Sit with the arithmetic of that sentence for a second. You reach for an insult with an ugly and well-documented history when aimed at Black people, you pin it on the first Black lawmaker ever to lead a major political party in Congress, and then you ask the room to believe race had nothing to do with it. Afterward Jebreal explained that she had the three wise monkeys in mind, the familiar see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil image. That explanation did not stop the backlash.

Hold on though. I won’t have a soul in here twisting my meaning. Hakeem Jeffries is not above criticism. Not even close. Question his relationship with AIPAC. Question his posture toward Israel amid Gaza’s continuing humanitarian crisis and severe food insecurity. Argue over whether Democratic leadership has been too cautious or too accommodating. All of that belongs in the rough business we call politics. Current humanitarian assessments project that roughly 1.4 million people in Gaza will face Crisis level or worse acute food insecurity between July and December 2026.

But there sits a canyon between attacking a man’s votes and reaching for language historically used to diminish Black humanity. One is political debate. The other carries baggage that generations of Black Americans have had to recognize and confront.

That particular comparison carries a history no clever explanation can simply wash away. American popular culture spent generations portraying Black people as primitive, animalistic, intellectually inferior, and even apelike. The Jim Crow Museum documents postcards, advertisements, cartoons, and other objects that explicitly linked African Americans with monkeys and apes. The Smithsonian likewise documents racist caricatures that helped reinforce social and political stereotypes about Black Americans. Drag that imagery into a political argument involving a Black man and the history comes with it whether the speaker intended every part of that history or not.

Here comes the part that ought to trouble every honest reader. Standards against racist language mean very little if they change depending on who says the words. Political affiliation does not erase history, and ideological agreement does not make dehumanizing language harmless.

So the question is not whether the speaker belongs to the right or the left. The question is whether people are willing to apply the same standard when the offensive language comes from somebody whose politics they otherwise share.

Ritchie Torres put that consistency question directly into the public conversation. The New York Democrat argued that if Jebreal and Ali had been figures on the far right, critics on the far left would have had little difficulty condemning the language. He finished by saying, “The silence is deafening.” Torres was among several Democratic lawmakers who publicly condemned the remarks.

I have watched this shuffle my entire life, in church business and union halls and city council chambers. People decide first who they are loyal to, then they decide what they are willing to see. Loyalty can slide on like a pair of blinders. Once that happens, another person’s dignity can become negotiable, depending on who happened to throw the punch. That temptation is hardly unique to one political party or ideology.

Let me say a thing that may sting a few readers. Bigotry does not check voter registration before it lands. Racist language does not become harmless because the person delivering it shares somebody’s views about healthcare, housing, Israel, Palestine, taxes, or anything else. The history attached to anti-Black imagery remains there regardless of the speaker’s political affiliation.

The Congressional Black Caucus said much the same thing in its response. The caucus rejected Jebreal’s explanation and said there was no “non-racist way” to call Jeffries, a Black man, a monkey or errand boy. It also called for rejecting anti-Black racism whether it comes from the political right or left.

Other Democrats spoke publicly as well. Torres condemned the remarks, and Representatives Joe Neguse and Ayanna Pressley were among the lawmakers reported as criticizing Jebreal’s language. That matters because the most credible standard is one applied without checking first whether the offender is a political friend or enemy.

Because that is the real test, is it not. It is easy to recognize offensive language when it comes from somebody you already distrust. The harder test comes when the speaker shares your causes, attends your gatherings, or agrees with you on nearly everything else. Consistency means the rule survives that test.

I will be fair about the apology too, because the record matters. Jebreal reiterated her criticism of Jeffries and AIPAC before acknowledging that the term she used was inappropriate, offensive, and should never have been used. She then ended her statement plainly: “I apologize unconditionally.” Readers can decide for themselves whether restating the underlying political grievance weakened the apology, but it would be inaccurate to say she never offered an unconditional one. She did.

Young brothers, hear me now. Do not let anybody sell you the notion that your dignity depends on the ideology of whoever is speaking about you. Nobody should be expected to excuse racially loaded language merely because it comes from somebody whose politics they otherwise support. That standard should travel in every direction.

Criticize Hakeem Jeffries. Criticize his votes, donors, leadership decisions, foreign policy positions, or anything else he does in public office. That is part of citizenship, and elected officials should expect vigorous scrutiny. But political disagreement does not require reaching for imagery that has historically been used to portray Black people as less intelligent, less civilized, or less human.

A racial insult does not lose its history because the speaker stands on one side of the political aisle rather than the other. The harder and more useful principle is simpler than that. Judge the language by the same standard every time, no matter who says it and no matter whose politics happen to be under attack.

Staff Writer; L.L. McKenna

Politics explained through the lens of justice and equity. Offering perspective that informs, challenges, and empowers.

One can contact this brother at; LLMcKenna@ThyBlackMan.com.

So when I watch what Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan have built over these last 13 years, something in my chest loosens. Two Black men who found each other early in their Hollywood journeys and decided, apparently on purpose, that the other one winning was a good thing. Not a threat. A blessing.

The years line it up plainer than I could.

Start with Fruitvale Station back in 2013. Coogler was 26, working on his first feature, and he chose to tell the story of Oscar Grant, the young man shot by a transit police officer on an Oakland platform on New Year’s morning in 2009. A hard thing to put on screen. He needed an actor who could make you love a flawed brother across 90 short minutes, so that when the bullet came it took something out of you too. He picked Jordan. Jordan had already done strong work in television and film, but neither man was a major Hollywood name yet. Both were betting on the other.

That is the part folks skip when they tell this. It was mutual risk. A first time director trusting an actor with the most important thing he had made. An actor trusting that same director not to waste his face and his time on something small.

