news
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#HUSitIn: Howard Students Occupying Administrative Building Say It’s Not Just About Money
Spurred to action by the recent allegations of the misappropriation of nearly $1 million in financial aid funds, hundreds of Howard University students have occupied the school’s administrative building for a fourth straight day. With unofficial student campus group HU Resist leading the charge, the students have presented the administration with a list of demands,…
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17-Year-Old Houston Teen Gets Into 20 Top-Tier Colleges With Full Rides
We here at The Root love it when young black folk defy all of the low expectations, irrational fears and systemic oppression of this America. And so we salute young Mr. Micheal Brown, who was accepted to not one, not seven, but 20 of the best colleges in the nation. The 17-year-old from Houston applied…
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Feds Charge Houston Megachurch Pastor for Fleecing Flock of Millions of Dollars
The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, senior pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church, a megachurch of more than 17,000 mostly African-American members, has been charged with scamming elderly investors of millions in a dubious Chinese-bond scam. CNN Money reports that the feds have charged the 64-year-old Houston pastor—and Louisiana financial planner Gregory Alan Smith, 55—with six…
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Atlanta Charter School Apologizes for 2nd-Grade Blackface Show in the Year of Our Lord 2018
This week, between that Heineken ad, Roseanne’s nonacting ass being back on TV (notably on the same network pandering to “unheard white working-class America” and yet nixing a Black-ish episode about NFL players kneeling) and now a minstrel show at an elementary school, I think wypipo are pranking us with overt racism followed by, “Who,…
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Oh, Yes He Did: Donald J. Trump Declares April National Sexual Assault Awareness Month
It’s clear that President Donald Trump has left shame way back in the place where his top hairs used to be—the distant past. But seriously, what shame? The ease with which lies roll off his forked tongue, and the fact that he chooses his advisers and Cabinet with the same criteria for a stay at…
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Ava DuVernay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Janelle Monáe and More Join Call for Justice for Slain Afro-Brazilian Activist
More than two weeks after the assassination of Marielle Franco, an Afro-Brazilian politician who had staunchly advocated against police violence, grim details have emerged around her death. As Kiratiana Freelon reported for The Root, the 38-year-old Franco was gunned down in her car by armed men in Rio de Janeiro. She was shot a total…
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Officer Blane Salamoni, Alton Sterling’s Killer, Has Been Fired
Blane Salamoni—the Baton Rouge, La., police officer who killed 37-year-old Alton Sterling on July 5, 2016—has been fired, Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul announced Friday. “These [police officers’] actions were not minor deviations from policy, as they contributed to the outcome that resulted in the death of another human being,” Paul said. Officer Howie…
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Texas Woman Gets 5 Years in Prison for Casting an Illegal Ballot in 2016 Election
A Texas woman on supervised release from a tax-fraud conviction will lose her freedom once again—this time for casting an illegal ballot in the 2016 election. A judge handed 43-year-old Crystal Mason a five-year sentence on Wednesday for casting a ballot before completing the full term of her sentence, including the supervised release, for a…
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#StephonClark: Independent Autopsy Shows Police Shot Him 8 Times, 6 in the Back
Contrary to initial police statements, Stephon Clark was not facing the officers who shot and killed him in the backyard of his grandmother’s house on March 18, according to an independent autopsy requested by the family. The autopsy, performed by pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu, found that eight of the 20 shots fired at Clark hit…