TSJ

By Richard Rose, President of Communities United for Justice | Atlanta, GA | July 6, 2026

As much of America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, racial oppression of sub-Saharan Africa and Native descendants continues. The president leads a revival of hate with white evangelicals constituting the amen corner.   Although the bigotry-fueled oppressive conditions that have been systematically enforced upon black and brown American citizenry have diminished, “making progress” means that the destination of full citizenship has not been reached.

Even if “all men are created equal,” equal treatment under the law is yet a poet’s dream in the United States of America. Not only is the 250th American milestone celebrated without a commitment to fulfill the lofty words enshrined in the declarative document of 1776, the current White House occupant, assisted by a collection of sycophants, is intent on sharpening the swords of repression by usurping established policy and regulation that have slowly bent toward justice. 

The destruction of the Federal civil service system will allow a bigoted bloodbath of HBCU graduates who had more limited corporate opportunities in previous generations. Policies and regulations that denied Native Americans promised relief from 400 years of post-invasion genocidal conditions can be expected to be discarded. Treaties between the USA and various Native Tribes, not worth the paper written on, will remain empty promises of equity and respect. 

The welcoming nation described in Emma Lazarus’ sonnet is but a figment of righteous imagination.  Instead, we are the nation of my baby boomer childhood that was infested with declarations of white supremacy proclaiming,  “whites only” and “colored entrance.”  Executive orders have declared that neither poor nor huddled masses can find freedom on our shores. We are still that nation, without apology.

The states of the former Confederacy lead the way. Gerrymandering of legislative districts uses race flimsily disguised as political differentiation to reduce the voting power of non-whites with Black Americans as the bullseye. Redlining by banks, insurance companies and local councils maintain limited access to healthcare and other life essentials. Southern attitudes see no conflict with American patriotism and waving flags that celebrate the failed insurrection against America, commemorated with assembly-line Confederate soldiers in front of southern courthouses.

 Georgia is home to the largest shrine to white supremacy in the history of the world, yet thousands of Black men and women visit the surrounding park daily, having been acclimated to racial oppression through subliminal messaging such that obvious signs of hate and oppression have been normalized. The Civil War has not ended.  It’s cornerstone that “the negro is not equal to the white man” is still a presumption. 

Knowledge of our true American history can save us. Neither Columbus or anyone else could have discovered a land where millions already lived and thrived.  This fable supports the current myth that America belongs to the paleskins, that there was no American genocide that continues in a modified version, that the enslavement of stolen Africans does not have bearing on the poverty that infects Black communities and that our governments are not currently invested in bigotry. We can do better if we face the realities of America today.

The Declaration of Independence gave America its words. The next 250 years will reveal whether we have the courage to live them.

By Lola Renegade | Atlanta, GA | June 25, 2026

Too many Black Millennials and Gen Zers are partying, twerking, and shopping us back into slavery all while being distracted by an endless parade of entertainment, celebrity culture, social media validation, consumerism, and moments of performative outrage when another Black man or woman is gunned down by the police. Seemingly, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery are long forgotten.

And it’s not just them. Many older African Americans are also sleepwalking through one of the most consequential political, economic, and social moments in modern American history. They are so afraid of white folks they will not embrace messages of liberation. Those that are doing nothing now did not do anything earlier in their lives. Once an activist, always an activist.

While our ancestors risked their lives to learn to read, register to vote, own property, attend school, challenge segregation, and secure opportunities for future generations, many of our young are being encouraged to invest their time, attention, and resources elsewhere. Social media algorithms reward spectacle over substance. Celebrity culture celebrates consumption over joining those of us who continue the fight. Influencers teach them how to go viral but rarely how to build institutions, organize communities, create businesses,  acquire political power, or defend democracy.

At the very moment when voting rights are under attack, economic inequality is widening, public education is being politicized, healthcare remains unevenly accessible, and democratic institutions face mounting challenges, millions are being sold a different vision of success. They are encouraged to pursue likes, followers, luxury brands, designer labels, sports betting, slave chains around their necks, expensive vacations, strip clubs, and temporary fame. They are taught to consume, react, and entertain rather than take on and disrupt the negative forces shaping all of our futures.

