Purple-and-red light streams from stained-glass windows onto congregants’ faces, as Highland Park Mayor Glenda McDonald takes the pulpit at New Grace Missionary Baptist Church on a recent Sunday afternoon. 

For weeks, the Rev. Leon Morehead had been encouraging his flock to attend the Lift Every Voice and Vote event at the church, where Democratic organizers would be offering on-site voter registration. But only about 30 people showed up. Mayor McDonald doesn’t hide her disappointment. 

“This place should be full,” says the mayor of this almost all-Black enclave of Detroit. “Your vote is your way of saying, ‘I’m here, and I will not be moved.’”  

Ever since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Black voters have been the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituency. And Black churches have frequently operated almost as an extra organizational arm for Democrats, with church leaders endorsing candidates, giving them platforms to connect with voters, and spearheading registration and turnout efforts.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Highland Park Mayor Glenda McDonald, a Democrat, poses for a photo at New Grace Missionary Baptist Church. An enclave of Detroit, Highland Park is almost 90% Black.

Civil rights icons like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rep. John Lewis began their careers in the church, preaching love and peace as a path to social and political progress. As “the first Black institution,” says Eric McDaniel, co-director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Politics of Race and Ethnicity Lab, the church is “where Black politics took shape.”

Lately, however, the bond between the Democratic Party and the Black electorate has been looking more tenuous. Polls show President Joe Biden’s support among Black voters across the United States has fallen by double digits from the 92% he won four years ago. The decline in swing states is even sharper: A May New York Times/Siena poll of registered Black voters in battleground states found that fewer than half said they planned to vote for Mr. Biden this fall. While neither party believes the president is in any real danger of losing the Black vote, both sides agree that presidential elections can be won or lost on turnout in majority Black cities like Detroit.

Former President Donald Trump is trying to win over Black voters with ad buys and campaign stops, and is vetting a potential Black vice presidential candidate, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. The Trump campaign is leaning into Black voters’ frustration over inflation and concerns about illegal immigration.

But another trend may also be working to the Republican Party’s advantage: the decline of the Black church. 

Overall church membership has dropped precipitously in the U.S. since the last presidential cycle, as many churchgoers formed new habits during the pandemic and never made their way back to the pews. And Black churches have seen a particularly steep drop-off. This November, when the Biden campaign will need the support of Black voters more than ever, it may not have the turnout machine of Black churches operating at full tilt. 

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

The Rev. Leon Morehead leads the service at New Grace Missionary Baptist Church in Highland Park, Michigan.

The 30 people sitting in the pews at New Grace for the Lift Every Voice and Vote event were reminded of their legal rights while voting and given an overview of Michigan’s new voting access laws – including nine days of early voting that encompass two Sundays. But some worry that getting voters to the polls on those Sundays may not be as easy as it was in the days when they could all go straight from church.

“At this point, not only is the church dying,” says Mr. Morehead, “but voter equality is going to die.”

Decline in church attendance

Many Black Americans have long relied on their church for both immaterial and material needs. During Mr. Morehead’s morning service, he shared the podium with an electrician, who offered to help any interested congregants learn about skilled-trade careers that only require a high school diploma. Black churches are often central community hubs, including for political decision-making, with surveys suggesting that voters who attend Black Protestant churches are more likely than others to hear sermons on race and politics. And in most Black churches, these mobilization efforts have been to the benefit of the Democratic Party.

In 1962, a privately funded program called the Voter Education Project was founded at the behest of Democratic President John F. Kennedy’s administration and was active for the next several decades, working with Black churches to coordinate voter registration. In Detroit, two church-based political action committees – the Fannie Lou Hamer PAC and The Black Slate – have for decades endorsed and promoted Democratic candidates, including Coleman Young, who served as the first Black mayor of the city. Souls to the Polls, a movement that started in Florida in the 1990s to get Black voters to the polls after Sunday services, was widely adopted by Democratic state parties and churches across the country. 

But after-church carpools are only an effective turnout strategy if voters are at church to begin with. 

Church membership has been declining among U.S. adults since the early 2000s, and saw a sustained drop after the COVID-19 pandemic upended life in 2020. The decline among Black Americans has been particularly steep. In a 2023 Pew survey, just 46% of Black Protestants said they attended religious services once a month – a 15% decline from 2019. 

