Ibrahim Coulibaly

Ibrahim Coulibaly Human Rights Advocate

Happy Election Day, everyone! 🗳️As I sit here at the Salt Lake City airport, stuck dealing with flight delays and feelin...
05/19/2026

Happy Election Day, everyone! 🗳️
As I sit here at the Salt Lake City airport, stuck dealing with flight delays and feeling a bit grumpy, I’m using this unexpected downtime to reflect on what today is really about. No matter how frustrating a disrupted travel schedule is, it doesn't change the fact that today is our opportunity to make our voices heard.
For minorities and marginalized communities, we have to remember that the right to vote was never just handed to us. It took a tremendous, generational fight, unyielding resilience, and a tragic number of lives lost to secure our place at the ballot box. We owe it to those who marched and bled for us to show up and use the power they fought so hard to give us.
Voting is even more critical today, especially given the recent Supreme Court decision in *Louisiana v. Callais*. By weakening Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the Court has made it much harder to fight against discriminatory voting maps and racial gerrymandering. When the legal protections guarding our representation are chipped away, our absolute best line of defense is our actual presence at the polls. We have to out-vote the systems designed to dilute our power.
Over the last few weeks, you might have noticed me posting enthusiastically about certain races and asking for your support for specific candidates, while remaining completely silent on others. I want to be transparent about my logic.
As the chair of our union’s PAC, I hold myself to a high standard of solidarity. I am fully committed to supporting our union’s endorsement decisions, even when I don’t personally agree with every single choice we make. Because of that, I chose to refrain from posting about races where two people I know closely are running against each other, or where someone I care about personally is running against a candidate endorsed by my union. It’s about balance, respect, and honoring my commitments.
But regardless of who is on your ballot, the most important thing is that *you* show up. Don't let your voice be silenced.
Let's do this. Go vote!
Best,
**Ibrahim Coulibaly**
*(Grumpy traveler, currently stranded in SLC, but still believing in the power of the vote)*

05/17/2026

History has warned us many times about what happens when power becomes surrounded by fear, loyalty tests, and silence instead of courage and accountability.

One of the clearest examples was Charles VI of France, the French king remembered as “Charles the Mad.” During periods of severe mental instability, he reportedly attacked his own men, forgot he was king, believed his body was made of glass, and drifted in and out of reality. Yet the greater tragedy was not simply the condition of one ruler. It was the failure of the people around him. Courtiers, nobles, and political allies competed for influence instead of protecting the nation from instability. Many enabled the chaos because they benefited from proximity to power.

France paid the price. The monarchy weakened, rival factions fought for control, corruption spread, and foreign powers exploited the division. The country descended into internal conflict while those closest to the throne often remained too afraid, too opportunistic, or too dependent to intervene.

History reminds us that nations are rarely damaged by one individual alone. The deeper danger comes when institutions lose the courage to act, when advisors become enablers, and when loyalty to a personality becomes more important than loyalty to the country itself.

A healthy democracy depends on people willing to tell leaders “no,” even when it is uncomfortable. Once everyone in the room becomes afraid to speak honestly, bad decisions stop being corrected — and they start becoming policy.

That lesson is just as important today as it was centuries ago.

Ibrahim Coulibaly
Human Rights Advocate.

05/02/2026

On May 2, 1963, more than 1,000 Black children peacefully protested racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, as part of the Children's Crusade, beginning a movement that sparked widely publicized police brutality that shocked the nation and spurred major civil rights advances.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had launched the Children's Crusade as part of the Birmingham anti-segregation campaign. As part of that effort, more than 1,000 African American children trained in nonviolent protest tactics walked out of their classes on May 2 and assembled at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church to march to downtown Birmingham. Though hundreds were assaulted, arrested, and transported to jail in school buses and paddy wagons, the children refused to relent their peaceful demonstration.

The next day, when hundreds more children began to march, Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor directed local police and firemen to attack the children with high-pressure fire hoses, batons, and police dogs. Images of children being brutally assaulted by police and snarling canines appeared on television and in newspapers throughout the nation and world, provoking global outrage. The U.S. Department of Justice soon intervened.

The campaign to desegregate Birmingham ended on May 10 when city officials agreed to desegregate the city's downtown stores and release jailed demonstrators in exchange for an end to SCLC's protests. The following evening, disgruntled proponents of segregation responded to the agreement with a series of local bombings.

In the wake of the Children's Crusade, the Birmingham Board of Education announced that all children who participated in the march would be suspended or expelled from school. A federal district court upheld the ruling, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ultimately reversed the decision and ordered the students re-admitted to school.

History Of Racial Injustice.

04/30/2026

The recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to further weaken protections under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 should concern everyone who believes in a functioning democracy.

This is not just about Black political representation—though history makes clear that Black communities are often the first and hardest hit. This is about the integrity of our entire democratic system. When safeguards against discrimination in voting are stripped away, it opens the door for exclusion, manipulation, and the erosion of equal voice. And once those doors are open, they rarely stay limited to one group.

