What began as a few encouraging words to Jacksonville Jaguars Head Coach Liam Coen has grown into a community message – and a way to help nurture the next generation of journalists.

Earlier this year, Jacksonville Editor Lynn Jones offered spontaneous encouragement, telling him to ‘keep your head up’ and ‘keep it going.’ The exchange quickly went viral, gaining national and international attention across television sports programs, podcasts, social media and online video platforms.

The Jacksonville Free Press turned the unexpected attention into an opportunity to give back, creating “Keep Your Head Up” T-shirts inspired by Jones’ words. Hundreds of shirts have since been sold, with proceeds benefiting the Jacksonville Free Press Journalism Fund, which supports efforts to nurture, encourage and develop future journalists.

For Hammock and Bolden, the words extend beyond football. They said the message also serves as a reminder to their families to remain positive and keep moving forward through life’s victories and setbacks.

The shirts have allowed a fleeting viral moment to produce a more lasting impact. Proceeds from sales are helping support a fund focused on creating opportunities for aspiring journalists and encouraging young people to learn the importance of storytelling, community news and documenting history.

Based on reporting by Jacksonville Free Press.

“Stompin’ Out Gun Violence” uses sought-after sneakers to open the door to a life-saving message for young people.

A new pair of shoes can do more than complete an outfit—it can help a young person step toward a safer future. That is the idea behind “Stompin’ Out Gun Violence,” a traveling shoe giveaway led by the Latroy V. Harris Initiative, “I Will Not Die to Gun Violence.”

Founder Monte Mabra says the work comes with no paycheck. Its reward is measured instead in smiles, gratitude, and the chance to turn a potentially negative outcome into a positive one. By pairing free shoes with conversations about gun violence, organizers hope to reach young people with a message that stays with them long after the event ends.

“I like what Monte is doing to change the course of violent crime,” said Michael F. Hupy of personal injury law firm Hupy and Abraham, S.C. and leading sponsor “The shoes carry them in the door, and the message follows them out.”

Students at Carmen School of Science and Technology, 3215 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, received Nike, Adidas, and Jordans. Principal Miller said she looks forward to next year and to continuing to build a relationship with the Latroy V. Harris Initiative.

The initiative honors Latroy V. Harris, who was lost to gun violence on Dec. 15, 2025. His family and loved ones are keeping his memory alive by working to prevent other families from experiencing the same loss.

The campaign’s next stop is Bruce Elementary School on Sept. 30. Organizers plan to give away shoes, gun- and domestic-violence awareness and prevention coloring books, and educational books.

For the young people reached by the initiative, each pair of shoes carries more than a brand name. It carries a reminder: their lives matter, their futures are worth protecting, and every step away from violence counts.

Based on reporting by Milwaukee Times Weekly.

Affinia Healthcare and Employment Connection are teaming up to help patients find jobs, training or volunteer opportunities as new Medicaid work requirements approach.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2027, certain adults will have to meet work, education or community service requirements to keep their coverage. Some patients may qualify for exemptions.

Patients seeking assistance can call Affinia Healthcare at 314-814-8700 and ask about the partnership. Affinia’s outreach team can help connect them with Employment Connection.

The post Partnership helps patients prepare for Medicaid rules appeared first on St. Louis American.

Based on reporting by St. Louis American.

NEW YORK — For anyone raised in the Caribbean, or in a Brooklyn, Bronx, or Queens household where the radio stayed tuned to home, there was never a time without the Mighty Sparrow. His voice was simply part of the furniture of our lives: at Carnival, at weddings, at Sunday lunch, in the car on the way to JFK. On Sunday, that voice went quiet.

Slinger Francisco, known to the world as the Mighty Sparrow, died Sunday, September 27, in New York. He was 91. His family said he passed peacefully after a brief illness, with loved ones at his bedside.

He was born in Grand Roy, Grenada, in 1935, and was still a small child when his family moved to Trinidad. Port of Spain made him. Its yards, its rum shops and its calypso tents gave him his rhythm and his sharp tongue. He sang in a church choir as a boy, but the city had a louder music, and by his late teens he was performing under the name that would become a title.

The breakthrough came in 1956 with “Jean and Dinah,” his mischievous farewell to the American servicemen leaving Trinidad after the war years. The song swept Carnival, winning him both the Road March and the Calypso King crown. It introduced a young performer who could be funny and fearless at once, who could make an entire nation laugh at itself and then think hard about what it had just laughed at.

