African-American Actresses Decry the Lack of Good Roles - The Daily Beast

African-American Actresses Decry the Lack of Good Roles - The Daily Beast: Comedian/actress Kim Wayans is all smiles as she basks in the glow of her first dramatic role in the new film Pariah but she still has to pause and ponder when asked what role in film she wished she’d had the chance to portray in the past few years. After a few minutes of thought, she shakes her head and asks, “What have we had?’’

Wayans’s not-so-shocking response is a fitting comment on the dearth of opportunities offered African-American actresses in film, television, and the media generally. In a year that has seen black women highlighted and showcased as the “help’’ or as disgruntled ex-wives ready to fistfight the next woman in a heartbeat, many in film and television continue to pose the question: will more selective, diverse, and fully developed roles ever be a reality for women of color?

Young Women Go Back to School Instead of Work - NYTimes.com

Young Women Go Back to School Instead of Work - NYTimes.com: Workers are dropping out of the labor force in droves, and they are mostly women. In fact, many are young women. But they are not dropping out forever; instead, these young women seem to be postponing their working lives to get more education. There are now — for the first time in three decades — more young women in school than in the work force.

...Many economists initially thought that the shrinking labor force — which drove down November’s unemployment rate — was caused primarily by discouraged older workers giving up on the job market. Instead, many of the workers on the sidelines are young people upgrading their skills, which could portend something like the postwar economic boom, when millions of World War II veterans went to college through the G.I. Bill instead of immediately entering, and overwhelming, the job market.

Test companies faulted on disabilities law – USATODAY.com

Test companies faulted on disabilities law – USATODAY.com: A new federal study criticizes the Justice Department for failing to enforce laws that provide disabled students with special accommodations for taking the SAT, bar exam and other high-stakes tests.

People with disabilities such as visual impairment, dyslexia or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder say they are entitled to extra time, special software or other accommodations that will best ensure that the test reflects their aptitude rather than their disability.

Testing companies say they don't have to provide accommodations if they think the requests are unreasonable, or if they think the applicant hasn't proved they need the accommodation.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that "almost all" of the nine testing companies it studied did not change any practices in response to regulations issued this spring designed to broaden the definition of disability and reduce burdensome documentation.

In Washington area, African American students suspended and expelled two to five times as often as whites - The Washington Post

In Washington area, African American students suspended and expelled two to five times as often as whites - The Washington Post: Across the Washington area, black students are suspended and expelled two to five times as often as white students, creating disparities in discipline that experts say reflect a growing national problem.

An analysis by The Washington Post shows the phenomenon both in the suburbs and in the city, from the far reaches of Southern Maryland to the subdivisions of Fairfax, Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.

Last year, for example, one in seven black students in St. Mary’s County were suspended from school, compared with one in 20 white students. In Alexandria, black students were nearly six times as likely to be suspended as their white peers.

In Fairfax, where the suicide in January of a white high school football player who had been suspended brought an outcry for change, African American students were four times as likely that year to be suspended as white students, and Hispanic students were twice as likely.

Myron Orfield, Scholar, Says Ethnicity-Targeted Charter Schools Feel Like 'Jim Crow Segregation'

Myron Orfield, Scholar, Says Ethnicity-Targeted Charter Schools Feel Like 'Jim Crow Segregation': In a recent interview with Bloomberg, director of the University of Minnesota Law School’s Institute on Race & Poverty Myron Orfield said that charters schools who target specific ethnic groups actually work against diversity, the article stated.

"It feels like the Deep South in the days of Jim Crow segregation," Orfield told Bloomberg. "When you see an all-white school and all-black school in the same neighborhood in this day and age, it's shocking."

The report sites a Civil Rights Project report from the University of California, Los Angeles, which found that charter schools were more segregated than regular public schools in 2010.

While, according to Bloomberg, a Minnesota charter school law report from 1988 recommended the schools remain diverse, in the 2009-2010 school year "three quarters of the Minneapolis and St. Paul region's 127 charter schools were 'highly segregated.'"

Boyle Heights Beat: Teaching By Example

Boyle Heights Beat: Teaching By Example: For many Boyle Heights students, educational success is a challenge.

Many are dealing with poverty, as well as a lack of role models. Only 5 percent of residents have degrees from four-year colleges. But some defy adversity, pursue a career in education, and, like Leticia Carlos and Danny Melendez, even return to teach in the community that needs them the most-their own.

Born in Boyle Heights, Carlos spent her early childhood in Zacatecas, Mexico, and returned to the United States during sixth grade. At first, Carlos had problems with English, which hurt her grades.

"One of the hardest parts for me was being able to understand the material that was being taught," she said. "That was what motivated me the most to learn English."

Arizona Schools' Ethnic Studies Program Ruled Illegal

Arizona Schools' Ethnic Studies Program Ruled Illegal: An administrative law judge ruled Tuesday that a Tucson school district's ethnic studies program violates state law, agreeing with the findings of Arizona's public schools chief.

Judge Lewis Kowal's ruling marked a defeat for the Tucson Unified School District, which appealed the findings issued in June by Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal.

Kowal's ruling, first reported by The Arizona Daily Star, said the district's Mexican-American Studies program violated state law by having one or more classes designed primarily for one ethnic group, promoting racial resentment and advocating ethnic solidarity instead of treating students as individuals.

The judge, who found grounds to withhold 10 percent of the district's monthly state aid until it comes into compliance, said the law permits the objective instruction about the oppression of people that may result in racial resentment or ethnic solidarity.

Wide obesity gap between affluent city, lower-income one in L.A. County - latimes.com

Wide obesity gap between affluent city, lower-income one in L.A. County - latimes.com: ...Obesity among the young is starting to level off in California and around the nation. But stark disparities persist, posing vexing obstacles to further change.

In Los Angeles County alone, the obesity epidemic costs about $12 billion a year for healthcare and in lost productivity, according to a 2006 report by the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

The challenges are plain at the Bell Gardens Community Health Clinic, where physician Jacqueline Lopez, deals with the consequences: diabetes and heart disease. She delicately coaches families to pick healthful foods and break through cultural barriers. Many Latino parents, she said, simply don't recognize the risks of their children being overweight.

Affluent Children Are More Physically Fit Than Poor Ones - NYTimes.com

Affluent Children Are More Physically Fit Than Poor Ones - NYTimes.com: ...An analysis of state data by The Bay Citizen revealed a large variation in how fifth graders in Bay Area elementary schools perform on the test. The schools that performed the best have few students from low-income families, for reasons that experts say are not surprising. At Sycamore Valley Elementary, in an affluent suburban community, not a single student was eligible to receive a free or reduced-price lunch because of low family income last year, according to the state’s data.

Across the Bay, in San Francisco’s Mission district, none of the fifth graders at Cesar Chavez Elementary School received six healthy scores on the test. More than a quarter of them were found to “need improvement” on every measure of fitness.

At Cesar Chavez, where Spanish is the first language for many, more than 85 percent of the students are eligible to receive free or reduced-price school lunches. In the school district that includes Cesar Chavez, Hispanic and black students are less likely to receive healthy scores than their Asian and white peers, the state data show.

Taking Classical Off The Pedestal, And Into Black Communities : NPR

Taking Classical Off The Pedestal, And Into Black Communities : NPR: Twenty-two years ago, bassist Rick Robinson became just the second African-American to join the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

But at the end of this month, he's stepping away from his post — perhaps permanently. He'll be touring with smaller ensembles in an effort to bring classical music to African-American and other underserved communities.

