Episodes
Tuesday Feb 24, 2015
Leid Stories - 02.24.15
Tuesday Feb 24, 2015
Tuesday Feb 24, 2015
Why Is It All Happening?: A Status Report on Major World Events
Diplomatic scholar, historian, attorney and prolific author Dr. Gerald Horne delivers a status report on major developments in the world today, masterfully decoding complex issues that are attached to them.
Horne, the John J. and Rebecca Moores chair of history and African American studies at the University of Houston, frames his discussion within the push-and-pull of shifting alliances among dominant powers and the emergence of new, game-changing players and events that are challenging their established order.
Monday Feb 23, 2015
Leid Stories - 02.23.15
Monday Feb 23, 2015
Monday Feb 23, 2015
On the Matter of Freedom: A History Lesson from Malcolm X
Just a month before he was assassinated, Malcolm X delivered a historical overview of the tumultuous years of the 1960s, when unrest and rebellions in large urban areas across America brought to the attention of the nation and the world the stark reality of its homegrown apartheid.
Leid Stories presents one of his last speeches, in which Malcolm X discusses, among other things, the role of the Nation of Islam (he had left the organization by then) in emboldening Blacks’ demand for freedom, justice and equality; the parallel struggles that were being waged in Africa; and how the Black political establishment was used to contain and control the burgeoning movement.
Malcolm X was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965. He was 39 years old.
Thursday Feb 19, 2015
Leid Stories - 02.19.15
Thursday Feb 19, 2015
Thursday Feb 19, 2015
Speaking Truth to Power: A Conversation with Vernellia Randall
Retirement hasn’t slowed down Vernellia Randall. Quite the contrary, it has given her a second wind. The former University of Dayton School of Law professor has doubled down on her activist work, “speaking truth to power” (her motto on her website), and “work[ing] continuously at changing the world through law, love and activism.”
Randall, who writes and lectures extensively on race, women’s issues, health care and the law, joins Leid Stories for a wide-ranging conversation about justice in America.
She is a co-founder of Racial Justice Now, an Ohio grassroots organization of educators, parents, clergy and community activists dedicated to fighting institutional and systemic racism and holding people in power accountable.
Apart from her academic accomplishments in law, Randall, a registered nurse, has had an impressive career in public health as an administrator of a statewide public-health program in Alaska. She is the author of Dying While Black, an in-depth look at race-based disparities in U.S. health care.
Thursday Feb 19, 2015
Leid Stories - 02.17.15
Thursday Feb 19, 2015
Thursday Feb 19, 2015
Toil and Trouble: Black Labor from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement (Part 3)
Our guest, Professor Charles L. Lumpkins, continues his presentation on African American labor from the Civil War to the turn of the 21st century—covering the periods of chattel slavery, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era. (Check the archives at leidstories.podbean.com for Parts 1 and 2, which aired Feb. 5 and Feb. 10.)
Dr. Lumpkins is a lecturer of labor and employment relations at Pennsylvania State University, where he earned his doctorate in history in 2006, and teaches history and African American studies. He also holds a master’s degree in library science.
His scholastic research focuses particularly on the history of social and political movements, and the history of the working-class.
Dr. Lumpkins is the author of the highly praised American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics, a necessary historical reference for the state of affairs in Ferguson, Missouri, today.
Thursday Feb 19, 2015
Leid Stories - 02.16.15
Thursday Feb 19, 2015
Thursday Feb 19, 2015
No Justice, Period: The Fate of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner Cases
“The People’s Attorney General” Alton H. Maddox Jr., who long before official announcements had predicted on Leid Stories that there would be no indictments in the police killings of Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner of Staten Island, N.Y., issues indictments of his own.
He discusses why, despite national and international protest, the legal rights of African Americans still are viewed through the lens of the pernicious Dred Scott decision of 1957, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that African Americans had “no rights that the white man is bound to respect.”
Maddox also discusses his own 25-year battle against New York state officials and the courts over his refusal to turn over all of his files and records pertaining to his representation of Tawana Brawley, who in 1987, when she was 15, had accused six white men, including a part-time police officer, a state trooper and an assistant district attorney in Dutchess County, of abducting and raping her.
Maddox, who has never been charged with any violations of the law or professional ethics, has not been granted a hearing on his being “barred,” not disbarred, from New York’s courtrooms since 1990.
