The American Alliance for Equal Rights, led by veteran anti-affirmative action strategist Edward Blum, has filed a federal lawsuit against the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, targeting its CBC Spouses Education Scholarship,  a program that has awarded over $11 million to Black students since 1988. The scholarships, ranging from $2,500 to $20,000, serve 300 students annually from districts represented by CBC members,  historically underfunded, majority-Black communities that have long been starved of educational resources.

Blum's organization frames this as a fairness issue, arguing that "awarding educational opportunities to some young constituents but not others,  based on the color of their skin,  is neither conscientious nor legal." The lawsuit is brought on behalf of Asian and Hispanic students, a familiar Blum playbook, the same architect behind the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that dismantled race-conscious college admissions nationwide.

But context matters. The CBCF scholarship exists specifically to help Black students navigate what the foundation itself describes as "inequitable education systems" amid shrinking federal investments in education. This isn't a program built on exclusion,  it's one built on survival.

CBCF president Nicole Austin-Hillery reaffirmed the organization's founding mission, stating they remain "committed to providing opportunity for all who can benefit from our work and programs." The foundation, established 50 years ago, was created to open doors that systemic racism had long bolted shut.

Link:  USA Today

From the perspective of those who care about Native safety and sovereignty, the Trump administration’s decision to remove the congressionally mandated Not One More Report is profoundly troubling. The report, created under the Not Invisible Act of 2020 and based on more than 250 testimonies, was designed to “provide tribes with solutions” to the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people and educate the public about an “epidemic of violence against Native women, Native people.” Yet, nearly 300 days after it was taken down from the Department of Justice website to comply with an executive order attacking so-called DEI content, it has not been restored.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who introduced the act, said she was “astounded” that an administration which signed the law could now treat this life-or-death issue as expendable. She argued that officials “don’t really care about addressing the violent crime in our tribal communities,” and called their actions “ignorant to the fact of the trust and treaty obligation that we have to our tribal communities.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski similarly pushed for the report’s return, noting, “If we don’t know what we don’t know, it’s pretty tough to say it’s a problem.”

Despite tribal leaders’ appeals to exempt nations from DEI crackdowns and preserve their status as a political class, the White House and DOJ insist the removal was simply about following the “Defending Women” order and say the report exists on “external websites.” But as Sen. Tina Smith put it, “If you want to solve a problem, you first have to see it and understand it, and that’s what that work was all about.” She called it “so offensive” that the administration reclassified tribal nations as just another DEI category rather than “sovereign nations, sovereign people.”

Cortez Masto vows to keep pushing: “They can try to keep it off of the website, but the report’s there. The recommendations are there … and we’re still going to move forward to address it.”

Link: Oklahoma Watch

Justice has finally caught up to a case that should have never stolen 21 years of Ralph Blaine Smith’s life. This week, the state of Ohio approved a $1.3 million settlement acknowledging the wrongful imprisonment of the Columbus man, who spent more than two decades behind bars for a home invasion and robbery that “perhaps never occurred.” While the compensation marks a formal recognition of harm, it cannot restore birthdays missed, family milestones lost, or the simple dignity of freedom taken for over two decades.

Smith was convicted in 2000 based solely on eyewitness identification. There was “no other evidence linking Smith to the crime,” no stolen property recovered, and no additional suspects charged. Yet that was enough to sentence him to 21 years in prison. The turning point came in 2021 when Fairfield County Common Pleas Judge Richard E. Berens granted Smith a new trial after determining prosecutors had withheld key evidence. That supplemental police narrative “contains numerous observations expressing skepticism about whether a crime had occurred,” Berens wrote.

The responding officer questioned how multiple men could commit an armed invasion and leave “without leaving tracks in the snow.” That doubt was never shared with the defense. Berens ruled the material was “exculpatory,” meaning it could have created reasonable doubt and should have been disclosed. Instead, it remained hidden while Smith lost decades of his life.

Ultimately, current Fairfield County Prosecutor Kyle Witt chose to drop the charges rather than retry the case. The state’s settlement followed shortly after Smith filed a wrongful imprisonment claim.

For Smith, the money represents a chance to rebuild and support the loved ones who stood by him. “They helped me out a lot when I was incarcerated with visits and phone calls. I'd like to make things a little easier on them,” he said.

