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Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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THE BHP WIRE —
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Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
The term "the people" refers to the public or common mass of people of a polity.[1] As such it is a concept of human rights law, international law as well as constitutional law, particularly used for claims of popular sovereignty. In contrast, a people is any plurality of persons considered as a whole. Used in politics and law, the term "a people" refers to the collective or community of an ethnic group or nation.[1]
Chapter One, Article One of the Charter of the United Nations states that "peoples" have the right to self-determination.[2] Though the mere status as peoples and the right to self-determination, as for example in the case of Indigenous peoples (peoples, as in all groups of indigenous people, not merely all indigenous persons as in indigenous people),[clarification needed] does not automatically provide for independent sovereignty and therefore secession.[3][4] Indeed, judge Ivor Jennings identified the inherent problems in the right of "peoples" to self-determination, as it requires pre-defining a said "people".[5]
Both the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire used the Latin term Senatus Populusque Romanus, (the Senate and People of Rome). This term was fixed abbreviated (SPQR) to Roman legionary standards, and even after the Roman Emperors achieved a state of total personal autocracy, they continued to wield their power in the name of the Senate and People of Rome.
The term People's Republic, used since late modernity, is used by states that particularly identify constitutionally with a form of socialism.
In criminal law, in certain jurisdictions, criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of the People. Several U.S. states, including California, Illinois, and New York, use this style.[6] Citations outside the jurisdictions in question usually substitute the name of the state for the words "the People" in the case captions.[7] Four states — Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky — refer to themselves as the Commonwealth in case captions and legal process. Other states, such as Indiana, typically refer to themselves as the State in case captions and legal process. Outside the United States, criminal trials in Ireland and the Philippines are prosecuted in the name of the people of their respective states.
The political theory underlying this format is that criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of the sovereign; thus, in these U.S. states, the "people" are judged to be the sovereign, even as in the United Kingdom and other dependencies of the British Crown, criminal prosecutions are typically brought in the name of the Crown. "The people" identifies the entire body of the citizens of a jurisdiction invested with political power or gathered for political purposes.[8]
In China, definitions of the people (Chinese: 人民) by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have shifted throughout its history. At the 2nd National Congress held in 1922, it included the proletariat, peasants, and the bourgeoisie. Usage of the term dropped following the Shanghai Massacre in 1927, with the term largely being replaced by the term masses (Chinese: 民眾). The use of the term people increased again in 1935 following the establishment of the Second United Front with the Kuomintang. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the people as defined by the Cihai dictionary, included "all the classes, strata, and social groups that participated in the resistance against the Japanese invasion". After the continuation of the Chinese Civil War, it was redefined to "the people were all the classes, strata, and social groups that opposed imperialism, the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, the landlord class, and the reactionary faction of the Kuomintang that represented these classes". The term was further redefined following the 1949 proclamation of the People's Republic of China. The Charter of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference defines the people as "socialist laborers, builders of socialist undertakings, patriots who support socialism, and patriots who support the unity of the motherland and are committed to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".[9]
Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, 1 lays down the most widely accepted formulation of the criteria of statehood in international law. It notes that the state as an international person should possess the following qualifications: '(a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with other states'
So far as States are concerned, the traditional definitions provided for in the Montevideo Convention remain generally accepted.
The dictionary definition of people at Wiktionary| International | |
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The term "the people" refers to the public or common mass of people of a polity. As such it is a concept of human rights law, international law as well as constitutional law, particularly used for claims of popular sovereignty. In contrast, a people is any plurality of persons considered as a whole. Used in politics and law, the term "a people" refers to the collective or community of an ethnic group or nation.
