By Jade Boone Evanston Alderman Ciceley Fleming, a sixth-generation Black resident of the Illinois city and a strong advocate for defunding the local police department, was a dissenting voice and the only vote against what many hailed as a landmark local reparations bill. The legislation, which would provide grants of up to $25,000 to assist…
By Monét Bowen Layshia Clarendon remembered the way they were—the way she and other members of the Atlanta Dream WNBA team felt so connected to owner Kelly Loeffler, and seemed to bond with her on issues both personal and political. Clarendon “shared meals with Kelly, stepped foot in her home…,” she recalled, “introduced her to…
By Airielle Lowe Derek Chauvin’s first words defending his treatment of George Floyd came not facing the jury that convicted him of murder, but at the neighborhood intersection in Minneapolis where he’d kept his knee on Floyd’s neck until he passed out and later died. “We’ve got to control this guy because he’s a sizable…
By Gregory Smith Jr. First came the injury. For the third year in a row, arch rival Oklahoma whipped Texas in the Red River Showdown, a football classic. In Dallas, no less. In Cotton Bowl Stadium. (Seating capacity: 92,000.) In quadruple overtime. 53-45. It was a close contest with, unfortunately for some, a predictable outcome….
By Monét Bowen The Washington Football team ended its season boasting about its victories in matters of top-tier diversity, ways that it had jumped ahead of other teams in the NFL, where 70 percent of the players are Black, but a vast majority of the head coaches and front-office executives are not. The team announced…
By Gregory Smith, Jr. It was 33 years ago when Doug Williams became the first Black quarterback to be a starter and Most Valuable Player in a Super Bowl. Williams led the Washington Redskins to victory over John Elway and the Denver Broncos, 42-10. So much for those who had argued that Black athletes could…
By Airielle Lowe Last year, her first as Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, Adrienne A. Jones ushered through legislation to settle a lawsuit ordering the state to compensate its historically Black public colleges for years of inequitable funding. Gov. Larry Hogan refused to sign the measure, saying its price tag was much too…
By Chrisleen Herard The former vice president had barely clinched the Democratic nomination for president, and George Floyd hadn’t been dead a month when Black conservative Candace Owens added her voice to a chorus of accusers. “They are using Breonna Taylor’s face and George Floyd’s death to funnel MILLIONS to support Joe Biden’s campaign. This…
By Naomi Johnson Misty Copeland, the premier ballerina, sees some potential good in the not so good moments. “With George Floyd and with Black Lives Matter,” Copeland said in a recent online interview, “in 20 years as a professional, though I’ve been saying these things very openly and publicly for 20 years, this is the first…
By Kayla Hill Black Restaurant Week in the District of Columbia was supposed to give one more boost to businesses like Open Crumb, a West African-seasoned eatery in a resurgent neighborhood that many in the nation’s capital might describe as, you know, the other side of town. Earlier, when the weather was warm, governments around…