Politics

(The Root) — Final details have been released for the closing ceremonies of the 50th-anniversary commemoration of the March on Washington, which will take place on Wednesday, Aug. 28. As previously reported, President Barack Obama will deliver a speech at the daylong event, which kicks off at 11 a.m. EDT at the Lincoln Memorial, the…

Update: Saturday, August 24, 1:34 p.m. EDT:  Rep. John Lewis, (D-Ga.), the only surviving speaker from the march in 1963, and Cory Booker, the 44-year-old mayor of Newark, N.J., and Democratic candidate for Senate, also spoke to the crowd at the National Mall, USA Today reports. “We cannot give up. We cannot give out. And…

It’s time for parents to be held accountable when their children run amok, CNN‘s L.Z. Granderson writes in a stinging piece that addresses several heinous crimes around the nation involving youth gun violence. “We don’t teach accountability, we don’t expect accountability and I’m not even sure we even know what accountability looks like anymore,” he…

(The Root) — Listen to talk radio, peruse the front page of the nation’s major news sites and covers of the big magazines this week, and the 1963 March on Washington occupies a lot of real estate. There are the stories and images of a peaceful gathering of Americans committed to nothing beyond calling for social justice and legal equality.…

As the country prepares to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic March on Washington speech, a new Pew Research study on attitudes toward racial equality finds that most of us believe that when it comes to equality, we’ve come a long way since the march but still have a long way…

(The Root) — On a sweltering day in late July, the Rev. Martin Rafanan, a St. Louis, Mo., labor organizer, led hundreds of service-industry workers, most of them African American, on a legally protected 24-hour strike. The strike was not only a St. Louis first but also part of a precedent-setting effort across four Midwestern…

(The Root) — I was a 17-year-old face in the crowd of 250,000 when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his immortal sermon at the March on Washington. I was standing so far behind the Reflecting Pool that I could barely make out the figures on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and the historic words…

(The Root) — One way to exact structural change in America is through schools and their curricula, The Root’s editor-in-chief, professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., said recently about creating a national dialogue about race that could help prevent tragedies like that shooting death of the unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Professor Gates was discussing his PBS…

On Monday, the Obamas announced a new addition to their family: a dog named Sunny. Like the current Obama family dog, Bo, Sunny is a Portugese water dog. Sunny came to the Obamas from Michigan, according to a statement released by the White House, and was born in June 2012. The Obamas adopted the dog…

At a Maine Republican Party fundraiser last week for newly elected party Chairman Rick Bennett, Gov. Paul LePage told attendees that President Barack Obama “hates white people,” according to two Republican lawmakers who were there, reports the Portland Press Herald. They said LePage remarked that Obama had the potential to be the best president ever…