Page 20 - Fifteenth Amendment News Today

Early Years and Ministry Davis was born about November 1839 into slavery in Christiansville (later Chase City), in Mecklenburg County. He was the son of Cephas Davis and Annie (sometimes noted as Frances) Davis. Most likely he gained his freedom at the end of the Civil War. His contemporaries’ comments and recollections suggest that Davis may have attended Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton University) or the Richmond Theological School for Freedmen (later Virginia Union...

Though he started life as a slave, Frederick Douglass became an abolitionist, orator, writer, statesman and ambassador. He liberated himself in 1838 and in 1845 published his first autobiography, " Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," (The Anti-Slavery Office, 1845). The book, alongside his work for the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad, helped him become one of the most famous African American men of his era. Born into slavery Frederick Augustus Was...

© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images The Census Bureau recently announced the results of the 2020 Census, which determines the apportionment of U.S. House seats among the states for the next 10 years. The most startling outcome was the shockingly small margin between New York and Minnesota in the race for the 435th and final House seat. Minnesota won the seat, but a difference of just 26 fewer Minnesotans or 89 more New Yorkers would have flipped it to New York. It’s unprecedented for a congressio...

ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE BATES In October 1829, some of the last surviving leaders of America’s founding generation gathered in Richmond, Virginia, for a state constitutional convention. Two issues dominated the gathering: suffrage and apportionment. Virginia’s 1776 constitution, drafted in the crucible of revolution, had limited the vote to white men who owned a certain amount of property. It also drew the General Assembly’s electoral districts to heavily favor the plantation-dominated Tid...

Cancel culture. Cancel culture. The right wing trumpets it so many times it rings in my ears. Freedom of speech, the rights mouth pieces claim, is "silenced" by the liberals and socialists who, conservatives say, control the nations media and universities, canceling out all but their own speech. But it is not those on the left that threaten free speech in any systematic way. It is those on the right that have a long and continuing history of silencing those who espouse even moderately progress...

The Progressive Era lasted from the 1890s to the 1920s and was marked by efforts to root out governmental corruption and waste, and to protect the rights of women, children, and the working-class. Not all progressive reforms were strictly democratic, however. For instance, reformers sought efficiency in government by emphasizing the roles of experts and specialists over elected officials and common citizens. In Virginia, progressives attempted to make experts, or “virtuous” voters, out of t...

SUMMARY The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of national legislation, not only for the civil rights movement but for the emerging women’s movement of the 1960s. It officially outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment and established the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission to enforce those provisions. In contrast to earlier civil rights measures, it included a ban on employment discrimination on the basis of gende...

A Democratic candidate vying for an open U.S. House seat in Florida asked a federal court to require Gov. Ron DeSantis to schedule a special election.

Xis speech shows path for China-Bangladesh climate cooperation By Md Enamul Hassan | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2021-04-27 13:01 Though Bangladesh emits less than 0.35 percent of global greenhouse gases, it is one of the most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change. Bangladeh is one of the vulnerable countries affected by climate change. Contributing factors include its nature as a low-lying and flat coastal plain, which makes the country more susc...

Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 — or really  Bush v. Gore in 2000. This time, a massive new Georgia law, the Election Integrity Act of 2021, also known as Senate Bill 202 (or SB 202), has triggered national apoplexy, with Democrats, including President Joe Biden, declaring it the new Jim Crow. Such comparisons are insulting to those who fought for civil rights in the 1960s, incendiary to a public discourse already hampered by low institutional confidence, and at base disingenuous. Sorti...