Blacks

Businesswoman Inez Brand spent all day Friday in Los Angeles attending a conference, but she was determined to fly back to her Dallas hometown in time to see "How Stella Got Her Groove Back." In Los Angeles, Reyna Gaar had to buy "Stella" tickets several hours in advance on Saturday at the Magic Johnson Theatres, where the show consistently sold out through the weekend despite being shown on seven screens.

It is one of the most controversial rallies in recent New York City history, pitting Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani against the protest's militant organizers--with many Harlem residents complaining they are caught in the middle. Orchestrated by Khalid Abdul Muhammad, who holds such strong views that he was dismissed from the Nation of Islam for his controversial remarks about Jews and Pope John Paul II, the Million Youth March is scheduled to take place on Malcolm X Boulevard in the heart of Harlem.

In the late 1950s, author Norman Mailer wrote a provocative essay for Dissent magazine titled "The White Negro." The piece attempted to pop-psychologize the white male's need to feel and act "black," specifically regarding the impact of jazz on the hippest sectors of the culture at that time. Mailer's sense of "the white Negro" has transcended the era in which it was originally written, and has recently mounted an impressive comeback, with Hollywood as its most visible proponent.

When Randi Payton started the magazine African Americans on Wheels in July 1995, he simply wanted to educate and inform black consumers about the automotive industry. A funny thing happened to Payton's magazine on its way to an impressive 600,000 circulation: The semi-glossy quarterly has become a conduit for the auto industry, informing Detroit, Europe and Asia about the aspirations of African Americans, who rarely see themselves as the focus of national marketing or sales efforts.

Eleven prisoners suffered minor injuries Friday morning in a racially motivated brawl at Pitchess jail, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department said. From 75 to 100 black and Latino inmates were involved in the fight, which began at 8:45 a.m. in the south wing of the jail, according to Deputy Cruz Solis. Deputies used commands and pepper spray to quell the disturbance in less than two minutes, he said. Nine inmates were treated at the jail clinic.

It was the day before this weekend's Assn. of Volleyball Professionals tour stop at Hermosa Beach got under way, but Dain Blanton was doing himself and his sport more good than a victory ever could. Swarmed by nearly 100 kids from the Ketchum Downtown YMCA in Los Angeles as he signed autographs for them, Blanton was concluding "Dain's Day at the Beach," a camp designed to bring mostly inner-city children closer to beach volleyball.

The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People is moving ahead with plans to establish a national bureau in Hollywood that would monitor and, it hopes, improve the hiring and portrayals of blacks and other minorities in the entertainment industry.

In the latest study to explore whether race affects who is condemned to die, an examination of 10 years of capital cases in Philadelphia has found that black defendants in certain categories of murder cases there are nearly four times more likely to be sentenced to death than are white offenders. Supporters of the death penalty immediately challenged the findings.

After winning a hard-fought primary campaign for a state Senate seat, Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles) left his victory party in his Corvette early Wednesday morning, heading with his fiancee to Restaurant Row on La Cienega Boulevard for a late-night dinner. As Murray crossed into the Beverly Hills city limits, a police officer pulled him over. "Life's little ironies," said Murray, an African American.

Black members of Congress expressed outrage Thursday but little surprise at the brutal murder of a black man in Texas, and they urged Americans to root out what one called "deep and vicious racism in this country." "It manifests itself at the street level in murder, but it also manifests itself at the boardroom in discrimination," Rep. Albert Russell Wynn (D-Md.) said. Rep.