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Watch: Protesters Speak Out on Freddie Gray: ‘I Miss Him So Much’
“All I have to say is, black lives matter,” said young Briana Briscoe in a video of protests that erupted on Saturday, April 25, in response to the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Baltimore man who died under suspicious circumstances from injuries he sustained while in police custody. In the video, Briana described Gray…
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Cornel West Responds (Indirectly) on Facebook to Michael Eric Dyson’s Critique
What’s more important: two academics debating each other’s relevancy or the plight of the black and poor in America? Cornel West seems to think it’s the latter, or at least that’s how he has posited himself in the brewing war of words between himself and former friend Michael Eric Dyson. While Dyson took to the…
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Listen: Michael Eric Dyson’s Interview on His Break With Cornel West
It was personal. In Michael Eric Dyson’s takedown for the New Republic of his friend and mentor Cornel West, he has a come-to-Jesus moment that is neither pretty nor kind, but painfully blunt. The realization comes to Dyson that West is a parody of the intellectual he once was, that his vicious and often personal…
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Black Women, Welcome to Your Breakdown
Author Benilde Little wants black women to know it’s OK. It’s OK to let go. It’s OK to cry. It’s OK to break down. In fact, in her new memoir, Welcome to My Breakdown, she welcomes black women doing so, becoming vulnerable and confronting their pain. In Breakdown, Little recounts her life as someone whom…
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Poverty Was the Crime in Walter Scott’s Slaying
When 50-year-old Walter Scott was pulled over by a police officer in North Charleston, S.C., Saturday, it was under the guise of a broken taillight. When he fled from that stop, his family said he possibly ran for fear of a warrant out for his arrest over child support. And when video revealed that Officer…
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Watch: SC Police Officer Charged With Murder After Shooting Black Man in the Back
It was a familiar story: A white police officer claimed that he felt threatened, that a black man wrestled with him for his weapon and that he had to shoot him in order to protect himself. But new video showing North Charleston, S.C., Police Officer Michael T. Slager, 33, shooting Walter L. Scott, 50, in…
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That Afro Is a Lie
A friend of a friend of mine a while back was lamenting why her natural hair did not look like X celebrity she really liked. That celeb’s hair was so big, thick and full, the curls so dynamic and bouncy. What products could this celeb be using? Was there a twist-out technique she could use…
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President Obama and The Wire Creator David Simon Talk Criminal-Justice Reform
President Barack Obama has previously expressed his love for the HBO series The Wire (2002-2008), which chronicled the effect of the war on drugs in the city of Baltimore. Now he’s sat down with the creator of the series to talk about mass incarceration in the U.S. On Thursday the White House debuted a video…
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Liberals, Conservatives Seek Common Ground on Criminal-Justice Reform
Get tough on crime. That was the mantra throughout the United States, both at the local and federal levels, as crime boomed toward the end of the 1970s. Many laws were passed, putting more police on the street and inflicting higher and higher penalties for various crimes in direct response to fears over drugs and…
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Happy Birthday, Divas!
Editor’s note: This week we’re celebrating the birthdays of three phenomenal performers—Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin and Mariah Carey—who not only share late-March birthdays but who also have voices that have defined their generations. First up, on Monday, is the Queen of Funk, Chaka Khan. On Wednesday we’ll honor the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, and…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
