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An Outrage takes viewers to the very communities where heinous acts of violence took place, offering a painful look back at lives lost to lynching and a critical look forward.

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Newsela | Worsening, unchecked segregation in K-12 public schools

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Despite Brown v. Board of Education ruling, schools still combating quiet segregation brought on by economic inequality and an influx of new citizens.

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Newsela | New segregation research studies white flight patterns in the early 1900s

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Newsela | Education and Equality in the United States

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Over the years, liberals and conservatives have clashed over the most effective policies for the American educational system.

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Newsela | Schools want to break away from names linked to a grim history

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Newsela | Correcting 5 myths about Rosa Parks and her stand on a Montgomery bus

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Newsela | U.S. education officials to gather info on discrimination against Muslims

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Newsela | More schools seeing new curriculum, funding that favor Native Americans

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State education initiatives are including Native American supports, curriculum and language like never before.

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Newsela | Civil War lessons often depend on where the classroom is located

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Lessons on the Civil War and its causes can vary from state to state, school to school

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Newsela | Supreme Court strikes down 2 North Carolina voting districts

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The U.S. Supreme Court delivers a blow to North Carolina's newly drawn congressional maps.

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Newsela | Supreme Court strikes down 2 North Carolina voting districts

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The U.S. Supreme Court delivers a blow to North Carolina's newly drawn congressional maps.

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Newsela | Born in strife: After 230 years, Electoral College still creates divisions

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Newsela | Issue Overview: Racial profiling

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Newsela | Shootings and protests prompt NBA and its players to seek social changes

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Newsela | Football player says protests meant to bring awareness to police shootings

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Protesters are singing as they take to the streets to demonstrate against the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police. This hasn't happened since the 1960s anti-war protests.

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Newsela | University of Missouri president quits over campus racial complaints

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Newsela | John Lewis blends '60s tactics, social media in new chapter of activism

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Congressman uses old tactics in new activism

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Newsela | 49ers fans burn jerseys over player's refusal to stand during anthem

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Newsela | Opinion: Civil rights activists ramp up their use of highways for protests

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Newsela | Race not completely defined by DNA

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Race and genetics: Understanding the biological basis of physical human variations

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History of civil rights and discrimination in America

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Newsela | Remembering the March on Washington, and King's historic speech

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The March on Washington, during which King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, happened 50 years ago. Thousands gathered to remember, and continue the struggle for justice.

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Newsela | Recalling an Era When the Color of Your Skin Meant You Paid to Vote

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Voting restrictions that began two centuries ago were slowly, legally phased out, right?

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Opinion: Author schools educators on treatment of African-American girls

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Newsela | Not everyone enjoyed Beyoncé's Super Bowl halftime show

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Newsela | Lawmakers, Republican candidates split over Confederate flag display

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Newsela | Grand jury indicts ex-officer for murder in South Carolina case

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Fires at black churches in South spur worries about racism and arson

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Fires at black churches in South spur worries about racism and arson

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Obama: Program will help young minority men and boys succeed

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Famous Speeches: Barack Obama's Election Night Victory Speech

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Newsela | Arrest in S.C. classroom renews debate over police, discipline in schools

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Newsela | Presidential Profile: Barack Obama

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President Barack Obama; 44th U.S. president from 2009-present.

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Newsela | First Lady Profile: Michelle Obama

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Federal government sues North Carolina over new voting law

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The Justice Department argues that the law, which requires voters to present photo identification, discriminates against minorities.

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In wake of lethal confrontations, police and young black men try talking

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In wake of lethal confrontations, police and young black men try talking

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Caribbean leaders ask Old World for slavery and genocide reparations

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"The legacy of slavery and colonialism in the Caribbean has severely impaired our development options," one Caribbean leader told the U.N. General Assembly in pressing for reparations.

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Newsela | Black preschoolers more likely to get suspended, report says

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A report by the Education Department says black students are disciplined more strictly, even in preschool.

