Featured
The Erasure of African American Cemeteries: Descendant Communities Fight Back. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America
Americans instinctively understand the sanctity of burial grounds when they walk through Arlington National Cemetery or visit memorials dedicated to national tragedy and sacrifice. These sacred spaces reflect a deeply held belief that the dead deserve reverence, remembrance, and protection. The question raised by the destruction and neglect of African American cemeteries across America is whether that same respect has been extended equally to African American burial grounds. The answer to that question reveals much about the nation’s history, its values, and whose memories it chooses to preserve.
Read complete essay. The Erasure of African American Cemeteries: Descendant Communities Fight Back.
The Week’s Top Stories
Political / Social
The Embarrassment of Trump’s Midterm Convention. By Joan Walsh / The Nation
Many GOP candidates in competitive House and Senate races are steering clear of the Dallas event.
Why not Ken Paxton?” MS NOW’s Chris Jansing asked Texas voter Dorothy Burton, who is Black and a registered Republican, on Wednesday afternoon, a few hours before Donald Trump launched his ridiculous midterm extravaganza in Dallas planned for Wednesday and Thursday. “Because he’s trash,” she shot back. “He is a disgrace.” Read more
Related: Video Shows Crowd Sizes At GOP Midterm Convention — And Trump May Want To Look Away. By Anthony Orrico / HuffPost
Related: Trump’s base sticks with him for the vilest of reasons: analyst. By Adam Lynch / AlterNet
The old order is dying as America faces a full-blown political reckoning. By Thom Hartman / AlterNet
“The old order is dying and the new cannot yet be born; in this interregnum, monsters appear.” —paraphrase of Italian anti-fascist Antonio Gramsci
While Hakeem Jeffries revealed, as he trash-talked Medicare for All, that he doesn’t believe we’re in a full-blown populist moment in America, Trump, Bannon, and the neofascist tech bros and billionaires fully realize what’s going on — and are committed to making the most of it. As are Bernie Sanders, AOC, Mamdani, El-Sayed and hundreds of other Democratic candidates this year. Read more
Black workers face new challenges as Trump labor policies reshape workplace protections. Gerren Keith Gaynor / The Grio
Labor leaders and lawmakers warn changes to federal agencies, jobs and worker safeguards could have a disproportionate impact on Black employees
“Black workers and other workers of color are facing the worst attacks in generations from the Trump administration,” says Fred Redmond, Secretary-Treasurer at AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of labor unions. The longtime union and civil rights leader says that as he travels and engages with Black workers across the country, he is finding there is no hope that Trump will do anything for them in terms of access to good-paying jobs, encouraging employers to hire Black workers, or ensuring worker protections like higher wages and safety from workplace hazards. Read more
Trump officials propose sweeping changes to the census that would reshape voting maps. By Hansi Lo Wang / NPR
The Trump administration is proposing major changes to how the U.S. government produces census results for the next national head count in 2030.
While the plan faces likely legal challenges, such changes would affect the population numbers used to determine each state’s share of representatives in Congress and votes in the Electoral College, redraw maps of voting districts for all levels of government and distribute federal funding for public services. Read more
Related: Trump Admin Wants To Exclude Non-Citizens And Eliminate Race From US Census. By Zack Linly / Newsone
Supreme Court rejects Missouri’s attempt to use newly drawn Republican congressional map. By Christine Romans / NBC News
The Supreme Court has rejected an attempt for Missouri to use a congressional map drawn by Republicans that would have likely eliminated the seat of a Democratic incumbent.
NBC News’ Sahil Kapur reports on the decision and the last-ditch attempt Republicans had taken to use the new map. Watch here
More Americans Are Losing Health Insurance—And Everyone Will Pay. By Alana Semuels / Time
Dr. Elaine Batchlor, CEO of MLK Community Hospital in Los Angeles, already knows what will happen if her hospital closes. All she has to do is remember King Drew, a similar safety net hospital that provided care to a large share of low-income patients in the same neighborhood, that closed in 2007 because of safety and quality problems. The low-income neighborhoods in South Los Angeles were without a hospital for almost a decade.
As a result, other hospitals in the area saw higher volumes of patients and more uninsured patients; one hospital’s share of uninsured patients more than tripled, from about 13% to nearly 45%, a study found. This redistribution of sick people led to severe overcrowding in other hospitals and higher costs for insured patients. Read more
Angie Nixon Is Fighting for the Right to Read. By Katrina Vanden Heuvel and John Nichols / The Nation
The Florida Senate candidate responded to Republican book-banning schemes by opening a bookstore.
