Racial Relations

The memo emerged early this week on an African American news website, then spread via e-mail, finally landing on the front page of the local paper. Its message: Atlanta is a majority-black city whose 35-year string of black mayors "has represented the breakthrough for black political empowerment in the South." And therefore, the white candidate running for mayor this year must be defeated. Reportedly disseminated by a local group called the Black Leadership Forum, it was the kind of idea guaranteed to raise hackles in Atlanta, a city that has worked hard to live up to native son Martin Luther King Jr.'s dictum about judging by character rather than skin color.

Mike Campbell sat and watched the flames. The 76-year-old Zimbabwean farmer desperately wanted to help. But you can't fight a fire with a walking stick. So the fierce, proud man who had spent so many years fighting for his land was forced to stand by as his family used green branches to fight the blaze burning toward his daughter's home. "It's a terrible feeling when you stand there, helpless. I can't really move very fast," said Campbell, who never really recovered after being beaten by thugs loyal to President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe's election violence in June 2008.

Sergio Merida and his relatives built taco trucks into a family business. To sell their fresh-cooked tacos, carnitas and tortas, each day they spread out across Palos Verdes Estates -- Merida to the east, his wife, Maggie Avila, to the center, and Sonia Avila, Maggie's mother, to the west. At lunchtime, Merida and Sonia Avila would pull alongside a small park and spend two hours feeding gardeners, construction workers and nannies, and the occasional local.

Seated in the corner of a bustling classroom, school volunteer Hanan Masarwa is barely visible amid a scrum of first-graders. The 18-year-old Masarwa is teaching the children to add as part of an Israeli national service program created in August. The volunteer program is an attempt to provide avenues, other than mandatory military service from which they are exempt, for integrating Arabs and religious Jews more fully into the mainstream Jewish state.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday launched an investigation into how the Sheriff's Department conducted a narcotics-search operation at Los Angeles Trade Tech College in which 33 students, all minorities, were detained. The Oct. 17 incident has fueled allegations of racial profiling from civil rights groups and sparked changes in the way the Sheriff's Department communicates with the Los Angeles Community College District.

The absence of Sen. Barack Obama's name from today's Michigan Democratic primary ballot has angered a large swath of African American voters here, exacerbating a racial political divide and threatening party unity heading into the November general election. Many black voters are already unhappy about the state's new voter identification law and a 2006 voter-approved referendum barring affirmative action in public hiring.

Jarvis Jenkins and Kytu Ivory are two black voters with two very different ideas about the racial tensions that have flared between presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Jenkins, a transit system worker, was not offended by Clinton's recent comment that "it took a president" to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- a remark that some critics have found disrespectful toward the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

. -- Barack Obama was down to his shirt-sleeves under the hot gym lights at South Carolina State University, exhorting students at this historically black college that America can and must be transformed. "We cannot treat our poor with disregard," he thundered Tuesday, cataloging America's racial ills, starting with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "We can't leave New Orleans in a mess and then expect to be a model for this world."

Shelby King is a fan of Barack Obama. She admires his charisma and passion and believes he could unite the country as president. On Saturday, however, King plans to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton in South Carolina's Democratic primary. "She's got the experience," said King, 61, a real estate agent in Columbia, the state capital. "She's tough. She's bright. I'm a female of her era, and I know how hard it's been to get to where she's gotten." Edward Pair also likes Obama.

A spasm of cross-racial gang shootings in and around the San Gabriel Valley city of Monrovia has left a 64-year-old African American man and a 16-year-old Latina dead and prompted a law enforcement crackdown to stem the bloodshed. In all, seven people have been killed or wounded in recent weeks, as suspected black and Latino gang members have traded gunfire. At least two of those killed have been bystanders, authorities said.