By George E. Curry As we approach May 17, the 60th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education landmark decision outlawing “separate but equal” schools, several studies show that our schools are more segregated now than they were three decades ago. And there are no indications that things are likely to […]

By Marc H. Morial   “The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.” President Lyndon B. JohnsonLast week in Austin, Texas, three former United States Presidents and President Barack Obama came together to […]

By Julianne Malveaux When John and Ann started working on January 1, 2013, John had an immediate advantage.  Because women earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn, it took Ann until last Friday [April 11, 2014] to earn the same amount of money that John earned in the calendar year of 2013.The issue of […]

By George E. Curry Covering the three-day celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act at the University of Texas last week brought back a string of memories – some fond, some bitter. As a son of the South –Tuscaloosa, Ala., to be specific – I saw first-hand how the region was […]

By Freddie Allen, NNPA Washington Correspondent WASHINGTON (NNPA) – In 1965, Tuskegee Institute in Alabama was a hotbed for social protest and bred students passionate about equality, justice and civil rights. Seventeen year-old, Ruby Sales, born in Jemison, Ala., was one of those students.“Once you got the religion of civil rights and you were really […]

By Julianne Malveaux I love voting.  Every time I go into the booth, I see little girl me, pigtails and all, plaid skirt, white blouse and green sweater, part of my Catholic school uniform.  Most of my relatives were Democrats, though my grandmother voted Republican a time or two because “Lincoln freed the slaves.”  In […]

By George E. Curry You would think that news of a high school student from a family of African immigrants getting accepted into all eight Ivy League universities would be met with universal celebration. If you thought that, think again.First the news:In the next month, Kwasi Enin must make a tough decision: Which of the […]

By Marian Wright Edelman Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a White mother’s son—we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.                      –Ella Baker The quote above is from Ella Baker 50 years ago, and like so much […]

By Julianne Malveaux If you missed the news about the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370 over the Indian Ocean, you must have been buried in sand.  For three weeks, we have been bombarded with theories – was it terrorism?  Pilot error? Something else?  Now the story has evolved.  Were pieces of the plane found?  Is […]

By George E. Curry  When I interviewed Marie Johns, then the outgoing deputy secretary of the Small Business Administration, a year ago, she said the SBA does not separate figures by race, though it hopes to do so at some point.Technically, she was correct in saying the SBA does not separate agency-wide figures by race. […]