What if the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had lived?

Source

(AP) -- The preacher in him would have continued speaking out against injustice, war and maybe even pop culture. He would likely not have run for president. He probably would have endured more harassment from J. Edgar Hoover.

Four decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. fell to an assassin's bullet, colleagues and biographers offer many answers to the question: What if he had lived?

For his children, however, the speculation is more personal. They know their lives would have turned out differently had they had their beloved father to guide and teach them.

Instead, history moves on, remaking the world in myriad ways. The nation has grappled with issues of race and inequity without the benefit of King's evolving wisdom. A generation has come of age celebrating him in a national holiday, like other figures of the frozen past.

But given the trajectory of his life -- from his appearance on the national scene during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott of 1955 to his death on a second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968 -- some of those closest to him have a good idea what King might be doing now, and where we might be as a country.

In the months before his death, King was speaking out against the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam and was working with other civil rights leaders on a Poor People's Campaign, with a march on Washington scheduled for that May. He was in Memphis that spring day to support striking sanitation workers.

Were King alive today, the disciple of Mahatma Gandhi would most certainly be speaking out against the Iraq War, says King biographer David J. Garrow. However, citing the famous "Drum Major Instinct" sermon King delivered from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta just two months before his death, Garrow says people might be surprised to hear echoes of presidential candidate Barack Obama's controversial former pastor.

"God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war," King said of the fighting in Vietnam. "And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it."

While King didn't go as far as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in suggesting that God "damn America," he predicted that the almighty might punish this country for "our pride and our arrogance."

"And if you don't stop your reckless course," he imagined the deity admonishing, "I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."

Garrow and others feel comfortable saying that King would not have sought elective office.

In 1967, King was being courted by the "New Left" to make a third-party run for president on an anti-war ticket with the renowned pediatrician, Dr. Benjamin Spock. FBI wiretaps reveal that King gave serious thought to running, but ultimately decided that his role lay outside the political arena.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King and marched alongside him, doesn't think time would have changed his friend's mind.

"I think Martin was a preacher, and I doubt very much if he would have wanted to subject himself to the need to compromise and play certain games that are requisite to political candidacy," says Lowery. "I think he would have preferred to do what he did best, and that was point out to ALL candidates and ALL officials ... `Thus sayeth the Lord."'

Had he chosen that path, his enemies -- chief among them FBI Director Hoover -- would have laid bare potentially embarrassing details of King's personal life.

Then-U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy authorized the wiretapping of King's home and offices in a campaign to ferret out communists. The secret recording campaign failed to prove that King was a communist, but it did provide evidence of the civil rights leader's extramarital affairs.

William C. Sullivan, head of domestic intelligence under Hoover, told a congressional committee that King was subjected to the same tactics used against Soviet agents and, "No holds were barred."

Hoover's office was unable to marginalize King with his supporters or cow him into silence with threats of exposure. But how might King have fared in the Internet age, when every peccadillo is exposed and every word parsed in a 24-hour news cycle?

The late Hosea Williams, one of King's chief lieutenants, once told Martin Luther King III that his father was "unstoppable" because he had conquered the two things that made men most vulnerable: the fear of death and the love of wealth.

Some, however, feel King's influence was on the wane and that at the time of his death he had already reached the zenith of his public career. He had "run out of things to do," the late Chauncey Eskridge, a King attorney, told Garrow.

"The painful truth is that in his last two months or so before he was killed, King was so exhausted -- emotionally, spiritually, physically -- that a lot of the people closest ... to him were really worried about his survival, his survival in the sense of would he have some sort of breakdown," Garrow says. "It would be expecting something truly superhuman, literally superhuman, for King to have continued the pace of life he had lived over those 12 years for another 12 years, never mind for another 20 or 40 years."

Journalist, author and commentator Juan Williams wonders whether King would be able to connect in a meaningful way with today's youth.

Although he was just 39, the 1964 Nobel Peace laureate's insistence on nonviolence was bumping up against the burgeoning black power movement, says Williams, author of "Eyes on the Prize" and more recently "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It."

"The big issue would be whether or not when he spoke out against the excesses of the rappers, for example, or when he spoke out on the high number of children born out of wedlock, whether or not he would be lumped in with the Bill Cosbys of the world ...," Williams says.

But he has no doubt King would be a force on the international stage.

"I don't think he'd be in the petty fray in the way that we think of some of these civil rights guys who are kind of ambulance chasers," says Williams. Instead, he sees an elder King as a man of "some standing, some stature, that people wait to hear from him... I think of Nelson Mandela in this way."

Lowery says that when King died, part of the nation's conscience died with him. Four young children lost something much more personal.

To Marty, Yolanda, Dexter and Bernice, the baby, Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't the icon or the dreamer. He was Daddy -- the man who smelled of Magic Shave and Aramis and chlorine from the YMCA pool where he taught his sons to swim, and of the long-stemmed green onions that somehow fell outside the prohibition against eating before the evening blessing.

One of Bernice King's fondest memories is of the ritual she and her father shared when he'd return from a trip, like the time he came home for her fifth birthday party on March 29, 1968 -- a day late because of a march in Memphis. She would jump into his arms for the "kissing game," in which each member of the family had a different spot on his face. Bernice's "designated spot" was his forehead.

Had her father lived, the 45-year-old minister is fairly certain she would be married and have children by now. But his graphic death and ponderous legacy, she fears, have made her a less than "viable candidate" for domestic bliss. Part of the problem is that her father set the bar so high. She remembers something her mother often said.

"She said, `I didn't marry a man. I married a mission,"' the daughter says. "So for me, a spouse is more than just a companion. It's someone to fulfill your destiny with. And I think in my case, because the destiny is so great, because you had a man whose life was cut short and there was some work that had to be completed, that you now have a responsibility to participate in, that makes it a little more difficult."

Martin III, likewise, feels he wouldn't be having his first child at age 50 had his father not been killed. "I wasn't clear that I even wanted to bring a child into the world," he says.

Both siblings are quite certain, however, that their father's death did not determine their career paths.

"I don't feel like I could have been exposed to what my father and mother were doing without being involved in this movement," says Martin King, president of the nonprofit group Realizing the Dream.

Each year as the assassination anniversary approaches, legions flock to the Lorraine Motel, which now houses the National Civil Rights Museum. Among those who made the pilgrimage last week were two lions of the civil rights movement -- U.S. Rep. John Lewis and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

If King were alive today, Lewis has no doubt he would be speaking just as forcefully and with as much authority as ever about the issues that matter most to Americans, old and young.

"He would be the undisputed leader," the Georgia Democrat says. "Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years later would still be speaking out against poverty, hunger, against violence, against war."

Jackson, then 26 years old, was in the parking lot of the Lorraine that day, talking up to King when he was shot. During his recent visit, the aging activist stepped over a low wall meant to keep out ordinary tourists, climbed the stairs to the balcony where his mentor lay dying, and wept.

King would be 79 now, but Jackson feels his power to move would remain undiminished.

"He might not be leading the marches, but he would have set the frame of reference," says Jackson. "His voice would be a voice of great moral authority."

Of all the "might be's" and "what if's," MLK III feels sure of one thing. Had his father lived, the country would be closer to realizing the "beloved community" he'd envisioned.

Still, he feels his father's guiding force pulling us inexorably in that direction.
advertisement

"From my perspective, his light still shines," he says. "His voice, his message, we're living every day. We're embracing more and more. We're not as close to it as I would like to see us, but we're still living it. We're still moving toward it."

So, in that way, he lives.

Cops: 3rd-Graders Aimed to Hurt Teacher

Source

WAYCROSS, Ga. (AP) — A group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward, police said Tuesday.

