Supporters and even opponents of same-sex marriage, including Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller (D-Calvert, Prince George's counties), have said publicly they believe the bill will pass the upper chamber with 25 votes once again. The senator whose vote was not counted last year, Sen. Joanne Benson (D-Prince George's), has said she opposes marriage equality.

A Nigerian immigrant who runs an executive car service, Otigba learned over burgers and potato salad that his new neighbors, all of them black, included a White House staffer, a Grammy-winning producer, a lawyer, a nurse, an engineer and a fellow business owner. That's an impressive lineup in most any community, but here in Prince George's County, the most affluent majority-black county in the United States, the Otigbas and their neighbors were just part of the wave of well-to-do families who arrived in the years before the financial collapse to stake their claim on a 5,000-square-foot version of the American dream.

Outside the cul-de-sac's seven brandy-colored brick neocolonials, party conversation quickly turned to typical middle-class concerns, from the quality of area schools to guidelines for the local homeowners association. By the time the Otigbas cleaned up and helped the hired DJ pack his equipment, several of their new neighbors had made something else clear. Most planned to spend the coming decades living in Balk Hill.

"I found that refreshing," said Otigba, 43. "When we moved here, I told my wife, 'This is it. I'm never moving again.' We were planting our roots."

That was then. Today, the Otigbas and five of their six immediate neighbors are underwater on their mortgages, that is, they owe more than their homes are worth. The lawyer's house sits vacant after a failed short sale. The engineer fears the house he shares with his family will become unaffordable when their mortgage resets in about a year. And having attempted once unsuccessfully to cut a new deal with their bank, the Otigbas are waiting to hear the results of a second effort. For months they've lived in fear that an official foreclosure notice will arrive with an order to vacate.

Alston is a Washington-based entrepreneur and the head of Alston Marketing. Founded in 2002, the firm has a diverse roster of clients that has included the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Capital Bikeshare and Prince George's County.

Describe your experience as a young black female entrepreneur?

I am a fourth-generation entrepreneur and fourth-generation college graduate from Oklahoma. I was raised to live the dream, work hard and never questioned those beliefs. No one ever said to me 'You can't become anything.' Yes, there's racism, sexism, classism and all the other 'isms,' but that was never an excuse. Sure things get tough, but you persevere and get through it.

Results of a survey paint a a complex portrait of black women who feel confident but vulnerable, who have high self-esteem and see physical beauty as important, who find career success more vital to them than marriage.

Maryland is near the top of the national rankings in median household income, but the state’s great wealth does not equal good health for everyone.

Instead, the state has troubling clusters of chronic disease, low-birth-weight babies and limited access to health care for those who lack the means to pay. Areas with large minority populations, including Prince George’s County, are especially hard-hit.

The NAACP is urging the Maryland legislature to abolish the death penalty.

The organization’s action comes on the heels of efforts to stop the execution of Troy Davis last year. But, the tone of that move represents a marked shift in which death penalty critics are increasingly framing the issue within the context of cost rather than as a moral imperative or as a way to highlight racial disparities. The hope is that states like Maryland, pressed for money during hard economic times, will take a second look at the practice and do away with it.

C. Anthony Muse, a well-known minister who leads the Ark of Safety Christian Church in Upper Marlboro, MD, and a state senator representing southern Prince George’s County, will take on U.S. Sen. Benjamin Cardin in the April 3rd Maryland Democratic Party primary and thus seek to become the first African American in history to represent the state of Maryland.

Muse, 53, announced his intentions at The Camelot by Martin’s Banquet Hall in Upper Marlboro recently before an estimated crowd of 2,000.

“I have traveled this state and people have told me that this country is going in the wrong direction,” he said. “I love this country and I love this state and people need to know that it is all right to have change.”

Muse noted that his opponent, Cardin, has been in public office “since I was 10 years old.”

The Prince George’s school board shut three dozen magnet programs after court-ordered desegregation ended in 2004. Diversity goals had become harder to achieve in the predominantly black school system, and officials found that extra program costs were not leading to better results. Now county schools offer a smaller number of “specialty programs” with goals of “raising student achievement and appealing to different students’ interests,” she said.

Experts say disparities appear to have complex causes. A disproportionate number of black students live below the poverty line or with a single parent, factors that affect disciplinary patterns. But experts say those factors do not fully explain racial differences in suspensions. Other contributing factors could include unintended bias, unequal access to highly effective teachers and differences in school leadership styles.

Racial politics and concerns about community cohesion dominated a three-hour hearing Thursday as scores of people from across Maryland came to Annapolis to condemn, offer suggestions and even praise the new legislative district map drawn by Gov. Martin O’Malley’s Redistricting Advisory Committee.

The map, which was the product of census data and comments from a dozen hearings across the state this summer, was first unveiled online last Friday. O’Malley said he had the hearing to give the people a chance to see and comment on it before he sends it to the General Assembly next month.

O’Malley listened to all of the testimony and said no one would likely say that the new map was better than the old one, but it was made necessary by shifting populations found in last year’s census. He said he would try to address as many concerns as possible before finalizing the map and presenting it to the legislature.

A committee appointed by Gov. Martin O’Malley released its recommendations for a new state legislative map Friday evening that reduces the number of districts that cross county lines and increases the amount of so-called “majority-minority” districts.

Though lawmakers were still busy early this week examining details of the proposal, initial reactions indicated the map is unlikely to draw as much criticism as the new congressional districts that were signed into law Oct. 20.

The proposed map includes 12 districts where a majority of the residents are black, up from 10 on the current map and another four “majority-minority” districts, including District 28 in Charles County.

Also notably, the recommendations include for the first time in state history a majority Hispanic district. As proposed, District 47B in Prince George’s County is more than 63 percent Hispanic.