Then came Creed in 2015. Coogler took a franchise everybody assumed belonged to Sylvester Stallone forever and handed the gloves to Jordan. The picture worked. Stallone got an Oscar nomination out of it. The whole thing felt less like a reboot and more like a passing of something sacred. A Black face at the heart of a story white America had held close for four decades, and not one soul had to be pushed aside for it to happen that way.

Which brings us to Black Panther in 2018. Now here is where a lesser pairing might have cracked. The director is running a billion dollar Marvel machine, and the actor is playing the villain. Not the hero. The villain. Killmonger. And Jordan took that role and made him one of the most quoted, most argued about, most mourned villains in the whole comic book business. He did not sulk about not wearing the crown. He knew a great villain is what makes a hero worth a damn. Serve the picture, you serve your partner. Lift your partner, and somehow you come up too.

You see the pattern yet? Each time, one of them stepped back a half step so the other could move forward a full one. And somehow they both kept rising.

By the time we reached Creed III, Jordan had moved behind the camera himself. He directed the picture, while Coogler, who helped develop the story and served as a producer, backed his longtime collaborator as he took that next step. Jordan turned it into the highest grossing film of the Creed trilogy. Plenty of partnerships get strange when one person starts occupying territory the other once owned. This one kept moving forward.

Then Sinners. 2025. Their fifth film with Coogler directing Jordan, counting Jordan’s brief return as Killmonger in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and the first that belonged to nobody but them. No Rocky. No Marvel. No existing thing to lean on. Coogler wrote an original vampire story set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932, put Jordan in it as twin brothers named Smoke and Stack, and dared the whole industry to bet against him. Warner Bros. put down a reported $90 million on an R rated horror movie with no built in audience, and gave Coogler an unusually filmmaker friendly deal that included ownership rights reverting to him after 25 years.

And it hit. More than $370 million at the worldwide box office. It became the highest grossing original live action film domestically in 15 years, going all the way back to Nolan’s Inception. People lined up. Old folks, teenagers, film nerds, my barber. Everybody had seen it or was about to tell you why they were going.

The money is not even the part that stayed with me, though. Watch what happened next.

This past March, at the 2026 Academy Awards, Sinners showed up holding 16 nominations. Sixteen. That topped Titanic. It topped La La Land. No single film in the entire history of that ceremony had ever pulled more. Coogler won for his screenplay, the first Oscar win of his career. And Michael B. Jordan, on his very first nomination, took home Best Actor.

Jordan got up to accept and did not rush through his mama and his agent and hustle off. He stayed at that microphone and called the roll of Black Oscar winners whose footsteps he was following. Sidney Poitier. Denzel Washington. Halle Berry. Jamie Foxx. Forest Whitaker. Will Smith. Named them so the room would remember whose shoulders he was standing on.

That is a man who knows he did not arrive alone. And he was only up there because somebody, more than a decade back, said I want you for this and truly meant it.

I keep thinking about the brothers coming up now, scrolling their phones, being told again in a thousand fresh ways that another man’s shine dims their own. That your homeboy’s promotion is somehow your failure. That there is one plate on the table and you had better grab yours before it is gone. I want every last one of them to look at these two.

Because what Coogler and Jordan proved, over and over, on the biggest stages this culture has to offer, is that the old math was a lie the whole time. Two Black men lifted each other and neither one shrank in the process. The director got his masterpiece. The actor got his statue. And the rest of us got to watch, for once, brotherhood do exactly what brotherhood was always supposed to do. Build something.

Not compete. Build.

My granddaddy had a saying about how a flame gives up nothing of itself when it lights the wick next to it. He mostly said it about church folk who guarded their little bit of authority like it was gold. But he could just as easily have been talking about these two men, who have looked across more than a decade at one another and decided, again and again, that the surest way up was side by side.

That is the lesson sitting right there in plain sight. We were never actually each other’s competition. We were always supposed to be each other’s proof.

Staff Writer; Lee Walker

This brother is a fitness trainer with 12 years of experience, focused on building strength, clarity, and real health within the Black community. Through his writing, Mr. Walker hopes to uplift younger Black men and men in general through honest conversations about fitness, financial pressure, fatherhood, discipline, mental wellness, and the importance of brotherhood.

Have questions? Reach me at LeeW@ThyBlackMan.com

The United States government today alleges that Mohammed was the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, a crime of historic horror that demands accountability. For nine years, the government told us that the mastermind of the attacks was Osama bin Laden, whom it never charged for 9/11-related crimes. Then, after it dispatched U.S. commandos to murder him when they could have arrested him, it recognized it killed the wrong man: Mohammed was the mastermind. By then, Mohammed had been tortured for three years by the CIA and the U.S. military.

But accountability obtained through unlawful methods is not justice. It is merely punishment wearing the costume of law.

The judge who recently suppressed Mohammed’s statements — an Air Force lieutenant colonel — did not create this crisis. He inherited it. He did not erase evidence. He confronted the unavoidable consequences of a decision made more than 20 years ago: The decision by President George W. Bush to authorize a system of torture that guaranteed that the most important terrorism prosecution in American history would be burdened by questions of legitimacy from the beginning.

The judge found that the abuse Mohammed endured in CIA and military custody was so severe that its coercive effects continued years later, contaminating subsequent statements made to FBI investigators. The constitutional problem was not limited to what happened in a particular interrogation room on a particular day. The problem was the continuing psychological impact of the government’s criminal conduct.

The government cannot torture a suspect, obtain information and then attempt to cleanse the evidence through later civilized questioning. Constitutional protections are not satisfied by changing the interrogator’s nameplate.

The FBI’s inexplicable failure to provide Miranda warnings added another layer of constitutional aberration. The entire purpose of Miranda is to prevent the government from using its immense power to obtain statements from a person who doesn’t voluntarily choose to speak.

This should never have been a military commission case.

