The Black Unemployment rate June was 15.4 percent in June, down from 16.8 percent in May, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week. The jobless rate for Black men, 20 and older, however, rose to 16.3 percent in June compared with 15.5 percent in May, BLS reported. However, the unemployment rate for Black women dipped to 14.0 percent with 16.5 percent in May. Overall, the U.S. nonfarm payroll employment rose by 4.8 million in June on top of 2.7 million in May. But, because so many jobs were lost in March and April, we are still 14.7 million jobs below where we were in February, before the pandemic spread, writes Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and In June, jobs were added due to many states continuing to lift the stay at home requirements. Job gains occurred primarily in leisure and hospitality, an increase of 2.1 million, a significant share of the overall rise of 4.8 million. The unemployment rate fell as well, from 13.3% in May to 11.1% in June. At 11.1%, the unemployment rate remains higher than in the worst month of the Great Recession, when it hit 10.0% in 2009. Hires are up because states relaxed their stay-at-home orders concerning pandemic, but more economic pain is on the horizon because the latest coronavirus data is that the relaxed restrictions on social distancing also had the effect of increased cases leading to some states to pause re-openings. In Florida and Texas, Covid-19 cases are spreading. Texas surpassed 200,000 Covid-19 cases over the July 4 holiday. Losses in public-sector employment will affect Black workers more, particularly Black women, Gould and Shierholz wrote. That’s because Black women have the highest share of jobs in the public sector. The Black unemployment rate is much higher compared with other racial and ethnic groups. BLS reported that the jobless rate for Hispanics was 14.5 percent and jobless rate for Asians was 13.8 percent. For Whites, the jobless rate was 10.1 percent. For white men, the unemployment rate was 9.0 percent.
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than a dozen Native American leaders and organizations sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Monday calling for the league to force Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder to change the team name immediately.
The letter was signed by 15 Native American advocates and obtained by The Associated Press. It demands the team and the NFL cease the use of Native American names, imagery and logos — with specific importance put on Washington, which last week launched a “ thorough review ” of its name.
The letter was delivered on the same day that President Donald Trump voiced his opposition to any name change by the team. Several team sponsors have come out in favor of change recently and Snyder showed his first indication of willingness to do so amid a nationwide movement to erase racially insensitive symbols.
According to their letter, the groups “expect the NFL to engage in a robust, meaningful reconciliation process with Native American movement leaders, tribes, and organizations to repair the decades of emotional violence and other serious harms this racist team name has caused to Native Peoples.”
The NFL did not immediately respond to a message confirming receipt of the letter. Goodell last week expressed support for Snyder’s review process of the name.
Retired PGA Tour golfer Notah Begay, IllumiNative founder Crystal Echo Hawk, two former executive directors of the National Congress of American Indians and several authors and professors signed on to the letter, which wants a full re-branding of the team “to ensure that continuing harm is not perpetuated by anyone.”
Trump is against re-branding the Redskins and Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians, who are also considering a name change.
Trump tweeted: “They name teams out of STRENGTH, not weakness, but now the Washington Redskins & Cleveland Indians, two fabled sports franchises, look like they are going to be changing their names in order to be politically correct.”
Snyder had been steadfast against changing the name on several occasions since buying the team in 1999. Last week, sponsors FedEx, PepsiCo, Nike and Bank of America released statements saying they requested a change, and several online stores removed the team’s gear.
“We believe it is time for a change,” PepsiCo said.
FedEx CEO Frederick Smith is a minority owner, and the company is the title sponsor of the team’s stadium in Landover, Maryland. The sudden flood of sponsors coming out against the name prompted the organizational review announced Friday.
“This process allows the team to take into account not only the proud tradition and history of the franchise but also input from our alumni, the organization, sponsors, the National Football League and the local community it is proud to represent on and off the field,” Snyder said.
The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody in May sparked protests and a nationwide debate on racism. That conversation renewed calls for Snyder to change the name called a “dictionary defined racial slur” by Native American advocates and experts.
