Black men are no better off than they were more than 40 years ago, due to mass incarceration and job losses suffered during the Great Recession, according to a new report by researchers at the University of Chicago. Derek Neal and Armin Rick, the co-authors of the study, found that reforms in the criminal justice system at the state-level largely contributed to disparities in arrests and incarceration rates that ultimately stifled educational and economic progress for Black men.

Unlike some who have thrown up their hands in understandable despair, the shootings and the plight of black men in Chicago and elsewhere have sparked Gay's imagination and creativity. She used her skill as a painter to provoke members of the black community to take a new look at what is happening to their sons, not to look away. Gay's paintings also bid the black community to look at black men as human beings and fathers.