"What I've come to conclude, at least at this point, is that there's something about the large concert hall and the huge number of people, and then separated into a huge number of people in the audience — it's just overwhelming," Robinson says. "And the concert experience itself — if no one greets people or tells a joke or explains anything about the music that they're about to hear in a personal or emotional context, they're just left wondering, 'Well, why am I here? It doesn't seem to make any difference that I'm here.'"

Mexican actor Pedro Armendariz Jr. dies in New York City at age 71 - The Washington Post

Mexican actor Pedro Armendariz Jr. dies in New York City at age 71 - The Washington Post: Mexican character actor Pedro Armendariz Jr. died Monday at the age of 71. There was no immediate confirmation of the cause of death.

Armendariz was best known for playing sly, sometimes cynical characters he endowed with wit and charisma. Armendariz played Gov. Riley in the 2005 movie “The Legend of Zoro,” and had roles in 1989’s “Old Gringo” and “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” in 2003.

President Felipe Calderon’s office issued a statement lamenting Armendariz’ death, calling him “a great actor who reflected well on Mexico at home and abroad.”

The Mexican government news agency Notimex reported he died in New York City of cancer, but said his family had asked for their privacy to be respected.

He acted in more than 100 films, including the Mexican hit “The Crime of Father Amaro.”

At Christmas, Evangeline Moore thinks of her martyred parents and demands justice - The Washington Post

At Christmas, Evangeline Moore thinks of her martyred parents and demands justice - The Washington Post: Evangeline Moore closes her eyes as she recalls what happened on Christmas, 60 years ago. She’s able to tell the story because she wasn’t home in Florida when the bomb went off.

Her father, Harry Tyson Moore, was an early, fearless civil rights leader in Florida who spent the late 1930s and 1940s investigating every lynching of blacks in the state.

It was on Christmas 1951, shortly after 10 p.m., that someone, likely a Klansman, lighted the fuse to a massive explosive charge rigged under the family’s home in Mims, about 40 miles from Orlando.

Evangeline, then 21 and working in the District as a clerk typist for the federal government, learned the tragic details when she arrived in Florida two days after Christmas, expecting a joyous family reunion.

Her father had been killed by the blast that leveled their home; her mother, Harriette V. Moore, would die nine days later.

Nearly 12 years before Medgar Evers was fatally shot, 14 years before Malcolm X was slain and 17 years before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Harry Moore became an important early martyr for civil rights.

Langston Hughes wrote a poem about his slaying a few months later.

In Camden, S.C., A Family Talks Race And Politics : NPR

In Camden, S.C., A Family Talks Race And Politics : NPR: ...They say it's a different place than when they were growing up, but with some of the same issues — namely, lingering racism. It's the same thing, Truitt says, that's holding the nation back right now.

"How can we not carry on a conversation about the state of America without talking about racism?" Truitt asks.

William Gaither, another cousin, says many people believe it's time to move on from this kind of conversation. "But we can't move on, because there is no truth and no reconciliation," he says.

Gaither is recently retired from the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce. He doesn't agree with the theory that America moved into a post-racial era when Obama was elected.

"That's sort of like a cave for hiding," Adams says. She says denying racism keeps the country from reaching its full economic potential.

"You know, a lot of what we are experiencing will not go away until we admit the most outstanding and devastating problem in this country, and it is that people are treated differentially only because they are of a different color," she says.

Judge rules New York City taxi system discriminates against disabled, following livery cab deal in Albany - NY Daily News

Judge rules New York City taxi system discriminates against disabled, following livery cab deal in Albany - NY Daily News: A federal judge took the wheel in the upcoming rollout of the recently passed taxi bill in ruling Friday that the city’s taxi system discriminates against the disabled.

U.S. District Court Judge George Daniels said the Taxi and Limousine Commission is in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act because the city has just 232 wheelchair-accessible cabs out of a fleet of 13,237 vehicles.

The judge ordered the city to develop a comprehensive, long-term plan to provide “meaningful access” to taxis that are accessible to disabled customers.

South Carolina Voter ID Law: Justice Department Blocks Controversial Legislation

South Carolina Voter ID Law: Justice Department Blocks Controversial Legislation: South Carolina's attorney general says he will fight the Justice Department in federal court over South Carolina's voter ID law.

The federal agency on Friday rejected the law, saying it makes it harder for minorities to vote. It was the first voter ID law to be refused by the Obama administration.

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez says South Carolina's law didn't meet the burden under the Voting Rights Act and may have prevented thousands of minorities from voting because they don't have the right identification.

The Justice Department must approve changes to South Carolina's election laws because of the state's failure in the past to protect the voting rights of blacks.

U. of Georgia Study Explores Factors in African-American Male Career Success

U. of Georgia Study Explores Factors in African-American Male Career Success: When it comes to perceptions of career success for African-American men, the old saying about how “it’s not what you know but who you know” is often seen as an undisputed truth.

However, when it comes to getting a job promotion or better pay, the strongest factor really is the “what” and not the “who.” And being light-skinned or dark-skinned or from a rich or poor family doesn’t determine career advancement, but being married to a woman who doesn’t work makes a big difference.

Such are just a few of the findings of a new University of Georgia study that bills itself as being “one step toward better understanding career success of African-American men.”

Standing Watch

Standing Watch: Russlynn Ali wasn’t quite sure what to expect when President Obama appointed her civil rights chief for the Department of Education. After all, the once high-profile agency had more recently been in a low-profile mode when the president took office in 2009. Ali was a passionate activist in California helping champion educational equity for minorities.

Today, as Ali approaches her third year working as assistant secretary for civil rights, she says she’s found Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan supportive of her efforts to recharge the agenda of the Office of Civil Rights.

Study: African-American men don't reap same career benefits from mentoring as Caucasians

Study: African-American men don't reap same career benefits from mentoring as Caucasians: ...Study co-author Lillian Eby, a professor in the Industrial-Organizational Psychology Program in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, said the finding shouldn't discourage African Americans from seeking mentoring and networking opportunities. Rather, it emphasizes the need for women and minorities to think broadly about the mentors they choose and with whom they network. People tend to have professional and social networks that are composed of people who are similar to them, she explained, and African Americans remain underrepresented in high-level positions.

"If African-American men are picking mentors who are like them, then they're more likely to be networking with people who have less power and influence within an organization," Eby said, "which may be why mentoring is not predicting career success for them."

Sudanese Refugees In Omaha Wrestle With Rise Of Street Gangs

Sudanese Refugees In Omaha Wrestle With Rise Of Street Gangs: OMAHA, Neb. -- When government soldiers from the north attacked Mun Nam Koak's village in southern Sudan nearly 20 years ago, he fled on foot to safety in neighboring Ethiopia. With his infant son on his back, the 22-year-old Nam and his wife took only what they could carry on their three-day trek to the crowded refugee camps across the border.

Three years later, Koak's young family arrived in Des Moines, Iowa, part of a growing population of Sudanese refugees who relocated to the Midwest in search of a better, safer life. He studied English and found a steady job at a nursing home.

Back in his homeland this July, a historic referendum established South Sudan as a separate nation after decades of brutal civil war with the north. Koak joined thousands of jubilant Sudanese in Iowa and across the country cheering this day of independence. But his elation was short-lived.

