Monthly Archives: June 2022

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, June 20th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. Im Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And Im Mary Reichard. This month marks the 100th anniversary of a promotional radio broadcast that launched the first Christian radio ministry. Heres Paul Butler with this weeks WORLD History Book.

SOUND: TELEGRAPH MORSE CODE

PAUL BUTLER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Wireless telegraphy had been around since before World War I. But radio broadcasting as we know it today began in 1920 with radio station KDKA.

SOUND: KDKA ELECTION RESULTS REENACTMENT

All over the country,hobbyists bought radio sets and began tuning in to the broadcast stations popping up across the country. But many in the church werent so sure.

JAMES SNYDER: The church did not trust radio.

James Snyder is a biographer and pastor:

JAMES SNYDER: You know, Satan is the prince and power of the air, radio goes through airwaves. So radio is the devil's instrument.

Another concern for Christians at the time continues to this day

MARK WARD: Well, this is something that there's so much secular entertainment on it

Mark Ward, Sr. is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Houston-Victoria.

MARK WARD: and we don't want to participate in a medium that is so secularized and worldly.

But in June 1922, a well-known Chicago minister named Paul Rader was preparing for an evangelistic tent meeting.

MARK WARD: Being the promoter par excellence that he was, he was looking for any opportunity to be able to promote the work. And..he was invited by the mayor of Chicagoto come and broadcast from a radio station that the mayor was sponsoring.

So on June 17th, 1922, Paul Rader arrives atChicago City hall with his brass quartet in tow. They mount the stairs and head to the roof. The studio is little more than a lean-to filled with wires and tubesand a microphone made from an old telephone receiver.

MARK WARD: The clock ticked down, it was time for the broadcast. And the brass quartet was in this little pinboard studio on the roof of Chicago City Hall. And the engineer shoves the phone through and says play.

MUSIC FROM THE QUARTET

After the quartet finishes, Paul Rader grabs the mic and begins to speak. Tom McElroy reenacted the moment for the 2003 documentary Save Them: The Life of Paul Rader.

TOM MCELROY/PAUL RADER: One hundred thousand sinners within the sound of my voice today must be saved. The world is drifting. Crime rules and the temporal officials are blamed when religion and religion onlynon-sectarian, un-quibbling, undogmatic religion will bring the peace you pray for.

A photographer from The Chicago Daily News snaps a photo of the moment and runs it over to the paper for the evening publication. Rader and the team joke that all of Chicago must have heard them not because of the broadcast, but for how loudly they were instructed tospeak and play in order for the equipment to pick them up. Historian Larry Eskridge:

LARRY ESKRIDGE: And Rader was rather surprised when all this happened, the response from people in the Chicago area. It really stunned him that this obscure little gadget could reach that many people.

Raders 1922 tent meeting was so successful that it soon became a permanent, active evangelistic center on Chicagos near North side: The Chicago Gospel Tabernacle.

Over the next few years Rader made guest appearances on various Chicago radio stations. When he discovered that the mayors station didnt broadcast on Sundays he offered to buy the whole day. Soon they built a studio in the tabernacle and began broadcasting 14 hours each weekend.

LARRY ESKRIDGE: They came up with programs for young boys called the Radio Rangers, they came up with a program for young girls, the Aerial Girls, and he also came up with a program called the Sunshine Hour, which was targeted sort of for shut ins and the bedridden folks and it intersperse snippets of poetry with comforting Bible passages and hymns played by one of the keyboardist on the tabernacles mighty Wurlitzer.

A few years later Rader and his broadcast team even had a network, daily morning program that aired on CBS:

AUDIO: Good morning Breakfast Brigade! Paul Raders Revielle Hour greets the host of early morning risers throughout America and Canada once again with refreshing music and message...

LARRY ESKRIDGE: What Rader seem to be bring to the table for radio was it he had the gift to be able to speak conversationally, and in an intimate fashion to folks that really made him seem like a friend.

RADER: Now will you sing around the table this morning?Many of you listening in bed...

LARRY ESKRIDGE:And he sort of envisioned, you may be sitting across the table from him, maybe you've got your Bibles open or just sharing a cup of coffee, and he's talking to you one on one as a friend or a neighbor.

Paul Raders broadcast ministry coincided with the great depression.

Farmers had crops that they couldnt sell and people across the region were suffering. So Rader transformed his tabernacle once againthis timeinto a major food distribution centercanning beans, cabbage, and any other produce he could get ahold of. Radio got the word out.

But as the recession dragged on, Raders broadcast initiatives were eventually unsustainable and he had to shut them down. He died just a few year later in 1938but not before transforming how Christians saw the media. Once again, biographer and pastor James Snyder:

JAMES SNYDER: There should be a connection between the broadcast and the listeners. So his idea of radio was it's another way to connect with peopleAnd so in that sense, I believe that that Paul Rader really invented Christian radio and really set the standard of what Christian Broadcasting ought to be about.

Thats this weeks WORLD History Book. Im Paul Butler.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.

