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An Education in Care: HBO Documentary Explores One Woman’s Wake Up Call When it Comes to Racial Disparities in Health Care

The Editors — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:44:59 +0000

By Tarice L. S. Gray
In 2011, there were nearly 3 million breast cancer survivors in this country. Dee Dee Ricks is one of them. She's the subject the HBO documentary "The Education of Dee Dee Ricks" which walks us through her treatment and charges that the health care system doesn't play fair.

Darn Right It’s “Too Incendiary”

The Editors — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 01:30:12 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels
The New York Times reported yesterday that Mark Melvin, a prison inmate in Alabama, is suing the state department of corrections because they won’t let him have a book his attorney sent him. His lawsuit charges that prison officials characterized the book as “a security threat,” as “too incendiary” and “too provocative.”

‘The Green Book‘ Juggernaut

The Editors — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 18:26:06 +0000

By Vern E. Smith
At the final curtain call of another sold-out performance of "The Green Book," Atlanta playwright Calvin Alexander Ramsey's moving two-act drama set in America before the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, veteran Atlanta actor Rob Cleveland, who plays its central character, told the well-integrated Balzer Theater audience: "None of us had ever heard of this book before we started the play.”

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 [...]

Warning: Cesspool Overload Coming

The Editors — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:22:18 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels
Warning to all who intend to follow the 2012 presidential election: better have a sturdy pair of hip waders handy, because the muck right-wing extremists and fellow-travelers have been shoveling out of the cesspool of American society into the respectable political discourse since President Obama took office is likely to become a deluge.

What About the First Lady Michelle?

The Editors — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:25:08 +0000

By The Editors
We couldn’t help but notice the mini-controversy that erupted last week over the depiction on the cover of Newsweek magazine of Republican presidential contender Michele Bachmann.

On Black Women’s Beauty . . . and the Beast(s) Within

The Editors — Tue, 24 May 2011 22:05:45 +0000

By Stacey Patton My Dear Sisters, Over the past week or so I’ve read many tweets, Facebook postings, blog rants, and online petitions in response to Psychology Today’s posting of a ‘scientific’ study – “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women” by Satoshi Kanazawa. The reaction to Kanazawa’s armchair psychobabble which was [...]

Has Trump Trumped Himself with ‘The Blacks’?

The Editors — Sat, 14 May 2011 01:19:44 +0000

By TaRessa Stovall
His headline-making announcement that he’d seek the GOP nomination for the 2012 presidential race, distinguished by an obsessive insistence on seeing President Barack Obama’s original birth certificate to establish American citizenship increased the ratings for his NBC reality show, Celebrity Apprentice, and provided rich fodder for pundits and comics alike.

PBS Documentary on The Freedom Riders: Chronicling The Nonviolent Army

The Editors — Fri, 13 May 2011 23:07:42 +0000

By Kenneth J. Cooper
“Freedom Riders” is a well-documented ride through history, back 50 years into another century, when America seemed like a different place. It is no joy ride.

Freedom Riders PBS Documentary is Must-See Television

The Editors — Wed, 11 May 2011 02:18:15 +0000

By George E. Curry
Whatever you plan to do next Monday night (May 16), make sure you are home in front of the television or have set your recorder to tape Freedom Riders, the excellent PBS documentary by filmmaker Stanley Nelson. And make sure children, related or unrelated, watch the documentary with you

Why Blacks Didn’t Celebrate Bin Laden’s Killing

The Editors — Fri, 06 May 2011 20:32:25 +0000

By Stacey Patton
Our quiet response speaks to our long-held understanding of what struggle is – our domestic struggle as a marginalized community is ongoing. We know that the war is not over and that neutralizing Osama bin Laden was a goal but only as part of a war that is not over.

The Birthers: Déjà vu All Over Again

The Editors — Wed, 04 May 2011 19:47:26 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels
If you think the Birthers have been chastened into silence, think again – and look to the past.

