Sixteen Michigan residents are facing felony charges for falsely claiming to be presidential electors for former President Donald Trump after he lost the 2020 election, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Tuesday. Each of the 16 alleged false electors have been charged with eight felony counts. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson joins “America Decides” to discuss the charges.
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In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision last week outlawing race-conscious admissions, college administrators who work in diversity, equity, and inclusion say that their efforts to recruit and retain a diverse student body, and to help students of color feel a sense of belonging, are even more critical now that colleges will not be allowed to consider race as a factor in admissions.
While some administrators said they may have to tweak some of their tactics, several interviewed by The Chronicle said their work could become even more challenging if the number of students of color on campus shrinks, as experts expect.
The Supreme Court ruling also comes at a time when conservative politicians in many states have attacked colleges’ work in diversity, equity, and inclusion; The Chronicle is tracking 38 bills that were introduced in 21 state legislatures this year to restrict DEI efforts in higher education. So far, six of the bills have been signed into law, with some restricting specific diversity strategies, such as the use of diversity statements, while others, including one in Texas, ban diversity offices and staff at public institutions altogether.
According to a Chronicleanalysis, at selective institutions that admit less than 25 percent of applicants, underrepresented-minority students make up 29.6 percent of enrollments; at less-selective institutions, such students compose 40.9 percent of the enrollment.
Since last fall, James A. Felton III, vice president for inclusive excellence at the College of New Jersey, has been meeting with an informal working group, including the public college’s vice president for enrollment management, director of admissions, legal counsel, and provost, to discuss how a Supreme Court ruling against race-conscious admissions might affect the campus.
The group has discussed the potential impact of such a ruling on its high-demand programs and whether the college — which is a selective institution that did consider race in admissions — might be able to expand its reach into geographic markets it hasn’t traditionally targeted, for example.
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled against race-conscious admissions, the group will take some time to digest the decision and weigh it against the college’s current programs, initiatives, and policies before creating an action plan in time for the fall’s recruitment season, Felton said.
For example, some of the college’s scholarship and grant programs assess students holistically, and may consider a student’s race and background. But the college does not expect changes in the programs.
“I don’t think it, for me, will have a major bearing on the vision and the mission and goals of our institution, as well as higher education over all,” Felton said, noting that New Jersey has not enacted any anti-DEI legislation. “I think the Supreme Court decision just compels institutions to consider new and strategic ways to approach the work.”
But Felton expects the ruling will shrink the number of Black and Latino students on campus, which means the scope and scale of programs the college can offer, all of which are open to people of all backgrounds, will also probably decline.
The California Precedent
John B. King Jr., chancellor of the State University of New York system, said the role of chief diversity officer had become even more important in light of the Supreme Court ruling. Chief diversity officers will need to work with campus leaders to forge a path forward that is consistent with the law but also honors a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, King said.
“If you look at what happened in California and in Michigan,” King said, “one of the challenges when the tool of race-conscious admissions was removed is that you had a precipitous drop in the presence of students of color, and that makes it that much harder to create a climate of belonging.”
California’s voters banned race-conscious admissions at public universities in 1996 through a ballot measure, Proposition 209, so Kathleen Wong(Lau), university diversity officer at California State University-East Bay, has been working without race-conscious admissions for years. Despite spending more than a half-billion dollars on race-neutral alternatives to diversify campuses, the University of California system has struggled to recover Black and Hispanic enrollment, particularly at its most selective institutions. “I’ll be frank,” Wong(Lau) said. “Holistic evaluations have been able to repair some of the loss. It has not been able to completely bring us back up to the point where we were allowed to use race as one of the criteria.”
Wong(Lau) said that senior diversity officers in California had focused on retention and climate, which she believes are not affected by the Supreme Court ruling, but that those efforts can go only so far when the sheer number of students of color in American higher ed remains minuscule. Black students at some public colleges in California can go an entire week without seeing another Black student, Wong(Lau) said, a situation that can make it difficult to create a climate where students really feel as if they belong.
Michael Benitez is vice president for diversity and inclusion at Metropolitan State University of Denver, which, as an open-access institution, is not directly affected by the end of race-conscious admissions. But he worries that prospective students could interpret the Supreme Court ruling to mean that they are not welcome on certain campuses.
“It’s not entirely on the school, but it certainly creates a feeling of perhaps not belonging, or I’m not wanted there, or I’m not going to make it there, or there’s little chance I’m going to get in, and I think so much of it is based on a misperception more than anything else,” Benitez said. As a result, he said, colleges will need to work harder now to communicate to students and families that diversity is still important on their campuses, and that students will have the support and resources they need to succeed.
Caroline Laguerre-Brown, a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, expects to see colleges focus more on recruiting.
“I think that universities are going to start spending a lot more time engaging in pipeline activity … designed to generate that diverse candidate pool,” said Laguerre-Brown, who also serves as vice provost for diversity, equity, and community engagement at George Washington University. “I think a lot of us will be strategizing about ways to reach communities that we haven’t reached in the past to try to encourage … that more-diverse, more-rich candidate pool.”
A woman is dead and nine other people are injured after fireworks exploded Monday night at a home in western Michigan, authorities said, as holiday pyrotechnics continue to send people to hospitals nationwide.
Deputies, firefighters and an ambulance responded just after 11 p.m. to the explosion in Park Township, the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office said. Nine people were taken to local hospitals with “injuries ranging from minor to critical.” Another person — an unidentified 43-year-old woman — was found unresponsive. Life-saving measures were performed but she was pronounced dead at the scene.
Several area homes and vehicles were also damaged by the explosion, authorities said. Images posted by WOOD-TV show debris and fireworks scattered across a front lawn as well as a broken car windshield.
The cause of the incident remains under investigation.
The incident marks the latest in a flurry of fireworks-related injuries.
One person was killed and four others injured Tuesday morning in east Texas in an incident involving fireworks explosions and other incendiaries, the Upshur County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
On Monday, three people were reportedly injured, one seriously, by a fireworks explosion on a homemade barge in New Jersey. A prosecutor is opening a criminal investigation into the incident, the Byram Township Police Department told CBS News.
On Sunday, a 58-year-old man in Illinois was critically injured when a commercial-grade firework exploded in his face. Also on Sunday, a man in Indiana was injured when a firework was “launched into his vehicle, exploding and causing injury.”
