The majority of people who spoke during a city council meeting in Fort Bragg, California, Monday favored keeping the name of the town despite its connection to a blundering Confederate general.
Read more
On Friday, in Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., just a few hundred yards from the White House — itself built by enslaved men and women — demonstrators and revelers alike gathered by the hundreds.
Read moreWhile daily demonstrations and protests continue across New York City into the fourth week after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, thousands of Brooklynites supporting the Black Lives Matter movement peacefully took to the streets on Friday to celebrate the Juneteenth.
Read more
A judge in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” on Thursday affirmed his ruling granting a restraining order to allow citizens to enter a newly discovered slave burial site to pay homage to their ancestors for one hour on Friday, Juneteenth.
Read more
One day before the nation marks 155 years since the end of slavery, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ordered the removal of portraits that hang in the halls of the Capitol commemorating four leaders of the Confederacy.
Read more
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said Tuesday that he’s making Juneteenth — a day that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States — an official holiday in a state that was home to the capital of the Confederacy.
Read moreA statute of Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain will be removed from the California Capitol rotunda, Democratic lawmakers in the state announced Tuesday.
Read more
Black community and political leaders are calling on President Trump to at least change the date of an Oklahoma rally kick-starting his return to public campaigning, saying that holding the event on Juneteenth, the day that celebrates the end of slavery in America, is a “slap in the face.”
Read more
President Trump on Wednesday said his administration will “not even consider” changing the name of any of the 10 Army bases named for Confederate Army officers. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Monday that he was open to discussion of such changes.
Read more
Ending a years-long debate over honoring a defender of slavery, Minnesota’s Supreme Court ruled 5-2 Wednesday that the commissioner of the state’s Department of Natural Resources had authority to restore the name of Lake Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska, as the Dakota people call it.
Read more
The bones of slaves carried from Africa to the Americas by Spaniards carry the records of both their mistreatment by their captors and the pathogens they carried with them to the New World.
Read moreA former American Airlines employee was fired for her posts on social media, and not for any discriminatory reason, a federal court in Pennsylvania ruled. The woman was fired after her “inflammatory and racially insensitive” Facebook posts — including one that suggested ancestors of slaves should be thankful that they were “brought over here” — went viral.
Read more
South Korea’s Supreme Court said Friday it will re-open a case related to the enslavement and abuse of thousands of people at a vagrants’ facility in the 1970s and 1980s, more than three decades after its owner was acquitted of serious charges. A finding that the government failed to protect the constitutional rights of former inmates could boost their push for compensation.
Read morePrivate detention company CoreCivic must face a novel employment class action by immigrants held at its facilities in California and nationwide, a federal judge ruled Wednesday in certifying forced labor claims against the private prison operator.
Read more
Convicted cult leader Keith Raniere demanded a new trial Monday, arguing that witnesses in his 2019 Brooklyn federal trial, including two his assault victims, lied about their plans to sue him civilly.
Read more
China is transferring tens of thousands of Uighur detainees out of internment camps and into factories that supply some of the world’s leading brands, an Australian think tank said Monday.
Read moreA class action suit claiming that the operator of an immigration detention facility’s voluntary labor scheme violated the forced labor prohibition in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act may continue, the Eleventh Circuit ruled, finding that the act applies to “private for-profit contractors operating federal immigration detention facilities.”
Read moreTwo people affiliated with Imperial Valley (Calif.) Ministries pleaded guilty Thursday to federal charges of forced labor conspiracy: Jose Gaytan, 47, and Sonia Murillo, 51, both of El Centro, face up to 25 years in prison, federal prosecutors said.
Read moreA federal class action claims Starbucks, Quaker Oats and Mars unfairly and deceptively market chocolate products as sustainably and/or ethically sourced, though it is the product of child and slave labor in West Africa.
Read more
Antebellum Southern plantations were built on the backs of enslaved people, and many of those plantations hold places of honor on the National Register of Historic Places — but don’t look for many mentions of slavery in the government’s official record of places with historic significance.
Read more