KEW

@kidadaewilliams

I read, tell stories, mind my business, and write--I SAW DEATH COMING is now in paperback. Talk to me nicely; I block early/often.

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KEW@kidadaewilliams· 7d

Chairteenth 🪑

Screenshot showcasing the Montgomery Brawl. August 5 2023.

KEW@kidadaewilliams· 26d

Detroit Air Quality

KEW@kidadaewilliams· 27d

Detroit Air Quality at 4 am. Now we’re at 508. 😵‍💫

Screenshot of Air Quality Now alert for Detroit at 4 am, showing, hazardous, 543 AQI

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Jul 11

"The Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation's history," Frederick Douglass, 1852 blackvoicenews.com/2026/07/03/c... The Ringbolt and the Chain of Our Nation’s Destiny: On The Enduring Message of Frederick Douglass's 1852 #Americaat250

Collage featuring Frederick Douglass, an American flag, a slave ship, a chain, and text from the Declaration of Independence and Douglass' 1582 speech "What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?" The text reads, "The Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation's history."

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Jun 28

Juneteenth gathering at Sacred Heart in Bowie, MD, honors legacy of enslaved ancestors www.cathstan.org/local/junete...

Two Black children join Fran Hawkins in a libation ceremony during a Juneteenth Family Day.

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Feb 28

New Frederick Douglass Statue Highlights St. Augustine’s Black History and Douglass's visit on April 7, 1889 jacksonvillefreepress.com/new-frederic...

Statue of Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, showing him sitting on a bench outside in St. Augustine, FL, with a book in one hand and a piece of paper (likely the text of the speech he gave in 1889).

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Feb 22

Washington-born Alexander Clark, an important 19th-century civil rights leader, www.observer-reporter.com/news/local-n... Clark spearheaded a lawsuit that was considered a forerunner to Brown vs. Board of Education, and was the U.S. ambassador to Liberia at the end of his life.

Portrait Illustration of Alexander Clark, a Black man in a suit and tie.

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Feb 21

👀 www.publicbooks.org/the-misuses-... #edusky #highered

Screenshot of text that reads: On its 150th anniversary, the university doesn’t even have the courage of its own platitudes. Maybe its motto shouldn’t be “America’s First Research University,” he thinks, but: “We Suck Up and Punch Down.” Source: The Misuses of the University https://www.publicbooks.org/the-misuses-of-the-university/

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Feb 11

This Baldwin quote on Vietnam: "A racist society can’t but fight a racist war — this is the bitter truth. The assumptions acted on at home are also acted on abroad, and every American Negro knows this, for he, after the American Indian, was the first ‘Vietcong’ victim. We were bombed first.”

Screenshot of a quote that reads: “Long, long before the Americans decided to liberate the Southeast Asians, they decided to liberate me: my ancestors carried these scars to the grave, and so will I. A racist society can’t but fight a racist war — this is the bitter truth. The assumptions acted on at home are also acted on abroad, and every American Negro knows this, for he, after the American Indian, was the first ‘Vietcong’ victim. We were bombed first.” Source: https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2018/10/on-my-mind-i-am-not-your-american-reviving-james-baldwins-opposition-to-u-s-empire

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Feb 1

Library of Congress sourcing for this quote, in case you're wondering www.loc.gov/pictures/res...

Library of Congress Colorized 19th-century print of a white man, Abraham Lincoln, standing next to a table and chair, and holding a book. Text reads: "The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts, not to over-throw the Constitution, but to over-throw the men who pervert that Constitution."

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Jan 25

“Deliver Us from Evil,” 1943, John Wilson's mural-like lithographic print juxtaposes scenes of the war in Europe and the Holocaust with the persecution and killing of Blacks in the U.S. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/a...

Screenshot of Black artist John Wilson’s 1943 lithographic print, "Deliver Us from Evil,” with scenes that juxtapose the Holocaust on the left with the apartheid system Black Americans faced during Jim Crow on the right.

The text accompanying the image reads: “Deliver Us from Evil,” 1943, a mural-like lithographic print, was one of many shot through with images of social angst and political turbulence. Divided into two halves, the artist juxtaposes scenes of the war in Europe and the Holocaust (at left) with the persecution and killing of Blacks in the United States (at right).Credit...

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Jan 25

Long before women gained the right to vote nationwide in 1920, Black women in the Pacific Northwest were already working to shape political life—organizing clubs, building party networks, and mobilizing voters. news.ucsc.edu/2026/01/a-vi...

Screenshot from a newspaper that shows pictures of 8 professionally dressed Black women who were officers of the Colored Women's Council in Portland, Oregon.

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Jan 24

🥴

Screenshot of the weather app showing insane -8 temps in Detroit.

