Gordon Parks escaped a segregated childhood in Kansas and remade American visual culture—then took his fight from the page to the screen. The best-known Gordon Parks images feel like they arrived already etched into public memory—so complete, so formally sure of themselves, that it can be easy to forget how much resistance they contain. The photographs are not simply records of what happened. They are arguments about what deserves to be seen, what counts as evidence, and who gets to author the story of American life. Read the full story at https://www.kolumnmagazine.com/2026/02/16/camera-as-a-passport/

Motherhood in the U.S. is revered. Actual mothers? Not so much. So where's a bedraggled mom to turn when she feels overworked, overwhelmed, and underappreciated? Turns out, momfluencers are stepping in to fill that void, including a particular category of momfluencer: the tradwife. We dive into that world to understand how it might intersect with the Trump administration, what it has to do with white supremacy, and where moms of color fit in.

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is responsible for naming two of the most contested ideas in American politics: intersectionality and critical race theory. A legal scholar and 'Backtalker' , she defends critical race theory — a term she helped coin : NPR https://www.npr.org/2026/05/05/nx-s1-5806015/kimberle-williams-crenshaw-backtalker

In this enlightening and deeply historical episode, award-winning journalist and "Black Twitter Founding Father" Michael Harriot joins to dismantle the myths of the American narrative. Known for his sharp wit and "receipts," Harriot explains why true history is often hidden and how his book, Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America, serves as a vital syllabus for reclaiming the Black experience. This conversation is a masterclass in cultural preservation and historical truth-telling. Harriot recounts his journey from a homeschooled "Black genius" to a New York Times bestselling author, exploring the "inventive cruelty" of the past and the undeniable brilliance that allowed Black Americans to build a nation from their own intellectual property. From the cannibalism of the first starving settlers to the Black women who masterminded the Civil Rights movement, Harriot centers the stories that have been erased by centuries of whitewashing. They discuss: •The Foundation of Lies: Why the first step to understanding history is acknowledging that "they be lying" and the organized effort to rewrite the Civil War through the Daughters of the Confederacy. •The Architect of Education: How Black people in 1868 South Carolina invented the American public education system as we know it today. •Haiti and Global Collusion: A deep dive into the Haitian Revolution and how the Western world collaborated to keep the first free Black nation in a cycle of debt and poverty. •Resistance as a Blueprint: The legend of Forest Joe and the "maroon" communities that forced America to create its first police forces. •Freeing Themselves: Deconstructing the myth of the "Great Emancipator" and proving that Black people—not Abraham Lincoln—were the primary agents of their own freedom. •Intellectual Property vs. Physical Labor: Why the transatlantic slave trade targeted African minds and engineers, not just muscle, and how that genius built everything from the US Capitol to the cowboy culture.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a very big deal. It transformed America, marking the end of the Jim Crow era and effectively banning racial discrimination in elections. Finally fulfilling the promise of a multiracial democracy, Black voter registration increased, and political representation across the nation better reflected America’s diverse population. 60 years later, a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act is at risk of being erased. In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court has sided with the plaintiffs in a redistricting case out of Louisiana called Louisiana v. Callais. The case focused on Louisiana’s legislative maps, which were amended after a 2022 lawsuit in which civil rights groups and community members sued the state of Louisiana, claiming the maps drawn after the 2020 census didn’t properly reflect Louisiana’s Black population. Once the new map with two majority-Black districts passed in the Louisiana state legislature in 2024, a group of “non African-American voters” filed a lawsuit that alleged the new map was unconstitutional and racially gerrymandered, intended to cut white voters out of power. Following the Supreme Court ruling, Louisiana must redraw that map. What happens next could ignite a widespread gerrymandering effort that would alter electoral maps across red states and have major effects on minority political representation in the United States at every level of government. If you want to read more about the case, take a look at some of the sources that contributed to our reporting: The Louisiana v. Callais case: https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case...