Category: Afro Briefs

NEW BRITAIN, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut fire chief has been placed on paid leave after an investigation faulted him for racial insensitivity and concluded minority firefighters have a reason to perceive racial bias in the department. This August 2017 photo released by the city of New Britain, Conn., shows a display of portraits of […]

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — It started with threats, taunting and racial slurs, and escalated to total pandemonium — hand-to-hand combat in the streets of Charlottesville. White nationalists and counter-demonstrators threw punches, screamed, set off smoke bombs. They hurled water bottles, balloons of paint, containers full of urine. They unleashed chemical sprays. Some waved Confederate flags. […]

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — With tires screeching and bodies flying, Marcus Martin shoved his fiancée out of the way of a car charging through a crowd of peaceful protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. People fly into the air as a vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., […]

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Protesters in North Carolina toppled a nearly century-old statue of a Confederate soldier Monday at a rally against racism. A toppled Confederate statue lies on the ground on Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, in Durham, N.C. Activists on Monday evening used a rope to pull down the monument outside a Durham courthouse. […]

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A Black teenager pointed a BB gun that looked like a handgun at police before he was fatally shot by officers outside an emergency youth center in eastern Arkansas, a prosecutor said in announcing no charges would be filed against the officers. Prosecuting Attorney Scott Ellington on Wednesday released body […]

HOUSTON (AP) — A man on death row for the notorious slaying nearly 20 years ago of a Black man chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged along a bumpy rural East Texas road will get his claim of innocence and poor legal representation reviewed by an appeals court. The 5th U.S. […]

BOSTON (AP) — A Boston man who spent 38 years in prison in the killing of a cab driver was released Tuesday after a prosecutor agreed to vacate his conviction based on “significant doubt” about the fairness of his trial, including the reliance on a witness who had been hypnotized. Frederick Clay was 16 when […]

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — A woman drove for two days with her dead 11-year-old daughter in her truck before hitting a guard rail in West Virginia, where authorities say witnesses saw her dragging the body into the woods. The driver, 37-year-old Erica Newsome, has been jailed on charges of concealing the body of her daughter, […]

JONESTOWN, Miss. (AP) — Otibehia Allen is a single mother who lives in a rented mobile home in the same isolated, poor community where she grew up among the cotton and soybean fields of the Mississippi Delta. During a summer that feels like a sauna, the trailer’s air conditioner has conked out. Some nights, Allen […]

WALDORF, Md. (AP) — An HIV-positive former teachers’ aide and track coach described as a “predator” by a Maryland prosecutor is facing more than 100 felony counts of child sex abuse, including deliberately trying to infect his alleged victims with the AIDS virus. Authorities announced a 119-count indictment against Carlos Deangelo Bell, 30, of Waldorf, […]

LOUIS (AP) — A White former St. Louis police officer charged with killing a Black man “executed” him after a car chase, then planted a gun in the slain drug suspect’s vehicle as an excuse for opening fire, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday. FILE – This file photo provided by the St. Louis Police Department […]