One year ago this week, Timothy Cole became the first person in Texas history to be posthumously exonerated through DNA testing. Cole served more than a decade in Texas prisons for a rape he didn’t commit before dying of a heart attack in 1999. The Innocence Project of Texas sought DNA testing in this case, which implicated another man as the perpetrator, posthumously clearing Cole.

By The Editors
The Census Bureau will continue to accept Census forms at least through April 15, 2010. After April 15 you will still have a chance to return your Census form by mail but a Census Taker will visit your home during the follow-up period, which begins May 1.

By Lee A. Daniels
A former New Orleans police officer’s guilty plea in federal court this week has further exposed the police department cover-up about the police shooting of six unarmed civilians on that city’s Danziger Bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

By Maggie Astor
With the recent passage of a sweeping overhaul of the American health care system, the U.S. moves one step closer to joining the long list of countries that guarantee health care to all their citizens. But for all of the conservative furor surrounding the bill, it does not actually provide universal healthcare — according to the Congressional Budget Office, it will newly cover 32 million Americans, but will leave up to 23 million uninsured.

By Jackie Jones
President Obama signed the final revision of the Patients Protection and Affordable Care Act. Now, the real work on health care reform is just beginning.

A half century ago a very large percentage of African Americans were not permitted to vote. Southern whites used a wide variety of tactics such as the poll tax, literacy tests, and other means to restrict black voting. When all else failed, whites resorted to violence to intimidate blacks and keep them from voting.

Jump ahead to 2008 and an African American, with considerable support from whites, is elected President of the United States.

By Lee A. Daniels
Governor McDonnell’s choosing the wrong month was as deliberate as his initial omission of any reference to Virginia having been a slave state; and to the Confederacy having fought the war in order to maintain slavery, and as his implying that Virginia was then an all-white state, when in fact in 1860 blacks, both enslaved and free, comprised nearly half of its population.

Jacqueline A. Berrien, the former Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), was sworn in on Wednesday, April 7, 2010, as the Chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) by Acting Chairman Stuart J. Ishimaru.

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.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund wishes to commend Justice Stevens upon the announcement of his retirement from the Supreme Court at the end of this term.