As we near the seventh anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida, I am reflecting on my role as a parent and educator and how I cannot ignore the possibility that a school shooting could happen where I work or where my children attend school. It is a tragedy that so many children, parents, and educators live with the daily fear of gun violence in American schools. While it’s easy to blame policymakers for our current state, we, th...

Federal agencies under the Trump administration have started banning Black History Month, and now it’s more essential than ever to take the opportunity to recognize the accomplishments and struggles of African Americans throughout history. As an educator, I find it particularly important to acknowledge and honor the father of Black history: Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, who founded Black History Month’s precursor, Negro History Week, at the behest of Black students. Now is also the time to examine...

A teaching colleague recently asked my opinion on whether she should take the lead on coordinating Black History Month activities at her school. To answer, I needed some context.I knew she was only one of three Black teachers in a school with several dozen total instructors, most of them white. (That’s a problem by itself, but I digress.) I asked if she was likely to get support from colleagues. She answered yes, but only if programming didn’t veer from the previous years of teaching sunny, wate...

This week, Mike Tyson returns to the ring after a 19-year layoff. His opponent is Jake Paul, the YouTube sensation turned professional boxer who some claim is bad for boxing. But boxing isn’t bad for Paul’s wallet. He may make up to $40 million from this fight, although neither Paul nor Tyson confirmed their payday. On the surface, the appeal is finding out if the 58-year-old Tyson can defeat Paul, who’s less than half Tyson’s age. There’s also this: learning if Paul can continue to build his resume as a boxer, defeating real boxers. However, at the lowest common dominator, the intrigue surrounds whether Jake Paul is the next great white heavyweight.

The nation abandoned any hope for a multiracial democracy on Nov. 5 in favor of reelecting Donald Trump for president. For me, this election is a mirror of 1877. The Union victory over the Confederates in the Civil War birthed the nation’s first attempt at a multiracial democracy. Black men throughout the South were elected to state houses and even Congress. However, the progress was short-lived. In 1877, the white power structure abandoned the multiracial democracy, choosing to violen...

Palestinians in Gaza began running, again, on October 8, 2023. “We Palestinians are always running,” Suheir Hammad writes in the poem Silence from her collection, "Born Palestinian, Born Black." “Where do we go?” One day after the deadly Hamas attack in Israel, the Israeli government warned and directed Palestinians in Gaza to leave targeted areas. Nowhere in Gaza was safe. One year after Hamas’ massacre, much of Gaza is reduced to rubble.

The Black Church is a stalwart institution in the African American community, serving as a major hub of spiritual enlightenment, social activism, and economic empowerment for Black people. It’s hard to overstate the impact the Black Church has had on the United States, particularly its artistic culture and politics. It’s the institution that gave us the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as well as a rich musical tradition that was foundational to popular culture, impacting everything from “blu...

In 1995, New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman considered taking control of specified functions within Camden municipal government. Understandably, she was concerned about a lack of resident buy-in. However, an editorial in the Courier-Post urged Gov. Whitman to press forward, saying:“Gov Whitman, perhaps, is reluctant to take over the entire city ... because some may call her racist; however, she shouldn’t care. Pulling the race card without cause is what desperate people do when they can’t de...

Democrats did their due diligence and achieved a “united” convention. President Biden’s decision to no longer seek re-election could have facilitated a contested convention. However, Democrats — starting with Biden — quickly got behind Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. That was the test before the convention. The test in Chicago was Palestine. The Biden Administration’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the vice president’s ambiguous posture on the campaign trail made for a potential confrontation between moderates and progressives. However, congressional progressives, from AOC to Bernie Sanders, have toed the party line and have backed the Harris Campaign.

President Joe Biden approached the 2024 presidential election with a historically low approval rating, and despite his desire to seek reelection, he was forced to drop out of the race, passing the torch to his Vice President Kamala Harris with the goal of keeping the presidency away from former President Donald Trump. It’s no secret that Biden’s trouble with the Black community affected his decision to depart from the race. He couldn’t have made enough visits to Black churches and Black radio...

