Sept. 21, 2026

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - I woke up Monday thinking about Troy Davis. Fifteen years ago, Georgia executed him. He was innocent. I was outside the prison that night.

As the old song goes, that's the night the lights went out in Georgia.

No physical evidence tied Troy to the killing of Officer Mark MacPhail. The case rested on eyewitnesses. Seven of the nine later recanted or changed their accounts. Several swore the police had pressured them. They pointed instead to another man at the scene, the man who first gave police Troy's name. One witness testified he saw that man fire the shots.

Good people spoke up. William Sessions, who ran the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) under three presidents, wrote that the case was permeated in doubt. Bob Barr, a Republican who supports the death penalty, wrote that condemning a man on the skimpiest of evidence does not serve justice. I am grateful to them. But they did not have what I had. I worked that case for fifteen years. I read the affidavits myself. I did not come away with doubt. I came away certain. Georgia killed the wrong man.

Troy saw what we could not. He kept telling us the only way to break the killing machine was to make the country watch it work. So we built our campaign around a hashtag, #TooMuchDoubt. His execution became the second most tweeted event on earth that year. Weeks later, Gallup found support for the death penalty at a 39-year low.

The next spring, Connecticut abolished the death penalty with a horrific murder case still in the headlines. Troy made that possible. A year later, Maryland became the first state south of the Mason-Dixon Line to abolish. I watched that vote from the Senate balcony in Annapolis, beside Kirk Bloodsworth. Maryland had sent Kirk, a White waterman and former Marine, to death row for a murder he did not commit. DNA freed him. Virginia followed in 2021, the first state of the old Confederacy to abolish.

Then we stopped. No state has abolished the death penalty since Washington struck it from its books in 2023.

The machine kept running. Since 1973, at least 203 people have been exonerated from death row. For every eight people executed, one has been exonerated. Two years ago Missouri executed Marcellus Williams, after the very prosecutor's office that convicted him asked a court to throw out the conviction.

The death penalty preys on the poor. About 95 percent of the people on death row could not afford a lawyer.

Lynching still haunts us. At least ten Black people have been found hanging this year. Most have been ruled suicides. Their families want independent reviews. This month Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and 59 colleagues asked the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate every one.

Frederick Douglass is often called the father of the civil rights movement. He was the first civil rights leader to call publicly for abolishing the death penalty. He said its roots were intertwined with the roots of the lynching tree. Both had to be cut down.

I learned the path thirty years ago at the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The Eighth Amendment bans cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court judges what is unusual by looking at the states. In 2005, once most states had barred executing children, the Court ended the practice. The threshold for ending the death penalty is 26 states.

We have 23. We need three.

Ohio is closest. Its Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has not carried out a single execution. In June he called for abolition. Pennsylvania's governor, Josh Shapiro, refuses to sign death warrants. North Carolina has not executed anyone in twenty years.

Much of the country is moving the other way. States executed 47 people last year, the most since 2009. Florida alone killed 19. In January 2025 the president signed an order pressing states to seek more death sentences.

These are hard times. We carry many fights. We cannot set this one down.

Two weeks before he died, Troy asked me to be an uncle to his nephew, De'Jaun. I said yes. I had known him since he was three. Today he is an engineer, helping build a dental school in Savannah, his uncle's hometown. Troy should have lived to see it.

Three states. Call your governor. Call your legislators. Douglass told us to cut down both trees. One is still standing. And it is time for the lights to stay on in Georgia.

Ben Jealous is a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania and a former national president of the NAACP. He is the author of Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing.

TriceEdneyWire.com - Dr. Ron Daniels, President of the Institute of the Black World, invited several U.S. leaders to go on a fact-finding mission to Cuba. Among those who went were Dr.Daniels, Louis Romain, Dr.Julianne Malveaux, Rev.Robert Turner, Dr. James Early,reporters from The Final Call, The Informer, World Conference of Mayors, Black Social Workers, young people, etc.  

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When Barack Obama became our President, some of us began to believe our nation was on its way to approaching equal rights for all where most of us had a chance to become whatever we chose to work for.  Some of us began to be comfortable with the idea that our children and grandchildren could become whatever they were willing to work for. They were becoming leaders at all kinds of places. They were having opportunities that we could not even dream we could ever have.

For a while, we didn’t have to read about so many murders of our children.  They didn’t witness the worst of America’s leaders from the top down using vulgar language, hearing about the highest ranking public officials raping women and not even serving time in jail for it!

We didn’t hear about Presidents in such an ugly way talking about their predecessors, using profanity during hours young people were up trying to concentrate on their studies.  We didn’t witness a President ignoring court orders such as taking down his name from the President John F. Kennedy Center. He's still ignoring the order, and with another act of defiance of a court order, he placed a tarp over the space so no one would know the court order has not yet been obeyed or at least he keeps us believing that covering both his and President Kennedy’s name is what the court ordered, while he tries to figure out how to disobey the Court and leave his name there!

