This Black History Month, Report for America is honored to uplift select reporting from corps members covering Black voices and communities, which have historically been undercovered and underrepresented in the media. 

According to a recent Pew Research Center study, only around 6% of reporting journalists in the United States identify as Black. We bring intentionality to our newsroom partnerships and corps member recruitment efforts, creating more opportunities and support for Black journalists and all journalists of color. Our current reporting corps includes 13% Black journalists.  

We hope you’ll appreciate this selection of recent Report for America corps member stories:

At this summer school, students learn about liberation and leadership

By Rebecca Cadenhead, MLK50, Tennessee

 The Sunflower County Freedom Project, a part of the Freedom Project Network, is an organization that gives Mississippi students “holistic and liberatory education experiences” during the summer and after school. Students learn about Black and Indigenous history, math, reading, and public speaking. The original Freedom Schools opened in 1969 to educate young Black Mississippians on Black history and political activism. One teacher said the need for the Freedom Project Network was obvious since local schools don’t teach in-depth Black history, despite Black students representing 84% of the district’s population. “When I was a student, we didn’t receive new textbooks, and we weren’t challenged to read many books,” she said. “Our teachers were amazing with the resources they had. But our schools were under-resourced.”

 
Cooperatives empower Black farmers amid historic discrimination, land loss struggles

By Lucille Lannigan, Albany Herald, Georgia

 The fight to retain Black-owned land continues in the U.S. as farmers grapple with systemic discrimination that has barred them from government lending programs. To counter this discrimination and lack of access, a group of southwest Georgians came together in 1969 to acquire 6,000 acres of land in Lee County, forming the New Communities cooperative. At the time, it was the largest single land holding for Black people in the country. Though the cooperative later faced land loss, the community is still strong with new cooperatives sprouting in its place.

At America’s longest-running Black rodeo, ‘real cowgirls and cowboys’ carry on a rich history

By Anna Pope, KOSU, Oklahoma

 The Roy LeBlanc Okmulgee Invitational Rodeo is the nation’s oldest and largest continually-running Black rodeo. Held for two nights in early August at the Bob Arrington Rodeo Arena in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, it includes a variety of rodeo events from bull riding, calf roping, and steer wrestling to the Pony Express, ladies steer undecorating and junior barrel racing. The rodeo was formed in the 50s in response to the town barring Black cowboys from competing in the local rodeo.“The most important part is there are Black cowboys and we do this too. We were the first cowboys,” competitor Aaron Foster said. “It’s a different feeling competing out there; it’s something about it. It’s like history.”

*The story aired nationally on NPR’s All Things Considered

How one Sacramento group is trying to make special education more accessible for Black families

By Srishti Prabha, CapRadio, California

The Black Parallel School Board is a community-based nonprofit founded in 2008 to address systemic inequities affecting Black students in Sacramento by helping families navigate school system bureaucracy. Statewide data underscores the urgency of their work: While Black students make up about 5% of California’s public school population, they are disproportionately represented in special education programs and over-disciplined. A parent of an autistic student said the organization’s advocacy for her son allowed her to finally feel confident in her son’s education. “Even though I knew my son’s rights, my rights as a parent and what he needed to succeed, it always felt like a fight,” she said. “I felt unsupported.” The Black Parallel School Board is mobilizing parents across California and families in five other districts have begun forming their own parallel school boards.

*The story aired nationally on NPR’s Here and Now.

Black men are changing the game in literacy

By Ashley Winters, The St. Louis American, Missouri

 Three nonprofits worked together to create literacy posters featuring 25 St. Louis-area Black men proudly reading, inspired by vintage READ posters created by the American Library Association. The literacy initiative’s goal is to ignite joy in reading and promote literacy. Data reflects this need, with 81 percent of Black third-graders in the St. Louis metro area failing reading in 2022-2023.  The campaign also aims to amplify the presence of Black men reading, Black men reading to the kids in their lives and to increase authentic representations of Black men as critical caregivers. “Our children need to have an image to aspire to,” said the founder of Believe Projects Julius B. Anthony. The combined efforts of Ready Readers, Black Men Read, and the Believe Project will reach more than 20,000 kids throughout the region.  

From Jim Crow to Kamala Harris: Black elders reflect on historic vote

By Corli Jay, The TRiiBE, Illinois

For this story, corps member Corli Jay interviewed five Black elders in Chicago who shared their past and present experiences with voting. The voters touched on segregation and discriminatory voting practices of the past and the historical significance of Kamala Harris potentially being elected the first Black woman president. “[…] I was from an era where Black people had to pay a poll tax to be able to vote,” one voter said. “My dad and some of his friends would pay for people who couldn’t afford to pay just so they had a right to vote. So, […] voting has always been important to me.” One voter compared the significance of Harris’ ticket to Barack Obama’s. “I remember when former President Obama got into office, and how so many people like my grandfather, who was in his 90s, cried to see a Black man that they never thought would get in office […],” she said.