Free Republic

It's Feb. 29, which means it's my last chance this year to answer the question: Why is there a Black History Month? The question is a valid one, often posed by honestly curious white people. Too frequently, though, I hear this: Why do you need a Black History Month? I'm tempted to reply that there are White History Months - they're the other 11 months of the year. That response, however, would be too flip and unfair to those who really want to understand the motive for the month. But when you think about it - and work with me...

Here we are, a half-century on since the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs are truly historical figures now, but for a small fraction of the population their fate still has the power to generate yesterday's heat. Were the Rosenbergs framed? Did they do anything? If they did do anything, was it anything much? Robert Meeropol, the younger son of the Rosenbergs, has lived his life close to home -- that is, among people who believed his parents were innocents, martyrs to a government bent not on catching Soviet spies but on crushing political dissent. Given the evidence...

The Preludes column on Aug. 17, about causes and effects of long hours on the job, misstated the number of hours that Americans work per week, on average. It is 39, not 49, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because of an editing error, an article last Sunday about the 1963 civil rights March on Washington referred incorrectly in some copies to a Civil War general to whom one marcher referred in a speech. The general, William T. Sherman, was a Union general, not a Confederate general.

Bolton High School blotted out a likeness of founder Wade Bolton after a teacher's complaint that a mural of the 19th Century planter and slave trader was "too Confederate." Principal Snowden 'Butch' Carruthers said a faculty committee decided Friday to paint over the new mural to avoid offending anyone. Wade Bolton left money to establish Bolton College in northeast Shelby County when he was shot dead in a feud in 1869. The college became a county school in the early 1920s, and Bolton's trust fund still supports the school. The Class of 2003 gave art teacher Christy Burns an $1,800...

Rev. Louis Brenton is armed everywhere he goes, sometimes with the Bible but always with a Glock 23. "I occasionally have to walk into some situations that are a little iffy," said the pastor of East Side Cumberland Presbyterian Church on South Prescott. Brenton said carrying a gun makes him feel more at ease in Memphis. He's prepared to defend himself if he is ever attacked. Cassandra Holland, 32, knows that feeling, too. The Loomis Fargo & Co. employee was robbed at gunpoint in 2000. "Every time I went to sleep, I'd see that gun in my face," she said....

For decades, Two Mile Hollow Beach existed as East Hampton's tony gay beach, without serious complaint. Then came private detectives with video cameras, and nudity and sex acts in the dunes were private no more. The videos sparked a reaction that exploded in an angry hearing in an East End firehouse yesterday morning, with gays protesting the intrusion on their no-tan-line turf. As the mayor, police chief and other elected and appointed officials sat on the dais, 150 angry locals, most of them gay, blew off steam about the private eyes who have been playing Candid Camera in the underbrush....

One man was shot to death and another was wounded after they forced a man inside his East Memphis home Friday night, police said. The shooting was at 4555 Dunn near Perkins and Willow. Insp. Richard Sojourner said the shooting came after two men confronted the resident of the Dunn home at a Union Planters ATM at Perkins and Quince. They ordered him to withdraw money, but the machine kept his ATM card. They forced the man back into his car, Sojourner said, and went to another ATM, where the same thing happened with a second ATM card. The two...

July 11, 2003 -- A new study finds many waiters and waitresses feel that black Americans generally tip less than restaurant diners who are white. The study, by a researcher at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, found that blacks tip on average 20 percent less than whites. In addition, restaurant workers of all races dislike waiting on black people because they assume the tips will be less no matter how good the service. NPR's Juan Williams reports. The study found that 63 percent of blacks and 30 percent of whites didn't understand that the standard restaurant tip in the...

<p>PLEASANT HILL - Two transients were hospitalized Sunday with head injuries, apparently after fighting with each other, police said in a written statement.</p> <p>Their identities were being withheld.</p> <p>Around 5 a.m., found the first transient, with head injuries, on Chilpancingo Parkway near Old Quarry Road, police said.</p>

Two men and a woman who specialized in robbing Hispanic residents face a growing stack of criminal charges, Memphis police said Thursday. A fourth member of the ring was fatally shot during an attempted robbery on Sept. 13 in Hickory Hill, said Robbery Bureau Maj. Randall O'Byrnes. It was the death of Robert Lee Brooks Jr., 25, that led police to suspect the group is responsible for a lengthy list of robberies, O'Byrnes said. He said the three people now facing charges are Deljuan E. Williams, 32; James E. Ingram, 23, and Sirita I. Tolbert, 19. Tolbert confessed to police...