Friday Feb 13, 2015
Leid Stories - 02.13.15
Friday Feb 13, 2015
Friday Feb 13, 2015
A Free-Form Forum That Will Free Your Mind!
Free Your Mind. It’s the best way to end the week.
Share your thoughts about major news issues and developments—and about topics covered on Leid Stories—with people who, like you, have deep respect and appreciation for off-the-beaten-path thinking and analysis.
Call 888-874-4888 (it’s free) and let’s hear what you have to say.
Friday Feb 13, 2015
Leid Stories 02.12.15
Friday Feb 13, 2015
Friday Feb 13, 2015
Lynching: America’s White Reign of Terror Against Blacks
Jesse Jackson Strikes on Little League Baseball
Between the Civil War and World War II, thousands of African American men, women and children were victims of “terror lynchings,” says our guest, Bryan Stevenson, founder and director of the Montgomery, Ala.-based Equal Justice Initiative, which has documented almost 4,000 such cases in 12 Southern states.
These barbaric and public acts of torture and terrorism, Stevenson says, were tools of white supremacy that “created a fearful environment where racial subordination and segregation were maintained with limited resistance for decades.”
Stevenson discusses the findings of the EJI’s report, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” released Tuesday.
Wednesday Feb 11, 2015
Leid Stories - 02.11.15
Wednesday Feb 11, 2015
Wednesday Feb 11, 2015
One Hand Clapping: The ‘Dialogue’ on American Apartheid
For decades now, practically every yardstick by which “progress” is measured in has pointed up a deeply embedded structural flaw. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, appointed by President Lyndon B Johnson in 1967 to probe the causes of urban rebellions that were occurring in major black cities at the time, warned in its 1968 report that the nation was “moving toward two societies—one black, one white, separate and unequal.”
Johnson’s “War on Poverty” campaign and its related programs attempted to attenuate the social, political and economic impact of the yawning divide. Vigorous black-led movements forced Johnson to concede that race oppression was widespread.
Almost half a century later, American apartheid seems as entrenched and pervasive as it ever was, with only a few cosmetic changes. The only people calling attention to it, it seems, are those most directly affected.
Leid Stories asks: Does this mean that whites have no interest in dealing with the issue because they do not see themselves as being adversely affected? It is naïve of blacks to think that apartheid in America is a problem that society in general wants to solve? Is American apartheid solvable?
Tuesday Feb 10, 2015
Leid Stories - 02.10.15
Tuesday Feb 10, 2015
Tuesday Feb 10, 2015
Toil and Trouble: Black Labor from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement (Part 2)
Our guest, Professor Charles L. Lumpkins, completes his presentation on African American labor from the Civil War to the turn of the 21st century—covering the periods of chattel slavery, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era. (Check the archives at leidstories.podbean.com for Part 1, which aired Feb. 5.)
Dr. Lumpkins is a lecturer of labor and employment relations at Pennsylvania State University, where he earned both his doctorate in history in 2006, and teaches history and African American studies. He also holds a master’s degree in library science.
His scholastic research focuses particularly on the history of social and political movements, and the history of the working-class.
Dr. Lumpkins is the author of the highly praised American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics, a necessary historical reference for the state of affairs in Ferguson, Missouri, today.
Monday Feb 09, 2015
Leid Stories - 02.09.15
Monday Feb 09, 2015
Monday Feb 09, 2015
The Brian Williams Brouhaha: Lies, Money and Media Hypocrisy
NBC News anchor Brian Williams is laying low for a while, hoping that an internal probe won’t unearth more of his “misremembered” stories.
Bigwigs at NBC are furious that their $10-million-a-year “NBC Nightly News” gatekeeper has tarnished the organization’s “credibility” with at least two stories. Williams said he was in a helicopter in Iraq in 2003 that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. And he said he saw a body or bodies float by his gang-ravaged French Quarter hotel in the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Iraq War veterans and New Orleans emergency officials have called Williams out on both counts, totally disputing Williams’ accounts.
Leid Stories in a commentary dissects the brouhaha over Williams, which provides an excellent opportunity to explore the real issue here: Brian Williams’ lies pale in comparison to the lies routinely told by NBC and corporate media in general.
The corporate media, however, don’t have a monopoly on lies, warns Leid Stories.