Category: Free the Jackson Five

In America, every accused person is innocent until proven guilty, right? Well, we may profess such lofty thoughts, but the cold reality is that most people believe that if you are in jail, you gotta be guilty of something. Look no further than the way people have reacted to Alfonso Rodriguez, Jr., the prime suspect…

Until the late sixties, in much of the country, the pigmentation differences between my wife and I would have made us felons had we tried to get married. According to one Virginia judge in 1959, “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents.…The fact that…

Here we go again. A young, white, blond-haired blue-eyed woman is abducted, presumably by some dark-skinned nefarious person. The media play swells into hyper, almost orgiastic über-coverage. The military gets drafted to search for the damsel in distress, and, in the latest round, the governor calls for the death penalty and holds candlelight vigils. Excuse…

Remember those low-budget horror films from the 1950s? Other-worldly music would play, and then a creepy creature would land its spaceship in a swamp in the middle of nowhere, slither out, and tell the first startled Earthling, “Take me to your leader.” Now, as then, we laugh at the idea that there could possibly be…

You may shoot me with your words,But still, like air, I’ll rise.-Maya Angelou Ever since she toppled incumbent Jackie Cherryhomes in 2001, Minneapolis Fifth Ward council member Natalie Johnson Lee, the council’s lone African-American woman, has continued to rise. She has successfully deflected and deflated those wanting to blow her off-especially the North Side wannabes…

One of my oldest friends, actor Joseph C. Phillips (mayor on CBS’s The District), who grew up black, hopeful, and liberal, but is now African-American, angry, and conservative, recently asked me how I felt about the latest Ward Connerly initiative. Connerly, the black University of California regent who convinced voters to make affirmative action verboten…