For the most part, Rep. John Lewis had the right idea.

Whenever I hear Cubans talk about their nation’s advancements in health care, and when I think about where the U.S. is on all this, what I hear is a tale of two scarcities. The tales, however, end differently for the people of color who are the main characters.

Donald Trump may be on his way to claiming the Republican presidential nomination, at least in part, by vowing to build a wall to keep Mexicans out of the U.S., but many of those Mexicans may have quietly built a wall that will keep him out of the White House.

Eleven years before Emmett Till’s bloated and brutalized corpse was displayed on the pages of Jet magazine as proof of the South’s atrocities against African Americans, there was Willie James Howard.

Replace Donald Trump’s New York accent with a Southern drawl, then replace his use of “illegals” with the n-word, and there you have it: a 2015 version of George Wallace, Alabama’s segregationist governor who stoked fear and prejudice to find his place in politics.

Since President Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations with Cuba—culminating with the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Havana last week after being shuttered for more than 50 years—much has been written about the country’s ties to black America.

Two weeks before President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. and Cuba would reopen embassies that had been shuttered for more than 50 years, I was embarking on a bit of diplomacy of my own.

Once upon a time in Florida, for many law-enforcement officers, being in the Ku Klux Klan was almost akin to being in the Fraternal Order of Police.

On one level, I can see how Shona Carter-Brooks got it twisted.

If Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis weren’t worthy-enough victims for people to push for “Stand your ground” laws to be revised or repealed, Sherdavia Jenkins should be.

Michael Dunn got away with murder.

The slaying of 17-year-old Jordan Davis by a white man who didn’t appreciate his taste in music had some black people scrambling to give black boys “the talk” about how not to scare white people into shooting them.

I’m worried that Marissa Alexander might end up becoming another Claudette Colvin.

It’s hard to get excited about a handshake. It is just a courteous gesture, after all.

Since Barack Obama made history as the nation’s first black president in 2008, efforts to whitewash all the other history that the nation had to overcome to get to that moment have been leaking into lesson plans.

In "a society dominated by forces bent on breaking" black boys "instead of nurturing them," it's important for families to show that they believe in their children, especially when it comes to education, Tonyaa Weathersbee writes at BlackAmericaWeb.

(Special to The Root) — In June of 2007, I was eating breakfast at a restaurant in downtown Caracas when a sea of Venezuelans flooded the streets shouting their support for their president, Hugo Chávez, after he decided against renewing the license of Radio Caracas Televisión.

BlackAmericaWeb blogger Tonyaa Weathersbee writes that with an unemployment rate of 13.8 percent, blacks in America face a bleak economic landscape. And jobs that once paved the way to the middle class are being replaced by technology.

In a post at BlackAmericaWeb, Tonyaa Weathersbee dismantles a plan by Arizona's controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio to have armed posses patrol elementary schools, saying the idea can easily go awry. Arpaio is known for his anti-immigration stance and for touting Obama Birther conspiracies.

Writing at BlackAmericaWeb, Tonyaa Weathersbee explains the importance of the civil rights issue currently before the Supreme Court.