Volume 114 No.

24

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JANUARY 28, 2006- FEBRUARY 3, 2006

Committee recommends continued federal oversight for Black colleges

By Zenitha Prince AFRO Staff Writer A special state committee on Jan. 23 recommended that Maryland renew its agreement with the U.S. Department of Educations Office for Civil Rights for up to five years to address continued inequities between the states historically Black and traditionally White institutions of higher learning. The committee, one of two convened by the Maryland Higher Education Commission to review Marylands compliance with its 2000-2005 OCR agreement, which requires that the state erase all vestiges of segregation in its higher education system, concluded that while the state has made good faith efforts to fulfill its requirements, monetarily HBCUs are still not on par with their White counterparts. The committee while acknowledging the good the state has done to respond to our agreement with the Office of Civil Rights tried to indicate where more work, more effort and more funding is required

Something New

and we asked that the state take additional time, up to five years to address these remaining deficiencies, said George Funaro, a former Deputy Secretary of Higher Education

Maryland HBCUs still not on par with their White counterparts

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AFROs Online Poll

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin suggested during Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that God is mad at America. He also said God wants New Orleans to be a majority AfricanAmerican city or what he calls Chocolate City. Do you think his comments are appropriate?

By Leonard Sparks AFRO Staff Writer

City officers charged with assault

occurred last Oct. 22 at Maria Ds on South Light Street in Federal Hill. While each charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $2,500 fine, the Baltimore States Attorneys Office would not comment on what sentence it would seek. The state has an opportunity to make a [sentencing] recommendation, and we cannot speculate at what the outcome would be at this point, said Margaret T. Burns, a states attorney spokeswoman. The officers, who were offContinued on A2 Actress Sanaa Lathan stars in Something New, a modern twist on the old interracial love story. See story on B1.
Photo by Sidney Baldwin

Akhenaton Bonaparte alleges that two city police officers assaulted him and a teenage friend at a South Baltimore carryout last October.

Photo by Leonard Sparks

Two Baltimore City police officers are facing misdemeanor assault charges after an incident at a South Baltimore carryout in which the victims say the officers were intoxicated and failed to identify themselves as police officers until a verbal confrontation inside the restaurant escalated into a scuffle outside. Michael Brassell is charged with one count of seconddegree assault and Jack Odom two counts of second-degree assault in the incident, which

Federal grants boost states anti-gang efforts

By Roderick C. Willis AFRO Staff Writer The U.S. Attorneys Office is receiving $2 million in federal funding to establish a statewide gang-prevention initiative and a Montgomery County antigang youth organization is receiving $750,000 in federal funding, Sen. Barbara Mikulski announced at separate press conferences on Jan. 23. Gangs know no borders, either internationally or within their own region. We need to continue to work to protect our neighborhoods and families - that means safer streets and safer communities, said Mikulski. This funding will help clean up our streets and fight the crime that is destroying our neighborhoods. I am so proud to have fought for this federal investment and will continue to do all I can to make our communities safer. The funding for this initiative is a vital part of our public safety effort, said U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, speaking at the press conference announcing the funding for the U.S. Attorneys Office. We cannot allow gangs to control our lives. The U.S. Attorneys Office will use the funding to increase prosecution of gangs and gang-related crimes as well as to fund gang-intervention and prevention programs. In Montgomery County, one of the most affluent counties in the country, the grant will fund the Latin American Youth Center. In addition to having gang-prevention and intervention programs, LAYC

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The death of a 8% 92% neighborhood

This is the first in a series that chronicles the stories of the stalwart people who survived one of the worst disasters in U.S. history and of the incomparable work of the Black church in providing physical, financial and spiritual support to these people whose lives were forever altered by Hurricane Katrina. NEW ORLEANS, November, 2005 The air was thick with an oppressive silence and the smell of rot. By Zenitha Prince AFRO Staff Writer

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The streets that once teemed with the play and laughter of children, the industry of mothers and fathers were empty now, reduced to mere dirt tracks. On the sidewalks, a lone boot, a mud-encrusted car, an overturned basketball ring, a red tricycle lay like ominous and mocking reminders of a life now lost. Battered, sometimes mangled houses stood abandoned, forlorn in the gathering gloom like looming sentinels of a ghost town. 1229 Deslonde St. was Pamela Everages home, yet on first sight, she could barely

recognize it. This is my first time back. Its just awful, she said. Just driving through the city, it looks like a Third World country. With a hand on her hip, Everage surveyed her neighborhood from the remains of her front lawn. Dressed in white T-shirt, blue jeans, a white bandana and a pair of sneakers encrusted in black,