“We’ve never been faced with a greater opportunity and moment for this to finally happen,” Echo Hawk said last month.
“Native Americans have been working and fighting on this issue for decades, decades and decades, and I think really talking with different Native leaders around the country, this is the moment. There’s really no excuse now for this Washington team and for the NFL to do the right thing.”
Lazarus Chakwera and family at swearing-in ceremony
June 29, 2020 (GIN) – In a landmark presidential rerun, Malawi’s sitting President has been ousted from power after a sweeping victory by a popular Pentecostal preacher and former theology lecturer who promised to unite and serve all Malawians. “I want to provide leadership that makes everybody prosper, that deals decisively with corruption and theft of public funds and a leadership what will follow the rule of law,” declared Lazarus Chakwera, who chalked up more votes than the former incumbent, Peter Mutharika, in the election rerun. Mutharika was President of Malawi from 2014 till May 2019, when he ran for re-election and beat Mr. Chakwera by a hair. There followed a flood of challenges, citing widespread irregularities including the use of correction fluid on ballots. The election was annulled in court. In essence, the Constitutional Court judges argued that Malawians deserve, and should expect, an A- grade election – not perfect, perhaps (who can boast that?) but free of systemic abuse. They should not have to make do with the more familiar C+ election that some nations and institutions still seem to tolerate or encourage. They also implied that a slap on the wrist was not enough, and that Malawi’s precious democratic institutions needed to be properly defended. This was an important blow against a widespread culture of impunity. It was just the second time in African history to have presidential poll results set aside, after Kenya in 2017. “We have had a very credible election compared to the 2019 presidential election,” Malawian human rights activist Luke Tembo told the AFP news agency. “The fact that people came out in large numbers to vote … has to be taken as a very strong message, moving forward, that Malawians will never allow their vote to be stolen. “I do feel like Lazarus, I’ve come back from the dead,” Mr. Chakwera said, vowing to unite the country and fight poverty. “Of what use is freedom from oppression if you and I are slaves to starvation? Or freedom from colonialism if you are a slave to tribalism?” Mr. Chakwere, 65, who heads the opposition Malawi Congress Party, was born in a tiny village outside of the capital city, Lilongwe, to a subsistence farmer. He studied theology at the University of the North in South Africa and at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois and wrote several books on religion. The philosophy and theology graduate has pledged to raise the national minimum wage and revamp industries that would add value to the crops of Malawian farmers.
Barack Obama tipped his cap. So did three other former U.S. presidents and a host of prominent civil rights leaders, entertainers and sports greats in a virtual salute to the 100-year anniversary of the founding of baseball’s Negro Leagues.
The campaign launched Monday with photos and videos from, among others, Hank Aaron, Rachel Robinson, Derek Jeter, Colin Powell, Michael Jordan, Obama and fellow former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter at tippingyourcap.com.
On the receiving end of those tributes are many of the Negro Leagues’ greatest alumni: Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, “Cool Papa” Bell and Jackie Robinson, who began with the Kansas City Monarchs and went on to break the color barrier in the major leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Not long after, with many of its best players gradually following Robinson’s path, the Negro Leagues ceased operations.
Singer Tony Bennett, showing his heart, tips a San Francisco Giants cap. Californian Billie Jean King opts for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Clinton said he chose a Chicago Cubs cap in honor of Ernie Banks, the late Hall of Famer who got his start in the Negro Leagues.
But, Clinton added: “This cap is for Hillary, too, when finally, the Cubs won the championship. Long before that, the Negro Leagues made baseball better and America better.”
The celebration was moved online after a major league-wide tribute to baseball’s Black pioneers scheduled for June 27 was shelved — along with the games — because of the coronavirus pandemic. At first, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick worried that his longstanding plan to honor the men and women who battled long odds for a game of their own would have to be postponed, at best.
