Black Enterprise pays homage to two of the nation's literary GOATS on June 22nd
On this day, June 22, BLACK ENTERPRISE pays homage to two of the nation’s literary goats: W. E. B Du Bois, the author and scholar who wrote the seminal text, The Souls of Black Folk, and Octavia Butler, the brilliant author who penned Kindred, the tale of a Black woman who time travel back to the horrors of slavery.
Corporate filings indicate the automaker withdrew its claim three days after seeking repossession of the former college football player's $135,000 vehicle due to $9,170 in missed payments.
This marks the second time Mercedes-Benz has sought to repossess Sanders’ vehicle. In April 2025, the automaker initiated a similar action after a previous payment default. Sanders’ father, Colorado head football coach Deion Sanders, attributed the issue to “disruptions in the payment process.” That dispute was resolved within six days.
Why This Story Matters to the Sports and Business Community
This development underscores the complex relationship among collegiate NIL valuations, professional contract stability, and long-term asset management. College athletes now secure significant corporate endorsements, and their personal finances often resemble those of major corporations.
Sanders’ ongoing financial challenges highlight the instability young athletes often face after college. He went undrafted in April 2025 and was later waived by the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Without a professional contract, he quickly encountered financial difficulties as expected income disappeared. Such volatility is common among former college and professional athletes, many of whom struggle with cash-flow issues, sudden income fluctuations, and the challenge of managing new wealth after their sports careers end.
These legal actions demonstrate how automatic bankruptcy stays affect major consumer brands. Under Chapter 7, an automatic stay halts asset liquidation. For luxury brands like Mercedes-Benz, prolonged litigation can be costly as high-value collateral depreciates. Brands cannot reclaim assets without court approval.
Intersecting Legal Troubles
The car dispute is only part of Sanders’ financial difficulties. The defensive back filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in October 2023, listing debts exceeding $11 million.
Most of that debt arises from a 2015 incident at a Dallas high school. In 2016, John Darjean, a school security guard, filed a personal injury lawsuit, claiming that during a phone confiscation in 2015, a 15-year-old Sanders assaulted him, causing severe, permanent spinal injuries. Sanders missed the 2022 trial, after which a Texas court entered an $11.89 million default judgment against him.
Sanders’ attorneys state the Chapter 7 filing is necessary to give the athlete a “fresh start.” Sanders maintains he acted in self-defense. In bankruptcy, a debt discharge eliminates qualifying debts and prevents creditors from seeking payment, but not all debts are cleared automatically. Darjean is contesting the discharge, claiming the judgment against Sanders should not be eliminated. The court will decide after a trial whether the debt will be discharged or if Sanders remains responsible. A federal trial is scheduled for Aug. 31 to determine if the multimillion-dollar judgment can be cleared.
Additionally, the resolution of the Mercedes-Benz claim follows a recent legal victory for Sanders.
The firm withdrew its lawsuit after U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater ordered its lawyers to show good cause and questioned why they had not properly served Sanders.
Mother of 1-Year-Old Killed in Mississippi Police Shooting Speaks Out, Calls for Justice
The mother of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley is sharing her account of the moments that led to her son's death
The mother of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley is speaking publicly for the first time following the fatal police shooting that claimed her son’s life in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, Mississippi.
In a video released by civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Van Turner, Vellesiya Wiley recounted the events leading up to the June 14 shooting that left her son dead and her friend critically injured. According to Wiley, she and her friend were leaving Walmart when police approached them over a suspected shoplifting incident. Wiley said she initially continued walking because the situation did not involve her.
Wiley alleged that she and her son got into her friend’s vehicle, and when her friend began driving away, officers drew their weapons. Fearing for her son’s safety, she said she lifted Kohen in an attempt to make officers aware that a child was inside the vehicle.
“By the time I sat my baby back down, it was like three or four shots,” Wiley said in the video. She stated that one bullet struck Kohen in the ribcage, while additional rounds hit her friend in the arm and thigh.
She also disputed claims that her friend intentionally tried to hit one of the officers with her vehicle.
“They tried to say that she forcefully was trying to drive and hit them, but they were all on the right side, and she was driving to the left. They just personally shot into the car,” Wiley said.
A 1-year-old in Mississippi was shot and killed by police after a cop opened fire on a vehicle involved in an alleged shoplifting incident at a Walmart. An adult was also critically wounded.
