Darryl Dawkins, the former NBA player known for his monstrous backboard-breaking dunks, has died at age 58, WFMZ reports. According to the news station, in 1975 Dawkins became the first player ever drafted to the NBA directly from high school. Affectionately nicknamed Chocolate Thunder by Stevie Wonder, the 6-foot-11-inch center played for several teams over…

On Aug. 12, a gunman fatally shot 24-year-old Whitney Brown as she sat in her car on a North St. Louis street. Her 5-year-old son, Jakeem, was in the backseat. On Tuesday, a St. Louis County police officer and his wife, both of whom were saddened by the story but wish to remain anonymous, took…

Early Wednesday morning, Vester Lee Flanagan II, reportedly upset over being fired from Virginia news station WDBJ7 in 2013 as well as the June church massacre in Charleston, S.C., targeted two of his former colleagues and fatally shot them during a live broadcast. If that wasn’t horrible enough, after killing WDBJ7 journalists Alison Parker and Adam…

Updated Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2015, 2:35 p.m. EDT: Vester Lee Flanagan II, 41, the suspect in the fatal shooting of two journalists on the air in Virginia, was arrested in critical condition after reportedly shooting himself. He has died from those wounds, according to Yahoo News. The news station notes that around 11:30 a.m., a…

Her name was Marcy Borders, but the world knew her as the “Dust Lady” after a now-iconic image showed Borders covered in dust during the attacks on New York City’s twin towers Sept. 11, 2001. Photographer Stan Honda was working for Agence France-Presse when he captured the image, which was snapped just moments before the…

Sandra Bland moved back to Texas in July to take a job with her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University. On July 10 a traffic stop ended in Bland’s arrest, with jail officials claiming a few days later that she was found hanged in her Waller County cell. On Tuesday evening, the Prairie View City…

The African-American book club that was booted from California’s Napa Valley Wine Train Saturday for what has been dubbed “laughing while black” was given a public apology Tuesday from the company’s CEO. “The Napa Valley Wine Train was 100 percent wrong in its handling of this issue,” Anthony “Tony” Giaccio said in a statement viewed by the…

In an opinion column published in USA Today Wednesday, Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson blasted the Black Lives Matter movement, which he said he believes is “focused on the wrong targets,” and called its recent disruption of Bernie Sanders’ speeches “lunacy.” The retired neurosurgeon acknowledged that protesters are right “that racial policing issues exist and some rotten…

There is a flier being distributed in Southfield, Mich., that shows a photo of a Klansman in a hood pointing his gun at the head of a black child who couldn’t be more than 6. The black child is wearing a white hoodie and is extending a bag of Skittles to the man. Another flier…

On Saturday afternoon, the Sistahs on the Reading Edge, a book club made up of 11 African-American women, boarded a Napa Valley Wine Train in California, intent on having a good time. But what started off pleasantly turned into a “humiliating” experience after the women were escorted off the train for laughing and talking too…