On Thursday, King joined other African-American leaders and pastors in a march at the Republican and Democratic National committee headquarters to urge legislators to reject the $10 million in funding PP has pledged to donate to influence the election.

Students for Life of America and the National Black Pro-Life Union have campaigned heavily against the federal funding of Planned Parenthood, who received $350 in taxpayer funds last year alone.

“We are uniting civil rights and moral rights to fulfill the dream of what my uncle called ‘the beloved community,’” said King. “We start where life begins, with the babies, and we will march on until abortion, racism and all society’s ills bow to the truth that we are all one race.”

Last year, after a group of college students posed as phone donors specifying that their money be used to abort a black child, the racist undertones of Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger blazed forth. The fake donors were told their money would be marked for such delivery even after one caller said, “the less blacks out there, the better” and another noted that “there are definitely too many black people in Ohio.” 

Planned Parenthoods across the nation are strategically placed in low-income, highly African-American populated areas – where poor women are more likely to have access. In fact, 62.5% of PP clinics are located in these communities and when you include Hispanic neighborhoods, the number increases to 70%. These same community leaders stood outside of a Washington, DC Planned Parenthood clinic in April, protesting the targeted placement.

Aside from aiming at African-Americans, PP’s activities across America are scandal-laced. In Kansas, a clinic is under criminal investigation for falsifying documents and performing illegal, late-term abortions. A California PP is accused of defrauding taxpayers up to $180 million and an employee of a Los Angeles PP was caught on video tape encouraging a minor girl to lie about her age in order to receive an abortion.

Pro-life activists fear that the $10 million PP has pledged to spend this election season will yield unfair influence over legislators to continue voting for federal funding of the organization. Taxpayers have no choice in what aspect of Planned Parenthood their dollars are channeled so individuals against abortion are forced to fund them.

“While we have a historic presidential election, with the first African-American candidate now the [Democratic] nominee, this racist agenda buy such a large organization cannot be ignored,” said Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union.

Sen. Barack Obama, though, possesses one of the most anti-life records in the Senate, having voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act, a bill that would have protected babies that survived late-term abortions.

Obama recently said he hoped his daughters wouldn’t be “punished” with a baby if they decided to have sex at an inappropriate age.

Planned Parenthood’s deliberate moves to situate themselves among a vulnerable population and use tactics – morals aside – to increase the group’s income deserves national attention and Congressional investigation. Gardner noted that donations received from PP are nothing more than “seed money.”

“It’s one hand watching the others money; it’s ‘you watch my back – I’ll watch your back’ money,” she said, adding that the pro-life agenda is not only a Republican platform item.

It doesn’t matter if your claim to fame is as a Democrat or a Republican…abortion is a plague among Americans – and an epidemic in the black community.”

The racist and anti-Semitic legacy of PP is rooted in the beliefs of its founder, Margaret Sanger, who often said that “we must exterminate the Negro population.” Now, more than 14 million black babies have been aborted by PP, in addition  to 30 million babies of other races.

According to Ricardo Davis of Georgians for Life, Sanger even created a plan to stop the growth of the black community in response to request by “southern state public health officials.” Her magazine, Birth Control Review, published an article praising a book entitled, “The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy.”

Pastor Stephen Broden of the Fair Park Bible Fellowship Church pinpointed the PP donations to the RNC and the DNC as a “conflict of interest” and called on both organizations to return such contributions.

“Planned Parenthood has since its inception targeted the black community to fulfill its eugenic philosophy of ridding society of the poor, unfit and uneducated,” he said. “It is outrageous that our government provides a sizeable percentage of our tax dollars to Planned Parenthood’s budget to exercise its philosophy of dysgenics among black Americans.”

 Australia’s first ever Central Australian Aboriginal male health summit will be held near Alice Springs.

 Since the announcement of the Northern Territory Emergency Response, Aboriginal men in unprecedented numbers have expressed concern to the Congress about the issues of child abuse, pornography, alcohol and other substance use.

The summit offers an opportunity for Aboriginal men to come together and discuss their leadership responsibilities in tackling child sexual abuse and violence in Aboriginal communities.

The Australian Government has provided funding to the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress for the summit, which was initiated by Aboriginal men.

There is an opportunity for Aboriginal men to play a greater protective role within their families and communities. The summit will support participants’ understanding of their responsibilities as fathers, uncles, brothers and sons to provide a supportive, healthy and happy environment for children, and help identify the changes and support services needed to achieve these goals.