After more than two decades, the United States still has not produced a final resolution in one of the most consequential criminal cases in its history. How many convictions have there been at Gitmo for 9/11? ZERO.

Had this prosecution been brought in federal court in Manhattan, it would have been governed by decades of precedent, a single trial judge, a single prosecution team, established discovery rules and a functioning appellate structure. The case would have been difficult and complex. But it would have been a real prosecution rather than a constitutional experiment conducted in slow motion.

Instead, Bush — embarrassed that 9/11 took place on his sleepy watch — persuaded Congress to create an extraordinary system; and then his White House successors discovered that extraordinary systems have extraordinary weaknesses.

The Guantanamo military commissions have produced exactly the outcome that critics predicted: Endless litigation over basic questions of evidence, procedure and constitutional authority. Mohammed’s case has cycled through four prosecution teams and five judges while the families of victims continue to wait for a conclusion.

Once coercive interrogation became government policy, prosecutors faced an unavoidable dilemma: Seek convictions using evidence compromised by criminal conduct, or confront the reality that the government had damaged its own case.

The prosecutors eventually recognized that problem. They pursued plea negotiations because a negotiated resolution offered something a contested trial might not: Finality and legitimacy. A plea agreement was accepted by the accused, prosecutors, Pentagon officials and the military judge, and it offered a path toward ending a case that had already consumed years of litigation.

Then the political branches intervened.

The agreement was accepted by the Army general in charge of all prosecutions, herself a former judge. Then Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin rejected the agreement and fired the general. Then the same prosecution team that had negotiated the plea sought to undo it. Then the military trial judge who accepted the plea declined to discard it. Then an appellate court reversed that decision.

The spectacle was extraordinary: The government negotiated a resolution, defended the process, challenged the process and continued litigating a case it had spent decades trying to avoid.

The final constitutional insult may be the government’s position that even an acquittal would not necessarily end Mohammed’s confinement. If the government may imprison a person indefinitely regardless of whether prosecutors can prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, then the trial is a symbolic sham and the Constitution becomes just dust.

The purpose of a trial is not theater; it is to determine whether the government has met its burden under law.

An acquittal is not a technicality. It is the Constitution’s command when the government fails to prove its case. The alternative is a system where accusations become convictions, detention replaces adjudication, and the courtroom becomes a stage in an already predetermined outcome.

That is not the American system of justice.

The irony is profound. The United States created the Guantanamo commissions in the name of efficiency and security. Instead, it created a process monumentally slower and profoundly less trusted than the ordinary courts it abandoned. It sought extraordinary justice and produced extraordinary confusion.

The lesson is not that constitutional protections are obstacles to defeating terrorism. The lesson is the opposite. Constitutional protections are what separate a lawful government from the very conduct it condemns.

The military judge’s ruling is a warning to the government that evidence matters, procedure matters, and the methods used to obtain justice determine whether the result deserves to be called justice at all.

After 20 years of delay, the United States is finally confronting the consequences of its own choices.

A small act of judicial courage at Guantanamo has exposed a much larger failure: a system built to avoid constitutional limits ultimately became trapped by its own rejection of first principles.

Written by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Official website; https://twitter.com/Judgenap

But there’s garden-variety “mean girl,” “queen bee” snark, and then there is the outrageous lunacy that we’ve witnessed of late.

Early last month, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed a law that allows abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. The previous law had a gestational limit of 24 weeks. As she signed the bill into law, Healey was surrounded by women cheering and applauding.

Applauding? For the ability to kill a full-term baby?

Two weeks ago, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed a law that makes it a crime to “interfere” with “the provision of reproductive health care” — which, of course, includes abortion and so-called gender-affirming care. The language of the law is deliberately written broadly. “Interference” includes “intimidation” and inflicting “emotional harm.” This will unquestionably be used to prohibit prayer and other protests outside abortion clinics.

Sherrill, too, was photographed surrounded by a cadre of applauding women. So much for freedom of speech.

Then, just a few days ago, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, sporting a hijab, spoke to a group of Muslim men. This kind of mindless appeasement ignores the horrific abuse inflicted upon women and girls in Islamic societies. Perhaps Hochul should spend less time watching “The Handmaid’s Tale” and watch the film “The Stoning of Soraya M.” instead.

Also in Massachusetts, the jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial — made up of nine women and three men — has been (at this writing) deadlocked for five days and can’t decide on the guilt of a woman who sent her husband on an errand and then killed her three young children — including an 8-month-old baby — by strangling them with exercise bands while he was gone.

Given how bad Clancy’s acts are, it has been surprising to see throngs of women lining the streets leading up to the courthouse, dressed in pink, making little “heart” signs with their hands and expressing their support for Clancy, who has admitted to the killings but is claiming innocence because of postpartum psychosis. Many more are posting their support on social media — like the female obstetrician who said, “I don’t know what else you could have done.” Seriously? Even assuming that Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis, there was nothing else she could have done besides murder her three children?

Some women are posting TikTok videos in which they — oops — pretend to throw their infants over stair railings, or toss them into the dryer, or set them in the dishwasher. This is apparently supposed to garner sympathy for the idea of how difficult parenting is.

Those videos are fakes, done using deliberately obvious video cuts during which a doll is substituted for the actual baby the mother was holding moments earlier.

But in other videos making the circuit, moms look to be baking with their excited little toddlers, only to slam a raw egg on the unsuspecting toddlers’ heads to crack it, much to the shock and chagrin of the children, who often burst into tears while their moms laugh at them.

This is funny?

And then there are the female judges — Teresa Stokes in North Carolina, Marva Brown in New York, Veronica Galvan in Washington, Hilary Unger in Texas, Cindy Truong in Oklahoma — who have faced fierce (and justified) criticism after repeatedly releasing violent criminals who offend again. (Stokes released Decarlos Brown, who was caught on camera stabbing Iryna Zarutska to death on the Charlotte light rail.)