Obama got Osama – But Gets Little Credit for Doing It

The Editors — Wed, 04 May 2011 01:31:01 +0000

By George E. Curry
Judging by his critics, Obama won’t have support even when he accomplished something George W. Bush couldn’t.

On the Road Again: Students and Freedom Riders Retrace Route—and Explore Roots—of Historic Bus Movement

The Editors — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:47:00 +0000

By TaRessa Stovall
May 1961: Between May and December , 436 black and white civil rights activists, many of them students, known as Freedom Riders rode more than 60 bus rides to fight segregated travel facilities in the South and raise the nation’s consciousness about racial injustice.

The Monkey on the Tea Party’s Back

The Editors — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 02:01:10 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels and Stacey Patton
Another day. Another outrageous example of how deeply the election of a black American of mixed parentage has unhinged some conservative white Americans.

Langston and Rick

The Editors — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 20:30:30 +0000

By The Editors
Last week there appeared on the website of Rick Santorum, the former conservative Republican Senator from Pennsylvania and potential candidate for the Republican Party presidential nomination, a montage of photos of Santorum above the slogan, “Fighting to Make America America Again,” similar to the title of the famous poem by Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again.”

Influence and Context: The Power and Risks of the Electronic Grapevine

The Editors — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 21:17:32 +0000

By Stacey Patton and TaRessa Stovall
The old saying, “I heard it through the grapevine” has new meaning in the age of social media and blogging.

Can We See Your Dead? – Lessons from Japan

The Editors — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:30:15 +0000

By Stacey Patton
The American media treats all human misery like pornography.

Ghosts of Mississippi

The Editors — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 21:45:02 +0000

By Vern E. Smith
Wharlest Jackson Jr. is a big man, well over six feet tall and 200 pounds. But to listen to him speak of his namesake, Wharlest Jackson Sr., is to witness the strapping adult reduced to the weeping eight-year-old boy who rode his bicycle to the scene of a powerful car bomb in the spring of 1967 in Natchez, Miss. and discovered that the victim was his own father.

Civil Rights Version of ‘America’s Most Wanted’ To Air This Friday

The Editors — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 19:50:48 +0000

By Stacey Patton
Tonight the groundbreaking investigative documentary series “The Injustice Files” airs on the Investigative Discovery Channel at 9 pm. The first show, “Secrets of Natchez,” investigates the murder of Wharlest Jackson, a civil rights activist and devoted father of five who became a target of one of the most virulent Ku Klux Klan chapters in the South because he took a job that white racists deemed fit only for white men.

When The Whole World Was Watching: The First Time

The Editors — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 02:04:29 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels
A new book published last month reminds us that the power of “new media” to support democratic change isn’t new.

Good Counsel: How Thurgood Marshall Inspired Me

The Editors — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:30:10 +0000

By Arsalan Iftikhar
I'm Arsalan Iftikhar, a civil rights attorney and frequent contributor to Tell Me More's Barbershop segment. The black history figure who has always been a hero of mine is Thurgood Marshall.

Letters from Thurgood: Segregation is Un-American, Too

The Editors — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 02:19:04 +0000

By Kenneth J. Cooper
As the Cold War with the former Soviet Union unfolded, Congressional investigators hunted for Communists in the American film industry, a search best exemplified by the “Hollywood Ten” case. A federal grand jury indicted ten writers, producers and directors in 1947 for contempt of Congress for refusing to tell the House Un-American Activities Committee whether they were members of the Communist Party. They were convicted and imprisoned for as long as a year.

The Scapegoating Frenzy

The Editors — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:31:43 +0000

By The Editors
Have you noticed that it’s getting difficult to keep up with whom to blame for America’s ills?

A Groundbreaking Verdict in Cigarette Death Trial

The Editors — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:04:59 +0000

By The Editors
In a groundbreaking judgment, a Massachusetts jury this week found the Lorillard tobacco company responsible for inducing a Boston woman to smoke as a child and ordered it to pay her family a total of $152 million.