Sunn m’Cheaux and Akua Page teach Gullah language and culture from juvenile incarceration facilities to Harvard In 2019, Akua Page was invited to a juvenile incarceration facility in Richland county, South Carolina, to give a presentation about the Gullah Geechee language, an English-based creole created by enslaved Africans. When the teens walked into the room, Page recalled, they seemed hardened, angry and annoyed. Undeterred, she began her lesson. “I told them: ‘Hey, I understand y’all are Gullah Geechee,’” the 30-year-old educator said. “I validated them first, and said: ‘Y’all are bilingu ..read more

Bridget Thorne, a Republican elected in Fulton county in 2022, has spread election fraud lies and accused county employees of crimes A Fulton county commissioner in Georgia has been operating a private Telegram channel for years, propagating debunked claims about the 2020 election, and spreading accusations of crimes by county employees, including Ruby Freeman, an election worker defamed by Rudy Giuliani in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2020 loss. Bridget Thorne, a Republican representing the relatively conservative cities of Fulton county north of Atlanta, indirectly identifies herself as the cr ..read more

A glaring racial disparity is evident in the 73 botched procedures involving lethal injections since 1976, report by Reprieve finds Black incarcerated people have been subjected to prolonged and painful botched executions in the US at more than twice the rate of white death row inmates, a new study has found. While glaring racial disparities have long been visible in US capital punishment, the report from the international human rights group Reprieve finds that the inequities exist even inside the death chamber. It reveals a shocking racial disparity in the rate of botched executions in which ..read more

People can claim $3,000 deduction for fetuses reaching six weeks gestation – but ‘it’s abortion politics’ not tax policy, experts say There were more than 36,000 “unborn children” claimed in tax filings in Georgia in 2022, the year the state enacted an abortion ban that also let people claim fetuses as dependents. Claiming that fetus, however, may have only netted individuals less than a couple hundred dollars in a state where a fifth of all children live in poverty. Georgia currently bans abortion past six weeks of pregnancy, which is before many women know they’re pregnant. But that ban, unl ..read more

Tributes paid to music producer who helped write TLC’s Waterfalls and worked on albums by OutKast and CeeLo Green Rico Wade, one of the architects of Atlanta’s “dirty south” hip-hop sound, who co-produced albums by OutKast, Goodie Mob and CeeLo Green and who co-wrote TLC’s 1994 hit Waterfalls, has died. He was 52. Atlanta’s mayor, Andre Dickens, paid tribute to Wade, saying he had “led in the creation of a hip-hop sound that has spanned decades and genres. Rico left an indelible mark on music and culture around the world and for that, the south will always have something to say ..read more

The Kappa Alpha Theta members jumped into action to save Cori Craft and her two sons after their SUV veered off into a creek With her two sons accompanying her, Cori Craft had just accidentally driven her SUV into a creek in rural Georgia, and she couldn’t find her phone to summon help as the car rapidly sank. Thoughts that she and her family could soon drown started to flood her mind. But then she heard a voice call out and ask if she was OK. Her reply that she was not OK was the only thing five college sorority members needed to hear to work together to pull Craft and her boys out – and then ..read more

Fulton county lawyers ask state appeals court to deny request by ex-president, who is charged with efforts to overturn 2020 election Fulton county prosecutors asked the Georgia state court of appeals on Monday to reject Donald Trump’s request to consider his claim that the district attorney should be disqualified over a relationship with her deputy, arguing that the matter was correctly settled by the lower court judge. “The present application merely reflects the applicants’ dissatisfaction with the trial court’s proper application of well-established law to the facts,” prosecutors wrote in a ..read more

Augusta National taps into fever for ‘pretty wild’ moment with branded solar glasses – which rapidly become a must-have They say bats come out during a solar eclipse, and owls too. Hippos have been seen to move towards their nighttime feeding grounds, bees to fly back to their hives and refuse to emerge until the sun comes back out, crickets begin to chirrup, mosquitoes come out for the evening, spiders take down their webs to protect them from the nighttime dew. Last time they had a solar eclipse one around these parts, scientists working at Riverbanks zoo over in South Carolina noticed that ..read more

Petition to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights filed on behalf of Manuel Paez Terán, aka ‘Tortuguita’, and their mother Human rights groups have filed a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights calling for a US Department of Justice investigation into the police killing of “Cop City” protester Manuel Paez Terán, as well as the release of all related evidence, and apologies to the family from the US government. Two organizations – Robert F Kennedy Human Rights and the Southern Center for Human Rights – together with the University of Dayton Human Rights Center filed the ..read more

Trump’s Presidential Records Act argument could be resurrected at trial even as the judge denied his motion to dismiss The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s prosecution on charges of retaining classified documents denied his effort to have the case dismissed on the contention that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to transform them as personal property and possess them at his Mar-a-Lago club. The ruling by US district judge Aileen Cannon was significant as it struck one of Trump’s main defenses and suggested the case is headed to trial ..read more