Author: Carma Henry

     Long before researchers coined phrases like “food insecurity” or “food apartheid,” Black congregations were feeding families abandoned by segregated systems, economic inequality and government neglect. But a new generation of faith leaders is asking a harder question: What if the church stopped merely responding to hunger and started confronting the system producing it?

During a Special School Board Meeting, members of the Broward County School Board presented a proclamation honoring the life, vision, and enduring legacy of Levi Henry Jr. to the Henry family and staff of the Westside Gazette, recognizing his lifelong commitment to community service, leadership, and advocacy throughout Broward County and beyond.

       Republican lawmakers in Tennessee approved a controversial new congressional map that removes the state’s only majority-Black U.S. House district, centered around the city of Memphis. The decision has sparked protests, lawsuits, and national debate over voting rights and representation.  

Salenah Cartier, a 23-year-old African American woman from Houston, Texas, has become the youngest PhD graduate at the University of Houston. She earned a doctorate in education and continues focusing on improving learning access for underserved communities.

       At 46 years old, I’ve lived long enough to know that silence is rarely accidental. It’s often a choice, one shaped by comfort, fear, exhaustion, or the belief that what’s happening doesn’t quite touch our front door yet. I’ve also learned this: silence has a sound. You may not hear it immediately, but over time it echoes, carrying consequences far beyond the moment we chose not to speak.

       Too many Black people heard truth come from Malcolm’s mouth yet discounted truth because it could not be right, it came from “a non-believer;” from someone not baptised in the faith, in Eurocentric Christianity. Beset by classical conditioning, beaten through the body into maimed minds, the African that left many doors of no return, survived horrible slave ships in crossing the Atlantic Ocean to centuries of chattel slavery, years of Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, legal discrimination, drugs and mass incarceration, heard truth and found a way to run from it, to hide somewhere in no man’s land, to so-called freedom!

   The Trump administration’s move to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III marks a major shift for the medical cannabis industry, with implications for taxation, research, insurance coverage, and patient access. While marijuana remains federally illegal unless Congress acts, the new classification recognizes accepted medical use and lowers regulatory barriers.

 Free celebration of liberty with special guests, performers and activities

Florida Emancipation Day Block Party, Saturday, May 23, 2026 from 4:30 to 9:00 p.m., at Ali Cultural Arts Center, 353 NW 1st Street, Pompano Beach, FL 33060. Free and open to the public

     The corporate world is getting flatter. In recent years, companies have had to respond quickly to unanticipated major shifts in the marketplace, including a worldwide pandemic and tariff-driven cost increases. One popular strategy is to find greater efficiencies where you can, and the most vulnerable are middle managers. This is the group that is not directly responsible for generating revenue.