The death of Elijah McClain prompted a flood of more than 8,500 letters from outside the state of Colorado—all begging Governor Jared Polis for justice. The author opens every one.

In Virginia, paramilitarism gets a rebrand.

After he killed two people in Kenosha, opportunists turned his case into a polarizing spectacle.

Gulfport police killed a Black veteran. His family waits for answers.

Samaria Rice is the mother of Tamir, not a “mother of the movement.”

A frustrated Black Lives Matter activist. A die-hard Confederate loyalist. A sheriff who won’t back down. In a place where protests are restricted and violence feels imminent, many cry: “We don’t want to die no more.”

Looking back on the George Floyd rebellion.

Armed only with their psychotic courage, they were running, dancing, singing, smashing, burning, screaming, storming heaven: all rapturous varieties of Baraka’s “magic actions.” I listened to 19-year-olds talk nonstop throughout the night we spent in jail, as they howled insults at the officers and swapped stories of humiliation by police. It struck me that they were too young to have seen even the initial phase of BLM. Though well-acquainted with power and violence, they were tasting “politics” for the first time. Whatever the fate of the movement, I suspect that much of their future thinking will be measured against the feelings that filled the nights of 2020: the vastness and immediacy, the blur and brutal clarity.

The private grief of Courteney Ross, George Floyd’s girlfriend.

For years, a tactical police unit in Mount Vernon, New York, reigned with impunity—protecting drug dealers, planting evidence, brutalizing citizens. Then one of its own started covertly documenting the abuse.

Last summer, in a small Wisconsin city, the country’s fiercest differences collided in the streets—and a teenager named Kyle Rittenhouse opened fire, shooting three people. In the aftermath, a disquieting question loomed: Were these among the first shots in a new kind of civil war?

On the birth of a progressive protest movement under President Trump.

A teenage clerk dialed 911. How should the brothers who own CUP Foods pay for what happened next?

A profile of the singer.

On Toyin Salau’s disappearance and death.

The author, on book tour when the pandemic set in, reflects on what could have been worse—and what could be better.

George Floyd’s killing galvanized a nation. But small groups like the queer-led collective Black Visions are channeling that energy into a movement for political change.

I say, Where’s Breonna, why won’t anybody say where Breonna is? He says, Well, ma’am, she’s still in the apartment. And I know what that means.

When a Black lineman from Colorado State went knocking on doors in a white neighborhood, he found himself at the dangerous intersection of a national racial reckoning and a world of internet-conspiracy fanaticism.

“What people need to know is we’re not protesting churches. We’re protesting this church.”

Two lawyers, a summer of unrest, and a bottle of Bud Light.

A Black Lives Matter confrontation pitted neighbor against neighbor—and displayed the raw power of a social media flash mob.

One man’s choice to stand alone. The story of race, politics, and power in baseball.

The gun-touting couple from St. Louis care more about private property than anyone realized.

A queer Black man's chance encounters.