Henry Johnson was born around 1892 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and later settled in Albany, New York, where he worked as a soda mixer, laborer, and railway station porter. In 1917, as the United States entered World War I, Johnson enlisted in the all-Black 15th New York National Guard Regiment. It would soon be redesignated the 369th United States Infantry Regiment — the unit history would remember as the Harlem Hellfighters.

The Hellfighters trained for combat like any American soldiers, but the U.S. Army had no intention of letting them fight alongside white troops. Rather than integrate them into American divisions, the Army handed the 369th over to the French Army, which was desperate for manpower and far less concerned with the color line. The French issued the regiment its own rifles, helmets, and equipment, and the men of the 369th spent more consecutive days in front-line combat than any other American regiment in the war—191 days. They never lost a foot of ground, and not a single man was taken prisoner. The regiment’s band, led by Lieutenant James Reese Europe, is widely credited with introducing jazz to European audiences during the war, seeding a musical influence that would echo across the continent for decades.

Henry Johnson’s defining moment came on the night of May 15, 1918, in France’s Argonne Forest. Standing sentry duty with fellow private Needham Roberts, Johnson came under attack from a German raiding party of more than a dozen soldiers. Roberts was badly wounded early in the fight. Rather than retreat, Johnson held his ground, firing his rifle until he ran out of ammunition, then throwing grenades, and finally fighting hand-to-hand with a bolo knife when the Germans closed in — killing several attackers and wounding others, preventing Roberts from being captured. Johnson suffered 21 wounds but survived, and the raiding party retreated.

The French government awarded Johnson its Croix de Guerre with bronze palm, making him one of the first Americans of any race to receive the honor in the war. German soldiers reportedly began calling him “Black Death.” Journalist Irvin S. Cobb, who had arrived in France skeptical of Black soldiers’ abilities, wrote an account of Johnson’s heroism that circulated widely in the American press and helped make him briefly famous.

That fame did not translate into recognition or support at home. Johnson returned to the United States with wounds that left him unable to continue his old work, but the Army denied him a disability pension and even a Purple Heart, and never entered his combat wounds in his official record. He struggled with poverty and declining health for the rest of his life and died in 1929, largely forgotten, at just 32 years old. He was buried with military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, but the honors due his actual battlefield service were still decades away.

The reckoning came slowly. Johnson received a posthumous Purple Heart in 1996, the Distinguished Service Cross in 2002, and finally the Medal of Honor in 2015, presented by President Barack Obama, who noted that Johnson had been denied the nation’s highest military honor for nearly a century largely because of his race.

Today, Henry Johnson and the Harlem Hellfighters stand as one of the most striking examples in American history of extraordinary valor met with willful national neglect — and of the long, often posthumous fight to set that record straight.

Sources:

• Harlem Hellfighter Henry Johnson awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor | HISTORY

• Harlem Hellfighter Hero: Henry Johnson | America Comes Alive

• WWI ‘Harlem Hellfighter’ Henry Johnson to Receive Medal of Honor | NBC News

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Today In Black History

• In 1943, William Dawson was elected as the first Black Democratic Party vice presidential candidate.

• In 1947, Dan Bankhead became the first Negro League pitcher in Major League Baseball.

• In 1968, Rev. Channing E. Phillips of Washington, D.C., was the first Black nominated for president by a major party at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, IL.

• In 1968, Julian Bond was nominated as the vice-presidential candidate at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, IL, but he withdrew his name because, at age 28, he did not meet the Constitutional age of 35.

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Every Tuesday until the end of 2026, we will publish a post about each of the 27 Amendments to the Constitution.

The 9th Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

The 9th Amendment, primarily written by James Madison, was ratified as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791 to acknowledge that the people hold additional rights beyond those specifically mentioned.

The 9th Amendment is also interpreted to mean that certain rights in the Constitution should not be construed to mean that the Constitution does not protect unenumerated rights.

The 9th Amendment reminds us that the people inherently hold other fundamental rights, integral to the nation's ethos of liberty and justice.

Through the centuries, the 9th Amendment has remained on the periphery of constitutional interpretation, and courts have often been reluctant to ground decisions solely in this amendment because of its open-ended nature.

However, one notable Supreme Court case is Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), where the Court recognized a right to privacy. Although not explicitly stated in the Constitution, the decision underscored that such a right was implied by the broader principles of liberty enshrined in the document, including the 9th Amendment.

This right to privacy has been used in many ways over the years, including with issues such as digital privacy, reproductive rights, and emerging technologies.

The 9th Amendment encourages citizens and lawmakers to consider what rights are inherent and essential, even if they are not explicitly enumerated.

The 9th Amendment continues to safeguard the principle that individual rights are expansive and not confined to those formally articulated within the Constitution.

Have you ever considered how the 9th Amendment applies to you?

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Doris “Dorie” Miller was born October 12, 1919, on a farm outside Waco, Texas, the third of four sons in a sharecropping family. He grew up working the land, playing fullback for Waco’s A.J. Moore High School, and helping support his household — experience that built the physical strength that would later serve him, and his country, in a moment no one could have prepared him for.

Miller enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1939, partly to see the world and partly to earn money for his family. But the Navy of that era offered Black sailors almost no path beyond the galley. Under the segregation policies still enforced throughout the U.S. military, Black enlisted men were confined to the Messman Branch — cooking, serving, and cleaning for white officers — regardless of their skill, strength, or ambition. Miller became a mess attendant, and by 1941 he was a Ship’s Cook Third Class aboard the battleship USS West Virginia, barred by policy from formal weapons training even as tensions with Japan escalated.

That policy became irrelevant on the morning of December 7, 1941. When Japanese aircraft struck Pearl Harbor, Miller was collecting laundry aboard the West Virginia. As torpedoes and bombs tore into the ship, he rushed to his battle station, only to find it already destroyed. Instead, he moved through burning, oil-slicked wreckage to help carry wounded sailors to safety, including the ship’s mortally wounded commanding officer, Captain Mervyn Bennion. Then Miller did something he had never been trained to do: he took hold of an unmanned .50-caliber anti-aircraft machine gun and began firing at the attacking planes, continuing until he ran out of ammunition and was ordered to abandon ship. Accounts from fellow crew members credited him with downing several enemy aircraft, though the Navy’s official record left the exact number undetermined.

For his actions that day, Miller was awarded the Navy Cross, the Navy’s second-highest decoration for valor — the first ever given to a Black sailor. Fleet commander Admiral Chester Nimitz pinned the medal on Miller personally aboard the USS Enterprise on May 27, 1942, telling him, “This marks a new day for the Navy.” The citation praised his “distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety.” Miller also received the Purple Heart, the American Defense Service Medal, and other combat honors.

The Navy, still bound by segregation, sent Miller on a war bond and recruitment tour rather than offering him a combat command befitting his heroism. He was promoted to Mess Attendant First Class and later Ship’s Cook Third Class, but never granted the officer’s path his actions had earned in the public eye. In 1943, he was assigned to the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay. On November 24, 1943, off Butaritari Island near Tarawa, a Japanese submarine torpedo struck the ship’s bomb magazine, sinking it in minutes. Miller was among 646 crew members killed. He was 24 years old.

