Category: National News

The U.S. Senate on March 17 unanimously passed a bill that would make crucial changes to current cocaine sentencing laws. The Fair Sentencing Act was originally introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) to correct a current 100-1 disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing under federal law. During the bill’s markup last week, a compromise […]

Haitian woman, already suffering severe conditions from the January 12 earthquake, which devastated the county, are increasingly becoming rape victims, according to an Associated Press report. “They grabbed me, put their hands over my mouth and then the three of them took turns,” a 21-year-old Haitian woman said, according to the AP, as she moved […]

Hoping to stimulate progress on the country’s HIV AIDS crisis, the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS led more than 50 influential clergy members to Capital Hill on March 17 to lobby for the commission’s Elimination of HIV/AIDS Act of 2009. The act calls for the federal government to lead the way in providing resources […]

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan proposed several revisions within the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education reform initiated under the Bush administration. While he intends to remain focused on academic gains, he will allow individual schools the freedom to determine how those improvements will be made, he said during a press conference on Monday. […]

The recent announcement that Virginia Thomas, the wife of Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is wading into the conservative brew of the tea party movement has many within those ranks excited. Thomas’ lobbying group, Liberty Central was formed in January to “serve the big tent of the conservative movement,” according to its Web site. […]

When it comes to ensuring an accurate count of the 2010 census, children play an important role. To that end the U. S. Census Bureau has beefed up its efforts to reach communities with a campaign entitled “Children Count Too.” The initiative began last week and alerts households to their responsibility for counting infants and […]

(NNPA) — In 1827 a group of prominent free African-American citizens from states along the eastern seaboard met in the New York City home of Bostin Crummell to discuss means to communicate their views on the various social, political and economic issues that commonly confronted them and their respective communities. Although Black citizens utilized the […]

In what could be a historic campaign, former Prince George’s County Executive Wayne Curry has told the AFRO that he’s seriously considering a run for the governorship in Maryland.  If he runs and wins, he would become the first Black governor in the state’s history. Curry, who served two terms as county executive, is currently […]

A group of 107 graduating seniors from the Urban Academy for Young Men in Englewood, Chicago is celebrating a great success: every young man in the school’s first graduating class has been accepted into a four-year-college. The bar for students is held high at Urban Prep, an all-African-American male charter school founded in 2006 and […]

Juanita Goggins, the first Black woman elected to the South Carolina Legislature, was found dead in her home in early March after she apparently froze to death. She was 75. Goggins, who had become a recluse in her later years, died in a rented house just four miles from the state house in Columbia, S.C. […]

President Obama renewed his vow for continued relief to Haiti during Haitian President Rene Preval’s visit to the White House on March 10. As citizens of the earthquake-stricken nation struggle to rebuild, Obama said the U.S. must continue to support Haiti in its hour of need. “The situation on the ground remains dire and people […]

Georgia Congressman John Lewis and a host of other Black leaders paused March 7 at the site of the “Bloody Sunday” incident in Selma, Ala., marking the 45th anniversary of a civil rights march which ended in violence. Lewis was part of the landmark voting rights march in which he and a host of other […]