More:

History Book - An evangelist takes to the airwaves - WORLD News Group

Photo: Manit Sriwanichpoom/Agence VU/REDUX

In 2010, historian Julian E. Zelizer edited an anthology of historical essays assessing the two terms ofGeorge W. Bush, who at that point had been out of office for a little more than a year. The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment was split into a dozen chapters, each written by a different historian and focused on a specific aspect of the Bush years: Iraq, the financial crisis, culture wars, and more. After Barack Obama left office, Zelizer edited another volume again billing it as a first draft of history. For as long as the series has been around, Zelizer and his contributors have used the 21st-century presidency as a window into the social and political upheavals of the mid-to-late-20th century. The collapse of the New Deal coalition and the aftershocks of the Reagan Revolution are consistent themes.

This time, theres an interesting wrinkle. Historians arent dealing with a discrete eight-year period with Donald Trump (as they were with Bush and Obama) but with an as yet unsettled bubble. Are we still in the Trump era? Maybe. No one knows whatll happen in 2024 whether were living through the intermission of a presidency that could stretch until 2029. The main concern underpinning the Trump edition, then, is the utility of writing such a contemporary history. Far from being a liability, contemporary historians argue, an understanding of the passions of a time can endow a writer with a set of questions inaccessible to posterity. Besides, any history of Trump will reflect and sublimate the anxieties of the time in which its written.

The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment includes 19 essays ranging from Trumps China policy to white supremacy, impeachment, and the pandemic. Among the standouts are Michael Kazins essay on the Democratic Party, Nicole Hemmer on the Trumpification of conservative media, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on Black Lives Matter and movement politics.

To justify the mission of his series, Zelizer cites a famous essay by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. The increase in the velocity of history means, among other things, that the present becomes the past more swiftly than ever before, Schlesinger wrote in a 1967 article for The Atlantic, reflecting on the proliferation of books on the Kennedy years. Unlike with retrospectives on Bush and Obama, Zelizer argues that its urgent for historians to fight Trumps duplicity with their research. Its hard to disagree even if their work might not reach a Trumpian readership. The alternative is to write nothing, to kick back and watch as Trump starts campaigning next year. If he runs again, the periodization might change, but for now, it makes sense to view his 2016 presidential campaign and single term as a unit. In keeping with Zelizers previous editions, this collection extends Trumps story, tracing antecedents such as Bush-era anti-American sentiment, 1990s nativism, Nixons dtente with China, and the social movements of the 1960s. The endgame isnt to arrive at anything so facile as Trumps legacy, Zelizer says, but to figure out how best to tell the story, to talk it over with each other, to start doing the never-ending work of historiography.

Trump, ready to burnish his achievements and potentially position himself for another run, met with the books contributors on Zoom last summer. Calling in from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, he ticked off a list of hobby horses: NATO, NAFTA, the plague or whatever you want to call it, the USS Gerald R. Ford. Then he took questions about his ideology, his relationship with the FBI, and on and on. After the meeting, Trump sent a thank-you note, but the predictable kicker, of course, came at a press conference days later, when he said people writing books about him are often bad people who write whatever comes to their mind or fits their agenda. It has nothing to do with facts or reality.

Most historians in this collection simultaneously understand Trump to be a product of the era, not the cause but someone who had the capacity to break with our politics in fundamental ways, Zelizer writes. In this book, Trump is neither a gilded autocrat nor an inept clown, but he still emerges as a transformational politician. As Nicole Hemmer persuasively notes in her essay, Remade in His Image: How Trump Transformed Right-Wing Media, the schism between the MAGA and Never Trump camps was both an affective mutation and a culmination. Hemmer cites Fox anchor Laura Ingrahams book Billionaires at the Barricades: The Populist Revolution from Reagan to Trump, in which Trumps win is portrayed as the fulfillment of the Reagan Revolution. Shared iconography and showmanship represented both a callback to a Republican tradition and a break from the past.

Elsewhere, Zelizer interrogates the assumption that such a thing as a Trumpian GOP even exists. He takes a more complicated tack in suggesting that Trump departed from norms while pursuing many of the partys long-term political objectives: the disassembly of the welfare state, deregulation, and tax cuts for the rich. Which is why it should come as no surprise that operatives like Mitch McConnell have never really abandoned Trump and will fill in the bubble beside his name should he win the nomination again.