Almost 75% of all fireworks-related injuries in the U.S. last year happened during the month surrounding the Fourth of July, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said in late June. There were 11 reported fireworks-related deaths in 2022, mostly associated with mortar-style devices. Victims ranged in age from 11 to 43. There were also 10,200 fireworks-related injuries in 2022.
A shooting that officials say occurred at a large street party in Saginaw, Michigan, left two people dead. In all, 15 people were injured.
According to a news release from Michigan State Police, the shooting happened at the party near Fourth St. and Johnson St. after the event was promoted on social media. Police agencies throughout Saginaw County dispersed the large crowd “multiple times in different locations throughout the city” prior to the shooting, the news release said.
Police were nearby when multiple 911 callers reported that people were shooting into the crowd around midnight.
A preliminary investigation uncovered that a fight broke out between partygoers, which resulted in gunshots being fired, the news release said. In response, others began shooting into the crowd, hitting “several victims,” the release said. CBS affiliate WNEM reported that there were more than 300 party-goers.
As people fled, many were injured after being struck by vehicles that were fleeing, the release said. Detectives later found “at least five different caliber weapons” that were used in the incident.
Fifteen people were injured by gunshots or being hit by vehicles, the release said. Two victims — a 19-year-old man and a 51-year-old woman — have died, the release said.
All 15 victims were taken to local hospitals for treatment, but the medical status of the surviving victims is unknown.
There are no suspects in custody, and there is no ongoing threat to the public.
Anyone with information is being asked to call the Saginaw Major Case Unit at 989-759-1605.
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A 19-year-old from Pickford, Michigan, was arrested by the FBI on Friday for allegedly making antisemitic threats on Instagram.
Seann Pietila was charged in a criminal complaint with “transmitting a communication containing a threat to injure another,” US Attorney Mark Totten announced Friday in a news release.
“Antisemitic threats and violence against our Jewish communities – or any other group for that matter – will not be tolerated in the Western District of Michigan,” Totten said.
According to a probable cause affidavit, Pietila had conversations with another Instagram user about committing a mass casualty or mass killing. Pietila told investigators that he didn’t plan on following through with the mass killings he discussed, the affidavit says.
Investigators found the name of an East Lansing synagogue, a date and a list of weapons – including bombs, Molotov cocktails and guns – in the notes app of Pietila’s phone, according to the affidavit.
His home was searched on Friday and among the items found were ammunition, magazines, a shotgun, rifle, various knives and a Nazi flag, Totten said.
Beth Lacosse, Pietila’s public defender, declined to comment, saying she had just been appointed to the case.
Pietila made his first court appearance on Friday and his detention hearing is set for June 22, according to court documents.
You may remember Jeff and Johnny Agar, the father-son athletes we introduced you to last year on their journey of defying the odds in triathlon. “CBS Mornings” lead national correspondent David Begnaud traveled back to Michigan to help pull off an epic surprise for the deserving duo ahead of Father’s Day.
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“He did this for one reason and one reason only, to throw you off your game.” That’s what I told Hillary Clinton backstage at Washington University in October 2016, moments away from her second presidential debate with Donald Trump. Two days prior, the world had learned, thanks to the Access Hollywood tape, that Trump liked to assert power by assaulting women. Trump retaliated by showing up at a pre-debate appearance with women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault. “Yeah, I got that,” Clinton responded dryly to my pep talk. “The great news is that it didn’t work,” I insisted. She had been through worse and I thought she would be okay, but it was my job, as the campaign’s communications director, to make sure of it. She mustered a serene smile, folded her hands, and slowly shook her head. “Nope. Didn’t work.”
Gretchen Whitmer, too, has dealt with boorish men, like one on the floor of the Michigan Senate who leaned over her to say something “very inappropriate.” The man was older, but she was the minority leader and senior to him. “Keep in mind, I outrank this guy, he’s looming over me, and of course, I am the one who has to go through all the mental gymnastics about how I respond to his offensive comment,” she said in a lament familiar to all women. She stood, waiting to speak until she could look him in the eye, and said forcefully but with a smile, “What the fuck is wrong with you? You can’t talk to me that way.”
Whitmer didn’t have the pressure of considering how millions of TV viewers—and voters—might judge her ability to withstand the pressure of being president on this interaction. (Clinton would later speculate that people might have liked to see some fire from her in responding to Trump pacing behind her on the debate stage, but in the moment what was most critical was for her to keep her cool.) For Whitmer, that encounter in the state Senate was seminal. She would not quietly tolerate misogynistic behavior as women before her had to do. Her lewd male colleague learned a lesson other foes—including Trump—would come to know: Whitmer doesn’t go looking for trouble, but if you come for her, she will punch you in the mouth.
It is a disservice to Whitmer that she is perhaps known more for outlandish things men have done to her—showing up at her home and office wielding guns, voting to strip her of her emergency powers to manage the pandemic, plotting to kidnap and assassinate her—than for her political acumen and what she has accomplished. But as a woman leader who came into the national spotlight during the Trump era, combating the torrent of misogynistic energy the 2016 campaign unleashed in the world has been a defining feature of Whitmer’s job. I see Whitmer battling the same forces Clinton faced but am encouraged. This time the men who tried to stop the woman are paying for their actions. Republican legislative leaders in Michigan who fought Whitmer lost control of the legislature. Many of the plotters are in jail. Even Trump—who tormented both Clinton and Whitmer—continues to face consequences as his legal troubles mount.
Whitmer recently commented that the country “is long overdue for a strong female chief executive”—begging the question of whether America will elect a woman front and center while asserting that a woman would do the job better than a man. And no, Whitmer is not planning a primary challenge to Joe Biden this time around. She will be busy raising money for Biden, however, along with 2024 House and Senate candidates, through her just-launched Fight Like Hell PAC.
I am not one of the people who buys into the self-actualizing bullshit that a woman can’t win the presidency. Clinton proved it’s possible. She got more votes. Having interviewed Whitmer for Showtime’s The Circus and based on my three decades in the political trenches, I could see she had the talent, drive, and toughness to be a solid national candidate. But earlier this year, I headed to Michigan to pressure-test that notion by observing how those qualities came to be and what all of it may say about Whitmer’s—or any woman’s—chances of being elected president.
