Is there a safe place for African Americans in the USA in 2026? What area or city can African Americans go to in order to feel safe and relax? This question came to me as I listened to an African American male talk about where he felt safe in a city. The answer to the previous question should be, “An area where other African Americans reside.” In today’s world, that statement might be a lie.

The African American man was adamant that when he visited another city, or even in his hometown, he felt safer in all-white environments. I listened to him and thought, “Is he right? Do I feel comfortable and safe around white people more so than African Americans?” I ended the conversation with the African American and continued thinking. “Has self-hate corrupted the African American mind to the point where they feel safer around those who have exploited them than themselves?” The question was so simple I had to laugh because the answer went straight to the root of the issues that plague the African American community. Many African Americans feel safer in predominantly white environments.

Many will argue that this is a broad statement and point to the makeup of the majority of cities that have a high number of African Americans. Yes, in a typical US city, it may seem that African Americans seek each other out. This is true, but are they seeking African American communities for safety, or because they cannot afford to live anywhere else? Are African Americans safe in the areas they live in that are majority African American? These are the questions where the answers can get uncomfortable.

There is no need to mention the crime rate in any so-called “African American Ghetto.” We all have heard the numbers and seen the actions that shock the world about African American interactions. The endless violence. The anger and aggression towards each other. The failing schools that are located in many African American communities. Are these factors that lead African Americans to feel safer around the people who created their misery? Is the seeking of safety around whites by African Americans even a sane act? I’ll let you answer these questions yourself.

We all know self-hatred is one of the main ingredients of the misery that shapes many African American communities. Yet, there is another ingredient that is often overlooked that gives the miasma a kick. Ignorance. Ignorance has become a mainstay in the African American community to the point where African Americans see it as the norm. Ignorance of self and lack of common sense have warped the mindset of many African Americans in the USA. Ignorance leads to a mental lack that keeps African Americans from understanding the issues they face. An ignorant person would run to the people who created their misery out of blindness, seeking safety. Doesn’t that sound like many African Americans in 2026?

African Americans should have overcome self-hatred and ignorance, with all the technological advances in modern society. That does not seem to be the case. The African American male mentioned earlier has a degree and uses technology daily for work and pleasure. Is he ignorant, or just being realistic in his assessment of the state of the African American community?
Are African Americans truly safe in all white environments? I won’t answer this because one common factor follows African Americans wherever they go. That common factor is themselves. If an ignorant, self-hating African American moves to White Heaven, they will still be who they are. In such cases, their ignorance and self-hatred may provoke the heavenly whites to attack on various levels. After all, who wants to be around someone who hates their own people, and self?

There will be no safe place for African Americans anywhere on the planet until they feel safe with what is looking back from the mirror. Until that day comes, White Heaven beckons.

Frank James IV © 2026
[email protected]

The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the writer and not of the Milwaukee Times Weekly Newspaper or HT Group, LLC, its staff or management. “Being Frank” is a bi-weekly column exclusive to the Milwaukee Times Weekly Newspaper.

Based on reporting by Milwaukee Times Weekly.

Black households face highest food insecurity rate at 61 percentBy Chinta Strausberg

More than one in three Chicago households are struggling to consistently put enough food on the table, with Black families experiencing the highest rate of food insecurity as reductions in federal food assistance and rising living costs deepen the city’s hunger crisis.

The 2026 Hunger in Chicago Report found that 36 percent of Chicago households — approximately 417,000 — are food insecure. The crisis is substantially worse among Black households, 61 percent of which reported experiencing food insecurity, compared with 44 percent of Hispanic households and 14 percent of white households.

Families with children are also being hit particularly hard. Forty-seven percent of Chicago households with children reported food insecurity.

The Greater Chicago Food Depository partnered with NORC at the University of Chicago to conduct the survey in June. Nearly 1,200 Chicago adults participated in the probability-based survey designed to represent households across the city.

The findings come as hundreds of thousands of Illinois residents have lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, following changes enacted under the federal tax and spending law signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025.

Danielle K. Perry, vice president of Policy, Advocacy & Community Engagement for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, called the reductions in food assistance “devastating” during a recent appearance at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and in an interview with the Crusader.

Perry said the combination of federal reductions and persistent affordability problems is forcing food banks and community organizations to reconsider how they reach families who increasingly need help.

The disparities revealed in the report are particularly significant for Chicago’s Black communities. In addition to the 61 percent food insecurity rate among Black households, 51 percent of South Side residents surveyed reported low or very low food security.

The report also challenges the assumption that hunger is primarily associated with unemployment.

Fifty-six percent of adults in food-insecure households were working but still struggled to afford enough food while paying for housing, utilities, health care and other necessities.

