History & preservation
Family records, community institutions, overlooked histories, and the knowledge we risk losing when nobody writes it down.
Meta’s new child-safety agreement introduces meaningful safeguards, but it also raises a deeper question about what families have been left to manage alone.
A father passes down a lesson his own father taught him: know your rights, but understand that a right written on paper cannot protect you from someone willing to ignore it. Through family memory, racial history, modern research and cases from Amadou Diallo to Tamir Rice and Airman Roger Fortson, Clarence C. Mitchell examines the survival wisdom Black families have passed across generations—and asks why parents are still being forced to teach it.
What could be more American than barbecue? Follow the smoke through early elections, mass political rallies, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Black voter mobilization, presidential diplomacy, and modern campaign traditions, and barbecue becomes something much bigger than food. It becomes a window into how Americans have gathered, organized, persuaded, excluded, resisted, and exercised political power.
A forceful personal commentary questioning selective outrage, punishment-first public policy, and the abandonment of working communities.
Black Democrats can be angry about where America is headed without pretending to be surprised. Clarence C. Mitchell reflects on the public record voters had before the 2024 election, the distractions that shaped the campaign, and a simple truth about democracy: choice carries responsibility.
Jerk is more than heat. Its ingredients, smoke, technique, and regional variations carry resistance, resourcefulness, and family tradition.