News and Events
September 29 - October 3, 2010 (Event)
ASALH Call For Papers, 95TH Annual Convention
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) is soliciting papers and panels for its upcoming 95th Annual Convention. This year’s conference theme is: "The History of Black Economic Empowerment." Although the program committee welcomes papers and panels on any aspect of African and African American history and culture, special preference will be given to submissions directly related to this year’s theme.
August 4, 2010
Researching African-American History in Indiana
Ask Dr. Tim Lake about early Black settlements in Indiana. He’ll share how he and Wabash College students have discovered that, 150 years ago, Black-White relations were not nearly as polarized as one might assume.
August 3, 2010
Bernice King breaks silence, asks SCLC to end rift
ATLANTA — After nearly 10 months of silence, the Rev. Bernice King urged the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on Tuesday to end the bitter infighting that has split the group she was elected to lead.
JuLY 30, 2010
National Urban League Convention Considers College Success, K-12 Education Reform
WASHINGTON — The rough road to a college degree can be made smoother for first-generation and low-income students if society begins to step up support in the areas of academic support, mentoring and financial aid.
JuLY 29, 2010
Judge Blocks Disputed Parts of Immigration Law in Arizona
The parts of the law that the judge blocked included the sections that called for officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws.
JuLY 28, 2010
Delta's Black Oystermen Seeking Cleanup Work and Clinging to Hope
At Pointe a la Hache, La., and other towns, the men sit around on old milk crates, hoping for a piece of the oil cleanup action that seems to have bypassed their little stretch of bayou.
JuLY 26, 2010
William and Mary Professor Thinks He Found Oldest Black School
WILLIAMSBURG, Va.— A College of William and Mary professor thinks he may have found the nation’s oldest surviving schoolhouse for African-American children.
JuLY 26, 2010
When Race Is the Issue, Misleading Coverage Sets Off an Uproar
It is an open question whether conservative media outlets risk damage to their credibility when obscure or misleading stories are blown out of proportion.
JuLY 26, 2010
Letter From Washington: Disabled See Progress, but Problems Persist
Twenty years on, the Americans With Disabilities Act has transformed the United States, improved the lives of the 50 million people with disabilities and served as a model for much of the rest of the world.
JuLY 25, 2010
YMCA lawsuit's 40th anniversary: Dees, historic case changed Montgomery forever
A 1954 decision from the country's highest court had ordered all-white public programs to admit blacks. But 15 years later in Montgomery, black children still could not play with whites in the youth programs that had been ordered desegregated.
JuLY 24, 2010
Despite Sherrod spotlight, black farmers denied settlement
WASHINGTON -- Black farmers, due $1.2 billion for a legacy of discrimination by the Agriculture Department, suffered a new and disheartening setback this week, despite the national spotlight provided by the quickly disavowed firing of a black department worker.
JuLY 23, 2010
House Panel Finds Evidence That Rangel Violated Ethics Guidelines
The details of the violations have not yet been disclosed, but they are said to include many of the most serious allegations against the Harlem Democrat.
JuLY 21, 2010
'Newsweek' Names BTW One of Nation's Best
Booker T. Washington Mag net High School in Montgomery is among 10 Alabama high schools and 1,600 high schools in America to make Newsweek magazine's America's Best High Schools list, according to a news release from Montgomery Pub lic Schools.
JuLY 20, 2010
Paper bingo still a big draw at Alabama gaming hall
PIEDMONT — The 80,000-square-foot building is quiet as a library, despite the 400 or so people seated at long rows of folding banquet tables, squares of paper spread out in front of them and an arsenal of ink daubers at hand.
JuLY 19, 2010
California Blacks Split Over Marijuana Measure
A cadre of African-American religious leaders have joined against a measure to tax and regulate marijuana.
JuLY 18, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist: The Roots of White Anxiety
In March of 2000, Pat Buchanan came to speak at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. Harvard being Harvard, the audience hissed and sneered and made wisecracks.
JuLY 16, 2010
Group: Dragging of slain SC man is a hate crime
NEWBERRY, S.C. – For the New Black Panther Party, it's simple: A black man being shot to death by a white man and dragged for miles behind a pickup truck is a racial hate crime.