“In our game, there’s nothing more honorable than tipping your cap,” Kendrick said. “And once I realized that national day of recognition was going to fall by the wayside, I thought, ‘OK, maybe we can do it next year.’ But that didn’t really do it.
“So then I thought, ’How about a virtual tip of the cap?‴ Kendrick paused, then chuckled. “And let me say here and now, there is no way I could have done this myself. I could not be more proud of the response.”
Kendrick got the lift he was looking for from communications specialist Dan McGinn and longtime NLBM supporter Joe Posnanski, a sports writer for The Athletic and author of “The Soul of Baseball,” chronicling his yearlong road trip promoting the Kansas City-based museum and the stories behind it with legendary Negro League star, the late Buck O’Neil.
O’Neil was the driving force behind the museum for decades. The NLBM has expanded several times since Rube Foster, as skilled an executive as he was a baseball pitcher, founded the first Negro National League at a YMCA on the same site in 1920.
Kendrick said his personal favorite tribute came from Jackie Robinson’s family.
“It’s Rachel tipping her cap, but there’s four generations of Robinson women in that video talking about our common cause and it evokes the kind of emotion at a time when our country really needs it,” he said.
“And you know,” he added a moment later, “it’s funny how this whole thing worked out. I always felt if there was going to be conversations about race in sports, the Negro Leagues should be at the center, because that’s the story: They triumphed over adversity.
“I got to know so many of them, and not a single guy that I met ever harbored ill will, at least to the point where they let it block their path. Everybody else thought the major leagues were better, but you couldn’t convince them,” he concluded. “They just wanted the chance to prove they could play this game as well as anybody else.”
They did, forging a rich legacy that will echo with a new generation thanks to something as simple as the virtual tip of a cap.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) today announced it is investing up to $30 million from its endowment in voter outreach organizations in the Deep South to increase voter registration and participation among people of color with a lower propensity to vote. The initiative, called Vote Your Voice, is focused on increasing voter participation specifically in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, beginning in 2020 and running through 2022. “This initiative is especially important right now, as millions of people across the country feel the urgency to make our voices heard this fall after the continued silence from our leaders on the many Black people being killed by police,” SPLC President and Chief Executive Officer Margaret Huang, said in a news release. “Voting won’t solve this problem the day after the election but in order to begin dismantling white supremacy, we need to ensure that every voter of color is able to cast their ballot without interference or hardship.” Huang continued: The work ahead of us will not be easy. The COVID-19 pandemic has and will continue to have a disproportionate impact on democratic participation for communities of color who have been harmed most deeply by the health and economic crisis and who will encounter greater barriers to voter participation given the new risks of voting in person on Election Day.” Numerous organizations across the five states are working to promote voter participation and reach communities of color, returning citizens and young people, but they are struggling to secure resources to further their outreach amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an era of social distancing, and major economic recession, the SPLC said in a statement. Vote Your Voice, a partnership with the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta (Community Foundation), will administer grants up to a total of $30 million available for nonprofit-nonpartisan activities through 2022 as organizations navigate reaching their constituents amidst the pandemic and other obstacles. “We are proud to partner with Southern Poverty Law Center to target education and mobilization efforts that support a robust, and fair, election process,” said Community Foundation Vice President of Community Lita Pardi. “We must all work to end systemic barriers that deny our citizens their right to vote, especially in Black communities across the South.” Other Vote Your Voice goals include: • Reconnecting with constituencies that historically and currently face barriers to voting, focusing on returning citizens, voters of color, and those who have been purged from voter rolls. • Engaging voters who are often ignored by outreach programs, including low-propensity voters of color and voters of color who live outside of major metro areas. • Building greater capacity for voter outreach work to combat voter suppression by providing multi-year support through the 2022 election cycle. • Funding and supporting organizations that are led by people of color. The SPLC and the Community Foundation will award their first round of grants in early July and a second round later in the summer. Organizations that work with communities of color have been invited to submit grant applications as part of the first round. The second round will be conducted through an open Request for Proposals process. Officials noted that Vote Your Voice builds on the SPLC’s ongoing voting rights work to enable every citizen in the Deep South the opportunity to have their voice heard at the ballot box. In the past two years, the SPLC invested a combined $2 million to help pass the Amendment 4 ballot initiative in Florida and increase voter registration and turn-out in Louisiana and Mississippi state elections. Meanwhile, in federal courts, the SPLC has successfully sued Florida on its unconstitutional poll tax and has ongoing litigation challenging Mississippi’s lifetime voting ban for citizens with certain felony convictions. Since May of this year, the SPLC has filed litigation in Alabama and Louisiana to challenge election laws that force voters to choose between participating in democracy and protecting their health. Information regarding Vote Your Voice is available, with a grant application coming soon at: https://www.splcenter.org/vote-your-voice
NASA engineer and mathematician Mary W. Jackson is finally getting her just due.
