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kidadaewilliams.com
KEW
@kidadaewilliams.com
4.1K followers 390 following 2.6K posts
I read, tell stories, block early/often, mind my business, and write--I SAW DEATH COMING is now in paperback.
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kidadaewilliams.com
KEW @kidadaewilliams.com · Nov 18
My girl made it to the Blacksonian, y'all! And she's in great company! ❤️‍🔥
A bookshelf in a store filled with books, centering the paperback edition of I Saw Death Coming by Kidada Williams. Next to her book is Allow Me to Retort by Elie Mystal, Black History AF by Michael Harriot, and Black Power by Kwame Ture.
Reposted by KEW
jamellebouie.net
i think this more than anything is what miller wants. vast detention camps with all of the suffering and death that means.
reichlinmelnick.bsky.social Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 1d
ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps.

If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight. www.ajc.com/politics/202...
ICE to begin detaining immigrants inside Social Circle warehouse in April
Homeland Security plans to build warehouse detention facilities in other cities being met with opposition.
www.ajc.com
February 10, 2026 at 3:56 AM
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esqueer.net
What, did you think they were going to stop with trans people?

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/u...
Pride Flag Is Taken Down From Stonewall Monument
www.nytimes.com
February 10, 2026 at 5:03 PM
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civicspod.bsky.social
Johnnie Tillman was a welfare rights activist who pushed for increased access to social services and better treatment from caseworkers. In 1972, she wrote a piece for Ms magazine arguing that welfare rights were women’s issues that required much more attention.
February 10, 2026 at 6:28 PM
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themarshallproject.org
A key Mississippi lawmaker has passed a major hurdle on a bill that calls for tougher oversight of deaths inside the state’s notorious prisons, following an investigation by The Marshall Project - Jackson, Mississippi Today, Clarion Ledger, Hattiesburg American and The Mississippi Link.
Mississippi Lawmakers Push Prison Reform After Dozens of Deaths Exposed
A reform bill that would set up an oversight committee to review each prison death comes after a joint news investigation by several local outlets.
www.themarshallproject.org
February 10, 2026 at 7:00 PM
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karenho.bsky.social
It's jarring to see how much money is going to ICE instead of education, healthcare, public transportation, international aid, green energy infrastructure, and the arts, but I guess that's the point.
February 10, 2026 at 4:46 PM
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heitmusic.com
"Shelley Lewis, who later discussed having a baby with Epstein, showed him the piece about the Gullah Geechee community... alongside the message 'where to find new help'."
Epstein’s ‘British girlfriend told him to recruit descendants of slaves’
Messages released by US authorities show Shelley Lewis discussing their relationship, finances and even having a child with the billionaire
www.thetimes.com
February 10, 2026 at 7:07 PM
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anatosaurus.bsky.social
In an authoritarian state, even a competitive one, the regime increasingly controls the system and as such loyalty to that system is loyalty to authoritarianism.
February 10, 2026 at 7:08 PM
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manonatelier.blacksky.app
*stares in I-told-you-so
carlquintanilla.bsky.social Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 13h
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW: “.. In our in-progress research, we discovered that AI tools didn’t reduce work, they consistently intensified it.”

hbr.org/2026/02/ai-d...
February 10, 2026 at 7:03 PM
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newsjennifer.bsky.social
“We can’t terrorize 98% of the people in this country that have been wrongfully detained for 2%,” Johnson said. “That’s not how the system works. And that is not OK.”
jbendery.bsky.social Jen Bendery @jbendery.bsky.social · 7h
A stunning detail the ICE chief shared in this hearing that was supposed to be a brag, except it isn't: ICE has arrested 379,000 people between Jan. 2025-Jan. 2026 -- but only 8,700 were suspected gang members or known suspected terrorists.

That's 2%! www.huffpost.com/entry/latest...
Congresswoman Uses Simple Math To Show How Broken ICE Is
www.huffpost.com
February 10, 2026 at 7:20 PM
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authorwinifred.blacksky.app
It's funny that no one is racist anymore and yet so many people excel at artisanal racism.
heitmusic.com Heit @heitmusic.com · 7h
"Shelley Lewis, who later discussed having a baby with Epstein, showed him the piece about the Gullah Geechee community... alongside the message 'where to find new help'."
Epstein’s ‘British girlfriend told him to recruit descendants of slaves’
Messages released by US authorities show Shelley Lewis discussing their relationship, finances and even having a child with the billionaire
www.thetimes.com
February 10, 2026 at 7:22 PM
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atrupar.com
Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."
February 10, 2026 at 5:11 PM
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rmayemsinger.bsky.social
Prisons are for people who've been CONVICTED of crimes.

