Newsletters - The Emancipator

Crème brûlée from the new documentary, “Ghost in America’s Kitchen.”

Unbound: The Granddaddy Of Black Chefs

James Hemings was a real one.

Kimberly Atkins Stohr and Ibram X. Kendi.

Unbound: What kids pick up about race

True: It’s how you say it. Truer: When teaching kids about race, what you do matters most.

African American women, seated at a table, writing, during the Birmingham Campaign, Birmingham, Alabama.

Unbound: Race matters: Why we need to know more, not less

If you are reading this newsletter, you are probably already familiar with the notion that race is a construct. So when you fill out a form that asks about race, it may seem inconsequential or even annoying. But it matters because race matters

Emancipation definition.

Unbound: Introducing the Justice Dictionary

The concepts and takeaways that defined 2022.

Unbound Takeover: The Gift Of Gratitude

This Thanksgiving season, The Emancipator team turns the reins over to Mia Henry, a social justice educator and founder of Freedom Lifted, for this issue of Unbound. This piece was adapted from a longer exploration of gratitude.

Report card for 2022 ballot questions.

Did America Make The Grade? Our Election Report Card

The election is over, but the American project continues, so what did Tuesday’s vote tell us about the nation’s commitment to the cause of justice? Let’s look at our report card.

FILE -- Students in a classroom at the UC Berkeley School of Law in Berkeley, Calif., Aug. 16, 2021. As the Supreme Court is set to consider affirmative action, the California and Michigan university systems say that despite vigorous effort, and hundreds of millions of dollars, their attempts to build diverse classes has hardly worked. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

Affirmative Action Can Be Saved

What's being left out of the Supreme Court's arguments on affirmative action?

Monster Shadow Lurking Over a House.

A supremely scary term is underway

It is fitting the term opened in October: Cases that will likely bring an end to affirmative action at public colleges and universities, and private schools receiving federal funding will be argued on Oct. 31. What will play out is likely to become, as The Emancipator contributor Brandon Hasbrouck writes, “a Halloween massacre.”

Black family waves goodbye for the day.

Black Progress Index: Roadmap To The Good Life

Introducing The Emancipator’s series on the Black Progress Index, a newly released data tool by the Brookings Institution and NAACP.

“Black milk. This baby is getting a mixture of coffee, sugar and water instead of milk, which is too expensive.” San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1937.

Evening The Odds, One Baby At A Time

The Emancipator contributors at Boston University School of Medicine are studying why Black babies and their mothers have such disparate health outcomes.

African American family posed for portrait seated on lawn.

Different takes on The Talk

Contributors open a window into some of the most difficult and urgent conversations that take place between parents, guardians and other caretakers, and children.

Childhood photos of Amber and Deborah for the Emancipator

We have to talk about The Talk—A message from The Editors

The Emancipator is quite obsessed with the idea of The Talk, the one where Black parents convey a different set of behavioral rules and expectations to their children to keep them safe — and alive. We’re also invested in what that conversation looks like along the lines of ethnicity, ability, sexuality, immigration status, and gender.

In this photograph, part of the original cast of "Star Trek," includes Nichelle Nichols, top left, DeForest Kelley, top right, Leonard Nimoy, bottom left, and William Shatner. "Star Trek," will be 40 years old on September 8, 2006. (Handout/MCT)

Celebrating Nichelle Nichols

While most TV and film roles for Black women were of servants or subplot characters meant largely to bolster White leads, Uhura shone as a brilliant, multilingual starship communications officer.

Families that stay together save (money) together

A new study about the growing number of Americans, particularly young adults, living in multigenerational households makes me wonder: Can this be an opportunity to change how society envisions the typical family home in a more inclusive way?

