Category: Commentary

Most parents of college students look forward to December, when their students come home for the holidays. Some are so excited to see their offspring home that they actually come to their colleges to pick them up. Others prepare special treats and goodies as an antidote to the oft complained about cafeteria food. Robert and […]

While too many Republican-dominated state legislatures have been making it more difficult for minorities, young adults and the elderly to vote, Marylanders have taken important steps toward the democratic ideal of “every voter counts, every vote is counted.” Those who are imposing more onerous voter registration and voting requirements on groups that voted for President […]

God help us to end poverty in our time. The poverty of having a child with too little to eat and no place to sleep, no air, sunlight and space to breathe, bask, and grow. The poverty of watching your child suffer hunger or get sicker and sicker and not knowing what to do or […]

Republican front-runner Newt Gingrich appeals to working Americans by slandering the poor. Gingrich recently denounced child labor laws as “truly stupid,” suggesting that schools should fire janitors and hire students under the age of 16 to clean the place. When critics said he would send America back to the age depicted by Dickens, Gingrich defended […]

Would you recognize a poor child when you saw one? Nine-year-old Carolyn Latimore and her sister Aalijah, 8, are beautiful little girls with big smiles on their faces. But Carolyn, Aalijah, and their older brother, Robert, 17, of Middletown, Ohio, fell into poverty when their parents divorced. They’ve lived in four places in the past […]

With the next election 11 months away, President Obama has begun sharpening his populist message and drawing a sharp contrast between his vision for America and the Republican alternative. Obama’s speech last week in Osawatomie, Kansas, provided an example of how he plans to attack his Republican opposition. “There is a certain crowd in Washington […]

I hope you watched “Extreme Home Makeover” on Dec. 2 as I did.  For me it was an opportunity of pride, as Bennett student Dominique Walker was featured, with her family, for a trip to Los Angeles, and a home upgrade.  Why?  Because her family remained in pain because their 11-year-old brother killed himself after […]

It was only when my nephew, Christopher Cummings, an honor student at Old Dominion University, was killed in a home invasion and double shooting last June that I began to fully understand the relentless pain that the families of crime victims experience. Christopher was a wonderful young man, determined to build a life helping others, […]

Our voting rights are under attack. In legislatures across the county, misguided state politicians have proposed, and in too many cases have passed, laws that create obstacles to voting.  That is why on Dec. 10 – International Human Rights Day – we are taking a principled stand for freedom in New York City to let […]

Although more African-Americans live in the South than any other region, Blacks elected to state legislative bodies there have become virtually powerless as those bodies have shifted from Democratic to Republican control. That’s the conclusion reached in a Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies research brief titled, “Resegregation in Southern Politics?” by senior research […]

I have worked for civil rights for all of our citizens since attending my first demonstration, at the age of 3, in the segregated south in Orangeburg, S.C., courtesy of my grandparents. The Sunbeam Bread Company would not hire African-Americans, and so we marched. Today’s civil rights struggle centers on the classroom, where the public […]