Doris Miller’s story became a turning point in the long fight to desegregate the U.S. armed forces, cited for years by advocates pressing for equal treatment of Black servicemen. The Navy has honored him repeatedly since: a frigate, USS Miller, was commissioned in his name in 1973, and in 2020 the Navy announced the aircraft carrier USS Doris Miller — the first carrier ever named for an enlisted sailor and the first named for a Black American. Congress has weighed posthumously awarding him the Medal of Honor, recognition many historians argue was denied him only because of his race.

As we all know, Donald Trump fired all the qualified and experienced military leaders who were in charge when he became president the second time and replaced them with loyalists. The current Secretary of the Navy has proposed renaming the aircraft carrier USS Doris Miller, an actual war hero who died while serving, after Donald Trump, a 5-time draft dodger. This would be atrocious.

Sources:

• Doris Miller | Biography, Facts, & Role at Pearl Harbor | Britannica

• Cook Third Class Doris Miller | Naval History and Heritage Command

• Doris Miller - Above and beyond the call of duty | VA History

• Doris Miller | Waco History

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Today In Black History

• In 1839, Joseph Cinque and the slaves who seized the slave ship Aminstad and killed its captain and most of its crew were taken into custody as the ship anchored at Culloden Point of Long Island, NY.

• In 1854, John V. DeGrasse, a prominent Black physician, was admitted to the Massachusetts Medical Society.

• In 1950, Chicago attorney Edith Sampson was named the first Black representative (alternate delegate) in the U.S. delegation to the United Nations.

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Two days ago, on Tuesday, August 18, a guy named Jake Lang came to Dearborn to lead a comically mislabeled “Christian Crusader March” that attracted hundreds of similarly misguided followers who felt it was their obligation to follow Lang and confront a population full of Muslims to call them ugly names because Jake Lang knew this was something that would make the news. He also knew that this Christian (???) march of his would serve as a distraction – albeit temporary – from the ongoing and steadily worsening trials and tribulations of his true Lord and Savior Donald Trump, who is practically drowning in self-perpetuated crises threatening to derail his grip on power going into 2027.

It should be noted that Lang’s protests are part of a long and sordid history of anti-Muslim protests led by some Christian extremists who have targeted the city over the past 20 years, as its Muslim population has exploded to the point where it is now the first and largest Muslim-majority municipality inside the United States at more than 54%. It should also be noted that Lang was charged with attacking police officers in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill, but was later pardoned by President Donald Trump.

Lang ultimately got to say whatever worthless remarks he delivered to the Dearborn City Council Tuesday evening as the purposefully created disturbance continued outside, eventually leading to at least seven arrests, according to the Detroit Free Press. Understandably, a number of Dearborn residents and business owners were nervous about the threat of potential violence. Some businesses were shut down for the entire day.

But just as interesting as Lang’s diversionary march itself is who was assisting him with that march, namely Detroit’s own Trump-loving Rev. Lorenzo Sewell, a Black pastor who has become one of Trump’s Black darlings for his support in rallying Black voters – including a host of misguided Black pastors – to support his con game of an administration.

Rev. Sewell has become one of the most visible Black conservative pastors in Detroit and one of Trump’s most prominent African-American religious supporters. His rise is particularly interesting because he has combined Detroit church leadership, conservative Christian politics, Trump’s outreach to Black voters, and national Republican politics altogether into a twisted recipe of a message that he delivers as a defense for why he continues to support Trump (and others should as well) despite, well, every damned thing.

But apparently, Sewell’s defense of Trump now extends beyond his (other) Lord and Savior Trump to include the likes of Lang, whose activities during the January 6 riot alone blatantly contradict any claim he ever had to be a representative of Christianity. I ain’t nobody’s religious scholar, but I do know how to read, and it’s not hard to make that distinction if you can read. Yet for whatever reason, none of this matters to Sewell, who seems to believe it’s more important to shelter the oppressor than those the oppressor seeks to oppress.

I’d love to say this won’t get worse, but it’s plain to see that it will. Because distractions, ugliness, and sheer brutality are all they have on the Republican side of the fence. Combine those traits with sheer desperation, and you can only imagine what they have in store between now and November 3.

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Justina Ford delivered nearly 7,000 babies over a fifty-year medical career, almost all of them from a home office no hospital would let her practice in. Born Justina Laurena Warren on January 22, 1871, in Knoxville, Illinois, to parents who had been enslaved, she grew up trailing her mother, a nurse, on rounds through poor neighborhoods — an early education in medicine that stuck. She graduated from the integrated Galesburg High School in 1890, married Baptist minister John Ford in 1892, and enrolled at Hering Medical College in Chicago, earning her medical degree in 1899.

A License Against the Odds

Ford and her husband moved briefly to Alabama, where John pastored a church, before relocating to Denver in 1902 so he could lead Zion Baptist Church. That October, Ford sat for Colorado’s medical licensing exam. She passed, becoming the state’s first licensed Black woman physician, but the examiner made clear what she was up against, reportedly telling her, “I’d feel dishonest taking a fee from you. You’ve got two strikes against you.” License number 3800 didn’t open doors — Denver General Hospital and every other hospital in the city refused her admitting privileges on account of her race and sex, a barrier that held for decades.

Fifty Years in Five Points

Shut out of institutional medicine, Ford built her own. She and John bought a two-story brick house in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood and turned it into her practice, seeing patients in converted rooms and making house calls, often on foot, at all hours. She specialized in obstetrics, gynecology, and pediatrics, and over the following half-century she delivered an estimated 7,000 babies. Her patients were the people Denver’s medical establishment wouldn’t touch: Black families, poor white residents, and immigrants who spoke little or no English — Ford reportedly picked up fragments of several languages just to treat them. Many couldn’t pay in cash, so she took what they had, from produce to coal to household help, and she was known to buy groceries herself for families who had none. Patients called her “the Baby Doctor,” and generations of Denver children she delivered came to be known informally as members of the “Justina Baby Club.”

Recognition from her own profession came grudgingly and late. For nearly fifty years, the Colorado Medical Society and the American Medical Association denied her membership, cutting her off from the referrals, hospital access, and professional standing granted to her white peers. It wasn’t until 1950 — two years before her death — that the Denver Medical Society finally admitted her, opening the door to state and national medical societies as well. That same year, the Cosmopolitan Club honored her with its human relations award, a rare formal acknowledgment of a career built almost entirely without institutional support.

Legacy

Justina Ford died October 14, 1952, in Denver at age 81, having practiced medicine continuously from the same Five Points home for half a century. Her impact only grew more visible afterward. In 1985, she was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame. Her former home was relocated and restored to house the Black American West Museum and Heritage Center, with her original office and waiting room preserved inside. Denver’s Ford-Warren Library carries her name, as does a scholarship and medical society established in her honor at the University of Colorado, and a bronze statue of her stands at a Denver light rail station. In 2020, a Littleton elementary school was named for her — a fitting tribute to a woman who spent her life delivering the next generation into a world that tried to keep her out of the room.

