HOMER, La. (AP) -- For 73 years before his killing by a white police officer, Bernard Monroe led a life in this northern Louisiana town as peaceful as they come -- five kids with his wife of five decades, all raised in the same house, supported by the same job.
The black man's shooting death is attracting far more attention than he ever did, raising racial tensions between the black community and Homer's police department.  The Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped organize a massive 2007 civil rights demonstration in Jena after six black teenagers were charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate, led a peaceful march Friday afternoon in Homer to protest the killing. . . .

 federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a judge's ruling that the Little Rock School District has met terms of a long-standing desegregation order. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled that a lawyer representing a group of Black students did not present evidence to support challenges to how the district's desegregation was evaluated. Known as the Joshua Intervenors, a group of Black parents and students contested the district's efforts to be released from federal monitoring. . . .

Unhappy with the Obama administration's decision not to attend an April meeting of the Durban Review Conference, which is connected to an international race gathering, activists plan to hold a Harlem rally to protest the action and urge the U.S. to participate in the important meeting. "We want to get the message to President Barack Obama and his administration that we are demanding U.S. participation in Durban II" . . .

DALLAS (NNPA) - District Attorney Craig Watkins stood with the victims of sexual abuse recently shaking hands and meeting the people that will be affected a new bill that will allow for criminal records to indicate past offenses through DNA testing, even after the statute of limitations has expired. . . .

"One in every 37 adults in this country is either behind bars or under the direct control of the corrections system — on parole or on probation. Here in Minnesota, it's one out of every 26 adults. In terms of the entire country, that means 7.3 million people are under the control of the correction system," Davis said.

'Black Press giant' Wilbert "Bill" Tatum, publisher emeritus, CEO and chairman of the board, 76, died in a hospital in Croatia on the evening of Feb. 25, after a brief illness. His daughter, Elinor Tatum, publisher and editor-in-Chief of the nationally known and respected weekly newspaper, has expressed her gratitude for the outpouring of support and condolences from leaders in the Black Press, political, public service and Black leadership communities across the nation. . . .

WASHINGTON (AP) -- He's not being timid, that's for sure.
President Barack Obama's first federal budget lays out the most far-reaching agenda for American life since Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society.'' But paying for it by having upper-income earners shoulder much of the cost is already provoking cries of "class warfare'' in Congress.
The Obama priorities reflected in the $3.6 trillion budget guarantees a fierce political battle ahead over taxes. And it assumes a fairly quick economic recovery from the worst recession in decades. ...

'Black Press giant' Wilbert "Bill" Tatum, publisher emeritus, CEO and chairman of the board, 76, died in a hospital in Croatia on the evening of Feb. 25, after a brief illness. His wife, Susan, and family were working to bring Tatum's body back to the U. S. from Croatia, a country in Central Europe. His daughter has expressed her gratitude for the outpouring of support and condolences from leaders in the Black Press, political, public service and Black leadership communities across the nation. . . .

 A historian has netted $60,000 from the auction of vintage films depicting the life of blacks in Oklahoma in the 1920s. Currie Ballard, the assistant secretary to the state Senate, first sold a copy of the films to the Oklahoma Historical Society, then had his collection of 29 film reels auctioned at the Swann Auction Galleries in New York.
Ballard said the buyer wanted to remain anonymous but that the films were purchased by an Ivy League university. . . .

The Ku Klux Klan was rising again. Segregation was the law and Martin Luther King Jr. was not even born yet. Amid the terror and oppression, civil rights pioneer W.E.B. DuBois published a groundbreaking book in 1924 that challenged the pervasive stereotypes of Black Americans and documented their rarely recognized achievements. His book, "The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America," detailed the role of Black Americans with the earliest explorers to inventions ranging from ice cream to player pianos. He argued that Blacks were crucial to conquering the wilderness, winning wars, expanding democracy and creating a prosperous economy by producing tobacco, sugar, cotton and rice and helping to build the Panama Canal. . . .