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We look at another significant June 19 in the history of slavery in the United States: June 19, 1838, when Jesuit priests who ran what is now Georgetown University sold 272 enslaved people to pay off the school's debts. In 2016, Georgetown University announced it would give preferential admissions treatment to descendants of the Africans it enslaved and sold. "Ours, as Americans, is an uninterrupted line of inheritance that many of us refuse to believe that we are descendants of," says Mélisande Short-Colomb, who is one of the first two Georgetown University students to benefit from legacy admission for direct descendants and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Georgetown Memory Project.

As President Biden signs legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday to mark the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned of their freedom more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, we speak to the writer and poet Clint Smith about Juneteenth and his new book, "How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America." "When I think of Juneteenth, part of what I think about is the both-endedness of it," Smith says, "that it is this moment in which we mourn the fact that freedom was kept from hundreds of thousands of enslaved people for years and for months after it had been attained by them, and then, at the same time, celebrating the end of one of the most egregious things that this country has ever done." Smith says he recognizes the federal holiday marking Juneteenth as a symbol, "but it is clearly not enough."

The Layered Republican Electoral Strategy to Cheat Rather Than Compete | A View From Moscow of Putin's Recent Nuclear Alert Compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Senator Manchin's Changes to the For the People Act That Stacey Abrams "Absolutely" Supports | "Everything You Need to Know About the Infrastructure Bill Traveling Through Congress" | Biden Carries the Weight of the World to Stop the Spread of Trumpism and Restore Democracy at Home and Abroad backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

The Pulitzer Board really did choose not to award a Prize for the Editorial Cartooning category in 2021. Please support the work of political cartoonists here. * * * Perry Dorrell blogs as PDiddie at Brains and Eggs, usually on topics concerning the strange brew of Texas politics. He's also on Twitter [...]

It's NICOLE SANDLER again filling in for Brad and Desi on today's BradCast. After an update on the latest news, I welcome a regular guest from the last decade, former Congressman DENNIS KUCINICH. He left Congress after 12 years in office back in January of 2013 after Ohio gerrymandered his district out of existence, and [...]

FEATURING TASNEEM ESSOP – The Group of 7, or G7 summit in Cornwall, England wrapped up on Sunday with Western leaders making effervescent pronouncements about global cooperation, sending warning signals to Russia and China, claiming a crackdown on global tax havens, and patting themselves on the back for taking bold action on climate change.  But climate...

FEATURING KHURY PETERSEN-SMITH – Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is in trouble once more for calling out American imperialism and daring to say out loud what most lawmakers refuse to say. In a recent tweet showcasing her questioning of State Secretary Antony Blinken during a House Foreign Affairs Committee, Omar said, “We must have the same...