News — african america

On Monday, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office announced five homicide charges against a former police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Black man during a 2017 incident. In a statement, District Attorney Chesa Boudin said this is believed to be the first time the city has ever charged a San Francisco Police Department officer with on-duty homicide.

The charges against former cop Chris Samayoa include voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, assault with a semiautomatic firearm, assault by a police officer and discharge of a firearm with gross negligence. The victim in the shooting was identified as 42-year-old Keita O’Neil.

“For too long, we have seen the failures of our legal system to hold police accountable for the violence committed against the members of the public they are entrusted to keep safe.  In my administration, police officers are not above the law,” Boudin said in the statement. “Police officers are obligated to follow the law when using force—even when responding to serious crimes.  As District Attorney, I will continue to hold accountable officers who inflict unlawful violence and breach the trust the public places in them.”

The December 2017 incident occurred when O’Neil, a suspect alleged to have carjacked a California State Lottery minivan, was being followed by Samayoa and his partner. After O’Neil drove to a dead-end during the pursuit, he got down and took to his heels, the statement said.  

In an attempt to get away from other patrol cars that were preventing him from escaping, O’Neil ran past the vehicle Samayoa and his partner were in. Samayoa, who was in the passenger seat of the police car, opened fire, fatally striking an unarmed O’Neil. His death was ruled as a homicide.

Though Samayoa only turned on his bodycam afterward, the gadget still recorded the shooting as the body cameras are set up to automatically record thirty seconds before its activation, according to the statement. Samayoa was fired from the force in the aftermath of the incident.

“Body camera footage shows that not a single other officer pulled out their service weapon or pointed at Mr. O’Neil,” Boudin said during a press conference on Monday, KQED reported. “As a result of Officer Samayoa’s terrible, tragic and unlawful decision to pull and fire his gun that day, Mr. O’Neil was killed and my office is filing charges today.”

Responding to the announcement of the charges, O’Neil’s family expressed their satisfaction. “I am happy to hear this news, and hoping it brings some justice to our family,” the deceased’s aunt said.

Shamann Walton, the Supervisor whose district the shooting occurred, said the “prosecution is an important, historic step towards showing that Black lives matter and that unlawful police violence will not be tolerated.”

“Bayview residents deserve to know that law enforcement officers who inflict violence and harm in our community will be held accountable,” he said.

A civil rights attorney and former Police Department Commissioner, Angela Chan, also said the charges are justified as they have to “confront the problematic culture of SFPD that allows officer involved shootings to occur without serious and objective investigations.”

“For many years, the highest ranks of SFPD have rewarded officer involved shootings by awarding medals of valor when an officer shoots and kills a community member, particularly Black, Latino, and Asian American community members, and even when an internal affairs investigation is pending,” Chan added.

A warrant for Samayoa’s arrest was signed by a judge with a $1,000 bail.

Chadwick Boseman’s widow Taylor Simone Ledward now has the authority to administer her late husband’s estate, PEOPLE reports. Ledward is currently the personal representative with limited authority of the late actor’s $938,500 estate, a court order obtained by the magazine says.

She will, by February 22, 2021, be required to file a $939,000 bond along with the final distribution of the estate, according to the court order. The documents also state that “the appraisal of the non-cash property in the inventory will be made by a Probate Referee,” ET reports.

Boseman’s wife filed a petition to be appointed administrator with limited authority last month. 43-year-old Boseman had tied the knot with his longtime girlfriend Ledward before he died of colon cancer on August 28. The actor died “intestate” — he died without having a will.

Ledward’s filing came nearly two months after the actor died. Per California law, when one dies without a will, the spouse inherits all community property and must split the individual’s separate property with the deceased surviving parents, according to Hollywood Reporter.

At the moment, much of Boseman’s wealth is believed to be held in trusts. After starting his acting career on TV, he gained fame when he landed a leading role in the 2013 critically-acclaimed biographical film 42. Boseman played Major League baseball legend Jackie Robinson, winning several awards for his amazing performance.

In 2014, he also played James Brown in Get On Up and then starred in Marshall as Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice. Apart from Black Panther, he made millions starring in the above films, according to reports.