The summit, to be held from 30 June to 3 July, will be the first formal gathering of Aboriginal men from remote communities in Central Australia aimed at creating a safe healthy environment for their families and communities.

Men attending the summit will have the opportunity to share their feelings in a supportive environment, and discuss how they can better support their children, families and communities.

The men will present a summary of their discussions and recommendations to a group of Aboriginal grandmothers on the final day of the summit, who will present the summary and recommendations to the Australian Government.

The Australian Government is proud to support this historic summit and looks forward to the outcomes of the men’s discussions. These outcomes will inform the development of Indigenous elements of the first National Men’s Health Policy, launched by the Rudd Government on 8 June 2008.

By Matthew Bigg

 ATLANTA (Reuters) – For black Americans, the road to political inclusion that has allowed Democratic candidate Barack Obama to make a serious bid for the White House has been long and difficult.

 After the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in 1863, a series of laws and amendments to the U.S. constitution allowed Hiram Revels to be elected to the senate in 1870 in Mississippi as the country’s first African American congressman.

 But only a small number of black Americans have entered the U.S. senate or become state governors since then and most of those who have found a slot on a presidential ticket had no chance of winning.

 The most unlikely black American on a presidential ticket was Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery in Maryland in 1818, Douglass taught himself to read, illegal for blacks at the time, fought a slave master and was repeatedly whipped.

 He escaped to New York in 1838, where he became a prominent lecturer, newspaper publisher and a spokesman for the abolition of slavery and for women’s rights.

 His autobiography became a bestseller and he advised President Abraham Lincoln during the civil war and delivered a stirring eulogy at Lincoln’s funeral.

 But when Victoria Woodhull ran for president for the Equal Rights Party in 1872 and named Douglass as her vice-presidential candidate, Douglass, who supported incumbent President Ulysses Grant, never acknowledged that he was on Woodhull’s ticket and never campaigned on his own behalf.

 ”It was a publicity stunt to generate attention to some for the issues she believed in,” said Eric Foner, a leading expert on the period.

NO VOTE

 In the decades after the end of the civil war, two black Americans were elected to the U.S. Senate before a series of laws ushered in an era of disenfranchisement, segregation and lynchings, all of which stifled black political participation.

 In 1932, 1936 and 1940, James Ford, a labor organizer, ran as the Communist Party’s vice-presidential candidate. Though the party gained less than 1 percent of the vote in 1932, some blacks including prominent intellectuals were attracted to its commitment to end racial discrimination as part of the drive for equality for all oppressed workers.

 Until that point, most Americans would have laughed off the idea of a black presidential bid as far-fetched.

 But a change started when, in the teeth of violent opposition, the civil rights movement set winning the right for blacks to vote in the South as a goal. After landmark acts in 1964 and 1965, blacks were able to vote in large numbers.

 Eldridge Cleaver, a leader of the militant Black Power movement, ran for president in 1968 on a pro-civil rights, anti-Vietnam War platform. The same year, comedian and activist Dick Gregory ran for president for the Freedom and Peace Party, which had broken off from Cleaver’s Peace and Freedom Party.

 That year, Charlene Mitchell, another communist, became the first African American woman on a presidential ballot — she ran in two states.

 Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, was also the first African American to vie for a major party’s nomination, attempting to become the Democratic party’s candidate for president in 1972.

 ”With her, it was something of a symbolic political exercise that people, including blacks, didn’t think was possible,” said Lee Edwards, presidential historian at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think-tank. 

“People were not seriously thinking that Chisholm … could become president,” Edwards said.

 FINAL LAP

 Rev. Jesse Jackson, who marched with Rev. Martin Luther King for civil rights, won primary elections in five states during his 1984 bid for the Democratic nomination and in at least 11 states in a repeat bid in 1988, when he was briefly considered the front-runner.

 ”My first run was to put the civil rights agenda, the structure of equality agenda, on the front burner,” Jackson said in an interview. “It broke a cultural barrier”.

 Jackson set his own bids in the context of a process that began in 1954 with a landmark Supreme Court decision on public school desegregation that laid the groundwork for democratic equality and civil rights.

 Obama was “running the final lap of a marathon” that had lasted for decades, Jackson said.

 He said political access for minorities was already entrenched whether Obama won or not, an argument partly backed up by the increasing number of black Americans who have run for president in recent elections.