He was fearless offstage too. A year after that first crown, he refused to compete over the paltry prize money offered to calypsonians, a stand that helped push the art form toward the respect and the pay its practitioners deserved.

Over six decades, he recorded hundreds of songs. He could turn a love story, a boast or a bit of bedroom comedy into a hit, but he was just as formidable when the subject was power. “Dan Is the Man in the Van” took apart a colonial schooling that taught Caribbean children nonsense about themselves. “Congo Man,” “Mr. Walker,” “The Lizard” and “Both of Them” became standards sung by people who had never set foot in a calypso tent. Long before anyone printed it on a poster, audiences had already crowned him the Calypso King of the World.

For New York’s Caribbean community, Sparrow was never just a visiting star. He made this city his home for many years and played its biggest rooms, including Madison Square Garden, before crowds of immigrants who heard in his voice the islands they had left behind. A Sparrow show here was less a concert than a homecoming.

Trinidad and Tobago honored him with the Trinity Cross, then its highest national award, and generations of calypsonians and soca artists have named him as the standard they measured themselves against. Fans called him “Birdie,” and the affection in that nickname said everything.

Tributes are already pouring in from across the region and the diaspora, and they will keep coming for weeks. But perhaps the truest tribute is the simplest one: somewhere tonight, in Port of Spain, St. George’s, Flatbush and beyond, someone is putting on a Sparrow record, turning it up, and singing along.

Based on reporting by New York Carib News.

A grand jury declines charges in the Nolan Wells case, a Jackson man pleads not guilty in Tasia Fortune’s hanging death, and a Maryland suicide ruling lands on raw nerves.

A Mississippi grand jury has declined to charge anyone in the death of Nolan Xavier Wells, the 18-year-old Black college football player who disappeared during a July Fourth boat trip with a group of white friends and was found dead two days later off Horn Island. His parents rejected the decision on Sept. 22, telling reporters they do not believe their son simply drowned and vowing to keep fighting for answers.

The grand jury’s report was made public late on Sept. 21, the same week a Jackson man pleaded not guilty to murder in the hanging death of Tasia Fortune and Maryland officials ruled that a Black man found hanging from a tree in Prince George’s County died by suicide.

All three cases now join the Crusader’s ongoing “Lynchings By Suicide” investigation, which began after Demartravion “Trey” Reed, a 21-year-old Delta State University student, was found hanging from a tree on the Cleveland, Miss., campus on Sept. 15, 2025. The state medical examiner ruled Reed’s death a suicide within days, a finding his family continues to dispute.

Nolan Wells: ‘We’ll Never Stop’

Wells, a wide receiver at Southwest Mississippi Community College, went to Horn Island, a barrier island reachable only by boat, with high school friends on July 4. When the group returned to the mainland that afternoon, Wells was not with them. A park ranger found his body in the water off the island on July 6.

Investigators have long said Wells chose to stay behind. His family never believed it, and an independent autopsy that attorney Ben Crump released in July at the NAACP National Convention in Chicago found an unexplained area of discoloration at the back of Wells’ head and ruled the cause of death undetermined.

The grand jury, which heard from 43 witnesses, found Wells’ death “consistent with drowning.” Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath said there is “absolutely no evidence” that race played a role, according to NBC News. The state medical examiner, however, also ruled the cause and manner of death undetermined.

“Elmore and I do not believe that Nolan simply and accidentally drowned,” Christine Wonsley, Wells’ mother, said, according to CNN. His father, Elmore Wonsley, reminded supporters that his son is “not a hashtag, he’s our son.”

Crump said the district attorney wants the public to accept “We’ll never know,” while the family answers, “We’ll never stop.” The family is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate and demanding release of the full case file and the state’s autopsy report. Mississippi has no statute of limitations on homicide.

Tasia Fortune: An Arrest, Not an Ending

Fortune, a 29-year-old mother of four, was found Aug. 3 hanging from a tree behind a vacant house on Road of Remembrance in west Jackson. From the start, her family insisted she did not take her own life.

After the state medical examiner ruled her death a homicide on Sept.10, Jackson police arrested Jarques “Jock” Ratliff, 51, the next day as he walked along Capitol Street and charged him with murder. Ratliff is African American, as was Fortune, according to Mississippi Today. Police said the two knew each other but have not said how.

