ATLANTA –From his first day at Morehouse College - the country’s only institution of higher learning dedicated to the education of black men - Joshua Packwood has been a standout.His popularity got him elected dorm president as a freshman. His looks and physique made him a fashion-show favorite. His intellect made him a Rhodes Scholar finalist. His work ethic landed him a job at the prestigious investment banking firm Goldman Sachs in New York City.

But it’s his skin that has made all of this an anomaly. This month, Packwood is set to take the stage and address his classmates as the first white valedictorian in Morehouse’s 141-year history. Read more »

Two teens were sentenced Tuesday to 23 years to life in prison for stomping a pregnant girl so badly her fetus died.

Alfonso “Lil’ Al” Price, 16, and Jebrell Wright, 17, were convicted of murder, kidnapping and felonious assault in an April trial.

They lured 18-year-old Kerria Anderson, who was 7½ months pregnant, to an Over-the-Rhine apartment July 11, 2007, where they beat and stomped her, resulting in a still birth. Read more »

The Society of Professional Journalists has decided that it is best to leave a suspect’s race out of crime reporting except for “extraordinary” reasons. Of course, to the SPJ, “good reporting” means race info in a story about crime isn’t “useful to people in the community” even if the race of a suspect is part of a police report apparently. Despite their claim that they aren’t toeing the PC line, their explanation is filled with just the sort of reasoning based on PC thinking — one of which is that all whites are racists.Some of you may remember the story in September of 2007 when the Sacramento Bee announced that they were revisiting their policy of including race in their crime stories. A particularly gruesome crime occurred that brought the Bee to revisit their policy when they reported on the suspect leaving out race while Internet reporting as well as the Bee’s own comments section on their internet posting of the story reported the race of the suspect anyway. Read more »

Anna Jarvis was never married and never had a child. But, like all of us, she had a mother. As a child, Anna sat through a Sunday School series where her mother taught on the subject, “Mothers of the Bible.” At The close of the series she heard her mother pray: “I hope someone, sometime will found a memorial day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it.”

After her mother died in 1905, Anna Channeled her grief in a constructive manner to fulfill her mothers prayer. She launched a nationwide effort to establish an annual day for honoring mothers. In 1908, Mothers Day became a fixture in most states.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are 83 million mothers in the United States. The number of single-mother households has tripled to more than 10 million since 1970. ARTICLE>>>

The 19-year-old son of a convicted murderer is now facing a murder charge himself, accused of beating a Jefferson Township mother of two to death with a dumbbell in her Lake Hopatcong apartment this past January, authorities said today.

Demetrius Diaz-Bridges is charged with murder and possession of a weapon for unlawful purpose in the Jan. 30 killing of Elizabeth O’Brien, authorities said. He was arrested Saturday in his mother’s home in Raleigh, N.C., police and a family member said.

Police say Diaz-Bridges, a former neighbor and friend of the victim’s older son, admitted to killing O’Brien and stuffing her body in the first-floor closet where it was found. Read more »

A video posted on YouTube.com is causing a lot of concern among Memphis City School parents.  Now were trying to find solutions.The clip labeled, “Mitchell High School Memphis … Rape Dat Ho,” was posted last month.  It was flagged as offensive then taken down, but not before News Channel 3 recorded the clip on tape.

The images are disturbing.  They are graphic and hard to watch.  It shows young men and women engaging in what one parent described as “sex with clothes on.” Read more »

An East St. Louis police officer faces charges for keeping officers from another department from doing their jobs.

Belleville police say they were trying to break up a teen fight when Debra Simpkins arrived and identified herself as an officer.

A police report says she then used profanities, accused the Belleville officers of being racist and allegedly agitated the crowd, who then rallied behind her.

Simpkins is due in St. Clair County Court July 10th.  more>>>

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Jacksonville high school student was recently beaten and battered at school by three students he said he didn’t even know.

Witnesses to the attack told police Forrest High School sophomore Karl Koch Jr. was targeted because of the color of his skin.”They started closing in, and all I remember is getting hit,” Koch said.

Read more »

Police plan to review surveillance footage of a fatal encounter between two Pittsburgh police officers — one of them a K-9 officer — and a Knoxville man with a history of arrests.Cameras outside a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center facility on the border of Knoxville and Mt. Oliver might have captured the Tuesday evening shooting that left Justin James Jackson, 19, dead.

