NEWS
By Michael Higginbotham | January 23, 2013
Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Baltimore-born Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights lawyer and first black Supreme Court justice who was instrumental in ending Jim Crow segregation. His representation of schoolgirl Linda Brown resulted in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education, which ended separation practiced in a wide variety of public facilities and institutions. Yet Marshall sought more than just desegregation. Explaining his vision, Marshall proclaimed that "a child born to a black mother in a state like Mississippi … has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States.
NEWS
By John-John Williams IV, The Baltimore Sun | January 19, 2013
The storms of winter 2010 shut down roads, cancelled classes, closed up shops and nearly ended a signature Baltimore event before it started. On a cold January night, organizers of the Pratt Contemporaries' inaugural Black and White Party watched the uncertain forecast and the falling snow, worried that the conditions were going to keep guests away from their humble celebration. Yet several inches of snow - usually a kiss of death for the winter-wary in Maryland - did not prevent 200 or so people from attending.
NEWS
By L'Oreal Thompson, Baltimore Sun Media Group | November 24, 2012
Wedding day: Oct. 27, 2012 Her story: Marielle Alexis Newman, 27, grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y. She is a color specialist for Under Armour. Her dad, Howell Newman, works for IBM and her mother, Leona Newman, works for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. His story: Benjamin Allen Schiffman, 26, grew up in East Petersburg, Pa. He is a patent examiner for the U.S. Patent Office. His dad, Jeffrey Schiffman, is the sports director at WSBA, a radio station in York, Pa. His mother, Lynne Morrison, is the executive director of Hands-on House, a children's museum in Lancaster, Pa. Their story: The couple met at University of Delaware, when Benjamin was a freshman and Marielle was a sophomore.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Tim Smith, The Baltimore Sun | October 11, 2012
Appropriately, given the prominent TV references, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra opens its 2012-2013 SuperPops season this weekend with a rerun — a program called "The Golden Age of Black and White. " This celebration of 1950s television and more first "aired" in 2006 and proved to be a vibrant, smoothly crafted example of the productions created by the Symphonic Pops Consortium, founded in Indianapolis by BSO principal pops conductor Jack Everly. The show's return promises an equally refreshing dip into the past.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Mary Carole McCauley, The Baltimore Sun | October 8, 2012
For more that two decades, author Emily Bernard has been fascinated by Carl Van Vechten, a white man who played a seminal - and controversial - role in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. She was in turns appalled by Vechten's air of entitlement, amused by some of his provocations and moved by his devotion to individual artists. (For instance, Van Vechten lobbied authorities to erect a nude, anatomically correct statue in New York's Central Park of the African-American activist James Weldon Johnson.
NEWS
By Leonard Pitts Jr | September 2, 2012
Lord help us, they're talking race again. "They" meaning Republicans and Democrats. Race is a critical, sensitive and sometimes painful issue with relevance to everything from environmental policy to education reform to criminal justice to media to health care. For a politician to address it requires political courage. That's why politicians do not address it. Usually. That changes during political season when a given pol calculates that breaking his customary silence might net some tactical advantage.