In England, Star Players Accused of Racist Comments - NYTimes.com

In England, Star Players Accused of Racist Comments - NYTimes.com: John Terry, captain of England’s national soccer team and the powerful club Chelsea, faces a criminal charge over accusations that he made a racial slur during an October match, apparently becoming the first player to be prosecuted for remarks said on the field.

The accusation against Terry, which he denied, represents an escalation in the attempt to stem the persistent and widespread problem of racism in European soccer.

On Tuesday, the Uruguayan forward Luis Suárez, who plays for Liverpool of the English Premier League, was suspended for eight matches and fined about $63,000 for making abusive remarks in an October game toward Patrice Evra, a black defender from France who plays for Manchester United.

Blacks Outpace Other Female Recruits in U.S. Military - NYTimes.com

Blacks Outpace Other Female Recruits in U.S. Military - NYTimes.com: Black women are enlisting in the military at far higher rates than are white or Hispanic women, and they now represent nearly a third of all the women in the armed forces, a new study by the Pew Research Center has found.

The study found that of the 167,000 enlisted women in the military, 31 percent are black, twice their percentage in the civilian female population. Black men represent about 16 percent of the male enlisted population, roughly equal to their proportion in the civilian population.

White women, by comparison, represent 53 percent of women in the military, while accounting for 78 percent of the civilian female population.

For Black Americans, A Longer Time Without Work : NPR

For Black Americans, A Longer Time Without Work : NPR: Although the U.S. gained more than 120,000 jobs last month, the numbers of the long-term unemployed barely shifted and the unemployment rates for African-Americans continued to go through the roof.

A recent NPR and Kaiser Family foundation poll shows although the long-term unemployed face many of the same difficulties regardless of race, there are distinct differences between blacks and whites struggling to find work.

Out-of-work blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians all took part in the NPR-Kaiser survey. There was only a large enough sample of blacks and whites, however, to specifically break out their responses.

"First of all, we found that among those people who have been unemployed for a long time, African-Americans make up a greater share of that population than they do of full-time workers," says Kaiser Family Foundation Researcher Liz Hamel.

Black Firefighter Recruits Continue Struggle To Diversify The New York Fire Department

Black Firefighter Recruits Continue Struggle To Diversify The New York Fire Department: The Fire Department of New York, one of the largest firefighting forces in the entire world, has struggled to recruit, hire and retain firefighters of color.

There have been lawsuits and pressure put on the city and the department, but only about 3 percent of the FDNY's force is black, a persistently low number in a city with a black population of more than 3 million.

But things in the department are slowly changing, thanks in part to the Vulcan Society, an organization of black FDNY firefighters who have led the charge in trying to change the face of the department.

This week, the group secured yet another victory. A judge had already deemed that the city and the department had for decades systematically denied blacks, Latinos and women entry to their ranks. The tests used during the hiring process were racially biased, courts determined, and the city was forced to develop a new test, which will be introduced for the first time in February.

BofA's Countrywide To Pay $335 Million, Settling Lending Discrimination Case : The Two-Way : NPR

BofA's Countrywide To Pay $335 Million, Settling Lending Discrimination Case : The Two-Way : NPR: The Justice Department is calling it the "largest residential fair lending settlement in history:" Bank of America's Countrywide Financial has agreed to pay $335 million to settle a lawsuit that claimed it discriminated against black and Latino borrowers.

The Justice Department alleges that Countrywide charged a higher interest rate on the mortgages of more than 200,000 minority borrowers, despite the fact that their creditworthiness was comparable to whites who received lower rates. Justice adds that in some cases, Countrywide steered minorities toward subprime loans when they in fact qualified for a traditional loan.

In its press release, the Justice Department adds:

"The complaint further alleges that Countrywide was aware the fees and interest rates it was charging discriminated against African-American and Hispanic borrowers, but failed to impose meaningful limits or guidelines to stop it.

"'Countrywide's actions contributed to the housing crisis, hurt entire communities, and denied families access to the American dream,' said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division."

MLK Bomb Plot: Attacker's Plea Withdrawal Request Is Denied By Court

MLK Bomb Plot: Attacker's Plea Withdrawal Request Is Denied By Court: An Army veteran with extensive ties to white supremacists was sentenced to 32 years in prison Tuesday for planting a poison-laced bomb along a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade route in what he said was meant to be an attack against the cultural diversity celebrated by the event.

Kevin Harpham tried unsuccessfully to withdraw his earlier guilty plea just before receiving the maximum punishment from U.S. District Court Judge Justin Quackenbush, who said the previously law-abiding Harpham seemed to be influenced by a "shrill and caustic and vitriolic" culture fueled by talk media.

Harpham told the judge: "I am not guilty of the acts that I am accused of and that I plead guilty to." He said he only agreed to the deal in September to avoid a possible life sentence.

For Indian Tribes, Blood Shouldn’t Be Everything - NYTimes.com

For Indian Tribes, Blood Shouldn’t Be Everything - NYTimes.com: AMERICA’S first blood quantum law was passed in Virginia in 1705 in order to determine who had a high enough degree of Indian blood to be classified an Indian — and whose rights could be restricted as a result. You’d think, after all these years, we’d finally manage to kick the concept. But recently, casino-rich Indian tribes in California have been using it themselves to cast out members whose tribal bloodlines, they say, are not pure enough to share in the profits.

What is surprising is not that more than 2,500 tribal members have been disenfranchised for apparently base reasons. (It’s human — and American — nature to want to concentrate wealth in as few hands as possible.) What is surprising is the extent to which Indian communities have continued using a system of blood membership that was imposed upon us in a violation of our sovereignty.

Hispanic students filling medical schools nationwide - Chicago Sun-Times

Hispanic students filling medical schools nationwide - Chicago Sun-Times: ...Acosta is part of a growing number of Hispanics who are applying to and enrolling in medical school. Since 2004, the number of Hispanic applicants to American medical schools has increased 22.9 percent, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. There was a nearly 6 percent rise between 2010 and 2011, from 3,271 to 3,459.

The numbers of Hispanic applicants are still fairly low, though, when compared to the total 2011 applicant pool of 43,919. And while the numbers of Hispanic doctors are growing, the rate still falls short of matching the explosive growth of the Hispanic community in the United States.

Recognizing the changing makeup of the U.S. population, medical schools have subtly adjusted their approach to create doctors of every background who are more sensitive to the needs of the community at large. Many schools have shifted their admissions process, focusing on the entire student rather than simply grades and MCAT scores.

Feds Condemn East Haven Police Department For Rampant Discrimination Against Latinos

Feds Condemn East Haven Police Department For Rampant Discrimination Against Latinos: The feds rolled into East Haven, Ct. to deliver a 23-page report with a harsh message: the local police regularly discriminate against and intimidate Latinos. The mayor of the town, Joseph Maturo, fired back that the report was both "slanderous" and "political."

After a two-year investigation, the Department of Justice slammed the East Haven Police Department on Monday for systemic discrimination against Latinos in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

"Discrimination and institutionalized indifference remain deeply rooted in the culture of the Police Department," Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roy L. Austin Jr. said at a press conference in New Haven, Ct.

Rebuffing Governor Scott, Florida A&M Declines to Suspend Ammons - NYTimes.com

Rebuffing Governor Scott, Florida A&M Declines to Suspend Ammons - NYTimes.com: Rebuffing the governor, Florida A&M’s board of trustees on Monday decided not to suspend the university’s president and asserted that it would “stand firm against outside influences, no matter how well intended.”

