What keeps us going when the work of justice feels like an endless fight? In “Facing the Storm,” Desireé Lucas draws on her Black Pentecostal upbringing, the wisdom of church mothers, and Frederick Douglass’s witness to explore the struggles of everyday life and the pursuit of collective liberation. From recurring bills and strained relationships to community organizing and confronting systemic inequality, she names the burdens that can leave us weary and uncertain. Yet struggle also connects us to those who came before us and persevered toward freedom. With honesty and hope, Desireé invites us to make room for rest, gather our courage, and face the storm together—trusting that the progress we seek may lie beyond the clouds.

What might it mean to bring our buried courage into the light? In Daylighting Courage Creek, Howard Thurman’s image of an “underground river” meets the practice of uncovering streams hidden beneath our cities. A walk along a recovering creek becomes a reflection on the quiet springs of confidence that sustain us through difficult times. It also becomes an invitation: to make room for those springs to surface in our own lives and in one another’s, then join together in the work of justice, mercy, and care for the places we call home. What could flourish if we kept a thousand little springs of action flowing?

Access can look like liberation. Representation can feel like progress. But what happens when entering powerful institutions becomes more important than transforming them? Reflecting on Audre Lorde’s enduring words, Dr. Carl W. Kenney II examines the difference between gaining a seat in the master’s house and dismantling the systems that continue to keep others outside.

What happens when two caged birds encounter one another—each confined by different circumstances, yet each still reaching for freedom? In this reflection, I share the story of meeting Bull City, an unhoused neighbor whose dancing revealed a freedom that his circumstances could not contain. His movement became a mirror. A reminder that cages do not always look the same—and neither does freedom.

History may not repeat itself, but its rhythms often sound familiar. In this reflection, Kendall considers what it means to become “poets of history”—people who recognize the patterns echoing from the past and discern how old harms can reappear beneath new language and forms.

Drawing from the history of Durham’s Hayti community and BLK South’s work in the Grant Street neighborhood, Kendall reflects on the courage required to name these familiar rhythms. He invites us to imagine new ones that can help mend historical wounds and lead us toward more just, healing, and humane ways of living together.

What began as a conversation after a neighborhood meeting became an unexpected partnership between the Grant Street Community and Duke University's Edible Atlas Lab—and just four months later, that collaboration was featured in The New York Times. This is the story behind the headlines, and why our neighbors' decades-long vision for a grocery store in the historic Hayti District remains at the center of it all.

National attention was never the goal. Our hope is that this moment helps amplify what residents have been advocating for all along: healthy food access, equitable investment, and a future shaped by the people who have faithfully called Hayti home for generations.

Some stories take generations to come together. This is the story of how Kendall and Erin Dooley's journey of tracing their family's Great Migration history led them to Durham's historic Hayti District, where they met the Grant Street Ladies and Monument of Faith Church—neighbors whose stories, commitment, and love for place have shaped a shared vision for the future.

“The Scripture for Palm Sunday (Matthew 21:1–11) is filled with symbols—palm branches, cloaks, and shouts of “Hosanna.” Yet at the center of it all is an image that feels almost out of place: a donkey. Not a war horse, not a chariot, not a display of dominance or force, but a donkey. I remember when I was working at Neighborhood Ministries in Phoenix, one of our pastors preached a sermon called Donkey Power, and it stayed with me because it named something I think we struggle to believe in: a kind of power that is humble, that serves, and that accompanies rather than dominates. It raises a question that has lingered with me ever since—why is it so difficult to trust that kind of power?”

“In the last BLK reflection,  Dr. Gould named the communal grief and sense of urgency honoring the many civil rights leaders who have recently passed.  And just a day after her newsletter posted, we lost another icon this past Friday in Dr. John Perkins.  Dr. Perkins voice and work was formational for me over many years as he was for many.

Before hearing of this latest passing, I attended a “People, Power and Change” meeting with local community leaders to practice sharing our public narrative stories.  The stories for why we do what we do, the moments in time that called us into our vocation.  The focus was on finding our stories for when situations and life circumstances brought us onto a new path.”

