Editor’s note: William Winter, governor of Mississippi from 1980-84, died on Dec. 18. On William Winter’s last day as governor of Mississippi, I was a 6-year-old first-grader at Eastlawn Elementary School in Pascagoula. I had been to the principal’s office earlier that school year for kicking a kid much bigger than me who I believed…

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Jeannie Graetz, who with her late husband, the Rev. Robert S. Graetz Jr., supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott and endured bombs and threats as a white couple aiding the historic boycott, died this morning. Her death comes approximately three months after her husband died at 92 from complications of Parkinson’s disease. Southern…

Jo Ann Robinson boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1949, paid her fare and saw just two other passengers – a white woman seated in the third row and a Black man sitting near the back. Well aware of the segregation laws that prohibited Black patrons from sitting in the whites-only section in…

Americans representing the diverse fabric of our nation turned out in record numbers over the last two months for an historic presidential election – standing with and for each other to overcome unprecedented challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic and widespread voter suppression efforts. Our democracy came under strain and attack, but we emerged with a…

She has been called the first lady of civil rights. Rosa Parks, who died 15 years ago on Oct. 24, 2005, is a global icon of the struggle against racial injustice, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. After…

This Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee, under Republican leadership, is scheduled to begin hearings to fill the vacant seat of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The rush to fill the vacancy with less than a month before the general election is nothing less than a power grab that ignores the unprecedented circumstances our nation faces. By…

On Monday, Oct. 12, many people will observe a holiday that celebrates what schoolchildren for generations in our country have been taught was Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas in 1492. But we know today that this supposed “New World” was already home to millions of diverse, Indigenous people with their own cultures, languages and…

A condensed version of this opinion piece was published on BET.com on October 5, 2020. These are hard times for Black America. Black communities are disproportionately devastated by COVID-19 – one in 500 of us is projected to die from the virus by January 1 – along with police violence and criminalization, wage inequities, healthcare…

Timothy Brannon lay down on the concrete pavement in front of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama, and raised his fist. He was not leading a Black Lives Matter rally or a voting rights demonstration. But he was making a bold statement of hope and perseverance in the ongoing fight for justice…