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Quote of the Day: John Hope Franklin on History
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.
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Black American Pride: Rep. Terri Sewell
(The Root) — A lot has changed since 1903, when W.E.B. Du Bois described black Americans as possessing what he called a “double consciousness,” caught between a self-conception as Americans and as people of African descent. As he put it in The Souls of Black Folk: “The Negro ever feels his two-ness-an American, a Negro;…
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Finally, Equal Rights for My Lesbian Mother
(The Root) — When I heard the news that morning, it whacked me in the chest like the kickback of a sudden and screeching stop. On Wednesday, June 26, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the Defense of Marriage Act. No longer would a legally married, same-sex couple be denied federal benefits…
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Zimmerman Trial: A Mother Speaks
(The Root) — After calling nearly three dozen witnesses over nine days leading up to the dramatic moment when Trayvon Martin’s mother took the stand, the prosecution on Friday rested its second-degree-murder case against George Zimmerman. Did the state prove Zimmerman’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? That seems as improbable as parts of his account…
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Zimmerman Trial: The Defense Calls Its First Witness
Friday, July 5, 5:22 p.m. EDT: Judge Debra Nelson has dismissed the defense’s request for acquittal in George Zimmerman’s second-degree-murder trial. Prosecutors argued against acquittal, saying, “One of them is dead and one of them is a liar.” The defense then called its first witness, Zimmerman’s mother, who identified the scream on the 911 call as…
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Tumblr Wants a Princess of Color for Disney's 'Frozen'
(The Root) — Another day, another white Disney princess. The Internet is speaking out about Disney’s latest tale, a reworking of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. Promotional artwork for the retelling, entitled Frozen, reveals that the heroine is, again, white. Incorporating diversity into Disney movies has been a slow climb. It wasn’t until 2009…
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Black Unemployment Rose in June
The Labor Department released its June jobs report today with news that the economy added 195,000 jobs last month, while the national unemployment rate held steady at 7.6 percent. The good news is that the numbers were higher than the 165,000 a Bloomberg survey of economists had estimated. But some of the report’s numbers give pause:…
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Twitter Loves Dr. Bao in Zimmerman Trial
(The Root) — Twitter continues its communal viewing of the George Zimmerman murder trial, and while it was inevitable that the people charged with defending Zimmerman would be seen as heartless bullies by those rooting for justice in the form of a guilty verdict, today a hero emerged in the form of medical examiner Dr.…
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Good Economy? Thank Fast-Food Workers
Fast-food workers feel overworked and underpaid, according to a piece at the New York Times, but the news is that several of these low-wage workers in the New York metropolitan area are not afraid to speak up about their experiences in an effort to push for change. Last week a City Council fact-finding panel listened…
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Will NYC's Stop and Frisk Last?
Last year New York City reported its lowest homicide rate since the Police Department started tracking it 50 years ago. Officials say the city’s stop-and-frisk policy has played a large role. It allows officers to stop and search anyone they believe is suspicious. But an editorial in the Washington Post suggests that if changes aren’t…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