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Dec 29

The great deskilling of students, brought to you by AI bros, ed tech enthusiasts, and higher-ed administrators who should know better. #edusky www.ru.nl/en/research/...

Screenshot of text : ‘The uncritical adoption of AI can lead to students not developing essential academic skills such as critical thinking and writing. If students are taught to learn through automation, without learning about how and why things work, they won’t be able to solve problems when something actually breaks – which will be often, based on the AI output we now see.’

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Dec 24

I often think about this regarding academia and the historical professional.

Screenshot of text from the other place that reads: “Basically, any institution you are part of in your life, be it social or professional, will actively punish you for having moral clarity or epistemic honesty, but it is deeply important you maintain them regardless."

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Dec 24

x.com/CharlesWMcKi...

From the other place: screenshot of text by Adam Serwer of The Atlantic, “The reason so many of yesterday’s free-speech champions transitioned so easily into today’s pro-Trump censors is that their definition of free speech never included the right of others to talk back.” Original article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/bari-weiss-censorship-free-speech-hypocrisy/685404/

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Dec 14

One in five students say affording life after college is one of their top stressors, according to a recent Student Voice survey. www.insidehighered.com/news/student... #collegedebt #edusky #affordability

Chart from a survey on college students’ concerns about their careers after college. To access the original article, here is the link https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/life-after-college/2025/12/10/college-students-stress-about-cost-living?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=8374b5e6c4-DNU_2021_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-8374b5e6c4-236904726&mc_cid=8374b5e6c4&mc_eid=7d9a9135f8

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Nov 12

Midtown Detroit businesses plan new holiday experience amid Noel Night hiatus www.freep.com/story/money/... Love the pic of Flo boutique owner, Felicia Patrick

An impeccably styled, older Black woman, Flo Boutique owner Felicia Patrick, stands in her glorious Midtown Detroit store, surrounded by hanging clothes and in front of an orange-painted wall filled with Black art.

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Oct 28

Scoring the public record with cowards’ names and practices across industries—academia, journalism, law, government, business, banking/finance, & medicine—will make it harder for them to conceal their involvement or claim ignorance. 🗣️Help ensure people now and in the future know who they are.

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Sep 27

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Screenshot of text:
"If [TFG] has been right about anything, it is that there is a deep rot in the upper echelons of American society, among people who have been put in positions of power and leadership. Trump understands that many of these people are weak, that their public commitment to civic principles can crumble under sustained pressure. In many cases, those folding have had ample resources to resist Trump’s shakedowns but haven’t been brave enough to do so. They are, in a word, chickenshit."

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Sep 23

Another ABST: “Creating Knowledge to Save the Republic”: Howard University Press and Academic Publishing in the Era of Black Power by Magana J. Kabugi www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Screenshot of text:

Abstract

This article examines the Howard University Press (HUP), the first fully functional and staffed academic publishing operation headquartered at a historically Black college or university (HBCU). In the decades before the HUP’s relaunch in 1974, after two iterations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, multiple HBCUs attempted to publish scholarly works that advanced the study of Black diasporic culture, history, and social thought while also pushing against anti-Black ideas propagated by White-controlled university presses. From 1974 to 2011, the HUP published or republished a diverse catalog of texts, ranging from historian Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) to conversations between writers Margaret Walker and Nikki Giovanni. By drawing upon oral histories of past HUP employees, archival collections, newspapers, magazines, and intellectual histories of Black Power thought and activism, the present article provides a granular understanding of the HUP’s significance in the landscape of Black-owned and Black-led publishing.

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Sep 23

Article ABST: “Sport Becoming an Art”: Curricular Dance, Cultural Pride, and Community Engagement at HBCUs by Emma Hawk. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.... If I can Interlibrary loan this article, *YOU* can Interlibrary loan this article.

Screenshot of text: Abstract

"Throughout the twentieth century, dance instructors at historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, championed an innovative and holistic pedagogy, recognizing dance’s history as a vehicle for celebration, resistance, and self-expression in African American life. Often assigned to physical education departments, these instructors imagined dance as a “sport becoming an art,” with the capacity to stimulate students’ bodies and minds in tandem. The instructors used movement to teach their students, primarily young Black women, social responsibility and a sense of cultural pride. Beyond campus, HBCU dance instructors led community-based workshops in their home cities and embarked on regional tours with extracurricular performance troupes, contributing to desegregation efforts throughout the South and elsewhere in the United States. Focusing on programs led by Charles Holston Williams of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Maryrose Reeves Allen of Howard University, and Mozel Jenkins Spriggs of Spelman College, the present article reveals how HBCUs enabled instructors, students, and audiences to think differently about the body’s capacity for communication and self-expression during periods of heightened political stakes and cultural revolution."

