Shaquanda Cotton Free

WFAA-TV
Radio personality Rickey Smiley embraces Shaquanda Cotton.
Public outcry worked! The 15-year-old was released from prison on Saturday after serving a year for shoving a hall monitor. The release was ordered by Jay Kimbrough, a special conservator appointed to overhaul the Texas Youth Commission because of -- get this-- a sex scandal in which prison officials coerced sex from inmates. Child inmates. 400 kids may be released by the end of the week, according to Kimbrough. All of them had been approved for release but had their captivity extended by the Texas Youth Commission staff.

A local radio DJ who led a rally outside the county courthouse last week interviewed Cotton after her release. You can watch the dangerous criminal who had to be locked up for a year here. (sample: Q: What did you do when you got home? A: Hugged my brother.)

Best article on the case and the locale: The Age (Australia): 14-year-old girl in jail for shoving teacher's aide

Houston Chronicle: Black teen who pushed hall monitor freed from juvenile prison

BlackAmericaWeb: Lawmaker Who Hastened Shaquanda Cotton’s Release: ‘This Never Should Have Happened’

Racism Lives, USA, 2007

Shaquanda Cotton (from Free Shaquanda Cotton website)

Miami, Florida: Tennis player Serena Williams is racially abused by a white male spectator who tells her to "hit the ball into the net like any nigger would".

Paris, Texas: A 15-year-old black girl, Shaquanda Cotton, has been in jail for over a year of a seven year jail term for pushing a hall monitor at her high school in 2005. (The hall monitor was not injured; it was her first offense.) Three months earlier, the same judge sentenced a 14-year-old white girl convicted of arson for burning down her family's house to probation.

Georgia: The Georgia State Senate has dropped the bill that would have freed 19-year-old black man Genarlow Wilson, who will now rot in jail for another eight years for conduct that is now only a misdemeanor under Georgia law.

It's not just the South, either:

Cambridge, Massachusetts: Vaunted Harvard University has 41 varsity sports and not one black coach. This is not surprising given that the AD and his 13 senior administrators are also not black. The AD has hired coaches for 12 sports since he was hired in 2001; all his hires are white.