Photographs by Kuwilileni Hauwanga/Capital B Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Smithsonian Institution’s first Black secretary, is stepping down after more than a year of escalating attacks from the White House over how the institution presents U.S. history. “I have spent nearly half of my life working at and being part of the Smithsonian family, and […]
Politics & Policy
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy
Kansas City’s Black Voters Keep House Seat as Missouri and U.S. Supreme Court Block GOP Map
In a setback for Republicans hoping to retain their hold on the House in the midterm elections, the U.S. Supreme Court once again rejected Missouri congressional maps backed by President Donald Trump. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Missouri temporarily blocked the state from returning to its 2022 congressional map for the November election. The […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
College Student Dies Amid ICE Crackdown on Haitian Immigrants
Last month, Pierre Damas Bel started his first year at Wright State University with the kind of future his family had crossed borders to imagine. The 20-year-old, an honors graduate of Springfield High School in Ohio and JROTC member who emigrated from Haiti in 2024, planned to study neuroscience, play soccer, and eventually attend medical […]
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 inElections, Politics & Policy, Voting
Black Voting Power Is Under Attack, So Thousands Came to D.C. to Fight Back
WASHINGTON — Shirley Lee traveled nearly 1,500 miles from Houston to the nation’s capital. Wearing a cowboy hat emblazoned with an American flag, she said that she wasn’t going to miss this year’s March on Washington. “It’s my 70th birthday on Sunday, so [being here] is my birthday present to me,” Lee told Capital B. […]
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 inPolitics & Policy
Trump Is Moving to Restrict Mail Voting Just Months Before the Midterms
With the midterm elections less than three months away, efforts to restrict access to the ballot box — efforts that could have major ramifications for Black voters — continue. A federal judge on Sept. 4 prevented the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing the Trump administration’s new rules during the upcoming November elections, prompting the administration […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
A Federal Judge Is Examining the Justice Department’s Case Against Don Lemon
Months after the arrest of journalist Don Lemon, a federal judge in Minnesota will probe whether grounds exist to toss the Justice Department’s case against him. On Aug. 18, Minnesota federal Judge Laura Provinzino issued an order demanding the Justice Department provide her with a wide swath of grand jury materials related to Lemon and […]
Posted inExtreme Weather, Infrastructure, Politics & Policy
From Memphis to Gary, Black Communities Are Being Left in the Dark
In the pews of a Memphis, Tennessee, church on Monday morning, the Rev. Earle J. Fisher wasn’t getting a headstart on next Sunday’s sermon, he was preparing a resource hub. “This can’t be my normal Monday because like so many others, we’re without power,” said Fisher, who teaches at LeMoyne-Owen College, an HBCU in Memphis. […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
The Battle Over Black Representation in a White Mississippi County
DeSOTO COUNTY, Mississippi. — Hester Jackson-McCray witnessed the beginning of the economic boom in this Mississippi Delta county when she moved south from Chicago in 1999. Year after year, she has watched the county attract newcomers and grow culturally and economically, cotton fields giving way to subdivisions and shopping centers. Other Black families like hers […]
