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Steve Stoute Once Again Disrupts the Future With His New UnitedMasters Venture. First Partnership? The NBA
In his myriad years in the music industry, Steve Stoute has proven himself a major player and a game changer, too. Hailed as a marketing genius by some, the man who began his career as road manager for Kid & Play has grown and evolved to become a label exec, an advertising mogul and,…
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Floridians May Not Have Elected Andrew Gillum but Did Vote to Restore Voting Rights to Over 1 Million Ex-Felons
Much to our eternal chagrin, Floridians did not elect Andrew Gillum as governor of their deservedly designated simple-minded (and often repressive) state. However, on Election Day, they did vote “yes” on Amendment 4, a citizen-proposed ballot initiative that will enable more than one million ex-felons to regain their voting rights, potentially changing the political landscape…
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If We’ve Ever Needed the LDF Before, We Sure Do Need Them Now
To attend the LDF’s 32nd annual National Equal Justice Awards Dinner themed: “Justice. Equality. Democracy,” is to swell with a sense of pride in the organized, brilliant pushback of our people in courts all over the land; it’s to know that two black women (Sherrilyn Ifill and Janai Nelson) are at the helm of this…
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Lost-Found ‘Negro’: Never-Before-Seen Chapter From Autobiography of Malcolm X Open to the Public
When I was growing up, The Autobiography of Malcolm X was like manna; it was part of my introduction to “black consciousness,” at least from a proto-nationalist, the-black-man-is-god perspective. Malcolm was larger than life, especially for us inner-city girls who were as well versed on Surahs as Psalms; his words our Sunday sermon, his persona…
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Crooked Lines: Ahead of the Midterms, 3 Women of Color Highlight Racial Gerrymandering in North Carolina
For filmmaker Yoruba Richen, the germ for Crooked Lines, a documentary about the fight against racial gerrymandering in North Carolina, was born of the tragedy that was Donald Trump’s election in November 2016. Richen, along with co-directors Monica Berra and Jackie Olive, came together to make the 11-minute short about how the Republican legislature in…
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Banging From the Inside: Activist Cat Brooks Runs to Become Oakland’s First Black Woman Mayor
Oakland, Calif., has long been a bastion of historical and cultural reverie in blackness. The “Detroit of the West” holds a special place in African-American esteem: Oakland incubated a nascent Black Panther Party; gave us Hieroglyphics, Too Short, and MC Hammer; and nurtured icons such as Elaine Brown, Zedanya, and Killmonger. It even has its…
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It’s Time to Listen to Black Women. We’ve Been Talking About Police Sexual Violence for a Long Time
“It’s never true that *no one* is talking about a thing. It’s often true that *not enough* people are talking about a thing …,” anti-violence activist Mariame Kaba recently tweeted from her popular @prisonculture account. That is certainly true of sexual violence by police officers, described as something “no one talks about” in a recent…
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Pooch Hall Facing 6 Years in Prison After DUI Involving 2-Year-Old Son
Although may be best known as a player on the Showtime series, Ray Donovan, most of us got to know and love Marion “Pooch” Hall from BET’s The Game. But what the 44-year-old actor is facing is anything but. TMZ reports that Hall has just been criminally charged with one count of child endangerment and…
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ACLU Files Discrimination Complaint on Behalf of Black Students in Central California
In response to claims of sustained racial abuse against the two percent of black students who attend the Visalia Unified School District, the ACLU of Northern California has filed a discrimination complaint against the district in court. The complaint, filed with the Department of Education, charges the district with violating Title VI of the Civil…
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2 Texas Judges Sent 20 Percent of All Juveniles to State Prisons Last Year
Two Harris County Texas judges accounted for more than one-fifth of all children sent to the state’s juvenile prisons in 2017. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of the children were black or Latinx. The Houston Chronicle reports: The two courts — overseen by Judges Glenn Devlin and John Phillips — not only sent more teens to…
