COMMENTARY By Ray Curry Secretary-Treasurer, UAW Laughter is the Best Medicine, says the Reader’s Digest version of America. But, not when it’s the only medicine, responds the America that far too many have known and continue to know. Not when the United States alone is one of the world’s top 33 most developed countries that ...

By Lauren Poteat NNPA Newswire Washington Correspondent On Sunday night, Dave Chappelle, the legendary, no holds barred comedian, was awarded the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Gifted with a spirit of perseverance, determination and extreme creative intelligence, the award recognizes Chappelle as one of the world’s greatest humorists. Bestowed only on a select ...

By Stacy M.Brown NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent Former U.S. Congressman John Conyers, whose 15-year fight to pass legislation that would make Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a federal holiday, has died. He was 90. The longtime Michigan Democrat represented what is now the state’s 13th Congressional District (which includes parts of western Detroit) for ...

By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Correspondent The Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and a titan of the U.S. Congress, Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD-7), died early Thursday morning on October 17. He was 68. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, the congressman’s wife and chair of the Maryland Democratic Committee, said Cummings died at ...

By Charlene Crowell For more than 40 years, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) has served as a mechanism for the federal government to hold banks and other depository institutions accountable for meeting the credit needs of low and moderate income (LMI) neighborhoods. Enacted in 1977, the CRA has the power to influence applications for bank mergers, charters, ...

By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Correspondent Atatiana Jefferson, a 2014 Xavier University biology graduate who worked in the pharmaceutical industry and was contemplating becoming a doctor, lived a life of purpose that mattered to all of those who gathered for a vigil on Sunday, Oct. 13, outside of her single-story, purple-painted home in Fort ...

by Dianne Anderson By itself, the fight for survival and surviving medical treatment is hard enough for one in eight women that will experience breast cancer in their lifetimes, but recovery and the choices after surgery aren’t much easier. Long-time health advocate Ernesta Wright wants them to know they don’t have to go through it ...

Commentary By Julianne Malveaux October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the proliferation of pink ribbons is about to start. Predatory capitalists will make breast cancer their cause, producing pink t-shirts, pocketbooks, everything. It’s a mixed blessing, this awareness, because too many will make this both a marketing and a profit-making opportunity, while others will ...

By Charlene Crowell For more than a decade, economists, lawmakers, and others have heralded the nation’s economy. Often citing how unemployment has declined as new jobs have been created, or Wall Street trading and major bank profits rising, some might be led to believe that all is well in America. But as Sportin’ Life in ...

By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Correspondent An estimate of more than 10,000 people filled the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in the nation’s capital during the just completed five-day Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF) Annual Legislative Conference (ALC). This year’s ALC theme, “400 Years: Our Legacy, Our Possibilities …” observed 400 years of the ...