On Wednesday (Jun 24) NASA announced plans to rename their headquarters located in Washington DC after the first Black female aerospace engineer Mary W. Jackson. Jackson, who was the agency’s first American American female engineer in 1958, opened up opportunities for countless women of color in STEM who followed in her footsteps.
“Mary W. Jackson was part of a group of very important women who helped NASA succeed in getting American astronauts into space. Mary never accepted the status quo, she helped break barriers and open opportunities for African Americans and women in the field of engineering and technology,” Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement to CBS News. “Today, we proudly announce the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building.”
NASA took to social media with the special announcement writing, “Our headquarters building in Washington, D.C., will be named after Mary W. Jackson, the first African-American female engineer at NASA. She started in research and later moved into the personnel field, working to ensure equal opportunity in hiring and promotion.”
Last year, Nasa renamed the street outside its headquarters as Hidden Figures Way.
“Hidden no more, we will continue to recognize the contributions of women, African Americans, and people of all backgrounds who have made Nasa’s successful history of exploration possible,” Mr. Bridenstine continued.”Mary never accepted the status quo, she helped break barriers and open opportunities for African Americans and women in the field of engineering and technology.”
Jackson’s career, along with those of other pioneering black NASA scientists including Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan, became widely recognized after the publication of Margot Lee Shetterly’s 2016 book, “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.” In the subsequent film Hidden Figures, Jackson was played by award-winning musician and actress Janelle Monáe.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi will retire the last state flag in the U.S. with the Confederate battle emblem, more than a century after white supremacist legislators adopted the design a generation after the South lost the Civil War.
A broad coalition of lawmakers — Black and white, Democrat and Republican — voted Sunday, June 28, 2020, for change as the state faced increasing pressure amid nationwide protests against racial injustice.
Mississippi has a 38% Black population, and critics have said for generations that it’s wrong to have a flag that prominently features an emblem many condemn as racist.
The Senate voted 37-14 to retire the flag, hours after the House voted 91-23.
Cheers rang out in the state Capitol after the Senate vote. Some spectators wept. Legislators embraced each other, many hugging colleagues who were on the opposing side of an issue that has long divided the tradition-bound state.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves is expected to sign the bill into law in the next few days.
Democratic Rep. Robert Johnson of Natchez choked back tears as he told reporters that he has seen white colleagues develop more empathy about how the Confederate symbol is painful to him and other African Americans. “They began to understand and feel the same thing that I’ve been feeling for 61 years of my life,” Johnson said.
A commission will design a new flag that cannot include the Confederate symbol and that must have the words “In God We Trust.” Voters will be asked to approve the new design in the Nov. 3 election. If they reject it, the commission will set a different design using the same guidelines, and that would be sent to voters later.
Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn, who is white, has pushed for five years to change the flag, saying the Confederate symbol is offensive. “How sweet it is to celebrate this on the Lord’s day,” Gunn said.
Legislators put the Confederate emblem on the upper left corner of Mississippi flag in 1894, as white people were squelching political power that African Americans had gained after the Civil War.