JuLY 14, 2010
Vernon Baker, Belated Medal of Honor Recipient, Dies at 90
Vernon Baker, who was the only living black veteran awarded the Medal of Honor for valor in World War II, receiving it 52 years after he wiped out four German machine-gun nests on a hilltop in northern Italy, died Tuesday at his home near St. Maries, Idaho. He was 90.
JuLY 13, 2010
Police Are Charged in Post-Katrina Shootings
NEW ORLEANS — Four current and two former New Orleans police officers have been charged in connection with the killing of unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, federal law enforcement officials announced here on Tuesday.
JuLY 13, 2010
UT strips Klansman’s name from Austin dorm
AUSTIN, Texas — University of Texas regents have stripped the name of a former law school professor and early organizer of the Ku Klux Klan from a campus dormitory.
JuLY 13, 2010
NAACP resolution condemns racism in tea party
KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Leaders of the country's largest civil rights organization accused tea party activists on Tuesday of tolerating bigotry and approved a resolution condemning racism within the political movement.
JuLY 12, 2010
Michelle Obama speaks at the 101st NAACP Convention
On July 12, 2010, the first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, spoke at the 101st NAACP Convention in Kansas City. She discussed the future of the NAACP and the African American community, as well her key issue: childhood obesity.
JuLY 9, 2010
Black police officer seeks pension
BIRMINGHAM -- The first black police officer hired by Tuscaloosa has returned to federal court seeking a pension for his 25 years of service that ended with his retirement in 1991.
JuLY 6, 2010
Obama Returns to Missouri, Site of Slim 2008 Loss
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For some in President Obama’s White House, Missouri remains the state that got away, nearly two years after his election.
JuLY 1, 2010
Art Review: Country Divided in Black and White
David Goldblatt's photographs, now on view at the Jewish Museum, avoid big feelings and go instead for the hard facts of his homeland, South Africa.
JuLY 1, 2010
Black Landowners Fight to Reclaim Georgia Home
HARRIS NECK NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Ga. — When the managers from the federal Fish and Wildlife Service talk about this2,800-acre preserve of moss-draped cypress, palmetto and marsh, they speak of endangered wood stork rookeries and disappearing marsh habitat, dike maintenance and interpretive kiosks.
June 30, 2010
Report: Harvard scholar's arrest at home avoidable
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – A black Harvard scholar and the white police sergeant who arrested him last July after a confrontation outside his home both missed opportunities to "ratchet down" the situation and end it more calmly, according to a review of the case released Wednesday.
June 30, 2010
Top French Schools, Asked to Diversify, Fear for Standards
PARIS — France is embarking on a grand experiment — how to diversify the overwhelmingly white “grandes écoles,” the elite universities that have produced French leaders in every walk of life — and Rizane el-Yazidi is one of the pioneers.
June 24, 2010
Boston Police Try A New Anti-Gang Weapon: Shame
Boston police are trying a new weapon in their war on gangs. They're hoping a little old-fashioned public humiliation might help curb inner-city violence. But many fear the new tactic will backfire.
June 20, 2010
A Young Father's Balancing Act
Leon Britton Jr. is a graduate of the Bronx Fatherhood Program, a service that trains men ages 16 to 24 in the ways of fatherhood.
June 16, 2010
CAPITAL CULTURE: Slaves who built Capitol honored
WASHINGTON — African-American slaves sweated in the summer heat and shivered in the winter's cold while helping to build the U.S. Capitol. Congress took note of their service and sacrifice Wednesday by erecting commemorative plaques inside the Capitol in their honor.
June 14, 2010
Art exhibit at ASU captures black history, culture
Marcella Hayes Muhammad said Sunday's opening reception for an exhibit featuring her work was like a homecoming.
June 10, 2010
Rare photo of slave children found in NC attic
RALEIGH, N.C. — A haunting 150-year-old photo found in a North Carolina attic shows a young black child named John, barefoot and wearing ragged clothes, perched on a barrel next to another unidentified young boy.
