U.S., Iran share goal but aren’t talking

The United States is willing to sit down with Iran “tomorrow” and jointly(联合) agree to full compliance(服从依从，遵守) with the nuclear accord(协议) they and five other world powers signed in 2015, according to a senior Biden administration official.

“We’ve made clear that we’re not talking about renegotiating(重新谈判) the deal,” the official said of the agreement that curbed(抑制) Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting(提升) U.S. and other sanctions(制裁，批准).

Iran has made equally clear it shares the goal of going back to the terms of the original agreement, before President Donald Trump pulled out of(退出) it. Trump reinstituted(再开创，再创立) the sanctions and added what Biden officials estimate were at least 1,500 new ones. In response, Iran reactivated key elements of the program the United States and others say could produce nuclear weapons. Iran denies any such ambition.

But nearly two months into Biden’s presidency, with Iran’s own contentious(有争议的) presidential election approaching in June, the two sides have been unable even to talk to each other about what both
say they want.

In the struggle for truth, a family stands divided

They say disinformation(假情报/消息) is consuming(消耗；adj 强烈的) their mother. She says they’re the ones who are brainwashed.


In a country where disinformation was spreading(传播) like a disease, Celina Knippling resolved(下定决心) to administer(给予，管理，监督) facts to her mom like medicine. She and her four siblings(同胞姐妹) could do nothing about the lies that had spread outward(外面的，外表的) from Washington since Election Day, or the violence it had provoked(激发引起). But maybe they could do something to stop dangerous political
fantasies(幻想) and extremism(极端主义) from metastasizing(转移) within their family. Maybe they could do something about Claire.

And so on one Saturday in February, Celina meticulously(细致地，一丝不苟地) assembled a spreadsheet(空白表格) of every court case filed (存档，保存)by former resident Donald Trump and his allies to contest(争夺，竞争比赛) the 2020 election. From her home outside Baltimore, she coded by date, state, case number and outcome. She analyzed how many lawsuits had been won, lost or dismissed and on what grounds(处于什么样的背景下). She broke down whether the presiding(主持的) judges had been appointed by Democrats or
Republicans.

Celina, 50, was not overly hopeful. She knew that her mom no longer trusted the mainstream media to tell
the truth, nor the country’s democratic institutions to adjudicate(宣判，判决) an election she was certain had been stolen. It was her antiTrump children, Claire Ryan contended(声称主张；竞争斗争), who were brainwashed.

Chattanooga(查特怒加市)’s dark history is getting its due(应得的；get one’s due：得到应得的)


chattanooga, tenn. — On a recent warm winter afternoon, hundreds of Chattanoogans flocked(成群结队，聚集) downtown to stroll along(漫步前行) the Walnut Street Bridge, a picturesque(秀丽的别致的，独具一格的) walking path that towers over the Tennessee River.

Once a decrepit(衰老的) eyesore(丑陋的东西), today the refurbished(翻新) bridge is a jewel of modern Chattanooga and a symbol of progress for a city that has undergone an urban renaissance(复兴再生). As part of a years-long effort to transform Chattanooga into an outdoor destination, the bridge is now a popular backdrop(背景幕) for marriage proposals, festivals and summer fireworks. Pictures of its bright blue beams(光线) appear on the city’s tourism websites and brochures. There’s a rock-climbing wall on one of the bridge’s pillars(柱子).

“It’s our Eiffel Tower,” said Mitch Patel, a businessman who owns a hotel at the southern entrance of the bridge.

But for many of Chattanooga’s Black residents, the city’s beloved pedestrian bridge isn’t an architectural beacon of the New South, but a painful reminder of the old: Before the Walnut Street Bridge became a tourist draw, it was a lynching ground. In 1893 and again in 1906, enraged White mobs hanged Black men from the bridge.

“A lot of those people don’t know what happened on that bridge. In the White community, it wasn’t spoke out in the open so much” said Eric Atkins, a local activist who has worked to raise awareness of the killings and memorialize the victims. “In the Black community, you never forget one of these atrocities. You never forget a lynching.”

Even as the bridge became a central gathering place of the city, some Black Chattanoogans who know its history have refused to cross it.

“I really don’t feel comfortable walking the bridge,” said Donivan Brown, the chairman of a group spearheading the memorial effort. “I felt as if by walking across the bridge that it was some sort of affirmation of silence or the fact that it’s a playground now.”

Now, more than a century later, Chattanooga is taking a major step to acknowledge its dark racial history. This spring, it will unveil a monument at the southern entrance of the bridge to honor Black victims of white supremacy and recognize those who risked their lives to defend them.

At a time when Americans are reconsidering what is worthy of public memorialization — and removing statues across the country that commemorate those who fought to uphold systems of oppression against Black people — Chattanooga is aiming to identify new heroes to venerate.

The memorial will mark the location where Ed Johnson, a Black man wrongfully accused of raping a White woman, was killed in 1906. Johnson had been convicted in a county court and sentenced to death. The lynching occurred after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a stay of execution. Johnson’s tragic end led to the first and only criminal trial in the Supreme Court’s history and affirmed its power to intervene in state and local affairs. In 2000, a Hamilton County judge formally cleared Johnson of wrongdoing.

The memorial features life-size statues of Johnson and two attorneys, Styles Hutchins and Noah Parden, Black men who appealed his case to the Supreme Court after White lawyers refused. Three other Hamilton County lynching victims, Charles Brown, Alfred Blount and Charles Williams, also will be memorialized. When completed, the memorial will be a part of a new plaza that city planners hope will become a space for public
gatherings.

The memorial’s completion comes after years of effort from an interracial committee of volunteers called the Ed Johnson Project. Advocates for the memorial said they see it as an opportunity for people to not only consider the past but also pause to think about race relations in the United States today.

Lynching was a common practice in the American South in the decades after the Civil War. From 1877 to 1950, more than 4,000 Black people were lynched, according to a historical count by the Equal
Justice Initiative.

Those who carried out the lynchings were almost never convicted of a crime. Congress did not pass a law designating lynching as a federal hate crime until 2020.

Although lynching claimed the lives of thousands of Black people, memorials remembering the victims of its terror are rare. One of the most prominent markers is in Duluth, Minn., where a mob of 10,000 people killed three Black entertainers who were accused of rape in 1920. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., houses more than 800 markers to symbolize thousands of lynching victims. The markers are individualized and mobile, with the hope that local communities with histories of lynching will erect them where lynchings took place.

The memory of Johnson’s case faded over the years, particularly among White residents, until the 1999 publication of the book “Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching That Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism,” by Mark Curriden and Leroy Phillips Jr. The book told of the night of Jan. 23, 1906, when a 21-year-old White woman named Nevada Taylor was returning home from work and a man attacked and raped her in the dark.

Based on a dubious tip, Johnson was arrested and accused of raping Taylor, a crime punishable by death.

Judge Samuel Davis McReynolds oversaw a rushed trial that legal historians say was riddled with problems. Johnson maintained his innocence, noting that at the time of the attack he was at work in a saloon. More than a dozen witnesses, White and Black, confirmed his alibi. When asked to identify her attacker, Taylor testified that she could not swear it was Johnson.

Despite the lack of evidence, Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death. He would have been left to die, had it not been for Parden and Hutchins, who took up his cause after most of his White lawyers abandoned him.