Civil Rights Movements & the Law

Three African American ER physicians in Washington, D.C., recount experiences on their wards, where Black patients make up the vast majority of the city's COVID-19 fatalities.

Gilbert Gee is a professor at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health, and he says the coronavirus outbreak reminds him of what happened during both the SARS and AIDS crises. As the battle against the current outbreak continues, Gee tells Hari Sreenivasan about racism's role in public health emergencies.

This paper addresses “Orientalization,” which I define as the objectification of Asian women as the “Oriental Woman”—the stereotypical image of the Ex…

In this report, Perilous Chronicle analyzes the first 90 days of prisoner resistance to COVID-19, beginning in March 2020. It describes the context for the wave of unrest, describes major events from this period, and draws conclusions based on the data collected for each event.

This article is written as a series of letters between a law professor and a medical doctor in reaction to the events surrounding the rise of the Black Lives Ma

The emergence of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, is causing great concern due to its rapid spread and high death rates, particularly among vulnerable

List of resources from the Prison Policy Initiative about the criminal justice system and COVID-19.

Condemns Reopening Economy As “Reckless” Washington, DC (April 24, 2020) Today, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law issued a new demand letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), calling for increased transparency and immediate action in response to COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on Black communities and other communities of color.  This letter follows […]

On December 20th, Michigan-based family medicine physician Dr. Susan Moore died due to complications from COVID-19. Less than two weeks before her death, Moore shared her experience with racism at the Indiana hospital where she was being treated, showing yet another example of anti-Blackness and medical apartheid.

A half-dozen corrections agencies provide less detail than they did a year ago.

The already large racial wealth gap between white and black American households grew even wider after the Great Recession. Targeted policies are necessary to reverse this deepening divide.

The deaths of Layleen Polanco and Tony McDade highlight how Black trans Americans are treated and criminalized.

Lawmakers, local officials and public health professionals took to Massachusetts' State House's steps. "This is not an Asian-American virus, this is not a Chinese virus."

Public officials lament the way that the coronavirus is engulfing black communities. The question is, what are they prepared to do about it?

LGBTQ activists have conflicting ideas on how best to observe Pride this year, but all say the protests' missions parallel struggles for LGBTQ rights.

The medical schools in Tucson and Phoenix are engaged in several efforts related to recruitment, retention, mentoring, faculty development, curriculum, culture and more.

The coronavirus became racialized, so it’s critical that educators understand the historical context and confront racist tropes and xenophobia from students and colleagues.

Kimberly Latrice Jones is an American author and filmmaker, known for the New York Times bestselling young adult novel, I'm Not Dying With You Tonight and for the viral video How Can We Win published during the George Floyd protest. The book was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award in 2020. That same year, a seven-minute video featuring Kim using a Monopoly analogy to explain the history of racism and its impact on Black Americans went viral, being shared by Trevor Noah, LeBron James, Madonna, and more. The viral video was featured on shows like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. She has subsequently signed an overall deal with Warner Brothers via her production company Push Films with her partner DeWayne “Duprano” Martin. Kim's literary roots run deep. She served on the Selection Committee for Library of Congress' 2016-2017 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, the 2015 Children’s Choice Illustrator Committee for The Children's Book Council, and the advisory board that created the Creative and Innovative Education Master’s Degree program at Georgia State University. She has been featured in Ms. Magazine, Seventeen, Paste Magazine, Bustle, Hello Giggles, Book List, Publisher’s Weekly, School Library Journal, and was Book Brahmin in an issue of Shelf Awareness. She received one of the inaugural James Patterson Holiday Bookseller Bonus grants while working at the famous children’s bookstore, Little Shop of Stories. Most recently, Kim’s bestselling novel, I’m Not Dying With You Tonight, co-authored with Gilly Segal, was nominated for an NAACP Image award, Georgia Author Of The Year award, and the Cybils Awards. I’m Not Dying With You Tonight was selected as the September 2019 book club pick for the Barnes & Noble YA book club and Overdrive’s Big Library Read.She resides in Atlanta and is the proud mother of a gifted boy. She lives for wigs and nail art, as her style icons are Dolly Parton, Chaka Khan, and Diana Ross.

ADL Center for Antisemitism Research builds upon ADL’s 100-plus years of antisemitism expertise to test, measure and identify impact to fight against this hate.

Antisemitism is often referred to as the oldest hatred, spanning nearly 2,000 years. Antisemitic hate groups seek to racialize Jewish people and vilify them as the manipulative puppet masters behind an economic, political and social scheme to undermine white people. Antisemitism also undergirds much of the far right, unifying adherents across various extremist ideologies around efforts to subvert and misconstrue the collective suffering of Jewish people in the Holocaust and cast them as conniving opportunists.

The annual report says instances of harassment, assault and propaganda are all on the rise. It warns public officials and social media stars have helped normalize longstanding antisemitic tropes.

The White House is putting forward a proposal to add a new racial category called Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) . If approved, the new designation could appear on census forms in 2020 and could have far-reaching implications for racial identity, anti-discrimination laws, and health research. Under current law, people from the Middle East are considered white, the legacy of century-old court rulings in which Syrian Americans argued that they should not be considered Asian -- because that designation would deny them citizenship under the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. But scholars and community leaders say more and more people with Middle Eastern roots find themselves caught between white, black, and Asian classifications that don't fully represent their identities. "What it does, it helps these communities feel less invisible", said Helen Samhan of the Arab American Institute, which has been advocating the change for more than 30 years. The White House Office of Management and Budget advanced the proposal with a notice in the Federal Register on September 30, 2016, asking for comments and which groups would be included. Under the proposal, the new Middle East and North African designation -- or MENA as it's called by population scholars -- is broader in concept that Arab (an ethnicity) or Muslim (a religion). It would include anyone from a region of the world stretching from Morocco to Iran, and including Syrian and Coptic Christians, Israeli Jews, and other religious minorities. Time will tell whether the new category will include Turkish, Sudanese, and Somali-Americans. As a result, this guide will slowly expand its coverage to include both Arab American and Muslima American as well as many of the other population groups from this part of the world. Dept. of Justice Affirms in 1909 Whether Syrians, Turks, and Arabs are of White or Yellow Race. Courtesy of the Arab American Historical Foundation.

Roark Capital and Silver Lake Management have a web of connections to the Atlanta police foundation, Cop City and surveillance in the city

The bill would create the first-ever civil rights division inside the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office.

2023 Regular Session - SB 426

(Reuters) - Descendants of Louisiana slaves sued their local government on Tuesday over land-use policies they say have led to a concentration of polluting

We asked all state systems for book policies and ban lists, then created a database for you.

In June of 2022, Michigan Department of Corrections (“MDOC”) made national news when NPR reported that non-English language dictionaries were banned in state pr

Before the Civil War, colonization schemes and black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in the United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures, conventions, and courthouses. They faced formidable opposition, most notoriously from the US Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott. Still, Martha S. Jones explains, no single case defined their status. Former slaves studied law, secured allies, and conducted themselves like citizens, establishing their status through local, everyday claims. All along they argued that birth guaranteed their rights. With fresh archival sources and an ambitious reframing of constitutional law-making before the Civil War, Jones shows how the Fourteenth Amendment constitutionalized the birthright principle, and black Americans' aspirations were realized. Birthright Citizens tells how African American activists radically transformed the terms of citizenship for all Americans.