Whitmer sets her alarm for 5:02 a.m. every morning. Not 5 a.m. 5:02 a.m. I made sure to arrive early at her residence in Lansing as I had met her enough times to know that if you show up on time, you will be late. Nevertheless, the governor was already striding down the hallway—ready to start her 10 a.m. childcare roundtable event at 9:50—and calling out “Hi, Jen!” as I came through the door.
The week I spent trailing her in Michigan was a blur of activity. On Tuesday, Whitmer signed a $150 million supplemental appropriations bill that the state legislature had passed with historic speed. The next day, she signed a bill to move up Michigan’s presidential primary. Thursday was a childcare event, followed by appearances before legislators considering new economic bills and a Galentine’s Day reception at her home. She rolled out a new policy in Detroit on Friday to benefit geographically and economically disadvantaged businesses, gave a speech to a group of more than 1,000 educators, and reached a deal with the legislature on a major new tax plan.
More recently, when three students were killed at a mass shooting at Whitmer’s beloved alma mater of Michigan State, she said the time for only thoughts and prayers was over and moved forward a gun safety package the legislature approved.
Whitmer describes herself as a progressive Democrat, but observing her up close, I see her core ideology as getting shit done. At the Galentine’s Day reception, she remarked that “if you want to get something done, give it to a busy woman.” Whitmer’s office has a lot of busy women—the four-person senior team is all female—and the operation seems to be in constant motion, yet calm and empowered. Their demeanor does not change in Whitmer’s presence, and they don’t shy away from telling her tough truths. It is a clarity too often lacking in political organizations; Whitmer’s team operates with a speed and confidence I rarely see. As a former aide who remains close to Whitmer put it to me, no matter what the issue is, the process for moving forward is always the same: “Find the partners, build the coalition, get the thing done.”
First elected to the Michigan House of Representatives in 2000, at age 29, Whitmer has never lost an election. She next served for nearly a decade in the Michigan Senate, becoming the state’s first female Senate minority leader. “Anyone who understands governing and politics respects her ability,” Jeff Timmer, a Michigan-based political strategist and erstwhile Republican who once produced television ads against Whitmer when she ran for the Michigan House, told me.
After Whitmer was term-limited out of the state Senate in 2014, she thought she was done with electoral politics. As she describes it, a number of powerful men abusing the public trust compelled her to get back into politics starting in 2015, when she finished the term of the Ingham County prosecutor in Lansing who had been forced out for—wait for it—being part of a sex-trafficking ring. It was there Whitmer signed a warrant for Larry Nassar, the US women’s gymnastics team doctor later convicted of sexually abusing hundreds of female athletes. Whitmer went into the 2016 election having decided to run for governor two years later. She thought Clinton would win Michigan and the White House. After Trump won both, she felt more urgency. “I filed for office on the first possible day and spent the next two years campaigning.” She won in 2018 by nearly 10 points.
It matters that Whitmer did not have the burden of being Michigan’s first female governor. That distinction goes to Jennifer Granholm, now secretary of energy under Biden, who was elected in 2002 and won re-election in 2006. There’s a singular alienation and judgment women first through the door encounter. (For the most current example, witness the constant headwinds Kamala Harris faces as the first woman and first person of color to be vice president.)
Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer celebrate during an election night watch party at MotorCity Casino Hotel on November 09, 2022 in Detroit, Michigan.By Brandon Bell/Getty Images.
HAMTRAMCK, Mich. (AP) — A Detroit-area community has banned LGBTQ+ flags from publicly owned flagpoles after a tense hourslong meeting that raised questions about discrimination, religion and the city’s reputation for welcoming newcomers.
In protest, a woman speaking during the public comment portion of the Hamtramck City Council meeting kissed a woman standing next to her Tuesday night.
During the public comments, two women who opposed the Hamtramck resolution banning LGBTQ flags from city property, one wearing a clown nose, gave a sarcastic presentation, then kissed in front of the city council: pic.twitter.com/QFO4ws3i4H
“You guys are welcome,” council member Nayeem Choudhury said. “(But) why do you have to have the flag shown on government property to be represented? You’re already represented. We already know who you are.”
Some members of the all-Muslim council said the pride flag clashes with the beliefs of some members of their faith. Businesses and residents aren’t prohibited from displaying a pride flag on their own property.
“We want to respect the religious rights of our citizens,” Choudhury said.
Hamtramck, population 27,000, is an enclave surrounded by Detroit. More than 40% of residents were born in other countries, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and a significant share are of Yemeni or Bangladeshi descent.
The council voted unanimously to display only five flags, including the American flag, the Michigan flag and one that represents the native countries of immigrant residents.
Mayor Amer Ghalib made the flag a campaign issue when then-Mayor Karen Majewski flew one on city property in 2021.
“We serve everybody equally with no discrimination but without favoritism,” he said.
Hayley Cain said she chose to live in Hamtramck after moving from California because it was known as a diverse community.
“I’m questioning whether it is. … The pride flag represents making space for all humans on all the spectrums, and this is where we’re going as a human species,” Cain said. “You can’t stop that.”
Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights advocacy group, said Hamtramck’s strict flag policy doesn’t discriminate against anyone.
“If there was one group that was not being granted access to something while others were then we would have a problem,” Walid said.
He said some Muslims who oppose an LGBTQ+ flag are no different than conservative members of other religions with similar views.
“Flags carry symbolism. Those symbols carry social and political messages,” Walid said.
Detroit City FC, a professional soccer team that draws thousands of fans to games in Hamtramck, called the council’s decision “inexcusable.”
“Pride flags send a powerful message that all are welcome and that the community values diversity,” the team said on Twitter.
Detroit City FC’s support of the LGBTQ+ community is unwavering. We are committed to making Keyworth the most welcoming sporting venue in US sports. pic.twitter.com/WJOtWk3bzk
Prosecutors filed a murder charge Tuesday in the death of a teenager whose remains have not been found despite an extraordinary monthslong search last year at a suburban Detroit landfill.
More than a dozen Detroit police officers wearing protective suits, respirators and goggles picked through tons of rotting summer trash for any trace of 17-year-old Zion Foster, a search that was finally halted in October. On Tuesday, Zion’s cousin, Jaylin Brazier, was charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence.
Brazier served a brief prison sentence last year after admitting he had lied to police during the investigation.
James Royster, Zion’s father, told CBS Detroit it has been extremely painful for him during this nearly year and a half long investigation.
