The Greene County Democrat

Category: history

  • Public Notices

    The City of Boligee is applying to the Alabama Department of Transportation for a federal capital funding award under Section 5310 of the Federal Transit Act. This funding is for capital assistance to help meet the transportation needs of seniors and individuals with disabilities in Greene County, Alabama. A public hearing will be held on June 12th at noon in the cafeteria at the  Boligee Town Center at 17404 Co Rd 20, Boligee, Alabama for public comments.

    Contact Information: Mayor Hattie Samuels, City of Boligee, 205 336 8531, boligeemayor@yahoo.com

  • Searching for Social Justice – a warning 

    Searching for Social Justice – a warning 

    Dr. Monty J. Thornburg, Sunfield Humanities Research

    A letter to Educational Colleagues:  

    Monday, June 1, 2026, was a State Holiday in Alabama. The June 1st Holiday each year honors Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy, whose government stood for the enslavement of African American people.  

    In 2014, I flew from California to Alabama to honor Dr. Robert Brown, Alabama’s and the South’s first Black public-school superintendent. The Alabama Black Belt Hall of  Fame had inducted Brown at the University of West Alabama (UWA).  

    UWA established the Alabama Black Belt Hall of Fame in 2003. It honored individuals who made significant contributions to the Black Belt Region. Its purpose was to promote awareness of the area’s cultural heritage and to support UWA’s commitment to regional development.  

    Two of the first three inductees were African Americans: George Washington Carver, a famous scientist at Tuskegee University. Across the South, in towns and cities, Carver’s name is seen on one of the once-segregated Black High Schools. Carver High  School in Eutaw, Greene County, Alabama, was prominent during the Voting Rights  Movement that began in Selma, Alabama, with “Bloody Sunday” on March 7, 1965.  

    Willie King was also honored as one of the first inductees at UWA. By 2014, when Dr.  Robert Brown was selected as an inductee and honored, the politics in the United  States had shifted, with President Obama serving in his final years in office. By 2016, the year that Harper Lee, noted author of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” was inducted into the UWA Black Belt Hall of Fame, as Donald Trump and his MAGA agenda took office, the award seemed to be almost disappearing. None of the plaques intended for display in the University’s Museum ever appeared. Willie King’s Blues Music became part of the  Black Belt’s Folk Arts and Culture events held annually in Eutaw, Alabama, at the Old  Courthouse, celebrating its 50th Anniversary in August 2026. The two-day events feature West Alabama Blues on Saturday and Black Gospel on Sunday, established by leaders from the Miles College of Birmingham, extension program.  

    When UWA selected Dr. Robert Brown for the Black Belt Hall of Fame, I was uninformed about the racial politics of the region between Greene County and  Sumpter County, as the region transformed from the Old South “Jim Crow” segregation to a “New South” version that is unique in the Western Black Belt of Alabama. Dr. 

    Brown was UWA’s first Black professor and the first professional person to ever work at UWA. He joined the faculty in 1967, the year UWA’s first Black student also entered.  

    Dr. Brown’s remarkable career in military service, civil rights service, and as the  South’s first county and district public school superintendent in 1970, second in the nation, I was proud to have the opportunity to fly from California to Livingston,  Alabama, to give his induction speech.  

    Before arriving in Livingston, I had learned that although Brown’s significant accomplishments in the military and civil rights, and his service as a UWA committee member, were recognized, his tenure as UWA’s FIRST Professional Black Educator was SILENCED.  

    Why was his UWA tenure SILENCED? This question has been a centerpiece of my research since. The answer, I’ve learned, tells a story that extends beyond the UWA,  Sumpter, and Greene County, and beyond Alabama. The reasons for his being silenced extend to our national story amid disheartening social and political division. It’s a division that extends across the United States. 

    Featured image: Dr. Robert Brown’s UWA Black Belt Hall of Fame Induction (Dr. Monty Thornburg)

  • Newswire: In the Wake of Black Exhaustion, the South is Still Fighting for Black Political Power

    Newswire: In the Wake of Black Exhaustion, the South is Still Fighting for Black Political Power

    by Waikinya J.S. Clanton, The Root

    I am tired. I want to say that plainly — not as an admission of defeat, but as an act of radical honesty that Black organizers in the Deep South rarely allow themselves in public.

