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Pastor Abducted in Egypt a Standout
(The Root) — The image of the Rev. Michel Louis, a Boston clergyman who asked the abductor in Egypt’s Sinai to take him captive instead of a female fellow traveler, has been shown around the world since the international incident began unfolding over the weekend. But long before the graying, 61-year-old pastor made a valiant…
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Baptist Leader: I'm Exhibit A on Diversity
(The Root) — As the first African American elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Rev. Fred Luter Jr. will travel throughout the country, preaching from some of the nation’s most storied pulpits. But on Sunday he was home with his local congregation at the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans. Three blocks…
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7 FAMU Hazing Suspects Surrender
Seven of the 13 Florida A&M University band members charged yesterday for the hazing death of drum major Robert Champion turned themselves in to authorities Thursday. The suspects include Bryan Jones, 23, of Parrish, Fla., who was arrested on felony hazing charges in Hillsborough County and released after posting $15,000 bond, according to a WKMG…
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4 Questions With Freeman Hrabowski III
Freeman Hrabowski III is called the general of math and science; he turned a commuter college about 15 minutes from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor into one of the nation’s leading sources for African Americans who receive Ph.D.s in science and engineering. For 20 years now Hrabowski, a native of Birmingham, Ala., has been at the helm…
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Easter Worship: A Novice's Questions
I’m getting ready for my annual visit to church for Easter Sunday worship, because, in spite of all I do the other 364 days of the year, I am a Christian at heart. And even more, I get to see a lot of my friends from the neighborhood, the car wash, the club — you…
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Racial Profiling and Alabama's Copycat Law
A federal judge in Alabama has delayed for one month the enforcement of that state’s tough new immigration law, set to go into effect this Thursday, Sept. 1. Responding to challenges to the suit from the U.S. Department of Justice, social-justice groups and religious organizations around the country, Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn on Monday indicated…
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A 100-Year-Old Civil Rights Vet Speaks
On March 7, 1965, Amelia Boynton Robinson was beaten and left for dead in Selma, Ala., on the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the historic march for voting rights. A longtime educator and activist in Alabama’s Black Belt, Boynton Robinson has seen many of her activist friends and peers pass on, like Rosa Parks and Dorothy…
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Don't Bring a Taser to a Church Fight
Simone Moore, the former minister of music at New Welcome Baptist Church in St. Elmo, Ala., came to worship last Sunday armed with a Taser. According to the Mobile Press-Register, the Rev. Darryl Riley fired Moore, who is also a special education teacher and an R&B singer, and gave him his last check after Sunday…
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Diversity for the USA's Biggest Protestant Group?
Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans’ Upper 8th Ward has about 4,000 members — most of them black, and all Southern Baptist. As the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention has 16 million members, but what it doesn’t have is a lot of diversity. Only 45,000 of its members are African American,…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
