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Christopher Banks of Mile High Festivals talks with the AmNews about Denver’s Juneteenth Music Festival. (Video by Kelly Torres)

Denver’s Juneteenth Music Festival took place Saturday, June 15 and Sunday, June 16 in the historic Five Points neighborhood, offering parade goers an array of DJs, block parties, food trucks, and live performances, including the main act, Bow Wow. This year marks 71 years of Denver’s longest running street festival, celebrating the day when the last of the nation’s enslaved people learned of their emancipation.

Kelly Torres photos

The post Juneteenth celebrated at Mile High City’s longest-running street fest appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

The venerated Willie Mays, iconically nicknamed “The Say Hey Kid,” widely viewed as the best baseball player in the long and storied history of the sport, has transitioned to rest in power with the ancestors.

Mays passed away at the age of 93 on Tuesday “peacefully and among loved ones,” as shared by his son Michael Mays through the San Francisco Giants, for which the elder Mays played most of his career.

Last week, in a press release by the Giants, Mays, who was born on May 6, 1931, in Westfield, Alabama, said he would not attend tonight’s Major League Baseball game between the Giants and St. Louis Cardinals at historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, just a 15 minute drive from Westfield.

Rickwood Field is the oldest ballpark in the country. It was built in 1910 and was the home to the Negro Leagues Black Barons, a team for which Mays manned the outfield as a high school teenager for 13 games in the 1948 season. Tonight’s game at Rickwood is a tribute to the Negro Leagues in observance of Juneteenth.

RELATED: Willie Mays’s legacy expands across cultural generations

“Rickwood Field? I knew about it as a kid,” said Mays. ”It was always there. As common as a church or a school or a movie theater. I grew up with Rickwood around the corner…  The majors? I didn’t dream about the impossible. I was taught to see your goal in your mind and work toward it. I could work toward getting to Rickwood Field and the Birmingham Black Barons. I didn’t need to dream for that. For that, I needed to work hard. So, I did.

Rickwood became my training ground. My start. My first job. When things changed in ‘47 with Jackie (Robinson) coming in? Well, then I started to dream big. You never forget your firsts. Rickwood Field is where I played my first home game. Rickwood Field is still here. So am I. How about that?”

The most apt word to characterize Mays as a player is breathtaking. At 5’10,” his combination of speed, power, skills, innate sense of angles, distance and trajectory of the ball, and flair for the dramatic were unparalleled. His statistics are mesmerizing: A 24-time All-Star. Two-time NL MVP. Twelve Gold Gloves. Four Time NL home run leader. Four-time NL stolen base king. The 1954 NL batting champion, the same season he won his only World Series.

Playing for the New York Giants in the Polo Grounds in Harlem prior to the franchise moving to Seals Stadium in San Francisco in 1958 before settling into windy and cavernous Candlestick Park in San Francisco beginning in the 1960 season, Mays, along with the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle and the then Brooklyn Dodgers’ Duke Snyder, formed the most famous trio of center fielders to compete in the same city, in the same era, in the annals of baseball.    

Many Harlemites growing up and living in America’s most prominent Black community in the 1960s recall seeing Mays playing stickball with youth or frequenting local establishments, as humble and unassuming as one of the nation’s most recognizable people could be.  

He was a central figure in defining the Black experience of overcoming the oppressive demonization of African descendants  in the Jim Crow South and the rejection of systemic racism by embodying and reflecting Black excellence as he grew into manhood.

If Sirius is the brightest star in the Earth’s night sky, Willie Mays is its human equivalent.  

The post Baseball legend Willie Mays dies at 93 appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black, 
examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.

If you’re thinking of not voting in the November presidential election, let me give you one important reason why you should vote — the courts.

Let’s say you’re a progressive who wants Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and reparations for Black people. Trump opposes all these things, but Biden is too much of an incrementalist for you. So you decide not to vote. What’s the worst that could happen, right? 

Well, if Trump is elected, he could appoint up to three new right-wing Supreme Court justices and hundreds of lower court federal judges. Why is that important? Because federal judges have lifetime tenure. Many join the bench when they’re in their 40s or 50s and stay in position for decades until they die or retire.

That means that when the next president comes along in 2028, it will be virtually impossible to implement a progressive agenda. Any policies you support will be struck down by Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices and federal judges for the next two to three decades. 

We’re seeing it already. In just four years in office, Trump appointed one-third of the U.S. Supreme Court and 242 federal judges. That’s why so many of Joe Biden’s policies have been struck down.

RELATED: Why I Want Cardi B to Vote

Trying to go to college? The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 last year that colleges and universities can no longer use race in admissions to create a more diverse student body. All six justices who killed affirmative action were appointed by Republican presidents. The three Democratic-appointed justices dissented.

Struggling to pay your student loans? The Supreme Court killed student loan debt relief that would have helped 40 million Americans. Once again, all six justices were Republican appointees.

Need to have an abortion? The Supreme Court ruled two years ago that women no longer have reproductive rights to control their own bodies. All six justices who overturned Roe v. Wade were Republican appointees. 

Did you fall behind on your rent during the pandemic? The Supreme Court ended the nationwide eviction moratorium that protected millions of American renters from being kicked out of their apartments. Once again, a 6-3 Republican decision.   

Want to vote for a Black member of Congress? The Supreme Court ruled that Republicans can use a racially gerrymandered voting map that disenfranchised Black voters in South Carolina. But all six Republican-appointed justices allowed the map. 

And it’s not just the Supreme Court.

Looking to launch a Black business? A federal judge in Texas ruled that the Minority Business Development Agency, a 55-year-old agency, is now illegal because it discriminates against white people. Once again, the judge was appointed by Donald Trump.

Need startup money for a new firm? A federal appeals court in Georgia ruled that a venture capital fund for Black women called the Fearless Fund can no longer focus on helping Black women. Both judges who voted against Black women in the 2-1 decision were appointed by Donald Trump.

RELATED: Byron Donalds and the Myth of the Broken Black Family 

Need help on the farm? A federal judge in Florida stopped President Biden’s debt relief program that helped Black farmers because it was unfair to white farmers. The judge was appointed by Republican President George Bush, exposing the influence of conservative jurists appointed years ago.

Then, just a few days ago, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas wouldn’t even allow emergency disaster assistance for Black farmers because it was unfair to white men.

Republican-appointed judges in the state courts are just as dangerous for Black people.

Want to wear your natural hair? A Texas judge ruled that a school district could force high school student Darryl George to cut his locs, despite the state’s CROWN Act that prohibits hairstyle discrimination. The judge ran as a Republican.

Want to protest racism? A Missouri judge just expunged the records of the infamous St. Louis couple who previously pleaded guilty to assaulting Black Lives Matter protesters with guns. The judge was appointed by Missouri’s Republican governor.

RELATED: As Black Gun Deaths Rise, Biden Says Congress Must Act

Elections have consequences. President Biden appointed the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court and appointed more Black judges in his first 1,000 days than any president in history. In fact, he appointed more Black judges than the last four Republican presidents combined. Trump, on the other hand, was the first president since Richard Nixon 50 years ago to appoint no Black judges to the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Give him another four years, and it’s all over for us.

While we’re busy scrolling through social media every day, hundreds of decisions are happening in courtrooms all around the country that affect our lives.

By not voting, you’re not helping Black people or promoting the progressive cause. You’re consigning your children to live under a legal regime governed by anti-Black Republican judges for years to come.

“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black, 
examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.

Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.

The post With a Trump Win, Republican Judges Will Rule the Courts—and Our Lives appeared first on Word In Black.

The post With a Trump Win, Republican Judges Will Rule the Courts—and Our Lives appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here