Richard Arrington Jr. born in October of 1934 in Livingston, Alabama  was the first African American mayor of the city of Birmingham, Alabama  serving 20 years, from 1979 to 1999. He replaced David Vann and, upon retiring after five terms in office, installed then-City Council president William A. Bell as interim mayor. Bell went on to lose the next election to the current mayor, Bernard Kincaid.

Arrington's father moved his family to the steel-town of Fairfield from rural Sumter County, Alabama when Richard Jr. was five years old to take a job with U.S. Steel. The steady work was an improvement over sharecropping, but Richard Sr. still had to supplement the family income by working off-hours as a brick mason.   more »

Approximately 70 students attended a rally Thursday at the University of Southern Mississippi in support of a group of students in Louisiana who have come to be known as the Jena Six.

"We wanted to show our support," said Brandon Dobson, 21, president of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, the 16-person group who organized the rally at Southern Miss. "Since we are unable to actually go there, we wanted to show our support here. We wanted to bring attention to it at USM because everybody knows about it, but nobody is doing anything."
 
Dobson said the goals of the rally were to get more information out into the community and raise money for the families of the Jena Six to ease court costs. Organizers say they collected more than $200.   more »