“Every day knowing that the person who murdered my child is waking free, like it’s ok. And like it was alright that it happened. And the fact that honestly, I did nothing about that,” he said. “I felt as a failure as a father, as a person, as a man, every day of my life.”
Photos of Zion Foster, 17, are shown in a staging at the Pine Tree Acres Landfill in Lenox Township, Mich., on July 28, 2022.
Paul Sancya / AP
Brazier, 24, has publicly said that Zion, who lived in Eastpointe, suddenly became unconscious while they were smoking marijuana at a Detroit house in January 2022. But he denied having any role in her death.
“There is a compelling body of evidence” against Brazier, assistant prosecutor Ryan Elsey said in requesting that he be returned to jail without bond.
Zion “walked into his house late at night and she came out dead,” Elsey said. “She was put in the trunk of his car, and he disposed of her body in a dumpster. … This idea that this is just some innocent person standing here is not going to be beared out by the facts.”
Police said Zion’s body was placed in a trash bin. The contents eventually were transported to Pine Tree Acres landfill in Macomb County.
Defense attorney Tim Doty disputed that a homicide occurred and urged a magistrate to release Brazier with an electronic tether.
“He is not a threat to anybody,” Doty said.
Brazier, however, was returned to jail without bond.
“It is unbearable,” Foster’s mother Ciera Milton told CBS Detroit in January. “How am I supposed to function on this? You know, yes people keep telling me you have other children and you know you gotta live for them and all that other kind of stuff, but no one that I know has ever been through this.”
BELLAIRE, Mich. (AP) — A man accused of aiding a plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor pleaded guilty Wednesday, the ninth conviction in state and federal courts since agents broke up an astonishing scheme by anti-government rebels in 2020.
Shawn Fix said he provided material support for an act of terrorism, namely the strategy to snatch Gov. Gretchen Whitmer at her vacation home in Antrim County. Prosecutors agreed to drop a weapon charge.
Fix trained with a militia, the Wolverine Watchmen, for “politically motivated violence,” prosecutors have said, and hosted a five-hour meeting at his Belleville home where there was much discussion about kidnapping Whitmer.
Fix, 40, acknowledged helping plot leader Adam Fox pinpoint the location of Whitmer’s home, key information that was used for a 2020 ride to find the property in northern Michigan.
“Guilty,” Fix told the judge.
He appeared in an Antrim County court, one of five people charged in that leg of the investigation. A co-defendant pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in March, leaving three other men to face trial in August.
Fix, who faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, agreed to testify if called by prosecutors.
The main kidnapping conspiracy case was handled in federal court, where four men, including ringleaders Fox and Barry Croft Jr., were convicted. Two others were acquitted.
Separately, three men were convicted at trial in Jackson County, the site of militia training, and are serving long prison terms.
Whitmer, a Democrat, was targeted as part of a broad effort by anti-government extremists to trigger a civil war around the time of the 2020 presidential election, investigators said. Her COVID-19 policies, which shut down schools and restricted the economy, were deeply scorned by foes.
But informants and undercover FBI agents were inside the group for months, leading to arrests in October 2020. Whitmer was not physically harmed.
After the plot was thwarted, Whitmer blamed then-President Donald Trump, saying he had given “comfort to those who spread fear and hatred and division.” Last August, after 19 months out of office, Trump called the kidnapping plan a “fake deal.”
A wildfire in Northern Michigan burned through 3,600 acres, forcing evacuations and prompting the closure of a nearby highway Saturday, officials said.
The blaze, centered in Grayling Township about 50 miles from Traverse City, is spreading west and southwest and threatening multiple buildings, the state’s Department of Natural Resources said in a statement.
“Evacuations are being conducted by emergency personnel,” the department said.
A five-mile stretch of Interstate 75 was shut down in both directions as crews battle the fire, and a temporary flight restriction was issued for a five-mile perimeter around the fire below 5,000 feet.
Firefighters are attacking the flames from the ground and the air, with aircraft scooping water from Neff Lake, Shellenbarger Lake and Lake Margrethe, according the statement.
Crawford County Sheriff Ryan Swope said in a statement that power in the area has been shut off for the safety of firefighters working under power lines.
It’s still unknown what sparked the fire, the Department of Natural Resources said in its statement earlier.
The fire is burning as Michigan sees “unprecedented” hot and dry conditions for this time of year, setting the stage extreme fire danger, the statement added.
The wildfire produced thick smoke in the area Saturday, and the department warned nearby residents to limit exposure to wildfire smoke by staying indoors with windows shut.
The Department of Natural Resources also said visibility may be reduced on roadways.
Warm temperatures, low humidity, gusty winds and dry fuels will all combine fuel the risk of fires in the days ahead, the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids said in a tweet.
Young Dillon Reeves stepped in to save the day when his school bus driver became incapacitated following a medical emergency. Correspondent Steve Hartman talked with Reeves, and his parents, about why the Warren, Michigan, middle school student was able to spring into action while so many other kids could not.
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The numbers: The University of Michigan’s gauge of consumer sentiment fell to a preliminary May reading of 57.7 from an April reading of 63.5. That is the lowest level since November last year.
Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal had expected a May reading of 63.
Americans view on near-term inflation moderated slightly in May. They now expect the inflation rate in the next year to average about 4.5%. Inflation expectations had surged to 4.6% in April from 3.6 in March.
Inflation expectations over the next five years rose to 3.2% from 3% in April. That’s the highest reading since 2011.
Key details: A gauge that measures what consumers think about their financial situation — and the current health of the economy — fell to 64.5 from 68.2 in April.
Another measure that asks about expectations for the next six months moved down to 53.4 in May from 60.5 in the prior month.
Big picture: Consumer spending is the engine of the economy. If households grow concerned about the outlook and pull back, it could push the economy into recession.
And Federal Reserve officials won’t be pleased to see expectations of inflation over the long-term increase. They view expectations as a key source of future inflation pressure.
What UMich said: “Consumers’ worries about the economy escalated in May alongside the proliferation of negative news about the economy, including the debt crisis standoff,” the press release said. In the most serious debt-ceiling standoff in 2011 consumer sentiment plummeted to recession levels but recovered quickly when the crisis was averted.
What are they saying? “While we don’t place too much weight on the relationship, if sustained, the latest plunge in consumer sentiment would be consistent with falling consumption in the second quarter. That would be alongside the probable hit to consumption from tightening credit conditions,” said Olivia Cross, assistant economist at Capital Economics.
