#TalkRadio – February 6: Worthy: A Tribute to Joe Madison, 8th Circuit Fight Update, and Celebrating Black History Month

SPEAKERS:

Tony Hill: 12:00 PM – 12:15 PM ET
Former Florida State Senator; served two decades in state Legislature and as aide to Rep. Al Lawson and Mayor Alvin Brown; Successfully led the fight which mandated teaching African American history in the Florida K-12 school system

Dianne Wilkerson: 12:15 PM – 12:57 PM ET
First African American Female to serve in the Massachusetts Senate and TJC Board Treasurer

Prof. Ernest J. Quarles, Esq.: 12:30 PM – 12:57 PM Eastern Time
Professor at John Hopkins University and African American Policy Forum Board Member; practicing attorney, civil rights advocate, and educator; former student of the late Honorable Judge A. Leon Higginbotham (3rd Circuit Court of Appeals) and was mentored by the late Professor Derrick Bell (Harvard and NYU)

Caitlyn Arnwine: 12:30 PM – 12:57 PM ET
Author and Creator of theTransformative Justice Coalition’s #VRABlackHistory Series; Professional poker player, Team 100k Pro, and organizer for women in poker; Current Consultant and former Social Media Director and Executive Assistant for the Transformative Justice Coalition; Current Speaker and former Coordinator of Public Education for the National Coalition for the Homeless
Twitter/X: @TheCaitlynBot
https://twitter.com/TheCaitlynBot

INTRODUCTION:

The Igniting Change Radio Show on Tuesday, February 6th, 2024, from 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Eastern Time, entitled, “Worthy: A Tribute to Joe Madison, 8th Circuit Fight Update, and Celebrating Black History Month”, will be live with Radio Show Co-Hosts and Transformative Justice Coalition (TJC) Co-Leaders Attorneys Barbara Arnwine, Esq. and Daryl Jones, Esq. and feature special  guests Tony Hill, Prof. Ernest J. Quarles, Esq., Dianne Wilkerson, and Caitlyn Arnwine (formerly Caitlyn Cobb). 

During the first segment of the show, Igniting change will interview Tony Hill in a special tribute to the late human rights champion, Joseph “Joe” Madison. Also known as “The Black Eagle”, Joe Madison was a legendary voice in radio and a recognized human and civil rights activist. The Transformative Justice Coalition extends their condolences to his wife, Sharon, his family, and everyone who enjoyed his powerful voice. Taken from his website at https://www.joemadison.com/bio, his bio follows, edited to be sadly in the past tense. Also known as “The Black Eagle”, throughout his storied radio career, Joe broke ground and broke records. He interviewed world leaders, including an exclusive interview with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Madison was an All-Conference running back at Washington University in St. Louis where he was also a baritone soloist in the university choir and a disc jockey at the campus radio station. He earned his bachelor’s degree in sociology, becoming the first person in his family to graduate college. At age 24, he became the youngest executive director of the NAACP’s Detroit branch before being appointed the organization’s National Political Director and eventually being elected to the National Board of Directors where he served for 14 years. During his tenure at the NAACP, Madison led hundreds of volunteers on a series of successful voter registration marches, including a cross-country “March for Dignity” from Los Angeles to Baltimore. The marches garnered thousands of signatures for an anti-apartheid bill in Congress. Madison’s radio career began in 1980 at Detroit’s WXYZ. He continued his broadcast journey to WWDB in Philadelphia, WWRC and WOL in Washington, DC. The popularity of his WOL program led to syndication on the Radio One Talk Network and its XM satellite channel which merged with Sirius to become SiriusXM in 2008. In 2023, Madison celebrated his 15th anniversary with SiriusXM. While Madison used his show as a platform for inspiring action on critical issues, he walked the walk himself. He traveled to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, assisted relief workers in the Gulf States after Hurricane Katrina, and led 90 straight days of demonstrations and peaceful arrests in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washignton, DC to raise awareness of genocide in Sudan. He took six trips to the country in the middle of its civil war to deliver survival kits to refugees and participate in the freeing of over 7,000 Sudanese slaves. In 2015, Madison set the Guinness World Record for the longest on-air broadcast, 52 hours. During the record-breaking show, he raised more than $250,000 for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Five months later, Madison made history again by broadcasting live from Cuba and becoming the first American radio host to do so in more than 50 years. In 2021, Madison went on a 73-day hunger strike to encourage passage of voting rights bills.  Unbeknownst to his listeners, he was fighting prostate cancer during his hunger strike. When asked if he understood the danger he was in, he replied, “I am willing to die.” A few months after his hunger strike, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act passed in the Senate with the help of Madison’s continued push on the radio. His efforts were noticed by many, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who publicly thanked him for another fight for justice. Madison is survived by his wife Sharon and their blended family which included four children, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Joe and Sharon had been married for more than 45 years and resided in Washington, D.C. Other notable achievements of Madison included: Being Selected to join the American Red Cross Board of Governors; Southern Christian Leadership Conference Journalism Award; Washington Association of Black Journalists Community Service Award; NAACP Image Award; Arts and Sciences’ Distinguished Alumni Award from Washington University in St. Louis; Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Washington University in St. Louis; and, Leading successful campaigns to honor comedian Dick Gregory and Motown artists The Four Tops with long overdue stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

During the second segment of the show, Igniting Change will interview Dianne Wilkerson and discuss updates in the fight regarding the November 2023 horrendous ruling by the 8th Circuit that there is no private right of action to sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Shortly after the show last week, the 8th Circuit decided not to rehear the wrongful and disenfranchising decision in Arkansas NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment. This refusal to rehear means that in the 8th Circuit, no private party or group can directly file a racial discrimination or vote dilution case under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court disingenuously indicated that Section 1983 may be a vehicle for bringing any such claims in the future. This show will talk about this disturbing opinion, its implications for voters in the 8th Circuit, and its implications in our national struggle for voter justice. 

