The Violence Against Women Act, first passed in 1994, makes possible local advocates’ ability to prevent and respond to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking.
The Arctic has invaded the lower 48: The arrival of its cold air means that half of America is walking around dressed like the Inuit man on the tails of Alaska Airlines’ planes.
On Monday, PBS’s documentary series Frontline aired Women in Blue, a documentary about the Minneapolis Police Department. In May 2020, actions by a male policeman from this department led to the death of George Floyd, triggering peaceful Black Lives Matter protests nationwide, including in Mississippi.
In spring 2020, respected documentarian Pamela Mason Wagner was in the field in Richmond, Virginia, working on a new piece for the Smithsonian Channel’s series, America’s Hidden Stories. Wagner already had produced a program for the series that aired in January 2021, called Madam President, about First Lady Edith Wilson, who took over the White House behind the scenes after President Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke.
Last week, I mentioned French journalist Paul Guilhard’s last dispatch before he was killed at Ole Miss in the fall 1962 riots over James Meredith’s admission to the university.
While covering the 1962 riots at the University of Mississippi over James Meredith’s enrollment, Philippe Guihard, a warm, friendly French journalist, became the only reporter killed during the civil rights era.
On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Stacey Riley is CEO of the Gulf Coast Center for NonViolence Inc. The nonprofit center is the largest program for victims of domestic violence in Mississippi: It runs a shelter in Biloxi, which houses up to 44, and another in Pascagoula with 16 beds.
On Dec. 1, 1955, a 43-year old bespectacled, decorous-looking, married seamstress wearing a neat suit was arrested on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa Parks had violated racial segregation laws, which then governed all aspects of daily life in the Deep South, by refusing to give up her seat to a White man and move to the back of the bus with other Black riders.
In the U.S., reparations have had a rocky, uneven history. After World War II, in which American Indians served in great numbers and in key roles, Congress approved financial compensation of about $1.3 billion for 178 tribes. But much of it ended up in government-controlled trusts.
Mississippi writer Kiese Laymon, born and reared in Jackson, has written in his memoir, Heavy,about his dislike of attending rural Concord Missionary Baptist Church on Sundays with his grandmama:
The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, led by members like Carrie Nation, Mississippi’s first female state senator, ushered in prohibition in the state before the nation because heads of families were spending their pay on liquor and returning home drunk to beat their wives and children.
By sentencing – and resentencing – juveniles to life without parole, Mississippi is growing increasingly out of step with other states and the larger global community in sanctioning a punishment most have rejected.
Asian Americans -- from South, Southeast and East Asia -- and Pacific Islanders make up the fastest growing minority in the U.S. That means that as voters, they could make critical differences in swing states on Election Day.
The phrase “Black Lives Matter” was coined by a woman activist in Oakland, California, in 2003. The Black Lives Matter movement was founded by three women activists. Even so, according to the NCADV, more than 45 percent of Black women have suffered domestic violence, and more than 51 percent of Black female homicides are committed by intimate partners. So, one conference participant noted, since intimate partners usually are of the same race, “Black men are a significant danger to Black women.”
