Columnist
Otis Sanford is professor emeritus of Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Memphis and political commentator for WATN-TV ABC24 News. Contact him at o.sanford@memphis.edu.
There are 248 articles by Otis Sanford :
Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill May 24 without comment. Because what could he really say that makes sense? His first and apparently only attempt to explain the rationale for the law would have been fine for a White Citizens Council meeting in the 1960s.
An incident at Health Sciences Park goes beyond one opportunistic racist hothead with more Confederate flags than he has sense. It’s emblematic of the growing white resentment to America’s reckoning with race.
Criticize Critical Race Theory if you must. But Republicans cannot legislate away the lasting impact of slavery and racism on American history.
Otis Sanford and Mark White have a friendly, but spirited, showdown over their polar opposite views about how to talk to Tennessee school children about race and racism.
Law enforcement is not helpless in trying to curb the lawlessness. But it will take cooperation from all of us who want safer streets and highways.
Thompson is not taking on this assignment as a neutral fact-finder. He does not have to be. The House is not a court of law and committee members are not unbiased jurors.
Otis Sanford: ‘I am calling on all Memphians to honor Wells this week and beyond by committing to help forge a more peaceful city. Deadly gun violence does not have to be just the way it is in the big city.’
Forrest believed that the worth of Black people was only as laborers, nothing more.
Otis Sanford says the dispute between Mayor Lee Harris and County Commissioner Mark Billingsley seems to portend the year ahead for politics in Shelby County.
It remains unclear how far teachers can go in discussing how racial injustice in the past impacts our society today. Republican lawmakers say that discussion is off limits. I say it is necessary.
Without question, this is another senseless shooting death that could have been avoided in a number of ways.
How did a seemingly rational, successful, God-fearing businessman – albeit with no previous political or government experience – so easily become a wavering tool of the far right without exhibiting so much as a shred of credible leadership?
And now that the Food and Drug Administration has moved the Pfizer vaccine from emergency-use authorization to full approval, I expect to see more employers, public and private, requiring the vaccine as a condition of employment.
So yes, COVID has laid bare our social inequities and made our divisiveness seem irreparable. It is not.
After the most horrific attack on American soil in our lifetime, we stood unified against a common enemy. And, despite our differences today, I believe we can do so again.
Shelby may still be the largest of Tennessee’s 95 counties, but it long ago lost the influence and cachet that it once enjoyed statewide.
The man just brought a Ford assembly plant to the state with more jobs than anyone in this region could have imagined. How can his potential challengers, Republican or Democrat, top that?
Worth Morgan formally announced Monday, Oct. 11, as a Republican candidate for Shelby County mayor.
Otis Sanford: “...while Powell never sought the office himself, he had tremendous influence with voters during tough presidential election years.”
Tennessee Republicans have been railing against businesses, local governments and schools for doing everything in their power to control the spread of a virus that has infected 1.2 million Tennesseans and led to more than 16,000 needless deaths.
‘It’s too bad Republicans in the state legislature don’t read the election commission web site. They never got the memo about nonpartisanship.’
Quiet as it’s kept, some parents want their children to learn the accurate history of America and the role that race, gender, ethnicity and privilege played in that history.
“It’s easy for (Mississippi Gov. Tate) Reeves and others of his ilk to continually recite Dr. King’s words about content of character and pretend that racism no longer exists.”
“The truth is, farm life historically for African Americans in the South was one of hardship and despair.”
Lang Wiseman, 50, said his greatest satisfaction in his dual role was his work making the planned Ford truck assembly plant at the Megasite of West Tennessee in Haywood County a reality.