Ledward and Boseman were first spotted together in 2015 before getting engaged in October 2019. Ledward, a Japanese and Black, is a singer. She graduated with a degree in Music Industry Studies from California State Polytechnic University Pomona in 2014. She was the lead singer of the school’s jazz band and once auditioned to be on the X-Factor, according to reports.

After dating Boseman for four years, she is believed to have married the Marvel superhero in a private ceremony before his health deteriorated. With Boseman gaining fame due to his sterling performances in films, particularly, the Black Panther, the couple were pictured at various award ceremonies and red carpet events.

The effect of the pandemic on Black-owned businesses has been widely reported. According to the New York Fed, the pandemic has disproportionately affected Black businesses. In a report, the Fed said Black businesses were more than twice likely to close than businesses owned by Whites.

“Nationally representative data on small businesses indicate that the number of active business owners fell by 22% from February to April 2020—the largest drop on record,” the report said. “Black businesses experienced the most acute decline, with a 41% drop. Latinx business owners fell by 32% and Asian business owners dropped by 26%.”

Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic which has resulted in the shutdown of many Black businesses, some have managed to stay afloat while others have expanded or new Black firms have emerged.  

Durham Transports Express, LLC, is one of the Black-owned companies that is opening despite the pandemic. The all-Black-owned female freight shipping trucking company is opening in Shreveport, Louisiana. The project is said to be the first trucking company owned and operated by an all-female staff.

The project, estimated at a quarter of a million-dollar, will be undertaken in two phases and is expected to be completed within six months, according to FOX 33 News.

A handful of supporters thronged the West Cedar Grove neighborhood on November 12 for the groundbreaking ceremony of the firm’s new transport facility. The CEO of the company, Latronia Durham, attributed the feat chalked so far to teamwork.

“I’m over the top excited because some companies are shutting down right now and we are being blessed to be in the position to open up,” Durham told Fox 33. “This was so hard for me from the beginning because of what I didn’t know. So we want to help people so it won’t be so hard or won’t be so discouraging to them.” 

The company is operated by Durham together with her sister Rokisha Durham alongside their mother and Latronia’s daughter. “We want to be able to create opportunities for families for younger people who want to have a career in transportation. It’s a lot of money to be made and we’re trying to make it easier for them to get in,” Rokisha Durham said.

Brittney Dunn from the African-American Chamber of Commerce said the opening of Durham Transports Express in Shreveport will provide jobs for commercial license drivers (CDL) and training for CDL drivers.

“She’s providing jobs for CDL drivers and providing training for CDL drivers. It just gives people another opportunity and another door to grow and expand in their occupation,” Dunn shared.

The company is looking forward to hiring more than a dozen employers. “I want them to come along and be a part of our team, and we will show them that it will work,” Latronia said.

Hip Hop education is not new and more teachers in the U.S. are embracing it as a fun way to sustain the interest of their students in learning. Sammy Rigaud is one such HipHopEd whose Freestyle Friday session went viral on social media last November because many were fascinated by his concept of motivating his students with rap sessions.

In the Atlanta teacher’s class, all that the second graders in The Kindezi School at Old Fourth Ward needed to do was to score 80% or higher on their weekly assessment. They would then be given the chance to spit bars, a tool Rigaud said motivated everyone to do better in their assignments, affecting their overall performance in his class.

The clip of their Freestyle Friday sessions now has over 3.5 million views on Twitter and to date, other teachers and schools have also adopted such techniques to motivate their students.

Initially, authorities in the school were hesitant about his techniques but they came around when they noticed how the performance of the second graders had improved and the good publicity the viral video brought to their school.

30-year-old Rigaud is a Haitian-American native of North Miami, Florida who works and lives in Atlanta. He did not set out to be a teacher, however, he found his purpose in life when a judge ordered him to do community service at the local YMCA. He babysat for 40 children while their parents were being attended to. That was the moment he knew he wanted to teach.

His goal is to make everyone excel. His Christian faith also influences his way of life. According to Rigaud, he teaches his children to develop them wholly and not in a part.

Rigaud has been teaching for seven years and has published a book to motivate children not to give up on themselves. He believes Hip Hop Education is the channel these children need especially in a diverse landscape with people from varied backgrounds. The minority should have a voice and to Rigaud, Hip Hop is that platform that can bring the much-needed change.

