The Rule That Can Surprise You If you claim Social Security at 62 and continue working, there is an important rule you need to understand. Your earnings can affect how much of your Social Security benefit you receive before reaching full retirement age. That is something worth knowing before your paycheck and benefit checks start
Claiming Social Security at 62 While You Are Still Working Read More »
The Difference Starts With the Purpose Just like earning a bachelor’s degree and earning a master’s degree are different experiences, earning a master’s degree and earning a PhD are very different from each other. Sometimes I hear people say, “Should I just keep going and get a PhD?” and that question tells me they may
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The Marker I Almost Walked Past This is going to make some people uncomfortable, but it happened right here in Tampa. While I was out filming a story about the Fortune Taylor Bridge, I came across a historical marker that nearly escaped my attention. Something told me to stop, so I turned around and read
This Happened Here in Tampa Read More »
The Contradiction There is something about The Great Migration that has always bothered me because the contradiction is hard to ignore. Southern officials spent generations telling Black people that they were inferior, unwanted, and needed to know their place. Yet when Black people finally started packing their bags and leaving, many of those same communities
They Said They Did Not Want Black People, So Why Did They Stop Them From Leaving? Read More »
“There Are No Black People in El Salvador” There is an old idea repeated in El Salvador that says, in one form or another, there are no Black people here. It gets said so casually that you might think the country simply came into the world that way. But once I started digging into the
The Black People El Salvador Learned Not to See Read More »
Words, Race, and Who Gets Corrected I came back to this subject because the way people judge Black speech has always stayed on my mind. Too often, the way Black people speak is treated as wrong simply because it sounds different from standard English. Some words and expressions have become strongly associated with Black culture
Black Words That Were Never Really Black Read More »
A Debt She Could Not Pay The year was 1902, near Dadeville, Alabama, and a Black woman named Sarah Neely found herself caught inside a system much bigger than the charge against her. Sarah was arrested for larceny, taken before the local mayor, convicted, and ordered to pay a fine. On paper, this may have
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Suspicion Has a History Black people do not become suspicious every time something looks wrong because we are irrational. Sometimes suspicion grows out of history. That does not mean every suspicious death is a murder. It does not mean every official report is false. It does not mean every police department, medical examiner, sheriff, prosecutor,
Black Suspicion Did Not Begin on Social Media Read More »
The Photograph That Changes the Way You See Him There is an image of Earl Campbell later in life that is difficult to reconcile with the football player people remember. The man who once ran through NFL defenders needed a walker and sometimes a wheelchair just to move around. His hands had become so arthritic
Earl Campbell: The Tyler Rose and the Price of Running Through Everybody Read More »
A House Sitting Beside History There is a house in downtown Tampa that most people could probably drive past without understanding what they are looking at. It sits at 851 East Zack Street, only a short distance from Tampa Union Station. Today the building looks fragile, weathered, and in desperate need of restoration. During segregation,
The Jackson House: When Segregation Made a Tampa Home a Haven Read More »