Featured
The Truth of a Love Supreme. By Justin Giboney / Christianity Today
Our politics are bitter and retributive. In the Christians of the Civil Rights Movement, we have a model of a better way.
Legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane called his album A Love Supreme an offering to God. The four-suite musical masterpiece was a spiritual declaration, he explained in the liner notes, signifying the marriage between his music and his faith in God. Civil Rights was a movement that lived out the truth of the Negro spirituals that activists sang, an unabashedly Christian endeavor in philosophy and practice alike. The love that Christians in the Civil Rights Movement sought to embody was not self-interested or limited to affirmation. It was a love they hadn’t received from this nation but one they knew to be necessary and real. Read more
Listen to “A Love Supreme,” Pt I – Acknowledgement here
Political / Social
The war on DEI is an old American story. By Colbert I. King / Wash Post
The dream of a more inclusive, fair and just America is under attack — again.
The upheavals roiling us today, though not exactly evoking déjà vu, have a familiar ring. Threats to equal rights and religious liberty come to mind. President Donald Trump’s order to terminate all “diversity, equity and inclusion” mandates, policies and programs — a frontal assault on efforts to promote fairness and full participation of people who have been historically underrepresented or subjected to discrimination — rings familiar. The country has been through this agony before. Read more
Related: Trump Doesn’t Want To Talk About Race And Health Care — And It’s Going To Take A Vicious Toll. By
MSNBC’s Death Rattle. By Dave Zirin / The Nation
The “liberal” news network is just the latest mainstream media organization to cower before Trump.
Under their new boss, Rebecca Kutler, who helped oversee CNN’s transition into something only watched in airports, MSNBC has gone on a bloodletting, axing almost exclusively news anchors of color. That seems to be a shared trait of her most high-profile firings or reassignments to lesser roles: Joy Reid, Jonathan Capeheart, Katie Phang, Alex Wagner, and the aforementioned Mohyeldin alongside the “stepping down” of Lester Holt as host of NBC Nightly News. Read more
Related: Black Journalists Are Being Pushed Out-And the News Is Worse Without Us. By Yesha Callahan / BET
The First Black Leader of Virginia Military Institute Is Ousted. By Stephanie Saul / NYT
The college’s board decided not to renew the contract of its superintendent, Major General Cedric T. Wins, who led diversity efforts and removed a Confederate statue on campus.
The move followed years of pushback from conservative alumni of the college who had objected to what they called General Wins’s “woke” efforts to increase campus diversity. And it followed accusations from a Virginia state senator that the effort to remove him was racially motivated. Read more
Trump officials start dismantling civil rights offices, as part of DOGE’s secret plan. By Julian Mark, Hannah Natanson and Danielle Abril / Wash Post
Agencies across the federal government are dismantling offices that enforce civil rights and antidiscrimination laws under a Trump administration push to shrink the workforce, weakening the government’s ability to deliver on legal obligations to protect workers’ rights.
The Social Security Administration this week announced it was closing its Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, where about 150 people worked investigating civil rights complaints, preventing harassment and ensuring accommodations for people with disabilities, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Read more
Related: Elon Musk Is South African. We Shouldn’t Forget It. By William Shoki / NYT
RFK Jr.’s Mental Health Bait and Switch. By Erin Reinhart / TNR
The newly anointed HHS secretary is weaponizing legitimate anger at the failures of current psychiatric care to gut public services, abandon poor and disabled people, and expand the police state.
At first glance, their mission statement echoes long-standing progressive critiques of psychiatry by the fields known as social and critical psychiatry, which argue that psychiatric diagnoses often obscure the structural causes of suffering—poverty, social isolation, racism, homelessness, and exploitative labor conditions. But, He conjoins planned abandonment of poor and disabled groups with a strategy of privatizing essential services. Read more
Neo-Nazis targeted a majority-Black town. Locals launched an armed watch. By Daniel Wu / Wash Post
Residents of Lincoln Heights, Ohio, are guarding their streets with rifles after criticizing the police response to a neo-Nazi rally.
For weeks, men carrying rifles have guarded the roads leading into Lincoln Heights, Ohio, stopping and questioning those who approach the Cincinnati suburb. The men, some of whom wear masks and body armor, are residents of this small, majority-Black town. They say they’re protecting their own. And they’re on edge. Read more
Black Leaders on Why They’ve Turned Against Eric Adams. Jeffery C. Mays / NYT
As the mayor seeks to rally support behind his uphill re-election bid this year, many Black leaders in New York have turned against Mr. Adams, saying that his crises have not only jeopardized his future, but also threaten the political prospects of other Black leaders.
Donovan Richards, the borough president of Queens, warned that Mr. Adams could harm the Black community. “You can set people back,” he said, “if you don’t manage with integrity.” Read more
World News
Trump-Zelenskyy clash marks a defining turn away from U.S. defense of democracies. By
The confrontation revealed Trump’s deep impatience with Ukraine and its democratically elected president, and his persistent defense of Russia’s autocratic ruler.