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Newsela | For the first time, three blacks will sit on Ferguson City Council

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Newsela | Representative John Lewis receives literary awards for "March" book trilogy

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U.S. Representative John Lewis honored for contributions to young adult literature.

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Newsela | A congressman writes a comic book about his work in the civil rights era

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John Lewis is a congressman from Georgia. As a young man, he helped lead the civil rights movement. He wrote a comic book to bring the history of the movement to life for students.

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Newsela | National black history museum being built in Washington

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The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture is expected to open its doors late next year or in early 2015.

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Newsela | Obama calls for economic equality on anniversary of civil rights march

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Saying that "no one can match King's brilliance," President Obama paid tribute to the civil rights leader on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Black teenager says he was arrested just for buying an expensive belt

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It's called shopping while black. And many African-Americans say they are either ignored in expensive stories, or asked question after question by suspicious sales staff.

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Issue Overview: Should the descendants of slaves get reparations?

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Issue Overview: Should the descendants of slaves get reparations?

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Oscars controversy shines light on lack of opportunity for minority artists

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Real change means more opportunities for minority artists in front of and behind the screen.

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Newsela | Black reporter honored by group that barred him

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Harry McAlpin was the first black reporter to attend a presidential press conference. He was not welcomed by many of the journalists at the White House.

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Newsela | En pointe and on top of world: Ballerina, film star breaks color barrier

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Newsela | Copeland leaps into history as first black ballerina in ABT principal role

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Newsela | Serena Williams earns 23rd Grand Slam title with win over sister Venus

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Serena Williams beat her big sister Venus in the women's final at the Australian Open.

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Newsela | Tiny university outranks many others in black physics grads; most are women

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Dillard University in New Orleans has a growing reputation for producing black physics majors

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Newsela | Opinion: New museum celebrates, honors African-American history

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Rep. John Lewis: "Our Declaration of Independence declares each and every one of us has a divine legacy that nothing and no one can take away."

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Newsela | Politics and culture increase significance of Black History Month

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Black History Month takes on added significance with the end of the presidency of the first black commander-in-chief of the United States.

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Newsela | White nationalist rally in Virginia leaves 3 dead, many injured

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Newsela | Activism through social media creates bigger buzz

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The trending hashtag "#iftheygunnedmedown" has exploded online, taking up the cause of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by Missouri police last week.

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An American flag outside the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. (Cliff Owen/AP Photo)

For decades, the Department of Justice has used court-enforced agreements to protect civil rights, successfully desegregating school systems, reforming police departments, ensuring access for the disabled and defending the religious.

Now, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the DOJ appears to be turning away from this storied tool, called consent decrees. Top officials in the DOJ civil rights division have issued verbal instructions through the ranks to seek settlements without consent decrees - which would result in no continuing court oversight.

The move is just one part of a move by the Trump administration to limit federal civil rights enforcement. Other departments have scaled back the power of their internal divisions that monitor such abuses. In a previously unreported development, the Education Department last week reversed an Obama-era reform that broadened the agency's approach to protecting rights of students. The Labor Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have also announced sweeping cuts to their enforcement.

"At best, this administration believes that civil rights enforcement is superfluous and can be easily cut. At worst, it really is part of a systematic agenda to roll back civil rights," said Vanita Gupta, the former acting head of the DOJ's civil rights division under President Barack Obama.

Consent decrees have not been abandoned entirely by the DOJ, a person with knowledge of the instructions said. Instead, there is a presumption against their use - attorneys should default to using settlements without court oversight unless there is an unavoidable reason for a consent decree. The instructions came from the civil rights division's office of acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler and Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Gore. There is no written policy guidance.

Devin O'Malley, a spokesperson for the DOJ, declined to comment for this story.

Consent decrees can be a powerful tool, and spell out specific steps that must be taken to remedy the harm. These are agreed to by both parties and signed off on by a judge, whom the parties can appear before again if the terms are not being met. Though critics say the DOJ sometimes does not enforce consent decrees well enough, they are more powerful than settlements that aren't overseen by a judge and have no built-in enforcement mechanism.

Such settlements have "far fewer teeth to ensure adequate enforcement," Gupta said.

