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A Broken Promise in Texas: Race, the Death Penalty and the Duane Buck Case

  • Black firefighter hopefuls who sued 16 years ago turn out for physical testing

    11/02/11
    Source: 
    The Chicago Tribune

    LaShonn Tomlinson always had dreams of becoming a Chicago firefighter, but while working at Amtrak's Union Station storage yard, those dreams often passed him by.

    "For years, I would see the new candidates running down Canal Street, and I'd be wondering when it would be my turn," said Tomlinson, 38. "But I never got the call."

    The call finally came Tuesday morning for Tomlinson and other hopefuls who, nearly two decades after suing the city for bias, have another shot at becoming firefighters.

  • National Housing Law Project Conference Remarks by John Payton

    10/17/11
    Source: 
    LDF

    John PaytonYesterday was the official dedication of the Martin Luther King Memorial here in Washington.  Some of you may have snuck away from this conference to be there.  I was there.  It was inspiring because the moral commitment of the civil rights movement is now center stage in at least part of our national culture.  But it was also challenging because we have a long way to go.  We are, I hope, past the absurd claim that we are

  • NYT: College Diversity Nears Its Last Stand

    10/17/11
    Source: 
    The New York Times

    ABIGAIL FISHER, a white student, says she was denied admission to the University of Texas because of her race. She sued in Federal District Court in Austin, causing Judge Sam Sparks to spend time trying to make sense of a 2003 Supreme Court decision allowing racial preferences in higher education. “I’ve read it till I’m blue in the face,” Judge Sparks said in an early hearing in Ms.

  • Washington Post: Jacqueline Berrien on leading the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

    10/12/11
    Source: 
    The Washington Post

    Jacqueline A. Berrien has been the chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) since April 2010. A Harvard Law School graduate, Berrien practiced civil rights law for many years, assisted underrepresented groups as a program officer for the Ford Foundation, and came to the EEOC from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where she served as associate director-counsel.

  • The Root: New Sentencing for Mumia Abu-Jamal?

    10/12/11
    Source: 
    The Root.com

    The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from the Philadelphia district attorney's office in the racially charged case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, bringing an end to nearly 30 years of litigation over the fairness of the sentencing hearing that resulted in his death sentence for the 1981 shooting of a police officer, the Washington Post reports.

    While his case has been famous among anti-death penalty activists and social-justice advocates for decades, this new development is no doubt even more poignant for many in light of the recent execution of Troy Davis.