Cicely Tyson. I remember when she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress when I was still in school for Sounder (1972). Yet it wasn't until the Academy Awards ceremony held in 2002, some 30 years later that an African-American actress for the first time ever took home...

That Kay Alden, always putting words in other people's mouths!

It started with her Communication Arts dissertation for her Ph.D. at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Encouraged by her college advisers to write about dead people because their body of work is complete, Kay instead decided to write about her passion,...

So, how did I get the best seat in the house, an upper box hanging over the front of the stage? Just lucky, I guess. Sitting next to me at Lucky Guy, a guy from Scotland who married a gal from West Virginia and now makes his home in the...

As I watch the new PBS series, "Makers: The Women Who Make America," which kicked off Feb. 26th, I am reminded of my encounter with one of those makers, Gloria Steinem, in the election battleground state of Ohio last fall.

I was also reminded of her as I...

Dick Gregory knows the power of laughter. He is our mirror in his Keynote Address for Black History Month at Bryn Mawr College Thursday, Feb. 28th 7:30 p.m. at Thomas Great Hall on campus. It's free and open to the public. First come basis. Bryn Mawr College is located in...

Why not Maria Shriver as the next Senator from Massachusetts, should Senator John Kerry be confirmed as Secretary of State? In a way, she'd be filling her uncle Sen. Edward Kennedy's shoes. Her dear parents are buried at a cemetery in Hyannis, Mass., and her wedding was at St. Francis...

What do Lincoln and Les Miserables have in common? Enjolras played by Aaron Tveit, a student leader of the June Rebellion in Les Miserables, belts it out: "It is the music of a people/Who will not be slaves again!" It is freedom's anthem. Frenchman Victor Hugo's epic novel was published...

The Bold and the Beautiful's Susan Flannery, please don't say good-bye on my birthday! Today marks Susan Flannery's last appearance as matriarch Stephanie Douglas Forrester on CBS' The Bold and the Beautiful after 25 years of being loved and hated the world over. Truth be told, her character was --...

Will President Obama's "Team of Rivals" (like Doris Kearns Goodwin's book of the same title), include Gov. Mitt Romney? President Obama, in the first blush of his re-election, says he will be meeting with Gov. Mitt Romney. How would you like to be the proverbial fly on the wall for...

For anyone who has ever wanted a second chance at love with the same partner, Hope Springs starring a midwestern couple played by Meryl Streep (Kay) and Tommy Lee Jones (Arnold), is your movie. And make sure you stay through the credits because some of the best parts are shown...

The Veepstakes. Will the President stay with Joe Biden? What about Romney's choice? Who will it be? A he or a she?

Mitt Romney has said he wants someone as his running mate who would be ready to be president from day one. What Republican would be better than...

Fly me to the Moon.

My family was a space family. My father started working at NASA from its inception in 1958 until his retirement some 32 years later.

When I was barely knee-high looking up at the moon and stars in the evening sky with my dad...

Ah, that slippery slope....

As the Rainbow PUSH Coalition's 41st Annual Conference kicked off this week at Chicago's Hilton and Towers, conspicuously absent was Rep. Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), the son of the founder, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. The father was besieged by media requests seeking information about...

"I, for one, am unwilling to let President Barack Obama be bullied out of office!", Massachusetts Gov. DeVal Patrick told an enthusiastic crowd at the 41st Annual Conference of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and Citizenship Education Fund at the Chicago Hilton & Towers across the street from Grant Park on...

As Republicans advocate keeping tax cuts for the rich, why not raise the minimum wage for the least of us? Do both. How is that for a Congressional compromise?

Women especially have an important stake in this. Nearly ralph-nader-on-raising-minimum-wage/" target="_hplink">two-thirds of all workers making at or below the federal...

What is the purpose of destroying John Edwards?

Why are his prosecutors acting as if they're in Star Trek: Voyager? Title them episode eight, "Ex Post Facto."

They're twisting the meaning of campaign finance law into something never before seen. Then applying this new legal twist to...

It should come as no surprise when 52-year-old World Bank Group President-Elect Jim Yong Kim, a former high school quarterback, talks of tackling the world's troubles in his new position.

Addressing the Chicago Dartmouth Club at a luncheon at the Intercontinental Hotel on May 9th, Dartmouth College's 17th...

Happy Birthday, Betty Daniels! As she now asks us to call her. But back in the day, it was always "Dean Daniels." Elizabeth Adams Daniels celebrated her 92nd birthday on May 8th, coincidentally "National Teachers Day," and has worked for Vassar College for 65 years, nearly half the existence of...

The Rev. Addie Wyatt, the woman who rolled up her sleeves to help others and worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and President John F. Kennedy and was a mentor to President Barack Obama in his community organizing as a young man, will be laid...

The Good Wife's Julianna Margulies came to Chicago as the guest of honor at the third annual Steppenwolf Salutes Women in the Arts luncheon.

Coincidentally, the two television series she's best known for -- ER and The Good Wife -- are both set in Chicago.

But she's never...