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.

North Charleston and West Ashley met in the middle Friday night, and Charleston hip hop walked away with something it doesn't get handed very often: a night it built entirely for itself, with the whole city watching. One line from the crowd is already being repeated around the city, and it deserves to be: Charleston doesn't need the industry. The industry needs Charleston. That's the whole night in one sentence.

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.

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

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?

At just 8 years old, McKenzie Nelson is already a published author. In this interview, Lauren McCaskill speaks with McKenzie and her parents about literacy, creativity, family support, and the power of helping young voices be heard.