Civil Rights & Social Justice
Black Family Suing Baltimore Sesame Place For $25 Million Alleging Racial Discrimination Against 5-Year-Old
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Dania Maxwell / Getty The rabbit hole is still rabbit hole-ing for Sesame Street-based theme park Sesame Place as it has once again been accused of racial discrimination against Black children. But this time a Sesame Splacelocation in Baltimore is in the hot seat—and this time a lawsuit has been filed. In fact, a Baltimore family is suing for a whopping $25 million alleging that multiple park employees ignored a five-year-old Black girl during a meet-and-greet event last month. From the Baltimore Sun: Related Stories The suit, which seeks class-action status, was filed in a federal court in Philadelphia against SeaWorld Parks, the owner of the Sesame Place, for “pervasive and appalling race discrimination.” The lawsuit alleges that four employees dressed ...
Rap Snitches: Congress To Review RAP Act Barring Use of Lyrics In Court
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Fulton County PD / Fulton County Sheriff’s Department The movement to prohibit the usage of rap lyrics in criminal cases by prosecutors has now reached the federal level, as a new bill with that aim has been introduced in the United States Congress. On Wednesday (July 27th), the RAP Act was introduced on the floor of the House of Representatives by Democratic Representatives Hank Johnson (GA-04) and Jamaal Bowman (NY-16). The Restoring Artistic Protection Act looks to protect artists from the wrongful usage of their lyrics against them in civil and criminal court cases. Representative Johnson shared the news through his Twitter account. “Freedom of speech is the constitutional foundation the framers thought necessary to enable a new and free soc...
6th Member Of ‘Central Park Five’ Exonerated Of Lesser Crime. Manhattan DA Apologizes
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Michael M. Santiago / Getty We’ve all heard of the Central Park Five. Many of us know the names Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam—the five men who were boys when they were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman who was jogging in Central Park in 1989 and then exonerated after they spent between seven and 11 years in prison. But you might not be familiar with a sixth victim who was arrested along with the others. Well, that man has now been exonerated. According to NY Daily News, Steven Lopez was exonerated of a crime he pleaded guilty to when he was 14. He had been arrested along with the other five, but he served less time after pleading to a lesser charge. From the Daily News: Lopez pleaded guilty to robbin...
The Jackie Robinson Museum Officially Opens In NYC
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: New York Daily News / Getty A new museum honoring the late baseball & civil rights icon Jackie Robinson officially opened to the public in New York City, after years of anticipation and planning. On Tuesday (July 26th), a ribbon-cutting ceremony occurred at The Jackie Robinson Museum, located just above the Tribeca neighborhood in New York City. The ceremony was attended by Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s widow and founder of the Jackie Robinson Foundation along with her son, David Robinson, and daughter Sharon Robinson. Also in attendance was Della Britton, the president and CEO of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, tennis legend Billie Jean King, filmmaker Spike Lee and former MLB pitcher C.C. Sabathia. Good Morning America ho...
Unpublished Memoir of Liar and Emmett Till Accuser Carolyn Bryant Donham Made Public
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Bettmann / Getty A memoir written by the woman who was at the center of the murder of Emmett Till has surfaced. The discovery, coupled with news of an unserved warrant from that time has raised calls to reopen the case. According to NewsOne, an unnamed source provided a copy of a 100-page memoir from Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman who made the false accusation against 14-year-old Emmett Louis Till in Mississippi in 1955. Her claim led to the boy’s abduction, savage beating, and lynching. Till’s grotesquely disfigured face was published in JET Magazine, spurring many to mobilize within the Black community and serving as a flashpoint for the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The document, entitled “I Am More Than A Wolf Whistle”, was apparentl...
Ketanji Brown Jackson Sworn In as First Black Woman on Supreme Court
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: The Washington Post / Getty Today (June 30) at noon, Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Jackson was nominated after Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement earlier this year. Jackson once clerked for Breyer. His retirement will also be effective today. Related Stories “It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, but we’ve made it! We’ve made it — all of us,” Jackson said in remarks at a White House event the day after the Senate vote, per NPR. She added, “I have dedicated my career to public service because I love this country and our Constitution and the rights that make us free.” The 51-...
