culture

Raising important questions about the demise of the presumption of innocence when today’s black males are involved, the Nation columnist Patricia J. Williams weighs in on the police shooting of 16-year-old Kimani Gray. The only thing anyone can agree upon is that on Saturday, March 9, 16-year-old Kimani Gray was shot seven times by two…

If the GOP wants to change its image, the Rev. Al Sharpton writes at the Huffington Post that members need to start by diversifying their platform, which means getting on the right side of civil right, progress and history. It’s difficult for some to process the fact that my parents were Republicans. But they were,…

A missing New Orleans teacher was seen driving alone in surveillance footage: Terrilyn Monette, who disappeared March 2 after a night out celebrating her Teacher of the Year nomination, was seen driving alone away from a bar on surveillance footage that New Orleans police found, the Huffington Post reports. The Times-Picayune reported that New Orleans…

“People don’t know that a black man [Capt. David B. Kenyon] invented the sliding pole,” Morris Davis, founder of the Chicago African-American Firefighter Museum, told DNAinfo.  Davis, 81, who retired from the Chicago Fire Department in 1992 after 37 years of service, told the site that people don’t seem to know that black firefighters, like…

(The Root) — Season 2 of ratings favorite Scandal resumes with a new episode Thursday. During its two weeks off, chatter on social media ranged from gasps to swoons over what and to whom Olivia Pope (played by Kerry Washington) will do next — not to mention ire over the showing of repeat episodes at…

A scheduled Ku Klux Klan rally in Memphis, Tenn., has prompted the City Council to change an ordinance on parades and public assemblies that bans masks for the purpose of civil rights intimidation, the Daily News reports. The KKK’s Loyal White Knights are calling on other branches to join its March 30 protest against the…

(The Root) — Diversity works. Every now and again it is refreshing — indeed, profoundly rejuvenating — to get a reminder of that fact. And I don’t mean this as just another celebration of the political coalition that has twice elected Barack Obama. No, I mean this in terms of everyday experience and the real…

CNN is reporting that a man alleges in a federal suit that Kevin Clash, the puppeteer behind Sesame Street’s Elmo character, threw a crystal meth sex party for him in 2004, when he was a teen. Clash’s attorney calls the suit meritless and says it is barred by the statute of limitations. Clash resigned from…

Joe Rickey Hundley, the 60-year-old man accused of slapping a toddler on a Feb. 8 Minneapolis-to-Atlanta flight and hurling a racial slur, has pleaded not guilty to assault in federal court, the Associated Press reports. The Hayden, Idaho, resident appeared in court on Wednesday. His lawyer, Marcia Shein, says that her client admitted to using…

Writing at Clutch magazine, The Root’s contributing editor Demetria L. Lucas has what she admits are some “un-PC” comments about the Ohio trial that made headlines and set off a national dialogue about rape. … Forgive me if I’m habitually line-stepping, or even crossing here, by writing what I’m really thinking, but there are a…