California logs more than 60,000 missing-child reports a year, and roughly nineteen of every twenty are classified as runaways — a label that advocates say falls hardest on Black children. The state built the nation’s first Ebony Alert to counter it, but does not publish the racial data that would show whether it works.
After the Supreme Court narrowed the Voting Rights Act this spring, Republican-led legislatures in six states redrew congressional maps that dismantle or dilute Black districts — a shift one analysis calls the largest single-election loss of Black representation since Reconstruction.
A voter-approved half-cent increase for county health care takes effect October 1 across Los Angeles County — and it lands hardest in Lancaster and Palmdale, where shoppers already pay the highest sales tax rate in the nation. Groceries and prescription medicine remain exempt.
The National Trust’s Preserving Black Churches program is accepting applications through September 11, 2026, offering grants of $50,000 to $500,000 for repairs, planning, and long-term sustainability at historically Black churches nationwide.
Black unemployment is the highest of any group in the country, yet one number moved the ‘right’ way this year. The improvement is a statistical illusion — and understanding why reveals both who got pushed out of the workforce and what Black women are building instead.
A viral claim ties Gary, Indiana’s two-week power outage to a supposed 18-month nationwide blackout. The outage is real and NIPSCO’s response deserves scrutiny — but the 18-month figure comes from a 2014 sabotage scenario that has nothing to do with this storm.
A 17-year-old boy died Friday night after a shooting at Independence High School’s season-opening football game in southwest Bakersfield. Police ask anyone with information to call (661) 327-7111.
James E. West co-invented the electret microphone at Bell Labs more than 60 years ago. Today his design sits inside roughly 90 percent of the two billion microphones made every year — including the one in your hand.
A 2026 March of Dimes report finds 34.6% of U.S. counties are maternity care deserts, with at least 96 labor and delivery units closed since January 2024 — and research shows the closures fall hardest on hospitals serving Medicaid patients and Black families, including in Kern County and the Antelope Valley.
A federal findings letter accuses Duke University School of Law of violating Title VI by using essay questions about diversity and perspective as stand-ins for race — a conclusion Duke can still contest, and one no school on the same enforcement track has yet settled.
The National Urban League’s 50th State of Black America report says hundreds of thousands of Black men and women have lost jobs since late 2025 — losses the organization estimates cost Black America about $87 billion in income.
Each August, communities from Oakland to the East Coast mark a commemoration that began in 1979 among incarcerated men at San Quentin — a tradition rooted in the deaths of George and Jonathan Jackson, and in a history that remains fiercely contested.
Agents attached to the Memphis Safe Task Force have shot seven people since the operation began, killing four men in roughly two months — a pattern covered heavily by local outlets but only in brief national bursts, according to reporting by the Tennessee Lookout.
Chicago police reported roughly 225,000 traffic stops in 2025 — less than half the 2023 total — yet Black and Latino drivers are still pulled over at far higher rates than white drivers, and new reporting shows more than half of all stops went unrecorded.
A federal judge refused to halt DeSoto County’s new majority-Black judicial subdistricts before November’s election, rejecting a challenge brought by a white former Republican gubernatorial candidate who argues the districts themselves violate the Voting Rights Act. The lawsuit continues.
A new ACLU of Iowa report finds Black students and students with disabilities are referred to and arrested by school police at sharply disproportionate rates — a pattern federal data shows nationwide, and one Los Angeles has documented, while Kern County publishes no comparable numbers at all.
Founded in 2004 by engineer Frederick E. Jordan Sr. and historian John William Templeton, National Black Business Month enters its 23rd observance as Black entrepreneurship — led by Black women — posts some of its strongest growth in decades.
Survey data shows Black millennials are three times more likely than baby boomers to be religiously unaffiliated, but most who leave organized religion keep their faith in a higher power — and are building spiritual community elsewhere.
A landmark 2021 Pew Research study found nearly half of Black adults believe Black churches have lost influence since the civil rights era — yet the newest national data shows Black Protestants remain among America’s most observant worshippers. Both findings are true, and the tension between them is the story.
A 29-year-old Black woman was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant west Jackson home. Nearly a week later, authorities have released no cause of death, no manner of death, and no incident report.
