"It was about faith in action," Thompson, who is now the church's senior pastor, told The Oaklandside. "It wasn't just about belief, it wasn't just about church attendance, but that to be a Christian meant you ought to be doing something to make the world better."
"For decades, the guiding tenet for those working at the department was to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. Many believe that's no longer possible," Stacey Young, executive director and founder of Justice Connection, which organized the letter, said in a news release on Monday. "They're being asked to put loyalty to the President over the Constitution, the rule of law, and their professional ethical obligations," she said. "We're seeing the erosion of the Justice Department's fabric and integrity at an alarming pace. Our democratic system cannot survive without the primary institution that enforces the law."
Today in history: On Sept. 25, 1957, nine Black students who had been forced to withdraw from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, because of unruly white crowds were escorted to class by members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division and the National Guard. Also on this date: In 1513, Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and sighted the Pacific Ocean.
Amid a funding blackout at one of California's largest universities, a San Francisco federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore more than $500 million in research grants to UCLA. The decision was made Monday by U.S. District Judge Rita Lin after U.S. President Donald Trump cut off $584 million in funding to the university at the end of July over allegations of antisemitism and civil rights violations.
But the Trump administration has been systematically destroying these federal protections for renters and homeowners, and now new internal documents shared with my office from whistleblowers inside the Department of Housing and Urban Development show the extent of the Trump administration's attack on civil rights and show how the administration appears to be ignoring the law.
In 1806, the Lewis and Clark expedition returned to St. Louis, more than two years after setting out for the Pacific Northwest. In 1955, a jury in Sumner, Mississippi, acquitted two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, of killing Black teenager Emmett Till. (The two later admitted to the crime in an interview with Look magazine.) In 1957, nine Black students who entered Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas were forced to withdraw because of a white mob outside.
Filed Tuesday, the complaint accuses the Rhode Island Department of Education and the state-run Providence Public School District of "blatant race discrimination." The lawsuit specifically takes aim at the "Educators of Color Loan Forgiveness Program," which offers up to $25,000 in student debt repayments for new teachers in Providence. "The catch: white teachers are not eligible," the complaint notes. With a student body that is more than 90% non-white, Providence has long sought to recruit more teachers of color.
The Trump administration's settlement proposal to UCLA - which includes a nearly $1.2-billion fine over allegations of antisemitism and civil rights violations - seeks to drastically overhaul campus practices on hiring, admissions, sports, scholarships, discrimination and gender identity, a Times review of the document shows. The 28-page letter - whose full contents have not been made public - also lays out in sweeping detail how it wants the university to enforce new policies that adhere to the president's conservative agenda.
In 1857, the S.S. Central America (also known as the Ship of Gold) sank off the coast of South Carolina after sailing into a hurricane in one of the worst maritime disasters in American history; 425 people were killed and thousands of pounds of gold sank with the ship to the bottom of the ocean. In 1940, the Lascaux cave paintings, estimated to be 17,000 years old, were discovered in southwestern France.
Which made you feel more seasick the sinking-ship stage set from the 2025 RSC production of Hamlet, in which you played Claudius, or HMS Terror from The Terror? Dr_JA_Zoidberg Definitely the RSC stage, because it moved throughout the production, so you'd suddenly find yourself losing your footing and wobbling. The set for The Terror was locked off, particularly when it was at that weird angle when the whole thing was tipping to the side.
On Sept. 10, 2008, the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) was powered up for the first time, successfully firing the first beam of protons through its 17-mile underground ring tunnel. Also on this date: In 1608, John Smith was elected president of the Jamestown colony council in Virginia. In 1846, Elias Howe received a patent for his sewing machine.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed the measure into law and framed it as a safeguard against foreign influence. It is very simple. Hostile foreign adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, as well as foreign terrorist organizations like Tren de Aragua, must not be allowed to own land in Texas, Abbott said in a press release. They should not be allowed access to our critical infrastructure, and they may not be allowed to exploit our border.
The de facto local expert on Chinese American history believes a plaque should be installed here to commemorate Yick Wo, a Chinese-owned laundry business that operated at 349 Third St. from 1864 to 1886. It became the focal point of a consequential U.S. Supreme Court case, Yick Wo v. Hopkins, when the laundry's owner, a Chinese immigrant named Lee Yick, and another laundry owner, Wo Lee, resisted an unfair San Francisco laundry business permit ordinance - one emblematic of the targeted anti-Chinese hostility pervasive in the city at the time.
Officially founded in 1821 as the capital of the then-Arkansas Territory, Little Rock gets its name from an actual little rock, which still sits on the riverfront. In 1722, a French exploration party saw the rock on the Arkansas River and dubbed the site and the nearby bluff, " le petite roche " or "the little rock." Originally, the area was Quapaw land, but it slowly became a well-known trading hub in the region for those traveling west.
Civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton led thousands from across the country Thursday for March on Wall Street in protest of the Trump administration's withdrawal from Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs three values that the president and his followers have eschewed. The massive Lower Manhattan march, coinciding with the 62nd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous March on Washington in 1963, kicked off from Foley Square on the 62nd anniversary of the March on Washington.
He was arrested, he was prosecuted, and in spite of us telling the district attorney's office that we had evidence that Mr. Williams was nowhere near the scene of the crime at the time, the case continued.
"As a school board member, I cannot sit idly by while adults who should know better try to pit one group of students against another. Our responsibility is to ensure that every child - including those who are transgender or gender nonconforming - has an opportunity to achieve their full, unique, and limitless potential."