Mahlia Posey

As the number of Virginia dairy permits continue to be withdrawn every five days, families try to keep business for next generation. Usually milk prices swing up and down on three-year cycles, but 2018 is the fourth year in a row of lower-than-average prices. Four years ago, U.S. farmers were making about $23 for every 100 pounds of milk they produced. Now, they're getting around $15, according to the USDA. "It's scary. It's terrifying. It's disheartening. A whole lot of different varieties of emotion that go into what's happening to us and you know it's like nothing I've ever seen," said farmer Ken Smith.

Across the county, several incidents have been reported regarding natural hair. Vanessa VanDyke, 12, of Florida, faced expulsion for her Afro. A Texas cheerleader's braids caused an uproar. And Mya and Deanna Cook of Massachusetts received detention and were barred from extracurricular activities for wearing braid extensions. 

Despite the natural curly hair revolution happening, institutions haven’t caught on. The “neat and clean” standards found in most handbooks on grooming were not written for black women, for they ignore the fact that kinky and coarse natural hair grows from the scalp. 

We went to Magic Fingers Studio, a natural hair salon in Brooklyn, and spoke with black women, a father of a young girl and elementary school students, all of whom shared stories of their natural hair struggles.

NBC Asian America spoke with people of diverse multi-ethnic and multiracial backgrounds about their personal stories and their identities. 

5 reporters, 1 van. At a time of deep divisions in America, five young journalists travel together across the country to find hidden stories in every corner of the United States. From red states to blue states, the team explores the issues that divide us and discover the stories that unite us. A co-production of WGBH and The GroundTruth Project.

Elizabeth Colomba is revisiting history and repainting it. Raised in France by parents from Martinique, she recalls going on a school trip to the Louvre. Among its vast galleries of European art was a portrait of a black woman. The painting surprised her, she would say later, simply because it existed. That moment, she said, led her to the kind of representational painting that has become her hallmark. 

The 40-year-old artist, inspired by the Dutch Masters, now lives in the city that was settled by their countrymen. Rebelling against the Eurocentric canon, and its predominantly male visions of an art without black people, Ms. Colomba, using allegory and mythology, began to feature black people in her portraits. 

Painted largely in oil, her richly hued paintings of black people in upper-class household settings are intended to turn history on its head by putting their subjects in forbidden tableaux. 

The École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts graduate has exhibited in the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in New York, the Fondazione Biagiotti Progetto Arte in Florence, the Gallery MOMO in Cape Town and other museums. Her most recent work can be seen in “Uptown,” an exhibit at Columbia University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts on the new Manhattanville Campus through Aug. 20.

For black women in particular, wearing their natural hair has become a way to promote self-acceptance and personal comfort. We stepped into Miss Jessie's salon to talk to some of the women who are embracing the curl revolution. 

Three families, three sons, three deaths. When Oscar Grant was killed by Bart officer Johannes Mehserle, his death received much attention from the public and the press, eventually starting the I am Oscar Grant movement. However, the deaths of his two best friends from gun violence went by unnoticed. In the "Black Lives Matter" era where police brutality receives most of the national attention, and with good reason, the families of those who die from everyday street violence want justice and support too.

After his cousin was murdered, Michael Tubbs realized he wanted to help combat the violence in his hometown and he decided to run for mayor to make change in his community. He is Stockton, California's youngest mayor at age 26. 

After the great recession of 2008, inequality widened along racial lines as people lost their homes, often their only major asset. Earlier this month the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington, D.C. think tank, reported in “Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of US,” that the average white family today has net assets of $141,900, compared with the $11,000 for African American families. This hollowing out of the African American family asset base is a nationwide phenomenon that can be explained by the shrinking African American middle class. It’s even more a factor in “strong market” regions like the Bay Area, where housing costs are soaring.