The plot involving as many as nine boys and girls at Center Elementary School in south Georgia was a serious threat, Waycross Police Chief Tony Tanner said.

School officials alerted police Friday after a pupil tipped off a teacher that a girl had brought a weapon to school. Tanner said the students apparently planned to knock the teacher unconscious with a crystal paperweight, bind her with the handcuffs and tape and then stab her with the knife.

"We did not hear anybody say they intended to kill her, but could they have accidentally killed her? Absolutely," Tanner said. "We feel like if they weren't interrupted, there would have been an attempt. Would they have been successful? We don't know."

The children, ages 8 to 10, were apparently mad at the teacher because she had scolded one of them for standing on a chair, Tanner said.

Two of the students were arrested on juvenile charges Tuesday and a third arrest was expected. District Attorney Rick Currie said other students told investigators they didn't take the plot seriously or insisted they had decided not to participate.

"Some of the kids said, `We thought they were just kidding,'" Currie said. "Another child was supposed to bring a toy pistol, and he told a detective he didn't bring it because he thought he would get in trouble."

Currie said the children are too young to be charged as adults, and probably too young to be sentenced to a youth detention center.

Police seized a steak knife with a broken handle, steel handcuffs, duct tape, electrical and transparent tape, ribbons and the paperweight from the students, Tanner said.

Currie said he decided to seek juvenile charges against two girls, ages 9 and 10, who brought the knife and paperweight and an 8-year-old boy who brought tape. He said all three students faced charges of conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, and both girls were being charged with bringing weapons to school.

Nine children have been given discipline up to and including long-term suspension, said Theresa Martin, spokeswoman for the Ware County school system. She would not be more specific but said none of the children had been back to school since the case came to light.

The purported target is a veteran educator who teaches third-grade students with learning disabilities, including attention deficit disorder, delayed development and hyperactivity, friends and parents said.

The scheme involved a division of roles, Tanner said. One child's job was to cover windows so no one could see outside, he said. Another was supposed to clean up after the attack.

"We're not sure at this point in the investigation how many of the students actually knew the intent was to hurt the teacher," Tanner said.

He said the teacher told detectives the children involved weren't known as troublemakers.

"You can't dismiss it," Tanner said. "But because they are kids, they may have thought this was like a cartoon — we do whatever and then she stands up and she's OK. That's a hard call."

The parents of the students have cooperated with investigators, who aren't allowed to question the children without their parents' or guardians' consent, he said. Authorities have withheld the children's names.

Martin told The Florida Times-Union of Jacksonville, Fla., that administrators would follow school system policy and state law in disciplining the students.

"From what I understand, they were considered pretty good kids," Martin said. "But we have to take this seriously, whether they were serious or not about carrying this through, and that's what we did."

Four mothers of other third-grade students at Center Elementary called for the immediate expulsion of the suspected plotters.

Stacy Carter and Deana Hiott both cited school system policy stating that any student who brings "anything reasonably considered to be a weapon" is to be expelled for at least the remainder of the school year.

"We don't want our children around them," Carter told the Times-Union. "The one with the knife could have stabbed my child or someone else's child at lunch or out on the playground."

"This is an isolated incident, an aberration. ... We have good kids," Center Principal Angie Coleman told the newspaper.

Great Comment

No. 9 TruthTeller says:

I know this an unpopular stance, but there seems to be an overblown obsession with race in the black community. I know, I know, the victim naturally feels the effect more than the perpetrator, but There comes a time when one becomes obsessed with the pain and forget to enjoy life, instead life is spent passing on the pain and obsession to succeeding generations, dooming them to a mental baggage that they needn’t carry.
You often read of black parents saying that ” I have to prepare my child for the prejudices of the world” , while not realizing that they might be preparing their children to a life time of mental inferiority and a lifetime of searching for prejudices, even when someone says “niggardly” that child then reacts before seeking out a dictionary.
Why NOT simply teach the child the skills needed to survive under any conditions, amongst any group, DON’T tell the child at a early age “because of your color everything in this country is stacked against you” that will cause the child to not bother to try, not bother to dream of an Obama/Condolezza life, instead have a steady march to the prison complex.

Remember, and know that there is no such thing as a White race/Black race, that was a construct designed by enslavers to divide the various ethnic groups into master race and non-humans, so when you obsess on race you are just mouthing the language of the enslavers.

THE LESSONS A YOUNG CHILD NEEDS:
1. People might have different colors and appearances but they are all the same, some good-some bad-some smart-some not so smart.
2. As a parent it’s my duty to introduce you to a person from as many ethnic groups as I can, at least one time in your life, so you will have spoken with another ethnic inhabitant of your world.
3. Remember this is your world, your land, as it is any other person, and you are entitled to your share of the pie, your share of the dream.

Sometimes the problem lies in how easily we accept our assigned roles in society, never questioning, never rebelling.

Sorry all I know my rant is inarticulate at best, but I needed to vent.

Source

Test Your Awareness: Do The Test

12 quick tips for a longer, healthier life

Source

1. Tea off in the morning
Hot tea can slash your risk of kidney cancer by 15 percent, according to a review in the International Journal of Cancer. Try pu-erh tea, which is better than green or black tea at preventing DNA damage.

2. Sleep smarter
Too much sleep, or not enough of it, can kill you. A British study found that getting more than 9 hours of sack time a night, or less than 6, doubles your risk of an early death from any cause. Aim for 7 to 8 hours a night.

3. Pop in your lenses post-shower
Soaping up while wearing your contacts can expose your eyes to infection-causing waterborne microbes, say University of Illinois at Chicago researchers.
Story continues below ↓advertisement
click here!

4. Drink wine, stay lean
Polyphenols, the compounds found in red wine, help your body block fat absorption, an Israeli study found. Red-wine marinades work, too.

5. Lose the lint
Taking 2 seconds to empty the lint trap in your clothes dryer can prevent you from being one of the 315 dryer-fire victims each year in the United States.

6. Check your neck
An American Journal of Medicine study found that a mildly underactive thyroid can boost your heart-disease risk by 65 percent. A quick blood test can assess your level of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH).

7. Lean back
Parking your torso at a 90-degree angle strains your spine, say Scottish and Canadian researchers. Instead, give your chair the La-Z-Boy treatment and recline the seat back slightly. The ideal angle is 45 degrees off vertical.

8. Scent your air safely
Some air fresheners contain phthalates, compounds that may disrupt hormone processes, Natural Resources Defense Council testing reveals. Stick with Febreze Air Effects and Renuzit Subtle Effects.

9. Boost your defenses
An Archives of Internal Medicine review reports that 400 IU of vitamin D a day reduces your risk of an early death by 7 percent. Try Carlson's vitamin D (carlsonlabs.com).

10. Skip the spray
Using household spray cleaners just once a week increases your risk of an asthma attack by 76 percent, say Spanish researchers. Use wipes instead.

11. Steam your broccoli
Italian researchers recently discovered that steaming broccoli increases its concentration of glucosinolates (compounds found to fight cancer) by 30 percent. Boiling actually lowers the levels.

12. Stretch it out
Genes in your body linked to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity can be "turned on" if you sit for hours on end, reports a study in Diabetes. Hit the "off" button by taking hourly laps during TV, book, and Web sessions.

Black is the new President...

