A candlelight vigil for Dr. Rosetta Stith, a charismatic and tireless advocate for the education of teenage mothers, will be held June 16 at 7:30 p.m., in front of the building formerly known as the Laurence G. Paquin Middle/High School for Expectant Teenage Mothers. Stith lead the school for many years. Dr. Rosetta Stith On June17, there will […]
Author Archives: Sean Yoes
AFRO Baltimore Editor
Baltimore Needs A Ceasefire
I began this column the morning after six people were killed overnight (Monday night into early Tuesday morning June 12-13), another gruesome aftermath, linked to a recent torrent of violence, during this the most murderous year so far in our city’s history. The past two weekends living in West Baltimore have seemed particularly harrowing even […]
Mayor Pugh’s Confederate Burden
Former Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake left behind a 500 pound gorilla as she walked out the door of her office at City Hall last December for current Mayor Catherine Pugh to clean up behind. Actually, SRB left four gorillas; four Confederate monuments, sprinkled mostly along the Charles Street corridor, icons of White supremacy in the […]
Jealous Tosses His Hat into Gubernatorial Ring
Ben Jealous, former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) formally announced May 31 that he is a candidate for governor of Maryland. He made the announcement in Ashburton, the venerable West Baltimore community where his mother grew up and Jealous spent many of his summers as a young boy. […]
The Curious Defense of Detective Marcus Taylor
If you let Det. Marcus Taylor tell it (through his attorneys that is) just about every member of the Baltimore City Police Department is dirty. He would have you believe broad swaths of rank and file officers are running roughshod over mostly Black, mostly poor residents of Baltimore, a la Det. Alonzo Harris in the […]
‘Tell Them We Are Rising’ Examines America’s HBCUs
Recently, the Trump White House released a signing statement connected to a federal funding measure, which has advocates for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) more than a little nervous about future funding of these institutions. “My Administration shall treat provisions that allocate benefits on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender (e.g… “School Improvement […]
Improving on the Perilous Plight of Black Boys
I’ve known David Miller, the founder and CEO of the Dare to Be King project for a long time. His brother Peter and I graduated from Walbrook High School in 1983 and David graduated from The Brook, one year later. And he’s been working with and mentoring Black boys and young men pretty much ever […]
The Ordeal of Ivan Potts Is the Same Old Tragic Story
“I had so many cases, so many things I was trying to research, so I could get justice. Because I knew the odds was against me; it’s little old me against a powerful system. So, all I would do is study law, read judge’s opinions to cases and I would just research the law every […]
What Have We Learned Two Years After Freddie Gray?
What have we learned as a city, in the two years since the death of Freddie Gray (April 19, 2015), and the subsequent uprising (April 27, 2015)? The answer, perhaps, seems anticlimactic; not much. FILE – In this June 23, 2016 file photo, a boy sits on a wall as a member of the Baltimore […]
The Ordeal of Ivan Potts Is the Same Old Tragic Story
Ivan Potts seemed implausibly upbeat when I spoke with him on April 14, just two days after he was released from Roxbury Correctional Institution in Hagerstown, Md. where he had spent almost two years after being convicted on a gun charge. That conviction was vacated last week and the charges dropped against Potts, after discovering […]
Oaks Should Have Trusted His Inner Hustler
Nat Oaks seemed to strongly sense something was up on December 7, 2015. After all, the 70-year old veteran politician grew up in, “The Village,” in Southwest Baltimore, attended Edmondson High School and officially entered Baltimore’s brutal political arena in 1983, when he was elected to the House of Delegates representing the 41st District of […]
Maryland State Sen. Nat Oaks Arraigned in Federal Court on Wire Fraud
Maryland Sen. Nathaniel T. Oaks, a veteran of Baltimore City politics since the 1980’s was charged in federal court today with honest services wire fraud, for allegedly accepting illegal payments in exchange for using his official position to benefit an individual (who was actually an FBI operative) on a business deal, according to the U.S. […]