Too many African Americans of all ages have become spectators in a struggle that demands participants. While powerful interests debate voting rights, criminal justice reform, economic opportunity, public education, and the future of democracy itself, voter turnout remains inconsistent, particularly in local elections where decisions affecting schools, housing, policing, economic development, healthcare, and public safety are actually made. So many of our young people know the lyrics to every trending song but cannot name their city council member, county commissioner, state representative, state senator, school board member, or congressional representative.  They know who is dating whom, who is feuding with whom, and who released the latest album, yet remain uninformed about legislation that directly affects our communities, our children, and our economic futures.

This conversation must also include the influence of portions of modern rap culture. Not all hip-hop is destructive. Hip-hop has produced extraordinary artists, scholars, entrepreneurs, activists, storytellers, and visionaries who have illuminated the Black experience with honesty, creativity, and brilliance. However, it is equally true that some of the most celebrated figures in popular culture built their brands glorifying drug dealing, violence, misogyny, hyper-materialism, and self-destruction. Many proudly recount how they sold drugs in Black neighborhoods to anyone willing to buy them, helping fuel addiction, family instability, incarceration, and despair in communities already struggling under the weight of poverty, discrimination, and disinvestment. The very activities that damaged neighborhoods became the foundation of entertainment empires worth millions and billions of dollars. Meanwhile, the communities left behind continue to bear the social and economic consequences. They helped the colonizers destroy our families and communities. 

The irony is painful. Previous generations marched so that we could vote. They risked their lives so that we could attend integrated schools, go through the front doors of establishments, sit in whatever seats were available, use any bathrooms, and stay in any hotel. They endured beatings, arrests, police dogs, fire hoses, bombings, economic retaliation, imprisonment, and even death so that future generations would have opportunities they never enjoyed.

Yet too often our younger generations behave as though freedom is permanent, democracy is on auto-renewal and is self-sustaining, and that progress is inevitable. Many consume the sacrifices of our ancestors without investing in the future of our descendants. They enjoy rights they did not earn while failing to protect them for those who will come after them. They spend billions of dollars each year on entertainment and consumption while too many schools struggle, too many worthy Black-founded nonprofits close for lack of funding, too many neighborhoods decline, too many young people lack mentors, and too many families remain economically vulnerable.

There is nothing wrong with partying and enjoying the life you have built. There is nothing wrong with enjoying music, fashion, sports, nightlife, or entertainment. Black joy has always been a form of resistance and survival. Our music, humor, creativity, and culture have sustained us through slavery, segregation, Jim and Jane Crow, discrimination, and injustice. The danger arises when entertainment becomes your primary identity, when consumption replaces solid citizenship, when celebrity replaces leadership, and when distraction becomes a substitute for civic engagement.

History has never been changed by those who were merely entertained by it. History is changed by those willing to organize, vote, build institutions, create businesses, educate children, mentor youth, challenge injustice, and make sacrifices for causes greater than themselves. Frederick Douglass did not free himself and speak out against slavery through entertainment. Harriet Tubman did not lead enslaved people to freedom through social media influence or how many likes she received from the plantations’ cottonfields. The Freedom Riders did not board buses headed into danger because it was convenient. All of them acted because history called and they unselfishly answered.

The question before Black Millennials and Generation Z is not whether they deserve to party. The question is whether they will party and still answer history’s call. The question is whether they can enjoy life while remaining committed to protecting democracy, strengthening communities, building wealth, educating children, supporting institutions, and defending freedoms won through the sacrifices of those who came before them.

One day, future generations will read about what all of us did with the freedom we inherited. They will not ask how many followers were accumulated, how many luxury vehicles owned, how many concerts attended, how many viral videos created, how many nights spent in clubs, or how many designer labels filled closets.

They will ask whether we strengthened democracy or weakened it. They will ask whether we expanded opportunity or merely consumed it. They will ask whether we invested in future generations or focused exclusively on ourselves.

Perhaps the most haunting and powerful question they will ask is, “What were you all doing when democracy was whipped beyond recognition, burned on a cross, and hung on a tree?” 

Dr. Marilyn Barnett Waters | Atlanta, GA | June 25, 2026 |

To truly understand why we must speak directly to our truth today, we have to look back to July 4, 1776. While the founders of this nation penned grand words about unalienable rights and liberty, those words rang hollow for the hundreds of thousands of African Americans held in brutal, systemic bondage. We were enslaved people.  (Listen to Frederick Douglas’ Speech on the Fourth of July)

The American Revolution was not a war for black liberation; in fact, the promise of freedom often wore a British uniform. Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation of 1775 and the Philipsburg Proclamation of 1779 offered liberty to any enslaved person who fled their rebel masters to fight for the Crown. Estimates suggest that tens of thousands of African Americans risked everything to escape behind British lines, seeking the freedom America denied them. For our ancestors, the Fourth of July was a day that marked the birth of a nation built on their unrequited labor.

