The Defenders Online | A Civil Rights Blog

The Beck-Palin Rally: Where Was The Rest of America?

The Editors — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:09:58 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels There are roughly 38 million African Americans in America. Why did so few of them show up at the Glenn Beck- Sarah Palin “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday?

Teaching Black Kids to Cope with Racism

The Editors — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:04:49 +0000

By Tarice L. S. Gray Families are where children find acceptance, which is key to healthy growth and development.

Obama Renews Pledge to Help New Orleans Rebuild

The Editors — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:03:20 +0000

By The Editors On the fifth anniversary of the great hurricane that submerged most of New Orleans, President Obama traveled to the Big Easy to assure its residents that “all of America, not just people here, not just folks in the White House, but all of America remains concerned and remains committed to their rebuilding.”

LDF Statement Commemorating 5th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

The Editors — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 02:42:56 +0000

Today, we honor the memory of those whose lives were lost during and after Hurricane Katrina, and stand steadfastly beside those who continue their struggle to reclaim and revitalize their communities.

55 Years Later, Emmett Till Murder Still Haunts

The Editors — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 20:58:51 +0000

By Stacey Patton August 28th marks the 55th anniversary of the brutal murder of 14 year-old Emmett Louis Till. In the summer of 1955 he was forced out of his bed in the middle of the night at gunpoint by white men, thrown on the back of a pick-up truck and driven to a barn [...]

“I Have A Dream”

The Editors — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:10:10 +0000

By Martin Luther King, Jr. I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great [...]

Coming Soon: The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial

The Editors — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:09:49 +0000

By The Editors Sometime next year Martin Luther King, Jr. will likely become more visible, more available, one might say, to millions more Americans.

“He prayed humbly that he was on God’s side”

The Editors — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:09:29 +0000

By The Editors This Saturday Glenn Beck, the conservative talk show personality, is leading a rally of conservatives at the Lincoln Memorial. He has declared it “divine providence” that it will occur on the forty-seventh anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and the famous “I Have A Dream” speech of Martin Luther King’s Jr. His plans [...]

August 28, 1963: A Moment of Glory

The Editors — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:07:26 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels There is no “battle for Dr. King’s legacy,” as one newspaper headline, intended to be attention-grabbing, put it this week. The legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and of the black freedom struggle was affirmed for all time at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.

Black Police Officers Association Endorses California Ballot Measure to Legalize Marijuana

The Editors — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:10:59 +0000

By The Editors A prominent association of black police officers last week endorsed the California ballot measure that would legalize marijuana in the state.

Deval Patrick: Running for Act Two

The Editors — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:09:37 +0000

By Kenneth J. Cooper Already, Deval Patrick is making history by being the first African American to seek reelection as a governor, in Massachusetts. His chances of setting another milestone as the first to win a second term as a state’s chief executive in November look pretty good.

The Tipping Point: Where Tolerance Ends

The Editors — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:09:12 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels The Muslim-American residents of Murfreesboro, Tennessee have discovered this summer they’re not as “American” as they perhaps thought they were. Not in the hearts and minds of some of their non-Muslim neighbors, anyway. And so, they now find themselves on the other side – the bad side – of the “tipping point.” In terms of [...]

Obama’s New American First: The President as ‘The Other’

The Editors — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:38:12 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels Today, American society is flooded with virulent, racially-driven images and rhetoric hurled against the President, saturated with the demonizing of undocumented Latino immigrants and calls for scrapping the constitutional protection all children born in America should enjoy, and degraded by cynical assertions that guilt-by-association is valid principle to apply to people who are not white

Clyde Murphy: 1948 — 2010

The Editors — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:08:10 +0000

By Theodore M. Shaw He brought an energy and commitment to his work that was rooted in his unabashed commitment to improving the lives of African-American people.

California Foreclosures Door Closes Harder on Blacks/Hispanics

The Editors — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:07:38 +0000

By Doug Miller Lending institutions in California have foreclosed on African-American and Latino homeowners nearly twice as much as white property owners, according to a new study by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), indicating that banks likely targeted those ethnic groups to receive more expensive and financially toxic subprime mortgages mortgages during the decade of the housing boom.

Justice, At Last, For an Ordinary Man?

The Editors — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:07:03 +0000

By The Editors Jimmie Lee Jackson died at 26 on February 18, 1965 in the melee that erupted when Alabama state police brutally set upon nonviolent protest marchers who had just come from a mass meeting on voting rights in a Marion church.

If Time Is Money, What Is Justice Worth?

The Editors — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:23:05 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels What is the meaning and the scale of justice for this special group of Americans – the guilty until proven innocent?

Legal Defense Fund Wins Relief for Victims of Post- Katrina/Rita Housing Discrimination

The Editors — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:19:16 +0000

Today a federal court in Washington, DC, prevented Louisiana from continuing to utilize a discriminatory formula as part of the federally-funded “Road Home” Program, which was designed by the Louisiana Recovery Authority and approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) to aid homeowners in their efforts to rebuild in the wake of devastating damage resulting from Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

AIDS-Ravaged Africa Now Offers Best Hope for the Future

The Editors — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:17:24 +0000

By George E. Curry Medical trials now underway in the very region most ravaged by the virus hold the best prospect of finally controlling the disease for which there is no known cure.

The Red and the Black: African Americans and Cherokees in Antebellum America

The Editors — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:16:47 +0000

By Kenneth J. Cooper Most people are astonished when I tell them the Cherokees owned slaves. Schools don’t teach about the slaveholding of the Cherokee and four other tribes who, most ironically, became known as the “Five Civilized Tribes.”

Baseball and Race: America’s Game – America’s Continuing Struggle

The Editors — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:40:09 +0000

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.

Ryan Matthews

The Editors — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:38:43 +0000

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.

Spike Lee revisits New Orleans in new HBO documentary

The Editors — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:23:32 +0000

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.”

Down For the Count… The Census Budget, That Is.

The Editors — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:10:31 +0000

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.

The Great Recession and the Racial Divide Within

The Editors — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:33:27 +0000

By The Editors Has America forgotten there’s a Great recession going on? That more than 14 million workers who recently had jobs now don’t? And that more than 44 percent of them have been out of work for six months or longer – a circumstance which has laid the foundation for a permanent jobless class numbering in the millions?