Commentary: For black folks, it’s the same story over and over
My father, who died two years ago at the age of 99, used to tell a story of an incident that occurred in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, when...
All Stories
Second-guessing Comey is easy, but would you have done better?
James Comey stands 6 feet 8 inches tall and looks as if he could have made a living playing a gun-slinging Western lawman in the movies had he not chosen...
With Trump win comes a test for angry, white supporters
My father, who is now 98, tells a revealing story from his youth in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. He was working with his father — my grandfather —...
How fear destroys America’s dignity
... The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its...
Review: ‘Only the Strong’ by Jabari Asim
One of the special pleasures of reading African-American fiction is relishing the names of characters. Ralph Ellison, for example, created a couple of the most memorable in "Invisible Man": Dr....
A tribute to Notre Dame’s Father Ted Hesburgh
It was October 1965. My friend David White, an Irish Catholic kid from Boston, and I, a black Catholic kid from many places, were having one of those earnest, post-midnight...
Adults crushed the Jackie Robinson West All-Stars’ love story
I guess I knew it was coming. I had seen reporter Mark Konkol's stories in DNAinfo Chicago about the controversy over potential rules violations by the Jackie Robinson West All-Stars,...
The world my sons will inherit
Grant, So here I am, having just turned 68 and in my first year of retirement, surveying the world that I and my generation, the baby boomers, are leaving to...
A police war on black men?
Yes, Eric Garner could have simply complied with the commands of the New York City cops trying to arrest him and been alive today. Doing time for selling "loosies," perhaps,...
What does it take to be black enough?
I am the great-great-grandson of an American slave, Amanda Gibbs, and the great-grandson of a free black man, Sylvester Wickliff, whose account of his life is among the slave narratives...