Who you are determines how well and how long you live. In 2012 the life expectancy for white Philadelphians was 78 years, versus 73 for Black Philadelphians, according to the latest Health of the City Report, produced by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. In 2019 that five-year gap remained, and it widened to six
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This story was originally published in Hidden City Philadelphia. Last fall, after Philadelphia announced the release of a request for proposal to develop one of the most notoriously blighted areas of the city, the Logan Triangle, a bevy of reporters called up Charlene Samuels, chairperson for the Logan Civic Association, to get community perspective. With
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In the early hours of September 17, 2023, Mazzie Casher and Steven Pickens were foot patrolling near A Street and Indiana Avenue in Kensington, a hotspot for gun murders. The co-founders of the Philly Truce Foundation, a nonprofit that tackles gun violence among the city’s Black youth, were accompanied by a Philadelphia police officer and
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Grid is honoring Black Birders Week (May 26 – June 1) by printing an obituary recently published by the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club (DVOC) about their first Black member, James “Jim” Carroll. On the 30th anniversary of the founding of the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, June 30, 2002, pioneering Black birder Jim
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By age 5, Philadelphia native Tatyana Woodard knew she was different. Born with a male body, she felt like a girl. She preferred girls’ clothes and loved White Diamonds, her grandmother’s perfume. Over time, Woodard’s conviction and hidden stash of feminine outfits grew. “At 16, I was put out of my house due to my
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The nine students sitting before their teacher, Andre Coles, differ in age, physical abilities, gender and race, but they come together to grow and build community through the Roots2Rise yoga program. With soft music playing in the background, program director Coles welcomes all. “Sometimes the world seems very unstable,” Coles says in a gentle tone
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The phone woke Jacqui Johnson, founder and clinical director of Sankofa Healing Studio, from a sound sleep. On the other end of the line, Tinika Hogan, recently released from prison, teetered on the brink of disaster. She was about to do something that would have gotten her kicked out of a halfway house, which could
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The head of the Wampanoag sachem Metacomet (aka King Philip) sat on a spike at the entrance to Plymouth, Massachusetts, for two decades after his failed uprising against the English colonists was crushed in 1676. The colonists sent his family into slavery in the Caribbean. Metacomet was the son of Ousamequin (aka Massasoit), who rescued
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The small light-brown button excavated in broiling August heat rests in the palm of Megan C. Kassabaum, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and Weingarten Associate Curator for North America at the Penn Museum. Dug up from one of three small sites in the parking lot behind the Community Education Center
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Margaret isn’t as mobile as she used to be. At 79 and still recovering from a car accident that forced her to learn how to walk again, she relies on her walker and cane to get around. Some days she doesn’t descend the stairs from the second floor of her North Philadelphia home because the
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