Or perhaps you saw Jessica Gorman, mother of murdered college student Sheridan Gorman, trying to plead her case before a congressional subcommittee. Sheridan was shot in the head and killed on Navy Pier in Chicago by an illegal immigrant. At the hearing, Washington state congresswoman Pramila Jayapal expressed her condolences to the Gormans but then bemoaned the fact that this was the fourth hearing about illegal immigrants and “sanctuary cities,” and said that Congress had “other things to do.”

Seriously, what is wrong with these people?

The point here is not that women are more violent than men, nor that they are uniquely unsuited for leadership roles in government, law enforcement or the judiciary. (As far as we know, the women making the “egg-cracking” and “baby-tossing” videos may well be stay-at-home moms.) Nor is it in support of the argument — now circulating widely on social media — that the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the right to vote should be repealed. (For what it’s worth, only about 50% to 63% of the vote-eligible population of this country has voted in presidential elections since 1980; turnout in midterm elections is even lower — more like 40%. This is pretty consistent for men and women.)

The point is that all human beings, male and female, have the capacity for evil, stupidity, cruelty and violence — including murder — and can display weakness and shockingly poor judgment.

This is a truth that is amply demonstrated in the Bible, for those who know their scripture. Both the Old and New Testaments are filled with accounts of men and women who were brave, virtuous and faithful to God’s commandments, as well as those who were venal, selfish, cowardly or wicked. If religion isn’t your thing, there’s plenty of evidence throughout secular history as well. In fact, I’d lay money that anyone reading this column can think of men and women they know personally whose behavior falls into either category — often both, people being what they are.

It’s culturally popular to blame all the world’s ills on men and their “toxic masculinity,” and, by extension, to hold women up as more virtuous, more sensible, more compassionate and thus better suited to “run the world.”

It’s also manifestly false.

Written by Laura Hollis

Official website; http://law.nd.edu/directory/laura-hollis/

Sadly, the administration’s response to the pressure is as erratic as its tariff policy.

On one hand, Trump lowered tariffs to bring down the price of beef, effective this week. The White House acknowledged the link between tariffs and higher prices by explaining that the cost of beef has risen “unreasonably” and that the remedy is to temporarily import more of it at a lower tariff rate. Experts expect the 300,000 metric tons of relief to come largely from South America.

Apparently, though, this economic lesson has not traveled very far. As Trump liberalized the market for beef, he also imposed new 50% tariffs on some $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, once again behaving as though buying from our closest neighbor is a detriment to U.S. consumers. Canada is retaliating in kind against American exports beginning Sept. 8. Products caught in the escalating trade war include steel, aluminum, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, plastics and electronics.

Economic war with Canada not only reminds the American people of a policy they hate but runs counter to an affordability agenda. Research on the effects of Trump’s tariffs continues to surface and offer clarity.

Take the most recent paper by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Columbia University. Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise and David Weinstein looked at who shoulders the cost of the tariffs, examining which part of the tariff reaches consumers through higher prices versus which share of the price hike is due to other factors. The group estimates that a 10% tariff on all imports will raise U.S. consumer prices by about 2.6%. Roughly two-thirds of the increase comes quickly and directly from the tariff being passed on to customers at the border. The remaining third of the price hike shows up more slowly in American-made goods.

Let me repeat that: Raising tariffs on foreign goods also raises the prices of American-made goods. This happens partly because domestic producers pay more for imported parts and materials. But it also occurs because domestic producers, facing less competition, often raise their prices simply because they can.

This is only the latest study to knock out protectionists’ three main claims at once.

The first claim is that “foreigners pay the tariff.” It’s hard to deny that the pass-through of costs collected at the border to U.S. consumers amounts to anything less than a tax.

Some intellectually honest protectionists concede as much. In fact, it’s what they want. They prefer a second claim: that higher import prices will push American consumers to switch from foreign goods to American goods. That may be. However, we can’t actually avoid an import tax that shows up in domestic prices and fatter markups. Buying American doesn’t actually shelter us from higher prices.

The third claim is that tariffs help American manufacturing as a whole. But for the average firm facing higher costs for both foreign and domestic inputs, tariffs do little.

What’s left is a tariff working exactly as designed: a hidden, unavoidable import tax that makes everything imported more expensive, hands government-favored firms pricing power at the expense of consumers, and taxes the domestic production it claims to defend. Citing Yale University’s Budget Lab, The Washington Post’s Ramesh Ponnuru points out that “Trump’s tariffs are costing American households an average of $1,100 a year.”

Unfortunately, because the prices of domestic goods take months to rise, the affordability crisis is still developing.

It’s not as if we don’t know what would help. The administration’s beef policy inadvertently acknowledges the argument for free trade. Now, apply that insight consistently.

If you want cheaper houses, do not make Canadian lumber more expensive. If you want more affordable cars and appliances, do not tax steel and aluminum inputs. If you want American manufacturers to compete, do not make them pay more for intermediate goods. And if you want American exporters to prosper, do not repeatedly provoke America’s trading partners into retaliating against them. In short, remove the tariffs.

Written by Veronique de Rugy

Official website; http://twitter.com/veroderugy

Writing about Cassandra Wilson presents its own challenge because you cannot pin the woman down. I have covered Black music most of my grown life, and every time the word jazz came up around her it fit like a coat two sizes too small. Sure, she could swing. But then here comes Robert Johnson, sung so slow and so low you swore the man was standing in the room. Hank Williams got the same treatment, a country weeper coming out sounding like it grew from Delta mud. Joni Mitchell, the Monkees, whatever struck the mood, all of it got pulled down into that dark register and belonged to Cassandra by the time she turned it loose.

