Outside a hall where Southern California Edison was celebrating Black History Month on Friday, a group of Altadena residents stood on the sidewalk, waving signs and talking of the homes and family members they lost in last year’s Eaton fire.
“They’re in there celebrating Black history and they’ve destroyed a Black town,” said Nicole Vasquez of My Tribe Rise, which helped organize the protest.
The Jan. 7, 2025 fire destroyed thousands of homes, including the majority of homes in west Altadena, a historically Black community. All but one of the 19 people who died were in west Altadena.
“If Edison’s tower did not ignite the fire, Altadena would still be there,” said Trevor Howard Kelley, who lost his 83-year-old mother, Erliene, in the fire.
Kelley, his daughter and two granddaughters had been living with his mother before her home was destroyed, he said.
The Black Altadena residents are part of a larger coalition that is asking Edison to advance each family who lost their home $200,000 in emergency housing assistance. They say that more than a year after the blaze many wildfire survivors are running out of the funds they had received from insurers.
The group protesting Friday also called for transparency from Edison. The company has said it believes it is likely its equipment caused the fire but has continued to deny it did anything wrong.
“We just want the truth,” said Felicia Ford, who lost her house in the fire. “What’s wrong with saying, ‘We got this wrong.’”
Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesperson, said Friday that the company continued to believe its voluntary compensation program was the best way to help victims of the fire. Edison has promised to quickly review each victim’s claim and pay it swiftly if approved.
Families who lost their homes can receive hundreds of thousands of dollars under the program, while those with damaged homes receive lesser amounts.
But many survivors say they don’t believe the offered amounts fully compensate their losses. And to receive the money, victims must agree not to sue — which many are not willing to do.
“We recognize the incredible struggles the community has faced,” Johnson said. “The intent of the program is to reach final settlements to allow the community to rebuild and move on.”
The investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released. Edison has said a leading theory is that its century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon, which had not carried electricity for 50 years, somehow became reenergized and sparked the fire.
Company executives said they did not remove the old line because they believed it would be used in the future.
Tru Williams said he just wants to get his parents back home.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
In December, state regulators ordered Edison to identify fire risks on its 355 miles of out-of service transmission lines located in areas of high fire risk and tell regulators how executives planned to use the lines in the future.
For more than a century, South Los Angeles has been an anchor for Black art, activism and commerce — from the 1920s when Central Avenue was the epicenter of the West Coast jazz scene to recent years as artists and entrepreneurs reinvigorate the area with new developments such as Destination Crenshaw.
Now, the region’s legacy is receiving formal recognition as a Black cultural district, a landmark move that aims to preserve South L.A.’s rich history and stimulate economic growth. State Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles), who led the effort, helped secure $5.5 million in state funding to support the project, and last December the state agency California Arts Council voted unanimously to approve the designation. The district, formally known as the Historic South Los Angeles Black Cultural District, is now one of 24 state-designated cultural districts, which also includes the newly added Black Arts Movement and Business District in Oakland.
Prior to this vote, there were no state designations that recognized the Black community — a realization that made Smallwood-Cuevas jump into action.
“It was very frustrating for me to learn that Black culture was not included,” said Smallwood-Cuevas, who represents South L.A. Other cultural districts include L.A.’s Little Tokyo and San Diego’s Barrio Logan Cultural District, which is rooted in Chicano history. Given all of the economic and cultural contributions that South L.A. has made over the years through events like the Leimert Park and Central Avenue jazz festivals and beloved businesses like Dulan’s on Crenshaw and the Lula Washington Dance Theatre, Smallwood-Cuevas believed the community deserved to be recognized. She worked on this project alongside LA Commons, a non-profit devoted to community-arts programs.
Beyond mere recognition, Smallwood-Cuevas said the designation serves as “an anti-displacement strategy,” especially as the demographics of South L.A. continue to change.
“Black people have experienced quite a level of erasure in South L.A.,” added Karen Mack, founder and executive director of LA Commons. “A lot of people can’t afford to live in areas that were once populated by us, so to really affirm our history, to affirm that we matter in the story of Los Angeles, I think is important.”
The Historic South L.A. Cultural District spans roughly 25 square miles, situated between Adams Boulevard to the north, Manchester Boulevard to the south, Central Avenue to the east and La Brea Avenue to the west.
Now that the designation has been approved, Smallwood-Cuevas and LA Commons have turned their attention to the monument — the physical landmark that will serve as the district’s entrance or focal point — trying to determine whether it should be a gateway, bridge, sculpture or something else. And then there’s the bigger question: Where should it be placed? After meeting with organizations like the Black Planners of Los Angeles and community leaders, they’ve narrowed their search down to eight potential locations including Exposition Park, Central Avenue and Leimert Park, which received the most votes in a recent public poll that closed earlier this month.
As organizers work to finalize the location for the cultural district’s monument by this summer, we’ve broken down the potential sites and have highlighted their historical relevance. (Please note: Although some of the sites are described as specific intersections, such as Jefferson and Crenshaw boulevards, organizers think of them more as general areas.)
WASHINGTON — President Bush marked Black History Month Saturday with a promise to deliver big funding increases to black colleges “even in a time of recession and war.”
Bush, who won less than 10% of the black vote in the 2000 election but has seen his popularity soar since the Sept. 11 attacks, used his weekly radio address to urge Americans to “reflect on the contributions of African Americans.”
Bush sought to assure black leaders he would not renege on a promise to increase funding for historically black colleges and Latino-serving institutions by 30% by 2005.
He also touted the education reforms enacted last month to help narrow the achievement gap between low-income students and their wealthier counterparts. “We have come far, and we have a way yet to go,” Bush said.
“Today we are fighting for freedom in a new way and on new battlefields. And we continue to press for equal opportunity for every American here at home. We want every American to be educated up to his or her full potential,” Bush said.
According to some polls, Bush’s support from blacks more than doubled after the Sept. 11 attacks. Eager to hold on to these gains, the White House has stepped up its outreach to black leaders.
But Bush has come under fire from Democrats, including prominent black lawmakers, for proposing deep cuts in job training and other domestic programs in his fiscal 2003 budget in order to fund more tax cuts and the biggest military buildup in two decades. The 2003 fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), in the Democrats’ weekly radio address, said Congress will “stand shoulder to shoulder” with Bush to fight terrorism, but he blasted Bush’s proposed budget for bringing back deficits.
