“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.”

“Each January, scholars and activists alike prepare to refute superficial and simplistic tributes to Martin Luther King Jr. The widespread celebration of the King holiday—from churches to schools to corporations—makes this difficult. King's legacy is invoked to promote empty multiculturalism and facile ideas of change, and it reflects erasures in civil rights history. Historian Michael K. Honey rights some of these wrongs in To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice. With clear writing and a thoughtful voice, Honey guides readers through pivotal movements of King's life by foregrounding his tense and symbiotic relationships with the labor movement. Honey adds texture to King's journey from being a descendant of people who ‘experienced deep poverty in the countryside’ to the supporter of striking sanitation workers in Memphis the day before his assassination (p. 22). Honey emphasizes that King's path was sometimes cleared, and sometimes muddied, by an interracial, but not always harmoniously integrated, labor movement.”

“Terrance Roberts shot and injured Hasan Jones in 2013. There is no question about that. What made this shooting fascinating to people in Denver was the question of which Terrance Roberts shot Jones. Roberts had risen to prominence locally and nationally as a peace activist, after years in the Bloods gang and serving a decade in prison on several felony convictions. Roberts’s anti-gang effort, known as the Colorado Camo Movement because of its members’ camouflage gear, unfolded in the very section of Denver he used to run. Had Roberts, the founder of a youth mentoring organization, acted in self-defense against Jones, a gang member? Or did ShowBizz — Roberts’s gang moniker — appear that day because, in fact, Roberts had never really changed?”

“As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor shows in Race for Profit, we are also only beginning to reckon with the complex network of bankers, real estate agents, and federal agencies that used the rhetoric of equality to obscure a set of race-to-the-bottom schemes that sought to extract as much wealth as possible from poor Black Americans.”

“The Smithsonian Institution's new National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) takes visitors on a spellbinding journey through the African American past and present.”