Police shoot, kill man holding hairbrush, witnesses say

Source

# Story Highlights
# NEW: Witness says, "The boy didn't have no gun, he had a brush on him"
# Man had history of mental illness, AP reports, ignored orders to halt
# Police kill Khiel Coppin, 18, after reports of a family dispute and a weapon
# New York Times: Cops fired 20 shots, realized Coppin held only a hairbrush

Another neighbor, Wayne Holder, said police should be required to see a weapon before opening fire on a suspect. "At least see a gun before you start to discharge it," Holder said. Police "don't even have to see it, [if] they think you got one, you're going to get shot."

The AP reported that the teen had a history of mental illness and his mother had tried to have him hospitalized earlier in the day.

A bystander who said he saw the shooting told CNN affiliate WABC-TV that the man was unarmed. "He dropped the brush," said the bystander, Dyshawn Gibson. "He put his hands up. Police just started firing."

As the teen approached officers, police ordered him to stop, police spokesman Paul Browne told AP. The teen refused and continued to approach, Browne said, prompting police to open fire.

An initial police statement given to reporters Monday night said the man was seen earlier pacing around the apartment.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Officers shot and killed an 18-year-old man who they believed to be armed, New York police said, but witnesses said Tuesday he was only holding a hairbrush.

The Monday night shooting followed a 911 call from the man's mother. Police described the situation as "a family dispute with a gun."

After officers arrived, the teen refused to halt as he approached police, prompting them to open fire, The Associated Press reported.

Police told The New York Times they believed the teen, Khiel Coppin, had a gun, but after five officers fired 20 shots they realized he was holding only a hairbrush.

"The boy didn't have no gun, he had a brush on him," said Andre Wildman, a neighbor who told CNN that he saw the shooting.

"He began screaming from the window at his mother and the police," the police statement said. "At some point, the male climbed out of the window and began crossing the sidewalk toward the police."

That's when police began firing, a police spokesman said.
advertisement

The police spokesman said officers were called to the apartment building in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood at about 7 p.m. by Coppin's mother who said she was having a dispute with her son.

According to a statement, police said Coppin's mother reported that her son was armed. But The New York Times quoted police who said Coppin himself was overheard on the mother's 911 call threatening to kill her and claiming "I have a gun." E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

Mychal Bell of 'Jena 6' released on bail

(CNN) -- Mychal Bell, a black teenager accused of beating a white classmate and who was the last of the "Jena 6" behind bars, was released from custody Thursday after a juvenile court judge set his bail at $45,000.

Supporters surround Mychal Bell on Thursday after his release at the LaSalle Parish courthouse.

Bell's release followed an announcement from LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters, who said he would not appeal a higher court's decision moving Bell's case to juvenile court.

Wearing a blue striped golf shirt and jeans, Bell walked out of the LaSalle Parish courthouse a week after an estimated 15,000-plus demonstrators marched through Jena -- a town of about 3,000 -- to protest local authorities' handling of the teens' case.

"We do not condone violence of any kind, but we ask that people be given a fair and even chance at the bar of justice," the Rev. Al Sharpton said outside the courthouse.

"Tonight, Mychal can go home, but Mychal is not out of the juvenile process. He goes home because a lot of people left their home and stood up for him," he said.

"Let America know -- we are not fighting for the right to fight in school. We're not fighting for the right for kids to beat each other. We're fighting to say that there must be one level of justice for everybody. And you cannot have adult attempted murder for some, and a fine for others, and call that equal protection under the law. Two wrongs don't make one civil right."

Demonstrators at last week's march were protesting how authorities handled the cases of Bell and five other teens accused of beating fellow student Justin Barker.

Many said they were angry that the students, dubbed the Jena 6, were being treated more harshly than three white students who hung nooses from an oak tree on Jena High School property.

The white students were suspended from school but did not face criminal charges. The protesters said they should have been charged with a hate crime.

Bell's attorney Lewis Scott said the teen was moved from jail to a juvenile facility earlier Thursday.

Walters said his decision not to appeal was based on what he believed was best for the victim in the case.

"While I believe that a review would have merit ... I believe it is in the best interest of the victim and his family not to delay this matter any further and move it to its conclusion," Walters told reporters. Video Watch the Rev. Al Sharpton discuss the teen's release »

He said last week's march, which included Sharpton and Martin Luther King III, did not influence his decision.

Bell, now 17, was the only one of the Jena 6 behind bars. His bond previously was set at $90,000.

A district judge earlier this month tossed out Bell's conviction for conspiracy to commit second-degree battery, saying the matter should have been handled in juvenile court. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal in Lake Charles, Louisiana, did the same with Bell's battery conviction in mid-September.

Prosecutors originally charged all six black students accused of being involved in beating Barker with second-degree attempted murder and conspiracy. Walters reduced charges against at least four of them -- Bell, Robert Bailey Jr., Carwin Jones and Theo Shaw -- to battery and conspiracy.

Bryant Purvis awaits arraignment. Charges against Jesse Ray Beard, who was 14 at the time of the alleged crime, are unavailable because he's a juvenile.

Wednesday, Gov. Kathleen Blanco announced that Louisiana State Police officers will protect the families of the Jena 6 and investigate any threats they have received. A white supremacist Web site posted the names and addresses of the six black teens after last week's march, calling on followers to "let them know justice is coming."

Thursday, the FBI said it had been made aware of allegations of threats.

"Threats are taken seriously, and as these investigations are ongoing we cannot comment further," said Sheila Thorne of the FBI's office in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The December 4 attack on Barker came after months of racial tension, including at least two instances of fighting in the town, sparked originally when three white teens hung the nooses.

Walters has said there was no direct link between the hanging of the nooses and the schoolyard attack, and defended the prosecutions ahead of last Thursday's peaceful march. Blanco defended the prosecutor Wednesday, saying, "He has a solid record and is highly respected among his peers."

Walters also addressed the stress and notoriety the town has been subjected to, saying the only way he and other residents "have been able to endure the trauma that has been thrust upon us is through the prayers of the Christian people who have sent them up in this community."

He also suggested that some kind of "disaster" was averted when thousands of marchers came to Jena last week.

"I firmly believe and am confident of the fact that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday, a disaster would have happened," Walters said.

"The Lord Jesus Christ put his influence on those people, and they responded accordingly," he said, without explaining exactly what he meant.

Soon after the district attorney spoke, a local reverend took issue with his comments.
advertisement

"Obviously, we are serving two different gods here," the Rev. Donald Sidley said. "My Bible says that we should do -- we should be loving, love your neighbor as yourself.

"For him to try and separate the community like he is and then using Christ Jesus to influence the people that Jesus is working on their side, well, that's -- that's absurd. ... God is god of the human race," said Sidley, of the New Evergreen Church. Source

Body Found In Calumet City Near Where Police Had Searched For Nailah Franklin

(CBS) CHICAGO The family of Nailah Franklin may find out on Friday whether a body found in the woods in Calumet City is hers.

The severely decomposed body was found in the woods behind a vacant business at 260 River Oaks Dr. in Calumet City early Thursday morning. The body was found in the same area where police and FBI agents a day earlier had been looking for Franklin, an Eli Lilly pharmaceutical representative who disappeared last week.

As CBS 2's Rafael Romo reports, the Cook County Medical Examiner's office has scheduled an autopsy for later Friday, and the task of positively identifying the woman has proven to be a greater challenge than expected.

The woman's body had been lying in the woods for several days, and officials said dental records will be needed to make a final identification. Meanwhile, Franklin's family is anxiously awaiting an announcement.

"We all love her and we're just praying for her safe return," said Franklin's cousin, Lela Toney. "We are, as everyone else is, waiting for news."

In the nine days since Franklin vanished, the wait has been agonizingly long for her family. They are still holding out hope for her safe return.