White Cop In Patrick Lyoya Shooting Charged With Second-Degree Murder
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: The Washington Post / Getty The police officer who was involved in the high-profile shooting of Michigan resident and Congolese refugee Patrick Lyoya two months ago has been charged with second-degree murder by prosecutors. On Thursday (June 9th), the prosecutor for Kent County announced that Grand Rapids, Michigan police officer Christopher Schurr was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Lyoya. In response to complaints about the length of time it took to make this charge, Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker said “he wanted to be thorough.” He informed Lyoya’s family before speaking to reporters. “These things take time,” he said at the press conference. Related Stories Lyoya, 26, was shot in the back of the head on April 4th during a traffi...
More Of The Same On The 2nd Anniversary Of George Floyd’s Death
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Guy Smallman / Getty It has been two years since the horrific and senseless death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, which was captured on video and shocked the world into protest. The unfortunate reality is that Black death at the hands of law enforcement still persists, with a few striking cases as examples. On the two-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, recent statistics underscore a grim truth – since his death, Black people accounted for 27 percent of the 1051 Americans who were killed by law enforcement in 2021 according to data compiled by the nonprofit group Mapping Police Violence. The same study also showed that Black people were three times more likely to be killed by police, yet 1.3 times more...
Rap Lyric Usage In Court Limited By New NY State Senate Bill
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: ANGELA WEISS / Getty A bill limiting rap lyrics being used in criminal trials against defendants in New York State is one step closer to becoming law thanks to the state’s senators. On Tuesday (May 17th), the State Senate of New York approved Senate Bill S7527 which would limit the usage of song lyrics and other forms of “creative expression” by prosecutors as evidence in criminal cases. While the bill doesn’t outright ban prosecutors from presenting lyrics and other materials to juries, it does require that they show that the work is “literal, rather than figurative or fictional” and that “evidence of criminal conduct, not the provocative nature of their artistic works” is what defendants should be tried by. Related Stories Those tactics have l...
Virginia Karen Komplains Critical Race Theory Has Her Biracial Son Refusing To Do Chores Because, Racism
HipHopWired Featured Video By all indications, there’s a white mother in Charlottesville, Virginia, who is using her biracial son’s newfound appreciation for his Blackness as an excuse to be racist AF and express her long-held belief that Black people invoke racism to evade accountability, not because we actually experience racism all the damn time. Or at least that’s my best guess for why she’s out here claiming her son is calling her racist because she makes him do chores. “We didn’t have issues before. He is in eighth grade,” Melissa Riley told Fox News. “He’s seeing himself just as a Black man. He’s seeing things that don’t go his way as racism. And he is finding safety in numbers now.” Riley is among other plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit against the Albemarle County School Board in Dec...
Black Teen Barred From Texas School Over Dreadlocks Hairstyle
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Screenshot / Click 2 Houston The absurdity of school districts creating a stigma over Black hairstyles is back in the news, as a teenager has been barred from attending a Houston-area school over having dreadlocks. According to local reports, a mother in East Bernard, Texas was shocked when a school official told her that her son, Dyree Williams, cannot enroll because he has dreadlocks and his mother refused to cut them. “The boys cannot have hair past their ears. I explained to her that my son has locks in his hair, and well, she was like, ‘Well he’s going to have to cut those,’” the boy’s mother, Desiree Bullock, said to the local news station. They had relocated to the area from Cincinnati, Ohio in February. The East Bernard ISD student handbook does s...
GA Students Protest After Black Student Suspended For Slapping White Student Who Called Him N-Word
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Marilyn Nieves / Getty When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock over a tasteless but relatively soft joke at the expense of Jada Pinkett-Smith, a lot of Black folks were suddenly on team “violence is never the answer. Well, I’d wager most of those Black people would feel differently about a Black student in Georgia who slapped a white student for calling him the N-word, reminding us that sometimes—people just need to be slapped. According to 11 Alive, it all started at Locust Grove High School in Locust Grove, Ga. The Henry County high school is investigating the incident in which a Black male student slapped a white female student for calling him the racial slur. The Black student involved in the incident, which was caught on camera, was suspended over th...