Michael Kazins essay about the Democratic Party and the rise of its progressive faction is a welcome addition. He argues that the party apparatuss resistance was ineffectual and that Democrats have been most competitive when they articulated a broadly egalitarian economic vision in the 20th century before Bill Clintons Third Way pivot. While Kazin nods to the reformist corners of the post-2016 party, I wish contributors would have lingered more on the extra-partisan elements of the Trump years that is, activists oppositional posture toward both major political parties. United in their hatred of a system personified by a figure with a once-in-a-lifetime ick factor, many feminist, Black, anti-finance, climate, and other activists became socialists en masse. Of course, they largely remained locked out of power. Though many workers embedded themselves in the institutional Democratic Party, their influence is more far-reaching than electoral politics. The mainstreaming of mutual aid during the pandemic is one example. For young people, socialism made legible an ethos of care something like Martin Luther King Jr.s network of mutuality, within which whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. These Trump-era political awakenings have spurred unionization drives everywhere from tony Manhattan media companies to Amazon warehouses and Starbucks franchises. The word socialism doesnt appear in the book very often (except to modify Bernie Sanders). Recounting the Democratic Partys post-2016 conflicts, Kazin writes that the party faced an identity crisis: If left unresolved, the argument made it more difficult to express in vivid terms what Democrats actually stood for and how they planned to implement that vision. For socialists in the Trump years, this was exactly the snag: the moderate old guard was visionless and stood for nothing in particular.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor contributes the most useful essay about social movements, linking the uprisings following George Floyds murder in 2020 to the political and business elites abuse of workers particularly since the collapse of the New Deal coalition. These were new protests largely rising out of the catastrophic consequences of nearly five decades of denying the materiality of racial discrimination through the steady erosion of the infrastructure to oversee the implementation of civil rights legislation and the undoing of the social welfare state, she writes. Its a necessary corrective to the corporate co-optation of anti-racist language, which obscures the fact that fights against racial inequality are fights against social inequality. With American billionaires profiting $2 trillion since the start of the pandemic, it could be said that one of Trumps final acts in office was an unconscionable wealth transfer that, regardless of whether hes elected again, well have to work aggressively to solve.

If theres a through-line in Zelizers series, its that the past is always in flux and will look different depending on what a writer chooses to foreground. Trump, with potential ambitions for seeking a second term, seemed eager to influence how historians saw the past, Zelizer writes. Even if Trump doesnt run for president in 2024, he and others will keep trying to confect their little mythologies, and someone will need to counter them with evidence. And even if this feels like fruitless work, easily discarded by propagandists or quickly rendered quaint by the increase in the velocity of history, as Schlesinger wrote, its still always essential.

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us.

See the article here:

How Do You Write a History of the Trump Era While We're Still in It? - New York Magazine

Since opening in 2017, Kalima DeSuzes Crown Heights bookstore and coffee shop Cafe con Libros has become a beloved haven for readersin particular Black and Afro-Latinx womenlooking for a space to dive into the very best that intersectional feminist literature has to offer. And thanks to her background working to combat racism and gender-based violence for nearly 20 years, there are few people better equipped than DeSuze to offer a reading list that spans both the checkered history and the irrepressible joy of Juneteenth.

For DeSuze, its this balance between knowledge of the past and hope for the future that guides both her daily work at the bookstore and the books she selected as essential reading for the holiday. Of course, theyre all written by, for, and about Black women, and told through different kinds of stories, whether fiction or non-fiction, DeSuze explains. But I wanted to think about the actual meaning of Juneteenth, from the history around it to the ways in which Black folks and in particular Black women have moved through it, through culture, through activism, through our hair, even, which can be a point of both resistance and joy.

And as for DeSuzes own Juneteenth celebrations this weekend? On Sunday, Im actually going to relax and my staff are off to do whatever they want to do, says DeSuze. My way of celebrating is just by relaxing, really, as I dont always have the opportunity to slow down. I think with these big holidays that celebrate Black joy, it often feels like theres an expectation that we always have to be doing something. But sometimes, especially for Black women, the best thing we can do for ourselves is to allow for a sense of comfort and relaxation and restoration. So Im going to offer myself that to the best of my ability this weekend.

Here, find DeSuzes picks for the best books to read this Juneteenthand beyondspanning everything from political histories to cookbooks.

This book has all the facts, but there are also so many personal stories interwoven into that history. Sometimes you read something and it feels completely cerebral, or like an exercise. But hearing all these personal stories in this book, it becomes an exercise of the heart and soul. I think thats why this book feels so important to meits all the intimate details that are included in that broader history.

We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World

This is a beautiful art book by Jasmine Hernandez about Black and brown trans and gender non-conforming creatives. I think everybody has their different ways of defining Juneteenth, but a huge thing for me is that its about freedom and its about liberation. Its about being able to come into your own autonomy and define your own life, and I think that this book allows for that. Its an artistic display of the ways in which Black and brown people, and especially young people, are coming into their own and commanding and demanding their future.

This is my always book, and I include it on pretty much every reading list I do. Its about the ethics we need to liveotherwise, wed just be consumed. Based on what we just went through with the shooting in Buffalo, and then in Uvalde, you get consumed and overwhelmed by the question of: What is going to take to make change happen? All About Love always keeps me on course and keeps me focused.

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

This really needs to be basic, required reading. These are stories written by some of the top writers and thinkers of our generation about the transatlantic slave trade, from 1619 all the way up, to a point where people can really understand that this is the pretext for Juneteenth. This is the origin of those celebrations, and you have to understand that in order to understand why it's so important.

Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter

Veronica Chambers is an extremely talented Black writer and journalist at the New York Times, and here, she chronicles the history of the Black Lives Matter movement through photographs and conversations. This is an opportunity for people to engage with the Black Lives Matter movement from a different perspective, and to really sit with these stories. It reinforces why Juneteenth is so important by illustrating that were still fighting for freedomfreedom from police violence, state-sanctioned violence, healthcare, childcare, the most basic stuff. Its another way of celebrating the folks who are fighting to move that pain into power.

Its a book about love, activism, and empowerment, but its also about the ways in which Laetitia Ky uses hair as a place of political activism and pushback. I think that thats very powerful, because historically, a lot of energyboth negative and positive, but mostly negativefor Black women has been wrapped up in our hair. We just had to pass a law [the CROWN act, first passed in California in 2019, was recently passed in the House] that says we cant be discriminated against for wearing our natural hair, which is crazy. How are we still having that conversation? So its a celebration and also a display of resistance about what we as Black women choose to do with our hair, whether its considered acceptable or not.

Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo

Zora Neale has an incredible history, and this was one of the last pieces of her work, where shes talking about slavery and shes talking about the South with all of these very interesting anthropological stories. I thought this would be great to include because she has such a command over folklore, and this very mythical, magical way of talking about Black life, especially in the vernacular that they used back then. It adds a different layer and a texture to the way we understand these stories.

Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island

I really wanted to add a cookbook, because there is so much history and politics in Black food, and I feel like when we do these kinds of reading lists, we dont always acknowledge that, even when it feels so important. If you look at the history of Southern Black cuisine, it is rooted in the history of slavery. But more than that, its about celebrating the Gullah Geechee culture, because they are all people of African descent who have maintained their language, their culture, their art, and their way of life, right there on those islands. Its representative of that spirit of resistance and persistence that underpins Juneteenth.

Daughters of the Dust: A Novel

In my humble opinion, Julie Dash has never got the respect that she deserves. Again, this is set on the Geechee islands about this family of women who are beautiful mystics, and the ways in which they try to survive and keep their family alive on that island is the most beautiful story. It followed the film she made that is equally beautiful, but it tells a very specific story to the island and to the history of those people from a Black female perspective.

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race

This is a response to James Baldwins The Fire Next Time written by a new generation of thought producers on race and racism in the United States of America. There are gendered aspects of it, too, because its also about the ways in which intersectional identities have very different experiences. Baldwins The Fire Next Time is a book that I think everybody should readeven to this day, it still astounds to mebut then to have a new generation talk about it and engage with it all over again, it chronicles how far weve come, how much further we have to go, and how the fight looks different now. I dont think its just a response to The Fire Next Time, I think its in dialogue with Baldwin. Theres no disagreement therethey are truly, genuinely in dialogue.

Follow this link:

Kalima DeSuzes Juneteenth Reading List Is About Both History and Hope - Vogue

KINDERHOOK The Persons of Color Cemetery serves as a silent reminder of this Columbia County towns past, and the hard-working, lesser-known non-white population that helped shape it. Formerly known by residents as a slaves cemetery, the remains of an estimated 500 African Americans, enslaved and freed persons alike, were laid to rest on a quarter-acre of land in the village during the mid-1800s.

For years this burial ground laid fallow and forgotten in an overgrown section of Rothermel Park. Its weathered headstones, hidden by tall grass and weeds, were visited occasionally by children chasing a stray ball that escaped the adjacent baseball field. It was rediscovered only a few years ago, thanks to the stalwart research efforts of former Kinderhook historian Ruth Piwonka, who led to an investigation into the history of the cemetery and its acceptance to the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

Ruth Piwonka was my mentor, said Kate Johnson, appointed village historian last fall after Piwonkas passing. The Persons of Color Cemetery is an important community touchstone. I relate to it emotionally and intellectually as a historian and someone who grew up here. This is a very important piece of our community history.

Before it was a cemetery, this small parcel of land belonged to Irish immigrant John Rogers, who set aside a quarter-acre of his own land as a cemetery for the people of colour In November 1815. The first U.S. census of 1790 recorded 4,661 persons in the township of Kinderhook, 730 Heads of Families and a total of 638 slaves.

The interpretive sign at the cemetery reads: By about 1875 the cemetery was filled; more than 500 persons are estimated to be interred here. It was closed that year, with coffin upon coffin as stated by Edward A. Collier in his 1914 book, A History of Old Kinderhook. This estimate of 500 internments in a quarter-acre plot (which is 10,980 square feet) allows for 21 square feet per burial (about 3 feet wide by 7 feet long), with children having smaller plots.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

At Saturdays Juneteenth Celebration in Rothermel Park, Elena Mosley, founder and director of operations and Unite Education and Cultural Arts Center, along with members of the Kuumba Dance and Drum Academy in Hudson, encouraged onlookers to join the drum circle and later proceed across the field to lay a wreath at the cemetery with Reverend Kim Singletary, the first woman to Pastor the Payne AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church in Chatham.

