Trump's twisted Education Dept, Black men mental health panel, Karmelo Anthony verdict
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What I’m Reading
Trump’s Education Department is backing away from addressing civil rights for Black students, AP News
In what is a surprise to no one, the Department of Education has shifted from working to remedy historic, systemic discrimination against Black people to another tool to address white grievances. Civil rights lawyers explained to the AP that these actions are “a complete inversion of legal history.”
Being Black in Pete Hegseth’s military, The Atlantic
Since becoming defense secretary, Pete Hegseth has worked hard to “delegitimize the accomplishments — and the very presence — of Black people in the military,” Clint Smith writes.
‘The whole of New York is stressed right now’: how Knicks finals fever reached Rikers Island, The Guardian
You don’t have to be a New York Knicks fan to appreciate this story. The Guardian’s Bryan Armen Graham watched Game 1 of the NBA Finals with nearly 2,000 incarcerated people inside the notorious jail complex.
Black Men shouldn’t do ‘this man thing’ alone, Word in Black
Word In Black pulled together a panel of therapists, wellness advocates, and community leaders to examine the mental health crisis facing Black men. Watch above.
What’s In The News
Across America
California: Oakland Museum of California will exhibit works from Mildred Howard’s 50-year career…
District of Columbia: Thanks to a partnership with the Washington Informer, several of our Urban Journalism Workshop high school students are seeing their bylines in a newspaper for the very first time. Read Jackson-Reed HS student Lilia Choice’s reporting on Black faith leaders in the D.C. area…
Florida: A Duval County School Board candidate used AI to create Black supporters in a campaign photo…
Georgia: Spelman College has named roboticist and artificial intelligence expert Ayanna Howard as its new president…
Illinois: A South Side church is offering a $10,000 reward to find the person who left a burning cross in Grant Park…
Iowa: The state Supreme Court has blocked the University of Iowa from repurposing a science scholarship for Black students…
Kansas: Wichita Northwest High School student Ta’Liyah Lewis has been crowned Miss Kansas’ Teen 2026…
Massachusetts: Someone was caught on camera walking up to Boston’s Museum of African American History before burning their Juneteenth celebration materials…
Missouri: A Missouri bill tried to put a price tag on enrollment to fix the education budget, without considering the vulnerable populations HBCUs serve, Alecia Taylor writes…
Pennsylvania: Daniel Yu was the first Princeton valedictorian to major in African American studies. Strangers ridiculed his selection…
South Carolina: The state’s GOP lawmakers want to withhold millions from South Carolina State University after a commencement speaker protest…
Texas: A jury in Collin County has sentenced Karmelo Anthony to 35 years in prison for the 2025 Frisco track meet murder of Austin Metcalf. He filed an appeal…
What’s Happening
The Justice Department’s hollowed-out Civil Rights Division is supposed to enforce federal anti-discrimination statutes. It has a new focus: the Second Amendment…
I met up with former Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah outside the newsroom building to show support as she filed a grievance against the outlet over her firing…
Adam Mahoney for Capital B: Black burial grounds are disappearing as families fight to protect them…
The Anti-DEI era is America’s costliest contradiction, according to NCA&T chancellor James Martin…
404 Media: In 1999, a farmer gave away 87 acres of land to a small Texas city to use as a park. The city sold it to a data center developer for $10 million…
WBEZ columnist Natalie Moore explored the Obama Presidential Center and all of its intriguing juxtapositions…
A federal appeals court revived a lawsuit alleging the State of Florida underfunded FAMU by nearly $2 billion over the past three decades…
Lynn Price, former co-owner of Houston’s popular Turkey Leg Hut, pled guilty to federal charges after he was accused of orchestrating the firebombing of a rival restaurant…
The families of two Black infants who died nearly six decades ago filed a federal lawsuit accusing the U.S. government of secretly using their children in experiments without their parents’ consent…
Rich Norris, assistant principal at a Rhode Island high school, has written a new book about the leadership group and its message for young men of color…
Word In Black: Advocates say weakening the Voting Rights Act could reduce Black communities’ influence over school funding, curriculum and educational opportunity…
Jalil Richardson spent months incarcerated in Florida and North Carolina after being misidentified by AI facial recognition tech for a crime he did not commit…
Mara Gay traveled to Memphis and Montgomery, Alabama, to write this essay: A shocking betrayal of Black Americans…
Entertainment News
R&B veteran Joe stepped behind the NPR Tiny Desk to blaze through his smash hits, including “Good Girls,” “I Wanna Know,” and more. Watch above…
The official trailer for “Once Upon a Time in Harlem,” a film about a 1972 party with the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance, is out…
Keke Palmer is teaming up with the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television for a new artist-in-residence program…
AP: Disney announced that it has acquired the global streaming rights to ‘Gracie’s Corner’ and will develop new original content with the Hollingsworth family…
I just finished watching “Nemesis,” and I was impressed with Y’lan Noel’s performance as Coltrane Wilder. The star spoke with The Grio’s Haniyah Philogene about his most compelling role yet…
lauren michele jackson profiled Lizzo for the New Yorker...