The history of the United States tells a difficult but undeniable truth: progress has too often come on the backs of Black people being exploited, silenced, or pushed out of the democratic process. From slavery, to Jim Crow, to modern-day voter suppression tactics, the pattern has been consistent. Every time Black voices rise, systems have been reshaped to try to contain that power.

But history also tells another truth—one that cannot be ignored. Black communities have never stayed down. Every attempt to silence has been met with organizing, resilience, and a refusal to disappear. From the Civil Rights Movement to today, the fight for justice has always adapted, evolved, and pushed forward.

This moment is no different.

Weakening voting rights protections doesn’t just rewrite laws—it tests the strength of our collective commitment to democracy. And if history is any guide, efforts to suppress will be met with renewed determination to participate, to organize, and to demand accountability.

Democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires vigilance. It requires participation. And it requires us to recognize that when one group’s rights are undermined, the foundation of all our rights is at risk.

We’ve seen this before. And we know how it ends—when people refuse to be erased.

— Ibrahim Coulibaly
Human Rights Advocate

04/13/2026

On April 13, 1873—Easter Sunday—a mob of hundreds of white men killed an estimated 150 Black people while attacking the Grant Parish courthouse in Colfax, Louisiana. Many of the Black victims were murdered in cold blood after surrendering. Only three white men died.
The Colfax Massacre was precipitated by the hotly contested 1872 Louisiana gubernatorial election. During the Reconstruction era, as many newly emancipated Black Americans began mobilizing and participating in politics, white communities determined to reinforce white supremacy began terrorizing Black people through acts of brutal violence.
After the 1872 election, when a federal judge declared William Kellogg the winner, he began making appointments to fill local parish offices. Meanwhile, Gov. Kellogg’s white supremacist opponent John McEnery and his supporters declared Mr. McEnery the winner of the election. In the ensuing unrest, Black voters who supported Gov. Kellogg staged a peaceful occupation, surrounding the Grant Parish courthouse and other municipal buildings in Colfax to prevent Mr. McEnery's supporters from taking them over.
In response, more than 300 armed white men attacked the courthouse building to forcefully remove Gov. Kellogg's Black supporters. When the white mob aimed a cannon to fire on the courthouse, some of the 60 Black defenders fled; others surrendered then, and more surrendered after the courthouse was set on fire. Many surrendering, unarmed Black men were nevertheless shot and killed by the white mob—some while fleeing.
After the massacre, the federal government indicted over 100 members of the white mob under the Enforcement Act of 1870. The law was specifically enacted during Reconstruction to protect newly freed Black voters from the terrorist threats of the Ku Klux Klan and other disgruntled white Southerners. Only three members of the mob were convicted, and they appealed.
On March 27, 1876, in United States v. Cruikshank, the Supreme Court issued a ruling dismissing charges against the three white men. The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment was only a protection against state actions and did not empower the federal government to punish the acts of one citizen towards another not clearly motivated by racial animus. In the eyes of the Court, racialized political violence did not qualify.
The Cruikshank decision severely limited the federal government's authority to legally enforce Black civil rights and protect Black citizens from racial terror at the hands of mobs intent on restoring white racial dominance in the post-Civil War South. As a result of the decision, white terrorist groups continued to repress Black Americans’ rights through voter suppression and acts of terror and violence.
Up until 2021, a historical marker on the site of the Colfax Massacre referred to it as the "end of carpetbag misrule in the South."
History Of Racial Injustice.

On April 12, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and at least 55 others, almost all of whom were Black, were jailed for “pa...
04/12/2026

On April 12, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and at least 55 others, almost all of whom were Black, were jailed for “parading without a permit” during a march against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.

A crowd of over 1,000 activists joined Dr. King, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, and Rev. Ralph Abernathy on a non-violent march toward the downtown area as hundreds more people lined the streets to support them. The peaceful marchers, embarking from Sixth Avenue Zion Hill Church in a predominantly Black neighborhood and headed for City Hall, met a first police barricade and continued on in a different direction. When the marchers neared a second police barricade, Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor gave the officers clear orders: “Stop them… Don’t let them go any further!”

Connor was a notorious segregationist with close ties to the Ku Klux Klan. At his command, several motorcycle patrolmen surrounded the crowd of peaceful marchers and began violent mass arrests. Police officers arrested Dr. King and Rev. Abernathy first, then continued grabbing and hitting the marchers. At least 54 more people were arrested that day, including Rev. Shuttlesworth.

The arrested marchers were charged with violating an injunction barring “racial protests” in Birmingham. City officials had obtained the injunction from a circuit judge earlier that same week, after arguing that civil rights protests attracted violence—even though the protests were always explicitly non-violent, and the violence that did occur was regularly wielded by police targeting the demonstrating activists. Throughout activists’ 1963 Birmingham campaign to challenge racial segregation, the entire world witnessed the police’s brutal treatment of nonviolent activists through newspaper photographs and televised footage depicting demonstrators being bitten by dogs, beaten by officers, and slammed into walls by fire hoses.