    I am tired, and I am tired of being tired. (Shout out to Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer.) Tired of fighting for the same thing: respect for my humanity.

    When Nina Simone wrote “Mississippi Goddamn,” she did not do so as a song of surrender. She wrote it as a bellow born from exhaustion and love — the kind that only comes when you don’t have clean water but still find yourself at the door of the courthouse demanding justice. That’s where we are right now. That’s where we have always been.

    And then the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

    In a 6-3 ruling, six people decided the fate of millions — striking down Louisiana’s congressional map and stripping the state of its second majority-Black district. Justice Kagan, in dissent, said plainly what the rest of us were already thinking: this ruling renders Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act “all but a dead letter.”

    Let me translate that for the people in Canton, Mississippi, where I’m from. Section 2 was our last legal line of protection against Jim Crow laws designed to silence our voices, specifically the provision that said you cannot draw maps designed to drown out Black votes. After the Court gutted preclearance in Shelby County v. Holderin 2013, Section 2 was one of the last remaining legal tools. Now the Court has dulled that blade to near uselessness.

    This is not abstract. This is not a legal footnote. This is about who sits at the table when they decide what your children’s schools look like, what your water pipes are made of, and whether your neighborhood gets a hospital or a highway. In Mississippi — where Black people make up nearly 38 percent of the population — fair maps aren’t a nicety. They are the difference between representation and erasure.

    When this decision came down, my plane had just touched the tarmac in Boston, and my phone erupted. Partners. Community members. Elected officials. Faith leaders. All are asking the same thing: What do we do now?

    What we do is what Black Mississippians have always done. We fight.

    That’s why THOUSANDS came together this week to Rally for Our Rights. These are our rights; we demand representation, and we will be heard.

    History will NOT repeat itself. We won’t let it.

    Now, I hear you. Black exhaustion is real. It is the compound weight of watching systems that were designed to harm us, functioning exactly as they were designed to. It is registering voters and knocking on doors, only to have six justices in Washington move the goalpost one more time. I carry that exhaustion, too.

    But I am a sixth-generation Mississippian. I carry the legacy of fighting for freedom. My great-great-great-grandfather, John “Booth” Boose, was a soldier in the 52nd Colored Infantry of the Union Army. The same battalion that first fought and won against the Confederacy.

    He didn’t just survive for freedom — he fought for it. That is the legacy I now hold and has become my obligation.

    The battle for Black political power in the South is not a regional story. It is the American story. The maps drawn here shape who controls Congress, who controls policy, and who controls the narrative about what this country is willing to be.

    To all those from across the state who converged in Jackson this week, this is only the beginning. There will be many more moments when we will need you to show up and show out again. In the meantime, check your voter registration and VOTE. Lines can only erase our power if we allow them to.

    If you are outside of Mississippi, understand what is at stake. Tell your elected officials that gutting Section 2 cannot stand without a Congressional response. Do not let the South be sacrificed for the comfort of inaction.

    We are exhausted — but we are not giving up, and neither should you.

    We are not done yet. In fact, we’re just getting started.

    Waikinya J.S. Clanton is the Mississippi State Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center

    Featured image credentials: No Kings Protest advocate

  • Newswire: Court Rejects Alabama House Map, Calling It Unfair to Black Voters

    Newswire: Court Rejects Alabama House Map, Calling It Unfair to Black Voters

    by Emily Cochrane and Abbie VanSickle, The New York Times

    A panel of federal judges on Tuesday rejected Alabama’s effort to use a new voting map for the November midterm elections, saying that the districts discriminated against Black people and could not be used so shortly before a vote.

    Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, said he would immediately appeal to the Supreme Court, which last month ruled that a Louisiana congressional map drawn to create two majority-Black House districts was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has already set special primaries in August in four House districts that would be affected by her state’s new congressional map.

