She’s home. Brittany Martin, the South Carolina woman who spent nearly four years in prison after being arrested at a George Floyd protest in June 2020, has been released. Martin, 36, had been separated from her five children and husband for nearly 1,000 days before her release on Wednesday morning. She was transferred from the […]
Criminal Justice
Posted inCriminal Justice, Everything's Political, Politics & Policy, Public Safety
The Threat of Unchecked Anti-Black Violence in 2025 and Beyond
What might happen to federal checks on anti-Black violence once Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office in January? Maybe this question popped into your head after you read that the U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the killing of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot by a […]
Posted inCulture, Incarceration
‘The Wildest Show in the South’: Spectacle and Suffering at America’s Biggest Prison
ANGOLA, La. — On a blistering fall afternoon, even by Louisiana’s standards, mainly Black incarcerated people cling tightly to bucking horses. They run from barreling bulls and get tossed around like rag dolls in events that are outlawed in rodeos across the country — but not here at the “wildest show in the South.” Each […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Education, Environmental Justice, LGBTQ, Politics & Policy, Reproductive Health
What Trump’s Second Term Could Look Like for Black Americans
The dread many Black Americans feel about Donald Trump’s triumph in the 2024 presidential election isn’t misplaced: He organized his reelection campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris around revenge — around how he and his allies can inflict the greatest amount of suffering on vulnerable groups and on those he considers enemies. Making things worse, […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Policing
The FBI Thwarted a Racist Terror Plot in Nashville
This story was reported in partnership with The Trace. It was the sort of stomach-churning conspiracy you’d expect to find in a dystopian neo-Nazi novel. Federal agents this week arrested a man driven by white nationalist ideology and charged him with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction to attack an energy facility in […]
Posted inCourts, Elections, LGBTQ
Why Judicial Elections Matter
It was a moment in a Detroit courtroom that went viral. A judge ordered that a 15-year-old girl be handcuffed and dressed in a prison uniform. Her offense? She fell asleep in his courtroom during a class trip. The incident was caught on the cameras in state District Court Judge Kenneth J. King’s courtroom, the […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Exonerated Five Sue Trump for Defamation
The five men exonerated in connection with the Central Park jogger case have called on a federal judge to put a stop to what they described as an ongoing campaign of falsehoods being leveled against them by former president Donald Trump. Since May 1, 1989, Trump has publicized his “hate” for the five Black and […]
Posted inCourts, Housing, Policing, Politics & Policy
Black Unhoused Communities Targeted After Supreme Court Ruling
LOS ANGELES – On a dirt pocket between a sidewalk and freeway in the Wilmington neighborhood in South Los Angeles, roughly half a dozen people lived in tents for most of the summer. But by 7 a.m. on Sept. 24, three police SUVs and a bright orange truck lined the street next to the freeway […]
Posted inInfrastructure, Partner Content, Public Safety
A Boy’s Bicycling Death Still Haunts a Black Neighborhood 35 Years Later
The story originally published on Healthbeat, a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published by Civic News Company and KFF Health News. Sign up for its newsletters here. DURHAM, N.C. — It’s been 35 years since John Parker died after a pickup collided with the bike he was riding on Cheek Road in east Durham before school. He was 6. […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Policing
The Epidemic of Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls in Wisconsin
Sheena Scarbrough had read the headlines about missing and murdered Black people in Wisconsin and across the country — but never imagined it would hit so close to home. On April 1, she spoke to her daughter Sade Carleena Robinson via FaceTime. On April 3 she found out the 19-year-old was missing. Scarbrough says she […]