Fannie Lou Hamer

KHALID Abdul Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, speaking at Kean College in Union, N.J., on Nov. 29, talked of "Columbia Jew-niversity" and "Jew York City" and suggested that German Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves. He also took aim at whites generally, the pope, homosexuals and the blind and disabled.No blacks on the faculty and staff condemned the contents of the speech, according to news reports.One faculty member sidestepped issues raised by the talk and lashed out at racism on the campus, to which he believed Jewish faculty members had contributed.

A federal three-judge panel on Friday threw out a lawsuit challenging Gov. Martin O'Malley's congressional redistricting map, rejecting the charge that the new district lines discriminate against African-Americans. The decision at the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt leaves in place a map that is believed to give Democrats a strong chance of picking up a seventh seat in Maryland's eight-member delegation to the House of Representatives. The Republican put at risk is Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, whose Western Maryland district was redrawn to include a large chunk of traditionally liberal Montgomery County.

Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou Random House / 176 pages / $25 Larger than life in a quintessentially American way, Maya Angelou has taken self-reinvention to a level that other American writing legends, like Hemingway, only wished for. Reading her latest collection of vignettes and extrapolations from her incredibly full and vivid life, Letter to My Daughter, one cannot help but be struck by how much Angelou has overcome and how far she has...

At a Heritage Foundation luncheon for activists and bloggers in July, Heritage President Ed Feulner asked, "What's up with the tea party …? We're not hearing much right now. " This question, in one form or another, is cropping up with increasing frequency. Where has all that tea party energy gone? Has the movement dissipated? The absence of public protests and rallies should not be mistaken for sleep, death or attention deficit syndrome. The tea party has simply become focused.

With the statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. firmly in place at Anne Arundel Community College, the committee that pushed for the memorial is turning to another effort, an education program based on King's philosophy of nonviolence. Officials at Sojourner-Douglass College recently agreed to house the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Institute on Non-Violent Studies and hired an assistant to research how to make it happen. "We are excited to do it. It fits right into our mission," said Charlestine Fairley, site director for the Edgewater campus.

Two disparate groups suggested Friday that Maryland's proposed congressional map might illegally dilute the power of minority voters, though national experts warned that any potential lawsuit would face a high hurdle in federal court. A Prince George's County political action committee and a national watchdog group contend that the proposed districts do not adequately represent the state's black and Hispanic populations. The accusations came a day after Western Maryland Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett expressed similar concerns.

The African-American holiday of Kwanzaa, which begins Monday and lasts for seven days, provides an antidote to the commercialization and consumer excesses of Christmas.Lavish gifts aren't the focus of Kwanzaa. Created in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga, a professor at Cal State-Long Beach, Kwanzaa is based upon different African customs.It celebrates the Nguzo Saba, which is Swahili for seven principles: Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective work and responsibility)

Faith Ringgold invented an art form in 1983, piecing African-American traditions together to create painted story quilts.Two years ago, she won the Coretta Scott King Award for illustration for "Tar Beach," a Caldecott Honor Book based on her story quilt of the same name. Her flat, folk-art style of painting transferred beautifully to the picture book.Now she has written and illustrated "Dinner at Aunt Connie's House" (Hyperion, $14.95, 32 pages, ages 5-9), which was inspired by her 1986 story quilt, "The Dinner Quilt."

John Higham, pastured nigh 10 years now, still has things to say. Well, history itself goes right on; shouldn't an endowed-chair Johns Hopkins historian, for all his emeritusness, still be reaching conclusions? Those honors, titles and books on immigration history - what a platform for an overview.This time, the book is "Civil Rights and Social Wrongs" (Penn State, 223 pages, $23.50). Its contributors (Diane Ravitch, Nathan Glazer, Lawrence H. Fuchs, other big names) address U.S. black-white relations since 1945 - then Higham, as editor, delivers a powerful summing up:"The civil rights movement of the mid-20th century is generally regarded as a 'tragic failure,' and so too its predecessors.

CHANNEL 13's Marty Bass -- meteorologist, broadcast journalist.And racist?That's what a caller to The Sun implied. He didn't say it outright. He used one of the now famous euphemisms. Bass, the caller charged, uttered a remark that was "disrespectful" to black folks.The alleged "offense" occurred a couple of weeks back, when the Carroll County school board voted to have students attend school on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and Presidents Day. According to the caller, Don Scott of the morning show read the news, and Bass yelled out, "Yahoo!