African-American News

*In the new cop drama “Street Kings,” opening this Friday, April 11, from Fox Searchlight, Cedric the Entertainer and Common step out of their known arts of comedy and rap, respectively, to star as good bad guys.

*The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that the head of Georgia's NAACP chapter wants a state investigation into racial sentencing patterns in Cobb County after disparities emerged in the so-called "Barbie Bandits" case.

Black enrollment has decreased at The University of South Carolina-Columbia. In the 2000 academic year African-Americans accounted for 18.7 percent of the undergraduate student population. In the current academic school year the percentage of African-Americans have dropped to 12.5 percent. According to the Freetimes, Dennis Pruitt, vice president of student affairs, stated the reasons for the drop in percentage are the expansions of sister campuses such as Aiken and Spartanburg, the tuition hike which increased 76.3 percent between 2002 and 2007 and lottery-funded scholarships for two-year colleges. Pruitt states that the reason for the decrease in blacks at USC could be the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2003 that allowed universities and colleges the ability to consider a students race in decision of admission. USC-Columbia is trying to increase the enrollment of African-Americans with the offer of scholarships specifically for minorities.

Faced with budget shortfalls, at least eight states are considering releasing thousands of inmates ahead of schedule, in hopes of saving billions of dollars.

On Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. had retreated to room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, worrying about a sanitation strike in Memphis and working on his sermon for Sunday. Its title: "Why America May Go to Hell."

Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly dominate America's talk radio while white liberal voices are mere squeaks on the airwaves. But now syndicated black radio hosts like Tom Joyner, Bev Smith, Michael Baisden and Warren Ballentine and other African-American radio personalities are not only increasingly audible to a wider audience but visible and influential as well. Black radio has always been here, covering the important issues from a black perspective, but it wasn't until Barack Obama, emerged as the first black man to prove himself to be a viable presidential candidate that the mainstream media wanted to hear what we had to say. It's another example of how his candidacy has broken the mold."

Last month viewers of the animated TV series The Boondocks learned that BET really stands for “Black Evil Television”, calculated to stunt the spirits and curtail the intellectual growth of black youth. Satire like the Boondocks depiction of BET only works when it contains big and obvious chunks of the widely known truth. Unfortunately, commercial black radio is not much better.

A daughter of a civil rights icon who served as a top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr. testified Monday that her father regularly molested her beginning when she was 6 years old.

Collectively Black Americans are the richest blacks in the world. But, only two Black Americans can claim a nine-figure income. Times are changing and Black Africans are making more money than Black Americans and have made it onto Forbes’ list of the world’s wealthiest billionaires. Watch Bro. Nuri Muhammad - Financing Black Liberation http://youtube.com/watch?v=RRTbICd4emo

National Geographic magazine insulted the historical and cultural legacy of Blacks during Black History Month by distorting history and blatantly insinuating that ancient Egyptians were anything but Black. Watch: Randall Robinson - European History is Black History Stolen http://youtube.com/watch?v=XLl8xd7QsIs

The “Stop Snitching” slogan that has spread through urban America like a wildfire... emerged out of the county and state prisons of America and was a legitimate backlash against unscrupulous law enforcement agencies striking deals with unscrupulous criminals to testify, truthfully or falsely, against their co-defendants or any other individual charged with a crime with whom the D.A. lacked the evidence to prosecute.

*The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that the head of Georgia's NAACP chapter wants a state investigation into racial sentencing patterns in Cobb County after disparities emerged in the so-called "Barbie Bandits" case.

Those who don't have their heads buried in the proverbial sand are well aware of the split state of the American economy. Increasingly, the nation has been divided into a land of "haves" and "have nots" where the middle class is rapidly eroding. Proof of this phenomenon is in evidence at every turn, from the profusion of real estate foreclosures, to the record number of folks filing for bankruptcy, to the skyrocketing salaries of corporate executives coming at the expense of employee benefits, to the tumbling value of the dollar, to the outsourcing of manufacturing and jobs overseas.

A new and informative website for girls and teens of color, www.urbangirlz.org, highlights an alarming trend revealing African American teens suffering from eating disorders most often linked to Caucasian women. Studies sited by the Office of Women's Health indicate Black girls and teens are not only binging and purging but admit to fasting and using laxatives regularly to lose weight. Researchers accredit changes in eating behavior among African American teens to body dissatisfaction.

America has come to a crossroads. You must understand that power is linked, in world politics, to oil. And as the greatest industrial nation on the Earth, America has an insatiable appetite for oil. When coal was the number one energy in the world, Great Britain ruled the world. She had the greatest deposits of coal. But when the power to move engines moved from coal to oil, England and America began vying for control of the places on this Earth that produce oil.

*Civil rights leaders claimed success in their call for a 40 Hour Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination Moratorium on Killings in Los Angeles. The Moratorium began Friday April 4th at 6.01 PM (the time and date Dr. King was killed forty years ago).

*According to the most recent News York Times/CBS News poll, support among white Americans for the presidential candidacy of Senator Barrack Obama “has softened” since the massive media reporting regarding his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - More than 40 students from the Florida A&M University School of Business and Industry are bound for Wall Street internships.

This is a record number of Wall Street interns for the historically black university

*A woman who claims Michael Jordan is the father of her 4-year-old son has asked a judge to order the former NBA star to take a third paternity test. Lisa Miceli, 35, is also requesting that the court lift a temporary restraining order imposed after Jordan filed a harassment suit against her

Australian man, Norm Moreen, wrestles an 8-foot crocodile to rescue his wife from its jaws.