E.R. Shipp

Shipp pauses in the preparation of her culinary contributions to the Thanksgiving meal to share what she's grateful for this year.

Some powerbrokers and dirty tricksters want to sow impeachment confusion, label what’s at stake “petty” and convince most of us to tune out. But don’t fall for the okey-doke.

Economic forces have produced 'squeegee boys' in Baltimore, but where are the girls?

Watching a play version of "To Kill a Mockinbird" in New York last week, I realized something: This is really a story for white people.

There would be no country music as we know it without its African American roots.

That first-day of school spirit needs to be bottled and shared across Baltimore throughout the year. Every child needs all the time what the clergy, the Mothers on the Move and the mayor provided for a single day: safe passage.

Journalists need to recognize that the face of struggle in America is not just white.

Baltimoreans know this city better than any long-distance observers. From church, to Ceasefire Weekend activities to a crab feast, my Sunday in Baltimore showed how we get it done here.

E.R. Shipp: When you’ve encountered racism, your senses are forever at high alert. For me, the first time was when I was about seven, growing up in Conyers, Ga.

Bullying old white men who can count on old school institutions to amplify their screechy voices have no monopoly on “American values.”

West Baltimore is teeming with ideas for redevelopment, and Pennsylvania Avenue is the key.

As much as some media coverage tried to make the March for Our Lives about the students who survived a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., those students have been wise enough to use their moment in the spotlight to share the stage.

Black women's fight for control of their bodies and safety in the workplace long predates the heightened concerns evident in the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. That's becoming part of a larger conversation sparked by the story of Recy Taylor that is now being told in a documentary.

The Baltimore City Police Department is its own worst enemy. Those at the top speak about protecting and serving while — through winks-and-nods or sheer incompetence — they condone those in the rank and file who are all about self-serving and terrorizing.

Those who support Roy Moore and his ilk fear that their time is running out, but they still have enough mischief in them to wreak havoc on our democracy. They are busily at work.

How absolutely empowering would it be if blacks who have even tentatively made it into the middle class joined forces to help others navigate myriad barriers that keep them in the servant class?

We are blessed and cursed with access to so much information; but to make sense of it, we need filters. That's where we, the media, come in.

How can blacks get over slavery if whites can't get over the Confederacy?

As much as anything that may be said to be undeniably American, is the spirit of neighborliness that is evident at times of crisis.

E.R. Shipp: There now seems to be a serious groundswell of commitment to doing something about gun violence in Baltimore.

Bad things have to happen to white people before there is a groundswell of support for righting wrongs that people of color have suffered for years without sufficient redress.

Does it really come down to the judges? Should blame for repeat felons with access to guns and the temperament to use them be laid at the feet of the men and women in robes?

Baltimore columnist: What do I do with a relative who hates anyone who's not heterosexual? Write them off? Engage?

It is maddening that this country of ours, a so-called beacon to the rest of the world, is so mired in hatred of otherness. Two particularly galling examples come to mind: the death of Richard Collins in College Park on May 20 and the death of two men in a Portland, Ore., attack last Friday. All were killed by white men with a reported history of rank animus toward blacks and toward Muslims.

I am a news junkie who takes in information the way I take in air: It is a necessity for life. But you can get crazy with this stuff. So, while I never advocate tuning out, I do suggest we add a bit of variety to our diets to avoid "Trumpitis."

Baltimoreans filled the sanctuary at Beth Am Synagogue over the weekend in response to a call to discuss public education at a crossroads, specifically Baltimore's K-12 schools, in which some 80,000 children are currently enrolled, and the headline-grabbing challenges with which we are all too familiar.

For those of us who have had misgivings about the authenticity and the audacity of the Trump presidency from the beginning, there has been a certain delight in observing the missteps of a team easily described as "dumb and dumber."

The next time you go to the polls, think about how the person you vote for — a governor, a member of Congress, a president — can set into motion who one day serves on the Supreme Court. Then proceed with deliberate purpose.

The stories of Harriet Tubman and other freedom seekers, as they are called in the tourism brochures, hold many sobering lessons for those of us trying to make sense of the country we have come to be — a nation led by a president who lies as easily as he tweets. With wild accusations that congressional leaders and even the heads of the FBI and the National Security Agency say are unfounded, he seeks to distract media and anti-Trump activists from following his diabolical plans to destroy

With nuts, neophytes and revisionists running the Trump asylum, one might wonder why 70 or so presidents, chancellors and advocates for historically black colleges and universities — HBCUs — accepted a "getting-to-know-you" White House invitation. The president had promised to "do more for HBCUs than any other president has done before." So, gingerly suspending doubts, they, like the educator Booker T. Washington more than a century before, sought seats at the table of power to bring

While Mr. Trump spins yarns, marginalizes media and demonizes judges who disagree with him, our U.S. Constitution and our even older tradition of robust dissent will be our salvation. But we must not become so obsessed with fact checking that we lose sight of issues that should be addressed no matter who occupies the White House.