A witness says they saw 2 women leaving the store with an infant, Kohen Kartier Wiley,… pic.twitter.com/9WZBkn3kj7
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) June 16, 2026
The shooting has sparked outrage across Mississippi and beyond, with community members gathering outside the Senatobia Walmart this week to demand accountability. Demonstrators called for the release of body camera footage and additional evidence related to the incident. Protesters clashed with law enforcement Tuesday evening, when authorities deployed tear gas outside the store, reports Action News 5.
Meanwhile, attorneys representing the family have questioned why officers discharged their weapons after allegedly seeing a child inside the vehicle and are calling for the release of body camera footage and Walmart surveillance video.
The officer who fired the fatal shots has not been publicly identified. Senatobia officials confirmed that the officer has been placed on administrative leave. The Mississippi Department of Public Safety is leading the investigation.
As the investigation continues, Wiley says she is focused on seeking justice for her son and ensuring that his death does not go unanswered.
30,000 Borrowers Will Have Federal Student Loans Forgiven
Emails confirming borrowers are eligible for relief under the settlement, began going out on June 12.
The U.S. Department of Education has begun notifying roughly 30,000 federal student loan borrowers that their debt will be canceled under a court-approved settlement tied to borrower defense claims alleging school misconduct, according to Forbes.
Emails began going out June 12, confirming borrowers are eligible for relief under the settlement in Sweet v. McMahon, formerly Sweet v. Cardona. The agreement covers borrowers whose applications were not processed by an April 15 court-ordered deadline.
🚨 We're hearing that some Post-Class Applicants who attended a non-Exhibit C school and are entitled to full settlement relief have started receiving notices from @usedgov.
The Department has until June 15 to send these notices.
— Project on Predatory Student Lending (@EdDebtJustice) June 12, 2026
Under settlement terms, the Education Department must discharge eligible federal student loans, issue refunds for qualifying payments made directly to the government, and remove associated negative credit reporting within one year of notification.
The relief follows a March 26 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the department’s request to delay implementation. The decision allowed broader discharge efforts affecting about 205,000 borrowers whose borrower defense applications had remained unresolved for years.
Borrower defense rules allow federal loan borrowers to seek cancellation if they can demonstrate their school misled them or engaged in substantial misconduct related to educational programs.
The underlying lawsuit, filed in 2019, accused the Education Department of failing to act on hundreds of thousands of pending claims. A 2022 settlement established more than $6 billion in potential relief for eligible borrowers tied to specific institutions or long-delayed applications.
According to the outlet, the Education Department said: “Despite its best efforts, ED could not respond to your application on or before Apr. 15, 2026.” It added that relief will be processed within one year unless further court action intervenes.
Officials have not announced a timeline for additional discharge waves beyond the approximately 30,000 borrowers currently receiving notices.
Advocates for student loan borrowers have said the settlement represents one of the largest borrower defense relief efforts in recent years. However, implementation timelines continue to depend on court oversight and the Education Department’s administrative processing capacity.
Pastor Dr. Jamal Bryant Drops The Blueprint For ‘BLACKGROUND’ And Breaks Ground On ‘New Birth Village’
The moment embodied the spirit of Juneteenth
On June 21, during Sunday morning church service at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, Pastor Dr. Jamal Bryant announced “BLACKGROUND,” a massive economic ecosystem designed to build tangible, generational wealth within the Black community. The crown jewel of the launch? New Birth Village, a 304-residence housing development engineered to turn lifetime renters into property owners.
“We’re building this while Kemp is still governor,” Bryant preached. “We’re building this before Keisha goes into the governor’s mansion. We’re building all of this!”
After a two-hour service on Juneteenth weekend, Bryant and first lady Dr. Karri Bryant led the church congregation in a processional ceremony to break ground at the site where New Birth Village will be located.
“Bryant used the analogy of a butterfly’s plight to express the initiative’s determination and flight in a video voiceover posted to Instagram.
“Today, we operate out of the broken psychosis of a butterfly,” Bryant said. “A butterfly, anatomically, should not be able to fly. Its wings are too big, and its body is too heavy that it should never be able to get off the ground … Nobody told the butterfly they weren’t supposed to fly … we have butterfly faith at New Birth. Everything they said we wouldn’t be able to do, we’ve been able to do it.”
“This, ladies and gentlemen, is single-handedly disfiguring and dismantling the spirit of gentrification.”
New Birth Village isn’t your typical community housing project. In a move that defines absolute economic intentionality, New Birth is executing this development with a 100% all-Black team: Black developers, Black construction planners, and Black-owned construction crews, keeping Black dollars circulating right where they belong.
