Just as the late Reverend Jesse Jackson believed, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley says our struggle to protect our rights and history is tied to our ability to dream of a better future.
A plaque near a statue outside King’s Chapel, a staple of the Freedom Trail in the heart of downtown, tells a story as old as Boston itself.
The statue depicts an enslaved woman holding a birdcage. The cage is open, suggesting birds set free.
The plaque deepens that narrative.
The radical act of remembering Black history
100 years ago on Saturday, Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History,” introduced the concept of Negro History Week after establishing the Association for the Study of Negro Life in Washington, D.C.
Less than a week later, we witnessed another.
The radical act of remembering Black history
100 years ago on Saturday, Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History,” introduced the concept of Negro History Week after establishing the Association for the Study of Negro Life in Washington, D.C.
Less than a week later, we witnessed another.
Where’s the bottom?
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Embrace’s President and CEO, Imari Paris Jeffries, Ph.D., said the following in an article he penned for USA TODAY about the killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis: “Public lynching will now be televised. And America has learned how to watch.”
Less than a week later, we witnessed another.
Fatherhood, Dr. King and the “fierce urgency of now”
On January 15, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, I took a leap with my daughter, Maya.
The price of telling the truth
Even as we celebrate three years since the unveiling of The Embrace and yet another MLK weekend, we can’t ignore our country’s accelerating slide into authoritarianism—and the lives already lost to it.
Last week, we talked about what we wanted to remember from 2025, and what the memories we cherish as a nation say about us.
In less than a week, January 2026 has already become a month of both memory and moment.
2025 has been a trying year for anyone in the business of fostering belonging.
But community leaders across the country, including in Boston, continue to choose persistence over retreat, collaboration over isolation and imagination over fear.
Every year, tens of millions of Americans struggle with food insecurity, many not knowing where their next meal will come from.