How Americans tolerate this man continuing to occupy our White House by disobeying every rule, every law, every practice followed for years without disobeying judges—and now he even disobeys Supreme Court orders without punishment! How do we teach our children to obey laws?

It’s no wonder many young people don’t feel they have to obey laws, do things reminiscent of many years past and think nothing of killing a young man by the name of Nolan Wells in Mississippi. I thank God for an athlete who has been cheated out of his chances to go as far as his talent would take him,  yet show his thoughtfulness by intervening and paying for seeking justice for young Nolan Wells.

Before Nolan Wells, there was Karmelo Anthony from Texas who was cheated out of a fair trial. Every possibility was denied him when certain witnesses who likely would have told a different story about what happened in the tragedy. Karmelo who was a senior in high school when he was convicted under questionable circumstances. He was given 35 years in prison and sent there immediately from the courtroom at the end of the trial.

In response to Karmelo’s tragedy, we’ve seen other acts of kindness when Attorneys Russell Wilson,11, Sean Moore, Brooke Cluse, (from Ben Crump’s Law Firm), Sean Dredia, and Justin Moore are handling his appeal against the conviction. They are conducting an independent review of the trial record to identify any legal errors there appear to be. I don’t believe so many lawyers of the caliber of this group would offer their services pro bono if they didn’t already see certain actions believed to be errors that denied Anthony a fair trial.

It seems that in many ways we’ve returned to the years when a Black person had no rights that a white man had to respect. It’s a tragedy that after the blood, sweat, tears and lives of so many people, we are brought back to where we were many years ago

We need more than Black people and a few others to show their humanity and not leave decency in this country to Black people alone who’ve already been denied so much. Everyday, I’m left to wonder where some of my non-Black friends are on confronting-what we have today!

Dr. E. Faye Williams is president of the Dick Gregory Society

To Be Equal 
July 11, 2026

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “The 1976 celebration was a more vital and happy one because of a broad belief that two years earlier the system had worked, and we were celebrating a system that had cleansed itself. We were in a period of renewal and relief, and today we’re in a period of fear and loathing. We don’t have any reason to celebrate our founding documents, because we’re living in an authoritarian state that is quite different from the one that the founders created.” -- Jonathan Alter

In a proclamation declaring 1976 The Bicentennial Year, President Ford called upon “every man, woman, and child to celebrate the diversity of tradition, culture and heritage that reflects our people and our patrimony.”

A half century later, President Trump used the occasion of the nation’s 250th anniversary to celebrate Trump.

In 2016, a bipartisan act of Congress created the United States Semiquincentennial Commission, branded America250, to “foster shared experiences that spark imagination, showcase the rich tapestry of our American stories, inspire service in our communities, honor the enduring strength, and celebrate the resilience of the United States of America”.

In 2025, the Trump administration began diverting funds intended for the nonpartisan commission to “Freedom 250,” a public–private partnership through which donors purchase access to Trump and millions of dollars could be funneled to Trump allies.  Among the events it produced were an IndyCar street race around the National Mall and a mixed martial arts combat event on the White House lawn.

On July 5, 1976, President Ford addressed newly naturalized Americans in Virginia: “‘Black is beautiful’ was a motto of genius which uplifted us far above its intention. Once Americans had thought about it and perceived its truth, we began to realize that so are brown, white, red, and yellow beautiful ... You came as strangers among us and you leave here as citizens, equal in fundamental rights, equal before the law, with an equal share in the promise of the future.”

In a speech to open the sparsely-attended Great American State Fair, Trump denigrated immigrants as “murderers, gang members, drug dealers, and dangerous criminals” and bragged about eliminating racial justice initiatives.

In 1976, the nation was struggling to recover from one of the most notorious episodes of presidential corruption in our history up to that point: a political espionage program, illegally funded by donor contributions, which the Nixon administration tried to cover up by destroying evidence, obstructing investigators, and bribing burglars.

The bipartisan resolve with which Congress confronted the Watergate scandal seems unthinkable today. Not only did a congressional committee vote unanimously to subpoena audiotapes that exposed the President’s guilt, members of the President’s own party stood ready to vote not only for his impeachment, but for his conviction, and urged him to resign.

But the reforms passed in the wake of the scandal did not anticipate a future president willing to flout institutional norms and test the limits of every available safeguard.

In his Bicentennial speech, Ford asked, “Are the institutions under which we live working the way they should? Are the foundations laid in 1776 and 1789 still strong enough and sound enough to resist the tremors of our times? Are our God-given rights secure, our hard-won liberties protected?”

