On Juneteenth, COC mobilizes against neo-segregationists’ efforts
By Bonnie V. Winston, COC staff
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union Gen. Gordon Granger and his troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and confirmed that the Civil War had ended and that enslaved African Americans were indeed free.
The day, now in its fourth year as a national holiday, symbolizes the end of one of the worst chapters in American history and is marked by celebrations around the country. But for many, Juneteenth is bittersweet – a poignant reminder not only of victories over a racist past, but of the ongoing fight for racial equality and justice.
“Juneteenth is used as an opportunity by politicians and corporations to celebrate the things of the past and act like we have completed the journey of racial equity and racial reconciliation,” said Evan Feeney, Color Of Change’s senior director of campaigns and organizing.
“But as we speak, our opponents are working to rip up the floorboards beneath our feet. Things that we thought we had long won and are codified into law and culture are under immediate threat. This is a moment to both celebrate how far we have come, but also recognize how tenuous those victories really are and the need to focus our efforts and continue to fight back.”
Feeney points to a disturbing trend that threatens the hard-fought rights most people take for granted: Neo-segregationists are exploiting Reconstruction-era laws originally enacted to protect Black Americans to dismantle those very protections.
Turning back the clock
The latest example: On June 3, a federal appeals court panel ruled that The Fearless Fund, an Atlanta-based venture capital firm founded by and focused on Black women, must suspend its grant program for Black women business owners while a lawsuit against it is litigated because it is likely to lose the suit brought by the far-right American Alliance for Equal Rights. The conservative group, led by neo-segregationist Ed Blum, claims the grant program targeting Black women violates a section of the 1866 Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race when enforcing contracts.
In effect, Blum is using a law put into place 158 years ago to protect formerly enslaved people from economic exclusion to challenge a program set up to provide opportunities for Black women and their firms that historically have faced discrimination in business and in the workplace.
Blum is the ultra-right activist behind the U.S. Supreme Court case last year that ended affirmative action in college admissions.
Assault on affirmative action and DEI programs
The attack on The Fearless Fund is not an isolated incident, Feeney said. Neo-segregationists are mounting broader assaults on an array of diversity and affirmative action programs, including legal challenges and pressure campaigns aimed at reversing policies that for decades have promoted racial equity.
Earlier this year, Duke University terminated its full-ride merit scholarship for Black students, which was awarded to about 10% of the university’s Black undergraduate population. University officials said in April that the transition from a scholarship program to a leadership program open to all students was necessary “due to the legal landscape related to race-based considerations in higher education.”
Additionally, in March, a federal judge in Texas ordered the Minority Business Development Agency to serve people regardless of race, despite the 55-year-old federal agency’s charge to address racial discrimination in the business world. The judge ruled in favor of white business owners who claimed the program discriminated against them.
Undermining civil rights milestones
“What we’re facing is an onslaught of efforts to make it illegal for folks to address historic and ongoing anti-Black discrimination,” Feeney said. He named Blum, former senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller, anti-immigrant law drafter Kris Kobach and Christopher Rufo, the mastermind of the initial attacks on critical race theory leading to book bans across the country, as key figures in the neo-segregationist movement to once again enshrine pro-white, anti-Black discrimination in America.
Their end goal? To overturn the central victories of the Civil Rights Movement, Feeney said. “They believe that the Civil Rights Act is a piece of racist legislation and should be gutted, struck down and overturned.”
Earlier this year, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas indicated that if a case challenging Brown v. Board of Education were brought before the nation’s highest court, they would attempt to overturn the historic 1954 decision that struck down the doctrine of “separate but equal” in public schools as unconstitutional and inherently unequal.
“Our opposition is moving legal challenges that, within the next year or two, might allow that to happen,” Feeney said.
Combating modern-day white hoods
Feeney drew a stark parallel between the Ku Klux Klan of the 1950s, where individuals hid behind white hoods, and today’s neo-segregationists who hide behind corporate charity funds. Major financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Fidelity and Vanguard, are channeling millions of dollars each year through their donor-advised funds to groups led by or participated in by Blum, Miller, Kobach and Rufo.
In response, Color Of Change has launched a robust campaign — “Stop the Neo-Segregationists” — targeting these corporate charities and their roles in bankrolling neo-segregationists’ efforts.
“These neo-segregationists can’t keep moving their legal cases forward if they don’t have millions of dollars in funding to do it,” Feeney said. “And that’s why we’re going directly after these corporate charities — because they are the conduits through which millionaires and billionaires across the country get to, in secret, fund this attack on our civil rights.
“By closing off that tap, we can try to force an end of this pipeline of cash to neo-segregationists or force these donors to come to light and reveal who they are.”
The campaign also forces these financial institutions to choose between their stated commitments to diversity and their financial support for groups promoting a pro-white agenda.
“All of these companies say that they stand with our communities — that diversity, racial justice, civil rights are important values for them. When we speak to them, they talk about the progress they’ve made in their own boardrooms and in their companies to provide more resources to more Black women-owned businesses. But at the same time, they’re cutting million-dollar checks to these neo-segregationists,” Feeney said.
“We’re starting to put pressure on them to make a decision: Do they stand with us, or do they stand with neo-segregationists?”
The road ahead
Feeney acknowledged the difficulty of the current legal landscape, carved by dozens of Trump-appointed judges and justices sympathetic to neo-segregationist arguments. However, he stressed the importance of continued legal fights and strategic actions to cut off funding sources for regressive movements.
“Color Of Change is committed to defending our institutions that preserve and protect Black culture and progress from the growing attacks on Black history, affirmative action and civil rights laws,” Feeney said.
He stressed the need for vigilance and activism in the face of renewed threats.
With the passage of civil rights laws in the 1960s, “we didn’t defeat our opposition. We banished them to the shadows, but the shadows are growing closer,” Feeney said. “Their reach is increasing, and they are more and more accessing tools and levers of power to take us back. The stakes are incredibly high, and we need to mobilize and fight back on the fronts that we are able to.”
To sign the petition demanding corporate charities stop funding neo-segregationists, click here.