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NAACP Names Female Interim President
(The Root) — The NAACP Saturday announced that Lorraine C. Miller, a member of the national board of directors since 2008, would become interim president and CEO of the 104-year-old organization. In doing so, she’s the organization’s first interim president and the first woman to fill the president-executive secretary’s role since 1916, a spokesman told…
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Skip Gates for President — of Howard U
(The Root) — The “Best Colleges” rankings from US News & World Report are usually an opportunity for many colleges and universities to go into PR overdrive to attract the best and brightest to their campuses. For other schools, it’s an opportunity to take stock of their aspirational goals. For Howard University, the school’s decline…
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Quote of the Day: James Cone on the Black Church
Read the quote in its full context here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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How the Shutdown Mirrored Slavery in the US
Writing at Salon, Andrew O’Hehir says that the poisonous effects of white supremacy, clearly depicted in 12 Years a Slave, “endure in American politics” and were on full display during the 16-day shutdown of the federal government. Five years before the beginning of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee – future commander of the Confederate States of…
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Grambling Forfeits Football Game Amid Player Protests
Grambling State football players refused to travel to Jackson, Miss., to suit up in a game Saturday against Jackson State, after complaints about mold and mildew on equipment and in facilities fell on deaf ears, ESPN reports. The cancellation, announced Friday by officials at the school in Grambling, La., was also the result of leadership…
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Jordan Davis: His Shooter's Alarming Jailhouse Letters
News 4 Jacksonville has unveiled disturbing letters written by Michael Dunn, the 45-year-old Florida man charged with last year’s shooting of 17-year-old Jordan Davis. The incident occurred after Dunn, who is white, and the black teen clashed over loud music while in their cars. Dunn, who says he acted in self-defense and writes that he…
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Why Obama Won the Shutdown
(The Root) — Though the president made a point to say during his remarks on the end of the shutdown, “There are no winners here,” that’s not entirely true. While the days of the shutdown marked a low point for the American people and an even lower point for government, the crisis ultimately marked a…
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Does Being on 'SNL' Really Matter?
(The Root) — Maybe Lorne Michaels doesn’t have Facebook. That would explain how the eternal executive producer of Saturday Night Live, the launching pad of enviable comedy careers since 1975, is having trouble finding black comedians to star on his show. Because — let the Internet tell it — there are tons of black female…
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How Racial Bias Hurts Searches for Missing Black Kids
Citing the case of autistic 14-year-old Avonte Oquendo of New York City, who disappeared two weeks ago, Stacia L. Brown, writing at Salon, explores how racial bias can hamper investigations of missing minorities. Bias, she says, could also prevent passersby from helping the disabled teen and keep the media from reporting the story. In the…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
