How will you remember Whitney Houston? Did you ever see her perform or meet her in person? Share your photos, memories and tributes and together we'll stitch together a remembrance of the legendary pop singer on iReport.

By the CNN Wire Staff

Los Angeles (CNN) - Legendary pop singer Whitney Houston was found dead Saturday at a Beverly Hills, California, hotel, officials said. She was 48.

The entertainer, whose incredible talent was discovered at an early age, was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. (6:55 p.m. ET) at the Beverly Hilton hotel despite resuscitation efforts, a police spokesman said.

Beverly Hills Police Lt. Mark Rosen said there were "no obvious signs of criminal intent" and that the cause of her death is being investigated.

Houston's bodyguard found her body, said Courtney Barnes, publicist for hip-hop artist Ray J, who was dating the pop diva.

According to her official website, Houston sold more than 170 million albums, singles and videos. But she also struggled with addiction problems over the years.

Read the full story

Editor's note: All eight entrepreneurs featured in CNN's documentary "Black in America: The New Promised Land – Silicon Valley," wrote updates about what's happening now and what's yet to come.

"Black in America: The New Promised Land, Silicon Valley" re-airs on CNN, February 11 and 12 at 8p.m., 11 p.m., and 2a.m. ET. Keep the conversation going on Twitter with #BlackinAmerica.

Angela Benton
“To say that it’s been a whirlwind since Wayne and I decided to put together NewMe in 2011 would be an understatement. It continues to amaze me when I think about where my life has gone, both personally and professionally, in under a year.  Especially considering my life wasn’t too shabby to begin with!  Since the NewMe Accelerator wrapped up in August I decided to move my family to Silicon Valley so that working on NewMe would be more manageable.

The number of opportunities that have been brought to the table have been nothing short of God’s work and plan.  I would have never thought that I’d get the chance to experience such a wide spectrum of my work, from visiting people and communities in the Hunter’s View neighborhood in San Francisco (probably the most Black people I’ve seen in the whole city at one time) to having engaging meetings with multi-billionaires on the future of NewMe.  You can check out a full update on what we’ve been doing on that front here.

So far the transition has been fairly smooth. There have been bumps in the road but that’s to be expected when you relocate 3,000 miles.  My kids enjoy it here so I don’t think I could have asked for anything more than that.   Right now I’m excited and focused on the new NewMe program that will begin on February 20th, as well as scaling and developing what we’ve built.... exciting times right now! ”

Hajj Flemmings
“My start-up Gokit has pivoted and we are excited about launching in March during SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas.  Our product will allow users to create profiles and capture and share life experiences through personas. Gokit’s new direction will also feature mobile apps, for iPhone first, then Android, to enable users to curate their stories and experiences. I have also been speaking a lot in the Michigan market to audiences regarding startups and the startup economy.”

Anthony Frasier
“Since leaving the NewME house I have been on a constant grind. We released a mobile app for my start-up Playd on the iOS app store and on the Android Marketplace. I have been working on Playd day and night to deliver an experience gamers love. We are planning new iterations and I plan to reveal new partnerships soon. I also started BrickCityTech.org which is a tech meetup I co-founded based in Newark, NJ. The idea is to bring some of that same energy from Silicon Valley back to New Jersey, and we partnered with New Jersey Institute of Technology to help us make that a reality. People have been asking me if I will move to Silicon Valley since the airing of the show. My answer: eventually. When I came home I had to establish something here, and right now that is where my focus is. Of course I'll still be flying back and forth, and I hope to be fortunate enough someday to have a home in both locations. I told Soledad I wouldn't leave my city empty handed, and I meant it.”

Pius Uzamere
“In January, our start-up BeCouply launched a new subscription service called BeCouply Dates that sends couples on amazing dates every month. So far, the service has gotten rave reviews from our first San Francisco subscribers and we've got hundreds of couples on the waiting list across the country. In addition, several thousand couples are on the waiting list for the iPhone app that we'll be launching in the next few months. Finally, we closed additional venture capital funding in January.”

Hank Williams
“Since the documentary aired, my start-up Kloudco is still in private testing. We have been testing for both bugs and user satisfaction. In the process we have refined the Kloudco feature set and look and feel based on user feedback and are now pretty excited because we think we have nailed the product experience. The underlying technology is much more complex than a typical website because of the volume of data we are designed to manage, so our next steps involve simulations with more data, and testing with larger numbers of users before opening the doors to the public.”

