Commentary by Black Kos editor Denise Oliver-Velez
There are actors. There are characters that actors play on stage, film and television. Only a handful of actors join the ranks of iconic portrayals of those characters which will live on beyond the lifespan of the individual. One of those actors was Michael Kenneth Williams. He left us yesterday, far too young at age 54.
For those of you who may have managed to be unaware of Williams, Imdb has a brief bio
Born in 1966 in Brooklyn, Williams was best known for his remarkable work on The Wire (2002). The wit and humor that Williams brought to Omar, the whistle-happy, profanity-averse, drug dealer-robbing stickup man, earned him high praise, and made Omar one of television's most memorable characters. Williams also co-starred in HBO's critically acclaimed series Boardwalk Empire in which he played Chalky White, a 1920's bootlegger; and the impeccably suited, veritable mayor of Atlantic City's African-American community. In 2012, Boardwalk Empire won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. He received his first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or a Movie for HBO's "Bessie" and subsequently received his second nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series for his portrayal of 'Freddy' in HBO's "The Night Of"
In 2018, VICE returned for its sixth season with an extended special season premiere produced by and featuring Williams as he embarked on a personal journey to expose the root of the American mass incarceration crisis: the juvenile justice system. "Raised in the System" offered a frank and unflinching look at those caught up the system, exploring why the country's mass incarceration problem cannot be fixed without first addressing the juvenile justice problem. Williams investigated the solutions local communities are employing that are resulting in drastic drops in both crime and incarceration. Michael garnered his first Emmy nomination as a producer for this incredible documentary and continues to host screenings across the country as a way to educate and raise awareness.
Giving back to the community played an important role in Williams' off-camera life. He launched Making Kids Win, a charitable organization whose primary objective is to build community centers in urban neighborhoods that are in need of safe spaces for children to learn and play. Williams served as the ACLU's Ambassador of Smart Justice.
No bio can capture the power of his performances or his person. Those who knew him, loved him, worked with him, and were affected by him over the years are sharing on social media.
Wendell Pierce, his friend and co-star on The Wire, who played Detective William “Bunk” Moreland offered a moving tribute. Go see the whole thread.
There were tributes from young people.
Lest we forget, Williams was gay, and his portrayal of a gay character in the Wire was radical for that time.
His June appearance at the BET awards.
His background as a dancer.
His interview with friend Queen Latifah.
One of the more personal clips I’ve enjoyed is from when Williams, whose father was from the South and mom was from the Bahamas, investigated his ancestry, weeping with joy at the results.
This is beautiful
We are blessed with the gift he gave us.
Rest now Brother.
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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A Mississippi man freed after nearly 23 years in prison filed a lawsuit Friday against the district attorney who prosecuted him six times in the killings of four people at a small-town furniture store.
Curtis Flowers was released in December 2019, about six months after the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out the conviction and death sentence from his sixth trial, which took place in 2010. Justices said prosecutors showed an unconstitutional pattern of excluding African American jurors in the trials of Flowers, who is Black.
The lawsuit filed Friday also names as defendants three investigators who worked with Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans. The county is not named as a defendant.
The suit says Evans and the investigators engaged in misconduct, including “pressuring witnesses to fabricate claims about seeing Mr. Flowers in particular locations on the day of the murders” and ignoring other possible suspects.
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Black Americans are more likely to get federal life sentences than whites or Latinos, a new study has found.
Why it matters: The analysis, published recently in Criminology, further illustrates the racial disparities of federal sentencing at a time when advocates are pushing for sentencing reforms for nonviolent offenders.
Details: An examination of more than 366,000 offenders convicted and sentenced in 90 federal district courts from 2010 to 2017 found racial disparities around life sentences targeting Black offenders. (The research excluded offenses related to immigration law.)
- More than 4,800 of all offenders were eligible for life imprisonment — and almost 1,200 received life sentences, the study found.