Jackson died from a gunshot wound in the head and one in the chest, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office said. The K-9 officer’s dog, a 6-year-old German shepherd named Aulf, died of chest wounds at a veterinary hospital. Read more »

Shortly after moving into their new home, an African American family was welcomed by someone burning “KKK” in their yard.

In a bustling neighborhood off Bonnabel Boulevard – near Lake Pontchartrain – one that was everything that this couple was looking for.  Last Saturday, they moved in.  They were proud to be on the block. Read more »

Moments before her ex-boyfriend was arraigned Friday on murder charges, 21-year-old Laci Green of Westland was described by family friends as a church-going, ambitious young woman who had ended a bad relationship and immersed herself in her nursing studies at Schoolcraft College.

“She went to church all the time,” said Sheila Noon, who worked with Green’s mother, Barbara, at the MotorCity Casino buffet.  [Her church probably recommended inter-racial relationships.]

Green, who worked at the casino hotel while attending school, had broken off a six-year relationship weeks ago with a 25-year-old Dearborn Heights defendant identified by police as Robert James-The-First Howard, accused of strangling Green to death early Wednesday morning near her home on Westland’s southwest side. Read more »

Police say it appears the initial cause of a fight involving between 100 and 150 students of teens at a South Los Angeles high school was friction between black and Latino gang members, KNBC’s Doug Kriegel reported.

The Locke High School melee, which began in the cafeteria near the end of the lunch period around 1 p.m., resulted in the arrest of four people.

Three students were arrested on suspicion of fighting and a non-student was arrested for allegedly having a knife, said Susan Cox of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Read more »

NEW YORK - Big corporations give him money. Presidential candidates seek his endorsement. He has influential friends in Congress and the governor’s mansion. The Rev. Al Sharpton has emerged over the past decade as perhaps the nation’s most prominent civil rights leader, a status that was demonstrated again this week when he led protests against police brutality that briefly shut down six of Manhattan’s major bridges and tunnels.

But he still carries baggage from his early days as a fire-breathing agitator: Government records obtained by The Associated Press indicate that Sharpton and his business entities owe nearly $1.5 million in overdue taxes and associated penalties. Read more »

PHOENIX - DMX was arrested on drug and animal-cruelty charges following an overnight raid on the rapper’s house Friday, authorities said. The 37-year-old rapper, whose given name is Earl Simmons, initially tried to barricade himself in his bedroom but emerged when a SWAT team entered his north Phoenix home during the 3 a.m. raid, sheriff’s spokesman Capt. Paul Chagolla said.

The arrest and search warrants stemmed from indictments for felony drug possession and misdemeanor animal cruelty charges. He made an initial court appearance Friday where bail was sent at $7,500, said his local attorney, Cameron Morgan. Morgan said he expected bail to be posted quickly. Read more »

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida football player who played his high school ball at Sandalwood High School is accused of identity theft after using the credit card of a fellow UF student after she was killed last year in a motorcycle accident. Jamar Hornsby, 21, turned himself in Friday morning on charges of credit card theft and fraudulent use of a credit card. His attorney, Huntley Johnson, said they learned that a judge had issued a warrant for Hornsby’s arrest on Thursday. Read more »

HOUSTON — A prospective juror in a marijuana possession trial was hauled off to jail Tuesday after police said they caught her smoking a joint outside the courthouse.

Attornies in the case had narrowed the jury pool down to 20 people when they took a 45 minute break.

When the break was over, 49-year-old Cornelia Turner Mayo didn’t return to Judge Sherman Ross’ courtroom.

Turns out she was on a smoking break — but what she was allegedly smoking was illegal. Read more »

By 2035, there will be about 1.96 million active Muslims in Britain, compared with 1.63 million church-going Christians, according to calculations by Christian Research, a think-tank. The think-tank has warned that 4,000 churches could close by 2020 if congregations continue to shrink at current rates. MORE>>>

PHILADELPHIA — Police acting on a tip closed in on an abandoned Southwest Philadelphia row house late Wednesday night and captured the third suspect in the death of a police officer shot in a weekend confrontation with bank robbery suspects.

Eric Floyd, 33, and a woman identified as his girlfriend, were taken into custody in a second-floor bedroom of the dilapidated house in the Kingsessing neighborhood with boarded-up windows shortly after 11 p.m. Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said Floyd was unarmed and did not resist.

Police said Floyd made a statement and is cooperating with police. Read more »

NEW YORK (WABC) — Protesters took to the streets of New York City Wednesday to object to the verdicts given in the Sean Bell shooting trial. The Reverend Al Sharpton was one of about 200 people arrested as part of the protests.