Link: Dispatch

Maryland's Independent Investigations Division (IID) was established to bring accountability to police-involved fatalities. Instead, it has become a case study in institutional opacity. Of 39 completed investigations, charges have been brought in just two cases, one of which was dismissed, raising serious questions about whether the office is genuinely committed to transparency or merely performing it.

The death of Dontae Melton Jr. crystallizes these concerns. Melton, experiencing a mental health crisis, approached officers seeking help on June 24, 2025. He begged, "Please, bro, please. It's an emergency." He was restrained, laid on hot pavement, and left waiting for medical assistance that never came due to a CAD system outage. He died alone in a hospital, unidentified, because the responding officer never noted his name.

The coroner ruled the death a homicide. And yet the IID, remarkably, concluded its investigation without speaking to any of the ten officers involved. The report determined that "none of the subject officers committed a crime under Maryland law," a finding that strains credulity given what body camera footage shows: a supervising officer, Sgt. Joshua Jackson, declining offers of help and stating plainly, "This don't look good. It's all about optics, baby."

That comment, and others like it, went entirely unaddressed in the declination report. As legal expert David Jaros noted, Jackson's statements "suggest he really was aware of the risk and was simply balancing those risks against his concerns about not looking good in the public eye," a potentially significant indicator of criminal awareness that the IID chose not to engage with.

Melton's mother, Eleshiea Goode, cut to the heart of the matter: "If the police are not responsible for my son's death, please tell me who is... A CAD system is not a person. Who killed my son?"

The Attorney General's office declined to answer detailed questions, referring reporters back to the report itself.

Link: Baltimore Beat 

If you’ve lost someone to fatal violence under police, ICE Agents or while incarcerated, apply to our Autopsy Initiative for a free independent autopsy here: https://www.knowyourrightscamp.org/autopsyinitiative

Jade Jones, a 17-year-old student from Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, attended the Know Your Rights Camp in Los Angeles and found the finance session especially impactful. As she prepares for college, lessons on credit, budgeting, and long-term planning stood out, along with access to a free financial workshop via QR code. Jade, who aspires to become a director, values storytelling as a way to amplify overlooked voices. She believes the camp equips young people with real-world knowledge to navigate complex systems and hopes to use what she’s learned to uplift others in her community.

Watch the video here:

The Alabama Supreme Court has issued a troubling 6-3 ruling that dramatically expands police authority to demand identification, a decision that sets a chilling precedent for civil liberties across the state.

The case centers on Michael Jennings, a Black pastor arrested in 2022 simply for watering his neighbors flowers while they were on vacation. Officers were called because a neighbor reported seeing an "unfamiliar car" and a "young Black male" near a property. When police arrived, Jennings identified himself as "Pastor Jennings," explained he lived across the street, and was tending to his neighbors yard. Despite this reasonable explanation, and despite the 911 caller later identifying him as a neighbor, officers demanded to see physical ID. Jennings refused, asserting he "hadn't done anything wrong." He was arrested. The charge was eventually dismissed, but the damage was done.

Now, the state's highest court has used this case to rule that officers can demand physical identification whenever they are "dissatisfied" with a person's verbal responses. Justice Will Sellers wrote that the stop-and-identify law "does not exclude from its purview a request for physical identification when a suspect provides an incomplete or unsatisfactory response." The word "unsatisfactory" is doing enormous, dangerous work here, it hands officers virtually unlimited subjective discretion to escalate any encounter.

Matthew Cavedon of the Cato Institute, which filed an amicus brief opposing this interpretation alongside the ACLU, rightly called it a "significant expansion of government power over people." His warning is stark: "If an officer's not satisfied with whatever answer you give, I sure hope you've got your driver's license or passport on you."

Link: ABC 3340

Tennessee Republicans, backed by the Heritage Foundation, are advancing legislation that would strip undocumented children of their constitutional right to a public education, a right enshrined since the 1982 Supreme Court ruling Plyler v. Doe. The bills would not only allow schools to deny enrollment to undocumented students, but would transform teachers and administrators into immigration informants, surveilling the very children they are meant to protect.

The human cost is already visible. High school teacher Sam Singer reports that students are already asking "if they're still allowed to go to school,"  questions, she rightly notes, "that no child should ever have to ask." Her words cut to the heart of what this legislation truly represents: a state turning its back on children. "The expectation should be, of course, you're supposed to be here, you're a kid. This is where you belong."

Heritage Foundation rhetoric frames undocumented children as a financial burden, yet undocumented people contribute nearly $97 billion annually in federal, state, and local taxes, far exceeding the cost of their children's education. As immigration policy analyst Cassandra Zimmer-Wong bluntly states, the Heritage Foundation's argument "does not hold up to any kind of basic scrutiny."

The consequences of denying these children an education would be catastrophic and generational. Zimmer-Wong warns that it would "create an uneducated, potentially illiterate underclass of children and then adults in this country." Research estimates undocumented students would lose a collective $1 trillion in lifetime earnings, while the broader U.S. workforce would shrink by 450,000 workers in critical roles.

Most chillingly, this is not just an attack on immigrant children,  it is an attack on public education broadly. Thomas Saenz, who originally litigated Plyler, warns that "when a certain cohort of kids is allowed to be out of school, what happens next is that their siblings and friends don't go to school — and rapidly, no one goes to school."

Link: The Intercept

Twenty-five-year-old Jasmin Lomas joined a Downtown Los Angeles protest against ICE and left with metal fragments embedded in her face. Three weeks later, she is still living with physical and emotional trauma after being struck by what her attorney believes was an indelible paint bullet fired by police, hitting her “just centimeters below her eye.” From her account, she was not engaging in violence but exercising her right to protest a federal immigration agency many believe harms immigrant families and communities. Instead of being protected, she says she was shot without warning.

“I feel like I can't really grasp what's happening and how severe it really is,” Lomas said, describing the aftermath. She explained that while tensions escalated and “there was tear gas and stuff,” she and others “didn't stay long” and were trying to leave the area. Although authorities reported issuing a dispersal order around 5:45 p.m., Lomas said she “did not hear” it and was actively attempting to exit. Around 6 p.m., as she used her phone to give a driver directions for pickup, she says an officer struck her in the face.

“They sat me down, and there was an EMT there that ended up helping me with the bleeding,” she recalled. “I still wasn't aware of what exactly happened, but with their reactions, I knew it was probably very bad.” The projectile hit her cheekbone, narrowly missing her eye. Her attorney, Paul Aghabala, said some metal remains lodged in her face because removing it poses medical risks. “The next step is to do a CT scan to see if the metal is in her bones,” he said.

A claim has now been filed alleging excessive force, along with a complaint to LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division. Aghabala said they want answers: “Who was the shooter, what kind of qualifications they had, did they have any training to use a weapon like this, and why was it that she got hit in the face without any warning?”

Link:  ABC7

At Howard University, "The Mecca," the most prominent HBCU in the world,  protest is not incidental to the institution's identity. It is foundational. That's why the recent change to pregame protocols for the women's basketball team cuts so deeply. The situation echoes Colin Kaepernick's original 2016 kneeling protest against police brutality from which they initially took inspiration from.

For six consecutive seasons, Howard's women's hoops program has knelt during the national anthem in direct response to racial injustice and police brutality. The ritual was born during COVID, when, as associate head coach Brian Davis explained, "all the social justice things were happening... all the young men and women of color [who] were passing away from the hands of police brutality." The team chose to take a stand — literally by going to their knees.

That stand has now been complicated. Following a December game against Army, the athletic department issued new pregame protocols requiring student-athletes to either stand or remain in the locker room. Rather than stand, the women's team chose the locker room,  a defiant but constrained form of solidarity, echoing the approach Dawn Staley's South Carolina Gamecocks have taken since 2020-21.

Coach Davis reframed the decision pragmatically: "We don't want to bring any bad light to Howard University, so we just decided to stay in the locker room now for every game, home and away." But the spirit of the protest endures,  the players haven't abandoned their convictions, they've adapted them under institutional pressure.

The most powerful response came from the men's soccer team. Junior goalkeeper Ireal Wyze-Daly captured the stakes with striking clarity: "If they can take away our right to protest, what else can they take away? I would never believe that coming to Howard, the biggest HBCU in the world, The Mecca, would basically be forced to bow down to the white oppressive system."

That sentiment matters. HBCUs exist as acts of resistance. Howard, in particular, has long been a training ground for activists, lawyers, and leaders who challenge systemic inequality. For its athletes to be restricted in how they express that legacy is a contradiction the institution must reckon with,  because protest, especially here, is more than symbolic. It's history in motion.

