By Grace Aneiza Ali
“The last time we all got together like this was in 1975,” says Taiwo Duvall as he stands in one of the gallery spaces at the Dwyer Cultural Center. It’s a frigid Tuesday evening in Harlem. It’s been snowing and sleeting for most of the day. Despite the precarious weather, over 200 people have packed the Dwyer, in what looks and feels more like a family reunion than the Center’s opening for the exhibition, Weusi Revisited: 2010.

By Janet Singleton
For me to have the opportunity to vote for the sort of person, as president of my nation, that I would aspire to be is even more miraculous than the racial breakthrough it represented. No Irshad, I voted for the President not because he is my color but because he is my kind, if only in my aspirations.

By The Editors
This month the U.S. Census Bureau issued new guidelines that could significantly alter how inmates in state prisons are counted for the census. That, in turn, could affect whether voting districts across the country gain or lose population in advance of the 2011 Congressional and state legislative redistricting.

By Doug Miller
Richard Brodsky, the legislator who chairs the New York State Assembly’s committee overseeing the operations of the MTA, says that while its officials have a legitimate gripe about funding its operating budget, the agency is floating phony numbers in its threat to eliminate free and reduced fares for New York City school kids.

By Carleen Brice
It is 2002, 2003, 2004 or 2005 and I am listening to Jill Scott’s song, Try, a lot. I’m writing my first novel while holding down a job, and editing an anthology about black women and midlife.

By Olympia Duhart
Shortly after the earthquake, the Obama administration granted temporary protected status, or TPS, for at least 100,000 Haitian immigrants living in the United States without proper documentation. The special status would also extend to about 30,000 Haitians who had been ordered deported. The status is only offered to Haitians in the United States as of January 12, 2010, the day the earthquake struck.

By C. Nicole Mason

On the one-year anniversary of the stimulus bill, the Administration will do much to convince us that it is indeed working. However, it’s going to take more than colorful pie charts and grandiose projections to ease the anxiety and the angst gripping communities.

Kennedy Brewer was sentenced to death in Mississippi in 1995 for a child murder he didn’t commit. DNA testing in 2001 indicated that he could not have committed the crime and led to his conviction being overturned. He remained in jail for seven more years, however, before an Innocence Project investigation led to the real perpetrator. He was freed two years ago this week.

By Paula L. Woods
A Wish After Midnight is written with a lyrical grace that many authors of what passes for adult literature would envy as it examines universal themes of finding lost love, belief in one’s dreams and the power of friendship.

By Karyn Langhorne Folan
For many black women, dating a white man pushes romance and family toward a head-on collision.