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Investigation Finds Fox Studios at Fault for Death of Black Stuntwoman on Set of Deadpool 2
On Aug. 14, 2017, racing pioneer and stuntwoman Joi “SJ” Harris died on the set of 20th Century Fox’s Deadpool 2, crashing into the side of a building in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. Harris was performing a stunt as the franchise’s character Domino, played by Zazie Beetz, when she lost control of her motorcycle. More…
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Yesterday in Georgia, Women in Prison Regained Some of Their Dignity
On Tuesday, the Georgia Dignity Act (House Bill 345) went into effect in all women’s prison facilities in Georgia, giving more than 3,800 women locked up in the state access to basic necessities like sanitary napkins, as well as affording them the decency of not being chained while pregnant or giving birth. The bipartisan bill,…
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Full Court Press: NBA Forces Every Franchise to Employ Psychologist, Behavioral Health Specialist for 2019-2020 Season
From Kevin Love to Metta World Peace, Dennis Rodman to DeMar DeRozen, players in the National Basketball Association—past and present—have publicly grappled with mental health issues. And that makes perfect sense, as the men of the NBA assuredly are part of the nearly 44 million Americans who have confronted mental illness in any given year.…
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The Water Dancer: Ta-Nehisi Coates Joined Oprah in Conversation at the Apollo—and We Were There
It was an amazingly candid conversation, punctuated with lots of laughter, black-ass intonations, and responses from the crowd. “I love a talking back audience,” Oprah said, as she and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates presented a salon of sorts at the venerable Apollo Theater last week. The packed audience (which included this writer) was privy to a…
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Here’s How Young Black Voters Are Fighting Back Against Voter Suppression in Mississippi
While folks around the country are galvanizing today, National Voter Registration Day, to make sure people are eligible to vote come Election Day, here in Mississippi, young black voters are fighting for much more than making sure our names are on the voter rolls. For four straight years, Mississippi will have had back-to-back, high-stakes elections.…
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Kindness Was Trudeau’s Ace…And Blackface May Cost Him the Election
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used to be my fourth favorite Canadian, behind Keanu Reeves, Celine Dion, and Margaret Atwood. Seeing Trudeau in blackface was more painful than when my old high school crush shared a racist meme on Facebook. It kills the part of your innocence that makes you sad and angry that you…
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The Magical, Riveting, Amazing Story of JJ and the Enthralling Power of Art
It’s early September 2019. The store clerk just outside Amsterdam Centraal Station watches me blow a gust of warm breath into my palms and tells me the best parts of summer left one week ago. The city welcomes me, as it had on my last six visits, with a cool breeze and light rain and…
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Harriet A. Washington's A Terrible Thing to Waste Injects a Dose of Hard Truth Into the Conversation About Black Lives
Harriet Washington’s 2007 tome, Medical Apartheid, not only outlined the pervasive use of medical experimentation on black Americans throughout history but circumscribed blacks’ credible distrust of the medical establishment. In fact, a large part of why J. Marion Sims’ statue was removed from New York’s Central Park more than a decade later was because of…
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Meet the New Head of Planned Parenthood: Alexis McGill Johnson Is a Seasoned Soldier in the War for Women’s Reproductive Health
It was mid-August, and just weeks into her new job as acting president/CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of American and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Alexis McGill Johnson was out front, defending the organization from attack. On that day, McGill Johnson said that Planned Parenthood would be pulling out of the Title X program,…
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When Will America Save Black Mothers From Dying? Never, Without Us
“I have taken trauma and turned it into triumph,” says Brittany “Tru” Kellman, founder of Jamaa Birth Village in Ferguson, Mo. At the age of 13, Kellman found herself in an unfamiliar city, running away from a violent home, and pregnant. At 37 weeks into her pregnancy, a physician decided to induce her labor without…
