African-american | featured news

You're older than you think. DNA from an unnamed African-American from South Carolina is so distinctive that it led scientists to a unique conclusion: The roots of the human tree date back much further than previously thought.

A sharp decline in incarceration rates for African-Americans from 2000 to 2009 marks a significant shift in the racial makeup of America’s prisons, according to a report released Wednesday.

More than half a century after she sat defiantly on an Alabama city bus, Rosa Parks has a permanent place in the U.S. Capitol — the first black woman to be honored with a statue there.

After more than a century, the Census Bureau is dropping its use of the word "Negro" to describe black Americans in surveys. Instead of the term that came into use during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, census forms will use the more modern labels "black" or "African-American".

In the quarter-century that Armentha Cruise has run her Silver Spring staffing firm, the nation has made strides toward racial equality. Voters have twice elected a black president, African Americans shine among Hollywood’s brightest stars, and the number of blacks who graduate from college has tripled.

Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not. Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some Americans' more favorable views of blacks.

Some African American, Spanish-speaking and elderly voters in Florida and Virginia are apparently being targeted by anonymous voter-suppression groups trying to trick them or intimidate them into not voting in the November presidential election, according to election officials and voter protection organizations.

It's not just the collection plate that's getting passed around this fall at hundreds of mainly African-American and Latino churches in presidential battleground states and across the nation....

In our view, however, there is a more compelling explanation for the apparent apathy on this issue. It's not that no one cares about voter suppression. But to rise above the other issues of the day -- and to transcend the inhibiting language that has framed the debate left and right -- voters will need to know what only to think about voter suppression but also what they can do.

The patchwork quilt that is the Democratic Party base -- women, Latinos, African-Americans -- will be on full display at Tuesday night's opening session of the national party convention. The highlight will be a prime-time address by First Lady Michelle Obama who is expected to play the same role Ann Romney did one week ago at the GOP gathering in Tampa: eschewing hard-edged politics for a soft-focus testimonial to her husband.