Most people in these warehouses - without proper food or sanitation or worse - haven't even been CHARGED with crimes.

And thousands are CHILDREN.

This will be another of America's greatest shames.
February 10, 2026 at 3:16 AM
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astra.bsky.social
Wall Street Journal, y'all
February 10, 2026 at 4:59 PM
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detroittransit.org
Let's tell Mayor Sheffield: Detroit needs better transit, and more transportation options.

Mayor Sheffield has a community conversation on "infrastructure and mobility" on the 18th. We're getting a crowd to show up, help us share!

www.detroittransit.o...

#DetroitTransit
Mayor Sheffield's community conversation on infrastructure and mobility. This will be Wednesday, February 18th from 5:30pm to 8:30pm at St. Andrew's Memorial Church on Wayne State's campus. Share your thoughts with the new mayor on transportation in Detroit!
February 9, 2026 at 10:05 PM
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toriglass.bsky.social
Researchers estimate that the life expectancy for people forced to work in cane fields was mid 20s.

They were slaughterhouses. Being sent to one was functionally a death sentence.
leahmcelrath.bsky.social Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 1d
Mortality rates were so high on sugar plantations during slavery that slaveholders used to coerce enslaved people working other crops like cotton with threats to sell them or their loved ones to sugar plantations.

That’s where the term “sold down the river” came from.
February 9, 2026 at 5:02 AM
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drhonor.bsky.social
THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH A HISTORY MAJOR
February 9, 2026 at 5:44 AM
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learothawms.bsky.social
This is a terrible story.

flip.it/KKCZjD
Two Former NFL Players Found Dead Before Super Bowl 60
Two former NFL players have tragically been found dead before Super Bowl 60 on Sunday night. The football world is getting ready for the final game of the season. The New England Patriots will be taki...
flip.it
February 9, 2026 at 10:19 AM
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adamhsays.com
“They quartered troops among them,
amid times of bitter peace,
when that massacre in Boston,
for a nation, stained a lease.