Consent decrees often require agencies or municipalities to take expensive steps toward reform. Local leaders and agency heads then can point to the binding court authority when requesting budget increases to ensure reforms. Without consent decrees, many localities or government departments would simply never make such comprehensive changes, said William Yeomans, who spent 26 years at the DOJ, mostly in the civil rights division.

"They are key to civil rights enforcement," he said. "That's why Sessions and his ilk don't like them."

Some, however, believe the Obama administration relied on consent decrees too often and sometimes took advantage of vulnerable cities unable to effectively defend themselves against a well-resourced DOJ.

"I think a recalibration would be welcome," said Richard Epstein, a professor at New York University School of Law and a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, adding that consent decrees should be used in cases where clear, systemic issues of discrimination exist.

Though it's too early to see how widespread the effect of the changes will be, the Justice Department appears to be adhering to the directive already.

On May 30, the DOJ announced Bernards Township in New Jersey had agreed to pay $3.25 million to settle an accusation it denied zoning approval for a local Islamic group to build a mosque. Staff attorneys at the U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey initially sought to resolve the case with a consent decree, according to a spokesperson for Bernards Township. But because of the DOJ's new stance, the terms were changed after the township protested, according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for the New Jersey U.S. attorney's office declined comment.

Sessions has long been a public critic of consent decrees. As a senator, he wrote they "constitute an end run around the democratic process." He lambasted local agencies that seek them out as a way to inflate their budgets, a "particularly offensive" use of consent decrees that took decision-making power from legislatures.

On March 31, Sessions ordered a sweeping review of all consent decrees with troubled police departments nationwide to ensure they were in line with the Trump administration's law-and-order goals. Days before, the DOJ had asked a judge to postpone a hearing on a consent decree with the Baltimore Police Department that had been arranged during the last days of the Obama administration. The judge denied that request, and the consent decree has moved forward.

The DOJ has already come under fire from critics for altering its approach to voting rights cases. After nearly six years of litigation over Texas' voter ID law - which Obama DOJ attorneys said was written to intentionally discriminate against minority voters and had such a discriminatory effect - the Trump DOJ abruptly withdrew its intent claims in late February.

Efforts to implement the nation's strictest voter ID requirements - a solution in search of a problem, according to one critic - foundered amid court defeats, confusion and at least one giant oversight.

Attorneys who worked on the case for years were barely consulted about the change - many weren't consulted at all, according to two former DOJ officials with knowledge of the matter. Gore wrote the filing changing the DOJ's position largely by himself and asked the attorneys who'd been involved in the case for years to sign it to show continuity. Not all of the attorneys fell in line. Avner Shapiro - who has been a prosecutor in the civil rights division for more than 20 years - left his name off the filings written by Gore. Shapiro was particularly involved in developing the DOJ's argument that Texas had intentionally discriminated against minorities in crafting its voter ID legislation.

"That's the ultimate act of rebellion," Yeomans, the former civil rights division prosecutor, said. A rare act, removing one's name from a legal filing is one of the few ways career attorneys can express public disagreement with an administration.

Gore has no history of bringing civil rights cases. A former partner at the law firm Jones Day, he has instead defended states against claims of racial gerrymandering and represented North Carolina when the state was sued over its controversial "bathroom bill," which requires transgender people to use the facility that matched their birth gender.

All of the internal changes at the DOJ have left attorneys and staff with "a great deal of fear and uncertainty," said Yeomans. While he says the lawyers there would like to stay at the department, they fear Sessions' priorities will have devastating impact on their work.

The DOJ's civil rights office is not alone in fearing rollbacks in enforcement. Across federal departments, the Trump administration has made moves to diminish the power of civil rights divisions.

The Department of Education has laid out plans to loosen requirements on investigations into civil rights complaints, according to an internal memo sent to staff on June 8 and obtained by ProPublica.

Under the Obama administration, the department's office for civil rights applied an expansive approach to investigations. Individual complaints related to complex issues such as school discipline, sexual violence and harassment, equal access to educational resources, or racism at a single school might have prompted broader probes to determine whether the allegations were part of a pattern of discrimination or harassment.