A Michigan public school district has banned backpacks inside all school buildings for the remainder of the school year, citing a nationwide rise in weapons being brought into schools.
Flint Community Schools’ backpack ban went into effect on Monday. The decision followed two separate safety incidents that canceled classes for two days at a district school last month, MLive reported.
In a letter to the community, Flint Community Schools Superintendent Kevelin Jones blamed a rise in “threatening behavior and contraband, including weapons,” at schools nationwide for the decision. In a statement to HuffPost, he also cited local threats against the district’s students, teachers and staff within the past few weeks.
“In addition to the backpack policy, we have increased the number of safety advocates throughout the district and added to our existing safety protocols over the past few weeks,” Jones said in an email Thursday.
The ban was approved by the Flint Board of Education, the district’s administration and principals, and received support from the Flint Police Department and other safety advocates, he said.
“Backpacks make it easier for students to hide weapons, which can be disassembled and harder to identify or hidden in pockets, inside books or under other items. Clear backpacks do not completely fix this issue,” Jones said in his community letter.
Small purses will be permitted. However, any student who brings a backpack to school will be sent to the front office so that a parent or guardian can be called to pick up their belongings. The office will not hold this property, the district’s website states.
“Based on the issues we continue to see across the country regarding school safety, we believe that this is the best solution at this time for those we serve,” the district said in a document addressing the change.
Backpack bans have gone into effect in schools nationwide in recent years amid shared safety concerns.
Last year, students in another Michigan school district were required to use only clear backpacks on campus after a school shooting at a local high school left four people dead.
These policies have come amid a rise in school shootings, with last year seeing more school shootings nationwide than in any year since at least 1999, according to data collected by The Washington Post.
As of last month, there have been at least 44 incidents of gunfire on school grounds this year, resulting in 19 deaths and 33 injuries, according to data collected by the nonprofit organization Every Town For Gun Safety.
A seventh-grader in Michigan is being praised for his quick thinking after taking control of a school bus after the bus driver lost consciousness, according to a statement from the school district’s superintendent.
The situation unfolded on Wednesday while students were being transported home from Carter Middle School in Warren, Michigan, about 30 minutes north of Detroit. During the ride, a bus driver “became lightheaded and lost consciousness” while the bus was traveling on Masonic Boulevard near Bunert Road, according to Superintendent Robert D. Livernois.
A “quick-thinking” seventh-grade male student “saw the driver in distress and stepped to the front of the bus and helped bring it to a stop without incident,” Livernois said.
The student has not been identified.
The Warren police and fire departments responded and tended to the driver, and students were safely loaded onto a different bus.
“The actions of the student who helped stop the bus made all the difference today, and I could not be prouder of his efforts,” Livernois said.
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The meeting of New College of Florida’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday afternoon began with a full hour of fierce criticism from members of the community, as dozens of professors, students, and parents lambasted what they view as a hostile takeover of the institution by a Republican governor with likely presidential ambitions. It ended with the chairman of the faculty resigning from the college.
The issue eliciting the strongest protest was whether five professors who had already cleared the usual hurdles to achieve tenure would be approved by the board — what is normally a perfunctory step. But the college’s interim president, Richard Corcoran, had let it be known that he didn’t want those tenure cases to be approved, citing general upheaval at the college and its new direction. The board acceded to Corcoran’s wishes, voting down the professors one by one, each by a count of six votes to four, before adjourning to chants of “shame on you” from those assembled.
The smallest college in the state’s university system has drawn outsize attention ever since Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, installed six trustees committed to reshaping its curriculum and upending its image. At a recent Republican Party breakfast in Michigan, DeSantis bragged that his chosen trustees had fired the president and “eliminated DEI and CRT.” It’s true that the previous president, Patricia Okker, was shown the door, as was Yoleidy Rosario-Hernandez, the college’s top diversity officer (though what exactly it would mean to eliminate critical race theory from a college is not clear). DeSantis also said he didn’t think anyone had heard of the institution before, referring to it as “New College of Sarasota.”
Corcoran, a DeSantis ally and former Republican speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, took over as interim president in February. Since then he has spoken excitedly about New College’s future, saying that he wants it to be the No. 1 liberal-arts college in the country, to more than triple its size — currently a little under 700 students — and to add an intercollegiate-sports program. A strategic statement submitted by the administration to the board was brimming with enthusiasm but short on details. The statement said the college should “add world-class faculty,” and its plan for enrollment growth offered the following call to action: “Students. Students. Students.”
The string of firings and pronouncements has been greeted with pushback from students and faculty members. At the beginning of Wednesday’s meeting, those wishing to make a comment were each given a minute to speak. One student told board members that “the student body does not support these things and does not support you.” An alumnus who graduated from New College a half-century ago said the board was “not just hurting my college, you’re hurting our state.” Two speakers invoked the Nazis. One student screamed an expletive at Corcoran and was asked to leave the room. A mother of a New College student said she had “faith that karma will come for all of you.”
The trustees absorbed statement after statement from those worried and angry about the proposed reforms at the college. Perhaps the best-known trustee appointed by DeSantis, Christopher Rufo — who has called for conservatives to “lay siege to institutions” in order to rid them of left-wing activists — attended remotely and was visible on a projection screen behind the other board members. He hovered over the proceedings silently, except for voting “aye” in lockstep with his fellow DeSantis appointees.
The most consequential votes centered on the five professors who were up for tenure: Rebecca Black and Lin Jiang, both professors of chemistry; Nassima Neggaz, a professor of history and religion; Gerardo ToroFarmer, a professor of coastal and marine science; and Hugo Viera-Vargas, a professor of Latin American studies and music. They were each up for tenure in their fifth year, technically one year earlier than usual, though they had all checked the necessary boxes, according to their fellow faculty members and the prior president.
We’re really nervous and uncertain. There’s a feeling of distrust. They say things, but what are they going to do?
Although they were denied this year, it appears that they might be granted tenure next year, assuming that they’re willing to stick around after being publicly turned down by the board. The president of the college’s faculty union, Steven Shipman, called the situation “uncharted territory” and pointed out that, in the last decade, about a third of faculty members had been granted tenure in their fifth year. But the decision on tenure for those five professors could have a ripple effect on faculty members deciding whether they still feel comfortable at New College. “We’re really nervous and uncertain,” Shipman said in an interview. “There’s a feeling of distrust. They say things, but what are they going to do?”
