By Lee A. Daniels
What were they thinking?

I’m referring to those three hundred or so whites who attended the Secession Gala in Charleston, South Carolina late last month on the exact 150th anniversary of South Carolina’s December 1860 secession from the United States.

Calvin H. Waller graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1905. He is believed to be the first African American to earn a degree from Penn State. He later became a faculty member at Prairie View A&M University in Texas.

It would be more than a quarter-century later before a black woman graduated from Penn State. Mildred Settle Bunton arrived on the Penn State campus in 1929.

By Tarice L.S. Gray
According to TechServe Alliance, a collaboration of IT services firms, clients, consultants and suppliers, as of November 2010, IT employment was at 3,906,200 jobs. The demand for workers who are skilled as software developers and web architects seems to be outpacing the supply. This is especially true when it comes to African Americans.

By Kenneth J. Cooper
Budget pressures have led three large states to cut funding for graduate school fellowships designed to increase the diversity of faculties at each state’s colleges and universities.

By George E. Curry
Republicans in the House and Senate, borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan, plan to stifle President Barack Obama’s domestic agenda by using recently-enacted tax cuts as an excuse to reduce federal spending.

There is even a name for it – Starve the Beast.

A Texas judge this morning declared Cornelius Dupree an innocent man, clearing him more than 30 years after he was wrongfully convicted.