The Black Republic Team
Black Republic Media represents the collaborative efforts of a team who share an appreciation for the journalism of Ida B. Wells, a disdain for the white gaze (not to be confused with white people) and an understanding of an America that is, for all intents and purposes, an apartheid state. Our intent is to speak Black liberation into existence.In the words of the editors of Freedom’s Journal, the nation’s first Black newspaper published in 1827, we declare: “Too long have others spoken for us, too long has the public been deceived by misrepresentations.”
Denise Young, Reporter & Content Creator
I am a writer, poet, public radio host, Lindy Hopper, and mother of three magnificent beings. My people, sharecroppers, Pullman porters, homemakers, and organizers, hail from Mississippi and Memphis.
A native Chicagoan, I grew up in an era when thousands of Black families were economically and politically inhumed in public housing on the south and west sides of the city. The “State Street Corridor”—30+ straight blocks of impoverished and inhumane projects—remains one of my most acute orientations to white supremacy’s dispossession of Black people. Our collective pursuit of liberation remains my single reason for writing. Asé!
Carla Appleberry, Reporter
I’m called to fight for our youth, especially after seeing the effects the Covid era has had on the social skills and confidence of school-aged children. On any given day you’ll find me working or volunteering at my daughter’s elementary school, at my dance studio developing programs to get kids back in touch with their own bodies and their community, at church working with youth through praise-dance, and out in the community listening and responding to issues in any way available to me.
Jon Jeter, Reporter
I was born to the grandson of a slave at the zenith of the civil rights era and the end of America’s Golden Industrial Age, and named for an uncle who was likely murdered in a spasm of white supremacist violence. If it is true, as Jay Z once said, that we are who we are before we’re born, then my sole purpose in life is to redeem the community that raised me, to restore its reputation after 400 years of slander, and help build the Beloved community that our Ancestors and our children deserve.
For what it’s worth, I began my journalistic career at the end of the Reagan administration, have worked for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Detroit Free Press, the Washington Post, and This American Life, covered Coleman Young, Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe, eaten cous cous in Cochabamba, braked for elephants in Botswana, and touched the hallowed ground of Cuito Carnavale, the Angolan town where Black Cuban soldiers drove a stake through the heart of apartheid South Africa. I am the author of Flat Broke in the Free Market and the upcoming Class War in America: How the Rich and Powerful Divided the Nation by Asking Are you a Worker or are you White?
Málaga Smith, Creative Director
As the president of Communications Team, Málaga Smith helps organizations succeed in their missions by combining strategy, creativity, heart and humor.
Málaga has a unique skill set comprised of technology, design and communication, and experience in various industries including marketing, finance, retail and non-profit, providing her with valuable insight and the ability to make unique creative and analytic contributions. She has expertise in strategic planning, branding, graphic design/illustration and web and database programming. These diverse capabilities make it possible to communicate and co-create with many wonderful people.
Málaga loves learning the culture and language of an organization and communicating with both creatives and techies to bring a project together, helping to create the lines of communication that bring all the pieces of a project together.
Málaga is passionate about working to support people and organizations that strengthen our communities. She trades in the currencies of truth, knowledge, love, and respect.
Credits
BRM Audio Logo: Kenneth Walker