Featured
Public Schools, Democracy, and the Return of Segregation. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / Race Inquiry
It is one of history’s ironies that African Americans, once barred from classrooms, became the fiercest champions of public schools after emancipation. They knew education was not just about literacy but about freedom, equality, and democracy itself. (Shown are Third, fourth, and fifth graders at Bethel Rosenwald School. Photo credit: National Archives)
The NAACP first won victories in professional schools, proving that segregation was indefensible. But in 1954 it struck at Jim Crow’s core with Brown v. Board of Education. The ruling was a moral triumph, yet it came at a cost: Black schools closed, Black educators lost jobs, and students entered hostile classrooms while white families fled to suburbs and built private academies. Read more
The Legacy of Black High-School Head Coaches During and After Segregation. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / Race Inquiry
During segregation, Black high-school head coaches were more than athletic leaders—they were cultural anchors and guardians of their communities. Working with scarce resources, they built programs that instilled discipline, pride, and resilience in young men and women. Their influence often extended far beyond sports, shaping how entire communities carried themselves in a society built on inequality.
A powerful example is James “Big Jim” Williams, the legendary football coach at Blake High School in Tampa, Florida. Known for his commanding presence and deep respect among young men, Williams was more than a coach—he was a stabilizing force. Read more
Political / Social
Trump defends use of U.S. military against ‘enemy within.’ By Morning Edition / NPR
President Trump defended the use of U.S. troops in American cities and told top U.S. commanders that the military would be used against the “enemy within.”
“This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control,” Trump told those gathered for the highly unusual event at Quantico, Va. “It won’t get out of control once you’re involved at all.” Trump said he told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the U.S. “should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” a reference to the Democratic-run cities that he has long said have high crime rates that make them uninhabitable. Read more
How a Government Shutdown Will Impact Black Families. By Brandon Tensley / Capital One
Black Americans make up 13% of the total U.S. population, but nearly 20% of the federal workforce, and could be especially impacted by the closure.
The U.S. government has officially shutdown after a deadlocked Congress failed to pass a funding measure by Wednesday’s 12:01 a.m. deadline. It’s the first federal shutdown in more than six years. Seeking to pressure Democrats, officials from the White House Office of Management and Budget last week told federal agencies to consider mass layoffs if the government shuts down. Here’s what you need to know about the shutdown. Read more
Black Voter Disenfranchisement Is On The Supreme Court Docket. By Anoa Changa / Newsone
The Supreme Court will give voting rights opponents a second chance to undermine Black political power in ‘Louisiana v. Callais.’
Black political power, fair representation, and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act are once again on the Supreme Court’s docket in Louisiana v. Callais. On the heels of the 60th anniversary of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965, the nation’s highest court will rehear arguments that could have major implications for fair representation for Black voters and other disenfranchised groups. Read more
Related: The Supreme Court’s Hypocrisy on Racial Justice. By Terrance Sullivan / The Progressive Magazine
State GOP Officials Seize Trump’s “War on Crime” to Disempower Blue Cities. By
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) speaks as U.S. President Donald Trump signs an order sending National Guard to Memphis, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on September 15, 2025.
GOP officials have long sought to erode Democratic-led cities’ autonomy on abortion access, LGBTQ rights, and more. Memphis and New Orleans — the two cities Trump has announced he plans to target next — are both Democratic cities in Republican-controlled states, and both also have Black mayors — a seeming prerequisite thus far for the cities that this hard-right administration is targeting. Read more
The Rise and Fall of Eric Adams. Dana Rubinstein / NYT
Mr. Adams has suspended his re-election campaign, becoming the first mayor of New York City to fail to win a second term since David N. Dinkins.
Four years ago, Eric Adams, fresh off what would become a razor-thin victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, held forth with characteristic bombast. He was the “face of the new Democratic Party,” he said. He suggested that with his working-class roots and police background, he was the model of new leadership for a party held hostage by the gentrifying elite. He would orient City Hall toward the dispossessed and the underserved. And as the city’s second Black mayor, he would continue the legacy of the first, David N. Dinkins. Read more
Related: Eric Adams drops out of NYC race, will it help Cuomo beat Mamdani? By Kathryn Palmer / USA Today
Suicide or Lynching? Mississippi Officials Insist Trey Reed’s Death Is Nothing Suspicious. By Kali Holloway / The Nation
His family says he left for college happy and healthy. Soon after, he was found hanging from a tree on campus. Yet local officials are refusing calls to investigate further.
De’Martravion “Trey” Reed—21 years old, Black, not even a month into his freshman year of college—was found hanging from a fruittree on the campus Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, just after 7 am on September 15. Within eight hours, campus police told the press there was “no evidence of foul play,” the coroner’s office declared no “visible injuries consistent with an assault,” and one official opined to the Mississippi Free Press that Reed’s hanging “was self-done.” Read more
Education
I Am on Kirk’s “Professor Watchlist.” I Know How It Destroys Civil Debate. By George Yancey / Truthout
I deeply value free speech and debate. The watchlist created by Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA is anathema to both.
