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Year in Review 2011

The Editors — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:48:25 +0000

By The Editors
As 2012 looms, and TheDefendersOnline.com takes its traditional two-week hiatus for the holidays, we look back on a year full of astonishing events.

Law Ending Prison-Based Gerrymandering Upheld in NY

The Editors — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:17:57 +0000

New York Supreme Court Justice Eugene Devine upheld New York’s law ending prison-based gerrymandering in the Little v. LATFOR lawsuit.

Supreme Court Will Decide Fairness of Cocaine Sentencing Rules

The Editors — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:50:56 +0000

By The Editors
Once the sentencing rules for an offense are changed to lesser terms, is it fair to still subject some individuals to the old, harsher rules?

“There’s Something Wrong With This Picture.” Blacks/Latinos Hit Particularly Hard As Mortgage Crisis Lingers

The Editors — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:59:46 +0000

By Doug Miller
The study, Lost Ground, 2011, found that low- and moderate-income African Americans and Latino Americans have suffered a disproportionate share of losses.

NYT Ltr. to the Editor: A New Way to Achieve Civil Rights?

The Editors — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 21:20:13 +0000

By John Payton
Editor’s Note -- The President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund takes issue in a letter to the New York Times of November 2 with a recent op-ed dismissing the effectiveness of recent civil rights litigation.

Black firefighter hopefuls who sued 16 years ago turn out for physical testing

The Editors — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 21:00:55 +0000

By Ronnie Reese via the Chicago Tribune
Editor's Note -- Nearly two decades ago, nearly 6,000 black Chicagoans had sought the chance to serve their city as firefighters. Their quest dream was at first denied, and then long-delayed before being ultimately vindicated by the Supreme Court in the case of Lewis v. The City of Chicago. This week the first of those candidates were called to begin the first round of testing, as an article from the Chicago Tribune

Trying Juveniles as Adults Doesn’t Reduce Juvenile Crime

The Editors — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 19:44:19 +0000

By Kenneth J. Cooper
Only eight states publicly report the race and ethnicity of juveniles transferred to adult courts for criminal prosecution, the Justice Department has found, and it’s no wonder that more states don’t. Those that do are sending disproportionate numbers of African-American or Hispanic teenagers to face the possibility of the most serious punishment that a juvenile offender can face—getting locked up in a state prison alongside hardened adult criminals.

Housing and Race: The Continuing Crisis

The Editors — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:39:26 +0000

By John Payton
Editor’s Note: These remarks were delivered by John Payton, President and Director Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Monday to conference of the National Housing Law Project in Washington.

LDF Takes a Stand for Teacher Quality and Equity in ESEA Reauthorization

The Editors — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:03:49 +0000

LDF joined more than eighty civil rights, disability, parent, student, grassroots and education organizations from across the country to urge Congress not to turn back the clock on teacher quality gains for poor and minority students, English Learners, and students with disabilities as it considers reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB).

We Worked With Martin

The Editors — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:52:17 +0000

Editor’s Note: Forty-eight years and two months after his speech for the ages, the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. will once again ring out over the National Mall in the nation’s capitol this Sunday as the memorial to him is dedicated. The attorneys who staffed the NAACP legal Defense and Educational Fund during the [...]

Making the Numbers and Letters Count

The Editors — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:47:29 +0000

By Kenneth J. Cooper
Tennessee State University, a historically black school in Nashville, has devised a program to improve math instruction in the state’s K-8 schools that could help narrow gaps in student achievement and college completion rates.

Georgia Remains Center of Death Penalty Controversy

The Editors — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:21:24 +0000

By George E. Curry
Ray Charles sings about Georgia being on his mind. But, as Troy Davis is to be laid to rest Saturday in Savannah, Georgia is also on the minds of distraught death penalty opponents who saw him executed on the basis of questionable evidence and despite an array of witnesses who had recanted their original testimony.

LDF Successfully Defends the Constitutionality of the Heart of the VRA

The Editors — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:31:58 +0000

On Wednesday, for the second time, a federal court in Washington, D.C. upheld the constitutionality of the heart of the 2006 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.

Study Whites More Likely to Gain Grants and Scholarships

The Editors — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 22:03:01 +0000

By The Editors
A newly-published study states that, contrary to the conventional belief, students of color, and especially black students, are not favored more than whites in gaining grants and scholarships.

Autism in the Black Community: Why African Americans should hear the cry for help

The Editors — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:49:19 +0000

By Tarice L.S. Gray
"Misdiagnosed and undiagnosed [autistic] black children end up in jail," Proctor said. "If I haven't got him any sort of vocational skills, language skills, behavioral skills, instead of my son being Ari, his name is going to be inmate 402197. And I just couldn't be on this earth and let him or another child of color be that."

The Problem We All (Still) Live With

The Editors — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 20:51:00 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels When is a painting not just a painting – but a mirror? That’s the question which leaps out of the current controversy over a painting that President Obama secured to hang in a well-trafficked corridor outside the Oval Office that first appeared forty-seven years ago in one of the most widely-read [...]

Black America: What Will “Catastrophe” Look Like?

The Editors — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:43:30 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels
The debt-ceiling crisis that threatened America’s economic foundation has abated for now.
But the jobs crisis and the foreclosure crisis which continue to threaten the present and future of millions of ordinary Americans have not.

Civil Rights Organizations Settle Hurricane Katrina Housing Discrimination Case against HUD and Louisiana

The Editors — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 19:43:13 +0000

Today, African-American homeowners and two civil rights organizations announced a settlement in a post-Hurricane Katrina housing discrimination lawsuit brought against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the State of Louisiana regarding the “Road Home” program.

Year in Review 2010

The Editors — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 21:35:53 +0000

By The Editors
Following a tradition begun last year, TheDefendersOnline.com will for the nest two weeks offer a look back at some of the stories we published in 2010 which so occupied your attention. What an eventful year! It’s a cliché, of course; but that makes it no less true.