It was terror that shook the nation. On Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, a bomb exploded in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Four little girls, all dressed in white — 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, and 11-year-old Denise McNair — died in the explosion, and are remembered in history. Congress now is considering offering them posthumously a C ...

President Obama’s 2014 proposed budget is a mix of spending cuts and tax increases. His stated goal is the creation of a “…rising, thriving middle class.” He considers his budget proposal to be a “fiscally responsible blueprint for middle-class jobs and growth.” The President has proposed a $3 million cap on retirement account balances; changing the Social Security cost-of-living adjustments to a “chained C ...

I don’t know where CNN’s John King got the information that a suspect in the Boston bombing was “a dark-skinned male,” but beyond apologizing he needs to explain himself. How many sources gave him the false tip? If it was fewer than two, then he violated a basic journalism rule. Who were these sources? (If you don’t want to out them publicly, tell your editor). Did King understand he used the kind of racial ...

Since most of the world’s population was not around at the beginning of this conflict, it is important for people everywhere to know the history of this 60-year-old struggle between the Western powers led by the United States and the people of Asia. ...

Republican Governor Rick Snyder, State Treasurer Andy Dillon and the Republican legislators are ratcheting up for a white supremacist* takeover of Detroit from its people and elected officials as has already been done with the Detroit Public Schools. They are aggravating the law, empowering an emergency manager to act as an un-elected dictator, seizing all powers of the mayor and city council, who are chose ...

“It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.” — The late National Urban League and civil rights leader, Whitney M. Young, Jr. Last week, during the National Urban League’s 10th annual Legislative Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., we released the 37th edition of the “State of Black America, Redeem the Dream: Jobs Rebuild America.” This ...

The Atlanta public school cheating scandal is but “the tip of the iceberg,” reports Bob Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. A new FairTest survey reports confirmed cheating incidents in 37 states and the District of Columbia in just that last four years. It also lists 50 ways adults in public schools artificially boost test scores. ...

You could say “42,” the film about the life of Brooklyn Dodgers great Jackie Robinson, is a gripping baseball tale and your assessment would be correct — but woefully incomplete. “42” is not just a baseball story. It’s a compelling history lesson as well. It tells the story of not just baseball but also of a central facet of 20th Century American life — the suffocating reach of racism— in the decades before ...

As George Benson sang in Moody’s Mood, “There I go, there I go, there I go…” making up words again. I couldn’t resist this one in light of our penchant to choose sides when it comes to economics versus politics. It seems we cannot understand, nor act upon, the fact that by combining the two disciplines and leveraging the resulting power from such a sensible strategy we could build a stronger base and finall ...

The recent actions taken by the State of Michigan are troubling — their very nature goes against the will of the people. If the people do not like the actions of their elected officials, such officials should be removed from office and by force, if necessary. When the citizens of Michigan repealed Public Act 4 in Nov. 2012, on Dec. 13, 2012 the Michigan Legislature, in a lame-duck session approved Public Ac ...