Ryan Paul Haygood

Today, Juneteenth is a vivid historical example that obtaining rights at law does not necessarily confer rights that have actual force. It is for this reason that Juneteenth celebrants are often conflicted.

Ralph Ellison immortalized “Juneteenth,” the annual celebration of the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when the enslaved Africans in Texas were actually emancipated, in his posthumous novel of the same name. Ellison’s title refers to the date when Union General Gordon Grander rode horseback into Galveston, Texas and announced to nearly 250,000 slaves that President…

The long march toward political equality for Blacks and other people of color recorded an important victory May 30, 2008 when a three-judge federal court in Washington, D.C., upheld Congress’ recent 25-year extension of Section 5, a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, the crown jewel…

Ralph Ellison immortalized “Juneteenth,” the annual celebration of the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when the enslaved Africans in Texas were actually emancipated, in his posthumous novel of the same name. Ellison’s title refers to the date when Union General Gordon Grander rode horseback into Galveston, Texas and announced to nearly 250,000 slaves that President…

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Ralph Ellison immortalized “Juneteenth,” the annual celebration of the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when the enslaved Africans in Texas were actually emancipated, in his posthumous novel of the same name. Ellison’s title refers to the date when Union General Gordon Grander rode horseback into Galveston, Texas and announced to nearly 250,000 slaves that President…

In his lifetime, Mr. Richard Gooden, a retired steel worker of 42 years, has been denied the right to vote twice by the State of Alabama. He was first deprived of his voting rights in the early 1960s during a dark period in Alabama’s history when Black voter registration was made virtually impossible by the…

Nearly fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in a voting rights speech given before an audience of 20,000 in Washington, D.C., recognized that “all types of conniving methods are being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters.” Unfortunately, Dr. King’s words ring true today in Alabama, where the Secretary of State, the…