It is important to remember that police brutality impacts Black women too.

On the evening of March 21, 19-year-old Nubia Bowe  and two male friends were approached by cops on a BART train who were responding to a complaint that they were soliciting. Nubia denies the accusations. She was kept in jail for 4 days, and now faces 4 misdemeanor charges and expulsion from her job training program.

#BringBackOurGirls - More than two weeks ago, Nigerian militant group Boko Haram (which translates to "western education forbidden") abducted 200 girls from a school in the town of Chibok in Nigeria. Now the girls have been taken as brides by militants. Western media has largely ignored the story, but here are a few resources to keep you informed.

by  Amber Wright

With all of the drink throwing, hair pulling, cursing and childlike yelling done by the casts of most of the non-scripted cable television shows featuring Black women, it’s no wonder that people still don’t believe that Black women can get along with each other. It has long been thought that we have a “crabs-in-a-barrel” mentality that prevents us from lifting our sisters up when they need a hand or championing them toward success without feeling jealous or envious.

There is nothing more irresponsible or inflammatory than placing the burden of remedying the racism and structural inequality on which the United States was built squarely at the feet of the marginalized.

Last week, Variety Magazine unveiled their list of powerful New York-based women in Media. Nine Black women made the list, and Iman was honored for her humanitarian work in Somalia at a luncheon on April 25.

by Brenda's Child

Growing up, there was no doubt in my mind that I could be beautiful and girly one minute and strong and fearless the next. If She-Ra could do it, so could I. Let me refresh you about She-Ra. She was He-man’s twin sister and the “Princess of Power.” One moment she was gorgeous Princess Adora, but when she pulled out her sword, she became a heroine. This cartoon was my inspiration.

by Jasmine Salters

They say the first step to recovery is admitting the problem…

I have a love-hate relationship with my snooze button. It is both a reminder that I have something to do and that I probably don’t have the energy needed to do it. I have been majorly depressed for as far back as my memory will take me. Getting out of bed has often required more effort than I am able to exert. There are days that I have to talk myself into showering and going outside. Other times I lie in the same spot for hours, angry with myself for not having the motivation to move. What is wrong with you? You are supposed to be a Strong Black Woman. There is no time for weakness.

As National Poetry Month comes to a close, we're celebrating these Black women poets who have changed us with their work. They help us to see ourselves and make sense of the world. They inspire us to be better and to make a difference. Here are the 15 Black women poets you should know.

Production for a live action version of 'Jem and the Holograms' is underway. The big screen version of the cartoon, which aired from 1985 to 1988, will be directed by Jon Chu, and the cast has been revealed.  Jem is the secret pop-star alter ego of Jerrica Benton, the owner of Starlight Music who uses a supercomputer called synergy to help stage massive musical events with her hugely popular band, the Holograms. Shana Elmsford is the band's bassist and the only Black character on the show. In the original show, Shana was depicted with a brown complexion and what appears to be a natural afro. In the film, Shana will be portrayed by Aurora Perrineau, a lighter-skinned actress who is seen in the new film's promo shots with straight hair.

Baltimore Sun - Two Towson University students edged out 170 other teams to win a national debate championship held in Indiana this week, the second time in recent years a Towson team has netted national debate honors.

Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, both from Baltimore, bested a team from the University of Oklahoma in the final round. Their argument likened police brutality, the prison-industrial complex and structural poverty issues to a warlike violence against African-Americans in the U.S. and identified solutions.

WSJ - Companies affiliated with Carol’s Daughter filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Thursday in connection with the beauty brand’s move to close most of its stores.

CD Stores LLC, formerly known as Carol’s Daughter Stores LLC, filed its Chapter 11 petition with the Manhattan bankruptcy court, as did the individual companies behind Carol’s Daughter stores. Court papers show that CD Stores is 100% owned by parent company Carol’s Daughter Holdings LLC (the parent company didn’t file for bankruptcy). And the petition, which reported assets and debts each in the $1 million to $10 million range, was signed by Carol’s Daughter Chief Financial Officer John D. Elmer.

