The Equal Justice Initiatives’ (“EJI”) National Memorial for Peace and Justice recently unveiled The Legacy Museum, dedicated to the victims of violent, non-judicial executions in the form of lynchings.  The 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to notice what crime they are alleged to have committed and an opportunity to defend those allegations before they are deprived of their liberty or, more importantly, their life. ​ The National Memorial for Peace and Justice pays tribute to those who were deprived of their 14th Amendment rights and to the suffering caused by lynchings which occurred[...]

The Charlotte Observer reported that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD), the largest police department in North Carolina, is implementing a new program to help solve current and cold cases. You may be thinking new DNA testing or interrogation methods but you would be wrong. The CMPD is leaving it to the cards, literally. CMPD is printing the faces of murder victims onto playing cards that will be handed out to prisoners in Mecklenburg County. CMPD hopes that by placing pictures of murder victims onto decks of cards, prisoners will contact Crime Stoppers with information. With approximately 600 open homicides[...]

Today is being organized as A Day Without Latinos where some Hispanics did not go to work, did not send their children to school, and boycotted businesses. On my way to work, I noticed a rally of hundreds of people kicked off at noon today at Marshall Park in Charlotte. Some were waving American flags while others held signs that read: “No Ban - No wall. Stay united”, “Stop Racism” and “We are not criminals.” It made me curious as to whether or not those people here illegally had an unqualified right to free speech. On May 7, 2015,[...]

The recent trend of states enacting “religious freedom” and “anti-discrimination” laws has sparked passionate debate about whether the laws are truly meant to “protect sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions of individuals, organizations and private associations” as Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant claims, or being used to open the door to discrimination in the name of religion.  In short, the bills preemptively protect businesses from being punished for refusing to offer services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and are in reaction to, or fear of, state laws that do the opposite: restrict businesses from refusing service based[...]