“Part of national security is economic security,” Conrad said. “The problem with the president’s budget is that his plan will return us to deficit spending–not just today, but for years to come.”
Comparing Bush’s budget to collapsed energy giant Enron Corp., Conrad accused Bush of making “the Enron mistake: underestimating our debt and endangering retirement benefits.”
Many Democrats charge that the $1.35-trillion, 10-year tax cut Bush pushed through Congress last year was too costly, imperiling the Social Security retirement program and the Medicare health care program for the elderly as the baby boom generation nears retirement.
The Bush administration defended its proposed cutbacks as part of an effort to shift federal resources away from what the White House deemed wasteful programs.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a child of Southern segregation who rose to national prominence as a powerful voice for Black economic and racial equality, has died.
Jackson, who had battled the neurodegenerative condition progressive supranuclear palsy for more than a decade, died at home surrounded by family. His daughter, Santita Jackson, confirmed his death with the Associated Press. He was 84. Jackson was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017 before the PSP diagnosis was confirmed in April.
Handsome and dynamic, an orator with a flair for memorable rhyme, Jackson was the first Black candidate for president to attract a major following, declaring in 1984 that “our time has come” and drawing about 3.5 million votes in Democratic primaries — roughly 1 in 5 of those cast.
Four years later, using the slogan “Keep hope alive,” he ran again, winning 7 million votes, second only to the eventual nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. His hourlong speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention brought many delegates to tears and provided the gathering’s emotional high point.
Rev. Jesse Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, acknowledge the cheers of delegates and supporters before his emotional speech to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta on July 20, 1988.
(John Duricka / Associated Press)
“Every one of these funny labels they put on you, those of you who are watching this broadcast tonight in the projects, on the corners — I understand,” he said. “Call you outcast, low down, you can’t make it, you’re nothing, you’re from nobody, subclass, underclass; when you see Jesse Jackson, when my name goes in nomination, your name goes in nomination.”
For nearly a generation, from the 1970s into the 1990s, that ability to absorb the insults and rejection suffered by Black Americans and transmute them into a defiant rhetoric of success made Jackson the most prominent Black figure in the country. Both beneficiary and victim of white America’s longstanding insistence on having one media-anointed leader serve as the spokesman for tens of millions of Black citizens, he drew adulation and jeers but consistently held the spotlight.
Supporters greeted his speeches with chants of “Run, Jesse, run.” Opponents tracked every misstep, from audits of his grants in the 1970s to his use of the anti-Jewish slur “Hymietown” to refer to New York City during the 1984 campaign, to the disclosure, in 2001, that he had fathered a daughter in an extramarital affair.
As he dominated center stage, the thundering chorus of his speeches — “I am … somebody” — inspired his followers even as it sometimes sounded like a painful plea.
Jackson’s thirst for attention began in childhood. Born out of wedlock on Oct. 8, 1941, he often stood at the gate of his father’s home in Greenville, S.C., watching with envy as his half-brothers played, before returning to the home he shared with his mother, Helen Burns, and grandmother, Mathilda.
During high school, his father, Noah Robinson, a former professional boxer, would sometimes go to the football field to watch Jesse play. If he played well, Noah would sometimes tell others, “That’s one of mine.” For the most part, however, until Jesse was famous, he shunned his son, who was later adopted by the man his mother married, Charles Jackson.
It was his grandmother, known as Tibby, who encouraged Jackson’s ambition. A domestic in stringently segregated Greenville, Tibby brought home books and magazines, such as National Geographic, that her white employers’ children had discarded.
“Couldn’t read a word herself but she’d bring them back for me, you know, these cultural things used by the wealthy and refined,” Jackson once said. “All she knew was, their sons read those books. So I ought to read them too. She never stopped dreaming for me.”
Her dreams propelled Jackson toward college — as did a need to avenge the childhood taunts that echoed in his head. An honors student, he turned down a contract to pitch for the Chicago White Sox to accept a football scholarship to the University of Illinois.
At Christmas break, he came home with a list of books. A librarian at the McBee Avenue Colored Branch referred him to the white library downtown and called ahead to clear the way. When he entered the main library, two police officers stood at the loan desk. A librarian told him it would take at least six days to get the books from the shelves. When he offered to get them himself, the officers told him to leave.
“I just stared up at that ‘Greenville Public Library’ and tears came to my eyes,” Jackson told a biographer, Marshall Frady.
That summer, 1960, Jackson came home and led a sit-in at the library, his arrest a first taste of civil disobedience. In the fall, he transferred to North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. There he became the star quarterback and participated in the beginnings of the sit-ins that became a signature part of the civil rights movement led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“It wasn’t a matter of Gandhi or Dr. King then,” he said of the library sit-in, “it was just my own private pride and self-respect.”
With his height and his oratorical flourishes, Jackson was a charismatic figure who led protests in Greensboro. Once, during a demonstration outside a cafeteria, as police were about to arrest the demonstrators, Jackson suggested they kneel and recite the Lord’s Prayer.
“Police all took off their caps and bowed their heads,” he said. “Can’t arrest folks prayin’.”
Then he led the demonstrators in “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“They stopped, put their hands over their heart,” Jackson said. “Can’t arrest folks singing the national anthem.”
After half an hour, he recalled, “we got tired and let ’em arrest us.”
Elected student body president, Jackson graduated in 1963. A grant from the Rockefeller Fund for Theological Education brought him to the Chicago Theological Seminary, where he hoped to find a venue for social activism.
That summer, Jackson traveled to Washington, where he heard King deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Two years later, he and a group of college buddies piled into vans to drive south for King’s Selma-to-Montgomery march. He met King there, and early the next year, King asked Jackson to head his Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Operation Breadbasket in Chicago. The goal was to win economic gains for Black people with a combination of consumer boycotts and negotiated settlements.
At 24, Jackson was the youngest of King’s aides. Operating out of a hole-in-the-wall office at SCLC’s South Side headquarters, he began by organizing preachers, arranging for them to urge their congregations on Easter to boycott products made by a local dairy that employed no Black workers.
During the following week, Country Delight lost more than half a million dollars in revenue. Within days, the company offered a deal: 44 jobs for Black workers. Without waiting for a boycott, other dairy companies called with offers, too.
King soon asked Jackson to be the national director of Operation Breadbasket. Jackson hesitated — the job required him to leave the seminary six months short of graduation. Jackson recounted in his autobiography that King told him, “Come with me full time and you’ll learn more theology in six months than you would in six years at the seminary.” He earned his ordination several years later.