Florida has in recent years been ground zero in the battle over the freedom to read. And Angie Nixon has bravely stood on the right side of history. Long before she won a surprise victory in the Florida Democratic Senate primary on August 19—and, because of her progressive positions and membership in the Democratic Socialists of America, suddenly became a national figure—Nixon started a bookstore in her hometown of Jacksonville that puts banned books front and center on the shelves. Read more
A Series of Hanging Deaths Has Black Families Demanding Answers. By Alecia Taylor and Dalila-Johari Paul
Over the past year, at least 10 Black people have been found hanging from trees, with some deaths ruled suicides that families question.
The suspicious circumstances of a loved one’s death and the response from authorities have left many Black families and observers questioning the investigations. For some, people found dead hanging from trees are a reminder of the thousands of Black people lynched in America and the cover-ups that often followed. Read more
Education
Trump Moves to Strip Tax Exemption From Schools That Aid Minority Students. Andrew Duehren and Michael C. Bender / NYT
The Treasury Department released rules that would prevent schools with race-based programs from qualifying for tax-exempt status, a threat to both higher education and other private schools.
Such a change would thrust the I.R.S. into the center of the Trump administration’s push to pressure schools to abandon initiatives aimed at supporting Black and other minority students, efforts meant to address the nation’s long history of racial discrimination and segregation. Trump officials, however, view such programs as a form of discrimination against white and Asian Americans, and federal civil rights lawyers have opened investigations on those grounds into admissions policies at Harvard, Yale and other schools. Read more
Related: Trump is using the IRS and nonprofit status to chill affirmative action. James D. Zirin / The Hill
Related: Trump administration alleges UC Berkeley law school favors Black applicants. By Max Rego / The Hill
HBCUs Are Building New Support Systems for Black Male Students. By Alecia Taylor / Capital B
The enrollment of Black men has declined for years, raising questions about what schools can do to turn the tide.
Across the country, young Black men are disappearing from higher education, with enrollment rates dropping across all higher education institutions. Although HBCUs have often been leaders in programs to recruit and retain young Black men, many are seeing a worse drop in enrollment rates than predominantly white institutions. Black male undergraduate enrollment across all colleges and universities declined about 22% between 2010 and 2022, according to the American Institute for Boys and Men. At HBCUs, the downturn was steeper, dropping 25%. Read more
The Fight for Fair Funding at Tennessee State University. By Olivia Sanchez / Inside Higher Ed.
Tennessee State University is one of the most underfunded historically Black land-grant universities in the country. In a 2023 letter to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, former Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the state owed the institution more than $2 billion, accrued over the past three decades.
According to another tally in 2021 from the Tennessee Office of Legislative Budget Analysis, the state owes the university anywhere between $150 million and $544 million in unpaid land-grant funds over the last 50 years. Read more
World
Trump’s repeated threats to ‘wipe out’ Iran are normalizing mass violence. By Mohamad Bazzi / The Guardian
The president’s latest warning barely registered, written off as typical behavior. But the threats have real-world consequences.
Trump has delivered this kind of warning so frequently over the past six months of his war against Iran that it hardly registers any more. But it’s important not to normalize Trump’s threats, which are usually accompanied by promises to devastate Iran’s infrastructure – vowing to destroy bridges and power plants. Those kinds of attacks would constitute war crimes under international law. Read more
Trump’s Venezuela Deal Helps His Rich Friends—And That’s It. Alex Nguyen / Mother Jones
Some CEOs will make a fast buck. Gas prices won’t change.
The Trump administration announced an arrangement with Venezuela last week that would see the US take control of 65 billion barrels worth of oil fields and a significant share of the country’s production of 800,000 barrels of oil per day—the latest development after an American strike on Caracas abducted the country’s president Nicolás Maduro in January. Read more
How Europe Politically Underdeveloped Africa. By Christopher J. lee / Dissent
In a renewed period of coups across the African continent, Ruth First’s analysis in The Barrel of a Gun remains as timely as ever. President of Uganda Idi Amin after taking power in 1971
“It has proved infectious, this seizure of government by armed men, and so effortless,” Ruth First writes in the opening pages of The Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’État (1970), reissued by Verso this year. “Get the keys of the armoury; turn out the barracks; take the radio station, the post office and the airport; arrest the person of the president, and you arrest the state.” Though published over half a century ago, First’s observations about the phenomenon of coups in postcolonial Africa could equally apply to the present. Read more
Related: Hutu and Tutsi: The history behind the divide. By Layth Mushtaq / Aljazeera
Related: US Votes Against UN-Endorsed New World Map To Correct Africa’s Size. By Angela M. Bronner / Newone
The psychological toll of Cuba’s multiple crises is pushing many islanders to the breaking point. By Danica Coto / AP
Sweltering nights. Water and power shortages. Dwindling fuel and crumbling homes. Limited public transportation and weak cellphone signals.
