Theo, the Best Friend and Big Brother We Grew Up With”: Honoring Malcolm-Jamal Warner
The Black community mourns the loss of a familiar face—one that brought warmth, humor, and dignity into our homes for decades. Malcolm-Jamal Warner, best known as Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show, was more than a television character. He was our brother, our friend, and, in many ways, our reflection.
From the moment he stepped onto the screen in 1984, Warner brought Theo to life with a perfect balance of charm, vulnerability, and wit. Theo wasn't just a sitcom son—he was our son. He faced school troubles, learned life lessons, navigated relationships, and matured right before our eyes. He showed a generation of Black boys that they could be sensitive and smart, flawed and funny—and still be loved. He offered a rare image: a young Black male growing up in a stable, nurturing household, figuring out life without violence or caricature. That mattered.
But Malcolm-Jamal Warner didn’t stop there. After The Cosby Show, he quietly but steadily built a career rooted in integrity and depth. He starred in and directed multiple projects, including Malcolm & Eddie, lent his talents to Reed Between the Lines, and earned critical acclaim in The People v. O.J. Simpson and The Resident. His spoken word poetry and music showed the same intelligence and emotional resonance that marked his early acting. Warner was an artist of substance, moving with care and intention in an industry that often demands compromise from Black creatives.
For nearly four decades, Warner showed us what it means to grow in the spotlight with grace. He never chased celebrity—he embodied craft. He remained grounded, choosing roles and projects that uplifted, educated, and humanized. He represented the best of us.
Today, as the Black community mourns, we do so not just because a public figure has passed, but because a part of our shared memory—of growing up, of laughing, of learning what love and family look like—has dimmed. Malcolm-Jamal Warner was Theo, yes. But he was also the possibility of Black boyhood raised with care, and the blueprint of manhood defined on his own terms.
We honor his legacy, his talent, and his spirit. Rest in power, Brother Malcolm. You gave us something real.
—
Organization of Black American Unity (OBAU)
Latest News Stories
The One Big Beautiful Bill: A Beautiful Lie for Black America
Supreme Court’s 14th Amendment Ruling Sparks Alarm in Black Communities
Supreme Court’s 14th Amendment Ruling Sparks Alarm in Black Communities
By Dr. Lawrence "Larry" Smith, Founder & President, Organization of Black American Unity (OBAU)
July 6, 2025
President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) is now the law of the land—and the consequences are already cascading through our communities. Marketed as a patriotic solution to America’s challenges, the bill is, in reality, a coordinated assault on the health, wealth, and future of Black Americans across this country.
As Founder of the Organization of Black American Unity (OBAU), I feel a moral obligation to speak clearly: this bill is not beautiful. It is brutal.
Medicaid Cuts: Health Insecurity by Design
The OBBB imposes harsh new work requirements for Medicaid, placing millions of lives at risk. Black families—who disproportionately rely on Medicaid due to long-standing healthcare disparities—are once again targeted under the guise of “fiscal responsibility.”
In state after state, the result will be catastrophic: people will be forced to choose between healthcare and survival. Chronic illnesses will go untreated. Prescriptions will go unfilled. And preventable deaths will rise—not because of lack of resources, but because of lack of care for Black lives.
SNAP Rollbacks: Punishing Hunger with Austerity
The bill shifts the financial burden of food assistance (SNAP) to the states—leaving millions vulnerable to cuts, delays, and disqualification. For Black households, who face food insecurity at double the national average, this change is nothing less than economic violence.
It tells struggling families that their hunger is too expensive to feed. That their dignity is not worth the dollars it would take to ensure a meal. That their children must go without.
Higher Ed Barriers: A Knife to the Dream
The elimination of subsidized federal loans and the tightening of Pell Grant eligibility will slam the door shut on countless Black students. These are young people already carrying the weight of generational inequity, trying to rise through education—and now they are being pushed into deeper debt before their future even begins.
This bill doesn’t just cut programs. It cuts possibility.
Tax Cuts for the Wealthy, Crumbs for the Rest
While billionaires receive permanent tax cuts, working-class Black families are offered table scraps. The expanded standard deduction may look good on paper, but for those living paycheck to paycheck, it won’t fix stagnant wages, rising rent, or generational poverty.
Worse still, there is no investment in closing the racial wealth gap. No plan for expanding Black homeownership. No strategy for supporting Black-owned businesses. This is not economic reform. It is the widening of the chasm.
Climate Rollbacks: No Future in a Burning World
By gutting clean energy programs, the bill denies Black youth access to one of the fastest-growing job sectors in America. Green workforce initiatives that could have transformed lives in our communities have been tossed aside for the benefit of oil, gas, and fossil fuel billionaires.
