WASHINGTON — Texas Democrats told Congress on Thursday that state Republicans were carrying out an attack on the voting rights of minorities to stop the onetime GOP stranglehold from trending any further purple — or even one day falling to the Democrats in an election. Amid shifting demographics in Texas, which has not voted for […]

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Focusing on social equity, a black woman whose business certifies residents for Connecticut’s medical marijuana card is taking advantage of measures in a new state law that target the issue most important to her. Kebra Smith-Bolden, a nurse and founder of CannaHealth, aims to provide security for people in her community who […]

Sporting her Olympic pink blazer and silver medal from the 1992 Summer Olympics and her gold medal from the 1996 Summer Olympics, track star Rochelle Stevens was ready for a 6 a.m. TV live shot of her watching the opening ceremonies of the 2020 Games in Tokyo last week. She was not only ready, but […]

Clarksburg, Md. — Three-time Olympian Dominique Dawes is among a handful of Americans who might know what it’s like to be Simone Biles, bowing out of the games in Japan when the world expected her to keep winning gold medals. Dawes, now the mother of four young children and owner of a gymnastics academy, says […]

NEWARK, N.J. — Rashanna James-Frison was 4 when her mother was killed; her father was shot and left paralyzed before she was born; and she was shuttled through the foster-care system. Luckily for the young teen, a tribe of loved ones helped lift her up along her painful journey, and this year she rose to be valedictorian […]

IRVINGTON, N.J. — Adenah Bayoh and her cousin put their aging grandmother in a wheelbarrow and walked through a thick, hot jungle to escape approaching rebels in an African civil war. The terrified 8-year-old girl had no idea what lay ahead, and how it would make her a success. War in Liberia would kill a […]

TARRANT, Ala. — As a white city councilman in an Alabama town faces outrage for directing a racial slur at a black city councilwoman, the town’s mayor says the episode was a calculated political stunt meant to harm him. Video footage of the July 19 town meeting in Tarrant, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham, rocketed across […]

It’s not how you start, inevitably it’s how you finish. Truer words couldn’t be spoken when discussing Titus Gardner’s journey. Gardner nearly slipped through the cracks that so many inner-city youths fall through. Given his backstory, he seemed destined to become a statistic instead of a vice president of a Fortune 1000 company. But as […]

Jermell Charlo wobbled Brian Castaño  in the first round and chased the staggered Argentine around the ring on Saturday night, but he was unable to deliver the knockout blow. Castaño returned with power in the second round, pinning his adversary on the ropes and nearly finishing him. Few among the raucous crowd at the AT&T […]

It’s a question seldom asked, much less explained: Why is ending the color barrier celebrated in baseball and rarely mentioned in pro football? Every year on April 15, Major League Baseball celebrates the day Jackie Robinson played his first big league game in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the color barrier in America’s national pastime. […]

The rise of minority quarterbacks and coaches in the NFL will be in the spotlight as a new season approaches. While the league hopes for a return to normalcy, including teams opening stadiums to full capacity and the addition of two more playoff teams, three black quarterbacks face challenges on the field and off, while […]

Forty-year-old Ed Herman will enter the UFC’s Octagon for the 28th time on Saturday night, this time in a match against the explosive Alonzo “Atomic” Menifield. Now competing at light heavyweight, Herman (27–14–0, 1 no contest) has the longest uninterrupted tenure on the UFC’s active roster. He competed as a middleweight for much of his […]

Badou Jack was set to avenge what many boxing insiders felt was an unjust split-decision loss to Jean Pascal on the undercard of Floyd Mayweather’s June 6 exhibition bout against YouTuber Logan Paul. Instead, Jack was notified at the end of May that Pascal had tested positive for several performance-enhancing drugs and the fight was […]

WASHINGTON — As part of his overall goal of promoting competition to help keep the economy on track, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is pushing for a ban or limits on employers’ non-compete agreements. Three states and the District of Columbia already ban these agreements, while a dozen other states ban their use for low-wage employees. […]