Suzanne Jackson is an artist who has experimented with materials for decades. Now in her 80s, she's having her first major museum retrospective in an exhibition titled “What is Love.” https://to.pbs.org/4gHMvTN

#OtD 16 Jul 1862 feminist, writer, and anti-racist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells was born. Wells' investigative journalism documented lynchings in the American south, and she was one of the founders of the @NAACP stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8788...

past/prologue

🤭

Trump mobilized 12+ federal agencies and the National Guard for the stated purpose of reducing “tremendous levels of violent crime” in Memphis mind you, that directive came 6 days after Memphis PD announced crime in the city had dropped to a historic 25-year low ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

Dr. Edward Bouchet (born in New Haven, CT in 1852) was among the first Americans in U.S. history to earn a Ph.D. in physics. The son of a formerly enslaved father, Dr. Bouchet earned his doctorate from Yale in 1876.

“When a Black child disappears, police are more likely to record them as a runaway, which removes the urgency to search during the first 72 hours, when a missing person is most likely to be found alive. A white child in the same circumstances is more often logged as missing and endangered.” 💔

Five facts that you should know about the current Cyclospora outbreak.

Today is also the birthday of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune — the icon responsible for my college education! She created her own school in 1904 (now Bethune-Cookman University), and was a national leader for Black and womens’ rights, even serving as an advisor to President Roosevelt.

i’ll take you there

“This budget recognizes that keeping families and pets together, preventing animals from ending up on the streets or in shelters, and supporting the rescuers who care for our city’s most vulnerable animals are all part of NYC’s affordability agenda” ❤️

Now and Forever Windows. Kerry James Marshall. Washington National Cathedral. Washington DC. #WindowsWednesday

Pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines called them the “first freedom riders” because they broke Jim Crow laws by touring the South by bus and performing together. The white members used makeup to darken their complexions to pass as black and fool local sheriffs. My story: www.dailykos.com/stories/2021...

GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY

for the culture ✊🏽

#tdih 2016 Philando Castile was shot to death 💔 by a police officer in a suburb of Saint Paul, Minn., at a traffic stop. Castile was known as “Mr. Phil” to students at the elementary school where he was a nutrition supervisor. #BlackLivesMatter #TeachTruth www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/ph...

"By the time his Tony Brown's Journal left PBS in 2008 after four decades, he had interviewed more than 1,000 guests, including Lena Horne, Jesse Jackson, Angela Davis, Bill Cosby and Sammy Davis Jr. The exchange with Ms. Horne hinted at his broadcasting mission.." #BlackSky free: archive.ph/LLw4b

past is prologue

“A skilled entrepreneur & ardent abolitionist, his wife & daughters founded the 1st interracial antislavery society for women.”

“…officials claimed the Black church had played a crucial role in the planning. They ordered the AME members to disperse and burned the church to the ground. Black churches were soon outlawed in Charleston; the AME church was the last Black church to exist there until after the Civil War.”

About Trump v. Barbara: Do not give the Court and the CJ credit for reading and upholding the Constitution. It's a travesty that this is not a unanimous decision... it's also a travesty that the Court let this question percolate for a year, giving credence to a crank theory of citizenship.

See, people always want to make this just about "sports," but the real upshot here is that, 6-3, trans women can't make a claim under the Equal Protection Clause. And if they can't do that, it's hard to see how they have constitutional rights.

ladies first ❤️

Tony Brown, a groundbreaking journalist, author, educator, and host of the iconic talk show “Tony Brown’s Journal,” has died. He was 93

On this day in 1844, the Oregon Territory passed its first of many laws prohibiting free Black people from moving into the area and authorizing violators to be whipped as punishment.

helpful coverage from @elpais.com english.elpais.com/usa/2025-08-...

BTW, racist Americans have hated Haiti since 1791, because Haiti was the first successful revolution against enslavement. And I want to note how Justice Jackson included a detailed discussion of the Black Codes in her defense of Hawaiian historical sovereignty in another case today.

He's the man who single-handedly caused 2 of the 3 biggest conflagrations to come out of Mississippi in the last 70 years (one of them being Emmett Till). Causing the biggest battle in the South since the Civil War, & his one man march sparked the Black Power Movement. James Meredith is 93 today

Whitney Houston, Roberta Flack, Nick Ashford, Valerie Simpson, and Diahann Carroll on the opening night of Ashford & Simpson’s first restaurant, The Sugar Bar Restaurant in NY.

Most people know about Rosa Parks and her courageous act of defiance that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped lead to a court ruling ending bus segregation in Montgomery. But fewer people know about Sarah Mae Flemming of Columbia, South Carolina.

Science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler was born #OTD in 1947. A multiple recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, she became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship (1995). #booksky #litsky #scifi #SpeculativeFiction

For America's 250th birthday, see her true colors. Filmed in Super 35 by Ernest Dickerson and enlarged to 70mm for select first-run engagements in 1992, Spike Lee's Oscar-nominated, Denzel Washington-starring MALCOLM X screens on 70mm 🎞️ on Saturday, July 4 and Tuesday, July 7. 🎟️: filmlinc.org/70

My son just asked why Netherlands has so many Black people on the team I told him we are everywhere.

A 'Song For My Father' www.dailykos.com/stories/2026...

“So, it’s just — it’s just an opportunity to really just kind of blow things wide open and go, “Well, this is another huge part of the story that hasn’t been told.”

For Black women farmers, tending the land is ancestral and healing Black farmers have lost millions of acres since the early 1900s. Today a generation of growers is working to rebuild and reconnect communities to the land. 19thnews.org/2026/06/blac...

Also let me recommend historian Annette Gordon Reed’s “On Juneteenth” for your summer reading list. I felt vindicated reading that Reed, a Texan, always saw Juneteenth as a Texas celebration. Her dive into the complicated history of Texas, slavery, integration & this holiday is riveting.

and they still won’t leave us tf alone

From Houston to Queens, cities across the country are honoring Juneteenth with festivals, concerts, parades, and community gatherings rooted in Black joy and remembrance. By: Shelby Stewart #BlackskyNews #Juneteenth www.essence.com/awards-event...

We should stand up for those working to register and mobilize voters and ensure they have the best legal advice and follow the rules. bit.ly/43G11Ub

a defining factor in my generation the damnable ‘respectability politics’

The first time I heard of Juneteenth I had discovered that Ralph Ellison had been working on a book with that title, and died before he got to finish it. www.aaihs.org/ralph-elliso...

When I head to Washington, I will be the first woman in Congress with a science PhD. That matters. At a time when science is under attack, Congress needs more leaders who understand the value of evidence-based decision-making.

To everyone who helped bring the Obama Presidential Center to life, thank you. Michelle and I are so grateful for all your dedication and hard work over the years. I got a little teary-eyed tonight thinking about my mother-in-law, Marian Robinson.

I still remember the picture of her holding his hand while waiting on the election results in 2008.

“The perpetrator has been caught, but the killers are still at large: the deep wells of American racism and white supremacy that Dylann Roof drank from.”

Today is the 60th anniversary of Black Power. (it's also the 50th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising in South Africa