u/Letsdefineprogress

Part 1: The Murder of Medgar Evers

In 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated outside his Mississippi home by white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith.

The evidence pointed to Beckwith, yet in 1964 two all-white, all-male juries refused to convict him. He walked free while Medgar Evers’ family waited for justice.

For the next 30 years, Beckwith openly bragged about murdering Evers and remained active in white supremacist circles.

The case only changed when an investigative reporter uncovered evidence that Mississippi had used taxpayer money to help fund Beckwith’s defense and that the original juries had been tainted by the illegal screening and exclusion of Black jurors.

Armed with new evidence, prosecutors reopened the case.
In 1994, 31 years after Medgar Evers was murdered, a jury finally convicted Byron De La Beckwith of murder.
This wasn’t simply the failure of one jury.

It was a failure of the courts, a failure of the legal system, and a failure of a state that helped protect a confessed white supremacist while denying justice to a murdered civil rights leader.

Justice Denied is a series documenting moments in American history when the courts, the legal system, or the ballot box failed Black Americans.

History isn’t only about what happened. It’s also about what our institutions allowed, and continues to allow to happen.

#JusticeDenied #FreeBlackMen #BlackHistory #CivilRights #MedgarEvers #KnowYourHistory #AmericanHistory #EqualJustice

Rutherford B. Hayes became president by exactly one vote. To get it, he agreed to give something away, the last protection millions of Black Americans had left.

In 1876, Samuel Tilden won about 250,000 more votes than Hayes. But four states each sent in two different vote counts. Nobody knew which ones were true. Both sides screamed fraud. For months, the country had no confirmed president. Some feared another civil war.

Congress formed an emergency panel to settle it. Every close call went Hayes's way. Final score: Hayes 185, Tilden 184. One vote decided who ran the country.

Even that almost fell apart. Democrats in the House tried to stall the count past Inauguration Day. What stopped them wasn't a law, it was a secret deal cut in a Washington hotel room. Hayes's team quietly promised Southern Democrats: if the stalling stopped, the soldiers still protecting Black voting rights in the South would go home.

One of those soldiers stood outside South Carolina's statehouse, protecting Governor Daniel Chamberlain. Down the street, a rival government waited for the soldiers to leave. On April 10, 1877, Hayes gave the order. Chamberlain had nothing left standing between him and the rival government. He gave up the next day and left the state for good, telling South Carolina's Black voters, more than half the state's people, that the president they'd helped elect had just abandoned them.

He wasn't wrong. Within months, every Southern government like his fell the same way. Black officials were pushed out. Voting rights freed Americans had held for barely ten years vanished, and stayed gone for almost ninety years.

Hayes never explained this trade in public. The stalling ended. The country got a peaceful handover of power. But was that peace worth what Chamberlain and the voters behind him lost?

So: if stopping a crisis meant handing a region back to the men just voted out, was that a president keeping the peace, or closing a deal?

Here's a question for both sides:
Since 1992 Republicans have controlled the Supreme Court the entire time, the House 70% of the time, the Senate 60% of the time, and the Presidency 40% of the time.

For Republicans, when does the time come that you start accepting the fact that your party is responsible for the problems we are facing? You've been in control for 30 years. Time to face facts.

To the progressives, explain to me why anyone should support the Democratic party anymore? All they do is lose.

🚨James Gosnell Jr. — the Charleston County magistrate who in 2015 told grieving Emanuel AME families that white supremacist shooter Dylann Roof’s relatives were “victims too” — has pleaded guilty to two federal charges: possession and distribution of child s*xual abuse material (CSAM).

Gosnell faces up to 20 years on each count, a mandatory minimum of 5 years, restitution, and lifetime sex offender registration.

Federal prosecutors say the CSAM recovered from Gosnell’s devices specifically included infants and toddlers.

In their motion opposing bond, they laid out Telegram communications between Gosnell and a co-defendant (who has already pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate) describing a planned trip to jointly abuse a infant, plus alleged references to past international trips connected to abusing young children abroad.

Gosnell spent months in jail claiming his devices were hacked (of course) and the CSAM was placed there. That story collapsed the moment a plea was on the table.

No matter how horrific the crimes, they always portray themselves of the victim.

Gosnell is the same judge reprimanded by the SC Supreme Court in 2003 for using a racial slur from the bench with a Black defendant.

A man who spent decades deciding who deserved the benefit of the doubt was, by prosecutors’ account, s*xually exploiting children this the whole time.

Sentencing date is to be determined.

Gosnell was originally appointed to the bench by Republican SC Governor David Beasley in 1996.

The top House Democrats on the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees said they will oppose efforts led by Rep. Thomas Massie to cut the $3.3 billion in U.S. aid to Israel expected under the memorandum of understanding if and when they come to a vote on the House floor.

Reps. Greg Meeks and Adam Smith, the ranking Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees, both told Jewish Insider they intend to oppose the amendment.

Meeks said there are “so many unanswered questions” about the implications and effects of the amendment.

“I know there is still danger [in Israel]. I don’t want Israel to be without what they need,” Meeks said. He also noted that many of the weapons that would be purchased with the funding would not be built for years to come.