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Civil Rights
Supreme Court Clears Path Toward Post-Conviction DNA Testing
By Andrew Cohen - Politics DailyThe United States Supreme Court Monday made it easier for convicted prisoners to seek and obtain post-trial DNA testing even over the objections of law enforcement officials. In a 6-3 ruling authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court ruled that death row inmate Henry Skinner could now proceed to seek crime-scene testing from Texas authorities under the federal civil rights law known as "Section 1983." Related Stories The Important Supreme Court Decision You Didn't Hear About Last Week Supreme Court's 8-1 Westboro Ruling -- and Alito's Passionate ...
Westboro's 'Church of Hate' Leader Once Championed Civil Rights
By Mara Gay - AOL NewsFred Phelps has been testing America's laws -- and patience -- for years, long before the Supreme Court today gave his anti-gay church group the OK to protest its gospel of hate at military funerals. But in the beginning, Phelps, now the 80-year-old pastor of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, had a very different cause -- civil rights. Before the bombastic, Kansas-based preacher began picketing high-profile funerals with signs like, "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," he was a prominent civil-rights attorney known for waging successful anti-discrimination suits in ...
Obama Won't Defend DOMA: Instant Reactions
By Mary Phillips-Sandy - AOL NewsPresident Barack Obama has decided that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and has ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to stop defending it in federal court. Until now, the Department of Justice has defended Section 3 of DOMA in court challenges. This section states that "the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife." Two DOMA challenges are currently pending in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In a letter to Congress ...
Confronting Civil Rights History, Face to Face
By Mary C. Curtis - Politics DailyIn one of comedian's Louis C.K.'s routines, he jokes that even well-educated whites tend to indulge in a little wishful thinking when it comes to recalling our country's history. Each year, he says, they "add 100 years to how long ago slavery was," guessing the number at maybe 400, instead of realizing it's closer to 140 -- "two 70-year-old ladies living and dying back-to-back." And, he adds, it's not as though it's been "parades and presents ever since." It's funny, as most of the best jokes are, because it's rooted in truth. His words crossed my mind when I came face to face with B.B. ...
Lessons From Ed Sanders, a Quiet Trailblazer for Educational Equality
By Mary C. Curtis - Politics DailyCHARLOTTE, N.C. – The friends, family and admirers who filled the pews at Covenant Presbyterian Church came to honor Ed Sanders, the no-nonsense son of Simpsonville, S.C., who became one of the quiet heroes of the integration of Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools. It was also a way to honor the promise that has yet to be fulfilled – equal educational opportunity for all Americans. At his funeral on Tuesday, everyone could agree that what the 88-year-old former high school principal did in 1957 – escort 16-year-old Gus Roberts through the doors at Central High – was the ...
Haley Barbour Backtracks: The Citizens Council, Revisited
By Steven Hoffer - AOL NewsIs that your final answer? Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour released a statement today clarifying recent remarks made in an interview with The Weekly Standard that many perceived as downplaying the hardships blacks experienced during the civil rights era. Here is Barbour's statement. When asked why my hometown in Mississippi did not suffer the same racial violence when I was a young man that accompanied other towns' integration efforts, I accurately said the community leadership wouldn't tolerate it and helped prevent violence there. My point was my town rejected the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody ...
Haley Barbour Doesn't Remember the Civil Rights Era as 'Being That Bad'
By Steven Hoffer - AOL NewsMississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's recollection of the civil rights era is making some headlines. "I just don't remember it as being that bad," Barbour told the Weekly Standard during an interview for a recent profile. "I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in '62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white." When asked about what King spoke about that day, Barbour replied: "I don't really remember. The truth is, we couldn't hear very well. We were sort of out there on the periphery. We just sat on our cars, watching the girls, talking, doing what boys ...
Rosa Parks Honored by Google With Montgomery Bus Doodle
By Steven Hoffer - AOL News(Dec. 1) -- The folks at Google are commemorating the 55th anniversary of one of the civil rights movement's great heroes. On this day in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, which sparked the 381-day Montgomery, Ala., bus boycotts and turned the 42-year-old seamstress into a critical symbol of the fight against segregation laws in the South. Parks died on Oct. 4, 2005, but her legacy remains a driving force in the push for racial equality. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in ...
Jimmie Lee Jackson Killer Gets Six Months in Jail After Plea Deal
By J. Richard - AOL News(Nov. 15) -- Justice was delayed, but in the end it was not denied. Forty-five years after civil rights worker Jimmie Lee Jackson was slain in Alabama, former state trooper James Bonard Fowler, now 77, has pleaded guilty to the crime. His plea means that Fowler will now serve six months in jail. Fowler first confessed to killing Jackson back in a 2004 interview with the Anniston Star, telling reporters he was acting in self-defense. Jackson, whose protests helped paved the way for the Voting Rights Act, was shot when a melee erupted inside the Marion, Ala., cafe where he and others had ...
Post-Juan Williams, 'Pictures of Muslims Wearing Things' Tumblr Launches
By David Knowles - AOL News
(Oct. 22) -- Does the sight of Muslims make you nervous? If so, you might want to avoid a new Tumblr blog titled "Pictures of Muslims Wearing Things," which was launched by an anonymous author this week. "Former NPR analyst Juan Williams, among other ignorant people, has an irrational fear of Muslims, and thinks you can identify them based on what they look like," the blog's author states. "Here I will post pictures of Muslims wearing all sorts of things in an attempt to refute that there is such a thing as 'Muslim garb' or a Muslim look." muslimswearingthings.tumblr.com "Pictures of ...
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