Abby Zimet: Ida Wells’ Crusade To Arouse the Conscience of America
Anti-lynching agitator, muckraking journalist, fierce suffragist and orator Ida B. Wells, used the media to fight against lynching, “that last relic of barbarism and slavery,” as “color-line murder” based on “the old threadbare lie that Negro men assault white women.”
Paul Laurence Dunbar: We Wear the Mask
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
Antoine Davis, Darrell Jackson: What Juneteenth looks like for prisoners
As Black men in prison, we live the tension between celebrating the abolition of slavery and struggling inside the system that replaced it.
Bernardine Watson: Freedom
the colored hotel was named for Crispus Attucks
a runaway slave, and the first man to die
for the America dream
Claude McKay: The Lynching
The ghastly body swaying in the sun:
The women thronged to look, but never a one
Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue
Derrick Z. Jackson: How Climate Change and ‘Heat Islands’ are Killing Black People
America’s history of redlining and other forms of housing discrimination means that climate change and the Black community are on a deadly collision course.
Clarence Lusane: Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis
Two Peas in a White Nationalist Pod
Etheridge Knight: Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
Hard Rock / was / “known not to take no shit
From nobody,” and he had the scars to prove it:
Kim Stafford: Poems for a Cause
Maybe we’re past hints and whispers,
our chance gone for subtle scents
and fugitive flavors—time for coffee
black, jolt of onion, garlic unadorned.
Amanda Alexander, Deanna Van Buren: The Care(ful) Work of Abolishing Prisons
How to kick our national addiction to prisons
George Yancy: Policing Does Not Have Problems — It Is the Problem
We must examine proactive ways to address the social issues that lead to crime and violence, which does not necessitate more police.
Derrick Z. Jackson: Why Does White East Palestine, Ohio Get Apologies, But None for Black Cancer Alley?
East Palestine, Ohio is getting endless apologies as Cancer Alley in Louisiana deals daily with a petrochemical wall of denial.
Daja E. Henry: Environmental Justice Activists in Memphis Are Finally Turning the Tide
Black women, particularly mothers, are leading efforts to treat people currently harmed by toxic neighborhoods and prevent future damage.
Irene Vázquez: How Black Hair Practices Can Inspire Architecture
An exhibit at the University of Houston explores how Black hair techniques can be translated into innovative building materials, designs, and methods.
