Archive for July 2018

Story originally appeared on the July 22 newsletter of TBTNewsService.com Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931), more commonly known as Ida B. Wells, was an investigative journalist, educator, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of…

The Chicago Department of Transportation’s inundated sign shop is notoriously backlogged. But a new request likely will move to the head of the line: “Ida B. Wells Drive.” Read more at The Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago’s City Council officially renamed Congress Parkway to Ida B. Wells Drive Wednesday, making the prominent east-west artery the first downtown street named for a woman of color and honoring one of the city’s great activists. Read more at The Chicago Tribune

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing employees to opt out of paying fees to the unions who represent them will impact public-sector unions across the country, potentially weakening their collective bargaining power. But the 5-4 ruling in the case, known as Janus v. AFSCME, could have an especially bad impact on African-American women, according to an analysis done…

For a brief period beginning last December, London Breed had gained entry into a club that has, of late, almost exclusively belonged to white men: the ranks of big-city mayors. Breed, a 43-year-old African American woman and president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, had automatically become the city’s acting mayor following the sudden death…

Last week marked the opening in Montgomery, Alabama, of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a first of its kind exhibit commemorating over 4,000 lynching victims. The project, spearheaded by the Equal Justice Initiative, also includes a museum that traces America’s history of racism, from slavery to our current era of mass incarceration. It…

There has been a long-simmering tension between the Democratic Party apparatus and its African-American base. Many black women, especially, voice frustration at what they interpret as a lack of commitment from a party that repeatedly depends on them to push its candidates to victory. In last year’s Alabama special election, black women played the deciding…

Massachusetts congressional candidate Ayanna Pressley sent one of her campaign aides to New York last week to help get out the vote for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who stunned national Democrats Tuesday by toppling veteran Rep. Joseph Crowley. Now Pressley is hoping to become the next giant-slayer in this year’s midterms. The first black woman to serve…

The newest star of the Democratic Party, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, launched her New York congressional campaign by declaring “women like me aren’t supposed to run for office” — a jarring embrace of her distinction as a 28-year-old Latina less than a year removed from a job tending bar. Her campaign slogan: “It’s time for one of us.” That…

Honoring legendary African-American civil rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells by officially renaming a city street after her is a good idea. So is changing the name of East Balbo Drive, a four-block stretch just south of downtown named for fascist aviator Italo Balbo. But combining the two — renaming Balbo Drive for Wells, as…