 Activist Lenora Fulani was the first black woman to have her name on the ballot in 50 states at the 1988 election. Alan Keyes ran for the Republican nomination in 1996 and in 2000.

 Rev. Al Sharpton campaigned for the Democratic nomination for the 2004 presidential election, a campaign in which Sen. Carol Moseley Braun was also briefly a candidate. 

While none has matched Obama’s prominence, he is not the only black candidate in 2008. Cynthia McKinney, an African American former congresswoman from Georgia, is the Green Party’s presumptive nominee.

 (Editing by Michael Christie and Eddie Evans)

 That question has now moved to the forefront of a heated racial battle within the Cherokee nation, which earlier this year voted to exclude a group of blacks and multiracials known as the Freedmen from citizenship in the tribe. The Cherokee say they have the right to determine their membership, while the the Freedmen say their expulsion violates the tribe’s post-Civil War treaty with the U.S. government. As the courts and the Interior Department mull over the case, Rep. Diane Watson, a Democrat from California, introduced legislation Thursday that would block the estimated $300 million in federal funds that the Cherokee receive annually and nullify their gaming rights unless the tribe reinstates equal membership to the Freedmen.

The Freedmen’s expulsion would strip them of tribal voting, housing and health care rights (though they will keep those benefits until the case is resolved). The question of who decides Indian identity affects not just the 2,800 or so Freedmen and 100 times as many Cherokee Nation citizens, but the half a million people who identified themselves on the last census as being of Cherokee heritage but not belonging to the Cherokee Nation — as well as, potentially, the more than 4.3 million Americans who consider themselves at least part American Indian and who could find themselves randomly booted from their tribes. And it creates new complications for the relationship between blacks, who have long held a romantic view of their kinship with American Indians, and Native Americans, some of whom owned black slaves and fought for the Confederacy.

That’s why the case has drawn the ire of the entire Congressional Black Caucus, which, in recognition of the shared suffering of Native and African Americans, has been a consistent champion of Indian causes. When Cherokee voters decided to strip the Freedmen of their full membership they were essentially legitimizing the one-drop rule. At the turn of the 19th century, the U.S. government relied on that racist tool, originally used to determine whether people were black or not, in combination with other factors for a census of people living on Native American tribal lands. Those who seemed Cherokee, or Cherokee mixed with white, were placed on a “Cherokee-by-blood” list. Those who seemed black, or Cherokee mixed with black, were generally placed on a “Freedmen” list. Both lists, known as the Dawes Rolls, were used to divest the collective tribe of its land holdings and apportion acreage to individual members — to make way for white settlers to move in and buy up the individual holdings. But spouses of Freedmen did not receive land allotments, while spouses of Cherokee-by-blood did, and land given to Freedmen was made available for sale sooner than Indian land.

The Cherokee Nation has not kicked out all people of African descent. Some of them were on the Cherokee-by-blood list, and some Cherokees-by-blood intermarried with blacks in the century since the lists were made. Tribal officials say this shows the movement to exclude the Freedmen isn’t racist. “If you really look at the Cherokee population, we have a wide difference of appearances,” says Principal Chief Chad Smith, who is hoping to retain his post in a general election this weekend.

But the Freedmen and their advocates contend that this historic inclusiveness only makes the sudden casting off of people with black blood more unfair. “There really is an ethnic cleansing going on,” says Jon Velie, the attorney who represents the Freedmen. Adds Marilynn Vann, president on the Descendants of the Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes, “It’s not a matter of Indians versus non-Indians. The majority of Freedmen can prove they have Indian blood, if not through DNA then through government documents.”

Both sides, oddly enough, agree that tribal membership is a political designation, rather than a racial one. No one wants to use a strict blood quantum — say, a requirement of 1/16th Cherokee blood — to determine who belongs. “I refuse to create a sieve through which our grandchildren will fall out,” says David Cornsilk, a Cherokee-by-blood who sides with the Freedmen. But each side sees very different implications. “What is identity?” posits Smith. “What is an Indian? What is a Cherokee? I would say it’s someone part of a recognized community.” Recognized, though, meaning on the proper Dawes List — not meaning active members of the tribe, as Vann asserts it should. “Even though Freedmen people didn’t participate in tribal councils for many years, they have served in Cherokee schools and hospitals.”