Solomon Badger, the chairman of the board, said the trustees would wait to decide whether to suspend the president, James H. Ammons, until the end of criminal investigations into the Nov. 19 death of a marching band member, possibly from a hazing ritual, and potential fraud by university employees.

Last week, Gov. Rick Scott called for Mr. Ammons to be suspended pending the investigations.

The governor’s action prompted an outcry from university students and alumni who called it premature and unnecessary. Students held small protests over the weekend at the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee.

Native American is proclaimed Catholic saint – USATODAY.com

Native American is proclaimed Catholic saint – USATODAY.com: The Vatican on Monday announced a 17th-century Mohawk-Algonquin woman will be canonized as a Catholic saint, the first Native American from North America so proclaimed.

It takes proof of two miracles to certify that a Catholic is clearly in heaven asking God to help people who pray in their name. Now, a second critical miracle has been credited to prayers in the name of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, who died in 1680 at age 24.

Jacob "Jake" Finkbonner of Ferndale, Wash., was 5 years old in 2006 when he split his lip playing baseball, developed a deadly flesh-eating strep infection and lay near death for months at Seattle Children's Hospital.

Jake's father, Don, is Native American and a member of the Lummi tribe. Its parish priest at the time, Timothy Sauer, urged Jake's parents to pray to Kateri to seek God's miracle, said Jake's mother, Elsa Finkbonner.

Civil Rights Commissioner: Lowe’s Pulling Ads From ‘All-American Muslim’ Is ‘At Best Cowardly’ | TPMMuckraker

Civil Rights Commissioner: Lowe’s Pulling Ads From ‘All-American Muslim’ Is ‘At Best Cowardly’ | TPMMuckraker: A Democratic member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has written a letter to Lowe’s President Robert Niblock about his company’s controversial decision to pull advertising from the show ‘All-American Muslim’ following a campaign by a right-wing fringe group.

“Lowe’s appears to have decided to withdraw advertising support for ‘All-American Muslim’ in response to a letter-writing campaign by a group known as the Florida Family Association (FFA),” Commission Michael Yaki wrote in the letter, which was written in his individual capacity as a member of the commission.

“I am extremely disappointed in your company’s decision to withdraw advertising support based on the bigotry of a few. While Lowe’s and the FFA may be free to exercise speech rights in this manner, I believe Lowe’s’ actions in this case was at best cowardly and at worst complicit in a campaign of hate against Muslim Americans,” Yaki wrote.

Missouri State University President Apologized After School Band Played 'Dixie'

Missouri State University President Apologized After School Band Played 'Dixie': SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Missouri State University is apologizing after its band performed "Dixie" at a site where three black men were lynched in 1906.

Interim President Clif Smart tells the Springfield News-Leader the song was an "unfortunate selection" and won't be played again in a public venue.

The Confederate anthem has come to represent the ideology of the Old South.

The school's Pride Band played "Dixie" at the Nov. 18 dedication of Park Central Square in Springfield, the southwest Missouri city where the university is located. A plaque identifies the square as the location where three black men were lynched more than a century ago.

Smart says the band director didn't understand the significance of the song.

The local NAACP president says "Dixie" was an inappropriate choice and sparked community complaints.

Racial Attack at Howard Beach Left Lasting Impression - NYTimes.com

Racial Attack at Howard Beach Left Lasting Impression - NYTimes.com: Twenty-five years later, this is the legacy of a racial attack in Howard Beach, Queens:

One of the victims died in the attack and is memorialized in a Brooklyn street sign, another died five years later, and the third is in jail in Virginia for unrelated crimes. The three teenagers convicted of manslaughter were released from prison and are family men in their 40s. A leader of the attack, who became the key prosecution witness and dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps in law enforcement, never did become a police officer.

In a precedent-setting decision, the judge in the case ruled that defense lawyers could no longer arbitrarily reject black jurors in criminal trials. Two years after the case went to trial, a black man was elected mayor of New York. The Queens neighborhood where the attack occurred is still predominantly white. The local pizzeria where the assault began is as popular as ever but now charges $2.50 a slice.

For Black Girls, Lack Of Exercise Heightens Obesity Risk : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

For Black Girls, Lack Of Exercise Heightens Obesity Risk : Shots - Health Blog : NPR: The evidence of America's obesity epidemic is all around us. But the problem is particularly acute among African-American women.

About half of African-American women in the U.S. are obese, compared to 30 percent of white women. Black women not only carry more weight, but they start piling on extra pounds years before their white counterparts.

So when does it begin, this excess and unhealthful weight? Research suggests the problem starts early, and it may have a lot to do with when girls give up regular exercise.


Doctors and public health specialists want kids to exercise at least 60 minutes every day, but among all children, black girls are most likely to report they got no physical activity in the past week. A lack of access to exercise opportunities may be one big reason why, says Shiriki Kumanyika, an epidemiologist and public health professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Legacy: A gift that inspires both pride and pain for scholarship recipients - The Washington Post

The Legacy: A gift that inspires both pride and pain for scholarship recipients - The Washington Post: ...All of them shared not just a history but a part in an ambitious social experiment. As children, they’d been promised college scholarships to help liberate them from the poverty and crime that too often plagued their families and their Prince George’s County neighborhoods. Now they were in their 30s, old enough to consider what that experiment had accomplished and how it had changed them.

William Smith had run into Rudolph in recent years and knew that he’d been in the Army and was working as an electrician. William described himself as a rap artist and a hustler, making money any way he could. He’d dropped out of high school in his senior year, and his mother used to say that he wouldn’t have ended up paralyzed if he had been more serious about his studies, an assertion that still angers him years later.

The Reality: Daunting difficulties for the children promised college scholarships - The Washington Post

The Reality: Daunting difficulties for the children promised college scholarships - The Washington Post: ...In the halls of Hyattsville Middle School, where they enrolled that fall, Darone Robinson and his classmates still existed in an exalted bubble. They were the Dreamers, the kids adopted by Washington Bullets owner Abe Pollin and his friend Melvin Cohen for an ambitious social experiment, one that had made the students symbols of hope in their neighborhoods and beyond.

Yet, when they left school at 3:15 p.m. every day, when they weren’t lunching with Pollin and Cohen, when they weren’t traveling on their exclusive school bus, the Dreamers returned to communities rife with drugs and gang-related carnage. They went home to mothers, many of them raising families on their own, who were terrified that their children would end up dead or be drawn into gangs or the drug trade.

Already, the giddy promise of that day in 1988, when Pollin and Cohen announced the scholarships, had given way to a more sober sense of what was possible.

The Promise: Two wealthy men set out to transform the lives of 59 poor children - The Washington Post

The Promise: Two wealthy men set out to transform the lives of 59 poor children - The Washington Post: ...Back in the spring of 1988, they’d all been friends at Seat Pleasant Elementary, part of a class of fifth-graders from some of Prince George’s County’s poorest neighborhoods.

Then, on a May afternoon, they received an unexpected gift that would alter their lives: the promise of a college education, paid for by two wealthy businessmen. Suddenly, the 11-year-olds were part of an ambitious social experiment being tried across the country, one that brought together rich benefactors and needy kids in a largely untested but intimate style of philanthropy aimed at lifting entire families out of poverty.

