This day in history: ‘Disco Demolition Night’ On this day in 1979, nearly 50,000 people packed Comiskey Park on the southwest side of Chicago to watch local DJ and notorious disco hater Steve Dahl blow up a bunch of disco records in between a White Sox doubleheader. “Disco Demolition Night” remains one of the seminal…
Read More Disco Demolition Night“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer – a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.“ Frederick Douglass Every year on this day I make an assessment, from my own perspective, of how much…
Read More 4th of July thoughtsFrom The Daily Skimm 6/2/22 40% That’s the percentage of Americans who belong to a racial or ethnic minority group. And that’s around 120 million people. But health research in the U.S. still skews heavily white (think: up to 90%). Not exactly accurate representation. Including people of all backgrounds in research can help scientists better…
Read More Health Research Skews WhiteThe Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor is a National Heritage Area managed by the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission. The purpose of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor NHA is to preserve, share and interpret the history, traditional cultural practices, heritage sites, and natural resources associated with Gullah Geechee people of coastal North Carolina,…
Read More DE GULLAH GEECHEE NYEWSThe Normalization of White Male Violence Seven summers ago, when Dylann Roof killed nine parishioners in a Charleston church, he signaled that perhaps white millennials would not, in fact, be more racially progressive than their parents or grandparents. Here, again, the hard truth that progress is not linear: Payton Gendron, the Buffalo shooter, is 18 years old…
Read More White Male Violence NormalizedRashawn Ray Tuesday, May 17, 202 A hate crime occurs nearly every hour in the United States. Saturday afternoon was no different. Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old white man, drove to a grocery store in a predominately Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. He then filmed himself shooting 13 people (11 Black and two white), killing 10, including a retired police…
Read More Preventing racial hate crimes means tackling white supremacist ideologyBy Michael Duffy Washington Post Opinions editor-at-large We are witnessing something of a watershed moment in the reckoning America is having with itself and its history. Harvard University released a 134-page report Tuesday that begins to explain how, as Post columnist Eugene Robinson put it, “the nation’s oldest, richest and most prestigious institution of higher learning” benefited from slavery. Two Harvard…
Read More A hard historical truth about HarvardWhile they have varying backgrounds and experiences, a majority of Black Americans (76%) say being Black is extremely or very important to how they think about themselves. A significant share says that when something happens to Black people in their local communities, across the nation or around the globe, it affects what happens in their own lives.…
Read More Race is central to identity for Black Americans and affects how they connect with each otherGood Black News celebrates Hazel M. Johnson, the community activist who sought to clean up the “Toxic Doughnut” that encircled her community on the South Side of Chicago, and in the process became known as the “Mother of Environmental Justice.” Read more HERE.
Read More Remembering Activist Hazel M. Johnson, the “Mother of Environmental Justice,” on #EarthDayBY GOODBLACKNEWS ON DECEMBER 27, 2017 by Niraj Chokshi via nytimes.com Don Hogan Charles, who was the first black photographer to be hired by The New York Times, and who drew acclaim for his evocative shots of the civil rights movement and everyday life in New York, died on Dec. 15, 2017 in East Harlem. He was 79. In…
Read More Don Hogan Charles, 79, Lauded Photographer of Civil Rights EraErica Martin Richards, M.D., Ph.D. It’s true that everyone experiences temporary periods of sadness, and times of worry and nervousness. But what about when those feelings won’t go away? Too often, women of color try to muscle their way through depression and anxiety on their own says Erica Richards, chair and medical director of the Department…
Read More Mental Health Among African American WomenBy Serena Williams I almost died after giving birth to my daughter, Olympia. Yet I consider myself fortunate. While I had a pretty easy pregnancy, my daughter was born by emergency C-section after her heart rate dropped dramatically during contractions. The surgery went smoothly. Before I knew it, Olympia was in my arms. It was the…
Read More Serena Williams: What my life-threatening experience taught me about giving birthBy Gillian Brockell “We captured three Negro soldiers, the first we had seen,” Private Byrd Willis wrote on May 8, 1864. “They were taken out on the road side and shot and their bodies left there.” Coming across these lines a century and a half later was “a chilling experience,” Lambert said in a phone interview.…
Read More Three Black soldiers executed by Confederates are finally being honored in VirginiaLoretta Mary Aiken (March 19, 1894 – May 23, 1975), known by her stage name Jackie “Moms” Mabley, was an American stand-up comedian and actress. Mabley began her career on the theater stage in the 1920s and became a veteran entertainer of the Chitlin’ Circuit of African-American vaudeville. Mabley later recorded comedy albums and appeared in films and on television programs including The…
Read More What Do You Know About “Moms” Mabley?By Shawn Donnan, Ann Choi, Hannah Levitt, and Christopher Cannon March 11, 2022 Nationwide, only 47% of Black homeowners who completed a refinance application with Wells Fargo in 2020 were approved, compared with 72% of White homeowners, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of federal mortgage data. JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest U.S. bank by assets,…
Read More Black Mortgage Applicants with Almost Highest Income Approved at Same Rate as White Applicants with Lowest Income