Politics

A Political Dynasty: Height and Hooks https://www.theroot.com/views/mourning-lioness-civil-rights The loss of Dorothy Height and Benjamin Hooks, two people who played significant roles in the civil rights movement is major. It’s so major that we don’t have anything cynical or skeptical to say. We have lost a generation of consistent, game-changing leadership and that is a fact.…

It’s hard to make pancakes with your right arm broken and useless in a sling. It was 90 degrees and humid in Miami Beach, even though it was just 7:30 in the morning. Frances Hooks was struggling to fix breakfast in the kitchen of their hotel suite during the NAACP annual convention in 1980. Breakfast…

This article was updated at 12:39 p.m. Dorothy I. Height, a commanding force in civil rights movement who stood on the platform with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during his historic “I Have a Dream” speech, died of natural causes at 3:41 a.m. at Howard University Hospital in Washington, DC. She was 98…

Mama Nature Rules the Air http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/19/AR2010041901101.html?hpid=topnews The biggest disruption of air traffic since 9/11 continues to strand millions of travelers.  Four days after an Icelandic volcano erupted spewing ash that can damage jet engines, just a third of European flights are expected to operate today. A few small airports opened as air authorities pushed back…

Has President Obama killed off the Congressional Black Caucus? From the very beginning, President Obama and his campaign promised the CBC nothing, so no one – not even the 42 CBC members – should be shocked that, at this point, they have gained minimal legislative progress with Obama in the White House and that they…

Memo to the tea partiers, et al: We’ll be cool—really—if you just stop using that phrase. You know what I’m talking about. The five words that you deploy accidentally on purpose to tell the president and a whole lot of other Americans that they’re not really Americans: “I want my country back.” What’s more insulting…

Lord knows various people have had the chutzpah to try to define and articulate a “black agenda”. And they have generally fallen short, not only in that endeavor but also in executing what they do come up with. Perhaps the most successful gathering of intellectuals, lawyers and policy makers took place in 1935 when the…

When you listen to the women of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) recount their experiences as organizers in the Deep South a half-century ago,  a crystal clear truth emerges: the civil rights movement could never have succeeded without the extraordinary creativity and courage of female organizers. As Charles M. Payne, a scholar at the…

by E.R. Shipp The Rev. Al Sharpton, in the public eye since his days as a teenage civil rights advocate, has changed before our eyes so many times. He has gone from the big-mouthed “No Justice! No Peace!” local protest leader to someone who is comfortable with Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, conservative big mouths…

Today is the last day to mail back your 2010 U.S. Census form before the government takes things to the next level: sending canvassers out to knock on your door, starting May 1. Once they do that, the cost of having you counted goes up from the pennies it costs for postage to $57 per…