While Donald Trump continues to make baseless claims of vote fraud following the elections, his successor Joe Biden is already at work as he announces a new COVID-19 task force to assist in the battle against the pandemic that has claimed lives in the U.S.

Among those listed for the newly formed advisory board include Yale School of Medicine professor Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, who will be serving as co-chair. Nunez-Smith, an associate professor of internal medicine, public health and management, will help lead the new administration’s fight against the coronavirus, the Biden transition team said.

“Dealing with the coronavirus pandemic is one of the most important battles our administration will face, and I will be informed by science and by experts,” Biden wrote in a statement. “The advisory board will help shape my approach to managing the surge in reported infections; ensuring vaccines are safe, effective, and distributed efficiently, equitably, and free; and protecting at-risk populations.”

With over 236,000 Americans losing their lives due to COVID-19 nationwide, and cases rising in more than 40 states, President-elect Biden recently said he will “spare no effort” in tackling the virus.

“Folks, our work begins with getting COVID under control. We cannot repair the economy, restore our vitality, or relish life’s most precious moments … all the moments that matter most to us, until we get it under control,” he said during his victory speech on Saturday.

Data show that Black and brown people, known as marginalized populations, continue to be disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, hence tapping a Black woman with skills in that field is ideal, analysts say.

According to her bio by Yale News, Nunez-Smith, the director of Yale’s Center for Community Engagement and Health Equity, the founding director of the Equity Research and Innovation Center, and the medical school’s associate dean for health equity research, studies disparities in healthcare access.

“She was one of the original Clinical and Translational Science Award scholars at the Yale Center for Clinical Investigations, and is now one of the program’s deputy directors,” according to the bio. It adds that she has also chaired the community sub-committee for Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont’s Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group, focusing on communities and groups most at risk for severe COVID-19.

The Yale School of Medicine professor, a native of the U.S. Virgin Islands, now joins 12 other people on Biden’s task force. Her fellow co-chairs are former FDA commissioner Dr. David Kessler, who is also a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco; and Dr. Vivek Murthy, the former Surgeon General under President Barack Obama who was instrumental in the fight against Ebola, Zika and the Flint water crisis.

Nunez-Smith, who has supported several chronic disease research projects in certain regions in the Caribbean, had already been advising the Biden campaign on the pandemic.

“Our country is facing an unprecedented time with COVID-19 cases accelerating nationwide,” Nunez-Smith was quoted by Yale News. “Everyone is affected by this pandemic, yet the burden is disproportionate. We know communities of color are grieving at high rates and are facing substantial economic impact. The transition advisory board is setting a course for everyone in our country to experience recovery. I’m honored to help lead on that work and thank President-elect Joe Biden for the opportunity to serve.”

There are two other Black people on the task force: Dr. Eric Goosby, an infectious disease expert and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, and Loyce Pace, the executive director and president of the Global Health Council.

Over 100 million Americans had already voted before Tuesday, November 3 in what is expected to be on the record, the biggest number ever of Americans who have participated in an election.

In 2016, a record of 137.5 million Americans voted in the election that was won by incumbent President Donald Trump. Observers say that number will be broken this year by the time polls close nationwide on Tuesday.

Trump is seeking reelection for another four years after his surprise win against the former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. But the president faces an uphill task in 2020 especially due to the challenges of managing the coronavirus pandemic as well as his conduct and scandals that have hit the administration.

The former vice-president and Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, has been favored in recent polls to win in certain battleground states including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona. A Quinnipiac survey, released 24 hours to the election, even has Biden leading in Florida and Ohio, two states that were won by Trump in 2016.

Both Trump and Biden are desperately seeking support from racial minorities who historically vote Democrat. On Monday, Trump even took to Twitter to plead to America’s Hispanic populace in Spanish.

African-Americans, a key voting block that came out at a rate of 56.9% according to a Pew research in 2017, are expected to increase that percentage point in 2020.

Malawi says it will open an embassy in Jerusalem, the controversial capital of Israel, in the summer of 2021. This was made known by the country’s foreign minister, Eisenhower Mkaka, who is on a three-day trip to the Jewish state.