Fifty years later, these questions no longer sound like a celebration of American resilience—they stand as an urgent test of whether our democracy can still summon the courage, accountability, and civic faith that once enabled it to correct its own course.

July 7, 2026

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - This week I am thinking about what it means to go back to school in a country that still rations opportunity. The stores are selling backpacks and dorm décor, but the deeper question is who gets access to education, who must borrow for it, and which institutions continue to carry the burden of Black possibility.

The fireworks have dimmed, and the Fourth-of-You-Lie sales are waning. In this country, we commemorate through commerce and celebrate through retail activity, so even though we are just a few days into July, back-to-school signs are already shouting from store windows and websites.

As with every milestone in this country, inequality roars. Some students will return to school with new laptops, quiet rooms, family-paid tuition, and networks that cushion every stumble. Others will return carrying debt, doubt, family obligations, food insecurity, transportation challenges, and the accumulated disadvantages of underfunded schools and under-resourced communities.

The back-to-school season is marketed as a fresh start. For too many students, it is also a reminder that opportunity in America has always been rationed.

The vanguard is not always the largest part of the army. It is the front edge. It moves first. It absorbs blows. It clears the path. By that definition, HBCUs have always been the vanguard. They were built because this country’s higher education system excluded Black people by law, custom, violence, and contempt. Their founding question was not, “How do we reproduce privilege?” Their founding question was, “How do we cultivate genius where America has refused to see it?”

That question remains urgent.

HBCUs enroll only a fraction of Black college students, but their impact is outsized. In 2022, HBCUs enrolled about 9 percent of Black college students, yet they produced 16 percent of the bachelor’s degrees earned by Black students in 2021–22. UNCF reports that HBCUs generate $16.5 billion in annual economic impact, support more than 136,000 jobs, and that the 2021 HBCU graduating class is projected to earn $146 billion over their lifetimes.

These are not sentimental institutions. They are economic engines, leadership factories, and community anchors.

Still, HBCUs are too often asked to do transformative work with transactional support.

That contradiction is especially sharp now, as federal student loan policy shifts under the feet of students and families. The Biden-era SAVE plan — Saving on a Valuable Education — was designed to make repayment less punishing by tying payments to income and family size, reducing monthly payments for many borrowers, limiting runaway interest, and creating a shorter forgiveness path for some small-balance borrowers. Now SAVE has ended, and millions of borrowers have been told to move into other repayment plans.

The change lands first on borrowers already in repayment, but current students are not untouched. Undergraduates will face a narrower repayment landscape when they leave school. Families will confront new Parent PLUS limits. Graduate and professional students will face new borrowing caps just as advanced credentials remain expensive and often necessary. Graduate PLUS loans, which previously allowed many graduate students to borrow up to the cost of attendance, are being phased out for new borrowers. Grad PLUS was the backstop many students used when tuition and living costs exceeded unsubsidized loan limits.

These numbers are not abstractions. They determine who can become a nurse practitioner, a physical therapist, a psychologist, a professor, a public health leader, a lawyer, a dentist, a physician, or a minister. They determine who can move from the first degree to the next rung. They determine whether talent is nurtured or stranded.

For Black students, the stakes are higher because the debt burden is heavier. Black students are more likely to borrow for college, more likely to borrow more, and more likely to struggle in repayment because the racial wealth gap follows them from home to campus and from campus to workplace. A loan policy that may look race-neutral on paper can still deepen racial inequality in practice.

That is the context in which HBCUs do their work. They educate students through inequality, against inequality, and beyond inequality. They do not merely polish privilege. They cultivate possibility. They take seriously the students America too often treats as afterthoughts, and they turn potential into leadership.

Having led an HBCU, I know both the miracle, the math, and the myth. At Bennett College, I saw daily what HBCUs do with too little: stretch dollars, nurture brilliance, hold students close, and insist that Black women’s futures were worth fighting for. I know the devotion of faculty, the exhaustion of administrators, the anxiety of families, and the constant scramble for resources. I also know this: HBCUs cannot be praised in February and underfunded in July. They cannot be applauded at commencements and ignored in appropriations. They cannot be celebrated as cultural treasures while their students are left to navigate a debt system that punishes aspiration.

The country loves the symbolism of back-to-school season. New backpacks. New notebooks. New slogans. But the real question is not what is on sale, it's what is at stake.

If HBCUs are the vanguard, then the question is not whether they have earned our admiration. They have. The question is whether they will receive the investment, protection, and respect that their record demands.

Back to school should not mean back to debt, back to rationed opportunity, or back to the same old inequalities dressed up in fresh retail packaging. It should mean back to possibility. Back to purpose. Back to institutions that have carried us when the broader society would not.

HBCUs are still carrying us. The question is whether public policy will finally carry its share.