Sources: Colorado Encyclopedia; Denver Public Library; UCHealth Today; Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame

Today In Black History

• In 1791, Benjamin Banneker, Black astronomer, mathematician, and almanac author, wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson challenging the idea of freedom for whites while Blacks did not enjoy the same freedoms.

• In 1950, Edith Sampson became the first African American appointed as a representative to the United Nations.

• In 1954, Diplomat and first Black winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Dr. Ralph J. Bunche was named undersecretary of the United Nations.

• In 1997, Alexis M. Herman, U.S. Labor Secretary, was instrumental in ending a 15-day United Parcel Service (UPS) strike.

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Every Tuesday until the end of 2026, we will publish a post about each of the 27 Amendments to the Constitution.

The 8th Amendment, ratified in 1791, is part of the Bill of Rights and addresses the government's power to impose penalties on individuals convicted of crimes, serving as a safeguard against the abuse of governmental power by ensuring penalties remain fair and proportionate.

The 8th Amendment states: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

Most often mentioned in the context of the death penalty, the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishments, but also mentions “excessive fines” and bail. The “excessive fines” clause surfaces (among other places) in cases of civil and criminal forfeiture, for example, when property is seized during a drug raid.

This amendment leaves the term “excessive” open to interpretation.

1. Interpreting "Cruel and Unusual Punishments": What constitutes "cruel and unusual punishments”? Do modern-day practices, such as solitary confinement and capital punishment, align with contemporary human rights standards?

2. Excessive Bail and Fines: Recently, debates have centered around cash bail systems that disproportionately impact marginalized communities, leading to a cycle of poverty and incarceration.

3. Evolving Standards of Decency: This doctrine suggests that the interpretation of the 8th Amendment must adapt to society's changing moral and ethical views, focusing on how to balance tradition with progress.

The 8th Amendment emphasizes that the punishment should fit the crime. However, the protections guaranteed by this amendment are continuously open to interpretation.

It is our Choice to help ensure a proper balance between the crime and the punishment.

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As we now know, the current occupant of the White House is working hard to erase any American history that is not white history, and is also encouraging museums to downplay or eliminate Black history.

Two of the country’s most important repositories of Black history exist because people in power kept saying no — and Black communities kept building anyway. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) were born nearly a century apart, out of very different circumstances, but they share the same origin story at heart: a refusal to let Black history go undocumented, uncollected, and unclaimed.

A Collector’s Insistence

The Schomburg Center traces back to one man’s personal library. Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, an Afro-Puerto Rican bibliophile living in Harlem, spent decades amassing books, manuscripts, art, and artifacts documenting the African diaspora, driven partly by a teacher who once told him Black people had no history worth studying. By the 1920s, requests for materials “by and about Negroes” at the New York Public Library’s 135th Street Branch had grown so heavy that the library established the Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints on May 8, 1925. A year later, the Carnegie Corporation paid $10,000 for Schomburg’s roughly 5,000-item collection and donated it to the library, on the condition that it stay in Harlem. Schomburg himself became the division’s curator in 1932. The center moved into a dedicated building at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard in 1980, and both that building and the original branch were named National Historic Landmarks in 2016.

From Research Hub to Cultural Institution

The Schomburg Center quickly became the intellectual backbone of the Harlem Renaissance and every major movement in Black scholarship and activism that followed, from the New Negro movement through the Black Power era. Today it operates as one of the New York Public Library’s four research libraries, organized into five divisions covering art and artifacts, general research, manuscripts and rare books, moving image and recorded sound, and photographs and prints. Scholars, filmmakers, genealogists, and students use its holdings to trace enslaved ancestors, verify civil rights history, and mine primary sources unavailable anywhere else. It also hosts public programming — author talks, exhibitions, and the annual Black Comic Book Festival — that keeps it a living cultural hub, not just an archive.

An Unlikely Namesake

Before there could be an NMAAHC, there had to be a Smithsonian, and its name comes from a man who never set foot in the country where he eventually had a museum funded by his family. James Smithson was a British chemist and mineralogist, born in France in 1765 to an illegitimate line that barred him from inheriting his father’s name and title. When he died in 1829, his will left his fortune to a nephew, with an unusual condition: if the nephew died without heirs, the money would go “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” The nephew died childless in 1835, and Congress accepted the bequest — more than $500,000 in gold coin at the time — the following year. President James K. Polk signed the act creating the Smithsonian Institution on August 10, 1846. Smithson’s exact motives are still debated, but the institution built in his name eventually grew to encompass 19 museums, including, 170 years later, one built specifically to tell the story he never lived to see.

A Century-Long Fight for a National Museum

The push for a national museum started even earlier, in 1915, when Black Civil War veterans gathered in Washington, D.C., to mark the war’s 50th anniversary and proposed a memorial to Black military service. Congress authorized it in 1929, but the Great Depression killed its funding. The idea resurfaced periodically for decades until Representative John Lewis took it up in 1987, introducing legislation nearly every year for fifteen years despite repeated defeat, including a 1994 blockade by Senator Jesse Helms. President George W. Bush finally signed authorizing legislation in 2003, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened on the National Mall on September 24, 2016, as the Smithsonian’s 19th museum.

A Landmark Still Doing Its Work

Designed by architect David Adjaye with a bronze latticework “corona” inspired by Yoruban art, the NMAAHC now holds more than 45,000 artifacts spanning slavery, Reconstruction, the civil rights movement, and contemporary Black culture, and draws visitors from around the world alongside nearly 300,000 members supporting its work. Between them, the Schomburg Center and the NMAAHC represent two answers to the same historic demand — one built from a single collector’s insistence that his people’s story mattered, the other from a century of organized political will. Both now stand as proof that the fight to preserve Black history was never just about the past; it was about making sure the future had somewhere to look it up.

Today In Black History

• In 1897, Black inventor W.B. Purvis patented the electric railway switch.

• In 1960, the African nation of Gabon gained its independence from France.

• In 1984, Roberto Clemente, born in Puerto Rico and of Black and Hispanic heritage, became the second baseball player to be featured on a stamp.

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Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor became the fastest man on two wheels at a time when much of the country was working to make sure he never got the chance. Born November 26, 1878, in Indianapolis, Indiana, Taylor grew up doing bike tricks outside a local shop while dressed in a military-style uniform for advertising, which is how he earned the nickname that stayed with him for life. The shop owner recognized his talent early, and by his teens Taylor was already outracing adults.

Breaking Into a Segregated Sport

Taylor’s rise came just as competitive cycling was one of the most popular — and most lucrative — spectator sports in America. It was also hostile territory for a Black athlete. The League of American Wheelmen, cycling’s governing body, voted in 1894 to bar Black membership outright, and Taylor spent much of his career facing boycotts from white riders, exclusion from Southern tracks, and outright violence, including being physically attacked on the track by a competitor in Boston. He relocated from Indianapolis to Worcester, Massachusetts, seeking a more tolerant training ground, and it became his lifelong home base.

