DALLAS (AP) - The Dallas prosecutor who built a reputation for freeing wrongfully convicted inmates says he has an idea to advance criminal justice reform in Texas: allowing defendants to appeal convictions and sentences on the basis of race.
WASHINGTON (AP) - John Legend believes hip-hop played its part in helping Barack Obama become president, and he's proud at how the genre has matured.
"I think hip-hop had a role in making sure we elected a black president in America because we made it so that black people were in people's homes ... through our music and through our culture," the R&B crooner said Sunday night at the Hip-Hop Inaugural Ball.
"I think it made Barack Obama and more people like him possible, so I'm really thankful for hip-hop and the role it plays in society," Legend said.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
This sentence spoken by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been quoted countless times as expressing one of America's bedrock values, its language almost sounding like a constitutional amendment on equality.
Yet today, 50 years after King shared this vision during his most famous speech, there is considerable disagreement over what it means.
CHICAGO (AP) - A veteran suburban Chicago police officer alleges two fellow officers at the Elgin Police Department used racial slurs and made jokes about the Ku Klux Klan, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week.
Officer Phillipp Brown, who is black, claims the comments and actions of two white officers contributed to "creating and perpetuating a hostile work environment."
Attorneys for Brown filed the lawsuit last week in federal court in Chicago. It names Lt. Sean Rafferty and Internal Investigator James Barnes.