Wayne Sutton
“After the first NewMe Accelerator cycle ended, I returned home to Raleigh, North Carolina. I spent time reflecting on what I could have done better to take advantage of the NewMe opportunity. After a brief hiatus and family time I decided to buckle down and work on my web design and coding skills, along with working with Angela to keep the vision of the NewMe Accelerator going. Soon after that, I realized to achieve my startup dreams, it was best for me to relocate to San Francisco, California. I'm now living in San Francisco, working on both NewMe Accelerator and NewMe Community projects and getting ready for a new set of entrepreneurs to join the NewMe Accelerator.”

Tiffani Bell
“My start-up Pencil You In is currently in the process of releasing its iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. With a new developer onboard, the company is now helping stylists and barbers in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Australia to accept appointments online.”

Crisson Jno-Charles
“Our start-up Fetchmob is being re-designed to cater to less well-defined communities. The next major release will occur next month.”

Editor's note: Angela Benton currently runs  Black Web Media, which publishes BlackWeb20.com and was featured in CNN's documentary "Black in America: The New Promised Land - Silicon Valley."

Angela recently relocated  to Silicon Valley with her family. See what's next for this full-time mom and entrepreneur.

"Black in America: The New Promised Land, Silicon Valley" re-airs on CNN, February 11 and 12 at 8p.m., 11 p.m., and 2a.m. ET. Keep the conversation going on Twitter with #BlackinAmerica.

By Angela Benton, Special to CNN

(CNN) - Since the initial broadcast of Black in America 4 in November we’ve received more than 300 applications for the newest cycle that begins on February 20th.  By now you’re probably wondering, ‘So who the heck is in the next class?!’  We have selected seven new dot com entrepreneurs to make up the next NewMe class - five African American men, one white woman and one Latina.

We thought it was going to be hard to outdo ourselves in terms of support from speakers, mentors, and sponsors, but we were wrong.  In addition to having folks like Mitch Kapor, Ben Horowitz (who was a mentor last year but was not shown in the Black in America documentary), Navarrow Wright, and Vivek Wadhwa involved again, some pretty impressive individuals have been added to the roster.

I can’t count the number of people who’ve asked me how we are able to pull off this type of program at the level we are doing it.  Aside from having a team that hustles hard, the companies that support the program financially are doing more than just cutting a check. They believe in what we are doing and are putting in sweat equity and resources too.

For instance, when we decided that it would be best for the Founders to work out of the city this time around (instead of the suburbs) so that we didn’t have to incur transportation costs, Google, our presenting sponsor for 2012, stepped up.  Not only were they fine with changing the location from the Googleplex in Mountain View to San Francisco, they also made it possible for us to work out of the HUB SoMA for the year.  The HUB SoMA is an amazing co-working space in the heart of one of San Francisco’s bubbling start-up districts that caters to organizations who are setting out to do good and change the world; the synergy couldn't be better.

Tagged is throwing the Founders a welcome party, HP is hosting the mid-way checkpoint (which is the beginning of the push for Founders to get ready for Demo Day), Wilson Sonccini is allowing us to send Founders that need it to their long standing Entrepreneur's College, and Gunderson Dettmer is providing regular weekly legal office hours.  NewMe would not be such a strong program without things like this that directly add to the Founders being successful.

Anthony Frasier, founder of Playd, a Foursquare-like app for video gamers, participated in the NewMe Accelerator and was featured in CNN's documentary "Black in America: The New Promised Land - Silicon Valley."

Anthony hasn't received any funding since pitching his idea to investors, but in December his app was selected 8 best new apps of the week on mashable.com. See what Anthony is doing now.

"Black in America: The New Promised Land, Silicon Valley" re-airs on CNN, February 11 and 12 at 8p.m., 11 p.m., and 2a.m. ET. Keep the conversation going on Twitter with #BlackinAmerica.

By Sarah Springer, CNN

(CNN) – When Stacey McBride- Irby, a long-time Barbie lover and designer, noticed that her 4-year-old daughter wasn’t playing with dolls, she became concerned.   