Perhaps more importantly, they have considered themselves Cherokee their whole lives. “There’s a tremendous amount of cultural identification that former slaves felt with Native tribes, of shared homeland, food, familial ties,” says Tiya Miles, a historian who runs the Native American Studies program at the University of Michigan. Cherokee had slaves. Cherokee also married, and slept with, blacks. And there were blacks who were adopted into the Cherokee tribe though they had no blood or slave ties. They all walked the Trail of Tears with the Cherokee, from the Deep South to Oklahoma.

These are the facts, but for blacks, especially, the mythology holds equally strong sway. A kinship with Native Americans has been a logical way to claim some sort of “non-black” status in a society where black is the most demeaned racial category. It’s also helped ground many black people searching for an original homeland, says Miles. “Native America was connected to freedom,” says Miles. “It was said slaves could run away to tribes and find shelter.” Clearly that wasn’t always the case, and the Cherokee controversy is, for Miles, “the end of innocence about what the historical relationship between African Americans and Native Americans really consisted of.”

It is ironic that the tribe wants to use the Dawes Rolls, which discriminated against Native Americans collectively, as a tool of discrimination against a group of blacks. But the Cherokee case is not without precedent. Several years ago, the Seminoles tried to kick their Freedmen out of their tribe. So, the federal government declared the Seminoles in violation of their treaty and refused to recognize the tribe’s sovereignty. As a result the Freedmen were reincorporated in the Seminole nation in 2003.

That could bode well for the Cherokee Freedmen, if Watson’s bill passes. But Oklahoma Representatives Dan Boren, a Democrat, and Tom Cole, a Republican, have come out against any Congressional action right now, saying it would be premature. Most folks agree that this country owes the Cherokee a lot for centuries of theft and brutal oppression. But if the Cherokee won’t reinstate the Freedmen, or both sides can’t come to a mutually acceptable compromise, the U.S. government will have to take the impolitic step of overruling tribal sovereignty, withholding federal dollars, and ushering the Freedmen back into the fold.

Prominent black leaders such as former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young and Georgia Congressman John Lewis, both onetime associates of Martin Luther King Jr., have endorsed Clinton. But other civil rights movement veterans in Georgia like the Rev. Joseph Lowery and local leaders like Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin have come out for Obama because they believe he shares King’s inclusive beliefs. It is a contentious divide. Young, for his part, has said Obama is too young to be President and should wait until 2016 to run, while Lowery has said that blacks who doubt Obama could do so because of a “slave mentality.”

“No matter how much education they have, they never graduated from the slave mentality,” Lowery told a largely black audience in mid-January. “The slave mentality compels us to say ‘We can’t win. We can’t do.’ Martin said the people who were saying ‘later’ were really saying ‘never.’ But the time to do right is always right now.”

And while the division among the veterans is dramatic, the generational divide is even more stark. Just ask William Jelani Cobb, an associate professor of history at Spelman College in Atlanta. Shortly after Obama’s resounding victory in the South Carolina primary, he asked his African-American history class what it thought about the presidential election. Of the 26 students in his class, he said 25 supported Obama and one was undecided. “When I pointed out what the Clintons had done vis-a-vis black issues, one of my students said ‘Oh, you do something nice for us and then your wife gets to have the presidency?’” Cobb said.

Six days before the South Carolina primary, Obama linked arms with Rev. Raphael G. Warnock — a representative of the younger cohort of African-American community leaders — and sang, “We Shall Overcome” before parishioners at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. Warnock was careful not to issue an endorsement; nevertheless, he introduced Obama to congregants in a manner fit for a king: “Giants have stood here so we don’t take this pulpit lightly, but we invited this brother because he’s committed and brilliant,” Warnock said. “We had to fight, bleed and die just to be able to vote,” Warnock added. “Now we can select Presidents. And now with credibility and intelligence and power, we can run for President.” A Jan. 25 Rasmussen Reports poll, taken before John Edwards dropped out of the race, shows Obama leading Clinton 41% to 35% statewide. According to Rasmussen, Obama leads 59% to 28% among African-American voters; Clinton leads 44% to 25% among white voters.

“I think we’re reaching the point where [the old guard] will need Obama more than he needs them,” says Cobb. “What happened in South Carolina was unprecedented because you had a vast majority of the Democratic establishment lining up behind [Hillary Clinton] and they still could not deliver the vote. It tilted radically in the opposite direction.”

