Lockport, N.Y., police apparently thought it would be OK to label the complexion of 19-year-old Shamir Allen as “dark Negro” on his mug shot in the police department’s database, WGRZ-TV reports. Allen was detained for alleged involvement in a string of shootings that have hit the city this year, according to WGRZ. The Lockport Police…

Ohio’s Wilberforce University, the nation’s oldest black private university, founded in 1856, is in dire straits amid plummeting student enrollment, a financial deficit of $9.7 million and its accreditation hanging perilously in the balance, the Associated Press reports. Alumni have rallied together in an effort to raise $2 million in cash donations that includes $400,000…

At first glance, you might guess by their deep-chocolate complexions, matching warm smiles and coordinated traditional attire that Charlotte Fadare and her husband, Olusola Fadare, have everything in common.   But the truth is, these newlyweds come from vastly different worlds, continents apart, and have spent much of their marriage bridging the cultural divide between…

Give the state of Georgia a round of applause. For the first time ever, it will have five African-American women on its statewide ballot come November. Democratic state Rep. Dee Dawkins-Haigler said of the historic moment, “We did not want to miss the opportunity to get out and announce this to everyone in the state of…

Dipping rates of student enrollment have placed the future of HBCUs in jeopardy. For generations, these institutions of higher education have played an instrumental role in educating black students, especially first-generation college students and low-income students. But in the last 20 years, five of them have shuttered their doors, and a dozen others have dealt…

Rashid Polo, who made waves on the Internet last week after his Vine video of convenience store employees following him drew 30 million views, has no plans to stop filming his racial profilers.  “If it keeps happening, I’m going to be forced to record it,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “Hopefully it doesn’t happen again,…

It’s been 50 years to the month since Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was introduced, making employment discrimination on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex and national origin” illegal and paving the way for equal-employment opportunity for everyone, right? Wrong. For women of color, especially black women, inequality in pay,…

Former Black Panther Party member William Potts Jr. has already spent 13 years in a Cuban prison, described by his lawyer Robert Berube as “one of the worst hellholes on the planet,” for hijacking and diverting a New York Piedmont Airlines flight to Havana in 1984, Reuters reports. “There were no bathroom facilities. There were…

Imagine that you’ve nearly completed the requirements of your four-year—that’s eight terms—apprenticeship program, and with two weeks to go before graduation and promotion to journeyman status, you’re expelled. This happened to a black apprentice attending a school affiliated with the Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee of Sheet Metal Workers Local 25, which represents sheet metal…

Danae Mines, one of 41 women in the New York City Fire Department, just made history as the first to grace the pages of the FDNY Calendar of Heroes that famously features bare-chested firemen, reports the New York Daily News. The 11-year veteran of Engine Co. 60 in the South Bronx, N.Y., is Miss March. Mines,…