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ORLANDO, Fla. - A federal grand jury is expected to hear testimony Wednesday surrounding the George Zimmerman case. The hearing is related to whether Zimmerman violated Trayvon Martin's civil rights when he shot and killed the unarmed teen in Sanford in 2012. At least one witness has been subpoenaed to testify. That man is believed to be Zimmerman's former neighbor, Frank Taaffe....

In this so-called ‘post-racial’ era, Halloween has become a new forum to push the envelope matters pertaining to race, free speech, and being funny, or what we think is funny. We’ve seen the images of the Ray Rice costume – complete with black face and a jersey dragging around a black female doll made to resemble his wife Janay. We’ve seen the image of someone dressed as a bullet ridden Trayvon Martin. We’ve seen the Halloween front yard featuring trees with lynched effigys. I’m pretty sure that an image of a Michael Brown, Darren Wilson or Eric ray riceGarner...

No stranger to controversial statements, NBA Hall of Famer turned sports commentator, Charles Barkley, blamed stagnation in the Black community on “brainwashed” Black people too “unintelligent” to choose education over street credibility. During an appearance on Philadelphia’s “Afternoons with Anthony Gargano and Rob Ellis” radio show, Sir Charles responded to a Bleacher Report article claiming that teammates of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson felt that he wasn’t “Black enough.” Seahawks’ cornerback Richard Sherman denied the locker room racism, telling CBS Sports, “Nobody in here said that. It’s made up.” Wilson also brushed off the story, saying, “Black enough? I don’t...

Low African American voter turnout helped create Ferguson’s mostly white government. Black leaders nationwide are using that fact to get their constituents to the polls.For many African Americans, this is shaping up to be the Ferguson Election. Around the country, black voters are being mobilized to vote in the 2014 midterms with the argument that the death of Michael Brown resulted, in part, from lack of black civic participation. While the population of Ferguson is nearly 70 percent African American, only 6 percent cast a ballot in the last municipal elections. This led to a majority-black city where the mayor...

A billboard advertising a line of bulletproof vests for young boys has appeared near the Florida capital in Tallahassee. Chilling, controversial and undeniably eye-catching, the ad is part of the “Vest or Vote” campaign mounted by The Dream Defenders. The Florida-based social justice organization is rallying residents to vote in Florida’s midterm election Nov. 4. According to a report on Jacksonville’s CBS 47 Action News, the group hopes to elect candidates who will repeal the state's controversial stand-your-ground law. According to The BRPR Group, the Miami-based advertising agency behind the campaign, the billboard was modeled after youth clothing ads like...

In a week that saw the capital city remove a mural that paid tribute to Ferguson, Mo. teenager Michael Brown, who was gunned down by a police officer while unarmed, a forum will be held to discuss the 18-year-old’s last words, in addition to other murder victims. Playing off the Seven Last Words of Jesus, the Shiloh Baptist Church will hold an event Friday to dissect the last words of seven murder victims, including Brown, Amadou Diallo, Shantel Davis, Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Renisha McBride. Preachers assigned to discussing each victim’s last words, include Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson...

According to Merriam-Webster, the first known use of the term “racism” was in 1933, but the practice of racism was well learned by that time. In the United States, slaves were brought to this land by Europeans who thought that the skin color and customs of the African captives made them less than equal to the “civilized” White settlers. That belief system permeated the treatment of Blacks in this country for hundreds of years, and in many ways, has yet to cease. The term is defined by Merriam-Webster as, “a belief that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a...

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in the October issue of Townhall Magazine.Over the past few months we’ve heard an awful lot about the police shooting of “unarmed” teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Before his death, Brown was caught on video in a strong-arm robbery of a convenience store. The video shows Brown was “unarmed” and used his personal strength to push away and assault a store clerk who tried to stop him from stealing a $50 pack of cigars. When Officer Darren Wilson stopped Brown and a friend in the middle of the road, an altercation allegedly occurred....

I’m not a psychiatrist, I haven’t sat down and interviewed George Zimmerman or the cop who shot Michael Brown, I don’t know what their motives are, I don’t know what kind of people they are, what kind of childhood traumas they have experienced. But I don’t think it’s nuts that in a certain way, when that cop killed Michael Brown, and when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, they were killing Barack Obama.

EATONVILLE -- Rev. Al Sharpton spoke to the congregation at the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Eatonville, invoking Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis as he urged members to vote in the upcoming election. “How do we answer Stand Your Ground in Florida? How do we answer our outrage over Trayvon Martin? How do we answer the things that we consider abusive and disrespectful and offensive? We go to the polls!" Sharpton said Tuesday. "They should not say, in the light of all that we’ve seen in Florida, that we were missing in action when we had an opportunity to do...