“As a little girl my Barbie dolls were all Caucasian. But, that didn’t really bother me because I was looking at her as my fantasy world. She was the actress, she was in soap operas, she was getting dressed up to go to a party,” McBride-Irby said. “But times are changing.”

McBride-Irby realized at age 13 that she had a passion for doll design, and years later, she made it her career.

While working for Mattel, she created designs for Barbie and the iconic doll’s friends, Disney princesses, rock star Barbies and her own innovation, “So In Style” Barbie, a line that features African-American Barbies that that resemble those of black women - different skin tones, fuller lips, one doll with curlier hair.

Her “So In Style” creations will be shown with some unique hairstyles at the Bronner Bros. Hair Show in Atlanta this month, but after 15 years, McBride-Irby is now on to another adventure: Her own doll company.

FULL POST

Editor’s note: Kris Marsh is on the faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and was a postdoctoral scholar at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is on Facebook  and on Twitter @drkrismarsh.

By Kris Marsh, Special to CNN

(CNN) - Recently, the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank released a study, "The End of the Segregated Century." Highlights of the study hit the press like wildfire. Headlines like “Segregation hits historic low” jumped off the page, and articles declared the findings to be proof that “the legacy of the civil rights era is still strong.”

Given that one of my areas of emphasis as a sociologist and demographer is racial residential segregation, I was saturated with emails, Facebook posts, and Tweets asking for my reaction. Above all, my main response is that we must be careful as consumers of information; in this case, readers who stop at the headlines are in danger of overlooking the fact that race still maters and that blacks are still highly segregated in the United States.

As social scientist, we employ three overarching theories to explain the existence and persistence of racial residential segregation: economics, preferences and discrimination.

Economics

Historically, there was a time when only the small population of free blacks were able to own property.  This set the groundwork for the wealth disparities between blacks and whites that persists today.  In general, unlike potential white home seekers, potential black homebuyers often do not inherit wealth from the previous generation. In most cases, blacks do not have the flexibility to borrow money from parents to purchase their homes. This potentially limits blacks’ ability to purchase homes in certain locations causing middle class blacks homeowners to live in close proximity to the black poor and reside in suburban areas less substantively white and affluent than their white middle class counterparts.

By way of illustration, consider Baldwin Hills, California. Baldwin Hills is a predominantly black area in Los Angeles County. This area encompasses both multi-million dollar homes and a housing project with a reputation so dangerous that during the 1980s and 1990s, it was commonly known as “The Jungle.”  In the 2001 Denzel Washington film Training Day, this housing project was used as the location for a scene in which a police detective engages in a midday gun battle. That same year, the director of the film Love and Basketball chose a multi-million dollar home in the same area to represent the residence of a former professional basketball star.

This divergent cinematic representation of Baldwin Hills illustrate the propinquity of the black middle class and the black poor and provides a dramatic example of a widespread phenomenon: that the black middle class is a spatial and social buffer between the white middle class and the black poor. FULL POST

By Alex P. Kellogg, Special to CNN

(CNN) - By just about every measure, life is significantly better for African-Americans and Latinos in small and medium-sized cities and towns in the South and West, according to a recently released report by Urban Institute.

The Washington, DC-based think tank found that the “opportunity gap” that separates African-Americans and Latinos from whites is the largest in the Midwest and Northeast and the smallest in the South and West.

Its study examined factors such as residential segregation, the quality of public schools, neighborhood home values, employment rates and rates of home ownership.

FULL POST

By Alicia W. Stewart, CNN

(CNN) – The stories we tell often leave room for only one hero.

In America, our civil rights hero is Martin Luther King.

But even he recognized the sacrifice of heroines like Patricia Stephens Due.

"Going to jail for a righteous cause is a badge of honor and a symbol of dignity. I assure you that your valiant witness is one of the glowing epics of our time and you are bringing all of America [to] the threshold of the world's bright tomorrows,"  King said in a telegram to Due and fellow students.

Patricia Stephens Due stayed in jail for 49 days, refusing to pay bail after she was arrested for sitting at a Woolworth lunch counter in Tallahassee, Florida.

“We are all so very happy to do this so that we can help our city, state and nation. We strongly believe that Martin Luther King was right when he said, ‘We’ve got to fill the jails to win our equal right’,” she wrote in a letter to the Congress of Racial Equality’s James Robinson.