The proposal also cuts the number of districts that cross county boundaries from 14 to 13.

ames Breedin cannot keep track of how often he has been admitted to Howard University Hospital for heart problems. "It's been so many," said Breedin, a 75-year-old disabled former truck driver from Northeast Washington.

One reason for his frequent returns, he says, is that he often can't afford the medications his doctor prescribes to keep his heart problems in check, "so I have to do without." Another is that he fears exercising outside because of neighborhood violence.

Medicare is preparing to penalize hospitals with frequent potentially avoidable readmissions, which by one estimate cost the government $12 billion a year. Medicare's aim is to prod hospitals to make sure patients get the care they need after discharge. But this new policy is likely to disproportionately affect hospitals that treat the most low-income patients, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

 

Three federal judges expressed skepticism Tuesday that Maryland's political mapmakers intentionally diluted black voting power when they drew new congressional districts, as the map's opponents have argued.

The three-judge panel held a hearing in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt to determine whether the state's new congressional map passes constitutional muster.

Judge Paul V. Neimeyer, one of the three deciding the matter, said that the General Assembly-approved plan appeared to be drawn with an eye toward ensuring that some incumbent members of Congress would be re-elected. "If that is the motivation, it is hard to get racial discrimination out of that evidence," Neimeyer said. The other two judges made similar comments.

As a three-judge panel heard arguments about whether Maryland's redistricting map dilutes the African-American vote, one of those judges said Tuesday he doesn't believe a case has been made to require a third black-majority congressional district.

Still, the judges noted that some changes in the map might be necessary after further review, and they asked an assistant attorney general representing the state elections board how that might affect the timeline for Maryland's scheduled April 3 primary.

Republicans and a voters-rights advocacy group are rallying against an initial proposal to redraw the state’s legislative districts.

The plan, released Friday by the Governor’s Redistricting Advisory, calls for increasing from 10 to 12 the number of majority-black Senate districts and creating a majority-Hispanic district in Prince George’s County. But a spokesman for the Fannie Lou Hamer Political Action Committee said the plan does not do enough to provide adequate representation to blacks and other minorities.

Radamese Cabrera, a consultant who works for the PAC, called the plan “pure racism,” arguing the map should have as many as 14 majority-black districts to more accurately represent black Marylanders.

County Council district 2 experienced "moderate to large" increases in its Hispanic population and corresponding decreases in its African-American population over the previous decade, according to an analysis from the Urban Institute.

The study, based on U.S. Census and American Community Survey data, looked at demographic shifts in Prince George's County between 2000 and 2010.

Regarding the Dec. 1 editorial “The wrong message,” on Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s attack on the University of Maryland’s Environmental Law Clinic:

We have fought since 2004 against efforts to build a concrete plant adjacent to the residential neighborhoods where we live. Without the dedicated work of the Environmental Law Clinic, one more small, moderate-income African American community would have fallen victim to a system concerned too little with the quality of the air we breathe.

The Cedar Heights Civic Association rallied the support of nearby communities, but we were still no match for the lawyers and the complexities of land-use law as practiced in Prince George’s County. By securing the free help of the law clinic, we were at least able to stave off for a while further damage to our health and communities caused by air, water and noise pollution. Although we are not sure of the final disposition, the legal help, which we could not otherwise afford, was a godsend.

Her children have been taught by teachers who are black, Asian, white and Hispanic, those who are young and those a bit older, and teachers with foreign accents and those without. And for that, Kathryn Holmes Johnson is thankful.

The Glenn Dale mother’s daughters, Bailey and Peri — in fourth and seventh grades at Benjamin Foulois Creative and Performing Arts Academy in Morningside — have benefited greatly from the diversity of their teachers’ backgrounds, Johnson said.

In Prince George’s County, the percentage of teachers of color, 67 percent this year, is more than twice the statewide average of 26 percent last year, but the county still is working to close the gap between the vastly nonwhite student population and the diversity of teachers.

The gist of the Nov. 16 news article “In search of Hispanic teachers” was that, because the number of Hispanic students is growing, Prince George’s County public schools and school systems elsewhere want to hire more Hispanic teachers. This is untenable as a matter of both law and logic.  

Federal civil-rights statutes and the Constitution forbid hiring teachers with an eye on race or ethnicity. The Supreme Court has expressly rejected the notion that faculty racial percentages should mirror student-body racial percentages (Hazelwood School District v. United States, 1977), as well as the “role model” justification for faculty discrimination (Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 1986). As Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote in the latter case, “Carried to its logical extreme, the idea that [minority] students are better off with [minority] teachers could lead to the very system the Court rejected in Brown v. Board of Education.”

The surge in Hispanic students across the nation is forcing schools to reckon with a deep shortage of teachers who share their cultural heritage.

More than 21 percent of schoolchildren are Hispanic, experts report, compared with 7 percent of teachers. No other racial or ethnic minority group has such a wide disparity. In the struggle to close this gap, the stakes are high: Research suggests that a more diverse faculty might lead to better attendance, fewer suspensions and higher test scores.

Much of the African-American demographic decline can be traced to the way lower- and middle-income blacks are moving to the suburbs, just as whites did after World War II. As a result, Maryland’s Prince George’s County is now the wealthiest majority-black county in the United States. (The gangsters from Yards Park also moved there, which accounts for most of the county’s crime.) But it’s just not true that D.C.’s racial divide is getting worse. Despite the African-American exodus—amounting to 100,000 people since 1990, according to a CBS Baltimore article on the 2010 census—the D.C. population grew by 30,000 residents over the same period. Many of the newcomers are well-off whites, while others are Hispanic, African, Asian, and multiracial. Immigrants now account for over 20 percent of D.C.’s metro-area population, according to a 2011 Brookings report, The Geography of Immigrant Skills. A recent article in the Washington Post, “A Region Remade,” reports that in 2010, just one in three neighborhoods in D.C. was highly segregated, with more than 85 percent of the residents of the same race or ethnicity. D.C. is becoming more diverse and undivided, not less.