“Mkaka reiterated the intent of the Republic of Malawi to open a fully-fledged Embassy in Jerusalem,” according to an official joint statement signed by the visiting Malawian minister and his counterpart, Gabi Ashkenazi. In return, the statement added, Israel agreed to increase bilateral cooperation in the fields of agriculture, tourism, investment technology, education and trade.

Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera first announced his intention to open an embassy in Jerusalem in September. The move, if seen through, will make Malawi the first African country to currently have a diplomatic mission in the new Jewish capital. A number of African countries, including Kenya, Ivory Coast, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, once had embassies in Jerusalem, but they were closed following the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Chakwera, an Evangelical, said his country was undertaking several diplomatic reforms, including the upgrading of the country’s Foreign Ministries and its embassies worldwide.

“The reforms will also include a review of our diplomatic presence, including our resolve to have new diplomatic missions in Lagos, Nigeria and Jerusalem, Israel,” he said, according to the Times of Israel. “I will be sharing more details about this in the near future.”

Chakwera’s decision to open an embassy in Jerusalem has incurred the wrath of the Palestinian authorities. Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Wednesday sent a letter of protest through a special envoy to the Malawian leader over the embassy move, according to Anadolu Agency.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem, seized in a 1967 Middle East war, as part of a future state while Israel considers the Holy City its eternal capital.

“Any step taken to establish a diplomatic mission in Jerusalem constitutes a violation of relevant United Nations resolutions,” the special envoy, Hanan Jarrar said. According to him, the UN Security Council Resolution 476 (1980) recently reaffirmed by Resolution 2334 (2016) does not recognize any action that seeks to alter the character and status of Jerusalem. 

“Under international law, East Jerusalem [including the Old City and its holy sites] are not legally part of Israel,” he said, adding that: “Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, the US and the international community have refused to recognize the sovereignty of any country to any part of Jerusalem in the absence of a permanent Arab-Israeli peace agreement.”

Also, the country’s opposition MPs have criticized the move but Chakwera insists establishing diplomatic ties with Israel was nothing new in Malawi. Currently, the 21-million majority Christian nation has no diplomatic mission in Israel. Meanwhile, Israel’s non-resident ambassador to Malawi is resident in Nairobi, Kenya. 

Another African country that has given a hint of opening an embassy in Jerusalem is Uganda. In February, President Yoweri Museveni told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would look into the possibility of opening an embassy in Jerusalem.

This was after Netanyahu suggested that Israel would open an embassy in Kampala if Uganda were to open an embassy in Jerusalem.

U.S. President Donald Trump in 2017 became the first world leader to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocated the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv there. Since then, Israel has taken steps to normalize relations with Muslim nations across the world.

Joe Biden has urged Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and the Nigerian military to “cease the violent crackdown on protesters” in the country amid weeks of peaceful nationwide protests against police brutality.

The Democratic presidential nominee called on the U.S. to stand with Nigerians who have for the past two weeks led peaceful demonstrations to protest against a police unit, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), which has long been accused of having a reputation of abuse that includes extortion, rape, torture and extrajudicial killings, according to Amnesty International. 

Recent protests against SARS emerged after a video circulated online earlier this month allegedly showing officers of the unit shooting a man in the country’s southern Delta state, Reuters reported. Police have reportedly denied the shooting. The hashtag #EndSARS began trending internationally on Twitter this week in support of the movement to end police brutality. 

“The United States must stand with Nigerians who are peacefully demonstrating for police reform and seeking an end to corruption in their democracy,” Biden said in his statement. “I encourage the government to engage in a good-faith dialogue with civil society to address these long-standing grievances and work together for a more just and inclusive Nigeria.”

Last week, Buhari announced the government’s decision to disband SARS among other promises of police reforms, in response to widespread protests led by Nigerians in the nation and Nigerian diaspora communities across the world.

The move was met with skepticism, though, since the government has made promises to reform the unit a number of times in previous years to no avail. Furthermore, Nigerian citizens feared that SARS officers would be redeployed to other units.