June 8, 2010
Georgia Escape: Famous men leave imprints on Augusta
The late, great James Brown may be considered Augusta’s most famous hometown hero, but Georgia’s second largest city was also home to two significant figures in American history. The youngest man to sign the Declaration of Independence, Georgia Governor George Walton, moved to Augusta from Farmville, Va., when he was 29. And President Woodrow Wilson moved to Augusta when he was 2 and lived there for a decade. All three men have left their imprints on the city.
June 2, 2010
Study Finds Blacks Blocked From Southern Juries
The practice of excluding minorities from Southern juries remains widespread and largely unchecked.
June 2, 2010
Alabama Voters Reject Coalition Bid
WASHINGTON — Whether it was his vote against the health care legislation or his strategy to sidestep the state’s black political leadership, the decisive defeat of Artur Davis in his quest to become the first black governor of Alabama illustrates the limits of trying to replicate the strategy that helped carry President Obama to office.
May 27, 2010
UWA professor uncovers historic racial struggles
LIVINSTON – Few Alabamians would know that the 1901 constitution has been under attack since its adoption and even before. Black Alabamians—the primary targets of the 1901 constitution—brought the first real challenges to it, dragging it before state and federal courts as early as 1902 in an effort to preserve their voting rights.
May 23, 2010
How Equal Was This Separate School?
You could listen to a lot of dry lectures by a lot of windy history professors and still not learn as much about race issues in the century after the Civil War as you do in “A Place Out of Time: The Bordentown School.”
May 18, 2010
Civil rights activist accused of vandalism at SCLC offices
Groups feuding over who's in charge of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference threatened to bring criminal charges against each other on Tuesday.
May 12, 2010
New York Minorities More Likely to Be Frisked
Blacks and Latinos were nine times as likely as whites to be stopped by the police in New York City in 2009, but, once stopped, were no more likely to be arrested.
May 9, 2010
Lena Horne, Singer and Actress, Dies at 92
Lena Horne, who broke new ground for black performers when she signed a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio and who went on to achieve international fame as a singer, died on Sunday night in Manhattan. She was 92.
May 1, 2010
A Separate Peace: Collier Heights
An iconic African American neighborhood, home to Kings and Hollowells and Abernathys, makes history again.
April 29, 2010
Civil Rights Leader Is Eulogized by Obama
WASHINGTON — President Obama eulogized the civil and women’s rights leader Dorothy Height on Thursday as a “drum major for freedom,” describing her as an American icon who tirelessly pursued justice.
April 28, 2010
Alvin Ailey Company Names a New Leader
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, one of the nation’s most successful dance troupes, said on Wednesday that it would entrust its future to Robert Battle, a 37-year-old outside choreographer who has had a long association with the company.
April 23, 2010
Ariz. governor signs immigration enforcement bill
PHOENIX – Gov. Jan Brewer ignored criticism from President Barack Obama on Friday and signed into law a bill supporters said would take handcuffs off police in dealing with illegal immigration in Arizona, the nation's busiest gateway for human and drug smuggling from Mexico.
April 22, 2010
Op-Ed Contributor: Ending the Slavery Blame-Game
THANKS to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.
April 20, 2010
Civil rights activist Dorothy Height dies at 98
WASHINGTON — Civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height, the president of the National Council of Negro Women for more than 40 years and a pivotal figure during the civil rights era of the 1960s, died Tuesday at the age of 98.
April 19, 2010
Embattled Civil Rights Group Struggles to Survive
ATLANTA (AP) -- Two factions of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference gathered Monday for separate meetings, hundreds of miles apart, with each group claiming to be the SCLC's board of directors as the embattled 53-year-old organization struggles to survive amid legal woes and bitter infighting.
April 18, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist: Welcome to Confederate History Month
It's kind of like that legendary stunt on the prime-time soap "Dallas," where we learned that nothing bad had really happened because the previous season's episodes were all a dream. We now know that the wave of anger that crashed on the Capitol as the health care bill passed last month — the death threats and epithets hurled at members of Congress — was also a mirage.
April 15, 2010
Aaron's hometown gives Hall of Fame-style honor
MOBILE, Ala. — Hank Aaron gathered with a handful of fellow Hall of Famers on his front porch and grabbed a seat next to commissioner Bud Selig.