Thirty-one percent of Chicago households reported delaying, reducing or skipping payments on basic necessities such as utilities or medicine to afford food. Among food-insecure households, that figure climbed to 70 percent.

The findings illustrate what hunger advocates describe as a broader affordability crisis that cannot be addressed by food pantries alone.

Perry said federal policy changes have made that challenge more difficult.

The 2025 federal law expanded SNAP work-reporting requirements for some recipients and made other changes to the nation’s largest food assistance program. The Greater Chicago Food Depository has opposed the reductions and called for strengthening SNAP and other programs supporting families struggling with food costs.

Illinois has already experienced a sharp decline in SNAP participation. The number of Illinois residents receiving benefits fell 16

percent compared with 2025, dropping to nearly 1.6 million people as of June, according to state data.

For Perry, the consequences are already visible in Chicago neighborhoods.

Asked how the Food Depository plans to meet increased demand, Perry said the organization will continue monitoring where pantry use and food needs are growing so “the pantries in the communities that have the highest need are receiving the food they need.”

The organization will continue fundraising, seeking food donations from local grocers and purchasing food when necessary to help fill the gaps, Perry said.

“We are considering all options to stand up in a moment of crisis and also to consider what is the food bank of the future,” Perry told the Crusader.

The Food Depository is also taking its work directly into neighborhoods through its Longest Communal Table events, where residents receive meals, learn about available resources and participate in conversations about solutions to hunger.

After Perry’s appearance at Rainbow PUSH, volunteers hosted a Longest Communal Table on South Kildare Avenue between West Madison Street and Washington Boulevard near New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, headed by the Rev. Dr. Marshall Hatch.

Perry said approximately 300 people received food while participating in conversations about ending hunger and learning where families can obtain free food.

Another Longest Communal Table is scheduled for Wednesday, September 30, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. between 65th and 66th streets in Ald. William Hall’s 6th Ward.

The neighborhood outreach comes as the report shows hundreds of thousands of Chicago households remain unable to meet their food needs, even when some assistance is available.

About 128,000 households, or 11 percent, are food insecure and receive no food assistance. Another 289,000 households, or 25 percent, receive assistance but still do not have enough food.

Approximately 124,000 households receive assistance and are considered food secure, while about 631,000 households meet their food needs without assistance.

The numbers underscore the limits of treating hunger solely as a question of food distribution. Families are being squeezed by grocery prices, housing, health care and other expenses while some forms of federal assistance have become harder to obtain.

For Black Chicago households, the report shows the burden is especially pronounced: nearly two-thirds of those surveyed experienced some level of food insecurity.

Perry said the Food Depository will continue expanding partnerships with neighborhood organizations and exploring ways to provide food in communities where access remains limited.

She said residents themselves must be the “driving forces” in determining how organizations respond.

For the Food Depository and its community partners, the challenge is both immediate and long term — getting food to families who need it today while addressing the economic and policy conditions contributing to hunger across Chicago.

Based on reporting by Gary Crusader.

Standing up to a bully requires more than slogans, press releases, or carefully staged outrage. It requires looking power in the face, refusing intimidation and saying, plainly, no. Congresswoman Joyce Beatty has that courage.

The Ohio Democrat and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus is standing virtually alone inside the Kennedy Center’s governing structure against Donald Trump’s attempted seizure of a national cultural institution. Trump has installed loyalists, pushed aside dissenters, and tried to plaster his name onto a building Congress designated as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy.

Beatty sued. And she won, not once, but twice. She did not merely issue a statement; she used the law, reminding Trump and his enablers that public institutions are not presidential playthings and that a board vote cannot erase an act of Congress.

Trump answered with insults and threats. During a virtual board meeting, he reportedly called Beatty “destructive,” claimed she had “never built anything,” and threatened to hold her responsible if the deteriorating building caused a death. That was not an argument. It was intimidation dressed up as authority.

Beatty did not fold. She has been pepper-sprayed while protesting police violence and arrested while demanding voting rights. She knows what it means to put her body, not merely her name, behind a principle. Now she is defending a public institution from a president who thinks anything touched by government belongs to him.

Audacity means boldness, nerve, even temerity. It is neither virtue nor vice until we ask: audacity in the service of what?

Trump’s is criminal audacity: the brazen nerve to privatize public memory and turn a national memorial into a vanity project. It is audacity in the service of ego, domination and theft.

Beatty’s is righteous audacity: the moral nerve to confront illegitimate power and refuse to be muted. Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared, “I have the audacity to believe,” then spoke of food, education, culture, dignity, equality and freedom for people everywhere. That was audacity in the service of justice. That is the tradition Joyce Beatty claims.

