By Nicole Mason
The trouble with Shirley Sherrod is that she told the truth. In a small town speech before an even smaller NAACP chapter, she grappled publicly with the discomfort of what happens when power and decisions that can impact the lives of ordinary Americans are in the hands of individuals who have traditionally been shut off from power or not had access to resources.

By Tarice L.S. Gray
While at a swim meet two weeks ago in Canada, World Record Holder and 2008 US Olympic Swimmer Cullen Jones got some heartbreaking news: Another child of color had drowned in his United States.

By William L. Taylor
I have had the good fortune to be a participant, not just a spectator, in the enormous social transformations of American life that occurred during the last half of the twentieth century. I see the changes in my everyday life and in the status of people of color, women, and people with disabilities.

By Lee A. Daniels
The gateway to understanding the optimism blacks feel even in the face of an alarming deterioration of their economic position can be put in one word.

Faith.

By Stacey Patton This past Wednesday, New York Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy stood at the U.S. Capitol holding up a long wooden paddle as she introduced the “Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act” – a bill that would ban corporal punishment in all public and private schools that receive federal assistance.

By Stacey Patton
Good news in the battle against corporal punishment in schools! But not everyone, especially some in Houston’s black community, agrees.

By Lisa W. Rosenberg
When my father laughed, he’d show his wide, white teeth, wrinkle his broad nose and let loose. I remember the sound of it, rich and soulful, with music in the background—Motown and jazz that he’d play when my parents threw parties. I remember the colors of those big 1970s bashes: bold red and turquoise plaids leaping from scratchy synthetics; paisleys in dizzying shades of orange, pink and purple.

By Lee A. Daniels
Why is there so much focus on the “heroism” of Atticus Finch in confronting the racism of the town’s (and region’s) legal system and so little discussion of the fact that he lost.

By Janet Singleton
African Americans show great empathy for other blacks in pain, says a study from Northwestern University. Whites, by comparison, showed less compassion for pain-stricken Caucasians.

By The Editors
It is the greatest regularly-scheduled publication devoted to black Americans’ concerns ever published.

We’re referring, of course, to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the quarterly compendium of news, statistics, and opinion on the experience of blacks in higher education founded seventeen years ago by the late Theodore Lamont Cross.