"It's been a sad, stressful week for all of us, and we don't want the worst case scenario to become a reality," said Franklin's uncle, Jon Merrill.

Since Franklin vanished, her sisters have orchestrated an extraordinary media blitz. A full-page Chicago Tribune ad appeared Thursday, paid for by her employer, Eli Lilly, and earlier, a blizzard of posters, media interviews, a Web site and a cash rewards.

"We have to believe," said Franklin's sister Marina Franklin. "You can't sit and wait for things to come to you. You can't sit at home and wait for people to give you information. You have to do something about it."

Meanwhile, police say the investigation is ongoing. They said when the partially buried body was found, there was no way to determine who it was, or even the race of the victim.

"What we have found is a female, unclothed, in a condition of being decomposed," Calumet City police Chief Russ Larson said.

The body might have been in that location for a week.

Franklin's car was found just across the Indiana state line in Hammond, Ind., last Friday. Police found personal items belonging to her in a golf course last weekend, and the unidentified body was located only two miles away, in the Wentworth Woods forest preserve in Calumet City.

A headset on the ground near the woods led police officers to the body.

"The officers observed an item that drew attention that took their attention they got out they parked their cars and... walked around the area, without being too graphic they made the discovery," Larson said.

The discovery was made across the street from the River Oaks car dealership. Chicago police are looking at surveillance video taken from the car dealer's camera.

An employee there says he saw a black car that looked like Franklin's Impala parked in that area last Friday before 9 p.m.

He said it was parked by the tree-line and sped away but he thought nothing of it until police showed up at that location Thursday. That's when he told police about his observation.

"We all desperately want to find the identity of the person," Larson said.

CBS 2's Rafael Romo contributed to this report.

(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Source

Love versus Intolerance

Online Videos by Veoh.com



Residents hope online videos will show city's true image


By Kelly Kazek
kelly@athensnews-courier.com

Two Athens residents hoped placing videos of local response to a recent Ku Klux Klan rally here would show the world the city is not stuck in a racist past.

The videos, which can be found at www.youtube.com by typing “Athens, Ala., Klan rally” in the search bar, were created a church group leader and a Madison Police dispatcher.

Stephen McAulliffe created a photo slide show set to Montgomery Gentry’s song “Some People Change.” It can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTm7EVPQjR4

“I couldn’t believe in 2007, they were trying to bring this back into our community,” McAulliffe said. “Like someone’s sign said, this is 2007, not 1945. I was curious to see how the town was going to react. I was very inspired to see the turnout.”

Three local churches organized an anti-Klan protest after Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were granted a permit by the city of Athens to hold an anti-immigration rally on Sept. 15. The person who requested the permit, Jack Thomas, gave a Rogersville address but no phone number, and no local connection could be ascertained for the dozen or so Klan members who attended. The Alabama Grand Dragon of the KKK, Jerome Johnson, responded to an e-mail before the rally saying he had organized the event.

Although its members described the rally’s purpose as a protest against immigration, Klan speakers also disparaged black people during speeches, which were liberally sprinkled with expletives.

The church groups, who held yellow signs with the word “love,” were joined by students from Alabama A&M University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who wore duct tape with “love” over their mouths in silent protest.

“I was moved just to see that the community came out against the Klan and the Klan’s teaching of hate,” McAulliffe said. “It was hate I wanted to go out and protest.”

The chorus of the song McAulliffe used in his slide show echoes that message:

“Here’s to the strong, thanks to the brave;

Don’t give up hope, some people change;

Against all odds, against the grain,

Love finds a way, some people change.”

The second video shows Rod Carroll standing in front of the scene of Klan members and protectors discussing the impact on the town where he has lived for 18 years.

Carroll, who is media director for Lindsay Lane Baptist Church and leads a group of young couples, said he first videotaped the event as a possible tool to teach about the effects of hate, but he posted it on YouTube in hopes to show Athens’ positive side.

Lessons from Jena, La.

By JASON WHITLOCK
Now we love Mychal Bell, the star of the 2006 Jena (La.) High School football team, the teenage boy who has sat in jail since December for his role in a six-on-one beatdown of a fellow student.

Thursday, thousands of us, proud African-Americans, expressed our devotion to and desire to see justice for the “Jena Six,” the half-dozen black students who knocked unconscious, kicked and stomped a white classmate.

Jesse Jackson compared Thursday’s rallies in Jena to the protests and marches that used to take place in cities like Selma, Ala., in the 1960s. Al Sharpton claimed Thursday’s peaceful demonstrations were to highlight racial inequities in the criminal justice system.

Jesse and Al, as they’re prone to do, served a kernel of truth stacked on a mountain of lies.

There are undeniable racial and economic inequities in our criminal justice system, and from afar the “Jena Six” rallies certainly looked and felt like the righteous protests of the 1960s.

But the reality is Thursday’s protests are just another sign that we remain deeply locked in denial about the path we need to travel today for true American liberation, equality and power in the new millennium.

The fact that we waited to love Mychal Bell until after he’d thrown away a Division I football scholarship and nine months of his life is just as heinous as the grossly excessive attempted-murder charges that originally landed him in jail.

Reed Walters, the Jena district attorney, is being accused of racism because he didn’t show Bell compassion when the teenager was brought before the court for the third time on assault charges in a two-year span.

Where was our compassion long before Bell got into this kind of trouble?

That’s the question that needed to be asked in Jena and across the country on Thursday. But it wasn’t asked because everyone has been lied to about what really transpired in the small southern town.

There was no “schoolyard fight” as a result of nooses being hung on a whites-only tree.

Justin Barker, the white victim, was cold-cocked from behind, knocked unconscious and stomped by six black athletes. Barker, luckily, sustained no life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital three hours after the attack.

A black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, investigated the “Jena Six” case and concluded that the attack on Barker had absolutely nothing to do with the noose-hanging incident three months before. The nooses and two off-campus incidents were tied to Barker’s assault by people wanting to gain sympathy for the “Jena Six” in reaction to Walters’ extreme charges of attempted murder.

Much has been written about Bell’s trial, the six-person all-white jury that convicted him of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery and the clueless public defender who called no witnesses and offered no defense. It is rarely mentioned that no black people responded to the jury summonses and that Bell’s public defender was black.

It’s almost never mentioned that Bell’s absentee father returned from Dallas and re-entered his son’s life only after Bell faced attempted-murder charges. At a bond hearing in August, Bell’s father and a parade of local ministers promised a judge that they would supervise Bell if he was released from prison.

Where were the promises and supervision before any of this?

It’s rarely mentioned that Bell was already on probation for assault when he was accused of participating in Barker’s attack. And it’s never mentioned that white people in the “racist” town of Jena provided Bell support and protected his football career long before Jesse, Al, Bell’s father and all the others took a sincere interest in Mychal Bell.

You won’t hear about any of that because it doesn’t fit the picture we want to paint of Jena, this case, America and ourselves.

We don’t practice preventive medicine. Mychal Bell needed us long before he was cuffed and jailed. Here is another undeniable, statistical fact: The best way for a black (or white) father to ensure that his son doesn’t fall victim to a racist prosecutor is by participating in his son’s life on a daily basis.

That fact needed to be shared Thursday in Jena. The constant preaching of that message would short-circuit more potential “Jena Six” cases than attributing random acts of six-on-one violence to three-month-old nooses.

And I am in no way excusing the nooses. The responsible kids should’ve been expelled. A few years after I’d graduated, a similar incident happened at my high school involving our best football player, a future NFL tight end. He was expelled.

The Jena school board foolishly overruled its principal and suspended the kids for three days.

