Tagged: African-Americans

Experts and educators are coming together today to discuss an economic transformation for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Leoneda Inge:  The down economy has not been kind to higher education and Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs have suffered even more. Andrea Harris is president of the North Carolina Institute of Minority Economic Development.  She has invited black college leaders and the head of the White House Initiative on HBCUs to debate the financial survival of these institutions.

House lawmakers have passed a bill that would rewrite the state's Racial Justice Act.

Jessica Jones: House lawmakers passed the controversial measure by a veto-proof 72 to 47 after a long debate yesterday afternoon. The bill would narrow the use of statistics that death row inmates could use to show that racial bias was a factor in their cases. It would also narrow the time frame inmates could use to prove bias. House Majority Leader Paul Stam is a sponsor of the bill.

Ntozake Shange’s 1977 choreopoem, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf” rocked audiences when it was initially staged in California and later on Broadway. It has since been performed on stage countless times around the world and was recently adapted into a film directed by Tyler Perry.

North Carolina voters will decide on Tuesday whether to join thirty other states that have amended their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage. North Carolina law already defines marriage as between a man and a woman; the amendment would enshrine heterosexual marriage in the constitution, and ban civil unions. Those for and against the measure have focused their efforts on mobilizing people of faith. Reporter John Biewen followed the debate over gay marriage in an African American church in Hickory.