By Doug Miller
African-American and Latino borrowers – already staggering under greater financial losses than whites in the wake of the U.S. mortgage foreclosure scandal – face an additional loss of an estimated $360 billion in cumulative family wealth from an associated decrease in neighborhood property values, according to recent testimony before Congress.

By The Editors
Jacqueline A. Berrien, Chairwoman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, has a “sense of urgency” about it’s work – and its showing.

Since taking office last April, Berrien has moved swiftly to reverse the federal agency’s reputation as inefficient in keeping track of claims individuals file with it and ineffective in safeguarding workers’ rights, according to a profile in this week’s National Law Journal.

By Lee A. Daniels
Blair L.M. Kelley’s important book, Right To Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson, which was published earlier this year, brings to our attention something that is largely not known: that the Montgomery boycott of 1955 – 1965 wasn’t the first such action, not by a long shot. Instead, it marked the revival of a long-shelved tactic of the black freedom struggle: nonviolent mass protest to directly confront the injustice of discrimination.

Eight years ago this November, Bernard Webster was freed in Maryland after serving 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

DNA testing disproved misleading testimony provided by a forensic analyst during Webster’s trial.

By The Editors
The separate, decades-long odyssey by tens of thousands of black farmers and hundreds of thousands of Native Americans to gain a measure of justice – and compensation – from the federal government is apparently nearing a just conclusion. The Senate last week approved a total of $4.55 billion to settle charges of wrongdoing the groups had brought in separate lawsuits.

By Lee A. Daniels
Data accumulating in a growing pile of reports map the devastating consequences of the Great Recession on millions of Americans.

Among the most recent is a study from The Urban Institute, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, full of alarming statistics and findings about the “threat” to America’s social fabric of the persistence of child poverty.

Eighteen years ago this week, Steven Linscott was exonerated in Illinois after spending three years in prison for a murder DNA testing proves he didn’t commit.

By George E. Curry
It has always been hard to overlook the high-profile Congressman from Harlem. If one ever had the privilege of meeting Charles Rangel, it was impossible to ignore his sharp intellect, his commanding presence, his booming voice or his smartly-tailored suits. Today, the defrocked chairman of one of the most powerful committees in Congress, like too many African-American political figures, has been accused of unethical lapses in judgment.

In the traditional college years—the late teens and early twenties – whites are more likely than blacks to be enrolled in college. But for people over the age of 25, blacks are more likely than whites to be attending institutions of higher education. Whether the student is white or black, the common American vision of [...]

By The Editors
Are America’s long-term unemployed – those unable to find work for six months or more – being pushed further down the road to ruin?

Two million of the nation’s nearly 15 million jobless workers will lose their unemployment benefits between November 30 and December 31 unless Congress once again extends unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed.