Featured
Lucy McBath: Mother on a Mission
NNPA NEWSWIRE — A woman who has spent the last six years lobbying Georgia’s Congressional, State House and State Senate delegations to enact common sense gun violence prevention laws could very well have continued in that vein. After Clinton’s loss in the 2016 election, McBath decided she needed to do more.
By Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D., NNPA Newswire Contributor
When her son Jordan McBath was alive, Lucy McBath would ask God to use him to make the world a better place. “That was my greatest prayer,” says McBath who was devastated when Jordan’s life was cut short at age 17. McBath admits his death was the first time in her life she had ever questioned God. In 2012, Jordan was murdered by Michael Dunn who objected to Jordan and his friends playing loud music at a Florida gas station. McBath says she learned a very good lesson about faith from that experience. “When you’re asking God to use you, you don’t always get to choose what that looks like,” she says quietly. “I realized I was being used – we were being used — to make this world better.”
McBath, who is running for the 6th Congressional District of Georgia against incumbent Karen Handel, believes God is continuing to use her as she continues her journey to create change. While Jordan’s murder prompted McBath to push for common sense gun laws, she was actually born into an activist family. McBath is the daughter of Lucien Holman and Wilma Holman, a man who served as the NAACP Illinois branch president for twenty years and a mother who worked as a nurse.
She spent her childhood traveling with her family, attending marches and rallies for civil rights and fighting alongside more storied civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was during these experiences, McBath learned the importance of fighting for what you believe. “I learned to stand up for what I believe and to challenge systems and beliefs that don’t afford everybody to have the same sense of democracy,” she says.
McBath talks about the importance of grassroots organizing and how essential organizing is to having a cultural shift. “Anytime there is a cultural shift in our society, people are out their mobilizing, marching and making their voices heard.” Most importantly, she also learned, “It only takes one person to begin a movement.”
McBath has done just that as national spokesperson for Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Fueled by the need for change, McBath also served as Faith and Outreach leader for both.
McBath names the book of Esther as her favorite book in the Bible. In a nutshell, Esther and her cousin Mordecai, who were Jewish, persuaded Esther’s husband King Ahaseurus to retract his order for the annihilation of all Jews – an order put in place after his Chief Minister Haman coerced him. Instead Haman was hanged in the gallows intended for Mordecai and the Jews were spared and defeated their enemies.
McBath is committed to doing what’s right and defeating those whose actions would ruin people’s lives. McBath worked with Everytown and Moms, founded her own charity, Champion in the Making Legacy Foundation, to help cover costs for students attending traditional or technical schools and served as a surrogate for the 2016 Hillary Clinton for President Campaign as one of the “Mothers of the Movement.”
A woman who has spent the last six years lobbying Georgia’s Congressional, State House and State Senate delegations to enact common sense gun violence prevention laws could very well have continued in that vein. After Clinton’s loss in the 2016 election, McBath decided she needed to do more.
“After losing the election, I thought to myself, what do I do? Where do I go? How do I continue to build upon what we have done?” she offers. “After Parkland happened, I realized the legislators have the power to create the change. It just had to stop. It had to stop,” says McBath growing silent. After a moment of reflection, McBath begins speaking again. It is clear McBath’s desire for change is painful and personal. “I had already been dealing with our gun violence/prevention – testifying and listening to the amendments and time and time again watching the Republican Party have a disdain for common sense gun laws,” she offers. “When the Parkland children stood up, I thought why are we not standing behind them. Why are we not helping them save their own lives? If not now, then when?”
Clearly, the time is now, and the election is in a few days and McBath has continuously beaten the odds, having secured the Democratic nomination. It took a lot of faith, time, money and effort to go down this path to potential lawmaker. “I had already been in Washington. I’ve already done a lot of work folks do. I testify, negotiate, advocate. I just thought that Jordan’s legacy,” her voice trails off. “If this is how to continue to save lives, then it would be more tragic not even to try.”
McBath is doing more than just trying, despite being called a “Gun Grabber,” by GOP opponents. The woman who wants common sense gun laws has been labeled an extremist by 2nd amendment activists, which is ironic. “We have an extremist culture here that has been perpetrated by the NRA leadership. I don’t want to cast stones at all NRA members, but if you are a law-abiding gun owner, you don’t have a reason to be worried,” she says.
While McBath’s name is connected most often to gun and violence prevention, the two-time breast cancer survivor is also fighting for access to healthcare. McBath is thankful for her great healthcare benefits as a Delta Airlines employee for 30 years, but understands her situation is not the norm for many of her constituents. “I don’t want anyone in my district to be faced with not having access to health care – faced with a healthcare crisis. When I know the incumbent tried to defund Planned Parenthood, I know what that means especially for women, most of whom are women of color.” McBath has a plan and a desire driven by the loss of her only child to get her constituents there.
Listening to McBath, one has to marvel at her strength and resiliency. When asked what would Jordan think of her congressional run, she smiles gently. “I think Jordan would have been very surprised. He would have said Mom go for it! What I’m doing is what I was teaching him to be.”
Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D. is culture and entertainment editor for NNPA/Black Press USA. She is also founder & editor-in-chief of The Burton Wire, an award-winning news blog covering the African Diaspora. Follow her on Twitter @Ntellectual.
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NFN live presents 🎙️ THE ROAD TO BEYOND IWDM 50: WE CANNOT STOP NOW! 🎙️
NFN Live presents: Charting our future and strengthening communities with the Mid-Atlantic Section! Tune in tonight for insights on building our legacy.
Join us TONIGHT for Week 4 of our 8-week podcast & leadership spotlight series! We are charting our future, strengthening our communities, and building our legacy together.
📍 THIS WEEK’S SPOTLIGHT: Mid-Atlantic Section
👤 GUEST:Imam Salahuddin A. Muhammad (Mid-Atlantic Section Convener)
🎯 TOPIC:Strengthening Our Masaajid and Key Institutions
🗓️ Date: Monday, September 28, 2026
⏰ Time: 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
📻 Where to Listen Live:YouTube, Facebook & IWDM Community Radio
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”
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💻 Register online & learn more:www.IWDMcommunity.com or bit.ly/IWDM50forward
🗓️ Save the Date: 2026 Community Development & Leadership Conference | Oct 30 – Nov 1, 2026 | Norfolk, Virginia Beach Area
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Black History
COMMENTARY: The Audacity of Joyce Beatty
GARY CRUSADER — Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, has taken legal action against attempts to alter the Kennedy Center’s governance and purpose. She sued after loyalists were reportedly installed and efforts were made to rename parts of the institution, which Congress designated as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy.
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.
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Dr. Jineea Butler joins Niele Anderson to discuss breaking news, from ICE detainee transparency to Angel Reese’s historic win. Tune in for the context behind the headlines.
Today, Niele Anderson is joined by Dr. Jineea Butler as they discuss the death of Joseph Hutchison Jr. following allegations involving his family’s funeral home, nearly 4 million newly searchable records of enslaved people, Nicki Minaj’s message to young voters, new concerns over ICE detainee transparency, and Angel Reese making franchise history with AP Defensive Player of the Year honors.
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#BlackPressUSA #MorningShow #BlackNews #AngelReese #NickiMinaj #ICE #BlackHistory
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