On Tuesday night, after Governor of Lagos State Babajide Sanwo-Olu had imposed a 24-hour curfew which began at 4 p.m. local time, witnesses at a demonstration reported seeing shots fired at the Lekki Toll Gate located in Lagos, Nigeria. Protesters accused soldiers of the Nigerian army of firing into the crowd.

Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, has written to the president of Nigeria requesting the pardon of a 13-year-old boy sentenced to 10 years in prison for blasphemy, Cywinski has tweeted.

"As the director of the Auschwitz Memorial, that commemorates the victims and preserves the remains of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, where children were imprisoned and murdered, I cannot remain indifferent to this disgraceful sentence for humanity," Cywinski wrote in the letter dated September 25.

A copy of the letter to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in the matter of 13-year-old Omar Farouk was posted on the Auschwitz museum's Twitter account. In it, the museum director declared he was willing to serve part of the boy's sentence. "(...) if it turns out that the words of this child absolutely require 120 months of imprisonment, and even you are not able to change that, I suggest that in place of the child, 120 adult volunteers from all over the world, gathered by us - myself personally among them - should each serve a month in a Nigerian prison," he wrote.

Cywinski wrote that the boy "Should not be subjected to the loss of the entirety of his youth, be deprived of opportunities, and stigmatized physically, emotionally, and educationally for the rest of his life," arguing that Farouk was too young to be held responsible for his words.

The 13-year-old was sentenced to 10 years in prison with forced hard labour because during a fight with a classmate at school he used words considered blasphemy in reference to Allah. In 12 Nigerian states, mostly in the north of the country where sharia law is in force, blasphemy can be punished with the death sentence, despite the Nigerian government declaring a withdrawal from the punishment four years ago.

Farouk's case has drawn protests globally. On September 16, UNICEF's representative in Nigeria, Peter Hawkins, filed an official protest with the country's president, pointing out that Nigeria was a signatory to chid rights treaties that were breached by the sentence. 

Like most kids around the world last spring, João Pedro Mattos Pinto found himself on lockdown because of the raging coronavirus. Unable to go to school on May 18, the 14-year-old Black Brazilian joined his cousins at their house in a favela outside of Rio de Janeiro. When gunfire erupted in the neighborhood, he sent his mother a WhatsApp message: “I’m inside the house. Don’t worry.”

Suddenly, 10 police officers burst into the house, searching for a purported drug trafficker and firing off more than 70 shots. João Pedro was hit in the back. His relatives bundled the bleeding boy into a police helicopter, and he was airlifted away. The police barred family members from accompanying the minor and refused to provide the family with any more information. Police arrested no one in the operation.

João Pedro’s cousin, Daniel, put out a desperate message on Twitter, begging people for help locating him. The #procurasejoaopedro (find João Pedro) hashtag trended on Brazilian Twitter overnight. While more than 1,400 young Black men are killed by police every year in Rio, João Pedro’s disappearance grabbed the headlines. It took his family 17 hours to locate his body in a public morgue.

That was seven days before the world would see the haunting video of a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd; before Black Lives Matter uprisings erupted across the United States, spreading quickly around the world. These two events helped to spark #VidasNegrasImportam (#BlackLivesMatter in Portuguese) protests in Rio de Janeiro and across Brazil, the South American country with the largest population of Black people outside Africa, just ahead of the United States. And in an ironic confluence of events—Joao Pedro’s death combined with the coronavirus—police in Rio were forced to stop almost all operations, at least temporarily, leading to a stark decline in fatal police encounters.

In a world without coronavirus, João Pedro’s death wouldn’t have trended on Twitter, nor would it have been front-page news. But the pandemic and subsequent protests forced Brazilians to focus on anti-Black police violence, which they had long ignored or normalized. Rio activists and lawyers, who had been working against such violence for years, filed an emergency petition asking Brazil’s Supreme Court to stop police operations during the pandemic. And one Supreme Court justice temporarily ruled in favor—with startling results.

One month after Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin’s June 5 order barring police operations in Rio—except in extreme circumstances—killings by police had dropped 70% compared to the previous 12 years. A study revealed that the suspension of police operations in Rio’s favelas could save more than 400 lives this year alone.

