Publications

“The title of Benedict J. Fernandez’s photograph could have doubled as an entry on the society pages of a Black newspaper or magazine: Dr. King enjoys lunch with his family after church in Atlanta. African American publications often reported on the luncheons, bridal showers, and parties of the Black elite.”

“A group of Georgetown University students in 2019 began wearing buttons that read For Elizabeth, or For Isaac, or For any array of other names. These adornments could have been mistaken for student government campaign buttons. But instead they pointed to a pivotal moment in Georgetown’s history: these were the names on the inventory of a bill of sale from 1838.”

“Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) may have poked a sleeping bear recently when he vowed to go to war to protect Chick-fil-A from a group of Notre Dame students and faculty who oppose a planned restaurant on campus. Graham’s comments were the latest chapter in the political jousting over the chicken chain’s conservative politics and religiosity.

But what many don’t know is that Chick-fil-A is far from atypical in fast food. Many chains have roots in two pillars of 20th-century conservatism: Christianity and free markets.”

“In the summer of 1967, Ebony magazine readers were offered a rare and deeply personal look into the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The esteemed leader had dispensed with his suits and ties—the standard uniform for mass meetings and court appearances. An elegant photo spread captured King in swim trunks, pajamas and slippers. King was at rest. Surrounded by the natural beauty of Ochos Rios, Jamaica, and unknowingly in the penultimate winter of his life, King’s time away from his multiple responsibilities to the freedom movement revealed an intimate portrait of a leader in transformation.”

“With Biden as the nominee and the general election campaign underway, there may be an impulse to forget what is now behind us, in the interest of simply dealing with what is in front. Yet the time is always right to consider how the party can move beyond rhetorical commitments to diversity. Competing against a Republican Party that has pandered to white nationalists requires a serious reckoning with the unfinished business of process and policy.”

McDonald’s has profited handily from its Black customers, while its presence in Black communities has led to a vexing set of circumstances for Black wealth and health.

Students do the hard work of rectifying racism in the academy. Administrators take the credit.

Americans have long pinned economic hopes on fast-food chains. And where there are hopes, there are scams.

Popeyes has long cultivated a black customer base — which has positive and negative ramifications.

“Five years after Ferguson, BLM remains a potent political and social force. Its power rests on the organizing principles that grounded it: a radical, intersectional critique of racism; locally based organizing that respects the autonomy of its affiliates; and multi-modal activism that does not restrain the definition of politics.”

Well-meaning liberals have long failed to recognize their own role in systems of oppression.

“In Whitman’s description of the flight and rest of a fugitive, we are reminded of the sheer brutality of slavery, as well as the radical possibility of humanity in the face of immorality.”

“The first thing I learned at college was that as a black student I had ruined college for everyone else. Among my cohort of about 3,500 at the University of Missouri at Columbia in the fall of 1997, black students numbered fewer than 300. We were outliers, and to many of our nonblack classmates, we were the undeserving throngs.”

“On a crisp February morning, I joined my co-hosts and producer of the podcast ‘Undisclosed: The Killing of Freddie Gray’ for a visit to Gilmor Homes in Baltimore, where Gray was arrested and thrown in the back of a police vehicle in 2015…”