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Leonard Pitts Jr.: Ignorance is Death

We live in ignorant times. By now, surely this is obvious beyond argument to anyone who's been paying attention. From the Capitol insurrectionist who thought he was storming the White House to Sen. Tim Scott's claim that "woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy" to whatever thing Tucker Carlson last said, ignorance is ascendant.

Blacks Won't Fall for Trump's Big Con

If a lie is repeated often enough, the truth may never catch up. Donald Trump understands this better than anyone, as he showers Americans with lies -- often the same ones repeated over and over -- knowing that more voters will hear him than the fact-checkers. One of his favorite howlers is his oft-repeated claim that "I've done more for African Americans than anybody, except for the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln." No one should fall for the con.

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A Tale of Two Cities: Selma and Shelby County

In "A Tale of Two Cities," Charles Dickens contrasted the plight of the poor in France with the lavish wealth of the aristocracy, the city of need with the city of greed. That harsh exploitation eventually erupted in the French Revolution, and the brutal revenge of the revolutionaries on their former oppressors.

New Generation of Protest Holds Great Promise for America

The inspiring rise of a new generation protesting against racial injustice is driving a new era of change in America, like the generation that emerged 60 years ago to build the civil rights movement of that time. July 16, 1960 is marked in my memory: that is the day I joined seven other friends to walk into the whites-only Greenville Library, and be arrested for violating the segregation laws.

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Trump's Big Lie Is a Threat to American Democracy

On Thursday evening, the House Select Committee investigating the sacking of the Capitol on January 6 will hold the first of its primetime, public hearings. The committee has done an exhaustive investigation, interviewing a thousand witnesses, looking at tens of thousands of documents. The hearings will reveal new information about what was in fact a multi-layered effort to overturn the results of a presidential election, driven by the White House and involving Republican legislators, operatives, state officials, and donors. The hearings will ask every American to understand how vulnerable our democracy is, and how close we came to losing it.

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Death by Tax Cuts: The Republican Health Care Plan

Donald Trump hosted a celebration in the White House Rose Garden for House Republicans after they passed their party's health care plan by the thinnest of margins. They were celebrating what Trump called a "win," without any thought about consequences.

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The Right to Vote Again Under Siege

The fundamental right in a democracy -- the right to vote -- is once more under siege. In state after state, across the country, Republican legislators have introduced literally hundreds of bills designed to suppress voting.

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People of Color MUST Get Out and Vote!

Republicans are already gloating about the elections coming this fall. With Joe Biden lagging in the polls, Trump's Big Lie rousing the Republican base, inflation distracting from the remarkable jobs recovery, Democrats look to be in trouble. Much can change in the months left before the election -- and one central question is whether increased registration and voting among African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans will begin to turn more districts and more states blue, particularly those in the South.

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The Mark of History Scars Tulsa

Memorial Day marks one year since the murder of George Floyd by the hands of the Minneapolis police. This week also marks the 100-year anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre - a brutal government-aided leveling of a prosperous African American community for which there still has been no accounting and no justice. Few even know about the massacre. It hasn't even been taught in the Tulsa public schools until this year. Although 100 years old, the massacre poses questions of justice and of decency that America cannot avoid.

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Donald Trump's Symbols and The Substance of Division

Symbols are important. Donald Trump, whose fortune is built upon a brand, and whose presidential campaign brandished symbols far more than reform ideas, knows that well.

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Trump Trains His Sights On Affirmative Action

Campaigning for the presidency, Donald Trump argued that blacks and other people of color should vote for him. Given their current conditions, he argued, "What the hell do you have to lose?" Since winning election, however, Trump seems intent on proving over and over again just how much African-Americans and other minorities have to lose.

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Racial Violence: Memory and Truth

Donald Trump's use of the term "lynching" to describe the ongoing impeachment inquiry in the House naturally sparked bipartisan outrage.

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Shutdown Allowed Trump to Play Poisonous Political Game

Donald Trump had the government shutdown that he wanted. No one should be confused about this.

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Reflection and Action

How should Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday be celebrated? It should be celebrated in many different ways.

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Why Should Iowa Always Be First?

Today, after more than a year of campaigning, debates, polls, fund-raising and ads, voters cast their first votes in the Iowa caucuses. Iowa is always first because it demands that it be first, but no matter who wins, this profoundly distorts the race.

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The Case for 'DC' Statehood Is Clear

Last week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 51, a bill that would make Washington, D. C., the 51st state of the union. It would finally end the denial of voting representation to its more than 700,000 residents, the majority of whom are black or brown.

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Injustice of Emmett Till's murder resonates to this day

"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine," goes the saying. For the brutal killing of Emmett Till in 1955, just how fine those wheels will grind remains to be seen even to this day.

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Guns and the democrat's replacement theory

It happened again. This time it was a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, of 19 second-, third- and fourth -grade students, along with two teachers, killed by a teenager who had just turned 18 and bought himself a gift of two high-powered military weapons designed to kill people in war and 375 rounds of ammunition for $3,500, which he used to shoot down his mostly young victims like rabid dogs.

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Remembering Brown v. Board of Education

Last Sunday marked the 66th anniversary of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. the Board of Education. The Brown decision addressed consolidated issues from four different cases involving racial segregation. The issues emanated from Kansas, South Carolina, Delaware, and Virginia. The unanimous opinion of the court was written by Earl Warren, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower's newly appointed chief justice. The Court declared that forced segregation of public-school children violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional.

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There's More Than Enough Evidence of Trump's Bias

Last week, amid the continuing clamor of Trump's chaos presidency, the question of whether Trump had used the n-word became a media sensation.