On August 3, a majority of justices on Brazil’s Supreme Court voted to uphold Fachin’s temporary ban on police operations in Rio—a decision that could have broader implications for addressing police violence across the country. The Supreme Court must still determine whether Rio’s state security policing needs to be aligned with national and international human rights standards.

“It is possible that if COVID hadn’t happened, we would not have had a [judicial] decision like we had,” said Wallace Corbo, a lawyer who works pro bono on behalf of the Educafro, an education and social justice nonprofit in Brazil. He started working on the Supreme Court case to stop Rio police operations last year.

“COVID and João Pedro changed everything,” Corbo explained.

The COVID-19 pandemic further unmasked the extent of racial inequities. Although it was the White and wealthy who brought the coronavirus to Brazil from their European holidays, the workers who live in favelas and periphery communities—the Black and poor—were dying at the highest rates. A recent study revealed that 80% of Rio’s coronavirus deaths were registered in the city’s most impoverished areas. And the hardest hit demographic group is older, Black, impoverished men. As of August 27, the country of more than 211 million people had registered more than 117,000 coronavirus deaths.

In many ways, Brazil has emerged as an almost mirror image of the United States, even down to the racial uprising that resulted from a police killing. It is second only to the United States in the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus. And like U.S. President Donald Trump, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro downplayed the virus from the beginning of the pandemic, calling it a “little flu.” Between March and May, two health ministers resigned; their posts remain vacant. The country has yet to implement a national coronavirus plan.

Such lack of coordination and planning leaves favela activists such as Fernanda Viana Araujo, 40, scrambling to provide food and other basic necessities to people quarantined in tight quarters in these neighborhoods. Mothers who supported their families as domestic servants had to stay home. Fathers who earned a living as parking lot attendants had no work. Grocery store attendants continued to work, potentially exposing their families to the virus.

Araujo said her focus recently has shifted to providing COVID-19 testing to residents of Maré, a favela with the highest number of both COVID cases and deaths overall in Rio.

“We normally focus on building our community through culture, art, public policy, and education,” said Araujo, who works with the nonprofit Rede da Maré, which is in the Maré favela. “But we realized we needed to do something to help our people stay alive. And that means giving them food for their table.”

Governor Kay Ivey Ivey offered a "sincere, heartfelt apology" for the "racist, segregationist rhetoric used by some of our leaders during that time." Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey apologized to Sarah Collins Rudolph, a survivor of a Ku Klux Klan bombing that left her severely injured and killed four Black girls, including her sister, in 1963.

In a letter sent to Collins Rudolph's lawyers, Ivey offered a "sincere, heartfelt apology" for the "racist, segregationist rhetoric used by some of our leaders during that time."

Ivey said there should be no question that Collins Rudolph, who was 12 when Klan members bombed 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham 57 years ago, and the four other girls "suffered an egregious injustice that has yielded untold pain and suffering over the ensuing decades."

Lawyers for Collins Rudolph had said in a letter to Ivey this month that, while hard-line segregationist officials like Gov. George Wallace didn't place the bomb next to the building, they played an "undisputed role in encouraging its citizens to engage in racial violence."

Collins Rudolph lost her right eye in the bombing. Glass fragments remained in her left eye, her abdomen and her chest for years after, according to The Associated Press.

Her sister, Addie Mae Collins, 14, was killed. So were Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson, also 14, and Denise McNair, 11.

"She has born the burdens of the bombing for virtually her entire life, and we believe her story presents an especially meritorious and unique opportunity for the State of Alabama to right the wrongs that its past leaders encouraged and incited," the letter to Ivey said.

The lawyers, who are from the Washington, D.C., firm Jenner & Block and are representing Collins Rudolph pro bono, had asked for an official apology as well as compensation.

Ivey's letter doesn't specifically address compensation, noting that the Legislature would have to be involved, and it says "other questions" raised by the lawyers will need to be reviewed.

"It would seem to me that beginning these conversations — without prejudice for what any final outcome might produce but with a goal of finding mutual accord — would be a natural extension of my administration's ongoing efforts to foster fruitful conversations" about race, Ivey said.

Rudolph Collins' lawyers, Ishan Bhabha and Alison Stein, said in a statement that they were "gratified" by the apology and that they looked forward to future talks about compensation.