Dear Community,

Tuesday (4/22/2014) night in the Bronx around 11:00PM, I witnessed three young boys of color (13 tops) playing with each other and running down the street. They were sword fighting with two pipes and doing what unsupervised kids do at that time of night.

I hear a pipe drop down the block (perpendicular to my street), and they run back on my street. I hear a voice of a man say “GET BACK DOWN HERE”.

Today TIME magazine released their annual list of the most influential people in the world, and this year eight Black women made the cut. The women are entertainers, activists, and world leaders. Their work is important and inspiring.

Here they are:

I'm terrified of motherhood -- not simply because of the changes birthing a child will bring to my body and lifestyle, but because once a woman becomes a mother, she is expected to shrink into herself -- to forego the parts of her identity that  anyone could ever construe as shameful.

by Lyndsey Ellis

I was invited to a weekend-long retreat at the end of last month. I went, expecting the solitude to welcome me with time to write, uninterrupted. But, besides words, I received something I considered even more valuable: good old-fashioned rest and peace of mind.

Brooke Kimbrough always dreamed of becoming a University of Michigan Wolverine. Her score on the ACT--a college readiness evaluation test--dwarfs the scores of most of her classmates. Earlier this month, she was part of a winning team at the National Urban League Debate Championship in Washington, D.C. Last week, she became a powerful symbol for exactly how Michigan's race-blind college admissions policies have failed.

Related: Student Stages Protest Against Rejection from University of Michigan

Mail Online - If expanding the guest list to include Michelle Obama at graduation for high school students in the Kansas capital city means fewer seats for friends and family, some students and their parents would prefer the first lady not attend.

A furor over what the Topeka school district considers an honor has erupted after plans were announced for Obama to address a combined graduation ceremony for five area high schools next month an 8,000-seat arena. For some, it was the prospect of a tight limit on the number of seats allotted to each graduate.

Until NeNe Leakes became one of the most insufferable characters I've had the misfortune of watching on television, Porsha Williams and Kenya Moore were my two least favorite cast members on the Real Housewives of Atlanta. Both women are beautiful and self-absorbed, traits I normally appreciate in reality TV stars, but Porsha's ditziness and Kenya's maliciousness make them difficult to stomach.

CBC - It was about a year ago that Queen Cee Robinson tried to find a doll that resembled her daughter and had a revelation – there weren’t any.

Robinson had seen black Barbie dolls before. Most of them wore bikinis, and they all had long, straight hair. And they all looked the same — sidekicks to the white dolls, or as Robinson describes them, “Barbie’s token black friend.”

That started Robinson down a path of giving dolls makeovers — providing them with loose curls and dreadlocks, hijabs and sarongs, all in the name of giving little girls a realistic image of themselves.

AZ Central - Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said Wednesday he will move forward with the felony child- abuse prosecution of Shanesha Taylor, the jobless mom whose Scottsdale arrest has drawn national attention and prompted calls for Taylor to receive assistance rather than punishment.

More often than not, we look at love as being some huge prize reserved for those of us who are good enough to deserve it. We have to be lucky enough, pretty enough, smart enough, sexy enough, patient enough and kind enough. As a result, we spend an awful lot of time attempting to master those things we assume will get us that prize.

by Ashleigh Atwell

Last week, I reluctantly exposed myself to I Won, a new track by rappers Future and Kanye West. The premise of the track is the duo bragging about their famous significant others, Ciara and Kim Kardashian. It seems like a sweet gesture until you actually pay attention to the lyrics. The song starts out with Future warbling the hook:

by Janice Fuller-Roberts

It’s easy to say what you would or wouldn’t do in a situation from the safety of your own home. It’s like being an armchair quarterback or a backseat driver. The “right” thing is always obvious when you’re not in the thick of things.

Everyone does it. We sit on our high horses and haughtily pass judgment on the actions of others. But the thing about high horses is that they’re precarious perches, and falling off is easier than you think. Some of us even get knocked off.