Also arrested were Bell’s fiance, Nicole Paultre Bell, as well as shooting survivors Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman.

“Today, we want motorists to think about how three [other] motorists were shot at 50 times for no reason,” Sharpton said.

New York Governor David Paterson is scheduled to meet privately with Sharpton and Bell’s family Thursday. Read more »

CHICAGO (AP) — It seemed for a while as if R. Kelly’s day in court might never come.

But after six years of repeated delays, jury selection is set to begin Friday in the Grammy-winning R&B singer’s trial on child pornography charges, prompted by a videotape allegedly showing Kelly having sex with a girl as young as 13.

Prosecutors, though, will have a unique challenge: The alleged victim, now 23, says it wasn’t her. And Kelly’s attorneys — including Ed Genson, who often represents the rich and famous — haven’t admitted it’s Kelly in the video. Read more »

Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, one of the architects of the border wall project between Mexico and Texas, drew boos from residents in Brownsville, Texas, at a public meeting on the subject this week.

“If you don’t like the fence … between the city and Mexico, I suggest that you build the fence around the northern part of the city,” fired off Tancredo when opponents to the fence made their displeasure heard at the meeting.

Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada called the Congressman a bigot, and said that the border wall project was a “racist thing.”

“They’re afraid of us Mexicans taking over politically, I think,” he said in a television interview. Read more »

WASHINGTON (CNN) — John Allen Muhammad, who is on Virginia’s death row in connection with the 2002 Washington-area sniper spree, has written to Virginia prosecutors saying he wants to waive all rights to appeal.

In the letter dated April 23, Muhammad professes his innocence, but says he wants to waive appeals so the state “can murder this innocent Black man.”

Muhammad’s court-appointed attorney, contacted Tuesday, declined to characterize the letter. But attorney James Connell said he had just met with Muhammad and “when I left him today at 3 o’clock, he did not want to be executed.”

Read more »

SAN DIEGO - Nearly 100 people, most of them students, were arrested in an undercover drug investigation at San Diego State University that began after a student’s fatal cocaine overdose last spring, authorities said Tuesday.

Authorities seized several guns, at least $60,000 in cash, marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms, hash oil, methamphetamine and illicit prescription drugs, authorities said. Two kilograms of cocaine and 350 ecstasy pills also were seized, officials said.

Eighteen students were arrested Tuesday when nine search warrants were executed at various locations, including fraternities, said Jesse Rodriguez, San Diego County assistant district attorney. Read more »

The new mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, a former fascist, has launched a campaign to promote Italian films at the expense of those featuring Hollywood stars such as Nicole Kidman and Leonardo DiCaprio, who are to be blacklisted.

American actors who flocked to Rome for its film festival will no longer be invited, on the orders of Alemanno, 50, of the National Alliance party, who last week became the first rightwinger to win the mayor’s job in 15 years.

Outside city hall, his followers greeted him with fascist salutes and shouts of “Duce! Duce!” – the title used by the dictator Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943. Read more »

Nine-year-old paperboy Ethan Hall was out on his regular route when a pack of piled-up letters on a woman’s front porch caught his eye.”I noticed that her mail’s there. And she’s handicapped, so she can’t come out of the house,” said Sycamore, Ill., resident.

Ethan suspected something was wrong and told his mother, who then called police. The boy’s instincts were correct. Three days earlier, the resident of the house had fallen and broken her hip, and she lay stuck and helpless on the floor. Read more »

Amid the controversy last week over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s latest comments and his relationship with Sen. Barack Obama [”Obama Calls Minister’s Comments ‘Outrageous,’ ” front page, April 30], it might be useful to take a look at some of the racial politics we’ve had in our region. The small town of Farmville in Southside Virginia offers a rich case study in what Obama has called “the racial stalemate,” the failure of black and white people to openly discuss their mutual resentments.

In 1959, Prince Edward County shut down its public schools for five years to resist the racial integration ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court. The white children went to a hastily organized private academy that was subsidized by the state government; the black kids were left to fend for themselves.

Today, blacks and whites in Prince Edward still live racially isolated lives. The children of well-off white residents attend the private school established in 1959, leaving the predominantly black public schools starved for resources. The high school even has two cheerleading squads: one black, one white. Read more »

Deep within our subconscious, all of us harbor biases that we consciously abhor. And the worst part is: we act on them 

“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson once told an audience, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Jackson’s remark illustrates a basic fact of our social existence, one that even a committed black civil-rights leader cannot escape: ideas that we may not endorse—for example, that a black stranger might harm us but a white one probably would not—can nonetheless lodge themselves in our minds and, without our permission or awareness, color our perceptions, expectations and judgments. Read more »

Investigators continue the manhunt for one of the suspects in the killing of a Philadelphia police officer.
Police are looking for 33-year-old Eric Floyd (pictured below). 