Clearly, marching is not enough. It is a start. This nascent movement has heavy lifting to do to get through to the president, to Congress and to that other half of America that is wondering why we are being so disrespectful. The first great hurdle, however, may be in binding into a coherent and sustainable alliance people with legions of fears and grievances — sometimes against each other.

There are glimmers of hope for enlightenment in the film "Hidden Figures." When the Costner character hears Katherine Johnson's story of having to run across campus to use the bathroom, he marches to the "colored ladies room" and knocks the sign down with a sledgehammer. The message here is that while the battles are fought in the halls of Congress and in the courts of law and public opinion, each of us has it in our power to take steps to affirm our common humanity.

There are glimmers of hope for enlightenment in the film "Hidden Figures." When the Costner character hears Katherine Johnson's story of having to run across campus to use the bathroom, he marches to the "colored ladies room" and knocks the sign down with a sledgehammer. The message here is that while the battles are fought in the halls of Congress and in the courts of law and public opinion, each of us has it in our power to take steps to affirm our common humanity.

As Morgan State University launched its sesquicentennial year in a special service Sunday, it was not lost on anyone there that Morgan's progress, like that of blacks in the U.S. in general, has come through concerted struggle. Even now its future is tied to the outcome of a federal lawsuit that seeks redress for vestiges of the Jim Crow era of state-sanctioned separate and unequal educational systems.

Too often blacks are seen as unrelentingly averse to law enforcement, though like other Americans we have police and military folks in our families. The story is complicated.

Over the weekend Mr. Trump named Stephen Bannon chief White House strategist, despite all that is known of Mr. Bannon's white nationalist leanings and his voice-of-a-movement status as incubator and disseminator of so-called "alt right" views through Breitbart News, an operation he directed before becoming Mr. Trump's campaign strategist in its final months. Think about it: Mr. Bannon is one of Mr. Trump's first executive choices.

As Election Day approached, I knew I'd carry with me my black ancestors, who've long fought for the right to vote in America. I did not count on taking with me a new citizen, a Muslim American who emigrated from Pakistan nine years ago. Going to the poll with him, and witnessing his indescribable joy at casting a vote for president for the first time, renewed my own sagging enthusiasm.

If Donald Trump loses, it won't be because the election is "rigged," but because of people like those I met in Reservoir Hill on Sunday who reject the racist, misogynistic and xenophobic strand of patriotism that dominates his campaign. And they do so, not with marching and protesting, but with greens and kugel.

If Donald Trump is a genius, as surrogates like former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani insist, he is of the evil genius variety and, like those in the movies, a menace to society.

The citywide homicide numbers — more than 1,000 in Baltimore since January 2013 — do not begin to register the paralyzing pain and suffocating sorrow of those left behind from violence. As my friend Vincent Dion Stringer wrote in a poem that became the lyrics for an orchestral work called "A Mother's Lament": "So many names unknown/So many sons lost/So many hearts broken/So many lights dimmed." But some have turned pain into purpose.

Dissent and protest, my fellow Americans, is in the very DNA of this country. Colin Kaepernick is therefore the ultimate patriot, caring enough about his very flawed nation to call it out for its failings and shaming the rest of us into engaging with the issues he raises.

As one who has personal experience with sexual assault as a college student years ago, I understand those, especially women, who refuse to separate the art from the man who created it. Just as I don't give a pass to Ryan Lochte, a 32-year-old Olympian, for his drunken rampage and lying in Rio last week, I do not give a pass to Nate Parker for what some might regard as a youthful indiscretion in 1999.

The death of Korryn Gaines is now under the microscope of official investigation and social media deconstruction. But I have been drawn to one aspect of what is now known about the 23-year-old mother of two who held Baltimore County police officers at bay for seven hours last week before they gunned her down and wounded her 5-year-old son. She instructed her son, Kodi, to view police as enemies who must be resisted: "You fight them. They are not for us."

I have usually dismissed as willfully ignorant and downright irresponsible those people who tune out the news and eschew politics. But as we find ourselves in a pitched battle for the United States presidency, I am beginning to understand them.

I can note that a lot of blacks are killed by blacks and a lot of whites are killed by whites and not let that observation distract me from the main issue at hand: why cops, no matter what their color, treat blacks so differently than they do other people. This process of being able to see beyond either-or is called using all parts of your brain and every ounce of your humanity. More people should try that.

For those demanding justice for Freddie Gray, and, by extension, for us all, this is no time to retreat into defeatism, permitting the anger and frustration to build to the next explosion. The mission is simple: Stay woke.

What's with conservative Republican politicians and their Bible-thumping demagoguery? They give religion a bad name the same way they imply Muslims do — and not just the "radical Islamic terrorists" that no sensible person condones.

When Donald Trump speaks, I hear someone who talks like a bully and who gives white people — mainly men — the courage to let their inner-bullies emerge, training their malevolence on those they perceive as threats. I do not see myself having an easy time in a Trumped-up America.

Baltimore needs to stop shrugging off its persistent problems at the polls.