Willie Edwards Jr., a black truck driver, was killed by Ku Klux Klansmen who forced him to jump off a bridge in Alabama in 1957. Two years earlier, white men had bludgeoned black teenager Emmett Till to death in Mississippi. No one went to prison for either slaying.
Both people died in racist lynchings, and relatives of each were aghast Tuesday after President Donald Trump compared his own possible impeachment to lynching — racist killings, often for the purpose of inciting terror, that took an estimated 4,400 black lives over roughly seven decades in 20 states, mostly in the South.
Click to Gallery
Willie Edwards Jr., a black truck driver, was killed by Ku Klux Klansmen who forced him to jump off a bridge in Alabama in 1957. Two years earlier, white men had bludgeoned black teenager Emmett Till to death in Mississippi. No one went to prison for either slaying.
"Either he's very ignorant or very insensitive or very racist and just doesn't care," said 66-year-old Malinda Edwards, Willie Edwards' daughter.
Till , a 14-year-old African American from Chicago, was kidnapped, beaten and dumped in a river in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman in a store. An all-white jury acquitted two white men of murder charges, although they later admitted the killing in a magazine interview. The FBI has yet to close a renewed investigation into his slaying.
The names of Edwards and Till are included on a national memorial to lynching victims that opened last year in Montgomery. Research by the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative, which commissioned the memorial, documented some 4,400 racial terror lynchings in the United States from 1877 through 1950.
"He knows what he's doing. He knows how to hurt and divide," said Cohen, who wrote the play "Anne and Emmett" about an imaginary conversation between Till and Holocaust victim Anne Frank.
Made in a tweet that drew backing from some Republican supporters including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Trump's claim was ill-informed at best and racist at worst, they said. And it denigrated the fates of people who were hanged, beaten, shot, drowned, burned or battered to death because of the color of their skin, they said.
FILE - This Monday, April 23, 2018, file photo shows a bronze statue called "Raise Up," as part of the display at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a new memorial to honor thousands of people killed in racist lynchings, in Montgomery, Ala. Facing an impeachment inquiry that he and supporters claim is illegal, President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019, that the process is a lynching. Some Republicans agree, but the relatives of actual lynching victims don’t. (AP PhotoBrynn Anderson, File)
"Either he's very ignorant or very insensitive or very racist and just doesn't care," said 66-year-old Malinda Edwards, Willie Edwards' daughter.
Deborah Watts, a cousin of Till, called the president's tweet "insensitive and offensive."
"Lynching is the ultimate act of racial terror that resulted in the brutal murders, trauma and terrorism that my cousin Emmett and thousands of innocent black men, women and entire communities of color suffered for hundreds of years," she said.
FILE - This Monday, April 23, 2018, file photo shows part of the display at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a new memorial to honor thousands of people killed in racist lynchings, in Montgomery, Ala. Facing an impeachment inquiry that he and supporters claim is illegal, President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019, that the process is a lynching. Some Republicans agree, but the relatives of actual lynching victims don’t. (AP PhotoBrynn Anderson, File)
Till , a 14-year-old African American from Chicago, was kidnapped, beaten and dumped in a river in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman in a store. An all-white jury acquitted two white men of murder charges, although they later admitted the killing in a magazine interview. The FBI has yet to close a renewed investigation into his slaying.
In the case of Edwards' father, Klansmen killed the 24-year-old man after mistaking him for another black man who supposedly smiled at a white woman or made a pass in racially segregated Montgomery. An FBI review found that the killers kidnapped him off a roadside and forced him to plunge off a bridge into a river.
Three men were indicted in Edwards' slaying in 1976, but a judge dismissed the case because the indictment didn't state a cause of death. Subsequent investigations led to no prosecutions, and all the suspects are now dead.
FILE - Willie Edwards Jr., shown in an undated file photo, disappeared from Montgomery, Ala., on Jan. 23, 1957, and was found dead in the Alabama River three months later. A Montgomery County Grand Jury refused to return any indictments after the investigation was reopened in 1997. Facing an impeachment inquiry that he and supporters claim is illegal, President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019, that the process is a lynching. Some Republicans agree, but the relatives of actual lynching victims don’t. (AP PhotoFile)
The names of Edwards and Till are included on a national memorial to lynching victims that opened last year in Montgomery. Research by the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative, which commissioned the memorial, documented some 4,400 racial terror lynchings in the United States from 1877 through 1950.