At Seat Pleasant, the promise generated a wave of publicity and excitement, transforming the fifth-graders into symbols of hope in their own neighborhoods and well beyond. The scholarships gave them a chance to achieve a kind of success that had eluded most of their parents. Yet their good fortune also became a burden that would endure long after they reached adulthood.

US immigration laws bow to the bigots and the opportunists | Gary Younge | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

US immigration laws bow to the bigots and the opportunists | Gary Younge | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: While travelling along the US-Mexican border, from Brownsville to San Diego, I met a man in New Mexico who went by the name of Quasimodo who claimed he "could tell an 'illegal' by looking at them". I found this doubtful, and so asked Quasimodo, one of the Minutemen, an anti-immigrant vigilante group how. "It's like wild dog versus tame dog. They just don't have the same kind of look."

Preposterous as Quasimodo's claim may sound, this crude and offensive rule of thumb has, in many states, become the rule of law. Legislation in Alabama, Arizona and elsewhere gives police the right to check the immigration status of those they 'suspect' of being undocumented.

This has effectively given bigots with badges a licence to go hunting with impunity for "wild dogs". Earlier this week a Justice Department investigation into Maricopa County, Arizona (which includes Phoenix) found the sheriff's department conducting raids against illegal immigrants because "dark-skinned" people speaking Spanish were reported congregating in an area.

Fire department sued over alleged racial discrimination - baltimoresun.com

Fire department sued over alleged racial discrimination - baltimoresun.com: The chief in charge of recruiting Baltimore firefighters filed a federal lawsuit this week against the Fire Department and the city over what he claims are racially discriminatory employment practices.

Lloyd Carter, who has been deputy chief for recruitment since the end of July, alleges in a document filed Monday that he has been passed over for promotions several times — most recently last month — and has been the subject of unfounded internal investigations because of his race. Carter, who is black, is requesting $3 million in damages.

Fire Chief James S. Clack said that he first heard of the suit Friday and had not spoken to Carter about it. The complaint had not been served on the department by midafternoon, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a department spokesman.

Ohio Civil Rights Commission to revisit 'white only' pool case - CNN.com

Ohio Civil Rights Commission to revisit 'white only' pool case - CNN.com: The Ohio Civil Rights Commission in Columbus will revisit next month a case it has already determined probably represents unlawful interference with housing rights on the basis of race.

The case was brought by Michael Gunn, a white man who had unrestricted access to the pool area for himself and his guests during the nearly two years he lived in a duplex in Cincinnati, he told CNN in a telephone interview.

Gunn said he and his girlfriend, who is also white, lived upstairs; their 31-year-old landlord lived downstairs. "It's a very nice neighborhood, racially mixed," said Gunn, a software engineer.

But it turned not-so-nice last Memorial Day, when he invited his 10-year-old biracial daughter to visit and swim in the pool, he said.

Book Tells How Iconic Civil Rights Era Photo Changed Lives of 2 Women | PBS NewsHour | Dec. 15, 2011 | PBS

Book Tells How Iconic Civil Rights Era Photo Changed Lives of 2 Women | PBS NewsHour | Dec. 15, 2011 | PBS: September 1957, Little Rock, Ark. Three years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled segregated schools unconstitutional in the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education decision.

Nine black students attempted to enroll at Little Rock's all-white Central High School. There, they were confronted by an angry mob and were turned back by a detachment of the Arkansas National Guard. As the students left, one of the more indelible images of the civil rights era was captured, two young girls, both 15, one black, one white, one resolutely ignoring the hate speech all around her, the other shouting racial epithets.

For more than 50 years, that picture has haunted both women, Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan. The intersections of their lives is the focus of a new book, "Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock," by David Margolick, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.

Ariz. sheriff illegally discriminated against Hispanics, Justice Dept. alleges - The Washington Post

Ariz. sheriff illegally discriminated against Hispanics, Justice Dept. alleges - The Washington Post: The Justice Department on Thursday accused a controversial Arizona sheriff known for tough immigration enforcement of widespread discrimination against Hispanics, saying Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s department illegally detained Hispanic residents and denied them critical services in jail.

Arpaio, the longtime sheriff in Maricopa County, oversaw a pattern of unconstitutional conduct that targeted Hispanics and retaliated against others who criticized the practices, the department said in an investigative report.

Craigslist organ donor: Kidney transplant made possible with Florida woman’s ‘help needed’ classified - NY Daily News

Craigslist organ donor: Kidney transplant made possible with Florida woman’s ‘help needed’ classified - NY Daily News: A young Florida woman desperately seeking a kidney donor turned to Craigslist as a last ditch effort to save her own life--and she got what she was looking for.

Selina Hodge, 28, from Miami posted her plea in July hoping a generous soul would help her.

"I turned to Craigslist, because I didn't know where else to turn to," Hodge, who suffers from an undiscoled illness, said in a report from Florida's WPTV.

Her request returned over 800 responses from around the world, one from a woman who lives just a few miles away in Palm Beach.

Stephanie Grant, 23, heard about Hodge's plight on the news and decided to step in, sacrificing her own healthy kidney and risking her own life in the process.

Growing Roses in Concrete | infinite hope | the national equity project blog

Growing Roses in Concrete | infinite hope | the national equity project blog: Professor Jeff Duncan-Andrade has been giving a very powerful talk in a few venues around the Bay Area on his work with and research on students in the most impoverished neighborhoods in Oakland.

He offers the alarming statistic that one in three urban students suffer from some form of PTSD, which is twice the rate of soldiers in Iraq. These students do not leave the battlefield, but grow up in it year after year.

Census shows 1 in 2 people are poor or low-income – USATODAY.com

Census shows 1 in 2 people are poor or low-income – USATODAY.com: Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans, almost 1 in 2, have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that is shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too 'rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.

Occupy Wall Street: Push To Commemorate Wall Street Slavery Market Site

Occupy Wall Street: Push To Commemorate Wall Street Slavery Market Site: Near the corner of Wall and Pearl streets, where businessmen and tourists plod below the towering office buildings and banks that loom over the East River, are the buried bones of one of the nation's most loathsome trades.

The American economy, a vast pool of unevenly distributed wealth, was built on the backs of enslaved Africans and hundreds of years of their forced labor. Few places benefited more directly from the awful business of slavery than Wall Street.

Tuesday marked the 300th anniversary of New York's first official slave market, which was established on Wall Street near Pearl and Water. But these days, little tangible evidence remains of Wall Street's slave-peddling past -- no plaques, no markers or statues, just grainy old maps in city archives and long-forgotten documents detailing who could be bought and sold.

But a small group of mostly white Occupy Wall Street protesters and a black city councilman from Brooklyn are working to change that.

Wisconsin faces lawsuit as civil rights groups cry foul over new voting rules | World news | guardian.co.uk

Wisconsin faces lawsuit as civil rights groups cry foul over new voting rules | World news | guardian.co.uk: A tough new law in the state of Wisconsin requiring voters to carry a photo ID card before they can cast their vote is being challenged in a federal lawsuit that claims thousands of poor, black and elderly people could be disenfranchised.

The legal action, lodged in the federal court for the eastern district of Wisconsin, opens a new front in the battle over voter registration before next year's presidential election. Civil rights groups are warning that a wave of legislative restrictions introduced in more than 30 states amounts to a concerted attack on voting rights in America on a level not seen since the days of segregation.

The lawsuit has been brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against Scott Walker, the Republican governor of Wisconsin, and other state officials. It is the only active federal challenge to the imposition of ID laws on voters.

