It was near the end of the "Blogging While Brown" conference on Saturday when a woman in the Air Force stepped to the microphone to tell the group that she blogged about natural hair and that there were "so many restrictions" on it in the military. If you have "relaxed" hair, she said, a new rule says one can't have two inches of new growth showing.

Black women were told they couldn't wear braids, cornrows or locs. "It's like singling us out," she said.

"I'm here because I don't know what to do."

Given that it was a conference of bloggers and the room was equipped for wireless, the twitterverse lit up.

"Makes me wonder what other indignities black military endure but does not complain about? #bwb," read one tweet, using the "bwb" "hashtag" for the conference.

Another wrote, "So apparently, the military has banned women from having more than 2 inches of new growth. The whole room just went 'WTF?!?' #bwb"

The founder and executive director of the conference committee, Gina McCauley, was reassuring. "You're not alone. You have a sisterhood of bloggers," she told the military woman. McCauley also gave out the Web address of a site with information on how to blog anonymously.

The Air Force attendee — who was wearing civilian clothes — was in the right place. The 206 official registrants for the third annual Blogging While Brown conference, held at Washington's Walter E. Washington Convention Center, were mostly other women, mostly black, less interested in looking like the latest hair-weaved video star than concerned about making a difference.

"To see so many women with natural hair here," marveled Patrice Yursik of the blog Afrobella, which is devoted to the topic. "Not to mention natural hair blogs. There seems to be an explosion of that." Sitting next to Baratunde Thurston of jackandjillpolitics.com (and formerly of the Onion, the satirical newspaper and website), and Lola Adesioye of Britain's Guardian, formerly of the New York Times and CNN, Yursik announced that as of July 1 she was launching a broadcast counterpart, Afrobella Radio.

That was just one panel. Also represented were blogs such as Racialicious and blackWeb2.0, Scott Hanselman of "Ways to Make Your Blog Suck Less," Facebook, Comcast, Afronetizen, the Federal Trade Commission and former Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin, among others. They served up expertise and inspiration. "Don't let your job interfere with your career," a quote from panelist Anil Dash, was a popular retweet.

McCauley reminded the audience that it was the black blogosphere that helped keep alive indignation about the racially charged beatings in Jena, La., in 2007, until the issue became a cause and caught the attention of the mainstream media.

One panel followed up that thought with lesser examples of black-blogger activism: Creating an AIDS-awareness campaign called the Red Pump Project, whose ideas were picked up by the Centers for Disease Control; monitoring a Hollywood that rewrote Asian, black or brown characters into white ones; or conversely, raising the idea that the next screen Spiderman did not have to be white.

In the eyes of McCauley, an Austin, Texas, lawyer, African Americans who blog don't get enough respect. She showed a clip of a blogger being honored by Rush Limbaugh at February's Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC. "When was the last time a blogger got an award from the NAACP or the Urban League, even by an intern?" she asked.

Nevertheless, Curt Johnson of the NAACP, his organization ridiculed by tweet after McCauley's comment, stepped up to the microphone to announce his presence and support. ("i stand corrected - rep from @naacp comms dept is here at #bwb. (tiny digital applause) --> lol, fair enough," tweeted one attendee.)

Corey A. Ealons, who coordinates African American media outreach for the White House, arranged for the crowd to meet in the Executive Office Building Friday with Melody Barnes, head of the Domestic Policy Council, and himself. He told the group that the White House was working on how best to get its message out "so it is easily digestible" on the Web, and that he viewed theirs as an ongoing conversation.

"Social media should be used to get the word *in,*Dash, of Expert Labs and of Indian background, said on another panel. "Sending input to the White House."

J. Jioni Palmer, communications director for the Congressional Black Caucus, did not fare as well. After explaining that he had more than 40 members to represent and thus did not see how he could tweet messages that would satisfy all of them, Palmer was ridiculed: "Comm Dir of Congressional Black Caucus is defending his cluelessness about twitter to crowd of black tweeters - incredible #bwb."

But he delivered some truth-telling: "I've been burned by bloggers more than by traditional reporters," he also said.

Though the day saw little of the us-against-them posturing that once routinely marked bloggers' mentions of the "mainstream media," Palmer's remark pointed out that there are still stark differences in training and background between the two.

On Monday, an Air Force spokeswoman was asked for details about the change in guidelines about black hairstyles.

"For your clarification:" Maj. Cristin L. Marposon, USAF, said in an e-mailed response.

"The Air Force has not issued new guidelines for African American women's hair. The Air Force does not establish appearance guidelines based on an individual's ethnicity."

The woman who raised the issue at the conference stood by her statement, but said the directive against braids and cornrows, proposed about 2005, was never implemented after an uproar. "what i was saying is reality," she wrote to Journal-isms. "A lot of it is at the discretion of your supervisor. If they feel like your hair is 'faddish' or it does not look within regulations then you will be told to change it or face the consequences.

