Happy #OnaJudgeDay! On this day 230 years ago, she made the daring decision to free herself. May her courage remind us that freedom is possible; that freedom happens within community; and that freedom is a constant struggle. www.cnn.com/2026/02/27/p...

“Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler” -Susana M. Morris “The Philadelphia Negro” -W.E.B. Du Bois “Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era and f the Slave Trade” -Philip D. Curtin

The right to vote was purchased in blood. It angers me to no end that we have elders who fought for access to the ballot, secured the right, and can now see it stripped from them yet again in their lifetime. We live in shameful times.

“This is not the color-blindness of Martin Luther King Jr., but what the scholar Ian Haney López has called ‘reactionary colorblindness,’ the purpose of which is to maintain racial hierarchy through superficially neutral means.”

I’m quoted in @justintinsley.bsky.social’s latest for @andscape.social.coop.ap.brid.gy. The pen in mighty. Y’all should check this out. Thanks for including me. andscape.com/features/jay...

Last week, I appeared on The Lead with Jake Tapper to discuss the dismantling of the slavery exhibit in The President’s House at Independence Mall in Philadelphia, the fight to preserve it, and it’s partial restoration. Grateful for the opportunity. #CNN #TheLeadCNN #America250 #BlackHistory

I’ve been saying for months this outcome was inevitable. www.dazeddigital.com/music/articl...

Many thanks to Mickey Factz for visiting my class on Kendrick Lamar at Temple University (“Kendrick Lamar and the Morale of the m.A.A.d city”). We discussed his career, the Blog Era, collaborating with Kendrick, and what makes Kendrick such a compelling writer. We even got a bar breakdown.

I need to do better about sharing on here. I was on the latest episode of @msolurin.bsky.social’s #OlayandFriends. Y’all should give it a listen. youtu.be/RzYEdIjr4xI?...

“Sesame Street” and its sequel, “The Electric Company,” were, “with lapses, the most intelligent and important programs in television,” Renata Adler wrote, in 1972.

When ICE agents questioned a group of 11- to 14-year-olds who’d just finished batting practice, their coach, Youman Wilder, stepped in. “I’m willing to die to make sure these kids can get home,” he recounted afterward.

There’s an old country adage that says you can boil a live frog in a pot on the stove so long as you gradually increase the temperature, because it will not perceive the inherent danger of the incrementally increasing heat. The water is now boiling. Let the reader understand.

This how I know black folk and white folk live in different realities. Because I coulda told you in my teens that some people in this country have so much hate in their hearts that they’d burn this country to the ground just to be rulers over ashes, if it meant people they don’t like get hurt more.

Within two hours of a Supreme Court ruling that limits the ability of federal courts to impose universal injunctions, lawyers for immigrant rights groups filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of their clients.

@whyy.org recently published a story about my forthcoming Kendrick Lamar course. You may read it below. whyy.org/articles/tem....

COMMENTARY: What’s the right way to mark Juneteenth? The newest U.S. holiday is confusing Americans @timothywelbeck.bsky.social writes for @theconversation.com lailluminator.com/2025/06/19/j...

What’s the right way to mark Juneteenth? The newest US holiday is confusing Americans @us.theconversation.com @timothywelbeck.bsky.social www.congress.gov/bill/117th-c...

Thank you for sharing this.

What is Juneteenth? What is the proper way to celebrate it? In many ways, the United States’ newest federal holiday has quickly become its most puzzling one. I talk about this in my latest article for @theconversation.com. theconversation.com/whats-the-ri...

In all seriousness, with all this talk about #HarrietTubman, I’d highly recommend Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar’s #SheCametoSlay. Y’all need that in your life.

Black Women Plan & Prepare Period. And yeah we knew and told y’all!

truth tellers are punished most when they are early, not wrong.

There's an easy fix for this. Start a nationwide project using AI to identify the people snarling in the background of all those old civil rights photos. Problem solved.

My favorite muppet with the sage wisdom.

I advise all my family, friends, and clients never to speak to law enforcement without an attorney present. The 5th and 6th Amendments exist for a reason. Do with that what you will.

Happy #MothersDay Mom. I thank God for you, your love, your nurturing, and your patience. It shaped me into the man I am today.

Happy Mother’s Day my love. What a great joy it is for our children to call you Mom.

Yesterday, we celebrated the beautiful lives and legacy of Kwasi and Elizabeth Agbottah. I thank God for placing such a treasure in the earth. It is beautiful to see their legacies alive and well in their five children. As his eldest said, we must finish what they started. We will.

One of my closest friends and his dear wife recently passed away in a tragic accident. It’s a devastating loss. They leave behind five sons ranging in age from 15-2. The family has organized a GoFundMe to support them. Please consider donating. www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-su...

Rest well friend. I will see you again…

Balloons on my page and what not… This last rotation around the sun has been a beautiful adventure, truly. God is faithful. I am grateful for this life God has given me, and thankful to be surrounded by so many who love and support me.

Thirty-one years ago, NaS was so excited it was my birthday, he decided to drop the greatest rap album of all time.

Institutions with means and might must resist the lawlessness of this administration. As Columbia's stance teaches, capitulation has no natural endpoint. It is heartening to see Harvard stand firm. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/u...

More of this.

Richman is yet another white artist who appropriated Black music to achieve unfathomable fame, only to later disparage the genre that made him famous. He then sought the industry’s highest validation for his appropriation of the genre. He can stay on that side. We good over here.

📖 OUT NOW ‘The Prison Industry’ By @biancatylek.bsky.social and @worthrises.bsky.social, the leaders in “exposing the immoral profiteering by companies feasting at the trough of incarceration” Mapping the corp-govt collusion in profiting off over-policing, mass incarceration and mass surveillance

Sen. Booker’s speech was a substantive and moral account of this moment. He did not read the phone book. He did not babble. For 24 hours @booker.senate.gov laid out a detailed, damning, and critical narrative of truth, history, politics, morality, humanity. What will you do?

This.

Sixty Civil Rights Organizations Call On U.S. Department of Education to Rescind “Dear Colleague” Letter, Cite Severe Inaccuracies and Threats to Equal Opportunity www.naacpldf.org/press-releas...

This. Is. Huge.

🗣️: “You can’t fake influence!” I just got word that yours truly is teaching a special course on Kendrick Lamar at Temple University this fall. Come through.

this is great and gets to what might be the defining attribute of this administration which is that trump himself is barely aware of what is happening

Just know that when you are a real leader, the thing that you hate most to say when someone on your team screws up is “I don’t know anything about it.” Cause you should be all over it by now and announcing the steps you’ve taken to protect our military & to see that this can’t happen again.

My father-in-law is cooler than your father-in-law. youtu.be/chAVi_lxTT0?...

LDF Condemns President Trump’s Executive Order to Dismantle the Department of Education - www.naacpldf.org/press-releas...

Trump and Vance are following Viktor Orbán's playbook for exerting control over universities, but to what end? US institutions are widely regarded as among the best in the world. Not the case for Hungarian institutions. www.chronicle.com/article/why-...

Remembering Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers) on his birthday (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003) 🕊️💙 That cut-up cardboard box brings back so many memories 😩