Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

This week, Higher Achievement-Baltimore held a commencement ceremony in honor of its very first class of After School Academy scholars.  Higher Achievement is a non-profit organization that provides middle school youth with academic enrichment programs and high schoool prep.  It has been opera...

After years as a federal prosecutor, Paul Butler became convinced that American criminal justice system is fundamentally broken, ruining more lives than it protects...

Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Obama held a historic White House Tribal Nations Conference on November 5 and made it clear that he is committed to ensuring that the needs and concerns of Tribal Nations are addressed by the federal government...

Today marks the anniversary of Shirley Chisholm's election to Congress in 1968. Chisholm, a Democrat who represented New York's 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983, was the first Black woman elected to Congress...

The U.S. Senate blocked a controversial amendment today that would have required the Census Bureau to belatedly add a citizenship question to the 2010 Census questionnaire...

Nearly 40 national civil rights organizations recently sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D. Nev., stating their concern over the obstructionist tactics used to stall Dawn Johnsen's nomination and urged him to bring the nomination to a vote quickly...

The economic hardships caused by current recession reach far and wide. But as a new online tool from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows, some communities are experiencing the negative effects of the recession more acutely than national averages reveal...

Here are a few interesting civil rights related items:  Editorial: Maryland should make it harder to dropout by raising the dropout age to 18 - The Washington Post Jerry Miller's journalism has helped to bring justice in civil rights-era murder cases - Editor & Publisher Memo urges all U.S. ...

"Gang Leader for a Day" is a fascinating story of how young sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh spent seven years documenting gang life and culture in Chicago after meeting and befriending a gang leader named JT...

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) announced today that it elected Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., to be the organization's next president.  She is the first woman and the second King child to head the organization, which was co-founded by Dr. King in 1957....

Former Sen. Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts received the Congressional Gold Medal yesterday for his lifelong and historic service to the nation. Brooke, who was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and served in the U.S...

President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law yesterday, October 28...

Just hours ago, President Obama signed into law theMatthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. For the first time in history,individuals targeted due to their sexual orientation, ...

Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, is calling on the Senate to reject a proposed amendment that would require the Census Bureau to add a question on citizenship and immigration status to the 2010 census form less than six months before the census takes...