deal with microaggressions in the greater society every single day."

"When you come and work for an organization like the Southern Poverty Law Center, especially for people of color, women, you don't expect this organization to mirror what we see out in the greater society."

The turmoil at the SPLC comes amid the broader #MeToo movement, and at a time when a new generation of workers are demanding equitable workplaces. Still, issues in the organization had surfaced long before. Back in the 1990s, the Montgomery Advertiser published a series of reports that exposed racial tensions within the organization and raised questions about aggressive fundraising tactics.

Baynes-Dunning points out that their staff has grown exponentially in recent years and that structures were not in place to monitor workplace issues and handle that expansion. Now, she wants to establish such a framework.

Ousted founder Morris Dee faced allegations of improper touching that made subordinates feel uncomfortable, and inappropriate comments. He did not respond to NPR's repeated phone calls for comment, but he has denied the sexual harassment allegations in other news outlets.

One challenge SPLC has moving forward will be how to separate itself from Dees, who has long been the face of the organization, and was its most prolific fundraiser after he won a high-profile civil verdict against the Ku Klux Klan over a lynching decades ago.

"People describe Morris Dees as if it's his entire name - Morris Dees comma the lawyer who bankrupted the Klu Klux Klan," says Vickers Shelley. "That was their brand."

Baynes-Dunning says they are up to the task. SPLC, she says, "is more than one person... we have now over 360 staff. They are the face of SPLC. It is their work that impacts communities that we serve. And so we've got to start lifting them up more."

Baynes-Dunning declined to comment on whether there will be more leadership changes at the Center and on its board as she moves ahead.

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After Allegations Of Toxic Culture, Southern Poverty Law Center Tries To Move Forward

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After allegations of a toxic workplace culture that discriminates against women and people of color, the Southern Poverty Law Center is trying to emerge and chart a way forward. Turmoil in the civil rights organization last month resulted in the firing of its famous founder, and the resignations of its longtime president and legal director.

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Ken Burns Jazz segement on Minstral Shows.

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Watch the video. It is about the concept of a Greek Chorus.

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An Introduction to Greek Theatre | National Theatre

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Watch the short video on Medgar Evers life.

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Synopsis

Civil rights activist Medgar Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. In 1954, he became the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. As such, he organized voter-registration efforts, demonstrations, and economic boycotts of companies that practiced discrimination. He also worked to investigate crimes perpetrated against blacks. On June 12, 1963, Evers was assassinated outside of his home in Jackson, Mississippi.In 2017, President Barack Obama designated his home a national historic landmark.

Early Life

Renowned civil rights activist Medgar Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. Growing up in a Mississippi farming family, Evers was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. He fought in both France and Germany during World War II, and received an honorable discharge in 1946. In 1948, he entered Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University) in Lorman, Mississippi. During his senior year, Evers married a fellow student, Myrlie Beasley. They later had three children: Darrell, Reena and James.

Upon graduation from college in 1952, Evers began working as an insurance salesman. He became involved in the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. His work with the RCNL was his first experience as a civil rights organizer. He spearheaded the group's boycott against gas stations that refused to let blacks use their restrooms. With his older brother, Charles, Evers also worked on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, organizing local affiliates.

Fighting Against Discrimination

Evers applied to the University of Mississippi Law School in February 1954. After being rejected, he volunteered to help NAACP try to integrate the university with a lawsuit. Thurgood Marshall served as his attorney for this legal challenge to racial discrimination. While he failed to gain admission to the law school, Evers managed to raise his profile with the NAACP. In May 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in the famous Brown v. Board of Education case. This decision legally ended segregation of schools, but it took many years for it to be fully implemented.

Later in 1954, Evers became the first field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi. He moved with his family to Jackson, Mississippi. As state field secretary, Evers traveled around Mississippi extensively. He recruited new members for the NAACP and organized voter-registration efforts. Evers also led demonstrations and economic boycotts of white-owned companies that practiced discrimination.

While a virtual unknown elsewhere, Evers was one of Mississippi's most prominent civil rights activists. He fought racial injustices in many forms, including how the state and local legal system handled crimes against African Americans. Evers called for a new investigation to the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who had allegedly been killed for talking to a white woman. He also protested the conviction of his fellow Mississippi civil rights activist Clyde Kennard on theft charges in 1960.

Tragic Death and Aftermath

Due to his high-profile position with the NAACP, Evers became a target for those who opposed racial equality and desegregation. He and his family were subjected to numerous threats and violent actions over the years, including a firebombing of their house in May 1963. At 12:40 a.m. on June 12, 1963, Evers was shot in the back in the driveway of his home in Jackson. He died less than a hour later at a nearby hospital.

