Fifty years ago this month, history took a great leap forward. On Feb. 1, 1960, four black students from Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina sat down at a segregated lunch counter in Woolworths department store in Greensboro, N.C. The chairs were for whites. Blacks had to stand and eat. A day later, the four young black men returned, with 25 more students. On Feb. 4, four white women... Read more.

If there's anyone out there arguing about the impact of electing a black president on this nation's African-American community, they should probably sit down now. Quietly. As we approach Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the extent to which the president has reconfigured views and perceptions of self-worth is astounding. A new Pew study shows that in the last two years, the number of blacks who think they're... Read more.

We all wish former President Bill Clinton a quick recovery from the medical procedure in which two stents were inserted in a single artery. That, following his 2004 quadruple bypass, when four arteries were 90 percent clogged. We're told that gone are Clinton's presidential days, when his dietary indulgences included regular binges on Big Macs. But it seems that Washington is still in the business... Read more.

On her husband's last day on the job, Renee Spencer sent me the kind of e-mail that could have come from a devoted spouse living just about anywhere in America. I do not know Renee, but that didn't matter. She is a blue-collar worker's wife in Ashtabula, Ohio, reaching out to another wife, whose working-class roots run deep in that same small town. Renee was 19 when she married the 20-year-old tower... Read more.