Working closely with Black writers has changed how I understand talent, growth, and the craft itself. The writers who stay committed, apply guidance, and keep writing often reveal that what they needed was already there. It simply needed time, practice, and room to grow.

Most curse words don't come from some evil place. They started plain. They were made 'bad' by whoever got to decide what counted as proper. Most elders in the Black village I grew up in cursed. The grandma, the auntie, the same women who cursed like sailors were often the ones making sure the neighborhood kids' bellies stayed full. In Black culture, cursing has never automatically meant disrespect. It's culture. Yes, culture.

African American cemeteries preserve ancestry, Black history, family stories and community memory. Dominique Holiday explores why protecting them matters.

It was a dark night. Too dark for any old lady to be out, especially at a cemetery, but Kweem was different. Her grandson had been buried only hours earlier. She reached into her bag, pulled out two mason jars etched with Psalm 58, and began filling them with dirt from his grave. “Baby, I will get to the bottom of this.” She would find out what happened to King and why her great grandson now carried a permanent scar across his face.

George Jackson and Mumia Abu-Jamal did some of the most disciplined work of Black liberation from inside a cell, while most of us walk around free and do nothing with it. That inversion should trouble us. If those who gave the most to our liberation gave it while incarcerated, political education cannot be optional for those of us still free.

We live in a digital age. Numbers matter. But when your business is people, it has to be more than numbers. Every person is human. They can’t be seen as a commodity. The revolution and pursuit of justice do need numbers. However, it needs integrity, humility, passion, morals, and ethics. So dear Brother… dear Sister… why are you here?

Never would I have imagined that when I came across the name John P. Perry, I was looking at a name already living in my own bloodline. The name of my great grandmother, the same woman I remembered wearing those beautiful dresses to church, was tied to that very line. The tree wasn't the only thing whose roots were planted in Lincolnville. So were mine, through my great great great grandfather. As my family shared stories and we connected the pieces, it all began to make sen

Henrietta Lacks never knew that cells taken from her body would change modern medicine forever. Taken without her knowledge or consent in 1951, her cells became HeLa, the first immortal human cell line, contributing to breakthroughs from the polio vaccine to cancer research and even space exploration. Jay Renee honors the Black woman behind one of medicine’s most important legacies and asks us to remember her name.

Black artists, writers, and geniuses have been erased, stolen from, and written out of history before. Emilia Bassano may be one of the most overlooked examples. What if one of the greatest literary voices of the English Renaissance belonged not to the man history celebrates, but to a Black woman whose identity was buried beneath someone else's name? This isn't just about Shakespeare. It's about who gets remembered, who gets erased, and how history has too often rewarded th

The practice of not splitting the pole has become a subconscious awareness of those around me, and concern for our collective wellbeing. My decision making is never without consideration for all those it may affect. If I'm presented with an obstacle in a path I know my folks will also be taking, I'm quick to alert them. From minor inconveniences to major dangers, to even opportunities, I'm constantly in communication with my people to the best of my ability

An exploration of why critical “greatest” lists miss what Black people actually live with and how Make It Last Forever becomes the ultimate Black album through organic Black ownership. Keith Sweat didn’t know what he was building. The question is whether the rest of the conversation about Black music is ready to acknowledge what he built. It started the way the best arguments start — not with a thesis, but with a genuine question. What is the greatest Black album of all time?

Trey “Director 80” Smith’s Botanical Series transforms the garden into sacred ground, where color, light, and structure mirror the inner work of healing. Red gates, water, and greenery become symbols of protection, ancestry, unity, and quiet spiritual growth

Relief has become something you experience quietly. We walk away from the water, the pink bag dragging at my spine like the ocean still has its hand on it.

An ancestral altar is a sacred space to honor your lineage, feed your ancestors’ spirits, and invite their protection, guidance, and healing into your everyday life.

A sharp reflection on the Black Panther legacy, questioning whether true liberation lies in global solidarity or in a unified, self-determined Black collective rooted in community first.

“Because I love you, I get the least of you.” A truth that cuts deep. Love strained by survival leaves those closest to us with fragments instead of fullness. What would change if we gave our best to each other?

A Clockwork Red traces the untold history of menstrual care as survival, not fashion. Long before industry or policy, Black women governed their bodies through lived knowledge—adapting, innovating, and preserving dignity under systems that denied it. What we call progress today stands on generations of women who turned deprivation into design and silence into endurance.”

Regardless of our physical differences, we all encounter similar challenges throughout the diaspora, which is why collective unity is essential.