Dr. King and others were held in the Birmingham Jail for several days after their arrest, while allies worked to raise money for bail. During this time, Dr. King drafted his famous ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ in response to a joint letter several white ministers had published in the local press, decrying the march and civil rights activists’ methods.

“For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’” Dr. King wrote. “It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’”

We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’ We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. . . . [and] we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place.

Dr. King was released on bond on April 20, 1963, but continued his work as a civil rights leader until he was assassinated five years later.

Most white Americans, especially in the South, supported segregation and opposed the civil rights activism that Dr. King and many others waged against it. As civil rights advocates began to win important judicial and legislative victories, white Americans implemented a strategy of “massive resistance,” deploying a range of tactics and weapons to discourage activism and slow the tide of progress. Some of these methods, such as criminalizing, arresting, and imprisoning peaceful protestors, foreshadowed the modern mass incarceration era. Other methods, such as bombing and murdering civil rights activists, used lethal violence to maintain white supremacy just as white mobs had used lynching throughout the era of racial terror.

History Of Racial Justice.

04/09/2026

On this day
April 09, 1939
Banned from Indoor Venues Because of Her Race, Renowned Opera Singer Marian Anderson Performs for 75,000 Outside Lincoln Memorial

On April 9, 1939, after being denied the use of every indoor auditorium in Washington, D.C., because of her race, world-renowned Black opera singer Marian Anderson instead performed for an audience gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial.

Ms. Anderson, a contralto, had been invited to sing at the nation’s capital on this day as part of a concert series hosted by Howard University. Because Ms. Anderson was already well known at the time, having spent years touring in Europe and the U.S., the university tried to book Constitution Hall, a large indoor auditorium, for her performance. However, the Daughters of the American Revolution, which owned the auditorium and had a “white-artists-only” clause in all of their contracts, refused to let Ms. Anderson perform in the space. Eleanor Roosevelt, who was first lady at the time and a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, resigned over the organization’s decision, but the Daughters of the American Revolution still refused to allow Ms. Anderson to perform.

Ms. Anderson then asked to use one of the local white public school’s auditoriums, but the D.C. Board of Education denied her request as well.

Because no other indoor venues in the city could or would accommodate Ms. Anderson’s performance, Ms. Anderson’s manager and Walter White, the executive secretary of the NAACP, persuaded the secretary of the interior to allow her to perform on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial instead.

Despite the humiliation of being denied the same accommodations granted to white artists, Ms. Anderson performed on April 9, dressed in a winter coat to keep herself warm and standing atop a makeshift stage built over the Lincoln Memorial’s steps. A crowd of over 75,000 people attended the event, and millions more listened over the radio. Ms. Anderson opened her performance with “America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee),” a patriotic song written in 1831.

Over a decade after this show, Ms. Anderson performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1955, becoming the first Black artist to do so. Throughout her career, Ms. Anderson continued to perform all over the world while also lending her talent to the struggle against racial injustice. The granddaughter of Black people once enslaved in Virginia, she sang at the March on Washington in 1963 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom that same year.

To learn more about America’s history of racial segregation, explore EJI’s report, Segregation in America. In addition, to learn more about the role that art and artists like Ms. Anderson played in the struggle for equal justice in America, watch this video of a conversation between EJI Director Bryan Stevenson and legendary jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.

History Of Racial Injustice.

02/04/2026

February 4, 1846
Alabama Begins Leasing Incarcerated People for Profit

The Alabama state legislature voted to construct the first state-run prison on January 26, 1839. In 1841, the Wetumpka State Penitentiary was built in Wetumpka, Alabama. The prison received its first person in 1842: a white man sentenced to 20 years for "harboring a runaway slave." In the antebellum penitentiary, 99% of incarcerated people were white, as free Black people were not legally permitted to live in the state, and enslaved Black people were instead subject to unregulated “plantation justice” at the hands of enslavers and overseers.

The penitentiary was supposed to be self-sufficient but soon proved costly as the prison industries of manufacturing wagons, buggies, saddles, harnesses, shoes, and rope failed to generate enough funds to maintain the facility. On February 4, 1846, the state legislature chose to lease the penitentiary to J.G. Graham, a private businessman, for a six-year term. Graham appointed himself warden and took control of the entire prison and the people incarcerated there, claiming all profits made from their labor and eliminating every other employment position except physician and inspector. Alabama continued to lease the prison to private businessmen until 1862, when warden/leaser Dr. Ambrose Burrows was murdered by an incarcerated person.

This initial leasing of the prison and the people incarcerated there marked the beginning of the convict leasing system in Alabama, and that system was soon renewed. In 1866, after the end of the Civil War, the government again authorized incarcerated people to be leased to work outside of the prison, and 374 people were leased to the firm Smith & McMillen to work rebuilding the Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad. In this post-emancipation society, Black people were no longer enslaved, and the convict population that was formerly almost all white was now 90% Black. The system of convict leasing became one that forced primarily Black people who were incarcerated—some convicted of minor or trumped-up charges—to work in hard, dangerous conditions for no pay. This practice continued until World War II.

History Of Racial Injustice.

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