Brick by brick, Deryl McKissack is building on a legacy. If you've ever taken in the magnitude of memorials, you've seen her handiwork.

"In a project like this, you know, there are a thousand moving parts," McKissack said.

For her, it's in the blood. She's part of a long line of architects, builders and dreamers.

"My family goes back to my great-great-grandfather who was a slave and came to this country in 1790. And he was a builder as a slave. And he passed a trade of building down to my great-grandfather," McKissack continued.

He would pass it down to his sons, who would become the first Black licensed architects in the southeast and officially start the family business in 1905. But it didn't end there. McKissack's father also took on the family legacy and her mother continued the work after his illness.  

"I started at six in the family business with my father. He would take us to work with him on Saturdays. I'm a twin and my mother needed a break," McKissack said. "And so he would take us on Saturdays and prop up on the drawing boards — because we didn't have computers back then — and he would have us draw."

In 1990, armed with a degree in civil engineering and $1000, McKissack launched her own firm.

"I had a lot to prove," she said. "I was one person. I was Black. I was female in a male-dominated industry. Why would anybody want to work with me?"

But somebody did eventually, after she picked up the phone and reached out to 150 potential clients.

"I don't need a handout," McKissack said. "If you give me an opportunity, I'm not going to let you down. And I built on that. My first client was Georgetown. I started with a $5,000 fee project and within six months I signed a million dollars worth of work with them."

From there, the repertoire grew from the U.S. Treasury restoration to modernizing D.C. area schools, to the design of Ghana's Cape Coast museum and project management on several U.S. airports.

"This particular job, you know, there was work on a taxiway in the apron all around the concourse. There was a lot of different activities here in the concourse."

But it was the appointment as architect of record for the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial that solidified McKissack's own stamp on history.

"I think about my ancestors and what they went through, the atrocities they went through — Jim Crow laws and you name it, slavery and all of that — for me to be sitting here today and even be sitting there then would just bring tears to my eyes because there had never been a time when a Black firm had designed something on a national mall."

Today her firm handles more than $15 billion in projects. But it wasn't a crystal stair. She says she faced misogyny and racism along the way.

"I've been discriminated against by Black men as well as White men," McKissacks said. "You want to say, you know, 'It's just a white male world and da da da da da.' But that's not true when you're a woman coming into this. And it's microaggressions in the sense that you can see them huddling together. You're left out."

A joint report from two architectural organizations found 2% of the nation's architects identify as African American. The barriers of obtaining licensure include the cost and a lack of support from their employer.

McKissack says she has come up with a plan to diversify the industry, enlisting some of the biggest firms in the country.

"Board members need to be Black in those companies so that there is a true understanding at the top of how policy makes Black people feel uncomfortable or how things are said and written," McKissack said. "So there are microaggressions, and then there's Black companies that need to be sustained."

Because like the McKissacks before her, she's laying a foundation she hopes lasts for generations to come.

"I believe that everybody is unique," she said. "They come here with a special purpose. And when they find that purpose, nothing can stop them. And as long as they're working and walking in that purpose, nothing can stop them."

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BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A jury in Georgia has adjourned without a verdict in the federal hate crimes trial over the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery.

A U.S. District Court judge dismissed the jury Monday evening after about three hours of deliberations that followed closing arguments in the case.

The jury will reconvene Tuesday morning at the courthouse in Brunswick, Georgia.

The jury is deliberating federal hate crime charges against Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William "Roddie" Brown.

Federal prosecutors claim Arbery was killed because of his race.

However, attorneys for the defendants said race was not a factor in pursuing Arbery, who was seen running in their neighborhood and looking at a home that was under construction.

The McMichaels and Brown have already been found guilty of state murder charges.

They are serving life sentences.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Like its namesake, President Andrew Jackson, Jacksonville is a city where race plays a prominent role in its history.

“We do have our issues,” said Isaiah Rumlin, president of the Jacksonville chapter of the NAACP.

He said the city has known its share of unrest, dating back to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He’s also concerned the same could happen during the Republican National Convention in August.

“We know we're going to have some problems here and there's going to be some demonstration taking place,” Rumlin said.

The head of the county’s GOP hopes that’s not the case.

“It’s only divisive, if you choose to make it so,” said Dean Black, chairman of the Duval County, Florida Republican Party.

President Trump is scheduled to give his renomination speech on August 27, 60 years to the day of a violent episode in Jacksonville’s civil rights movement.

