Author: Virginia Martin
Martin Luther King’s 1963 Birmingham arrest spurred a Supreme Court case. The ruling still matters.
The case is Walker v. City of Birmingham, which ruled on the legal principles that allowed Bull Conner and Birmingham to jail Martin Luther King Jr. on Good Friday, 1963. Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy explains why the case continues to influence legal thinking during these tumultuous times. Read more.
Birmingham Kicks Off New Garbage Pickup Plan
Birmingham has begun to deliver garbage carts to city residents in the first phase of its plans to change garbage pickup in the city.
The Department of Public Works will deliver about 20,000, free, 96-gallon garbage carts among the city’s four waste management districts over the next four weeks. Plans are to deliver about 100,000 uniform garbage carts through next year. Read more.
Proliferating Wildfires Poison Public Health Across the Country
As wildfires continue to burn in parts of the United States, state public health officials and experts are increasingly concerned about residents’ chronic exposure to toxin-filled smoke.
This year has seen the most wildfires of the past decade, with more than 56,000 fires burning nearly 7 million acres nationwide, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. While the total area burned is less than in some recent years, heavy smoke has still blanketed countless communities throughout the country.
Climate change is causing more frequent and severe wildfires, harming Americans’ health, pointed out Dr. Lisa Patel, deputy executive director at the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, which raises awareness about the health effects of climate change.
“The data we have is very scary,” she said. “We are living through a natural experiment right now — we’ve never had fires this frequently.”
Patel sees the effects of wildfires in her work as a practicing pediatrician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, treating more women and underweight and premature infants at the neonatal intensive care unit when wildfires rage in Northern California.
As researchers focus on the public health impact of wildfire smoke, state health and environmental officials across the country have had to issue more air quality notices and provide guidance and shelter for residents struggling during periods of heavy wildfire smoke. And as experts have found, this issue isn’t isolated to the West Coast — it hurts more residents in the Eastern U.S.
Studies show that chronic exposure to wildfire smoke can cause asthma and pneumonia, and increase the risk for lung cancer, stroke, heart failure and sudden death. The very old and very young are most vulnerable. Particulates in wildfire smoke are 10 times as harmful to children’s respiratory health as other air pollutants, according to a study in Pediatrics last year. Read More
Republished from Stateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts
Alabama Honors Hugo Black’s Complicated Legacy
Alabama native and Supreme Court justice Hugo Black became a civil rights champion after a brief time in the KKK. A new monument honors his complicated legacy. Read more.
New Aviation Charter School Aims to Diversify the Cockpit
Since the pandemic began, the aviation industry is down 2 million workers and those who remain are overwhelmingly white. One new charter school in Bessemer hopes to address both issues by preparing diverse students for jobs in aviation. Read more.
Birmingham Gets Grant to Train Unemployed for Health Care Jobs
A $10.8 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration will go to a new initiative placing Birmingham’s historically excluded job seekers in high-demand health care positions.
“Our grant (proposal) was very competitive because we have an amazing health care sector here, and so essentially this will build on our already existing opportunities (to) connect job seekers who haven’t really traditionally had the ability to cross over and compete for those jobs,” said Sarah McMillan, the manager of workforce and talent development in the city’s Office of Innovation and Economic Opportunity. Read more.
New Mental Health Crisis Center Aims to Interrupt Revolving Door of Jail and ER Visits
The new clinic in Jefferson County will offer short-term crisis care to people who might otherwise wait hours at a hospital or wind up in jail. Read more.
Author Documents Police Killings of African Americans During Jim Crow
In the spring of 1941, outside a movie theater in Fairfield, John Jackson waited with his girlfriend to see a show. A white police officer ordered Jackson and the other people in line, all African Americans, to clear the sidewalk. But Jackson, laughing and joking with his girlfriend, did not hear the order.
When challenged by one officer, Jackson asked, “Can’t I laugh?” The police officers forced Jackson into the back of their squad car, beat him severely and shot him four times. He died before reaching the police station.
Three years later, in Donalsonville, Georgia, an “elderly Negro woman” did or said something (or perhaps, nothing at all) that displeased the white clerk in a general store. The 20-year-old clerk followed the woman outside and beat her to death with an ax handle.
Neither the Fairfield cop nor the store clerk, or countless other white killers like them, went to jail for their crimes.
White-on-black violence was both a result and a pillar of Jim Crow. For African American men and women, even “the most commonplace encounters” with whites could turn lethal. And it is this aspect of the Jim Crow system, in which whites could do violence to black people with impunity, all the while being empowered and protected by the legal system, that is the focus of Margaret A. Burnham’s new book “By Hands Now Known.” Read more.
6 Ways the Conversation Around a Guaranteed Income in the US Has Changed
A guaranteed income conference held in Atlanta shows how the movement has progressed since 2017, with more than 50 pilots currently handing out cash. Read more.
Tyson Pushes for Saturday Absentee Voting, Commissioners Demur
Sheila Tyson was determined to have her say.
The Jefferson County commissioner whose resolution to open the courthouse for absentee Saturday voting declared that commissioners who voted against the matter going onto today’s agenda were wrong to not open the courthouse.
Arguing for in-person absentee voting on two Saturdays in October, Tyson said the underlying problem is voter suppression.
“Voter suppression is rampant here in the state of Alabama because that’s the only reason I can see why these doors are not open,” she said. Read more.
