Ka’Nard Allen has been shot twice in his 10-year-old life. On May 12 he went with his mother to the annual Mother’s Day second line parade in New Orleans. When two gunmen shot into the line of participants—men, women and children—Ka’Nard’s cheek was struck by a bullet. Eighteen...

“Daddy,” the boy said, “I don't want to disobey you, but I have made my pledge. If you try to keep me home, I will sneak off. If you think I deserve to be punished for that, I'll just have to take the punishment. For, you see, I'm...

My name is Nardyne Jefferies; my only child, Brishell Jones, was murdered on March 30^th, 2010, by a gun.

She sent me an email; she’d made reservations ... for Mother’s Day. And I never got my Mother’s Day dinner with my daughter.  And it’s just hard, because all the special...

Anyone despairing that Congress can’t get anything done should note last week’s swift vote to get furloughed air traffic controllers back to work. Congress can move very quickly and efficiently when it wants to and when their own comfort and that of constituents well-off enough to fly was...

Every day four children in America are killed by abuse or neglect.  More than 750,000 children are abused or neglected each year.  Even when children survive or after physical scars heal, the emotional damage left by child abuse and neglect can last a lifetime just as the post...

The United States Senate’s failure to pass common sense gun safety measures -- the Manchin-Toomey Amendment to expand background checks to keep guns away from underage or dangerous people, and amendments to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines designed only to kill as many human beings as...

I would like every parent in this country . . . I would like them to look in the mirror.  And that’s not a figure of speech . . . I mean, literally find a mirror in your house and look in it and look in your eyes and say,...

Here’s a multiple-choice quiz: 

Which of the following should be part of a model school safety plan?

a)  Proven evidence-based models for school violence reduction that focus on preventing misbehavior and violence by promoting a healthy, positive school climate.

b)  Threat...

"A deep inner sickness has taken over when we can't feel the suffering of those who are enduring structural violence every hour. We are in the psychological and spiritual condition of Dives who couldn't see Lazarus on his doorstep, with his wounds and sores being licked by the dogs. He...

Why is the National Rifle Association so afraid of the truth? There are many misconceptions about guns and gun violence swirling around in Americans’ minds—and in many cases, this misinformation is no accident. For years the NRA has blocked the truth and actively fought against and prevented research...

“My friends are dead. I saw the bad man. He was next to me when we ran out.”
“I played ball with him. Now he is dead.”
“My friend got killed cause she didn’t hide good enough.”
“Do you think it is my fault?”...

"It will not be sufficient for Morehouse College, for any college, for that matter, to produce clever graduates, men fluent in speech and able to argue their way through; but rather honest men, men who can be trusted in public and private--who are sensitive to the wrongs, the sufferings, and...

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote these words in his April 1963 Letter from a Birmingham...

“Our minds fasten on that single moment on the bus -- Mrs. Parks alone in that seat, clutching her purse, staring out a window, waiting to be arrested. That moment tells us something about how change happens, or doesn’t happen... We so often spend our lives as if...

February 26 will mark one year since 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed by a gun wielded by self-appointed neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman after he saw Trayvon walking home from a 7-Eleven with a bag of Skittles and bottle of Arizona iced tea.

Black children, youths, and...

As President Obama closed his State of the Union speech on February 12, after all of his other policy proposals for the nation’s future, he said this: “Of course, what I’ve said tonight matters little if we don’t come together to protect our most precious resource -- our...

"One hundred fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation and 50 years after the March on Washington, we celebrate the spirit of our ancestors, which has allowed us to move from a nation of unborn hopes and a history of disenfranchised votes to today’s expression of a more perfect union ......

This is an important conversation for our children, for our communities, for Democrats and Republicans. Speaking is difficult but I need to say something important. Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something. It will be hard. But the...

On Saturday, January 26, I and many others will gather on the National Mall for the March on Washington for Gun Control. We are calling on members of Congress and state legislators to pass common sense gun safety laws to stop the epidemic of...

In his last Sunday sermon at Washington National Cathedral, Dr. King retold the parable of the rich man Dives who ignored the poor and sick man Lazarus who came every day seeking crumbs from Dives’ table. Dives went to hell, Dr. King said, not because he was rich...