At 76, Patricia Greenwood has given up on trying to name whatever now grows in the yard. It isn’t grass, she said. That died many floods ago and never returned. The water in her kitchen has never run clear in her memory. Even the dog refuses to drink it. She is one of many Cahokia […]
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 inBlack Migration, Climate Change, Economic Development, Environmental Justice, Housing, Politics & Policy
The Black Mecca’s Climate Plan Is Costing Black Atlanta Residents Their Homes
This is the first story in a series on “climate gentrification” in Black neighborhoods. Support for this series was provided by The Neal Peirce Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting journalism on ways to make cities and their larger regions work better for all people. ATLANTA — By the time Atlanta hosts a World Cup […]
Posted inHousing, Politics & Policy
Georgia Lawmakers With Real Estate Ties Are Writing the State’s Housing Laws
This article was produced in partnership with the nonprofit newsroom Type Investigations, where Chauncey Alcorn and Adam Mahoney are 2025-2026 Ida B. Wells fellows. When Kenneth Porter moved to Atlanta from Wilmington, North Carolina, in 2016 to advance his career in the entertainment industry, he rented part of a two-bedroom townhouse on Atlanta’s eastside for […]
Posted inEquity, Money, Public Services, Wealth Gap
Hidden Profits in Power Bills Are Hitting Black Southerners Hardest
Brionté McCorkle opened her latest Georgia Power bill and started doing some math to try to understand where her money was going. The total was $233 — steep, but familiar for her and her neighbors living just outside Atlanta. Then she plugged the number into a new calculator built off a national analysis of investor‑owned […]
Posted inEconomy, Environmental Justice
Congo Miners Keep Dying for Minerals That Power U.S. Tech
When the earth caved in eastern Congo last week, more than 200 Congolese miners were buried alive. Those who survived spent the next several days pulling hundreds of bodies from the red clay that has become increasingly essential to powering the evolution of technology within the U.S. The collapse came less than a month after […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Extreme Weather, Housing
Insurance Crisis Leaves Black Homeowners One Disaster Away From Homelessness
The insurance check to rebuild Zaire Calvin’s family properties came in at just under $300,000, a drop in the bucket compared to the roughly $2.1 million they had been worth. His family had five homes sprawled across two lots in the leafy suburb of Altadena, California, before the Eaton Fire unleashed its wrath, leveling both […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Politics & Policy
Chemical Plants Keep Exploding, but Trump’s EPA Is Rolling Back Safety Rules Anyway
In September 2023, sirens blared again across Hopewell, Virginia, after oleum, commonly known as fuming sulfuric acid, leaked from the AdvanSix chemical plant. The plant, one of many big polluters in the predominantly Black city, had at least 66 violations of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act at the time. And this […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Technology
In Chicago, a Pentagon‑backed Lab Could Price Out Black Residents
CHICAGO — By the time Jerry Whirley heard that a $9 billion quantum-computing campus was coming a few blocks from his South Shore home, most of what he actually needed from his neighborhood, like somewhere to buy medicine or groceries, had already vanished. He didn’t learn about “Quantum City” from the governor or the mayor, […]
Posted inNews
Racist Doll Thrown at Mardi Gras Parade Ignites Citywide Backlash
During what should have been a joyful 7th birthday at a Mardi Gras parade, a young Black girl in New Orleans caught a gift that stopped her family cold. The child was tossed a Black doll with noose-like beads around its neck from a parade float adorning the phrase “crack pipe,” the child’s mother, Shayna […]
Posted inCourts, Economic Development, Eminent Domain, History, Politics & Policy, Rural Issues
Georgia Is Letting a Railroad Seize Land a Black Family Has Owned For 100 Years
SPARTA, Ga. — In 1850, Andrew Benjamin Tarbutton enslaved 25 people in central Georgia. A year later, he purchased more than a dozen additional people off the docks in Savannah and marched them toward his home, setting the foundation for his family’s generational wealth. Four generations later, a railroad company owned by one of his […]