However, Cobb says that while race is “an important landmark [it is] not the determining one. We’re not so hungry for a black President that we’ll vote for anyone.” He sees several calculations going on in the minds of the black electorate — and in each individual black political leader. “If Obama wins the nomination and wins in November, they will be in the position of being a black person who opposed the first black President,” Cobb says. “If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination and then loses in November, then they will be in the position of having picked the wrong horse in the race. If Clinton wins the primaries and in November, then it will stave off the inevitable, that there will be a political cost for supporting her. Some people in the black community are looking at the black politicians who represent them right now and wondering whether they could lose their seat in Congress. The fact that that’s on the table right now is interesting.”

There remains substantial hesitation among older African-American voters. “People with high crossover appeal like Obama are viewed with great skepticism [by black voters], because people aren’t sure whether a candidate like that would come through for them,” says Andra Gillespie, an assistant professor of political science at Emory University. “If Obama were President of the U.S. and had to deal with a Jena 6 or Hurricane Katrina, people wouldn’t be sure whether he could identify the 800-pound gorilla in the room. It’s not a valid critique, but maybe they think he hasn’t been as forceful an advocate for black issues as they’d like.”

With Obama’s chances at winning the Democratic nomination as yet uncertain, Gillespie says there will still be skepticism among black leaders. “If he had a 75 or 80% chance, I think more people would fall in line,” she says.

Indeed, the contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination has provided black radio with several center stage moments. “When you need the black vote you deal with black radio, and that’s what happening,” says Ronald Walters, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland at College Park.

After the Iowa primary, for example, Hillary Clinton seemed to give President Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed civil rights legislation into law, more credit for progress than Martin Luther King Jr.’s “dream” — a perceived stand-in for Obama’s “hope.” When that drew negative attention among black voters, Bill Clinton made the rounds defending his wife’s statements on more than three syndicated black talk radio programs in one day. “Ironically, the use of black radio by the Clinton campaign has been in giving Bill Clinton airtime to denounce Obama,” says Richard Prince, an online media commentator. “During South Carolina this had the reverse effect: turning African Americans against the Clintons.”

The critical role of African-American voters during this election cycle has compelled both the Clinton and Obama campaigns to turn to influential black syndicated radio hosts, such as Bev Smith (whose show on AURN claims to reach 25 million listeners) and Tom Joyner (whose Dallas-based syndicated program says it has 8 million listeners every week), in an effort to spread their campaign message. It also helps them with damage control in the aftermath of negative mainstream media coverage, such as the backlash from controversial statements made by Obama’s former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

“For the first time the candidates are using black radio in a significant way — they used to make their black radio rounds during the week leading up to the November election and that was it,” says Joyner, a 36-year radio veteran. “The only time that ever came close was when Jesse [Jackson] ran in 1984. This election is forcing the candidates to reach out to the black community and talk about issues that matter to us. We hope that this continues with future elections.”

Joyner, by many accounts, is considered an urban industry pioneer. His decision in 1996 to hire former Black Entertainment Television host Tavis Smiley to provide daily political commentary on The Tom Joyner Morning Show was pivotal in raising political activism and awareness among blacks via the airwaves. His endeavors, which continued to gain momentum with both Bill Clinton administrations and the campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry, have extended this election season to include a free hotline for voters to report poll site irregularities. (Joyner will testify in front of Congress this week on the subject.)

“We [black radio hosts] have an opportunity to be griots, the front person that people turn to and listen to, just like black radio was in the ’60s,” says Smith, host of the nation’s only syndicated African-American nightly talk radio show. She says, “We [in black radio] have been here covering the issues that matter to the black community for many years, but the mainstream media did not come to us. With the emergence of Barack Obama we have been vindicated. His candidacy has put the issue of race into the 21st century much in the same way that it was in the 20th century.”

The fact that most black radio hosts, including Ballentine, Baisden and Smith, disproportionately endorse Obama over Clinton, is not surprising, but some industry analysts, including Atlanta-based urban radio consultant Harry Lyles, warn that the practice could potentially become problematic in the long run. “Black radio hosts need to be careful; he’s running for President of the United States, not President of black America,” says Lyles, who has spent more than 25 years on-air and behind the scenes in radio. “They need to stimulate interest and intelligent discussion about the election, not just cheer on Barack Obama. Being a cheerleader can be very dangerous.”

Many black radio hosts say for the time being they’re content with enjoying the renewed interest in the political process sparked by the closely contested Democratic race — a trend they hope will continue. “It’s the greatest,” adds Joyner. “I just hope it lasts; I’ve been wanting to see people this engaged for years.”

