I wish them a superbly ass-kicking season.

FB carlos.gaines.676834

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From Virgil Hawkins Florida Chapter National Bar Association's website:

In April 1949, Virgil D. Hawkins, a former faculty member of Bethune-Cookman College, applied for admission to the University of Florida’s law school. He was academically eligible and possessed appropriate life experience qualifications. However, the long road to achieving his goal of becoming a lawyer would force him to persevere for nine more years and overcome Florida’s Jim Crow laws that racially segregated its state universities. His journey would eventually open the doors of Florida’s public universities to African Americans, although not to him.

In May of 1949, the University of Florida, through the Florida Board of Control (later Board of Regents), denied his admission (as well as five other African-American graduate school applicants) based solely upon race. Mr. Hawkins sought relief through the Florida Supreme Court. The Court acknowledged that he possessed “all the scholastic, moral and other qualifications except as to race and color” for admission (State ex rel. Hawkins, 47 So. 2d 608, 609 (Fla. 1950)).

He did not prevail due to the Court’s finding that under the Equal Protection Clause, Florida could pay for his legal education in a different state or Florida would build a law school for black students [at Florida A&M University]. Both findings defied U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the 1938 Gaines case (Missouri) and the 1950 Sweatt case (Texas), decided prior to Florida’s 1950 decision.

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court ordered the public schools desegregated “with all deliberate speed” by 1956 in Brown v. Board of Education and in a companion decision ordered the University of Florida to admit Virgil Hawkins However, Virgil Hawkins was still not admitted to the University of Florida. Petitioning for his admission to the University of Florida College of Law, Mr. Hawkins eventually went before the Florida Supreme Court three times and the United States Supreme Court twice. After the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Florida to immediately enroll him in 1957, the Florida Supreme Court concluded that federal law could be superseded by state law in some instances (the now-discredited “interposition” doctrine). Florida Supreme Court Oral Argument Press Summaries (see public information summaries, oral argument 5-99).

In 1958, Hawkins sought to enforce his U.S. Supreme Court decision in Florida’s federal District Court. In 1949, Florida had minimal requirements for law school applicants.  It did not require that applicants take the LSAT or even have a BA degree.  To oppose Hawkins in 1958, Florida retroactively imposed a minimum LSAT score, beyond what Hawkins had attained.  Despite the illegal defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court, Florida also claimed Hawkins was morally unqualified to attend UF.  Sandbagged by these defenses, Hawkins’ counsel informed him they could not prevail and would not continue to seek his admission to UF. When Judge DeVane informed the litigants that he would sign a desegregation order if Hawkins was not awarded relief, Hawkins consented to the inevitable.  Consistent with all of the prior unlawful court decisions, DeVane granted relief to the class of UF applicants Hawkins represented but denied relief to Hawkins, the named plaintiff.  In her memoirs, Constance Baker Motley explained: “There was a serious legal difficulty with Judge DeVane’s order, which we and the state consciously overlooked.”  On September 15, 1958, George Starke was admitted to the College of Law, UF’s first African-American law student. Mr. Hawkins’ efforts to desegregate UF law school led the way for the desegregation of the entire State University System in Florida. In 1962, W. George Allen became the first African-American to graduate from the University of Florida College of Law.

Mr. Hawkins eventually received his J.D. 27 years after first applying to the University of Florida. Upon graduation, he stated his goal was to offer legal assistance to “people, just barely making a living, who don’t qualify for legal aid, but still can’t afford to hire an attorney.” In 1976, he appeared before the Florida Board of Bar Examiners. His application to take the Florida Bar Examination had been denied because the Massachusetts law school from which he had graduated was not accredited by the American Bar Association, a formerly segregated organization. Returning to Florida, he worked behind the scenes with the civil rights legal work of Joseph Hatchett and Leander Shaw. After a successful appeal, at the age of 69, Mr. Hawkins took his oath of office and became a member of The Florida Bar by special waiver.

[The link to the rest of his biography is here: https://virgilhawkinsnba.com/virgil-hawkins/]

Gabri Johnson woke up unusually early on the morning of July 15. Beyond that, she had no reason to suspect that just before 9 a.m., she would receive a phone call from her mother that would upend the family’s life. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had just arrived at their Cary, North Carolina, home and taken her 55-year-old father, Gabriel Johnson, into custody.

