By Kemba Smith
As most Americans, I believed in the motto, liberty and justice for all, until at the age of 23 in April 1995, I stood in a court room with Lady Justice watching as Federal District Court Judge Richard B. Kellam sentenced me to a mandatory minimum sentence of 24.5 years in the Federal Women’s Prison in Danbury, Conn., as a first-time non-violent drug offender with no possibility of parole.

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.

By John Shearer
Ella and May grew up worlds apart. Ella, 60 and single, spent her early years in Greenwich Connecticut and was a runner up in the Miss Black America beauty pageant. May, 40, started life on Chicago’s South Side. Ella went to Smith College. May was a gang-banger who somehow managed to get by.

Muhammad Ali TKO’s Chuck Wepner in 15 rounds to retain his heavyweight boxing title.

Nurse and aviator Janet Harmon Bragg is born in Griffin, Georgia.

Canada gives African-American citizens the right to vote.

Patricia Roberts Harris, first African-American woman to serve as a United States ambassador, dies in Washington, D.C.

Slavery abolished in Puerto Rico.

Alonzo Pietro, explorer known as “il negro,” sets sail with Christopher Columbus.

J.H. Smith patents lawn sprinkler.