culture
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High School Football Players Claim White Rivals Called Them ‘N–gers’
A heated rivalry between two high school football teams erupted in a huge sideline-clearing brawl, which five black high school football players from Long Island are claiming started after they were called the n-word by the players and coaches, the New York Daily News reports. The black players from Amityville High School, which would lose…
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Family of Man Firefighters Refused to Help Wants Justice
Medric Mills, 77, and his daughter had just finished dropping off a broken computer at a repair shop on Jan. 25 when he collapsed onto the sidewalk. His daughter ran back into the store to have them call 911. Since they repair shop was across the street from a fire department, people ran there for…
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Shani Davis: Skating for History, Not Love
Speed skater Shani Davis will go down in history for his succession of Winter Olympic firsts, most notably as the first African-American athlete to win an individual gold at the Winter Games. But in his own sport, he is celebrated for his extraordinary record of sustained excellence. Over the past decade, Davis has dominated speed…
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How the Urban Bush Women Got Their Name
Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal visits with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar in the Reynolds Industries Theater at Duke University. Zollar and her dance troupe, Urban Bush Women, are partaking in a two-week residency at Duke University. Urban Bush Women celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Watch:
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AIDS Activist Michael Tikili: ‘I Saw My Reflection, I Saw the HIV Infection’
Five years ago, Michael Tikili had a hard time looking at himself in the mirror because every time he saw his reflection, he saw “the infection.” Hearing, in 2009, that he had contracted HIV had shaken him to his core. The 23-year-old African-American Duke University graduate racked his brain to figure out how this could…
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AIDS Outreach Declined As Minority Cases Grew
Dr. Anthony Jones has been an HIV/AIDS specialist for more than 15 years. During that time the Oakland, Calif., primary care physician has become more and more discouraged as he has watched the AIDS epidemic in the San Francisco Bay area become increasingly more of a problem for the African-American community. “We’re really at a…
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30 Years Into the AIDS Epidemic, Blacks Still Don’t Get Enough Treatment and Care
“All African Americans deserve lifesaving HIV prevention, testing, care, and treatment services.” That was the message of a statement issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thursday. It came with new data about a still-unmet need in the black community—more than 30 years after the first HIV and AIDS cases were identified—when it…
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California School Plans Fried Chicken and Watermelon Lunch For Black History Month
File under how not to celebrate Black History Month. Carondelet High School for Girls in Concord, California, is under fire after announcing a Black History Month lunch special menu of fried chicken, cornbread and watermelon. Students at the Northern California private school had been brainstorming ways to celebrate Black History Month. The lunch menu was…
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Judge Who Ordered Black Boy’s Name Changed From Messiah to Martin Is Fired
A Tennessee judge who ordered that a black couple change their son’s name from Messiah because that name was reserved for Jesus Christ has been fired, New York’s Daily News reports. Last August, Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew of Cocke County in eastern Tennessee ordered that the boy’s first name be changed to Martin, even…
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John W. Thompson to Become 1st Black Chairman of Microsoft
While the big news coming out of the tech world this week was the appointment of Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, what went underreported is that John Thompson, one of the few high-ranking African Americans in the technology sphere, is slated to become only the second chairman in Microsoft’s history, replacing tech genius Bill Gates,…