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A day of hope in Monrovia

In the days I spent in Liberia just prior to the inauguration of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the nations new president, brigades of young men and women could be seen everywhere brightening Monrovias By Larry S. Gibson Special to the AFRO decrepit buildings with fresh paint. Citizens wielding brushes instead of guns were a welcome sight on the capitals streets, which had absorbed too much blood for too long. New paint suited the occasion, reflecting the peoples long deferred, awakened hopes.

Political consultant Larry Gibson with the new president, whose successful campaign he ran.

Courtesy photo

All inaugurations are historic, but this one was momentously so. In November, Liberian voters had surprised the world by electing Ellen Johnson Sirleaf over soccer star George Weah, making her the first female elected head of state in Africa. Her Jan. 16 inauguration, falling poignantly on a date celebrated here in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., attracted thousands of Liberians, nine heads of state, including the presidents of Nigeria and South Africa, the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and First Lady Laura Bush. Standing on the grounds of the Capitol building, Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated economist and grandmother known as The Iron Lady to the media and Old Ma to the populace, gave a thoughtful and strong 46 minute speech, vowing to fight corruption, rebuild the nation, empower women and improve the lot of Continued on A12

The new Liberian president beams at the bright future she sees for women in her country.

Photo by Larry Gibson

Copyright 2006 by the Afro-American Company

January 28, 2006 - February 3, 2006, The Baltimore Afro-American

Continued from A1 pungent mud, Everage was the lone smidgen of life on an otherwise dead street. Then we began to walk. A slightly rusted sign proclaimed Beautiful Blocks, an especially unseemly sentiment against the backdrop of decay. A nearby Dead End sign seemed much more appropriate. Everages face was a study of defeat and worry, wreathed in frowns and dominated by a pair of tired-looking eyes. She had not gotten much news about her extended family. She had seen one neighbor and her son at a shelter, who told her that the morning after the hurricane, people had already begun to walk their dogs and clean their yards before the floodwaters began to rise. She wondered if she would ever see them again. That family down there, all three of them were in wheelchairs. I think they got out when my sons left, said Everage, pointing out the houses as she spoke. That guy over there, he works off shore. He was gone, too. Those two people in that house over there, theyre middle and high school teachers. The lady here, an administrator at Charity Hospitaleverybody knew each other. People went to high school together, they knew your family. Having no other idea of her neighbors fates, Everage read the hieroglyphic markings on the houses, left there by res-

A5

The death of a neighborhood

time, soldiers were barring people from entering and where, it was rumored, bodies were still being found. I know people on the other side and they are people I grew up with and theyre not letting you over there, Everage said. I know a lot of the old people didnt leave. And Im afraid that a lot of people - my relatives and other people - didnt make it. Everage, 39, was working on a cruise ship in Hawaii when Hurricanes Katrina and Avenue Canal to the north, the St. Bernard Parish line to the east, St. Claude Avenue to the south and the Industrial Canal to the west, which effectively isolates the enclave from the rest of New Orleans. Wrested from the wilds of a cypress swamp by poor African-Americans and immigrant laborers from Ireland, Italy and Germany, the Ward was among the last of the citys neighborhoods to be developed. And while in recent times, quaint early 20th capsized furniture and the putrid scent of mould hampered her efforts to salvage mementos of her familys life. And in the end, there was not a lot to save. I had a lot of nice paintings on the wall, all my paintings are gone, as well as a computer and other hardearned items, she said. Her childrens diplomas, some of their trophies, her grandfathers gramophone and her daughters rusted trumpet were all that was left of years

Pamela Everages face was a mixture of pain, fatigue and disbelief as she gets the first look at her home, which was flooded when the levees around Lake Pontchatrain were breached in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Everage was only able to salvage some of her childrens trophies, her grandfathers gramophone and her daughters rusted trumpet.

