The Cambridge Police Department in Massachusetts dropped a disorderly conduct charge against Gates, calling his arrest “regrettable and unfortunate” in a statement yesterday. Police arrested Gates at his home July 16 after a verbal confrontation with him. They said they were called to the house after a passerby mistook Gates’ effort to open his jammed front door for a break-in.

E-mails and telephone calls flew among black academics around the U.S. after Gates, 58, a leading scholar who has written about race and justice, was handcuffed on the front porch of his home, and only three blocks from the Harvard campus where he teaches. Kerry Haynie, a political scientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, said he received more than a dozen calls and e-mails from friends about Gates’s trouble.

“It’s shocking,” Haynie said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Even before this incident came up, I spoke with a reporter about whether we’re in a post-race society. My immediate thought was, hell no.”

Source: bloomberg

Working with the CRP Future Pilot Flight School in Dallas, American and comedian Steve Harvey have put together an event this weekend to promote aviation among young African American men. Harvey is coming in Saturday to talk to about 100 African American guys about aviation and African Americans who participated in aviation.

According to organizers of this weekend’s event, the 100 men who will participate in the Steve Harvey Mentoring Weekend were picked from more than 1,000 applicants.

In particular, the young men will hear about the Tuskegee Airmen, the group of African American aviators who distinguished themselves in World War II. Nearly 1,000 were trained at the Tuskegee, Ala., Army Air Field between 1941 and 1946.

The youths will get to look at various military aircraft. They’ll also meet David Harris, a pilot who in 1964 was the first African American to fly for American Airlines. Harris retired from American in 1994.

Source: dallasnews.com

“There is an enormous achievement and opportunity gap impacting African-American youth as it relates to grade level education and higher education opportunities. This year’s record setting conference tackled these issues from a global perspective, finding solutions to educating our young men and women and directing our members to act and inspire others to act on the solutions discussed,” Chairman of the 100 Black Men of America, Inc., Al Dotson, Jr., Esq. This year’s historic event broke conference attendance records for members, spouses, youth and corporate partners. In addition to the generous support of the corporate sponsors, a number of partnering organizations made significant financial investments and launched a number of programs during the conference. “Thanks to the generosity of our corporate partners, we are able to impact lives globally as we better our communities, strengthen our families and prepare our youth for a brighter future,” added Dotson.

Source: marketwatch.com

The Tribune was founded in 1884, when the city had only 108,000 African Americans, few of them literate.

Blacks “were forbidden to learn to read and write,” said Robert W. Bogle, current publisher of the nation’s oldest continuously published African American newspaper. “But Chris thought those who were educated could pass the word on.”

Bogle and an array of dignitaries including Mayor Michael Nutter and Pennsylvania’s U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter Sunday kicked off a year-long celebration of the Tribune’s 125th anniversary.

A striking grey granite monument hailing Perry as “Publisher, Writer, Statesman, Civil Rights Activist” was unveiled at Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, the nation’s oldest public African American cemetery.

“All these years, Chris never had a marker,” said Bogle, dapper in a three-piece suit, bow tie and pocket square. “The Tribune felt it was important that he have one.”

The dedication was followed by a rousing yet reverent, balloon-studded service at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in the city’s Overbrook section.

Source: philly.com

The planned filing, confirmed by Obama administration officials, would be the third-largest in U.S. history and the largest-ever U.S. manufacturing bankruptcy.

The decision to push GM into a fast-track bankruptcy, and provide $30 billion of additional taxpayer funds to restructure the automaker is a huge gamble for the Obama presidency.

But in a sign of progress in the government’s high-stakes effort, a bankruptcy judge approved the sale of substantially all of U.S. automaker Chrysler’s assets to a group led by Italy’s Fiat in an opinion filed late on Sunday.

Chrysler’s bankruptcy, also financed by the U.S. Treasury, has been widely seen as a test run for the much bigger and more complex reorganization of GM.

The reverend is scheduled to deliver the keynote address later Sunday at the 54th Detroit NAACP Fight for Freedom Fund dinner at Detroit’s Cobo Center.

Former speakers at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s largest annual fundraiser have included President Barack Obama when he was the U.S. Senator for Illinois; his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.; and Bill Clinton.

Source: AP

A mind that is cluttered with money worries may be flooded with one or two or all of these thoughts at one time or another. Maybe you were there once in your life, maybe not. Most people with financial troubles are anxious, confused, angry, harbor feelings of hopelessness, insecurity, and uncertainty about future financial outcomes. Consequently, this state of mind affects everything, including work performance.