    The ruling further confuses the electoral landscape across the South, as Republican-led legislatures have raced to implement new district lines after the Supreme Court narrowed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It also demonstrates how the ruling from the nation’s highest court has further muddled how lower courts interpret the landmark civil rights law.

    If the case makes it to the Supreme Court, it will be the first major test of the high court’s new standard for challenging congressional maps. The lower court judges made clear that they had reviewed the arguments through the lens of the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling last month but maintained that the state’s map failed under the new standard by intentionally discriminating against Black voters.

    “We cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination,” the panel of three judges wrote in a lengthy ruling. It also warned against causing voters additional confusion by trying to use a new map before the November elections. 

    The court, the panel wrote, was “painfully aware of the gravity of our ruling.” But, it added, “we do not find the issue particularly complex or close.”

    The decision out of the Birmingham-based federal court was issued by Judge Stanley Marcus, who was nominated to the bench by former President Bill Clinton; and by Judges Anna M. Manasco and Terry F. Moorer, both named to their posts by President Trump. (Judge Marcus typically sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta.)

    Mr. Marshall, the attorney general, said he was “disappointed, but not at all surprised” by the ruling.

    “Know this,” he added, “in my mind, it is not a matter of whether we win this case, only when.”

    In the 79-page ruling, the judges said they faced a difficult choice. They could either greenlight a map they had already concluded was intentionally discriminatory, or they could block that map for the current election. 

    The judges wrote that they did “not lightly intrude in state affairs,” but that their previous review had left them “in no doubt” that Alabama’s map “intentionally discriminated based on race in violation of the Constitution.”

    The panel explained that it had reviewed the case under the Supreme Court’s updated standard, which appears to allow partisan gerrymandering but sets a high standard to challenge maps for race discrimination.

    The judges wrote that the “enormous record” around the drawing of the districts “contains no evidence of a partisan motive.” Their ruling, they wrote, marked a rejection “in the strongest possible terms” of Alabama’s “attempt to finish its intentional decision to dilute minority votes with a veneer of legislative regularity.”

    The decision also wrestles with two issues that have arisen in other states scrambling to redraw their maps in the middle of the primary season: the burden on election officials and the potential for significant voter confusion.

    In tackling these two arguments, the court cited what is known as the Purcell principle, a doctrine that federal courts should generally avoid changing rules too close to an election to avoid voter confusion. When Alabama changed its maps recently, the court argued, voter confusion spiked.

    Citing testimony from the Alabama director of elections, Jeff Elrod, the court said “it will take a chaotic, decentralized, and herculean effort for officials in his office and fourteen counties to reassign voters” to new districts. 

    While the decision was carefully tailored to apply only to specific questions about the redistricting procedures in Alabama, the whiplash in the state could ripple outward. State senators in South Carolina on Tuesday plan to continue to debate a new congressional map that could eliminate the last majority-Black district in the state, even as early voting begins. 

    Alabama has been tangled in litigation over its congressional map for years and had been barred from redistricting until after the 2030 census. Black voters have argued that the state has unfairly undercut their power at the ballot box. More than one in four residents of Alabama are Black.

    But in June 2023, the court stunned many legal watchers by siding with the argument that Alabama had violated the Voting Rights Act and needed to draw a second district with a majority of Black voters or come “close to it.”

    Shortly after, lawmakers returned to Montgomery, the state capital, and drew a new map. But wary of pitting incumbent Republicans against one another, the legislature approved a map that increased the percentage of Black voters in one district to about 40 percent, from about 30 percent.

    This panel of federal judges struck down that map and ordered an independent special master to draw district lines. The master’s map was used in 2024, paving the way for the election of Representative Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat. And it was this map that the federal court said should remain in place for the November elections. 

    “This is a significant step in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go before this fight is settled,” said Mr. Figures in a statement on Tuesday morning.

    Representative Barry Moore, a Senate candidate who currently represents one of the districts that could change under the new map, decried “another example of unelected bureaucrats trying to override the will of Alabama voters and punish our state for standing its ground.” 

