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There are various reasons why AFROTECH participants attended this year’s conference, but even before the annual event began, one word hit home with everyone: community.

The gathering of minds at the AFROTECH Conference is the largest occasion in the nation for Black technology professionals. The conference began exactly one week following the 2024 presidential election. With Trump as the President-elect, many were left feeling discouraged and uneasy about what the future holds given some of the policies Republicans proposed in Project 2025.

Given the sequence of events, the timing of this year’s summit is perfect. For many attendees, AFROTECH has provided a safe space during uncertain times.

Photo by Marcus Ingram/Getty Images for AfroTech

“It’s our first time here and I think we didn’t really know what to expect, but just looking at every successful room full of individuals that look like you is awesome, and I think that’s more encouraging, even though last week a little different on the political side,” Yordnos Teffera told Blavity. “I think seeing this and being here just kind of gives you more hope as compared to last week.”

Photo by Robin L Marshall/Getty Images for AfroTech

The Onion, the Chicago-based satirical news company, won a bid Wednesday in a private bankruptcy auction to acquire conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars and related assets to his media empire, with backing from the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, who are owed compensation due to Jones’ years of dismissing the massacre.

The New York City Council secured a major win for renters by passing legislation to end upfront broker fees, a common burden for those seeking housing across the five boroughs.

Changing the broker-fee landscape in NYC housing

New York City and Boston stand out as the only U.S. cities that require tenants to pay broker fees, even if they have never hired or met the broker. The hefty fee, typically around 15% of the annual rent, is added to the total cost when tenants sign their new lease. This fee goes directly to the broker who listed or showed the property, The City and Gothamist reported.

Councilmember Chi Ossé (D-Brooklyn) speaks during a rally at the steps of City Hall ahead of a City Council meeting on November 13, 2024 in New York City. | Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The bill, which was introduced and sponsored by Chi Ossé, a council member who represents Bedford-Stuyvesant and North Crown Heights in Brooklyn, will now require the party who hired the broker, usually the landlord or building manager, to cover the broker fees. If tenants choose to employ their own real estate agent to ease the housing search, they are still responsible for paying that fee.

Council member Chi Ossé celebrates the passing of his bill during a City Council meeting at City Hall on November 13, 2024 in New York City. The NYC City Council held a series of votes that included the Fairness in Apartment Rentals Act, which requires whomever hired the real estate broker to pay the fee, essentially freeing renters from paying broker fees. The bill which was sponsored by Council member Ossé, passed by a 42-8 vote | Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The opening ceremony at the 2024 AFROTECH Conference kicked off with high energy, highlighting attendees’ excitement about the educational panels, networking and social mixers, the career fair and more over the next few days.

On Nov. 13, over 35,000 Black people from across the globe, who work in or are pivoting to the tech industry, gathered at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston to jumpstart their AFROTECH Conference experience. As the room filled, registrants were greeted by Will Lucas, AFROTECH’s brand manager and host of Black Tech Green Money, as DJ Stakz curated the good vibes that led to a dance party where there was nothing but high energy in the room.

The ceremony began with the Evan E. Worthing Colts marching band, drumline, and dance team bringing a spirit similar to HBCU homecomings as they played Beyoncé’s 2011 song “Party.” This revved up the crowd, who sang along loudly. Lucas then hopped on stage with actress Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins to welcome everyone before he passed the baton as the Innovation Stage host to his co-host who introduced Morgan DeBaun, Blavity’s founder and CEO.

“This not a regular tech conference as you can already tell,” she told the audience after she stepped on stage in a red pantsuit before doing a roll call to see who was in the room.

Photo: Benjamin Esakof

Photo: Benjamin Esakof

Michael Strahan continues to face backlash from people, primarily conservatives, who feel that he disrespected the troops on Veterans Day. On Sunday, he visited the San Diego Naval base with his Fox Sports colleagues. The former New York Giants star, who was standing with his arms crossed in front of him during the anthem, said veterans have a special place in his heart.

“I have nothing to protest. I have no statement to be made. The only statement that should be made and that I want to make is that I love the military, I’ve always loved the military, and I will always love the military,” he said in the clip.

New details have emerged in the tragic death of Philly rapper PnB Rock, born Rakim Allen, suggesting that an insider may have orchestrated the rapper’s murder inside Roscoe’s House of Chicken & Waffles in Los Angeles two years ago.

Harriet Tubman was a spy, a nurse, an abolitionist and, most importantly, a military leader who guided Union soldiers during the Civil War. Her resilience and wartime contributions were honored at a Veterans Day ceremony on Monday.

Social media users are turning to Bluesky as an alternative to X, formerly known as Twitter, following the results of the 2024 presidential election. The platform welcomed 700,000 new users since Nov. 5 — bumping the amount up to 14.5 million users worldwide, with most coming from North America and the United Kingdom. In September, Bluesky had 9 million users, according to the company.

The federal agency announced Friday that seniors will face changes in premiums, deductibles and coinsurance for Medicare Parts A and B. How do Medicare Parts A and B differ? Medicare Part B covers doctor visits; outpatient care; preventive services like […]

Ella Jenkins, a singer-songwriter known as the “first lady of children’s music,” has died. She was 100. 

According to NPR, John Smith, the associate director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, confirmed news of her passing. Jenkins had an enduring relationship with the nonprofit record label, recording 39 albums throughout her career of nearly seven decades. 

Finding her unique sound by way of church, folk and schoolyard influences, Jenkins, who was a self-taught musician with a natural understanding of rhythm, built a career on writing and performing music exclusively for children, a rarity in the mid-20th century, according to The New York Times. Her infectious renditions of nursery rhymes like “Miss Mary Mack” and “The Muffin Man” played a pivotal role in redefining children’s music and showed how music could be a tool for learning and empowerment. 

Jenkins’ career began in the 1950s when she quickly became known for her signature call-and-response technique, which she told NPR was inspired by jazz singer Cab Calloway’s 1931 song, “Minnie the Moocher,” specifically, it’s “Hi-dee hi-dee hi-dee hi” section. 

“Then you’d say it back — ‘ho-dee ho-dee ho-dee ho’,” she told the outlet. “So I started doing not only with his songs — I thought I would make up few songs myself. Children can learn very easily by imitating, following the leader and then pretty soon be able to teach it themselves.”

The success of Jenkins’ call-and-response led to Call-and-Response: Rhythmic Group Singing,” her first album, released in 1957, the Times reported. It featured West African and Arabic chants and one from an American chain gang, which included students from the Howalton Day School, the country’s first Black private school in Chicago. 

An avid advocate of the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-1960s, Jenkins’ lyricism and musicality was uplifting and conscious of the plight of the Black community, aiming at its youth to inspire change. Her activism brought her to Martin Luther King Jr.’s rally at Soldier Field in Chicago in 1964, where she performed. 

By the 1970s, Jenkins was a household name. In celebration of the bicentennial in 1976, she released We Are America’s Children. The album included a version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” which consists of a tribute to Indigenous Americans, and “Black Children Was Born,” an homage to Harriet Tubman, Bessie Smith and other Black visionaries of the 20th century. 

Jenkins appeared in many children’s programs, including Sesame Street, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood and WTTW’s Totem Club. 

Jenkins continued to make music and perform for children throughout the 1980s and 1990s, releasing the popular album Multicultural Children’s Songs in 1995. She was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children in 2000 and 2005, losing the latter to an album in tribute to her work. Jenkins received the Grammy for lifetime achievement in 2004. 

Jenkins released her last album, Camp Songs With Ella Jenkins and Friends, in 2017. 

According to the Times, she never married and has no immediate survivors.