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

During the 1970s and ’80s, New Grace Missionary Baptist Church held multiple services every Sunday and boasted over 1,000 members. Weekly attendance now averages between 125 and 175. Roughly 100 people attended the service June 9, 2024, in Highland Park, Michigan.

The pandemic may have escalated the trend, but pastors say they’d been seeing it for years. New Grace was considered a megachurch in the 1970s and ’80s, says Mr. Morehead, with multiple services every Sunday and more than 1,000 members. By the early 2000s, that number had gone down by half. When Mr. Morehead began at New Grace in mid-2022, in-person attendance was below 100. Weekly attendance now averages between 125 and 175, he says, although this particular Sunday had closer to 100 attendees and more than two-thirds appeared to be part of the baby boomer generation or older. 

“Some of our senior members say, ‘It’s not the same way it used to be,’ and that’s because movie theaters and stores weren’t open on Sunday. There was no sports or work,” says Mr. Morehead. “You open the doors and people flock in – those days are over.”

One factor behind this decline is increased mobility. For years, New Grace needed only a small parking lot because its congregants all lived within walking distance. But as more Black Americans have moved out of urban neighborhoods into farther-flung suburbs and exurbs, many are no longer in close proximity to the churches their parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents attended – weakening relationship ties and feelings of obligation. 

“We have turned into silos of self instead of communities of care,” says the Rev. Torion Bridges, who founded The Commonwealth of Faith in Redford, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. “Whether it was a strong block club or a strong PTA, we are systematically losing these community organizations. And the last one we’re losing is the church.” 

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

The Rev. Torion Bridges speaks to the Monitor at The Commonwealth of Faith June 9, 2024, in Redford, Michigan. Although his church will play a role in mobilizing Black voters ahead of November's election, he thinks more turnout efforts will be needed.

“The cornerstone to Democratic success”

That hasn’t stopped campaigns from continuing to use Black churches to try to rally voters. Mr. Biden has given speeches at several historic Black South Carolina churches this year, including Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, where nine parishioners were killed by a white shooter in 2015. Earlier this month, Mr. Trump spoke at a Detroit church where he said that Mr. Biden has been “the worst president for Black people.”

A June USA Today/Suffolk poll found Mr. Biden winning just over half of Michigan and Pennsylvania’s Black voters, with Mr. Trump winning 15% and 10% respectively. Many experts expect the president’s stock among Black voters will rise as the election nears and more people begin paying attention. Still, polls at this same point in the run-up to the 2020 election had Mr. Biden’s support among Black voters between 70% and almost 90%.

And Democrats still remember the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton got almost 48,000 fewer votes in Detroit than President Barack Obama got in 2012. Mrs. Clinton lost Michigan, one of the “blue wall” states that cost her the election, by fewer than 11,000 votes. 

“The African American vote in Michigan is the cornerstone to Democratic success,” says Heaster Wheeler, senior adviser to Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state. “Every successful Democratic outcome in Michigan for the last 40-plus years is rooted in Black voter turnout.”

Mr. Trump’s current strength in the polls could well be a mirage. Pictures released from Mr. Trump’s Detroit church appearance last weekend indicated that many attendees were actually white. And a recent Brookings article pointed out that many of the polls showing Black voters moving toward Mr. Trump have high margins of error. Other polls suggest that Mr. Trump’s recent conviction in his New York hush money case may have already flipped a number of Trump-supporting Black voters back to Mr. Biden.

Among Black voters interviewed by the Monitor in Detroit, the conviction came up repeatedly, with many expressing incredulity that the life of a felon could be so different for a famous white man.

“You can’t even get a job at McDonald’s if you’re a convicted felon, and now this guy is running for president?” says Toni Burgess, a member of New Grace.

Still, a handful of Black voters at a Pride parade in downtown Detroit, where an “Out for Biden/Harris” yard sign was leaning upside down against a giant rainbow flag, expressed a willingness to spurn the Democratic Party.

Although Kelly McAlpine voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, she says she’ll vote for either Mr. Trump or third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this year because of “what’s going on” at the U.S.-Mexico border. A man named Ken, who declined to give his last name, says he voted for Mrs. Clinton in 2016 and Mr. Biden in 2020, but plans to stay home this November – even though he knows “that’s essentially a vote for Trump.” 

