Racial Justice
On July 25, the day that would have been Emmett Till’s 82nd birthday, President Joe Biden hosted a White House signing ceremony for a proclamation establishing the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Mississippi and Illinois.
Gun Violence
When 10-year-old Maite Rodriguez was murdered by an assault rifle in her fourth-grade classroom alongside two teachers and 18 classmates, her parents had to identify her body by those favorite sneakers.
Gus Newport, who passed away in June, was a warrior for social justice, equality, and peace who spent his life pushing local, national, and international communities to get closer to “best.”
Christine King Farris, who passed away on June 29 at age 95, embodied a legacy of servant-leadership as an educator and activist. She taught generations of students at Spelman College and helped establish the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Change in Atlanta, where she served as a founding board member, vice-chair, and treasurer.
The Fourth of July holiday is meant to bring Americans together to celebrate the promise of our Declaration of Independence. This year we are reminded again of the work that still needs to be done to make our nation live up to its ideals.
On June 12, 1967, Supreme Court justices ruled 9-0 that Virginia’s law banning interracial marriage and all others like it were unconstitutional and that the freedom to marry was “a basic civil right.”
Our nation is about to celebrate its third commemoration of Juneteenth as a federal holiday, marking the jubilant day in June 1865 when many enslaved people in Texas finally learned they were free from federal troops arriving in Galveston after the end of the Civil War. The news came more than two and a half years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, freeing all slaves in the Confederate states.
The day after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who had announced his decision to run for President, gave a speech at the Cleveland City Club. He said that it was not a time for politics, but a time of “shame and sorrow,” and he spoke on the “mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives”.
Gun Violence
The Wear Orange movement began in honor of Hadiya Pendleton, an honors student and drum majorette who was shot and killed on a Chicago playground in January 2013 just days after she had performed in President Obama’s second inaugural parade.
It’s hard to be what you can’t see, and just as children of color need to be able to see themselves in the books they read, all children need to be exposed to a wide range of books that reflect the true diversity of our nation and world as they really are.