The fact that all the residents so far are African American, many of them new to Prince George’s County, underscores just how differently the county is evolving compared with the rest of the Washington region.

From Loudoun to Fairfax to Montgomery, communities that are growing are also growing more integrated, with people of every race and ethnicity living side by side. Prince George’s stands virtually alone as a place that is gaining population yet has an increasing number of residents living in neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly one race — in this case, African American.

A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization has called on the Office of the State's Attorney for Prince George's County Maryland to bring hate crime charges against a Prince Frederick man scheduled to go to trial on Monday, October 17, for allegedly assaulting a Virginia Muslim limousine driver.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says the alleged assault took place on March 11 of this year when the Muslim limo driver of Moroccan origin reported that he picked up two passengers in Washington, D.C., shortly after midnight and was asked to take them to National Harbor.

After learning that the driver's name is Mohammed, one of the passengers asked whether he was Muslim. When the driver said he is Muslim, that admission allegedly prompted both passengers to use religious and ethnic slurs and make threats to the life of the driver.

The passengers reportedly called the Muslim driver a "jihadist" and told him they were going to "f**king murder" him.

When the limo arrived at the destination, one of the passengers allegedly punched the driver in the head, knocking him to the ground and fracturing his wrist. Both passengers were subsequently arrested and charged.

This map’s three majority-minority districts contain African-American populations of 52 percent, 56 percent and 57 percent. The total minority population of District 4 represents 74 percent, of District 5 it is 68 percent and in District 7 it is 64 percent.

Ÿ The 4th District is a Beltway district that hugs the Montgomery and Prince George’s county lines. It also has the state’s largest concentration of Hispanics, totaling 21.8 percent of the district’s population.

Ÿ The 5th District is a suburban Washington, D.C., and Interstate 95 district. It contains all of Charles County, the majority of area within Prince George’s County, the I-95 portion of Howard County and the precincts bordering I-95 within Baltimore County.

The once-every-decade overhaul of Maryland’s Congressional districts is drawing fire from a group of Montgomery and Prince George’s lawmakers who say the plan scatters black, Hispanic and Asian communities across too many districts, weakening the strength of the minority vote at a time when Census data show it should be growing.

...“There’s a growth amongst minorities and then a reduction of representation. That really flies in the face of the Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which seeks to preserve and not dilute minority voting strength,” said Braveboy, an attorney.

Prince George’s County resident, Renatta DeBlase, is pulling back the curtain on her time behind the scenes working with jazz legends including Duke Ellington and Billy Taylor during the racially charged 1960’s in her audio book and ebook “WITH STARS IN MY EYES”. Released in May of this year, the audio version of WITH STARS IN MY EYES is narrated with warmth by the author, now a retired veteran of both the music and publishing industry based in Washington DC.

In the late 1960’s, Deblase was a young white college student from the suburbs who fell in love with the uniquely African-American music emanating from the hip jazz clubs of New York. Soon, she was a valued insider in that world, fighting to bring the music of jazz pianist Billy Taylor and the hugely influential Duke Ellington to audiences, no matter what the color.

On September 24th the Accokeek Foundation’s 11th annual African American Heritage Day will celebrate the region’s history and culture with “Enduring Traditions: Rich Connections to Our Past” at the National Colonial Farm at Piscataway Park. Bring the family for a day full of music, living history demonstrations, children’s activities, fascinating panels, and the best soul food this side of the Mason Dixon line.

On August 23, Barack Obama Elementary School welcomed the surviving members of the 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars Team. The team shared with students their story of being the only all Black little league team, in formerly segregated Charleston, SC.

“It is an honor to have the 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars Team visit with the students and staff of Barack Obama Elementary School,” said Pearl Harmon, principal, Barack Obama Elementary School. “I am thrilled that my students had the opportunity to engage in living legends who utilized unfortunate circumstances to create an extraordinary opportunity.”

In Prince George’s County, the white population among the youngest children is half that of its general population, at 7 percent, and a quarter of its youngest residents are Hispanic - nearly twice that of their parents’ generation. There are one-third fewer whites in the nation’s wealthiest majority-black county compared with 10 years ago.

The Laurel City Council last night unanimously approved an ordinance to repeal a highly contested election law.

The vote ended weeks of public outcry from civil rights groups, including the NAACP and ACLU, after a complaint regarding the law was filed with the state’s attorney general’s office.

Opponents contended that the law unfairly banned residents with criminal backgrounds from running for elected office and would give the city’s Board of Election the power to determine who can and cannot run for elected office in the city.

Enjoy an evening of culture in the County. The Prince George’s African American Museum and Cultural Center will host Unwind Wednesday’s every 1st Wednesday.

Many said they too want the safer neighborhoods and better-quality stores that development brings. There are also long-established black middle-class enclaves east of the river, such as Hillcrest, where residents are also happy to see more well-to-do black neighbors.

When campaign aides to former Maryland Republican governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. were indicted last month on charges that they sought to suppress black voter turnout last year, the allegations against Ehrlich’s right-hand man drew the biggest headlines.

But as the case moves to court Monday, the lesser-known defendant and his often controversial, behind-the-scenes work for Maryland political campaigns are poised to take center stage.

Because the congressional districts need to be drawn in time for the April 3 primary election in 2012, the General Assembly will meet in a special session to approve them, likely to be the week of Oct. 17.