Once again, our future has been sold for someone else’s profit.
The Bigger Picture: Coordinated Suppression
Let us be clear: the One Big Beautiful Bill is not just about cuts. It’s about control. It’s about stripping away the very programs that offered Black people a way forward—healthcare, food, education, housing, green jobs—while cloaking that destruction in patriotic language.
This is not policy. This is a rollback of justice.
A Founder’s Call: Organize. Resist. Rebuild.
From Harlem to Houston, from Compton to Charlotte, from coast to coast—this bill hurts our people. That’s why at OBAU, we are not reacting. We are responding with purpose and with power.
We are building new institutions of sovereignty and strength:
- DuBois College, for liberated Afrocentric education
- BLKCOIN, to circulate Black wealth in the digital age
- Biddy Transactions, to break barriers in real estate
- Creole Clothing Company, to reclaim and reframe Black pride through culture
We are not just resisting. We are reimagining.
The time has come for more than protest. The time has come for Black infrastructure, Black ownership, and Black autonomy.
They passed the bill.
They tried to bury us.
But we are the architects of our own future.
And we will never, ever be broken.
In solidarity and struggle,
Dr. Lawrence “Larry” Smith
Founder & President
Organization of Black American Unity (OBAU)
www.obau.org
Supreme Court’s 14th Amendment Ruling Sparks Alarm in Black Communities
Supreme Court’s 14th Amendment Ruling Sparks Alarm in Black Communities
Supreme Court’s 14th Amendment Ruling Sparks Alarm in Black Communities
By OBAU Writing Staff
July 6, 2025
In a ruling that many legal scholars are calling a constitutional crisis, the United States Supreme Court has declared that only Congress—not the states or federal courts—can enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to disqualify a presidential candidate. The decision comes in direct response to efforts to bar Donald J. Trump from the 2024 ballot for his role in the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
The ruling, passed in a 5–4 majority, clears the path for Trump to continue his campaign despite mounting legal and moral arguments that he violated his oath of office. But for Black America, the ruling represents something far deeper: a profound betrayal of one of the Constitution’s most important safeguards—one born out of our blood, our history, and our fight for freedom.
What Is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment?
Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment was part of the Reconstruction effort to build a multiracial democracy after the Civil War. Section 3 was designed to prevent former Confederates—those who had taken up arms against the United States—from holding office again. It reads:
“No person shall… hold any office… who, having previously taken an oath… to support the Constitution… shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion…”
The clause was clear then. And it is clear now. Yet the Court ruled that states, citizens, and even lower federal courts cannot enforce it without explicit Congressional action.
Why This Matters to Black America
This ruling sends a message: even if a president inspires a violent attack on the government, they can return to power if Congress refuses to act. And that message strikes at the very foundation of Black political struggle in the United States.
The 14th Amendment exists because Black Americans demanded it after slavery. It was our protection against those who would destroy the very Union that once enslaved us. It was our insurance that those who betrayed democracy could not lead it.
Now, that protection has been stripped away—not with tanks or torches, but with a gavel.
“This isn’t just a legal decision. It’s a direct challenge to the historical role Black people have played in making America live up to its promises,” said one OBAU constitutional advisor. “If the 14th Amendment can be gutted, what’s next?”
A Dangerous Pattern of Immunity and Impunity
This decision comes just days after the Court ruled that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for "official acts." Together, these rulings create a disturbing trend:
- Presidents may be immune from prosecution
- Insurrectionists may return to power
- Constitutional limits may no longer apply—if the person is powerful enough
Black Americans have long known the dangers of unchecked authority. We’ve lived it—from slave patrols to COINTELPRO to voter suppression. The very idea of law without accountability is what Reconstruction aimed to fix. But the Supreme Court’s latest ruling takes us backward.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Congress is unlikely to act. The system was built to protect itself. So we must do what Black Americans have always done: organize, educate, build, and resist.
At OBAU, we call for:
- National civic education on the 14th Amendment and Reconstruction
- Voter defense and registration efforts in every state
- Independent Black institutions to shield our people from legal and political instability
- A cultural and political awakening to the creeping erosion of democracy
We must reject the lie that this is about “states’ rights” or judicial restraint. This is about power—who holds it, and who the law is willing to protect.
The Final Word
The 14th Amendment is not a technicality. It is a contract sealed by the suffering of Black people and signed with the blood of our ancestors. If this nation will not honor it, then we must.
This is not just about Donald Trump. It’s about whether Black struggle, Black votes, and Black futures still matter in this country.
We will not be passive. We will not be silent.
We will protect our legacy—by any legal and collective means necessary.
— OBAU Writing Staff
Organization of Black American Unity (OBAU)
www.obau.org