By Lee A. Daniels
Strip away all the rhetoric of rationalization from the proponents of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law. What you’re left with is another example of how thin the veneer of civilization is, of how willing some people are to be cruel to others – especially when their cruelty can be simultaneously fostered and shielded by laws.

By Seth Freed Wessler
Washington’s game of immigration-reform dodgeball got particularly intense this week after Arizona passed its racial police state bill.

By George Alexander
I would lie captivated as Pryor painted vivid pictures of folks who sounded and looked familiar to my African-American world. You could just see them. He could take you to the barbershop, to the shoeshine stand, to the speakeasy even if you’d never had a drink in your life. Yet, it all rang true. It was real.

On Wednesday, April 28, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered rehearing in a case challenging Washington State’s racially discriminatory law that denies the vote to people with felony convictions. A panel of eleven judges will reconsider this important civil rights case.

By Lee A. Daniels
Friday Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed legislation passed by the Grand Canyon State’s legislature declaring every Latino resident there a second-class citizen who can be stopped by any law officer for no reason other than that they “look” Latino and made to produce proof of their American citizenship or be arrested for “trespass.”

By Kevin Eason
Kevin Eason is a freelance editorial cartoonist and Illustrator from NJ. His brand of satire covers news events in politics, entertainment, sports and much more. Kevin’s work features include: TVOne, NABJ, WBLS_107.5FM, EURweb and various newspapers & magazines throughout the country.

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
In Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama, historian Peniel E. Joseph examines President Barack Obama’s ascent to the White House, an almost unbelievable achievement that is still startling in its historic significance.

By TaRessa Stovall
Who will pick up the baton?

When civil rights pioneers Drs. Benjamin Hooks and Dorothy Height passed away in mid-April, the question ricocheted through cyberspace, amid tributes to the pair of visionary legends as stalwarts of a movement that created the America we know today.

By Jill Nelson
On March 10 the judiciary committee of the Georgia House passed the Georgia Pre-Natal Non-Discrimination Act, HB 1155, which seeks to ban the solicitation of women of color by abortion providers, even though there is no evidence that abortion providers do so.

In 1984, David Shephard was convicted of a rape and robbery arising from an incident where two men had abducted a woman from a parking lot in New Jersey. The victim identified Shephard as the rapist through voice identification after one of the assailants had called the other “Dave.” Blood-type testing performed on biological evidence could not exclude Shephard, and he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. DNA testing conducted in 1992 excluded Shephard as the depositor of semen on a vaginal swab, but since there were two perpetrators, he could not be definitively excluded. Further testing revealed two DNA profiles, neither of which matched Shephard. In light of these results, a new trial was ordered, but the prosecution elected not to retry Shephard. He was exonerated 15 years ago this week.