DUNCAN, Okla. – It's been a date long anticipated: the Duncan High School football team, hoping to reclaim past glory and opening its 2002 home season against the five-time defending state champions. The game will be played as scheduled Friday night, but for some, it's no longer a simple story of touchdowns and tackles. It's part of a complex saga of crime and punishment, history and race. It's the odyssey of a proud town anguished by accusations that five of its football heroes – all of them black – sexually assaulted a 14-year-old Indian girl. "We were already hurting" when...

Before Tammy Millikin moved to Memphis she had one big question about her new city: "Where are the bad neighborhoods?" Then she promptly moved to an area she was warned against. "That's where the diverse neighborhoods are," said Millikin. "It's critical that I find a place where my children could grow up around people with different backgrounds." It's that near-obsessive quest for diversity and racial harmony that has Millikin out front on the first wave of school uniform protests in Memphis City Schools. Millikin was denied her request to opt out of the mandatory districtwide school uniform policy in August....

WHAT does it take to get through to Virginia's legislators? In April they passed and Gov. Mark Warner signed a law that is going to get someone raped or killed. The law requires animal rescuers, most of whom are women and many of whom live alone, to post their home addresses and telephone numbers publicly in pounds, open their homes to the public "at reasonable hours" and make their rescue records available to the public upon request. As if that were not stupid and dangerous enough, these volunteers' homes are now subject to a warrantless inspection by the state veterinarian....

The writer of an Aug. 21 letter to the editor wanted to know why there was no outrage about the eviction of white farmers in Zimbabwe. Colonialism has raped, pillaged, abused and taken advantage of the continent of Africa for hundreds of years. Only a few countries have been brave enough to stand against it. White Zimbabweans control 80 percent of the fertile land there and account for only 5 percent of the population. As in the Republic of Congo, people native to the area are taking back the land that belongs to them. They are also educating their people....

When Arthur Miller and his wife moved to Rosamond Avenue six years ago, they would sit on their front lawn and watch the evening evaporate. It was a quiet, peaceful neighborhood with manicured lawns and neat homes. Some of the nearby industrial employers like Firestone and International Harvester had either closed or moved, but Rosamond remained a respectable, racially mixed, working-class street. Just six years later Rosamond has a much different feel. "We don't sit in the front yard anymore," said Miller, 55, who works a forklift and owns his home. "The street used to be real quiet. But after...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hundreds of blacks rallied in front of the Capitol on Saturday to demand slavery reparations, saying that compensation is long overdue for the ills of that institution. ``It seems that America owes black people a lot for what we have endured,'' Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan told the crowd. ``We cannot settle for some little jive token. We need millions of acres of land that black people can build.'' ``We're not begging white people,'' said Farrakhan, one of several speakers at a rally organizers billed as ``Millions for Reparations.'' ````We are just demanding what is justly...

A FEW days after Sept. 11, Bruce Springsteen was pulling out of a beach parking lot in the Jersey Shore town of Sea Bright when a fan rode by. The man rolled down his window, shouted, "We need you!" and drove on. It was the kind of moment, Mr. Springsteen said, that made his career worthwhile. "That's part of my job," he said. "It's an honor to find that place in the audience's life." "The Rising" (Columbia), Mr. Springsteen's first album of new songs with the E Street Band since 1987, is due for release on July 30. It continues...

CAIRO, July 6 (UPI) -- Hisham Muhammad Ali Hadayet, the Los Angeles airport gunman who killed two people on July 4 before being shot and killed himself, was a pious Muslim but had no links with Islamic extremists, according to family members in Hadayet's native Egypt. They were "totally surprised" by news of the shooting rampage, a relative told United Press International after seeing a report Friday on Egyptian state television. Hassan Mustafa Mahfouz described the family as "shocked" and could not believe the news at first when the shooter was identified as Hadayet. The family spoke to him just...

They say he can't even spell gangsta rap. He says they give lawyers a bad name. There's rhythm and heat in the flow of words between U.S. Dist. Judge Robert H. Cleland and three attorneys for Memphis rapper Project Pat. But it's not the rapid-fire staccato that made Patrick Houston a million-selling recording artist with raps like Chickenhead. For one, the words haven't been growled into microphones but typed in a series of legal briefs filed since Houston was convicted in March by a Jackson, Tenn., jury of two counts of being a felon in possession of a gun. The...

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Lynn Neary. ROBERT SIEGEL, host: And I'm Robert Siegel. In Arab countries, there are vast human resources and higher expenditure on education than elsewhere in the developing world. Life expectancy is generally high, adult illiteracy has declined and dire poverty--life on less than a dollar a day--is more rare there than just about anywhere else. But freedom, women's rights and participation in the modern communications and computer revolution are in short supply. These are all findings of a United Nations Development Program report released today in Cairo. Unlike many other pronouncements...