Race & Ethnicity

Tribal members and descendants have reached out to President Barack Obama to make the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre a National Monument, which would better guard it against development and commercialization.

Kristi Eaton, Associated Press / Philly.com

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This undated file photo shows the historical marker commemorating the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 on the road near the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Wounded Knee, S.D.  (AP Photo - File)

May 01, 2013 | A small patch of prairie sits largely unnoticed off a desolate road in southwestern South Dakota, tucked amid gently rolling hills and surrounded by dilapidated structures and hundreds of gravesites — many belonging to Native Americans massacred more than a century earlier.

The assessed value of the property: less than $14,000. The seller's asking price: $4.9 million.

Tribal members say the man who owns a piece of the Wounded Knee National Historic Landmark on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is trying to profit from their suffering. It was there, on Dec. 29, 1890, that 300 Native American men, women and children were killed by the 7th Cavalry in the final battle of the American Indian Wars.

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• What Abigail Fisher’s Affirmative Action Case Is Really About
• ACLU Blasts Supreme Court Rejection of Challenge to Warrentless Spying Without Proof of Surveillance

Nikole Hannah-Jones, ProPublica

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Abigail Fisher and Edward Blum walk outside the Supreme Court in October 2012. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

March 18, 2013When the NAACP began challenging Jim Crow laws across the South, it knew that, in the battle for public opinion, the particular plaintiffs mattered as much as the facts of the case. The group meticulously selected the people who would elicit both sympathy and outrage, who were pristine in form and character. And they had to be ready to step forward at the exact moment when both public sentiment and the legal system might be swayed.

That's how Oliver Brown, a hard-working welder and assistant pastor in Topeka, Kan., became the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that would obliterate the separate but equal doctrine. His daughter, whose third-grade innocence posed a searing rebuff to legal segregation, became its face.

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Related:

ACLU Blasts Supreme Court Rejection of Challenge to Warrentless Spying Without Proof of Surveillance, Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now!

• A legal effort to block the government’s warrantless domestic surveillance program has failed after the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday a group of journalists, lawyers and human rights groups cannot challenge the law.
• America’s Global Torture Network

• The bottom line, said Clyburn, is that the 1965 civil rights law has "had a positive impact on the voting rights of people traditionally denied the right to vote. To ignore that, to me, is beyond the pale. It means you went to the bench with an agenda."
• Liberal racial hypocrisy

Jennifer Bendery, Huffington Post

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Lydia Howell

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Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) criticized Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia over comments he made about the Voting Rights Act. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

03/01/2013 | Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Friday that he was "absolutely shocked" to hear Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia describe a key piece of the Voting Rights Act, one of the most significant achievements of the civil rights movement, as a "perpetuation of racial entitlement" earlier this week.

"I'm not easily surprised by anything, but that took me to a place I haven't been in a long time," Clyburn said of Scalia's comments, during an interview with HuffPost. "What Justice Scalia said, to me, was, 'The 15th Amendment of the Constitution ain't got no concerns for me because I'm white and proud.'"

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Related:

Liberal racial hypocrisy, Falgunia Sheh, Salon

• Killing people of color just for being a suspected threat is a total outrage for liberals. Well, sometimes.
• Just because a president liberals like is calling for targeted killings doesn’t make the policy any less troubling — politically or racially.