Some peo­ple are born lis­ten­ing below the noise. We notice the shift before the storm breaks. We feel what’s com­ing before any­one names it. Emotion moves through us like weather—settling in the chest, chang­ing the light of a room, ask­ing to be acknowl­edged. This is not excess. It is attune­ment. My Great Gran was like that. 

Tributes poured in across the coun­try for the revered civ­il rights fig­ure the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., who died Tuesday morn­ing at 84. The two-time Democratic pres­i­den­tial hope­ful and Greenville, South Carolina, native died peace­ful­ly, sur­round­ed by his kin, accord­ing to his fam­i­ly.  Jackson, who was active in the civ­il rights move­ment as a col­lege stu­dent, worked along­side the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a young adult before King’s 1968 assassination. 

In the ear­ly 1800s, William Murray and his wife, Lucy, were free African Americans who were mem­bers of Providence Baptist Church—familiarly known as the Old Stone Church—on Lower Howard’s Creek. This church was plant­ed in Clark County by a white con­gre­ga­tion in 1784. In 1870, white mem­bers sold the church to an African American con­gre­ga­tion, and it con­tin­ues today as the Providence Missionary Baptist Church. Murray fam­i­ly descen­dants have resided in the Lower Howard’s Creek... 

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, in 2025, 16 states passed 31 restric­tive vot­ing laws at the same time that 25 states passed expan­sive vot­ing laws.  Oddly, some of the states pass­ing restric­tive laws also passed some of the expan­sive ones.  Montana was the worst state in enact­ing restric­tive laws with five sep­a­rate pieces of leg­is­la­tion; Ohio a close sec­ond with four.  Kentucky res­i­dents were lucky in that the 2025 leg­is­la­ture here did not pass...