BlackAmericans.com

Homes of the Billionaires

2010-03-14T21:28:00Z

Warren Buffett epitomizes living modestly in today's tough economic climate. Despite a $47 billion fortune, the legendary investor -- and the world's third-richest man -- lives in the same five-bedroom, gray stucco house he bought in Omaha, Neb.'s Happy Hollow suburb in 1958 for $31,500. This folksiness is in line with his famous investing philosophy. "If you don't feel comfortable owning something for 10 years," he once told a reporter, "then don't own it for 10 minutes." But Buffet, who also professes...(read more)

Detroit School Leader Otis Mathis Can't Write

2010-03-14T20:57:00Z

Bill Pugliano/Getty Images With the city's kids scoring dead last on national tests, isn't that a problem? According to his memoir, The Teacher Who Couldn't Read , John Corcoran graduated from college in 1961 and taught high school for 17 years, all without being able to read, write or spell. Finally, at age 48, he sought help and now serves as a public speaker and fierce advocate for literacy. The John Corcoran Foundation claims to have trained 300 tutors and tutored more than 2,000 students. Perhaps...(read more)

Tomorrow's Crop of Black Women Leaders

2010-03-14T20:45:00Z

Ayanna Pressley, Kamala Harris, Terri Sewell, Robin Kelly In 2010, black politics is often written in male faces. Tomorrow, women may be the torchbearers of black political power Today's pantheon of African-American political talent begins with President Barack Obama, who rode into office on the strength of organized communities and an overwhelming black turnout. Add to the shining roster: Cory Booker, Rhodes Scholar and mayor of Newark, N.J.; Adrian Fenty, mayor of Washington, D.C.; Deval Patrick,...(read more)

Obama Social Secretary Ran Into Sharp Elbows

2010-03-14T20:33:00Z

Long before the State Dinner party crashers and the tension with her White House colleagues and the strain in her relationship with the first lady, Desirée Rogers began to understand she was in trouble when David Axelrod summoned her to his office last spring to scold her. Ms. Rogers had appeared in another glossy magazine, posing in a White House garden in a borrowed $3,495 silk pleated dress and $110,000 diamond earrings. But if the image was jarring in a time of recession , Mr. Axelrod was as...(read more)

Obama promise: Brighter education futures for kids

2010-03-14T20:25:00Z

President Barack Obama is promising parents and their kids that with his administration's help they will have better teachers in improved schools so U.S. students can make up for academic ground lost against youngsters in other countries. A proposed overhaul of the education law championed by President George W. Bush will put the impetus for change on states, school districts and schools, Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. "We set a high bar, but we also provide educators...(read more)

Inner City School Gets 100% of Its Black Men in to College

2010-03-13T11:08:00Z

There is one public, all-male, all–African American high school in the city of Chicago called " The Urban Prep Academy for Young Men ," located in Englewood. The school recently got the attention of Mayor Richard Daley and Chicago Public Schools Chief Ron Huberman , when they were able to get all of their 107 seniors accepted in to 72 different colleges across the country. Huberman had this to say: "All of you in the senior class have shown that what matters is perseverance, what matters is focus,...(read more)

Jame Brown's Body Missing

2010-03-13T09:32:00Z

James Brown's body is missing from its crypt, according to his daughter. The remains of the singer - who died on Christmas Day 2006 (25.12.06) of a suspected heart attack aged 73 - were being held at his daughter Deanna's house in South Carolina while a public mausoleum is being prepared. However, LaRhonda Pettit, one of James' illegitimate daughters, claims the body of the 'Papa's Got A Brand New Bag' singer has gone missing to prevent her carrying out an autopsy to determine the true cause of his...(read more)

Black Americans Are One of the Fastest-Growing Segments in Online Dating

2010-03-12T11:49:00Z

Is online dating capable of doing great things for the Black community? Consider: Gallup reports that half of all Black Americans believe it's "very important" for couples to marry when they have a child -- yet according to research from Packaged Facts, more than six out of ten Black Americans are unmarried, thereby making that group the most unattached in America. The solution may well lie in online dating, where African-Americans now constitute one of the fastest-growing segments of that market....(read more)

Why Are There So Few Black Women Politicians?

2010-03-12T11:43:00Z

Carol Moseley Braun during her presidential campaign in 2004 In Part 2 of our Women’s History Month series on leadership, the real reasons so few are elected. When Ayanna Pressley decided to take a shot at a seat on the city council in her adopted hometown of Boston, Mass., she was committed to winning by any means necessary. This meant cashing in her 401(k) retirement plan—earned over 16 years as a Democratic operative in Boston and in Washington for Sen. John Kerry and other lawmakers. With a mother...(read more)

Keith Bulluck gives nine scholarships in honor of Steve McNair

2010-03-12T11:37:00Z

Tennessee Titans linebacker Keith Bulluck surprised nine high school students Monday night by presenting them with $1,000 in scholarship money in the name of his late teammate Steve McNair . The scholarships were presented at the 44th annual National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame awards dinner. Bulluck chose nine winners (the same as McNair's jersey number) from among 54 recipients of a separate scholar-athlete award for Middle Tennessee high schoolers. The nine players didn't know...(read more)

How Black Women Became Powerful

2010-03-11T21:34:00Z

In Part 1 of our Women’s History Month series on leadership, a look at the roots of female empowerment. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush held a closed-door meeting at the White House to discuss law and order after the race riots in Los Angeles. Bush and the other lawmakers in attendance received an unexpected visitor in Rep. Maxine Waters, then a freshman representative from South Central Los Angeles, who had invited herself into the deliberations. The gatekeepers were taken aback, but Waters...(read more)

Minority births on track to outnumber white births

2010-03-11T21:23:00Z

Minorities make up nearly half the children born in the U.S., part of a historic trend in which minorities are expected to become the U.S. majority over the next 40 years. In fact, demographers say this year could be the "tipping point" when the number of babies born to minorities outnumbers that of babies born to whites. The numbers are growing because immigration to the U.S. has boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years. Minorities made up 48 percent of U.S. children...(read more)

Ex-Detroit councilwoman gets 37 months for bribery

2010-03-11T21:19:00Z

John T. Greilick Monica Conyers arrives at the Theodore Levin Federal Courthouse in downtown Detroit for her sentencing on her bribery conviction, Wednesday, March 10, 2010. Conyers is a former Detroit City Council member A former Detroit city councilwoman was sentenced to more than three years in prison Wednesday for bribery after a federal judge refused to set aside her guilty plea during a stormy court hearing dominated by a dispute over evidence of other payoffs. As guards cleared the packed...(read more)

Once-revered SC lawmaker freezes to death alone

2010-03-11T11:49:00Z

Juanita Goggins is seen in a 1974 file photo in Rock Hill, S.C. Goggins was the first black woman elected to the the South Carolina Legislature in 1974, and was hailed as a trailblazer at the time. Three decades later, Goggins died alone and freezing in the home she rented for 16 years, just four miles from the gleaming Statehouse dome Horace W. Goggins II poses in his family home Wednesday March 10, 2010, in Rock Hill, S.C. His mother, Juanita Goggins was the first black woman elected to the South...(read more)

Nearly Half of Black Women Have Herpes

2010-03-10T15:46:00Z

The latest news out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is very troubling, to say the least. A jaw-dropping 48 percent of black women between ages 14 and 49 have the virus which causes genital herpes, says the federal agency. Blacks in general are more than three times as likely as whites to have herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) (39.2 percent vs. 12.3 percent). Why is it so much higher among black women? It is likely that biological factors make women more susceptible to genital...(read more)