California Indian Tribes Eject Thousands of Members - NYTimes.com

California Indian Tribes Eject Thousands of Members - NYTimes.com: COARSEGOLD, Calif. — The six-page, single-spaced letter that Nancy Dondero and about 50 of her relatives received last month was generously salted with legal citations and footnotes. But its meaning was brutally simple. “It is the decision by a majority of the Tribal Council,” the letter said, “that you are hereby disenrolled.”

And with that, Ms. Dondero’s official membership in the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, the cultural identity card she had carried all her life, summarily ended.

“That’s it,” Ms. Dondero, 58, said. “We’re tribeless.”

Ms. Dondero and her clan have joined thousands of Indians in California who have been kicked out of their tribes in recent years for the crime of not being of the proper bloodline.

FAMU Hazing: Police Charge 3 Florida A&M Band Members With Battery

FAMU Hazing: Police Charge 3 Florida A&M Band Members With Battery: Three Florida A&M band members were charged Monday in the beating of a woman during hazing rituals that became so severe that her thigh was broken, police said. The beatings came about three weeks before drum major Robert Champion was killed during a band trip to Orlando. Police say hazing also was involved.

Tallahassee police said that on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, Bria Shante Hunter was beaten with fists and a metal ruler to initiate her into the "Red Dawg Order" – a band clique for students who come from Georgia.

Hunter told police that days later the pain became so unbearable that she went to the hospital. Besides her broken thigh bone, she had had blood clots in her legs.

Sean Hobson, 23, and Aaron Golson, 19, were charged Monday with hazing and battery, and James Harris, 22, was charged with hazing.

Bigotry charges aimed at Lowes over Muslim TV show | The Raw Story

Bigotry charges aimed at Lowes over Muslim TV show | The Raw Story: One of the biggest US retailers faced charges of bigotry Monday after it bowed to pressure from a Christian group and stopped advertising on a reality TV show about Arab Americans.

Lowe’s, a national hardware chain, said it was among a number of sponsors to abandon “All-American Muslim,” which follows the daily lives of five suburban families of Arab heritage in Dearborn, Michigan.

“Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lighting rod for many of those views,” it said in a statement on its Facebook page.

Life Upon These Shores — Looking at African American History, 1513-2008 — By Henry Louis Gates Jr. — Book Review - NYTimes.com

Life Upon These Shores — Looking at African American History, 1513-2008 — By Henry Louis Gates Jr. — Book Review - NYTimes.com: ...Through dozens of profiles and other short essays, accompanied by abundant and beautifully reproduced prints, paintings, newspaper clippings and photographs, Gates, the director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, tries to summarize the black experience in North America, from the arrival of the free black conquistador Juan Garrido with Ponce de Leon in 1513 to the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

Though there are inevitable gaps (there’s one scant reference to Billie Holiday, for instance, and her name is misspelled), most of the major figures are here, from politics, religion, scholarship, entertainment, sports. It is an appropriately eclectic group, ranging from leaders of slave rebellions like Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner to Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson. Most are familiar, at least to semi-serious students of black history, but some are undeservedly obscure, like Cotton Mather’s slave Onesimus, who taught Mather how to inoculate the Massachusetts Bay Colony against smallpox.

- The Washington Post

- The Washington Post: After the health-care company where Linda Evans worked relocated outside the Washington area, she spent two years searching for another job. But nothing panned out.

“I felt like a loser,” said Evans, who lives in the District.

No doubt the nation’s economic woes have made a lot of people feel that way. But women— especially black women like Evans — were among the hardest hit. And the so-called recovery has been even worse for them.

According to a recent study by the National Women’s Law Center, black women have lost more jobs during the recovery — 258,000 — than they did during the recession — 233,000. Put another way, black women represented 12.5 percent of all women workers in June 2009. But between then and this June, black women lost 42.2 percent of jobs lost by women overall.

Fuqua School looks to African American football star to shatter racist legacy - The Washington Post

Fuqua School looks to African American football star to shatter racist legacy - The Washington Post: FARMVILLE, Va. — Nearly 50 years after it opened as a sanctuary for white students in a county that resisted school desegregation to the very end, the Fuqua School wanted badly to prove its racist days were over.

The private school in this town on the banks of the Appomattox River accepted its first black student in the late 1980s. But the black community here still knew Fuqua as central Virginia’s most famous “segregation academy.”

It was still viewed, well into the 21st century, as a symbol of defiance to the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. It was still seen as a place where black students were unwelcome.

Joaquin Luna Jr.’s Suicide Touches Off Immigration Debate - NYTimes.com

Joaquin Luna Jr.’s Suicide Touches Off Immigration Debate - NYTimes.com: ...In the days since Mr. Luna took his own life last month and since some of his writings became public, his story — of an illegal immigrant who suddenly lost hope of becoming the first in his family to go to college — has evolved into something more.

To the immigrant rights movement in Texas, Mr. Luna has become a symbol of the psychological toll that being in the country illegally can take on young people. To others, he has become a political pawn, with his death being used by those who support the passage of the Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who go to college.

U.S. school excuses challenged - Class Struggle - The Washington Post

U.S. school excuses challenged - Class Struggle - The Washington Post: Many Americans, including me, are skeptical of efforts to portray our public schools as failures compared to the rest of the world. The late Gerald W. Bracey, my favorite contrarian education expert, exposed exaggerations, false assumptions and deceptive graphics that made us look worse than we were.

But a new book edited by Marc S. Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, offers convincing evidence that we are running out of excuses. The book, “Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems,” is so unsettling I am devoting two columns to it. Today I examine apparent flaws in our rejection of international comparisons. Thursday I outline what Tucker says we must do to catch the Shanghainese, Japanese, Finnish and other top-performing education systems.

Media Companies Set Their Sights on Latin Women - Advertising - NYTimes.com

Media Companies Set Their Sights on Latin Women - Advertising - NYTimes.com: WITH the Census Bureau counting nearly 25 million Latin women in the United States, marketers and media companies have started getting excited about the potential to reach them.

Among the most recent initiatives is a new publication, Cosmopolitan Latina, that will start publishing in May and will be aimed at American-born Latin women who are bicultural and bilingual.

“A lot of marketers understand that they need to invest with the Latino market,” said Donna Kalajian Lagani, the senior vice president and publishing director at Cosmopolitan. But many Latinos, she said, “are digesting their information in English.”

According to the census, of the Latin women in the United States, more than eight million are native-born and older than 18. “She’s very Latina, but she’s also very American. You can’t separate the two,” Ms. Kalajian Lagani said of the new magazine’s intended reader.

Liberian president, women’s campaigner and Yemenite activist accept Nobel Peace Prize - The Washington Post

Liberian president, women’s campaigner and Yemenite activist accept Nobel Peace Prize - The Washington Post: OSLO, Norway — Three women who fought injustice, dictatorship and sexual violence in Liberia and Yemen accepted the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize on Saturday, calling on repressed women worldwide to rise up against male supremacy.

“My sisters, my daughters, my friends — find your voice,” Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said after collecting her Nobel diploma and medal at a ceremony in Oslo.

Sirleaf, Africa’s first democratically elected female president, shared the award with women’s rights campaigner Leymah Gbowee, also from Liberia, and Tawakkul Karman, a female icon of the protest movement in Yemen.