She, her sister, six other Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University students and one high school student were jailed after participating in the peaceful sit-ins, a defining symbol of America’s civil rights movement.

Due, a 20-year-old student then, led the first jail-in, and received global attention from leaders like King.

Today, Patricia Stephens Due died after a two-year battle with thyroid cancer, and more than 50 years of activism.

FULL POST

Editor's Note: James Braxton Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and an associate professor of English at Lehigh University. He is also the founder of Hip Hop Scholars, LLC, an association of Hip Hop generational scholars dedicated to researching and developing the cultural and educational potential of Hip Hop, urban and youth cultures. You can follow him on Twitter @DrJamesPeterson.

By James Braxton Peterson, Special to CNN

(CNN) - I don’t think that anyone would consider me a fan of Beyonce’s music. Any of my students will tell you that generally speaking, R&B is not my musical genre of choice.

That said, I feel compelled to speak to some of the unspoken issues regarding university courses revolving around prominent pop cultural figures. There has been a bevy of media coverage on this kind of course, most recently directed towards Kevin Allred’s “Politicizing Beyonce ...” course in Rutgers University’s Women and Gender Studies department. Coverage of Allred’s course seems to be garnering more overall positive support than some previously taught courses like Michael Eric Dyson’s Jay-Z class at Georgetown University, but I still think that many folk outside of the academy, particularly those who dismiss this kind of coursework, do not fully appreciate the war zone the academy has become.

We are at war. We are fighting for the right to reach students, especially students frustrated with the homogeneity of the educational curriculum, especially students whose lived experiences are not reflected in the curriculum as it is currently constructed. We are fighting for innovation in the Humanities but also in the social and so-called "hard" sciences.

Too many college classrooms are like mausoleums. For all of our smart technology and tentative embrace of the digital age, too many courses are not willing to integrate currency into the classroom space. And that is part of what this war is about. Allred’s course speaks to young people, especially young people of color, women, and the LGBT community, in ways that too many other courses simply will not and some others simply cannot.

FULL POST

Editor’s note: Carolyn Edgar is a lawyer and writer in New York City. She writes about social issues, parenting and relationships on her blog, Carolyn Edgar.

By Carolyn Edgar, Special to CNN

Now that Bishop Eddie Long has apologized to the Anti-Defamation League for a service at his New Birth Missionary Baptist Church that purported to crown him a “king,” one has to wonder what Long was thinking.

With all the scandal that has surrounded him recently, Long and the New Birth leadership should have anticipated that the video of the New Birth service would attract a great deal of attention, including from Jewish groups. Even if Long were unfamiliar with Jewish rituals and traditions, he might have guessed that having himself wrapped up in a Torah scroll might be considered controversial. Long rightly apologized to the Anti-Defamation League for misusing the holy Hebrew scriptures and Jewish rituals in his “coronation” ceremony.

However, Long still owes some apologies.

First, he owes his New Birth congregation an apology. Long should have apologized to his church a long time ago for the scandal that originally rocked New Birth. When four young men who were former members of New Birth accused Long of coercing them into sexual relationships as teens and young adults, Long vehemently denied the charges. Later, he quietly settled with the plaintiffs. He has not admitted guilt, but he also has not refuted the charges in a way that removes even the most basic doubt. Long should have stepped down from his position as head of New Birth. Instead, he returned after a brief hiatus, and sought to restore his congregation’s belief in his leadership by subjecting his church to a ritual without foundation in either the Christian or the Jewish faith – in which it was claimed that Long has a “king chromosome,” among many outrageous assertions. It is clear that those who remained faithful to New Birth wanted to see their disgraced leader returned to his former power and authority. Long could have orchestrated a service that uplifted him spiritually and gave his members reason to cheer without including made-up Jewish rituals. Instead, Long perpetrated a fraud on the people who stuck by him and his church long after many others, including Rev. Bernice King, a daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., left.

Second, Long owes an apology to Christians. As offended as members of the Jewish community may have been by the New Birth service, it was equally offensive to Christians. Many people noted that Jesus Christ refused kingship, yet Long had the hubris to participate in a ceremony that claimed to make him some kind of king. In his apology, Long retreated by saying he is “a mere servant of God,” but he needs to do more, and apologize to the Christian community for a service many Christians also found abhorrent. FULL POST