Blog
Lawyers Must Challenge Racist Symbols in Our Courthouses
Emancipate NC attorney Ian Mance, along with Elizabeth Hambourger, an attorney from the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, published an article in Trial Briefs about attorneys’ duty to challenge the racist symbols, including Confederate monuments, in our counties’...
Emancipate NC files amicus brief about over-policing of Black communities
Yesterday, associate director Elizabeth Simpson filed an amicus brief in the North Carolina Supreme Court in State v. Johnson, a case about how criminal defendants can prove racial profiling and selective enforcement of the law. Using new data analysis from public...
Emancipate NC Fights For Body Camera Transparency & An End to No-Knock Warrants
Yolanda Irving and Kenya Walton are two Black mothers in Raleigh, whose homes were wrongfully raided by a Raleigh Police SWAT Team in 2020. The raid was based on a bad address on a warrant, stemming from a corrupt cop and a corrupt informant. The mothers’...
Justice League Fellow On NFL Social Media For Activism
Jatoia Potts is a 2022 Emancipate NC Justice League Fellow. Jatoia first met the Emancipate NC team in December 2019, after she was released from pretrial detention in the Durham County jail, where she spent over nine months locked up on a $250,000 bond. The...
Emancipate NC Stands In Solidarity with the Family and Community of Daniel Turcios
Image courtesy of WUNC and Jason DeBruyn. It depicts Kerwin Pittman addressing reporters, as Dawn Blagrove and Ivan Almonte comfort Rosa Jerez, the wife of Daniel Turcios. Last week, the Raleigh Police Department needleessly murdered another civilian–this time, a...
Calling Incarcerated Artists!
Image depicts artwork by Emancipate NC client, Ashlee Inscoe. Calling all incarcerated artists! Inspired by the creativity and resilience of our siblings in jail and prison, Emancipate NC will launch a site to showcase the talent of incarcerated artists....
Emancipate NC Prepares Petition to Release DPD Body Cam
Image depicts Dawn Blagrove with William and Kim Smith at the Durham Police Department awaiting release of body camera footage. Emancipate NC has prepared a petition to publicly release body camera footage from an aggressive police action by the Durham...
Emancipate NC Raises a Billboard in Elizabeth City
Image depicts Kerwin Pittman underneath a new billboard in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, dedicated to the life and memory of Andrew Brown, Jr. Emancipate NC has raised a billboard in Elizabeth City, North Carolina to honor the life and memory of Andrew...
Dawn Blagrove Argues at NC Supreme Court
As previously reported, Executive Director Dawn Blagrove was invited to give oral argument in a Juvenile Life-without-Parole case at the North Carolina Supreme Court last month, after Emancipate NC submitted an amicus brief on behalf...
Emancipate NC & Team File Suit For Prison Censorship
In recent years, North Carolina prison officials have systematically violated the First Amendment by censoring publications mailed to incarcerated people, including the popular magazine, Prison Legal News. Thousands of incarcerated people across the country rely...
Biden’s Team Comes to NC: We Respond
CHARLOTTE — Emancipate North Carolina, and the North Carolina Black & Brown Policy Network released the following statement ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg visiting North Carolina tomorrow: “In...
Emancipate NC Debates Police Reform
Emancipate NC’s Kerwin Pittman was featured in a televised debate on police reform at Wake Technical Community College last week. He was joined by Senator Amy Scott Galey (R, Alamance), Senator Mejtaba Mohammed (D, Mecklenburg),...
Emancipate NC Goes to the NC Supreme Court
Earlier this year, Emancipate NC submitted an amicus brief, authored by Dawn Blagrove and Ian Mance, to educate the North Carolina Supreme Court about the racial justice consequences of Juvenile Life Without Parole. On Wednesday,...
Lester Kearney’s Family Speaks
Photo depicts Lester Kearney's family, along with Advocate Cierra Cobb, outside of the Warren County Courthouse in October 2021. Lester Kearney is an innocent Black man facing the death penalty in Warren County, North Carolina for the 2018 murder of an elderly white...
Abolish Solitary Confinement Already
Personal commentary by Elizabeth Simpson If it wasn’t heartbreaking, it would be funny. Two weeks ago, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, through its unironically named research unit, the “Innovation Institute,” concluded: there is a body of...