Everyone in the Jim Crow South knew the rigid caste system and his or her place in it. Everyone in the Black community knew their life could turn upside down by the mere accusation of ?disrespecting? a White person and their false sense of superiority and privilege. Everyone knew that ?disrespecting? a White female was a capital offense punishable by death.

Despite knowing the grim realities that came with their dark complexion, the young group of African Americans on that freight train that day in March 1931 was still optimistic about the opportunities that awaited them in Memphis.

However, at a train stop in Stevenson, Ala., a young White man claimed that a group of Blacks had tossed him from the train. The sheriff in nearby Paint Rock, Ala ordered officers to arrest all African Americans onboard. When the train stopped, only nine African American men and two White females were onboard.

The two White females claimed the young Black men had gang raped them, and they were arrested on the spot Eight of the nine men were convicted and sentenced to death with very little evidence to suggest they were guilty of any crime.

The group became known as the Scottsboro Nine as the country was rocked by this blatant injustice. The International Labor Defense and the NAACP represented the Scottsboro Nine legally.

Eventually, one of the alleged victims recanted their story, saying that they were prostitutes who were trying to escape charges of vagrancy. The judge dismissed her story and convicted the Scottsboro Nine. On appeal, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the convictions.

Throughout the history of the Jim Crow South, injustices were commonplace. From Emmett Till to the Mississippi burning incident, equal justice for Blacks was completely unheard of throughout the southern region of the country.

However, as time has gone by and the South has become integrated, politically correct Americans have prided themselves on the abolishment of racism and discrimination. Ask a specific demographic if racism still exists and the answer is always an emphatic ?no.? Ask them about the Jena Six, and see if that answer is still as emphatic as before.

?There are a lot of places in the Deep South where (almost) nothing has changed aside from the fact that segregation isn?t legal,? said Mark Potok, director of the intelligence project for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama.

In December 2006, an African American student asked the principal for permission to sit at a ?White-only? tree in the courtyard of Jena High School in Jena, Louisiana. The principal responded by saying that the student could sit anywhere he pleased. The next day students found three nooses hanging from the ?White-only? tree.

Race riots followed, culminating in a schoolyard fight that resulted in six Black teens charged with attempted murder for beating up a White teen who suffered no life threatening injuries.

The Black community of Jena was outraged. Prior to the fight at Jena High school, a Black teen had survived a vicious attack for attending an all-White party. In addition, a White youth had recently pulled a shotgun on three Black teens at a local convenient store. According to CNN.com, the White kid who beat up the Black party crasher faces charges of simple battery and the thug who pulled a shotgun faces no charges.

CNN.com reports that in the convenient store incident, the three Black teens were actually arrested and accused of aggravated battery after grabbing the gun?in what they call self-defense.

Despite the recent racially charged incidents, city official believe race is not an issue in any of these incidents.

?Race is not a major local issue. It?s not a factor in the local people?s lives,? said Mayor Murphy McMillan.

After protests erupted at the school and in the community, District Attorney Reed Walters told the Black students who were protesting under the ?White only? tree that he could ?end their life with a stroke of a pen.?

His words proved prophetic after the Jena Six were arrested and charged with attempted murder although the victim, Justin Barker, 17, was released from the hospital after two hours for a concussion and swollen eye. Barker even attended a ring ceremony later that night, where friends say he was his same jovial self.

The District Attorney added, ?I will not tolerate this type of behavior. To those who act in this manner, I tell you that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and with the harshest crime that the facts justify. When you are convicted, I will seek the maximum penalty allowed by law. I will see to it that you never again menace the students at any school in this parish.?

Mychal Bell, the first of the six to face a trial, will learn his fate this month. According to the Associated Press, an all-White jury on reduced charges of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit it convicted Bell. He faces up to 22 years in prison.

?Can they really do this to me?? Bell asked from his jail cell.

Like the Scottsboro case in 1931, the Jena Six has received support from activist groups such as the NAACP and ACLU.

Al Sharpton recently organized a demonstration in the central Louisiana town to protest a justice system that has ?one rule for White kids and one for Black kids.?

Sharpton added, ?I did not come to Jena to start trouble. I came to Jena to stop trouble.?

According to local residents, Jena is a town divided by race. The town of 3,000 has only 350 African Americans. Most Blacks live in the impoverished Ward 10, while Whites live in a section of town known as ?Snob Hill.?

