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See Politics and Power Through the Eyes of 3 Black Female Journalists
There was a time when a U.S. president could wander around inside a moving train, by himself, during an afternoon. In 1948 Harry S. Truman made a surprise visit to the compartment of Alice Dunnigan, who, typewriter across her lap, was writing her story for the black press. He had heard about the trouble she…
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Newark’s Mayor Meets One-on-One With Gangs to Forge Peace
With his first-100-days marker past, Newark, N.J.’s new mayor, Ras Baraka, is trying a variety of actions to keep crime down in his bullet-riddled city. And variety means not just within the range of conventional, public-official thinking: Last week he had a secret meeting with gang leaders in a city church, with inside security provided…
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Pennsylvania’s Attempt to Silence Prison Activist Mumia Abu-Jamal
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett just signed a new law that allows convicted prisoners to be sued by their victims for “seeking publicity or money.” Corbett made a point of signing it at an infamous Philadelphia street corner: 13th and Locust. It’s where Mumia Abu-Jamal, a part-time radio journalist driving a cab on Dec. 9, 1981,…
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Remember When Black TV Programs Were Angry and Unapologetic?
When I was growing up in a northern-New Jersey ghetto in the early Afro-picked 1970s, my mom used to take me places in her car. Our radio dial was locked to 1430 WNJR, a soul AM station, and in the afternoons I would hear something at the top of the hour called “National Black Network…
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Obama’s US-Africa Leaders Summit Aims to Strengthen Ties
Black people who look to defend President Barack Obama against other black people who claim he hasn’t done anything particularly “black” as president have had plenty of ammunition this week and will have more the next. The first black president, the son of an African immigrant, is also the first to convene a U.S.-Africa Leaders…
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New Malcolm X Diary Reveals a Revolutionary Optimist
While many in the civil rights movement community this summer are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, another important half-century milestone—and a significantly blacker, more radical one—was recently acknowledged in New York City: the founding of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, Malcolm X’s political organization. If Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of domestic social…
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Why Newark Turned From Booker to Baraka
When I grew up in Newark, N.J., in the 1970s and early 1980s, Kenneth Gibson held office as the city’s first black mayor. He had a famous quote: “Wherever American cities are going, Newark will get there first.” In his postelection speech Tuesday, Newark Mayor-elect Ras Baraka thanked Gibson for the phrase and repeated it.…
