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Marissa Alexander, Woman Sentenced To 20 Years For Firing Warning Shot in Florida, Gets New Trial

By goodblacknews on September 26, 2013

Marissa Alexander new trialTALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A Florida woman serving 20 years in prison for firing a shot at her estranged husband during an argument will get a new trial, though she will not be able to invoke a “stand your ground” defense, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

The case of Marissa Alexander, a Jacksonville mother of three, has been used by critics of Florida’s “stand your ground” law and mandatory minimum sentences to argue that the state’s justice system is skewed against defendants who are black.
The 1st District Court of Appeal ruled that Alexander deserves a new trial because the trial judge handling her case did not properly instruct the jury regarding what is needed to prove self-defense.
The ruling, written by Judge Robert Benton, said the instructions constituted a “fundamental error” and required Alexander to prove self-defense “beyond a reasonable doubt.”  But the court also made it clear in its ruling that the judge was right to block Alexander from using the state’s “stand your ground” law as a way to defend her actions. That law generally removes people’s duty to retreat in the face of possible danger and allows them to use of deadly force if they believe their lives are in danger.
Faith Gay, one of the attorneys representing the 33-year-old Alexander, said she was grateful for the “thorough consideration” provided by the appeals court.  “We are looking forward to taking the case back to trial,” Gay said.

'Invisible Man' Ban Rescinded by North Carolina School Board After Community Backlash

By goodblacknews on September 26, 2013

"Invisible Man" author Ralph Ellison and his wife, Fanny, at their home in New York in 1972, 20 years after the novel's publication. (Nancy Crampton / Knopf)
“Invisible Man” author Ralph Ellison and his wife, Fanny, at their home in New York in 1972, 20 years after the novel’s publication. (Nancy Crampton / Knopf)

ASHEBORO, N.C. — High school students in Randolph County once again can get “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison’s classic 1952 novel of alienation and racial discrimination, at school libraries.  Nine days after the county school board banned the book, it reversed itself at a hastily called special meeting Wednesday night, voting 6 to 1 to return the novel to school bookshelves. Several board members apologized for the ban and said they had been chastened by an outpouring of angry objections from county residents.

The backlash caught board members by surprise. Several said they had been inundated with emails begging them to reconsider. Others conceded that they had acted rashly and should have consulted with the superintendent and rank-and-file teachers in the 16,000-student district, about 85 miles northeast of Charlotte.  Several said the public reaction had opened their eyes to viewpoints they had not considered and broadened their outlook on the importance of all types of literature.
“We may have been hammered on this and we may have made a mistake, but at least we’re big enough to admit it,’’ said board member Gary Cook, who had voted for the ban but reversed himself Wednesday.  The meeting, in a packed boardroom, lasted only 45 minutes. The vote to rescind the ban took a few seconds, with only board member Gary Mason dissenting. He called the book “not appropriate for young teenagers.”
The board’s abrupt reversal came in the middle of the annual Banned Books Week sponsored nationally by the American Library Assn., which celebrates the freedom to read. The association and the Kids’ Right to Read Project wrote the school board condemning the ban and asking that it be reversed.

Jury Awards $1 Million To John Collins, Who Sued City of Chicago For False Police Charges

By goodblacknews on September 25, 2013
John Collins
John Collins, who was wrongfully imprisoned in Cook County Jail for over a year.

Cook County jurors on Tuesday awarded $1 million to a man who was wrongfully held in jail for more than a year.  John Collins, a 42-year-old Chicago barber, was arrested in 2006 and spent 385 days in jail due to false charges of aggravated battery to a police office, officials said.  After a three-day trial, a jury found the city of Chicago and Chicago police Officer Michael Garza guilty of malicious prosecution.

“I felt like a right in the pool of wrong,” Collins said of his time in jail. “I didn’t want to swim in that pool no more, but I didn’t want to drown either. So I kept fighting.”  When officers pulled Collins over in 2006, he’d just left his salon.  One officer accused him of kicking and spitting on them, but a jury acquitted Collins and he was released from Cook County in 2007.

“All I know is that I ended up a victim,” he said. Collins said the trauma and distress is still with him. “I was just devastated,” he said. “I was just devastated.” Collins missed the birth of his now 7-year-old son Elwood while in jail, a moment he said he can never get back.  Since his release, Collins has worked continuously in his Dolton salon, and noted the verdict brings him a step closer to having his life back.  “I’m thankful that someone’s seen justice,” he said.

