The father of a 3-year-old boy who died last weekend under his care says that his son accidentally shot himself in the head with a loaded gun; the boy’s mother, however, believes differently.
You can add “being distraught over the death of your child while black” to the growing list of things that might get you arrested after police locked up a grieving mother for trying to see her son at a Pennsylvania hospital.
Anyone who thinks children should be seen and not heard has clearly never heard of Naomi Wadler. The 11-year-old blew millions of minds when she appeared onstage at last month’s March for Our Lives “to acknowledge and represent the African-American girls whose stories don’t make the front page of every national…
Just one week before a mass shooting would launch their school into the national spotlight, students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School put on a Black History Month show at the Parkland, Fla., school. In a last-minute, unrehearsed addition, black student organizers wanted to address a letter that had appeared in…
In the 24 hours it takes for this column to be written, edited, copy edited and uploaded to The Root and to end up on your phone, about 318 people across the United States will have been shot (in fact, the shooting at YouTube headquarters happened between writing my first and second drafts of this column). That’s just…
Here’s a small glimmer of hope for victims of domestic violence: On Saturday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the passage of new legislation that requires convicted domestic abusers to surrender any and all firearms and prohibits them from obtaining or renewing a firearm license.
On Wednesday afternoon, black students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., assembled to draw attention to their growing safety concerns since returning to class—concerns they say may not necessarily be shared or highlighted by their white classmates, who have received the bulk of the national…
The ability of the Parkland, Fla., school-shooting victims to organize nationwide gun control rallies less than six weeks after their school was attacked is nothing short of a political miracle. Even Byron Allen couldn’t have predicted the perfect storm of demographics, inept politicians, charismatic kids and engaged…
Conservative social media users are back on their bullshit (though, being “back” would mean they somehow left it).
Yolanda Renee King, the grandchild of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, made a surprise appearance Saturday at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. The 9-year-old roused the crowd with a passionate speech that would no doubt have made her activist grandparents proud, evoking the “I Have a…
It’s a powerful thing to channel your pain into positive change. On Saturday, Jennifer Hudson did just that when she took to the stage at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., to sing a soul-stirring rendition of Bob Dylan’s protest anthem “The Times They Are a-Changin’.”
I am here today to represent Courtlin Arrington. I am here today to represent Hadiya Pendleton. I am here today to represent Taiyania Thompson, who at just 16 was shot dead at her home in Washington, D.C. I am here to acknowledge and represent the African-American girls whose stories don’t make the front page of every…
A teenage girl was shot and killed by her younger brother over what police believe to have been an argument over video games.
To the black students who walked out of schools across the country yesterday: We see you. We watched as you stood there, brown skin shining, braids swinging, voices booming, taking charge and walking in the revolutionary tradition of your ancestors. We saw the fire in your eyes. We felt it burning. Hold on to it.…
In a clear case of reverse racism, an obscure, little-known discipline called “science” has revealed that the vast majority of gun owners are uneducated white males who think black people are preparing to launch a sneak attack against the Caucasians any day now.
Well, it certainly looks as if the same rotten tree produced the same rotten fruit. And as it turns out, while some students were marching for their lives on National Walkout Day to protest gun violence, Morgan Roof, the sister of white supremacist and mass murderer Dylann Roof, was on social media expressing her…
The biggest surprise of being a parent so far is how often my daughter surprises me. She’s a little over 2 years old now, and it seems like every week she does or says something new that I had no idea she knew how to do or say. Yesterday morning, for instance, she noticed me laughing at a text I received, and then…
As I am writing this, thousands of school-age children are walking out of classrooms all across the country to protest U.S. politicians’ unwillingness to enact commonsense gun control. The nationwide demonstration is being hailed as a groundbreaking act of civil disobedience that seeks to protect the lives of…
Today in “This is exactly why schools should be gun-free zones” news, a Seaside, Calif., teacher—who is also a reserve police officer, mind you—somehow accidentally fired a gun inside a local high school classroom on Tuesday, injuring three students.