Newark, NJ - Public Square Amplified continued its conversation with Dr. Cofield, asking her to draw parallels between past and present racist practices and to share her thoughts on whether today’s generation has the ability to organize, protest, and effectively fight for their rights.

Newark, NJ - Dr. Willa Cofield describes Enfield, the North Carolina town where she was born and raised, as a close-knit community shaped by familial ties, shared cultural norms, a spirit of entrepreneurship, and the Black church as its anchor.

Public Square Amplified sat down with Cofield to learn more about how she fought for civil rights, and how present-day advocates can learn from her strategies and be inspired by her quiet ferocity.

The bustling intersection at Broad and Market Streets is a prime location for shopping, featuring a variety of department stores and street vendors. It’s also a public transportation thoroughfare making it an ideal spot to engage with folks.

Hurricane Beryl, the strongest hurricane recorded in the Caribbean since 2005 and the earliest Category 5 hurricane ever observed in the Atlantic Ocean, devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in its path across the Caribbean. The prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a small island developing state, spoke with Public Square Amplified’s executive director about the widespread devastation, the nation’s appeal for aid and the broader meaning of the increasingly powerful storms afflicting the planet.

On Sunday, June 9, at about 7 a.m., dozens of Rutgers police raided and then evicted a peaceable assembly – an encampment – of Newark residents and Rutgers University students at the institution’s Newark campus. The raid occurred without warning.

Debates at city hall have been called lots of things by lots of people — obfuscatory, corrupt, insulting, biased, protective of special interests, among countless others. But the discourse has rarely been called or considered “art.” In New Brunswick, coLAB Arts is implementing a new program, “Documenters,” part of a nationwide effort, to provide community residents with reports on the discussions and decisions that occur at public meetings. But coLAB Arts isn’t stopping there — it also plans to leverage the reporting to inspire and support the creation of art. Ultimately, this art inspires, catalyzes and drives community engagement — a key aspect of the organization’s mission.

For many, commemorative holidays have been reduced to another day off or a means to host a barbecue or ravage a sale. Yet, they all came at a human cost. 

Juneteenth is one such noble day that represents more than just the end of the enslavement of Africans in America, but reminds us of a political moment that lives vividly in our contemporary space. It is also referred to as "Freedom Day" or "African American Emancipation Day." 

Photo essays can be counter-narratives to affirm our shared humanity in racialized spaces designed to erase it. And Public Square Amplified's photojournalist, Brian Branch-Price, makes it look sublime. As always, his choice of the black-and-white medium delivers a beautiful portrait of a Black female rancher.

Tammy Harris comes from generations of harvesters. In the mid-twentieth century, her grandparents traversed the highways during the terror-filled Jim Crow era of racialized laws from New Jersey to Florida to harvest potatoes and other produce.

On a summer day in August, When Black Women Gather (WBWG), an international organization, took a cross-section of Black women from N.J. to learn how to shoot.

"It was a long-awaited adventure originally planned for Mother's Day, pre-pandemic,” said the founder of the organization, Helen Higgenbotham.