Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

Today we take a moment to remember Odetta. Odetta’s voice was beautiful but she was more than just a singer.  She brought the tradition of American folk music to the Civil Rights Movement.

Editor’s Note: You can read more Jami Floyd blogs on “In Session”

Editor’s Note: You can read more Jami Floyd blogs on “In Session”

Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

Fifty-three years ago today, Rosa Parks greatly advanced the cause of civil rights with a single dignified act. She refused to stand.

The year was 1955 when the seamstress quietly explained to a Montgomery, Alabama bus driver, James Blake, that she would not give up her seat for a white passenger. It was the year my parents were married and I wasn’t born until nearly a decade later. But I always knew of Rosa Parks, the mother of the civil rights movement. Her story, and that of the Montgomery Bus Boycott that followed, was part of the context of my childhood.

Children today can only imagine that time when black people were forced to sit at the back of the bus, to drink from separate water fountains, to swim in separate pools and beaches and of course to attend separate schools. Segregationists insisted that such separation could be equal. But we all now know what the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1954. That separate can never be equal.

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The U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

A federal judge has ordered the immediate release of five Algerian prisoners from the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. The men have been held there for nearly seven years and the ruling is an indictment of Bush administration policies that led it to sweep up innocent men along with hardened terrorists in the so-called war on terror. And this judge, Judge Richard Leon, is no liberal apologist for Al Qaeda. This is a judge appointed by President Bush. And the administration fully expected him to rule otherwise.

But a judge, whatever his political stripes, is still a judge. And this one rightly found that seven years of waiting for our legal system to charge anyone, even GITMO detainees, is enough. The justice department has not said whether it will appeal. But of course, a whole lot is about to change at justice with a new attorney general coming to town, and a president-elect who has vowed to close GITMO once and for all.

When he does, the camp will go down in history as a sad reminder of what happens when mistakes are made at the highest levels of our government, and no one has the courage to acknowledge it.

Editors note: See more of Jami’s posts at the In Session Blog.

Prop 8 protesters on the streets of Los Angeles

Editor’s Note: You can read more Jami Floyd blogs on “In Session”

Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

I am going to go out on a limb here and say this about gay marriage: California got it wrong and Connecticut has it right. And I say this to you as a Christian - one who reads the Bible and goes to church and prays with my children. Because to me Proposition 8, well it just doesn’t seem like the Christian thing to do.

The courts in California gave gay people the right to marry. And now, voters have taken that right away. And that’s downright mean-spirited. Now, my Christian brothers and sisters are quick to tell me that they are okay with civil unions. But that marriage is between a man and a women. My friends say they are tolerant. But is tolerant the best we can do in this country? Doesn’t the Constitution require something more? Isn’t this country about equal protection for all Americans? Not just some of us.

And I know, there have always been those who resist change. They opposed the abolition of slavery. They opposed civil rights. They opposed inter-marriage and now they oppose gay marriage too. But time and time again we do the right thing and time and time again the Constitution prevails. Because the greatness of America is not rooted in intolerance.

This country is great precisely because we recognize the fundamental rights of all Americans — black and white, male and female and yes, gay and straight.

Editor’s Note: You can read more Jami Floyd blogs on “In Session”

Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

The lines are long this election day and it is a glorious thing. Because there is no right more sacred in a democracy than the right to vote.

And for years we have taken that precious right for granted. Too many black folks have taken it for granted despite the heroes who gave their lives to give us the right to be counted as full citizens, empowered with this right to choose. For too long women have stayed home on Election Day despite our brave foremothers who so bravely stood for the right of their daughters and granddaughters to have the same choice as men. For too long the working poor have not appreciated the power we have to change our circumstances by casting a ballot.

But not today. Not anymore. Because after eight long years, set in motion by an election in 2000 that was stolen, not won, after six years of war with the wrong enemy and 4,189 soldiers lost and $700 billion later on the heels of a failed economic policy that led to the biggest bail out in U.S. history, Americans are waking up to a new day today. Election Day.

