A federal judge in Texas has ruled that a set of state laws dictating how hair-braiding stylists could gain certification to teach students how to braid hair was unconstitutional, the Associated Press reports. Isis Brantley, a Dallas hair-braiding salon owner, with the help of the Institute for Justice, filed the federal lawsuit against Texas in…

Almost 75 percent of the registered voters in Selma, Ala., and the surrounding areas went to the polls in the 2012 general election, casting a majority of their votes for President Barack Obama and Democratic U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell. The movie Selma depicts the 1965 struggle for voting rights in the Alabama town where cotton…

VH1’s Sorority Sisters, the network’s latest reality series with an ensemble cast of African-American women, has been embattled in controversy since a trailer for the show leaked in June. That trailer inspired a petition to keep it from airing, which was signed by thousands. Despite the backlash before the show even began, Sorority Sisters debuted…

The New York City Police Department is taking a hard look at its security protocols in light of the terror attack in France on Wednesday, in which masked gunmen stormed into the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical newspaper, and killed 12 people, including top journalists, cartoonists and two police officers, the New York…

Adenah Bayoh immigrated to the U.S. when she was just 13, escaping a civil war in her native land, Liberia. She put herself through college by working three jobs, one of which was as a teller for a bank, where she rose up the ranks, became an executive and saved enough money to begin her…

This year, 2015—the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and the 150th anniversary of emancipation and the end of the Civil War—is the time to turn nationwide #BlackLivesMatter protests into tangible public policy. The Success-Oriented Funding proposal from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University offers activists a tangible framework for criminal-justice reform.…

The costumes worn in the critically acclaimed film Selma tell about an important yet understudied history of the race, class and generational tensions of the Deep South. Few realize how critical dress was in establishing and maintaining the social order of the South. The Jim Crow system was built upon a hierarchy that placed wealthy…

President Barack Obama has made it a priority for his last two years in office to shrink the prisoner population at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp so much that it would become an economic burden if it were kept open any longer, the New York Times reports. Closing the detention camp was an issue he…