Jeanne Theoharis

The shoelaces, which read “Running with Jesse Jackson, ’88" are part of the Library's Rosa Parks Papers collection. Parks was involved in Jackson's 1988 campaign for president and years later, in 2005, he would deliver the eulogy at her funeral. www.c-span.org/clip/public-...

ICE detains reporter Estefany Rodríguez in Nashville - Nashville Banner Reporter Estefany Rodríguez, detained by ICE with no arrest warrant, may face deportation. Her attorneys seek immediate review of the legality of her case.

ICE has arrested and detained a Nashville journalist who reported stories critical of ICE. She’s married to a U.S. citizen and has been seeking asylum here after fleeing death threats in Colombia because of her journalism there.

They’ve already sent her to Louisiana.

To maintain the Montgomery bus boycott for 382 days, Montgomery's Black community organized an elaborate car pool system with 40 pickup stations giving 10,000-15,000 rides a day coordinated by volunteer dispatchers (Rosa Parks was one for a time). It required a tremendous amount of fundraising.

Howard was forced to leave Mississippi after the acquittal of Emmett Till's killers & moved to Chicago. In the 1960s, he began providing abortions for women who needed them, even though it was illegal and in 1972 started Friendship Medical Center to provide broader medical care for Black people.

Image caption: Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson speaks to a guard during a tour of the Krome detention facility in Miami on December 30, 1981, after the quelling of a hunger strike during the Christmas holiday. Jackson's visit brought media attention to conditions at the facility. Mark Foley. Reprinted with permission from AP Photo.

Jesse Jackson visiting the Krome Detention Center in 1981. He exposed the racist policy of mandatory detention of Haitians who were deemed "economic" refugees not worthy of asylum. Image from @tinashull.bsky.social's book Detention Empire.

Dear Colleagues, We write to share information about a paid summer professional learning experience for teachers that centers histories of education and educational activism in New York City Public Schools. K-12 teachers of all content areas as well as paraprofessionals, school counselors, and school-based administrators (nominated by faculty) are invited to apply for the 2026 Histories of Educational Action & Learning (HEAL) Summer Institute. This professional learning experience invites New York City educators into a community with scholars and organizers to learn about local histories of educational activism and explore the role of advocacy and action in education today. Institute Details: The institute will take place in person Monday-Thursday, 9:30 am - 2:30 pm from July 6th-16th.* Participants (excepting administrators) earn up to 30 CTLE credits and receive a $500 honorarium. We especially encourage teams of classroom-based educators to apply. **** Apply at http://tinyurl.com/HEALSI2026 by April 3rd**** Why HEAL? Teachers rarely learn histories of NYC schooling and activism; yet this context is key to understanding the communities that NYC educators work in and for. With an intensive focus on local educational history and grassroots efforts to advance educational justice, this learning experience invites current educators to see themselves and their students as collective change-makers. What past participants have said about this experience: “I am feeling completely reinvigorated and am very excited to implement what I've learned at my… school!” “[T]he institute was a much needed reminder of why I am still in this career… The institute helped me feel re-inspired to continue working to impact the lives of young people, even though it will never be easy!” “I feel a transformed sense of the importance of studying history, a reaffirmed commitment to grounding activism in one's community, a trust in the importance …

Join us for this incredible learning experience, NYC public school teachers!

2 week summer institute, honorarium & CTLEs, and an ongoing community of critical practitioners for educational justice.

Apply by April 3. tinyurl.com/HEALSI2026

old photo of young man with glasses and white jacket, head and shoulders

At 15, Claudette Colvin had been politicized by false arrest & torture of her classmate, poet Jeremiah Reeves . . . she refused to move on bus.

"'We’d been studying Constitution [in school during #BHM] I knew I had rights.'” rosaparksbiography.org/bio/claudett... via @jeannetheoharis.bsky.social

A briefing would be nice, but that’s not the most important thing in front of us. I don’t need a briefing where Marco Rubio will gaslight us for an hour to know how I’ll vote on a War Powers Resolution.

There’s my amazing sister Rev. @liztheoharis.kairoscenter.org with her (customary) megaphone marching from the Migrant memorial in San Antonio this morning as part of Rev Dianne Garcia’s march from Dilley Detention Center this week to end immigrant detention.

Some beautiful photos from @kairoscenter.org’s Steve Pavey of today’s march to end family detention—which Rev Dianne Garcia started at Dilley Detention Center on Monday and marched 90 miles. The march began today at the San Antonio Migrant Memorial.

Marching—now at the San Antonio migrant memorial with community groups, @kairoscenter.org, and Rev. Dianne Garcia’s march from Dilley Detention Center calling attention to all who have died and been kidnapped.

Brown beret standing on the side of the road keeping the march safe.

Brown Berets protecting the March challenging the inhumane detention of so many families that Rev Dianne Garcia began at Dilley Detention on Monday walking 90 miles to shine a light.

Heading off.

Rev Dianne Garcia reminding us how this government is trying to make invisible the suffering. “We believe in freedom and justice.” 60,000 people in detention, 20,000 steps today for them and “the inheritance of love we have received from our immigrant communities.”

Marching—now at the San Antonio migrant memorial with community groups, @kairoscenter.org, and Rev. Dianne Garcia’s march from Dilley Detention Center calling attention to all who have died and been kidnapped.