In a 2001 statewide election, voters chose to keep the flag. An increasing number of cities and all Mississippi’s public universities have taken down the state flag in recent years. But until now, efforts to redesign the flag sputtered in the Republican-dominated Legislature.
That dynamic shifted as an extraordinary and diverse coalition of political, business, religious groups and sports leaders pushed for change.
At a Black Lives Matter protest outside the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion in early June, thousands cheered as an organizer said the state needs to divorce itself from all Confederate symbols.
Religious groups said erasing the rebel emblem from the state flag is a moral imperative. Notable among them was the state’s largest church group, the 500,000-member Mississippi Baptist Convention, which called for change last week after not pushing for it before the 2001 election.
Business groups said the banner hinders economic development in one of the poorest states in the nation.
In a sports-crazy culture, the biggest blow might have happened when college sports leagues said Mississippi could lose postseason events if it continued flying the Confederate-themed flag. Nearly four dozen of Mississippi’s university athletic directors and coaches came to the Capitol to lobby for change.
Many people who wanted to keep the emblem on the Mississippi flag said they see it as a symbol of heritage. The battle emblem is a red field topped by a blue X with 13 white stars. The Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups have waved the rebel flag for decades.
The Mississippi Supreme Court found in 2000 that when the state updated its laws in 1906, portions dealing with the flag were not included. That meant the banner lacked official status. The Democratic governor in 2000, Ronnie Musgrove, appointed a commission to decide the flag’s future. It held hearings across the state that grew ugly as people shouted at each other about the flag. Legislators then opted not to set a flag design themselves, and put the issue on the 2001 statewide ballot.
Former Mississippi Gov. William Winter, who is now 97, served on then-President Bill Clinton’s national advisory board on race in the 1990s and was chairman of the Mississippi flag commission in 2000. Winter said Sunday that removing the Confederate symbol from the banner is “long overdue.”
“The battle for a better Mississippi does not end with the removal of the flag, and we should work in concert to make other positive changes in the interest of all of our people,” said Winter, a Democrat who was governor from 1980 until 1984.
Democratic state Sen. Derrick Simmons of Greenville, who is African American, said the state deserves a flag to make all people proud. “Today is a history-making day in the state of Mississippi,” Simmons told colleagues. “Let’s vote today for the Mississippi of tomorrow.”
Jun 15, 2020 (GIN) – Some of the largest anti-racism protests in Europe have taken place in Belgium, the birthplace of King Léopold II, whose brutal rule of Congo from 1885 to 1908 caused an estimated 10 million Congolese deaths through murder, starvation and disease. This past week, close to 12,000 people gathered in central Brussels. They were targeting the King Leopold statue outside the royal palace and more than a dozen others. The most egregious one depicts a group of Congolese people kneeling below Leopold in “gratitude”. Many of these statues were built in the 1930s when the Belgian government created a mythology around Leopold II, erasing the public memory of the Congo atrocities and replacing it with a narrative of a benevolent king who brought glory to Belgium. But as calls for the statue’s removal grow louder, Belgian’s political class is raising objections to the dismay of Afro-Belgians and other citizens. “You should see what Leopold II has done for Belgium!” Prince Laurent, younger brother of the current Belgian King Philippe, was quoted to say. “He had parks built in Brussels and many other things.” “I don’t see how he could have made people (in the Congo) suffer,” Laurent said. “There were many people that worked for Leopold II, and they were really abusive — but that does not mean that Leopold II was abusive.” “You won’t erase the history by removing statues,” said District Mayor Koen Palinckx of Antwerp. “You won’t turn back the clock.” He scolded activists destroying objects that are public property saying: “That’s a line you do not cross.” “This is not how we proceed in a democracy,” added Auderghem Mayor Didier Gosuin. “This is not how we put history back on the right track.” In 2010, former Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel, the father of future prime minister and present EU Council president Charles Michel, called Leopold “a hero with ambitions for a small country like Belgium” and described the Congo stories as “exaggerations”. Belgians have been unwilling to confront colonialism, said Idesbald Goddeeris, a professor of history at Leuven Catholic University. When he was a student in the 1990s, instructors spent only one or two minutes on the country’s role in Congo, he recalled. “Slavery is still very real history for black people – we are still living with the consequences of it, with a racial hierarchy that puts black people at the bottom,” said Mary Ononokpono, who is doing a PhD at the University of Cambridge on the British-Biafran slave trade. “Britain, Europe and America – and Africa – have to confront their history,” said Ononokpono. “We urgently need to have a long-overdue and honest discussion about the history of slavery and its legacy of impoverishment.”