None of it slowed him down. In 1896, at eighteen, Taylor won his first major race, a one-mile sprint at a prestigious meet in Massachusetts. Over the next few years he shattered records across nearly every sprint distance, from a quarter-mile to two miles, and by 1898 he held seven world records simultaneously.

World Champion

In 1899, competing in Montreal, Taylor won the world one-mile track cycling championship, making him the second Black athlete to win a world title in any sport and the first Black cyclist to do so — a full decade before Jack Johnson broke boxing’s color line. The following year he won the U.S. sprint championship. He raced across Europe and Australia to massive crowds, often earning more in a single European tour than most Americans made in years, and was celebrated abroad in ways he rarely was at home.

Taylor was also known for a conviction that set him apart from most professional athletes of his era: a devout Baptist, he refused to race on Sundays throughout his career, even when it cost him major purses and titles he might otherwise have claimed.

Decline and Rediscovery

Taylor retired from racing in 1910, worn down by the physical toll of competing and the constant strain of racism both on and off the track. He invested his winnings in business ventures that failed during the Great Depression, and by the early 1930s he was destitute, selling copies of his self-published 1928 autobiography, “The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World,” door to door in Chicago. He died alone on June 21, 1932, at Cook County Hospital, and was buried in an unmarked grave in a segregated section of a Chicago cemetery.

Legacy

Taylor’s story might have ended there had a group of former professional cyclists, organized with support from Schwinn Bicycle Company executive Frank W. Schwinn, not raised money in 1948 to give him a proper burial with a new headstone. Today, Major Taylor is recognized as one of the first Black athletes to achieve international sports stardom, a trailblazer whose success under relentless hostility opened doors later walked through by Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, and generations of Black athletes who followed. Cycling clubs across the country still carry his name in tribute to a champion the sport tried, and failed, to keep out.

Sources: Wikipedia; Britannica; Biography.com; National Endowment for the Humanities; Major Taylor Association

Today In Black History

• In 1794, Absalom Jones and his followers dedicated the African Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, and affiliated with the Protestant Episcopal Church after they were thrown out of the white church to which they originally belonged because they were praying in the same section as the white members.

• In 1890, the Mississippi Constitutional Convention began the systematic exclusion of Blacks from political life in the South, using literacy tests and other restrictions.

• In 1922, the Washington, D.C. home of Frederick Douglass was declared a national shrine.

• In 1941, Madame Lillian Evanti, internationally renowned opera singer, founded the National Negro Opera Company.

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Every Tuesday until the end of 2026, we will publish a post about each of the 27 Amendments to the Constitution.

The 7th Amendment, ratified as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791, guarantees the right to a jury trial in civil cases where the value in controversy exceeds twenty dollars. Based on the common law tradition, it is designed to balance the power of the judiciary and safeguard against potential governmental overreach, and ensure that citizens, not just judges, have a say in the adjudication of civil disputes, thereby fostering a more democratic legal process.

The common law tradition originated in England and relies on case law and judicial decisions to develop and interpret legal principles. Unlike legal systems that are based primarily on written statutes or codes, Judges in common law systems play a significant role in shaping the law by interpreting past decisions and applying them to new situations. This tradition aims to ensure consistency and fairness in legal proceedings by following established precedents, while also allowing for flexibility and adaptation over time. The common law tradition influences the interpretation of amendments like the 7th Amendment, which emphasizes the importance of a jury trial in civil cases.

Essentially, the 7th Amendment represents the idea that average citizens should participate directly in the judicial process. A jury of peers brings diverse perspectives, fostering empathy and fairness that a single judge might overlook. Moreover, jury deliberations contribute to the development of common law by setting precedents grounded in societal values.

Recently, the right to a jury trial in civil cases has faced numerous challenges. The complexity and cost of litigation can deter individuals from pursuing jury trials. Also, the prevalence of arbitration clauses in contracts often circumvents jury trials altogether, funneling disputes into private arbitration settings.

The 7th Amendment is designed to focus on fairness and public involvement in the civil legal system for everyone, and it gives litigants a choice for their civil trial between a judge and a jury.

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Azie Taylor Morton’s signature sat on American currency for three years, yet her name remains one of the least recognized in U.S. financial history. Born February 1, 1936, at St. John Colony, a freed-slave settlement near Dale, Texas, Morton never knew her father, and her mother was deaf. Her hometown had no high school open to Black students, so she was sent to Austin’s Texas Blind, Deaf and Orphan School, a charity institution for Black children, to complete her education. She graduated at sixteen and enrolled at Huston-Tillotson College, a historically Black college in Austin, earning a bachelor’s degree in commercial education, cum laude, in 1956.

From the Classroom to Washington

Morton’s early career combined teaching with public service. She taught at a school for delinquent girls before becoming assistant to the president of her alma mater. Her move into government came in 1961, when she was appointed to President John F. Kennedy’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, the body tasked with enforcing nondiscrimination in federal hiring. Over the following decade, she held a series of posts in Washington, including staff assistant to the U.S. House Committee on the District of Columbia. She also built a career in Democratic Party politics, serving as special assistant to the chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1971 to 1976.

Appointment as Treasurer

On September 12, 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Morton the 36th Treasurer of the United States. She held the position until January 20, 1981, and remains the only African American ever to serve in that office. The role, distinct from the Secretary of the Treasury, requires the Treasurer’s signature alongside the Secretary’s on all Federal Reserve notes before they can be issued as legal tender. For nearly four years, Morton’s signature appeared on the nation’s paper currency, a quiet but permanent mark on American history carried in millions of wallets without most people ever knowing her story.

A Life of Global Service

Morton’s public service extended well beyond the Treasury. She represented the United States on the American delegation to Rome for the 1978 enthronement of Pope John Paul II, chaired the People to People Mission to the Soviet Union and China in 1986, and served as an election observer for presidential elections in Haiti, Senegal, and the Dominican Republic. She was also a representative to the first African/African American Conference held on the African continent, work that reflected a career built on bridging communities as much as managing institutions.

Legacy

Azie Taylor Morton died December 7, 2003, in Austin, following complications from a stroke. Her tenure as Treasurer opened a door that, decades later, still has not been walked through again by another Black American. She is remembered less for a single dramatic moment than for a body of work spanning civil rights enforcement, party politics, international diplomacy, and the literal machinery of the U.S. financial system — proof that history is often made in offices few people think to look for it in.

Sources: BlackPast.org; Texas State Historical Association; NFCC; African American Registry

Today In Black History

• In 1827, after a race riot in Cincinnati, one thousand Blacks left the city for Canada.

• In 1835, a mob of white citizens in Canaan, New Hampshire, used 100 yoked oxen to pull a Black school into a nearby swamp.

• In 1897, Black inventor L.P. Ray patented the dust pan.