At Saturdays Juneteenth Celebration in Rothermel Park, Elena Mosley, founder and director of operations and Unite Education and Cultural Arts Center, along with members of the Kuumba Dance and Drum Academy in Hudson, encouraged onlookers to join the drum circle and later proceed across the field to lay a wreath at the cemetery with Reverend Kim Singletary, the first woman to Pastor the Payne AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church in Chatham.

The interpretive sign at the Persons of Color Cemetery.

The Persons of Color Cemetery was recognized on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

Archaeologists from the New York State Museum conducted a ground-penetrating radar survey at the burial ground in November 2017. Preliminary findings seemed to echo Collier's earlier comment, showing a large number of interments, many clustered together, burial on top of burial. The findings are still being calculated.

Before the cemetery was rededicated in May 2017, an archaeological dig to place the interpretive sign at the site exposed a small bone fragment. Found at a depth of only 20 centimeters, it appeared to be a rib, likely that of a small child. The excavation was halted, the bone was left in place, and a more appropriate location was found for the signposts.

The largest gravestone is crafted with a low relief carving in the form of a tulip. Inscribed are the words: The journey of the just is blessed; a tribute of respect erected by the ladies of Kinderhook. This tribute was bestowed upon Isabel Legget, who died in 1854 at the age of 77. The reason for the tribute remains a mystery.

Of the existing gravestones, three belong to adults. Eight stones etched with poetic remembrances mark the deaths of children. What caused their deaths is unknown.

Of the existing gravestones, three belong to adults. Eight stones etched with poetic remembrances mark the deaths of children. What caused their deaths is still unknown.

The largest gravestone is crafted with a low relief carving in the form of a tulip. Inscribed are the words: The journey of the just is blessed; a tribute of respect erected by the ladies of Kinderhook. This tribute was bestowed upon Isabel Legget who died in 1854 at the age of 77. The reason for the tribute remains a mystery.

Forced illiteracy among enslaved persons and a lack of written documents account for why most of the regions Black history from that time period is missing.

Johnson said the cemeterys current location, once part of Rogers backyard and now the village park, is meaningful, in that its part of the everyday lives of people who live in Kinderhook and those who come, even to do something as commonplace as play baseball. Its where people can see it and reflect upon it.

A documentary on the cemetery, Brought to Light: Unearthing the History of an African-American Cemetery in Kinderhook, NY, is available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Persons of Color Cemetery is a historic point of interest on the villages walking and bicycling tour.

See the original post here:

Black history remembered at Kinderhook Persons of Color Cemetery - Times Union

Last year, President Joe Biden made Juneteenth the newest federal holiday. The day, June 19, marks the date in 1865 when the last enslaved people in America were finally freed.

Renowned Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. told CBS News that marking the day as a holiday was a long time coming.

"Juneteenth was not embraced as a national Black holiday for a long, long time," Gates said. "But it was kept alive by Black people in Texas. And that's what's so sweet about it. Our people have been hungry for holidays. Hungry for traditions. Hungry for stories about Black history."

By day, Gates is a professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. By night, he's the host and producer of the PBS genealogy show "Finding Your Roots," along with countless documentaries on Black history.

He broke down the three biggest historical moments in freeing those who were enslaved:

"The Emancipation Proclamation, signed on January 1, 1863, Juneteenth, June 19, 1865, and then finally, the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865 which is what finally and ultimately abolished the institution of slavery," Gates said.

When asked why the name Juneteenth caught on, he explained, "One of the reasons that I think Juneteenth stuck is that we're all charmed by the poetic brilliance of the name, 'Juneteenth.' What better name for June 19 could there possibly be? It's great, it's fetching, you know? It's catchy."

Gates said there is also a bit of fiction around that day in 1865, when, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Gordon Granger issued general order no. 3 to free the enslaved Black people of Galveston, Texas.

"Well, we were raised to think that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, right? The problem is that the Emancipation Proclamation, in and of itself, didn't have the power to free anybody," he said. "It only applied to enslaved people in the Confederacy, and it can only be enforced if Union troops had captured territory in the South, in the Confederacy."

Gates said it's believed only 500,000 out of 3.9 million enslaved men and women were freed due to the Emancipation Proclamation. He explained that the Civil War didn't end when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865 which is why it took longer to get word out.

"So Texas finally surrenders to the Union on June 2. Gordon Granger comes, and on June 19 in Galveston, he issues the Emancipation Proclamation. Because now, the Union Army is in possession of the territory. So that's the true story," Gates said.

He detailed why many historians believe that enslaved people in Texas knew about the Emancipation Proclamation before it had been issued there.

"One is because of the proverbial 'grapevine.' So there was this miraculous way for enslaved people to communicate plantation to plantation and state to state," Gates said. "But the second factor is that because Texas was removed from the main action of the Civil War, many slaveholders moved to Texas for safety. And they took their enslaved people with them."

Gates also stressed the significance of the era that came after Juneteenth, which saw the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and Reconstruction Acts.

"This was the first concentration of Black power," Gates said. "In the summer of 1867, 80% of all eligible Black men, who were formerly enslaved in the South, registered to vote. And in 1868, they actually voted. Ulysses S. Grant won the presidency, so you could reasonably say that Black men had elected a president of the United States."

