Filibuster. Cloture. Reconciliation. The chatter surrounding President Biden’s landmark infrastructure investment and Build Back Better agenda seems focused on the legislative process, on political maneuvering, on faceless numbers taken out of context.
Sometimes friends have to hold friends accountable. That’s why I got arrested outside the White House on Oct. 5. I was there with other civil rights and religious leaders to call on President Joe Biden to do more to protect voting rights that are under attack.
There is an African proverb that captures one of the challenges that many financially successful Black-owned business leaders face in America. “Your earned riches may engender envy and jealous criticism but be not dismayed by the foolishness of the envious.”
When I was a teenager, I went to an under-18 club called Animal House. We lived in Walnut Park, so either my mom or dad would drive me and my friends just up the road to North County. It was the spot to go to for kids across our region.
Retired Congressman William L. “Bill” Clay submitted this piece in January 2020 in response to news reports that developer Paul McKee Jr. plans to use the name “Homer G. Phillips Hospital” for a new, small urgent-care clinic. “It is apparent that many in the St. Louis community are unfamilia…
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.
Black Americans are not only more religious than non-Black Americans, but they are also more likely to believe that opposing racism is essential to faith, the Pew Research Center concluded in a recent study.
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…
It’s that time of year again where our families participate in the tradition of back-to-school shopping.
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…
As a network of patient-centered, health and public health organizations, we stand with all the medical and lay professionals that care for our communities’ health and wellbeing, especially our colleagues on the frontline protecting us all from the proven, deadly impact of COVID-19. Acknowle…
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.
The far-right attack on voting rights is fierce. And the unwillingness of some Senate Democrats to challenge rules that allow a Republican minority to block voting rights bills is making some question whether we can turn back the tide of voter suppression. As the Black Voters Matter Freedom…
For two and a half years, enslaved Black Americans in Galveston, Texas, were both free and not free. According to the soaring words of the Emancipation Proclamation, as of January 1, 1863, they were “thenceforward, and forever free” with the full endorsement of the U.S. government.
Critical race theory (CRT) is an academic movement of civil rights scholars and activists in the United States who seek to critically examine the law as it intersects with issues of race and to challenge mainstream liberal approaches to racial justice. Critical race theory examines social, c…
Paid family and medical leave is getting all the attention right now, and there is no doubt that the United States needs to catch up to the rest of the world. Offering federal paid benefits to parents or caretakers to assist with new child responsibilities or care for those long-term illness…
When I meet people for the first time and hand them my business card, there is almost always that moment of surprise -- that split second when they are creating a scenario in their minds of how I became Chairman and CEO of a highly esteemed community bank.
January 1, 1863, marked the first official day that the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, effectively freeing enslaved people from the bonds that considered them property. However, it wasn’t until nearly two and half years later on June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers visited Galvest…
History is contested because the telling of history is powerful.
A year ago vehement protests were continuing in the light of the murder of George Floyd, 46, by former police officer Derrick Chauvin; while onlookers begged him to stop and fellow police officers stood by, as if giving silent assent.
"The lie of massive, rampant voter fraud is serving the same function today as it did during the rise of Jim Crow. It stokes fear in a segment of the population that democracy is in peril, and thus provides cover for laws that target Black voters with race-neutral language in the 21st centur…
Happy Pride month to Black LGBTQ readers and to all of us who love LGBTQ people!
