Don
Lemon knew he was going to be arrested.
On
January 18, he flew from Minneapolis to
Chicago to emcee the MLK
Breakfast for PUSH Excel the next morning.
He was expert and
gracious, as always - but he also dropped a
couple of quiet bombs.
Lemon all but said he was under siege. He
didn’t list every case or
name every colleague. He didn’t have to. The
message was clear: his
arrest was coming.
Lemon
understands power. He understands pretext.
And he understands that
when Black journalists challenge the state,
dominant media
narratives, or official police accounts -
especially during moments
of racial crisis - the First Amendment does
not disappear. It becomes
conditional, enforced through discretion
rather than principle.
The
“good news,” if one can call it that, is
that Lemon is a man of
means. He has elite legal representation and
the resources to contest
a pretextual arrest. His detention - on
thin, politicized grounds -
will cost him time, money, and energy, but
it is unlikely to end in
conviction. That outcome is not justice. It
is insulation. And
insulation is rare.
Lemon
did not name Georgia Fort, an independent
Black woman journalist who
was also arrested while doing her job. Fort
lacks the structural
protections that often determine whether
constitutional violations
are challenged or quietly absorbed. She does
not have a corporate
employer, a national platform, or a legal
war chest. She was
livestreaming when she was taken into
custody. Her arrest did not
dominate cable news. No emergency panels
were convened to debate its
implications for press freedom. That
omission matters.
Because
when Black journalists are targeted,
institutional backing determines
whether an arrest is treated as a
constitutional crisis or as
collateral damage. A famous journalist’s
arrest is framed as a
First Amendment test case. An independent
Black woman journalist’s
arrest is treated as an unfortunate footnote
- if it is acknowledged
at all.
Fort’s
arrest is not incidental to Lemon’s.
It is the point.
Her
case illustrates how press freedom is
rationed through selective
enforcement. The same act of journalism -
documenting police conduct,
challenging official narratives, recording
public events - can be
protected speech or criminalized behavior
depending on who performs
it and who stands behind them. Credentials
function as shields.
Independence functions as exposure.
This
is not an aberration; it is a pattern. The
state does not need to
silence all journalists to chill speech. It
needs only to arrest the
least protected, drain their resources,
interrupt their work, and
allow the rest to absorb the lesson. This is
how constitutional
rights erode in practice: not through formal
repeal, but through
discretionary enforcement; not through
censorship, but through
deterrence.
Black
journalists have been disciplined for
exercising First Amendment
rights since the 19th century. From Ida B.
Wells to Georgia Fort, the
pattern is consistent. When Black
journalists are arrested,
surveilled, sued, or financially depleted,
the issue is rarely the
alleged offense. It is discipline. It is
viewpoint discrimination
enforced through pretext. It is the
strategic narrowing of who can
safely speak.
The
First Amendment has never applied evenly.
For Black journalists, it
has always been provisional - recognized in
theory, contested in
practice, and withdrawn precisely when it is
most needed.
Don
Lemon knew what was coming because history
repeats itself.
The
question is not whether Lemon will survive
this moment - he likely
will.
The question is whether we are finally
willing to tell the
truth about press freedom when Black
journalists like Georgia Fort
are the ones exercising it.
That
question matters - especially during Black
History Month, a century
after Carter G. Woodson created Negro
History Week to confront the
deliberate erasure of Black truth. The
intimidation of Black voices
is not new. What is new is the brazenness:
retaliation politics
dressed up as law enforcement, grievance
masquerading as governance,
and power exercised as erasure.
We
have
walked this road before. Copies of the Chicago
Defender
were confiscated
rather than allowed to circulate in the
South. Ida B. Wells was not
alone in having her press destroyed. The
pattern is familiar because
the principle has never changed.
The
First Amendment is not under threat when it
is loudly proclaimed.
It
is under threat when it is selectively
applied.
And
when Black journalists are punished for
doing their jobs, silence is
not neutrality.
It
is complicity.
