In Mississippi, serious mental illness or substance abuse can land you in jail, even if you aren’t charged with a crime. The state is a stark outlier in jailing so many people for so long, but many officials say they don’t have another option By Isabelle Taft, Mollie Simon, ProPublica and Agnel Philip, ProPublica This...

By Pam Dankins Mississippi continues to rank first in the nation in fetal deaths, according to 2021 data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month. The report examined deaths of fetuses in utero that occurred after 20 weeks’ gestation, also known as stillbirths, in the United States. Mississippi led the nation...

By Aneri Pattani – Black Headline Newswire As more than $50 billion makes its way to state and local governments to compensate for the opioid epidemic, people with high hopes for the money are already fighting over a little-known bureaucratic arm of the process: state councils that wield immense power over how the cash is...

By Noam N. Levey – Black Headline Newswire SUFFOLK, Va. — When Kristie Fields was undergoing treatment for breast cancer nine years ago, she got some unsolicited advice at the hospital: Share your story on the local news, a nurse told her. Viewers would surely send money. Fields, a Navy veteran and former shipyard worker,...

By Lauren Sausser – Black Headline Newswire CHARLESTON, S.C. — Maude Callen, a Black nurse-midwife, delivered more than 800 infants across the South Carolina Lowcountry starting in the 1920s, when segregation made it difficult for Black people to get medical care. Although Callen isn’t commonly considered a household name, visitors passing through the new $120...

Subsidizing fertilizer is costly for African governments By (Special to Black Headline News) Global fertilizer suppliers have made incredibly high profits in 2022/23 on the back of price spikes attributed to the Russia-Ukraine war. The profits of the world’s top nine producers trebled in 2022 from two years previously. The margins and impacts have been...

This will be America’s 425th National Park; although the known killers have never been charged, the monument will remind Americans of this historical tragedy By Black Headline News https://vimeo.com/849660717 WASHINGTON – The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument became the country’s 425th national park July 25, on the 82nd anniversary of Till’s birth, as...

SB 266 aims to stop college professors from teaching about systemic racism By Rochelle Anne Davis and Eileen Kane (Special to Black Headline News) A Florida law that took effect on July 1, 2023, restricts how educators in the state’s public colleges and universities can teach about the racial oppression that African Americans have faced...