Lamar Richardson has made history as the youngest Black lead producer ever to win a Tony Award in one of the ceremony’s top production categories…
The New York Times reviewed Ahmir Thompson’s documentary on the iconic band Earth, Wind & Fire, calling it an “astonishing movie that fully lives up to its deliberately unwieldy title”...
Historian Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, daughter of the late comedian Richard Pryor, sat down with NPR’s Tonya Mosley to talk about her father’s relationship with the N-word...
DJ Screw’s sound shaped hip-hop hits in the digital era. Now, his music is finally heading to digital streaming platforms…
Admitted serial rapist and former NFL champion Darren Sharper is nearing a projected 2028 release date...
CBS quietly canceled one of its most-watched shows: “Watson,” which starred Morris Chestnut...
The Los Angeles Times profiled Byron Allen and his journey from comedian to media mogul…
Serena Williams has returned to pro tennis with a doubles victory in London, but her comeback has been cut short due to injury…
For the New York Times, Jonathan Abrams mapped out the hip-hop soundtracking the Knicks’ run to the NBA Finals…
T Magazine tracked down the eyeglasses Charlie Murphy wore in “Harlem Nights”...
Obituaries
James Blood Ulmer, a singular force in free-funk and avant-garde jazz, has died. He was 86…
Marlene Louise Johnson, a former Associated Press journalist who sued the wire service for discrimination, has died. She was 89…
Stacey King, a three-time NBA champion with the Chicago Bulls who became an Emmy-winning broadcaster, has died. He was 59…
Don’t Miss
Can you beat my time on Black Crossword? 36 seconds!...
I answered 20 questions from Lawrence Ross about my hometown of Detroit, my career, and more. Watch here…
Danielle A. Scruggs of Black Women Directors shared a list of grants and opportunities for those looking to break into the entertainment industry…
Capital B’s Alecia Taylor compiled a list of Black pride celebrations across the country this summer…
The NAACP is accepting nominations for its inaugural “Advancement List,” honoring trailblazers across industries who are advancing Black communities…
The NMAAHC is hosting a Juneteenth community day in Washington. Make sure you check out Juneteenth celebrations in your local area…
Love that your feed is Black on Black! I will be writing about that in the future. But for now, your page speaks to something deeper than individual headlines. It raises the question: why are Black Americans still forced to justify our intelligence, our humanity, our leadership, our history, and our right to exist fully in this country?
For generations, the fear of Black literacy, Black leadership, Black political power, Black economic independence, and Black truth has been used as a weapon against us. The obsession with limiting what Black people can learn, where we can work, what offices we can hold, and how our history is taught says more about the insecurity of the system than it does about Black people.
Why does Black progress live rent-free in so many minds? Why does the existence of educated, successful, outspoken Black people feel like a threat to those who claim superiority? If a society is truly confident in its values, it should not be afraid of truth, history, education, or equality.
And this poison does not stop at America’s borders. Anti-Blackness has been exported, normalized, and repeated across the world, shaping how other nations view Blackness, power, beauty, intelligence, and belonging.
What does that say about humanity? Why is the truth so difficult for people to confront? And why does doing what is right always seem to take lifetimes when the harm has been obvious for generations?
At some point, the question is no longer whether Black Americans have proven ourselves. We have. The question is why so many systems are still built around denying what has always been true.