Link: The Grio

For generations, Black farmers in America have faced a quiet but devastating force working against them: the USDA's county committee system. Hidden from public view and rooted in the discriminatory foundations of the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act, these committees hold enormous power over who gets loans, disaster assistance, and access to federal programs, and they have long used that power to exclude Black farmers.

Shirley Sherrod, a civil rights activist and former USDA employee, knows this intimately. Her father was denied a loan to build a brick house simply because he was Black, "even though all of the white farmers were getting [the loans],"  and was later shot and killed by a white farmer. Decades later, Sherrod herself was told by a county official that her husband would get an emergency loan "over my dead body." These are not isolated incidents.

The numbers confirm the scale of the problem. In 2024, only 8% of eligible voters cast ballots in county committee elections,  yet the barriers for Black farmers are even steeper. Of roughly 3,600 candidates who ran for seats, only 201 were Black. As Sherrod explains, "You run, and then you don't win. There are people who can determine whether you get a loan... so you get tired and just try to exist."

The consequences are real and immediate. Committee members act as gatekeepers over farmers' financial lives, with power to approve or deny disaster payments, influence hiring decisions, and control outreach. As fourth-generation farmer Patrick Brown puts it: "There may be a little bit too much power there." And that power is routinely abused,  documented cases show qualified Black candidates being passed over for jobs, election results being challenged after Black wins, and ballots mysteriously going missing.

Harvard researcher Trevor Findley cuts to the heart of it: "Going back to the first Farm Bill, all of the benefits flowed to the landowner, and that largely remains the case today."

Link: Capital B News 

At just 10 years old, Honey Cooper is already redefining what’s possible for young scholars in San Bernardino. A fourth grader at Kimbark Elementary School, Honey is simultaneously enrolled at San Bernardino Valley College,  a rare and remarkable achievement that has her community beaming with pride. “I go to Kimbark Elementary School and Valley College,” Honey said with confidence, casually describing a reality that sets her apart in the most inspiring way.

Like many children her age, Honey dreams big. She imagines a future as “an artist, a fashion designer or even a surgeon.” But what makes her story extraordinary is that she isn’t waiting to grow up to start chasing those ambitions. By stepping into a college classroom while still in elementary school, she is proving that age does not define ability.

Kimbark Elementary Principal Brittany Zuniga described the accomplishment as groundbreaking. “It's extremely rare,” she said. “What I love about Honey doing this and starting this is she's paving the way. She's opening the doors for everybody else, because I think so many of us didn't even think that this was a possibility.” For Zuniga and the school community, Honey’s enrollment challenges long-held assumptions about what young students can achieve.

Honey herself hopes her journey becomes a blueprint for others. “This can help kids, parents and even teachers… so anyone can do what I'm doing right now,” she said. Her words reflect not only ambition, but generosity,  a desire to lift others as she climbs.

Outside the classroom, Honey remains a vibrant and well-rounded child. She participates in theater, loves reading, and prioritizes time with friends and family. Her mother, Mia Cooper, emphasizes balance, noting, “Spending time with her friends is very important, because you have to work on that social skill.” Limited screen time and strong family values help keep Honey grounded.

Above all, Honey credits her family’s unwavering encouragement. “They always encourage me to try my best… and make sure to never give up,” she said.

Link: ABC7

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has taken the deeply troubling step of personally blocking the promotions of at least six high-ranking military officers,  including two Black men and two women on track to become one-star generals, with a Black colonel and a female colonel from a separate branch also removed from promotion lists. This intervention represents a dangerous and potentially illegal intrusion into a process designed to be insulated from political interference.

What makes this particularly alarming is that these officers had already been selected through the military's rigorous, peer-reviewed promotion system,  meaning their colleagues and superiors had determined they had earned advancement. Hegseth overruled that judgment not on the basis of performance, but apparently on ideological grounds. According to a U.S. official, Hegseth has been "weeding out senior officers who are deemed ideologically incompatible," a chilling phrase that reveals a politicization of military leadership that should concern every American regardless of party.

This pattern didn't begin with these six officers. Hegseth previously fired Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown,  "the second African American to hold the job,” and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, "the first woman to hold the Navy's top uniformed job," in both cases offering no explanation. The context is hard to ignore given that Hegseth's own writings questioned whether Brown "got the job by merit or his race."

