Black Man

Mixed martial arts fighter Darren Costa and his longtime friend Matthew Morrow were shot early Saturday at a house party in Pasadena as a wave of violence swept across the region. Morrow, 21, died from the wounds he suffered at the party in the 7000 block of Outing Ave.; Costa, 20, was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Anne Arundel County Police did not name Costa as one of the victims, but his trainer Noel Smith, owner of a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym in Glen Burnie, confirmed Costa was injured at the party.

The Harford County Sheriff's Office is seeking the public's help in finding two men wanted in connection with an armed robbery at an Edgewood Burger King in mid-March. On Friday, March 15, at 10:20 p.m., the Burger King restaurant at 1808 Edgewood Road was robbed by two men. One robber is described as a black man with a light complexion, 6 feet to 6 feet, 2 inches tall and with a thin build. A second robber displayed a handgun during the robbery and demanded money from the clerk.

Apparently, it comes as quite a surprise to some people that Sen. Barack Obama is black. I'm driven to this realization by the response to a recent column in which I referred to the senator as African-American. Many people wrote to correct me on that. Among the most memorable was a guy who said: "I heard his dad was a radical Muslim from Africa and his mom was a white atheist from Kansas City. If that be the case, wouldn't he be half a black man and half a white man? If he's a half-breed, shouldn't you do a correction?"

A man died in a shooting reported in Southwest Baltimore about 4 a.m. Thursday, city police said. Officers were called to the 1300 block of Carroll Street in the Washington Village/Pigtown neighborhood, where they found a black man with a gunshot wound to the chest. Homicide detectives are investigating. The victim was taken to an area hospital, where he died, police said. No other information was immediately available. The shooting death is the first police have reported in the city in more than a week, after two shootings in West Baltimore left two women and two men dead March 19. A man and woman were shot while driving a pickup truck in West Baltimore on Monday but were expected to survive.

It had all the trappings of a racially explosive case: A black robber opens fire on an innocent white couple in a Southwest Baltimore park, the woman is fatally wounded by six bullets and her boyfriend suffers a thigh wound.But within 48 hours the case was solved: The boyfriend, Robert Harris, 23, was charged with paying $20,000 to an alleged hit man, Russell Raymond Brill, 22, of Arbutus.Police said Mr. Harris staged the robbery to collect a $150,000 life insurance policy on his fiancee, Teresa McLeod, 27. In fact, Ms. McLeod's 9-year-old son was the beneficiary.

ROCKVILLE -- Lawyers for the family of a black man shot to death last month by a white Montgomery County police officer met yesterday with county officials -- including the insurance risk manager. Johnnie Cochran, William H. Murphy Jr. and Walter Blair held a private meeting with County Council President Isiah Leggett, two weeks after Blair said they would be filing a "mega-lawsuit" against the county on behalf of the wife and children of Junious Roberts. After the meeting, the lawyers declined to say whether their visit signaled the possibility of a settlement.

Sam Fulwood III, self-described "blue-chip black" and Capitol Hill correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, is angry.His generation of black baby boomers came of age with civil rights, voting rights, affirmative action, fair housing, school integration. They were "Negro ambassadors," children burdened with the responsibility of proving blacks were as good as whites.In "Waking from the Dream: My Life in the Black Middle Class," his recently published autobiography from Doubleday, he writes that they were "trained to run the next lap, after the historic heroism of those who faced the dogs, water hoses and brutal cops.

Ascene from the life of a black corporate employee:He's the only person of his race at a marketing meeting. A white person he doesn't know well comes up, slaps him on the back, and says, "Hey, I bet you play basketball, don't you?"Does he get offended by the stereotype and tell the guy off? Ignore him? Make a joke? What's more important -- defending one's dignity or not wanting to make an already touchy situation even more uncomfortable?For Brent Wade, such an incident did happen. And for him, he says, it was just another day at the office.

When he was a much younger man, Leon Gilbert often quoted a line from "Othello" to his daughter: "I have done the state some service," he would recite, "and they know 't."Leon Gilbert is an old man now; his heart is bad, his kidneys no longer functioning. But Othello's declaration still resounds in his mind, a protest against all he has suffered and all he has lost. "I have done the state some service."He is sitting in his weary little rowhouse in York, Pa., but his eyes no longer see anything in this dim, wood-paneled room.

A man died in a shooting reported in Southwest Baltimore about 4 a.m. Thursday, city police said. Officers were called to the 1300 block of Carroll Street in the Washington Village/Pigtown neighborhood, where they found a black man with a gunshot wound to the chest. Homicide detectives are investigating. The victim was taken to an area hospital, where he died, police said. No other information was immediately available. The shooting death is the first police have reported in the city in more than a week, after two shootings in West Baltimore left two women and two men dead March 19. A man and woman were shot while driving a pickup truck in West Baltimore on Monday but were expected to survive.

