When Kermit Williams hears a new pro-Donald Trump radio spot that’s supposed to draw in Black voters, his mind sprints in the opposite direction: He thinks about the former president’s history of aggression toward marginalized communities. “I can’t unsee the Central Park Five and what Trump did to try to get a group of innocent […]
Politics & Policy
Posted inHistory, Politics & Policy
Daring to Be Bold: Examining Shirley Chisholm’s Everlasting Impact
When Kimberly Peeler-Allen was in the fourth grade, she had to pick someone to research for Women’s History Month. Her mother had a thought: Why not Shirley Chisholm? For Peeler-Allen, 47, the link was personal. Like Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and the first Black candidate to seek a major political party’s […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
The Fight for Democracy and Black Votes Loomed Large in Biden’s Speech
Among the many special guests at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday was the jazz singer and civil rights legend Bettie Mae Fikes. Beloved as the Voice of Selma, Fikes is known for having led protests in song. She often changed the lyrics of Black standards to match the movement: “Tell […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Voting
Biden, Bloody Sunday, and the Ongoing Fight for Black Votes
Fifty-nine years ago on Thursday, white state troopers brutalized voting rights protesters as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Footage of the carnage — one officer cracked 25-year-old John Lewis’ skull with a billy club — enraged the country, and galvanized widespread support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, […]
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy
Why Super Tuesday Is a ‘Dress Rehearsal’ for the General Election
Kristin Powell vividly remembers watching the Super Tuesday returns in February 2008 and being consumed by a single question: Can he actually make it? A college student spending a semester in Italy at the time, Powell was referring to Barack Obama, the youthful U.S. senator from Illinois who was challenging the establishment darling Hillary Clinton […]
Posted inInside Capital B, Politics & Policy
Introducing Everything’s Political From Capital B
Whether it’s the subjects we learn in school, the hairstyles we wear to work, or the art we make about our experiences, Black people in America are regularly reminded that our lives are lived under the influence of politics. In our new politics and culture newsletter, Everything’s Political, Capital B reporter Brandon Tensley will go […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Voting
How the Legacy of a Reconstruction-Era Massacre Shapes Voting Rights Today
Shauna Sias, 48, has lived in Opelousas, Louisiana, almost her entire life. And thanks to her father, a civil rights advocate who battled racial segregation in the Deep South, she’s always known about the massacre that shattered the small Louisiana city during Reconstruction. Over the course of around two weeks beginning on Sept. 28, 1868, […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
60 Years After the Civil Rights Act, Equal Opportunity Is Under Attack
There’s too much at stake with constant assaults on civil rights — and a new report is calling on Black Americans to organize and “fight for the soul of America.” The National Urban League’s State of Black America report comes just months ahead of the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Why Some Black South Carolinians Aren’t Responding to Nikki Haley’s Message
Kym Smith is passionate about a wide range of causes, from pushing for South Carolina public schools to include Black history in their curricula to bringing adequate health care to Black communities. But rarely, if ever, does Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley grapple with issues of deep-seated racial inequality, said Smith, a 36-year-old mother and […]
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy
‘New Literacy Test’: The Black Organizers Waging War on Disinformation
Every time an election looms, Baton Rouge resident Ashley Shelton notices the red flags — the signs sprinkled around the city and other parts of Louisiana that give the wrong information about when voters can cast their ballots. She doesn’t know who the bad actors are. But whenever she sees one of these signs — […]
