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Corinne Bailey Rae drops into Express Newark, and students are thrilled

NEWARK, NJ–Corinne Bailey Rae is a time traveler. A cosmonaut. A historian of the future past. And this benevolent explorer wants her fans to see what she has seen. Her latest album, Black Rainbows, a 45-minute transmission released September 15, invites the listener on an immersive, sonic voyage traversing the American South, Ethiopia, and the great expanse of outer space as Bailey Rae surveys what was and what will be of Black existence.

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Arts & Culture Public Square Amplified team Arts & Culture Public Square Amplified team

Photo Essay| “A Touch of the South in New Jersey”

Photo essays can be counter-narratives to affirm our shared humanity in racialized spaces designed to erase it. And Public Square Amplified's photojournalist, Brian Branch-Price, makes it look sublime. As always, his choice of the black-and-white medium delivers a beautiful portrait of a Black female rancher.

Tammy Harris comes from generations of harvesters. In the mid-twentieth century, her grandparents traversed the highways during the terror-filled Jim Crow era of racialized laws from New Jersey to Florida to harvest potatoes and other produce.

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Arts & Culture Public Square Amplified team Arts & Culture Public Square Amplified team

Photo Essay| When Black Women Gather

On a summer day in August, When Black Women Gather (WBWG), an international organization, took a cross-section of Black women from N.J. to learn how to shoot.

"It was a long-awaited adventure originally planned for Mother's Day, pre-pandemic,” said the founder of the organization, Helen Higgenbotham.

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Photo Essay| Mark the Farmer

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Mark Kearney pulls weeds to make room for the eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, beans, squash and melons that will grow on the three-acre urban oasis he manages.

Kearney, who was formerly incarcerated, says he feels alchemy working the land on the Newark-based Hawthorne Avenue Farm.

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