    After last month’s Supreme Court decision rejecting Louisiana’s congressional map, Republicans in Southern states saw an opportunity to redraw districts that had core blocs of Black voters who repeatedly elected Democrats, adding to an ongoing gerrymandering battle launched by President Trump and his allies in Texas.

    In Alabama, state officials instead pushed to use the 2023 map, a move the Supreme Court cleared the path for earlier this month. However, it still left the decision up to the federal panel of judges, the same one that rejected the congressional map.

    Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.

    Featured image credentials: Wes Frazer for The New York Times

  • Newswire: Ancestry Travel for Black Travelers on the Rise

    Newswire: Ancestry Travel for Black Travelers on the Rise

    from BlackPressUSA, by New York Carib News

    Ancestry travel is emerging as one of the most meaningful travel trends of 2026, and for Black travelers, it carries a significance that extends far beyond leisure. More than simply visiting a new destination, these journeys offer an opportunity to reconnect with family history, cultural identity, and ancestral roots.

    According to Condé Nast Traveler, ancestry travel is among the leading travel trends for 2026, reflecting a growing desire among travelers to seek deeper, more personal experiences. Rather than focusing solely on luxury accommodations or sightseeing, many are choosing trips that help them understand where they come from and how their personal stories fit into a broader historical narrative.

    For Black travelers, this form of travel often carries added emotional and historical weight. The legacies of slavery, forced migration, colonialism, and incomplete historical records have left many families with limited information about their origins. As a result, travel becomes more than a vacation, it becomes a journey of discovery and reconnection.

    Often, these trips begin with a DNA test, a family story, or a clue uncovered through genealogical research. But once travelers arrive at a destination tied to their ancestry, the experience frequently becomes transformative. It offers an opportunity to stand in places connected to their lineage and to engage directly with cultures and communities that help bring family history to life.

    The growth of ancestry travel has been fueled in part by the increasing accessibility of genealogical tools. Platforms such as Ancestry allow users to trace family origins, identify DNA communities, and receive suggestions for “Ancestral Journeys” based on genetic connections.

    For people of African descent, specialized organizations such as African Ancestry provide even greater specificity, helping individuals trace maternal or paternal lineages to present-day African countries and ethnic groups. This level of detail can transform a general desire to visit Africa into a purposeful journey centered on specific regions and communities.

    Featured image credentials: Black Press USA stock photo of African savannah excursion

  • Newswire: They Can’t Win On Policy, So They’re Rigging The Rules

    Newswire: They Can’t Win On Policy, So They’re Rigging The Rules

    by Ashley Marshall, Co-Founder and Brittany Cheatham, Director of Communications with Forward Justice

    As America approaches its 250th birthday, we can look around us and see all the ways our democracy and society have been enriched by becoming more inclusive. Yet, recent regressions in law and policy are attempting to cement us to a reality where only wealthy, white men have a voice, a vote, or access to political power. Attacks are not happening in isolation; they are coordinated attempts to silence the people and destroy the bedrock of our democracy to keep its promises from being truly realized.

     

    Last week, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Lousiaina v. Callais, a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines that struck down Louisiana’s congressional map that added a second majority-Black district, and in doing so, gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Then, on May 6, the Supreme Court shot down a request to delay the order. We cannot be more clear: this was not a ruling about one state’s map. It marks a fundamental shift in the constitutional understanding of equality, voting rights, and officials’ power to wage “lawfare” against their constituents. We see this ongoing erosion of voting rights by all branches of government, and instead of upholding the constitution and ensuring checks and balances, this court continues to eviscerate precedent and progress, demonstrating their allegiance to party over people. 

     

    For over four decades, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act operated on a clear principle: when electoral systems produce racially discriminatory results, they violate federal law, even when proof of discriminatory intent is absent. Congress amended the VRA in 1982 to make this clear because they knew that lawmakers who want to suppress Black votes rarely announce it. 

