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We need to talk about Ferguson, brothers and sisters. Not about the protestors—the vast majority of whom are peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights. Not about police militarization, either, which has only escalated tension on the ground. We need to talk about justice for Michael Brown. Justice [...]

To Mulugeta Seraw What could we have done but give your son our crooked handwritten, misspelled condolences? We wrote letters and poems on construction paper, neatly folding them like your resting hands in the casket.   We slipped our notes between fruit [...]

As national civil and human rights organizations and leaders committed to the protection of the rights of African Americans and all Americans, we come together as a unified collective to urgently impress upon elected officials, law enforcement, the legal profession, businesses and all those in [...]

"Were you with him?" "What did he say?" "What were his last words?" "Did he mention...?" By the time we are nine, ten, or eleven most of us will hear someone wonder aloud, after a passing, what did it all mean and how did it come [...]

"Children, it turns out, will never thrive in storage," Nell Bernstein writes in the recently released Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison. It's a statement that shouldn't seem radical. (I Googled "thrive in storage," just to make sure, and it [...]

Surrounded by girls, Rasheed Curtis, 6, talks about why Overton should stay open before the last day of school at Overton Elementary School, June 19, 2013. | Jessica Koscielniak ~ Sun-Times Mayor You Stole My Children’s Safe, Sane Neighborhood SchoolA second open letter from Irene Robinson [...]

By the time I was 7 years old I knew drugs were bad. I didn’t need a parent to sit me down on their knee and tell me this because Saturday morning cartoons were frequently interrupted by an advertisement brought to me by Partnership for [...]

I am sick of writing this poem but bring the boy. his new name his same old body. ordinary, black dead thing. bring him & we will mourn until we forget what we are mourning & isn’t that what being black is about? not the [...]

Long before he became the most powerful man in the Alabama Senate, before he controlled billions of dollars in state money and had lobbyists, governors, and future presidents seeking his favor, Hank Sanders used newspapers and magazines as bathroom tissue. His mother would collect periodicals [...]