But the kids responsible for Barker’s beating deserve to be punished. The prosecutor needed to be challenged on his excessive charges. And we as black folks need to question ourselves about why too many of us can only get energized to help our young people once they’re in harm’s way.

I’ve been the spokesman for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Kansas City for six years. Getting black men to volunteer to mentor for just two hours a week to the more than 100 black boys on a waiting list is a yearly crisis. It’s a nationwide crisis for the organization. In Kansas City, we’re lucky if we get 20 black Big Brothers a year.

You don’t want to see any more “Jena Six” cases? Love Mychal Bell before he violently breaks the law.

Source

Two arrested in noose incident near Jena, Louisiana

ALEXANDRIA, Louisiana (CNN) -- A Louisiana city that hosted many of the "Jena 6" protesters Thursday became the site of a racially charged incident of its own.


A photo taken by I-Reporter Casanova Love shows a noose hanging from a pickup in Alexandria, Louisiana.

Authorities in Alexandria, less than 40 miles southwest of Jena, arrested two people who were driving a red pickup Thursday night with two nooses hanging off the back, repeatedly passing groups of demonstrators who were waiting for buses back to their home states.

The marchers had taken part in the huge protests in Jena that accused authorities there of injustice in the handling of racially charged cases -- including the hanging of nooses in a tree after a group of black students sat in an area where traditionally only white students sat.

The driver of the red truck, whom Alexandria police identified as Jeremiah Munsen, 18, was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor -- a reference to the 16-year-old passenger. Munsen also was charged with driving while intoxicated and inciting to riot, according to the police report.

As officials were questioning the driver, he said he had an unloaded rifle in the back of the truck, which police found. They also found a set of brass knuckles in a cup holder on the dashboard, the police report said. Video Watch what police found on the truck »

The passenger told police he and his family are in the Ku Klux Klan and that he had KKK tattooed on his chest, the police report said. He also said that he tied the nooses and that the brass knuckles belonged to him, the report said.
Don't Miss

* Police report (PDF)

The report, filed by Officer F.R. Drewett, said he and another officer were standing with protesters awaiting their bus back to Nashville, Tennessee, when one of the group told him about a truck driving with nooses hanging off the back.

The truck was circling around town, repeatedly driving past groups of demonstrators, the report said. The officers pulled the pickup over and arrested two after searching the vehicle.

At least one of the nooses was made out of an extension cord, according to the police report.

The driver and passenger are white, according to the police report.

An entry in the report lists "Bias Motive: Racial Anti-Black."

Alexandria Mayor Jacques Roy said those involved were "from around Jena" and not from the same parish as his city. See where the incident occurred »

Roy said he is looking into whether the incident was a hate crime.

A photograph of the truck was sent to CNN by I-Reporter Casanova Love, 26, who said he is in the U.S. military. He's visiting his family in Louisiana and said he witnessed the event.

After the arrests, Roy came out to address the crowd and apologized, saying he does not condone racism, Love said.

Love added, "If the police had not stepped in, I fear what might have happened."

Love explained why he sent the photo to CNN: "People need to see this. It's 2007, and we still have fools acting like it's 1960."
advertisement

Roy said the matter is "not indicative" of Alexandria and that local authorities will look into it "completely, thoroughly and transparently."

Some protesters saw another truck with a noose hanging off it, but authorities did not find the vehicle, according to the police report. E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

Source

Commentary: 'Jena 6' rally was about equal justice, not race

By Roland S. Martin
CNN contributor
Source









(CNN) -- As I watched thousands of people gather in Jena, Louisiana, via CNN and CNN.com, tears were streaming down my face.

Roland Martin says he wishes the crowds in Jena, Louisiana, were far more integrated.

Even though I was doing my radio show on WVON-AM in Chicago at the time, it was truly emotional watching the display.

It was reminiscent of the Million Man March in 1995, when black men gathered in the nation's capital in a mass show of unity.

As a 38-year-old African-American man, I have no memory of the Civil Rights Movement.

I was born November 14, 1968, and Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated seven months earlier.

His death, in many ways, signaled an end to that long but peaceful resistance against America's systemic and deeply rooted oppression of African-Americans.

It was great seeing so many people exercising their free speech and right to protest, but to also demand a change to what they felt is an unjust legal system.
Don't Miss

* Martin: Where is the outrage when humans are abused?
* Martin: Oprah's big bucks could help Obama
* Martin: Bush needs to pull a John Wayne
* Martin: Faith against sex, greed

Many people have commented on what is taking place in Jena, with some suggesting that the six black teens accused of beating a white teen deserve years in prison, while others say they should be freed. Video Watch Martin talk about the rally and the case »

It is true that Justin Barker, a white teen, was beaten and left unconscious. The disturbing photos clearly show that.

Yet, the question as to whether a school fight -- one that sent Barker to the hospital, only to see him released the same day and attend a party that night -- warranted the teens to be charged with attempted murder.

Folks, that's the primary reason for the outrage that you have seen and heard.

Much of the reporting and commentary on this has been shallow, choosing to see it as a black-white issue, as opposed to the various views of how do you define equal justice in America.

Let's try this exercise for a moment. We can remove all racial tags and ask ourselves some critical questions.

# If you heard that six teens had beaten up another teen leaving him unconscious, would you think that those accused deserved to be tried as adults and face upwards of 80 years in jail?

# If a group of teens hung a noose on a tree, and the principal recommended to expel them, and then the school board overruled them, what would you say about that?

# Prior to Justin Barker being beaten, another teen (who was black) was beaten, and no charges were filed against the (white) students in that case, would you question the district attorney's action in Barker's case?

Lady Justice in America is supposed to be blind. We all want to have confidence in our legal system so that when someone is prosecuted, it is fair and just. But so many people know that is not the case.

Look at O.J. Simpson. Thirteen years later, people are still mad that he got off.

Fine. So if you're mad about O.J., are you equally offended about Jena?

Frankly, I wish the crowds in Jena were far more integrated. I was hoping more whites would show up to express their displeasure with this justice system. And I am hoping that those who see this case -- and O.J. -- as wrong will look at the case of former Chicago police commander Jon Burge, who has been accused of leading the torture of upwards of 200 black and Hispanic men over nearly two decades.

Many of them went to prison based on beaten confessions, and when they were freed, the city paid millions in settlements.

But what happened to Burge? He's sitting in his Florida home, collecting a big pension, while the city spends millions defending him (because he was a city employee). He has never been charged.

We can travel all across America and find case after case after case of men and women who have been wrongfully imprisoned, some sitting on the doorsteps of the death chamber.

What should we take away from Jena? We must all be vigilant in demanding that our legal system is fair and just. We must not be silent and say it's not in our backyard, so therefore it doesn't matter.

It might be the Jena 6 today, and it just might be your household tomorrow.

Write. Call. E-mail. Petition. Protest. If all of that leads to more fairness and equality, then the march was valuable.

Your race doesn't matter in this. Your voice is what counts.
advertisement

Roland S. Martin is a nationally award-winning, multifaceted journalist and CNN contributor. Martin is studying to receive his master's degree in Christian Communications at Louisiana Baptist University, and is the author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith." You can read more of his columns at www.rolandsmartin.com

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

The Jena 6 Case is History Written in Lightning

Trey Ellis Wed Sep 19, 12:41 PM ET
If you don't know who the Jena 6 are, you are not alone. The first I heard about the black high school teens being railroaded through the Louisiana criminal justice system was last week when I received an email urging me to wear black Thursday the 20th in their support.