     

    Thirteen years ago, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court stripped the federal government of the ability to block discriminatory voting changes before they could take effect, and promised that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act would remain a safeguard. That safeguard is now effectively gone. Since the Shelby decision, for over a decade, the North Carolina General Assembly has waged a death by a thousand cuts campaign against voting rights in the state- always under the cover of administrative process, election integrity, or partisan fairness. A federal court found that North Carolina’s redistricting plan was one of the largest racial gerrymanders ever encountered, and their voter suppression legislation was found to target Black Americans “with almost surgical precision,” in our lawsuit, NAACP v. McCroy.  

     

    In NC NAACP v. Hirsch, our photo voter ID lawsuit in North Carolina, voters were told that the Voter ID Exception Form would be a safeguard for those without IDs. Now that a court has issued a ruling in the case, officials are working to eliminate that exception form. We continue to see this same ploy: Remove protections under the guise of “race-neutrality,” point to insufficient remedies as solutions, and then strip away those remedies. What remains in the wake of this scheme are entire communities- taxpayers, parents, essential workers- who are shut out of their democracy and silenced, although they continue to be the core of their communities. 

     

    Ignoring the impact of race is a continuation of decades of racist disenfranchisement and centuries of white supremacy and policy violence, aimed at the very people whose forced labor built — and continues to build — this country. We cannot be “race neutral” in a country that was founded on racist ideology and expect true progress, equity, and repair. There must first be acknowledgment, but what we continue to experience is erasure, disregard, and persistent devastating harm.

     

    Without federal oversight and protections, instead of changing their deeply unpopular policies, officials are methodically changing their electorate. They are attempting to handpick their voters so they can remain in power while silencing those who disagree with them, and our courts continue to uphold this assault at every level. Instead of dogs, water hoses, poll taxes, and batons, the tools of suppression today are gerrymandering, voter ID requirements, and legislation like the SAVE Act. The targets have always been the same: Black and brown voters, poor people, women, students- the very people whose organizing has driven the most transformative change this country has ever known.

     

    We know the South drives policy and change throughout this nation, and we have been here before. Some of the most transformative policies in this country have come from the organizing done right here in the South. An Analysis by Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter found that the Callais ruling could eventually lead to a redistricting wave that could help Republicans flip as many as 19 majority-minority seats currently held by Democrats. This ruling has cleared a path for this dangerous practice to spread across the South and beyond, but we will continue the legacy of Southern organizing that has always moved this nation forward.

     

    We launched the POV NC tour to connect with, educate, and empower voters across this state in the face of exactly this kind of assault. We heard from people in counties across North Carolina who all want the same thing: to be heard, and to have officials who enact policies that are just, equitable, and for the people. These are not unreasonable expectations; they are the foundational promise of democracy. We are still fighting unfair maps right here in North Carolina. We are still fighting photo voter ID. We filed an appeal the same day this ruling came down, and we are not stopping. 

     

    Fear of the people and fear of being accountable to the people are driving this wave of “lawfare” and policy violence. Many elected officials know they cannot win based solely on their policies and results, so they are changing the rules. They are more focused on power and gamesmanship than the needs of the people, and they know we can see through the facade. Their fear is its own acknowledgment of our power and progress.

     

    Our democracy is on life support because of relentless attacks from the very people who are supposed to uphold and steward it. But we know that it has always been the power and work of the people to heal, rebuild, and reimagine when those in power fail us. This fight is not over. Full, equitable access to our democracy is our right. We will continue building power and resources in our communities. We will continue to mobilize and demand accountability. We will rise from the ashes of the democracy they are trying so desperately to burn down, and we will build anew- and that new democracy will be rooted in humanity, equity, and most of all, love.

  • Supreme Court lets Alabama speed adoption of congressional map eliminating a majority-Black district

    Supreme Court lets Alabama speed adoption of congressional map eliminating a majority-Black district

    by Lawrence Hurley, NBC News

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday removed an obstacle to Alabama’s using a new congressional map in this year’s election that would eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black districts.

    The court, over the objection of its liberal members, sent litigation over the Republican-drawn map back to the lower court, which could speed up the state’s effort to use its map.