It’s time for a financial assessment. Is your trouble because you have maxed out your credit cards? Maybe you have more month than money. Do you have medical expenses? Are you sick and can’t work? Have you lost your job, or been downsized? Where did the shortage originate?

Once you have assessed where the problem lie, then you can look at remedies. Money troubles in plain simple English are not enough money to cover your present lifestyle. The causes may or may not be within your control.

When the funds are low, the logical answer would be to make more but what most people do is fret about it. Some spend more time worrying about what they don’t have while others add on a second job.

Money troubles are not going to go away without something changing. Worry will not make up the deficit but initiating a plan of action will.

Make a list of all of your monthly household living expenses: mortgage, rent, utility bills, etc.

List Your Debts (creditors you owe)

List your entertainment

List miscellaneous (lunch, coffee, snacks, etc.)

Write in how much you pay on each. Total that amount.

List your sources of income (job, spouse, etc.). Take the total from this and subtract it from what you spend on household, debts and entertainment. If that figure shows you are not covering your expenses, look back at your expenses; see what you can eliminate from entertainment. Make a list of other areas you are expending money, such as lunch, dry cleaning, hair cuts, etc.

Try taking your lunch from home rather than buying lunch. The average lunch cost about $7.00. That $7.00 for five days comes to $35.00 a week, totaling $140.00 a month. Imagine if you, your wife and children spent the same amount weekly,that would amount to a partial mortgage or rental payment.

Take a look at your Debt. Began to work from the smallest to the largest. Take the money you saved from not buying, let’s say lunch, and redirect the total amount towards paying off the smallest debt first.

As you pay off each debt, take that money and add it to the next smallest debt, working your way to the largest, until you have eliminated your debt completely. While you are doing this, examine your household budget.

Look at how to eliminate some of your other expenditures; for example, if you have a high cell phone bill, you might want to exchange that cell phone for one with a more fixed rate. Maybe instead of hiring a lawn service, you could cut the grass yourself. Perhaps you might visit Barber or cosmetology trade schools to obtain these services at a reduced rate.

Look at what you are already doing first to find the extra money. If you still need more to make up the deficit, then you might look at your skills and talents: start a home-based business. It’s something you could do as a family.

Money troubles can be conquered, if you are willing to take a few extra steps. Don’t look at the impossible debt mountain, began the climb one step at a time. And, yes, it is okay to reward yourself along the way but keep in mind where you are headed. Don’t overdo it. Once your debt is eliminated, don’t spend the excess money; instead, add it to your future savings options.

Understand that paying your debts down will not take place overnight but if you are consistent it will happen.

Author Bio
Blondie L. Clayton is a Realization StrategistTM, Publishing Coach the co-founder of the Online School of publishing, Book Publishing and Marketing Coach; works as a freelance writer; hosts the “Author’s Spotlight at Positive Change Radio. Download your free debt free starter kit at blondie2book.com

The Chapter 11 filing, in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, will send shock waves through the entire industry – including Chrysler’s rivals, suppliers, dealers and the hundredsof thousands who rely on the industry for their livelihoods. As part of the filing, the U.S. government will provide up to $3.5 billion in debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing and up to $4.5 billion in exit financing. Obama said he hopes the entire bankruptcy process will take only 30 to 60 days.

Source: Reuters
The bankruptcy signals that Obama is prepared to play hardball with holdout lenders rather than knuckle under to their demands and will likely set the tone for similar discussions with bondholders of General Motors Corp (GM.N) – which is now on the clock to restructure its operations by the end of May.

The arrangement, according to one leading scholar, is one that King would have found offensive.

“I don’t think the Jefferson family, the Lincoln family … I don’t think any other group of family ancestors has been paid a licensing fee for a memorial in Washington,” said Cambridge University historian David Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of King. “One would think any family would be so thrilled to have their forefather celebrated and memorialized in D.C. that it would never dawn on them to ask for a penny.”

King would have been “absolutely scandalized by the profiteering behavior of his children,” Garrow added.

In a rare victory for the short story, Elizabeth Strout’s “Olive Kitteridge,” a collection set in New England and linked by the forthright title character, a math teacher and general scold with an understanding heart. It was the first book of short stories to win since 2000 (Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies”).

Three prize winners centered on racial history, from colonial times to the 20th century.