Ratliff pleaded not guilty on Sept. 14 and was denied bond as a flight risk. His attorney, Toney Baldwin, called him “a pillar of the community” and said his client made no confession.

Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney called the arrest “not the conclusion” and said more arrests are expected. “We understand this case is being viewed through a broader lens, a global lens,” Brackney said, according to ABC News.

Christy Spivey, Fortune’s mother, said that when police told her about the arrest, “I just started crying and told them ‘thank you, thank you, thank you.’”

Activists want more. Byron Brumfield of Medgar Evers Reloaded: A Mission and a Movement said Ratliff “should be charged with a hate crime also, just like anybody else,” according to WLOX. Ward 3 Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes has asked U.S. Attorney Baxter Kruger’s office for federal assistance.

Prince George’s County: A Ruling in Hours

In Upper Marlboro, Md., a Black man was found hanging from a tree outside a business on D’Arcy Road on the morning of Sept. 20. Within hours, the state medical examiner ruled his death a suicide with no other signs of trauma. He has not been publicly identified.

Police Chief George Nader said the man’s family agrees with the ruling. Relatives asked that his name be withheld and said the public attention had made his death “more unbearable,” according to the Maryland Daily Record.

County Executive Aisha Braveboy urged residents not to share images or spread speculation online. “This is a tragedy. A person is dead,” Braveboy said, according to WUSA9.

A Pattern the Crusader HasTracked

Mississippi is where Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy, was abducted and murdered in 1955, and where Mack Charles Parker was dragged from a Poplarville jail and lynched in 1959.

In February, JULIAN, the civil rights organization founded by attorney Jill Collen Jefferson, released “A Crimson Record,” a report documenting more than 70 suspected modern-day lynchings across seven Southern states since 2000. The report calls the federal Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, signed in 2022, “toothless.”

The Wells family is pressing for a federal investigation. Jackson police have promised more arrests in Fortune’s killing, and activists are calling for hate crime charges. More than a year after Trey Reed was found on the Delta State campus, his family is still waiting on answers of its own.

Across these cases, families and advocates have made the same demand: release the grand jury findings, the autopsy reports and the evidence behind every ruling.

Based on reporting by Chicago Crusader.

A volunteer-led task force of St. Louis-based lawyers will go after contractors who take advantage of victims of last year’s May tornado.

Mayor Cara Spencer announced the creation of the task force on Thursday as an expansion of the city’s effort to provide legal aid to victims in the tornado zone. The EF3 tornado damaged and destroyed thousands of homes in the north and west parts of the city.

The task force will be composed of area lawyers and Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, a legal aid group that often works with the city on housing and other legal issues.

Together, the litigators will provide free legal expertise and representation to eligible homeowners who believe they were defrauded by a contractor, including by receiving shoddy or partial work.

Spencer said she hopes the task force sends a “clear and unambiguous message” to fraudsters looking to victimize homeowners impacted by the tornado.

“I’ve just heard over and over again some truly heartbreaking stories of folks that have been taken advantage of by contractors, some of which are local,” Spencer said.

In May, a High Ridge contractor was charged with defrauding victims of the tornado by Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office.

Homeowners seeking legal aid will go through a two-stage screening process to evaluate their claims. Then, if selected, an attorney will be matched with the homeowners. The intake form can be found here.

Celeste Vossmeyer, an attorney who has worked with Spencer’s administration on several other projects, helped assemble the task force. She said the city’s north and west sides need extra eyes while recovery efforts continue.

“We’re hoping that this is also going to be a deterrent as other money flows into the tornado disaster area and to other scammers that may try to take advantage of these individual homeowners,” she said.

Spencer said the city will also partner with the attorney general’s consumer protection office. The office will forward complaints from homeowners in the tornado zone to the task force.

Spencer said that without the help of the volunteers, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri and the attorney general, the city could not offer this type of help.

Shawn Caruso, a senior attorney at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, called on other lawyers in the area to consider joining the pro bono team.

“Every lawyer who volunteers expands our ability and our capacity to provide more free legal aid to our residents,” Caruso said.

Published with permission as part of a content partnership between The St. Louis American and St. Louis Public Radio. Click here to view original story.

The post St. Louis officials form pro bono task force to fight fraud against tornado survivors appeared first on St. Louis American.

Based on reporting by St. Louis American.