The former Teachers College of Columbia University professor who found a noose on her office door wants $200 million from her ex-employer, saying the school killed her career. Madonna Constantine has filed the mega-lawsuit with the New York State Supreme Court after she was fired following the release of findings that she allegedly plagiarized research. Read more.

Detroit Could Axe Hundreds of Teachers

In the face of a projected $303 million deficit, Detroit Public Schools may have to lay off 600 teachers and close 23 schools. These measures are part of a proposal by Michigan’s financial overseer, Robert Bobb, who was named to the position in January after the schools’ superintendent was fired in December of last year. Full story.

 
Three Workers Fired in Noose Incident

A fuel company at a Rhode Island airport fired two workers Monday accused of hanging a noose over the desk of a Black co-worker. It was a colleague of John Valles at the T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, R.I., who found the noose when Valles was on vacation Feb. 15. “I took it as a racial slur. A hate crime. That’s how I took it,” Valles said. Allied Aviation announced the firings following the findings of its internal investigation, officials said. Read the rest.

Smoking causes more cancers than once thought  It is known that tobacco-smoking leads to serious health complications. Smoking is a major risk factor for cancer. But a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) links smoking to more cancers than most people realize. Get the details at BET.com/Body & Soul.

Infamous Klansman will rally troops in civil rights capital

Renowned ex-Klansman David Duke is uniting his troops in Memphis, the home of the National Civil Rights Museum. Duke, the Louisiana White supremacist politician who came a stone’s throw from landing in the U.S. Senate, has announced his Euro-International Conference to be held in the historic city on Nov. 8. But it is unclear exactly where the event will be held, according to Kevin Kane, an official with the convention and visitors bureau. At the convention, Duke will address the presidential election. “We will assemble to say clearly that neither Black radical, Barrack Obama, nor Mr. Amnesty, John McCain, truly represent the will of the American people,” says Duke, who left the Democratic Party several years ago to join the Republican ranks. Before his run for the Senate in 1990, Duke left the KKK – officially – and he formed the National Association for the Advancement of White People, NAAWP. He says he didn’t pick Memphis because it is the infamous site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or the home of the National Civil Rights Museum, but because it is the most centrally located cities in the United States.

Police seek noose planter at Texas University. Police want to know who put a noose on the chair of the student body president at Abilene Christian University last week. When Daniel Paul Watkins, and African-American senior political science major, returned to his office on Wednesday, somebody had put the racially insensitive symbol there. University President Royce Money said the action is nothing short of a hate crime and campus cops are working to solve the case. Only about 13 percent of the student body at Abilene Christian, a campus of 4,700 students, is Black.

U.S. official nix African refugee program. The U.S. State Department has ended a program that allowed African refugees with family members in the United States because DNA tests proved that many of the Africans were not really related. The program, established nearly two decades ago to assist people trying to escape political unrest and violence, accepted close relatives, including parents and children, of people already here. Most of the refugees flowed through Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Gambia. Of the 3,000 who were tested, most were originally from Somalia, Ethiopia, or Liberia, according to the State Department. “The program has been suspended,” said State Department spokesman Robert Wood, noting that only about fifth of applicants from those countries had actual blood ties.

Worker is fired after hanging a noose at a children’s hospital. Authorities in Philadelphia are investigating a potential hate crime after finding a noose swinging in an electrical shop at The Children’s Hospital. The alleged culprit has been fired for the Aug. 11 incident, hospital officials announced this week, but they refused to disclose his name, which has infuriated some residents. The fired member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers allegedly hung a noose on a light fixture on the 13th floor of the Aberson Pediatric Research Center. According to FOX News 29, the worker’s colleagues had asked him at least three times to remove the racially offensive symbol. Children’s Hospital released a statement to the news channel that says: “We believe this to be a blatantact of racial intimidation, for which we have ZERO tolerance at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. This has not happened before and was an isolated incident.” Jerry Mondesire, who heads the local chapter of the NAACP, says he believes the hospital handled the situation the right way.

He hung nooses from his truck and drove past a crowd of “ Jena Six” protestors

Jeremiah Munsen, a 19-year-old from Colfax, La., thought he’d send a powerful message to the protestors who showed up in his state last September to march against the prosecution of the six Black teens from the town of Jena accused of beating a White classmate. So he slung two nooses from his pickup truck and made sure the protestors got a glimpse. A judge has now sent a powerful message to Munsen, sentencing him to four months in prison for that single act of ultra-insensitivity. He could’ve been slapped with a one-year term, but Munsen bargained for the lesser sentence in April by fessing up to a misdemeanor charge of interfering with the protestor’s federally protected right to travel, The Associated Press reports. A group of African-American protestors were in Alexandria, La., waiting for their bus back home to Tennessee when Munsen repeatedly drove past them, displaying the nooses.

