Verite

1 week ago | veritenews.org | Michelle Liu

When going to a movie in New Orleans before the early 1950s, Black families had to enter through the back door and sit in balconies, separated from white patrons. Then theaters, such as the Gem, opened for Black audiences. In 1951, “movies, music, singing, comedy and other performances (at the Gem) were attended by mostly African-American audiences,” the Preservation Resource Center states.

1 week ago | veritenews.org | Safura Syed

As a resident of St. James Parish, Barbara Washington is already surrounded by plastics manufacturers, chemical companies and natural gas refineries that populate the parish. But the local government is looking to pave the way for more industry — at the expense of her community’s health, she told Verite News.

1 week ago | veritenews.org | John Gray

Maze, the soul and funk group that was beloved by New Orleans’ Black community, honored Frankie Beverly, who passed away in September 2024, as the second weekend of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival drew to a close on Sunday (May 4). The second weekend of the festival featured local, national and international musical acts from a myriad of genres, including Santana, Morris Day & The Time, Trombone Shorty, Patti Labelle, Tems and Kamasi Washington.

1 week ago | veritenews.org | Katie Jane Fernelius

When Congress passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in March 2021, it allocated $350 billion in assistance to state and local governments – providing the largest infusion of cash to local governments since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For New Orleans, that money represented a desperately needed lifeline. The city had been hit particularly hard by COVID-19. It was an early hotspot for the virus.

1 week ago | veritenews.org | Arielle Robinson

Two nonprofits in New Orleans are worried about their futures after the U.S. Department of Justice abruptly canceled a federal grant that would have helped them offer support to survivors of violence. The two groups, Beyond Harm and Silence is Violence, were set to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars to aid the work they do intervening in domestic and sexual violence situations and connecting survivors of violence with resources to help them heal and rebuild their lives.