George Zimmerman may already be destitute and homeless due to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a Federal Justice Department investigation into whether or not Zimmerman committed civil rights violations has the potential to put him behind bars. In a related report by The Inquisitr, Robert Zimmerman is planning a Zimmerman family reality TV show and a line of self-defense products called Brand Z. A producer named Beth Marshall is working on a series of plays as a tribute to Trayvon Martin, and she claims Martin would be still be alive today if he was white like her own son. The...

We want to believe in justice for all, but when guns are in white privileged hands, blind justice remains impossible to expect.“I think it’s a vindication for justice.” Angela Corey said that. This is the same Angela Corey whose office failed, not so long ago, to secure a guilty verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman for the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. But there was the Florida state attorney on Wednesday afternoon, having secured a guilty verdict – delivered by a mostly white-male jury in about five hours – that condemned Michael Dunn to a minimum of 25 years...

Few people thought they would, right? Holder’s teased friendly audiences from time to time with vague promises that “justice” would be done but even he’s been at pains to note that civil-rights cases are hard to win. I think that, ever since the Rodney King trials, the public has a hazy sense that if a state prosecutor can’t get a conviction in a racially charged case that’s gotten national attention, the feds will swoop in and file their own charges as a fallback option. It’s not a matter of law, it’s a matter of politics: If people are sufficiently...

The Justice Department is not expected to bring civil rights charges against George Zimmerman in the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, according to three law enforcement officials, despite allegations that the killing was racially motivated. The federal investigation of Zimmerman was opened two years ago by the department’s civil rights division, but officials said there is insufficient evidence to bring federal charges. The investigation technically remains open, but it is all but certain the department will close it. …

Winston Churchill once said, “You have enemies? Good. That means you stood up for something in your life.” Is no instance is this quote more applicable than the tenure of Attorney General Eric Holder, who stepped down on Thursday after leading the Department of Justice for six years and in, turn, became a prime target for Republicans intent on destroying everything that both he and the Obama Administration stood for. Despite constant attacks, as well as deliberate misinformation by Republicans, Holder stood strong and for six years became a champion for civil rights, gay rights, and voting rights. Holder himself...

Mayor Kevin Johnson will convene a two-day forum of the U.S. Conference of Mayors this weekend in Sacramento that will include a session discussing the response to the violence in Ferguson, Mo. The attorney representing the family of Michael Brown, the young man killed by police in Ferguson in August, will be part of the panel discussion. Attorney Benjamin Crump also represents the family of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager shot in 2012 by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla....

I was stunned by the anger and sarcasm Harry J. Mallory directed toward a dead teenager, Trayvon Martin, in the Sept. 17 letters. It was over the top and then some (“Cartoon comparing Putin to Zimmerman case went too far”). His reasoning seems pretty easy to understand: Trayvon was black; blacks are thugs; so all George Zimmerman did was create a “dead thug.” Sadly, this sort of (racism) seems pretty common among the far right these days. Here’s what I remember: Trayvon Martin was simply walking home. George Zimmerman targeted him because he was black. Zimmerman followed Trayvon, even after...

ith a smile on his face, George Zimmerman spent Saturday afternoon posing for photos, sharing hugs and shaking hands with gun enthusiasts at a firearms expo in Lake Mary.. "It's so odd to me," said Zimmerman, about the celebrity treatment he receives in public. "[But] it is appreciated." In his first interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Zimmerman described life after his acquittal last year in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The former Neighborhood Watch volunteer shot the unarmed black teen in Sanford on Feb. 26, 2012. Now life for the 30-year-old is completely different. He's always moving. He's...

The explosive wave of reactions to the fatal shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri hasn’t lost its momentum just yet. Black student leaders have come together in support of racial equality with the formation of a multi-university group, the Black Ivy Coalition. The coalition dedicated to social change is comprised of members from all eight Ivy League institutions, with plans to gain student memberships from colleges across the nation, and was officiated with the release of a statement summarizing their motivations and ambitions (see full text below). Their tagline? “It is now time for our generation to...

Rapper Snoop Dogg and the League of Young Voters came together to host a panel about police brutality and the chaotic events that unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri, after 18-year-old Michael Brown was fatally shot. In addition to Snoop Dogg, the panel also welcomed Michael Brown’s father, Michael Brown Sr.; Jordan Davis’ mother, Lucia McBath; attorney Benjamin Crump and Chuck Creekmur of AllHipHop. The panel, titled No Guns Allowed: Fallout From Ferguson, took place during the BET Hip-Hop Awards weekend in Atlanta. The group of panelists discussed what the African-American community needs to do to help solve issues of racism and...