The general nonfiction award went to “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II” by Douglas A. Blackmon, Atlanta bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. Newsweek editor Jon Meacham won the biography prize for “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,” a best-seller about the populist president whose sympathy for the less fortunate never extended to slaves.

“Jackson represents the best and the worst of us,” Meacham said.

Source: AP

The winners of the design competition — which also include the Freelon Group, Davis Brody Bond and SmithGroup — were chosen over five others, including well-known architects like Norman Foster and Diller Scofidio & Renfro.

The museum is expected to cost $500 million and will be built on a site near the Washington Monument after a three-year design period to turn the winners’ idea into a workable blueprint. The museum was established in 2003 by an act of Congress. And although it does not have a building yet, it has already begun collecting artifacts and conducting seminars and other events, including a recent two-day program on the Black Power movement.

Source: NYTimes

“Do not believe this thing called overnight success — there is no such thing,” he told a throng inside the David Lawrence Hall on the University of Pittsburgh campus last week. “Anyone who’s a success had to bust their (rear) for it. That means when you’re tired, when you’re grumpy, when you’re sick, you have to do more.”

Source: Chicago Sun Times

His divine hope, says Martin, who has repeated the ritual each evening, is “that God uses me as an instrument for his will to provide insight to those who are listening.”

As Martin speaks, in great cascades of words that flow by like a rushing river, it is clear this is no garden-variety pundit. He is African American, the first to host a prime-time cable news program since Alan Keyes’s brief run on MSNBC seven years ago. He is ubiquitous, holding forth in venues as varied as morning radio, a syndicated column, an Essence magazine blog and a forthcoming book. And he is a take-charge family man, insisting that four nieces who he felt had a poor home environment move in with him and his wife, an ordained minister.

Source: Washington Post

Terms of the deal, announced Tuesday, weren’t disclosed.

Founded in 1954, Johnson Products has sales of more than $23 million a year. The company, whose brands include Gentle Treatment and Ultra Sheen, offers more than 30 hair-care products.

Source: LA TImes

Wagoner, who has been the company’s top executive since 2000, has come under increasing fire over the last year as GM’s financial condition has deteriorated. In his eight years at the helm, GM has lost $68 billion and the company’s stock value has declined 95%.

President Obama on Monday will announce his plan to restructure the nation’s auto industry, including the prospect of further short-term financial aid.

Wagoner was asked to depart GM as part of that plan, said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to talk publicly. No indication was given that similar leadership changes would be asked of Chrysler.

Source: LA Times

“Small businesses are the heart of the American economy,” Obama said in announcing the measures. “They’re responsible for half of all private-sector jobs, and they created roughly 70 percent of all new jobs in the past decade. . . . But today, too many entrepreneurs can’t access the capital to start, operate or grow their business. Too many dreams are being deferred or denied by a form letter canceling a line of credit.”

That’s what AARP, the nation’s leading advocacy group for people age 50 and older, was looking for when it tapped Rand, a former Xerox executive and civic leader, to succeed William Novelli as CEO.

Rand, 64, whose appointment as AARP’s first African-American CEO is being announced today, says the civil rights struggles of the 1960s formed the guiding principles of his life.

“The ’60s to me was a transformational time” of working for civil rights for “women, people of color, the poor and the aged. That’s what I was born into and became an activist in at the time.”

Source: USA Today

About 6,000 people attended the meeting at the Los Angeles Convention Center and heard prominent black political and cultural figures discuss African American issues in the era of Barack Obama. The topics included foreclosures, gang violence, education and U.S. diplomacy in Africa.

Source: LA Times

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded on Feb. 12, 1909, by 60 people, both black and white, gathered in a New York apartment to discuss recent race riots and how to fight discrimination. They signed a proclamation known as “The Call,” and the NAACP, initially known as the National Negro Committee, was born.

In its first three decades, the NAACP’s primary mission was to end the lynching of African Americans. The group held protests, persuaded President Woodrow Wilson to make a public statement against lynching, and in 1922 published a full-page ad in major newspapers that said 3,224 people had been lynched between 1889 and 1918 for offenses such as offensive language and refusal to give up land. Educating the American public, NAACP leaders have long believed, is one of the most effective tools to gaining equal rights.

The organization’s crusade then moved to fighting the Jim Crow laws that made segregation legal. NAACP lawyers won numerous courtroom battles that broke down barriers for African Americans and allowed equal access to education, the right to vote and employment opportunities.

A century later, the NAACP now has 225,000 dues-paying members, 1,700 branches, a 64-member executive board and the youngest leader in its history.

Source: SFGate