In 1968, Jesse Jackson stands to the left of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where King was assassinated the next day.
(Charles Kelly / Associated Press )
In April 1968, Jackson joined King in Memphis, where the civil rights leader had decided to stand with striking Black sanitation workers. Few of King’s staff supported the effort, worrying that the strike — and the planned Poor People’s Campaign in Washington — distracted from the main goal of attaining voting and political rights for Black Americans.
During a planning meeting, King blew up at his aides, including Jackson. “If you’re so interested in doing your own thing, that you can’t do what this organization is structured to do, if you want to carve out your own niche in society, go ahead,” King yelled at Jackson, according to the latter’s account. “But for God’s sake, don’t bother me!”
The next day, standing below the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where the team was staying in Memphis, King yelled down at Jackson in joviality, as if to mitigate the outburst, inviting him to dinner.
Within moments, shots rang out. Jackson later said he ran upstairs and caught King’s head as he lay dying. Andrew Young, a King aide who later became U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told Frady that he doubted Jackson had cradled King’s head, but that they all had rushed to the scene and all had gotten blood on their clothes.
But if all of them were touched by King’s blood, only Jackson wore his gore-stained olive turtleneck for days, sleeping and grieving in it, wearing it on NBC’s “Today Show” and before the Chicago City Council. In dramatizing the moment to his own benefit, Jackson provoked hostility from King’s widow and others in the movement’s leadership that lasted decades.
Richard Hatcher, the first Black mayor of Gary, Ind., and a Jackson supporter, recalled that once Jackson decided to run for president, the campaign thought it had the backing of the Black leadership.
“Big mistake. Big mistake,” Hatcher said. “Over the following months, every time things seemed to get going, here would come a statement from Atlanta, from Andy [Young] or Joe Lowery or Mrs. King, ‘We don’t think this is a good idea at all.’“
As Jackson’s media prominence grew — including a cover photo on Time magazine in 1970 — tensions erupted between Jackson and SCLC, in part because of the sloppy bookkeeping that became a Jackson characteristic. In late 1971, SCLC’s board suspended Jackson for “administrative impropriety” and “repeated violation of organization discipline.” Jackson resigned, saying, “I need air. I must have room to grow.”
Rev. Jesse Jackson raises a clenched fist from a police van after he and 11 others from Operation Breadbasket were arrested during a sit-in at the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., offices in New York City on Feb. 2, 1971. The organization, part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, has been protesting A&P’s alleged discrimination against blacks.
(MARTY LEDERHANDLER / Associated Press)
Calling a dozen Black celebrities to New York’s Commodore Hotel, Jackson formed his own organization. Originally called People United to Save Humanity — the presumptuous title was soon changed to People United to Serve Humanity — PUSH became his pulpit. Like Operation Breadbasket, its goal was to boost minority employment and ownership.
Jackson traveled the country preaching self-esteem and self-discipline. Thousands of youngsters took pledges to say no to drugs, turn off their television sets, study. They became the core of his voter registration drives, the inspiration for the “I am somebody” chant that would define his public ministry.
As with Operation Breadbasket, Jackson used PUSH to hold corporate America to account. In 1982, for example, he launched a boycott of Anheuser-Busch with the slogan “this Bud’s a dud.”
“We spend approximately $800 million with them [annually]. Yet, out of 950 wholesale distributorships, only one is Black-owned,” Jackson said.
Shortly thereafter, Anheuser-Busch contributed $10,000 to Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund, contributed more than $500,000 to the Rainbow PUSH coalition, and established a $10-million fund to help minorities buy distributorships.
In 1998, 16 years later, the River North beer distributorship in Chicago was purchased by two of Jackson’s sons, Yusef and Jonathan. (Jackson’s eldest son, Jesse Jackson Jr., won election to Congress from Chicago in 1995, but resigned and was convicted of fraud in 2013 for misuse of campaign funds. Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, also had two daughters, Jacqueline and Santita. A third daughter, Ashley Laverne Jackson, was the child of his relationship with a PUSH staff member, Karin Stanford.)
Critics called the PUSH campaigns elaborate shakedowns. Others, like Jeffrey Campbell, president of Burger King when Jackson opened negotiations in 1983, found the encounter with Jackson and his rhetoric of economic empowerment inspiring.
“Before they came in, my view was that we ought to fight them, that this guy Jackson was a monster, and I had the backing of my bosses to walk out if necessary,” Campbell told the Los Angeles Times in 1987. But Campbell said he quickly changed his mind.
“He got to me very quickly, without me realizing it, when he started talking about fairness. He would say: What is fair? Blacks give you 15% of your business — isn’t it fair that you give 15% of your business, your jobs, your purchases back to the Black community, the Black businesses?
“That little seed began to grow in the back of my mind,” Campbell said. “It was the right question to ask me.”
How Jackson handled money gave critics additional openings. Between 1972 and 1988, PUSH and its affiliates attracted more than $17 million in federal grants and private contributions. After many audits, the Justice Department sought $1.2 million in repayments, citing poor recordkeeping and a lack of documentation.
Jackson gave little thought to such issues. “I am a tree-shaker, not a jelly-maker,” he would often say.
Management held little interest for him. But politics was a different matter.
From the moment he began urging and registering Black Americans to vote, Jackson found his milieu. He used PUSH resources to staff get-out-the-vote drives that helped elect Hatcher in Gary, Kenneth Gibson in Newark, N.J., and Carl Stokes in Cleveland.
In those days, he also advocated participating in both parties, what he called “a balance of power.” In 1972, he claimed he had registered 40,000 Black voters to support Illinois’ white Republican senator, Charles Percy.
That same year, at the Democratic convention in Miami, Jackson unseated Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s 58-member Illinois delegation and replaced it with a “rainbow” of his own, even though he had never voted in a Democratic primary. Liberal Democrats who despised Daley as a corrupt big-city boss hailed Jackson as a hero.
In the decade to come, Jackson basked in celebrity and international travel, including a controversial meeting with Yasser Arafat. Jackson met the then-leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1979 when he traveled to Syria to free U.S. pilot Robert Goodman, who’d been shot down while on a bombing mission. By the time Jackson declared his 1984 presidential campaign, he had burnished his foreign policy credentials.
At the convention that year in San Francisco, he predicted that in an era of Reaganomics, a Rainbow Coalition of ethnic and religious identities could retake the White House.
