Recy Taylor should never be forgotten; Oprah says so.
Unless you have been hiding under a rock or a pile of work for the last two days, you may have already heard Oprah deliver what some are saying may have been a speech hinting at her candidacy for presidency in 2020. There are mixed opinions on whether or not she could or should run, but regardless of where you stand on that issue, Oprah raised another issue that is overlooked but needs more attention.
As The Root’s Kirsten West Savali put it, Rosa Parks, Recy Taylor and Gertrude Perkins are the mothers of the #MeToo movement. We need to say their names.
Oprah mentioned Taylor, who died Dec. 28 at the age of 97, in her acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes.
At the age of 24, Taylor was kidnapped, blindfolded and raped by six white men who threatened her life if she ever spoke to anyone about it.
Bravely, she did tell her story, but none of her attackers were ever prosecuted. In 2011, a then-91-year-old Taylor told The Root: “Wasn’t nothing done about it. The sheriff never even said he was sorry it happened. I think more people should know about it … but ain’t nobody [in Abbeville, Ala.,] saying nothing.”
Taylor’s story has been told on film in The Rape of Recy Taylor and is also featured in the book At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement From Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power.
Read up on Recy’s legacy and understand how white sexual terror was used against black women in the Jim Crow South.
I have not gotten that far in Fire and Fury yet, but knowing all the tea former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon spilled to author Michael Wolff got me wondering if it is possible that special counsel Robert Mueller has his own “deep throat.”
I mean, if Wolff was able to get all of that out of one of Trump’s closest confidants, then it would make sense that Mueller would have someone up top who is spilling the beans, too, right?
I posed this question to Senior Editor Stephen A. Crockett Jr. (that’s a lot of damn name to type) earlier today in Slack, and we both wondered, “Who could that person be?”
Maybe it’s the president himself.
The Associated Press is reporting that Mueller’s team of investigators have expressed interest in speaking with Trump, and although there have been talks between Mueller’s team and Trump’s lawyers, no details have been worked out yet:
It’s not surprising that investigators would ultimately seek to interview the president given his role in several episodes under scrutiny by Mueller. Any interview of Trump would be a likely indication that the investigation was in its final stages — investigators typically look to interview main subjects in their inquiries near the end of a probe.
I knew last week, when I read the things Bannon was saying, that it had to mean big things could happen with the Mueller investigation.
No way tea like this gets dropped in a book and the special counsel doesn’t already have a good bit of that info in his dossier.
I guess we will have to wait and see.
Today is the first day of the Florida 2018 legislative session, and what better way to start that off than with two state legislators admitting that they have been carrying on an extramarital affair? Because ... Florida.
State Sens. Anitere Flores and Oscar Branyon—each of whom is reportedly married with children—issued a joint statement saying that their “longtime friendship evolved to a level” that they both “deeply regret.”
Hey, they have already asked forgiveness from their families, and they need you to just mind your own business at this point and allow them some privacy to work it out.
Oh, but they reportedly only came forward because an anonymous website posted footage that showed one of the senators staying overnight at the other’s house. Oops.
Is LaVar Ball the hero we never thought we needed? Serious question. Every time we think he’s going to fall flat on his face, he finds another way to turn it back around.
This time, Ball has somehow managed the Lithuanian team to leave the Baltic Basketball League and instead play in five friendly games across Europe that will be broadcast on Facebook. No deal like this has ever been done, reportedly.
The Lithuanian team even made an announcement with a schedule for what will be known as the Big Baller Brand Challenge Games.
You can’t even be mad at Ball at this point.
You just gotta respect his hustle.
The next time you tell me an unarmed black man deserved to be shot because he shouldn’t have been smoking weed/driving while black ... or should have complied ... or the officers thought their lives were in danger, I want you to remember this video in which a white woman with a gun had time to wave it around, cock it and talk shit to the police before she got shot to death.
But a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland playing with a toy gun was shot within seconds of coming in contact with the police.