April 15, 2010
Group to buy church housing Scottsboro Boys museum
SCOTTSBORO — A private foundation has come up with the money to purchase an old church housing a new museum dedicated to the “Scottsboro Boys” case.
April 15, 2010
Mants an important figure in civil rights movement
WHITE HALL -- He might not have been as well-known as John Lewis or Stokely Carmichael, but Bob Mants forged his own civil rights reputation, at times on the back of a borrowed mule.
April 15, 2010
Benjamin Hooks, who boosted NAACP, dead at 85
NASHVILLE – Civil rights leader Benjamin L. Hooks, who shrugged off courtroom slurs as a young lawyer before earning a pioneering judgeship and later reviving a flagging NAACP, died Thursday in Memphis. He was 85.
April 12, 2010
Son of Former Congressman Enters Race to Take Rangel's House Seat
Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV said that Charles B. Rangel's departure as chairman of a powerful Washington committee helped pave the way for him to run.
April 9, 2010
White House butler Eugene Allen's humility recalled at funeral
In the end, Eugene Allen, a White House butler who lived a life behind the scenes of history, was the subject of wide acclaim.
April 6, 2010
Wilma Mankiller, former Cherokee chief, dies at 64
Former Cherokee Nation Chief Wilma Mankiller, one of the nation's most visible American Indian leaders and one of the few women to lead a major tribe, died Tuesday in Oklahoma after suffering from cancer and other health problems. She was 64.
April 5, 2010
University of Alabama to mark Wallace's 'stand'
TUSCALOOSA — For years, the only marker on the University of Alabama campus of George C. Wallace's "stand in the schoolhouse door" was a small brass plaque on a decaying building.
March 30, 2010
Tavis Smiley tackles Martin Luther King Jr.’s anti-Vietnam War speech
Martin Luther King Jr.’s life has taken on a hagiographic glow more than 40 years after his assassination in 1968. He not only has a national holiday named after him, but his name is attached to schools and streets nationwide.
March 29, 2010
Black farmers call for action on discrimination settlement
WASHINGTON -- Congress will not meet a March 31 deadline to set aside $1.2 billion to settle thousands of black farmers' discrimination claims.
March 28, 2010
Next Year in the White House: A Seder Tradition
WASHINGTON — One evening in April 2008, three low-level staff members from the Obama presidential campaign — a baggage handler, a videographer and an advance man — gathered in the windowless basement of a Pennsylvania hotel for an improvised Passover Seder.
March 17, 2010
Wayne Collett, Track Medalist Barred Because of a Protest, Dies at 60
Wayne Collett, a runner who won a silver medal for the United States in the 1972 Munich Olympics and who was then judged to have acted so disrespectfully during the medal ceremony that the International Olympic Committee barred him as a competitor for life, died Wednesday. He was 60 and lived in Los Angeles...
March 4, 2010
Debate rages over burials at Lincoln Cemetery
No record of burials is kept at Lincoln Cemetery, so no one is sure if bodies have been buried one on top of another, and no one is responsible for its upkeep, including the skeletal remains that are visible in some parts of the cemetery...
March 3, 2010
Seeking Your Questions on Historically Black Colleges
More than 100 institutions of higher learning in this country are classified as historically black colleges and universities. That formal designation originated in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order to establish a federal program “to overcome the effects of discriminatory treatment...
March 2, 2010
ASU Sit-In Anniversary Image Gallery
The Studen Sit-In Movement at Alabama State University, A One Day Conference: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary. Image Gallery.
February 28, 2010
MLK documents: A national treasure unearthed
It was December 2007 when Elizabeth City State University archivist Jean Bischoff plunged into the depths of the basement in the G.R. Little Library to find a national, historical treasure — boxes of correspondence from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
February 25, 2010
Democrats retreat on new privacy protections
WASHINGTON – Democrats have retreated from adding new privacy protections to the nation's primary counterterrorism law, stymied by Senate Republicans who argued the changes would weaken terror investigations.