It’s known as Ax Handle Saturday.

“It was just a bloody day in the city of Jacksonville,” Rumlin said. “And it will be a day that we will never forget.”

What happened next is a disturbing part of Jacksonville’s history. On that August day in 1960, a group of about 200 white men – brandishing baseball bats and ax handles – attacked a group of African American protesters at a lunch counter sit-in. The violence eventually spread into a park and nearby streets, where the mob attacked any African Americans in sight.

“It didn’t make any difference who you were. If you had black skin, you were attacked,” said Rodney Hurst, Sr., who survived Ax Handle Saturday.

Hurst was a teenager then, participating in a lunch counter sit-in, when the violence began.

“Our only option then was to run for safety because there was nothing,” he said. “There were no policemen downtown for protection of any kind, so we started running.”

He later wrote a book about his experience, called “It Was Never About a Hot Dog and a Coke.”

“The title, ‘It Was Never About a Hot Dog and a Coke,’ simply means that it was about human dignity and respect,” he said.

A 60th anniversary commemoration of Ax Handle Saturday has long been planned in the downtown park where it took place. Organizers said the RNC being in town at the same time won’t change that.

“The Republican Party has connected Donald Trump’s acceptance speech in an inextricable way to the anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday,” Hurst said. “We don’t mind. If you want to do something on August 27, that’s fine. What we’re commemorating happened 60 years ago.”

It’s an incident that, despite the passage of time, remains very much in the present.

Just last week, the city of Jacksonville removed a Confederate monument from the public park where violence occurred on Ax Handle Saturday in 1960. The school district there is also now looking at whether schools named after confederate leaders will be renamed.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Donald Trump's re-election campaign has scrapped plans to hold a rally in Alabama next weekend, CNN and The New York Post have confirmed.

The cancellation of the event comes amid concerns about the rising number of coronavirus cases in parts of the United States, including the South.

The campaign never formally announced the plans for the Alabama rally, but Trump was slated to travel to the state ahead of the GOP’s Senate primary race between his former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and former Auburn University football coach, Tommy Tuberville.

Campaign officials ultimately decided against it as state officials voiced concerns about a mass gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic, CNN reports.

A person close the Trump campaign told CNN there are currently no rallies on the horizon, but aides are scoping out possible venues for future events.

The canceled plans come as Trump continues to complain about the low turnout during his first return to the campaign trail in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

For decades, Black farmers say they have been at the mercy of historically discriminatory lending practices by the U.S. government and banks that do not treat them fairly.

“Farming is really hard for white males, and if it’s really hard for white males, then it’s dreadful for anyone else,” said Zephrine Hanson, an urban farmer who grows small crops she then sells to artisan shops.

Hanson and others say the practices have led to a precipitous decline in the number of Black farmers in our country.

According to the Census of Agriculture, there were roughly 1 million Black farmers in the United States in 1920, comprising around 14 percent of the total number of farmers in the United States.

In 2020, according to the same data, the number of Black farmers in the U.S. had fallen to 45,000, comprising only 1.4 percent of all farmers.

“You know, when you take a man’s farm, it’s not like he’s going down to work at McDonald’s,” said Dr. John Boyd, CEO of the National Black Farmer’s Association. “You break his spirit. You take his history, and dignity, and respect, and you crush him.”

Boyd says he founded the NBFA in the 1980s after he and four other Black farmers would experience discriminatory practices at the hands of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) when they would go into the office and ask for loans.

“At one particular time, [the director of the local USDA] spat on my shirt,” said Boyd. “He tore my application up and threw it in the trash can. I was pleading for $5,000, and this white farmer comes in, during my time when I’m supposed to be getting this loan, and he passes [the white farmer] a government check for $157,000.”

We reached out twice to the USDA for comment but have not gotten a response.

Boyd says, today, discrimination is less blatant. It can be something like pleasantly-worded letters saying loans cannot be processed and a farmer will have to try again next year. But to farmers of color, it is difficult; federal loans are often their only funding option outside of predatory lenders and suppliers who charge outrageous interest rates.

Otherwise, in a business built on credit, Black farmers are pushed out and forced to sell their farms.

“I’ll be honest, I hope the USDA changes, but I’m not waiting,” said Hanson. “That’s definitely something they’ll have to want to change.”

In 1997, more than 400 Black farmers filed a class action lawsuit against the USDA in what became known as Pigford vs. Glickman, charging the agency with discrimination against Black farmers. The government settled for more than $1.25 billion, the largest discrimination settlement ever paid by the federal government.

