President-Elect Joe Biden’s administration plans to support legislation offered by District of Columbia Democratic Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton that would ensure federal agencies advertise with minority-owned businesses, including the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA). ... read more »

Chavis, a student and disciple of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and a member of the famous Wilmington 10 civil rights group, began his new show on Sunday, Oct. 4, featuring Major Neil Franklin, the executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC). ... read more »

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) has introduced several bills, including the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Reauthorization and Bullying Prevention and Intervention Act, H.R. 71, the Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act of 2015, and H.R. 4660, an Amendment to the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2015 affirming the authority of the Attorney General to reduce prison overcrowding by developing and implementing lawful policies relating to requests for executive clemency from deserving petitioners. ... read more »

Black Americans have to be involved at all levels of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We cannot afford to be silent, detached, denied, or prevented from being at the decision-making tables in terms of COVID-19 public health policies, research, clinical trials, remedies, and vaccine development. Our lives and future are at stake. ... read more »

The Biden Campaign will also spend on ad buys with African American-owned media, including the NNPA, TV One, Roland Martin Unfiltered and others. Campaign officials said they will continue to add other media outlets targeting African Americans as the campaign moves forward. ... read more »

Addressing the disparities surrounding COVID-19 and other illnesses, Dr. Fauci pointed to many African Americans, Latinx, and Native Americans occupying essential jobs that provide employees with little — or no — protection. ... read more »

Biden said he plans to hold financial institutions accountable for discriminatory practices in the housing market, and he will restore the federal government’s power to enforce settlements against discriminatory lenders. Additionally, the plan calls for Biden to strengthen and expand the Community Reinvestment Act to ensure that the nation’s bank and non-bank financial services institutions are serving all communities. ... read more »

“People are stressed and worried, not only about caring for themselves but protecting and caring for someone in the home or someone long distance,” Choula stated.  “It’s very important that there is increased conversation with nursing facilities through virtual visitation and phone calls, which is what AARP is advocating.”  ... read more »

"At 9:22 p.m. this evening, April 6, my father and hero, Earl Graves, Sr., the founder of Black Enterprise, passed away quietly after a long battle with Alzheimer's," Earl Graves Jr. wrote on Twitter. "I loved and admired this giant of a man and am blessed to be his namesake. Love you, dad." ... read more »

"I got started in the African American community. I got involved in the Civil Rights Movement when I was a kid. I helped de-segregate a movie theater, that kind of thing," Biden noted. "I was the only guy who worked in the projects on the East Side who was White. That's how I got started, and the Black community is the community that, as we say, brung me to the dance. That's how I got elected." ... read more »

Known as “surprise medical billing,” these unexpected costs arise when a patient goes to a hospital for emergency or non-emergency care, only to find out afterwards that one of the medical providers who administered care was not covered in the patient’s insurance network. ... read more »

“The Bloomberg campaign’s initiative is groundbreaking, and it goes to significantly increasing the economic health of African Americans by tripling their net worth,” said Columbia, South Carolina Mayor Steve Benjamin, who co-chairs Bloomberg’s campaign. “The Bloomberg model is intentionally focused on creating a million new African American homeowners, 100,000 new African American-owned businesses, and $70 billion in federal capital to go in the 100 most challenged neighborhoods across the country.” ... read more »

An annual highlight of the conference was the 2020 NNPA Publisher Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented to The Dallas Examiner’s distinguished publisher, Mollie Finch Belt. ... read more »

“It is with great pleasure that the NNPA Executive Committee has selected Mollie Belt for the honor of the Publishers Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to the NNPA for so many years,” stated NNPA National Chair and Houston Forward Times Publisher Karen Carter Richards. ... read more »

Jones said voting rights had been under attack since the 2013 Shelby V. Holder decision, which eliminated a lot of voter protections. “It’s not the same as the old Jim Crow laws, but there’s still efforts out there to suppress votes and keep people from having that free access to the booths,” he stated. Jones noted that he’s working to restore “teeth” in the Voting Rights Act but doubts that the current GOP-led Senate and President Trump’s administration would approve. “I don’t see it happening, so it’s all the more important to get out and vote in the 2020 elections.” ... read more »