In 1978, she began her public service career when she served as the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs under Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson. She was later appointed as the nation’s first woman Chief Administrative Officer or City Manager, where she was responsible for the daily operations of a city with nearly 8,000 employees.

In 1991, Franklin joined the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games as the top ranking female executive, serving as senior vice-president for external relations. In this position she was instrumental in the development of the Centennial Olympic Park and served as ACOG’s primary liaison with labor unions, civil rights groups, neighborhood and community organizations, and environmentalists.
In 2004, Franklin was named Governing magazine’s Public Official of the Year. In 2005, TIME magazine named her one of the top five mayors in the country and U.S. News and World Report named her one of “America’s Best Leaders”. Esquire Magazine named her one of the best and brightest and American City and County Magazine named her Municipal Leader of the Year. Also the same year, she received the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. In 2006, she was honored with the Southern Institute for Business and Professional Ethics’ Ethics Advocate Award. In 2007, Newsweek Magazine named her one of the women to watch in their Women & Power issue.

Franklin also serves as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Purpose Built Communities and as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.

Banks’ sweet voice and smooth choreography helped distinguish the Dramatics, particularly in Detroit’s post-Motown scene of the 1970s, when the group enjoyed crossover pop success with songs such as”Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get” and “In the Rain.”

Born Ronald Dean Banks on May 10th, 1951, in Detroit, Banks was tall and strapping, with a vocal delivery inspired by the Temptations’ Eddie Kendricks. He was among a group of teenagers who formed the Sensations in 1964 and then changed their name to the Dramatics the next year.

The Dramatics began on the Wingate label, but had no charting hits with that imprint. Their first hit came with ‘All Because of You,’ which landed at No. 43 in 1967 and was released on the Sport label.

After signing with Stax Records in 1971, they released “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get,” which reached No. 3 on the R&B charts and No. 9 on the pop charts, and the atmospheric “In the Rain,” which went to No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 5 on the pop charts.

The band later had top-10 R&B hits with “Me and Mrs. Jones,”"Be My Girl” and “Shake It Well” on the Los Angeles-based ABC label and “Welcome Back Home” on MCA.

On March 4th, 2010, Banks died of a heart attack. He was 58. He is survived by his wife Sandy and six children.

Breast cancer takes a tremendous toll on women and men of all ages, races, and ethnicities, as well as their families and communities. Breast cancer also has a huge impact on the health care system that treats and monitors those people who have been diagnosed with the disease and provides end-of-life care for those who die from it. Prevention is the key to reducing the emotional, physical, and financial burden of breast cancer. Despite decades of productive breast cancer research, the number of women diagnosed with the disease continues to rise. In 2012, about 227,000 women and 2,200 men in this country will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and 40,000 women will die from it.

Approximately 35 percent of African Americans had no measurable assets in 2009, and 24 percent of these same households had only a motor vehicle. Kimbro, observing how the weight of the continuing housing and credit crises disproportionately impacts the African-American community, takes a sharp look at a carefully cultivated group of individuals who’ve scaled the heights of success and how others can emulate them. Based on a seven-year study of 1,000 of the wealthiest African Americans, The Wealth Choice offers a trove of sound and surprising advice about climbing the economic ladder, even when the odds seem stacked against you. Readers will learn about how business leaders, entrepreneurs, and celebrities like Bob Johnson, Cathy Hughes, Spike Lee, L. A. Reid, Herman Cain, T. D. Jakes and Tyrese Gibson found their paths to wealth; what they did or didn’t learn about money early on; what they had to sacrifice to get to the top; and the role of discipline in managing their success.

In January of 2002, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers fired Tony Dungy – their all-time most successful coach – on the heels of the franchise’s best ever string of seasons, leaving the 32-team National Football League with one minority head coach. The firing was emblematic of what minority coaches in the NFL had long felt: although minorities made up roughly 70 percent of the league’s players, minority coaches were generally the last hired and first fired.

Civil Rights lawyers Cyrus Mehri and the late Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. were furious with Dungy’s firing and they believed it was the result of systematic racial discrimination in the NFL. They commissioned a study to compare the win-loss records of NFL head coaches by race over the previous 15 seasons, and the results were stunning. African American coaches won more games than white coaches but were less likely to obtain and retain head coaching positions. Mehri and Cochran used the study as the basis of a report they titled “Black Coaches in the National Football League: Superior Performance; Inferior Opportunities” and sent it to the NFL’s New York headquarters. Ultimately, after several months of deliberation, the NFL implemented one of Mehri and Cochran’s principal proposals: that every team looking for a head coach should interview at least one minority candidate before making a hire. Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney was one of the proposal’s stalwart advocates as the NFL owners consider it, and the initiative therefore took his name: The Rooney Rule.

The Rooney Rule has been very effective in increasing diversity among the NFL’s head coaches during its 11-year existence – except this year. There are only four minority head coaches going into the 2013 season, the fewest since 2003.

The Salute to Excellence Award is given to persons who display outstanding performance through the year on the field and in front offices in the National Football League. The award is named in honor Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr., one of the co-founders of the Fritz Pollard Alliance that passed away in 2005.

The Fritz Pollard Alliance has held this Annual Salute to Excellence Award since 2006 presenting the first awards at Super Bowl XL in Detroit, MI.

Now in its 25th year as an international event, the NAIAS is among the most respected auto shows in the world, providing unparalleled access to the automotive products, people and ideas that matter most – up close and in one place. This is theme was entitled “The Love of Cars Starts Early”.

Glover spent more than 22 years in various investigative and administrative assignments in the FBI, ultimately rising to the position of Executive Assistant Director for administration at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., one of three individuals directly reporting to the Director of the FBI. He also served as Assistant Director of the Inspections Division, where he supervised the on-site inspections and audits of FBI Headquarters and field office operations and the periodic evaluations of all FBI investigative programs. In March 1989, he retired from the Bureau.

According to data from the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), the largest registry of unrelated HSC volunteer donors in the world, approximately 60 percent of potential minority donors who register opt out before donation, compared with 40 percent of whites. Whites have a 79 percent chance of finding a donor match, compared with a 33 percent chance for African-Americans.

Switzer and his colleagues found that four factors contributed to the high rate of registry dropouts among minorities: As compared to whites, minorities reported more religious objections to donation, less trust that HSCs would be allocated equitably, more concerns about donation, and a greater likelihood of having been discouraged from donating.