While America’s economic recovery continued at a steady pace, racial disparity in hiring continues to plague the African American labor market, according to the Labor Department’s August jobs report.

Instead of purchasing the latest fad smoothie or participating in a TikTok challenge, here are a few suggestions for life-long wellness. These recommendations are as simple as learning your ABCs.

For over a century, the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis has been a champion for empowerment and opportunity for African Americans in our community. We pride ourselves on working to improve lives through various programs – such as those that provide utility assistance -- and by advocat…

Many of us, including me, check COVID-19 rates constantly, watching the red bar dip and soar with anticipation. Our front-line workers carry an additional burden; they also count more grieving families in their waiting rooms and witness the increased anxiety in the eyes of sick patients. 

Francis Scott Key, author of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” our “national anthem,” was a dyed-in-the-wool racist. He opined that “Negroes” were a “distinct and inferior race.” He was a slaveholder from a family of slaveholders who influenced the odious seventh President Andrew Jackson to appoin…

We are tired.  We are tired of being beaten by policemen.  We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again.  And then you holler, “Be patient.”  How long can we be patient?  We want our freedom, and we want it now.” – John Lewis, March on Washington for Jobs and Freed…

Race has long been a key determinant of public health in this country, and as U.S. Surgeon General under President Bill Clinton, I saw those disparities – and worse outcomes for Black Americans – every day.

Have you ever felt like you are a fraud and have not lived up to the expectations of your friends and family? Do you think your co-workers have an inflated view of your skills and abilities and one day they will find out you do not know much, and they will expose you as a fake? When you look…

As students and educators return to school, I’d like to offer a prayer of encouragement. Considering the confusion regarding mask mandates, social distancing guidelines and vaccination rates, I feel it is needed.   

Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon who died last year, liked to tell activists that building a better world depended on people being willing to make “good trouble.” Rep. Cori Bush, D-MO., has just given us an example of effective troublemaking that should inspire us to action.

My phone pinged at 2 a.m. this morning and simply read “Belma has passed!” My immediate response was, “I had wondered how she would survive without Dr. Henry Givens, her dear husband of 60 years.” One of the sad occurrences among the COVID era is the passing of so many of St. Louis’ great Bl…

I used to think of February as the Blackest month of the year. It’s the month set aside to honor and celebrate Black history in all facets. Sure, June, aka Black Music Month, celebrates our contributions to what is known as a universal language, but it’s not as all-encompassing as February.

“I chose to be an agitator. The next time you put your underwear in the washing machine, take the agitator out, and all you’re going to end up with are some dirty, wet drawers.” – Dick Gregory

The Jan. 6 attack on Congress and the U.S. Capitol was an assault on our democracy. So is the effort by congressional Republicans and their right-wing media allies to keep Americans from learning the truth about the insurrection. They are desperate to protect the people responsible for that …

We stand at a pivotal time in history, where the “Power of Us”, the collective energy and wisdom of our community, can be the difference between a step back in time or a step into the future. We are confronted with a nation in denial, that has cast a willful blind eye to reality. 

When it comes to financing your car, do as I say and not as I did—-I offer this advice with great humility. Why?  Because, when I bought my first car in 1995, I thought a 20% interest rate on a car loan was a good deal. As a young man earning low wages with a limited credit history and no co…

It is peak irony to see Governor Parson use his legal powers to protect white people of privilege and means who admitted they broke the law by endangering Black protestors who feel the law does not adequately protect them.

There’s been a lot of news about the Democratic legislators in Texas who fled the state to prevent Republicans from pushing through sweeping new voter suppression laws. Gov. Greg Abbott has threatened to have them arrested to force them to attend a special session of the state legislature.

“America,” Langston Hughes once wrote, “never was America to me. And yet I swear this oath—America will be!” What will it take, I often wonder, for America, the land of the oppressed, home of racist cowards, to be America to me? What will it take for America, a place where billionaires are p…

When I took office on April 20, nearly 100 days ago, I knew that my election to this office was unprecedented. To be a Black woman, a single mother, a native to the North side who still lives there, I knew St. Louis was not used to a leader like me. 

There is no question that the future of our community will be tied to the employment opportunities that exist in our area. Especially as we emerge from the traumatic impact the pandemic created for many young men and women across St. Louis, our focus remains heavily on promoting the right wo…

Missouri’s highest court has ruled that the voter-led initiative to expand Medicaid is constitutional, correcting a circuit court ruling and rebuking a Republican legislature that has used every tool in its political toolbox to prevent Medicaid expansion. 

The right-wing majority on the Supreme Court just undercut the Voting Rights Act again. Having gutted the section that required pre-approval of state voting laws to protect the rights of minorities to vote in Shelby v. Holder, Republican-appointed justices now have castrated the backup claus…

“The 21st century Jim Crow assault is real. It's unrelenting, and we're going to challenge it vigorously. While this broad assault against voting rights is not unprecedented, it's taking on a new and, literally, pernicious forms. It's no longer just about who gets to vote or making it easier…

St. Louis County will soon receive about half of the $193 million it was awarded from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act.

Have you ever known anyone who measured their self-worth by the size of their bank account or by their physical appearance? 

The state of Missouri, the “Show Me State,” is in the heart of America.

A year after the death of the great civil rights icon John Lewis, a group of Texas Democratic lawmakers is following Lewis’s lifelong call for people to make “good trouble” and “necessary trouble” to secure equality and justice for all.

During a recent St. Louis Regional Health Commission patient advisory board meeting, the agenda included an update on Medicaid expansion. One of the representatives said, and I quote, “Yes, we need to talk about that. I’m mad.”

During the civil rights movement’s struggle against discrimination and voter suppression in Jim Crow America, the Black Church was a source of refuge and resolve. Today, a new wave of voter suppression laws is targeting Black voters, and new generations of Black clergy are bringing their mor…

During the past year, a reckoning has happened across the country.

For decades, the Black press has been a vanguard of the Black community’s history and guardian of its future. As we sit at a crossroad of progress and regression, hope lies in strengthening this storied institution.