Senator Jack Reed put it plainly: "Denying the promotions of individual officers based on their race or gender would betray every principle of merit-based service military officers uphold throughout their careers" and would, critically, be illegal.

The Pentagon's response,  dismissing the reporting as "fake news" while claiming "meritocracy, which reigns in this Department, is apolitical and unbiased," rings hollow against a backdrop of firings and blocked promotions that disproportionately target women and people of color. True meritocracy doesn't selectively remove officers who have already been judged on merit by the institution itself.

These actions undermine military readiness, institutional trust, and the rule of law,  all in service of an ideological agenda with no place in national defense.

Link: NPR

DeMari Wilson, a 14-year-old student from Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, attended the Know Your Rights Camp in Los Angeles and proudly called Colin Kaepernick his “GOAT.” His favorite session focused on financial empowerment, where he heard from a speaker who rose from poverty to become a multimillionaire; proof that success is possible for children of color. DeMari also won the camp scavenger hunt, taking home prizes including a limited-edition all-black Kaepernick jersey, Beats Pro headphones, and Disneyland tickets. After a tough previous day, he described the camp as life-changing and hopes it expands worldwide.

Watch the video below:

Six years after Breonna Taylor was shot dead in her own home, the pursuit of accountability for those responsible has been quietly buried. Federal prosecutors have moved to dismiss charges against former Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany,  the two officers who falsified the warrant that sent police crashing through Taylor's door on the night of March 13, 2020. The decision, filed "in the interest of justice," represents a profound betrayal of that very principle.

Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was killed when officers executed a no-knock drug warrant based on false information, searching for a former boyfriend who no longer even lived there. Police found no drugs, no cash,  nothing. The city of Louisville ultimately paid her family a $12 million wrongful death settlement, a tacit acknowledgment of institutional failure. Yet the architects of that fatal lie are now walking free, their lawyers elated. "We are elated with this development," declared Travis Lock, attorney for Jaynes, a statement that rings hollow against the grief of a mother who buried her daughter.

Tamika Palmer, Breonna's mother, made her anguish clear. "Their phone call today informing me that charges against the police are being dropped while implying they have helped me is utterly disrespectful," she wrote. "This is the first time I've heard from them since they took over and it's clear they have not served me or Breonna well." Her words cut to the heart of what this dismissal truly represents: not justice, but erasure.

Under the Trump administration, even Brett Hankison,  the only officer imprisoned in connection with Taylor's death — has been supported in efforts to leave prison early while his conviction is appealed. Meanwhile, the officers who constructed the fraudulent justification for the entire raid face no consequences at all.

Activists have long argued that Breonna Taylor's killing exemplifies the systemic injustice Black women face. This dismissal confirms it. When falsifying a warrant that leads directly to an innocent woman's death carries no lasting legal consequence, the system isn't broken, it's working exactly as it was designed to.

Link: NPR 

In a landmark moment for advocates of reparatory justice, the United Nations General Assembly has voted to recognize the transatlantic slave trade as "the gravest crime against humanity." The resolution, proposed by Ghana, passed with 123 votes in favour,  a powerful affirmation that the international community is ready to confront one of history's darkest chapters.

The scale of the crime demands this recognition. Between 1500 and 1800, an estimated 12–15 million Africans were forcibly taken to the Americas, with over two million perishing on the journey alone. These were not abstract historical figures,  they were human beings whose suffering built the foundations of modern wealth. As Ghana's Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa made clear, this resolution is about accountability, not charity: "We are demanding compensation, and let us be clear, African leaders are not asking for money for themselves. 

We want justice for the victims and causes to be supported, educational and endowment funds, skills training funds."

The resolution, backed by both the African Union and the Caribbean Community, rightly acknowledges that the wounds of slavery have never healed. It states that slavery's consequences persist as racial inequalities and underdevelopment "affecting Africans and people of African descent in all parts of the world." Ablakwa put it plainly: "Many generations continue to suffer the exclusion, the racism because of the transatlantic slave trade which has left millions separated from the continent and impoverished."

That 52 countries,  including the UK and EU member states, chose to abstain is deeply disappointing. Their position that "today's institutions cannot be held responsible for past wrongs" rings hollow when the inequalities those wrongs created are still felt today.

