Black Americans - The African Mirror

Jun

2021

On ‘Freedom Riders’ 60th anniversary, voting activists ask Biden to do more

MERDIE NZANGA U.S. President Joe Biden needs to do more to secure voting rights for Black Americans, said activists travelling through the South to commemorate the historic 'Freedom Riders'. "I am hoping that we will see the same kind of tenacity, commitment, and passion around protecting the civil rights of Black voters as we've seen with other policies," LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, which organized the tour, told Reuters from Atlanta on Monday. Dozens of civil rights activists are traveling on five customized buses from Jackson, Mississippi to Washington D.C. this week, to mark the 60th anniversary of…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Biden warns of echoes of Tulsa massacre in the United States today

WORLD

JEFF MASON JOE Biden has become the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where hundreds of Black Americans were massacred by a white mob in 1921, and he said the legacy of racist violence and white supremacy still resonates. Biden came to Tulsa to put a spotlight on an event that epitomizes the country's history of brutal racial violence, despite the massacre being largely under the radar in U.S. classrooms and history books for years. "We should know the good, the bad, everything," Biden said in a speech to the few survivors of the attack…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

What has changed a year after George Floyd’s death?

WORLD

ANASTASIA MOLONEY IN the year since the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, people worldwide took to the streets to protest against racism amid renewed calls for reforms in U.S. law enforcement. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering Floyd in April, a milestone in the fraught racial history of the United States and a rebuke of law enforcement's treatment of Black Americans. But what tangible change has happened to address racial inequality in the United States since Floyd's murder? The…

Nov

2020

By The African Mirror

Kamala Harris breaks barriers as America’s next vice president

WORLD

JAMES OLIPHANT KAMALA Harris made history with her election as Joe Biden's vice president, becoming the first woman, first Black American and first Asian American to win the second highest U.S. office. Harris, 56, is widely seen as an obvious candidate for the Democratic Party nomination in 2024 should Biden, who will be 78 at their inauguration on Jan. 20, decide not to seek a second term. She hasn't weighed in publicly on such speculation. Edison Research and the major U.S. television networks on Saturday projected their victory, based on unofficial final results, even though the incumbent president, Republican Donald…

Jul

2020

By The African Mirror

‘This can’t go on’: U.S. workers plan nationwide strike to protest racial injustice

WORLD

NELLIE PEYTON FAST-FOOD, nursing home, airport and other frontline workers across the United States are planning a mass strike on Monday to protest systemic racism and inadequate protections for Black people against coronavirus. The Strike for Black Lives is expected to draw tens of thousands of workers in over 25 U.S. cities, according to a coalition of national labor unions and social justice groups that have organized it. Some workers will strike all day and others will walk off their jobs for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time that a white police officer knelt on the neck…