When a Black teacher was able to purchase a home in the predominately-White ?Snob Hill?, local real estate agents refused to show him a ?White? property even though several were advertised in the local paper, according to CNN.com.

A young African American with a business degree was unable to get a job as a bank teller despite his qualifications.

The racial lines and caste system in Jena is evident and it was only a matter of time before all of the tension exploded.

?The White kids should have gotten more punishment for hanging nooses. If they had, all of the stuff that followed could have been avoided,? said Melvin Washington, the lone African American on the school board.

Despite the negative attention that has recently invaded Jena, injustice along racial lines is still commonplace in American society.

According to the Urban League, Black men are three times more likely than White men to face jail once they have been arrested. Over 24 percent of Blacks arrested in the U.S. in 2005 ended up in jail compared with 8.3 percent of White men.

Blacks also received jail sentences that are on average 15 percent longer than Whites for similar crimes. For aggravated assault, Black men were sentenced to an average of 48 months in jail, which is 33 percent longer than the average of 36 months received by White men, according to the Urban League?s annual State of Black America report.

As Bell awaits his sentencing, and the remainder of the Jena Six await their fate, ask yourself is racism extinct from American society. Sometimes people will have you believe that everyone gets along despite physical differences, and those claiming racism are simply playing the race card to their advantage. The next time you hear this excuse, think of the Jena Six and ask yourself, have we come as far as we think we have?

Todd Smith is the web master for Regal Mag The preeminent Online Magazine for African American Men

After many urban centers in the United States fell into decline for the last five decades, a new revitalization movement has successfully swept the nation. From the West Coast to the East Coast, urban areas are seeing a rebirth, economically and culturally. Americas re-focus on the local economy, as well as independent businesses, has led to the growth in appeal of urban centers.

In addition, the lure of city centers continues to grow stronger with large segments of the population, including younger professionals, empty-nest couples, and individuals without children. The convenience of living downtown, with work and entertainment options, along with the excitement of enjoying the city, has prompted many urban deaths to be re-born.

With that said, the question remains: Will Detroit real estate enjoy the rebirth of urban renaissance?

San Diego: From slums to luxury

From the 1950s to the mid-1980s, Downtown San Diego experienced significant decline. Not only did residents leave, but they were followed by the retail, entertainment, and restaurant establishments that opted to conduct business elsewhere. With the fleeing of both residents and businesses, Downtown turned into an essentially abandoned area, filled with vagrants, drugs, and crime.

Due to city initiatives, Downtown San Diego has experienced a significant revitalization, now becoming one of the most valued property locations in the county. With the opening of the prestigious San Diego Convention Center, San Diego Padres Petco Park, along with the tremendous growth in popularity of the luxurious Gaslamp District, thousands of residential condos were developed to meet the demand. In fact, when the Hard Rock Hotel San Diego offered suites for sale, they sold out in the very first day.

Today, Downtown San Diego, especially in the Gaslamp District, hold very high rent values, as restaurants, retail stores, and entertainment venues vie to open their doors in the highly popular area. The revitalization of Downtown San Diego has been incredibly successful, turning the abandoned area into a luxurious destination filled with waterfront properties, popular live-work buildings, and five-star hotels.

Revitalization of city centers around the country

San Diego is by far not the only example of a highly successful downtown revitalization. From Los Angeles to New York, and Philadelphia and Baltimore in between, many downtowns  and their savvy investors  have enjoyed the benefits of a city rebirth.

There are several elements that are impacting the revitalization of our nations downtowns:

” Rising cost of transportation: The continuously rising oil prices, along with the consumers greater awareness of eco-friendly choices, have prompted both people and businesses to choose downtown areas. The ability to walk or bike to work and entertainment destinations is quite attractive.

” Changing demographics: The growth of the population, as well as professionals desire to reduce commute times, has the areas surrounding centers to undergo gentrification. Understandably, this shifts the demographics of the region, and the once-shunned downtown becomes more attractive for living, especially because of the lower values in comparison to the already gentrified areas.

” Diversified industries: One of the reasons many downtowns fell from grace stems from the struggle of the regions main industry. However, with the diversification of industries, city centers are enjoying a rebirth. Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore are all great examples of a former failing industrial region converted into a diversified economy  and a subsequently reborn urban center.

The future of Detroits real estate revitalization

The successful revitalization around the nation  from abandoned industrial slums into luxurious renaissance city centers  bodes well for the future of downtown Detroit. With its deep history, ranging from Motor City to Motown and the Red Wings, the cultural lure of Detroit is undeniable.

