“Black” is a magical word.

St. Louis, Mo., police are still looking for a suspect in the case of a black 17-year-old boy who was shot and killed on his birthday last weekend.

It took a Cook County, Ill., jury less than three hours to find Kenneth Williams guilty on all charges related to the 2013 killing of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, a King College Prep High School student who performed as a majorette for Barack Obama’s second inauguration.

It is no longer news that the violence that plagued Chicago during the Aug. 3 weekend was one of the deadliest weekends in the past two years in the city, ending in a spree of gun violence that left 74 people shot, including 12 dead.

A Texas man arrested for killing his teenage neighbor in a dispute over fireworks claims he only shot the victim in self-defense but police say cell-phone video shows otherwise.

The father of a 3-year-old boy who died last weekend under his care says that his son accidentally shot himself in the head with a loaded gun; the boy’s mother, however, believes differently.

You can add “being distraught over the death of your child while black” to the growing list of things that might get you arrested after police locked up a grieving mother for trying to see her son at a Pennsylvania hospital.

Anyone who thinks children should be seen and not heard has clearly never heard of Naomi Wadler. The 11-year-old blew millions of minds when she appeared onstage at last month’s March for Our Lives “to acknowledge and represent the African-American girls whose stories don’t make the front page of every national…

Just one week before a mass shooting would launch their school into the national spotlight, students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School put on a Black History Month show at the Parkland, Fla., school. In a last-minute, unrehearsed addition, black student organizers wanted to address a letter that had appeared in…

In the 24 hours it takes for this column to be written, edited, copy edited and uploaded to The Root and to end up on your phone, about 318 people across the United States will have been shot (in fact, the shooting at YouTube headquarters happened between writing my first and second drafts of this column). That’s just…

Here’s a small glimmer of hope for victims of domestic violence: On Saturday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the passage of new legislation that requires convicted domestic abusers to surrender any and all firearms and prohibits them from obtaining or renewing a firearm license.

On Wednesday afternoon, black students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., assembled to draw attention to their growing safety concerns since returning to class—concerns they say may not necessarily be shared or highlighted by their white classmates, who have received the bulk of the national…

The ability of the Parkland, Fla., school-shooting victims to organize nationwide gun control rallies less than six weeks after their school was attacked is nothing short of a political miracle. Even Byron Allen couldn’t have predicted the perfect storm of demographics, inept politicians, charismatic kids and engaged…

Conservative social media users are back on their bullshit (though, being “back” would mean they somehow left it).

Yolanda Renee King, the grandchild of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, made a surprise appearance Saturday at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. The 9-year-old roused the crowd with a passionate speech that would no doubt have made her activist grandparents proud, evoking the “I Have a…

It’s a powerful thing to channel your pain into positive change. On Saturday, Jennifer Hudson did just that when she took to the stage at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., to sing a soul-stirring rendition of Bob Dylan’s protest anthem “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”

I am here today to represent Courtlin Arrington. I am here today to represent Hadiya Pendleton. I am here today to represent Taiyania Thompson, who at just 16 was shot dead at her home in Washington, D.C. I am here to acknowledge and represent the African-American girls whose stories don’t make the front page of every…

A teenage girl was shot and killed by her younger brother over what police believe to have been an argument over video games.

To the black students who walked out of schools across the country yesterday: We see you. We watched as you stood there, brown skin shining, braids swinging, voices booming, taking charge and walking in the revolutionary tradition of your ancestors. We saw the fire in your eyes. We felt it burning. Hold on to it.…