Evers was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, and the NAACP posthumously awarded him their 1963 Spingarn Medal. The national outrage over Evers's murder increased support for legislation that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Immediately after Evers's death, the NAACP appointed his brother, Charles, to his position. Charles Evers went on to become a major political figure in the state; in 1969, he was elected the mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, becoming the first African-American mayor of a racially mixed Southern town since the Reconstruction.

A police and FBI investigation of the murder quickly unearthed a prime suspect: Byron De La Beckwith, a white segregationist and founding member of Mississippi's White Citizens Council. Despite mounting evidence against him-a rifle found near the crime scene was registered to Beckwith and had his fingerprints on the scope, and several witnesses placed him in the area-Beckwith denied shooting Evers. He maintained that the gun had been stolen, and produced several witnesses to testify that he was elsewhere on the night of the murder.

The bitter conflict over segregation surrounded the two trials that followed. Beckwith received the support of some of Mississippi's most prominent citizens, including then-Governor Ross Barnett, who appeared at Beckwith's first trial to shake hands with the defendant in full view of the jury. In 1964, Beckwith was set free after two all-white juries deadlocked.

After Beckwith's second trial, Myrlie Evers moved with her children to California, where she earned a degree from Pomona College and was later named to the Los Angeles Commission of Public Works. Convinced that her husband's killer had not been brought to justice, she continued to search for new evidence in the case.

In 1989, the question of Beckwith's guilt was again raised when a Jackson newspaper published accounts of the files of the now-defunct Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, an organization that existed during the 1950s to help raise popular support for the maintenance of segregation. The accounts showed that the commission had helped lawyers for Beckwith screen potential jurors during the first two trials. A review by the Hinds County District Attorney's office found no evidence of such jury tampering, but it did locate a number of new witnesses, including several individuals who would eventually testify that Beckwith had bragged to them about the murder.

In December 1990, Beckwith was again indicted for the murder of Medgar Evers. After a number of appeals, the Mississippi Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of a third trial in April 1993. Ten months later, testimony began before a racially mixed jury of eight blacks and four whites. In February 1994, nearly 31 years after Evers's death, Beckwith was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died in January 2001 at the age of 80.

In 1995, Myrlie Evers-Williams (she remarried) was elected chairwoman of the board of directors of the NAACP. She is currently a member of the board's executive committee.

Since his untimely passing, Medgar Evers's contributions to the civil rights movement have been honored in many ways. His wife created what is now known as the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute in Jackson, Mississippi, to continue the couple's commitment to social change. The City University of New York has named one of its campuses after the slain activist. In 2009, the U.S. Navy also bestowed his name on one of their vessels.

In 2017, President Barack Obama designated his home a national historic landmark. "The National Historic Landmark designation is an important step toward recognizing and preserving significant civil rights sites in Mississippi and around the country," Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran said in a statement. "The sacrifices made by Medgar and Myrlie Evers deserve this distinction."

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Civil rights activist Medgar Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. In 1954, he became the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. As such, he organized voter-registration efforts, demonstrations, and economic boycotts of companies that practiced discrimination. He also worked to investigate crimes perpetrated against blacks.

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Before the Voting Rights Act

Reconstruction and the Civil War Amendments

Before the Civil War the United States Constitution did not provide specific protections for voting. Qualifications for voting were matters which neither the Constitution nor federal laws governed. At that time, although a few northern states permitted a small number of free black men to register and vote, slavery and restrictive state laws and practices led the franchise to be exercised almost exclusively by white males.

Shortly after the end of the Civil War Congress enacted the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, which allowed former Confederate States to be readmitted to the Union if they adopted new state constitutions that permitted universal male suffrage. The 14th Amendment, which conferred citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, was ratified in 1868.

In 1870 the 15th Amendment was ratified, which provided specifically that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude. This superseded state laws that had directly prohibited black voting. Congress then enacted the Enforcement Act of 1870, which contained criminal penalties for interference with the right to vote, and the Force Act of 1871, which provided for federal election oversight.

As a result, in the former Confederate States, where new black citizens in some cases comprised outright or near majorities of the eligible voting population, hundreds of thousands -- perhaps one million -- recently-freed slaves registered to vote. Black candidates began for the first time to be elected to state, local and federal offices and to play a meaningful role in their governments.