The first Sean Hannity heard about it was last night when Reverend Al was trying to bring it up and Hannity assumed he was talking about Megan Williams, the young black woman who was tortured and sexually assaulted by those crazy hillbillies in West Virginia. Cryptkeeper Colmes tried to explain but as usual Hannity didn't hear a word he said.

The Jena 6 case began last fall when a new black student to the mostly white, rural Louisiana town of Jena sat under the "white tree," so called because it was the place where the white kids at school congregated.

The next day three white boys on the rodeo team hung three nooses from the tree.

The white boys were only given an in-school suspension, their act deemed no more than a "prank."

The day after that several of the school's black high school football stars organized a peaceful silent protest under the tree. The school freaked, called in the police and the next day Reed Walters, the local D.A., addressed the school. There, he is reported to have looked at the black kids in the audience, waved his pen in the air and said, "With a stroke of this pen, I can make your life disappear."

The football season was a good one for Jena and for a few months there was relative quiet in the town. Then on November 30th, a wing of the high school was burned down. Whites thought it was blacks and the blacks assumed it was the whites.

The always excellent Wade Goodman of NPR reported what happened next:

"The next night, 16-year-old Robert Bailey and a few black friends tried to enter a party attended mostly by whites. When Bailey got inside, he was attacked and beaten. The next day, tensions escalated at a local convenience store. Bailey exchanged words with a white student who had been at the party. The white boy ran back to his truck and pulled out a pistol grip shotgun. Bailey ran after him and wrestled him for the gun.
After some scuffling, Bailey and his friends took the gun away and brought it home. Bailey was eventually charged with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace. The white student who pulled the weapon was not charged at all.

The following Monday, Dec. 4, a white student named Justin Barker was loudly bragging to friends in the school hallway that Robert Bailey had been whipped by a white man on Friday night. When Barker walked into the courtyard, he was attacked by a group of black students. The first punch knocked Barker out and he was kicked several times in the head. But the injuries turned out to be superficial. Barker was examined by doctors and released; he went out to a social function later that evening.

Six black students were arrested and charged with aggravated assault. But District Attorney Reed Walters increased the charges to attempted second-degree murder."

The first black kid to go to court, Mychal Bell, then 16, was tried as an adult and convicted by an all-white jury. He faced 22 years in prison. After an outcry the charges were reduced; however, tomorrow Mychal Bell is to be sentenced on the lesser charges.

The white kids who attacked Bailey the night before have not been charged with anything.

As always happens in these cases, the blacks say of course there has always been racism in this little town, and the whites say their little town is just like any other small town full of good, churchgoing folk.

What white Southerners still fail to realize is their complicity in some of the most vicious and effective terrorism the world has ever seen. Lynchings were only the most visible and brutal embodiments of a system to terrorize the black minority. A noose is a symbol the way a swastika is a symbol. A noose hanging from a tree in that context is an almost unimaginably vicious act. Those white teens, instead of being ashamed of their terrorist ancestry, reveled in the evil. The adults who are charged with the education of all the students deemed it merely a prank.

The scariest part of this ordeal is that you know these boys are the relatively lucky ones for whom publicity might spare them. How many other black lives are still thrown away at the whim of our broken justice system?

Source

Jena Update: Crowds, Activism and Outrage

Michael Torres of New Orleans stands with fellow demonstrators as they march in Jena, La., today to protest what they say is an injustice against six black teenagers, known as the Jena 6, charged with attempted murder of a white student. Protesters say the charges are a gross overreaction to a schoolyard fight in a school where racial tensions were running high; the authorities say the victim was blindsided with no chance to defend himself. (Sean Gardner/Reuters)
By Maria Newman
Richard G. Jones, a reporter for The New York Times, is in Jena, La., today, where protesters have converged in support of the six black youths arrested for beating a white classmate.

Their numbers are overwhelming the little town, he reports. There are crowds gathered peacefully at the city’s courthouse, at a nearby park, and at the high school that was at the center of the incident whose aftermath drew them here.

They came from far and near: Many of them rode buses all day and all night to get to this town where there was something called “the white tree.'’

Fanon Brown, 16, is one of them: He told Mr. Jones that he left Philadelphia at 3 a.m. Wednesday and got to Jena 27 hours later. He is here, he says, not just for the six black boys who were arrested for beating a white classmate after a series of incidents in the town, but for the larger things he said the case represents about race and justice in America:

I can’t believe that after all these years we still have deformities in our justice system. We have to free the Jena Six but we’ve got to go home and take care of this racism thing.

Before this week, the major national news outlets had barely mentioned the chain of events in Jena that began more than a year ago, but word circulated through the Internet, in the e-mail and text messages that young people use these days to relay news to one another. Now, the story is on the national agenda, and even President Bush discussed it today with reporters:

“Events in Louisiana have saddened me,'’ he said at a press conference at the White House. “I understand the emotions. The Justice Department and the F.B.I. are monitoring the situation down there and all of us in America want there to be fairness when it comes to justice.'’

This is what the protesters in Jena today have been saying about the troubles here, which began when a black student asked the school’s assistant prinicipal whether he could sit under a tree in the center of Jena High School that was known as a whites-only gathering place, and was told he could. The next morning, there were two nooses found hanging from the tree.

Diana Jones traveled from Atlanta with her 17-year-old daughter April and her husband, Derrick. “Nobody should have to ask if they can sit under this tree,'’ Mrs. Jones told The Times. “I’m surprised to hear that this is still happening in 2007.'’

Another surprise to April and to young people like her, she said, were the polar opposite reactions that different people in Jena seemed to have to each event leading up to the arrests of the six boys.

“I just feel like every time the white people did something, they dropped it, and every time the black people did something, they blew it out of proportion,'’ she told Mr. Jones of The Times.

Two students from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette said they felt it was their turn to march for civil rights.

“This is the first time something like this has happened for our generation,'’ said Eric Depradine, 24, who is a senior. “You always heard about it from history books and relatives. This is the chance to experience it for ourselves.'’

His schoolmate, Charley Caldwell Jr., 22, who is a sophomore, said he was amazed by details of the case.

“When I first heard about it, I thought it was obscene, so I felt I had to come,'’ he said.

“We’re here to free the Jena Six,'’ he continued, using the sobriquet people have emblazoned on T-shirts and signs on display today.

Latese Brown, 40, a social worker from Alexandria, La., about 40 miles from here, said: “I felt I needed to be here to support these kids. It’s about time we all stood together for something.'’

She said she was stunned at remarks on Wednesday by the district attorney, Reed Walters, who said he did not prosecute the students accused of hanging the nooses in the tree because he could find no Louisiana law they could be charged under.

“I cannot overemphasize what a villainous act that was,'’ he said about the nooses. “The people that did it should be ashamed of what they unleashed on this town.'’

As for the beatings, he said, four of the defendants were old enough to be considered adults under Louisiana law, and that one of the juveniles who were charged as adults, Mychal Bell, had a prior criminal record.

“It is not and never has been about race,” Mr. Walters said. “It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions.”

The Town Talk, an area newspaper, has more on Mr. Walters’s press conference here.

Ms. Brown expressed incredulity at Mr. Walters’s line of thinking: “If you can figure out how to make a school yard fight into an attempted murder charge, I’m sure you can figure out how to make stringing nooses into a hate crime.'’

[ Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this post rendered the district attorney’s name incorrectly. ]

Source

Tavis Smiley Goes Hard At Republican Party

September 19th, 2007 | Author: Anthony Springer Jr

Tavis Smiley is not an emcee, but that didn't stop him from laying into the Republican party and its 2008 presidential hopefuls like a battle-hungry rapper in a recent interview with EUR Web.