So where does a sound like that come from? You go back to the house on Albemarle Road.

Cassandra Marie Fowlkes was born in December of 1955, last of three. Now the daddy, Herman Fowlkes Jr., that man could play. Guitar, upright bass, taught it too, and he ran with the cats on the local scene back when nobody up North was writing any of it down. Cut records with Sonny Boy Williamson II, understand. So the blues was already living in that house before the child could climb up on the piano bench. And the mama, Miss Mary, she taught school, went and got herself a doctorate later on, kept Motown going on the turntable. Think about that mix. Berry Gordy shining out of one room and a bluesman working his changes in the next.

Piano lessons started at six. Then clarinet, marching band, the whole business. By the time the teenage years hit, the drills had worn thin, so the girl went to her father asking him to teach guitar. You know what he did. Handed her a Mel Bay book and told her to go figure it out. Some folks hear that and think the man was being hard on his child. I hear somebody who knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted those fingers finding their own way, and Lord, did they. Little folk songs came pouring out after that, running behind Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez.

Church got hold of the girl too, of course it did, standing between mother and grandmother of a Sunday. Anybody raised in the Black church knows that building will teach you more about a lyric than any music school ever could.

Millsaps College was first, theater and philosophy. Then Jackson State, a mass communications degree finished up in 1979. A drummer named Alvin Fielder got in her ear and pushed toward the real jazz work, the improvising. New Orleans had the woman for a spell. Then New York City rang in 1982, and child, that is when school really started.

Up there came Steve Coleman and that M-Base crowd, the Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter sides worn clean through, the craft of taking one line and making it mean two or three things at once. First album as a leader, Point of View, dropped in 1986. By 1988, Blue Skies had arrived, a standards date, and heads started turning. But the big one, the album that changed everything, that arrived in 1993. Blue Note signed on and out came Blue Light ‘Til Dawn.

And this right here is the part that gets me, the part a whole lot of us who came up in this part of the country carry around. Think about it. Years and years gone from home, all that New York shine worked in, and what does the woman do with it. Turned right back around toward home is what. That low, smoky thing in the singing was Mississippi through and through. You could hear the heat of a front porch in it, the hush of a little country church, the stillness of the delta after dark. New Moon Daughter arrived in 1995 and earned her first Grammy in 1997. After that the records just kept coming. A tribute to Miles on Traveling Miles in 1999. Belly of the Sun soaking in the light in 2002. Then Glamoured, then Thunderbird with T Bone Burnett at the board. Loverly arrived in 2008 and brought home a second Grammy in 2009, and years on down the line Coming Forth by Day laid a wreath at Billie Holiday’s feet. Somewhere in all that came a turn shoulder to shoulder with Wynton Marsalis on Blood on the Fields, the thing that won the man a Pulitzer.

Time magazine went and called her the best singer in America back in 2001. Took the crown, Cassandra did, and never once acted like it sat on her head.

You want to know what stays with me, though. It is the coming home. January of 2010 the Mississippi Blues Trail set down its hundredth marker and put that name on it. They planted the plaque right in front of Brinkley Middle School, across the road from the very house where a little girl used to shinny up trees. John Horhn, the man who is mayor of Jackson now, grew up on that street with her. He likes to tell about the two of them in second grade, him hollering up at the tree to come on down while the answer came back that she was headed for the top. And you know what. That is precisely where she went.

There was a thing said at that ceremony I have never let go of. Told the crowd that our music has gone out and touched the whole wide world, that the blues sits down at the bottom of pretty near everything we sing, bebop on up to rock and roll. Coming from a woman who had sung in the grandest rooms on the planet, that was no small offering. It was a thank-you to the dirt she came from.

By 2026 the honors ran about as deep as they give out. The NEA made her a Jazz Master in 2022. Colleges lined up with honorary doctorates, Millsaps and Berklee and The New School among them. Europe threw prizes, festivals gave medals, the home state pinned a Governor’s award on her chest. None of it, not one piece, changed the plain truth of the matter. A girl off Albemarle Road took the whole shape of Black Southern song and carried it to Tokyo, to Paris, to any stage on earth with a good piano waiting.

We lost a giant today. For those of us who write these things down, who came up in the same red clay, it lands like losing blood kin. What Cassandra showed a body is that you could go clear across the world and never once turn loose of where you started. Every young artist stuck in some little Southern town, wondering if anybody out there is ever going to listen, ought to sit a while with all of that.

Rest easy now, Cassandra. The marker is still standing across from the schoolyard. The records are still turning down here where summer never lets up. You took the sound of Mississippi farther than any of us had a right to hope. May you rest in peace.

Staff Writer; Jamar Jackson

This brother writes with a love for poetry, music, and real conversations that reflect everyday life in the Black community… Much of his inspiration comes from old records, spoken word, and the kind of stories people carry with them for years… One may contact him at; JJackson@ThyBlackMan.com.

The Song That Built a Neighborhood

Dolly Parton wrote “I Will Always Love You” in 1973 as a goodbye letter to her boss, Porter Wagoner, who she was leaving to go out on her own as a solo artist. This was the song that built a neighborhood. The tender song of love and heartache was written by the then young Parton and has become one of the most covered songs in history.

Some 20-odd years later, Whitney Houston would record her own version of the song for a film, creating one of the best-selling singles of all time. The Bodyguard was a global phenomenon, in which Parton would again collect all the songwriter royalties from the song’s massive success. And as for the actual money, Parton would later reveal how that was spent too.

The best purchase she made with that cash, according to Parton, was a strip mall in a historically Black neighborhood in Nashville. “It was mostly just Black families and people that lived around there,” she said. “And I thought that this was the perfect place for me to be, considering that it was Whitney. I’m just going to be down here with her people, who are my people as well. This is the house that Whitney built.”