True freedom did not arrive with a single declaration, nor did it end when the last enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned of their emancipation on June 19, 1865—two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Because of this long, painful delay, Juneteenth is not a holiday for simple celebration; it is a sacred day of commemoration. It is a time to remember that freedom was delayed then, just as justice is delayed now.

From the broken promises of Reconstruction and the terror of Jim Crow lynchings, to the systemic barriers we still confront in 2026, our struggle for true equality has never ceased. Today, we are witnessing a profound cultural and political pushback—an intentional effort to rewrite our history, ban our books, stop us from voting, and silence our truths. By choosing to commemorate Juneteenth, we honor the resilient spirits of those who fought before us, we acknowledge the chains that were broken, and we fiercely confront the modern struggles we still face as America works even now to celebrate its 250-year Anniversary.  We speak directly to this truth because a community that remembers its past cannot be stripped of its future.  We must wake up to this truth.

By Lola Renegade | June 9, 2026

“The ultimate measure of a man (woman) is not where he (she) stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he (she) stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

 — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I watched Trevor Noah Netflix special Joy in the Trenches over the weekend. He posed a question that refuses to vacate my thoughts: Who will you be when history calls? I added “where.”

It is a simple question, yet it may be one of the most important questions any generation can answer. History is not merely a record of people, places, events, presidents, wars, elections, and legislation. History is a record of who stood up, who sat down, who spoke out, and who remained silent. Every generation eventually arrives at a moment when saying and doing nothing becomes impossible.

For people of color in America and our allies, that moment has arrived once again. Under the Trump Administration, hard-fought gains in civil rights, voting rights, diversity initiatives, economic opportunity, and equal protection are under unprecedented attack. The stakes are high and the consequences will be felt for generations. It is long past the time that each of us must decide whether to stand idly by watching and benefitting while others do all the heavy lifting. Or it is time to step up to do your part to help shape history and to deal the final deathblow to injustice in a way that this part will never need to be revisited again.

In 1961, a group of extraordinarily brave Americans – both Black and white, the Freedom Riders, boarded buses bound for the Deep South to challenge segregation and force this nation to confront its lack of conscience. Many were barely out of their teens. Some were college students. Some were clergy. Before departing, many wrote their wills and letters to loved ones, fully aware they might never return home alive.

They faced firebombs, beatings, imprisonment, and the very real possibility of death, not for personal gain, but for the promise of a more just America. They challenged segregated seats on buses, at lunch counters, and helped change the course of history. More than six decades later, the buses are different, but the destination for full equality remains the same.

Many others before us made tremendous sacrifices and answered the call and because of them, many of our lives are better.

History called Harriet Tubman, and she answered by risking her freedom and her life to lead others out of bondage. History called Ida B. Wells, and she answered by exposing the horrors of lynching when much of America preferred ignorance over truth. History called Frederick Douglass, and he answered by standing before a nation celebrating liberty and asking what the Fourth of July meant to millions who remained enslaved. History called Fannie Lou Hamer, and she answered by exposing before the nation the violence and terror inflicted upon Black citizens who dared to exercise their constitutional right to vote. History called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and he answered from a Birmingham jail cell, reminding America that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and warning that the silence of good people often proves more dangerous than the actions of the openly wicked.

Every generation inherits unfinished work. Today, history is calling once again. It is calling in an era marked by fierce debates over voting rights, education, immigration, access to medical care, judicial power, economic inequality, and the future of democratic institutions. It is calling as election deniers and fake electors continue to seek and win positions of influence. It is calling as public trust in elections has eroded and facts themselves are increasingly filtered through partisan loyalties. It is calling amid debates surrounding Project 2025, presidential immunity, executive power, and the return of Donald Trump to the presidency despite felony convictions that, in previous eras, might have ended a political career. It is calling as participants in the January 6 insurrection are viewed by some as criminals and by others as patriots. It is calling as America wrestles once again with old questions about race, power, citizenship, and whose voices matter in a democracy.

