During this planting session, farmer Jay Huggins didn’t have much to complain about. The 37-year-old row crop farmer planted his corn and soybeans with minimal challenges. He didn’t battle drought or excessive weather conditions on his 1,000-acre farm in Okolona, Mississippi. His harvest this year didn’t leave him “in the red.” “The fields I’ve been […]
Money
Posted inEconomic Development, Environmental Justice
Data Center Coming to Your Neighborhood? See Where Your Candidates Stand.
If you’re a Black American worried about a data center coming to your neighborhood, the questions are immediate and seemingly boundless. Will electricity bills rise? How much water will it use? And will elected officials listen before approving it? A new nationwide election dashboard from the NAACP and the Memphis, Tennessee-based Black environmental organization Young, […]
Posted inFederal Overhaul, Mental Health, Politics & Policy, The Workplace
‘I Had to Get My Mind Right’: The Challenges to Loving Relationships After Being Laid Off
This story is a collaboration between MindSite News, Capital B, The 19th, and The Nation, and was edited by MindSite News. Photos by Kuwilileni Hauwanga On April Fool’s Day last year, Philadelphia federal worker Darlene Tart-Scott arrived at work only to find out she had been laid off. Minutes later, she was on a train […]
Posted inFederal Overhaul, Mental Health, Politics & Policy, The Workplace
A ‘Gut Punch’: Black Women Fired by DOGE Work to Overcome Shame and Self-Blame
This story is a collaboration between MindSite News, Capital B, The 19th, and The Nation, and was edited by MindSite News. Photographs by Kuwilileni Hauwanga When Sharon Davis opened her email at 5 a.m. on April 1, 2025, she learned that she had been fired from the Food and Drug Administration after 24 years of […]
Posted inFederal Overhaul, Mental Health, Politics & Policy, The Workplace
The Unseen Toll: Depression, Anxiety Plague Black Women a Year After DOGE Layoffs
Part 1 of a three-part series, FIRED: The DOGE Layoffs Hit Black Women Hard, a collaboration between MindSite News, Capital B, The 19th, and The Nation, edited by MindSite News. Photographs by Kuwilileni Hauwanga Darnese Foster remembers the day she learned she was fired from her federal government job. “I was off that Friday, which […]
Posted inEconomic Development, Politics & Policy
A Data Center Promises Jobs in This Black Town, but Residents Aren’t Convinced
CLARKSDALE, Mississippi — Rumors of a potential data center had loomed over Voneshay Walker like a cloud for months. She’d heard the whispers and seen reports of other centers popping up in small towns across the South. She didn’t expect it to hit so close to home. Walker is a native of Tutwiler, Mississippi, a […]
Posted inEconomic Development, Environmental Justice, Politics & Policy
Meta’s Data Center Will Be the Biggest in the U.S., but No One Knows Who They’re Hiring
Across a rural pocket of cotton and soybean fields in northeast Louisiana, Meta, the eighth most profitable company in the world, is attempting to build America’s largest data center. The project, which is located in Richland Parish, an area home to three times as many Black residents as the national average, has seen its anticipated […]
Posted inEmployment, HBCUs, Higher Education, The Workplace
A Free D.C. Trade Program Is Connecting Black Students to Higher-Paying Jobs
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Marcus Bruce leaned against the tables where he and his carpentry students paused to answer questions from local middle schoolers on a recent tour of the University of the District of Columbia’s workforce campus. The young students didn’t hold back: “What happens to student loans? Will they take it from your check […]
Posted inBlack Migration, Housing, Wealth Gap
The Black Suburban Dream is Now Leading to a New Wave of Gentrification
When Caleb Roberts moved from Milwaukee to Texas, he knew the story of Black people in Dallas being pushed out for generations. In Milwaukee, he helped to stop a $1 billion highway project that threatened to gentrify his neighborhood after he had already seen it happen across the country. During the 20th century, across Dallas, […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics & Policy
Supreme Court Blocks Trump’s Attempt to Fire Lisa Cook from Federal Reserve Board
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday blocked President Trump’s bid to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, leaving her job secure for now. A distinguished economist, the Georgia native and Spelman College grad is the first Black woman to sit on the Fed’s board. She also held roles in the Clinton, […]
