Near the end of the first week of Michael Jackson’s infamous child molestation trial in 2005, a large group of African-American community activists and leaders gathered at a community center in Los Angeles to talk about Jackson, the trial and whether he was a target because he was a rich, successful, and famous African-American. This is the slightly paranoid tinged chatter heard whenever a black celebrity, and there have been a lot of them, wind up in the court docket for real or alleged crimes or are lambasted in the media for bad behavior.

The Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission (GGCHCC) will hold a general meeting on July 7 to solicit ideas from the public about the establishment of a National Heritage Area that will span 12,000 square miles along the entire coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, and portions of the North Carolina and Florida coasts.

Philip Simmons, whose skill with the hammer and anvil elevated him from a humble working man to an artisan widely recognized as a national treasure, died Monday night. He was 97.