The psychological toll of daily life in Cuba is pushing many to their breaking point on this island of nearly 10 million people, with no relief in sight as a U.S. energy embargo persists and longtime economic and financial troubles deepen. “Before there was hope,” Dr. Yomeidis Felicó Riverón said. “Right now, what people have lost is exactly that.” Read more
Why Jamaica is seeking $10bn in reparations from the UK. By Priyanka Shankar / Aljazeera
Hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans toiled in Jamaica under more than 300 years of British rule.
A Jamaican delegation to the United Kingdom has said it will file a petition addressed to King Charles III to seek legal guidance on the question of slavery reparations. This is the first time a British Commonwealth state will use this legal route “for the cause of reparatory justice”, the Jamaican delegation said, as the visit to London kicks off on Monday. King Charles is Jamaica’s head of state, as the country is yet to transition from a constitutional monarchy to a republic. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
25 years of reporting on the state of American Muslims. By Dilshad Ali / RNS
During Trump’s second term, we’re seeing the emergence of a doggedly stronger and more unapologetic ownership of what it means to be American Muslim.
Conditional acceptance of Muslims as Americans in the immediate years after 9/11 often hinged on their ability to provide something good or be a model minority. As former President Bill Clinton said at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, “If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together.” Read more
In direct appeal to Trump, Catholic bishops’ president urges end of mass deportations of Haitians. By Aleja Hertzler-McCain / RNS
The letter marks a shift toward a more direct and pointed tone in challenging President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.
Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference president, sent a letter on Tuesday (Sept. 8), urging President Donald Trump to cease the deportation of “large numbers” of Haitian immigrants. Citing the violence in Haiti, Coakley wrote: “As citizens of this great country, we have been entrusted with a tremendous moral responsibility, and this is true most of all for you as our head of state, Mr. President. To this end, I respectfully ask: What good is the immense wealth, prosperity, and influence with which we have been blessed as a nation if not used in service of our humanity?” Read more
How Christians can fight back against Christian nationalism. By Christian Paz / Vox
Are we on the precipice of a white Christian nationalist takeover?
The author and religion scholar Robert P. Jones sure feels like we’re close. “This is our 1933,” he writes in his new book, referencing the year that Weimar Germany fell to a Nazi takeover. Panicked allusions to Nazi Germany have been a common occurrence in the Trump years. But Jones, who has studied religion for decades and grew up Southern Baptist, has a very specific perspective on why those references are warranted now, particularly because of the role Christians played then — and it all worries him. Read more
Related: Rejecting Evangelicalism Is Not How We Restore Democracy. By Daniel K. Williams / Christianity Today
Historical / Cultural
Smithsonian head to resign after Trump admin threats to cut off support. By Lindsey Granger / The Hill
Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch announced he will step down by the end of the year, after seven years leading one of the most important cultural institutions in the country.
Bunch is the first Black person and the first historian to lead the Smithsonian. His departure comes as the Trump administration has dramatically escalated its fight with the institution over how American history should be told. Read more
Related: The Real Legacy of Lonnie Bunch. By Sebastin Smee / The Atlantic
Trump Admin Removes Information on Slavery From Former Confederate Statue Site. By Chris Walker / Truthout
The revision comes as members of the Trump administration have indicated plans to restore the statue at the site.
Trump administration has removed language critical of slavery from the site where a Confederate memorial once stood in Arlington National Cemetery. The Confederate statue was taken down after Congress voted to remove it from the grounds in 2023. Upon the statue’s removal, a plaque was installed at the site putting the former monument into context, noting its revisionist history and its “nostalgic, mythologized vision” of the antebellum South. In addition to replacing that plaque, the White House has indicated that it plans to reinstall the statue. Read more
Black Wall Street Wasn’t The Only One: The Thriving Black Business Districts America Nearly Forgot. By Grace L. / Baller Alert
Tulsa’s Greenwood became the symbol of Black economic power, but Black communities from Richmond to Atlanta, Durham, Chicago, and Los Angeles were building their own business empires too.
