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.

When I play poker and go all-in, I may be holding pocket aces. Other times, I’m bluffing. Either way, all of my chips go into the pot. In poker, going all-in doesn’t require certainty. It requires commitment. And the same is true when it comes to artificial intelligence.

For Black Americans, this particular bet is crucial. We have too few voices in the rooms where AI is being shaped and too much at stake in what happens next. Black workers, students and entrepreneurs are already being affected by AI. So this isn’t just somebody else’s technology debate. It’s ours, too.

AI could cure cancer. AI could kill us. That is the extraordinary range of possibilities now being debated by some of the very people building the technology.

And some of the risks are becoming less theoretical. OpenAI recently disclosed six instances of unexpected or concerning model behavior during training or evaluation, including models taking unauthorized actions, concealing information and finding ways around constraints. A recent brief from the U.N.’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI described a separate OpenAI-Hugging Face incident as one of the clearest real-world warnings yet of a possible path toward losing human control over advanced AI agents.

But development is hardly slowing down. In fact, it’s clearly going all-in.

President Donald Trump has framed AI largely as a competition America cannot afford to lose, saying, “Whoever wins AI wins.” He recently announced plans to create an “AI Force” and appoint an AI “czar,” while promising not to “hinder or stifle” the growth of the AI industry. And Anthropic reports that Claude now leads 26% of the company’s AI research and development work and collaborates on more than 90% of it.

Vast sums of money, extraordinary computing power and some of the smartest people on the planet are being committed to making these systems more powerful.

If that is the bet we are making, then responsibility deserves the same commitment.

There are signs that at least some in the industry recognize that. Anthropic recently announced a partnership with Accenture to embed independent evaluators inside its frontier AI development process, with each company expecting to invest at least $1 billion over five years.

That is closer to the balance we need. Development does not necessarily have to stop for responsibility to accelerate.

Responsibility starts with safety: keeping increasingly powerful systems under human control, protecting privacy and cybersecurity, and guarding against misuse.

But responsible AI has to mean more than preventing some future catastrophe.

It means preparing workers whose jobs may change or disappear. It means making sure algorithms don’t reproduce discrimination in hiring, lending, health care and education. It means helping schools decide when students should learn without AI, about AI and with AI.

And it means making sure people who will live with the consequences have a meaningful role in shaping them.

That includes Black folks.

I’m not an AI expert, a tech billionaire or a politician. I’m a Chicago educator who has spent most of my adult life preparing students, almost all of them Black and from low-income communities, for an unpredictable future. That makes this debate especially urgent to me.

And our young people aren’t waiting for adults to figure it out. About six in 10 Black teenagers are already using AI chatbots for schoolwork. Yet federal data show that about 60% of schools serving mostly students of color provide AI training to at least some teachers, compared with 75% of predominantly white schools.

The economic stakes are significant, too. McKinsey estimates that 24% of Black workers are in occupations with greater than 75% automation potential, compared with 20% of White workers. Black people make up about 12% of the U.S. workforce but only 8% of workers in tech jobs and just 3% of technology executives in the C-suite.

So Black people are not watching this transformation from the sidelines. We are using the technology, our children are learning with it, and we are working in occupations that could be significantly changed by it. What we don’t have are nearly enough seats at the tables where the biggest decisions are being made.

That lack of representation was visible recently. At a major Washington gathering calling for action on AI safety, almost none of the people onstage were Black.

Black voices aren’t absent, however. Sen. Cory Booker called for a special session of Congress on AI, saying the technology’s rapidly evolving risks and opportunities require urgent attention. Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke has pushed for greater accountability when AI is used to make consequential decisions in employment, housing, credit, education and other areas. And the NAACP is challenging the expansion of AI data centers over concerns including pollution, water and energy use, utility costs and insufficient community input.

Those questions are now playing out here in Chicago, where Mayor Brandon Johnson has proposed a one-year moratorium on new or expanded data centers while the city develops regulations addressing their effects on energy, water, pollution and residents’ quality of life.

Those concerns illustrate why inclusion must be part of what we mean by responsible AI. Responsible AI cannot mean only preventing AI from someday escaping human control. It also has to mean making sure the AI we are deploying today does not deepen inequities we already know too well.

The Gates Foundation’s new Goalkeepers report emphasizes that AI could become a powerful equalizer or deepen existing inequalities. The foundation is putting its money where its mouth is, committing at least $1 billion over two years to expand access to AI and help ensure its benefits reach people who might otherwise be left behind.