As television cameras rolled, Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the democratically elected leader of a country that has been under attack from Russia since 2014, saying he’s “ungrateful,” “disrespectful” and “gambling with millions of lives.” The lecture left no doubt that Trump sees Ukraine merely as one of the parties in a negotiation, and not as a democratic U.S. ally grappling with the invading force of a much larger, autocratic neighbor, Russia. Read more
Related: “Zelensky Walked Into a Trap.” By Jonathan Chait / The Atlantic
Related: Trump Brings a Day of Historic Shame for the United States. By Michael Tomasky / TNR
USAID issues funding termination notices to key South African health programmes. By Tamsin Metelerkamp / Daily Maverick
USAID has axed funding for HIV/Aids organisations across South Africa — a decision that stands to have devastating consequences for medical research, disease prevention, support for key populations and community-based testing and tracing.
“This wasn’t a duplication of government services. It was complementary, providing that final push to achieve those 95-95-95 targets and reduce our infections and our HIV and TB mortality. This is the entire HIV and TB programme put at risk of unravelling across public sector facilities, communities and key population services,” she said. Read more
Related: South Africans balk at Trump’s refugee offer to Afrikaners. By Joe Davidson / Wash Post
U.S. Terminates Funding for Polio, H.I.V., Malaria and Nutrition Programs Around the World.
“People will die,” said Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, “but we will never know, because even the programs to count the dead are cut.”
The projects terminated include H.I.V. treatment programs that had served millions of people, the main malaria control programs in the worst-affected African countries and global efforts to wipe out polio. Here are some of the projects that The New York Times has confirmed have been canceled: Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
A Tale of Two Christianities. By Jeanne Petrolle / Patheos
Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in 313ce. Ten years later, what began as a multicultural minority movement centered on Jesus of Nazareth became an arm of the Roman Empire. Since then, Christianity split into two broad traditions: Empire Christianity and Jesus-follower Christianity. Empire Christians worship power, wealth, moralism, and certainty. Jesus-following Christians aim to act like Jesus, as the Gospels portray him: innovative, countercultural, compassionate, studious, brave.
The New Testament Jesus organized his life around studying the Jewish Scriptures, interpreting those Scriptures unconventionally, teaching, learning, traveling, praying, fasting, feeding people, healing people, building community, breaking social conventions, and listening for God. Read more
Documentary highlights the tensions, isolation of being ‘Black + Evangelical.’ By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
A new documentary is shedding light on a group of people who are part of the evangelical Christian tradition in a way, said Wheaton College theology professor Vincent Bacote, “that’s not just white and being a Republican.”
Black evangelicals, said Bacote, are too often unseen — the “orphan in our home faith community.” Over the last decade and a half, he has sought to remedy that by turning the history of Black evangelicals into a 90-minute documentary, “Black + Evangelical.” The film, produced in conjunction with his evangelical college and Christianity Today, premiered at a Feb. 21 screening on the school’s Chicago suburban campus. Read more
Historic Black churches receive $8.5 million in preservation grants. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
Clockwise from top left: Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Mayank Patel); Taveau Church (Preservation South Carolina), Moncks Corner, South Carolina. (Photo by Bill Fitzpatrick); First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Athens Inc., Athens, Georgia. (Photo by Clark E. Scales); Anna Bell Chapel A.M.E. Church (New Haven Preservation Society), New Haven, Missouri. (Photo by Jack Lister)
Thirty historically Black churches and projects, including those with ties to Civil Rights leaders who led churches and protests across the United States, are receiving grants totaling $8.5 million from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Read more
Historical / Cultural
The Broken Promise of ‘40 Acres and a Mule.’ By Sho Baraka / Christianity Today
On January 12, 1865, 20 Black pastors met with Union general Tecumseh Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to discuss Black Americans’ new life of emancipation with the Confederacy nearly defeated.
What came from that discussion was Special Field Order No. 15, commonly known as “40 acres and a mule.” Sherman, Stanton, and the federal government promised newly freed people the right to lease, then eventually buy, some 400,000 acres of confiscated land along the Atlantic coast, stretching from South Carolina down to Florida. Read more
Lifelong New York civil rights advocate, NAACP leader Hazel Dukes dies at 92. By Sejal Govindarao / ABC News
Dukes, who led the New York State NAACP for nearly five decades, fought tirelessly for voting rights, economic development, fair housing and education through her career. Even in her 90s, she spoke out against police brutality and for adequate health care in underserved neighborhoods, the NAACP’s New York State chapter said in a statement.
