As Wildfire Smoke Chokes the Northeast Again, Black Communities Are at Risk

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

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Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

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Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

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July 16, 2026

Adam Mahoney, Capital B

Smoke from wildfires in Canada shrouds the Manhattan skyline at sunrise in Jersey City, New Jersey, on Thursday. Smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires has turned skies yellow-gray across the Great Lakes and Northeast as the jet stream pushes soot and ash across the Great Lakes and into the Northeast. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

On Wednesday, New York City ranked among the most polluted cities in the world. By Thursday, Gov. Kathy Hochul expanded a statewide Air Quality Health Advisory, warning that levels across New York City, Long Island, and Western New York could begin to cause adverse health effects on people. The most intense smoke is forecast to push as far south as Washington, D.C.

For Black communities across the Midwest and Northeast, the scene is familiar. Black communities already shoulder a disproportionate burden of air pollution, asthma, and respiratory disease, which makes these smoke events land even harder. Some of the worst hit places so far include Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee.

A recent study found that Black adults and those living in higher-poverty census tracts faced the strongest mortality effects from cumulative wildfire smoke exposure. Wildfire smoke, researchers at Stanford University have noted, is “10 times as toxic” as typical air pollution.

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