Fifty years ago, Americans from community after community came together and committed to a vision for justice and equality.  People fought. People died. People transcended the small interests of their own needs, as Blacks, Jews, women, gays and lesbians, took real risks to advocate for change and common cause.

There are few stories that cause me to sprint to Facebook and Twitter, but a widely read New York Times opinion editorial by Alice Randall arguing that black women are the most obese group in America because "we want to be" caused me to do just that. Curious to hear what my African-American sister-friends had to say about Randall's claim that we are large because we are seeking acceptance from black men who prefer "sugar down below," I was surprised when the response to my posting was met with... radio silence.

The course of my life changed when I met Mrs. C. She has quite possibly been one of the most influential forces in my life. Mrs. C served as an example for me and for countless women and men across the country, simply because she spent the sum of her life working to be and do more than what was expected of her.

Administrator Lisa Jackson of the Environmental Protection Agency discusses the role of the EPA in creating clean energy jobs and promoting healthy, clean environments in communities of color at the 2011 Congressional Black Caucus' Annual Legislative Conference.

Dr. Maya Rockeymoore, President and CEO of Global Policy Solutions, speaks about deficit reduction, the role of the "Supercommittee" and social security reform at a Capitol Hill briefing titled "What's at Stake? Proposed Deficit Reduction Measures Affecting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and the Impact on Communities of Color".

Prison stays have become all too common in the African American community. Today, the length of the sentence has increased, as has the distance from prisoners’ homes, disrupting the lives of incarcerated families.

In its deliberations to develop a plan to reduce the federal deficit by more than a trillion dollars over the next decade, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction considered a proposal to calculate cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) in all government programs using the Chained Consumer Price Index-Urban (C-CPI-U), rather than the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U).

Congress is currently debating to make serious cuts in Social Security. Some analysts in Washington believe that the cuts are necessary to help the country out of its economic downturn.  However, any changes in the program will severely affect all recipients, particularly African-Americans.

The impact of the mass incarceration of African American men in the U.S. for largely the same group of drug-related crimes are monstrous and devastating on all of society. In the United States, African Americans, who are 12% of the population, are 44+ percent of the prison population.

When the Three Stooges attacked each other with hammers and eye-poking fingers, generations of TV-watchers found their antics to be funny but hardly something to emulate. Fat Albert and his legions of fans among minority children are a different story. His jolly demeanor and loveable nature are inseparably associated with his girth.