Belva Davis (October 13, 1932 – September 24, 2025)
Ever heard of Belva Davis? She wasn’t just any reporter. She was the first Black woman on TV news out West, a total trailblazer! Imagine the doors she had to kick down. But one of her biggest gigs? Covering the explosive Huey Newton trials. This wasn’t just a legal case; it was a snapshot of a nation boiling over with racial tension, a pressure cooker about to burst. Belva Davis didn’t just report on it; she navigated it, a Black woman in a white-dominated media landscape, during a time of intense racial strife. Continue reading
Decades after his most potent works were written, the words of Gil Scott-Heron feel less like historical artifacts and more like dispatches from a future he had already foreseen. The “Winter in America” he sang about in 1974—a season of political disillusionment, racial tension, and national malaise—has returned with a vengeance, manifesting in the polarized and profoundly disquieting landscape of the present day. To read his poetry and listen to his music in 2025 is to confront a sobering reality: the struggles he chronicled have not been overcome, but rather have morphed and intensified, finding a chilling new echo in the political climate of the second Trump presidency. 
“Old pirates, yes, they rob I; Sold I to the merchant ships, Minutes after they took IFrom the bottomless pit. But my hand was made strong By the hand of the all mighty. We forward in generationTriumphantly.Won’t you help me sing
“Like the pine trees lining the winding road I’ve got a name I’ve got a name Like the singing bird and the croaking toad I’ve got a name I’ve got a name And I carry it with me like my daddy did But I’m living the dream that he kept hid Moving me down the highway Rolling me down the highway Moving ahead so life won’t pass me by Like the North wind whistling down the sky I’ve got a song I’ve got a song Like the whip-poor-will and the babies cryingI’ve got a song I’ve got a song And I 