John S. Rock becomes the first black attorney to practice before the United States Supreme Court.

By Erik Gleibermann, ColorLines magazine
In the days after Hurricane Katrina, the band members from the Soul Rebels Brass Band-dispersed from Texas to South Carolina and beyond-made a pledge over their cell phones. They would go home again and blast funk-infused horns at club Le Bon Temps Roulé.

By The Editors
Eric H. Holder, Jr., President Obama’s choice for Attorney General, easily won the approval of a key U.S. Senate committee Wednesday.

By TaRessa Stovall
On New Year’s Day, as much of America was still enjoying the exhilaration of Barack Obama’s victorious presidential campaign and anticipating the Inauguration festivities, young black men were still being murdered – by police officers and by each other.

By Lee A. Daniels
The verse is more than a century old, and thus, has a slightly archaic tone. But, proclaimed on January 20th boldly and yet simply by the Reverend Joseph E. Lowery, it framed the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States with a profound poignancy.

*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.

By Stacey Patton
When Barack Hussein Obama was elected our 44th president last November, I immediately began to think of a long line of heroic black ancestors whose blood, toil and sacrifices paved the way for this once “skinny kid with a funny name” to make history. In the midst of my joy, their names and faces surged to the forefront of my mind

By The Editors
Can the quality of parenting and environment make a difference in the challenges faced by so-called “crack babies,” children born to crack cocaine-addicted mothers in the 1980s and 1990s, who were never expected to thrive?

By The Editors
On the evening of January 6, New York Cities School Chancellor Joel Klein and Reverend Al Sharpton engaged in a dynamic discussion about the relationship between the educational achievement gap and human rights in the United States.

By The Editors
The economic crisis gripping the nation intensified Friday as two reports quantified the deepening slide. The monthly report of the federal Department of Labor found that employers cut 524,000 jobs last month – the latest in a series of alarming monthly job losses that added up to a total of 2.45 million jobs lost during all of 2008.