"A lot of the people that are making the decisions don't understand our hair. It's not a fad, it's not something that can be just slicked back and everything is alright depending on our texture."

What will the bloggers do about that?

Blogging While Brown: Blogs Represented at Blogging While Brown 2010

Bobbi Bowman, Maynard Institute: To reach future audience, ONA and minority journalists must unite [October 2009]

Danielle Lee, Urban Science Adventures: Travelogue: Blogging While Brown - recap #1

Ananda Leeke blog: Ananda’s White House Visit During the Blogging While Brown Conference on June 18, 2010

Scott Hanselman, Computerzen.com: 32 Ways to Keep Your Blog from Sucking

TheRoot.com: Worth Obsessing Over: Our Favorite Blogs

Baratunde Thurston blog: June 18, 2010

"Former New Orleans police Officer David Warren had claimed not to know if he hit anybody when he fired a shot with an assault rifle four days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall," the New Orleans Times-Picayune editorialized on Monday."Given Mr. Warren's award-winning marksmanship, his claim was never believable," it continued. "Friday federal prosecutors accused the former officer of needlessly killing Henry Glover.

"In announcing the indictments against Mr. Warren Friday, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten also announced indictments against two officers accused of setting Mr. Glover's body on fire and two other officers accused of obstructing the investigation into Mr. Glover's death. One can't read the indictments without feeling outrage over what was done to Mr. Glover."

As the New York Times noted, "The circumstances surrounding Mr. Glover's death were first reported in late 2008 in an article that was a collaboration by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute and the nonprofit investigative news service Pro Publica."

But on Friday, the key member of that collaboration, A.C. Thompson, wrote that the whole story has still not been told.

"When I began investigating the mysterious death of Henry Glover, one of the most notable aspects of the case was the lack of documents," Thompson wrote.

"Here was a New Orleans resident found incinerated in a car just a few hundred feet from a police station in September 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina. Yet there was no sign that anyone in authority had ever conducted any sort of investigation. The New Orleans Police Department told me in 2008 that they knew absolutely nothing about Glover's demise.

"Today's indictment suggests that was not true. The 11-count indictment accuses police officers of shooting Glover and torching his corpse, physically attacking his brother and another man, and then attempting to conceal it all.

"What's most striking about the charging documents is what they do not address: the extraordinary number of officers in the department who were likely aware of these events as they unfolded. ... Numerous -- possibly dozens -- of other officers were likely present at the site of the alleged beatings."

The indictments are not the only legal action. "Charlene Green, the mother of Glover's child, filed a wrongful death suit this week on behalf of her teenaged son, Henry Glover Jr.," columnist Jarvis deBerry wrote Friday in the Times-Picayune. "The suit follows reporting done by The Times-Picayune and ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom that worked with this newspaper in an investigation of police shootings after Katrina."

And as the New York Times said, "The case is one of at least eight investigations into actions of the New Orleans Police Department being conducted by the federal government.

"Most of the investigations concern events in the chaotic days after the storm. The best known, concerning the shootings of civilians on the Danziger Bridge that left two dead and four wounded, resulted in five guilty pleas from current or former police officers.

"Last month, the Department of Justice announced that it would conduct a full-scale investigation into the patterns and practices of the police force, a step that usually results in a legally binding blueprint for wholesale reform.

"In a sign of just how grim the view of the police force is in New Orleans, the mayor himself formally solicited such a review, citing a need for 'systemic and transformational change.'"

Andrew Langston, 83, Founded Rochester's WDKX

"Andrew A. Langston founded Rochester's only African-American-owned radio station in Rochester in 1974. And from small beginnings, WDKX-FM (103.9) has become a power in the community for discussion and entertainment from a growing audience. Mr. Langston, who was chief executive officer of the station, died Thursday, according to station officials. He was 83," Jeffrey Blackwell wrote Saturday in the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y.

"Shiera Coleman, vice president of broadcast for the Rochester Association of Black Journalists, worked for Langston as an intern and later on-air with the station's morning show.

" 'I had a lot of respect for him - to be able to create this business from the ground up and have it succeed for all these years when a lot of people didn't think that it would succeed,' she said.

"'He overcame all the obstacles, and you know he was just a great man.'"

"WDKX-FM (103.9) went on the air on April 6, 1974, with the initials of Frederick Douglass, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X - African-American leaders revered by Mr. Langston. And in the tradition of his heroes, the station has become a voice for the community and for young people."

The National Association of Black-Owned Broadcasters gave Langston its "Pioneer in Broadcasting" award in 1990. Just as his peers did, he complained that ratings services did not count his audience properly and that white advertisers figured they could reach his listeners by buying time on white-owned stations that also played some black music. He told this writer then that WDKX was losing $2 million a year on such audience misreadings.

Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy said, "During times when radio stations were being bought by major corporations, Mr. Langston held on to WDKX, which is now one of the few independently owned radio stations in the country."

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