The local police union has posted a $10,000 reward,bringing the total offered for information leading to Floyd’s capture to more than $45,000.

Tip calls have led police as far away as New York City in search of Floyd.  Monday morning, investigators searched a train out of Trenton at New York’s Penn Station.  A tip indicated he could be on board.

Read more »

Bears running back Cedric Benson has been arrested on a drinking-related charge. It happened while Benson was on a boat Saturday night near Austin, Texas. He now faces charges of boating while intoxicated and resisting arrest.

Benson was boating on Lake Travis in Texas when his boat was stopped for a random safety check. After failing a field sobriety test, he was told he would have to go ashore for another test. At that time, he refused to cooperate, and according to the Lower Colorado River Authority, he presented himself as a threat to the officer. He was subdued with pepper spray and arrested.

But Benson claimed that he wasn’t drunk and didn’t resist arrest. Read more »

ANC president says ruling party plans to transfer 30% of farmland by 2014.

JOHANNESBURG (Sapa) - ANC president Jacob Zuma passionately addressed thousands of workers at a May Day celebration in the North West on Thursday saying that rural development was key to fighting poverty.

“Many of them work long hours for poverty wages. Read more »

(*Editors note: The KSS has already distributed hundreds of fliers calling attention to the true nature of this reoccurring problem out front of the Shop rite where the robbery took place, where some of us also shop and use the that bank, as well as throughout the neighborhood where the shooting took place, where some of us also live. We spoke with many of the people from Port Richmond about the incident and it was nice to see so many people out there building a memorial for officer Liczbinski. The white communities of Philadelphia are getting extremely fed up with this mess and they aren’t shy about expressing their feelings. It’s sad that it takes these types of things to bring neighborhoods together but not as sad as what will happen if we continue down this path in silence. Click here to view the flier.)

A Philadelphia Police officer has died after being shot by alleged bank robbery suspects in the city’s Port Richmond section Saturday morning. Read more »

Psychologists at the London Metropolitan University want to do during the reign of Elizabeth II what Elizabeth I did not desire to do during hers: make windows into men’s souls.

They are devising subtle tests to sniff out the hidden racism of job applicants. They are not looking for the kind of racists who wear their prejudices on their sleeve or, worse, behave in an openly and violently racist way.

They are seeking out those who claim not to be racist yet who hold racial stereotypes in their mind, not even consciously. We are back to the days, it seems, of the witch-hunt and the Inquisition.

Read more »

This NY Times article talks about this latest conspiracy book and explains a few of its arguments but fails to mention that Officer Faulkner was shot by Wesley Cook’s gun and Wesley Cook was found at the scene, shot by Officer Faulkner.   Also Wesley Cook admittted at the hospital that he shot Officer Faulkner and that he hopes that Officer Faulkner dies.  Mumia Abu-Jamal is Wesley Cook’s black supremacist name.  These conspiracies focus on witnesses to the crime scene who are unreliable either way due to their drug abuse.  The forensic evidence is not disputable.

PHILADELPHIA — A book published on Thursday asserts that a black radio journalist convicted of murdering a white Philadelphia police officer more than 26 years ago is not guilty of the crime and that it was actually committed by another man who is now deceased.

The book, “The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal,” by J. Patrick O’Connor, asserts that Officer Daniel Faulkner died on Dec. 9, 1981, from shots fired by Kenneth Freeman, a business partner of the brother of the convicted man, Mr. Abu-Jamal, who has been on death row for 25 years for a crime he says he did not commit. Read more »

A local anti-racism group is claiming the Rochester police are harassing the black community in enforcing their Zero Tolerance initiative. It allegedly happened Tuesday afternoon about two blocks from Aquinas High School.Jordan Brown, who is black, stopped at a local store to get something for his car. His younger brother Stephen Strachan waited outside. “I saw my friend so I slapped him up. And the cops came out of nowhere and they said put my hands behind my back,” said Strachan.

Brown says he was verbally abused and “roughed up” by police when he tried to find out why police had his brother. “I came out of the store and said what’s happening. And they told me, shut up and get back. And then another cop came out and said, as a matter of fact, get him too.” Read more »

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