When Naimah Muhammad heard that her alma mater, Fisk University, planned to build a data center on campus, she was annoyed and confused. The announcement came just days after the spring semester ended. There were no hearings, town halls, or meetings with students or residents of the majority-Black neighborhood in north Nashville, Tennessee, she said. […]
Money
Posted inHousing, Politics & Policy
In America’s Poorest State, Unhoused People May Soon Be Jailed
NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana Gov. Landry has signed into law what the National Homelessness Law Center says is “one of the cruelest anti-homeless bills in the country.” As the Louisiana state Senate debated what the National Homelessness Law Center says is “one of the cruelest anti-homeless bills in the country,” more than 50 mainly Black […]
Posted inEconomic Development, Politics & Policy, Rural Issues
One of America’s Last Black Homesteads Is Fighting to Preserve Its Full Story
Beverly Steele didn’t realize her hometown could be recognized for its historic significance. It’s one of the only two African American homesteading communities left in the nation. In Royal, Florida, Black families are still holding onto the inherited 40-acre plot passed down nearly two centuries ago. It’s a rare reality in America today, given the […]
Posted inCommunity, Culture, Economic Development, History
Black Burial Grounds Are Disappearing as Families Fight to Protect Them
The first time Terry O’Neal walked into an old cemetery, she found splintered coffins pushed up by storms and time, with “skeletons sitting outside of caskets.” In Chloe, Louisiana, the acre that holds generations of Black, Creole, and Indigenous families looked more like an abandoned field than a resting place, she recalled. The neglect in […]
Posted inEconomy, Elections, Politics & Policy
Black Women in Mississippi Are Connecting Voting to Peace and Prosperity
Over the years, Gabrielle Wyatt has heard directly from Black women nationally who described wealth as not only earnings, but about the conditions to live fully with financial freedom, abundance of choice, belonging, and thriving health. With the attack on Black economic and political power, Black women have been hit the hardest, disproportionately suffering from […]
Posted inBlack Migration, Climate Change, Economic Development, Environmental Justice, Housing, Politics & Policy
As the Sea Rises and Rents Triple, Miami’s Black Neighborhoods Are Disappearing
This is the second story in a series on “climate gentrification.” 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. MIAMI — By the time Latonya Floyd came outside, the photographer’s lens […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Extreme Weather, Housing, Politics & Policy
Trump Weakened FEMA, and a Black St. Louis Neighborhood Is Paying the Price
ST. LOUIS — The tapping sound drew Jeffrey Bingham to his front window. Outside, the world was folding in on itself. Trees bent sideways. Power lines snapped. Across the street, a two-story brick house crumbled and disappeared instantly. Then his windows blew and the front door ripped open. He ran for the basement as pressure […]
Posted inHistory, Money
Charleston’s Gullah Geechee Community Demand 7,000 Acres in Reparations
Marcus McDonald’s roots run deep on both his sides of his family in Charleston, South Carolina. He’s a descendant of the Boone Hall Plantation, where his ancestors in his father’s family were once held captive. They come from a line of Gullah Geechee people, the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were enslaved […]
Posted inClimate Change, Criminal Justice, Economic Development, Environmental Justice, Policing, Politics & Policy
Atlanta’s ‘Cop City’ Makes a Black Neighborhood a Testing Lab for AI Policing
This story was published in partnership with Counterstream Media for The AI issue of Peace & Riot. ATLANTA — When he drives through his neighborhood now, Brian Page passes rows of police cars and AI‑powered cameras that track nearly every movement. For most of his life, Page, who goes by “Scapegoat Jones,” felt safest in […]
Posted inEconomic Development, Rural Issues
Railroad Wins Appeal to Take Generations-Old Land in Rural Georgia
Months ago, Blaine Smith was afraid that the Georgia Court of Appeals would allow a railroad company to seize part of his family’s generations-old land. That fear came true Wednesday when the court upheld a lower court’s decision to let Sandersville Railroad exercise eminent domain to take properties from several landowners in Sparta, Georgia, to […]