• In 1894, Black Congressman George Washington Murray disclosed that he owned 12 patents, mostly for agricultural products.

• In 1956, Charles L. Gittens became the first Secret Service Agent.

• In 1957, Archibald T. Carey, Jr. was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as the first Black Chairman of the President’s Committee on Government Employment Policy.

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El-Sayed victory signals sea change for the Democratic Party

Don’t let Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow margin of victory over Haley Stevens fool you, just in case some Democrat out there holding a grudge wants to try and claim that this was not a mandate.

Sure, according to the numbers, Abdul El-Sayed’s final margin of victory, not announced until August 5 around 10 am, was only about 25,000 votes. That translates to a reportedly narrow victory of barely 1%, at 48.5% to 47.5%. That’s according to the New York Times and CNN, as reported in The Detroit Free Press.

HOWEVER.

This was the most expensive primary in history, which attracted 500,000 more primary voters statewide than ever before. Expensive overwhelmingly because supporters of El-Sayed’s opponent, Haley Stevens, spent more than $60 million in a desperate attempt to defeat him. A huge chunk of that cash came from AIPAC. El-Sayed not only took no money from AIPAC, he didn’t take any money from any other PACs or corporate sponsors. His was truly a people-powered campaign, which scared the hell out of a mainstream Democratic establishment that has relied heavily on corporate and PAC donations since forever. As the saying goes, money is the mother’s milk of politics. Nobody ever thought that could ever change – until now.

Scratch that. The money will stay in the game, but what could change is where that money comes from. If enough Democratic candidates, into the future, are willing to buck the system and follow the lead of El-Sayed and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, then that could dramatically revise the political calculus of how campaigns are run forever. But most importantly, such a movement has the potential to sweep out the puppets and open the door to a new generation of politicians who actually represent the communities they are supposed to serve without fear because they will no longer be beholden.

I know. It sounds impossible, almost like I’ve been listening to Pollyanna whispering in my ear.

But what if Pollyanna is right?

Abdul El-Sayed just defeated the Democratic establishment, AIPAC, and $60 million of corporate cash, all focused on making sure Haley Stevens came out victorious no matter what.

She didn’t.

What if Pollyanna is right?

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Every Tuesday until the end of 2026, we will publish a post about each of the 27 Amendments to the Constitution.

Ratified on December 15, 1791, as part of the Bill of Rights, the 6th Amendment provides several critical protections for individuals accused of crimes. It reads:

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”

These protections include the right to a speedy and public trial, the right to an impartial jury, the right to be informed of the accusations, the right to confront witnesses, the right to obtain witnesses, and the right to legal representation.

In 1966, after a Supreme Court case involving an arrested person (Ernesto Miranda) who spoke about his guilt without an attorney present, the “Miranda Warning” was universally accepted by law enforcement nationwide. Arresting officers must apprise someone of their “Miranda Rights” if they intend to interrogate the person at any time, and the person must clearly indicate that they “understand their rights” before saying anything. The Miranda Rights, which can be waived by the accused, are based on both the 5th and 6th Amendments.

Although the exact wording may change a little, it basically states:

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we ask you any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer with you during questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish. If you decide to answer questions now without a lawyer present, you have the right to stop answering at any time.

The 6th Amendment details several distinct rights for people accused of crimes:

1. Speedy Trial: This right ensures that defendants are not subjected to unduly long incarcerations while awaiting trial. Speedy trials are crucial for preserving the integrity of evidence and protecting the accused from unnecessary pre-trial detention.

2. Public Trial: Public trials serve as a check on the judicial system, allowing the community to witness the proceedings, which in turn promotes transparency and accountability.

3. Impartial Jury: The right to an impartial jury ensures that defendants are evaluated by an unbiased group of their peers, which is fundamental to upholding the integrity of the justice system.

4. Notice of Accusation: This clause affords the accused the right to be fully informed of the charges against them, enabling the preparation of a proper defense.

5. Confrontation Clause: The accused has the right to confront and cross-examine witnesses testifying against them, a vital aspect that helps to challenge and test the credibility of the evidence.

6. Compulsory Process: This allows defendants to obtain witnesses in their favor through the issuance of court-ordered subpoenas, ensuring that all relevant testimony is available during the trial.

7. Right to Counsel: Perhaps one of the most critical components, this ensures that defendants have the right to be represented by an attorney, which is essential for a fair trial. This clause was further reinforced by the landmark Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), which held that counsel must be provided for defendants who cannot afford an attorney.

The 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments, along with the 8th and 14th Amendments, which I will discuss later in this series, help ensure that people are treated fairly during interrogation and trial if they are suspected or arrested for a crime.

And, a reminder, being undocumented in the United States is a CIVIL offense, similar to a traffic ticket. Undocumented people are NOT “criminals” unless and until they are CONVICTED of an actual crime.

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Millions of people who could never pick his face out of a crowd know his sound by heart. Plas John Johnson, Jr. was born July 21, 1931, in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, into a musical household — his father played banjo and later saxophone, his mother sang and played piano. Johnson was singing harmonies with his siblings by age four, and once his father bought him a soprano saxophone, he taught himself to play, later moving to alto and tenor. He and his pianist brother Ray began recording as the Johnson Brothers in New Orleans in the late 1940s, and by 1951 Plas was touring with R&B singer Charles Brown.

From New Orleans to the L.A. Studios

After serving in the Army, Johnson and his brother relocated to Los Angeles in 1954, and Plas quickly became one of the busiest session musicians in the country. Bandleader and producer Maxwell Davis, an early champion, hired Johnson to cover his own saxophone parts so Davis could focus on producing for Modern Records. From there, Johnny Otis and Capitol Records executive Dave Cavanaugh brought Johnson into the Capitol fold, where he played behind Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, and Frank Sinatra.

For nearly two decades, Johnson averaged roughly two recording sessions a day. His tenor sax appears on B.B. King and Sam Cooke records, Beach Boys tracks, Ricky Nelson and Bobby Vee singles, and instrumental hits credited to studio-only acts like B. Bumble and the Stingers and The Marketts. He later played on albums by Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Rod Stewart, Tom Waits, Linda Ronstadt, and Elton John — a session discography that spans nearly every genre of American popular music from the 1950s through the 1990s. His work placed him at the center of the loose network of L.A. studio players later nicknamed the Wrecking Crew, and he was featured prominently in the 2008 documentary of that name.

The Pink Panther Theme

Johnson’s signature moment came in 1963, when composer Henry Mancini wrote “The Pink Panther Theme” specifically for his sultry, swinging tenor sound. Johnson, who had already been a regular in Mancini’s studio orchestra, recalled that the session took only two takes. “When we finished, everyone applauded — even the string players,” he said. “They never applaud for anything.” The theme, released alongside Blake Edwards’ 1964 film, won three Grammy Awards and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. It remains one of the most recognizable pieces of music in film history, and Johnson’s solo is the reason why.

