Sean Yoes By Sean Yoes AFRO Senior Reporter syoes@afro.com On the morning of April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr., 25, sat with friends outside the Gilmor Homes in West Baltimore thinking about what he wanted to eat for breakfast. Moments later he was handcuffed and howling in pain as he was being shoved into […]
Author Archives: Sean Yoes
AFRO Baltimore Editor
Posted in!Front Page
Mosbys push back against ‘vindictive investigation’
Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and husband, Baltimore City Council President, Nick Mosby. (Courtesy Photos) By Sean Yoes AFRO Senior Reporter syoes@afro.com Several leaders in Baltimore’s Black community believe a federal tax investigation accompanied by a simultaneous and seemingly unbalanced media probe of Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and her husband Baltimore City […]
Posted inBaltimore News
Annapolis 2021: Real law enforcement reform in Maryland?
(By Good luck images_Shutterstock) By Sean Yoes AFRO Senior Reporter syoes@afro.com Even as HR7120, known as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act sits in the Senate after passing out of the House on March 3, advocates for real law enforcement reform in Maryland are fighting for perhaps the most comprehensive legislation to combat police […]
Posted inAfro Briefs
Race and Politics: My Black barbershop odyssey
By Sean Yoes AFRO Senior Reporter syoes@afro.com Our country has been through a lot over the past year, so of course, that means Black people have been through a lot, times 10. In a country that has terrorized us since 1619, our 401st year (2020) truly was one for the history books chronicling our collective […]
Posted in!Front Page
State of the city: Mayor Scott’s first 100 days
Mayor Brandon M. Scott (Courtesy Photo/https://mayor.baltimorecity.gov/) By Sean Yoes AFRO Senior Reporter syoes@afro.com When Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott took his oath of office in December he was immediately confronted with dual crises: the city’s towering murder rate and a global pandemic that had killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. On March 18, at the 100 […]
Posted inCoronavirus
COVID diary: `I started to tear up…I don’t want to die’
Mona Diallo, a West Baltimore community activist and advocate utilizes a catheter at home as she continues her recovery from COVID 19. (Courtesy Photo) By Sean Yoes AFRO Senior Reporter syoes@afro.com For Mona Diallo, a community activist and advocate based in West Baltimore, community truly is everything. And many of the members of the community […]
Posted in!Front Page
‘Dr. Kizzy’ helped save the day
Kizzmekia Corbett, an immunologist with the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). (Photo courtesy Black Health Matters) By Sean Yoes AFRO Senior Reporter syoes@afro.com Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, the leader of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Vaccine Research Center’s (VRC) Coronavirus Team, a young Black woman known affectionately as “Dr. Kizzy” […]
Posted inCoronavirus
New Zealand’s triumph, America’s tragedy
New Zealand was a model example of how to handle the COVID-19 pandemic, in comparison to the United State’s major tragedy, with more than half-a-million lives lost to the novel coronavirus. (AP Photo/Juan Karita) By Sean Yoes AFRO Senior Reporter syoes@afro.com On January 21, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed a resident in […]
Posted in!Front Page
AFRO Exclusive: Legislature passes HBCU funding bill
By Sean Yoes AFRO Senior Reporter syoes@afro.com A 16-year court battle between the State of Maryland and its Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) may be coming to an end with the passage of the HBCU Funding Bill out of the Maryland Legislature with a price tag of $577 million. “This lawsuit has been going […]
Posted inBaltimore Community
From Freddie Gray to George Floyd, will this time be different?
Sean Yoes By Sean Yoes AFRO Senior Reporter syoes@afro.com On May 1, 2015, as parts of the city still smoldered, Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby charged the six cops who arrested Freddie Gray. The move sent seismic shockwaves throughout law enforcement agencies across the nation. Then three weeks later, a grand jury indicted those […]
Posted inAfro Briefs
GOP voter suppression: Jim Crow 2021
Thirty-three states have introduced bills to restrict voting in the wake of historic voter turnout in 2020. (image courtesy The Brennan Center) By Sean Yoes AFRO Senior Reporter syoes@afro.com There are many images famous and infamous that have become synonymous with the 20th century Black American struggle for civil rights and equity. One such image […]
Posted inNEWS
Not his-tory, our-story
Sean Yoes By Sean Yoes AFRO Senior Reporter syoes@afro.com I stopped “celebrating” Black History Month decades ago in lieu of an ongoing observation and chronicling of Black excellence personally and professionally. It was Ossie Davis who, during the eulogy of Malcolm X, declared, “Malcolm had stopped being “negro” years ago. It had become too small, […]