Juneteenth memorializes the day when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, to announce all enslaved peoples were free upon the surrender of the last Confederate stronghold. More than 150 years later, in 2021, President Joe Biden made Juneteenth a national holiday. Holidays and memorials remind us of who we are as a country—our past and who we hope to become in the future. Juneteenth celebrations provide the opportunity to remember the real national Independence Day.

This month marks the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The ruling in the 1954 case was one of the most consequential court decisions in American history, overturning the doctrine of separate but equal—or separate and unequal, depending on who you ask—established by Plessy v. Ferguson. The case also set the stage for Civil Rights Movement activists to dismantle the racial caste system that was Jim Crow.

"Brown v. Board of Education" desegregated our schools. It also made it harder for Black teachers to succeed, argues Rann Miller. Read more In April, Philadelphia hosted the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. While the planners of the convening may have glowing remarks about its host city, researchers took Pennsylvania to task. At the meeting, Travis Bristol of the University of California, Berkeley, and Sharif El-Mekki, CEO of the Center for Black Educator Develo

Mayor Cherelle Parker was the first woman elected mayor in the history of Philadelphia. She vowed to voters that she will vigorously fight crime and believes she’s doing just that. She has a mandate to do so. Historically, Philadelphia has regularly contended with poverty and gun violence. While gun violence is down compared to last year, 2023 follows three of the most violent years in recent memory and the trauma remains something residents continue to navigate. According to a Pew Charitable Trust 2023 poll, Philadelphians from all backgrounds want their elected leaders to prioritize reducing the city’s crime rate in the coming years. According to the poll, those most affected are Black and Latino/a/x residents, who make up a majority of city residents.

The Super Bowl last week was filled with cultural moments that blew people away. Usher provided one of the more entertaining halftime shows in recent memory. Beyoncé announced on a Verizon commercial she’s releasing new music . . . and of course, the NFL couldn’t get enough shots of Taylor Swift at the big game. However, there’s one act of the culture that took place that is hardly ever noticed these days, but is nevertheless a cultural touchpoint in the mainstream: the dap. Dap is a customary salutation or greeting amongst Black people. It’s a clasping of hands that can morph into additional hand exchanges and/or a bro hug.

When it comes to Black history and the city of Philadelphia, there is much to reflect on and celebrate. There’s the work of South Jersey-born abolitionist William Still, who was known as the father of the Underground Railroad, responsible for ushering African Americans safely through Philadelphia on their way to freedom. There’s also the work of groups such as the Agricultural and Mechanics Association of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, which purchased land and financed education for newly emancipated

History can teach us a lot about where we are as a society and how we got here. Some historical topics are uncomfortable to engage in: they can be both difficult to learn as well as painful to teach. One such topic is chattel enslavement. Let me tell you: Enslavement was wrong. And it cannot, and should not, be ignored in the curriculum or in our society. The unpaid labor of African people, as well as the exploitation of resources from lands where the descendants of formerly enslaved Africans

Considering the history of Black quarterbacks, are they not enough of an underdog? After Fritz Pollard, the first Black quarterback in football history, came a ban on Black players by the NFL from 1933 to 1946. When the NFL reintegrated in 1946, the prevailing assumption was that Black athletes weren’t intelligent enough to play quarterback. Whites even assumed that Black players lacked the physical stamina and emotional courage to excel at contact sports like boxing and football.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses marchers during his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington. Read more As another MLK Day arrives, politicians across the spectrum will post pictures with quotes by Martin Luther King Jr., using them as a veil to conceal all the ways their policies don’t align with his philosophies. Instead of, like King, advocating for voting rights, economic and environmental justice, and criminal justice, today’s legislato

The policy is part of a familiar playbook where governments enact racist fashion bans in the name of “curtailing crime.” The City Council of Philadelphia passed a ban in December on ski masks as a purported crime-fighting measure. According to the ordinance, wearing ski masks will be prohibited in parks, schools, public transit and other city-owned buildings, carrying with it a fine of $250 for each offense, and up to $2,000 if a mask is worn during the commission of a crime. The council bill