In 2016, TPUSA produced an online list titled “Professor Watchlist,” a site designed to identify professors who purportedly “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” I don’t “teach leftist propaganda in the classroom,” and I never discriminate against conservative students, but I was nevertheless placed on the list soon after its creation in 2016, apparently because I am a philosopher who examines the complex ways in which white people are socially and psychically complicit in the perpetuation of anti-Black racism in the United States. Read more
Related: She Was Fired for a Comment on Her Private Facebook Account. Sabrina Tavernise / NYT
Harvard says Trump officials made factual errors in antisemitism finding. By Susan Svrluga / Wash Post
Harvard University unequivocally rejected the Trump administration’s finding that it violated federal civil rights law, objecting to what it said were numerous inaccuracies and failings in the investigation, according to an extensive response sent to the government earlier this month and obtained Tuesday by The Washington Post.
The university said the government made factual errors and misapplied the law during its probe of alleged antisemitism on campus, ignored dozens of changes Harvard made to improve the climate for Jewish people and did not acknowledge the university’s extensive responses over many months to the government’s requests for information. Read more
Trump’s push to eliminate DEI at colleges denies conservatives an opportunity. By David Ramadan / USA Today
It is both possible and necessary to protect free expression and conservative values without dismantling the infrastructure that helps students of all backgrounds succeed.
President Donald Trump‘s recent move to target universities like the University of Virginia and George Mason University over diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs is a mistake. As a lifelong conservative, a former Republican legislator and now a professor at George Mason, I know firsthand the importance of universities – not just to our economy but also to the strength of our society. Read more
Related: Responding to Attacks On DEI. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / Race Inquiry
World
Trump’s Gaza Plan Is Mere “Repackaging of Genocide” for Israel’s Benefit. By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now
After a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump unveiled a 20-point peace plan for the Gaza Strip on Monday that aims to end Israel’s war on Gaza, free the remaining Israeli hostages and remove Hamas from power.
Palestinian human rights attorney Diana Buttu says the deal is “certainly not a plan that is going to end the genocide. What they’re simply attempting to do is repackage it.” Buttu also notes that while Trump met with Netanyahu before announcing the plan, Palestinians were not consulted. Buttu asks, “Why is it that Palestinians have been forced to negotiate an end to their genocide?” Read more
As US warships prowl the Caribbean, our region must hold fast against Trump’s gaslighting. By Kenneth Mohammed / The Guardian
American attacks have killed more than 14 people they claim were drug traffickers in our waters. Now our islands are at risk of being dragged into a manufactured conflict we are ill-equipped to endure.
For decades, the Caribbean has been caught in the slipstream of other people’s wars – from cold war proxy battles to Washington’s “war on drugs” and “war on terror”. Our islands have too often been turned into the frontlines for policies scripted elsewhere but fought in our waters, our communities, and on the backs of our most vulnerable. Read more
Related: Have Cubans Fled One Authoritarian State for Another? Jon Lee Anderson / The New Yorker
What Pan-Africanism Can Teach Us Now. By
A biography of Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah casts the post-WWII era as a Black liberation epic rather than a psychodrama between Moscow and Washington.
In his captivating new book, The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide, the journalist and scholar Howard W. French recasts the story of the post–World War II global order as a Black liberation epic instead of a psychodrama between Washington and Moscow. His chief characters are not Kennedy and Khrushchev but rather Nkrumah, his fellow postcolonial leaders, and Black intellectuals and organizers in the United States. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Fully MAGA-fied Christianity. By Peter Wehner / The Atlantic
It’s no longer an interesting question as to why Trump is an almost perfect inversion of the moral teachings of Jesus; the answer can be traced to a damaged, disordered personality that has tragically warped his soul. What is an interesting question is why those who claim that the greatest desire of their life is to follow Jesus revere such a man and seem willing to follow him, instead, to the ends of the earth.
It’s a complicated matter to untangle. For a significant number of evangelical Protestants the explanation is fairly straightforward: They celebrate the Trump ethic; it pervades their church and their faith communities. Read more
Related: Two versions of Christianity battle for America’s soul. By Shadi Hamid / Wash Post
Related: What gospel was preached at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service? By John Fea / RNS
Related: MAGA can’t expand its base — and Christian music tells us why. By Amanda Marcotte / Salon
DC archbishop, sisters denounce assault of migrants at hands of US government. By Rhina Guidos / NCR
Youth from the Shrine of the Sacred Heart gather at the entrance of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington after a procession to observe the World Day of Migrants and Refugees Sept. 28, 2025.