The other committee members are Senate President Mike Miller, who has served on the previous two commissions in 2001 and 1991; House of Delegates Speaker Michael Busch; Prince George’s County businessman Richard Stewart; and former Del. James King, the only Republican....

Federal law also requires that Congressional districts be drawn so that racial and ethnic minorities will be able to elect representatives from their communities, Friedman said.

Is gentrification black and white? Or economic? Last week, at a meeting about the often ominous issue of gentrification, a panel of young black professionals rejected the common idea that gentrification means white people moving into black neighborhoods. Instead, they argued, gentrification is about economics and a product of market forces....

Speakers referenced demographic shifts in the history of the city. Georgetown had a reputation as a slum in the 1920's, and Anacostia was nearly 80% white up until the 1950's. Given this, there was a consensus that change is natural as people come and go between and within neighborhoods. Davis noted that there is an emerging group of middle class African Americans that are "not choosing to buy or if they buy they are typically choosing the big house in Prince George's County."

Prince George's County is the most racially diverse county in Maryland, and Baltimore City ranks second.

Detailed racial breakdowns from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that minority groups account for 80.8 percent of the residents of Prince George's County, part of the Washington, D.C., suburbs.

The corresponding figure for Baltimore City is precisely 70.4 percent, based on the results of the 2010 federal census.

“There always has been trouble around that school,” he said. “My impression is that it’s [racial issues] between white and black and Hispanic. This area is what we call the poor side of town.”

The Hyattsville City Council on May 31 gave a slight nod to plans for a new Hyattsville elementary school after months of negotiating with the Prince George’s County school system to rework a number of things on the site, including traffic flow.

Paul Taylor, director of capital programs for Prince George’s County Public Schools brought a revised site plan, which has all school traffic removed from Nicholson Street.

Trevor Otts doesn’t want a repeat of the last time political boundaries were redrawn in Maryland.

The 2002 legislative redistricting plan submitted by the General Assembly faced multiple lawsuits and was ruled unconstitutional by the state’s highest court, which redrew the lines.

As the state and other governmental entities prepare to begin the once-a-decade process, Otts, who owns a business consulting firm and lives in Fort Washington, is chairing a political action committee that aims to ensure proposed districts reflect Prince George’s County’s majority minority population.

There was standing room only in a Prince George’s Community College auditorium Wednesday night as community members clamored to join a town hall forum on race and the economic recession.

The discussion was an opportunity for the community and panelists to discuss the findings of a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation-Harvard University poll on the recession’s impact on area African American families.

America’s wealthiest black county is in trouble.

Prince George’s County, Md., has gained prominence in recent years as the most affluent county in America with a majority African-American population. Average income in the county is almost double the national average for black families, according to the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey.

But the county, adjacent to the District of Columbia, has been laid low by the recession and the mortgage meltdown and now holds a more dubious distinction: a rising foreclosure rate that ranks as the worst in Maryland.

Tate, who grew up in the wealthy, largely African American Prince George's County, Maryland community, admits that she once wore race on her sleeve.

Behind a wire fence not far from National Harbor, the waterfront resort and mini-city in Oxon Hill, are the remains of a once-thriving plantation.

It was called Salubria and was owned by John H. Bayne, a prominent physician and slave owner whose three children were poisoned by a 14-year-old slave named Judith.

Watch a sneak preview of 'Enlisted: A conversation with Five Generations of African Americans From The U.S. Armed Services".

This inspiring video will featured as apart of our current exhibition: 'Coming Home: How the African american Experience During World War II Shaped the Culture of Prince George's County.'

Jolene Ivey, a Maryland state delegate from Prince George’s County and the mother of five boys, founded the organization Mocha Moms to bring black mothers together to support one another in their parenting experiences. Like other mothers, she is concerned that her boys — Alex, 21; David, 18; Julian, 15; Troy, 13; and Aaron, 11 — “reach their full potential, do as well in life as they can, be as happy as they can, make contributions to the world, be good people and grow up in one piece.”

But she is also concerned about some issues that her friends who are white are less likely to face. Ivey and her husband, Glenn, the former two-term state’s attorney in Prince George’s, spent days on pins and needles after one of their sons was accused of a crime he did not commit. Although her son denied wrongdoing and she and her husband confirmed his version of events, authorities cleared him only after a series of text messages proved that he was not the culprit, Ivey said.

As Rev Anthony Evans describes it, the initiative to provide financial education and banking resources to black consumers sponsored by the NAACP and Wells Fargo, the nation�s biggest mortgage lender, is a financial crime against the African American community....

Prince George�s County, a bastion of the African American middle class, has the highest foreclosure rate in Maryland. Realty-Trac�s measures show that one in every 742 housing units in the county received a foreclosure filing in February � 2.4 times the state average.

Legislation passed during the recently ended General Assembly session will revamp the state's minority contracting program, eliminating sub-goals for women- and black-owned businesses for one year as officials study whether more changes are needed.

Prince George's County, Md., has seen more foreclosures than any other parts of the D.C. region, and some civil rights groups are accusing banks of discriminating against county residents, who are predominately African-American.

In times past, says Michelle A. Bell, a black businesswoman such as herself would not have had a seat at the table when deals were struck....

After long and protracted study and debate, WSSC's new Minority Business Enterprise program takes effect on May 1, but some critics say it does not go far enough to erase the contracting disparities found by the study.

When the first gunboats exploded on the Patuxent River, everyone at Mount Calvert heard the blast. It was an ominous sound.

The year was 1814, and the United States was once again at war with Britain. Thousands of British troops were marching through southern Maryland to attack Washington.