Young Black voters less Democratic

As Black Americans become less religious and church attendance declines, community leaders are less able to reach voters like Ms. McAlpine or Ken, says Mr. Bridges. Telling older, mostly female church attendees that they need to vote and to vote Democratic “is like shooting fish in a barrel,” he says. But getting through to Black voters who are more likely to stay home on Sunday could be a challenge.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

The Rev. Leon Morehead (left) leads the service, which includes a band, at New Grace Missionary Baptist Church in Highland Park, Michigan. Surveys find that young Black Americans are far less likely to have a connection to the Black church and are more open to voting Republican.

Young Black Americans are far less likely to have a connection to the Black church, according to the recent Pew survey. And while older white voters tend to skew more Republican, the trend is reversed in the Black community: Another Pew poll found that 29% of Black voters under the age of 50 supported or were leaning towards Mr. Trump, compared with just 9% of those over 50.

Feeling isolated – or even alienated – from the church, young Black voters are looking for community elsewhere: in LGBTQ+ groups, which have long had a complicated relationship with Black churches, or with Black Lives Matter, which some experts characterize as the first significant Black rights group that has no ties to church. 

Pandemic-inspired changes, such as adding live-streaming options, could be an opportunity to bring more young people back into the fold, says the Rev. Charles Williams II of Detroit’s Historic King Solomon Church. Before the pandemic, Mr. Williams says he preached to more than 125 congregants every Sunday; now it’s fewer than half that. But social media clips of his sermon often get as many as 400 views. 

“I not only have membership from the neighborhood or city; I have membership from across the country now,” says Mr. Williams, who is also the Michigan chair of the National Action Network, a civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Still, virtual connection can’t fully replace the benefits of gathering in person, says Mr. McDaniel at UT Austin. He remembers attending church one Sunday back when he was in grad school, and the pastor asked him to participate in a local march that the Rev. Jesse Jackson was leading. Although he really wanted to go home and watch football, he said yes – and was glad he did. 

“It’s the personal connection that is lost, and that’s critical,” says Mr. McDaniel. “It’s the people who are there sitting in the pews who will be more committed.”

When the United Kingdom heads to the polls July 4, all eyes will be on towns like Tyldesley.

With its tangle of narrow streets and red brick homes dating back to the area’s industrial heyday, Tyldesley is typical of towns across England’s northwest. Labour Party candidate Jo Platt has already spent weeks campaigning here, diligently pushing glossy leaflets into letterboxes and engaging in doorstep conversations with voters.

“We need to give a little bit of hope back to the country. I think that’s what we’ve lost,” she says earnestly, already walking to her next canvassing event. “We’ve lost pride in our towns. If we’re fortunate enough to get into government, then I hope that’s something that we can bring back.”

Labour is campaigning hard here. Once it was all but given that the traditionally left-leaning party would win the votes of working-class, industrial towns like Tyldesley. Then came 2019. The area’s constituency switched allegiances to the opposing Conservatives, ending decades of Labour domination.

Tyldesley was not alone. The 2019 election saw a landslide of small towns across England’s north and Midlands as well as in Wales – an area often described as the “red wall” in honor of Labour’s traditional colors – vote in Conservative members of Parliament, many for the very first time.

The collapse of the red wall was a key factor in pushing then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson to 2019 election victory with an 80-seat majority. But five years later, with Conservative approval ratings rapidly tumbling and Labour looking at overwhelming gains in Parliament, it’s these seats – and accordingly, their voters – that are likely to push Labour across the finish line. 

Identity and the red wall

The legend of the red wall – and its 2019 collapse – is tightly bound to an idea of British political tribalism. Throughout the 20th century, northern, working-class voters were seen as loyal Labour devotees, while rural, more affluent areas were judged to be unquestioning Conservative heartlands.

Karen Norris/Staff

The 2019 election brought new political divisions to the fore, with old class divides overshadowed by issues such as Brexit, when the U.K. left the European Union. Many red wall areas – towns that too often felt overlooked and forgotten in a new era of globalization – had voted to leave the EU, but were concerned that Labour would not honor the referendum results. In Tyldesley, the mood soured in the run-up to the 2019 vote. Local Labour councilor Jess Eastoe, who has been handing out leaflets with Ms. Platt, describes being verbally assaulted and spat at.

