(Updated 9/13/2013) Washington residents plan to converge on the steps of the D.C. Council at noon Sept. 17 to protest Mayor Vincent Gray’s veto of a living wage bill and to urge council members to “do the right thing.” In July, all but one council member approved the Large Retailer Accountability Act of 2013 (LRAA), also known […]
Author Archives: Yanick Rice Lamb
Special to the AFRO
Posted inAfro Briefs
Texas Leads U.S. in Execution of African Americans
Texas isn’t just big in size and population. It’s also big on the death penalty. When it comes to executions, Texas is the battleground state and has been No. 1 since 1976. The Lone Star State reached a milestone this summer when Kimberly McCarthy became the 500th person executed in Texas since the death penalty […]
Posted inAfro Briefs
Trayvon Martin Case Fuels Anxiety for Black Moms
Denise Green has been celebrating her son’s birthday on July 26 without him for the last four years. Her son, Joseph Taylor, died after bullets intended for someone else pierced his shoulder and struck behind his ear at a Baltimore intersection in November 2009. People still pack annual memorials held on the anniversaries of Taylor’s […]
Posted inWashington D.C. News
Turning the Tide on AIDS in D.C.
Washington has been called the Murder Capital and the AIDS Capital. However, the District of Columbia overcame the first label. Now, some AIDS experts say that it is beginning to shake off the second one, too. “I want to dispel an urban legend that D.C. is the worst in the world,” Gregory Pappas, M.D., Ph.D., […]
Posted inHealth
International ‘Reunion’ Focuses on Medical Family Tree
People of African descent from all over the world converged at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore over the holiday weekend for a “family reunion” to discuss how to fix medical problems on their family tree that have persisted since slavery. Sonia Sanchez recited a poem she wrote for the International Conference on Health in the […]
Posted inNational News
School Daze with Obama and Romney
Magistrate Sidney Barthwell Jr. knew both President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney long before they became household names. Barthwell was the only African American in the class of 1965 with Romney at Cranbrook School for Boys in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. From 1987 to 1990, he attended law school at Harvard University where he met Obama. […]
Posted inNational News
Day 3– Supreme Court Wraps Up Arguments on Health Reform
Tuesday was considered the pivotal day with its focus on the controversial individual mandate, but the U.S. Supreme Court justices turned up the heat on Wednesday morning as they questioned arguments on “severability” to determine whether to keep any or all of the health reform package. In the final stretch of the three-day case, the […]
Posted inNational News
Day 2– Supreme Court Mixed on Minimum Coverage Mandate
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court took healthy bites into the meat of the health reform case today, picking apart arguments on the requirement that everyone obtain insurance — the most controversial aspect of the plan. “Under the Commerce Clause, what Congress has done is to enact reforms of the insurance market,” U.S. Solicitor General […]
Posted inNational News
Supreme Court Health Reform Arguments–Day 1
Latest Article: Day 2– Supreme Court Mixed on Minimum Coverage Mandate Day 3– Supreme Court Wraps Up Arguments on Health Reform U.S. Supreme Court justices dissected a tax law for 90 minutes, March 26, the first day of deliberation to determine whether or not it should interfere with their ability to rule on the constitutionality […]
Posted inMovie Reviews
“Dark Girls” Documentary: Black Impediments to Accepting Why Black is Also Beautiful
She’s ugly. She’s dumb. She’s mean. She’s a mud duck. She’s covered in a layer of dirt that must be washed off. She’s pretty– to be so dark. These are some of the comments shared by dozens of women and children in the new documentary “Dark Girls: The Story of Color, Gender and Race” at […]
Posted inAfro Briefs
Military Families Celebrate the Reason for the Season
The Rev. Raichera McCray pumps her fist in the air as she repeatedly shouts “Hallelujah! Hallelujah Jesus!” Her joy is contagious, and Reid Temple A.M.E. Church in Glenn Dale, Md. has already been primed by the cranberry-robed choir’s song of praise, For Every Mountain. She encourages congregants to have faith whether they have mountains of […]
Posted inNational News
Health Care Survival Pivots on Which Justice is Most Conflicted
U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan are at the center of a debate over whether they should be involved in deciding the fate of health-care reform that would greatly benefit African Americans, because of possible conflicts of interest. “We’re struggling in a fractured health-care system,” said Dr. Oscar E. Streeter Jr., professor […]