At the same time, British ships sailed up the Patuxent River, moving more troops inland while chasing a troublesome collection of U.S. gunboats. Led by the bold U.S. Commodore Joshua Barney, these gunboats had been the only naval force to challenge British invaders on the Chesapeake Bay.

According to an interactive Census map, Prince George's County grew only 7.7% whereas most of the areas around DC grew much more. You can select your state and then mouseover your county to get the county stats. Racially, there was a big change: 34% fewer whites, 126% more Hispanics, and 10% more blacks. This has made the white and Hispanic population both at 15% while the black population is at 64%. Multiracial has also gone up 9% according to these statistics to a 2% share and other groups (unnamed) have gone up 23%, though their "share" is still 0%.

It looked like a virtual certainty a few weeks ago that Maryland was going to legalize same-sex marriage but the state House has now killed the bill because of furious lobbying from predominately black churches.

Tuesday's Washington Post article examining the response by African-American voters to President Barack Obama's new Defense of Marriage Act policy reveals what many in the black community already know: When it comes to the ballot box, marriage equality is mostly a nonissue. In interviews with black pastors, pollsters, churchgoers and professors, African-American voters explain that economic and social-justice platforms are of far greater concern than LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues....

The answer remains murky. Already, white LGBT activists such as David Mixner are sending not-so-subtle signals that race will matter in Maryland. "Our national organizations must immediately line up the unshakable and unmistakable support of President Obama. Voters love him in this state especially in vote-rich Prince George's County and Baltimore," he writes in a Feb. 28 blog posting. With PGC nearly 63 percent African American, Mixner's message could not be clearer — even if he wimps out on the clarifying.

"I think this is one issue where the majority should not impose their beliefs on others," Shilling said.

Juan McCoy, who lives with his partner, Chris Williams, and their five children in Camp Springs, said it is frustrating to listen to politicians whose rights are not being affected like his are. His senator, C. Anthony Muse (D-Dist. 26) of Fort Washington, voted against the bill in the state senate.

McCoy said Saturday he felt that Alston was planning for the next election rather than do the job she was elected to do and was not a fan of her suggested amendment to the bill to make it a civil union that was rejected.

"It's really disappointing that an African-American would go the separate-but-equal route," McCoy said. "It's a throwback, and that's what's disappointing to me about many of the delegates in the House that continue to accept this type of discrimination. To put obstacles in the way of other groups to me is just baffling. While I think civil unions would have been a good start many years ago, I don't think that would've been a good option today."

Results from the 2010 census confirm that Maryland is becoming a favorite domicile of non-white Americans. Indeed, all of the state's growth in the past 10 years flows from African Americans, Asians and Hispanics moving to the Free State.

Whites now are in the minority in four jurisdictions — Montgomery County, Charles County, Baltimore city and Prince George's County. Minorities make up 41 percent of Howard County's population and 37 percent of Baltimore County's.

School and community leaders, parents and students met on Tue., Feb. 15 to decry bullying, youth violence and gang activity in and around Prince George's County schools and pledged to take definitive actions against activities that they say are tied to the recent spate of homicides.

District 3 Board of Education member Amber Waller organized the two-hour forum and declared in an interview with The Washington Informer that "the community call to action was a success."

More than 100 students, parents, family members, public school employees, and members of the community attended the forum at Northwestern High School. One important reason for the success, said Waller is that there was "a great vari-ety of participation from our community," including students who took advantage of the opportunity to voice their experi-ences and concerns to the officials present.

There was standing room only in a Prince George's Community College auditorium Wednesday night as community members clamored to join a town hall forum on race and the economic recession.

Ana Palma of Colmar Manor was laid off 18 months ago as a construction project manager and said she cannot afford proposed cuts to the Prince George's County Public Schools budget that would require her to provide transportation for her daughter to attend Landover's Kenmoor Middle School.

"These are the kids that are probably going to run the country, and they're the ones being hurt," said Palma, whose daughter, Natally, is a seventh-grader enrolled in the Talented and Gifted program at Kenmoor; her neighborhood school does not offer the program.

According to the most recent state statistics, Maryland's infant mortality rate was 7.2 per 1,000 births in 2009. The mortality rate for whites in Prince George's County was 6.0 per 1,000 births, compared to 11.1 for blacks in 2009.

Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker is among those who support the in-state tuition plan. In written testimony, he said, "Maryland should be investing in all students who live and learn and contribute to our state, regardless of where they were born."

Adams says that before moving, he looked at a two-bedroom house around the corner from his mother's home priced at $285,000. But it had no refrigerator or washing machine, so in 2006, he settled on a five-bedroom home for slightly more in District Heights, Md., a working-class suburb in Prince George's County....

In Prince Georges County, where he lives now, the black population has grown 11 percent in the last decade.

The Hispanic population in Prince George's County nearly doubled over the past 10 years, fueling much of the locality's growth and matching the number of whites for the first time, according to new census figures released Wednesday.

The percentage of African Americans remained steady in the majority-black county, and the percentage of whites continued to tumble, although at a slightly slower pace than in the previous decade.

Although its population grew more slowly than those of neighboring counties, Prince George's holds firm to its position as the second-largest jurisdiction in Maryland, with more than 863,000 residents.

For Temple Hills resident Luther Atkinson, the annual celebration of Black History Month in February is not only a chance to revisit black history nationwide but his personal history as well.

Atkinson, 73, played Negro League Baseball in the late 1950s and 1960s and shared his story and talked about the league's history Friday at Oakcrest Community Center in Capitol Heights. He is scheduled to speak at Suitland Community Center at 6 p.m. Feb. 18.

Businesses owned by women and minorities are not getting a proportionate share of major contracts awarded by the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, according to a new study released Thursday.