“Don’t panic,” she recalled her mother saying in a gentle voice when she picked up. “ICE just came to the house and took your pa.”

A refugee from Liberia with a history of minor strokes dating back to 2020, Gabriel has legally lived in the United States since he was 15 years old. While he has maintained legal status, he never became a U.S. citizen. His family says they were initially told his detention stemmed from a potential misunderstanding around a missed immigration appointment before later learning officials were pursuing his removal under a broader change in federal immigration policy.

Sixteen days later, the family’s worst fears became reality. After first being held at an ICE holding facility in Cary before spending roughly two weeks at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, where relatives say he repeatedly told them he was being denied consistent access to food, water, and his stroke medication, Gabriel was transferred to Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. According to his family, he suffered a stroke there on July 30 that has left the left side of his body paralyzed.

[The rest of the article was published on The Grio.]

https://thegrio.com/2026/07/31/nc-family-speaks-out-says-their-father-gabriel-johnson-suffered-stroke-in-ice-custody-weve-been-trying-to-do-it-the-right-way/

Gabri Johnson woke up unusually early on the morning of July 15. Beyond that, she had no reason to suspect that just before 9 a.m., she would receive a phone call from her mother that would upend the family’s life. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had just arrived at their Cary, North Carolina, home and taken her 55-year-old father, Gabriel Johnson, into custody.

“Don’t panic,” she recalled her mother saying in a gentle voice when she picked up. “ICE just came to the house and took your pa.”

A refugee from Liberia with a history of minor strokes dating back to 2020, Gabriel has legally lived in the United States since he was 15 years old. While he has maintained legal status, he never became a U.S. citizen. His family says they were initially told his detention stemmed from a potential misunderstanding around a missed immigration appointment before later learning officials were pursuing his removal under a broader change in federal immigration policy.

Sixteen days later, the family’s worst fears became reality. After first being held at an ICE holding facility in Cary before spending roughly two weeks at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, where relatives say he repeatedly told them he was being denied consistent access to food, water, and his stroke medication, Gabriel was transferred to Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. According to his family, he suffered a stroke there on July 30 that has left the left side of his body paralyzed.

[The rest of the article was published on The Grio.]

H/T u/Hi_iAMchrisHansen

I look at the exit polls every 2 years after the federal elections. Mississippi never fails.

Mississippi's barbaric reputation remains unmatched in the 21st century.

About the Jeremy Jerome Jackson case:

https://www.mississippifreepress.org/jpd-offers-20000-reward-in-severed-head-case-autopsy-results-released/

https://www.wapt.com/article/police-man-found-dead-in-jackson/10005044

About the Rasheem Carter case:

https://www.mississippifreepress.org/they-told-him-no-rasheem-carters-family-questions-police-details-of-death-in-smith-county/

https://capitalbnews.org/rasheem-carter-mississippi/

A sobering fact: More than 90% of the white voters of Mississippi have consistently voted Republican in this century--the highest percentage of all 50 states.

IG iamtucks

u/LadronCustoms is clearly talented and has a sense of humor. He will be a millionaire sooner or later.

Bonus points for the bald spot of the man in white pants.

https://louzeolivier.simdif.com/

u/_forum_mod made this post last night:

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmen/comments/1vkzd82/how_do_you_typically_vote/

Needless to say, spam comments were expected. And they did start popping up.

Many of us who were around this sub 2 years ago would remember the bots/agents who came to troII this sub to oblivion circa late summer with 3 months or so left before the November elections. And things kept getting worse after Biden dropped out.

I hope y'all mods will deliberate on this sincere question: Shouldn't there be some better guardrails this time?

And my question 2 years ago is perhaps still germane: Why should we let these fake black men hijack this sub (and give the general public the false perception that actual black men made those comments)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Lewis

Lewis was only 19 years old when he entered the first Kentucky Derby. The race was held at what was then the Louisville Jockey Club on May 17, 1875, but is now known as Churchill Downs. Ten thousand spectators watched this first race. Lewis rode a horse named Aristides, which was one of two colts entered by their owner, H. Price McGrath of Jessamine, Kentucky. The other horse, Chesapeake, was ridden by William Henry. Although the same owner entered both horses, Chesapeake was favored to win the $2,850 purse, and Lewis was told that his job was to lead most of the race to tire out the other horses. Out of the fifteen jockeys in the field, at this first Kentucky Derby, thirteen of them were African American. Aristides' trainer, Ansel Williamson, was also an African American.