“The political wrangling over Brexit forced many people to choose between their EU identity [as a ‘leaver’ or a ‘remainer’] and their party identity,” says David Jeffery, a senior lecturer in British politics at the University of Liverpool. “Most studies show that, until quite recently, the EU identity was held much more strongly. Brexit really broke down this strong loyalty toward Labour.”

But that is now changing. As of June 13, just over three weeks before the election, the Conservative Party was polling at just 26% for the Leigh and Atherton constituency of which Tyldesley is part, compared with 50% for Labour. Similar figures are being seen across red wall seats, many of which are projected to fall back under Labour control.

“Of the red wall seats, I’d be surprised if more than a handful stayed with the Conservatives,” Dr. Jeffery says. 

“The Conservatives have done nothing”

The Conservatives’ fall from grace across red wall towns has a regional accent. Across Wales and northern England, many voters feel cheated by shortfalls in the government’s “leveling up” plan, a targeted program supposedly designed to help balance regional inequalities between London and other U.K. regions.

Leon Neal/Reuters

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (left) walks with energy secretary Claire Coutinho (right) at the Rough 47/3B Bravo gas platform in the North Sea, June 17, 2024.

The program was a key part of the Conservatives’ promise when they won red wall seats in 2019; at that year’s party conference, then-leader Mr. Johnson vowed that “leveling up” initiatives would repay the region’s trust. 

There has been little, however, in the way of results. The government’s flagship plan for a high-speed train line between London and Manchester, HS2, for example, was canceled in October 2023. (The line will instead stop at Birmingham, 100 miles farther south.) Similar policies, such as reducing regional differences in life expectancy or building 40 new hospitals by 2030, have also fallen flat. 

Discontentment in towns like Tyldesley also mirrors concerns seen across the country as a whole. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is unpopular, and after a flurry of four Conservative leaders in just over six years – including Liz Truss, who spent just 44 days in office and remains best known for being compared to a lettuce – there is a dearth of likely replacements. Meanwhile, the party’s rhetoric of fiscal austerity is wearing thin after 14 years, particularly against a background of inflation and rising prices. 

“The Conservatives have done nothing,” Tyldesley resident Charlotte Steel says when asked who she’ll be voting for in the election. She’s particularly worried about a health and social care system that has been hit by repeated Conservative funding cuts, and says that she’ll be supporting Labour. “This government doesn’t care about people.”

The cost of living in particular is on everyone’s lips. Doorstep issues focus on local infrastructure: People are desperate for more housing, but the new estates being hastily erected are too expensive for locals and serve commuters from nearby Manchester instead.

PA/Reuters

HS2 workers look on as the boring machine Cecelia breaks through after finishing a 10-mile-long tunnel for the HS2 project under the Chiltern Hills, March 21, 2024.

Local schoolteacher Paul Crowther remains undecided, but is already sure that he won’t be voting Conservative either. The party’s leader, Mr. Sunak, is simply out of touch with the needs of local people, he says. “We just need more funding,” he says, “For the NHS and for education.”

Labour rebounding?

It’s voters like Mr. Crowther that Labour hopes to bring back into the fold. In order to do so, its manifesto has introduced new themes, such as pledges to create a “new Border Security Command” and “crack down on antisocial behavior,” as well as plans to recruit more teachers and promises of economic stability. 

Critics have accused the party and its leader, Keir Starmer, of moving away from Labour’s left-wing roots and heading for the political center. Yet the move – a deliberate break from the policies of former leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was seen by many small-town voters as too radical – seems to be resonating. 

Mr. Starmer may not be wildly popular, but he is a safe option – and after years of political upheaval and an increasingly disliked government, that might just be a winning formula.

“People are worried about issues that affect this town, like drugs and petty crime,” says Ms. Eastoe, the Labour councilor. “We need to put the boring back in politics. We’re running a country, not a circus.”

Hatem Khaled/Reuters

Palestinians gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, amid shortages of aid supplies, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues.

It is a jarringly impersonal term for a life-and-death issue at the heart of the eight-month war in Gaza: whether Israel has exercised proportionality in its military response to Hamas’ spate of killings and kidnappings last Oct. 7.

The reason for the international focus on this bedrock international legal principle is clear: the immense toll being borne by Gaza’s Palestinian civilian population in the fighting.

Still, applying it to the Israel-Hamas conflict is less straightforward.

That’s because it requires disentangling a web of issues every bit as complex as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself – not just human and ethical, but also regarding matters of politics, military decisions, and the international rules of warfare.

