Stories

How do we — the artists, the writers, the ones who are so used to squaring off with the worst of ourselves, our world, our humanity — find a language suitable for our current state of disaster, which is almost biblical in its force and Shakespearean in its unfolding? The 10 young Black writers in this project — talented poets from Oakland, Houston, St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Nashville, New Orleans and Los Angeles — are using the tools at their disposal, whatever they have. There’s the...

By Ellen Crankey, September 11, 2020, Insider. In less than a month, two women turned a viral news story about a small Georgia town for sale into the foundation for a new Black-centric community with the idea of freedom at its core. Ashley Scott, a realtor from Stonecrest, Georgia, told Insider that events that rattled the US this year — George Floyd's death in police custody in late May and the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic — had left her feeling "distraught" and "looking for...

Ernest Skelton, an appliance technician, was answering a routine call to Caroline Brock’s home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, when they shared a conversation about racial inequality that would resonate across the U.S. and around the world. During his visit, Brock ventured to ask Skelton how he was doing. At first, he thought she was talking about the coronavirus, but she specified that she was curious about his experience as a Black man in the U.S. She posted about their interaction on...