Even before the pandemic, it was a race against time to preserve Native American languages across the country. COVID-19 has accelerated this.

The Cherokee Nation has had more than 30 of its 2,000 fluent speakers pass away during the pandemic. They've made sure Cherokee language speakers received the COVID-19 vaccine first.

Other tribes have been prioritizing native speakers as well.

The Language Conservancy is one group working to revitalize native languages.

“It’s basically taken what might have given us another five years with the language, has now decreased it to maybe just a year or two before the last speakers pass on. And so, it's taken basically really a terrible crisis and created a whole other tragedy on top of it,” said Wil Meya, Executive Director at The Language Conservancy.

Just in the last six to 12 months, at least 30 of the speakers they've worked with personally have passed away. They've taken their efforts virtual, so they can continue in the pandemic.

That includes the teacher training and teaching young people native languages that usually happens in person. It's been happening over Zoom instead.

They say the positive from all this is they've been able to have people from all over the country, even the world, participate.

“Languages are, you know, an essential part of a community's identity and their health, and so we have this expression in the work we do that language is healing and for many young people, the relearning of their language is an effort to come to terms with the trauma of the past and try to move forward in a positive way,” said Meya.

The nonprofit has also pivoted to how it creates native language dictionaries.

Typically, it works in person with elders over two weeks. Now, they're putting laptops with a microphone and a recording setup on some reservations.

“We set up Zoom and we remote desktop into that machine and the linguist or the person who does the transcriber works with the elder just like you and I are talking over Zoom,” said Meya.

Currently, these remote dictionary efforts are happening in Montana with the Crow language, and in southern Colorado with the Ute dialect. They'll be expanding to parts of Canada in the coming months.

Step into Nicole Jennings' book club today and you will hear conversations she wasn’t having with her neighbors a year ago.

Her book club was born in the months after the death of George Floyd.

The discussion is often about issues at the core of what took place less than 10 miles from where they live in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina.

“The fact that I am a person of color, so for me to talk about life is not difficult, but for someone else to talk about my life and my experiences and to understand them from my point of view, it takes a lot,” Jennings said. “It takes someone who would want to listen and want to learn and not to feel as though anyone is pointing the finger, but my reality is my reality.”

For eight years, Jennings has lived in a neighborhood that is mostly white.

“I know that as an African American, I can count on one hand the number of people who look like me in the neighborhood,” she said. “Unless you get out of your bubble and your comfort zone, you’ll never recognize what you’re impacting and also what is impacting you.”

Like many suburbs across America, Edina is evolving.

“For our own community, which is predominantly white, getting more diverse every year, embracing that diversity, making sure everyone is welcome everyone is included,” said Edina Mayor Jim Hovland.

Mayor Hovland says his city has taken steps over the years to become more inclusive, including hiring a race and equity coordinator.

“That’s kind of the pathway we’re on, the trajectory for our community is gaining a better understanding of what these issues have historically been for people who are different from us, who have faced more impediments in life, things that we just took for granted,” the Mayor Hovland said.

High school senior Shreya Konkimalla has taken an active role in Edina when it comes to social justice.

“Usually in Edina, I think, we usually try to stray away from the hard conversations about race, diversity, and inclusion in order to avoid conflict,” Konkimalla said.

She’s building a virtual art gallery titled “From Struggling to Healing.”

“I think it’s something we can all come together with and all appreciate together, and I think from that, we have the ability to understand other people and where they are coming from,” the senior said.

It’s hard to know what progress looks like for an issue so deep and so personal.

“There is no yardstick for progress when you think about the centuries of acts that have not been discussed,” Jennings said.

Jennings says book club conversations with her neighbors have grown over the months to be authentic.

“We can take what we’re reading and look around us in the world,” book club member Kathy Ganley said.

“It’s the fact that we listen, and by doing so, we learn from each other,” another member Andrea Kmetz-Sheehy stated.

As we close in on a year since many parts of America started having uncomfortable conversations, Jennings says it’s important the discussions don’t go quiet.

“Ahmaud Arbery, that was before. Then, right after, that was Breonna Taylor, and right after that, it was sequential again. You don’t recognize it until it got in your backyard. That was frustrating. That was frustrating," Jennings said. "It was that concept. It wasn’t the, ‘Let’s talk about it’ moment. No, I’m eager to do that actually. I welcome it."