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 […]
Black women
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 inPolitics & Policy, Voting
Black Women Are Sounding the Alarm About Voting Rights and America’s Future
Is the nation – from institutions to lawmakers — investing in the needs of Black women voters? A new, nonpartisan poll by The Highland Project and brilliant corners Research and Strategies that surveyed 700 participants found the answer is “overwhelmingly no.” The report focused on what researchers define as “the fulfillment gap,” whether Black women […]
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 inElections, Politics & Policy, Rural Issues
Black Women Sweep Local Elections in Small Towns
Deondreze Young hadn’t planned on a career in politics. But, when seats opened up on her hometown city council, her father encouraged her to run, and she did, in hopes of making change in Wadley, Georgia. Young’s roles and position in the community — as a cosmetology instructor, nail technician, substitute teacher, and mother — […]
Posted inEconomy, Employment, Money, Partner Content
Black Women’s Unemployment Is Rising. Economists Say It’s a Warning Sign.
Originally published by The 19th Unemployment rates over the past year have remained largely steady for every group of workers but one: Black women, whose unemployment rates have been rising. For the past three months that increase has been even more pronounced, with Black women’s unemployment rate hovering at 6 percent — twice the rate […]
Posted inCulture, Politics & Policy, Public Safety, Rural Issues
Meet the Black Women Who Say Survivalism Is a Necessity, Not a Trend
Kelli McGuffey Pilkington hunts deer and squirrels, fishes whenever she can, stores jars of preserved food she cans herself — and keeps a holstered Smith and Wesson .38-caliber handgun under her T-shirt, just in case. Pilkington, 48, is a sturdily built 6-foot-tall Black biracial woman who lives in a 644-square-foot cabin on 18 acres of […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
How Black Women Are Approaching a Kamala Harris Candidacy
Camille McCallum is one of the thousands of Black women taking up the banner to support Vice President Kamala Harris — and she’s turning to TikTok to spread the word. Inspired by a call filled with 44,000 Black women from diverse walks of life, McCallum jumped onto social media within hours of the news that […]