Back in Galveston, the formerly enslaved began marking their freedom with a celebration in 1866. Gates told CBS News that, as far as he's concerned, the details of Juneteenth are less important than the power of its message.

"Juneteenth is one of the first holidays that Black people created on their own. And of the holidays that they created in slavery times, Juneteenth is the one that survived and is now a national holiday," he said. "For a country built upon the love of freedom, any manifestation of the enjoyment of freedom should be celebrated by all our country. Let's hope for that day."

This story was produced by the CBS News Race and Culture Unit.

Read this article:

"Hungry for stories about Black history": Henry Louis Gates Jr. breaks down the significance and history of Juneteenth - CBS News

With moments of joyous song and yet an acute awareness of history of slavery and discrimination, Gov. Phil Murphy joined about 100 people as they reflected on the past and the future in a Juneteenth celebration Monday.

The governor didnt mince words or sugarcoat New Jerseys troubled past inside of Greater Mount Zion AME Church in Trenton.

Its not a history of which we should be in anyway proud, he said, referring to slavery.

Murphy went on to note New Jersey was one of the last states to ratify the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery. The state was also one of the last to ratify the 14th and 15 amendments, which gave Black people equal protection under the law and the latter gave Black men the right to vote.

New Jersey didnt ratify the 14th Amendment until April 2003, Murphy noted.

The day remembers June 19, 1865, when Gen. Gordon Granger and Union soldiers brought news of the Emancipation Proclamation to enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, and declared that all people held in slavery in the U.S. must be freed. They were the last slaves to learn of their freedom because Texas was a remote state.

The governor also went as far as to point out that there were still enslaved Black people in New Jersey when Union soldiers brought the news to Texas.

But to be absolutely certain it is a history we must acknowledge and a history we must teach, Murphy said, adding, While we cannot undo our states sorry legacy on race, we can work to overcome and make up for it.

Mondays event was one of numerous celebrations and remembrances that took place across the state over the last few days.

Asbury Park held Juneteenth celebrations at Springwood Ave. Park, with 34 vendors and 10 performers in attendance at the second annual event. There was free food, vendors, activities, and performances for attendees to enjoy.

In South Jersey, the Gloucester County NAACP and Gloucester County Prosecutors Office hosted their third annual Juneteenth celebration in Deptford on Saturday at Fasola Park, featuring live music, food, vendors, a DJ, and more.

New Jersey celebrated Juneteenth as a state holiday on Friday, for the second year. But the federal holiday for Juneteenth is Monday.

NJ Advance Media Staff Writer Amethyst Martinez contributed to this report.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.

More:

No sugarcoating N.J.s history with slavery from Murphy at Juneteenth event - NJ.com

Emberly McLean-Bernard, born six weeks premature in rural Mississippi, weighed less than five pounds when doctors sent her home. She did not cry and barely ate, her mother said, and not two days elapsed before she began to gasp for breath. Jocelyn McLean rushed her daughter to the nearest emergency room, but the baby was already turning blue.

The medical team went straight to code blue, pumping air into the babys lungs, trying to force an IV line into Emberlys neck and scalp, prodding her with a rectal thermometer but her vital signs kept failing. After four hours, they gave up.

A state medical examiner concluded that the death had not occurred because of a medical problem, but had been a homicide, the result of blunt force injuries with signs of strangulation.

Ms. McLean, a 29-year-old Black mother with two other small children, was charged with capital murder.

Ms. McLean was stunned. The emergency room doctor who had tried to save the baby was shocked. But Dr. Joye Carter, a forensic pathologist tapped by the defense to review the case, saw an all-too-familiar pattern: a medical examiner who made a ruling without talking to the doctor or even examining the hospital records. Supervisors who signed off on his decision. A criminal justice system that all too often sends Black people to prison on evidence that might not have convicted someone else. In court, Ms. McLean and her lawyer recalled, Ms. McLean was called a monster.

She spent more than a year in jail before Dr. Carters autopsy review forced the state medical examiner and prosecutor to acknowledge that the babys injuries could be explained by the desperate attempts to save her that night.

Im thankful that this woman didnt murder her child, Steven Jubera, the assistant district attorney in Tallahatchie County, said in an interview after the charges were dismissed. But the flip side of it is, My God, Ive had a woman locked up.

The nations death investigation system, a patchwork of medical examiners, freelance experts and elected coroners who may have no medical training, is responsible for examining suspicious and unexplained deaths. Wrapped in a mantle of scientific authority, its practitioners translate the complexities of disease, decomposition, toxicology and physics into simple categories like accident, homicide or death by natural causes, setting in motion the legal systems gravest cases and wielding tremendous influence over juries.

Yet these experts are far from infallible. As forensic science of all kinds faces scrutiny about its reliability, with blood spatter patterns, hair matching and even fingerprints no longer regarded as the irrefutable evidence they once were, the science of death has been roiled over the past year with questions about whether the work of medical examiners is affected by racial bias, preconceived expectations and the powerful influence of law enforcement.