Detroit shares many of the same pre-requites for successful revitalization. Motor City is indeed growing more diversified, including industries in human resources, finance, and the health sciences. Although the McMansions will always be prevalent at 30 Mile Road, the younger generation of professionals  who care about the environment and enjoying cultural entertainment  will be apt to move downtown.

The signs of revitalization are already clear in Detroit, including the popularity of the RiverWalk development, which connects the Joe Louis Arena to Gabriel Richard Park. The brownfield redevelopments throughout Detroit have also been met with success, such as the FD Lofts in Eastern Market, which homes many creative businesses as a mixed-use building.

For the savvy investor who is willing to overcome certain hurdles, the opportunities are lucrative in downtown Detroit investment properties. Although Detroit MI real estate is still on the cusp between death and rebirth, the probability is high that the future of Detroit is akin to its other successfully revitalized urban counterparts. Thus, the investor who sees the future of Detroit real estate can purchase great properties at incredibly discounted pricing  building in significant profit for the subsequent full revitalization boom.

As a Detroit real estate investor, you enjoy the foresight of the revitalization success seen in other urban areas. By seeing the future of Detroits rebirth, you can build your long-term portfolio of profitable equity from the demand that flows in from those seeking a culturally rich and convenient lifestyle downtown.

Urban Detroit Wholesalers is dedicated to upgrading the value of your Detroit real estate portfolio. Read our market analysis, current news, and pertinent case evaluations of Detroit investment properties.

African American Images is Changing

Fashion, Fitness and Other Industries —

New Book, Website and Blog

 Greenville, NC (PRWEB) June 17, 2008 — Black America, Body Beautiful: How the African American Image is Changing Fashion, Fitness and Other Industries is a new book, along with its accompanying website and blog, about a people’s struggle in finding their particular preference for body image and recognizing their body images, body types and standard of beauty are greatly influencing today’s fashion, advertising, fitness, television and movie and political industries.

 Despite all the medial and media attention focused on the rate of overweight and obesity in the African American population, African American images and body types are greatly influencing changes in the fashion, fitness, advertising, television and movie and political industries. This is because “overweight,” like beauty, can be in the eye of the beholder. Most research studies investigating attitudes about body image and body type among African Americans have shown they are more satisfied with their bodies than are their white counterparts. Most black women, for example, are of course concerned with how they look but do not judge themselves in terms of their weight and do not believe they are valued mostly on the basis of their bodies. Black teen girls most often say being thick and curvaceous with large hips and ample thighs is seen as the most desirable body shape. Thus, there appears to be a wider range of acceptable body shapes and weights, and a more flexible standard of attractiveness, among black Americans as compared to whites. And that fact is not being lost on leaders of industries that might profit from understanding this wider range of beauty, as well as playing to it.

 Voluptuous supermodel Tyra Banks is just one African American who’s broken the mold in that industry. The effects have been seen right down to department and local clothes stores, where lines of larger and plus size fashions are expanding, becoming more colorful and more ornate. In the fitness industry, health gurus Madonna Grimes and Billy Blanks have been revolutionizing how people get fit and how fitness needs to be redeveloped for the African American population.

 Advertising has taken a similar turn, not the least of which has been Dove and Nike’s major promotional campaigns in 2005 with plus-sized actresses. In movies and on television shows, the African American “beautiful body” image has also followed suit.

 Even in the political arena, the effect of Presidential Nominee Senator Barack Obama has caused many to reassess the African American image. Medical Anthropologist Dr. Eric Bailey introduces and explains the self-acceptance and body image satisfaction of African Americans, and traces how that has spurred changes industry.

 In conjunction with the new book, a new website and blog provides visitors an opportunity to share their opinions, views, thoughts, and suggestions about the issues related to African American body images, body types, and standard of beauty. The website (www.blackamericabodybeautiful.com) primarily serves to promote more accurate representations of physical and visual images associated with all peoples of African and African American descent as well as to become a global resource center for culturally competent African American focused products in the areas of clothing, sportswear, household and entertainment industries.

 In addition, the blog (http://blackamericabodybeautiful.blogspot.com) provides visitors with an opportunity to share their opinions and suggestions about all issues related to body images, body types and standard of beauty along with some of my personal insight and behind the scences events related to my field research, promotions, and activist activities in order to continue our cultural revolution in changing America’s and the world’s view of the African American image.