Coming out of Congressional Black Caucus Week, her example provokes a larger question: What is Black political power for?

The CBC was founded in 1971 by 13 members who understood that representation without collective action was insufficient. They boycotted President Richard Nixon’s State of the Union address and demanded a meeting about Black America. They were not invited to power’s table because the powerful developed good manners. They organized, insisted, and disrupted.

Today the CBC is larger and more institutionally powerful than its founders could have imagined. Black members hold seniority, key committee positions, and party leadership. Hakeem Jeffries could become the first Black Speaker of the House. But proximity to power is not power, and titles are not transformation.

CBC week brings urgent policy debates about voting rights, economic justice, health, education and Black political power. It gathers ambitious young people, seasoned public servants, advocates and entrepreneurs, along with more receptions than any human can reasonably attend. Yet we must not confuse access with action or networking with movement-building. The measure of the gathering comes after the ballroom lights go dark.

Will voting rights be defended and predatory redistricting challenged? Will Black unemployment, Black maternal mortality and the racial wealth gap be treated as emergencies rather than perennial panel topics? Will elected officials confront authoritarianism when it is risky?

Joyce Beatty has answered with her actions.

Her fight is about more than a building. Cultural institutions tell us whose history is honored and whose names endure. Trump’s desire to rename the Kennedy Center is part of his effort to rewrite history, punish dissent, and place himself at the center of every American story. He does not simply want power. He wants tribute. Beatty refuses to pay it.

Black women have often supplied the labor and backbone of American democracy while others received the credit. They organize voters, steady institutions, defend the Constitution, and are told to lower their voices. Beatty’s voice was literally muted during a Kennedy Center meeting. She found another microphone: the federal courts. Resistance is not always a march. Sometimes it is a lawsuit, a vote or a refusal to consent. Sometimes it is one woman in a hostile room saying, “You may have the votes, but you do not have the law.”

Courage deserves to be named. We saw it in Barbara Lee, standing alone against the sweeping 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and warning against a blank check for endless war. We saw it in Barbara Jordan, a freshman on the House Judiciary Committee, making the Constitution thunder during Watergate. We see it in Maxine Waters, using her financial leadership to confront predatory lending, discriminatory finance, and attacks on consumers. And we see it now in Joyce Beatty.

The CBC has long called itself the conscience of the Congress. Conscience is not a ceremonial title. It is a duty. At a moment when too many people accommodate the outrageous, normalize the abnormal, and calculate the cost of speaking, Beatty has chosen to fight. Her righteous audacity is not simply that she challenged a president. She refused to let public memory become private vanity.

Dr. Julianne Malveaux is a Washington, D.C. based economist, author, and commentator. Visit www.juliannemalveaux.com.

Based on reporting by Gary Crusader.

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

Rev. Leon William “Sonny” Clark, longtime pastor of New Spirit Baptist Church in Santa Ana and a respected faith and community leader in Orange County, died Sept. 9. He was 72.

Born Oct. 2, 1953, in Bennettsville, South Carolina, Clark was a U.S. Navy veteran who later built a life of service centered on family, faith, ministry, and community.

Clark began his formal ministry at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Altadena in 1978. After acknowledging his call to ministry in 1980, he preached his first sermon and went on to serve churches throughout Southern California, including Second Baptist Church in Riverside, Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Rubidoux, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Pomona, and Friendship Baptist Church in Yorba Linda.

In November 2003, Clark was called to lead New Spirit Baptist Church in Santa Ana, where he served as pastor for more than 22 years. His work extended beyond the pulpit through counseling, mentoring, civic engagement, and efforts to strengthen Orange County’s African American community.

Clark served on the Orange County Heritage Council and supported efforts to preserve and celebrate African American history and culture. He helped organize the Orange County Black History Parade and Unity Festival, served on the Interfaith Committee and the Orange County Transit Authority, and served as president of the Orange County Ministers Conference.

In 2024, the City of Santa Ana recognized Clark for his contributions to the community. He also received the Orange County Southern Baptist Association Hall of Faith Award and was previously honored as Pastor of the Year by the Orange County Heritage Council.

Clark is survived by his wife, Andrea Joyles Clark; six children, Shawn Williams, Le Ondra Clark Harvey, Kyla Coward, Joshua Clark, Marissa Clark and Ashley Clark; grandchildren and great-grandchildren; siblings; extended family; and the New Spirit Baptist Church congregation.

A wake will be held Thursday, Oct. 1, from 4 to 8 p.m. at New Spirit Baptist Church, 701 S. Sullivan St. in Santa Ana, with a remembrance service from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

A Celebration of Life will be held Friday, Oct. 2, at Friendship Baptist Church, 17145 Bastanchury Road in Yorba Linda. Viewing begins at noon, followed by the service at 1 p.m.