“We must leave the racial battleground and come to economic common ground and moral higher ground,” he said in a memorable speech.
“America, our time has come. We come from disgrace to amazing grace. Our time has come,” he said. “Give me your tired, give me your poor, your huddled masses who yearn to breathe free and come November, there will be a change, because our time has come.” Delegates roared to their feet.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a candidate for the democratic nomination for President, works the crowd from onstage following a speech at the Cincinnati Convention center, Friday, April 13, 1984.
(Al Behrman / Associated Press)
But they did not nominate him. Nor did the convention of 1988. Addressing Black ministers in Los Angeles in 1995, the hurt still showed as Jackson railed at the injustice of beating Al Gore in the presidential primaries, only to watch as he was tapped by Bill Clinton to be his running mate in 1992.
“In 1988, I beat him in Iowa, a state 98% white; he said it was ’cause of liberals and farmers. So I beat him in New Hampshire; he said it was ’cause he was off campaigning in the South. So I beat him in the South on Super Tuesday; he said Dukakis had split his support. I beat him then in Illinois, in Michigan; he said he wasn’t really trying. I beat him then in New York; said he ran out of money. But now, here I am this afternoon, talking to y’all in this church in South Central L.A. — and he’s vice president of the United States.”
To many of his Democratic opponents, however, Jackson’s “rainbow coalition” symbolized not common ground, but the party’s devolution into a collection of identity caucuses whose narrow causes doomed them to defeat. In 1992, many of those critics gathered around Clinton as he formulated his “New Democrat” campaign. Clinton soon used Jackson as a foil.
The occasion came when Jackson invited rap singer and activist Sister Souljah to a political event featuring the Arkansas governor. In an interview, Souljah had wondered why after all the animus of white people toward Black people, it was unacceptable for Black people to kill whites. Clinton, instead of delivering the usual liberal-candidate-seeks-Black-votes hominy, lashed out at her words.
The moment bought Clinton a priceless image of willingness to speak truth to the party’s interest groups but came at the price of Jackson’s rage.
“I can maybe work with him, but I know now who he is, what he is. There’s nothin’ he won’t do,” Jackson said to Frady. “He’s immune to shame.”
By then, however, Jackson’s prominence had already begun to wane. Indeed, the role of race leader, itself, had started to disappear. The civil rights revolution in which Jackson had figured so prominently had allowed a new and more diverse generation of Black elected officials, corporate executives and public figures to flourish. Their success eroded his singular platform.
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., right, laughs after saying goodbye to Rev. Jesse Jackson, reflected left, after Obama addressed the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s annual conference breakfast in Rosemont, Ill. on June 4, 2007
(harles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press)
Jackson continued to travel, agitate, protest, but the spotlight had moved on. He dreamed that Jesse Jr. might one day win the office he had pursued. When, instead, another Black Democrat from Chicago, Barack Obama, headed toward the Democratic nomination in 2008, Jackson’s frustration spilled into public with a vulgar criticism of Obama caught on microphone.
In Obama’s White House, he suffered what for him might have been the severest penalty — being ignored.
Yet to those who had seen him in his prime, his image remained indelible.
“When they write the history of this campaign,” then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo said after the 1984 contest, “the longest chapter will be on Jackson. The man didn’t have two cents. He didn’t have one television or radio ad. And look what he did.”
Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and six children, Jesse Jr., Yusef, Jonathan, Jacqueline, Santita and Ashley.
the Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention Friday, June 30, 2006, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
WASHINGTON — Before a Mt. Rushmore-like painting of seven revered and deceased black heroes, a tuxedoed Bill Clinton stood in a darkened hall recently to describe himself to an audience of black Americans.
The 10-minute speech by the Democratic presidential nominee to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Dinner in Washington expressed a simple, direct and unspoken–though clearly understood–contrast to the last 12 years. Clinton did not have to spell out a course of action to win their support.
Rather, he swore to the 4,000 black diners that if they helped him fulfill his quest to win the presidency, he would provide “full participation, full partnership” in a Clinton White House.
“If I change my address, I will only be a tenant there,” he said. “You still own the place, and I want you to act like it.”
For Clinton, the moment was special only because it occurred in the harsh glare of a spotlighted public gathering. More typical of his efforts to court black support was the private, closed-door fundraiser held hours earlier and a few blocks away at a downtown Washington art museum. That reception, hosted by some 60 affluent black American business owners, produced $600,000 for the Arkansas governor.
“This was a historic event,” Rodney Slater, one of Clinton’s top black aides, said immediately after the fund-raiser. “This represents the fact that African-Americans want to be key players in the Clinton Administration. When they can raise that kind of money–that’s more than African-Americans have ever raised for anybody–you can bet the candidate will pay attention to them.”
Like all contemporary Democratic presidential candidates, Clinton is counting on overwhelming support from the nation’s black voters to propel him to victory. But to achieve that, he has taken a significantly different approach than the party’s previous nominees.
Clinton has avoided offering himself as a benefactor of black Americans through dramatic, highly publicized appeals to them or by proposing a host of social programs. Rather, the Arkansas governor has conducted an almost stealth-like campaign within black communities, quietly collecting chits from influential leaders and middle-class blacks while limiting efforts directed at poor, ghetto-dwelling African-Americans. And in targeting middle-class blacks, he has tried to blend their political and economic concerns into the same mix of issues aimed at attracting the highly coveted white suburban voting bloc.
He has done this in order to claim a larger share of the white vote–especially suburban white males, who polls have suggested viewed previous Democratic presidential candidates as too eager to genuflect to black demands. No Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 has won a majority of the white vote, a major reason the party has lost all but one presidential election since then.
With this strategy, Clinton sought to give his campaign an inclusive middle-class cast, effectively defusing race as an issue and avoiding the need to reassure white voters that he would not unduly bend toward poor and needy blacks.
Surprisingly, as Clinton has pursued this strategy, polls have shown he has garnered increasingly enthusiastic support from black voters. A recent survey of 850 blacks by the Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies showed more than 80% giving Clinton highly favorable marks on questions of knowledge, fairness and leadership.
In fact, if there has been any genius–or luck–to Clinton’s handling of black voters, it has stemmed from amplifying the hard-edged pragmatism with which many black political leaders and their constituents approached the 1992 campaign. Minimizing conflict within their ranks, they have kept their eyes fixed on the prize: returning a Democrat to the White House. And Clinton appears to have been the beneficiary of this growing political maturity among black voters.
