Naomi Davis’ dream is not too different from the one that took her grandparents from being sharecroppers in Mississippi to living on the South Side of Chicago: the vision of being a part of an autonomous Black community. Utilizing millions of dollars in grants, including $10 million from the federal government’s Justice40 initiative, Davis’ organization, […]
Adam Mahoney
Adam Mahoney is the climate and environment reporter at Capital B. He can be reached by email at adam.mahoney@capitalbnews.org, on Bluesky, and on X at @AdamLMahoney.
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Partner Content
‘What Corruption Gets You’: How Utility Companies Bought Support in the Black South
Former Florida state Rep. Joe Gibbons sat in the library of the Faith Community Church in Greensboro, North Carolina, trying to convince its pastor to quit promoting rooftop solar. With a lobbyist’s charm, Gibbons told the Rev. Nelson Johnson that rooftop solar, which allows customers to generate their own renewable electricity, was bad for people […]
Posted inBlack Migration
Reading List: This Generation’s Great Black Migration Is Worth a Closer Look
Black Americans are moving more than they ever have over the past 50 years, and just as during the Great Migration of the 20th century, they’re reshaping the entire fabric of the United States as they do. As Black folks leave the West, Midwest, and North, the South has been the only region with more […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
The Last Black Neighborhood in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO — In November 1978, Pete Holmes was among the hundreds of Black San Francisco residents killed in one of the most notorious mass murder-suicides in history. Three weeks later, Holmes’ granddaughter Kamillah Ealom was born in a San Francisco hospital more than 4,000 miles away from where her grandfather and others perished in […]
Posted inBlack Migration
Without a Sense of Home, Black America’s Mental Health Suffers
For Black and Caribbean Americans, so much of the meaning of home has been ruptured because of slavery and what happens when people are forcibly uprooted from their homes. Descendants from enslaved Africans most often lost that connection to their geographical lineage. It’s contributed to the inability of Black people to find cocoons in the […]
Posted inClimate Change, Environmental Justice
Moving South, Black Americans Are Weathering Climate Change
This is the fifth installment of a yearlong Capital B series on the country’s current Black migration, the most significant movement of Black people in the U.S. in 50 years. It was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Environmental and Epistemic Justice Initiative at Wake Forest University. Stephanie Roberson wasn’t expecting this phone call from […]
Posted inBlack Migration
Black Meccas Exist – But There’s a Catch
This is part of a yearlong Capital B series on the country’s current Black migration, the most significant movement of Black people in the U.S. in 50 years. It was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Environmental and Epistemic Justice Initiative at Wake Forest University. The search for a Black mecca since African […]
Posted inClimate Change, Environmental Justice
Black Louisianans Grapple With a Climate Change-Denying Governor-Elect
Every 100 minutes, a football field-sized piece of Louisianan land is swallowed by rising seas. But the state, the second-Blackest in America, recently elected a governor who says that climate change is a “hoax.” Just a year removed from Louisiana’s release of its first climate action plan, Black activists fear that Republican Gov.-elect Jeff Landry […]
Posted inClimate Change, Environmental Justice
New Fed Report Outlines the Unequal Burden of Climate Change
Athens, Alabama, isn’t unique – and that’s the issue. Streetlights are nonexistent, homes aren’t connected to the city’s sewage lines, and streets are poorly maintained. But in the town, which is the third-fastest growing in Alabama, residents say this reality disproportionately impacts Black people, contributing to residents being expected to live shorter lives than 94% […]
Posted inClimate Change, Environmental Justice
Why Upgrading the Nation’s Electric Grid Is a Racial Issue
Having grown up in Minnesota, the second-coldest state in the continental United States, Mia Brooks smiled at the thought of the year-round soggy Southern heat before moving to Texas. But as climate change makes summer more oppressive nationwide, it’s made Southern winters particularly more intense. Over the past two decades, the South’s winter and spring […]
