Author: Reggie Jackson

“We don’t want to be protected after the fact. We want to be protected and treated like we matter without it taking a white supremacist shooting up our community.Time and time again they’ve shown nobody cares about us here. It’s a pattern.” – Marlene Brown, 58-year-old Buffalo resident “People are going to try to excuse it as this person not being from Buffalo,  they’ll say things like ‘This is not who we are.’ I just want to be clear that this is exactly who Buffalo is. It doesn’t matter that we have a Black mayor. This is still a...

Near the end of the Milwaukee Bucks playoff game against the Boston Celtics three people were shot near the Deer District on Friday night on North Dr. Martin Luther King Drive and West Highland Avenue. Two of the victims were transported to the hospital by the Milwaukee fire department and another victim drove herself to the hospital. A second shooting occurred when a 20-year-old man was shot on Water and Highland. Less than one hour later, gunshots rang out on Water and Juneau. Police report that seventeen people were shot in this third incident. The police took a 19-year-old...

“Racism is not easy to talk about in racially mixed company. It is often considered downright impolite to bring it up. Too many demons of guilt, resentment, and vulnerability are tied up in it. Unfortunately, it usually takes a racial eruption…to get Americans to acknowledge their racial differences in public and talk about them, at least for a while, before clamping the lid of denial back down.” – Clarence Page (1996) Just when people across the country were ready to claim America was willing to honestly “reckon” with racism, reality stepped in and said, “hold on a minute.” To...

“In total, for the nine-month period represented (July 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022), the Index lists 1,586 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,145 unique book titles. This encompasses different types of bans, including removals of books from school libraries, prohibitions in classrooms, or both, as well as books banned from circulation during investigations resulting from challenges from parents, educators, administrators, board members, or responses to laws passed by legislatures…The Index lists bans on 1,145 titles by 874 different authors, 198 illustrators, and 9 translators, impacting the literary, scholarly, and creative work of 1,081 people altogether. The...

I must acknowledge that the term “White Comfort bills” is not mine. I recently had the pleasure of meeting a brilliant scholar who made a point that resonated with me. As I have tried to say many times, the so-called “anti-CRT” bills really have nothing to do with critical race theory. She calls them “White Comfort bills.” I’m going to borrow her term because it perfectly articulates the essence of these new laws. If you read the text of the bills that are spreading exponentially across the country, one line you find in most of them is a line...

Nearly seventeen years ago my mentor Dr. James Cameron returned from a trip to the Senate chambers when they issued an apology for never passing an anti-lynching bill. As a lynching survivor and creator of America’s Black Holocaust Museum, he was center stage as the Senate did something to “make up” for never passing a federal law to make lynching a federal crime. That same year, 2005, I made the second of what would become three trips to Marion, Indiana, the site of the lynching Cameron survived on August 7, 1930. I visited the jail he was removed from...