History

A Sea of Gold

By Adam Tschorn They were the team to beat in the 1980s -- and didn't they know it. In just a few months, the 1986-87 Los Angeles Lakers would take Showtime to a new level...

Harvard Professor

The incident involving Harvard Professor Skip Gates and the Cambridge police has a very long and tortured “back story.” It involves attitudes that were formed as for back as the Revolutionary War. First and foremost...

USA Moon Landing

People grabbed their telescopes to see it. I was in Port-of-Spain in Trinidad and Tobago visiting my extended family for the first time in my life. I had graduated from UCLA and was just about...

Kill Bill?

On May 6th in Georgia, William Earl Lynd, 53, became the first death-row inmate executed in the U.S. in seven months.  Executions have been on hold all these months while the U.S. Supreme Court decided...

James Forten: A Man With the Wind at His Back

James Forten (1766-1842) was born in Philadelphia, the grandson of slaves. Forten began working with his father at Robert Bridges’ sail loft when he was only 8 years old. When his father was killed in...

Common Myths About Me: Why Was Kareem So Mad?

(Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson) Photo Credit: Malek Mansour Which of the following is not true: A. You can catch a cold from going outside with your hair wet. B. You have to drink eight...

Benjamin Banneker: The Colonial Da Vinci

Historians routinely praise Thomas Jefferson as one of the smartest men of his time.  He was educated, well read, a prolific writer (hey, he wrote the Declaration of Independence!), a dedicated statesman, and one of...

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams: Heart surgeon

When you watch TV shows today, it’s not uncommon to see black doctors charging up the paddles and shouting “Clear!” or “Somebody get me a rib-spreader, stat!” When I was growing up, however, a black...

Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler: First Black Female Doctor

Dr. Benjamin Spock published his famous "Baby and Child Care" in 1946, eventually outselling all other nonfiction books other than the Bible.  However, in 1883, 63 years before Spock’s book, America’s first African-American woman medical...