Nearly 50 years after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his call for justice from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, “tens of thousands reconvened near that spot Wednesday, under cloudy skies and amid hope and frustration about the current state of race relations in America,” the Washington Post reports. At 3 p.m.,…

(The Root) — For much of the last month, dozens of media outlets have told the story of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr gave his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. We know of the major organizers — Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph and others —…

Timothy Hill, the brother of Michael Brandon Hill, who was armed when he entered a Georgia school last week, says President Barack Obama should be more focused on preventing such incidents rather than calling to thank the bookkeeper at the school who thwarted a potential mass shooting, according to Clutch magazine. Antoinette Tuff has likely been…

Aside from his lawyers’ fees, state law requires Florida to cover George Zimmerman’s legal costs because he was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, the Orlando Sentinel reports. That includes the cost of expert witnesses, travel, depositions, photocopies, even that animated 3-D video that defense attorneys showed jurors during closing argument that depicts…

Controversial scholar Cornel West has taken aim at civil rights leaders again. This time he hits them for ignoring “Wall Street criminality,” saying that money has corrupted American culture, according to the Raw Story. At book launching event on August 24 following the 50th Anniversary March on Washington, West condemned mainstream civil rights leaders for…

(The Root) — It’s inevitable. Every January as we prepare to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, our Facebook and Twitter feeds become cluttered with obligatory links to King’s other famous quotes — gathered from various seminal texts, like the Letter From a Birmingham Jail and the Eulogy for the Martyred Children. (Jay Smooth gives…

(The Root) — In a March 2012 article for Baton Rouge, La.’s The Advocate, reporter Naomi Martin wrote, referring to me, “While some of his childhood friends still sell drugs on the streets of Baton Rouge, Toldson has a much different life as a professor at Howard University.” This statement confused me and made me…

(The Root) — On Aug. 28, 2008, 45 years to the day of Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, the slain leader’s eldest son, Martin Luther King III, spoke at the Democratic National Convention and celebrated the ascendance of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. King said that his father would be “proud…