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Volume 30 Issue 35

Page 1

September 19, 2025

GREATER HOUSTON EDITION

AframNews.com

Vol.30, Issue 35

FREE

African-American News&Issues

“Addressing Current & Historical Realities Affecting Our Community”

FRED HAMPTON

JAMES CHANEY

HATE By: Fred Smith

MEDGAR EVERS

MALCOLM X MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

WHEN THE SHOTS RING OUT

By: Roy Douglas Malonson

The image of Charlie Kirk collapsing on stage at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025, has already become one of the most replayed videos in America. A sniper’s bullet ended his life in front of thousands of stunned students, echoing an era that many believed was long behind us. For Black Americans, the moment doesn’t feel new. It feels like history repeating itself—the kind of public violence that silenced Medgar Evers in 1963, gunned down Malcolm X in 1965, and ended the life of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. It also recalls the deadly attacks

on members of the Black Panther Party, who were hunted by both white supremacists and government forces for daring to defend Black communities and demand justice. The violence of that decade did not stop with Black leaders. White allies who stood with the movement also paid the ultimate price. Viola Liuzzo, a mother of five, was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan for helping transport marchers after Selma’s Bloody Sunday. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, two young Shots on pg. 3

Why the hell do white folks hate Black folks? That question echoes across our history, and the answer always leads back to the lies they built to protect their power. From the beginning, slavery needed a justification. They told the world we were less than human, that our bodies were property, that our freedom was a threat. That hate wasn’t born from us—it was created and passed down to preserve white supremacy. When slavery ended, hate didn’t die. It put on new uniforms: Jim Crow laws, lynching mobs, and police badges. It blocked our children from schools, denied us loans, and jailed us for existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hate became a tradition, a system, and a strategy. And generation after generation, white America found new ways to recycle the same fear. But here’s the most dangerous part: the fear they created spreads so far that it seeps into our own minds. When I turn on the news and see how they portray us, I feel it. I see endless mugshots of Black men, stories of violence in Black neighborhoods, images carefully chosen to make us look like predators instead of people. And if I’m honest, sometimes even I start to feel the fear they planted. If I didn’t know better, I would be scared of Black folks too. That’s how powerful their system of hate is—it teaches us to be afraid of ourselves. White folks hate us because our equality threatens their privilege. They hate us because our excellence exposes the lie. They hate us because if Black people ever stood fully free, the old order would crumble. Fear is their weapon. Hate is their shield. But no matter how many times they replay those images, the truth still rises: we are not who they say we are. We are AA more. And that truth is what they fear most.


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Volume 30 Issue 35 by AFRAMNEWS.COM - Issuu