Bill Gates writes that the people with the greatest needs often have the least power to determine where innovation and investment go.

That sounds eerily familiar.

Black Americans know from experience that national progress does not guarantee racial equality. The United States has grown richer, stronger and more technologically advanced while Black people have too often been denied an equal opportunity to share in that progress.

We should not repeat that pattern with AI.

Going all-in cannot mean committing everything to making the technology more powerful and then hoping safety, opportunity and equity somehow catch up.

Going all-in means going all-in on responsibility, too.

All-in on technical safety. All-in on privacy. All-in on preparing workers. All-in on helping schools and students navigate the technology wisely. All-in on preventing old biases from becoming automated ones. And all-in on making sure Black students, workers, professionals and entrepreneurs can help shape AI and benefit from it rather than simply absorb its disruptions.

The AI industry is already going all-in on development. Black people should insist that responsibility includes us, too.

We don’t know how our country’s gamble on AI will turn out. But Black people need a seat at the table so we can play our hand.

The post Responsible AI Development Requires a Seat at the Table for Black America appeared first on Chicago Defender.

Based on reporting by Chicago Defender.

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.

The road after graduation can take Xavier University of Louisiana’s mass communication students far beyond New Orleans. In the last three years, several students from Xavier’s Mass Communication department have been admitted to master’s programs at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles.

On Wednesday, Sept. 23, Miki Turner, a professor of professional practice at USC Annenberg and an award-winning journalist, author and producer, visited Xavier’s mass communication department to talk to students about the opportunity to study at USC after graduating from Xavier.

“When I first got to USC, I went to the dean of admissions and said, ‘Hey, can I go recruit at HBCUs?’ I thought she was going to say no. She said, ‘Of course, I’d love that,’” Turner said.

“So, I have been doing this for close to 13 years now, and nothing gives me greater pleasure than to see them come and see them thrive and shine. You know, I feel this is a part of my assignment here on earth,” she added.

After meeting Turner as a sophomore during a joint Xavier and USC research trip to Accra, Ghana, Brier Evans, a Xavier alumna and current USC Annenberg student, became one of three students to pursue USC Annenberg after her senior year at Xavier.

“What I valued about my former [Xavier] professors was how they worked with us and advocated for us. For USC, there was never a thought about whether or not I felt prepared. I was prepared. I was confident in what I had learned during my time at Xavier,” Evans said.

Dr. Nia Mason, department head of Mass Communication and associate professor, organized the event as part of an ongoing initiative to connect Xavier’s mass communication majors with prestigious journalism and graduate school opportunities.

During the discussion, she went through the application process and scholarship opportunities available and explained the type of portfolio work that catches the attention of the admissions committee.

For Xavier students, conversations about graduate school can be extremely important as many begin thinking about what comes next after graduation.

Several students, including Ja’lyn Jones, a senior mass communication major with double minors in sociology and music from Holly Springs, Mississippi, said the visit helped him understand what is possible after his time at Xavier.

“The conversation with Turner both broadened and elevated my perspective toward preparing for grad school,” Jones said.

“Learning about USC Annenberg, I was truly impressed by the diversity in not only the students and staff, but also the skill set and mindset each one possessed, while still feeding into the same institutional purpose [for HBCU students],” he added.

Turner has been involved in sports journalism and media for many years before taking a position in academics at USC. She wanted to make sure her time at Xavier was not only an opportunity for students to learn about higher education, but also about what it takes to continue developing as emerging communication professionals after earning their undergraduate degrees.

She also addressed a question specific to Xavier’s students: what it means to come from a historically Black college or university (HBCU) into a program like Annenberg.

“As a graduate of Hampton [University], I did not have this experience, so it means everything to me. The best thing about USC is that network. It doesn’t matter who you are. They got you,” Turner said.

By talking to professionals such as Turner, students can learn more about how to obtain and succeed in experiences that can help them become stronger candidates.

“I’m so grateful that there are people like Miki who are recognizing the talents that are being fostered in our HBCUs. [Those] who are seeing the gaps in their own academic spaces and are looking to place more and more of our students into these pipelines. My time at both institutions was invaluable,” Evans said.

The post Building a Bridge: USC Annenberg professor visits Xavier as mass communication pipeline grows appeared first on The Xavier Herald.

Based on reporting by Xavier University of Louisiana – Xavier Herald.