The Ainu (/ˈaɪnuː/) are an indigenous ethnic group who reside in northern Japan and southeastern Russia, including Hokkaido and the Tōhoku region of Honshu, as well as the land surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, such as Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula, and the Khabarovsk Krai. They have occupied these areas, known to them as "Ainu Mosir" (Ainu: アイヌモシㇼ, lit. 'the land of the Ainu'), since before the arrival of the modern Yamato and Russians. These regions are often referred to as Ezochi (蝦夷地) and its inhabitants as Emishi (蝦夷) in historical Japanese texts. Along with the Yamato and Ryukyuan ethnic groups, the Ainu people are one of the primary historic ethnic groups of Japan and are, along with the Ryukyuans and Bonin Islanders, one of the few ethnic minorities native to the Japanese archipelago. Official surveys of the known Ainu population in Hokkaido received 11,450 responses in 2023, and the Ainu population in Russia was estimated at 300 in 2021. Unofficial estimates in 2002 placed the total population in Japan at 200,000 or higher, as the near-total assimilation of the Ainu into Japanese society has resulted in many individuals of Ainu descent having no knowledge of their ancestry. The Ainu were subject to forced assimilation during the Japanese colonization of Hokkaido since at least the 18th century. Japanese assimilation policies in the 19th century around the Meiji Restoration included forcing Ainu peoples off their land. This, in turn, forced them to give up traditional ways of life such as subsistence hunting and fishing. Ainu people were not allowed to practice their religion and were placed into Japanese-language schools, where speaking the Hokkaido Ainu language was forbidden. In 1966, there were about 300 native Ainu speakers. In the 1980s, there were fewer than 100 native Ainu speakers, with only 15 using the language daily. The Hokkaido Ainu language is likely extinct today, as there remain no known native speakers. The other Ainu languages, Sakhalin Ainu and Kuril Ainu, were declared extinct in the 20th century. In recent years, there have been increasing efforts to revitalize the Hokkaido Ainu language.
The Romani, also spelled Romany or Rromani ( ROH-mə-nee or ROM-ə-nee), colloquially known as the Roma (sing.: Rom), are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group who traditionally led a nomadic, itinerant lifestyle. Linguistic and genetic evidence suggests that the Romani originated in northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed by historians to have occurred around 1000 CE. Their original name, derived from the Sanskrit डोम (doma), may refer to the Doma, a Dalit caste traditionally associated with musicians and dancers. The Romani population moved west into the Ghaznavid Empire and later into the Byzantine Empire. The Romani arrived in Europe around the 13th to 14th century, via the Balkans. Although they are dispersed, their most concentrated populations are in Europe, especially central, eastern, and southern Europe, as well as western Asia (mainly Turkey and Iran). In the English language, the Romani are widely known by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies), which is considered a pejorative by some Romani due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity, as well as its historical use as a racial slur. In the United Kingdom, the term Gypsies (or Romany Gypsies) is preferred by many of the Kale and Romanichal, and is used to refer to them in official documentation. The attendees of the first World Romani Congress in 1971 unanimously voted to reject the use of all exonyms for the Romani, including Gypsy. The exonym Tsigani and its variants are commonly used in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in the Balkans. However, this term can also be considered a pejorative. Since the 19th century, some Romani have migrated to the Americas. There are an estimated 1 million Romani in the United States and 800 thousand in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the 19th century from Eastern Europe. Brazil also includes a notable Romani community descended from deportees from the Portuguese Empire during the Portuguese Inquisition. Since the late 19th century, Romani have migrated to other countries in South America and Canada. Though often confused with Irish Travellers and the Yenish people in Western Europe, the Romani are culturally different. The Romani language is an Indo-Aryan language with strong Persian, Armenian, Greek, and South Slavic influence. Balkan Romani also shows an extensive Turkish influence. It is divided into several dialects, which together are estimated to have more than 2 million speakers. Because the language has traditionally been oral, many Romani are native speakers of the dominant language in their country of residence, or else of mixed languages combining the dominant language with a dialect of Romani in varieties sometimes called para-Romani.
The Sámi (US: SAH-mee, UK: also SAM-ee; also spelled Sami or Saami) are the traditionally Sámi-speaking indigenous people inhabiting the region of Sápmi. Formerly known as Lapland, Sápmi encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and of the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Historically, the Sámi have been known in English as Lapps or Laplanders; however, these terms are exonyms, regarded as offensive by the Sámi, who prefer their own endonym. Their traditional languages are the Sámi languages, which are classified as a branch of the Uralic language family. Traditionally, the Sámi have pursued a variety of livelihoods, including coastal fishing, fur trapping, and sheep herding. Their best-known means of livelihood is semi-nomadic reindeer herding. As of 2007, about 10% of Sámi were connected to reindeer herding, which provides them with meat, fur, and transportation; around 2,800 Sámi people were actively involved in reindeer herding on a full-time basis in Norway. For traditional, environmental, cultural, and political reasons, reindeer herding is legally reserved for only Sámi in some regions of the Nordic countries.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Mae Jemison, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.
