Have you ever heard of Margaret “Missy” Allen or Nikki McPhatter? In July of 2008, attorney Margaret “Missy” Allen was killed by a boyfriend who was a former client. Calvin McKelton was found guilty of strangling Allen and then dumping her body in Cincinnati’s East End. He was also found guilty in the shooting death…

Musician John Forte has issued a plea for folks to get out and vote. The musician and songwriter discusses how he lost his right to vote because of his conviction for cocaine possession with the intent to distribute. Forte was sentenced to the mandatory minimum of 14 years, but his sentence was commuted by President…

Alan Newton now has 18.5 million reasons to move forward after serving 22 years in prison for crimes he did not commit. Newton, a former bank teller, was freed in July 2006 after serving nearly 22 years in prison for a rape, robbery and assault conviction. Newton had asked for DNA testing in 1994, but…

What is going on in Virginia? Evan McMorris-Santoro of Talking Points Memo reports that Virginia Beach Republican Party Chair Dave Bartholomew forwarded a racist e-mail comparing African Americans to dogs. The e-mail subject line, “my dog,” consists of a racist parable about African Americans and welfare. In the first 24 hours since the e-mail came…

A textbook distributed to Virginia fourth-graders says that thousands of African Americans fought for the South during the Civil War — a claim rejected by most historians but often made by groups seeking to play down slavery’s role as a cause of the conflict. The passage appears in Our Virginia: Past and Present, which was…

Dr. Mildred Jefferson, a nationally recognized leader of the anti-abortion movement and the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, has died. Jefferson was a leader in many anti-abortion organizations. In the late 1960s, she helped establish the National Right to Life Committee, which includes 50 state groups and more than 3,000 local…

Standards in education have been under fire as they relate to schoolchildren. Has anyone been paying attention to what has been coming out of the mouths of some of these political candidates? In a debate on Tuesday in front of a law-school audience, Christine O’Donnell, running for the U.S. Senate from Delaware, questioned the separation of…

According to the Associated Press, at least three service members discharged for being gay have begun the process to re-enlist. The movement to overturn the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy gained momentum when President Barack Obama campaigned on its repeal. Congress failed to repeal the policy this fall, but U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips…

Celebrity radio personality Angie Martinez announced today the launch of her new online charity, Angie’s Guest Closet (AGC). The virtual celebrity closet’s debut auction will kick off on Friday, Oct. 15, with items from the personal closets of some of the world’s most famous artists and celebrities, including Justin Bieber, Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige, Kim…