They won freedom for their people
but in fine print said: be damned.
To that man who said, of ham, they’d
‘rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam’“ www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...
One of Our Own
A poem
www.theatlantic.com
February 6, 2026 at 9:04 PM
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jamellebouie.net
crickets from the free speech crowd, of course
allenk81.bsky.social Allenk_81 @allenk81.bsky.social · 2d
FAMU can't use the word Black on anything posted around campus related to Black History Month, to stay in compliance with Florida state laws against DEI. Black students can't use the word Black at their Historically Black College during Black History Month.
February 8, 2026 at 3:35 PM
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karnythia.bsky.social
When we said she was a weirdo some of y'all said we're mean. But the proof is in the proverbial pudding
February 8, 2026 at 3:25 PM
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mdstamper.bsky.social
“Carry This In Remembrance Of Me” by Delita Martin (American) - Acrylic, charcoal, lithography, relief printing, decorative papers, & hand stitching / 2019 - Muscarelle Museum of Art (Williamsburg, Virginia) #WomenInArt #DelitaMartin #Muscarelle #WomensArt #WomenArtists #artText #WomenPaintingWomen
A young Black woman with dark black skin stands in three-quarter view, her shoulders angled left while her head turns back toward us. Her expression is serious and self-possessed with lips set and eyes steady. Short, tightly curled hair frames her face, punctuated by three rosette-like circles along the hairline. A veil of translucent turquoise dots washes over her forehead, cheeks, and neck, continuing down her torso. Some circles are crisp, others faint, as if the pattern is drifting. Behind her, the background becomes a dense constellation of circles in many sizes, so her body feels both separate from and woven into the field. She wears a strapless, pale dress tinted with icy blue, patterned with hand-drawn lavender rings and spirals like water on water. At her neck sits an expansive, dark collar that spreads across the shoulders like lace or leaves, its edges visibly hand-stitched. Nestled in the collar are circular medallions of layered paper and fabric with faint handwriting and numbers appear on them, including the plainly legible words “sold to.” The title echoes the religious phrase “do this in remembrance of me,” but Martin’s shift to carry turns remembrance into a burden and a duty. Made in the context of Muscarelle’s “1619/2019” exhibition on slavery and forced migration, this portrait treats memory as something living … and unfinished. The necklace’s “sold to” and ledger-like numerals evoke bills of sale and the paperwork of slavery, making the language of ownership impossible to overlook. By cutting, layering, and stitching those fragments into adornment, Martin re-authors the archive so what was once evidence of commodification becomes mourning and resistance. The cool blues and repeating circles (often linked in her practice to spirit space and feminine power) are veil and shield like an ancestral presence that protects the sitter’s interior life. Her unwavering gaze insists on presence over possession, asking us to remember with accountability.
January 2, 2026 at 7:14 AM
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mdstamper.bsky.social
“April” by Elise Kendrick (American) - Mixed media / 2021 - Frist Art Museum (Nashville, Tennessee) #WomenInArt #EliseKendrick #Kendrick #MixedMedia #artText #BlueskyArt #AfricanAmericanArt #BlackWomen #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #BlackArtist #BlackArt #FristArtMuseum #WomenPaintingWomen
The title "April" depicts a person described by the American artist Elise Kendrick as a content creator, former podcaster, and bassist to place a specific person inside a painting that, at first glance, seems like only a universal icon of beauty and rest. Created during the pandemic as Kendrick began her “The Aunties” series, the portrait carries the feeling of finding community through screens with a face held close and a private breath made public. The close-up portrait shows a Black woman with medium-brown skin and a full, natural dark afro that fans outward like a halo. Her brows are thick and arched. Her eyes are closed, chin lifted, and deep plum lips part slightly to reveal white teeth, suggesting a moment of release. Kendrick renders her face and neck in radiant bands of orange, gold, green, and violet, with crisp highlights along the cheekbones and nose and cool shadows along the neck. She wears a plain white t-shirt. Behind her, a patterned field repeats jars labeled “Black Magic” in layered blues and purples, like wallpaper, with scratchy, hand-drawn lines. The repeated “Black Magic” jars fold the Black salon into the picture plane. They nod to the alchemy of modern haircare including oils, gels, edge control, and curl creams and likely to a reclaimed language of power, where “magic” names skill, inheritance, and self-definition rather than stereotype. April’s lifted head and closed eyes become an insistence on softness without apology to take up space, be seen, and choose ease. Shown in the Frist Art Museum’s micro-exhibition "Elise Kendrick: Salon Noir," Kendrick’s bright palette and graphic patterning extend her Nashville-based practice of honoring women of color and the cultural meanings carried in hairstyle, texture, and routine. The highlights and the repeating, label-like jars feel like they might be visual shorthand for the salon as both workplace and sanctuary, and for Black hair as culture, craft, and pride.
January 5, 2026 at 7:30 PM
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mdstamper.bsky.social
“Brea” by Monica Ikegwu (American) - Oil on canvas / 2023 - Muskegon Museum of Art (Muskegon, Michigan) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomenArtists #MonicaIkegwu #Ikegwu #MuskegonMuseumofArt #BlackArt #BlackArtist #art #artText #BlueskyArt #BeYou #AfricanAmericanArtist #AmericanArt #WomenPaintingWomen
