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By The Editors
On the fifth anniversary of the great hurricane that submerged most of New Orleans, President Obama traveled to the Big Easy to assure its residents that “all of America, not just people here, not just folks in the White House, but all of America remains concerned and remains committed to their rebuilding.”
Teaching Black Kids to Cope with Racism
By Tarice L. S. Gray
Families are where children find acceptance, which is key to healthy growth and development.
Top 25 African-American Films of All Time
By Ralph Richardson
I am an NYC-based filmmaker, so I come to this Top 25 list with a wonderful joy and love for film, and since my mother took me to the movies every week since I was 3, I also have a pretty good knowledge of this grand art form
My Top 10 African-American TV Shows of All Time
By Ralph Richardson
Hey ya’ll, I’m back, this time with the Top Ten African-American TV Shows of All Time.
Calvin Willis
Six years ago this week, Calvin Willis raised his arms high above his head and walked out of a Louisiana prison, free for the first time in 21 years. Willis was wrongfully convicted of rape in 1982 and served more than two decades before DNA testing excluded him as the perpetrator.
The Red and the Black: African Americans and Cherokees in Antebellum America
By Kenneth J. Cooper
Most people are astonished when I tell them the Cherokees owned slaves. Schools don’t teach about the slaveholding of the Cherokee and four other tribes who, most ironically, became known as the “Five Civilized Tribes.”
A Fun Face?
*Warning: Explicit photographic content may be disturbing*
By Stacey Patton
When I saw news reports of the baker’s “Drunken Negro Head” cookie that he started selling on Martin Luther King Day and in “honor” of President Obama, I was immediately struck by its grotesque familiarity.
Biloxi Schools Controversy: Punished for Achievement?
By Stacey Patton
When school begins this Wednesday, 267 of Biloxi’s top-performing elementary students will be attending a new school less than a mile down the road. But some parents and city residents feel that move will threaten the student’s continued high scholastic achievement.
Sarah Rector: The Richest Colored Girl in the World
By Stacey Patton
“Oil Made Pickaninny Rich – Oklahoma Girl With $15,000 A Month Gets Many Proposals – Four White Men in Germany Want to Marry the Negro Child That They Might Share Her Fortune,” which appeared in The Kansas City Star on January 15, 1914, was just the first of many newspaper and magazine headlines during the next decade about Sarah Rector, the richest black child known to the world in that era.
Clyde Murphy: 1948 — 2010
By Theodore M. Shaw
He brought an energy and commitment to his work that was rooted in his unabashed commitment to improving the lives of African-American people.
Chemical Relaxers: The Facts Might Not Be So Relaxing
By Janet Singleton
Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair caused bad feelings last summer for many black female film-goers, who felt more betrayed than they did fairly portrayed by the film. Lost in all of the earsplitting debates and viral blog posts, was any deeper discussion of the health implications for black women and girls who use hair straightener
Justice Denied: Still No Money for Black Farmers Settlement
By The Editors
Black farmers’ years of litigation and political lobbying to try to right an egregious wrong endured another frustrating setback Thursday when the Senate once again refused to appropriate the funds necessary to settle their long-decided discrimination lawsuit against the federal government.
Spike Lee revisits New Orleans in new HBO documentary
By Tarice L.S. Gray
It was five years ago this month Katrina left a historic mess in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The destruction of the hurricane, been called one of the worst natural disasters in American history, was documented by filmmaker Spike Lee in his 2005 Emmy-award winning film “When the Levees Broke: A requiem in four parts.”
8 Year-Old Girl’s Hair Triggers Cries of Racism But Are We Jumping the Gun?
By Stacey Patton
When I finished the full story, I came to the surprising conclusion that this latest interaction between a white teacher and black child’s hair just might not be a racist incident after all.
No Birth Records = Tough Road Ahead When Aging Out of Foster Care
By Tarice L.S. Gray
Dominque Freeman is one of the lucky ones. She is just completing her freshman year at Cal State Northridge, and she’s doing so with the help of a full academic scholarship. Even more importantly, she now has an identity.
Just a year ago, Freeman didn’t exist.
Unlike most U.S. citizens, she had no birth certificate, no social security number, and she’d just aged out of a foster care system that had determined that her case was closed.
Is That Your Child? Mothers Talk About Rearing Biracial Children
By Marion Kilson and Florence Ladd
Our new book, Is That Your Child?: Mothers Talk About Rearing Biracial Children, is based on interviews with black and white mothers of biracial children. The book opens with our interview with each other, charts the challenges and rewards of rearing biracial children, and profiles black and white mothers with distinctive biracial parenting experiences. It concludes with suggestions for positive parenting strategies, which are relevant to all varieties of biracial combinations.