Disfranchisement

The extension of the franchise to black citizens was strongly resisted. Among others, the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, and other terrorist organizations attempted to prevent the 15th Amendment from being enforced by violence and intimidation. Two decisions in 1876 by the Supreme Court narrowed the scope of enforcement under the Enforcement Act and the Force Act, and, together with the end of Reconstruction marked by the removal of federal troops after the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877, resulted in a climate in which violence could be used to depress black voter turnout and fraud could be used to undo the effect of lawfully cast votes.

Once whites regained control of the state legislatures using these tactics, a process known as "Redemption," they used gerrymandering of election districts to further reduce black voting strength and minimize the number of black elected officials. In the 1890s, these states began to amend their constitutions and to enact a series of laws intended to re-establish and entrench white political supremacy.

Such disfranchising laws included poll taxes, literacy tests, vouchers of "good character," and disqualification for "crimes of moral turpitude." These laws were "color-blind" on their face, but were designed to exclude black citizens disproportionately by allowing white election officials to apply the procedures selectively. Other laws and practices, such as the "white primary,", attempted to evade the 15th Amendment by allowing "private" political parties to conduct elections and establish qualifications for their members.

As a result of these efforts, in the former Confederate states nearly all black citizens were disenfranchised and removed from by 1910. The process of restoring the rights taken stolen by these tactics would take many decades.

Attacks on Disfranchisement Before the Voting Rights Act

In Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915), the Supreme Court held that voter registration requirements containing "grandfather clauses,", which made voter registration in part dependent upon whether the applicant was descended from men enfranchised before enactment of the 15th Amendment violated that amendment. The Supreme Court found the Oklahoma law was adopted in order to give whites, who might otherwise have been disfranchised by the state's literacy test, a way of qualifying to vote that was not available to blacks. In 1944, the Supreme Court held that the Texas "white primary" violated the 15th Amendment. Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944). The Southern states experimented with numerous additional restrictions to limit black participation in politics, many of which were struck down by federal courts over the next decade.

Congress passed legislation in 1957, 1960, and 1964 that contained voting-related provisions. The 1957 Act created the Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice and the Commission on Civil Rights; the Attorney General was given authority to intervene in and institute lawsuits seeking injunctive relief against violations of the 15th Amendment. The 1960 Act permitted federal courts to appoint voting referees to conduct voter registration following a judicial finding of voting discrimination. The 1964 Act also contained several relatively minor voting-related provisions. Although court decisions and these laws made it more difficult, at least in theory, for states to keep all of their black citizens disenfranchised, the strategy of litigation on a case-by-case basis proved to be of very limited success in the jurisdictions were sued and it did not prompt voluntary compliance among jurisdictions that had not been sued. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other formal and informal practices combined to keep black registration rates minimal in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and well below white registration rates in the others.

Faced with the prospect that black voter registration could not be suppressed forever, however, some states began to change political boundaries and election structures so as to minimize the impact of black re-enfranchisement. In 1960, the Supreme Court struck down one such effort, in which the state legislature had gerrymandered the city boundaries of Tuskegee, Alabama, so as to remove all but a handful of the city's black registered voters. The Supreme Court ruled that by doing so Alabama had violated the 15th Amendment. Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960).

The "Reapportionment Revolution"

In the early 1960s, the Supreme Court also overcame its reluctance to apply the Constitution to unfair redistricting practices. Prior to 1962, the United States Supreme Court had declined to decide constitutional challenges to legislative apportionment schemes, on the grounds that such "political questions" were not within the federal courts' jurisdiction. In Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), however, the Supreme Court recognized that grossly malapportioned state legislative districts could seriously undervalue -- or dilute -- the voting strength of the residents of overpopulated districts while overvaluing the voting strength of residents of underpopulated districts. The Supreme Court found that such malapportionment could be challenged in federal court under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

In later cases including G ray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963), Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), and Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964), the Supreme Court established the one-person, one-vote principle. Because in many states malapportioned legislative districts had resulted in sparsely-populated rural counties having a much greater share of their state's political power than their state's population, correcting this imbalance led to dramatic realignments of political power in several states. In Fortson v. Dorsey, 379 U.S. 433 (1965), the Supreme Court suggested, but did not hold, that certain types of apportionment might unconstitutionally dilute the voting strength of racial minorities.

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Introduction To Federal Voting Rights Laws

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Reconstruction and the Civil War Amendments Before the Civil War the United States Constitution did not provide specific protections for voting. Qualifications for voting were matters which neither the Constitution nor federal laws governed.