A Long, Underrated Career

Beyond session work, Johnson led his own recordings, including “This Must Be the Plas” and “Mood for the Blues,” and later recorded for Concord Jazz. He joined the house band for “The Merv Griffin Show” in 1970 and continued performing at jazz festivals well into his later years. Because studio musicians rarely received public credit, much of Johnson’s solo artistry went overlooked even as his playing became inescapable on the radio and in film scores.

Influence That Outlived the Spotlight

Plas Johnson died July 15, 2026, in Granada Hills, California, just shy of his 95th birthday, survived by seven children, eight grandchildren, and twelve great-grandchildren. Documentary filmmaker Denny Tedesco, who chronicled Johnson and his fellow studio musicians, noted that Johnson’s influence rippled forward largely unseen: musicians he shaped went on to shape the next generation, who often have no idea Johnson’s tone is buried in their own musical DNA. Few players have left so deep a mark on American music while remaining, to most listeners, anonymous — a voice everyone recognized, attached to a name most never learned.

Sources: NPR; Wikipedia; Rolling Stone; Irish Times

Today In Black History

• In 1865, the provisional governor of Florida abolished slavery by proclamation.

• In 1897, Lloyd Ray patented the dust pan, a metal collection plate attached to a short wooden handle.

• In 1928, William A. Scott, III founded the “Atlanta Daily World,” the first Black daily newspaper in modern times.

• In 1957, Archibald J. Carey, a Chicago minister and attorney, was appointed the first Black chairman of the President’s Committee of Government Employment Policy.

• In 1960, the African nation of Niger gained its independence from France.

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The Democratic Party calls itself a “big tent” party. That means the party should include conservative, centrist, and left-leaning Democrats, as well as Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members, who also identify as and caucus with Democrats.

However, now many establishment Democrats are actually lambasting and denigrating left-leaning members and DSA members, often calling them “communists,” just like Trump and MAGA are calling all Democrats. What is this: the 1950s? New York City Mayor Zohran Mamadani and other DSA and left-leaning candidates around the country have been winning elections over establishment Dems, and that is what is worrying those establishment Dems, most of whom accept millions in funding from AIPAC and corporations.

A reminder that the establishment Dems helped us to lose the presidency, the House, and the Senate in 2024, want to maintain that status quo (and the millions in funding they receive from AIPAC and corporations), and now they are insisting that we support them over other Dems who have new ideas for governing and working for the people?

This is also why approval of the Democratic Party is at its lowest in decades, with many Democrats leaving the party to become independents.

“Progressive” Dems are called “progressive” for a reason: they support working with and for the people to progress towards the future, while “establishment” Dems desire to maintain the status quo and not change things, including accepting their corporate funding.

As Democrats, the people we should be fighting are the Republicans, not each other.

Those of you who have been following me here on “We Are Speaking” know that I publish articles primarily about Black people and organizations who fought the status quo and worked to progress towards the future to make their marks in Black history.

In the August 4 Michigan Senate Democratic primary, a progressive candidate is running against an establishment candidate.

I am sure you can guess which candidate I am supporting and why.

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Dr. Jewel Plummer Cobb spent a lifetime proving that a laboratory bench and a college presidency could belong to the same career — and that neither had to wait for permission.

Born January 17, 1924, in Chicago, Jewel Isadora Plummer grew up surrounded by science. Her father, Frank Plummer, was the first Black graduate of Harvard Medical School and practiced as a dermatologist; his home library sparked her early curiosity. That curiosity turned into a calling in high school, the first time she looked through a microscope in biology class. She enrolled at the University of Michigan but left after encountering segregated student housing, transferring to Talladega College in Alabama, where she finished her biology degree in just three years. New York University initially denied her a graduate fellowship — reportedly because of her race — but reversed course after an interview. She earned her master’s there in 1947 and her Ph.D. in cell physiology in 1950, with a dissertation on the mechanisms of melanin pigment formation.

That early focus on pigment cells shaped the rest of Cobb’s scientific career. Working alongside researchers including oncologist Dr. Jane C. Wright, Cobb spent the 1950s and ‘60s developing techniques for culturing human cancer cells in tissue culture, then testing chemotherapy agents against them. Her work helped establish that methotrexate could treat certain skin cancers, lung cancers, and childhood leukemia — a drug still used in cancer and autoimmune treatment today. She was also the first researcher to publish data showing that actinomycin D reduced nucleoli in both normal and malignant human cells. Her research took her to international cancer congresses in London and Moscow and to a fellowship in Naples, Italy, and it was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute, the National Science Foundation, and the American Cancer Society.

Cobb’s career moved fluidly between the lab and the lectern: teaching posts at NYU, the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Hunter College, and a decade running the biology lab at Sarah Lawrence College. In 1969 she became Dean of Arts and Sciences at Connecticut College — the first Black dean in the college’s history — where she created a scholarship program for Black undergraduates and a post-baccalaureate pre-med program that sent students on to Yale, Georgetown, and beyond. After a stint as dean at Rutgers’ Douglass College, Cobb reached a milestone in 1981: she was named president of California State University, Fullerton, becoming the first African American woman to lead a major research university. Over nine years, she expanded the campus’s science and engineering facilities, built its first student housing, and pushed research as a campus priority, even when it drew pushback from faculty who saw teaching as the university’s only mission.

Beyond her own research and administration, Cobb became one of the country’s most persistent voices for women and scientists of color trying to enter fields that weren’t built for them. Her 1979 essay “Filters for Women in Science” used the metaphor of a filter’s pore size to describe how systemic barriers narrowed who made it through to a science career. She chaired a national conference of minority women scientists that produced the influential 1975 report “The Double Bind: The Price of Being a Minority Woman in Science.”

Her honors reflect a career that spanned two worlds: election to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1974, membership on the National Science Board, the Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, more than 20 honorary doctorates, and, in 2021, a road at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole renamed in her honor.

Dr. Jewel Plummer Cobb died January 1, 2017, in Maplewood, New Jersey, at age 92. A former student once said of her: “I would not have become a doctor. Because of her, I knew it was possible.” That’s the throughline of her life — proof, in the lab and at the podium, of what was possible.

Sources

• Jewel Plummer Cobb, Biologist and Educator, African American Registry

• Jewel Plummer Cobb, Marine Biological Laboratory

• Jewel Isadora Plummer Cobb: Biologist and College President, Undark

• Jewel Plummer Cobb, Mothers in Science

• Jewel Plummer Cobb, 92, Dies; Led a California Campus, The New York Times

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Today In Black History

• In 1794, Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church was founded in Philadelphia by Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, a former slave and itinerant preacher, because the white church he attended started segregating its parishes because Bishop Allen’s sermons were so popular.

• In 1870, George Dixon, an Afro-Canadian born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, became the first Black person to hold the world title in boxing.

• In 1918, the National Liberty Congress of Colored Americans asked Congress to make lynching a federal crime.

• In 1919, the first convention of the National Association of Negro Musicians was held in Chicago and awarded its first scholarship to a young Marian Anderson.

• In 1991, Bernard A. Harris, Jr., a NASA clinical scientist and flight surgeon, officially became a NASA astronaut.