The market response proves that the consumer hunger for high-quality, accessible real estate assets is at an all-time high. Before developers even broke ground or hosted a formal launch event, over 3,000 eager buyers flooded the waiting list for the 390 available units. This massive demand underscores an urgent reality: Black families are ready to invest; they just need the inventory and the access.
Home Ground (New Birth Village | Homeownership): Expanding direct access to real estate assets as the literal foundation of family equity and generational wealth.
Common Ground (The King’s Table | Food Security):Combating regional food insecurity with precision. Through bi-weekly distributions every first and third Saturday, the church ensures the community’s physical health matches its economic growth.
Higher Ground (Education | Civic Engagement): Creating multiple dimensions of opportunity—spanning academic scholarships, skilled trades training, voter education, and civic leadership development. The directive here is clear: protecting civil rights is inseparable from building financial independence.
Economic Ground (Business & Entrepreneurship): The macro-play. BLACKGROUND has set an aggressive mandate to help launch one million new Black-owned businesses by 2030 by providing entrepreneurs with critical marketplace networks, mentorship, and scaling resources.
Firm Ground (Financial Literacy): Delivering the tactical, high-level tools and wealth-management strategies required to build credit, master investments, and protect capital for generations.
Holy Ground (New Birth Missionary Baptist Church): The spiritual center and strategic corporate engine powering the entire movement, operating far beyond the sanctuary doors.
The Top of the Bottom Line
When it comes to closing the racial wealth gap, teaching financial literacy is no longer enough. The real game is equity, asset control, and enterprise infrastructure—and New Birth Missionary Baptist Church is putting on a masterclass in economic self-reliance. By leveraging its own institutional capital and land to build accessible real estate, New Birth is shifting the paradigm from charity to true asset ownership. This is the ultimate blueprint for how the modern Black church can weaponize its infrastructure to buy back the block and secure generational prosperity.
According to a study released in May by Catalyst and New York University School of Law’s Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, 80% of U.S. organizations remain committed to workplace inclusion despite growing legal and political pressure surrounding DEI initiatives. The report, titled “A New Path to Inclusion: How to Overcome Legal and Cultural Constraints on Building Fair Workplaces,” surveyed more than 2,000 employees and leaders and found that many companies still value and implement DEI.
The findings arrive as many corporations face increased scrutiny following President Donald Trump’s executive actions targeting DEI programs and the continued fallout from the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
“Despite a high-risk legal environment, our research shows that DEI is not dying—it is evolving,” said Joy Ohm, vice president at Catalyst, in a press release. “We see a majority of organizations adjusting their strategies, so this is a story of adaptation, not a broad rollback.”
The report found that 77% of organizations have altered their DEI investments over the past three years. However, those changes have not been uniform. Among federal contractors, who are subject to heightened government oversight, 51% reported reducing their inclusion efforts, while only 32% increased them. In contrast, 52% of organizations that are not federal contractors reported increasing their inclusion efforts, compared with just 20% that reported decreases.
“Even in the face of a concerted assault on the values of inclusion and fairness, many organizations remain deeply committed to this work,” Ohm added.
David Glasgow, the executive director of the Meltzer Center, said the data illustrates how companies are adapting based on their legal exposure rather than abandoning inclusion altogether.
“It’s been extremely challenging for organizations of all kinds to navigate the legal environment for DEI work over the past few years,” Glasgow said. “Yet we are seeing companies adopt nuanced approaches to inclusion based on their specific risk exposure.”
The report also suggests that many companies are rebranding or reframing DEI efforts around broader concepts such as workplace fairness, belonging, and opportunity while continuing to pursue inclusion goals internally. Researchers argue that the shift reflects a changing landscape rather than the end of corporate diversity efforts.
While companies may be changing the language surrounding DEI, the demand for fair and inclusive workplaces remains firmly in place.
“What organizations say publicly about their inclusion initiatives doesn’t always tell the full story,” said Christina Thomas, who serves as project director at the Meltzer Center.
“Organizations are responding to real legal and political pressure by changing their language and public posture. But the internal work is harder to undo,” Thomas added. “It’s embedded in people, processes, and culture in ways that don’t shift as quickly as a public statement. These findings indicate that the reality inside organizations is more complicated than the headlines suggest, and that matters for understanding where DEI actually stands.”