A young Black woman with deep brown skin stands against a softly graded pink backdrop marked by horizontal bands. She faces forward, weight settled, and meets our gaze through oversized burgundy glasses. With both hands raised, she lightly pinches the frames at her temples for an in-between moment of looking …. and being looked at. Her natural, coiled hair spreads in short twists around her head. A small septum ring and subtle highlights on her cheekbones and glossy lips catch the studio light. She wears a cropped, magenta-and-black striped cardigan over a pale pink top tied with a black ribbon as the hem lifts to show her stomach and a belly-button piercing. High-waisted, wine-colored trousers sit low on her hips, their seams and folds modeled with careful shading. Layered necklaces include a small heart-shaped pendant. Her wrists are stacked with beaded bracelets and a watch while rings glint on her fingers. American artist Monica Ikegwu renders skin, fabric, and jewelry with crisp realism while keeping the surrounding pinks velvety and quiet, so the woman’s serious, alert, and unflinching expression is self-possessed and fully present. By 2023, Ikegwu had built her practice around Black portraiture and the politics of perception including how people are seen … and how they choose to appear. She has described her aim as portraying sitters “not as subjects to paint, but as people with their own sense of self.” “Brea” leans into that tension as the gesture of adjusting glasses becomes a quiet claim to authorship, as if the young woman is setting the terms of visibility in real time. The saturated pink palette is both tender and emphatic to turn a familiar “pretty” color into a stage for confidence and edge. This painting gives everyday style such as bracelets, piercings, stripes, and streetwear a monumental feeling, insisting that contemporary self-fashioning is not vanity but identity work for a practiced, dignified way of saying, I decide how you meet me.
January 8, 2026 at 4:37 PM
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mdstamper.bsky.social
“Usher Board President” by Robert Pruitt (American) - Charcoal, conté, and coffee on paper / 2018 - California African American Museum (Los Angeles) #WomenInArt #RobertPruitt #BlackArt #AmericanArt #AfricanAmericanArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaWoman #CAAM #CaliforniaAfricanAmericanMuseum
A monumental, life-size drawing shows a Black woman with medium-brown skin standing in three-quarter profile, facing our right. Her posture is upright and composed, shoulders squared, as if holding steady through a moment of quiet responsibility. She has long, thick natural hair worn loose and full, framing her face and falling past her shoulders. A folded sheet of white paper (like a program or improvised hat) rests lightly on her head. Her features are modeled with soft highlights along the cheekbone and nose and her mouth is gently closed. Her eyes are focused into the distance and her expression is thoughtful and calm. Her left hand lifts a pencil to her lips in a gesture of concentration as her right arm hangs relaxed at her side, fingers slightly curled. She wears a vivid red dress with dramatic puffed sleeves, a fitted bodice, and a draped, gathered skirt that swells with weight and movement. Cuffed wrists, small buttons, and fabric seams are carefully outlined. At the chest, a striped inset panel is dotted with small celestial emblems set close to the heart. The woman is rendered with meticulous shading in charcoal and conté, while warm coffee washes stain the paper into a soft halo behind her. Faint smudges, tape marks, and the paper’s raw edges remain visible, leaving the surrounding field mostly open so her silhouette and the saturated red garment command the space. American artist Robert Pruitt’s title identifies the usher board, a tradition of many Black American church leadership often carried by women with an ethic of care grounded in welcomeness, order, and protection. The pencil hints at her stewardship and also mirrors the artist’s own tool. Emblems on her bodice like a sunburst and planets stretch the portrait toward history and the future, as if her daily responsibility holds cosmic weight. Created for Pruitt’s CAAM exhibition “Devotion” (2018–19), the work treats its subject as an icon of ordinary greatness: poised, radiant, and fully present.
January 10, 2026 at 4:27 PM
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mdstamper.bsky.social
“Girl in a Red Dress” by Charles Henry Alston (American) - Oil on canvas / 1934 - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) #WomenInArt #CharlesHenryAlston #Alston #HarlemRenaissance #AfricanAmericanArt #BlackPortraiture #BlackArt #artText #BlueskyArt #AmericanArt #PortraitofaGirl #TheMet #MetMuseum
A young Black woman sits with her body turned slightly while she looks off to our left, as if her attention has been caught by something beyond the frame. She wears a vivid red dress that is both formal and modern, anchored by a large, rounded white collar and chest drop that brightens her neckline and draws our eyes upward. Her hair is short and close to the head, shaping her profile with clean, sculptural clarity. The painting balances bold color against simplified forms as her figure is modeled with calm, steady contours rather than fussy detail, giving her an iconic stillness. The setting is spare and uncluttered, letting the red of the dress carry emotional weight via warmth, visibility, and intent while her gaze remains reserved, self-contained, and unmistakably dignified. Nothing about her posture asks for permission so the portrait holds her as a person with interior life, style, and agency, captured in a moment that feels quiet but resolute. Made in 1934, this work sits within Harlem Renaissance portraiture’s insistence on modern Black subjecthood and beauty without caricature plus selfhood without explanation. Art historian Richard Powell called this painting a model of the “New Negro” woman: “defiantly black, beautiful, and feminine, yet also unsettled, mysterious, and utterly modern.” American artist Charles Henry Alston’s approach reinforces that tension as the sitter is intimate in scale, yet deliberately unreadable. The painting’s sculptural face and elongated neck also echo Alston’s interest in African aesthetics joined to modernist pictorial flatness. In the mid-1930s, Alston was stepping into public leadership as an artist-educator and WPA mural supervisor in Harlem, helping shape a visual culture of representation. This portrait embodies Alain Locke’s challenge that “art must discover and reveal the beauty which prejudice and caricature have overlaid” … not by idealizing the sitter, but by granting her complexity and presence.
January 15, 2026 at 4:02 PM