A study published last year by the Journal of Forensic Sciences found evidence of cognitive bias when 133 forensic scientists were presented with identical medical evidence in hypothetical cases involving child deaths. The deaths were more likely to be ruled an accident if the child was white and the caregiver was a grandmother; they were more frequently ruled a homicide when the child was Black and being cared for by the mothers boyfriend.

The study, whose authors included Dr. Carter, touched on the very essence of the simmering debate over forensic pathology. It showed, its authors said, that judgments that ought to be based on science can become clouded by prejudice when medical examiners allow their findings to be affected by information that is not medically relevant. But many leaders in the field insist that medical examiners are obligated to consider the totality of the case before them including statistics showing that boyfriends are more likely than blood relatives to commit child abuse.

The new research was met by an explosive backlash. The National Association of Medical Examiners complained that the study had been poorly designed and improperly conducted. One association member filed an ethics complaint against Dr. Carter and the three other forensic pathologists listed as authors, claiming that the paper would do incalculable damage to our profession.

One of the authors suggested retracting the paper simply to end the controversy. I cant even sleep at night because of all the hate and vitriol that Ive received, he wrote in an email shared with The Times. In frustration, Dr. Carter, who had spent years trying to expand racial representation in the profession, resigned as head of the organizations diversity committee.

Recent cases like the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis where some experts contended that the prolonged weight of police officers on Mr. Floyd was not the cause of his death have catapulted the debate over bias into the public arena.

Dr. Andrew Baker, the chief medical examiner in Minneapolis, who would go on to perform the official autopsy in the Floyd case, acknowledged in an address to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in 2015 that egregious failures of the system have led to tragic consequences for innocent defendants.

But he attributed the failings to bad apples in the profession, not a failure to implement safeguards against error. Overt failings such as incompetence, dishonesty, fraud and corruption do not constitute cognitive bias, he said.

Dan Simon, a professor of law and psychology who served for six years on the federal committee charged with creating better forensic standards, said medical examiners have been uniquely resistant to adopting reforms. They stand out in their recalcitrance, he said. And its a serious problem.

Critics say that a reluctance to admit the possibility of bias, combined with a lack of diversity in the profession and a traditionally cozy relationship with law enforcement, can increase the chances of racial disparities when medical examiners err. A string of Black and Latino defendants have been freed in recent years, some from death row, after the autopsy findings that had helped convict them were disproved.

In one California case, Vicente Benavides spent 25 years on death row on charges of raping and sodomizing his girlfriends 21-month-old daughter so brutally that it killed her. Mr. Benavides was released in 2018 after experts said the cause of death presented at trial was anatomically impossible.

Before getting involved in the case of Emberlys death in Mississippi, Dr. Carter had spent much of her career taking on the issue of racial bias in the forensics profession.

She attended medical school at Howard University, which was then the only historically Black school with a pathology residency, and in 1992 became the first Black woman to lead a medical examiners office, in Washington. She realized that there was virtually no pipeline to train and recruit nonwhites in her profession even though more than half of homicide victims in the country are Black.

Later on, she heard absurd claims from fellow medical examiners, including that Black people were impervious to pain and that bruises cannot be detected on dark skin. She came to believe that a lack of cross-cultural training was causing mistakes with large consequences.

Some of those ramifications became apparent during her forensic pathology residency, in the 1980s, when she was the only Black pathologist in the office of the medical examiner in Miami.

A string of poor Black women were turning up dead in dismal settings cheap hotels, abandoned buildings, open fields. Though the women were found in similar poses, the deputy medical examiner believed their deaths had been triggered by a combination of cocaine use and voluntary sex. Nearly all were classified as drug-induced accidents.

Dr. Carter pushed back. The victim she examined had a severe crack habit, but Dr. Carter declined to call the death an accident.

She was right after a public outcry, the autopsies were reviewed; injuries were found that had been overlooked or dismissed, and the deaths were all reclassified as homicides. A man with prior rape convictions became the prime suspect in 32 killings over nearly a decade. He died before he could be brought to trial.

Over the years, the most commonly cited source of bias in forensic pathology has been law enforcement influence, in part because in some places police detectives are routinely present during autopsies.

In the Mississippi case, it may have been the other way around: The prosecutor, Mr. Jubera, said there was no suspicion of foul play in Emberlys death until the pathologist called it a homicide. That left, he said, only one suspect: her mother.

For months after Emberlys death, Jocelyn McLean called the county coroner and the state medical examiners office looking for an explanation of why her daughter had died, worried that she had missed a warning sign, or that the hospital had released the baby too soon.

She got no answers. The medical examiners office had a massive backlog that was forcing families, the police and courts across the state to wait lengthy periods for autopsy reports.

But unlike in many jurisdictions, Mississippis medical examiners were board-certified forensic pathologists working in a state-of-the-art lab. Still, 15 months ticked by before the local prosecutor was notified by the pathologist on the case, Dr. J. Brent Davis, that the death was a homicide.