In 2023, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Dukes with the NAACP’s highest honor — the Spingarn Medal. “I’m not tired yet,” Dukes said in her acceptance speech for the award. She added that she would continue her advocacy and empower the next generation of NAACP leaders. Read more
Author Ibram X. Kendi on DEI, America’s ‘progression of racism’ and his new book on Malcolm X. By John Blake / CNN
When Ibram X. Kendi, author of the New York Times # 1 bestseller “How To be an Antiracist,” began writing a biography of the civil rights leader for young readers, he uncovered yet another Malcolm X: a thoroughly contemporary figure who would fit right into America’s turbulent political landscape of 2025.
Kendi says Malcolm would have been uncomfortably familiar with rising Islamophobia in the US, the surge in White Christian nationalism and politicians who routinely deploy White supremacist rhetoric. And the recent campaign to abolish DEI efforts across America would have reminded Malcolm of growing up in a “separate but unequal” society under Jim Crow laws, Kendi says. Read more
Percival Everett Is Challenging the American Literary Canon. By Eliana Dockterman / Time
With his latest, James, a reimagining of Huckleberry Finn told from the perspective of the escaped slave Jim—who drops his nickname for the more noble-sounding James—Everett has jump-started a conversation about the great American novel, how issues of race interplay with the so-called American canon, and how we talk to our children about America’s past.
For many, however, James has become an important companion piece to Mark Twain’s work, the book “all American literature comes from,” to quote Ernest Hemingway. “I’ve been getting lots of mail from former and current English teachers thanking me that they can now teach Huck Finn again because they can do it alongside James,” he admits, “which is great news for me and certainly flattering, but doesn’t come as a great surprise. It’s a problematic text.” Read more
Bruno Mars Is Pop’s Most Reliable Male Star. Who Is He, Really?
A schmaltzy ballad. A bubble-gum pop song. A raunchy rap anthem. All three Hot 100 hits feature Mars, a blockbuster singer and songwriter who is largely a cipher.
In many ways, Mars was born for this. Growing up, he became known for his impersonations of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, and played in his family band, a pedigree you can hear clearly in his reverent stylistic tributes. His father is Puerto Rican and Jewish, while his mother is Filipino, and, perhaps as a result of growing up amid different cultures, he is pop’s premiere code-switcher, able to feasibly hop between the ’80s schlock of “Die With a Smile” and the playful hedonism of “Fat, Juicy & Wet” without raising too many eyebrows. Read more
Black gospel music preserved in world’s largest digital archive. By Molly-Jo Tilton / NPR
Over the past two decades, Baylor University’s Black Gospel Archive has collected and digitized more than 60,000 gospel songs, making it one of the largest digital gospel collections in the world.
The archive focuses on records from the “golden era of gospel music,” roughly 1945-1980. It also houses important artifacts like recorded sermons, concert announcements and sheet music, to preserve the history of Black gospel culture. Now, thanks to a new grant, the archive will expand its collection to include oral histories as well. “It is the music that endured,” gospel historian Bob Darden says. He served as the lead researcher for the archive until his retirement in 2023. Read more
Sports
‘He was a legend’: An oral history of Satchel Paige’s final game at 59. By william Weinbaum / Andscape
In 1965, the Hall of Fame pitcher threw three scoreless innings against players half his age. Nearly sixty years later, here’s how it happened.
At age 59 – his official birthdate was July 7, 1906 – and a dozen years removed from his most recent major league outing, Paige threw three scoreless innings for the Kansas City Athletics against the Boston Red Sox, the American League’s top slugging offense. The oldest player ever to appear in a Major League Baseball game gave up only one hit (to a fellow future Hall of Famer) and no walks. Read more
The man who blocked for Jim Brown fears America is moving backwards. By Jarrett Bell / USA Today
Days before reporting to the Cleveland Browns training camp in Hiram, Ohio in 1964, John Wooten took a detour to Washington, D.C. for the sake of history. Wooten, then a veteran guard who blocked for Jim Brown, was at the White House on July 2 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Yet decades since he reveled in the White House with the passage of civil rights legislation, which paved the way for other measures, Wooten shudders in weighing plans outlined in Project 2025. He may be well into retirement, but his spirit hasn’t waned as he considers social and political ramifications projected in Project 2025. Said Wooten, “When you read through it, you see immediately that it would destroy every single thing we have worked for and won in this country.” Read more
Steph Curry’s greatness is a scene worth savoring for as long as we can. By John Hollinger / The Athletic
As I walked from my hotel to Orlando’s Kia Center in the Florida sun and passed by all the No. 30 jerseys in every bar and restaurant along the way, a little voice inside my head whispered, “Savor this.”
I had no idea I’d have this much to savor, obviously, no extrasensory perception that Steph Curry would bomb away for 56 points to lead a rousing Golden State Warriors comeback — one that ended with a road crowd roaring “M-V-P” on his final two free throws. It was one of the most memorable performances of this or any other season. Read more
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