Burial will take place Monday, Oct. 5, at 10:15 a.m. at Riverside National Cemetery.

Clark often shared a guiding principle that shaped his ministry: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

By Steven A. Holmes Special to The Post

It is nearly 20 years since Chauncey Bailey, a crusading journalist, was murdered

on an Oakland street corner, gunned down to prevent him from writing stories about a

crooked business.

I hope people remember Bailey, a reporter and editor-in-chief for the

Oakland Post, the city’s Black newspaper. He had already written several articles about

the problems of a business called Your Muslim Bakery and was working on another

when the bakery’s owner ordered an employee to kill Bailey.

His murder shocked the journalism world that found the idea of an American

reporter killed for doing his job unfathomable. For me, the shock and sadness were also

personal.

I knew Bailey. In the mid-1970s we were classmates in the Michelle Clark Memorial

Foundation program, the precursor to the Institute for Journalism Education Summer

Program. A program, backed by the Ford Foundation, that provided intensive training

for fledgling minority journalism students and then placed them in jobs at newspapers

and television stations.

I’m reminded of Bailey and that program when I visit the East Bay at the end of

September to discuss the future of student journalism. To me, the visit will not only

evoke memories of Bailey. It will also be an opportunity to hone strategies to protect and

support student journalists who are under attack today, maybe not in the way that took away Chauncey Bailey, but an attack, nonetheless.

Spurred by the hostility toward the free press emanating out of Washington, high

school and college journalists are facing a barrage of censorship and harassment from

school administrators and local officials.

The 24-hour hotline staffed by the Student Press Law Center (SPLC), the non-profit I chair, has seen a 35% increase in calls from student journalists seeking legal advice on censorship, libel and copyright issues during the past two years, as well as a tripling in the number of complaints of harassment, including threats of firing, of faculty advisors.

I am not suggesting today’s national climate is as dangerous as the murderous

intentions of Yusef Bey IV, the man who ordered Bailey’s assassination. But the

harassment of student journalists does kill something else. It can destroy the desire of

student journalists to continue their growth to become professional news gatherers and

producers – something the country will always need.

It is that professional maturation that I’m reminded of when I think back on Chauncey

Bailey.

Truth be told, when we were classmates back in 1974 Bailey was the class clown,

known more for his sardonic wit than his writing or reporting talent. I have vivid

memories of Bailey sitting at his desk in the back of the room regaling us with sarcastic

comments. Sure, he was funny.

And he didn’t exhibit the level of reporting skills of our other classmates such as Milton Coleman who went on to be the Deputy Managing Editor of the Washington Post or Alexis Scott who for years has run the Atlanta Daily World.

After a series of reporting jobs in Hartford, Connecticut, Detroit, Michigan, and Oakland, Bailey had risen in talent and skill to helm this very newspaper. A tip from a source led Bailey to look into the possibility that Bey was running Your Muslim Bakery into bankruptcy. Word that Bailey was working on that story filtered back to Bey who ordered the journalist killed.

On August 2, 2007, Bailey was shot three times at point-blank range as he walked to work.

So, when I think of my trip to the East Bay my thoughts go to journalism’s past

represented by Chauncey Bailey’s sacrifice and what the staff and the board of SPLC

can do to secure the current and future work of student journalists.

Steven A. Holmes is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His novel “Black Messiahs” was published in May this year.

By Special to The Post

Church extends condolences to individual’s family and loved ones

At approximately 6:30 a.m. Monday, an unhoused individual was found deceased on the steps of Williams Chapel Baptist Church, located at 1410 10th Ave. on the corner of 10th and International in East Oakland.

The individual appears to have come to the church seeking safety and may have needed medical support. We extend our deepest condolences and prayers to the individual’s family and loved ones.

This tragedy reflects a broader crisis affecting unhoused individuals and families throughout the Bay Area. Too many people are living without reliable shelter or timely access to medical care, mental health support, and other essential services. Limited funding and insufficient resources continue to leave vulnerable people without the help they need.

Williams Chapel Baptist Church, a member of the Interfaith Council of Alameda County, works alongside West Side Missionary Baptist Church to provide safe-haven overnight parking, tiny-home emergency shelter, and wraparound referral services to the unhoused.

With funding, both East and West Oakland sites can increase to full capacity and extend to other congregations, creating more safe places for people living on the streets to seek shelter, support, and connection to services.

We invite government agencies, nonprofit organizations, interfaith communities, businesses, and neighbors to join us in this work. By working together with compassion and purpose, we can develop meaningful solutions and help more people experiencing homelessness receive care, stability, and dignity.