Opinion

They try to erase us. Again. Erase the stories, the elders, the recipes handed down on index cards stained with soul. Erase the baby with thick curls chasing cousins through the grass. Erase the uncle who grills with one hand and carries history in the other.

As a Teach For America (TFA) alum who started my teaching journey in Atlanta, Georgia, I vividly remember the experience the AmeriCorps Education award afforded me 13 years ago. Without it, I would have never been able to become a teacher.

In alliance with his compliant foot soldiers on Capitol Hill and emboldened by a Supreme Court majority bending to his wishes, Donald Trump is using his second term in office to create an upside-down Alice in Wonderland government where civil rights become civil wrongs and the strength of diversity becomes a weakness.

For more than 20 years, Menino was a major figure to the people of Boston. He had a deep commitment to equality, and he understood the plight of the underdog. The LGBTQ+ Black community had an ally in Menino at a time when our struggles mainly went unheard.

As the country highlights National Minority Mental Health Month, the AFRO would like to shine a spotlight on the many ways the whole family can help new mothers.

The Boston Branch of the NAACP has quietly made a departure from the longstanding position of most of the city’s Black leadership on affordable housing. The NAACP’s new approach is a refreshing and insightful addition to the standard approach.

None of us should be silent about the recent use of federal agents by this administration to bully, arrest and investigate political opponents. Just as none of us should accept as normal or okay its use of the military against Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. 

It is clear that a significant number of those elected to represent us in Congress have never experienced poverty or needed life-saving health care they couldn’t afford without insurance.

Sarah-Ann Shaw, the pioneering Boston journalist who died last year at age 90, believed deeply in the power of education to change lives and uplift communities.

At a time when it feels like the president, Congress, and the judicial branches of government have collectively declared war on Black and brown America, one cannot help but be reminded of Frederick Douglass’ iconic speech, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” delivered on July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York.

The heat doesn’t knock anymore — it barges in. It fills your lungs like smoke, presses against your chest like regret. It sits on porches in poor neighborhoods where the AC never worked or was too expensive to run.

Most Americans who buy food at the grocery store with benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, already work.