The study, which was ordered by the utility and looked at contracts and subcontracts awarded by the water and sewer utility between July 2003 and June 2009, found "statistically significant underutilization" of those businesses for prime contracts in construction, architecture and engineering, goods and services and professional services, according to WSSC officials.

For subcontracts in those areas, some racial and ethnic groups also got significantly less than a proportionate share in all but the professional services category.

WSSC staff will draft a new minority contracting program for commissioners to consider. The current program expires April 30.

"I think Prince George's County, which is predominantly African American, should not be viewed as a monolithic entity or county or community," Brown said. "I think we're going to get varying degrees of support and varying degrees of opposition. We know from public comments that many of the traditional civil rights organizations have come out in support of it," he said, referring to the same-sex marriage bill.

"We also know that a number of members of the clergy from the African-American churches have come out or spoke against it," he said. "So there's not a clear or I should say single voice in Prince George's County on this issue as I suspect is true in most all of the large counties in Maryland."...

"Well, my only response, and this is not a response to the impact on black families, white families, or any other families," he said. "My response to that is I have had experience through friendships and acquaintances with couples – same-sex couples – who are successfully raising children. And that's in a number or variety of racial or ethnic backgrounds. So I have difficulty understanding that comment."

With a paucity of minority women in science, technology and math (STEM) careers, a Prince George's-based business has partnered with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and HBCUs to retain minority women in those careers. GPRA Strategic Management and the NSF held a conclave in June to build community awareness about the issue and are committed to broadening minority representation STEM careers.

The movement was a long time coming, according to Kelly Mack, Ph.D., program officer with the NSF's ADVANCE program. She said the NSF wants to create more diversity in science-related fields.

A Landover man filed a complaint Monday in Prince George's County Circuit Court against the Woodmore Towne Center at Glenarden alleging Glenarden city police officers racially profiled him for going to multiple stores Nov. 26 without making noticeable purchases.

Jonathan Lancaster, 19, a black male, is suing for $70,000 in punitive damages after Glenarden police officers allegedly told him they observed him going to two stores without buying anything and after they asked him to leave the property despite his having no previous criminal history.

"I knew his rights were violated because the officers did not articulate a reasonable suspicion that a crime had occurred or was going to occur," said Lancaster's attorney, Jim Bell, adding that Lancaster is not talking to the press. "That was just blatant."

A dozen current and former Prince George's County Public School employees recently filed a multi-million lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the school system and the Prince George's County Educator's Association, alleging racial discrimination at work.

The $50 million mass action lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt Nov. 22 by 12 former and current county school teachers and secretaries against the Prince George's County Educator's Association and Prince George's County Public Schools.

The lawsuit alleges that Largo High School Principal Angelique Simpson-Marcus, a black woman who took the job in 2007, has targeted white teachers because of their race and in an effort to force the white teachers out of the school and black teachers and employees who stood up for them.

First Sheila Dixon, now this. We began 2010 with Baltimore Mayor Dixon convicted for theft; now Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson is implicated in bribery and kickback schemes.

In Dixon's case the prosecutor was smart. Instead of bribery and shakedowns, he charged her with pocketing gift cards intended for poor kids. Hard to stand by a mayor under those circumstances.

Next, Dixon lost all sympathy when she resigned to preserve her $83,000-a-year city pension while sending her extravagant hairdresser bills to the taxpayers.

"Myopic" would be the belief that the suburbs are necessarily better places for working- and middle-class whites, even though they are not actually good for wide swaths of people, because of social fictions about the nature of people who occupy them. (This is particularly galling coming from a resident of Prince George's County, which has steadfastly refused to organize land use in a way that would allow its existing transit infrastructure to work in a self-sustaining fashion, in favor of cargo-cultic sprawl and totally atomized new-urbanist theme parks like National Harbor and Konterra.)

The county's image took a beating in the wake of the arrest of County Executive Jack B. Johnson on Nov. 12. It has long been a place of stark contradictions for many residents, a symbol of black middle-class success, and a place with many problems -- poor schools and high crime -- regularly associated with cities. Here is how residents view themselves and some key facts about the county:

As the negative gaffes begin to pile up from misspoken statements to unheard of predictions, current Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele may be in for a helluva re-election battle. However beyond the normal political gestures and whispers that often go on behind-the-scenes of a Party election, Steele may be facing more of a racial undertone that could spell his demise.

The 52-year old Prince George's County native has held the Republican Party top post since his 6th-ballot 91-vote victory on January 30, 2009 becoming the 64th Chairman of the RNC. Facing a possible up-hill battle, if he chooses to run for re-election this time around, he certainly will not be deterred by such systematic provocations as he has been challenged time and time again throughout his career.

Gov. Martin O'Malley and former Gov. Bob Ehrlich each tried to prove they have done more for the African-American community in a debate Thursday morning on WOLB's Larry Young Show.

Health care, veterans, crime and funding for minority-owned businesses and historically black colleges and universities dominated the election's third debate, moderated by Young, a former Democratic state senator from Baltimore. In the midst of the policy debate, the candidates barely looked at one another, instead exchanging

"that's not true" jabs and a comment by Ehrlich that O'Malley will soon be looking for a job in the private sector.

Concerns over bullying and staffing cuts at Prince George's County schools were raised at a community forum held this week by incoming county executive Rushern Baker.

Joe Murchison, a Laurel resident and the executive director of the nonprofit Side by Side, said he was worried about the effect recent parent liaison layoffs at county schools would have on the Hispanic community.

"Our Spanish-speaking families, they make up a sizable number of our families," said Murchison, at the Tuesday night forum at Lake Arbor Elementary School. Census Bureau data from 2009 reveals that persons of Hispanic or Latino origin make up 13.5 percent of the population of Prince George's County. Many of those families don't speak English and need bilingual parent liaisons to help them get involved, Murchison said.