That was not a press release. That was a woman who made about $10 million from the voice of a Black artist and would go on to invest hugely in the Black community.

Whitney Houston: A Friendship Rooted in Respect

Dolly Parton told Andy Cohen that one thing she wished had happened during Whitney’s time on earth is to have had the opportunity to sing with her. “I wish that could’ve happened,” she said. “I would have loved that. But I don’t think I could have come up to snuff with her, though. She’d have out-sung me on that one for sure.”

That kind of humility is rarely seen. Dolly Parton is one of the greatest songwriters of all time and yet here she was handing all of the credit to one of the greatest singers of all time for a fantastic version of her song. She celebrated it by allowing Whitney’s masterpiece to stand on its own unique merit and honored the song’s new meaning by investing the proceeds to help kids from less fortunate backgrounds.

There was clearly a lot of respect between Parton and Whitney – and all of this transcended genre, race, and age. This was proof that true admiration has no boundary lines.

Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter, and a Door Wide Open

Beyoncé released her highly-anticipated studio album, Cowboy Carter, on March 29, 2024. The album which explores the deep roots of country music by Black artists secured multiple Grammy wins for the global superstar. Not only did the Queen reinvent the hit “Jolene” written and recorded by the Queen of Country, Dolly Parton, but Dolly was thrilled with the interpretation.

“She’s giving that girl some trouble,” Parton said about Beyoncé’s Jolene, “and she deserves it!” Dolly appeared on Cowboy Carter performing the album’s interlude “Dolly P” and also the song “Tyrant”. She opened the door wide open and walked through it with Beyoncé.

Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026, at age 80, and Beyoncé called her “the barometer” and “The North Star.” She also wrote, “You taught so many lessons on how to be uniquely yourself and I’m so honored that I got to work with you. I will treasure that forever.”

That is not a tribute to write to someone you barely knew. That is a tribute to write to someone who has inspired you to see your place in music history.

The Imagination Library: 300 Million Books and Counting

Dolly Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995. Every month of every year from birth to age five children could receive a brand new, free book in the mail. Regardless of the income of their parents or where they lived in the world.

Her father could not read a book. She wanted to change that for every child on the planet to grow up in a home where there were books, everywhere.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library was already distributing free books to children all over the world and by the time of her passing, It had gifted more than 304 million books to children in the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Ireland. For children in Black households and in poverty-stricken communities where the public library is far, that single book every month was frequently the only new book they had. Children who are not reading proficiently by the third grade are four times more likely to not graduate from high school in time, according to research. Dolly Parton was fighting against this long before it became a topic of conversation.

She Said It When It Wasn’t Easy to Say

It was a chaotic time in the world in 2020. George Floyd was killed and the Black Lives Matter movement erupted across the country with protests filling the streets in every town and city. Most celebrities remained silent but Dolly Parton was not one of them.

“Of course Black lives matter,” she said. Simple. Direct. No hedging. This statement was especially courageous and risky for a country music singer who has a mostly white fan base, but she said it anyway.

Dolly Parton also donated $1 million to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center to support both the research and the treatment for the coronavirus which was rapidly spreading across the world in that same year. Funding from her donation helped to develop the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. The pandemic — and its resulting hospitalizations and deaths — have hit Black communities particularly hard. Dolly’s contribution to coronavirus research, therefore, is in part a racial-justice donation.

She even took “Dixie” off of one of her own branded attractions in 2018, rebranding it quietly without any form of drama. “As soon as you realize something is wrong you should fix it,” she told Billboard. Wise words and a good show of accountability without debate.

Closing Thoughts: Whose Celebration Is This, Really?

Dolly Parton hailed from a very small cabin in the hills of East Tennessee with 12 other siblings, and they had very little money and few opportunities. That origin shaped her in terms of being generous and of knowing what it is like to need something and not able to have it.

She also knew that it was Black artists, Black audiences and Black cultural institutions that had lifted her to her highest height. Whitney Houston made her a global songwriter. Beyoncé made her a country music revolutionary. And Black fans chose to embrace her as one of their own and made her a legend.

Dolly Parton repaid the favor in the form of strip malls, a scholarship program, millions of children’s books and two simple words of praise at the precise moment to deliver them.

As Beyoncé said, she was the North Star. And our beloved friend will be deeply missed by the Black community that she so adored and that so adored her as well.

Associate Editor; Stanley G. Buford

Feel free to connect with this brother via Twitter; Stanley G. and also facebook; http://www.facebook.com/sgbuford.

Also his email addy is; StanleyG@ThyBlackMan.com.

There were many Americans who voted in the November 2024 election who voted not for someone but against someone. Despite one candidate being heads and shoulders over the other, far more qualified to be the leader of the country, many voted against that candidate for no other reason than the person’s race and gender.

Who voted against the candidate born into humble surroundings but nevertheless worked and excelled while following a moral compass. The other candidate, an emotionally, intellectually and mentally challenged individual, knew of  no cesspool that he was not willing to swim.

How did that turnout as you dig deeper and deeper into your wallets and pocketbooks to purchase food and clothes for yourself and family? Do you still have that satisfaction that you had election night when you fill up your car to head to work? Were you still delighted that the other candidate lost when you learned your son or daughter, sister or brother and close friends lost their federal jobs for no legitimate reason?

Democrats, Independents and even some Republicans are looking forward to the midterm elections in November. Looking to right the ship and save it from completely sinking.

Some are actually overjoyed that what they perceive as the dark night in America will soon be replaced by a new morning of sanity. That with a new Congress, a responsible Congress, the ills of the nation, the insensitive, inhumane, childish policies of the immoral regime would be halted and reversed.

