Sheena Scarbrough had read the headlines about missing and murdered Black people in Wisconsin and across the country — but never imagined it would hit so close to home. On April 1, she spoke to her daughter Sade Carleena Robinson via FaceTime. On April 3 she found out the 19-year-old was missing. Scarbrough says she […]
racism
How Haitian Immigrants Are Fighting Back
They’ve filed criminal charges. They’re talking to the media. They’ve spoken out at the U.N. And they’re organizing politically. As anti-Haitian rhetoric and lies continue to spread, sparking violence and intimidation against immigrants from the overwhelmingly Black country, they and their allies are fighting back. Even as former President Donald Trump and his running mate, […]
Haitian American Group Demands Retraction of Trump’s Statements
Haitian-American community leaders and organizations rebuked former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, for repeating false claims this week that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating household pets and demanded a retraction of the statements. During his Tuesday night debate with Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris on ABC, […]
Justice Has Been Delayed for Black Farmers, and They’re Looking to the Next President for Answers
Bernice Atchinson, an 85-year-old advocate from Alabama, has been fighting for more than 40 years on behalf of her fellow Black farmers. She even represented them in the landmark case Pigford v. Glickman, a class-action lawsuit alleging the U.S. Department of Agriculture discriminated against Black farmers from 1983 to 1997 when they applied for federal […]
After Years of Litigation, First Black Mayor in Rural Alabama Town Gets to Serve
Patrick Braxton is overwhelmed with gratitude. He’s been juggling a yearslong legal battle to serve as the lawful mayor of his hometown, Newbern, Alabama. After years of harassment, his rural town enters a new chapter: Its first Black mayor will finally get to serve. Braxton will be reinstated as mayor of Newbern, according to a […]
Is the Promise of ‘Diversity’ Leaving Black Students Stranded?
This article first appeared on The Emancipator and is part of the coverage of the 50th anniversary of a federal judge’s ruling that led to busing in Boston to desegregate schools It’s republished here under a Creative Commons license. See full series here. During the time of Brown v. Board of Education, the most radical […]
Whistleblowing While Black: How Truth-Telling Changes the Careers of Black Women in Tech
This article was copublished with The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom covering gender, politics, and policy. Sign up for The 19th’s newsletter here. The night of Jan. 5, 2021, Anika Collier Navaroli slept poorly. She had an uneasy feeling about what might happen in Washington, D.C., the next day. Back then, Navaroli was a senior policy official at […]
Rural America Has an Eviction Crisis, Too
Black rural Americans are still feeling the strain of the failed promises of the Reconstruction era and discrimination in lending, as redlining has pushed them away from homeownership into tenancy. A new report illuminates the struggle: Southern Black counties have higher eviction filing rates than their white counterparts. In four states — Georgia, Mississippi, North […]
‘Opera Has Never Been White’: The Invisible Legacy of Black Women in Classical Music
Originally published by The 19th It was 1781 when a 14-year-old girl made her debut as an opera soloist in Saint-Domingue, the former French colony now called Haiti. She was a free person of color, the first person of African descent to star as the soloist in a French opera, and soon became the main […]
Black and Indigenous Activists Unite to Eradicate Racist Landmarks
The waters in and around the United States have had a long history of claiming Black life since the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Along the Kansas and Missouri border, a small, unassuming creek is a part of this lineage, researchers say. For years, Johnson County, Kansas, residents believed the Big Negro Creek that cut through their […]