February 25, 2010 (Event)
The Student Sit-In Movement at Alabama State University
The National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture at Alabama State University is sponsoring a one day conference in observance of the 50th Anniversary of the sit-in movement, with a special focus on the 1960 Alabama State student sit-in campaign at the Montgomery County Courthouse.
February 13, 2010
Louisiana Museum Confronts Segregation
BATON ROUGE, La. — When Eddie Robinson was growing up here in Louisiana’s capital city about 80 years ago, he discovered the only way a black person infatuated with football could attend a game at the state university: He showed up at 5 a.m. on Saturdays to clean the stadium.
February 13, 2010
American Speedskater Shani Davis Belongs to the World
RICHMOND, British Columbia — In the serpentine mixed zone at the Richmond Olympic Oval, the young Dutch speedskater Arjen van der Kieft turned a corner after a training session last week and came upon a half-dozen journalists from the Netherlands, who nodded benignly in his direction.
February 10, 2010
SCLC internal battle continues
A Fulton County judge has signed an order cutting off the access the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's national treasurer has to SCLC funds. In his place, two of three people – board members Curtis Harris, Rita Samuel or Jewel Devereaux – are now required to sign any checks drawn on the organization's bank accounts, according to the order Fulton Superior Court Judge Alford Dempsey signed Monday.
February 8, 2010
Black history sites immortalize fights for freedom
Not all the historical black history sites in Montgomery are areas of reverence. The spot on Court Square Fountain is where families were forever broken apart during slave trading, where mothers sometimes saw their children for the last time, where men's mouths were inspected as though they were cattle.
February 5, 2010
Ancient Tribe Goes Extinct as Last Member Dies
(Feb. 5) – Marking the end of a language and an entire people, the last member of the Bo, an ancient tribe that lived in the Andaman Islands, has died.
February 3, 2010
Lee A. Archer Jr., Tuskegee Fighter Pilot, Dies at 90
Lee A. Archer Jr., a pioneering black fighter pilot who was credited with shooting down four German planes, three in a single day, when he flew with the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, died Jan. 27 in Manhattan. He was 90 and lived in New Rochelle, N.Y.
February 2, 2010
Fairview Avenue planning draws crowd
More people than expected, about 150, came to a city of Montgomery meeting Monday seeking input on the future of West Fairview Avenue. The information collected will become part of the master plan for what is a prominent commercial corridor in west Montgomery.
February 1, 2010
Civil rights attractions draw cache of tourists to Alabama
Shirley Cherry considers Dexter Parsonage Museum one of Montgomery's emerging gems that never should have been hidden. It was home to 12 pastors of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church -- most notably, it was home to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as well as the Rev. Vernon Johns and the Rev. Arnold Erasmus Gregory.
February 1, 2010
Civil rights leader urges crowd at Scottsboro Boys Museum opening to rededicate themselves to cause
SCOTTSBORO, AL - Seventy-eight years after the Jackson County trial of nine black men accused of raping two white women caught the world's attention, officials on Monday dedicated a museum they said shows how far the civil rights movement has come.
February 1, 2010 (Event)
Fun is definitely a good bet for ASU’s E-mail Trivia Pursuit game. All players have to do is show how much they know about the University. The following details the rules and prizes for the winners.
January 31, 2010
New Exhibition Transports Visitors To The Skies Over War-Torn World War II Europe
The Test, an exciting new exhibition about the "Tuskegee Experiment" and the first African-American combat aviators in the U.S. Military will open at the Frontiers Of Flight Museum in Dallas, TX on 10 February 2010. The exhibition premiered at the Main branch of the Kansas City Library on 12 December 2009.
January 29, 2010
BALTIMORE — President Barack Obama on Friday accused Republicans of portraying health care reform as a "Bolshevik plot" and telling their constituents that he’s "doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America."
January 29, 2010
Louis R. Harlan, Historian of Booker T. Washington, Dies at 87
Louis R. Harlan, whose definitive two-volume biography of Booker T. Washington convincingly embraced its subject’s daunting complexities and ambiguities and won both the Bancroft Prize and the Pulitzer Prize, died on Jan. 22 in Lexington, Va. He was 87.