(The Root) —Don Lemon, one of CNN’s highest-profile black anchors, triggered a recent firestorm of anger and recrimination when he suggested that African Americans should alter their personal behavior if they want to achieve racial equality. Lemon’s efforts at tough love admonished young black men for wearing baggy pants, castigated hip-hop for romanticizing prison culture,…

Oscar Grant’s father will be allowed to sue Johannes Mehserle, the Northern California transit officer who shot and killed his 22-year-old son, now that an appellate court has upheld a lower court’s ruling that the shooting was indeed involuntary manslaughter. The 2009 shooting of Grant has gained renewed attention in light of Trayvon Martin’s shooting…

Michael David Dunn has pleaded “not guilty” to murder in the shooting death of Jordan Russell Davis, a 17-year-old African-American high school student, during an incident at a Florida gas station last year.  The shooting is gaining nationwide attention because of its similarities to the Trayvon Martin shooting. NBC News reports:  A Florida gun collector has pleaded…

Archaeologists digging on the grounds of a Philadelphia playground have found evidence of a 200-year-old grave site that the Mother Bethel African Methodist Epicopal Church purchased in 1810 because Philadelphia cemeteries would not accept black people. Among the estimated 3,000 laid to rest there were prominent African-American folk of that era, the Huffington Post reports: Mother Bethel…