A spokesman for the city’s Law Department said they are “disappointed” in the verdict in the case and said they plan to “explore all available options including an appeal.”

article by Natalie Martinez via nbcchicago.com

Three African-Americans Earn MacArthur Fellowships in 2013

By goodblacknews on September 25, 2013
Three African-American fellows have been named to this year's MacArthur Fellows. Pictured from left-right are Kyle Abraham, Tarell McCraney and Carrie Mae Weems. (Photos courtesy of The MacArthur Foundation)
Three African-American fellows have been named to this year’s MacArthur Fellows. Pictured from left-right are Kyle Abraham, Tarell McCraney and Carrie Mae Weems. (Photos courtesy of The MacArthur Foundation)

Twenty-four talented individuals were recognized Wednesday morning after they were named the 2013 class of MacArthur fellows – an honor given to an extraordinary group made up of individuals who have achieved much success in their personal creative pursuits.  This year, three African-Americans — Kyle Abraham, Tarell McCraney and Carrie Mae Weems – have been identified by the MacArthur Foundation and join the group of fellows who are each awarded $625,000 to use as they wish towards their creative visions.
“This year’s class of MacArthur Fellows is an extraordinary group of individuals who collectively reflect the breadth and depth of American creativity,” said Cecilia Conrad, Vice President, MacArthur Fellows Program.  “They are artists, social innovators, scientists, and humanists who are working to improve the human condition and to preserve and sustain our natural and cultural heritage. Their stories should inspire each of us to consider our own potential to contribute our talents for the betterment of humankind.”
In particular, the work of these three visonaries attempts to teach lessons and transform the ideas associated with the African-American experience.  Abraham is a New-York-based dancer and choreographer whose work is often inspired by some of his childhood memories growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Shaquille O’Neal Acquires Minority Ownership Stake in Sacramento Kings

By goodblacknews on September 23, 2013
NBA basketball player Shaquille O'Neal speaks onstage at the 27th Annual Great Sports Legends Dinner to benefit the Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis at The Waldorf=Astoria on September 24, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for The Buoniconti Fund To Cure Paralysis)
NBA basketball player Shaquille O’Neal speaks onstage at the 27th Annual Great Sports Legends Dinner on September 24, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for The Buoniconti Fund To Cure Paralysis)

Shaquille O’Neal is joining the ownership group of the Sacramento Kings.  The Kings announced Monday that O’Neal has acquired a minority stake in the team under new owner Vivek Ranadive. The Kings will introduce the four-time NBA champion at a news conference Tuesday in Sacramento.
O’Neal tormented the Kings during the height of his career with the Los Angeles Lakers, and handed Sacramento its biggest blow by rallying the Lakers from a 3-2 deficit to win the 2002 Western Conference finals.  O’Neal retired after the 2010-11 season and has worked as an analyst for TNT the last two seasons.
article by Antonio Gonzalez, AP via thegrio.com

Best-Selling Slave Memoir "The Bondswoman's Narrative" is Authenticated by South Carolina Professor

By goodblacknews on September 23, 2013

“By Hannah Crafts,” reads this page from the 1850s novel “The Bondwoman’s Narrative.” (The Bondwoman's Narrative, Beineke Library, Yale University)
“By Hannah Crafts,” reads this page from the 1850s novel “The Bondwoman’s Narrative.” (The Bondwoman’s Narrative, Beineke Library, Yale University)

In 2002, a novel thought to be the first written by an African-American woman became a best seller, praised for its dramatic depiction of Southern life in the mid-1850s through the observant eyes of a refined and literate house servant.  But one part of the story remained a tantalizing secret: the author’s identity.
John Wheeler lived on the plantation where Hannah Bond escaped slavery.

That literary mystery may have been solved by a professor of English in South Carolina, who said this week that after years of research, he has discovered the novelist’s name: Hannah Bond, a slave on a North Carolina plantation owned by John Hill Wheeler, is the actual writer of “The Bondwoman’s Narrative,” the book signed by Hannah Crafts.

Beyond simply identifying the author, the professor’s research offers insight into one of the central mysteries of the novel, believed to be semi-autobiographical: how a house slave with limited access to education and books was heavily influenced by the great literature of her time, like “Bleak House” and “Jane Eyre,” and how she managed to pull off a daring escape from servitude, disguised as a man.

The professor, Gregg Hecimovich, the chairman of the English department at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., has uncovered previously unknown details about Bond’s life that have shed light on how the novel was possibly written. The heavy influences of Dickens, for instance, particularly from “Bleak House,” can be explained by Bond’s onetime servitude on a plantation that routinely kept boarders from a nearby girls’ school; the curriculum there required the girls to recite passages of “Bleak House” from memory. Bond, secretly forming her own novel, could have listened while they studied, or spirited away a copy to read.

The research also shows that Bond may have been given a man’s suit by a member of the Wheeler family who was sympathetic to her desire to flee.

Professor Hecimovich, 44, said that he has verified the writer’s identity through wills, diaries, handwritten almanacs and public records. He intends to publish his full findings in a book, tentatively titled “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts.”

His work has been reviewed by several scholars who vouch for its authenticity, including Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation’s pre-eminent scholars of African-American history. Professor Gates bought the obscure manuscript at auction in 2001.