One thing is straightforward.

While there has been terrible suffering on both sides, the scale of physical destruction, and the number of civilian casualties, have been far greater in Gaza. So, too, is the number of people forced from their homes and now facing shortages of vital supplies.

The numerical imbalance was brought home again this month, when Israeli special forces rescued four of the dozens of hostages still held by Hamas, from a pair of civilian apartment buildings. Although the rescue operation initially took the captors by surprise, Israel’s ground and air response during an ensuing firefight claimed more than 200 lives.

Yet the international agreements underpinning “proportionality” make it clear that the rights and wrongs of war cannot be reduced to a mere head count of the victims on each side.

Amir Cohen/Reuters

Israeli protesters demand that their government do a deal to release all hostages held in Gaza.

That is especially true of wars like that in Gaza – and other 21st century conflicts, like the United States’ “war on terror” after the Al Qaeda attack of 9/11. Such confrontations have pitted a militarily dominant country against nonstate adversaries embedded among civilians and subscribing to very different rules of engagement, or no rules at all.

One man’s proportionality ...

Proportionality, in the body of humanitarian law governing the treatment of civilians in wartime, is defined differently.

It requires, first, that in the kind of “war of self-defense” that Israel launched after Oct. 7, decision-makers must not use more force than is necessary to defeat the threat they are facing.

During combat, an additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions stipulates that “an attack shall be cancelled or suspended if it becomes apparent … that the attack may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”

So, overall, has Israel been meeting those tests?

“No” is the verdict – and not only from Hamas and other pro-Palestinian voices.

Similar accusations have come from Russia and China, from human-rights groups, and from some U.S. allies in Europe. Even Israel’s most important international ally, U.S. President Joe Biden, has described some aspects of Israeli actions in Gaza as “over the top.”

Israel, however, has strongly rebutted the allegations.

Israeli leaders say the unprecedented scale of their attacks in Gaza was a necessary and proportionate response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre – the greatest loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Nazi Holocaust.

From the outset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was launching something very different from the more limited military operations it has pursued in Gaza in the past.

Amir Cohen/Reuters

An Israeli military convoy moves inside the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Those were aimed at curbing Hamas rocket fire for a few years. This would be an all-out “war,” aimed at permanently breaking Hamas’ hold on Gaza and destroying its capacity to threaten Israel.

Israeli officials have also pushed back against accusations they have been waging that war with disproportionate force and insufficient attention to civilian lives. They have emphasized the occasions on which Israeli planes dropped leaflets warning local residents of impending attack.

They have not seriously challenged the high number of deaths in Gaza – at nearly 40,000, many times more than the roughly 1,500 Israeli lives lost.

But they do take issue with Palestinian assertions, widely accepted by the world’s media, that the great majority of the victims in Gaza have been civilians, women, and children. Israel’s argument has been boosted by a recent shift in the U.N.’s assessment of the casualty figures and reports suggesting many of the victims have, in fact, been men of fighting age.

What do the Talmud and Quran say?

Which of the dueling views about the war is more accurate will become clear, if at all, only after the fighting is over. And that is not only because they are part of the wider argument over the rights and wrongs of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It is because the tests of proportionality under international law are inherently subjective.

Ultimately, they come down to the weight that decision-makers place on civilian lives. The single greatest hurdle to an eventual peace is the degree to which Israelis and Palestinians value – or do not value – each others’ common humanity.

Hamas leaders have so far given little sign of valuing civilian lives. The Oct. 7 attacks targeted young and old, women and children, and, as the war has ground on, they appear to view the plight of Palestinian civilians with little more regard.

They have reserved their vast network of protective underground tunnels in Gaza for Hamas fighters. And news reports this month cited Hamas’ military commander, Yehia Sinwar, as calling Palestinian deaths a “necessary sacrifice” in its struggle against Israel.

While Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has insisted his commanders are properly taking the risk to Gaza’s civilians into account, other Israeli officials since Oct. 7 have denigrated Palestinians as “animals.”

Maybe the hope for change, however distant, could lie in a source that leaders on both sides of the war in Gaza profess to cherish: their religious texts.

Both the Jewish Talmud and the Quran teach a powerful ethical lesson.

In a verse echoed verbatim in the Quran, the Talmud says that “whoever destroys a single soul, Scripture regards him as if he had destroyed a complete world.

