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Twitter Slams Tavis Smiley for Attacking Obama
While President Barack Obama has garnered mostly praise for his remarks on race and George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the death of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Tavis Smiley, talk show host and frequent critic of the president, offered a different take. He criticized the president for taking too long to address the verdict, tweeting, “Took POTUS…
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Chicago Rallies for Trayvon
(The Root) — Chicago residents gathered in the city at Federal Plaza today in honor of Trayvon Martin. According to Chicago radio station WVON, the demonstration was organized to press the Department of Justice into bringing further charges against George Zimmerman, the man who shot Martin to death in Florida. Hundreds turned out at the…
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Veteran Journalist Helen Thomas Dies at 92
During a brief segment on her MSNBC show on Saturday, Melissa Harris-Perry and reporter Kristen Welker paid tribute to longtime White House journalist Helen Thomas, who passed away at the age 92. Thomas began covering the White House in 1961 when John F. Kennedy was president and served until her retirement in 2010. Before her…
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Judge Orders Withdrawal of Detroit's Bankruptcy Petition
A Michigan county circuit judge on Friday ordered that Detroit’s federal bankruptcy filing be withdrawn because the governor and the city’s emergency manager violated the state constitution, according to the Detroit News. The state has appealed the order. Ingham County Circuit Judge Rosemary Aquilina urged Gov. Rick Snyder to read certain sections of Michigan’s constitution,…
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Iran Demands Justice for Trayvon Martin
Iran’s foreign ministry entered the growing debate surrounding George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of the unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on Friday, criticizing the verdict and America for widespread racial discrimination, the Washington Times reports. “The acquittal of the murderer of the teenage African American once again clearly demonstrated the unwritten, but systematic racial…
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The Power of the Obama Race Formula
(The Root) — Race is one of those subjects that can get you quick-flash-fried in American public life. Like a small drumstick dropped into a boiling cauldron of grease, a public figure can be burned to a crisp in seconds. From Al Campanis, Jesse Jackson and Don Imus to Trent Lott, Reverend Jeremiah Wright and…
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Motor City's Decline Was Decades in the Making
Keith B. Richburg, China correspondent at the Washington Post and a native of Detroit, reminsces about the city’s glory days and the reasons for its long slide into blight and decay. My heart aches today knowing that my beloved home town of Detroit now has the notoriety of being the largest American city to officially…
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Florida's Racist Past Helped Kill Trayvon
(The Root) — A famous quotation, which is often stated and attributed to many, is: “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” When a jury of George Zimmerman’s peers acquitted him of second-degree murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., many advocates in the black community were…
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Racism Is Alive Across the Globe
(Special to The Root) — A few years ago in fall 2011, I was staying at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. This is the hotel where Martin Luther King Jr. is said to have finished writing his famous “I Have a Dream” speech before delivering it the next day at the Washington Memorial on…
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Quote of the Day: Camille Cosby on Entrepreneurship
Read more of The Root’s coverage of Camille Cosby here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute 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.
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