An untold number of other people also were lynched, but their stories were lost to time or official indifference. Janet Langhart Cohen says those cases include that of her distant cousin Jimmy Gillenwaters, who was lynched in Kentucky in the early 1900s.
Cohen, the wife of former Republican Sen. William Cohen of Maine, said Trump is one of too many racist whites who have shown a lack of respect for lynching victims and their descendants.
FILE - In this Thursday, Aug. 27, 2015, file photo, Deborah Watts, of Minneapolis, sits in a Jackson, Miss., hotel and speaks about events in Mississippi and Illinois during the week that commemorate the 60th anniversary of the slaying of her cousin Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old from Chicago, who was visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta. Facing an impeachment inquiry that he and supporters claim is illegal, President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019, that the process is a lynching. Some Republicans agree, but the relatives of actual lynching victims don’t. (AP PhotoRogelio V. Solis, File)
"He knows what he's doing. He knows how to hurt and divide," said Cohen, who wrote the play "Anne and Emmett" about an imaginary conversation between Till and Holocaust victim Anne Frank.
Facing an impeachment inquiry that he and supporters claim is illegal, Trump tweeted: "So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here — a lynching. But we will WIN!"
Edwards, who lives in Dayton, Ohio, said she feels sick in her stomach any time she hears the word "lynching," and Trump's tweet was no different. Trump's message was all the worse because it displayed indifference to the victims of actual lynchings and their descendants, Edwards said.
FILE - In this Sept. 3, 1955, file photo, mourners pass Emmett Till's casket in Chicago. Till was a 14-year-old African American boy who was kidnapped, tortured and lynched for whistling at a white woman in Mississippi by a white mob. Facing an impeachment inquiry that he and supporters claim is illegal, President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019, that the process is a lynching. Some Republicans agree, but the relatives of actual lynching victims don’t. (AP PhotoFile)
"It says to them that 'What happened to you is like nothing more than an investigation.' These are people who went through the most gruesome and heinous things that could be done to them," said Edwards.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A big, new package of U.S. military aid will help Ukraine avoid defeat in its war with Russia. Winning will still be a long slog.
The arms and ammunition in the $61 billion military aid package should enable Ukraine to slow the Russian army's bloody advances and block its strikes on troops and civilians. And it will buy Ukraine time — for long-term planning about how to take back the fifth of the country now under Russian control.
“Ultimately it offers Ukraine the prospect of staying in the war this year,” said Michael Clarke, visiting professor in war studies at King’s College London. “Sometimes in warfare you’ve just got to stay in it. You’ve just got to avoid being rolled over.”
The U.S. House of Representatives approved the package on Saturday after months of delays by some Republicans wary of U.S. involvement overseas. It was passed by the Senate on Tuesday, and President Joe Biden said he would sign it Wednesday.
The difference could be felt within days on the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russia’s much larger army has been slowly taking territory against massively outgunned Ukrainian forces.
The aid approval means Ukraine may be able to release artillery ammunition from dwindling stocks that it has been rationing. More equipment will come soon from American stocks in Poland and Germany, and later from the U.S.
The first shipments are expected to arrive by the beginning of next week, said Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party.
But opposition lawmaker Vadym Ivchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s National Security, Defense and Intelligence Committee, said logistical challenges and bureaucracy could delay shipments to Ukraine by two to three months, and it would be even longer before they reach the front line.
While details of the shipments are classified, Ukraine’s most urgent needs are artillery shells to stop Russian troops from advancing, and anti-aircraft missiles to protect people and infrastructure from missiles, drones and bombs.
What’s coming first is not always what front-line commanders need most, said Arakhamia, the Ukrainian lawmaker. He said that even a military giant like the U.S. does not have stockpiles of everything.
“The logic behind this first package was, you (the U.S.) finds our top priorities and then you see what you have in the warehouses,” Arakhamia said. “And sometimes they do not match.”
Hope for future breakthroughs for Ukraine still hangs on more timely deliveries of Western aid, lawmakers acknowledge.
Many experts believe that both Ukraine and Russia are exhausted by two years of war and won’t be able to mount a major offensive — one capable of making big strategic gains — until next year.
