Vice-President Kamala Harris wrote a letter to HBCU students last week. In the letter she acknowledged the role Howard University, one of the nation's oldest HBCUs located in Washington, DC, played in her intellectual and political development. She said, "At an HBCU, you are enpowered to be anything and do everything without excuse. You are constantly reminded you are young, gifted and Black."
Women's strugge to obtain the vote was a serious struggle. Woman's Equality Day emerged to celebrate the signing of the proclamation in 1920 when Secretary of State Bianbridge Colby signed the petition giving women the right to vote. In 1973, as women fought fo rthe passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), Bella Abzug, a Congresswoman from New York, introduced a resolution desginating August 26th as Women's Equality Day.
The nation celebrated the 61st anniversary of the March on Washington, which occurred on August 28, 1963. The March for Jobs, Freedom and Justice drew marchers from across the nation and the crowd exceeded 250,000 people. Male and female speakers spoke to the attendees. Some of the speakers included Diane Nash, Dasiy Bates, Rosa Parks and Josephine Baker. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream Speech" at the march.
This year marks the 69th anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till. Till was a Chicago teenager who traveled to Mississippi in 1955 to visit relatives. Till was falsely accused of whistling at a white woman. He was subsequently abducted and lynched. His body was pulled from the Tallahactie River several days after his disappearance. President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law in 2022.
The California Reparations Bill has been tabled for this legislative session. It will not be voted on. Critics of this approach blamed last minute amendments to the bill by Governor Gavin Newsom. Copies of the draft proposed sending six million dollars to California State University to discuss how to implement recommendations from the state's task force. This move, for proponents of the bill, undermined the bill's central purpose: creating a Freedmen Affairs Agency. Others claimed that the refusal to vote on the bill with have negative ramifications for the candidacy of Vice-President Kamala Harris.