Ms. McLean, who was living near Atlanta and had been visiting Mississippi when she went into labor, saw the first sign of trouble in December 2017, when she received a Facebook message from a caseworker at the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services warning that if Ms. McLeans two living children were not seen by the agency within 48 hours, they would be removed from her custody.

During the subsequent visit, the caseworker disclosed that state authorities in Mississippi had concluded that Emberly had been a victim of child abuse. I was like, aint no way. Aint no way that could have happened, Ms. McLean said. She was in my custody the whole time.

Emberlys siblings, who were then toddlers, were forced to strip naked for an exam and were removed from Ms. McLeans custody for almost a year.

Her first chance to see the autopsy report came in early 2019, when she agreed to sit down with Mississippi homicide investigators to give a voluntary statement.

During that interview, one of the investigators claimed that a tear in Emberlys rectum could have been caused only by sexual abuse.

Ms. McLean responded in a tone of subdued disbelief: Are you saying she was raped?

As she began to grasp what the investigators were implying, she twice asked to take a lie-detector test. None was administered.

The prosecutor, Mr. Jubera, said he ultimately disregarded the medical examiners findings of potential sexual abuse, saying that they didnt make sense in this scenario. But he did not question the homicide ruling. I have to rely on my experts, he said.

He theorized that Ms. McLean, upset by relationship problems with Emberlys father, had killed the baby in a postpartum snap.

Three years after Emberlys death, Ms. McLean was indicted on a charge of capital murder.

She remained in jail for almost a year, telling her children over video visits that she was working at a new job. When the pandemic delayed her trial, a judge allowed her release on a $250,000 bond and a $350-a-month ankle monitor.

Her court-appointed lawyer, Tara Lang, was troubled by the case. Mississippi has the countrys highest infant mortality rate, and the baby had been released from the neonatal ward before she began to gain weight.

Dr. Rodney Baine, the doctor who had tried to save Emberlys life, told Ms. Lang that the baby showed no signs of injury when she arrived at the hospital but was simply very vulnerable and very sick.

He reiterated that contention in an interview with The Times. Its just A.O.G., Dr. Baine said. Act of God.

Ms. McLean found herself wondering if the medical examiner would have looked at the death of a white child differently. Im a Black mother, she said. He just knew, off rip she killed her baby.

Her lawyer was introduced to a medical expert she was told might be able to help: Dr. Carter.

When I looked at the autopsy, I had already read the medical records, Dr. Carter, 65, said. So then I was like, What? This doesnt make any sense. This makes no sense at all.

The medical examiners report, she wrote in a memo, did not mention several alternative explanations for the babys condition: a post-mortem test for a virus that came back positive, thermometer probes that could have caused the rectal tear, multiple attempts to find a vein that left bruising and puncture wounds in her head and neck.

It was clear immediately to me that the doctor hadnt reviewed the medical records, Dr. Carter said.

It is not clear why Dr. Davis did not have the records in his case file or insist on getting them.

Ive done I dont know how many autopsies the first thing you look at is the emergency room records, said Dr. Baine, the emergency room physician who had tried to save Emberly.

The Tallahatchie County coroner, Ginger Meriwether, did not return calls for comment. Dr. Davis, who conducted the examination, and the supervisors who approved it also declined to comment.

This is the kind of case that chills you to the bone, Dr. Carter said.

In October, more than five years after Emberly died, Jocelyn McLeans capital murder trial was finally set to begin.

Her lawyer, Ms. Lang, had been raising serious questions about the case for more than a year, sending the prosecutor first the missing medical records, then Dr. Carters review of the autopsy report.

Mr. Jubera had in turn sent them to the state medical examiners office and to Dr. Davis, who was by then working in Utah.

Months went by with no response. So Ms. Lang prepared to confront Dr. Davis on the witness stand about how he had reached his conclusions.

Just days before trial, Dr. Davis abruptly changed his mind. The death was not a homicide after all, he wrote in a memo to Mr. Jubera. The babys injuries were consistent with lifesaving efforts and, in the genital area, diaper rash.

Dr. Davis wrote that the revision was prompted by a review of the hospital records, which he said he had not seen before. Without them, he said, there had been no other explanation for the injuries. The charges were dropped.

The Innocence Project has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the medical examiners involved, saying that a grossly inadequate and reckless investigation had deliberately ignored evidence that weighed in Ms. McLeans favor.

On the eve of her trial, Ms. McLean had made arrangements for her children to be cared for while she was in Mississippi, and had even planned a good-luck dinner with her co-workers at McDonalds, where she is an assistant manager.

Instead, she found herself seated in the back corner of a library in Douglasville, Ga., speaking to a reporter.

She was relieved that the case had been dropped, she said, but for her the real turning point had come many months before, when her lawyer called with the news that Dr. Carter had recognized that no one had killed her baby.

It was a type of relief, she said, that somebody believed me.

Visit link:

Autopsies Have a History of Costly Mistakes, Yet Change Is Slow - The New York Times