For his part, Corcoran played down the significance of the tenure denials, noting that they could come up for approval again and saying that it made sense to wait and see how reform at the college worked out in the coming months. “Change is scary, but there’s nothing that anyone can constructively point to from that podium that has done anything but protect New College and strengthen it,” he said, an assertion that was met with laughter from some in attendance.
After the five professors were denied tenure, the crowd erupted into chants of “shame on you.” Just before the meeting was adjourned, Matthew Lepinski, a board member, faculty chairman, and associate professor of computer science, unexpectedly announced his resignation from all of those positions. Lepinski has been at New College since 2015. “I’m very concerned about the direction that this board is going and the destabilization of the academic program,” he said. “So I wish you the best of luck, but this is my last board meeting. I’m leaving the college.” He then stood up and walked out of the room.
MILWAUKEE ― A few weeks before her victory, Janet Protasiewicz, the liberal ― and de facto Democratic ― nominee for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, issued a warning about what could happen if her conservative opponent, Dan Kelly, managed to pull off a victory: It could flip the 2024 presidential election.
“Don’t you think our elections should be fair and free?” Protasiewicz asked HuffPost. “Don’t you think there should be a Supreme Court justice who wasn’t going to vote to overturn the 2024 election results? If they don’t come out the way that he wants, that’s what I think will happen.”
The idea that an off-year April election could swing control of the presidency would’ve seemed ludicrous not long ago, before the GOP’s lurch toward authoritarianism and whole-hearted embrace of former President Donald Trump’s lies about the election. But for thousands of liberals and Democrats across the country who poured cash into Protasiewicz’s campaign, the threat was a central motivator.
Protasiewicz’s eventual 11-point victory was the latest example of how Democrats have made major progress in clawing back power at the state level, with party leaders in key states effectively turning state-level elections into extensions of national political causes, tying them to the outcome of the next presidential election and hyping up the importance of state-by-state battles over abortion rights.
The strategy has fired up college-educated voters, who are more likely to vote in off-year elections, and convinced liberals around the country to pour small-dollar donations into electoral contests once considered far too obscure to merit outside investment.
The results of these tactics speak for themselves: 57% of Americans live in a state with a Democratic governor. The 17 states where Democrats have a trifecta ― meaning they control the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature ― equal 41.6% of the country’s population. The 22 Republican trifectas, mostly built in smaller states, amount to just 39.6% of the country.
But as the party continues a long slog back from its 2010 wipeout ― when Republicans jumped from 9 trifectas to 22 in a single night and gained control of a redistricting process enabling them to lock Democrats out of power in states across the country ― the chances for further progress are shrinking.
“We have to be realistic,” said Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan state senator whose viral speech defending gay and transgender rights helped raise millions to power Democrats’ eventual victory in the state’s legislative elections last fall. “People asked me how it feels for everything to change overnight. But it wasn’t overnight. There has been a persistence and a dedication to down-ballot races from Republicans that Democrats simply haven’t had.”
Recent weeks have shown the promise and peril of the comeback so far. Victories in Wisconsin, and Michigan’s moves to repeal an abortion ban and right-to-work legislation, have been offset by the Wisconsin GOP’s pick up of a state Senate supermajority and the defection by a Democratic state legislator in North Carolina, both of which illustrated how stop-start the party’s progress is, and how fragile its gains can be. And the expulsion of two Democrats from the Tennessee House of Representatives shows how helpless the party remains in some states more than a decade after the 2010 wipeout.
Republicans now have supermajorities in 20 states, having picked up veto-proof majorities in three states with Democratic governors since the 2022 midterms: Wisconsin, where the GOP won a special election the same day as Protasiewicz’s victory, and in North Carolina and Louisiana, where Democratic legislators switched parties.
Many states where the party is at its weakest are in the South, with some of the largest Black populations in the country, giving the party little power to defend its most loyal voting bloc. Of the 10 states with the largest Black population share, seven have GOP governors, seven have GOP legislative supermajorities and six have both.
“We have to admit that we have a problem before we work to address a problem,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist in South Carolina and political adviser to House Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.). National Democratic groups should “continue to prioritize the South, the rural South and the constituencies that primarily make up the South and that’s Black folks.
A Badger State Revival
Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler brought techniques and strategies he learned running the national progressive group MoveOn to his home state, helping revitalize the state party.
Daniel Boczarski via Getty Images
Wisconsin is both a case study for Democrats’ new appreciation of the stakes of state-level fights and a reminder of how the gerrymandering that emerged from the 2010 election continues to stand in the party’s way.
When Republican Scott Walker became Wisconsin’s governor in 2010, he set out to shift state politics rightward through gerrymandering and the evisceration of the state’s once-powerful labor unions. Trump’s victory in the Badger State in 2016, just eight years after Barack Obama carried it by 14 percentage points, spoke to Walker’s success in that endeavor.
Amid public outrage over Trump that helped Democrats make inroads in the suburbs, the party ousted Walker in 2018. But in April 2019, conservatives narrowly triumphed in a statewide supreme court race that liberals had hoped to win.
Witnessing that defeat was one of the reasons that Ben Wikler, a Madison native then serving as Washington director of MoveOn.org, decided to jump back into politics in his home state. He was elected chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin in June 2019.
Leveraging skills and contacts, he had acquired in the world of national grassroots organizing, Wikler turned the state party into a fighting force. Among other techniques, he used his growing social media following to raise funds for the party, which he plowed into a hiring spree, prioritizing field organizing as well as communications. The latter ignited a virtuous cycle in which the party got more press coverage and thus generated more fundraising that enabled it to continue hiring.
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin now boasts 118 paid staffers, including some interns and part-time workers ― up from 24 employees when Wikler took over.
“The Republican infrastructure in the state of Wisconsin used to be far superior to the Democratic infrastructure,” said a Milwaukee-area Republican strategist who requested anonymity to speak freely. “[Wikler] has built a finely tuned, fast-moving, well-oiled machine. And so they are playing better on the field than they used to.”
The party’s advances under Wikler, and a concurrent shift toward Democrats among highly educated voters who are more likely to show up in off-season elections, helped a liberal justice win a state supreme court race in April 2020 and subsequently flip the state for Biden that November.