“Over the past several weeks, I have been carrying the poignant weight of communal grief. The season began with the passing of Claudette Colvin, the forerunner to Rosa Parks, whose story has too often been marginalized by the historical conditioning that allowed space for only one “acceptable” Negro woman at a time. On March 2, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus nine months before the Montgomery Bus Boycott began.

Mother Colvin passed on January 13, 2026, and was laid to rest on January 24. Unlike Mother Rosa Parks, she did not lie in state at the Capitol. While people gathered from across the country to honor her life, presidents did not attend her service. Yet…”

Sometimes, I feel like the walls are caving in. It gets harder to breathe—frustrated and irritated and frustrated and irritated—an endless cycle of frustration and irritation. Frustrated because the people who have the resources to solve these problems in our neighborhood, for some reason, won’t share them. Frustrated because the people you think should be giving to this work aren’t, or haven’t, or are hoarding and holding on. When you know…

When Ash Wednesday rolled around last week my wife asked if I wanted to go to any of the church services in town. You see, after seventeen years in pastoral ministry I’d been spending the last two learning the trade of earthen building. Separated from the rhythms of traditional church life, and more particularly the life of a pastor, I said I’d like to do laundry instead. But that Wednesday moved fast and it was dark and late by the time we left the adobe house we’re building. We opted for enchiladas and a Modelo and dirty clothes. After finishing our meal we chatted with the restaurant owner as the plaza in our small town was being cordoned off after rumors of an active shooter and bomb threat were being addressed. Snow was falling for what felt like the first time all winter. 

The day after Rev. Jackson’s passing, our class discussion centered around a reading of David Walker’s 1829 Appeal to Color People. Dr. Chavis, when lecturing about the content, named that it is not enough to simply know history but to learn from it. It is a small class of about 15 people, so we always have the opportunity to ask him questions about the subject matter or about his life experience.

During black history month, the story of soul food is often recounted. Stories of those who used the scraps of food that was given, the throw aways, the discarded, and turned it into delicious dishes that were sustaining. They had to create something new out of what was given, resilience and resistance in action as the scraps were transformed. Cooking and eating became the few spaces where autonomy could exist, grounding oneself in one’s own humanity when every system worked to deny it. The flavors carried memory across generations even when language, land, and family were distant.

Smell is the quietest sense, yet it speaks the loudest. It enters without asking, slips past logic, and lands directly in memory. Long before we have words, we have scent. Before sight sharpens or language forms, smell is already working—wiring safety, love, fear, and belonging into our bodies.

Scientifically, scent travels straight to the limbic system, the part of the brain that holds emotion and memory. That’s why one breath can take you back decades. A kitchen you haven’t stood in since childhood. A person who no longer walks this earth. A version of yourself you forgot you were.

As the world around me is constantly changing and traveling up my nose and nervous system, I am triggered with something I was told quite a bit as a young girl, but am “today years old” in understanding more.

Growing up, the church would sing it was “...built on nothing less..than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.”

In 2006, India.Arie went on to sing about its presence.

BLK South’s 2025 Annual Report reflects a year of transition, learning, and deeper rootedness. As we relocated to Durham and continued our work in the Historic Hayti District, this report offers an honest snapshot of what it looked like to practice place-based community development through presence, partnership, and patience. Inside, we share highlights from our neighborhood work, formation spaces, public engagement, and the relationships that continue to shape our long-term vision for the South.

Can soul work smell and taste like chocolate chip cookies? I think those 6 weeks in some ways did.  Soul work was a beautiful and communal experience. Connecting with those who were looking for community and the opportunity to talk about their faith. I remember my first meeting with these folks and sharing fresh baked cookies with them. The smell and kind gesture lingers with me as I reflect on our time together. Each week was a different batch of chocolate chip cookies. 

Decolonial thinking, praxis, and theologies encourage us to expand and recover other ways of knowing and learning. Art and nature are two important examples of this. Check out this song, poem, painting series, and these facts about the mycelium network, and notice what stirs in you.

“There’s something about smell that gets there first—before language, before logic, before we even know what we’re feeling. Smell slips past the guards. It fills the nostrils, settles on the tongue, and suddenly the body remembers something the mind hadn’t named yet. Smell teaches us how to recognize patterns.”