54 Search results for "imprisonment"

By Émelyne Museaux White women’s sovereignty has always been inextricably linked to the subjugation and exploitation of Black people. Research shows that 40% of slave owners were white women during US chattel slavery. According to history professor Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, most of these white women inherited slaves from their fathers and retained ownership of them […]

Editor’s Note: This month at BYP, we will be exploring Black Liberation & Organizing, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics. How do we hold politicians accountable to Black communities? Is that even possible? What should be our role in the electoral politics? What does abolition look like in practice? What […]

 by Cheryldean Peters Beginning in the early 1600s, my ancestors were legally forced into slavery and robbed of their freedom. They were involuntarily exploited, beaten and forced to work as servants, which primarily helped generate income for America’s economy. Their servitude drastically enhanced local and colonial economics while creating generational wealth for their oppressors. Africans […]

After a 40-year imprisonment for being a member of the Black liberation organization, MOVE, Michael Africa Sr. has finally been released on parole.

by Maximillian Matthews After arriving on the campus of Elon University in the fall of 2005, I instantly sought out the Black community in an effort to not feel isolated and misunderstood. I knew I would need Black folks in order to thrive at predominantly white institution. My need for kinship led me to Alpha […]

This past Tuesday, Metro Nashville City Council members passed a resolution that would prohibit the city from investing in private prison companies in the future.

Reproductive justice advocates—Sistersong, in particular—and community organizers pushed for more humane treatment of pregnant inmates in North Carolina and helped secure a recent policy change to that end in the state. The News Observer reported that Prison Director Kenneth Lassiter signed a policy to end the use of leg or wrist restraints on women, who […]

According to reports from Foreign Policy, the arrest of Christopher Daniels, known in Dallas as Rakem Balogun, on December 12, 2017 has resulted in the FBI’s first known prosecution of any individual suspected as being a Black Identity Extremist. The FBI Counterterrorism unit came up with this designation targeting radical Black activists last year, and […]

Art and life reflect mutuality. Tracy Lynn Garner, a woman convicted of depraved heart murder for administering buttocks implants to a Georgia woman, has also died. Garner was 58 and had not yet served four years of her life sentence. This scenario parallels a story-line in Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It reboot. There, a […]

As Americans continue grappling with rampant sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual abuse of vulnerable populations by people with situational dominance, another reminder to protect children from adult monsters came late last week. A jury convicted 38-year-old Jelani Maraj of endangering the welfare of a child and predatory sexual assault on a child younger than […]

When people envision environmental injustice, they likely think about nations deemed “developing” instead of “first world.” However, that binary fails to explain how the United States of America includes human crises like the Flint water crisis and similar water quality issues throughout the nation. When powerful officials mishandle information about the compromised environments in which […]

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is pointedly undoing the progress that anti-prison and criminal justice reform advocates have worked for over the years.