We all know the scenario. Some of us could even write the script. Just the other day, someone at work assumed you didn’t know something, couldn’t do something, or wouldn’t understand something. When that ugly microaggressions monster appears on the job it can be hard not to turn into a librarian and offer up a well-deserved read. How do you keep your spiritual cool at work when folks try it?

by Neisha Marie

A friend of mine once swore never to tell her whole story to another person. She wanted to ensure her own words could never be used against her. While others might have recoiled at such an admission, I did not. I understood completely because I too had sewn parts of myself closed never to be revealed to another person.

by Tiffany Gill of Black Girls Unscripted

I remember reading about Karyn Washington, founder of @ForBrownGirls and the #DarkSkinRedLipProject, back in 2012. Madame Noire did a few great features on her and I was intrigued by her story. Being a member of the brown-skinned girls club myself, I could easily relate to the need for such a platform to boost the confidence of browner-hued women who are often excluded from mainstream beauty discussions.

by Hanifa Barnes

“Why you talk white?”

I grew accustomed to hearing this question from classmates throughout my formative years. Growing up as an African child in America, with an east African father and west African mother, my existence was a dual reality. At home, “standard” English was a requirement, but outside of my home amongst my peers talking “White” was not cool.

by Tejai Beulah

I first wrote about Dr. Teleka Patrick on Thursday, January 9, 2014. By that date, Dr. Patrick had been missing from Kalamazoo, Michigan since Thursday, December 5, 2013. I wrote about her because I didn’t like the way the national media was covering her story at the time. The first few weeks of the case, Dr. Patrick was presented as an accomplished young woman and a promising doctor. However, as more information was learned about her from social media and her ex-husband, the story changed. Dr. Patrick was no longer Dr. Patrick. She was a missing crazy woman who had stalked Gospel singer, Pastor Marvin Sapp. Little more was said about all that Dr. Patrick achieved by the age of 30. No empathy was shown for the fact that she was clearly suffering from a break with reality in the YouTube videos that were broadcast about the Internet. The national media had dismissed her.

An autopsy has identified the body recovered from a northwestern Indiana lake as that of a missing Michigan doctor Teleka Patrick.

A cause of death has not been released, but the Lake County Coroner’s Office said Wednesday that fingerprints confirmed the body Patrick's.

15-year-old Danielle Locklear was last seen leaving her grandfather's home in Hope Mills, North Carolina on March 11.

Police say 15-year-old Danielle Locklear’s ex-boyfriend, Je'Michael Malloy, has confessed to killing her and dumping her body in a river after the two got into an argument that night.

They said the conversation turned violent and Malloy choked Locklear to death and stuffed a sock in her mouth.

by LaChelle Watson

When a woman expresses disinterest in marriage there are a lot of things that people tend to assume about her. Is she a woman scorned who has given up on love? A feminist man-hater? Some strange individualist with estoteric views? Seldom are these assumptions applied to men who are disinterested in marriage. In fact, it is arguably more socially acceptable for a man to not want marriage. For the most part, I try not to care what other people think but this is one area where my being misunderstood is somewhat troubling.

“Are you an alien from outer space, mommy?” That was an honest question I asked my mother the first time I read the “Resident Alien” header on her green card as a child. She took that opportunity to explain to me what a green card was and why she had one. My mother is from the beautiful island of Roatán, Honduras and came to live in the U.S. when she was thirteen. She was old enough to come to the States, full of memories of life back “home,” but young enough to assimilate into life as a Black American.

by Amity Payne

By now you must have heard the story of Shanesha Taylor, the homeless 38-year-old mother who was arrested on March 20 after leaving her children in her car while she went to an interview, was finally released from prison. Taylor, unable to afford daycare, left her six month old baby boy and a two-year old son in in her SUV for more than 45 minutes and has been charged with child abuse. She now faces a long legal battle, and upon her release, child protective services kept custody of her children.

Four-months ago Teleka Patrick, 30, left Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she worked as a first-year resident, and was never seen again. Authorities believe that today a fisherman may have found her body a the lake near where her car was discovered back in December.

The Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office released the following statement just after 2:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday afternoon:

by LaChelle Watson

My 25th year was definitely a golden one. I had a lot of great experiences and very challenging personal revelations. I noticed a shift within myself that signified me becoming more of a woman and aware of who I am. Here are some things that I learned.

by Amber Wright

Dear Mrs. Obama,

We have never met, but I feel like I know you. After all, I see your face every day on my vision board that's pinned up at my desk at work. The picture I cut out of you is strategically placed in the center of my board, for you represent the heart of all that I aspire to be.

by Stephanie Sneed

For the past few weeks every corner store, every liquor store and every gas station in Southeast has had photos of Relisha, a small Black girl with big sad eyes and small braids, her face adjacent to a man who as the details emerged would be known as a kidnapper, murderer and perhaps a pedophile. Ever so often a neighbor will relay their story of six degrees of separation, whether they went to high school with the mother or stayed at the shelter with them, needless to say this story hits close to home. But, similar to the local papers, new stations and online commenters, I’m getting ahead of myself. As tragic as Relisha’s story is, the real danger is what happens in the media far too often—the story is sensationalized and then individualized. The community’s rational outrage is quelled by having someone to blame, which is a grave mistake and overlooks the fault of larger more sinister forces that ignored Relisha until it was too late. Without institutional changes, there will be another Relisha Rudd.

by Lyndsey Ellis

April 4th marks the 86th birthday of one of America’s pioneers in contemporary literature. Dr. Maya Angelou, an acclaimed writer whose body of work spans over 5 decades, is known as a living legend with an unmatched tender heart and a knack for speaking her mind on behalf of black culture. She’s considered one of the trailblazers of autobiographical writing, but is also largely recognized for her poetry and civil rights activism.

What does self love mean? What does loving myself even look like? What paradigm of self love should I follow? I couldn’t look in the media because it’s plastered with images of people perpetuating ideals of flawed standards of beauty. I couldn’t look to music because it’s inundated with products of cosmetic surgeries and booty shots posing as artists and video vixens. I couldn’t even look at my parents because they have yet to discover the phenomenon of self love for themselves. So, where did I look? Myself.

I write an advice column for a website dedicated to sexual health and pleasure for women of color. I recently received a letter that really struck a chord from a self-described “overweight, Black woman in her late 30s”. She admitted being aware of the dangers of unprotected sex, but kept finding herself in situations where her male partners refused to use condoms. Because of her age and size, she believed her dating options to be severely limited and so she felt pressured to oblige these men, worried they might be her only chance for love and intimacy. In other words, she felt that “beggars can’t be choosers.”

Rape has absolutely nothing to do with sex.

Rape is the use of a reproductive organ to commit violence or murder. The organ can easily be substituted with a gun.

Rape is a human rights violation as outlined by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter declares all human beings as born free and equal in dignity and rights.

A couple of weeks ago I took an impromptu trip to evil-ass Florida because the weather in DC was making me angry, depressed, and stabby due to winter's refusal to die a timely death. Plus, one of my besties lives there, so the decision was easy.

by Candi Marsh

Most have heard of or are familiar with the old adage, “it takes a village to a raise child.” I firmly believe this to be true, as villages serve as pseudo-parents that assist in raising our children. With the high percentages of children being raised in single-parent households, the urgent need for more villages is imperative.

Research conducted by Kids Count Data Center: Project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation concluded that sixty–seven percent of the Black/African American population were raised in a single-parent households while thirty-three percent of non African-American families were single-parent households.

The Muslim Anti-Racist Collaborative (MuslimARC), a collaborative of diverse Muslims dedicated to combatting anti-Black racism, discrimination and exclusion within the Muslim community, launched a Twitter campaign that has opened the door to discussing anti-black racism within the Muslim community.

In a discussion this month hosted by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, writers Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talk about their encounters with blackness in America. Adichie was born in Nigeria and Smith was born in Britain. Of course, W.E.B. Dubois’ idea of double consciousness came up as well as their views of what “black” is in America. In the discussion, Adichie said, ”Black matters because of racism. It’s existential, a constructed reality, not biological. We can’t control how the world views us.” This is coming from an African who had to adopt the cultural implications of blackness as a college student in America.