African American

It is no secret that for decades, tobacco companies have filled disadvantaged communities with advertising and marketing attracting generations of young people of color to the products they peddle. A new report from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health finds that alcohol companies are taking a page from the tobacco industry's playbook. Specifically, we found African-American youths ages 12-20 are seeing more advertisements for alcohol in magazines and on TV, compared with all youths ages 12-20.

Whether the issue is gay marriage, Vegas-style gambling or college for illegal immigrants, all of Maryland's ballot campaigns have this in common: They are lavishing attention on black voters. African-Americans are expected to be fully a quarter of the Maryland electorate this year, a surge in participation attributed to robust support for President Barack Obama. Their sheer numbers make them important as Maryland, for the first time in decades, faces a trio of major ballot questions.

Quick quiz: What do LL Cool J, The Rock, 50 Cent, Karl Malone, Don King, Lynn Swann, Wilt Chamberlain, Eldridge Cleaver, Peter Boulware, Tony Dungy and Alveda King, (niece of Martin Luther King Jr.) have in common? If you guessed membership in the Republican Party, please go to the head of the class. If you are unable to comprehend how any African-American could make this political choice, please stay after school. You require remedial assistance. In fact, your intolerance is part of the problem - both for the Republican Party and the country at large.

It is well documented that African-American women with breast cancer are more likely to have a more aggressive type of the disease that kills them, but why remains a mystery. The answers may be found one day soon, as researchers focus more on the genetic makeup of cancer tumors and how African-American women may respond differently to treatment than women of other races. "There are two different tracks of research going on that could in the future help better treat African-American women with breast cancer ," said Rebecca McCoy, community health director of the advocacy group Komen Maryland.

COLLEGE PARK - Darryl Hill didn't set out to make history. The Atlantic Coast Conference's first African-American football player said Tuesday that he was a "reluctant pioneer. " But as the former Maryland wide receiver's college career unfolded in the early 1960s, he and his family were victimized by racism. The more Hill was taunted by fans, the more he said he became invested in the cause. "When I started seeing … the horrors that were going on in the South, I got more and more motivated," said Hill, who was invited to campus Tuesday to mark the 50th anniversary of his arrival at the school in 1962.

Low graduation rates among African-Americans at Maryland's historically black colleges and universities present a major issue deserving of systematic analysis for solutions. This problem has been well documented by countless media outlets in HBCU communities nationwide, including in a recent Sun editorial. That editorial also challenged Maryland's HBCUs on the efforts of their faculty and administration to create and maintain cultural changes that can reverse the systemic trend of underachievement, which begins well in advance of any student's arrival at any HBCU.

The local chapter of Baltimore's NAACP has taken an interest in the recent tensions brewing between Baltimore city principals and city schools CEO Andres Alonso's administration, denouncing the recent moves concerning two principals whose school was cleared of cheating, and announcing that it wants to investigate the racial and gender makeup of principals who have been dismissed from the system. The city's NAACP President Tessa Hill-Alston attended a picket protest held by the city's administrators union last week outside of city school headquarters.

You know you are entering a different world when you see the heavy cordless iron that requires a fire to heat it sitting atop a wooden ironing board covered with a bed sheet used as an ironing pad at the Howard County Center of African American Culture. For those who can remember manual eggbeaters and other hand-held tools hanging from the wall, this is a step back in time. For some, emotion comes with seeing the white wooden kitchen cabinet that held someone's dishes in the early 20th century.

Lloyd Campbell "Mitch" Mitchner, who had been director of Baltimore's Urban Services Agency during the mayoral administration of Kurt L. Schmoke and later headed AFRAM, the African-American cultural festival, died July 16 of lung cancer at Northwest Hospital. He was 84. "I've known Lloyd since I was a teenager when he and my mother and Barbara Mikulski were social workers for the Baltimore City Department of Social Services," said Mr. Schmoke, former dean of the Howard University Law School, who is now university vice president and general counsel.

An open letter to African America: In the late '90s, the Internet belched forth a rumor that the Voting Rights Act was soon to expire and that black folks would lose the vote as a result. Though stupid and untrue, the rumor spread like a dust cloud till it was inescapable. You couldn't get away from it in a confession booth. You couldn't get away from it in a phone booth. Everybody was up in arms. Flash forward to 2012. Now the threat is real. There is a sustained effort to suppress the black vote as we approach this pivotal election.