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Zina Garrison: The Trailblazer Who Helped Change Tennis
When people talk about the history of Black women in tennis, the conversation often begins with Althea Gibson and then leaps straight to Venus and Serena Williams. But between those eras stood a remarkable athlete whose contributions deserve far more recognition: Zina Garrison. Born in Houston, Texas, November 16, 1963, Garrison fell in love with…
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Hoard Park: Known as the Da Park
Tourists will never find Hoard Park in a guidebook. It doesn’t have Buckingham Fountain or the grandeur of Jackson Park. It’s just a small neighborhood park tucked away on 72nd and Dobson. But for me and my childhood friends, it was our treehouse. Long before I knew anything about urban renewal or city planning, I…
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Mary Jane Richardson Jones: The First Lady of Black Chicago
Long before Chicago became known for towering skyscrapers and bustling streets, there was a woman quietly building something far more enduring—a legacy. Her name was Mary Jane Richardson Jones. If you’ve never heard of her, you’re not alone. History has a habit of overlooking Black women, even the ones who helped shape cities. But without…
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The Many Ways in Which the United States Ain’t Shit
I was sitting here thinking about America, a country that is often described as the greatest nation on Earth. It is a nation that has accomplished extraordinary things. It has sent human beings to the Moon, produced some of the world’s greatest innovations, and given birth to cultural treasures such as jazz, blues, gospel, and…
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Humanity’s Centuries-Old Fascination with Whores
Let’s be honest: few figures have occupied more space in the human imagination than the whore. Kings wrote laws about them. Priests preached sermons against them. Artists painted them. Writers filled novels with them. Politicians condemned them in public and sought them out in private. Entire civilizations have spent thousands of years obsessing over women…
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People of Earth (Black Folks)
We are the people of the earth,born from dust, sunlight, water, and time. We are the color of riverbanks after rain,of cinnamon and chestnuts,of copper pennies warmed by a summer afternoon,of fertile soil waiting for seeds,of coffee, cocoa, amber, honey, and mahogany. We are not one shade. We are a thousand whispers of brown,a million…
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Confessions of a Bookworm Who Turned Out to Be a Nerd
For most of my life, I thought of myself as a bookworm, not a nerd. In my mind, nerds were the people who loved math, science, computers, and all the technical subjects that made my eyes glaze over. They were the kids building robots, memorizing equations, and spending their weekends at science fairs. I was…
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The Long Shadow of Patriarchy
Patriarchy did not fall out of the sky one random Tuesday afternoon like bad weather. Human beings created it. Layer by layer. Rule by rule. Fear by fear. Property deed by property deed. And once you really start studying history, you realize patriarchy is not simply “men being in charge.” It is an entire social…
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The Romanticization of Marriage Amongst Black Folks
Every day on social media, Black people bewail the lack of marriage in the community. Folks write think pieces, make podcasts, go live for three hours at a time mourning the “breakdown of the Black family” like they’re standing over a gravesite in a church hat and hard-bottom shoes. But some of these same people…
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Bronzeville: Where the Great Migration Learned to Breathe
There are cities within cities. And then there’s Bronzeville— not just a neighborhood, but a testimony. To understand Bronzeville, you have to walk backward through time, into the long shadow of the Great Migration—that massive, sacred movement of Black folks who packed up their lives in the South and headed north with nothing but grit,…
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