Category: OPINION

“All types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters,” Dr. King asserted during his 1957 Give Us the Ballot remarks at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington. “The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition.” As we […]

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – The selection of Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the next leader of the Catholic Church was, in some ways, inevitable. Latin America is home to the largest Catholic population in the world, and it is long past time for the tradition of selecting European popes to end. Hopefully, Cardinal Bergoglio, to be […]

As a result of Ohio’s Republican Senator Rob Portman’s declaration last week that he now supports homosexual marriage, I am once again compelled to ask: Why are Christians and conservatives constantly apologizing for what they believe? Portman said he changed his position because his son told him that he was homosexual. Typically, I would not […]

On March 4 Oberlin College in Ohio, which has always had an outsized role in the history of Black higher education, cancelled classes for a day and instead held a “Day of Solidarity” in response to a month-long series of hate speech being scrawled on various buildings, doors, and posters throughout the campus. The words […]

Last week the Maryland Legislature passed legislation abolishing the death penalty. I believe the time has come to repeal the death penalty because it is racially-biased, demonstrably unreliable, and not an effective deterrent. This debate is full of practical, legal, and moral questions that deserve our full attention. Maryland’s justice system is strong. Our law […]

The AFROIn response to “Brother Can You Spare A Dime,” (AFRO, 10/17/12) I was contacted by someone from National Public Radio (NPR) about doing an interview about panhandling and the inner conflict that takes place when I’m deciding whether I should or should not give to those that beg for money.  “What conflict?  There is […]

As a father, husband and son, Women’s History Month has special meaning to me. March is an especially appropriate time, as President Obama declared, “. . . to remember those who fought to make our freedom as real for our daughters as for our sons.” In my “Bread and Roses” column during March of last […]

With just 27 words in 1791, America’s Second Amendment paved a blood-drenched trail for legal access to modern-day weapons used in videogame-like fashion to gun-down fellow citizens, military-style. Now, after all the mass carnage of 222 years of the freedom to bear arms –there’s a sudden political epiphany for urgent “gun control” to ostensibly curb […]

In January 2013, Gov. Martin O’Malley’s administration announced that it will not build a 180-bed new jail for youths who are prosecuted as adults in Baltimore. Instead, it will spend up to $30 million to renovate an existing adult facility that would hold 60 youths, which is more than enough space to house the declining […]

Who was James Armstrong? That’s a very important question, I recently learned. Now, I know, the theme for Black History Month this year revolves around President Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and Rev. Martin Luther King and the March on Washington in 1963. But then there is “the Barber of Birmingham.” Even though […]