This year, presented with the chance to shift control of the state supreme court from conservatives to liberals, Wikler didn’t hesitate to mobilize the party’s resources to their fullest. Ironically, thanks to a set of campaign-finance reforms that Walker oversaw in 2015, there were no restrictions on how much the Democratic Party of Wisconsin was able to transfer to liberal Justice-elect Janet Protasiewicz. The party ended up giving Protasiewicz more than $9 million in her bid for the officially nonpartisan office.
Democrats’ involvement in Protasiewicz’s bid sparked allegations from conservatives that she would serve as a partisan activist rather than an impartial judge ― a charge she sought to defuse by promising to recuse herself from cases involving the state party.
For Wikler, though, the net benefits of electing Protasiewicz, including the possibility of obtaining less Republican-leaning congressional and state legislative maps, made campaigning for Protasiewicz an easy decision.
“Republicans are not shy about doing everything in their power to elect far-right judges,” he told HuffPost in late March. “And Democrats have a choice: Either they can roll over and let the extreme right dominate the courts, or they can fight back with everything they’ve got.”
That bet paid off. But Protasiewicz’s coattails were not quite enough to carry Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin, an attorney, across the finish line in a special state Senate election in the same Milwaukee suburbs that have been trending more Democratic in recent years. Habush Sinykin’s narrow defeat gave Republicans a two-thirds majority in the state Senate, enabling them to impeach and expel Democratic elected officials on a party-line vote. That could theoretically endanger everyone from liberal judges and prosecutors to Protasiewicz and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D).
Wikler isn’t too worried, though. If Republicans target Protasiewicz or other liberal judges, Evers would have the power to name those officials’ replacements. Wikler also called Habush Sinykin, the unsuccessful Democratic contender for state Senate, a “dynamite candidate” who had suffered from the gerrymandered nature of her district.
“What’s happened in Wisconsin can be a playbook for Democrats across the country,” Wikler said.
Officials in other state parties are already trying to learn from the strides made in Wisconsin. Following the dramatic expulsion of two Black Democratic lawmakers in Tennessee, Wikler spoke to the Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Hendrell Remus about “what the channels are to fight back.” The Democratic Party of Wisconsin also sent out an email fundraiser for its Tennessee counterpart and matched the first $25,000 of the $38,000 the email raised.
“Republicans are abusing supermajority powers that they haven’t earned,” Wikler said. “Tennessee Democrats have a chance to make that backfire.”
Money And Media In Michigan
Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s speech defending herself against GOP attacks went viral a year ago this week, enabling her to tap into a national donor base that has become invested in previously obscure state legislative contests.
McMorrow’s speech, delivered a year ago on Wednesday, came after a GOP colleague implied she was a “groomer” for supporting transgender rights and opposing Republican-led efforts to block discussion of gay rights and racism in public schools.
The speech went viral, attracting millions of views and helping McMorrow soon raise $1.2 million, 85% of it from outside the state. Much of that money was sent to help state legislative candidates. She said the key was airing television ads turning those candidates into actual people rather than just ballot lines with a D or R next to their names, noting that surveys have shown that 80% of Americans can’t identify their state legislator.
“We connect to stories of people,” McMorrow said. “Trying to sell the story that we’re just trying to flip a state legislature is not relatable.”
McMorrow said that keeping the money coming in relied on repeatedly connecting to national audiences by emphasizing national battles happening on the ground in Michigan.
“Something that we really tried to do intentionally was to continue to seek out national media opportunities, to tell the story of what’s happening in Michigan, but making that connection to national politics because that’s the only way to break through to people,” McMorrow said.
Helping McMorrow and others out was a liberal media ecosystem fully ready to talk about state-level contests. After her speech, McMorrow was twice a guest on “Pod Save America,” the liberal podcast founded by former staffers for President Barack Obama. The podcast also held a special episode in Madison to draw attention to Protasiewicz’s campaign.
The way Democrats have been able to tap into national small-dollar donors to fund state races was visible in Wisconsin. In providing Protasiewicz with $8 million of the $14 million she raised, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin counted on a surge in grassroots donations that complemented the big checks that came in. In the nearly four years since Wikler took over as chair, the state party took in more than 777,000 donations, compared with just under 65,000 over the same period preceding Wikler’s arrival.
“It takes resources to run your own operation, but when you do, it means that every individual candidate will have a political network and a volunteer network that takes years to build,” Wikler said.
Protasiewicz also outperformed her conservative opponent, Dan Kelly, in direct fundraising from small-dollar donors, raising nearly 25,000 donations of $50 or less, compared with Kelly’s 3,800.
The big picture gap is most evident from how the Democratic Governors’ Association (DGA) has been able to develop a small-dollar fundraising program the Republican Governors’ Association (RGA) has so not been able to match, enabling the former group to come close to matching the GOP dollar-for-dollar in key races for the first time in decades. (Both the DGA and RGA take extensive sums directly from corporations and wealthy donors, but the RGA has long had more success in that area.)
Laura Clawson, the DGA’s digital director, said the committee was able to build its online donor base by drawing people in with e-mails touching on national issues and figures, then explaining how giving to governors can matter, even if it increased the digital difference between opening an initial email and making a donation.
“A lot of people’s goal is to just get someone onto that contribution page with as little friction as possible,” Clawson said. “Implementing that flow allowed us to do donor education about why this matters. And we’ve seen a huge, huge increase in our donations.”
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, the chair of the DGA in the 2022 cycle, said the committee was able to spend three times the amount it did in 2018. The party picked up governorships in Maryland and Massachusetts while losing Nevada, marking only the second time since 1934 the president’s party has increased its governorships during a midterm.
“Who your governor is matters more than ever,” Cooper said, citing pandemic response and fights over abortion rights. “Democratic governors demonstrated we will protect your pocketbook, your freedoms and the foundations of our democracy.”
Problems Money Can’t Solve
Tennessee State Rep. Justin Pearson, expelled from the state legislature and then reinstated, has shown Democrats do not always need electoral power to push for change.
The expulsion ― and lighting-fast reappointment ― of Tennessee Reps. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones was, like McMorrow’s speech, a singular moment for Tennessee Democrats to seize the advantage. Pearson and Jones became instant superstars, with national leaders like Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) raising money for them online.
In a different state, the momentum could carry Democrats to a modicum of power. But after losing control of both legislative chambers in 2010, the party has only spiraled downward in the Volunteer States. Heavily gerrymandered maps mean Democrats only have one congressman left in the state, and Republicans hold more than three-quarters of the seats in the state House and the state Senate.