“We’re smart,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), one of Clinton’s earliest and most important black backers, said recently. “We know where our best interest lies. Even if it means that we campaign a little bit differently and not in the ways that we have before, we are out to win, and we can win with Bill Clinton.”
Overall, blacks make up about 1-in-6 of Clinton’s voters, according to recent polls. In the final Times national pre-election poll, released last week, he was favored by 78% of black voters, with President Bush and independent candidate Ross Perot each backed by 9%.
Many of these voters are the legacy of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s unsuccessful 1984 and 1988 campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination, which excited political passions among blacks and swelled voter registration rolls within their communities.
Democratic nominees Walter F. Mondale in 1984 and Michael S. Dukakis in 1988 each publicly enlisted Jackson to their cause in hopes of gaining the allegiance of his followers. But while both Mondale and Dukakis harvested the vast majority of black votes cast in their respective races, neither was able to generate a huge turnout by African-Americans. That was especially apparent four years ago, when the failure of blacks to turn out in large numbers was seen as a major reason Dukakis lost close races to then-Vice President Bush in several states, including Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Missouri.
Clinton, during most of his campaign, took the alternative approach of keeping Jackson at arm’s length while beckoning an aspiring breed of black leaders to supplant him as a link to black voters.
Among the first black officials to join the Clinton cause early in the primary season–at a time when Jackson’s disdain for the Arkansas governor was undistinguished–were Reps. John Lewis of Georgia, Mike Espy of Mississippi and William J. Jefferson of Louisiana.
These three, like others, are not especially well-known nationally. But for the Clinton camp, what counts is that each commands strong and favorable name identification among blacks in their home states. And while in large measure these politicians offered their early support based on their association with Clinton as a fellow Southerner, it also reflected the new pragmatism among them.
Waters, a national co-chairwoman of the Clinton campaign, most vividly illustrates this phenomenon, given her past close ties to Jackson. Echoing countless other black elected officials, she makes clear that winning the White House is what matters to her this year, not the strategy the candidate employs to get there.
“I don’t question it at this point,” she said. “I want George Bush out of the White House so bad, I’ll buy (Clinton’s) strategy.”
Like Waters, Rep. Craig Washington (D-Texas) is unconcerned about Clinton’s primary focus on white, middle-class, suburban voters.
“He needs to go where he can get votes that I can’t get for him,” Washington said. “The fact that he doesn’t come into black churches every Sunday and that he doesn’t campaign in black communities (to avoid) turning off Joe Willie Six-Pack doesn’t bother me. He doesn’t want to send them back to help the Republicans.”
Linda Faye Williams, associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, said statements like those from black elected leaders–most of whom were faithful Jackson supporters in the past–reveals the “12 years of pent-up leadership hopes” among black leaders.
She also said that “many black elected officials chafed during the last two (presidential) elections over their own roles as leaders because Jesse was always the one out front. Clinton has answered their prayers by giving them room to maneuver.”
Ironically, in the campaign’s final hours, Clinton finds himself more dependent on black votes in some key states than many of his advisers anticipated. As many polls have shown the race tightening, the Arkansas governor’s fate appears increasingly tied to a heavy turnout among traditional Democratic constituencies, including blacks.
That’s especially true in two key regions. It appears Clinton needs a high black turnout in the Midwestern battleground states of Michigan and Ohio–where blacks cast 8% and 12%, respectively, of the votes four years ago–and in such hotly contested Southern states as Georgia and Louisiana, where blacks constituted about a fifth of the vote in 1988.
These political realities have helped lead to a rapprochement between Clinton’s campaign and Jackson. The campaign is hoping Jackson can help spur a big turnout among blacks for the Democratic ticket. And the civil rights leader, for his part, is quietly cooperating in hopes of gaining clout.
Meanwhile, some blacks have remained lukewarm toward Clinton, worrying that his campaign strategy will serve only to get him elected without demonstrating a real commitment to helping poor blacks. These leaders were distressed that the well-publicized bus tours that helped define the Clinton campaign immediately after the summer’s Democratic National Convention focused on small towns and rural America, where the crowds were made up mostly of white faces.
“We’re going to have to put a lot of pressure on Brother Clinton once he gets in the White House,” said Cornell West, director of Afro-American studies at Princeton University. “I hope he wins, but I recognize he’s not a true warrior for our cause.”
After a flurry of complaints that the campaign was avoiding black voters and ignoring their issues, Clinton’s staff squeezed in time for him to campaign a few weeks ago with a delegation of black congressional leaders as they barnstormed several Southern states in a get-out-the-vote effort sponsored by the Democratic National Committee.
Still, the bus trip failed to quell all of the concerns. Even some of those who joined in the journey dubbed it “The Back of the Bus Tour.”
Admittedly, I am a guy who generally dreads the thought of plodding through a shopping mall on any day of the year, but to me the encroachment of Black Friday into Thanksgiving evening seems not only insane but also disturbingly unpatriotic.
It was bad enough when it became the norm for people to show up in the middle of the night in order to be near the front of the line when store doors swung open early on the morn after Thanksgiving. Every time I heard about the herd of shoppers being culled as someone got trampled or sent to the hospital after a fight over a Tickle Me Elmo, I felt justified in my smugness and disdain of this retail frenzy. If that is how the rabble wanted to spend their time and money, so be it. The manic rush to save a hundred bucks on a 50-inch flat-screen TV or finish Christmas shopping by 9 a.m. on Black Friday could go on without me.
Over the years, though, retailers have pushed the starting time for this mad dash earlier and earlier until now it is bumping up against the slicing of the pumpkin pie at the Thanksgiving dinner table. This does not seem right.
I pity the poor retail workers who have to leave home and hearth and turkey dinner on the most venerable national holiday of the year. Instead of giving thanks for the opportunity to be confronted by a greedy horde of bargain hunters, I suspect most of those workers are cursing the store owners who decided to ruin the day with their own lust for a dollar. I think it is safe to assume the guys who own Target or Best Buy or the other big retailers will not be manning the cash registers. No, they will be sharing a leisurely Thanksgiving repast with their heirs in the peace and safety of their gated communities.
In 2013, it will be exactly 150 years since Abraham Lincoln set aside the fourth Thursday in November as a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” Obviously, traditions shift over time, but let us hope that by next year those who put making money and spending money above all other values will not have totally desecrated what was once an all-American day like no other.