A veteran journalist and author, Smiley is set to moderate a debate with GOP candidates that will air Sept. 27 on PBS. A similar debate with the Democratic presidential hopefuls took place this summer.

However, things quickly turned sour for Smiley when he learned that several of candidates will not be in attendance and neither wasted time nor bit his tongue describing his feelings about the situation.

"The word frontrunner has taken a whole new meaning for me," he says during the interview with Lee Bailey. "I didn't know it meant being out front and running from people of color."

Smiley also went on to draw a parallel between his debate, the debate hosted by Univision, and what message the noticeable absence by Republicans sends to black and brown voters.

"The frontrunners, specifically Mr. Romney, Mr. McCain and Mr. Guiliani, have said to us they will not be on stage at Norfolk State University on September 27th. All the Democrats showed up in June, but the front running Republicans have said they will not be there. They have also told Univision that they will not be there for the Hispanic debate. So, collectively, what the Republican frontrunners have told both black and brown Americans is that we don't appreciate you, don't value your issues and you're not a priority to us."

The Republican candidates weren't the only ones drawing fire from Smiley, issuing a warning to his black GOP friends.

"J.C. Watts, Armstrong Williams, Colin Powell, Condeleeza Rice ... the list goes on and on ... to all my black Republican friends, I don't wanna hear it anymore! If you want black folks to take your party seriously, then your party ought to take black folks seriously."

Undeterred by the absence of Romney, McCain and Guiliani, Smiley insists that the show will go on, and will make sure the truancy of the front runners will be on front street for the world to see.

"We've got five who say they are coming and, Fred Thompson just got into the race so we're still working on him. I've made it clear to all of these candidates that if you show up there's a podium with your name on it and a bottle of water for you. If you don't show up there's a podium with your name on it and a bottle of water. The nation is going to see at least three empty podiums representing Romney, Guiliani and McCain."

Now that's fighting the power.

Source

Alabama Plan Brings Out Cry of Resegregation

Kendra Williams, holding papers at front, with parents whose children were zoned away from the high-performing University Place elementary school. The moves were “all about race,” she said.


TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — After white parents in this racially mixed city complained about school overcrowding, school authorities set out to draw up a sweeping rezoning plan. The results: all but a handful of the hundreds of students required to move this fall were black — and many were sent to virtually all-black, low-performing schools.

Dave Martin for The New York Times

Kendra Williams and other black parents argue that the plan violates federal law.

Black parents have been battling the rezoning for weeks, calling it resegregation. And in a new twist for an integration fight, they are wielding an unusual weapon: the federal No Child Left Behind law, which gives students in schools deemed failing the right to move to better ones.

“We’re talking about moving children from good schools into low-performing ones, and that’s illegal,” said Kendra Williams, a hospital receptionist, whose two children were rezoned. “And it’s all about race. It’s as clear as daylight.”

Tuscaloosa, where George Wallace once stood defiantly in the schoolhouse door to keep blacks out of the University of Alabama, also has had a volatile history in its public schools. Three decades of federal desegregation marked by busing and white flight ended in 2000. Though the city is 54 percent white, its school system is 75 percent black.


Kendra Williams and other black parents argue that the plan violates federal law.

The schools superintendent and board president, both white, said in an interview that the rezoning, which redrew boundaries of school attendance zones, was a color-blind effort to reorganize the 10,000-student district around community schools and relieve overcrowding. By optimizing use of the city’s 19 school buildings, the district saved taxpayers millions, officials said. They also acknowledged another goal: to draw more whites back into Tuscaloosa’s schools by making them attractive to parents of 1,500 children attending private academies founded after court-ordered desegregation began.

“I’m sorry not everybody is on board with this,” said Joyce Levey, the superintendent. “But the issue in drawing up our plan was not race. It was how to use our buildings in the best possible way.” Dr. Levey said that all students forced by the rezoning to move from a high- to a lower-performing school were told of their right under the No Child law to request a transfer.

When the racially polarized, eight-member Board of Education approved the rezoning plan in May, however, its two black members voted against it. “All the issues we dealt with in the ’60s, we’re having to deal with again in 2007,” said Earnestine Tucker, one of the black members. “We’re back to separate but equal — but separate isn’t equal.”

For decades school districts across the nation used rezoning to restrict black students to some schools while channeling white students to others. Such plans became rare after civil rights lawsuits in the 1960s and ’70s successfully challenged their constitutionality, said William L. Taylor, chairman of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights.

Tuscaloosa’s rezoning dispute, civil rights lawyers say, is one of the first in which the No Child Left Behind law has become central, sending the district into uncharted territory over whether a reassignment plan can trump the law’s prohibition on moving students into low-performing schools. A spokesman, Chad Colby, said the federal Education Department would not comment.

Tuscaloosa is not the only community where black parents are using the law to seek more integrated, academically successful schools for their children.

In Greensboro, N.C., students in failing black schools have transferred in considerable numbers to higher-performing, majority-white schools, school officials there said. A 2004 study by the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights documented cases in Florida, Indiana, Tennessee and Virginia where parents were moving their children into less-segregated schools.

Nationally, less than 2 percent of eligible students have taken advantage of the law’s transfer provisions. Tuscaloosa, with 83,000 residents, is an hour’s drive west of Birmingham. During court-ordered desegregation its schools roughly reflected the school system’s racial makeup, and there were no all-black schools.

But in recent years the board has carved the district into three zones, each with a new high school. One cluster of schools lies in the east of the city; its high school is 73 percent black.

Another cluster on Tuscaloosa’s gritty west side now amounts to an all-black minidistrict; its five schools have 2,330 students, and only 19 are white. Its high school is 99 percent black.

In contrast, a cluster of schools that draw white students from an affluent enclave of mansions and lake homes in the north, as well as some blacks bused into the area, now includes two majority-white elementary schools. Its high school, Northridge, is 56 percent black.

The rezoning plan will force an estimated 880 students in Tuscaloosa to change their schools.

At a meeting in February 2005, scores of parents from the two majority white elementary schools complained of overcrowding and discipline problems in the middle school their children were sent to outside of the northern enclave.

Ms. Tucker said she, another board member and a teacher were the only blacks present. The white parents clamored for a new middle school closer to their homes. They also urged Dr. Levey to consider sending some students being bused into northern cluster schools back to their own neighborhood, Ms. Tucker said. Dr. Levey did not dispute the broad outlines of Ms. Tucker’s account.

“That was the origin of this whole rezoning,” Ms. Tucker said.

Months later, the school board commissioned a demographic study to draft the rezoning plan. J. Russell Gibson III, the board’s lawyer, said the plan drawn up used school buildings more efficiently, freeing classroom space equivalent to an entire elementary school and saving potential construction costs of $10 million to $14 million. “That’s a significant savings,” Mr. Gibson said, “and we relieved overcrowding and placed most students in a school near their home. That’s been lost in all the rhetoric.”

Others see the matter differently. Gerald Rosiek, an education professor at the University of Alabama, studied the Tuscaloosa school district’s recent evolution. “This is a case study in resegregation,” said Dr. Rosiek, now at the University of Oregon.

In his research, he said, he found disappointment among some white parents that Northridge, the high school created in the northern enclave, was a majority-black school, and he said he believed the rezoning was in part an attempt to reduce its black enrollment.

The district projected last spring that the plan would move some 880 students citywide, and Dr. Levey said that remained the best estimate available. The plan redrew school boundaries in ways that, among other changes, required students from black neighborhoods and from a low-income housing project who had been attending the more-integrated schools in the northern zone to leave them for nearly all-black schools in the west end.