And most of those seats are deep red: Only four of the 75 Republicans in the state House received less than 60% of the vote in their most recent election. While strategists in the state hope the party can use gun violence as an issue to potentially flip a handful of seats in the growing suburbs of Nashville, it shows how if the Democratic comeback is built on maps, money and media, the latter two can’t matter much without the first.
“Republican extreme gerrymandering really locked Democrats out of power artificially for the last decade and created artificial barriers that you can’t overcome with a standard campaign,” said Kelly Burton, the former president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
The NDRC, chaired by former Attorney General Eric Holder, was founded in 2016 as a counterpoint to longstanding GOP efforts to shape legislative and congressional maps. It spent millions pushing for referenda to block partisan gerrymanders, challenging GOP-drawn maps and backing candidates in judicial, legislative and governor’s races.
But gerrymandering does not explain away all of the Democrats’ struggles in Tennessee. Trump’s margin of victory in 2020 was 23 percentage points, and the state is heavy on white working-class voters and evangelical Christians.
While Democrats have progressed in many states, most deep red states remain firmly in control of the GOP. In places like the Dakotas and the deep South, Republicans don’t need to gerrymander to maintain a firm grip on power.
When Pearson talked to HuffPost’s Phil Lewis earlier this month, he encouraged Tennesseans to do more than just vote to make a change in the state: “We need people who are actively, consistently, consistently engaged in democracy. [People] who protest, who make phone calls, who show up to hearings, who stay engaged, all the time, all year round.”
Of course, Pearson and Jones have shown you do not necessarily need electoral power to create change. Their protest, and the subsequent GOP overreaction, shined a brighter light on a legislature riven with problems but largely ignored by the public. It also created momentum for Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, to push for a red flag law.
Tennessee’s legislative session ended on Friday without any actions on guns and with many Republican legislators still deeply opposed. But Lee said he would soon call for a special session on gun reform, citing the “broad agreement that dangerous, unstable individuals who intend to harm themselves or others should not have access to weapons.”
It’s a reflection of the public pressure Pearson and Jones brought.
“Throughout history ― Southern history and Black history ― it has always taken some sort of shockwave event for folks to tune into our issues and our communities in a very intentional way,” Seawright said. “What happened in Tennessee was another of those shockwave events in history.”
DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — A lot was happening in March 1965 in the bungalow in Selma, Alabama, that then-4-year-old Jawana Jackson called home, and much of it involved her “Uncle Martin.”
The role the Jackson House played was integral to the Civil Rights Movement, so Jackson contacted the The Henry Ford Museum near Detroit about a year ago to ask if it would take over the preservation of the Jackson House and its legacy.
“It became increasingly clearer to me that the house belonged to the world, and quite frankly, The Henry Ford was the place that I always felt in my heart that it needed to be,” she told The Associated Press last week from her home in Pensacola, Florida.
Starting this year, the Jackson House will be dismantled piece-by-piece and trucked the more than 800 miles (1,280 kilometers) north to Dearborn, Michigan, where it will eventually be open to the public as part of the history museum. The project is expected to take up to three years.
Owned by dentist Sullivan Jackson and his wife, Richie Jean, the 3,000-square-foot (280-square-meter) home was where King and others strategized the three marches against racist Jim Crow laws that prevented Black people from voting in the Deep South.
King was inside the home when President Lyndon Johnson announced a bill that would become the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“There was a synergy going on in that house during those critical times,” Jawana Jackson said. “Whether that was when Uncle Martin was praying the morning of the Selma to Montgomery march or whether he was talking to President Johnson (by phone) in the little bedroom of that home, I always got a sense of energy and a sense of hope for the future.”
The house and artifacts, including King’s neckties and pajamas, and the chair where he sat while watching Johnson’s televised announcement, will be part of the acquisition by The Henry Ford. The purchase price is confidential.
Named after Ford Motor Co. founder and American industrialist Henry Ford, the museum sits on 250 acres (100 hectares) and also features Greenfield Village where more than 80 historic structures are displayed and maintained. The Jackson House will be rebuilt there, joining the courthouse where Abraham Lincoln first practiced law, the laboratory where Thomas Edison perfected the light bulb, and the home and workshop where Orville and Wilbur Wright invented their first airplane.
Also among the collection’s artifacts are the Montgomery city bus whose seat Rosa Parks refused to give up to a white man in 1955 and the chair that Lincoln was sitting on in 1865 when he was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington.
Visitors to Greenfield Village will be able to walk through the Jackson House, according to Patricia Mooradian, The Henry Ford’s president and chief executive.
“This house is the envelope, but the real importance is what happened inside,” Mooradian said. “We want people to immerse themselves in that history … to feel and experience what may have gone on in that home. What were the conversations? What were the decisions that were being made around the dining room table?”
Built in 1912, the home served as a guest house for Black authors W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington who held “fireside chats” regarding education, religion, the arts, community building and economic sustainability, according to the Alabama African American Civil Rights Heritage Sites Consortium.
It took on a greater importance following the fatal shooting of a young Black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, by an Alabama trooper.
On March 7, 1965, weeks after that slaying, about 600 people participated in a peaceful protest. The late Georgia U.S. Rep. John Lewis was one of the leaders of the planned 54-mile (86-kilometer) march to the state Capitol, which was part of the larger effort to register Black voters. But police beat protesters as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in what is now known as “Bloody Sunday.”
Television and newspaper reports seared images of that confrontation into the nation’s consciousness. Days later, King led what became known as the “Turnaround Tuesday” march, in which marchers approached police at the bridge and prayed before turning back.
Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 eight days after “Bloody Sunday.” On March 21, King began a third march, under federal protection, that grew to thousands of people by the time it arrived at the state Capitol. Five months later, Johnson signed the bill into law.
The Jackson House brings a new dimension to understanding the role Black Americans played in defeating Jim Crow, according to historian Gretchen Sullivan Sorin.
“The Jacksons are unsung heroes,” Sorin said. “Their generosity and courage shows us how we, as ordinary Americans, can stand up against injustice.”
Jackson said her parents felt the risks were worth taking.
“For them, it was all about the future for me and millions of other children that were going to grow up,” she said. “They felt that everyone deserved a peaceful and more democratic society to grow up in.”
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Williams is a member of AP’s Race & Ethnicity team.