“And whoever preserves a single soul, Scripture regards him as if he had preserved a complete world.”

There was no question about who would be the star of the show as Major League Baseball descended upon Alabama for a weeklong series of Negro League tributes. But just to make sure, Birmingham native Willie Mays’ name was on the marquee of the historic Carver Theater ahead of a documentary screening Monday night.

From documentaries to baseball games, his presence was looming. And then, as Tuesday’s minor league game went into the good night, so did the “Say Hey Kid.”

“It’s very untimely,” offers comedian and actor Roy Wood Jr., a fellow son of Birmingham who was reporting at Rickwood Field at the time Mr. Mays’ passing at age 93 was announced.

“But to have seen and been in a baseball stadium when the announcement came out, you saw exactly what he did as a player,” says Mr. Wood, whose new podcast is called “Road to Rickwood.” “He brought people together, regardless of race or lifestyle. Strangers in this crowd here were hugging.”

AP/File

San Francisco Giants outfielder Willie Mays displays the four baseballs representing the four homers he hit against the Milwaukee Braves, April 30, 1961, in Milwaukee.

He offered those heartfelt sentiments during a celebrity game at the famed park on Wednesday evening, with a tribute game between the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants slated to take place Thursday. Within a baseball throw of Mr. Wood, a comedian who came to fame through his performance at the White House Correspondents’ dinner in 2023 and his tenure with “The Daily Show,” was Mr. Mays’ Hall of Fame plaque from Cooperstown.

The gold-plated memorial paled in comparison with Mr. Mays’ sterling career, even as the late afternoon sun beamed off it. Mr. Mays, a 24-time All-Star and 12-time Gold Glove winner, is considered by many the greatest player in MLB history. During a week in which MLB confirmed its commitment to giving the Negro Leagues their flowers, it was the city of Birmingham that blossomed to life, whether it was through various murals of Mr. Mays or the stories of his legend.

Rickwood Field, the oldest ballpark in the United States, took on additional significance this week in the aftermath of the death of Mr. Mays. He began his baseball career there in 1948 in the Negro Leagues as a 17-year-old. He played for the Birmingham Black Barons, and there’s a picture in the recesses of one of the park’s gift shops with members of that team. Just one person in that picture is still with us – the Rev. William Greason, one of Mr. Mays’ former teammates. He’s slated to throw out the first pitch at Thursday evening’s MLB game.

“There has never been a ballplayer as good as Willie Mays,” Mr. Greason told The Washington Post.

On Monday, Mr. Mays’ passing was the furthest thing from Birmingham’s mind, as the HBO documentary with his name played at Carver. After the screening, director Nelson George and Mr. Mays’ son, Michael, were on hand for a brief dialogue.

Michael Mays, who is from Harlem, talked about the love and appreciation his family has for Birmingham.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle/AP

Artist Chuck Styles (left) talks with host Harold Reynolds during the dedication of the mural celebrating Willie Mays in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, June 19, 2024. The mural, by Mr. Styles, was dedicated the day after Mr. Mays’ death at age 93.

“It’s kind of emotional because it’s full circle,” the younger Mays told the audience, almost prophetically. “It’s been an honor to meet [the surviving Negro Leaguers] and get to talk to them. We all know their hardship, we all know their struggle, but they marched through it like it wasn’t nothing.

“The joy and the happiness that went on in the community, despite the struggle, I can sense that when I come here,” he added. “That’s the core of my dad’s character. It’s a Birmingham thing. It’s a Fairfield thing. It’s a family thing.”

“Say Hey” wasn’t just an audible and welcoming gesture from Mr. Mays. It constituted how he played the game. 

That flair also had a tinge of defiance, which may have been interpreted as a type of protest during the segregationist and racist period during which Mr. Mays played, explains Anthony Williams, director of the Negro Southern League Museum in Birmingham.

“There’s a certain stylishness that just comes with [Black] culture. There’s a certain way of doing things differently from the regimented way,” says Mr. Williams. “You still have to learn discipline, the rules, and structure, but at the same time, you don’t have to adhere to it. You can actually have an edge by personalizing your own style within the rules. I think that’s what we see when we think of a Willie Mays or a Satchel Paige.”

Mr. Williams’ words open up an interesting dichotomy, considering one section of the Mays documentary, which talks about a brief spat with Jackie Robinson. 

