Category Archives: African Americans

FirstFollowers: Using Participatory Action Research to Make Change in Our Community

Posted on August 2023 by James Kilgore

FirstFollowers has a tradition of doing participatory action research at Champaign-Urbana Days, the premier outdoor summer event aimed primarily at the Black community. Participatory Action Research (often called PAR) aims to gather data and information, not just for publication but … Continue reading →

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A “Pattern of Problematic Conduct”: Urbana Officer Tests Police Accountability (Shortened Print Version)

Posted on August 2023 by Brian Dolinar

This article originally appeared at WILL/Illinois Public Media on July 5, 2023. Reprinted with permission. It has been edited for space and style. See the full version here. “I had a big goose egg on my forehead,” Tianna Morrow recalled, … Continue reading →

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A “Pattern of Problematic Conduct”: Urbana Officer Tests Police Accountability (Full Version)

Posted on August 2023 by Brian Dolinar

This story is part of a partnership, focusing on police misconduct in Champaign County, between the Champaign-Urbana Civic Police Data Project of the Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit public accountability journalism organization, and Illinois Public Media. This investigation was supported … Continue reading →

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Code Blue: Suffering through DWB in Rantoul

Posted on August 2023 by Kevin Williams

This essay, submitted to the Rantoul Press in 2009, was never published. The author shares it now to give context to community concerns with policing in Rantoul in the wake of recent police shootings of young Black men. “You were … Continue reading →

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Growing Up “Unlucky”: Putting a Human Face on Bureau of Labor Statistics

Posted on May 2023 by C. Owen

Numerous options for employment abound in our small metropolitan area nestled amid the farmland of eastern central Illinois. From warehouses to food establishments to car repair shops, job seekers have many a choice for offering their time and effort. Yet, … Continue reading →

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Why I Called Herschel Walker Coonish: The Right of Black People to Call Out their Traitors

Posted on December 2022 by Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua

Editors’ Note: This article has been held until after the Georgia runoff election so there would be no suggestion of a political endorsement. Since Donald Trump’s incursion into US politics in 2015, deprecation and intimidation have become pervasive. Trump and … Continue reading →

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How The Issue of Representation Impacts Central Illinois

Posted on December 2022 by Marcus Pruitt

The issue of unequal representation of cultures has plagued the nation since its birth, often resulting in the perversion of people’s natural rights. In central Illinois, it extends that perversion through aggressive discrimination. Although minorities have seen more representation on … Continue reading →

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A Time of Monsters: The New Nadir and the Crisis of the Black Worker

Posted on September 2022 by Gus Wood

We currently reside in what Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called “A Time of Monsters.” Exacerbated by the catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic, the Black working classes continue to struggle under what Black Studies scholar Sundiata Cha-Jua has dubbed “the New Nadir.” For … Continue reading →

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Juneteenth Freedom Day

Posted on September 2022 by Aaron Ammons

Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19 that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with … Continue reading →

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Reckless Law, Shameless Order: Behind the Scenes

Posted on June 2022 by Nasrin Navab

  One afternoon in April of 2021 Faranak Miraftab called me to ask if I was interested in holding an art workshop with formerly incarcerated artists in continuation of the “IDENSCITY,” a conceptual art space that I had been developing … Continue reading →

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Shamar Betts Case Moves to Federal Appeals Court

Posted on May 2022 by Janice Jayes

On April 8, the case of Urbana resident Shamar Betts moved to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Betts was arrested in June, 2020 in the midst of a national crackdown on protests against the murder … Continue reading →

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“It’s a Money Grab”: Billions in COVID Relief Going to Fund Police and Prisons

Posted on May 2022 by Brian Dolinar

If you’re from inner-city Birmingham, Alabama, there’s a “99-percent chance” you have a family member or friend who has been incarcerated, according to Veronica Johnson, deputy director for the Alabama Justice Initiative, which has been fighting against a proposal to … Continue reading →

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Passing: Can One Ever “Pass”?

Posted on March 2022 by Jim Barrett

I recently watched one of the most beautiful and perhaps also one of the most significant movies I have seen in a long time. Passing, based on a 1929 novel by the Harlem Renaissance author Nella Larson (1891–1964), is a … Continue reading →

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Local Community Protests Former Champaign Police Chief’s Teaching Appointment at Parkland College

Posted on March 2022 by Public i

Former Champaign Police Chief Robert T. Finney was hired in August, 2020 to teach Community Policing as well as Introduction to Criminal Justice at Parkland College. “Unbelievable” is what one African American community member thought on hearing the news; “Shocking,” … Continue reading →

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Countering Violence in Champaign-Urbana

Posted on February 2022 by James Kilgore

The uptick in murders in 2021 represents a national crisis. In 2020, the FBI counted 21,750 homicides in the US, a 30 percent increase over 2019 and the largest percentage increase since 9/11. The total number of murders rose slightly … Continue reading →

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Ending Gun Violence Requires Long-Term Investments in People and Communities

Posted on February 2022 by Helen A. Neville and Nickholas Grant

Quansay L. Markham (17 years old), Jonathon McPherson (17), Jadeen Moore (19), Acarrie Ingram-Triner (19), and Jordan Atwater-Lewis (17) are among the people who were shot and killed in Champaign-Urbana in 2021. Are there things we could have done as … Continue reading →

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Urbana’s Long Search for Traffic-Stop Equity

Posted on February 2022 by Durl Kruse

In 2004 the State of Illinois required all law enforcement agencies to report their annual traffic stop data to the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). The Urbana Police Department’s (UPD) data shows they have enforced traffic laws inequitably every year … Continue reading →

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The Unacknowledged and Ongoing Genocide: Violence against African Americans

Posted on February 2022 by Gordon Brown

I began writing this reflection on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 2021, a national holiday created by President Lincoln in the hopes of healing the wounds following the Civil War. Yet for many the wounds still run deep. One of the … Continue reading →

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The Ubuntu Project and the Need for a Progressive Shift in Policing

Posted on September 2021 by Alex Horton

Ubuntu is a term that originated with the Zulu people and roughly translates to “humanity” in English. The term emerged as a political concept following apartheid’s disintegration in South Africa. Now a collective of local community members, scholars, clergy, and … Continue reading →

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Scapegoating and the 2020 Marketplace Mall Riots

Posted on August 2021 by Janice Jayes

I watched the legal machinery eat further into the life of a young man this past month. On June 14, I joined others at the sentencing hearing for Shamar Betts at the federal courthouse in Urbana. Betts is accused of … Continue reading →

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