Monica Blake watched closely as a Texas jury weighed the case against a white police officer charged in the fatal shooting of a black neighbor, wondering whether the panel would render a different decision than so many others in recent years. C.J. Lawrence, a Jackson, Mississippi-based civil rights attorney and founder of the advocacy website Black With No Chaser, said the verdict offered one clear message: "Black people won't become criminals in their own homes."
Collapse Menu
Filter By Location
Filter by Media
Houston furniture store offers shelter after winter storm
For Tina Rios, her family and hundreds of other people, shelter from the winter storm that has left much of Houston without power or heat came from an unusual place: a furniture store. Sitting at one of the many tables on display Wednesday inside Gallery Furniture's cavernous showroom, Rios, 32, explained how she “started stressing really, really hard” after her suburban Houston mobile home lost power at around 4:30 a.m. on Monday and she, her husband, Eric Bennis, and their three children were soon able to see their breath inside. After spending one frigid night there, they realized they needed to find somewhere warm to wait out the blackout, not so much for the parents, who grew up in New Jersey and are used to cold, but for the children, ages 3, 9 and 10.