Tuscaloosa’s school board approved the rezoning at a May 3 meeting, at which several white parents spoke out for the plan. One parent, Kim Ingram, said, “I’m not one who looks to resegregate the schools,” but described what she called a crisis in overcrowding, and said the rezoning would alleviate it. In an interview this month, Ms. Ingram said the middle school attended by her twin seventh-grade girls has been “bursting at the seams,” with student movement difficult in hallways, the cafeteria and locker rooms.

Voting against the rezoning were the board’s two black members and a white ally.

Dan Meissner, the board president, said in an interview this month that any rezoning would make people unhappy. “This has involved minimal disruption for a school system that has 10,000 students,” he said.

But black students and parents say the plan has proven disruptive for them.

Telissa Graham, 17, was a sophomore last year at Northridge High. She learned of the plan last May by reading a notice on her school’s bulletin board listing her name along with about 70 other students required to move. “They said Northridge was too crowded,” Telissa said. “But I think they just wanted to separate some of the blacks and Hispanics from the whites.”

Parents looking for recourse turned to the No Child Left Behind law. Its testing requirements have enabled parents to distinguish good schools from bad. And other provisions give students stuck in troubled schools the right to transfer. In a protest at an elementary school after school opened last month, about 60 black relatives and supporters of rezoned children repeatedly cited the law. Much of the raucous meeting was broadcast live by a black-run radio station.



Some black parents wrote to the Alabama superintendent of education, Joseph Morton, arguing that the rezoning violated the federal law. Mr. Morton disagreed, noting that Tuscaloosa was offering students who were moved to low-performing schools the right to transfer into better schools. That, he said, had kept it within the law.

Dr. Levey said about 180 students requested a transfer.

Telissa was one of them. She expects to return this week to Northridge, but says moving from one high school to another and back again has disrupted her fall.

One of Telissa’s brothers has also been rezoned to a virtually all-black, low-performing school. Her mother, Etta Nolan, has been trying to get him a transfer, too.

“I’m fed up,” Ms. Nolan said. “They’re just shuffling us and shuffling us.”

Source

Teen's conviction tossed in La. beating

Source
By Janet McConnaughey, Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS — A state appeals court on Friday threw out the only remaining conviction against one of the black teenagers accused in the beating of a white schoolmate in the racially tense north Louisiana town of Jena.

Mychal Bell, 17, should not have been tried as an adult, the state 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal said in tossing his conviction on aggravated battery, for which he was to have been sentenced Thursday. He could have gotten 15 years in prison.

His conspiracy conviction in the December beating of student Justin Barker was already thrown out by another court.

Bell, who was 16 at the time of the beating, and four others were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder. Those charges brought widespread criticism that blacks were being treated more harshly than whites after racial confrontations and fights at Jena High School.

Bell's attorney Louis Scott said he didn't know whether his client, whose bond was set at $90,000, would get out of jail immediately.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Louisiana | Sharpton | Bell | Third Circuit

"We don't know what approach the prosecution is going to take — whether they will re-charge him, where he would have to be subjected to bail all over again or not," Scott said.

Civil rights leaders, including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, had been planning a rally in support of the teens for the day Bell was to have been sentenced.

"Although there will not be a court hearing, we still intend to have a major rally for the Jena Six and now hopefully Mychal Bell will join us," Sharpton said in an e-mailed statement.

Said Jackson: "The pressure must continue until all six boys are set free and sent to school, not to jail."

Jena, La., is a mostly white town where racial animosity flared about a year ago when a black student sat under a tree that was a traditional gathering place for whites. A day later, three nooses were found hanging from the tree. There followed reports of racial fights at the school, culminating in the December attack on Barker.

The reversal of Bell's conviction will not affect four other teenagers also charged as adults, because they were 17 years old at the time of the fight and no longer considered juveniles, said attorney George Tucker of Hammond.

Prosecutors have the option of appealing to the state Supreme Court. District Attorney Reed Walters did not return a call Friday.

Judge J.P. Mauffray had thrown out Bell's conspiracy conviction, saying it was not a charge on which a juvenile may be tried as an adult. But he had let the battery conviction stand, saying Bell could be tried in adult court because the charge was among lesser charges included in the original attempted murder charge.

Teenagers can be tried as adults in Louisiana for some violent crimes, including attempted murder, but aggravated battery is not one of those crimes, the court said.

Defense lawyers had argued that the aggravated battery case should not have been tried in adult court once the attempted murder charge was reduced.

The case "remains exclusively in juvenile court," the Third Circuit ruled.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Police officer resigns over videos targeting minorities

Source
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A city patrol officer who posted a series of homemade videos disparaging blacks, Jews, Cubans and illegal immigrants on YouTube.com resigned Friday, the mayor's office said.

Officer Susan Purtee, 60, turned in a letter to the police department's personnel office announcing her intention to resign effective Sept. 22, said Sgt. Rich Weiner.

Purtee was reassigned to a desk job after the videos, reportedly posted by Purtee and her sister on YouTube.com, drew attention and criticism from city officials.

In the videos, the sisters refer to blacks, Jews, Cubans and illegal immigrants as "filthy," and accuse Jews of abusing their positions within the nation's media and entertainment industries, including at Disney, Viacom and The Associated Press.

"Clearly, with her conduct, she does not deserve to wear the badge or belong in the Division of Police," Mayor Michael Coleman said in a statement. "We will not tolerate racist conduct by any employee, and will continue to work with residents and our police to build bridges of trust and cooperation."

Purtee's sister, Barbara Gordon-Bell, 52, of Parkland, Fla., has said the pair made the videos for fun and to reveal the truth about America.

Purtee, a 15-year patrol officer, could not be reached for comment Friday; the phone number for a listing in her name in the suburb of Grove City was disconnected.

A police department investigation into Purtee's actions will continue despite her resignation, Weiner said. A message seeking comment was left with the Fraternal Order of Police, which said it would represent Purtee during the investigation.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Ole Miss suspends frat for one year

Source
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A University of Mississippi fraternity has been suspended for a year after a black student said he was the victim of a racial slur and a physical assault at a party, school officials said Friday.

Freshman Jeremiah Taylor, 18, said he was pushed down the stairs while attending a Delta Kappa Epsilon party Aug. 22 on the Oxford campus, according to school officials. The student newspaper, The Daily Mississippian, reported Friday on its website that Taylor said he was called the N-word at the party.

Taylor, of Southaven, filed a complaint on Aug. 24 with the Dean of Students' office, said Jeffrey Alford, Associate Vice Chancellor for university relations at Ole Miss.

Alford said the party got out of hand and people were asked to leave. Taylor told Mississippi Public Broadcasting in a Sept. 10 radio report that he was on his way downstairs, when "a guy in an orange shirt threw a beer can at me and hit me in my left shoulder." Then others shoved him down the stairs, he said.

Ole Miss officials said Friday the school's judicial council had found the historically white fraternity guilty of violations of harassment, assault, disorderly conduct, possession of alcohol and hosting an unauthorized party.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Mississippi | Taylor | Ole Miss | Jeffrey Alford, Associate

Alford said the fraternity was also fined $1,000, which will be used to fund an alcohol and drug education program; its members were required to perform 20 hours of community service and attend a racial sensitivity program. Members can continue to live at the residence, but they cannot recruit or socialize, he said.

The newspaper reported this is the first strike against the fraternity in the school's two-strike alcohol policy.

When asked by The Associated Press if this was the first time Ole Miss had suspended a fraternity for racial slurs and harassment, Alford said, "I don't know. It certainly is the first time in recent memory."

He said that all Ole Miss freshmen take a creed that says "I believe in respect for the dignity of each person."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.