Twenty-five years ago, coach Sam Johnson and I launched an organization dedicated to providing a place where Liberty City kids could play baseball and football while learning they didn’t have to sling drugs on a street corner. For close to three decades, the Liberty City Optimist Club has mentored African-American…
South Florida is still home to the most head-turning female TV reporters in the nation. That’s why it’s time for another list of the ten hottest women delivering the news. After all, they work in a medium that places a high priority on being ridiculously good-looking while reporting stories. To…
Since the beginning of the University of Miami’s football season, anonymous angry fans have been paying for planes to fly banners over every game demanding that head coach Al Golden be fired. While the Canes were losing against the University of Cincinnati last week, for instance, a banner proclaimed, “I…
What do African-Americans need to succeed? Too often, people who live outside of Miami’s black communities focus on negative issues such as gun violence and police-involved killings. Reporters have no qualms about naming the city when a crime occurs in Miami Gardens, a predominantly black city. But when a theft…
Mike Huckabee can’t climb past 5 percent in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination. So the former Arkansas governor, who moved to Florida like many other carpetbaggers, is getting insanely desperate. He went full Ku Klux Klan. Last week, he compared Kim Davis — the Kentucky court clerk whose…
It’s been more than 20 years since Miami New Times columnist Jim DeFede wrote a series of columns that called Miami Heat owner and Carnival Cruise Line chief Micky Arison “a greedy corporate pig.” Since then, the newspaper has written hundreds of stories about Heat championships, charities, and kind acts…
Al Golden is out of excuses. As the coach’s University of Miami Hurricanes gear up for the September 5 opening home game versus Bethune-Cookman University, there’s little reason to believe the team will make the national championship playoffs. Last year, UM’s marketing team came up with a clever slogan about…
Though school begins this week, three boys from Overtown won’t get a fresh start. Earlier this month, Ernest Rowell and Khalib Newkirk were arrested for the murder of 10-year-old Marlon Eason. According to police, either Rowell, who is 18 years old, or Newkirk, who is age 15, opened fire back…
Donald Trump has hijacked the Republican Party’s conservative base. Fox News and the other billionaires funding Trump’s GOP opponents can’t do anything to stop him. The more outrageous Trump gets, the more popular he becomes. After insinuating that Fox News personality and Republican debate moderator Megyn Kelly was hard on…
In January, as part of President Obama’s $15 billion plan to expand Head Start, Miami-Dade was awarded $290 million in federal funds to “provide opportunities for low-income children and their families.” Eight months later, county officials haven’t provided any details about these “opportunities.” We don’t know how the $290 million…
As the 2015 Miami Dolphins training camp kicks into high gear, Fins fans’ annual preseason cockiness reaches stratospheric levels. Just recently, a Harvard University study pegged the Dolphins — owners of an 8-8 record last year and a seven-year playoff drought — as the AFC’s Super Bowl representatives. Emory University,…
On August 4, my memoir, The Book of Luke: My Fight for Truth, Justice, and Liberty City, will go on sale. I hope many young African-Americans who think the odds are stacked against them will read it and be inspired. I wrote the book, which is previewed in this week’s…
The memoir, due out August 4, begins this way: “I was born on Miami Beach on December 22, 1960. How I came out, what time I came out, I don’t know. What I do know is that it was unusual. Miami Beach was still segregated… and black people weren’t even…
Last month, 31-year-old Loukucha Joseph was left for dead after she was shot and run over by a car driven by unknown assailants near NE 149th Street and Sixth Avenue. Two weeks later, just a couple of blocks from where Joseph died, unknown suspects in a white car fatally shot…
Five years after Durell Eskridge, Devonta Freeman, and Rakeem Cato led the Miami Central High Rockets to their first state title and made the cover of Miami New Times, the former teammates have fulfilled their dream of playing in the pros. Freeman, who also won a college football national title…
Veteran NBA forward David West has lost his mind. The 34-year-old former all-star just pulled off the craziest free agent move in sports history by taking a gargantuan pay cut to play for the San Antonio Spurs. West opted out of the last year of his contract with the Indiana…
The Miami Heat brain trust of Pat Riley and Micky Arison needs to stop messing around with team superstar Dwyane Wade. Riley should tell Arison to open up his $7.1 billion wallet and make Wade the highest-paid player on the Heat. Since being drafted in 2003, Wade has been forced…
Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and everyone associated with Fox News has blood on their hands. By constantly spreading hatred of African-Americans and other minorities, Fox News and its commentators inspire domestic terrorists like Dylann Roof to commit atrocities. The 21-year-old’s murder of nine African-Americans…
Caitlyn Jenner’s coming-out party doesn’t help the transgender community move forward. Though Caitlyn, formerly known as Bruce, is on the cover of Vanity Fair and stars in her own E! reality show, it’s clear the onetime decathlon champion is just looking to cash in on her transition from a man…
Today’s top hip-hop artists have no sense of righteousness. During the golden era of rap from the 1980s to the 1990s, there were so many of us really speaking to the black experience. Grandmaster Flash, Public Enemy, KRS-One, Ice-T, NWA, and 2Pac were just a few of the acts that…
Miami sports fans need to tune in to The Andy Slater Show on 940 WINZ-AM. I’m not saying that just because I’m a guest host on his daily show today, which airs from 2 to 4 p.m. Slater is changing sports talk radio by doing old-school, shoe-leather reporting. He’s the…
More than a week after Miami Beach cops were busted sending one another racist and sexist emails, there’s been zero outrage from so-called civil rights leaders and activists. No one protests the racism polluting police departments across the nation until the body of a young black male is lying dead…