By selecting Karman, the prize committee recognized the Arab Spring movement that has toppled autocratic leaders in North Africa and the Middle East. Praising Karman’s struggle against Yemen’s regime, Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland also sent a message to Syria’s leader Bashar Assad, whose crackdown on a monthslong rebellion has killed more than 4,000 people according to U.N. estimates.

Racial Differences in the Formation of Postsecondary Educational Expectations: A Structural Model

TCRecord: Article: Background: Educational attainment is associated with a plethora of positive economic and social implications for individuals, institutions, and the broader society. One factor that has been identified as an important predictor of students’ educational attainment is their educational expectations. Thus, understanding how educational expectations are shaped is important to comprehending how success can be fostered among students from diverse racial backgrounds.

Purpose of the Study: This quantitative study is aimed at understanding the process by which students from various racial backgrounds cultivate and reformulate their educational expectations during the high school years. Three research questions were explored in this study: (1) How do various academic and interpersonal factors directly affect students’ educational expectations? (2) How do academic and interpersonal factors indirectly affect students’ educational expectations via their self-perceptions? and (3) How do those effects vary across different racial groups?

Achieving Equity for Latino Students: Expanding the Pathway to Higher Education through Public Policy

TCRecord: Article: Dense with statistics concerning how U.S. policies, K-12 schools, and institutions of higher education are failing Latino/a students, this text also offers compelling stories from undergraduates struggling to achieve a college education. Frances Contreras has woven a cogent argument for how and why public policy has developed to constrain college attendance and graduation for Latino/a youth. Contreras reframes the so-called achievement gap as a K-12 opportunity-to-learn gap grounded in inequitable and inhospitable schooling practices. She untangles a web of factors contributing to a leaking educational pipeline that most harms students who are English Language Learners (ELLs)—including a paucity of highly qualified teachers; poor school facilities and a lack of excellent curricular materials; many teachers’ negative perceptions of Latinos/as’ intellectual talent and motivation; low levels of teacher interactions with Latino/a families; and a lack of school staff who either speak Spanish or can effectively teach ELLs.

Black Atlantans Struggle To Stay In The Middle Class : NPR

Black Atlantans Struggle To Stay In The Middle Class : NPR: There's no question that the Great Recession has meant hard times all around, but from 2007 to 2009, it sent black America into an economic tailspin.

According to the Pew Research Center, the median net worth — that's assets minus debts — of black households decreased by more than 50 percent from 2005 to 2009.

NPR's Robert Siegel traveled to Atlanta — a city that's virtually synonymous with the black middle class — to find out what those numbers mean in the lives of real people. He started in Fairburn, Ga., a cul-de-sac and two-car garage suburb just south of the city.

The 10 most segregated urban areas in America - Race - Salon.com

The 10 most segregated urban areas in America - Race - Salon.com: Decades after the end of Jim Crow, and three years after the election of America’s first black president, the United States remains a profoundly segregated country.

That reality has been reinforced by the release of Census Bureau data last week that shows black and white Americans still tend to live in their own neighborhoods, often far apart from each other. Segregation itself, the decennial census report indicates, is only decreasing slowly, although the dividing lines are shifting as middle-income blacks, Latinos and Asians move to once all-white suburbs — whereupon whites often move away, turning older suburbs into new, if less distressed, ghettos.

Milwaukee Finds Huge Racial Disparities In Traffic Stop Data

Milwaukee Finds Huge Racial Disparities In Traffic Stop Data: Black drivers in Milwaukee were seven times more likely to be pulled over by police than their white counterparts, while Latinos were five times more likely to be stopped, according to a study conducted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Meaghan Bledsoe-Horton, 23, was born and raised in Milwaukee, a city which recently won the unflattering title of most segregated in the U.S. Random traffic stops are a common occurrence for Bledsoe-Horton, who is black.

Last year, Bledsoe-Horton was driving home when she was stopped in Whitefish Bay, a mostly-white suburb of Milwaukee sometimes referred to by the illustrative epithet, Whitefolk's Bay. With three black male friends in the car, she recalls, she was asked by the police officer if she was lost.

Ofield Dukes, PR legend dead at 79 - The Root DC Live - The Washington Post

Ofield Dukes, PR legend dead at 79 - The Root DC Live - The Washington Post: D.C. public relations trailblazer Ofield Dukes died Wednesday in his hometown of Detroit at the Henry Ford Hospital after enduring a long battle with multiple myeloma, a a rare form of bone cancer. He was 79.

“We are extremely saddened by the loss of our dear friend,” said Gregory Lee Jr., president of the National Association of Black Journalists. “Ofield Dukes revolutionized the public relations industry by increasing the visibility of African-Americans working in the field. Mr. Dukes will forever be regarded as a standard bearer for public relations professionals of all races. A true giant in the world of PR, he will truly be missed.”

Martin Luther King Murder: Smithsonian Channel Uncovers Film From Assassination

Martin Luther King Murder: Smithsonian Channel Uncovers Film From Assassination: Some forward-looking college professors enabled television's Smithsonian Channel to offer a look at the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. from the time in which it occurred.

The network said Wednesday it will air a documentary in February culled primarily from local news footage in Memphis, Tenn., where the civil rights leader was murdered on April 4, 1968. Most of the footage hasn't been seen on television since it originally aired.

Many such moments are lost since local television stations usually taped over old broadcasts or threw away film reels, said David Royle, executive producer at the Smithsonian Channel. But some University of Memphis professors sensed in March 1968 that civil rights history was happening with a strike of local sanitation workers, the event that drew King to Memphis, and they collected footage of the events through King's murder and its aftermath.

"What they were doing was absolutely visionary – and very unusual," Royle said.

Black Scholar Of The Civil War Asks: Who's With Me? : NPR

Black Scholar Of The Civil War Asks: Who's With Me? : NPR: The Civil War ended slavery in America. So why, asks author Ta-Nehisi Coates, do African-Americans, who benefited most from the conflict, take so little interest in it? Coates, a confessed Civil War obsessive, wrote about that question in his recent article, "Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?"

The story appears in a special issue of The Atlantic commemorating the Civil War.

Of course, 150 years after the war began, many Americans study the conflict in many different ways. Some get caught up in the leaders' personalities, or in specific battles that served as turning points in the war.

"There's a group of people for whom that means obsessing over military tactics," Coates tells NPR's Steve Inskeep.

Parents help their kids speak fluent Spanish and maintain their heritage - The Washington Post

Parents help their kids speak fluent Spanish and maintain their heritage - The Washington Post: The nannies’ most important credentials include speaking no English, only Spanish. The elementary schools are bilingual, or full immersion. Summer vacations unfold in, say, Colombia or Peru. The “Vamonos! Let’s Go!” CDs with Dora and Diego have been played so many times that finally they must be summarily disappeared for the sake of everyone’s sanity. Even the family dogs are bilingual, enthusing equally to “afuera” and “outside,” “juguete” and “toy.”

And yet, for parents going to such lengths, there will almost inevitably come a moment like the one experienced a few years ago by Glenda Harvey, a native of Puerto Rico. She speaks English without an accent, yet at home with her children, she speaks Spanish. Her husband, Steve Harvey, speaks English but fully supports the Spanish mission. By the age of 3, their elder son, Sebastian, was fluent in Spanish and English. Then he went to an English-language preschool.

Income gap stays wide in District, narrows in suburbs - The Washington Post

Income gap stays wide in District, narrows in suburbs - The Washington Post: The income gap between whites and blacks living in the District is one of the widest in the country, new census statistics show. That stands in stark contrast to the Washington suburbs, where the gaps have become some of the nation’s narrowest.

