Former Florida Rep. Carrie Meek died at age 95 in her Miami home on Sunday. Known for her fiery speeches and trailblazing career, Meek was among the first class of Black Floridians elected to Congress post-Reconstruction.

According to ABC News, her family did not confirm a cause of death, only that she suffered a long illness.

Meek, the youngest of 12 children born to a sharecropper and laundress, won her first Congressional race at 66 years old in 1992 after she ran unopposed by Republican candidates for her Miami-Dade County seat. Before her bid for Congress, Meek was Miami-Dade Community College’s first Black professor, associate dean and assistant to the vice president, a member of Florida’s state House and the first Black woman voted to the state’s senate.

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Alcee Hastings and Corrine Brown joined Meek in January 1993 as the first Black Floridians to serve in Congress since 1876 as the state’s districts had been redrawn by the federal courts in accordance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

On her first day in Congress, Meek reflected that while her grandmother, a slave on a Georgia farm, could never have dreamed of such an accomplishment, her parents told her that anything was possible.

“They always said the day would come when we would be recognized for our character,” she told The Associated Press in an interview that day.

Source: Trailblazing Legend, Former Florida Rep. Carrie Meek Dies at 95

According to ABC News, a coroner has confirmed that Casey Goodson Jr., a 23-year-old Black man in Ohio died after being shot five times in the back and once in the torso by Jason Meade, a White Ohio sheriff’s deputy last December.

BLACK ENTERPRISE reported late last year that Goodson’s family members and community activists had stated that Goodson was on his way back home carrying a Subway sandwich when he was fatally shot in the back several times by Meade, a Franklin County Sheriff’s office SWAT deputy.

According to WOSU, Sean Walton, the slain victim’s family attorney, stated that the autopsy proves that Goodson was murdered by Meade.

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“From our standpoint, it leaves no doubt as to what happened to Casey,” Walton said. “And it just shows the need for immediate accountability with regard to Jason Meade. We feel like there is no reason he should not be terminated immediately from his position as a Franklin County sheriff’s deputy.

“We’re just happy that the world can know the truth now, that Casey was shot in his back five times and shot in his butt once. It clearly shows he was shot by Jason Meade at the incident at his home. It was an execution, it was a murder.”

Franklin County Prosecutor Gary Tyack’s office said it will review the autopsy before making a final decision on whether to charge Meade. The deputy remains on administrative leave from the sheriff’s office.

Franklin County Sheriff Dallas Baldwin added that the final autopsy released last week “doesn’t provide all of the facts needed to give us those answers,” and that he will wait until the criminal investigation is completed before deciding whether to pursue any disciplinary action against Meade.

“I want to be clear that the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office use of force policies prohibits any deputy from using deadly force against anyone who doesn’t pose an immediate threat to the officer or to others,” Baldwin said in a statement. “However, I also want to emphasize that criminal investigations over the years have shown that the physical location of gunshot wounds alone do not always tell the entire story of what happened.”

Source: Casey Goodson Jr. Was Shot 6 Times By White Ohio Police Officer, Autopsy Reveals

Lawyers representing Malcolm X‘s estate are requesting his case be reopened in light of new evidence that may reveal that the New York Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation conspired to have him killed.

According to ABC News, the family and attorney of former undercover NYPD officer Ray Wood disclosed that they recovered a death bed confession letter in November 2020. The letter allegedly states that the NYPD and the FBI conspired to insure the killing of Minister X, who was gunned down in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom during a speech in 1965.

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Wood’s family stated that in the letter, he wrote that it was his responsibility to have X’s security detail arrested in the days prior to his scheduled appearance at the Audubon. This would ensure that security would not be sufficient to stop the gunmen from killing Malcolm X.

Despite three men from the Nation of Islam being convicted of killing the civil rights icon, attorney Ben Crump, three of Malcolm X’s daughters and Wood’s family are hoping the case will be re-opened in light of the discovery of this letter.

“So, what we’re trying to do is talk about restorative justice as lawyers — try to pursue relentless justice,” said Attorney Ray Hamlin.

Last February, Netflix released the docuseries Who Killed Malcolm X, which chronicled historian Abdur-Rahman Muhammad’s years-long research to unravel inconsistencies in the Malcolm X murder case. In the series, Muhammad worked to reveal evidence that two of the three men convicted for Malcolm X’s death were in fact not present at the Audubon on the day of this murder.

Source: New evidence points to NYPD, FBI conspiracy in Malcolm X assassination, lawyers say