news
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DOJ Report: Police in Ferguson Antagonized Demonstrators and Violated Their Free-Speech Rights
A U.S. Department of Justice report finds significant faults in law enforcement’s response to the demonstrations last summer in Ferguson, Mo., over the slaying of Michael Brown, the Associated Press reports. State and local authorities antagonized demonstrators in several ways, such as using military-style equipment and inappropriately using tear gas. The DOJ also concluded that authorities…
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Black Supporters of the Confederate Flag: ‘Don’t Let Cowards in Bedsheets Hijack Its Meaning’
There’s Karen Cooper, the Virginia woman who described how the Confederate flag, to her, represents defiance in the face of oppression. “I actually think that it represents freedom,” Cooper, a black woman, says in a webisode of the documentary Battle Flag. “It represents a people who stood up to tyranny.” According to the Washington Post, Cooper takes…
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Michelle Obama Has Girl Scout Sleepover on the White House Lawn
It seems there’s nothing that first lady Michelle Obama won’t do to stress the tenets of her Let’s Move initiative that gets children to take exercising and eating healthy seriously, including turning her backyard into a campsite for 50 Girl Scouts. That’s right: On Tuesday the White House South Lawn was littered with marshmallows, tents, campfires—well,…
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SC Black Church, Torched by KKK 20 Years Ago, Erupts in Flames
A historically black church located just outside Charleston, S.C., and which was burned to the ground 20 years ago by the Ku Klux Klan, was ablaze Tuesday evening. According to WACH Fox 57, the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church, located in Greeleyville, S.C.—about an hour away from Charleston—burned well into the evening as two…
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Ala. NAACP to Investigate Numerous Claims of False Drug Arrests and Abuse
Numerous people attended the Pickens County, Ala., NAACP meeting on June 29 to complain about false arrests from a drug sweep. The state’s NAACP said that the organization is launching an investigation, WBRC-TV reports. The claims stem from an 18-month drug operation that netted more than four dozen suspects. But many of them claim that…
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Misty Copeland Rises to Principal Dancer at American Ballet Theatre
Renowned ballerina Misty Copeland was made a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre on Tuesday, becoming the first African-American woman to hold the position with the company, the New York Times reports. The promotion, the Times notes, brings to realization a well-known ambition of Copeland’s, who wrote about wanting to secure the promotion in…
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Exonerated La. Man Who Spent 29 Years on Death Row Dies of Lung Cancer
Glenn Ford, an exonerated convict who spent almost 30 years in solitary confinement for a murder he did not commit, died early Monday in New Orleans at the age of 65, the Times-Picayune reports. Shortly after being exonerated and released from Angola on March 11, 2014, Ford found out that he had lung cancer. Supporters…
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NC Police Recapture Escapee, Charge Prison Worker for Aiding and Having Sex With Him
North Carolina authorities have recaptured escaped murderer Kristopher Antonio McNeil and brought up a female prison worker on multiple charges, including having sex with the inmate, NBC News reports. McNeil, 29, is believed to have climbed a fence to escape from a minimum-security unit at Brown Creek Correctional Institute in Polkton, N.C., according to the…
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Baltimore County Police Launch Investigation Into Fatal Police Shooting of Unarmed Black Man
The Baltimore County Police Department’s homicide unit has launched an investigation into the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man in the Baltimore suburb of Owing Mills, according to Reuters. As The Root reported, three police officers, responding to a domestic disturbance Thursday, fired at least 19 rounds and killed 41-year-old Spencer Lee McCain.…
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Police Car Involved in Detroit Car Chase That Killed 2 Children Had No Functioning Dash Cam
The police car involved in an ultimately deadly pursuit with a parole violator did not have a working dash camera, Detroit Police Chief James Craig said, according to the Detroit Free Press. “The dash cam was not operational,” Craig told reporters at a news conference Monday. “It was an older marked scout car that a…