“To hear the Republicans tell it, from the
second President Obama took his hand off the Bible taking the oath of
office, everything that happened after that was his fault. I’d like to
see any of you get behind a locomotive going straight downhill at 200
miles an hour and stop it in 10 seconds.” -- Former President Bill Clinton
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is our nation's first African-American First Lady
of the United States. Wife of our incumbent and 44th President of the
United States, Barack Obama, she is also mother to two daughters --
Malia Ann, soon-to-be 14-years old and Sasha, age 11.
President Obama surprised many Americans this month as the first sitting
President to announce his support of same-sex marriage. While Obama's
staunchest critics believe he has risked alienating many of his
African-American supporters, his supporters reject this notion.
The co-founder of one of America's largest Black-owned banks, Alvin
Boutte Sr., has died. He was 82. Boutte was one of the country's most
influential Black businessmen. The bank he helped launch, Independence Bank, at one point had total assets of $145.7 mil.
Dr. Manning Marable, who died shortly before his biography “Malcolm X: A
Life of Reinvention” (Viking) was released last April, was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize in History on Monday. The book, which has been the source of much controversy, was moved from the biography category by the Pulitzer board.
Gil Noble, the longtime host of WABC-TV's groundbreaking public affairs
program "Like It Is," on which he interviewed such notables as Nelson
Mandela, Muhammad Ali and Jesse Jackson, died Thursday at age 80.
African-Americans once were clustered so heavily in urban areas that the
terms “Black” and “inner city” came to be used almost synonymously.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census results, that time is history.
Since becoming the first African-American to graduate from the Coast
Guard Academy in 1966, Merle Smith has seen more diversity among the
corps of cadets. But he says the academy still has work to do to better
reflect the face of America.
Last December during a massive “Stand for Freedom” rally in Manhattan,
John A. Payton, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational
Fund, told a throng of marchers that “These are dangerous times we’re
living in, but we’ve won in the past and we will win in the future.
It’s getting harder and harder to register our votes and these efforts
disproportionally affect people of color.” That passionate voice for justice was stilled last Thursday when Payton, 65, died in Baltimore.