When people hear “Black Wall Street,” Tulsa’s Greenwood District usually comes to mind first. That makes sense. Greenwood became one of the most famous examples of Black wealth in American history, especially after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre nearly destroyed the district. But the larger story of Black business districts stretches far beyond Oklahoma. Across the country, Black entrepreneurs were building banks, insurance companies, newspapers, hotels, restaurants, theaters, stores, and entire commercial ecosystems at a time when segregation often blocked them from doing business freely elsewhere. Read more
For the first time ever Miss America’s crown sits atop a Black woman’s natural hair. By Kay Wicker / The Grio
25-year-old Regan Hutsell of Texas made history when she was crowned Miss America 2027 while rocking her natural hair.
On Sunday. Sept. 6, 25-year-old Regan Hustell was crowned Miss America 2027 during the Miss America pageant at the Palm Beach County Convention Center and The Kravis Center for Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida, becoming the 10th Black woman to win and the first to win while rocking her natural hair. Read more
The “proud” 1968 single that cost James Brown his audience: “I was just telling it like it is.” By Paulina Subia / Far Out Magazine
In August 1968, James Brown drove around Watts, a neighbourhood in southern Los Angeles, with his manager Charles Bobbitt, finding 30 children to bring with them to the recording studio.
Brown had a vision for his next song, a call-and-response chorus of its title, ‘Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud’. As Bobbitt recalled, speaking at Brown’s funeral in 2006, the children were paid $10 each and given a James Brown album. The song, meanwhile, initially written on a hotel napkin, according to legend, would be transformed in the studio. Read more
Sports
Frances Tiafoe’s success is an American success — the kind Donald Trump’s party wants to get rid of. Joe Scarborough / MS Now
In his final speech as president, Ronald Reagan offered one last thought about the country he loved:
You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.
Frances Tiafoe is that American. His parents fled civil war in Sierra Leone and came to the United States. His father helped build a tennis center in Maryland and stayed on to maintain the grounds. With no money for a place of their own, Tiafoe and his twin brother slept in an office at the tennis center. They picked up tennis because the courts were there. And now Tiafoe is the toast of New York City, heading to the U.S. Open semifinals after last night’s extraordinary comeback. Read more
‘The Jackie Robinson of golf’: the forgotten story of Black pioneer Ted Rhodes. By Rich Tenorio / The Guardian
Ted Rhodes, center, got his start as a professional golfer by playing in a tournament hosted by boxing great Joe Louis, right.
How good a golfer was Ted Rhodes? At the 1948 US Open, he finished the first round just three shots behind the leader – and eventual winner – Ben Hogan. But there’s more to the story: Rhodes was the first Black competitor in the tournament in its modern era, during a time of widespread segregation in American sport.
Rhodes is the subject of a new book by sports historian Dan Taylor, Out of the Rough: Ted Rhodes and His Fight against Golf’s Color Barrier. The author aims to change what he sees as mainstream unfamiliarity with Rhodes, even among golf enthusiasts. Read more
“Ask Them”: Mike Tomlin Calls Out NFL Owners Over Lack of Black Head Coaches. By Farheen Fathima / Essentially Sports
Mike Tomlin is experiencing his first season away from an NFL sideline in 19 years.
In a wide-ranging interview with TODAY anchor Craig Melvin for a special edition of “Glass Half Full,” the former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach and current NBC Sports analyst didn’t shy away from one of the league’s most uncomfortable ongoing storylines: the shrinking number of Black head coaches in the NFL. Read more
“If the League Were 70 Percent White Instead of Black, This Would Never Be Said”: Jemele Hill Calls Out Linda Cohn After Caitlin Clark Jealousy Claim. By Sami Haider / Sportskeeda
Jemele Hill is pushing back on the media narrative surrounding Caitlin Clark after the three-time WNBA All-Star made her senior national team debut against China at the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup.
In a thread posted Saturday, the sports commentator argued that the ongoing “everybody is jealous of Caitlin Clark” storyline, fueled by prominent media figure Linda Cohn, carries a distinct racial subtext that goes unexamined. Read more
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