Funeral services for Almena Davis Lomax, who died on March 25 at age 95, will be private. In lieu of flowers, the family encourages donations to the United Negro College Fund.

A towering figure in journalism, Lomax left a notable imprint on the Los Angeles Black community, the city and the nation as the former editor of the Los Angeles Tribune and a civil rights activist.

According to her son Michael Lomax, president and chief executive of the United Negro College Fund, she died after a short illness in Pasadena.

Sensors in Southern California monitoring locations have yet to pick up any appreciable amount of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors in Japan, and so far the diasater is said to pose no threat to residents of the state.

In its daily reports, the South Coast Air Quality Management District has continually stated that there has been no “increase in radiation levels above typical background levels” detected since the earthquake and tsunami in Japan that has claimed more than 9,500 lives.

Augustus Tolton, a former slave and considered the first African American to become a Roman Catholic priest, is now on the path to becoming the first African American to be canonized, almost 114 years after his death.

He may, at the same time, become the first Civil War-era U.S. saint.

Last Wednesday, during a public gathering in St. James Chapel at Chicago’s Quigley Center, Cardinal Francis E. George, and commission members, took an oath to carry out their duties for the cause of Tolton’s sainthood.

Adoring fans paid more than $315,000 recently to pluck up portions of Lena Horne’s life. That was OK since the singer-actress-activist had vacated her earthly premises eight months before, leaving only the trappings of the great and courageous life she had led.

After about three hours, some 150 fans who had packed the small Manhattan auction house—Doyle, New York—went their way, owners of books, art, gowns and others items that had once been some of  Horne’s favorite things.