Mr. Robinson believed that Mr. Mays didn’t do enough to speak up about the Civil Rights Movement, which was ironic considering a similar ideological conflict between Mr. Robinson and Malcolm X. Mr. Mays acknowledged Mr. Robinson’s efforts toward civil rights, and then offered, “So too, have I, but in a different way.” 

Ken Makin

Former New York Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia stands next to the Baseball Hall of Fame plaque honoring Willie Mays at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, June 19.

The documentary goes on to say that Mr. Mays mentored a host of Black baseball players, including Bobby Bonds, who later named Mr. Mays the godfather to his son, Barry.

Mr. Mays’ celebrity and approach to the game inspired the generations that would follow. Even as the number of Black baseball players continues to dwindle, there are advocates for the game such as former New York Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia, who appreciated the Negro League tributes at Rickwood.

“In the wake of Willie’s passing, this feels right,” Mr. Sabathia says. “I take on the personal responsibility of bringing more Black baseball players, but we need more Black families at the games. We need more accessible experiences like this that bring more fans, which will bring more Black players.”

That type of intentionality fits the week to a T. The hope is that it will be easy for prospective fans and baseball enthusiasts alike to “say hey.” As accolades and tributes continue to pour in, one thing is for certain – saying goodbye is a much more difficult task.

Frederick Douglass, by Sidney Morrison

Frederick Douglass roars from the pages of this meticulous novel, thanks to the voices of his steadfast wife, Anna, and their children, plus confidants, paramours, and even enslavers. A complex man emerges. Proud and persistent, fickle and flawed, he’s inseparable from the era’s tumult and hard-fought triumphs.

Shanghai, by Joseph Kanon

European refugees adrift in Shanghai face few options at the dawn of World War II. As Jewish spy Daniel Lohr and his flame, Leah, ping-pong between local gangs, Western opportunists, Japanese occupiers, and his crime-boss uncle, they’re drawn down morally murky paths. The threats, narrow misses, and one-liners pack a punch in this tale of loyalty and survival.

How To Age Disgracefully, by Clare Pooley

An eclectic bunch of West London locals bands together to save a community center. All wrestle with shame and regret. Each needs a boost. Madcap schemes, snappy banter, and insights on rebooting one’s joy make Clare Pooley’s latest novel go down smoothly.  

Shelterwood, by Lisa Wingate

Lisa Wingate interweaves two stories of courage set in Oklahoma. In 1909, two girls – one white and one Choctaw – subsist in the woods after fleeing abuse. In 1990, a park ranger investigates missing bones and a mysterious death. The novel is a page-turner.

The Glassmaker, by Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier’s exceptional novel hopscotches through five centuries of a glassblowing family in Murano, Italy. Time moves forward, but the characters age very little. Chevalier’s descriptive prose on glassmaking artistry, together with her delightful characters, creates an entrancing tale. 

Jackie, by Dawn Tripp

Dawn Tripp’s fictional portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis captures her imagined emotional life, including her marriage to John F. Kennedy, her grief after his assassination, and her complicated marriage to Aristotle Onassis. These weave a through line that’s a testimony to Kennedy Onassis’ resilience.

Godwin, by Joseph O’Neill

Lured by his dodgy, fortune-seeking, soccer agent half brother, Mark Wolfe finds himself in West Africa searching for a teenage soccer prodigy. Bouncing from office politics to families, from global capitalism to colonialism, the novel delivers storytelling with wit and depth.

David Rowland: 40/4 Chair, by Erwin Rowland and Laura Schenone

Is it possible to reinvent the chair? David Rowland did. His 40/4 design was the first stackable chair – 40 can nestle together like matryoshka dolls. This beautifully illustrated book chronicles the industrial designer’s extraordinary creativity. 

A Paradise of Small Houses, by Max Podemski

The Philadelphia row house. The Boston triple-decker. The New Orleans shotgun house. These types of homes evolved over decades, serving low- and middle-income residents. Such urban dwellings offer a template for addressing the housing shortage. 

Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, by Ann Powers

“Traveling” isn’t a conventional biography of Joni Mitchell. Ann Powers deconstructs Mitchell’s life into thematic chapters – from feminism to fusion jazz. Powers also shares how the songs resonate with her own life.

