Majid wants to show me a negligee. It's on sale, and comes with a striped thong. When I demur, he eagerly shows me a frilly lace concoction in yellow. Quickly appraising my figure, enveloped in a black abaya, he ventures a guess: "D cup?" Without waiting for an answer, he trots over to a wall lined with lace and satin. The push-up bras are especially popular, he informs me. And the matching panties are three for the ...

Like other ethnic groups before them, American blacks are steadily climbing the political ladder, winning more state, local and national offices each election. Some 90 black mayors are now serving in U.S. cities and towns, including Newark and Gary. That is not surprising, because those cities have black majorities. But last week brought the most dramatic evidence yet of black political progress. Los Angeles, the nation's third largest city, elected its first black mayor, although the Negro population is a ...

He wore black denim trousers and motorcycle boots And a black leather jacket with an eagle on the back. He had a hopped-up cycle that took off like a gun, That fool was the terror of Highway 101. —Jukebox Favorite Organizing a weekend "gypsy tour" to the tiny California mining town of Angels Camp , the Northern California chapter of the American Motorcycle Association won eager support from the Angels Camp Lions Club and police. The Lions agreed to sponsor ...

The hardscrabble town of Marianna, Ark. , near the Mississippi River, has no movie theater but plenty of boarded-up storefronts. Summer work for teenagers can mean wrenching labor in the rice and soybean fields. Young black men know that if they want something better, they have to go elsewhere. Enter the four Chambers brothers -- Larry, Billy Joe, Willie Lee and Otis -- who blew into their old hometown driving gleaming BMWs and Camaros, sporting gold chains and fancy clothes. ...

In a packed courtroom on the 13th floor of 100 Centre Street, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, dressed in a black suit, stood before Judge Michael J. Orbus and calmly said "not guilty." Although he didn't say much else, the defense that the former director of the IMF and his lawyers — who proclaimed his plea a "powerful statement" of his innocence — will now most likely begin building is that his encounter with the Sofitel employee was consensual. Early ...

In Rialto, on old route 66 just outside Los Angeles, young Mexican Americans in sharp cars and glittery, cowboy-goth clothes are pouring into a hangar-size nightclub to hear El Komander sing. Brawny, buzz-cut and with a midnight pallor, El Komander looks as if a Mexican drug cartel might have sent him on a summer internship with the Russian mob. He's wearing a black satin cowboy outfit with flashes of silver lightning embroidered on its sleeves. His narcocorridos — narco ballads ...

"Mommy, I want to be white." Imagine my wife's anguish and alarm when our beautiful brown-skinned three- year-old daughter made that declaration. We thought we were doing everything right to develop her self-esteem and positive racial identity. We overloaded her toy box with black dolls. We carefully monitored the racial content of TV shows and videos, ruling out Song of the South and Dumbo, two classic Disney movies marred by demeaning black stereotypes. But we saw no harm in Pinocchio, ...

While eager prospectors searched for oil all around the world, beneath the sea and in the mountains, high-living Houston last week took a look under its garbage and found black gold. An independent driller, Trice Production Co., brought in a rich well from 8,000 ft. below the city dump, and gave it an appropriate label: "Houston City Dump No. 1."Dump No. 1 is the latest strike in the old Pierce Junction salt dome, where wells are pushing ever closer to Houston's city limits. ...

Down Mobile way, darkies croon to the night on soft spring evenings, grin, tip hats, as they shuffle past white "gemmen," still their noble lords if not their masters. Fortnight ago, Clarence Darrow, keen-witted, sharp-tongued Northern lawyer, stopped in Mobile, Ala., made speeches to wide-mouthed black men attacking Negro lynchings. On street corners hot-blooded white men gathered, muttered curses on Mr. Darrow, "damned Yankee" agitator. At Negro schools, able Lawyer Darrow repeated his speeches to the "new Negro." Klan circulars ...

Just past noon, Anna Chernova, a 68-year-old retiree, pushed her black metal shopping cart into an Aldi store here. After arriving from Russia 16 years ago, Chernova regularly shopped at conventional supermarkets like Dominick's and Jewel, but no more. "They're too expensive," Chernova says, clutching her shopping list with one hand. Now she visits Aldi once a week, drawn by the deep discounter's $2.69 1-gal. jugs of milk and 33-cent boxes of salt. "I've got to save ...