By Lee A. Daniels
They’ve discovered – again – that baseball really is just like America.
That’s the meaning I took from Thursday’s New York Times story pointing out glaring racial disparity in the game between the positions of first-base and third-base coach. At the first-base position, twenty of the thirty coaches are of African-American, Latino-American or Asian descent. Of the thirty third-base coaches, twenty-three are white, three are black and four are Latino.

Six years ago this week, Ryan Matthews was exonerated after spending five years on Louisiana’s death row for a murder he didn’t commit.

Matthews was 17 years old when he and his friend Travis Hayes were charged with committing a murder in Bridge City, Louisiana. After six hours of interrogation, Hayes falsely confessed to being the getaway driver. A witness to the shooting said he saw the perpetrator in his rearview mirror and identified Matthews in a highly suggestive police procedure. Both men were convicted – Hayes was sentenced to life in prison and Matthews to death.

After years of appeals, attorneys representing Matthews requested DNA comparison on an alternate suspect. The DNA profile from the murder implicated the alternate suspect – proving Matthews and Hayes innocent. Matthews was released in June 2004 and officially cleared in August.  Hayes would not be freed until January of 2007.

By Tarice L.S. Gray
It was five years ago this month Katrina left a historic mess in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The  destruction of the hurricane,  been called one of the worst natural disasters in American history, was documented by filmmaker Spike Lee in his 2005 Emmy-award winning film “When the Levees Broke: A requiem in four parts.”

By Doug Miller
An unexpectedly robust mail-in response from American households wound up saving the U.S. Census Bureau nearly a quarter of the money it had budgeted this fiscal year to conduct the 2010 Census, according to Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and other federal officials.

By John Payton
John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., was invited to speak this week on the state of elementary and secondary education at the Centennial Conference of the National Urban League. He followed to the podium Arne Duncan, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education. Both were introduced by Marc Morial, the President and CEO of the Urban League.

By Lee A. Daniels
A federal judge this week blocked the central and most controversial provisions of Arizona’s newly-enacted immigration law that took effect Thursday, declaring they improperly interfered with federal immigration enforcement law.
But while the judge’s ruling cheered opponents of the law, which included the federal Department of Justice, it represented only the first [...]

The funding formula used to provide grants to New Orleans residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita very likely disadvantaged black homeowners because it was based on depressed property values that result from both current racial isolation and the city’s segregated past, a U.S. District Court judge has indicated.
As the [...]

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 Stacey Patton
Since Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration of any state in the country  –  of which 79 percent of its 39,000 inmates are black – it ’s no surprise to hear that BP is using prison labor to clean up the largest oil spill ever in U.S. history.

By Tarice L.S. Gray
The Hilde Back Educational Fund is a small organization, with the mission of promoting educational development through sponsorship. The film documents their small yet significant impact in Kenya. But the tiny village in Kenya can be looked at as a microcosm for much of the rest of the world.