Photos by Zenitha Prince

Too many of the buildings look like this in the Lower Ninth Ward. Flood waters dumped this mangled house on this site. Century homes were mingled with shrines of modern life such as barber and beauty shops, small businesses, gasoline stations, eateries, washetarias, a surfeit of churches and the ubiquitous corner store, more than 36 percent of its residents live under the poverty line. Many attribute the wards slow economic growth to the flood that ran longtime commercial and industrial businesses and residents out of the neighborhood when Hurricane Betsy devastated the city in 1965. Now, again, many wonder about the future of the neighborhood that bore the worst of Hurricanes Hurricane and Rita with most of its 5,601 housing units destroyed and its nearly 14,000 residents scattered, homeless or dead. Everage felt relief that at least her children were not counted among the latter. I spoke to my son two days before the storm and I told him, I got a feeling this storm will really hit so go ahead and take a backpack, go ahead and get out, Everage recalled. For days, her son traveled from town to town trying to evade the reach of the storm until he was finally able to board a Greyhound bus to Virginia, where his sister attended college. As she took in the utter ruin of the neighborhood, Everage was glad she had decided not to bring him back. In her home the situation was equally grim. Foot-high black sludge; waterlogged,

cue workers to document the dates of their visits and the fates of the inhabitants. A 0 meant no bodies were found, and as Everage surveyed the houses, she breathed a sigh of relief at all the zeros she saw. Then she came to a house where a single woman lived with her five small children. She looked at the abandoned car mired in the bog of the front yard, then hesitantly raised her eyes to the markings on the wall. The 6 confirmed what she already knew in her heart. They didnt make it, she whispered with a shake of her head. I taught her son how to ride his bike. Everage also worried about her relatives and friends, who lived on the other side of North Claiborne Avenue between Florida and Caffin Avenues, a place where, at the

This lone boot, like many other items strewn across sidewalks, backyards and roadways, is a painful reminder of the lives that were lost or destroyed in the flood.

Rita hit New Orleans and like many others she observed the devastation of her home on television. Everything was crushed and saturated weeks ago and then the second storm hit and Im watching [television] and saying, Thats my neighborhood, she said. And then they said the lower Ninth Ward got hit the worst. And Im thinking, The levee that broke is right where I live. Everage lived in a largely African-American community best known for producing cultural icons like Antonine Fats Domino Jr., the legendary rock-and-roll star and Kalamu ya Salaam, a dramatist, fiction writer and prolific poet. Like a small city within a city, the Lower Ninth Ward is bounded by the Southern Railway railroad and Florida

of living. I dont think I know what to feel, Everage said. I havent processed yet. But as Everage continued to think about her loss and the loss of her neighbors, many of whom did not have renters insurance, she knew she could not come back and she became angry. We cant come back. The problems been the levee for 25 years since 1964. Same stuff happened: a lot of people lost their houses and their lives. Its like deja vu, Everage said, then added, Theres got to be charges against somebody-federal government, state-somebody has got to be held accountable.

People on Foxx

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AP Chris Folk

Committee recommends continued federal oversight for Black colleges

and a member of committee two, which examined the states financial obligations under this commitment. In its draft report the committee concluded that the state had done much to enhance its HBCUs through its successes in programs like the private donation incentive program, access and success program, and enhancement grants program. However, in many areas, HBIs were not comparable and competitive with its White counterparts. Some of those areas were: * The percentage of students receiving federal grants * Funding guidelines attainment * The percentage of general funds as a portion of a schools total revenue * Student-faculty ratio Funaro said he believes that parity in these areas will be Continued from A1 best achieved under the guidance of the OCR. There has been data and evidence to suggest that after 20 to 30 years these historically Black institutions have not received the support that would make them comparable to traditionally White institutions. The Office of Civil Rights provided the impetus for the state to look at these, he said. Whether the state will agree with Funaro will be decided on Feb. 15 when MHEC votes on the recommendations. But, a commission spokeswoman said, it is unlikely that they will accept all the recommendations. I would say there will definitely be some changes and some altered recommendations, said MHEC spokeswoman Helen Szablya. However if you consider the fact that staff from the commission and commission members were a part of the committeesits a pretty solid report. The education department has not submitted its report either and one of its spokesmen said they were still evaluating the matter. Funaro said he worries that if MHEC does not vote to extend OCR agreement that the state could begin to slack off in its desegregation efforts. Thats the big question. Thats the issue that is going to be the ultimate test for MHEC that, on its own, will the state continue to address the remaining deficiencies in funding and support for HBCUs? Funaro said. My prayer is that they will faithfully continue to do so.