Cardinal Robert McElroy wasted no time pointing out that this year’s World Day for Migrants and Refugees is not like the others — at least not in the U.S. “For this year we are confronting — both as a nation and as a church — an unprecedented assault upon millions of immigrant men and women and families in our midst,” McElroy said during a Sept. 28 homily at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, as the archdiocese in the nation’s capital observed the church event that celebrates, on Oct. 4-5 this year, the resilience of displaced people around the world. Read more
Was the Mormon Church Gunman a Trump Supporter? What We Know. By Robert McCoy / TNR
Thomas Jacob Sanford, the 40-year-old Iraq War veteran identified as the suspect in a fatal Sunday attack on a Mormon church in Grand Blanc, Michigan, seemed to own Donald Trump memorabilia, with a campaign sign on display outside his house.
His reported home on East Atherton Road in Burton, Michigan, according to public records, is located less than 20 minutes by car to the church into which he ran his truck, before opening fire—killing at least four people—and setting the building ablaze. Read more
Historical / Cultural
How ‘woke’ went from an expression in Black culture to a conservative criticism. By Terry Tang / AP
The expression “stay woke” started out as an affirmation for African Americans.
In the past decade it has been used by some Republicans — and some Democrats — as a pejorative for people thought to be too “politically correct,” another term that took on negative connotations as it gained wider use. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he was ending the “woke” culture in the military, saying the service has been hamstrung by political correctness. He referenced diversity efforts, transgender troops, environmental policies and other disciplinary rules. Read more
Remembering Dr. Quintard Taylor, a Historian Who Made Black History Accessible. By Lola E. Peters / Emerald
From his landmark book to founding BlackPast.org, Dr. Taylor left tools that help forge a deeper understanding of Black communities in Seattle and beyond.
BlackPast.org has become an acclaimed source of information for students, everyday readers, and academics. It is our Wikipedia. Read more
A Bold Design for a New South. By Martin Luther King Jr. / The Nation
This article appears in the March 30, 1963 issue.
An arresting paradox emerged in 1962. History will doubtless judge the year as making a favorable turning point in the struggle for equality, yet it was also the year that civil rights was displaced as the dominant issue in domestic politics. Although thundering events in Oxford, Miss., and Albany, Ga., captured public attention, there was a perceptible diminishing in the concern of the nation to achieve a just solution of the problem. Read more
Tina Turner statue unveiled in Tennessee community where she grew up. By Adrian Sainz / ABC News
A 10-foot statue of rock n’ roll queen Tina Turner was unveiled Saturday in the rural Tennessee community where she grew up — before becoming a Grammy-winning singer, an electrifying stage performer, and one the world’s most recognizable and popular entertainers.
The statue was revealed during a ceremony at a park in Brownsville, located about an hour drive east of Memphis. The city of about 9,000 people is near Nutbush, the community where Turner went to school as a child. As a teen, she attended high school just steps from where the statue now stands. Read more
Sports
NFL pushing diverse worldview with Bad Bunny even as America retreats from it. By Mike Freeman / USA Today
The NFL knows that Bad Bunny’s emphasis on Puerto Rican pride would likely upset certain people, people who like football, but may not like a message of diversity. In fact, they may hate a message of diversity. The league knew this and didn’t care.
In making the Super Bowl announcement, Bad Bunny wore a pava, a traditional Puerto Rican hat. “What I’m feeling goes beyond myself,” he said in a statement shared by the NFL. “This is for my people, my culture, and our history.” Read more
Related: Ay, Dios mio! The Super Bowl goes ‘woke’ with Bad Bunny. By Daily Kos Staff
I rewatched the Thrilla in Manila with Muhammad Ali. He still winced at the blows years later.
In 1989, with Muhammad Ali sitting beside me, I watched a tape of Ali’s historic triumph over Joe Frazier in Manila, which took place 50 years ago this week.
Despite the fact that it was one of Muhammad’s greatest ring triumphs, there was no joy in his face as The Thrilla in Manila unfolded. Sitting beside me, he winced as some of Frazier’s blows landed. He seemed to be reexperiencing the pain. When the tape ended, he turned to me and said, “Frazier quit just before I did. I didn’t think I could fight anymore.” Read more
Rockets’ Kevin Durant sees himself signing contract extension in Houston. By William Guillory / The Athletic
During his first official news conference in a Houston Rockets uniform, Kevin Durant didn’t waste any time eliminating any doubts about his future with his new team.
“I do see myself signing a contract extension,” Durant said at Rockets media day on Monday. “I can’t tell you exactly when it’ll happen. But I do see it happening.” Read more
Site Information
Articles appearing in the Digest are archived on our home page. A collection of “Books/Podcast and Video Favorites ” is also found on our home page. And at the top of this page register your email to receive notification of new editions of Race Inquiry Digest.
Click here for earlier Digests. The site is searchable by name or topic. See “search” at the top of this page.
About Race Inquiry and Race Inquiry Digest. The Digest is published on Monday and Thursday. The Weekend Edition is published on Saturday. Click here for earlier Editions.
Use the customized buttons below to share the Digest in an email, or post to your Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter (X) accounts.