After 130 years, Quaker is finally changing the name of their popular pancake brand, Aunt Jemima. Acknowledging that the brand was based on a racial stereotype, the name of the product will change and the imagery removed. Introduced on Nov. 1, 1889, the inspiration for the product was a minstrel song, “Old Aunt Jemima,” NBC News reports, based on the mammy archetype. With her large, smiling face and headkerchief, the character was centered in the ideal of Black women as domestic caretakers for whites. The original logo was based on a woman named Nancy Green who was a “storyteller and missionary worker.” Green was born enslaved. In 1989, the image was updated to show Aunt Jemima in pearl earrings and a newly-coiffed hairstyle. However, the name and her mammy-oriented personality remained. Kristin Kroepfl, vice president and chief marketing officer of Quaker Foods said that the company acknowledges that attempts to update the brand have proven insufficient. PepsiCo, which owns the Quaker brand, released a statement stating that they are retiring the brand image. “As we work to make progress toward racial equality through several initiatives, we also must take a hard look at our portfolio of brands and ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers’ expectations,” the company said. Riché Richardson, an associate professor at Cornell University, told the TODAY show on Wednesday. “It’s an image that harkens back to the antebellum plantation … Aunt Jemima is that kind of stereotype premised on this idea of Black inferiority and otherness,” Richardson said. “It is urgent to expunge our public spaces of a lot of these symbols that for some people are triggering and represent terror and abuse.” Quaker Foods has not yet released the new name for the product but stated that the new packaging will appear in stores later this year. They also committed to spending $5 million over the next five years “to create meaningful, ongoing support and engagement in the Black community.”
Bubba Wallace’s car being escorted on to the track at Talladega by other NASCAR drivers in an act of solidarity;Bubba Wallace in an “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt
Federal authorities on Monday confirmed they are investigating the discovery of a noose found in the Talladega Superspeedway garage stall of Bubba Wallace, NASCAR’s only Black full-time driver who successfully pushed the stock car series to ban the Confederate flag at its venues earlier this month.
U.S. Attorney Jay Town said his office, the FBI and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division were reviewing the situation. “Regardless of whether federal charges can be brought, this type of action has no place in our society,” Town said.
The stock car series, founded in the South more than 70 years ago, has tried to distance itself from the flag for years at the risk of alienating a core group of its fan base. At Wallace’s urging, it went ahead with the ban as the nation grapples with social unrest largely tied to George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died in the custody of Minneapolis police.
NASCAR has not outlined how it will enforce the restriction and this week’s race at Talladega, in the heart of the South, presented the series with its biggest test in the early going. Disgruntled fans with Confederate flags drove past the main entrance to the Alabama race track prior to Sunday’s race, while a plane flew above the track pulling a banner of the flag that read “Defund NASCAR.”
Hours after the race was postponed by rain, NASCAR said the noose had been found. The sanctioning body vowed to do everything possible to find who was responsible and “eliminate them from the sport.”
“We are angry and outraged, and cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous act,” the series said in a statement. “As we have stated unequivocally, there is no place for racism in NASCAR, and this act only strengthens our resolve to make the sport open and welcoming to all.”