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Every Tuesday until the end of 2026, we will publish a post about each of the 27 Amendments to the Constitution.

I plead the 5th!

If there is one thing most people know about the 5th Amendment, it is that individuals can prevent incriminating themselves in court by “pleading the 5th” and exercising their right to remain silent. This protection is not an admission of guilt but a safeguard against coerced confessions and forced testimony.

Ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, the Fifth Amendment was designed to safeguard citizens against potential government abuses. The Fifth Amendment protects individuals from being compelled to incriminate themselves, meaning they are not required to answer questions or provide evidence that could be used against them in a criminal case. It also ensures due process of law, meaning the government must follow fair procedures before depriving someone of life, liberty, or property, and protects against double jeopardy (being tried twice for the same crime).

The 5th Amendment text reads:

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

The 5th Amendment offers five critical protections:

1. Grand Jury Clause: Before being tried for serious offenses, individuals have the right to a grand jury review, ensuring that there is sufficient evidence to proceed.

2. Double Jeopardy Clause: This prevents individuals from being tried twice for the same offense, providing protection against repeated prosecutions.

3. Self-Incrimination Clause: Perhaps the most famous aspect of the amendment, this clause protects individuals from being forced to testify against themselves, which is where the phrase "pleading the Fifth" originates.

4. Due Process Clause: This guarantees that individuals cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, ensuring fair treatment under the law. This is the section of this amendment that is being totally ignored with the ICE raids.

5. Takings Clause: It mandates that if the government takes private property for public use, it must provide just compensation to the property owner.

As the Trump administration continues to pull suspected undocumented immigrants off the street and out of their homes and workplaces and label them “criminals” based only on their appearance or last name, the due process guarantees of the 4th and 5th Amendments are being ignored. Trump actually said, “Who has time for all of those trials?”

The rights listed in the Constitution are not just for U.S. citizens. All persons on American soil are covered by the Constitution.

Our Choice

The 5th Amendment guarantees that persons cannot be deprived of their core rights without due process of law.

It is essential for us to remember the 5th Amendment protections and help ensure that all individuals in America are safeguarded against government abuse.

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Before there was jazz, blues on Broadway, or hip-hop sampling a century of Black sound, there was ragtime — and there was Scott Joplin, the composer who turned it into art. Born around 1868 near Linden, Texas, to Jiles Joplin, a formerly enslaved laborer, and Florence Givins Joplin, a free-born domestic worker, Scott grew up in a household that valued music the way other families valued land. His father played the fiddle, his mother sang and played banjo, and by age seven Scott was already picking out tunes himself.

A Musical Education Against the Odds

The Joplin family settled in Texarkana, where Scott’s talent caught the attention of Julius Weiss, a German-born music teacher who gave the boy free lessons in harmony, sight-reading, and European classical composition. That grounding mattered: it meant Joplin approached the syncopated rhythms he heard in Black communities — echoes of field hollers, spirituals, and banjo dance tunes — with the structural discipline of a trained composer. Few musicians of his era combined those two worlds so fluently.

As a teenager, Joplin left home to work as an itinerant pianist, playing in saloons and dance halls across the Midwest and South. He eventually settled in Sedalia, Missouri, studying music formally at George R. Smith College and immersing himself in the city’s thriving Black entertainment scene.

Maple Leaf Rag and Ragtime’s Breakthrough

In 1899, Joplin published “Maple Leaf Rag” through Sedalia publisher John Stark. It became the first instrumental sheet-music hit to sell over a million copies, and — unusually for a Black composer at the time — Joplin negotiated a one-cent royalty on every copy sold, giving him a steady income for years. The piece’s rolling left-hand bass and syncopated melody became the blueprint for ragtime itself, and Joplin followed it with dozens more rags, including “The Entertainer,” “Solace,” and “Elite Syncopations.”

Reaching for Something Bigger

Commercial success wasn’t Joplin’s only ambition. He believed ragtime deserved to stand alongside European classical forms, and he poured that conviction into “Treemonisha,” an opera about a young Black woman who leads her rural community out of superstition through education. Joplin self-financed a modest 1915 staging that failed to find an audience, and he died two years later, in 1917, in New York, in poverty and declining health, without seeing his masterwork properly recognized.

The Long Echo of His Music

That recognition came decades later. Ragtime experienced a major revival in the 1970s, driven in large part by pianist and musicologist Joshua Rifkin’s recordings and by the 1973 film “The Sting,” which built its Oscar-winning score around Joplin’s “The Entertainer” — introducing his music to a new generation who had no idea it was already 70 years old. In 1976, the Pulitzer Prize board awarded Joplin a special posthumous citation for “Treemonisha,” finally honoring him as a serious American composer.

Joplin’s fingerprints are all over the music that followed him. Ragtime’s syncopation fed directly into early jazz and stride piano, and its blend of classical structure with Black vernacular rhythm set a precedent for later fusions — from Duke Ellington’s orchestral suites to the sampling culture of hip-hop, which regularly loops ragtime-era piano runs. His insistence that Black musical forms belonged in concert halls, not just dance halls, still shapes how American music institutions think about genre and legitimacy today.

More than a century after his death, Scott Joplin’s rags are still taught to every piano student who tackles syncopation for the first time — proof that the rhythms he refused to let anyone dismiss became the heartbeat of American music.

Sources: Britannica; Texas State Historical Association; SHSMO Historic Missourians; Library of Congress, Treemonisha

Today In Black History

• In 1847, the African country of Liberia, with the capital named Monrovia after American President Monroe, was established by the first group of freed Blacks who left America in 1820.

• In 1880, Black inventor A.P. Abourne was awarded a patent for the refining of coconut oil.

• In 2004, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama gave the Keynote Address at the Democratic National Convention.

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Beauty like this don’t lie

If melanin were a person, he/she would probably be the most powerful and influential person on Earth. Certainly in the United States. Because melanin is the deciding factor in skin color, and skin color – throughout history – has had the power to dictate who was the ruler and who got ruled, who was considered beautiful and who was not, who was enslaved and who did the enslaving.

Black skin has rarely been promoted as a positive. Hell, black anything is rarely a positive. Black sheep of the family. White hat vs. Black hat. It’s bad luck if a black cat crosses your path. On and on.

Where It Rains in Color is an excellent science fiction novel written by Denise Crittendon, a good friend and fellow Afrofuturist. A central theme of Crittendon’s novel, which has received considerable acclaim, is that Black skin is precious. And the darker the skin, the more precious it becomes. The most beautiful women – who are the darkest skinned- are known as the Rare Indigo. Crittendon’s premise is a refusal to accept what most of us have been taught – covertly as well as overtly- that the color black is the mark of the beast. Instead, it is a mark of the blessed.