Equally troubling is the active opposition from the United States, whose current administration has been criticized by Ghana's President Mahama for "normalising the erasure of black history," a charge that carries real weight given moves to restore Confederate statues and dismantle slavery exhibits.

This resolution is, as President Mahama called it, "a safeguard against forgetting." It is not the end of the journey,  but it is an essential beginning.

Link: BBC

New York, NY (April 7, 2026) — Renowned Civil Rights Activist and Super Bowl quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, announced plans today to publish THE PERILOUS FIGHT, a new memoir acquired by Legacy Lit Editor, Amina Iro. Iro acquired World Rights from Creative Artists Agency, LLC. Legacy Lit will publish in hardcover and eBook editions on September 15, 2026. The audiobook, narrated by Kaepernick, is produced by and will be available exclusively from Audible to coincide with the hardcover and eBook release. THE PERILOUS FIGHT is now available for pre-order. 

On September 1, 2016, Colin Kaepernick took a knee during The Star Spangled Banner, but the world has never fully understood his story. Not the “why.” Not what it cost. Not what it took to become the man who was ready for that moment.

That story begins in Turlock, California, where Kaepernick, a Black kid adopted into a white family, spent his earliest years navigating an identity the world around him didn't always know how to hold. Everything that connected him to who he truly was—his Blackness, his culture, his sense of self—was met with resistance. Sports became his refuge and his proving ground. On the field, his talent could not be questioned, minimized, or taken from him. It was the one space that was entirely his. And what that space produced was extraordinary: a quarterback whose arm and instincts would carry him to the Super Bowl and into the history books.

But success brought with it an education he hadn't anticipated. He began to see the NFL not just as a league, but as a mirror of American capitalism, of racial exploitation, of a country that celebrated Black entertainment and criminalized Black lives in the same breath. He had been reading: Malcolm X. Muhammad Ali. Huey P. Newton. Angela Davis. And what he saw in the NFL, in Turlock, in the repeated, unpunished killing of Black and Brown Americans by the very systems claiming to protect them, converged into an undeniable truth: this was not someone else's fight. It was his. It is ours.

When Kaepernick knelt, he was not acting on impulse. He was acting on years of becoming, of absorbing, reckoning, and refusing to look away. In response, the NFL rejected him, the country revealed itself, and the man who had spent his whole life earning his successes chose, deliberately, to risk all of it for something larger than himself.

But in the ten years since he took a knee, the questions his protest raised about race, power, identity, and the courage it takes to fight for a more equitable world have not gone away. They are the questions of our time. They are the questions this book answers.

"People saw the moment. But they didn't see the years that made it possible: the questions about who I was; the injustices I could no longer ignore; the voices of those who came before me that I carried into that stadium. That journey, from a Black kid navigating an identity the world didn't always make space for, to an athlete who realized the game was bigger than football, shaped everything. When I took a knee, it wasn't a sudden act. It was the result of years of becoming. And what came after taught me the most important truth: this fight has never belonged to one person. It belongs to all of us. We fight for each other. We build with each other. We must fight for justice and equity with the courage and clarity this moment demands. That is how we build a future worth fighting for." says Kaepernick.

"One of the pillars of the Legacy Lit imprint is to inspire social change through unique and powerful stories and there are few better suited to represent that mission than Colin Kaepernick," says Krishan Trotman, VP, Publisher, Legacy Lit. "He was the catalyst of an undeniable movement that captured the attention and interest of the world. I am thrilled that he chose Legacy Lit as a partner in sharing his valuable perspective, and his unvarnished story for the first time. Colin is an inspiration to so many, and I know that readers, the world over, will be moved by his poignant memoir."

Diana Dapito, Audible Head of Consumer Content, said: “Hearing Colin Kaepernick tell his story in his own voice brings an urgency and authenticity that only he can deliver, and we’re honored to capture his words in this audiobook. This is a once-in-a-generation story that’s powerfully relevant today. It’s a privilege to serve as the exclusive audio publisher for this memoir and to collaborate with Colin and Legacy Lit to bring this vital work to listeners worldwide.”

In THE PERILOUS FIGHT, Kaepernick delivers his story with the same unflinching conviction that defined the moment the world watched. Equal parts memoir and manifesto, it traces the off-the-field battles that turned a single act of protest into a movement that changed American sports and culture forever. This is the story of a man who became someone the moment demanded. It is a story about identity, sacrifice, and the cost of courage. And it is, ultimately, a story about all of us and the future we are still fighting to build.