How wonderful that would be if that was the case. But unfortunately, elections have consequences. So much of the policy as well as the attitudes and tone of the current regime will not and cannot be reversed by a new Congress nor even a new administration. Elections have consequences and what the current regime has done will remain in place for many years, perhaps decades after its slithers from power.

It might take decades if not longer for people throughout the world who once looked at the US admirably and with affection to see the US in a similar light after the last two years. To once again view the US as that shining city on the hill where freedom, justice and equality shined supreme and once served as a beckon of hope and inspiration.

Is that how people who sought political asylum, and those who were legally working through the maze of the US citizenship process still feel about the US after finding themselves deported to some country for which they never lived nor speak its language?

Is that how people in countries that one believed the US a friend and reliable ally feel about the US when the current regime goes out of its way to demean, insult and basically declare war on their country?

The current regime has done more in two years to destroy the US’ image of being a responsible, stable and progressive nation than anything the Chinese, Russians or others could have done in their propaganda campaigns against the US. The current regime with its childish, irrational and playground mentality has forced governments and their people to look at China as the responsible adult in the room.

As children and elderly people throughout the world die from starvation and diseases it will not be lost by many nor forgiven that vital humanitarian aid that both Republican and Democratic administrations had provided over the years was one of the first of many evil actions of the current regime.

Those who survive will not be singing America the Beautiful. They will not see a nation committed to and propelled by goodness but greed. Faith and friendship but fearmongering. Facts but fear. Hope but hate. Righteousness but racism. Mercy but maliciousness. Christianity but cruelty. Love of all mankind but loathing of all who are viewed as other.

Whereas Russia, North Korea and Iran once had the designation of being pariah nations, the current regime through its illegal, immoral, inhumane actions and conduct now own that designation of pariah nation throughout the world. It will keep that designation in many people’s minds throughout the world for a long time after the current regime and its enablers have been swept from the halls of power.

Elections do have consequences and Americans and people throughout the world have seen in just a blink of an eye just how dangerous, deadly and demonic such consequences can be. Yes, elections do have consequences as a very wise man said.

By the way, that very wise man was also a good, moral, righteous man who also served as president of the US. He brought an audacity of hope not just to America but the world. History will proclaim him one of the greatest US presidents ever. It will also highlight him as a man of faith, charity and mercy. His name, President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the US.

Staff Writer; Al Alatunji

Question or comment regarding this article? Feel free to send a message to: Alatunji@ThyBlackMan.com.

When I graduated high school in New Orleans, America was a different place. Black Americans were all but locked out of economic opportunity because of the color of our skin and the racial caste system that saw us as no more than servants to White Americans; many of whom benefited financially and socially from our enslavement for centuries.

Growing up in a city rife with segregation, I channeled my frustrations into my studies. When I enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution that was built in part by enslaved people, my people, I knew the best way to reengineer the system was by understanding how it worked and its connection to the conditions of Black Americans in this country. My double major was in economics and African American Studies.

That education prepared me to become a leader who understood that, for America to progress as a nation, it had to provide pathways to financial independence, safety, and sustainability for the people who built it. It was clear to me that at every juncture in this nation’s history where African Americans began to create opportunity for themselves, the efforts were cut off systemically or with physical violence, as we saw in the case of the bombing of Tulsa in 1920.

The fallout from these events, and from policies that blocked the ballot box like literacy tests and poll taxes, has shown us that every effort to stifle us leads to cultural disarray and stalls our ability to move forward.

Yet, today, we find ourselves once again succumbing to infighting about the same struggles we could have extinguished generations earlier by tackling systemic racism and its impact on our economy, our standing in the world, and our collective understanding of one another.

We have an administration that entered a zero-sum game targeting diversity initiatives with executive orders that so thinly veil their racism it’s laughable. The result of those orders has been a massive spike in unemployment, creating a ripple effect through our entire economic system. It’s been cuts to university budgets and to schools that are simply trying to uphold our nation’s values of ensuring that all Americans have access to the American dream regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or faith. Those cuts have stifled essential medical breakthroughs, cancer research, clean energy development, and the development of equitable, ethical artificial intelligence.

The next victim in the cutting spree is African-American studies.

The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Iowa, and the University of Kansas are just a few institutions that are shuddering or consolidating their African-American studies programs in this climate. Some are citing low enrollment as a reason for their reductions. But it is impossible to ignore the threats of budget cuts and the evaporation of essential federal dollars from an administration circling diversity programs like a hawk.

The restrictions have been so significant that simply mentioning the words “black,” women,” “disabled,” or “inclusion” can risk financial ruin.

But as Dr. Marcus Garvey stated, “A people without the knowledge of their history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.” I’d take it a step further and say that a nation without knowledge of its past, its origins, and its culture is like a tree without roots.

African-American studies teaches college students, the young people preparing to lead us into the future, why our country operates the way it does today and provides a blueprint for how to leverage our Democracy and constitutional rights to drive change.

African-American history is not only about the challenges that Black Americans have faced since we arrived in the 13 colonies in bondage; it shows the power of protesting, the endurance of community, and the meaning of community.

It’s a field of research that challenges harmful narratives, as Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois did in his 1935 book Black Reconstruction in America, overturning the prevailing racist Dunning School narrative, proving that post-Civil War democratic experiments failed not because of Black incompetence, but because white elites deliberately fractured multi-racial labor solidarity to re-establish control.

It was also the focus of Kevin Roberts’s Ph.D. dissertation, the President of the Heritage Foundation. The irony of studying slave communities, kinship networks, and survival strategies in Louisiana during the 18th and 19th centuries, while authoring Project 2025, a document designed to strip Americans of our Constitutional rights, cannot be overlooked.

There’s power in these programs and understanding Black history. There is also power to be gained by blocking an increasingly frustrated population’s access to historical practices, thereby demanding more from our leadership and government.

