When I heard about the death of John Hope Franklin, I grabbed my copy of “Mirror to America,” his 2005 autobiography. The blurb on the cover reads: “The twentieth-century fight for civil rights told in the first-person singular by a preeminent American historian.” An understatement. For 94 years, John Hope Franklin lived the history he [...]

Now is not the time to be reminded of Charles Dickens or the French Revolution, it would seem. Life in 2009 America is already plenty bleak. Yet Marc Morial, National Urban League president and CEO, channeled “A Tale of Two Cities” to summarize the league’s State of Black America 2009 Report. It is “the best [...]

In the photograph, lawyer Julius Chambers stands in the rubble of his fire-bombed office. His firm is in the middle of more than 30 desegregation lawsuits before courts in North Carolina. And the Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools case – which would be a landmark win for school desegregation and the law firm – is pending [...]

While commentators debate whether a New York Post cartoon that links cops, a dead monkey and perhaps a president is stupid, racist or both (that last one gets my vote)… While citizens weigh in on Attorney General Eric Holder’s labeling of America as a nation of “cowards” when it comes to dealing with the issue [...]

They walked along Pennsylvania Avenue and the crowd roared. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama looked relaxed and not the least bit cold and – just like that – it was real. Men jumped on other men’s shoulders to get a better look, parents held children high in the air and throngs of [...]

Each night leading up to the inauguration of Barack Obama brings more celebrations, more of that particular mix of celebrities, politicians and media folk. Sunday night, the Root inaugural ball also added history. At the party at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History, you could see film director John Singleton ducking into a [...]

What a homecoming! The Obamas and the Bidens — on their whistle-stop train trip from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. — made a stop in Baltimore, where I was born and raised. It’s where I was once refused entrance to an amusement park on the Baltimore County line because of the color of my skin. Did [...]

Washington is holding its breath — and it’s not just because of 14-degree weather. The city is getting ready for Tuesday’s inauguration of a new president and it wants everything to be perfect. On Friday bleachers set-up outside the White House stood empty. That will change. A few bundled-up pilgrims made their way to peek [...]

Post-racial America. It became a familiar term in the last year, and why not? It sounds wonderful. Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States. An African American, his wife and two little girls are planning a move into the White House. Time to turn the page on the country’s tangled history of racial conflict [...]

What’s in a name? I know what’s in mine. My grandmother on my mother’s side died when my older sister was an infant. My parents promised that if they had another daughter, they would honor my late grandmother. So that’s how this fifth and final child of Thomas and Evelyn Curtis came to be named [...]