Do You See Yourself In The C-Suite? Lets Put You in the Corner Office
It’s Dexter Hall’s strategic mission to get you there — and succeed! Here’s why.
Dexter Hall says he’s gotten more out of life “by giving to others than by what has been given” to him. Wearing a cross around his neck like an old-fashioned, Southern pastor, Hall is a professional coach with the Black Executive Men organization. He sat down with BLACK ENTERPRISE Senior Multiplatform Content Producer Ashlei Stevens for the XCEL Summit for Men Spotlight series three years ago.
As we approach the 10th anniversary of the XCEL Summit for Men, BE reminds today’s young African American professionals of a piece of advice he offers to anyone aspiring to greatness — “you must first be a servant to others.” It’s a part of Hall’s leadership style. Hall and the Black Executive Men organization have the mission to help Black men who aspire to C-suite leadership get there and succeed. When you hear his point of view in this accompanying video clip, you’ll know he has the strategy to get you to the C-suite. And BE wants to help him help you!
County officials said the center aims to address gaps in services.
DeKalb County officials opened a new day center to provide residents experiencing homelessness with access to meals, mental health support, employment assistance, and housing services, Decaturish reports.
The South DeKalb Day Center facility, located at New Life Church in Decatur, is designed to serve as a central access point for people seeking help with immediate needs and long-term housing solutions. County leaders said the center will offer case management, behavioral health referrals, and connections to job training and permanent housing programs. It is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and offers breakfast and lunch.
The opening comes three months after the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved nearly $930,000 in funding for the initiative. The allocation covers leasing costs, staffing, food services, security, and other operational expenses.
County officials said the center aims to address gaps in daytime services for people experiencing homelessness by offering support in a single location.
According to the county’s Community Development Department, staff members will assess each person’s needs and connect them with resources, including mental healthcare, workforce development programs, and housing navigation services.
“The key focus here though is you got individuals who are in crisis, give them stabilization and transform them to a better life,” DeKalb County Community Development Director Alan Mitchell told WSB Radio. “No one has done this before in this metro area.”
County leaders accelerated plans for the project following increased public concern over homelessness in Decatur and the limited availability of dedicated daytime resources.
“This new center strengthens our ability to meet residents where they are, provide critical support services, and create opportunities for long-term success. It represents another step forward in our efforts to build a more responsive and coordinated system of care throughout DeKalb County,” DeKalb County CEO Lorraine Cochran-Johnson said.
Officials said the center is intended to provide a consistent entry point for residents seeking assistance while helping connect them with stable housing and other essential services.
Obamas’ Higher Ground Production Company Lands Disney Deal Following Netflix Exit
Barack and Michelle Obama's production company is entering a new chapter with Disney, launching an original animated fantasy series.
Barack and Michelle Obama’s media production company, Higher Ground, embarks on its next major venture after ending its eight-year first-look deal with Netflix earlier this year.
The company has partnered with Disney to develop Journey, an original animated fantasy series produced in collaboration with Disney Kids & Family (formerly known as Disney Branded Television). Created and executive produced by Matt Munn, whose previous credits include Ice Age: Collision Course and Spies in Disguise, Journey follows a young heroine who ventures into forbidden lands in search of answers surrounding her father’s disappearance while discovering powerful magic within herself.
“Journey is an epic adventure anchored by a remarkable young heroine whose courage inspires those around her,” said Ayo Davis, president of Disney Kids & Family, in a press release, according to The Independent. Davis added that the series explores “resilience, self-discovery and the power of believing in something bigger than yourself.”
Jessie Dicovitsky, who serves as Higher Ground’s head of television, said the company sees the project as a continuation of its mission to create meaningful content for families.
“Combining adventure, imagination and music, Journey is a true original that takes bold swings,” Dicovitsky said. “We’re proud to partner with Disney on this fantastical series and to build on Higher Ground’s history of delivering fun and meaningful stories for kids and families.”
Founded in 2018 by the former president and first lady, Higher Ground has become one of the most successful production companies launched by public figures. Its projects include the Oscar- and Emmy-winning documentary American Factory, the Oscar-nominated films Rustin and American Symphony, and family-focused programming such as Ada Twist, Scientist.
The Disney deal comes just months after the Obamas announced in April that Higher Ground would become an independent production company, allowing it to work with multiple studios and distributors rather than remaining tied to a single platform. Nevertheless, Journey signals that the Obamas remain committed to using storytelling to inspire younger generations while expanding their footprint across the entertainment industry.