So make sure you are a part of it. Make sure your voice is heard. Don’t take anything for granted. And get out and vote.

Editors note: See more of Jami’s posts at the In Session Blog

Watch In Session anchor Jami Floyd’s commentary on politicians’ sex scandals. Are there really more politicians having illicit sex, or does the media just prefer to cover these stories? Is the real dirty word in politics actually “Issues”?

You can read this and other commentary from Jami Floyd on the In Session blog.

Watch Jami Floyd’s commentary on Sen. Ted Stevens’ felony convictions. Should end his reelection bid?

You can also read this and other commentaries from Jami Floyd on the In Session blog.

Salim Hamdan

Editor’s Note: You can read more Jami Floyd blogs on “In Session”

Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

Rarely has the word “guilty” meant as little as it does in the case of Salim Hamdan, the first prisoner to stand trial for war crimes at Gitmo.

Because it’s not a trial really. It’s a Military Commission, which means different rules, a wider scope of evidence, a jury of six military officers and a military judge. The former driver for Osama Bin Laden was accused of swearing his loyalty to Al Qaida and helping Bin Laden to escape after 9/11. Now that he’s been convicted, Hamdan faces life in prison.

The chief military prosecutor in the case calls the trial “an open and fair and thorough process,” one which strikes a balance between security and Hamdan’s right to present his case.  But I respectfully disagree. This proceeding was neither speedy nor public. And in this country, that is not a fair trial at all.

Read more of Jami Floyd’s comments on the In Session blog.

Program Note: In the next installment of CNN’s Black in America series, Soledad O’Brien examines the successes, struggles and complex issues faced by black men, women and families, 40 years after the death of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Watch encore presentation Saturday & Sunday, 8 p.m. ET

We devote several days on the blog to smart insight and commentary related to the special.
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Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
“In Session” Anchor
I woke one morning thinking about black men. I had dreamt about black men in the night, having been bombarded by images of them the day before.

At the airport, I’d read a long article about the fall television schedule, and then-NAACP President Kwesi Mfume’s calls for more black and brown faces on television.

On the plane, I’d read also about Lawrence Russell Brewer, a white man who had been on trial in Texas for the dragging death – a lynching really – of James Byrd Jr., a black man. (He has since been convicted of murder and sentenced to death).

That night, I turned on the television in my hotel room only to see Martin Lawrence, “steppin’ and fetchin’” on Fox. So, I turned off the tube and curled up into bed with Toni Morrison’s nobel prize-winning The Bluest Eye, a book I’d enjoyed to that point. But this night I read a chapter about a black man raping his daughter. Another starkly hateful and negative image of the black man.

So I closed the book and went to sleep.

And I woke that next morning thinking of these black men – and those who hate them: white men who hate black men, black women who hate black men, black men who hate themselves.
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Jami Floyd
360° Contributor, In Session Anchor

Editor’s Note: Watch Jami Floyd tonight at 10pm on Anderson Cooper 360°

There is a reason two appellate courts in Texas — first a three-court panel of the state court of appeals and now the Texas Supreme Court — have ordered the return of children removed from a polygamist ranch to their mothers: It is the right thing to do.

Not as a matter of sympathy, or morality, or decency, but as a matter of constitutional law.
To be sure, the Texas Supreme Court today did not specifically find the absence of wrongdoing at the ranch — where authorities contend sexual abuse of young girls is routine. Indeed, the court acknowledged the state’s interest in protecting children from harm. But state agents cannot simply storm homes, polygamist or otherwise, to remove children without a showing of abuse. Suspicions are not enough.

It is perhaps difficult for anyone who cares about the children or their mothers (who many believe are brainwashed from birth) to understand.

But for those of us who choose to become lawyers, these are the easy cases. These are the very people our constitution is designed to protect — the least popular among us, lest they be subjected to the tyranny of the majority.

Read more of Jami Floyd’s comment on the In Session blog