Civil Rights | featured news

A device designed to control unruly inmates by blasting them with a beam of intense energy that causes a burning sensation is drawing heat from civil rights groups who fear it could cause serious injury and is "tantamount to torture."

Kentucky senatorial candidate Rand Paul said Tuesday he's planning a campaign staff shake-up a week after a round of interviews in which he dismayed fellow Republicans by discussing his views on racial segregation.

A conservative who won the Republican Party nomination for U.S. senator in Kentucky tried on Thursday to repair the damage on Thursday from comments he made that suggested he did not fully support civil rights laws.

The only man to admit shooting Malcolm X was freed on parole Tuesday, 45 years after he assassinated the civil rights leader. Thomas Hagan, the last man still serving time in the 1965 killing, was freed from a Manhattan prison where he spent two days a week under a work-release program, state Department of Correctional Services spokeswoman Linda Foglia said....

Benjamin L. Hooks, a champion of minorities and the poor who as executive director of the NAACP increased the group's stature, has died. He was 85.

Physical attacks on people based on their sexual orientation will join the list of federal hate crimes in a major expansion of the civil rights-era law Congress approved today and sent to President Barack Obama.