For anyone who feels as disgusted as I am with the plundering of Thanksgiving, go to Change.org and sign the petition urging Target to stop being the Grinch who stole Thanksgiving from employees. Maybe if one retailer is shamed into doing business more thoughtfully, others can be, as well.
LOVE Island host Maya Jama uses all the experience under her belt to ensure that the show’s contestants stay happy.
The 31-year-old was pictured in a revealing black dress with a belt for Love Island All Stars Games Night episode.
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Maya Jama was pictured in a revealing black dress with a belt for Love Island All Stars Games Night episodeCredit: instagram/mayajamaThe telly fave shows off her curves in this black dressCredit: instagram/mayajama
Maya made a return to the villa for the Honesty game, where islanders were asked to answer brutal questions in front of all of the other couples.
With the Islanders in their couples, they had to decide between themselves which other couple fits the bill.
But eager eyed viewers noted that Maya seemed to secretly dislike Belle after spotting how she pulled up Belle.
Maya asked: “Which couple has the least sexual chemistry?”
Belle said it was Leanne and Scott due to him previously being in a love triangle with her.
This led to Belle shouting at Scott for saying that she was the one doing the chasing.
A stern Maya interrupted and said: “Belle, if it wasn’t 70-30 what was it?”
Belle replied that Scott was fully invested and that he had a good way of dancing around things to make things look right.
Fans took to social media and one wrote: “MAYA CALLING BELLE OUT FOR TALKING BS.”
Another said: “The fact Maya could’ve stayed where she was but went after Lucinda shows that even Maya knew Jessy, Belle and Samie were doing too much.”
A third added: “Maya having to step in to comfort Lucinda bc of the bullying. Belle, Jessy & Samie COUNT YOUR DAYS.”
Jama strikes a pose in her revealing black outfitCredit: instagram/mayajamaThe host wore the plunging black outfit for the Love Island All Stars Games Night episodeCredit: instagram/mayajama
A MYSTERIOUS black glove has been found near Nancy Guthrie’s home as investigations into her suspected kidnapping continues.
FBI agents discovered the potentially major clue during a wide-scale search around the home where TV star Savannah Guthrie‘s mom is believed to have been snatched.
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FBI agents have recovered a black glove from a roadside near Nancy Guthrie’s houseCredit: Andy Johnstone for New York PostFBI agents found a potentially a major clue in the search for the masked thugCredit: Andy Johnstone for New York PostNancy Guthrie has been missing since January 31Credit: Facebook/Savannah Guthrie
Detectives found the single glove along a roadside about one and a half miles away from Nancy’s home in Tucson.
Online sleuths were quick to point out the glove resembles the pair worn by a masked man caught on video approaching Nancy’s home before she vanished.
The FBI Evidence Response team pulled the glove from low, desert shrubbery.
Savannah‘s mother, Nancy, 84, was taken from her home sometime in the early morning hours of February 1 andhas been missing ever since.
He said the author demanded Bitcoin in exchange for the identity of the kidnapper.
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Speaking with Fox News on Wednesday morning, Levin said, “We got, kind of a bizarre letter, an email from somebody who says they know who the kidnapper is and that they have tried reaching Savannah’s sister Annie and Savannah’s brother, to no avail.
“And they said they want one Bitcoin sent to a Bitcoin address that we have confirmed is active.
“It’s a real Bitcoin address, and as they put it, time is more than relevant.
“So we have no idea whether this is real or not. But they are making a demand.”
Chilling surveillance captured a masked and armed intruder tampering with a camera outside Nancy’s home the night she was kidnapped.
The videos show the individual ripping plants from the property and using it to block the camera just hours before the 84-year-old mother was taken from her bed.
The individual was cloaked in a ski mask and dressed in a jacket and pants, along with black gloves and a backpack.
In the first video shared by authorities, the subject was seen walking slowly toward the front door, with a hunched-over back, covering the camera while appearing to look around.
The individual then stepped back, searched the ground, stepped off the front porch, and pulled a plant from the lawn.
In a second clip, the plant appears to be shoved in front of the camera, obscuring the view as the individual holds what appears to be a flashlight inside their mouth.
Detectives found a single glove along a roadside about one and a half miles from Nancy’s homeCredit: Andy Johnstone for New York PostSurveillance footage at the home of Nancy Guthrie the night she went missing in TucsonCredit: APAn investigator searches the area near Nancy Guthrie’s home in the Catalina FoothillsCredit: Reuters
Investigators have made it clear they haven’t identified a person of interest or suspect, and called the individual a subject.
In a statement shared along with the footage, the Pima County Sheriff’s and the FBI begged for tip and asked anyone with information to contact 1-800-CALL-FBI or visit http://tips.fbi.gov.
“We are at an hour of desperation,” she said in a video on Monday.
Timeline of Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance
Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, disappeared from her home on February 1, 2026.
Timeline:
January 31: Nancy is last seen by her family
5:32pm: Nancy travels to her daughter’s home for dinner, about 11 minutes from her own house.
9:48pm: Family members drop off Nancy Guthrie at her home in Tucson. Her garage door closes two minutes later.
February 1: Nancy is reported missing and a search begins
1:47am: Nancy’s doorbell camera disconnects
2:12am: Camera software detects a person moving in range of the camera. There is no video, and Nancy does not have a storage description.
2:28am: Nancy’s pacemaker app disconnects from her phone, which is later found still at her house.
Around 11am: A parishioner at Nancy’s church calls the mom’s children and says she failed to show up for service.
11:56am: Family members arrive at Nancy’s house to check on her.
12:03pm: The family calls 911 to report Nancy missing.
8:55pm: The Pima County Sheriff’s Office gives its first press conference and reveals some clues found at Nancy’s home caused “grave concern.” Sheriff Chris Nanos says helicopters, drones, and infrared cameras are all being utilized in the search.
February 2: Search crews pull back. Nancy’s home is considered a crime scene. Savannah releases a statement thanking supporters for their prayers, which her co-hosts read on Today.
February 3: A trail of blood is pictured outside Nancy’s home, where there were reportedly signs of forced entry. Nanos admits they have no suspects, no leads, and no videos that could lead to Nancy’s recovery. He and the FBI beg for more tips and accounts.
February 4, 8pm: Savannah and her siblings release a heartbreaking video directed at their mother’s abductors asking for proof she is alive and saying they’re willing to work with them to get her back.
February 5: FBI offers $50,000 reward for information on the case.
5pm: First ransom demand deadline for millions in Bitcoin passes. Guthrie family releases demand to speak “directly” to the kidnappers, saying, “We want to talk to you and we are waiting for contact.”