The per capita income for whites in the District is more than triple what it is for blacks, and the difference has only widened since 1990. In several suburbs, including Prince George’s, Loudoun and Stafford counties, incomes for blacks and whites are closer than ever, and today whites earn $1.30 or less for every $1 that blacks earn.

Demographers and city activists say the difference reflects four decades of upper- and middle-class blacks abandoning the city for the suburbs, coupled with a more recent resurgence of affluent whites moving to the District. Some speak of the city’s middle class as a vanishing phenomenon, propelled in part by rising housing prices.

Cities moving beyond segregation – USATODAY.com

Cities moving beyond segregation – USATODAY.com: ...Blacks' move to suburbia has accelerated in the past decade, shifting the racial make-up of urban and suburban neighborhoods across the nation. The change is particularly striking here because of the area's long history of racial segregation.

Black-white residential segregation plummeted from 2000 to 2010 in the Kansas City metropolitan area after rising during each of the previous three decades, according to one analysis of Census data.

Kansas City last year was the 36th most segregated metropolitan area among the 100 largest, down from 18th in 2000.  "It's as much the fact that city ghettos are being broken up as the fact that suburbs are beginning to integrate," says Kansas City native John Logan, a Brown University sociologist who did the analysis. "It's one of the places that I would describe as a success in the making, after a long history of intense segregation."

D.C. schools have largest black-white achievement gap in federal study - The Washington Post

D.C. schools have largest black-white achievement gap in federal study - The Washington Post: D.C. public schools have the largest achievement gap between black and white students among the nation’s major urban school systems, a distinction laid bare in a federal study released Wednesday.

The District also has the widest achievement gap between white and Hispanic students, the study found, compared with results from other large systems and the national average.

The study is based on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, federal reading and math exams taken this year by fourth- and eighth-graders across the country.

The tests are the only continuing and nationally representative assessment of what students know. State-by-state results were released last month, but large cities have agreed to have their own results published separately since 2002, with 21 participating this year.

Generally speaking, the results in large cities mirror national trends: Students are showing some improvement in math, but progress in reading is stagnating.

Minority Parents On Education: Schools Need Reform, But Children's Academic Success Is On Us

Minority Parents On Education: Schools Need Reform, But Children's Academic Success Is On Us: Studies have consistently shown that compared to their white counterparts, minority students are less likely to graduate high school on time or receive any form of higher education, and more likely to drop out of high school.

While some experts point to methods for closing achievement gaps and enhancing the performance of the bottom 5 percent of schools and students by way of legislation and policy, a new report out by the Public Education Network examines the role of the parent.

Whereas just 37 percent of the general public considers schools in their communities -- versus schools in other areas -- as examples of institutions needing reform, about 70 percent of black and Latino parents point to those in their neighborhoods.

Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church: Kentucky Congregation Overturns Ban On Interracial Couples

Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church: Kentucky Congregation Overturns Ban On Interracial Couples: An eastern Kentucky church under a firestorm of criticism since members voted to bar mixed-race couples from joining the congregation overturned that decision Sunday, saying it welcomes all believers.

Stacy Stepp, pastor of the Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church in Pike County, told The Associated Press that the vote by nine people last week was declared null and void after it was determined that new bylaws can't run contrary to local, state or national laws. He said the proposal was discriminatory, therefore it couldn't be adopted.

Stepp said about 30 people who attended church services voted on a new resolution that welcomes "believers into our fellowship regardless of race, creed or color."

The issue came up at the tiny all-white Appalachian church after the daughter of church secretary Dean Harville visited over the summer with her boyfriend, who is from Africa, and the two sang for the congregation.

Pain in the Public Sector - NYTimes.com

Pain in the Public Sector - NYTimes.com: ...The cutbacks hurt more than just services. As Timothy Williams of The Times reported last week, they hit black workers particularly hard. Millions of African-Americans — one in five who are employed — have entered the middle class through government employment, and they tend to make 25 percent more than other black workers. Now tens of thousands are leaving both their jobs and the middle class. Chicago, for example, is laying off 212 employees in the upcoming fiscal year, two-thirds of whom are black.

That’s one reason the black unemployment rate went up last month, to 15.5 percent from 15.1. The effect is severe, destabilizing black neighborhoods and making it harder for young people to replicate their parents’ climb up the economic ladder. “The reliance on these jobs has provided African-Americans a path upward,” said Robert Zieger, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Florida. “But it is also a vulnerability.”

NAACP targets tougher voter qualifications – USATODAY.com

NAACP targets tougher voter qualifications – USATODAY.com: The NAACP launches a campaign Monday against new state laws that tighten voter qualifications.

The NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, two separate organizations, will release a report that finds the laws tend to suppress minority voting — a trend the report says emerged after unprecedented minority turnout in the 2008 election and Census figures that show people of color gaining a larger share of the population.

The groups will send the document to congressional leaders, state attorneys general, secretaries of state and the Department of Justice in hopes of prompting legislation to roll back laws requiring government-issued identification at the polls and reducing the number of early-voting days and other measures they say could disenfranchise as many as 5 million voters.

ProPublica review of pardons in past decade shows process heavily favored whites - The Washington Post

ProPublica review of pardons in past decade shows process heavily favored whites - The Washington Post: White criminals seeking presidential pardons over the past decade have been nearly four times as likely to succeed as minorities, a ProPublica examination has found.

Blacks have had the poorest chance of receiving the president’s ultimate act of mercy, according to an analysis of previously unreleased records and related data.

Current and former officials at the White House and Justice Department said they were surprised and dismayed by the racial disparities, which persist even when factors such as the type of crime and sentence are considered.

“I’m just astounded by those numbers,” said Roger Adams, who served as head of the Justice Department’s pardons office from 1998 to 2008. He said he could think of nothing in the office’s practices that would have skewed the recommendations. “I can recall several African Americans getting pardons.’’

White House Pushes for Weighing Race in Admissions - NYTimes.com

White House Pushes for Weighing Race in Admissions - NYTimes.com: The Obama administration on Friday urged colleges and universities to get creative in improving racial diversity at their campuses, throwing out a Bush-era interpretation of recent Supreme Court rulings that limited affirmative action in admissions.

The new guidelines issued by the Departments of Justice and Education replaced a 2008 document that essentially warned colleges and universities against considering race at all. Instead, the guidelines focus on the wiggle room in the court decisions involving the University of Michigan, suggesting that institutions use other criteria — students’ socioeconomic profiles, residential instability, the hardships they have overcome — that are often proxies for race. Schools could even grant preferences to students from certain schools selected for, among other things, their racial composition, the new document says.

Smithsonian Black History Museum Accepts KKK Robes

Smithsonian Black History Museum Accepts KKK Robes: The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture has acquired two Ku Klux Klan robes that will be exhibited in its future home on the National Mall.

One of the robes donated Monday comes from the family of the late writer Stetson Kennedy, who died in August some six decades after he infiltrated the KKK and exposed its secrets.

The second robe belonged to Phineas Miller Nathaniel Wilds, a chaplain in the Klan. It was donated by his great-great-grandson Richard Rousseau.

The $500 million museum is scheduled to open in 2015. Curators are planning exhibits spanning the journey of slaves from Africa, the Civil War, the civil rights movement and accomplishments in music, sports and culture.

Congress has pledged to provide about half of the cost.