Posts by amstrat

For as long as she can remember, Hanna Wagari, a longtime resident of San Diego and the Director of Marketing for a multinational cosmetics company, has straightened her hair every time she’s had a job interview. “I feel that white people find me less intimidating and more likable when my hair is straight,” said Wagari,…

African Americans have long been punished for appearing in professional or academic settings while wearing their natural hair. In 2010, a Black woman in Alabama refused to cut her dreadlocks, and a job offer disappeared. Last December, a video of a Black high school wrestler who was forced get his dreadlocks cut off before a…

CHICAGO — Decade by decade, the newspaper told the story of black life in America. It took note of births and deaths, of graduations and weddings, of everything in between. Through eras of angst, its reporters dug into painful, dangerous stories, relaying grim details of lynchings, of clashes over school integration and of the shootings…

For nearly 115 years, the Chicago Defender has been a vital news source for African Americans in Chicago and beyond. At a time when Black voices were largely excluded from mainstream media platforms, the Defender covered both major events—the 1919 Chicago Race Riot, the murder of Emmett Till, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.—and the details of Black community…

After more than a century, the Chicago Defender, the iconic news outlet for African Americans in Chicago and beyond, printed its last copy. It will be continuing only as a digital operation. Watch on CBS Chicago.

CHICAGO — Wednesday’s edition of the Chicago Defender is the last one available in print. After more than a century as the main source of news for generations of black Chicagoans, the iconic Chicago newspaper will now only be available in digital form. “We grew up with the Defender,” said reader Lawrence Keenon. “It is…

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing about H.R. 40, a proposal from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) that would authorize a national apology and study reparations for slavery and racial discrimination against black people in America. Among those testifying before the subcommittee was writer…

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thinks reparations already came in the form of a Black President, but that didn’t stop Congress from having a hearing Wednesday on H.R. 40 which calls for the establishment of a commission to study reparations for Black Americans. The panel, which included notables like Danny Glover, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and economist Julianne Malveaux overwhelmingly made…

In 2019, Juneteenth will be celebrated as emancipation was in the old days: with calls for reparations. As the country marks 154 years since news of the end of slavery belatedly came to Texas, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the subject of reparations for black Americans. It is a watershed moment…

It didn’t seem to be that controversial of a statement given the data. Since the Donald Trump presidency; the Georgia governor’s race; the St. Louis mayoral race and others, a certain number of black men have been sneaking back into the Sunken Place voting booth. Whether it’s partisanship, misogyny, or vague notions of “electability,” research shows (pdf) some black men will find…