Still, Russia is pushing forward at several points along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front, using tanks, wave after wave of infantry troops and satellite-guided gliding bombs to pummel Ukrainian forces. Russia is also hitting power plants and pounding Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which is only about 30 kilometers (some 20 miles) from the Russian border.
Ivchenko said the goal for Ukraine’s forces now is to “hold the line” until the bulk of new supplies arrive by mid-summer. Then, they can focus on trying to recapture territory recently lost in the Donetsk region.
“And probably ... at the end of summer we’ll see some movement, offensive movement of the Ukrainian armed forces,” he said.
Some military experts doubt Ukraine has the resources to mount even small offensives very soon.
The U.S. funding “can probably only help stabilize the Ukrainian position for this year and begin preparations for operations in 2025,” said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank.
In the best-case scenario for Ukraine, the American aid will give commanders time to reorganize and train its army — applying lessons learned from its failed summer 2023 offensive. It may also galvanize Ukraine’s allies in Europe to increase aid.
“So this just wasn’t about Ukraine and the United States, this really affected our entire 51-country coalition,” said U.S. Congressman Bill Keating, a Democrat who visited Kyiv on Monday as part of a four-member congressional delegation.
Zelenskyy insists Ukraine's war aim is to recapture all its territory from Russia — including Crimea, seized illegally in 2014. Even if the war ultimately ends through negotiation, as many experts believe, Ukraine wants to do that from as strong a position as possible.
Whatever happens on the battlefield, Ukraine still faces variables beyond its control.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who seeks to retake the White House in the November election, has said he would end the war within days of taking office. And the 27-nation Europe Union includes leaders like Hungarian President Viktor Orbán and Slovakian Prime Minister Richard Fico, who have opposed arming Ukraine.
Ukraine’s allies have held back from supplying some arms out of concern about escalation or depleting their own stocks. Ukraine says that to win the war it needs longer-range missiles it could use for potentially game-changing operations such as cutting off occupied Crimea, where's Russia's Black Sea fleet is based.
It wants Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMs, from the U.S. and Taurus cruise missiles from Germany. Both governments have resisted calls to send them because they are capable of striking targets deep within Russian territory.
The new bill authorizes the president to send Ukraine ATACMS “as soon as practicable.” It's unclear what that will mean in practice.
Sometimes, promised weapons have arrived late, or not at all. Zelenskyy recently pointed out that Ukraine is still waiting for the F-16 fighter jets it was promised a year ago.
Meanwhile, Russia is using its advantage in troops and weapons to push back Ukrainian forces, perhaps seeking to make maximum gains before Ukraine's new supplies arrive.
For weeks it has pummeled the small eastern city of Chasiv Yar, at the cost of 900 soldiers killed and wounded a day, according to the U.K. Ministry of Defense.
Capturing the strategically important hill town would allow them to move toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, key cities Ukraine controls in the eastern region of Donetsk. It would be a significant win for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Western officials say is bent on toppling Ukraine’s pro-Western government.
Russian pressure was aimed not just at gaining territory, but on undermining Zelenskyy and bolstering critics who say his war plan is failing, said Clarke of King's College London.
The U.S. aid package decreases the likelihood of a political crisis in Ukraine, and U.S. Speaker Mike Johnson deserves credit for pushing it through Congress, he said.
"He held history in his hands,” Clarke said.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
From left, U.S. representatives Nathaniel Moran, R-Tx, Tom Kean Jr, R-NJ, Bill Keating, D-Mass, and Madeleine Deane, D-Pa, talk to journalists during a joint news conference outside Saint Michael cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. A newly approved package of $61 billion in U.S. aid may prevent Ukraine from losing its war against Russia. But winning it will be a long slog. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A volunteer makes a camouflage net at a facility producing material for Ukrainian soldiers in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. A newly approved package of $61 billion in U.S. aid may prevent Ukraine from losing its war against Russia. But winning it will be a long slog. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Servant of the People party, talks during an interview with Associated Press in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A woman rallies to raise awareness on the fate of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Ribbons with the colors of the European Union and Ukraine are attached to a tree next to memorial wall of Ukrainian soldiers killed during the war in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
The body of a woman killed by Russian bombardment in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Soldiers carry the coffins of two Ukrainian army sergeants during their funeral in Lviv, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
