NEW YORK (NNPA) - The public may never know if Shem Walker, 49, knew that the man he scuffled with on his mother's steps one evening in mid-July was an undercover narcotics officer.
The officer was using the stoop to monitor a "buy-n-bust" operation a few doors away from the Walker home. What happened may never be known because Shem Walker is dead.
The New York Police Department and some witnesses say the men scuffled after Walker told the man in plainclothes to move on. Somehow the officer's weapon fired and a 15-year Army veteran died defending his mother's home, something he had done many times before in an area known for drug trafficking ...

A federal judge last week threw out a free-speech lawsuit brought by a former Tennessee high school student who wore clothing bearing the Confederate flag ...

William Jefferson, Louisiana's first Black congressman since Reconstruction, was found guilty on 11 of 16 counts in a high-profile case that attracted national attention after federal investigators recovered $90,000 in cash hidden in a freezer in the congressman's home.

A remorseful Michael Vick wants a second chance and a fresh start with the Philadelphia Eagles — and knows he won't be easily forgiven by fans.

Here, Quentin talks about his new film, "Inglourious Basterds," which is based upon a screenplay he started writing over a decade ago. The World War II action flick stars Brad Pitt as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army who leads a squad of Jewish soldiers on a mission behind enemy lines in France to go hunting for Nazis.

Birmingham's mayor offered a blanket pardon Tuesday to thousands of demonstrators charged in this cauldron of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, a mostly symbolic forgiveness he acknowledges few may actually want.

The Philadelphia NAACP is denouncing a grand jury's clearing of several police officers of wrongdoing in the arrests last year of three shooting suspects, who were kicked and hit by officers as they lay on the ground.

Black males accounted for about 8,500 of the nearly 72,000 students enrolled in tMississippi's public universities last fall, which is less than 12 percent.

The 52-year-old U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, historically a leading force for overturning racist policies and enacting civil rights laws against Jim Crow segregation, has become obsolete and must be replaced, say civil rights leaders who are moving to make it happen.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has arrived in oil-rich Angola to underscore America's presence in one of sub-Saharan Africa's largest energy producers where America is competing with China for resources.