Category: OPINION

“How did this community get this way: so cold, so distance, and so hostile?,” an elderly man asked me one day while I was buying coffee. When I’m walking back to my job teaching students at Arlington Elementary School in Northwest Baltimore, I notice several Black men occupying corners. Some have cold in their eyes, […]

Congressman Elijah Cummings As I consider the consequences for our future during this critical election year, it is no overstatement to observe that our future will be on the ballots that will be cast on Election Day this November just as surely as will be the candidates for office. The virtually nonstop television coverage of […]

George E. Curry While our attention was focused last week on Bill Clinton becoming unhinged while defending his indefensible crime bill and insulting the Black Lives Matter Movement in the process, Wells Fargo and billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson were demonstrating how the wealthy escape personal responsibility when they misbehave badly.  In the case of […]

Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. On April 4, we celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King even as we marked the 48th anniversary of his assassination. On April 5, voters went the polls in the Wisconsin primaries, but a new raft of voter suppression laws insured that the results were skewed. One of Dr. King’s […]

Marc H. Morial “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white–separate and unequal. This deepening racial division is not inevitable. The movement apart can be reversed. Choice is still possible. Our principal task is to define that choice and to press for a national resolution … will require a commitment to national […]

Dr. E. Faye Williams Trice Edney – There was a time when I didn’t tithe.  I, like many people, dropped my few dollars in the collection plate when it came around or when I was on my way out of church.  In my mind at the time, tithing was never mandatory, but I always felt […]

In an online petition, more than 50,000 conservatives are leading a campaign to allow guns at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July. The reason: Conservatives claim they will be “sitting ducks” in the Quicken Loans Arena, the site of the convention, if Republican attendees aren’t carrying guns. Sitting ducks? For each other or […]

Raynard Jackson I have received so many phone calls and e-mails asking me about the continued firings of the few Black staffers at the Republican National Committee (RNC) that I have decided to share my thoughts on this issue. First of all, these staffers deserved to be fired and it should have happened a long […]

José Felipé Anderson Just when you thought that the turmoil of recent Supreme Court controversies would make us feel that the court may not protect our most precious rights, we get a welcomed judicial ruling.  A unanimous court affirmed the principle of one person one vote earlier this week in Evenwal v. Abbott, a Texas […]

John R. Hawkins III On April 5 Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, one of military’s most outstanding leaders, retired from the United States Army with full honors at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, after  41  years of exemplary service.  Born in Mobile, Alabama in 1953, he was raised in Thomasville, Georgia and graduated in 1975 from […]

Rev. Susan K. Smith I remember when I was a teen and former Alabama segregationist Gov. George Wallace was running for president. To me, he was a hateful, vile and scary man. Wallace was angry that the federal government had dared interfered in the “right” of the South to practice segregation. When he was first […]

“All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no […]