Colin Kaepernick is a Super Bowl quarterback who holds the all-time NFL record for most rushing yards in a game by a quarterback. He is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, and civil rights activist. He is the founder of the Know Your Rights Camp, Kaepernick Media (Formerly Ra Vision Media), Kaepernick Publishing, and Lumi Story AI. He has been awarded Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award, the Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, the ACLU's Eason Monroe Courageous Advocate Award, and numerous others for his work in athletics and advocacy. His show, Colin in Black and White, co-produced by Ava DuVernay, has won two NAACP Awards, his Nike "Dream Crazy" has won an Emmy, and he's been featured in GQ, Men's Health, TIME, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair, New York Times, the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and many more. Learn more at Kaepernick7.com and follow for updates on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, X.com, and YouTube. 

About Legacy Lit:

Legacy Lit is an imprint dedicated to giving voice to issues, authors, and all groups that have been underrepresented, under-served, and overlooked. Our mission is to inspire social change and to elevate and celebrate diverse communities. We are unapologetically intentional and committed to promoting equality and equity for all people. Our books uplift and celebrate diverse communities using fresh narratives, powerful storytelling, and big ideas that will educate, enlighten, and inspire.

About Grand Central Publishing Group:

Grand Central Publishing Group reaches a diverse audience through books that cater to every kind of reader. Our divisions include Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Nashville, and Union Square & Co.

About Hachette Book Group:

Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a leading US general-interest book publisher made up of dozens of esteemed imprints within the publishing groups Basic Books Group; Grand Central Publishing Group; Hachette Audio; Little, Brown and Company; Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Orbit; and Workman Running Press Group. We also provide custom distribution, fulfillment, and sales services to other publishing companies.

Our books and authors have received the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Caldecott Medal, Newbery Medal, Booker Prize, Nobel Peace Prize and other major honors.

We are committed to diversity in our company and our publishing programs, and to fostering a culture of inclusion for all our employees and authors. We are proud to be part of Hachette Livre, the world's third-largest trade and educational publisher.

Visit hachettebookgroup.com to learn more about HBG imprints. For updated news follow HBG on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, X.com, Pinterest, and YouTube.

About Audible:

Audible, Inc., an Amazon.com, Inc. subsidiary (NASDAQ:AMZN), is the leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling, offering global audiences a powerful way to enhance and enrich their lives through extraordinary content. Audible’s catalog includes more than 1,000,000 audio titles, including Audible Originals as well as audiobooks and podcasts from leading studios, print, audio and magazine publishers and world-renowned entertainers.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Megan Perritt-Jacobson, Senior Director of Publicity, GCP Non-Fiction 

megan.perritt-jacobson@hbgusa.com 

Estefania Acquaviva, Senior Publicist, GCP Non-Fiction 

Estefania.acquaviva@hbgusa.com 

Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas presents itself as a progressive, open facility,  a minimum-security campus where women move freely, attend work programs, and begin rebuilding their lives. It is, according to a damning investigation by The Marshall Project and NBC News, nothing of the sort. What emerges from the testimony of eight women and multiple whistleblowers is a portrait of systematic predation, institutional cowardice, and calculated silence.

Staff members exploited the profound power imbalance of incarceration to coerce women into unwanted sexual acts,  in storage closets, locked offices, bathrooms, and blind spots deliberately chosen for their lack of cameras. Teacher Donald Ross allegedly groomed women with outside food and small privileges before groping and assaulting them. 

Chaplain Timothy Martin allegedly cornered a woman named Darlene in a bathroom and reached into her underwear after months of grooming. Ross's contemptuous response to these allegations was telling: "Y'all don't understand the games that these inmates play... They lie. They're not people who can be trusted." This is the voice of a system that has always had a ready answer for its victims.

Women who reported assault were shipped to harsher facilities. Officers who raised alarms were fired for "conducting an unauthorized investigation." Timeiki Hedspeth, who reported being groped while handcuffed, said: "What made me upset was when they didn't believe me,  it's frustrating and hurtful." Darlene described the aftermath with devastating simplicity: "I just felt like I didn't have a voice the entire time."

