Desne A. Crossley: My Cousin’s Suicide
The first lesson in keeping secrets came in 1962, when I was eight.
Terry Blackhawk: A Springfield Ghazal
My grandfather “witnessed a lynching” my father recalled,
but “expressed no shame” about what he’d seen in Springfield.
“Only a boy,” my mother maintained, when my father
began to tell about his father that night in Springfield.
Molly Fisk: Early
Small towns at daybreak are so nostalgic:
the only thing missing’s a train whistle.
Good morning, America. Mercenaries
in Portland last night teargassed a wall
of mothers. How long will we remember?
Arun Gupta: 10 Organizing Principles for Defeating Trumpism 2.0
Here are the organizing lessons I learned from movements for worker organizing, immigrant rights, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, climate justice, Palestine solidarity, and abortion rights. These lessons may serve us well under Trump 2.0.
Clarence Lusane: Making America White Again
The Deafening Silence of Trump’s Black Supporters
Desne A. Crossley: Something I Came Across
Yesterday, I was culling through papers to throw out and came across a letter from my mother to her father. She’s trying to cushion the news that no one will tell him. He’s dying of cancer.
Video: Cookie & Zo’e | Segregation 60 years apart
A Georgia Family Wrestles With School Choice 60 Years After Desegregation.
Douglas H. White: Surviving Hard Times
The Last Generation of Black Americans Under Jim Crow and the Culture of Racism in America
Paul Laurence Dunbar: Invitation to Love
Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd’ning cherry.
George Yancy: Black History Testifies to the Impossible Creative Power of Black Resistance
Literary scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin discusses how Black yearning keeps surviving in the face of racist violence.
Michael Simms: America
Beside the highway outside McKeesport PA
a state trooper has pulled over a black man
who leans against his rusty Ford
palms flat, feet apart
assuming the position
as we say in America
Molly Fisk: Two Poems
Part, partial, apart, apartheid,
apartments invaded, a woman
shot though she too was a piece
of the continent, she was a part
of the main.
George Yancy: Frederick Douglass’s Words Ring True: “Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand”
The draconian measures of the Trump administration must be challenged by way of the mass movements that extend beyond the pale of electoral politics.
Video: Grace
Sixteen-year-old Grace prepares for her baptism in the 1950’s South. When she learns she must repent before the ritual, Grace contemplates her budding romantic feelings toward her best friend, Louise.