One of the states where Black turnout is important is Maryland, where incumbent Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) is fighting to keep his job from former Gov. Robert Ehrlich (R), whom he defeated in 2006 with a strong African-American vote in Prince George's County and Baltimore. Recent polls show that O'Malley has a 5-point lead, but that is among likely voters, a sample that does not traditionally include a large number of African Americans.

National journalism groups have weighed in at the Court of Appeals in a high-profile dispute over whether the Maryland State Police should turn over to the Maryland NAACP files showing how the agency handled five years' worth of complaints of racial profiling in traffic stops.

The NAACP's effort to see the internal police documents has drawn a brief from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, joined by the Society of Professional Journalists. The national NAACP had also filed a brief in support of the state NAACP.

President Obama will travel to Maryland next week to rally voter turnout in support of Gov. Martin O'Malley, who is running for re-election against former Republican governor Bob Ehrlich.

The president will campaign with O'Malley in Prince George's County on Oct. 7 at Bowie State University, according to O'Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese. Bowie State University is Maryland's oldest historically black college.

Campaign analysts say black Democrats — whose turnout is traditionally low in Maryland — are particularly valuable to O'Malley.

Angarai International, Inc., a company located in the Prince George's County Economic Development Corp's Technology Assistance Center (TAC), has been selected as one of this year's Top 100 MBEs.

Wayne K. Curry had soared to the peak of his political career in September 1996 when he was featured in a Washington Post Magazine cover story. Two years earlier, Prince George's County voters had made him the first black executive and the nation's only black chief elected official of a county.

Curry, a real estate lawyer who had grown up in Prince George's and helped desegregate its public schools, was the most potent symbol of the demographic shift that had transformed the county from a predominantly white, blue-collar farming community into a haven for an emerging African American middle class. Curry described Prince George's then as "the jewel in the crown of the post-civil-rights era," a place whose new black leadership wanted prosperity and progress for everyone, not just its then-55-percent black majority.

America's largest and fastest-growing ethnic group recorded another political milestone last week when voters in Maryland – a major receiving state for Central American immigrants, many of them illegal aliens – prepared to elect Salvadoran-born Victor Ramirez their first Latino state senator.

Ramirez, a Democrat who's served in the Maryland legislative assembly for the past eight years, defeated incumbent David Harrington, an Anglo, by a two-to-one margin in Prince George's County, a largely African American political jurisdiction located on the outskirts of the nation's capital. Ramirez is expected to win easily against his Republican opponent in the general election this November, despite his outspoken pro-immigration politics and growing pressure from the state GOP to institute an Arizona-style crackdown.

But Ramirez's win also illustrates just how far Latinos still need to go to transform their demographic strength into real political clout. Nationwide, about 200 state assemblymen and – with the Ramirez win – some 60 state senators are Latino. That means less than 4% of the country's 7,200 elected state representatives are Latino. Five years ago, the figure was just 3%.

he Prince George's County Police Department partnered with the Maryland Park and Planning Commission yesterday to host the 29th Annual Hispanic Festival. Community Oriented Policing officers set up several booths during the festivities and were on hand to share informative pamphlets, discuss crime prevention solutions and highlight the on-going collaboration between Prince George's County Police Department and the Hispanic community. The Hispanic Festival offered a wide variety of activities, entertainment and cultural experiences for all ages. Activities included the main stage with live entertainment, dance performers, ethnic foods, interactive children's area, carnival rides and games, craft booths, a teen area, exhibitors/displays, face painting, music, more.

Locally, Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson along with Councilmembers Camille Exum, Dist. 7; Tony Knotts, Dist. 8; Ingrid Turner, Dist. 4; and Marilynn Bland, Dist. 9, are all under investigation for possible wrongdoing involving American Hospitality Management, run by developer Arun Luthra.

According to court documents, members of the council attempt to extort money from the corporation to get projects approved.

The complaint specifically singles out Knotts for walking into American Hospitality Management and telling an employee that if Luthra procured 10 "Diamond" members, which would amount to $40,000, for a political event in September 2009 then Knotts would remove any hurdles in the way of American Hospitality Management projects.

Every year politicians easily outnumber firetrucks at Greenbelt's Labor Day parade, but the rite of passage in Prince George's County politics Monday had a special intensity that melded the friction of big-city politics with small-town America.

A 39-year-old Filipino American and mother of two is gunning for her second term representing the 26th legislative district of Prince George's County in Maryland.

Kriselda "Kris" Valderrama is competing with six other Democratic challengers in the September 14 Primary. The top three vote getters will face their Republican opponents in the November general election.

In her first primary four years ago, she barely won, edging her closest rival by only 100 votes. As an incumbent, however, Valderrama is expected to have an advantage over new challengers.

Likewise, the full support of Filipino-Americans in the Maryland neighborhoods of Oxon Hill, Temple Hills, Camp Springs and Fort Washington is expected to boost her re-election bid after her campaign noted that close to a thousand registered Fil-Am voters failed to cast their ballot in the 2006 primary elections.

A recent study points to a lack of minority leadership among Maryland nonprofits, especially in Prince George's and Montgomery counties, but many groups say they are working to buck the trend.

Fewer than 25 percent of nonprofit executive directors in the Baltimore-Washington region are a racial or ethnic minority, despite minorities accounting for half of the region's population, according to a study by the Urban Institute released in April. The figure is closer to 22 percent in Prince George's and Montgomery, whose populations are more than 63 percent minority. Latinos are the most underrepresented group, accounting for 10 percent of the population but only 1 percent of nonprofit leaders.