As a black man, I was appalled by the thinly veiled racism in former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s commentary about African-American attitudes toward President Obama ("From pride to disillusionment: a black leader sours on Obama," March 17). All black people are not of one mind, nor are Hispanics, Asians or whites. Mr. Ehrlich's proposition that a black man who once supported the president no longer supports him as strongly today is worthy of comment make sense only if the author believed that we all march to the president's drum, no matter what he says.

This is the thing that gets me: On March 5, I saw the front page headline - "6 killings continue violent 2013 start" - and it did not faze me one bit. It was not news. It was what I've come to expect in Baltimore and all major American cities. The news, as we say in this business, is not when a dog bites a man but when a man bites a dog. Or when, as in my hometown, New York City, there is such a lull in killings that that is the news: "Homicides in city in deep freeze for 7 days running," Newsday reported on Jan. 25. I might still have paid no mind to that Sun headline except that a good friend called from Philadelphia to tell me that one of those killed was the brother of another friend of his. That headline now had meaning.

Baltimore police reported that a man was shot in the face in Sandtown-Winchester on Saturday night. The shooting was reported about 9 p.m. in the 1800 block of Presbury Street, police said via Twitter. The area is northwest of downtown. The victim was taken to an area hospital, police said. He was described as a black man in his mid-20s. Detectives were notified, police said. No other details were immediately available. sdance@baltsun.com twitter.com/ssdance

A robber struck a Royal Farms in Fells Point on Sunday night, leaving with a peculiar payday that only a sweet tooth could covet. The man, described as a black man in his 40s with a light beard, about 5 feet 10 and 170 pounds, wearing a red jacket with white lettering over a black hooded sweat shirt, entered the convenience store sometime before 7:43 p.m., police said. He walked down the candy aisle, pulled out a bag and began sticking boxes of candy into the bag, police said.

When will liberals stop living in the past? Specifically, when will they accept that they aren't all that stands between a wonderful, tolerant America and Jim Crow? I was in the room when, during the Democratic National Convention, civil rights hero John Lewis suggested that Republicans wanted to "go back" to the days when black men like him could be beaten in the street by the enforcers of Jim Crow. I thought it an outrageous and disgusting bit of demagoguery. The audience of Democratic delegates cheered in a riot of self-congratulation.

Two men who robbed a McDonald's restaurant in Abingdon Friday evening remained at large Sunday morning, the Harford County Sheriff's Office said. At about 7 p.m. Friday, two black men entered the McDonald's in the 400 block of Constant Friendship Boulevard and robbed the manager while patrons were eating in the dining room, the sheriff's office said in a news release Sunday morning. One robber, described as a black man, 6 feet tall and wearing all black with white/gray work gloves and a black beanie cap, entered the restaurant and approached the manager.

That Vivien Thomas, a black man with neither a college nor a medical degree, could have worked as a research assistant at Hopkins Hospital during the 1940s was in itself something of a minor miracle. In that era of strict racial segregation, the only black men who worked at the hospital were pushing brooms and mops. Not only were there no black doctors at Hopkins, there were no black professionals of any kind.The hospital wards and waiting rooms were designated ''white'' and ''colored'' -- even the blood bank carefully separated blood donated by whites from blood donated by blacks.

Baltimore police reported that a man was shot in the face in Sandtown-Winchester on Saturday night. The shooting was reported about 9 p.m. in the 1800 block of Presbury Street, police said via Twitter. The area is northwest of downtown. The victim was taken to an area hospital, police said. He was described as a black man in his mid-20s. Detectives were notified, police said. No other details were immediately available. sdance@baltsun.com twitter.com/ssdance

Mixed martial arts fighter Darren Costa and his longtime friend Matthew Morrow were shot early Saturday at a house party in Pasadena as a wave of violence swept across the region. Morrow, 21, died from the wounds he suffered at the party in the 7000 block of Outing Ave.; Costa, 20, was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Anne Arundel County Police did not name Costa as one of the victims, but his trainer Noel Smith, owner of a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym in Glen Burnie, confirmed Costa was injured at the party.

The Harford County Sheriff's Office is asking the public's help in finding a Joppa man who has been missing since Friday. Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie was last seen on Friday, May 25, at about 5:30 a.m. near his residence in the 500 block of Terrapin Terrace in Joppa, according to a sheriff's office news release. Agyei-Kodie is a 37-year old black man. He is 5 feet, 6 inches tall, weighs about 170 pounds and has black hair, brown eyes and a tribal mark scar on his left cheek.