    The state has been battling civil rights plaintiffs over its congressional map for years, with a focus on whether a second majority-Black district was required to comply with the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

    The latest flurry of court filings came in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling on April 29 in a case from Louisiana that undermined a key provision of the law, making it much easier for states to draw districts that dilute minority voting rights.

    The court fast-tracked the Alabama case a week after a similar decision in the Louisiana dispute. Both decisions are a boon to Republicans, who are locked in a redistricting war with Democrats triggered by President Donald Trump, with control of the House at stake.

    In a dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the court action was “inappropriate and will cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week.”

    The Alabama litigation includes a claim that the state’s favored map intentionally discriminates against Black voters, a finding that may not be affected by the Louisiana ruling, Sotomayor added.

    Alabama’s appeal of the lower court ruling that invalidated its map was on hold at the Supreme Court while it decided the Louisiana case. As soon as the ruling was issued, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the justices to act quickly on its appeal so the state can move forward with using its preferred map.

    The Legislature has already passed legislation, signed into law by Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, that would push back the state’s primary elections, which were originally due to take place May 19.

    The Alabama litigation dates to the map the state drew immediately after the 2020 census, which included one majority-Black district. The state, which has a population that is more than a quarter Black, has seven congressional districts.

    Civil rights plaintiffs successfully challenged that map, winning a surprising ruling at the Supreme Court in June 2023.

    The state then sought to try again, drawing a new map — the one the state currently wants to use — that still included one majority-Black district, but the Supreme Court rejected that effort, too, in September 2023. 

    That led to a court-drawn map with two majority-Black districts’ being used in the 2024 election. Democrats won both races.

  • Why the internet is still obsessed with Octavia E. Butler, years after her death

    Why the internet is still obsessed with Octavia E. Butler, years after her death

    by Samantha Brown, NBC News

    For pioneering science fiction novelist Octavia E. Butler, writing was more than a profession. It was a form of survival, resistance and reflection. In “Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler,” author and college professor Susana M. Morris shares the quiet yet radical story of Butler’s life, revealing how the worlds she imagined were shaped by the one that often shut her out.

    Going from a shy Black girl, born in 1947 and raised under Jim Crow, to a literary icon, Butler’s path to success was not linear. She was told not to dream but to get a “real” job. 

    As she juggled temp jobs, financial anxiety and a society that resisted making room for her, Butler wrote genre-defining literature that has been adapted for TV and film in recent years, and has continued to go viral nearly two decades after her death in 2006 at 58.

    “Positive Obsession,” named for a 1989 essay by Butler, pulls from journals, interviews and personal letters in Butler’s public archives to illuminate the forces that shaped her, revealing an ambitious and meticulous writer.

    For most of her career, Butler woke up before dawn to write for hours ahead of what she once called “lots of horrible little jobs.” As she toiled in factories and warehouses, washing dishes, inspecting potato chips and making telemarketing calls, Butler conjured characters from her everyday encounters.

    Book cover titled 'Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler' by Susana M. Morris, featuring a portrait of a woman with glasses and earrings against an orange background.
    Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler.

    Morris told NBC that in sharing Butler’s story now, 19 years after her death, she hopes to inspire artists who don’t think they can afford to create to find the time.

    “In this economic system that we’re currently in, we are so crunched down trying to buy eggs or pay the rent,” Morris said “sometimes we don’t even feel like we can access art for art’s sake. But through all the trials and tribulations, she was accessing it.”

    Butler’s journals show how writing was her way of pushing back against racism, patriarchy and other norms that frustrated her and made her feel overlooked as a creative person and a public intellectual. She wrote because “she had to,” Morris writes. She put pen to paper to make sense of the world and speak back to it.

    Beyond writing novels, Butler eventually became known for her direct and evocative engagement with readers, whom she pushed to think deeply about the world around them. She analyzed real-world dynamics and extrapolated them into prescient and cautionary fiction. She wrote stories that seem to have become only more popular as time has passed. Her novel “Kindred” was reimagined into a TV series in 2022, and authors John Jennings and Damian Duffy won a Hugo Award in 2021 for their graphic novel reimagining of her book “Parable of the Sower.”