Hotten becomes first African-American woman on Maryland appellate court

For the first time in history, an African-American woman is serving on the bench in a Maryland appellate court.

In Annapolis Tuesday, Gov. Martin O'Malley delivered the oath of office to Prince George's County Judge Michele Hotten.

Hotten was an associate judge for Prince George's County Circuit court for 15 years. She now sits on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals -- the state's second-highest court.

When Wendy Holland heard that a security guard was gunned down at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum last June, she didn't think much of it. She saw the clip on the evening news and went back to life as a 17-year-old in Prince George's County: advanced classes, sports practices, hanging out with friends.

...while the infant mortality rate declined among whites, from 5.1 to 4.1, the rate increased slightly among black families to 13.6 from 13.4 in 2008.

Maryland catering hall Martin's Crosswinds has become a "United Nations for weddings," incorporating elements from various cultures into their wedding receptions. Here are three recent weddings at the Greenbelt venue.

The organizers of the Prince George's African American Museum and Cultural Center recently took one step closer toward opening their own building with the creation of a Saturday artists' market on land it owns on Rhode Island Avenue (Route 1) in North Brentwood.

The market is being held on the third Saturday of the month through October, said Steven Newsome, the museum's executive director.

More than a dozen regional artists participated in the kickoff on June 19 by paying $40 each for a spot on the recently paved parking lot of the museum's land at 4511 Rhode Island Ave.

Back in the 1970s, Woodley Timberlake was part of the mass migration of black Washingtonians to Prince George's County, an exodus fueled by the quest for the American dream -- a home with a back yard, quality schools and a safe neighborhood.

Timberlake, now 65 and a retired federal worker, felt proud as blacks captured political and economic power in the once-majority-white county. But two years ago, when his daughter and her husband planned to return to the area with their baby girl, Timberlake urged them to move to a safe community with good public schools -- not Prince George's. His daughter chose Fairfax County.

Over the last year or so the Prince George's County Public Schools undertook an ongoing process to bring down the number of suspensions the system produced. Their decision to focus on keeping students in school as often as possible has been a good decision, however as some educators have done in the past, the 'keep 'em in class' directive is troublesome. This requires our school officials to think outside of the box that says we either suspend the kid or keep them in the classroom. As has been the case around the country, Prince George's must invest in alternatives at solving this discipline problem through policies like student behavioral contracts, community service, behavior plans, and when needed in-school suspension. The Report of the Task Force on the Education of Maryland's African American Males from 2006 says that there is "considerable evidence that a history of suspension does one of two things – either it puts a child on the path toward delinquency or it accelerates his journey there."

The two candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for the District 47 Senate seat squared off June 3 during a forum in Cheverly, debating voting records and stances on issues such as development and taxes.

Incumbent David Harrington (D) of Cheverly hopes to stave off the challenge in the Sept. 14 primary election by Del. Victor Ramirez, (D-Dist. 47) of Cheverly.

During the forum hosted by Progressive Cheverly, audience members posed questions to the candidates, and each candidate asked three questions of his opponent.

Several African American sites in Prince George's County were designated historic Tuesday under a plan approved by the County Council that takes a comprehensive look at preserving the county's rich cultural heritage.

Prince George's County and the District are looking for a trio of thieves who are behind a string of armed robberies.

The owner of Sammy Carry Out on 12th Street Northeast was confronted by a man with a gun on Thursday evening. He says he recalls one of the suspect's demands. "Gimmie money, gimmie money," said Guo Jin He.

A former Hyattsville police lieutenant and a current officer said Tuesday at a news conference that they were suspended and one forced to retire early because they were outspoken about alleged impropriety in the department.

Appearing outside the Hyattsville police station with leaders from the NAACP and Casa de Maryland, retired Lt. Gary Blakes and officer Barbara Smith said that they were punished for decrying racism and sexism in the department and that they have filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The Prince George's County's citizen complaint oversight panel budgeted $248,000 in fiscal 2010.

According to the Prince George's panel's 2009 report, in fiscal 2009 it reviewed 163 investigations and received notice of 572 new complaints.

L. Denise Hall, administrative director for the Prince George's complaint panel, said the board is made up of seven citizens, all appointed by the county executive and confirmed by the county council.

At 18, Aaron Lancaster never expected he would be headed to South Africa -- let alone to cover the FIFA World Cup, international soccer's premier event.

Lancaster, of Bowie, and Anamarie Shreeves, 21, of District Heights will be among six Florida A&M University students who will embark on a trip organized by FAMU journalism professor and former Washington Post foreign desk copy editor Joe Ritchie.

One of the country's wealthiest Black men and a possible candidate for mayor of the District of Columbia praised Prince George's County for its positive business environment, especially for small and minority businesses.

Multi-millionaire real estate developer and investor R. Donahue Peebles told an audience of 150 – primarily comprised of entrepreneurs – at Prince George's Community College's Rennie Forum, Wed., May 19, that Prince George's County is an outstanding location for commerce.

Sandra Pruitt and her husband, Aaron, were young black professionals getting ready to start a family when they began their house search more than 20 years ago.

It didn't take long for the Pruitts to become sold on Lake Arbor, an enclave of Colonial-style houses with sweeping living rooms with fireplaces, five bedrooms and libraries.

The Prince George's County community, set around a pristine golf course and lake, would eventually fill with more people such as Pruitt, career-oriented, civic-minded African Americans interested in raising families in a tight-knit community.

The UniverSoul Circus, headquartered in Atlanta, was founded in 1994 by Cedric Walker, a concert promoter who wanted to give black circus performers a chance to showcase black culture and talent. Its annual appearance here in Prince George's County is a rite of spring.