During the last two segments, Igniting Change will be joined by Prof. Ernest J. Quarles and Caitlyn Arnwine (formerly Caitlyn Cobb) to discuss Black History Month. The Transformative Justice Coalition and the Voting Rights Alliance, in honor of Black History Month, are reviving the daily special #VRABlackHistory series devoted to sharing the legacies and stories of the sheroes, heroes, and events in the fight for Black suffrage. This series was created in 2017 authored by Caitlyn Arnwine and will add 13 NEW articles this year. In addition to these daily newsletters all February long, this series also incorporates daily social media posts; an interactive calendar; and, website blog posts to spread the word broadly. Readers can feel free to publish any of our articles on their social media outlets, with credit given to the Transformative Justice Coalition. If you’d like TJC to share you sharing this series, be sure to send any publications to carnwine@tjcoalition.org so they can be reposted! TJC encourages everyone to share this series to your networks and on social media under the hashtag #VRABlackHistory and to use this series for school projects. You can also tweet us @TJC_DC to share your own facts. Others can sign up for the daily newsletters and view all the articles of this series at VotingRightsAlliance.org. 

BACKGROUND ON 8TH CIRCUIT OPINION

In November 2023, while organizations like the Heritage Foundation now celebrated the 10th Anniversary of Shelby County v. Holder in 2023, the horrendous ruling by the 8th Circuit that there is no private right of action to sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act represents another strike to the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act that is even more dangerous to the future of voting rights than Shelby v. Holder was. On the cover page of this Opinion, under Amici on behalf of Appellants (State of Arkansas), the State of Florida and the States of Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah are listed as supporting the position that there is no private right of action to sue to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965! This is a betrayal of the voting rights of people of color in Florida and the 13 other states. It is an abuse of power to use State authority and public funding to deny African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans their right to sue to enforce and secure their voting rights. Since the rendering of this nefarious decision, there are already efforts to expand the doctrine of this opinion to other federal circuits, including the 5th Circuit. This case has caused a national uproar with many demanding that the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act be passed ASAP to prevent further erosion of the Voting Rights Act. It is widely expected that this matter will end up in the Supreme Court of the United States where the outcome is uncertain.

QUESTIONS:

SEGMENT ONE – Tony Hill

• Tony Hill, welcome to our show. It is very appropriate that you are here during Black History Month, you successfully led the fight which mandated teaching African American history in the Florida K-12 school system. Tony, as a listener of Joe Madison from Florida, what did his voice mean for this nation? 
• Daryl, Joe Madison was a Parren Mitchell Awardee. As the former Chair of the Parren Mitchell Dinner, can you tell people why he was honored and what that dinner meant to you?
• Besides being an acclaimed radio show host, Joe Madison was quite the activist. What do you think were some of his finest moments as a radio show host and activist?
• Tony, before you depart, what are your final thoughts on Joe Madison that you would like to share with our listeners?
• Thank you for all of your hard work. How do our listeners get in contact with you?

SEGMENT TWO – Dianne Wilkerson

• Dianne, welcome back to Igniting Change. As you know, the whole nation was surprised and riled by the 8th Circuit’s decision in the case of Arkansas NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment which held that there is no private right of action to bring a lawsuit under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. What was your reaction when you first heard of this decision?
• Sadly, the full 8th Circuit has refused to rehear this case which means this bad ruling now stands throughout seven states of our nation: North and South Dakota; Minnesota; Iowa; Arkansas; Missouri; and, Nebraska. What do you see as the implications for the people residing in these 7 states and nationwide?
• Daryl, please share with the audience about our model resolution campaign. How do people join this movement? (VotingRightsAlliance.org)
• Dianne, we also have a 2024 Voting Rights Pledge that people can sign onto at VotingRightsAlliance.org. What are your thoughts on this Pledge?

SEGMENTS THREE AND FOUR –  Prof. Ernest J. Quarles, Dianne Wilkerson, and Caitlyn Arnwine

• This year’s Black History Month is different then the previous years because of the threats: we have whole school districts that have voted not to teach Black History; we have attacks on affirmative action, DEI, the Voting Rights Act (as we just discussed), critical race theory, and books about Black History, just to name a few things! What does Black History Month mean in 2024?
• Caitlyn, tell us about the Transformative Justice Coalition’s #VRABlackHistory Series. 
• How do you put this Series together? 
• How did this atmosphere affect your preparation of the Series this year? 
• Sometimes, people do the same stories over and over again when teaching Black History. In the teaching of Black History, what is often omitted?
• Prof. Quarles, you are a lawyer, civil rights activist, and historian who teaches at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Your courses focus on deficits in America’s storytelling, erased and marginalized histories, and U.S. racial history. How has this anti-Black History movement affected your classes?
• Diane, a lot of these state legislatures are leading these assaults on Black History. As a former Massachusetts State Senator, what would you recommend parents do at the state and local level to fight back against these attacks from Moms For Liberty and other groups?
• Dianne and Prof. Quarles, we all agree that this country would be better if everyone was immersed in Black History. What can we do to promote the teaching of Black History and culture?
• Prof. Quarles, what courses are you teaching this year?
• Dianne, What do you think is the most important grassroots organizing that you think needs to happen in order to ensure strong voter protection and engagement in November 2024?
• What are your final thoughts to our listeners? (Model Resolution)
• Thank you for all of your hard work. How do our listeners get in contact with you?