Philosopher George Santayana once said that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We are at a critical juncture in our history, inching toward repeating the worst parts of our past and recreating a system that serves only a few. And the only way we will survive it is by standing together. And we can only stand together by understanding and accepting the flaws of our past to build a better future.

We cannot allow a field as precious as African-American Studies to die because of political pressure. Not now, not ever.

If we do, it will be at our own peril.

Written by Marc Morial

Official website; http://twitter.com/MARCMORIAL

That is why weight ratings are never “just numbers.” They are promises, warnings, and limits all wrapped into one. If you use car jacks, you are not simply lifting steel. You are managing risk, protecting your body, and making sure the machine above you does not become a disaster in a split second.

Understanding that reality can make you a more careful driver, a smarter vehicle owner, and a far safer person in the garage or on the roadside.

Why Weight Ratings Matter More Than You Think With car jacks

A weight rating tells you the maximum load a tool is designed to handle safely under proper conditions. That sounds straightforward, but real life is rarely that tidy. Vehicles are heavy in uneven ways. A truck loaded with gear does not behave like an empty sedan. A slightly sloped driveway changes the equation. So does soft ground. So does rushing.

When you use car jacks, you are often not lifting the entire vehicle at once, but that does not mean the rating can be treated casually. People sometimes assume that “close enough” is good enough. It is not. The rating is there because engineers know metal flexes, seals fail, balance shifts, and human beings make small mistakes when they are distracted or tired.

Think about how often people associate numbers with paperwork rather than danger. There was a mechanic’s helper at a neighborhood shop who used to associate rating labels with legal fine print, the kind of thing nobody really reads. Then one afternoon, he watched a senior technician stop everything over a mismatched jack. No shouting. No drama. Just a calm, immediate refusal to continue. That moment stayed with him. He later said it was the first time he understood a weight label was not there to decorate the tool. It was there to protect the person using it.

That shift in mindset matters. If you treat ratings as sacred boundaries instead of suggestions, you dramatically reduce the chance of catastrophic failure.

How to Read Vehicle and trolley car jack Ratings Correctly

The first step is knowing your vehicle’s weight. You can find this in the owner’s manual, on the driver-side door placard, or through manufacturer specifications. You should pay attention to gross vehicle weight, curb weight, and whether the car is carrying passengers or cargo. Those details matter more than many people realize.

The second step is checking the rating on your trolley car jack or other lifting equipment. This number should never be guessed at. If the label is worn off, unreadable, or suspicious, that tool should not be trusted until the specification is confirmed. Guesswork has no place under several thousand pounds of metal.

The third step is understanding that your jack is only one part of a safe lifting setup. Jack stands matter. Ground conditions matter. Lift points matter. A strong tool used incorrectly can still fail in practice. A rated tool placed on unstable terrain becomes part of an unstable system.

And this is where emotion sneaks in, because safety errors are often painfully human. People hurry because rain is coming. People improvise because the store is closed. People ignore the manual because they have done it “a hundred times.”

Sometimes people even try to preempt trouble in exactly the wrong way. One driver, trying to preempt a roadside delay before dark, decided to jack up his SUV quickly on the shoulder without checking the ground firmness. He thought speed would protect him. Instead, the rush nearly created the problem he was trying to avoid. The base shifted, the vehicle tilted, and only pure luck kept the moment from turning tragic. Trying to stay ahead of danger only works when caution comes first.

Common Mistakes That Turn a Simple Lift Into a Serious Risk

Many accidents happen not because people know nothing, but because they know just enough to feel confident. That can be the most dangerous place of all.

One common mistake is underestimating actual weight. A vehicle may weigh more than expected because of tools, cargo, modifications, or towing equipment. Another is choosing convenience over compatibility. Not every jack suits every vehicle height, frame design, or repair task.

Another major mistake is relying on car jacks alone while working underneath a vehicle. This is never the standard you should accept. Hydraulic systems can leak. Mechanical parts can slip. Seemingly solid setups can change under load. Backup support is not optional; it is essential.

Then there is the subtle danger of bad advice. A friend, a neighbor, an online comment—sometimes people can inveigle you into trusting shortcuts because they sound experienced and relaxed. There was a young car owner once who got inveigled by an older acquaintance into using a bargain-bin tool for a heavier crossover. The pitch was smooth: “It’ll hold for a minute, no problem.” That “minute” was long enough for fear to take over when the jack groaned and dipped. Nothing terrible happened, thankfully, but the lesson was unforgettable. Confidence is not the same as competence.

Choosing Safer Equipment and Building Better Habits With a trolley car jack

Good equipment creates peace of mind, but good habits are what truly keep you safe. If you use a trolley car jack, choose one with a rating comfortably above the load you expect to lift. Inspect it regularly. Look for leaks, cracks, bent components, corrosion, and worn wheels. If anything seems off, do not rationalize it away.

Use the correct lift points recommended by the vehicle manufacturer. Work on level, solid ground. Set the parking brake. Chock the wheels still on the ground. Lift slowly. Watch for shifting. Support the vehicle properly before doing any work beneath it.

Most importantly, never let familiarity make you casual. The routine jobs are the ones that tempt people into skipping steps. A quick tire swap. A fast brake check. A simple look underneath. These are exactly the moments when discipline matters most, because nothing feels dramatic—until it suddenly is.

Weight ratings may look cold and technical, but their purpose is deeply human. They are there because your safety matters. Your family matters. Your future matters. A stamped number on a tool is not trying to inconvenience you. It is trying to speak plainly in a situation where mistakes can be permanent.

So the next time you see a rating label, pause. Read it. Respect it. Let it slow you down just enough to do the job right. Because when metal rises and gravity waits, numbers stop being numbers. They become responsibility, and they become care.

Staff Writer; Willie Jacobs