The NAACP's 'finest hour'
As historical footnotes go, this one is gaining modern relevance. The Second Suffolk state senatorial district has always been about the numbers. But it's also been about race, and, most important, how state governments devise race-neutral remedies for past racial ills. How that process starts is usually the result of organized community action - and the threat of federal lawsuits. More »
Man lobbies to see father honored for service in WWII
URBANA, Ill. - His father was the first black man - and still the only one - elected to a countywide office in Champaign County, may have been the first African American elected a state's attorney in Illinois history, and later was appointed a U.S. attorney for a large section of downstate Illinois. More »
Kansas State celebrates rediscovery of King speech
Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech at Kansas State University just months before his death in 1968, and school officials long believed that any full recording had been lost in a fire later that year. But last week, the university unveiled a recently found full-length audio recording of the speech during a packed event titled "The Dreamer Speaks Again." More »
Kansas' messy racial history dates to its founding
TOPEKA, Kan. - During the prelude to the Civil War, Kansans fought on the side of what was right, seeking to keep the scourge of slavery out of the state and help the enslaved. Wait a minute, historians say. As Kansas celebrated its 150th birthday last Saturday, those who have devoted their careers to studying the period want to fill people in on something: Most of the settlers who fought to ensure Kansas entered the union as a free state initially wanted to ban blacks from the state entirely. More »
