Recently added articles from National Urban League. The State of Black America:

The National Urban League Opportunity Compact

Jan 01, 2006; Morial, Marc H ... "Support the strong, give courage to the timid, remind the indifferent, and warn the opposed." -Whitney M. Young, Jr. The State of Black America 2006 report was compiled and analyzed against the backdrop of one of the most catastrophic events to ever befall our nation. Hurricanes ...

THE NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE EQUALITY INDEX

Jan 01, 2006; Thompson, Rondel; Parker, Sophia ... The Equality Index is used to compare the conditions between whites and blacks in America using multiple variables. Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States counted an African American as 3/5 of a person for purposes of taxation and state representation in Congress, an index ...

Black Homeownership: A Dream No Longer Deferred?

Jan 01, 2006; Freeman, Lance ... Homeownership has long been synonymous with the American Dream. It has come to symbolize stability, the achievement of middle-class status and having "made it" in American society. Numerous studies show that the majority of Americans prefer homeownership to renting. For example, one report found ...

Escaping the "Ghetto"of Subcontracting

Jan 01, 2006; Turner, Mark D ... In recent years, small minority-owned businesses (SMB) have firmly established a niche in the world of subcontracting-proffering competency, specialized expertise, and business acumen to larger and more lucrative prime contractors. The present burgeoning of SMBs is, arguably, a direct result of ...

The State of Our Children

Jan 01, 2006; Edelman, Marian Wright ... Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German Protestant theologian executed for opposing Hitler's holocaust, said the test of the morality of a society is how it treats its children. The United States of America is flunking Bonhoeffers test: * A child is abused or neglected every 35 ...

Hurricane Katrina Exposed the Face of Poverty

Jan 01, 2006; Wiley, Maya ... As a nation, we face a rising tide. The floodwaters of poverty are eroding the shores of opportunity. The levees that broke in New Orleans, too weak to hold back the flood waters of the category 3 Hurricane Katrina, made this painfully clear. The flood waters of Lake Pontchartrain and the mighty ...

Race, Poverty, and Healthcare Disparities

Jan 01, 2006; Smedley, Brian D ... "Of all the forms of injustice, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane" - Martin Luther King, Jr. More than four decades have passed since Dr. King's observation that the racial and economic divide in healthcare most symbolized the brutality of ...

The State of Civil Rights

Jan 01, 2006; Jones, Nathaniel R ... The state of civil rights in America is most precarious. Civil rights advocates may find themselves in the situation of the person who did not realize that his throat had been cut until he attempted to shake his head. This should come as no surprise to those who have been manning the ...

Racial Disparities Drive Prison Boom

Jan 01, 2006; Curry, George E ... "You could abort every Black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." -former secretary of Education William Bennett Implicit in Bill Bennett's controversial 2005 comment on his syndicated radio program is the notion that black people are criminals and if you ...

New Orleans Revisited

Jan 01, 2006; Morial, Marc H ... The day after Katrina, pictures of New Orleanians stranded and suffering at both the Louisiana Superdome and the Ernest N. Mortal Convention Center hit the national news. Their faces, filled with so much pain and struggle, shocked both my wife and me. I was sad and angry, because I knew ...

New Orleans: Next Steps on the Road to Recovery

Jan 01, 2006; Brazile, Donna L ... Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans And miss it each night and day I know I'm not wrong ... this feeling's gettin' stronger The longer, I stay away. Louis Armstrong Somebody ought to circulate the lyrics of Louis Alter, made famous by the ...

The National Urban League Katrina Bill of Rights

Jan 01, 2006; Anonymous ... The National Urban League believes that our nation cannot be whole again unless, and until, the lives of our neighbors in the Gulf Coast are finally made whole-in their homes, in their places of employment, in their schools, in their hospitals, in their businesses, and in revived vibrant and ...

Rosa Parks: An Ordinary Woman, An Extraordinary Life

Jan 01, 2006; Jones, Stephanie J ... Rosa Parks just said "No" to Injustice. It would have been so easy and so much safer for Rosa Louise McCauley Parks to move to the back of the bus as she was told on December 1, 1955. But she didn't. Now, more than 50 years later, the names of the bus driver who summoned the Montgomery ...

History of the National Urban League

Jan 01, 2006; Anonymous ... The National Urban League grew out of that spontaneous grassroots movement for freedom and opportunity that came to be called the Black Migrations. When the U.S. Supreme Court declared its approval of segregation in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, the brutal system of economic, social and ...

In Memoriam: RENALDO BENSON

Jan 01, 2006; Anonymous ... Renaldo Benson was a soul and R&B singer and songwriter. He was best known as a member of the Motown group, the Four Tops. He joined the Four Tops in 1953 and continued to perform with the group for more than five decades. The group signed with Red Top Records and Riverside Record ...

In Memoriam: SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

Jan 01, 2006; Anonymous ... Shirley Chisholm was a great American politician, educator and author. She was viewed as a woman before her time, breaking some of the barriers of sexism and racism, especially in politics. As a Congresswoman, she represented New York's 12th District for seven terms, from 1969 to 1983. In 1968, ...

In Memoriam: JOHNNIE COCHRAN JR.

Jan 01, 2006; Anonymous ... Johnnie Cochran Jr., was known as one of the nation's best criminal defense lawyers and rose to fame when he uttered the phrase, "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit." He helped win an acquittal for O.J. Simpson in a double-murder trial. Cochran was born in Shreveport, La., the oldest of ...

In Memoriam: SHIRLEY HORN

Jan 01, 2006; Anonymous ... Shirley Horn was an American jazz pianist and vocalist who got her start opening for Miles Davis. She became revered as a master interpreter of American standards. She recorded several albums on different labels in the 1960s, creating little fanfare. Horn began performing locally in her native ...

In Memoriam: JOHN H. JOHNSON

Jan 01, 2006; Anonymous ... John H. Johnson was one of the most influential African-Americans of our time. He was the founder of the Johnson Publishing Company, an international media and cosmetics giant that includes Ebony and Jet magazines, Fashion Fair Cosmetics and EBONY Fashion Fair. John Johnson was the first black ...

In Memoriam: VIVIAN MALONE JONES

Jan 01, 2006; Anonymous ... Vivian Malone Jones was one of two black students to enroll at the University of Alabama in 1963. She and another student, James Hood, were enrolled by U.S. marshals and the federalized Alabama National Guard after Gov. George C. Wallace made his famous "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door" on June ...