If you’ve gone out at all this summer, you’ve probably noticed a lot of “help wanted” signs hanging in windows. Companies, particularly in the service and retail sectors, have been struggling to hire workers — especially since the spring, when Covid vaccines became widely available and pandemic restrictions began easing.
Read MoreMy condolences to families that have been failed by the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections. The entire agency needs to be investigated. Until then our office is about to start paying low-level bonds because no one should pay for a misdemeanor with their life.
Read MoreMost people have heard about famous inventions like the light bulb, the cotton gin and the iPhone. But there are countless other, often overlooked inventions that make our daily lives easier. Among the creative innovators behind these devices are African American inventors. From the traffic light to the ironing board, see a list of products that have sprung from the minds of Black inventors.
Read MorePermanent supportive housing isn’t a new idea. The federal government spent $1.71 billion funding such housing in 2020 alone. There are now 179,569 such beds nationwide for people experiencing homelessness and physical or mental disabilities, quadruple the 2007 total, according to federal statistics.
Read MoreSimmons College of Kentucky, the state’s oldest African American college, was founded in 1879. The college was established by former slaves to train the sons and daughters of fellow African Americans. In August of 1865, Rev. Henry Adams led the effort to create the institution where he proposed a college be established for former enslaved people at the State Convention of Colored Baptist Churches meeting at Louisville.
Read MoreThink back to two summers ago, the summer of 2020, when a series of violent, highly-publicized killings of Black Americans sparked outrage and a national movement to eradicate racism and its evils. That movement gave way to a newer, reactionary one, a backlash that is playing out in schools and school board meetings across America. Host Emanuele Berry shares stories about Black people who got tangled up in this current backlash in both extreme and very personal ways.
Read MoreShe isn’t alone. As much as 15% of Louisville’s child care workforce has left the industry since the coronavirus pandemic began due to factors such as low pay and child care issues of their own, according to Metro United Way, leaving a gaping hole in staffing in a critical field.
Read MoreThe area which will be called "The Hope Village," will have tents, portable facilities, water and access to electricity. Those who received help will also be provided access to community partners who can help with such things as housing, substance abuse counseling and mental health.
Read MoreThe 9-year-old liked drawing animals with big sparkly eyes in her sketchbook. She wanted to be an artist and knew how to appreciate the finer things in life, like canned corn and the icing in Oreos — she never deigned to eat the chocolate cookies. Ava was opinionated and outspoken, like her father, Aaron Williams, and had his light hazel eyes.
Read MoreLincoln’s eloquence captured the idea that America wouldn’t be a truly free country until African Americans were fully integrated into civic life. He had hinted at this idea a few months earlier at Gettysburg, saying “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom” in order that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Part of that new birth meant counting African Americans among “the people.” While most white Southerners were fighting to destroy the republic, Lincoln had become convinced that African Americans would vote to uphold the principles the nation was founded on, and that Black political participation would be essential for maintaining republican government in America during Reconstruction and beyond.
Read MoreMeanwhile, the return to in-person school instruction has coincided with an alarming increase in Black women exiting the labor force. Between October and November, the labor force participation rate for Black women dropped to 60.3%, effectively erasing the impressive gains reported in August. This 1.5 percentage point dip represents a weakening attachment to the workforce for Black women in recent months: 181,000 of them have exited the workforce since September, with more than half (91,000) exiting in November alone. This reversal in labor force reentry is unique to Black women, as women in other racial-ethnic groups continued to regain their footing in the workforce.
Read MoreThe Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review has retracted an article which claimed – or misclaimed, as the case may be – that an African American advocacy movement discouraged Blacks from voting for Democratic politicians and suppressed news about the Covid-19 pandemic.
Read MoreNow, a six-figure salary is quite the range. A worker earning $100,000 annually probably has a more difficult time affording things like a house than someone raking in $900,000 a year. It would be unfair to generalize that the American Dream is out of reach for the entire six-figure club.
Read MoreBy the end of the war in 1865, 40,000 Black Union soldiers had been killed, of whom three-quarters had died from infection or disease. Many of their individual stories have been lost, but Willis' research uncovered moving tales of Black love, patriotism and bravery. Her recently published book, "The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship," shines a light on these forgotten soldiers and their families through a rich archive of rarely-seen photographs.
Read MoreEvery year, the academy organized an essay contest that it publicized throughout Europe. In 1739 the members announced the subject of the competition for 1741: “Quelle est la cause physique de la couleur des nègres, de la qualité de leur cheveux, et de la dégénération de l’un et de l’autre?” (“What is the physical cause of the Negro’s color, the quality of [the Negro’s] hair, and the degeneration of both [Negro hair and skin]?”) Embedded in this question was the academy’s assumption that something had happened to “Negroes” that had caused them to degenerate, to turn black and grow unusual hair. In short, the academy wanted to know who is black, and why. It wanted to know, too, what being black signified. The winner was promised a gold medal worth three hundred livres, roughly the annual earnings of a common worker at the time.
Read MoreWe report evidence on discriminatory behavior from the largest correspondence study conducted to date in the rental housing market. Using more than 25,000 interactions with rental property managers across the 50 largest U.S. cities, the study reveals that African American and Hispanic/LatinX renters continue to face discriminatory constraints in the majority of U.S. cities although there are important regional differences. Stronger discriminatory constraints on renters of color (particularly African Americans) are also associated with higher levels of residential segregation and larger gaps in intergenerational income mobility. Using matched evidence on the actual rental outcomes at the properties in our experiment, we show that correspondence study measurements of discrimination do indeed predict actual outcomes.
Read MoreI told him about my father’s struggles to get an education because guidance counselors and admissions agents would not accept Black people into community colleges or SUNY programs in the 1950s and ’60s. I told him that even though my father was a veteran, he could not be approved to use the GI Bill for college or buy a house, since no one would process his paperwork because he was a Black man. I told him that people painted “Go Home Nigger” on the back of our home when my parents finally saved enough money to build a house in the suburbs of Syracuse, New York. And I told him how “Black Lives Matter” calls attention to the fact that Black people are considered less than white people ― and that needs to stop.
Read MoreThe fourth phase, which Louisville Metro Councilman Jecorey Arthur also referred to as "Waterfront West," will extend Waterfront Park to take up 22 acres between 10th and 14th streets in the Portland neighborhood. "This new phase will provide additional open space along the river, increasing our opportunities for new experiences and activities," the Waterfront Park website says. "The RiverWalk will connect the current park space to the Phase IV expansion."
Read MoreThe issue, he said, illustrates a broader challenge of police reform: It requires investments that city leaders are often unwilling to make. Humphrey pointed to the dearth of social services in Louisville that he said means police officers — rather than mental health counselors — must deal with mentally ill suspects, without adequate training in how to de-escalate such situations. “When there are no other resources to respond, who steps in? The police,” he said. “And that’s of no ill intent, but it comes to that because problems fester.”
Read MoreNonviolent coercion always brings tension to the surface. This tension, however, must not be seen as destructive. There is a kind of tension that is both healthy and necessary for growth. Society needs nonviolent gadflies to bring its tensions into the open and force its citizens to confront the ugliness of their prejudices and the tragedy of their racism.
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