Carolina Rodriguez strolls through the unpaved streets in her blue uniform and sneakers, calling out to boys and girls to remind them that rugby training is being offered today through the Rugby 4 Chocó program. 

In El Valle, a town in the Chocó region along Colombia’s Pacific coast, the sport is child’s play – and something more.

Decades of fighting between guerrillas and paramilitaries over territory and control of drug-trafficking routes have made Chocó one of the most unstable areas of the country. Climate change also makes fishing and farming increasingly difficult, further diminishing opportunities for Chocó’s young people. Lacking jobs at home and seeking to escape the region’s high poverty, many youths are enticed to join the violent armed groups.

“I am sure that through sport, we can continue to take children away from the conflict,” Ms. Rodriguez says. 

Since 2021, the Rugby 4 Chocó program, for which Ms. Rodriguez serves as head coach, has given children a safe – and fulfilling – alternative to the violence roiling the region. Children who participate in the program’s coed rugby training sessions have the freedom to make decisions, program organizers note. There are no aggressive instructions directed at the children, so play can occur in a friendly environment. The children learn the values of trust, respect, responsibility, equity, and inclusion in society.  

The program was initiated by the local nonprofit Fundación Buen Punto and is supported by the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, based in Glasgow. The idea is to “take something fun and see how we can use this to bring people together, to teach them about peaceful coexistence, to teach them about conflict resolution, and give them new opportunities in life in a completely different way,” says Mark Camburn, manager of programs at SCIAF. 

So far, more than 1,000 children have participated in the program. The organizers try to conduct at least two training sessions per week.

Thirteen-year-old Wendy Machuca is one of the oldest children taking part in the program. She has helped translate training instructions to other players from the Emberá Dobida Indigenous group, as rugby is still a little-known sport in the remote region.

“I like it because rugby brings many new things that I have never seen before,” Wendy says.

Adri Salido

Children play rugby in El Valle.

Adri Salido

Men talk in front of a store in El Valle while their daughters play in a boat.

Adri Salido

Player Cristian Córdoba shaves his eyebrows. He lives in a small wooden house with only basic services.

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Lucero Lemus, who has participated in the Rugby 4 Chocó program since it began, sits for a portrait in her bedroom.

Adri Salido

Since 2021, more than 1,000 children have taken part in the rugby program.

Adri Salido

Children participate in a Rugby 4 Chocó training session.

Reuters

Men fish near Baltimore's broken Francis Scott Key Bridge, June 10.

Last week, Baltimore reopened its port to vessel traffic. The city can now turn its full attention to replacing a critical bridge that collapsed in March after being struck by a cargo freighter. June 24 marks the deadline for proposals to build a new span.

Restoring a vital piece of infrastructure offers an opportunity to rethink how citizens can be involved in redesigning their communities, especially at a time of mass urbanization and climate change. One proposal would replace the fallen Francis Scott Key Bridge with a lighter span suspended by cables. Its towers would be set farther apart, creating a wider lane for ships. The design, which reflects innovation and cooperation, was a collaborative effort between an Italian architect and a French structural engineer. The materials would have a low carbon footprint, and new communication technologies would better connect outlying communities with the city center.

The plan was pitched by the same company that rebuilt a bridge that collapsed in Genoa, Italy, in 2018. That restoration was completed in just 15 months, well short of the average time span for large infrastructure projects in Italy. Several factors combined to create “an ethical momentum of great stature,” Maurizio Milan, the designing engineer, told Euro News. Enhanced government transparency helped protect the project from corruption. Residents and construction workers were consulted in the designing the structure. Such steps reflect lessons learned after disasters elsewhere, such as in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and in Japan following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Residents and local officials in Baltimore have already stressed that, in replacing the Key Bridge, civic values matter as much as structural design. That has included compassion for the families of workers who died in the bridge collapse and economic support for those whose jobs ground to a halt while the port was closed.

The tragedy also sparked a vibrant debate about healing the city’s racial issues. Francis Scott Key penned the words of the national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.” As a lawyer, he represented enslaved people seeking their freedom in court. But he was also a slave owner himself.

Now some residents see a new bridge as an opportunity to express a more inclusive identity. Speaking at a community forum, Carl Snowden, head of the Caucus of African American Leaders, observed, “What an incredible moment in history we find ourselves in.” A new bridge in Baltimore may span more than water. It may also arc the city’s skyline with tighter bonds of community.