February 9, 5pm: Second ransom demand deadline, reportedly with “much more serious” conditions.
Savannah Guthrie posted several videos pleading for her mother’s safe returnCredit: Instagram/savannahguthrie
WASHINGTON — Ever since a racist video was posted on President Trump’s social media account, the White House has offered shifting responses.
First it dismissed “fake outrage” by those denouncing it as racist, then it deleted the post and blamed a staff member.
Trump later told reporters Friday that “I didn’t make a mistake.” The Republican president claimed that before the video was posted, he did not see the part that depicted former President Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
The chair of the Congressional Black Caucus was unsparing in her criticism when she spoke to the Associated Press.
“It’s very clear that there was an intent to harm people, to hurt people, with this video,” Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) said.
The AP interviewed Clarke, who leads the group of more than 60 Black House and Senate members, hours after the video was deleted Friday.
Here is an interview transcript, edited for length and clarity.
What was your reaction when you saw that the post?
We’re dealing with a bigoted and racist regime. … Every week we are, as the American people, put in a position where we have to respond to something very cruel or something extremely off-putting that this administration does. It’s a part of their MO at this point.
Do you buy the White House explanation that this was an aide’s mistake?
They don’t tell the truth. If there wasn’t a climate, a toxic and racist climate within the White House, we wouldn’t see this type of behavior regardless of who it’s coming from…. Here we are, in the year 2026, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, the 100th anniversary of the commemoration of Black history, and this is what comes out of the White House on a Friday morning. It’s beneath all of us.
Has there been any contact between the White House and the Congressional Black Caucus on this? Could there be any good-faith exchange?
There has been no outreach from the White House. We certainly didn’t expect there to be. The outreach has to happen prior to these type of juvenile antics.
Republican criticism built more quickly Friday than it has during previous Trump controversies. What do you make of that?
It’s not lost on them, our communities that we represent, that elections are coming up. So it’s not lost on my colleagues, either. If they want to align themselves with this type of really profane imagery, this type of bigoted and racist attack on a former sitting president and his wife, they are throwing their lot in with an individual who has shown himself to be a disgrace.
It’s not common for President Trump to retract anything. What does that indicate to you that he did?
I think it’s more of a political expediency than it is any moral compass. … As my mother would say, “Too late. Mercy’s gone.”
What more do you hope to see from the White House about this?
My hope is that we can contain the harm that they’re doing. There are Black children who are listening to their president … seeing what he’s posting on Truth Social, [and] it will have an impact on how they view leadership of their own country. … I think that this administration has an opportunity to change course. They always do. We leave room for that. But, unfortunately, Donald Trump is hardwired this way.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
As a democracy, we have to stand up together against this type of racism, this type of bigotry, this kind of hatred that is coming from the president of the United States and those who surround him. … It’s very clear that there was an intent to harm people, to hurt people, with this video. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have stayed up for 12 hours.
Barrow and Zhang write for the Associated Press and reported from Atlanta and Washington, respectively.
Operations came to a sudden standstill on Thursday at 6pm CET, with the airport saying on its website: “Due to weather conditions, no take-offs or landings are currently possible.”
The airport remains closed today as adverse weather conditions continue to disrupt transport across north Germany.
Berlin Brandenburg Airport said in a statement: “We currently have freezing rain and black ice and cannot yet predict when takeoffs and landings will be possible.
Lufthansa also scrapped a number of flights in and out of the city.
German weather service DWD warned of “significant slipperiness” caused by icy conditions spanning Berlin to the Baltic Coast and Polish border.
Forecasters were uncertain about when travel disruptions might ease, with the cold snap anticipated to continue across northwest Europe into next week.
Germany’s national railway operator Deutsche Bahn said train service between Berlin and Hanover have also been affected by the icy weather.
SYDNEY Sweeney has debuted a sexy lingerie look, leaving fans’ jaws on the floor as she posed in a black thong and matching bra.
The stay recently announced her new brand, Syrn, which she’s been feverishly promoting with paparazzi-style shots, and daring ads.
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Sydney Sweeney debuted her sexiest look yet for her brand SyrnCredit: Instagram / SYRNThe star posted in a tiny black thong and matching braCredit: Not known, clear with picture desk
Sydney, 28, posed for the camera in a lacy black bra, a tiny thong, thigh-high tights, suspenders, and a matching silk robe.
She shielded her face from the flash in the snaps, posted to the Syrn Instagram Story.
The promotional pic comes days after the release of a racy ad, showing the Euphoria actress doing some work around the yard in itty bitty lingerie.
SHOWSTOPPER
In the ad, she’s seen in a tiny house getting ready to start her day.
Birds outside her window are chirping, carrying bras and underwear on a wire.
She then heads out to do yard work, tending to a ruse bush, trimming imperfections off a shrub shaped after her body, and mowing the lawn.
After a long day of work, the bra and panty-clad star strips down to slip into something more comfortable.
Her silhouette is seen in the window as she slips off her bra and tosses it out.
Sydney’s impressive figure is on full display in the ad, which promotes the latest release from her brand.
She previously shared that Syrn will offer designs split into four “personas” – seductress, romantic, playful and comfy.
The range will come in 44 sizes from 30B to 42DDD.
She said at the time: “The secret is finally out . . . this is lingerie you wear for YOU, no explanation, no apology.
“I wanted to create a place where women can move between all the different versions of who we are.
“I love working on cars, I go water skiing, I’ll dress up for the red carpet then go home to snuggle my dogs.
“I’m not one thing, no woman is.”
Sydney has been pulling out all the stops to promote her brand, SyrnCredit: SYRN By Sydney SweeneyShe continues to share sexy looks, and appear in racy adsCredit: Refer to sourceSydney recently posed for an ad that showed her doing yard work in her underwearCredit: @syrn / instagram
You may have read recently how minions of the Trump administration removed an exhibit about slavery from the President’s House in Philadelphia (where George Washington lived, with slaves) as part of its ongoing sop to MAGA sensitivities and campaign to erase history in favor of a fairy tale in which the worst thing Washington ever did was chop down a cherry tree.
The study of history is by nature messy, replete with conflicting interpretations and incomplete puzzles, but it’s what you need to know in order not to repeat it. PBS, lately defunded by conservatives but not disassembled, is among the institutions working to bring it to the people — indeed, the only television outlet seriously devoted to it. (History Channel is just a name.) Premiering Tuesday and continuing weekly is the four-part series “Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History,” presented by Henry Louis Gates Jr., at the start of what happens to be Black History Month.
