A fifth-grade teacher in Fort Worth, Texas, has ignited a firestorm of controversy after he reportedly separated students by race last week and then hurled insults at them and their families, CBS 11 reports. The Fort Worth Independent School District is investigating the incident. The event occurred Friday during a music class at Hazel Harvey…

Fox Searchlight’s 12 Years a Slave, directed by Steve McQueen and starring Chiwetel Ejifor, triumphed this weekend at the box office during its limited opening in 19 theaters, grossing $960,000, Deadline Hollywood reports.   Searchlight said Sunday that the film, produced by New Regency, reached an “incredibly diverse audience,” adding, “We have been attracting both…

A young Detroit mother was heartbroken recently when her request was denied to have her 2-year-old son blessed by famed gospel singer and pastor Marvin Winans during a special ceremony. Why? Well, it seems that Winans, pastor of the Perfecting Church in Detroit, has a strict policy of not blessing the babies of unwed mothers…

(The Root) — The NAACP Saturday announced that Lorraine C. Miller, a member of the national board of directors since 2008, would become interim president and CEO of the 104-year-old organization. In doing so, she’s the organization’s first interim president and the first woman to fill the president-executive secretary’s role since 1916, a spokesman told…

Grambling State football players refused to travel to Jackson, Miss., to suit up in a game Saturday against Jackson State, after complaints about mold and mildew on equipment and in facilities fell on deaf ears, ESPN reports. The cancellation, announced Friday by officials at the school in Grambling, La., was also the result of leadership…

News 4 Jacksonville has unveiled disturbing letters written by Michael Dunn, the 45-year-old Florida man charged with last year’s shooting of 17-year-old Jordan Davis. The incident occurred after Dunn, who is white, and the black teen clashed over loud music while in their cars. Dunn, who says he acted in self-defense and writes that he…

(The Root) — When Bluefield State College opened in the late 19th century, it was created to educate the children of black coal miners in segregated West Virginia. But political change, economic upheavals and changing demographics have resulted in a change in complexion at the HBCU. Today it is 90 percent white, according to NPR.…

(The Root) — Brooklyn, N.Y., resident LeRoy McCarthy has long been a fan of slain rapper Christopher Wallace, who was also known as Biggie Smalls, Big Poppa, Notorious BIG and so on. So he started an online petition to rename a street corner in honor of the rapper, who immortalized his Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in his…

(The Root) — At a time when more laws are being put in place to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, an increasing number of African-American adults are calling themselves LGBT. An estimated 1,018,700, or 3.7 percent, of black adults consider themselves LGBT, and 34 percent of African-American same-gender couples are…

As lawmakers voted on Wednesday to end the 16-day government shutdown, a House of Representatives stenographer approached the dais and began shouting about God and Freemasons, according to Business Insider. She was promptly removed from the floor. “He will not be mocked,” a woman shouts on the recording. “This is not one nation under God.…