Your children, grandchildren, and generations yet unborn will one day ask a question that no amount of wealth, status, influence, or self-justification will be able to avoid: Who were you, where were you, and what did you do when history called? They will not ask how many luxury vehicles, airplanes, and yachts you owned. They will not ask how many formerly colonized countries you visited, how many mansions you purchased, how many designer labels filled your closets, how many concerts or sporting events you attended, how many casinos you visited, how many strip clubs you visited, how many times you attended church as a false witness, how many violent and vulgar video games you played, how many degrading rap lyrics you wrote and produced, how many followers admired your social media accounts, or how many photographs documented your comfort and success. They will not care how much money you spent being entertained while the future of Black freedom and progress was on the line and being written around you.

They will ask where you stood. They will ask whether you defended democracy when democracy was being tested. They will ask whether you defended truth when lies became profitable. They will ask whether you defended the vulnerable when doing so was unpopular. They will ask whether you challenged injustice or accommodated it. They will ask whether you spent your resources merely pursuing comfort, consumption, and entertainment while future generations inherited the consequences of your indifference. They will ask whether you invested in education, justice, opportunity, and freedom or whether you invested only in yourself. They will ask whether your faith transformed communities or merely sustained institutions. They will ask whether you sought proximity to power or whether you spoke truth to power.

I am reminded of a simple truth: I eat fruit from trees I did not plant. I enjoy freedoms secured by sacrifices I did not make. I benefit from struggles, beatings, and deaths that I did not endure. The question before us is whether we will do the same. Will we plant trees from which we may never eat or enjoy their shade? Will we defend freedoms whose full benefits we may never see? Will we invest in a democracy that our children, grandchildren, and generations yet unborn will inherit?

Remember, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” — Frederick Douglass

Who and where will you be when history calls?

Join Communities United for Justice in the fight for freedom and full equality!  

By Lola Renegade | Atlanta, GA | May 30, 2026 |

A couple of days ago, while visiting the Atlanta History Center with my great niece and nephew – my proxy grandchildren –  I noticed something that stayed with me long after I left.

Everywhere I turned, I saw several Black women caring for little white children.

Some carried babies on their hips. Others pushed strollers through the museum corridors and gardens. Some held tiny white hands as curious toddlers wandered through exhibits laughing, pointing, and exploring the world with complete innocence and trust.

At first, seeing one Black nanny seemed unremarkable.

But after witnessing it again and again, I felt history pressing against and piercing my spirit. I found myself thinking, “I know this story personally.”

I recall my mother,  along with several of my aunts, and countless other Black women, worked as domestics in Mississippi during the brutal decades of Jim and Jane Crow throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. They cared for white children whose parents were often half their age or younger, and eventually the children themselves, called them by their first names, as though these grown Black women were perpetual children themselves, undeserving of the dignity and respect automatically granted to white adults.

In the South of that era, Black women and men were rarely addressed with basic respect. White children were taught early that Black adults – even elderly Black adults – did not deserve titles such as “Miss,” “Mrs.,”  or “Mr.”

Imagine the psychological violence and trauma of that. Imagine helping to raise a child, pouring love, patience, and tenderness into their life, only to see many grow into adults who embraced the same prejudices, racial hatred, and moral corrosion that had been passed down to them for generations by grandparents, parents, institutions, and an America determined to preserve racial hierarchy.

What greater tragedy is there than witnessing a child’s humanity slowly poisoned by the very parents entrusted to nurture it?

We have Child Protective Services (CPS) to rescue children from physical abuse, neglect, and dangerous homes. But who rescues children from inherited hatred? Who intervenes when racism, bigotry, and dehumanization become family heirlooms passed from one generation to the next?

Where is CPS when a child’s conscience is being corrupted, their empathy diminished, and their humanity stolen by the very parents, grandparents, and trusted adults charged with shaping their moral character?

Shouldn’t society be equally concerned and ready to remove children from their homes when they are taught to hate, fear, and to devalue the humanity of others?

Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of racism is not only the damage it inflicts upon its victims, but the moral injury it inflicts upon the children taught to carry it forward. Teaching a child to hate another human being, not only diminishes the humanity of the hated, but also the humanity of the hater.

It was witnessing my mother and other Black women navigate those humiliations that shaped me in ways I did not fully understand at the time. Even as a child,  I made a vow to myself: no matter how poor, hungry, or desperate I might ever become, I would never become a domestic worker for white America. In the words of singer Lou Rawls, “I’d rather drink muddy water and sleep out in a hollow log.”