Gates, who also hosts the PBS genealogy series “Finding Your Roots,” has presented such documentaries as “Africa’s Great Civilizations” and “Great Migrations: A People on the Move,” has made cameo appearances in HBO’s “Watchmen” series and “The Simpsons.” He teaches at Harvard and is a well-known public figure — a history communicator, scholar and storyteller and a minor TV star the world also knows as “Skip.” Even-tempered and even-handed, he’s a good guide through the minefields of racial history — he keeps you from blowing up. You might find yourself angry at the material, but not with Gates.
“Under the floorboards of Western culture run two streams, continuously,” he says. “One is antisemitism, one is anti-Black racism,” whose purpose here is to explore “the areas of overlap.” They aren’t the only victims of bigotry in American history and modern America; Italians and Irish immigrants had their turn, too. White supremacy, which is very much alive in the land — turn on the news — disdains every people of color. But as people who shared the experience of being “mocked and feared, blamed and banished, envied and imitated,” often allied, sometimes antagonists, theirs is a special case.
Gates has assembled a stimulating, illuminating, maddening, saddening, but often inspiring, story of their relations with the world and one another. (Here and there he reaches a little outside his theme.) At 75, he’s lived through a good slice of the history illuminated here, including “our brief golden age” of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and though he structures his series as a pendulum swinging between worse and better news, he scrupulously bookends it in a hopeful mood, with a Seder to start and a discussion with students to end. His insistence that no one is safe until everyone is safe, can seem to portend a future in which no one will ever be safe, though as a teacher I assume he’s more sanguine. His manner, at least, is encouraging.
The Seder, which begins with a singing of “Go Down Moses (Let My People Go),” gathers a tableful of Black, white and biracial Jews — each distinguished enough to have their own Wikipedia pages — in a roundtable discussion. Participants include New Yorker editor David Remnick, author Jamaica Kincaid, journalist Esther Fein, rabbi Shais Rishon, Angela Buchdahl (the first East Asian American to be ordained as a rabbi); and culinary historian Michael Twitty, who provides the doubly meal — kosher salt collard greens, West African brisket and potato kugel with sweet and white potatoes and Creole spice.
Though both Jews and Black people faced (and face) discrimination, their American journeys were launched, says Gates, “on different trajectories,” one group chased from nominally Christian countries, the subject of durable medieval superstitions, the other dragged from their homes. Though the mass of Jewish migration, escaping Russian pogroms and Nazi Germany in succeeding waves, occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some arrived before the revolution; but the Constitution, which enshrined religious freedom, granted them legal rights. (This presumably did not help the Jews of African descent Gates says were present here early on.) Black people, kidnapped and enslaved, had none, and as freedom was gained, new laws were written to hold them in place.
Gates posits a sympathy between immigrant and first- and second-generation Jewish Americans in the 20th century and disadvantaged Black people, based on a common experience of oppression; Jewish newspapers used the word “pogrom” to describe violence against Black people in the South. And Jews, many raised with a sense of social justice, were disproportionately represented among white activists in the Civil Rights Movement. This would change: Where Martin Luther King declared “I’m more convinced than ever before that our destiny is tied up with the destiny of our Jewish brothers and vice versa, and we must work together,” later Black activists, like Stokely Carmichael preferred to go it alone, promoting self-determination and even separation.
Still, many of the stories here are based on Black and Jewish friendships. We learn of W. E. B. Du Bois and Joel Spingarn, who sat together on the board of the NAACP and to whom Du Bois dedicated his 1940 autobiography “Dusk of Dawn.” Of Tuskegee Institute founder Booker T. Washington and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, a president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., who built schools — more than 5,000 nationally, eventually — for systemically disadvantaged Black students. (Graduates included Maya Angelou and John Lewis.) Of Chicago rabbi Abraham Heschel, bringing 15 other white rabbis down to Selma, Ala., in 1964 at the request of King, where their arrest made headlines — which translated to political pressure.
In music, we meet Louis Armstrong, who as a boy worked and stayed with a Jewish family, and wore a Star of David, and his manager Joe Glaser. We’re told the story of Billie Holiday‘s lynching ballad “Strange Fruit,” written by Abel Meeropol (under his pseudonym Lewis Allan), recorded by Milt Gabler for his Commodore label and performed regularly by Holiday at Barney Josephson’s Cafe Society, New York’s first truly integrated nightclub. And we hear Paul Robeson, daring to sing in Yiddish in a concert in Moscow, in support of Itzik Feffer, a Jewish poet imprisoned (and later murdered) by the Soviets.
As a social and political history covering two intersecting storylines for more than the length of the nation, it’s packed with incident and facts — the Klan resurgent after World War I (six million members, it says here); the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where Jesse Owens triumphed and the U.S. committee pulled two Jewish sprinters from competition; racist Nazi policies, borrowed from American Jim Crow, and the Holocaust. Also the domestic destabilizing effects of wars in the Middle East. Jews and Black people will find themselves on the opposite sides of some questions.
Even at four hours, it’s a survey course, streamlined but not simplistic, and as such it will fly through some points and elide others; there are whole volumes dedicated elsewhere to what constitutes a single sentence here, and libraries dedicated to some of these figures. (Why not read some?) The view is not singular, and as such, there’ll be something for everyone to question, especially as Jews and Black people are often described as a community, when neither is heterogeneous. (Jews don’t even agree on what makes a Jew.)
But whatever goes back and forth between then, the world has its own ideas. “People who hate Jews,” says Gates, “uncannily hate Black people too. Because when the stuff hits the fan, they’re coming after both of us.”
There are plenty of ways to celebrate Black History Month here in Los Angeles, whether you’re looking to honor jazz innovators like Miles Davis or recognize those who are making history now, including a Black woman-founded grocery store that provides organic vegan produce to South L.A. neighborhoods.
This year marks the centennial celebration of Black history across the United States — though that time frame spans only a fragment of how long African Americans have been contributing to this country.
In 1926, historian Carter G. Woodson and the Assn. for the Study of Negro Life and History spearheaded the first celebration of Negro History Week during the second week of February, overlapping with Frederick Douglass’ birthday on Feb. 14 — to encourage the study of African American history. President Gerald Ford officially designated February as Black History Month in 1976, during the U.S. Bicentennial.
