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.

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.

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.

“This country has an abnormal obsession with blood, especially the blood spilled of innocent lives who prematurely become pummeled bodies, so we commemorate tragedies but fail to disrupt the bloodletting systems. We also love dead heroes, well some of them, despite often hating them while they are living.

In this season, it will take many of us taking action where we are to ensure that no matter how many times we have to cross the bridge toward justice we will stay in the fight. Our names may not appear in history books, someone else may get all of the credit but building a pathway to liberation, fighting for justice is the real work of saints, sheroes and heroes.”

"In that moment, I was reminded that, despite our differences, we have to coexist, working and raising our children in this shared space we call home. But what that moment also taught me, post-election, is that much of that 'unity' is false—a facade, a social display of organized harm, parading with joy over those it brutalizes... How can those who find entertainment in our culture continue to vote in ways that keep us oppressed, upholding their values as a measure of 'winning'—a false American dream?"

"We need accomplices, those who are tethered to us. If one suffers, all suffer, and if one is free, all are free. In the legendary and historic 'Letter from Birmingham Jail,' the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.' If we are truly serious about the work of justice, we will work daily to lay aside our political and religious differences for the sake of humanity and foster deep relationships that force us to be accomplices, not allies."