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said she was “shocked and appalled” by the “vile act” against Wallace, an Alabama native.
“There is no place for this disgusting display of hatred in our state,” Ivey said. “Bubba Wallace is one of us; he is a native of Mobile and on behalf of all Alabamians, I apologize to Bubba Wallace as well as to his family and friends for the hurt this has caused and regret the mark this leaves on our state.”
Richard Petty, seven-time NASCAR champion and owner of Wallace’s famed No. 43, was headed to Talladega to support his driver. Petty, who turns 83 next month, has not attended a race during the coronavirus pandemic and said in a statement he was “enraged by the act of someone placing a noose in the garage stall of my race team.”
“There’s absolutely no place in our sport or society for racism,” wrote the Hall of Famer known simply as “The King.” “This filthy act serves as a reminder of how far we still have to go to eradicate racial prejudice and it galvanizes my resolve to use the resources of Richard Petty Motorsports to create change. This sick person who perpetrated this act must be found, exposed and swiftly and immediately expelled from NASCAR.
“I believe in my heart this despicable act is not representative of the competitors I see each day in the NASCAR garage area. I stand shoulder to shoulder with Bubba, yesterday, today, tomorrow and every day forward.”
Reaction from Wallace’s fellow drivers was immediate as they prepared for the rescheduled race Monday afternoon. Retired four-time champion Jeff Gordon called it a “cowardly” act and Ryan Blaney, one of Wallace’s closest friends, tweeted: “You’re my brother and always will be. Don’t let the people who are lower than life to try and bring you down.”
In an act of solidarity, all the NASCAR drivers escorted Wallace’s No. 43 car on to the track at Talladega on Monday for the race that was postponed by rain on Sunday.
The 26-year-old Wallace has not commented since a statement on social media late Sunday in which he said the “the despicable act of racism and hatred leaves me incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and how persistent we must be in the fight against racism.”
“As my mother told me today, ‘They are just trying to scare you,’” he wrote. “ This will not break me, I will not give in nor will I back down. I will continue to proudly stand for what I believe in.”
Wallace has worn a shirt that says “I Can’t Breathe” over his firesuit and sported a Black Lives Matter paint scheme in a race last month in Martinsville, Virginia. Wallace has said NASCAR assigned him two sheriff’s deputies for security at Martinsville after he called for the ban.
Wallace said he has found support among fellow drivers for his stance on the flag. He noted that in his tweet after the noose announcement.
“Over the last several weeks, I have been overwhelmed by the support from people across the NASCAR industry including other drivers and team members in the garage,” he said. “Together, our sport has made a commitment to driving real change and championing a community that is accepting and welcoming of everyone. Nothing is more important and we will not be deterred by the reprehensible actions of those who seek to spread hate.”
Five years ago, former NASCAR chairman Brian France tried to ban flying the flags at tracks, a proposal that was not enforced and largely ignored.
This year was different and it was Wallace who led the charge. Wallace, whose father is white, was not always outspoken about racism; even after Floyd was killed last month, he was not the first driver to speak out for racial equality. He has said he began to find his public voice on racism after watching video in May of Ahmaud Arbery’s fatal shooting in Georgia. He said he now recognizes he must not let his platform as a prominent driver go to waste.
Talladega is one of the more raucous stops on the NASCAR schedule, but the pandemic prompted the series, like all sports, to ban or sharply limit fans for months. With only 5,000 fans allowed in, the scene this week was a dramatic departure from the Talladega norm with plenty of room for social distancing and fans asked to wear masks.
Fans were not granted access to the infield or the restricted area of the Cup Series garage. Under strict new health guidelines, a very limited number of people can access the garage where the cars are kept. That would include crew members for each of the 40 teams, NASCAR employees, Talladega staff members and any contracted safety crews or security guards.
Drivers are not even permitted to enter the garage, instead of going directly from their motorhomes to the race cars to drive. They were never called to the cars Sunday because of rain.
