Across the United States, immigration enforcement raids are intensifying. Families are being separated at dawn, children are waking to find their parents gone, and communities are once again gripped by fear. While much of the public debate centers around legality and policy, what is unfolding ...
Letter to My Grandfather, Dr. Robert J. Thrash, Sr.
March 3, 1950, lives again in me.
Granddad,
There are discoveries that arrive not just with information but with impact. Learning that you pledged Omega Psi Phi on March 3, 1950 was one of those moments. It was not just a date or a detail; it was ...
Letter to Bernice L. McFadden
Professor McFadden,I came to your work the way some people stumble into sacred places, unaware that they’re standing on holy ground. Sugar was my entry point. I didn’t know then that it was your first novel. I simply knew that I was holding something potent. ...
Letter to Ancestor Toni Morrison
Ancestor Morrison,
I write to you with bowed head and lifted spirit, fully aware that this letter is not simply a note of thanks but a laying down of flowers at the feet of the one who made space for us to fly. You are no ...
Gospel Music Is Dead: On Black Song, Belonging, and the Urgency of Our Sound
Gospel music is not dead. We know that because it is still doing what it was created to do: make room for praise, hold space for joy and sorrow, and declare the truth of a living God through the voices of a living people. It ...
Let Us Rest: A Juneteenth Reflection on Black Rest as Resistance
It is Juneteenth and I am going to rest. Not out of neglect. Not out of disengagement. But out of reverence. Because what is more sacred than choosing one’s body, one’s spirit, one’s breath after centuries of being told we are only as valuable as ...
A Defiant Song: Black Men, Gospel Music, and the Power of Presence on Father’s Day
In a year marked by political erasure, cultural silencing, and the calculated undermining of Black identity, I stood among nearly 100 men on the platform of Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, California, and took part in something profoundly radical: we sang.
It was Father’s Day, ...
Grief as Currency: Public Sorrow and the Transaction of Significance
Yesterday, news of Bishop Norman Hutchins’ passing spread swiftly across social media, met with a flood of tributes and emotional posts. A beloved songwriter, pastor, and award-winning recording artist, Hutchins devoted his life to ministry through music, preaching, and serving. His songs, including God’s Got ...
The “N-Word Pass”: Cultural Memory and the Illusion of Inclusion
What does it mean when the descendants of the enslaved start handing out permission slips to use the language of their own dehumanization? Across school campuses, even in historically Black communities like Leimert Park, Black students are giving their non-Black peers a so-called “N-word pass.” ...
The Song of Our Undoing: Black Sacred Traditions, Proximity to Whiteness, and the Lessons of Sinners
The new film Sinners lays bare, in chilling metaphor, a truth we have long felt but too rarely name. The white vampire, Remmick, who weaponizes music to control Black souls, represents more than a cinematic villain. He is the embodiment of systems that seek to ...