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Jack Johnson Pardon in the Works?
Congressional supporters of a pardon for Jack Johnson, the world’s first black heavyweight champion who was imprisoned nearly a century ago for his romantic liaisons with white women, are still pushing for justice, according to the Associated Press. Johnson, a native of Galveston, Texas, who was known for his flamboyant style of dress, arrogance, charm…
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NAACP Suit Is Latest Salvo in Fight Over Schools
As states grappled with ways to reinvigorate the flagging public education system, charter schools were offered up as an attractive alternative: a way to break outside the mold and offer the kind of innovative learning environment and accountability for results that is more often associated with private schools. Some critics fear that this alternative is…
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A Health Crisis Behind Bars?
Eighteen-year-old Aleshia Napier didn’t have to die the way that she did. The troubled young African-American woman hanged herself with a bed sheet five years ago in solitary confinement while incarcerated at Broward Correctional Institution in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., her family’s lawyer, Randall Berg Jr., executive director of the Florida Justice Institute, told The Root.…
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Lawsuit Puts Private Prisons in Spotlight
Antoney Jones, a gay African-American man imprisoned in Idaho, needed protection from other inmates who thrived on assaulting vulnerable prisoners, especially those who were black and gay, his lawyers said. He especially needed protection after testifying against a criminal defendant for California prosecutors in an undisclosed case. Not only was he black and gay, but…
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Imprisoning Our Kids for a Profit
Mike McIntosh II, 21, used to be a vibrant athlete who loved doing kick flips on his skateboard, scoring goals on the soccer field and executing extreme bike tricks on his BMX. He was smart, too, studying welding at a community college, his father recalled recently. “He was a sports fanatic,” the father, Michael McIntosh,…
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The Myth of Black Confederates Persists
“This is a fiction,” Fergus M. Bordewich, renowned historian and author of five nonfiction books, told The Root about the latest rancorous debate about black Confederates that comes as the nation’s commemoration of the Civil War’s 150th anniversary continues. “It’s a myth,” continued Bordewich, author of Washington: The Making of the American Capital and Bound…
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Oil-Spill Victims: Where's Justice?
Some members of Kenner Calvary Baptist Church in Metairie, La., used to make a hearty living along the Gulf of Mexico coast selling homemade gumbo and fried fish to tourists, making beds at once-bustling hotels and washing dishes at teeming restaurants. In turn, they made healthy donations at church on Sunday. But then their way…
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Marchers Remember: MLK Was Pro-Union
In what is being hailed as a national Day of Solidarity, hundred of thousands of teachers, nurses, students, clergy, firefighters and other workers from across the nation will hold “We Are One” demonstrations to show support for Wisconsin union employees to demand a stop to overreaching policies by Republican lawmakers trying to balance budgets on…
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Gutting Unions Hurts the Black Middle Class
We’re republishing this article, which originally ran on March 10, 2011, in honor of Labor Day. “The Fabulous 14.” That’s what Rozalia Harris and other members of the Milwaukee teachers union call the renegade Democratic state senators who fled Wisconsin on Feb. 17 to stop a vote on a proposed spending plan that includes restrictions…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