    On social media, the “#OctaviaKnew” trend captures the ominous ways her words resonate in the present on issues like climate change, inequality and politics. Her ability, decades ago, to conjure how we live now gives Morris’ students a feeling of connection to Butler’s work today.

    In “Parable of the Talents,” published in 1998 and set in the 2020s, Butler introduces a conservative presidential candidate who urges voters to join him in a project to “make America great again.” The words on the page reverberated through Morris’ classroom as she taught the book during Trump’s first presidency. It’s why many readers think Butler’s work was nearly prophetic. “Psychic? Maybe not,” Morris says. “Prescient? Absolutely.”

    Morris uses the 1987 short story “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” — about a community grappling with a fictional genetic disorder — to talk to students about the marginalization of people with disabilities. 

    Butler’s 1984 short story “Bloodchild” pushes readers to rethink gender, reproduction and family. “We’re living in a moment that demonizes transness,” Morris said. “But in ‘Bloodchild,’ men carry the babies. It complicates our idea of what bodies are supposed to do.”

    Butler’s fiction never floated away from reality. It confronted it. And it continues to make readers question what they thought they understood. Though often shelved as science fiction, Morris says Butler’s work transcends the label, and she instead classifies it as “speculative fiction.”

    Morris’ immersive portrait can at times feel like reading Butler’s journal or listening to the innermost thoughts of a quiet and sometimes lonely person.

    “She lived a life of the mind,” Morris said. Out of that life came work shaped by discipline, imagination and a kind of beautiful obsession — one that Morris hopes others might mirror in their own lives.

    “I hope that in this world that is often devoid of beauty,” Morris said, “that other folks can see her example and find the beauty in their own kind of practice.”

  • Newswire: SCOTUS Callais Decision Delivers Major Blow To Black Voting Rights

    Newswire: SCOTUS Callais Decision Delivers Major Blow To Black Voting Rights

    Above, Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, speaking at a “Fight for Fair Maps” rally.

    by Anoa Changa-Peck, NewsOne

    For months, voting rights advocates have warned that the Supreme Court would use its decision in Louisiana v. Callais to strip away Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, further eroding freedom. 

    And they were right. 

    Decided along ideological lines, Wednesday’s 6-3 decision blocked a Black-majority congressional district in Louisiana just weeks before voters head to the polls. A second Black-majority congressional district was created after voters and organizers fought for fair representation after the 2020 Census. 

    As NewsOne previously reported, Wednesday’s decision comes after the Supreme Court gave an anti-voting rights group a second chance to make its case. Originally heard in March, 2025, the case was rescheduled for rehearing in October, giving opponents of fair maps more time to invent reasons to deny Black voter power. 

    The majority opinion attempts to narrowly tailor the case to Louisiana only. Instead, by many accounts, Callais aids the Republican plan to lock up power for the next generation. 

    Joel Payne, spokesperson for MoveOn Civic Action, said the Court’s decision gave Republicans the green light to continue Trump’s “desperate power grab.”

     “Suppressing voters is another way for Trump and Republicans to rig the system so they can keep stacking the deck for billionaires and the Epstein class and avoid accountability for their failed leadership,” Payne said in a statement. “MoveOn members will fight this naked MAGA power play to hoard more power and wealth for themselves and the billionaires that fund their campaigns.” 

    Almost immediately after the Callais‘release, Florida House Republicans passed an even more extreme gerrymander than the state’s current congressional map. In many ways, Florida’s move is a replay of the aftermath of the 2023 decision Shelby County v. Holder, when Texas and North Carolina rushed to pass racially discriminatory laws previously blocked under the Voting Rights Act. 

    Pro-democracy advocates have consistently stressed the need for full voting rights and fair maps to ensure communities have a say in the issues impacting their lives. Affordable housing, healthcare access, the cost of living, gun safety, and fundamental fairness require leadership that listens to and considers people’s needs. 

    Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, highlighted the importance of educators being committed to basic values of fairness and equity as a part of teaching responsible citizenship. 