Karamba Diaby Elected To German Parliament, Becomes 1st Black Member

By goodblacknews on September 23, 2013

karamba-diaby-16x9
Karamba Diaby, a Senegal-born chemist, has become Germany’s first black federal lawmaker, and a woman of Turkish origin has become the first Muslim elected to Parliament from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party, officials said Monday.
Until now there were no black lawmakers in Parliament, despite more than 500,000 people of recent African origin believed to be living in Germany.  “My election into the German Parliament is of historical importance,” said Karamba Diaby, 51, who moved to the city of Halle in 1986 after receiving a scholarship to study in communist East Germany.
Diaby, who gained German citizenship in 2001, said his priority would be to promote equal opportunities in education. “Every child born in Germany should have the chance to be successful in school regardless of their social background or the income of their parents,” he said.
RELATED POST: Senegal Native Karamba Diaby Poised to Become 1st Black Member of German Parliament
article by Yesha Callahan via clutchmagonline.com

Attorney General Eric Holder Expands Changes in Drug-Case Policy

By goodblacknews on September 22, 2013
Attorney General Eric Holder, speaks about the mandatory minimum policy at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's 2013 annual legislative conference in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Attorney General Eric Holder, speaks about the mandatory minimum policy at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 2013 annual legislative conference in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is expanding a major change in federal drug sentencing policy to cover pending drug cases, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday.  Last month, Holder said certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders — those without ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels — no longer will be charged with offenses that impose severe mandatory minimum sentences.

Holder said he now has broadened the new policy to cover defendants who have not yet been convicted in drug cases that could involve lengthy mandatory prison sentences. The policy also may be applied, at the discretion of prosecutors, to a defendant who has entered a guilty plea, but has not yet been sentenced.  Mandatory minimum prison sentences, a legacy of the government’s war on drugs, limit the discretion of judges to impose shorter prison terms.  Holder says the government should reserve the most severe prison terms for serious, high-level or violent drug traffickers.
“Some federal drug statutes that mandate inflexible sentences — regardless of the individual conduct at issue in a particular case — do not serve public safety when they’re applied indiscriminately,” Holder told a criminal justice issues forum of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said that in one case, a first-time offender arrested with less than 2 ounces of cocaine was sentenced to 10 years in prison because of mandatory sentencing guidelines. Paul has drafted legislation along with committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., that would give judges wider sentencing discretion as one way to relieve prison overcrowding and bring down the exploding costs of operating prisons.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press via thegrio.com

Beyoncé and Jay Z Rank as Forbes’ Highest Earning Power Couple

By goodblacknews on September 22, 2013

Beyonce and her husband Jay-Z attend a rally honoring Trayvon Martin outside One Police Plaza in Manhattan on July 20, 2013 in New York City. Demonstrators have gathered in various cities across the country to protest the acquittal of neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman and press for his federal prosecution in the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images)
Beyonce and her husband Jay Z attend a rally honoring Trayvon Martin outside One Police Plaza in Manhattan on July 20, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images)

Although African-Americans weren’t prominent in Forbes’ annual list of the richest Americans, they are definitely well-represented among Hollywood power couples.  The finance magazine has released its list of the highest earning celebrity couples and perhaps to the surprise of no one rapper Jay Z and his wife, pop icon Beyoncé, top the list.  The chart topping duo earned $95 million last year through their concerts, album sales and endorsements, putting them ahead of couples like Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen, as well as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, who just welcomed their first child, a daughter named North, into the world, came in 5th overall, earning $30 million.  Still none of these couples’ earning power combined reaches the height of say Oprah Winfrey, who, bolstered by rising OWN ratings, has made close to $3 billion in the last year.
article via thegrio.com

R.I.P. Former Heavyweight Boxing Champion Ken Norton

By goodblacknews on September 19, 2013
Ken Norton connects with a left to the head of Muhammad Ali during a bout in Inglewood, Calif., in 1973.

Ken Norton, who had three memorable fights with Muhammad Ali, breaking Ali’s jaw in winning their first bout, then losing twice, and who went on to become the World Boxing Council heavyweight champion, died Wednesday in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, Nevada. He was 70.

His death was confirmed by his son Ken Jr., an assistant coach with the Seattle Seahawks of the N.F.L. and a pro linebacker for 13 seasons, The Associated Press said. Norton had been in poor health for several years after sustaining a series of strokes, The A.P. reported.

Norton defeated Ali on a 12-round split decision in 1973 to capture the North American Boxing Federation heavyweight title. Norton was an exceptionally muscular 6 feet 2 inches and 220 pounds, but he was a decided underdog in the first Ali fight.

“Ali thought it would be an easy fight,” Norton’s former manager, Gene Kilroy, was quoted by The A.P. as saying. “But Norton was unorthodox. Instead of jabbing from above like most fighters, he would put his hand down and jab up at Ali.”  Kilroy said that after the fight, Norton visited Ali at the hospital where he was getting his broken jaw wired, and Ali told him he never wanted to fight him again.