The relationship between Black women and white children in America did not begin with modern-day nannies or domestic workers. Its roots stretch back into slavery itself, when kidnapped, enslaved Black women were often forced to nurse white babies from their breasts while their own children waited nearby, sometimes hungry, neglected, or handed off to others. Few images capture the emotional and moral contradictions of America more painfully than a Black mother coerced to using her body to nourish the child of those who claimed ownership over her body, her humanity.

That contradiction has echoed through generations of Black women in America. What struck me most at the museum was not simply the presence of Black nannies caring for white children. It was the realization that, despite all America’s claims about progress, its incestuous kinship to slavery still exists in painfully familiar ways.

At The Gathering Spot in Atlanta, I have met several young Black women – brilliant, highly educated, accomplished women with advanced degrees – who lost professional opportunities during the chaos, instability, and cruelty unleashed within the early months of President Donald Trump’s attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In fact, it is stated that more than 300,000 Black women lost their jobs within the first few months under this racist, tyrannical administration. One can safely bet that if America stated that number, double it. This nation has long suffered from a pathology of lies – sanitizing and erasing its history, minimizing its crimes, and demanding the oppressed to forget what these modern-day robber barons would rather not remember.

Some of these young women now work as nannies for affluent white families, not because they lack intelligence, ambition, or qualifications, but because survival leaves little room for pride. Mortgages and rents still have to be paid, car notes still arrive, and student loans still demand payment.

I understand that for many survival does not and cannot wait for justice. It never has and it never will. Especially, if you are waiting for justice to live in America with any chance of longevity. And so these women, extraordinarily gifted beyond measure, have found themselves stepping into one of the oldest labor roles historically assigned to Black women in America: caring for white children.

That reality forced me to think differently about one of Trump’s most infamous statements during the presidential campaign when he warned Black Americans about immigrants “taking your Black jobs.” At the time, many dismissed the statement as ignorance, racism, or political theater from the man who would soon become one of America’s most corrupt, greedy, heartless, stupid, ignorant, morally and intellectually bankrupt presidents. But perhaps there was an uncomfortable historical truth buried inside that language. Because throughout American history, some of the “Black jobs” this country has consistently reserved for Black women have involved caregiving, domestic labor, emotional labor, and service to white families.

America’s and Trump’s replacements for our best and brightest have been mediocre to less-than mediocre white men and women. Amazingly, it took Trump less than ten years to turn America into a truly “shithole country” – the very name he has given to countries of color who refuse to be exploited by him and will not bribe him, his family, colleagues, and administration.

Black women have long been expected to nurture America while America simultaneously withholds full dignity from us. And what makes this history even more painful is the emotional intimacy involved. These are not distant transactions. These women rock white babies to sleep, celebrate first words, first steps, prepare meals, read bedtime stories, soothe nightmares, wipe tears, snot, and asses.

They become trusted figures in the emotional development of children who oftentimes grow up absorbing the same racial animus and systemic biases that diminishes the very women caring for them. How do Black women continue loving the soon to be unlovable under those conditions? How do you pour tenderness into children who may, more than likely, eventually inherit a worldview that sees you as inferior, threatening, or invisible?

Perhaps the answer lies in something both heartbreaking and extraordinary about Black women in America: despite centuries of degradation, exploitation, exclusion, and disrespect, many have refused to surrender their humanity and capacity to love unconditionally.

We all know that babies are not born racist. No infant instinctively hates Black people. Hatred is learned carefully and intentionally over time. It comes through family attitudes, political rhetoric, segregated systems, coded language, media imagery, fear, silence, and societal conditioning.

For a brief and innocent season of life, many white children experience unconditional safety, affection, and nurturing through Black hands before the world begins teaching them racial hierarchy and hate.

That truth sat heavily with me as I walked through the museum with my late sister’s grandchildren, thinking about her boundless capacity to love. She was a hospital executive and registered nurse. She, too, belonged to a long line of Black women who gave of themselves freely to family, work, community, and often to a nation that rarely returned the favor. Her capacity to love the unlovable was so much greater than mine. I can count on one hand, with fingers remaining, the number of white people I can or have called “friend” in my sixty-nine years on the planet.

In the movie, The Help, I am constantly reminded of a nation that never grows tired of exploiting the labor of Black women who are still carrying America’s children and America itself on our hips and our backs.

And if this America truly is the greatest country in the world – the very best the planet has to offer – then Lord knows the world is in desperate need of a better alternative.

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