Even more grotesque: Bryan passed its 2023 safety audit with full marks. Deborah Golden, a civil rights attorney who has represented over 50 survivors from federal prisons, captured the reality precisely: "It's rotten from the top down and from the inside out."

As Marie wrote from her Alabama prison cell: "Keeping all of the secrets... really did break me." The institution didn't just fail to protect her. It finished the job.

Link: NBCNews

Host:  Amir Whitaker  (@Drknucklehead_esq) and Diana Barbadillo (@deeeeezzyyy)

Guest: Chris Martin ( @doc_martin88) 

Civil rights attorney and activist Chris "Doc Martin" Martin joins the Know Your Rights Camp podcast to expose how the child welfare system funnels Black children into incarceration. From his roots in South Central LA to co-founding the Reimagine Child Safety Coalition, Doc Martin breaks down the systemic failures connecting foster care and mass incarceration. He also shares his frontline legal work defending protesters, challenging prosecutorial power, and using art to envision a world free from cycles of violence and state surveillance.

Watch the video here:

Listen to the podcast here:

The Trump administration scored another legal victory in its systematic dismantling of immigrant rights Wednesday, as the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government can continue detaining immigrants indefinitely,  without bond. The decision represents a significant escalation in what critics see as a deliberate campaign to weaponize the courts against immigrant communities.

The ruling overturned a lower court decision protecting Joaquin Herrera Avila, a Mexican national arrested in Minneapolis in August 2025 simply for lacking documentation. Despite having lived in the country for years without any criminal record, Avila was detained without bond and placed into deportation proceedings,  a fate the administration is now legally empowered to impose on millions more.

This is not an isolated ruling. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reached the same conclusion last month, finding that the Department of Homeland Security's blanket denial of bond hearings was "consistent with the Constitution and federal immigration law." Two circuit courts have now aligned to endorse a practice that, until recently, was considered legally questionable. Under previous administrations spanning nearly three decades, long-term residents with no criminal history routinely received bond hearings,  a basic due process protection now effectively stripped away.

The administration's willingness to reinterpret settled law was laid bare in the dissent. Circuit Judge Ralph Erickson warned that Avila and "millions of others would be subject to mandatory detention under a novel interpretation" that "hasn't been used by the courts or five previous presidential administrations." This isn't legal clarification,  it's legal innovation in service of mass detention.

Attorney General Pam Bondi's response revealed the political appetite behind the ruling. Celebrating what she called a "MASSIVE COURT VICTORY against activist judges," her post framed the stripping of habeas corpus rights as a law-and-order triumph. The administration has faced over 30,000 habeas corpus petitions since Trump took office,  a staggering figure that underscores just how aggressively immigrants are being detained without legal justification.

Each ruling chips away further at the constitutional bedrock that protects all people, citizen or not,  from unlawful imprisonment.

Link: PBS

Florida's Board of Governors has enacted one of the most consequential attacks on social science education in recent memory, voting to ban introductory sociology from general-education requirements across all 12 public universities,  a decision with profound implications for how students understand communities of color.

The move, championed by Chancellor Ray Rodrigues, rests on the claim that sociology has become "ideologically captured" and is now "social and political advocacy dressed in the regalia of the academy." This framing is academically indefensible. Sociology's empirical tools,  structural analysis, institutional critique, intersectionality, are precisely the frameworks that render communities of color legible to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.

The state's revised curriculum deliberately restricts "teaching that presents systemic racism, sexism or oppression as primary drivers of inequality." From an academic standpoint, this is not a pedagogical correction,  it is ideological surgery. Scholars across disciplines have documented how structural racism shapes health disparities, incarceration rates, wealth gaps, and educational outcomes. Prohibiting instruction on these mechanisms does not eliminate their existence; it eliminates students' capacity to analyze them.

Faculty opposition has been unambiguous. Professors have called the state-designed materials an "affront to academic freedom" and "subpar," recognizing that a sociology stripped of race, gender, and inequality analysis is barely sociology at all. Board member Kimberly Dunn warned the removal was "broader than necessary," arguing that sociology "contributes directly to the competencies we consistently emphasize" and preserves "disciplined, evidence-based inquiry into critically important aspects of the human experience."

What Florida has legislated, in effect, is a mandated blind spot: a state-enforced incapacity to see race, power, and inequality with the analytical precision those communities deserve.

Link: Miami Herald