- Black offenders accounted for fewer than a third of all cases but constituted nearly half of those eligible for life sentences.
- White offenders accounted for more than a third of all cases but constituted less than a quarter of those eligible for life sentences.
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Our focus on gentrification might lead people to believe that it is the dominant form of inequality in American cities (our outsized focus on the phenomenon may be due in part to the fact that gentrification scholars, journalists, and consumers of digital media tend to live in gentrifying neighborhoods themselves). But the core rot in American cities is not the gentrifying neighborhoods: It is exclusion, segregation, and concentrated poverty.
White, wealthy neighborhoods that have refused class and racial integration have successfully avoided much scrutiny as gentrification has taken center stage in urban political fights. On the other hand, predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods often don’t gentrify due to disinvestment and centuries of racist and classist policies.
And yet, gentrification captures our imagination, providing the visual juxtaposition of inequality. While stagnant, segregated neighborhoods are an accepted backdrop of American life, fast-changing, diverse neighborhoods and the culture clash that accompanies gentrification are the battlefield where all the disagreements come to the forefront.
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A recent New York Times article features a Black Brooklyn homeowner who went to talk to a new white neighbor and was mistaken as a panhandler: “I went over to strike conversation and before I could finish a sentence, he told me that he didn’t have any money,” the man told the Times. Stories like this of Black homeowners watching their neighborhoods change around them abound, often with the earlier residents experiencing culture shock as the new entrants treat them or longstanding cultural markers with disdain.
In a Twitter thread about the article, educator and historian Erica Buddington recounted how when a package was mistakenly delivered to her new neighbor’s house and she went to retrieve it, the neighbor immediately assumed she was a salesperson and shut the door in her face.
Beyond these frustrating and racist microaggressions is the concern about displacement and harms that might befall those who stay. A 2020 study by then-University of Florida sociologist Brenden Beck showed that “on average, calls to the police increased after a neighborhood’s middle-class population grew.” While Beck did not find that those calls translated into more stops or low-level arrests, he did find that “police made more order-maintenance and proactive arrests following real estate market growth.”
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Ferrer, a historian at New York University, starts by describing her own “heavy inheritance”. She was born in Cuba in 1962. In 1963 her mother took her to New York, where her father was living. Her mother had to leave behind a nine-year-old son from a previous marriage. Ferrer, like thousands of others, would feel the full tension of the US-Cuba relationship in the very fabric of her family.
From there, Ferrer turns to the island story, packing five centuries into concise chapters brimming with vivid detail and terrific page-turning momentum. She starts with the establishment of the first Spanish settlement in 1511, explaining how Cuba became an important stopover for the annual treasure fleet. By the 18th century, its impressive defences and strategic location enticed the British to capture and occupy “the Havannah” from 1762 to 1763 – an incident long erased from Britain’s collective memory, if it was ever there in the first place. Also often forgotten is Cuba’s crucial role in the American struggle for independence, as Spain channelled money and troops through the island to support the revolution.
By the late 18th century, the contours of the relationship with the US were clear. Cuba’s economy had been transformed by the collapse of sugar production in Saint-Domingue during the Haitian revolution, between 1791 and 1804. Investment in Cuban sugar soared, as did the number of enslaved people brought to the island.
Sugar and slavery bound Cuba and the US together. Ferrer is clear on this: “Cuba – its sugar, its slavery, its slave trade – is part of the history of American capitalism.” One telling example could be found in March 1853, when the newly elected vice-president, William Rufus King, running mate of President Franklin Pierce, was sworn into office from the Ariadne sugar estate in Matanzas, Cuba. King was an Alabama slaveowner, convalescing in Cuba from the tuberculosis that killed him the following month.
That decade also saw failed plots to annex Cuba – still a Spanish colony – to the slaveholding US south, but the American civil war ended such schemes. Soon after, in 1868, Cubans began an unsuccessful 10-year war for independence. Slavery ended first – if not until 1886 – but colonialism lingered on.
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