Rev Dianne praying by the gate to Dilley

Marching at sunset. The march was 90 miles long

Was proud to join Rev.Dionne Garcia and @kairoscenter.org marching 90 miles from the inhumane Dilley Detention Center to San Antonio this week to shine a light on the kidnapping of families happening across the country.

They found him. He died.

Another murder by our immigration goon squads

Jesse Jackson Loved Us—Sometimes Before We Loved Ourselves “Before they came for us, and woke, and us, and power, they came for Jesse Jackson,” Kiese Laymon, the author of Heavy and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, wrote just hours after …

This is a stunning piece by @thrasherxy.bsky.social on the power and capacious love of Jesse Jackson. If you only read one thing this week, make it this: lithub.com/jesse-jackso...

It’s giving middle passage

Black Women and Resistance: Biography of a Life in Struggle CBFS: Authors and filmmakers join in a discussion on Black women and four histories of resistance. This is an in-person event.

We're back at the Schomburg Center
Thurs March 5th at 6:30 for a conversation on Black Women and Resistance with Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Louis Massiah, Yoruba Richen & Kenja McCray on Audre Lorde, Joan Little, Toni Cade Bambara & Black Power. Don't miss it! www.eventbrite.com/e/black-wome...

“We do not need allies more devoted to order than to justice. I hear a lot of talk these days about our direct action talk alienating former friends. ... If our direct action programs alienate our friends … they never were really our friends.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr., 1964

KING OF THE NORTH | Kirkus Reviews MLK above the Mason-Dixon line.

👆🏽PLEASE READ MLK’s Letter closely.

Liberal moderates proved more interested in their own comfort (even brutal order) than actual human rights for all people.

READ:

King of the North: Martin Luther King’s Freedom Struggle Outside the South

~Jeanne Theoharis

www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...

Reverend Jesse Jackson's march for jobs -- around the White House. By photographer Thomas O'Halloran, 1975. Photograph shows Jesse Jackson surrounded by marchers carrying signs advocating support for the Hawkins-Humphrey Bill for full employment. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003673988/

"You can’t plant a seed & pick the fruit the next morning."

So many lessons to learn from Rev. Jackson's (1941-2026) 💔words AND his years of on the ground organizing, in interracial coalitions, to challenge racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ, poverty, unfair labor, militarism, mass incarceration, & more.

Unspeakable.

Meet the Young Organizers Survival Corps Young organizers from around the country gathered at Haley Farm to study past social movements and train in the tactics of nonviolent resistance and grassroots organizing.

Must read for today (though I might be biased 😊): Liz and Sam Theoharis writing on the young organizers survival corps that the @kairoscenter.org has pulled together: www.thenation.com/article/acti...

Plaintiffs Are Likely to Succeed on Their Due Process Claim The crux of Plaintiffs' due process claim is their allegation that Defendants "carried out a sham process solely to effectuate a predetermined result," thereby "imposing uniquely brutal conditions ... without any meaningful process." ECF No. 4-1 at 28, 31. Whether they are likely to succeed on this procedural claim under the Due Process Clause is assessed in two steps. "[T]he first asks whether there exists a liberty or property interest which has been interfered with by the State; the second examines whether the procedures attendant upon that deprivation were constitutionally sufficient." Ky. Dep't of Corr. v. Thompson, 490 U.S. 454, 460 (1989) (citations omitted).

Here, Plaintiffs have shown that it is likely that their redesignations were predetermined-and thus violated their due process rights-because officials with authority over BOP made it clear that they had to be sent to ADX Florence to punish them, no matter what result the ordinary BOP process might have yielded. The Court does not reach this conclusion without careful considera-tion. But Plaintiffs have proffered an unusual array of evidence in support of their claim. That evidence, described below, shows it is likely that (1) officials with authority over BOP sought to punish Plaintiffs because then-President Biden had commuted their death sentences; and (2) those officials intervened in the BOP redesignation process that was already underway, dictating out- comes with which BOP officials subordinate to them were not genuinely free to disagree-and which resulted in a dramatic, uniform about-face in how the redesignations were handled.

From all this largely consistent and unrebutted evidence, it is not hard to conclude that it is likely that "following the Executive Order, the BOP committee was told to look at what the President and the AG were saying," that "[t]he BOP committee members took that to mean that everyone needed to be referred to ADX [Florence]," and that in the end, BOP officials understood that Plaintiffs had to be transferred there. ECF No. 4-32 91 12-13. It strains credulity to believe that subordinate BOP officials carrying out this process felt free to disagree with what had been demanded at the start by officials far senior to them, with authority over their careers and livelihoods. Thus, it is likely that there was no genuine opportunity for Plaintiffs— at their hearings, during their appeals, or at any other time-to oppose their transfers to ADX Florence.

This is a damning, astounding opinion from Kelly, writing about the Justice Department's treatment of federal prisoners under their control:

King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life of Struggle Outside the South Book — Non-fiction. 2025. By Jeanne Theoharis. 400 pages. Illustrates how King’s time in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago — outside Dixie — was at the heart of his campaign for racial justic...

Yes, a must read on Dr. King with a lot also on Coretta Scott King.

King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South by Jeanne Theoharis.
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www.zinnedproject.org/materials/ki...

The reinstatement of three of the CUNY “Fired Four” points to the resurgence of union power in the city. “It’s a reminder of how crucial it is, especially right now in this time with resurgent McCarthyism and fascist repression, to be part of a union."
https://bit.ly/4aoXrAC