Willie Rainge, along with three other men and one woman, was wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of a young couple abducted from a Chicago-area gas station 1978. Among the causes of Rainge’s wrongful conviction was bad lawyering: his attorney failed to point out inconsistencies in the state’s evidence and version of events at trial.

After investigators from the Northwestern School of Journalism took the case in 1996, they discovered lost evidence pointing to the true killers buried in a police file. Subsequent DNA testing excluded all five defendants, and they were officially exonerated 14 years ago this week.

By Khalil Gibran Muhammad
In the coming weeks, as Chicago officials extend handgun rights to its citizens in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, and politicians debate whether or not urban residents will be better protected by armed soldiers, important lessons from the past should not go unheeded.

By The Editors
Diversity and equal opportunity in the Chicago Fire Department appears to have a high-level champion—the prospective new Fire Commissioner.

By Lee A. Daniels
A teachable moment on America’s racial past and present is occurring at the University of Texas at Austin because of the exposure of the dirty history of one of its early twentieth-century professors: his membership in the Ku Klux Klan.

By The Editors
For the second time in two years, the Supreme Court narrowly ruled that gun-control laws cannot abridge the right to bear arms the Second Amendment grants individuals. The decision came in a case challenging the gun-control laws of Chicago and a nearby suburb, Oak Park, Illinois, McDonald v. Chicago, No. 08-1521.

By Lee A. Daniels
Thursday the U.S. Senate refused to pass legislation extending unemployment benefits for jobless workers coming to the end of their regular benefits period. As a result, by the end of next week, more than a million jobless Americans will have lost their benefits this month.

With only days until Senate confirmation hearings begin on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) has released a report examining the nominee’s civil rights record.

By The Editors
Black farmers’ years of litigation and political lobbying to try to right an egregious wrong endured another frustrating setback Thursday when the Senate once again refused to appropriate the funds necessary to settle their long-decided discrimination lawsuit against the federal government.

By Stacey Patton
Good news in the battle against corporal punishment in schools! But not everyone, especially some in Houston’s black community, agrees.

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.