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1 week ago | 
williquinn.medium.com | Quintessa Williams
History + JusticeNearly two centuries after the university commissioned racist scientific images of Renty and Delia, their portraits are finally being returned where they belong. After nearly two centuries and a legal battle years in the making, images of enslaved ancestors from South Carolina are finally coming home. On May 28th, Harvard University agreed to release the 1850 daguerreotypes of Renty and Delia Taylor — a father and daughter forced to pose naked for a racist pseudoscientific study.
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1 week ago | 
dallasweekly.com | Quintessa Williams
Overview: The Trump administration has cut $1 billion in federal funding for school-based mental health programs, which was intended to help schools address the growing youth mental health crisis. Black students are already at risk of significant psychological harm, including suicide, due to limited access to mental health services and exposure to racial discrimination and disproportionate rates of school-based discipline.
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1 week ago | 
wordinblack.com | Quintessa Williams
Research shows that suicide rates among Black youth have climbed by nearly 37% over the past five years, with Black teens now reporting higher attempt rates than their white and Hispanic peers. At the same time, Black and Native American students are 1.3 times more likely than white students to attend schools with a police officer — but no school mental health counselor.
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1 week ago | 
amsterdamnews.com | Quintessa Williams
In the spring of 2020, a video of George Floyd being murdered by a Minneapolis police officer went viral. And then — something unprecedented happened: millions filled the streets, marching and demanding the defunding of police, community-centered care, and an acknowledgement that Black lives truly matter — not just on the streets, but in classrooms and school hallways. School districts responded, too.
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1 week ago | 
theatlantavoice.com | Quintessa Williams
In the classic sci-fi movie “Minority Report,” Tom Cruise plays a cop whose “Precrime” unit uses surveillance and behavior patterns to arrest murderers before they kill. Set in the future, the movie raised tough questions about privacy, due process, and how predicting criminal behavior can destroy innocent lives. But what once seemed like an action fantasy is now creeping into American classrooms.
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1 week ago | 
dallasweekly.com | Quintessa Williams
Overview: Despite promises to remove armed officers and replace them with counselors, mental health supports, and restorative justice programs after George Floyd's murder, many school districts have failed to fulfill their promises. Instead, many have replaced officers with AI tools and surveillance software, which experts say has disproportionately policed Black kids.
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1 week ago | 
williquinn.medium.com | Quintessa Williams
Rest in Peace and PowerAs the nation marks the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s death, the South also reckons with Black lives lost and justice undone after the DOJ abandoned the very reforms promised in their names. On May 25, 2020, the world watched as George Floyd was murdered on a Minneapolis street beneath the knee of a police officer, who held his neck to the pavement for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. That summer and beyond, America was forced to reckon with our grief and rage.
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1 week ago | 
triangletribune.com | Quintessa Williams
When Jesse Hagopian first encountered Malcolm X, it wasn’t in a textbook or classroom lecture. It was through Spike Lee’s iconic 1992 film.
“I realized I needed to learn more,” Hagopian, educator and director of the Teaching for Black Lives campaign at the Zinn Education Project, tells Word In Black. “Reading his autobiography in college was transformative, like it has been for so many. But it also left me feeling betrayed.
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2 weeks ago | 
wordinblack.com | Quintessa Williams
In the spring of 2020, a video of George Floyd being murdered by a Minneapolis police officer went viral. And then — something unprecedented happened: millions filled the streets, marching and demanding the defunding of police, community-centered care, and an acknowledgement that Black lives truly matter — not just on the streets, but in classrooms and school hallways. School districts responded, too.
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2 weeks ago | 
dallasweekly.com | Quintessa Williams
Overview: The U.S. Department of Justice recently ended a long-standing federal school desegregation order in Louisiana, which could signal the beginning of a larger unraveling of legal protections for Black students. Despite the Brown v. Board of Education decision, many school districts across the country are still under federal desegregation orders, and the lack of federal oversight could result in racial disparities in student access and outcomes.
