Statue of late civil rights leader John Lewis replaces Confederate monument in Georgia
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM A monument honoring the life and work of civil rights icon John Lewis was unveiled in Decatur, Georgia, marking a major step in confronting America's racial past. For more than a century, a Confederate obelisk stood in the square where the new memorial now Read More...
New giant database lets people learn about the lives of millions of slaves
While we know the dark history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the number of Africans forcibly taken from their homes, we hardly know anything about the lives of individual slaves. Only a few historical enslaved people are known by name, and most are lost to history. In a colossal effort to Read More...
To address racism today, companies must back words with action
Much has changed in the corporate world since 2014. Back then, brands went largely unchallenged for standing on the sidelines or issuing noncommittal statements during the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Calls for the Washington football team to change its name at that time Read More...
Our public transit systems can help us fight racism. Here's how
In the US, the opportunities afforded to people can often rely on how connected their communities are transportation-wise. This is something Darnell Grisby knows well. Growing up as a Black man in Southern California during the 1980s and 1990s, Darnell Grisby saw how limited public transportation Read More...
Statue of BLM activist replaces that of a slave trader in Bristol
The British city of Bristol was once a hub for the Atlantic slave trade. A statue of Edward Colston, a slave trader, stood in the city until last month when it was toppled by protestors. Now, a statue of Black Lives Matter activist Jen Reid has replaced the monument. The statue, named A Surge Read More...
Twitter engineer leads movement to replace racially-loaded tech terms
What sort of impacts do words have in our everyday jobs? For Regynald Augustin, a programmer at Twitter, the unquestionable drive to change the terminology used in his day-to-day job was an effort that started back in January. The impetus for change started after he received an email with the Read More...
Black environmentalists are uniting to fight climate injustice
"I can’t breathe." These were among the final words that George Floyd and Eric Garner gasped before their deaths at the hands of white police officers. That plea has become part of the current rallying cry for racial justice and an end to police brutality in the United States. But for Black Read More...
The founder of Netflix just donated $120 million to black colleges
Many prominent public figures have donated towards causes that support racial justice in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, but no donation has gone further than that of Netflix founder Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin. The duo recently put forth $120 million that will be Read More...
Los Angeles is defunding the police and investing in minority communities
One of the main demands to come out of the nationwide George Floyd protests is for cities to defund police. That doesn’t mean completely defunding police departments but, rather, allocating some of their budgets to other initiatives that provide poor and minority communities with more than a Read More...
10 actions you can take to promote racial justice in the workplace
As our top story of the day explains, understanding whiteness is the first thing white people must do to end racial discrimination. The next order of business is for white people to be vanguards of equality and racial justice in all areas of society—whether it be at home or at work. But how Read More...