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Everyone’s Watching Baltimore: So, Now What?
Baltimoreans are a bit touchy about the attention their city is receiving from “outsiders”—everyone from a rainbow of volunteers from faith-based or social-justice-oriented groups around the nation who see Baltimore as their next mission, to the U.S. attorney general to national figures like the Rev. Al Sharpton, Cornel West and even Prince, who performed a peace…
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How Black America Rallied to Stop the Racist Film The Birth of a Nation
A hundred years ago—on March 3, 1915, to be exact—as war consumed Europe, and the United States tried to steer clear of entanglements, some of the best minds and most passionate social-justice advocates had one goal: to stop the opening of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation at the Liberty Theater in New York City’s Times…
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How the Black Press Covered Brown v. Board of Education
The ruling now universally known as Brown v. Board of Education was hailed in the black press of the day as the most significant event in the freedom struggle since the Emancipation Proclamation. It was essentially a do-over, providing an opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court to set right what it got wrong in 1896…
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2012 Elections: Why SCOTUS Matters
(The Root) — This is most likely not at the top of your list as you begin to determine your man for president of the United States come Nov. 6. But, in a word, it should be this: SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the United States. Either President Obama or would-be President Romney will make…
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Study: Race a Factor in Wrongful Convictions
(The Root) — How many times have you heard the cynics among us quip that there are no guilty people in prison because somebody else did the crimes for which they’ve all been arrested, convicted and incarcerated? And yet every year — often more than once a year — the knowing smirk is momentarily wiped…
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Life for Zimmerman? Don't Count on It
For weeks, online and on the streets, people called for the arrest of the man who fatally shot an unarmed black 17-year-old, Trayvon Martin. To them the shooting constituted what they no doubt saw as murder, despite the speculations of many legal experts that, at most, the man, George Zimmerman, might be charged with manslaughter,…
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Zimmerman's Claim, and a Growing Trend
Wondering why George Zimmerman hasn’t been arrested yet in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin? The darned law’s the thing. A Sanford, Fla., police department with more backbone could have interpreted it in such a way that an over-eager, trigger-happy neighborhood-watch volunteer would have been arrested by now for the fatal shooting of the 17-year-old…
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What's All the Fuss About in Mississippi?
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is opposed to what it calls “mass incarcerations for terrifyingly long periods of time,” so its chief counsel is not very upset at what is upsetting so many people in Mississippi and nearby states: Gov. Haley Barbour’s on-his-way-out-the-door pardons and early releases to more than 200 people (pdf),…
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Herman Cain, Party Promoter
What is Herman Cain bringing to the Republican Party other than pizza and his brand of pizzazz? Well, the former chairman of Godfather’s Pizza, who pretty much dropped out of the running in the GOP presidential primary because of his womanizing, promises to bring an “unconventional” endorsement when he addresses the Southern Republican Leadership Conference…
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The Curious Case of 'Porgy and Bess'
You may not know the storyline of Porgy and Bess, but you certainly recognize some of the music, beginning with that standard “Summertime.” Black artistic royalty have been among those who have performed Porgy in whole or in part, onstage, on-screen, on vinyl or disc, as a theater musical, as a concert or — as…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