    “People died to protect and advance this right,” Pringle said in a statement. “The reason we have voting rights laws in America is to remedy discrimination against voters of color. If the Supreme Court does not recognize the need to continue upholding this basic value of one person, one vote, then Congress must stop stalling and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.”

  • Newswire: Gen Z Slang Deeply Rooted In Black Culture, Linguistic Experts Say

    Newswire: Gen Z Slang Deeply Rooted In Black Culture, Linguistic Experts Say

    Photo Source: Mohd Azrin / Getty

    by Shannon Dawson, NewsOne

    Popular Gen Z slang words like “rizz” and “slay” have become so widespread that these terms topped Unscramblerer’s list of most popular slang in 2025. But where do these buzzworthy words come from, and how do they become so deeply embedded in our everyday language that friends and even parents start using them? Experts say many of the words now labeled as Gen Z slang actually have roots that reach back centuries, particularly in Black culture and to African American Vernacular English (AAVE).

    The Black history of Gen Z slang.

    A report by NBC News correspondent Marquis Francis explored the history of some of these phrases with language enthusiasts. According to the report, some of these words emerged during periods of enslavement, born out of struggle and trauma. Linguists note that such language was often used to communicate openly within the community while remaining opaque to outsiders. Today, many of these words are recognized as part of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also called Ebonics.

    As previously reported, historians believe AAVE’s roots trace to English dialects introduced to the American South in the 17th and 18th centuries, according to The Oxford Handbook of African American Language. These dialects were adopted and adapted by African Americans, influenced by both British English and African languages, as well as Caribbean creole varieties brought over by enslaved people. Although AAVE is frequently mischaracterized as slang or “incorrect” English, it is a fully distinct linguistic system with its own grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation patterns — such as dropping “-ing” (e.g., “goin’” instead of “going”) or r-lessness, and substitutions like “fo’” for “four” or “he be” instead of “he is.”

    Negative stereotypes and improper attribution lead to the erasure of history, experts say.

    Over time, this vernacular evolved. Many of the popular Gen Z terms that thrive today eventually circulated within popular Black subcultures, including early hip-hop and underground drag scenes, and were not widely embraced by the mainstream. Words with letters dropped, or entire phrases combined to form new expressions, were often dismissed as improper speech associated with poverty or lack of education. 

    Those negative stereotypes still exist today. A 2021 study involving 20 audio recordings of 14 Black North American men and six Black British men asked participants to guess the speakers’ race and age. The study found that speakers perceived as using AAVE were more likely to be stereotyped as “lazy,” “uneducated,” and “poor.” Controversies surrounding AAVE are not new — the 1996 Ebonics debate, in which the Oakland, California, Board of Education recognized it as a primary language to improve literacy, sparked nationwide discussion and criticism.

    Today, however, these terms have permeated the default dialect of a generation, transcending race, region, and class in the digital age. Critics, however, have highlighted the erasure of Black origins, pointing out that non-Black Gen Zers often use these words without understanding their cultural significance and complicated history.

    “I don’t necessarily say that no one else can speak it, but what I do say is it comes from those people that created it,” said Sonja Lanehart, a linguistics professor at the University of Arizona and the author of The Oxford Handbook of African American Language, which she wrote to address misconceptions around AAVE.

    Linguists warn that when a word’s origins are viewed negatively or stripped away, it can erase a community’s history, a potentially dangerous consequence. For Jamaal Muwwakkil, a sociocultural anthropologist and linguist, it is crucial that Gen Zers understand the history of these words and credit the people who created them.

    “It doesn’t make any sense to me that you can hear a word and then say, ‘That word sounds cool or it’s interesting; let me never look into it and just start saying it,’” Muwwakkil told Francis. “That seems strange to me.” He explained that AAVE was more than slang: it was a tool for enslaved people brought to the U.S. in the 17th century to find common ground among themselves, using language to communicate within the community while remaining covert to outsiders. It was a form of protection. 

    Language experts stress that African American language is not exclusive to Black people, but understanding its history and giving proper attribution is essential. Without that recognition, some people may benefit from the language, while those who created it are often erased.