Most people don’t even know who they are, and that’s probably a good thing, in a sense. They’re a group of educated Black women on a mission that no one else is willing to give countless hours of charitable time to. It’s all about numbers, and there’s one number that ought to stop people in […]
There are houses where people live, where people die, and then there are houses that seem to collect the missing. On West Chew Avenue in Philadelphia’s Olney section sits an ordinary-looking rowhouse that has become the center of something almost impossible to describe without sounding like fiction. For years, people walked past it, cars rolled […]
Listen to a short preview of the article https://youtu.be/XpzXLCAjAKA The moment Jeanetta Brantley made the noise clearer around a call recording, the noise around her character and her past became deafening. Brantley, an audio professional, took a publicly released marine-distress recording connected to the final hours of 18-year-old Nolan Wells and performed what she described […]
America often criticizes Black people for distrusting authorities, particularly in places such as Mississippi. But trust cannot be demanded while history remains unresolved. For generations, Black families have carried stories of people being threatened, abducted, murdered and buried without justice. This is not folklore. The FBI and Department of Justice have documented Mississippi cases in […]
A lie repeated for nearly forty years does not become a confession simply because the public wants to believe it and has memorized it. Whenever the Reverend Al Sharpton enters a racially sensitive case, his critics reach reflexively for the same name. Tawana Brawley. They do not merely say that a grand jury rejected Brawley’s […]
There is a lucrative market in America for a Black man willing to tell white audiences that racism is exaggerated, Black distrust is irrational, and the real problem is always Black people themselves. Brandon Tatum has learned how to work that market. The former police officer turned conservative podcaster has built a large platform by […]
A court can issue a gag order. A judge can seal documents. Prosecutors and defense attorneys can stand before the bench, place their hands on a Bible, and swear that they understand the seriousness of protecting a cooperating witness. But in Baltimore City, somehow, the streets can still get the paperwork. According to recent reporting […]
Like so many before me, I made the trek down the long, winding roads leading to the Maryland State Police Training Commission in Woodstock, Maryland. I arrived for state training believing I was beginning a career in public service. I did not yet understand that I was also entering a culture governed by its own […]
America has a white people problem. Not all white people, of course. That disclaimer must be rushed to the front of every racial conversation like a hostage with a note pinned to his shirt. Not all white people. Not even most, some people will insist. Just enough to keep Black folks rehearsing survival scripts before […]
America turned 250 years old, and like clockwork, the same old racist ghost showed up wearing khakis, sunglasses, and a mask. During the nation’s milestone celebration, while politicians wrapped themselves in flags and gave speeches about freedom, hundreds of masked white nationalists marched through Washington, D.C., carrying Confederate imagery and chanting about “reclaiming” America. Reports […]