Facing Fears: Many Minorities Need Encouragement to Get in the Swim
By Tarice L.S. Gray
While at a swim meet two weeks ago in Canada, World Record Holder and 2008 US Olympic Swimmer Cullen Jones got some heartbreaking news: Another child of color had drowned in his United States.
Ishmael Reed on ‘Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media’
By Jill Nelson
Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers is Reed’s fourth book of media criticism. We talked to Reed while he was on the East Coast on a brief tour to promote a book whose publication and scathing critique of racist, corporate controlled media has largely and not surprisingly been ignored by those whom Reed labels the “Jim Crow Media.”
‘A Small Act’: HBO Documentary Spotlights Dilemma of Education Funding
By Tarice L.S. Gray
The Hilde Back Educational Fund is a small organization, with the mission of promoting educational development through sponsorship. The film documents their small yet significant impact in Kenya. But the tiny village in Kenya can be looked at as a microcosm for much of the rest of the world.
Time to Spare the Rod in Black Communities
By Stacey Patton
April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. During this time of heightened awareness I want to challenge black communities everywhere to change the conversation on how we discipline our children.
Obama’s New American First: The President as ‘The Other’
By Lee A. Daniels
Today, American society is flooded with virulent, racially-driven images and rhetoric hurled against the President, saturated with the demonizing of undocumented Latino immigrants and calls for scrapping the constitutional protection all children born in America should enjoy, and degraded by cynical assertions that guilt-by-association is valid principle to apply to people who are not white
America is essentially a dream, a dream as yet unfulfilled.
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Feature
LDF Statement Commemorating 5th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina
Today, we honor the memory of those whose lives were lost during and after Hurricane Katrina, and stand steadfastly beside those who continue their struggle to reclaim and revitalize their communities.
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The Beck-Palin Rally: Where Was The Rest of America?
By Lee A. Daniels
There are roughly 38 million African Americans in America.
Why did so few of them show up at the Glenn Beck- Sarah Palin “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday?
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Teaching Black Kids to Cope with Racism
By Tarice L. S. Gray
Families are where children find acceptance, which is key to healthy growth and development.
Black Police Officers Association Endorses California Ballot Measure to Legalize Marijuana
By The Editors
A prominent association of black police officers last week endorsed the California ballot measure that would legalize marijuana in the state.
Biloxi Schools Controversy: Punished for Achievement?
By Stacey Patton
When school begins this Wednesday, 267 of Biloxi’s top-performing elementary students will be attending a new school less than a mile down the road. But some parents and city residents feel that move will threaten the student’s continued high scholastic achievement.
55 Years Later, Emmett Till Murder Still Haunts
By Stacey Patton
August 28th marks the 55th anniversary of the brutal murder of 14 year-old Emmett Louis Till. In the summer of 1955 he was forced out of his bed in the middle of the night at gunpoint by white men, thrown on the back of a pick-up truck and driven to a barn [...]
California Foreclosures Door Closes Harder on Blacks/Hispanics
By Doug Miller
Lending institutions in California have foreclosed on African-American and Latino homeowners nearly twice as much as white property owners, according to a new study by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), indicating that banks likely targeted those ethnic groups to receive more expensive and financially toxic subprime mortgages mortgages during the decade of the housing boom.
August 28, 1963: A Moment of Glory
By Lee A. Daniels
There is no “battle for Dr. King’s legacy,” as one newspaper headline, intended to be attention-grabbing, put it this week. The legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and of the black freedom struggle was affirmed for all time at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.
Coming Soon: The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial
By The Editors
Sometime next year Martin Luther King, Jr. will likely become more visible, more available, one might say, to millions more Americans.
Ryan Matthews
Six years ago this week, Ryan Matthews was exonerated after spending five years on Louisiana’s death row for a murder he didn’t commit.
Matthews was 17 years old when he and his friend Travis Hayes were charged with committing a murder in Bridge City, Louisiana. After six hours of interrogation, Hayes falsely confessed to being the getaway driver. A witness to the shooting said he saw the perpetrator in his rearview mirror and identified Matthews in a highly suggestive police procedure. Both men were convicted – Hayes was sentenced to life in prison and Matthews to death.
After years of appeals, attorneys representing Matthews requested DNA comparison on an alternate suspect. The DNA profile from the murder implicated the alternate suspect – proving Matthews and Hayes innocent. Matthews was released in June 2004 and officially cleared in August. Hayes would not be freed until January of 2007.