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Sep 22

Screenshot of a newspaper article.

Reprinted from late editions of last week:
CHELTENHAM
—
Maryland’s Hell Hole
__
Former Inmate Tells of Skeletons in the Walls, Secret Burial Plot, Brutal Beatings, Peonage, and Other Atrocities at Maryland’s Reformatory.

An article published in the Afro-American (newspaper) on Sept 29, 1934. (Maryland Historical Trust).

WaPo article here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/09/22/house-of-reformation-graveyard/

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Sep 22

At least 230 Black boys and teens died while in the care of the House of Reformation between 1870 and 1939, according to a review of state records, news reports and death certificates. This tally is likely an undercount because key records are missing for many of the years analyzed.

Screenshot of table of known deaths:

Known deaths at House of Reformation
At least 230 Black boys and teens died while in the care of the House of Reformation between 1870 and 1939, according to a review of state records, news reports and death certificates. This tally is likely an undercount because key records are missing for many of the years analyzed.

This chart shows that at least 230 children died while in the care of the House of Reformation between 1870 and 1939, according to a review of state records, news reports and death certificates. This tally is likely an undercount because key records are missing for many of the years analyzed.
1870-1879
19
1880-1889
32
1890-1899
73
1900-1909
34
1910-1919
34
1920-1929
14
1930-1939
24
Source: House of Reformation Annual Reports, Prince George's County death records, archival news clippings
Katie Mettler / THE WASHINGTON POST

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Sep 22

Former DJS secretary Vincent Schiraldi, whose team launched the restoration effort before he left the administration earlier this year, said the state [of Maryland’s] decades of neglect amounts to a “deep level of depersonalization and dehumanization.” He continued...

Screenshot of text:
“The history of institutionalization is to rob people of their personhood, and I cannot think of a better example of it than taking children, some of whom hadn’t even committed a crime, some of whom were 10 years old, having them die in custody and burying them in a potter’s field, and not acknowledging it,” [former DJS secretary Vincent] Schiraldi said. “That is not just robbing them of their personhood while they were in our care and custody, but even after death.”

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Sep 14

Screenshot of text from: "You cannot fight asymmetrical power by pointing out logical fallacies, or violence, or politeness, or compassion. You can only fight it by refusing to abide by its logic — and, over time, by offering a vision of a different way of living, a different way of orienting ourselves towards the world and others, that is more compelling. Not just for people who believe exactly what we do, but for everyone. I’m not suggesting we give up on the fight. I’m suggesting we start fighting a very different one. ●AHP, "The Reaction is Asymmetrical,” 9/14/2025

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Aug 1

"Some students come to college 4 an education, & others simply for a credential.” The latter’s "truth will come out—that they will *flatline* in their careers because life in the real world will expose their reliance on shortcuts, cunning & cheating.” www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view... #edusky

A screenshot from an article on a professor’s resolve for handling a student's AI f——y.
The text reads: "I will use this case in future classes as an object lesson and a warning. But I’ve also come to terms with the fact that some students come to college for an education, and others simply for a credential. The former will learn how to research, think critically, identify patterns in culture and history, and synthesize large amounts of material—which is exactly the type of mindset that will enrich our society and help them succeed. As for the latter, I have confidence that their truth will come out—that they will flatline in their careers because life in the real world will expose their reliance on shortcuts, cunning and cheating."

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Jul 20

From www.nytimes.com/2025/07/19/o...

Screenshot of a lesson from Frederick Douglass, Jamelle Bouie imparted, that’s useful for evaluating RW parasitic behavior: "For Frederick Douglass — the great abolitionist and thinker whose political philosophy was shaped by republican thinking — virtue includes self-respect, cultivated through education, and self-reliance. “Liberty has its manners as well as slavery,” Douglass wrote to the Black abolitionist and journalist Martin Delany in 1871, “and with those manners true self-respect goes hand in hand with a just respect for the rights and feelings of others.”

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Jul 17

We tried to tell y'all!!! www.bloomberg.com/news/article... "young workers who hold a number of much-maligned humanities degrees—including English, history and philosophy—are all more hirable."

Screenshot of what humanities faculty have been telling you people for a while: "If you’re looking for a tech job, you might be much worse off. According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, graduates in computer science, computer engineering and graphic design all have unemployment rates at 7% or greater; young workers who hold a number of much-maligned humanities degrees—including English, history and philosophy—are all more hirable."

KEW@kidadaewilliams· Jun 28

I just spotted this Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. poster featuring this quote in his book this week. Thanks for the reminder. Full speech: www.blackpast.org/african-amer...