A judge has ruled against providing Marissa Alexander, 33, with a new “Stand your ground” hearing, reports Salon. Alexander was originally convicted and sentenced in 2012 to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot during a confrontation with her abusive husband, Rico Gray. The conviction was overturned on appeal. The “Stand your ground”…

It was through social media that 16-year-old Jada of Houston learned of her rape, and it has been through social media that Jada has taken back control. After a mocking hashtag, #JadaPose, went viral on Instagram, Jada learned that her alleged attackers—and their supporters—had taken photos of her, unconscious, after the attack, meaning that Jada was…

International adoptions may be decreasing in many countries, but more and more African-American mothers in Florida looking to put their babies up for adoption are opting to send them to Canada to avoid racism. According to the Ottawa Citizen, black mothers in the state have told adoption officials that they want their babies raised by…

Sara Gibbs was a single woman, working long hours as a nurse, when she made a decision that would change her life. Gibbs never thought she would be a mother, but after an infant girl was left on the doorstep of a nearby doctor’s office, she made the decision to take the child in. She’s…

Is letting your child play in the park a crime? The North Augusta, S.C., police department thinks so. According to ABC 6, Debra Harrell has been charged with unlawful conduct toward a child for allowing her 9-year-old daughter to play in a park while Harrell worked at a nearby McDonald’s. The 9-year old was approached…

There were 82 people shot in Chicago over the weekend. One of them was 17-year-old Marcel Pearson, who was set to begin his freshman year at Western Illinois University. Instead he was shot down by a gunman in his South Side neighborhood. The shooting happened around 10 p.m. as Marcel walked around his neighborhood park,…

Over a 10-week period, 1964’s Freedom Summer brought together nearly 700 student volunteers, local residents and other civil rights activists to work to ensure that African Americans in Mississippi could exercise their right to vote. But without the tireless work of these eight dedicated women, the movement as we know it wouldn’t have been the…

Debtor prisons are supposed to be a thing of the past, so how did this elderly man end up in jail? Iheanyi D. Okoroafor, a 78-year-old retiree living in South Hadley, Mass., was imprisoned for a $508.27 bill, according to the Boston Globe. On June 11 Judge Robert S. Murphy Jr. sentenced Okoroafor to 30…

Spike Lee’s critically acclaimed Do the Right Thing is celebrating its 25th anniversary this summer. The film explored issues of race and violence on one hot day in Brooklyn, N.Y. Since then, there’s been a resurgence of all things late ’80s and early ’90s, and it’s not just the fashion. All these years later, we’re still…

It’s well-known that 1964’s Freedom Summer, as it came to be called, was an interracial effort, with many white college students joining African Americans to register voters in Mississippi. It was the murder of three civil rights activists—two of them white—by members of the Ku Klux Klan that sparked national outrage and drew national attention…