Street outside NASA's DC office renamed for 'Hidden Figures'

Visitors to NASA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. will forevermore be reminded of the African-American women who were essential to the success of early spaceflight.

On Aug. 23, 2018, U.S. Senators Ted Cruz, Ed Markey, John Thune, and Bill Nelson introduced a bipartisan bill to designate the street in front of NASA Headquarters as Hidden Figures Way. On Wednesday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine was joined by Sen. Cruz, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, and author Margot Lee Shetterly to make that designation official.

The renaming honors Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who were featured in Shetterly’s book – and the subsequent movie – Hidden Figures, as well as all women who honorably serve their country, advancing equality, and contributing to the United States space program.

“I just want to say these were the three hidden figures in a very prominent book that became a magnificent movie that started a movement that brought all of us here today,” Bridenstine said. “Here we are, 50 years after the landing of the Apollo 11 Moon lander, celebrating those figures who were, at the time, not celebrated.”

Members of the Johnson, Jackson and Vaughan families, as well as Christine Darden, a mathematician who worked alongside these esteemed women at NASA, were surrounded by a large crowd gathered at the corner of 3rd and E Street SW to share in the momentous event.

“A street sign is a piece of metal, that’s under the wind, sun, rain, snow. But a street sign’s a lot more than that,” Cruz said. “Because for years, and then decades, and then centuries, when little girls and little boys come to see NASA, they’re going to look up and see that sign, and they’re going to say ‘Hidden Figures? What’s that? What does that mean?’ And that, in turn, is going to prompt a story – a story about the unlimited human potential of all of us.”

Mendelson, who introduced the renaming bill for the city council in September 2018, also noted the integral role NASA’s human computers of the Apollo era played in developing America’s space program, and the important lessons we take from history, particularly lessons on race in this country.

“It’s not just a story of individuals but it’s also a story of, and acknowledges, the racism in this country and how we still struggle to deal with that and to overcome it,” he said.

The story that sparked the movement Bridenstine spoke of was shared with the world by an author who has her own close ties to NASA. Shetterly’s father, whose birthday also was Wednesday, spent his entire career at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, as an atmospheric research scientist.

“Naming this street Hidden Figures Way serves to remind us, and everyone who comes here, of the standard that was set by these women, with their commitment to science and their embodiment of the values of equality, justice and humanity,” Shetterly said. “But, let it also remind us of the Hidden Figures way, which is to open our eyes to contribution of the people around us so that their names, too, are the ones that we remember at the end of the story.”

Son of sheriff's deputy faces federal hate crime charges in Louisiana church fires

Federal hate crime charges have been filed against the son of a sheriff's deputy who was arrested in connection with a string of fires at three historically black churches in Louisiana, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.

Holden Matthews, 21, faces three counts of intentional damage to religious property, which constitute hate crimes under the Church Arson Prevention Act. He was also charged with three counts of using fire to commit a felony, the Justice Department said in a news release after the federal indictment was unsealed.

Holden Matthews, 21, was booked into the St. Landry Parish Jail on three counts of simple arson of a religious building.St. Landry Parish Sheriff Dept. The indictment says the fires were set "because of the religious character" of the properties.

The fires at the three churches, which were all started by gasoline and set from late March to early April, unnerved churchgoers in the St. Landry Parish region — conjuring up images of attacks on black churches in the South during the civil rights movement, and more recently, during the 1990s.

"Churches are vital places of worship and fellowship for our citizens and bind us together as a community," David Joseph, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, said in a statement. "Our freedom to safely congregate in these churches and exercise our religious beliefs must be jealously guarded. Today we are one step closer to justice for the parishioners of these churches and the St. Landry Parish communities affected by these acts."

Matthews already faced state charges in the church fires, including violating Louisiana's hate crime law. He has pleaded not guilty in that case.

[SOURCE: NBC NEWS]

Central Park 5 prosecutor leaves Columbia Law position

A prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office will leave her post as a part-time lecturer at Columbia Law School amid controversy over her role in the wrongful conviction of five black and Latino teens, according to Bloomberg Law.

Elizabeth Lederer was one of two assistant district attorneys who prosecuted Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson and Korey Wise, the so-called “Central Park 5,” in the brutal 1989 assault and rape of a jogger in Central Park.

The school’s Black Law Students Association had called for Lederer’s dismissal over her role in the prosecution of the five teens, who served full prison sentences before their convictions were vacated in 2002 due to DNA evidence exonerating them and a confession from serial rapist Mattias Reyes.

Students unsuccessfully called on the university to remove Lederer in 2013, but public interest has been renewed in the case by the Netflix docudrama “When They See Us,” in which Lederer is played by Vera Farmiga.

Lederer informed the school of her decision not to seek reappointment late Wednesday, according to Law School Dean Gillian Lester.

“The mini-series has reignited a painful—and vital—national conversation about race, identity, and criminal justice,” Lester said in a statement, according to Bloomberg Law.

“I am deeply committed to fostering a learning environment that furthers this important and ongoing dialogue, one that draws upon the lived experiences of all members of our community and actively confronts the most difficult issues of our time,” she added.

[SOURCE: THE HILL]

Cedric Richmond to co-chair Joe Biden’s campaign for president

U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, has been chosen as the first national co-chairman of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, The New York Times reported Friday (May 31). The selection could improve the former vice president’s stock with black voters and members of Congress at a time when two black Democrats, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California, also are seeking the party’s nomination for president.

Richmond worked with Booker and Harris when he chaired the Congressional Black Caucus in 2017 and 2018, and Politico reported that he gave maximum monetary contributions to their campaigns. In August, he facilitated a question-and-answer session with another Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is white, at Dillard University in New Orleans.

But he also has been a vocal supporter of Biden, a white man who was a senator from Delaware before becoming Barack Obama’s vice president. Richmond was pushing Biden to run as early as 2016, the year Republican Donald Trump was elected president, and he formally endorsed Biden in April, Politico reported.

What will be his role in the Biden campaign? Richmond told The Times: “My biggest strength is offering political advice and using my political instincts to come up with strategy, and not just strategy in the African-American community. I think the real strength is in the South and other parts of the country."

The Sixth Man: A Memoir by Andre Iguodala

The standout memoir from NBA powerhouse Andre Iguodala, the indomitable sixth man of the champion Golden State Warriors.

Andre Iguodala is one of the most admired players in the NBA. And fresh off the Warriors’ third NBA championship in the last four years, his game has never been stronger.

Off the court, Iguodala has earned respect, too—for his successful tech investments, his philanthropy, and increasingly for his contributions to the conversation about race in America. It is no surprise, then, that in his first book, Andre, with his cowriter Carvell Wallace, has pushed himself to go further than he ever has before about his life, not only as an athlete but about what makes him who he is at his core.

The Sixth Man traces Andre’s journey from childhood in his Illinois hometown to his Bay Area home court today. Basketball has always been there. But this is the story, too, of his experience of the conflict and racial tension always at hand in a professional league made up largely of African American men; of whether and why the athlete owes the total sacrifice of his body; of the relationship between competition and brotherhood among the players of one of history’s most glorious championship teams. And of what motivates an athlete to keep striving for more once they’ve already achieved the highest level of play they could have dreamed.

On drive, on leadership, on pain, on accomplishment, on the shame of being given a role, and the glory of taking a role on: This is a powerful memoir of life and basketball that reveals new depths to the superstar athlete, and offers tremendous insight into most urgent stories being told in American society today.

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