Mitchell S. Jackson

Beneath the beefs, misogyny, and celebrated violence, I hear something else.

I was taught not to cry at death. And it fucked me up.

To one America, he has long been a beacon of the civil-rights movement—the man met Dr. King! To another, he was a loudmouth in a tracksuit, surrounded by controversy and shady friends—the man knows Don King, too. Pulitzer Prize winner Mitchell S. Jackson tailed Al Sharpton around the country to find out why he keeps going, what he’s still doing, and where his place in history will be.

The white guy who brought down affirmative action in higher education now has his sights set on the financial industry.

A century ago, they tore the progress of Reconstruction to shreds. Now, they’re doing it again. Here's how.

Police departments are rushing headlong into machine learning. That’s going to spell even more trouble for Black and brown Americans.

Half a century after its inception, the genre's look remains as vital—and influential—as ever.

Have you ever felt this kind of heat? That turns car seats and sidewalks into skillets?

Fifty years into music's most competitive genre, Mitchell S. Jackson weighs in on what it takes to be, as it's said, top five, dead or alive.

Despite what President Biden says, unfortunately, to most Americans this is a normal Supreme Court.

Peep the cover of Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion—and a preview of two great basketball fits, too.

Commencement speeches are fine. Here's a dad-to-daughter letter from the heart. The strength she found as a little girl will serve her well as a woman.

American Black players made up 18 percent of all MLB rosters in 1991; on opening day in 2022, they composed a paltry 7.2 percent. What does this mean for America's so-called national pastime?

Five Black police officers killed Tyre Nichols. The reaction was swift—and that's both necessary and complicated.

Less than a year after his infamous slap, Smith is back on screen in an Oscar contender—and I’m left wrestling with whether or not I should see the movie.

The Supreme Court’s overlooked, idiotic decision to weaken Miranda rights is actually a blow to Constitution.

I had revived my support of Kanye West’s music and fashion. Now I feel like a fool.

He grew up speaking a language of the enslaved on the shores of Pin Point, Georgia. He would become the most powerful Black man in America, using the astonishing power vested in a Supreme Court justice to hold back his own people. Now he sits atop an activist right-wing court poised to undo the progressivism of the past century. What happened?

I’m in no hurry to wave it, but don’t tell me I don’t love my country.

In the moment Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, he was not the magnanimous, multitalented A-lister but a kind of new-age version of Willie Horton: a symbol the racists could point to and say, See?

Oregon and 19 other states still use language from the 13th Amendment to govern working conditions for inmates—some of whom still pick actual cotton. The rules are changing, but not without resistance.

The sideways looks I get when boarding a plane make me question whether I belong up there.

"Sporting my luxe-priced Off-White was a symbol to myself that I will never again wear anything that makes me feel poor."

Each and every Black person you see could testify as to why it must endure.

At fifty-six, already decades into an A-list career, Chris Rock is rebooting the Saw franchise. He nailed the fourth season of Fargo. He’s directing again. He’s writing more jokes. The man might just be trying to live forever.

In the past few years, Hollywood has recast the male Adonis as slim, bookish, and emotionally available. Some men aren’t happy about it. Where does that leave you?

When pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol Building, it showed, yet again, what the white man thinks he deserves.

And it’s worse than we thought. But at least we know what we’re dealing with, and I’m starting now.

Black folks who support the party in light of their long train of abuses and usurpations do so at the expense of justice for Black people at large.

Physical greatness alone will never again suffice to anoint a hero.

We followed the megastar through the halls of his Newark, New Jersey alma mater in search of the man behind the mystique.

Mitchell S. Jackson remembers the late writer's profound love of black life.