​Zaakiyyah Najeebah Dumas O’Neal

My Black womanhood has always felt like a cloak of safety in Chicago. I have been so fortunate to spend a lot of time watching people on buses and trains, and walking through neighborhoods that are not my own to write poems[…]

​Michele Goodwin

One that is picturesque, peaceful, artistic, environmentally mindful—and hip. Those things are true too for people of color. However, it is also a place of fear, hostility, passive-aggression and lack of mindfulness regarding race.

Hanif Abdurraquib

For most of my adult years in Columbus, I have been thinking about the way monuments can vanish. For the kids in my east-side neighborhood, downtown was a distant planet, only a few miles and an entire universe away from where we kicked broken glass off of basketball courts or climbed atop the roofs of neglected school buildings.

Ali Black

A week ago, I was up during the middle of the night trying to figure out if I was really having chest pains or if I was just tripping. Until now, I didn’t realize that these chest pains could have been attributed to the murder of Ahmaud Arbery or the exhausting situation between Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper

​Chris Bournea

In the late 1960s through the 1970s, Franklin Park was a community gathering place for African Americans every Sunday afternoon, spring through fall.

​Miela Fetaw

It is Saturday morning and I have spent all weekend packing up my belongings from my parents northside Milwaukee home into my first apartment. Nina Simone’s “Baltimore” is on repeat. My best friend and now roommate is on the opposite side of town doing the same; it will be her first time living on the northside.