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When the coronavirus first spread to the fields and food processing factories of California’s Central Valley, Graciela Ramirez’s boss announced that line workers afraid of infection could stay home without pay.A machine operator at Ruiz Foods, the nation’s largest manufacturer of frozen burritos, Ms. Ramirez stayed on the job to make sure she did not lose her $750-a-week wages. “I have necessities,” Ms. Ramirez, a 40-year-old mother of four, said in Spanish. “My food, my rent, my bills.” (Hubler, Fuller, Singhvi and Love, 6/26)

With coronavirus cases surging, the toll on Latino and Black Californians keeps getting worse. The two groups now have double the mortality rate from the virus in Los Angeles County than white residents, the latest troubling sign of the deep health inequity that has come with COVID-19. (Lin II, 6/27)

Dr. William Strudwick was finishing a shift at Washington, D.C.'s Howard University Hospital when his wife, Maria, texted. Their 19-year old son, Cole, wanted to join a protest five days after the killing of George Floyd. It was 9 p.m. After dark, Strudwick weighed, he couldn't predict how protesters would act — or how police would treat his son. He wrote back one word to his wife: "No." (Cheslow, 6/27)

It’s the difference between black and Black. A longtime push by African-American scholars and writers to capitalize the word black in the context of race has gained widespread acceptance in recent weeks and unleashed a deep debate over identity, race and power. Hundreds of news organizations over the past month have changed their style to Black in reference to the race of people, including The Associated Press, long considered an influential arbiter of journalism style. Far more than a typographical change, the move is part of a generations-old struggle over how best to refer to those who trace their ancestry to Africa. (Eligon, 6/26)

Downtown Washington blossomed into a rich celebration of black family and culture on Saturday, marking the sixth week of near-constant public expression in the District for racial justice. Attendees danced, sang and practiced yoga from the Washington Monument to Black Lives Matter Plaza in planned demonstrations that stretched from midmorning through late afternoon. The jubilant and controlled environment mirrored the street-fair vibe of many of the daytime demonstrations, which have stood in contrast to some more heated nighttime activities, including one where protesters trying to topple a statue near the White House clashed with police. (Davies and Boorstein, 6/27)

Two days after George Floyd was killed by the police, Zee Thomas, 15, posted a tweet: “If my mom says yes I’m leading a Nashville protest.” Ms. Thomas had never been to a protest, let alone organized one. And yet five days later, with the help of five other teenagers, she was leading a march through her city, some 10,000 strong. (Bennett, 6/26)

Mike Sexton is white and a Republican who lives in an affluent suburb of Fort Worth, where many neighbors back President Trump and some work in law enforcement. Rage wells up in his voice as he says that George Floyd, a Black man, was “basically lynched.” Shawn Ashmore is an independent who lives nearby in east Dallas. He’s using Floyd’s killing to teach his young sons uncomfortable lessons about the privileges their family enjoys because they’re white — how, for instance, they’ll never fear for their lives during an encounter with the police the way some Black men do. (Beason, 6/28)

It was a scene Jeannine Lee Lake never would have imagined when she first ran against Greg Pence, Vice President Mike Pence’s brother, for a rural Indiana congressional seat two years ago: an almost entirely white crowd of more than 100 people marching silently in the Pences’ hometown this month, offering prayers for Black people killed by police and an end to systemic racism. Leading them was Lake, who is in a rematch against Pence. She is the only Black woman running for federal office in Indiana this fall. (Burnett and Smith, 6/28)