Join us for Twitter Spaces

The truth exposed nearly 70 years too late

Join us for a Twitter Spaces conversation with Jerry Mitchell, founder of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. He’ll talk about revelations from a secret memoir by 88-year-old Carolyn Bryant Donham, the White woman at the center of the Emmett Till case

Boston, MA - 7/3/2022 Demonstrators congregated at the JFK Building in downtown Boston to protest the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade on July 3, 2022. Speakers from multiple democratic socialist organizations spoke to the hundreds in attendance. (Carlin Stiehl for The Boston Globe)

They can legislate morality but they can’t break our soul

This is a week we Americans commemorate the nation’s founding and its constitutional ideals. But this year, for so many of us, is hitting different.

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Asian American writers pay tribute to the life of Vincent Chin

Technically, the two White men who killed Vincent Chin on a summer night in the Detroit area were plea bargained down to manslaughter. But we all know it was murder.

A Juneteenth flag is raised during a celebration Monday at the African American Civil War Memorial in the District. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Matt McClain

Triggered — but in a good way

Juneteenth has been part of the Black American experience for more than 150 years. But many people – inside and outside Black and Brown communities – are still learning what the celebration is all about.

Roberta Wolff walks through the Old Burying Yard in Harvard Square on June 11, 2021.

Where bad ideas come from

For even the most dedicated advocates of justice, it can be hard to remain forward-looking, let alone optimistic, at a time where crises seem to fester, swell, then explode.

Crypto

Can crypto drive racial equity?

When the first bitcoin was created in 2009, communities of color jumped in to explore a new class of financial assets without the runaround of traditional banking. What are the risks? What are the opportunities?

**EMBARGO: No electronic distribution, Web posting or street sales before 3:01 a.m. ET April 21, 2022. No exceptions for any reasons. EMBARGO set by source.** FILE -- Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) at a news conference in Washington, Dec. 10, 2021. Hair is a potent symbol of self, of gender, of subversion. To renounce it can be just as powerful. (T.J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times)

Fireside Chat With Rep. Ayanna Pressley

A conversation about the factors contributing to the gaping racial student loan debt gap and the urgent solutions that would transform the student debt crisis into a true form of reparations.

‘Where is the money?’ abolitionist Maria Stewart asked in the 1800s. We’re still asking.

We can solve the racial wealth gap

“Where is the money?” abolitionist Maria Stewart asked in the 1800s. We’re still asking.

Amber Payne, left, and Deborah Douglas co-editors-in-chief of the new online publication of "The Emancipator"

We’ve got big plans for you

Greetings from co-editors in chief, Deborah D. Douglas and Amber Payne. We’ve spent the last nine months working hard on reimagining the nation’s first abolitionist newspaper for the digital age.

Wilma Rudolph at the finish line during 50-yard dash at a track meet in Madison Square Garden in 1961.

Have Black Americans done enough yet?

I recall when I first really became aware of Black History Month: In my elementary school, the occasion was marked by an all-school assembly, and some students — including me — were selected to dress up as a Black historical feature. I wanted to be Wilma Rudolph, the record-breaking Olympic sprinter.

Cornell William Brooks.

You know we’re at war, right?

An 1831 woodcut represented as an “authentic and impartial” narrative of Nat Turner’s rebellion, depicting, at top, enslaved Black Americans attacking whites and, at bottom, soldiers in subsequent pursuit of the rebels.

Colonization killed so many Indigenous people, the earth COOLED

We know the story. Or, at least, we think we do.

Is it possible to right an ‘upside-down’ justice system?

At a time when legislative action to redress our broken criminal legal system seems less and less likely, there are opportunities to find solutions elsewhere, if people, including the justices of the court, are willing to take them.

Who will protect Black women?

As hard as Black women work to protect others, to protect democracy, I keep asking myself: Who protects us?

Culture in context: Mothers of Gynecology monument by Michelle Browder unveiled in Montgomery, Alabama

Speaking truth about our monuments

In Boston and across the country, communities are speaking truth to our monuments, erecting new markers to fully tell our story, and dismantling the symbols honoring and perpetuating tyranny and terror.

As diversity in Boston booms, Black residents flee

Boston’s population has boomed over the last decade, and the city became dramatically more multiracial — but a lot less Black.