Darren “Bo” Taylor gave up his life with the Crips to foster harmony
Darren “Bo” Taylor, a one-time gang-banger who survived the mean streets of Los Angeles to bring about peace between rival gangs following the 1992 L.A. riots, lost a battle with cancer on Monday. He was 42. The former Crips member was perhaps the most unlikely peace activist. “Through his UNITY One organization, Taylor worked painstakingly to reduce street violence and to teach life skills to inmates. You don’t find many in the gang-intervention world who can be effective in the street, effective in the courtroom, effective at City Hall and effective in the prisons,” civil rights attorney Connie Rice told The Associated Press. “He could calm everyone down and make us work together.” Survivors include his wife, Marlene Oglesby-Taylor, and mother, Charlene Taylor. (Photo/ Los Angeles Times).

Don’t count on Jesse or Colin in Denver.

Secretary of State Colin Powell downplayed reports that he’d be standing next to Sen. Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention in Denver later this month. During the primaries, Powell had kind words for Obama, stoking speculation that the first African-American secretary of State might throw his support behind potentially the first African-American president. Go to BET.com/News for more..

Second noose is found on Tennessee construction site. For the second time this month construction workers at the BlueCross BlueShield building site in Tennessee Thursday found a noose at the worksite in Cameron Hill. It was constructed of plastic building material, FBI Agent in Charge Ed Galloway told The Chattanooga Times Free Press. He said his office is investigating. Skanska, the company in charge of the construction project, is offering diversity and sensitivity training, the newspaper reports. “We’ve added a tremendous amount of security at the site,” John Reyhan, general manager for the project, Reyhan said. “And at our job-wide meeting every morning we are encouraging anyone to come forward with any reports of intimidation.” The first noose was found last week.

FBI steps into the Florida noose case.

The FBI has stepped into the middle of an investigation into who sent a noose to an African-American commissioner in Orlando, Fla., who blasted a local golf course for having what she called a racially insensitive picture on the club wall. Now that the Orlando Police have confirmed that a noose was delivered to Commissioner Daisy Lynum’s City Hall office, federal authorities are treating it as a hate crime, Local6.com reports. Lynum has vociferously demanded that the Dubsdread golf course take down the 1930s photo showing a barefoot Black boy, caddying for a White player, calling the picture racist. During that era, Blacks were forced to remove their shoes before stepping onto the greens. “There is a photograph of the history of Dubsdread but there is a Black caddy with no shoes on,” Lynum told the news station earlier. “I find the picture insulting and I would like for someone to take it down. We don’t have to change the history but we could sure change how it looks now.”

Judge dismisses entire jury following noose incident. What’s the chances that Anas Hourani, a 24-year-old man accused of choking and raping a woman five years ago, would have gotten a fair trial? The actions by a Connecticut judge would suggest he didn’t feel Hourani had an ice cube’s chance in hell. Superior Court Judge Lawrence Hauser dismissed the entire jury in the murder-rape case after the drawing of a noose was discovered on the blackboard in the deliberation room. Hauser said that under state law he had no choice but to clean house of the six jurors and three alternatives and start over. The noose, Hauser said, is a symbol of racism and intimidation.

Ohio man is charged with a hate crime

An Ohio man has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly sending threatening letters to a respected Muslim man who was brutally beaten in his home a month earlier. Michael Coon is accused of sending 10 threatening emails to Dr. Amjad Hussain, a retired heart surgeon, trustee of the University of Toledo and the writer of a guest column for the Toledo Blade. Last month, according to sheriff’s deputies, someone pistol-whipped Hussain and sprayed him with mace. Police say the hate mail is nothing new. “This guy has just been the victim of a violent crime and now he receives another crazy email from this guy,” Det. Mark Woodruff. Deputies say they don’t think Coon is connected to the beating.

Columbia professor who got a noose has been fired
The Columbia University professor who drew national attention after being targeted with a noose on her door has been fired amid plagiarism charges. Madonna G. Constantine, who taught psychology and education with an emphasis on ethnic issues at Columbia’s Teacher’s College, received a reprimand four months ago following a year and a half investigation into whether she stole the writings of two former students and a former colleague. Although she had been censured, she was allowed to keep her job. But acrimony grew as Constantine defended herself and filed a grievance against the university president, Susan Fuhrman. Constantine’s firing, announced in a letter to faculty Monday, was “purely retaliatory,” her attorney, Paul Giacomo, said. “During the months since the college levied sanctions against her, Professor Constantine continued to make accusations of plagiarism, including in at least one instance to the press, against those whose works she had plagiarized,” the letter stated. “We are terminating Madonna Constantine’s employment with Teachers College for cause, subject to a hearing before a faculty committee,” it said. “In the interim Professor Constantine is suspended, effective immediately.” Regarding the noose incident of February, a criminal investigation is ongoing. Constantine initially linked it with the plagiarism case. “I believe that nothing that has happened to me this year is coincidental, particularly when I reflect upon the hate crime I experienced last semester involving a noose on my office door,” she said in a February email to faculty and students. “As one of only two tenured Black women full professors at Teachers College, it pains me to conclude that I have been specifically and systematically targeted.”