You may already be familiar with the MAGA histrionics surrounding the extraordinary – and extraordinarily popular and profitable - movie The Odyssey, which my wife and I saw last weekend. Predictably, MAGA is enraged that the ridiculously gorgeous Lupita Nyong’o was cast as Helen of Troy. Why? Because according to Greek mythology, Helen of Troy was the most beautiful woman in the world. And not only is Lupita of Troy a Black woman, she is a very, very dark-skinned Black woman. And she is fine as hell, as we brothers might like to say. Suffice to say it’s not a reach to consider Lupita in the running as one of the most beautiful women evuh.

Which is totally unacceptable to Elon Musk, incontrovertibly whiter-than-white white supremacist supreme who became the world’s first trillionaire last month in June.

“Chris Nolan desecrated the Odyssey so that he would be eligible for an Academy Award,” Musk was quoted as saying.

Nolan produced, wrote, and directed The Odyssey, which has received just as many rave reviews as it has mocking criticisms of Elon’s racist temper tantrums about a fictional character in a fictional movie where Lupita’s actual appearance time in the three-hour-long epic amounts to somewhere between 10-15 minutes, according to AI Google, which matches up with what would have been my estimate.

But then check out what historian extraordinaire Kahlil Greene points out:

“Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey opened July 17 with Lupita Nyong’o, a Black actor, cast as Helen of Troy. Conservatives in the US and far-right accounts in Greece called it an erasure of Greek heritage.

“Here is what those same voices stayed quiet about.

“In the early 1800s, Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire pried marble sculptures off the actual Parthenon in Athens and shipped them to London. They have sat in the British Museum since 1816.”

One of these is a movie. The other is the real thing, still gone. Guess which one got called erasure.”

Game. Set. Match.

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I have seen some awesome movies over the decades, but seeing “Black Panther” was life-changing for me. I think my favorite costumes were the ones for Queen Ramonda. Those headpieces!

Ruth E. Carter has spent more than three decades making sure Black stories look as rich on screen as they feel in real life. As a costume designer, she has clothed some of the most iconic moments in American film — and in doing so, rewrote the rules for what her profession could achieve.

Early Life and Education

Carter was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of five children. She studied theater at Hampton University, a historically Black institution in Virginia, where she first developed her eye for how clothing communicates character, history, and status. After college, she moved into regional theater costuming before landing in Hollywood, where she began working with the Black Filmmaker Foundation — a launching pad that would connect her to a young director named Spike Lee.

Building a Career, Frame by Frame

That partnership with Lee became one of the defining collaborations in modern cinema. Carter designed costumes for School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, and Malcolm X, a working relationship that spanned more than two decades. Her costumes for Do the Right Thing captured the specific texture of 1980s Brooklyn streetwear, while her work on Malcolm X required painstaking historical research to trace the evolution of a man’s identity — from zoot suits to the disciplined tailoring of his later years.

Carter’s range only grew from there. She dressed Amistad, What’s Love Got to Do with It, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Selma, and Dolemite Is My Name, moving fluidly between eras, continents, and genres. Whether she was recreating the antebellum South, the Civil Rights Movement, or 1970s Blaxploitation cinema, her work consistently did more than decorate — it told the story underneath the story.

Wakanda and a Place in History

In 2018, Carter’s design work reached a new scale entirely with Marvel’s Black Panther. Tasked with building the visual identity of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, she fused real traditions from Maasai, Basotho, Tuareg, Zulu, and Himba cultures with Afrofuturist imagination, creating a wardrobe that felt both ancient and entirely new. The film earned her the Academy Award for Best Costume Design — making her the first African American to win in that category in Oscar history.

Four years later, she won again for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, becoming the first African American woman to win two Academy Awards in any category. She has since been nominated a fifth time, for Sinners, making her the most Oscar-nominated Black woman in the Academy’s history — a streak that includes earlier nominations for Malcolm X and Amistad.

Recognition and Legacy

Carter’s honors extend well beyond the Oscars. In 2021, she became only the second costume designer ever to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Costume Designers Guild recognized her with its Career Achievement Award in 2019, and she has been celebrated by institutions from the Coolidge Corner Theatre to museums that have exhibited her original designs as works of art in their own right.

Why She Matters

Ruth E. Carter’s influence runs deeper than any single film. For decades, costume design was treated as a supporting craft, rarely credited with shaping how audiences understand history, power, and culture. Carter proved otherwise. Her research-driven, culturally grounded approach elevated Black costume design to an art form recognized at the highest levels of the industry — and opened doors for a new generation of designers to tell Black stories with the same rigor and respect she brought to Wakanda, to Harlem, and to Malcolm X’s Harlem streets alike.

Today In Black History

• In 1848, Lester Walton was appointed minister to Liberia.

• In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln read the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet.

• In 1933, Caterina Jarboro became the first Black person to perform with an American opera company, singing “Aida” at the New York Hippodrome.

• In 1939, Jane Matilda Bolin was appointed judge of the court of domestic relations in New York City by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, becoming the first Black woman judge.

• In 1979, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to restore citizenship to Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

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Every Tuesday until the end of 2026, we will publish a post about each of the 27 Amendments to the Constitution. This post was originally published in July 2025.

Ironically, when the #ConvictedFelon Donald Trump was running for his second term, he promised his supporters that he would find and deport any immigrant who was also a convicted felon. Now, however, he and ICE are finding, arresting, and/or deporting any legal or undocumented immigrant they can find, over 80% of whom have no criminal offenses. Entering this country illegally is a misdemeanor, similar to a traffic ticket, rather than a felony or a serious criminal offense.

They are intentionally ignoring the rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution to all persons in the United States, not just citizens. ICE is also using “administrative warrants” instead of the “judicial warrants” required by the 4th Amendment to the Constitution.

Ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, the Fourth Amendment is intended to ensure that every individual has the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, thereby safeguarding citizens from unwarranted governmental intrusions.

The Fourth Amendment emerged because, under British rule, the use of “writs of assistance” allowed agents of the Crown to search colonists’ homes and businesses without specific warrants, fostering resentment and a demand for change.

The Fourth Amendment explicitly states:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The Fourth Amendment strikes a balance between an individual’s right to privacy and the state's duty to maintain order and security. It establishes the legal standards of "probable cause" and the necessity of judicial oversight through warrants, thereby ensuring that searches and seizures are not conducted on mere suspicion or whim.

The requirement that warrants be judicially sanctioned and specific ensures that any intrusion by the government is justified, limited in scope, and subject to review. This protects citizens from surveillance and intrusion absent a compelling and legitimate justification, thus safeguarding personal liberties.

ICE is just showing up where brown and Black immigrants may be, including just on the street and at their immigration hearings, and putting them in vans and taking them away. ICE almost never has a judicial warrant or “probable cause” besides what ICE decides is the reason for taking these people. They are also seizing and deporting people who have been here for decades, often since they were children.

Recent court cases have addressed issues such as the legality of police accessing phone data without a warrant and the monitoring of internet activity. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to ensure that the right to privacy and against unreasonable search and seizure remains protected.

It is important for us to understand the Constitution and each of its amendments so that we can protect ourselves against wrongful and possibly illegal government actions, such as those being perpetrated by Trump and ICE.

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