Leonard Pitts Jr.: We'll go forward from this moment
This column by Leonard Pitts Jr. was published in The Miami Herald on Sept. 12, 2001, and received an extraordinary response from readers worldwide.
Chat live with Leonard Pitts Jr. from 1-2 p.m. Wednesdays, or submit questions ahead of time.
Leonard Pitts Jr. won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2004. He is the author of Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood. His column runs every Sunday and Wednesday.
On Sept. 11, 2001, he wrote a column on the terrorist attacks that received a huge response from readers who deluged him with more than 26,000 e-mails. It was posted on the Internet, chain-letter style. Read the column and others on the topic of September 11.
Email Leonard at lpitts@MiamiHerald.com or visit his website at www.leonardpittsjr.com
This column by Leonard Pitts Jr. was published in The Miami Herald on Sept. 12, 2001, and received an extraordinary response from readers worldwide.
If Kwame Kilpatrick were white, don't you think he'd have been thrown out of office a long time ago? Heck, he'd be out of jail by now and shopping his memoirs.
You know what bugs me most about Sarah Palin? It isn't that John McCain spent weeks claiming Barack Obama was unready to lead, then chose her as his running mate -- and potential leader of the free world -- a woman who until six years ago was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population: 5,469.
You can't blame Karen Fletcher for deciding not to fight. Had she lost, she faced the possibility of five years in prison. Under the plea agreement she accepted in early August, she got six months of house arrest, five years on probation and a $1,000 fine. But if the agreement allows Fletcher, of Donora, Penn., to avoid the more onerous punishment, it also allows us to avoid what surely would have been a violent collision between morality and the Constitution.
He spoke of the promise before he spoke of the dream. In the first part of the momentous speech he gave at the Lincoln Memorial, the part school children don't memorize and pundits never quote, Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded a watching world that in writing the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the founders were ``signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
Leonard Pitts Jr. won't be online today. His chat will take place as usual next week, and he will answer your questions then. We're sorry for the inconvenience.
As I wandered about looking lost, I chanced upon a teacher who volunteered to lead me where I needed to be. When I told her why I was here -- a series of columns on What Works to change the culture of dysfunction that entraps too many African-American kids -- she told me I had come to the right place: KIPP Gaston College Preparatory and KIPP Pride, two charter schools serving 600 kids here in farm country.
'I sure hope Timothy doesn't come to school today." It was when that thought came to mind, says Frederica Wilson, surveying the faces at the conference table in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools headquarters, that she knew she had a problem.
They say the house was a mess. There were holes in the floor. The walls were pulling apart. There were no windows, doors or fixtures. It was filled with trash. The stairs were unsafe. There were dead cats in the basement.
AUSTIN, Texas -- Mr. Harris has a way of putting things.
One month and 1,400 e-mails later, here is a progress report on What Works.
The late-day sky was spitting snow. Inside the classroom, tiny black children, younger than kindergarten age, sat in a circle, legs folded "crisscross applesauce" beneath them. Soon, they would begin their French lesson, but first there was a ritual chant.
You and I are about to embark on something new.
Leonard Pitts Jr., a mainstay as a news and features columnist at The Herald for 13 years, won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary Monday.
The coroner says he only called it homicide because he had no choice.
I guess I'm obligated to be offended by this new board game. After all, Al Sharpton says I should. And not just Rev. Al, either. Many other people - including NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and radio host Tom Joyner - have pronounced themselves offended by the game. Not that I blame them. It's called Ghettopoly, a take-off on Parker Bros. venerable Monopoly. Except that this game isn't about moving a car or a top hat around the board, buying properties and landing on Boardwalk after somebody has put up a hotel.
I guess I touched a nerve.
This is how you stone a woman to death. You bury her up to her neck. Then you heave stones at her head. One imagines her face slowly obliterated, her skull repeatedly broken. One imagines the process takes a long time.
So what is it you have against gay marriage?