The new memo, sent by Candice Jackson, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights, to regional directors at the department's civil rights office, trims this approach. Jackson was appointed deputy assistant secretary for the office in April and will remain as the acting head of the office until the Senate confirms a full-time assistant secretary. Trump has not publicly nominated anyone for the role yet.

The office will apply the broader approach "only" if the original allegations raise systemic concerns or the investigative team argues for it, Jackson wrote in the memo.

Candice Jackson's intellectual journey raises questions about how actively she will investigate allegations of unfair treatment of minorities and women.

As part of the new approach, the Education Department will no longer require civil rights investigators to obtain three years of complaint data from a specific school or district to assess compliance with civil rights law.

Critics contend the Obama administration's probes were onerous. The office "did such a thorough review of everything that the investigations were demanding and very expensive" for schools, said Boston College American politics professor R. Shep Melnick, adding that the new approach could take some regulatory pressure off schools and districts.

But some civil rights leaders believe the change could undermine the office's mission. This narrowing of the department's investigations "is stunning to me and dangerous," said Catherine Lhamon, who led the Education Department's civil rights office from August 2013 until January 2017 and currently chairs the United States Commission on Civil Rights. "It's important to take an expansive view of the potential for harm because if you look only at the most recent year, you won't necessarily see the pattern," said Lhamon.

The department's new directive also gives more autonomy to regional offices, no longer requiring oversight or review of some cases by department headquarters, according to the memo.

The Education Department did not respond to ProPublica's request for comment.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has also proposed cutting over 40 positions from the civil rights office. With reduced staff, the office will have to "make difficult choices, including cutting back on initiating proactive investigations," according to the department's proposed budget.

Elsewhere, Trump administration appointees have launched similar initiatives. In its 2018 fiscal plan, the Labor Department has proposed dissolving the office that handles discrimination complaints. Similarly, new leadership at the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed entirely eliminating the environmental justice program, which addresses concerns that almost exclusively impact minority communities. The Washington Post reports the plan transfers all environmental justice work to the Office of Policy, which provides policy and regulatory guidance across the agency.

Mustafa Ali, a former EPA senior adviser and assistant associate administrator for environmental justice who served more than 20 years, quit the agency in protest days before the plan was announced. In his resignation letter, widely circulated in the media, Ali suggested the new leadership was abandoning "those who need our help most."

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Trump Administration Quietly Rolls Back Civil Rights Efforts Across Federal Government - ProPublica

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For decades, the Department of Justice has used court-enforced agreements to protect civil rights, successfully desegregating school systems, reforming police departments, ensuring access for the disabled and defending the religious. Now, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the DOJ appears to be turning away from this storied tool, called consent decrees.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Police department to get more body cameras following shooting

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Mayor says shooting is "horrible tragedy"

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Newsela | No indictment by grand jury in shooting of Ferguson teen

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Anger erupted after a Missouri policeman was not indicted. Michael Brown's family asked people to "channel your frustration in ways that will make a positive change."

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Newsela | As racial issues roil Hollywood, slave revolt film makes splash at Sundance

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Just as African-American entertainers are protesting lack of diversity at the Oscars, a film about a slave revolt put a charge into the Sundance Festival - and got a big bid from a major studio.

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Newsela | Five years on: Recalling Trayvon Martin and the birth of Black Lives Matter

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Stirred to action five years ago, many people maintain the message will not die out.

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Newsela | Dozens more NFL players took a knee in protest on Sunday

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President Trump's criticism of NFL players results in further protests.

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Newsela | Activists want LeBron James to sit out NBA season to protest Rice decision

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Twitter campaign aims to pull LeBron into protest of grand jury's Tamir Rice decision.

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Newsela | Black women take issue with new Army rule on hair

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The Army's new rules ban certain hairstyles, including twists, large cornrow braids and dreadlocks, that are popular among black women. That hit a nerve among some soldiers.