Oliver Lewis followed his instructions and was pushing most of the field while trailing a horse named Volcano for most of the race. However, in the late stretch, Chesapeake was unexpectedly far back in the pack while Aristides and Volcano were running neck and neck for first place. Lewis and Aristides pulled away near the finish line and won the race by two lengths. With that victory, Lewis became the first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby, America's longest continuous sporting event. Later that season, Lewis came in second in the Belmont Stakes in New York and won three more races at the Louisville Jockey Club, riding Aristides in all of them. He would never ride in the Kentucky Derby again, however, and would retire after that racing season for unknown reasons.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-primary-elections/michigan-us-house-district-13-results

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/07/jobs-report-july-2026.html

U.S. economy unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July

Published Fri, Aug 7 20268:31 AM EDTUpdated 25 Min Ago

The U.S. economy saw an unexpected declined in jobs during July while the unemployment rate edged lower, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday in a snapshot that showed a slowing employment picture.

Nonfarm payrolls fell by a seasonally adjusted 23,000 for the month, compared to a downwardly revised 20,000 for June. The Dow Jones consensus forecast had been looking for a gain of 83,000.

https://nul.org/news/black-america-already-recession

Black America Is Already In A Recession

By Candece Monteil , National Urban League
Published 01 AM EDT, Fri Aug 7, 2026

“Policy rollbacks that have removed protections and investments designed to support Black communities … is the regression, combined with economic indicators, particularly unemployment, that would qualify as recessionary if they were applied to the national economy.” — Monica Mitchell, Chief of Staff, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies

The revelation that the U.S. economy shed 92,000 jobs in February and now faces its highest unemployment rate in years has rattled economists, many of whom warn that the country may be on the brink of a recession.

For Black America, the recession has already arrived.

Even worse, the Black recession isn’t driven natural market cycles alone. It is the predictable outcome of the deliberate policy choices of the Trump administration —choices that have aggressively dismantled the very protections meant to advance equity and stabilize communities historically shut out of opportunity. Not only did the administration take a sledgehammer to federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on Day One, it has spent the last year slashing agencies that have long served as engines of mobility for Black workers, including the federal civil service. More than 327,000 federal jobs have been eliminated, not through attrition or organizational modernization, but through deliberate cuts that have eroded pathways to the middle class built through generations of civil‑rights gains.

At the same time, the administration has abandoned federal support for disadvantaged businesses. Critical institutions—among them the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Fund and the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA)—have been targeted for defunding or dismantling altogether. These programs have been lifelines, offering capital and technical assistance to Black entrepreneurs who face entrenched discrimination from traditional lenders. Removing them does not create a level playing field; it cements an unequal one.

The consequences are measurable and immediate. After reaching an all-time low during the Biden administration, the Black unemployment rate surged to 8.3% by November 2025 — the highest level since the pandemic — and remains more than twice the rate for white Americans. The Black homeownership rate fell to 43.9% in the first half of 2025, wiping out years of fragile progress and deepening a racial wealth gap that already stood among the most persistent in the country.

Even before the latest dismal jobs report, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies had already declared 2025 “a regression and recession” for Black Americans. In its State of the Dream 2026 report, the authors wrote, “Instead of aggressive leadership in dismantling structures of racial inequality, we are witnessing regressive leadership that is slashing government employment and agencies designed to address predatory economic practices that disproportionately harm Black communities.” The report further notes that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act entrenched permanent tax cuts for high‑income households and corporations while reducing investment in poverty‑alleviating programs and leaving support for working families stagnant or shrinking.

Policy experts often refer to Black Americans as the “canary in the coal mine” — the first to feel the impact of economic stress. If that analogy holds, the warning is clear: a broader national recession is not far behind. But acknowledging that Black America is already in recession is not merely a prediction about the future; it is a call to confront what is unfolding in the present. The question now is whether policymakers will heed that warning — or continue to ignore the communities already bearing the brunt of the nation’s economic retreat.

https://mississippitoday.org/2026/08/06/coroner-ids-woman-hanging-from-tree-behind-jackson-home/

https://prospect.org/2026/08/04/michigans-democratic-primary-could-hinge-on-black-voters/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/abdul-el-sayed-wins-michigans-democratic-senate-primary-notching-midwe-rcna589750