Newspapers / The Carolina Times (Durham, … / Dec. 4, 1993, edition 1 / Page 1
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chapel hill 27599-393° USPS 091-380 OLUME 71 - NUMBER 48 DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA — SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4,1993 TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913 PRICE:30 CENTS Jurors Seated In Vlichael Seagroves Manslaughter Trial j>). Opening arguments began (jnesday in the trial of a Durham n charged with killing one jager and wounding another ing a break-in at his home in lorehouse hief Says linton Plan Will urt Blacks iP) - The Clinton health care j will hinder ueatment of black icnis who need it the most, said lis Sullivan, former secretary of Department of Health and man Services. ullivan told an audience at Duke versity Medical Center on inday that the plan’s price Iffols will degrade the quality of offered by family and primary physicians. lacks already _ suffer proportionately under the bn's health care system because economic and racial 'timination, he said, ullivan, who was the nation’s if health official in the Bush ninistration, currently is sident of the Morehou.se School ■ Medicine in Atlanta. Ic said the wrong kind of reform uid result in growing cost to the ipaycr, an explosion of icnvork and less attentive care, tiler breeding an environment ere blacks do not feel at home. The people who come to us arc en confused, frightened or pairing,” Sullivan said. "They d to be welcomed. ... We drive away, disenfranchising them Jirely as if we shut the door." March. A jury whose members include a musician, a chef and an unemployed Army veteran was tapped Tuesday to decide the fate of Michael Seagroves. Seagroves is charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of Jamal .Elliott, 15, and with assault in the wounding of Elliott’s friend, Clifton Taft Hester, 16. The March 18 shooting at the Seagroves home has touched off a heated debate about rising crime and how far homeowners can go to defend themselves and their property. Debate over the legal ramifications of the case haven’t stopped since shots rang out from Seagroves’ home in Woodcroft, a large, upscale residential development in Durham. The incident also has divided residents in the city, which has seen drugs fuel its crime rate. In one camp are those who support Seagroves, saying the 37- year-old homeowner was only protecting his family when he fired at the four teenage intruders. Others argue that he overreacted to the unarmed youths and that they did not pose a direct threat to him or his sick child that day. Race also has become an issue in the case. Seagroves is white and the four youths are black. There are two blacks and one Asian on the jury, which is evenly split between men and women. The panel of 12 jurors and three alternates was selected after two days of intense questioning about crime and self defense. Dozens of potential jurors were dismissed. Many said they couldn’t be impartial because they had suong opinions about crime or had already made up their mind about the case. The jury will decide whether Seagroves was right to defend himself or whether he used excessive force against the four teenagers, who police say broke into his garage to steal a motorcycle and a set of golf clubs. Seagroves said he was defending himself and his young son when he fired on the burglars. Yet police said the teenagers were running away when Seagroves fired six rounds from his .22-caliber rifle. Police said Elliott was struck four times in the back and Hester was hit twice. The prosecutor is expected to call Hester and some of the other suspects in the break-in, who will give a first-hand account of the events that led up to the shooting. Report: Police Did Not Use Excessive Force in Pepper Spray Kiiiing MRS. RUBY HENDERSON was 100 years old on November 29,1993. Black Alumni Seek To Protect ECSU Chancellor, Fear Jenkins Will Be Fired CONCORD (AP) - Community leaders urged calm after the district attorney issued a report saying police did not use excessive force during the arrest of a man who died! after being sprayed with pepper gas. District Attorney Bill Kenerly 1 said Angelo Robinson, whose arrest and death on July 11 triggered rioting in Concord, did not die because of criminal negligence. "We have really been hutting and don’t need any more violence," said Mary Blakeney, chairman of the human relations committee of the Concord-Cabarrus County Chamber of Commerce. The report is "an outrageous miscarriage of justice," but not a surprise, she said. Civil disobedience will not help, she said. Robert Mathis, the city aldermen representing Concord’s predominantly black Ward 4, CHAPEL HILL (AP) - There’s a special need filled by Elizabeth City State University, say about 100 black alumni of the college who asked the university system president to support the school’s chancellor. The alumni came in three chartered buses Tuesday to visit C.D. Spangler for about 45 minutes in the room where university Board of Governors meetings normqlly are held. They gave testimonials to the school and chancellor Jimmy Jenkins and even read a poem that likened the millionaire Spangler to a great man who "walks with the crowds in the road." "I had low SAT scores," said Harold Barnes, who has law offices in Elizabeth City and Suffolk, Va. "I could not have gotten into the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I could not have gotten into the University of Virginia. I made my way to ECSU. They opened their arms and said if you are willing to learn, we are willing to teach." The meeting came after 26 white residents of northeastern North Carolina petitioned Spangler to replace Jenkins, who has been chancellor at the historically black university since 1983. Those critics were white gentry who didn’t like a black man running a historically black college, said Barnes, who brought petitions signed by 2,500 people who supported Jenkins. After the meeting, Spangler said the issue of Jenkins’ job status was a personnel matter that he would not discuss in public. He admitted chancellors are often under fire. "Being a chancellor is a very difficult job and every one of my chancellors has made a decision that has angered someone," he said. "It’s normal for people in this state to raise questions about the way their universities are run. That’s a positive thing. It shows they care about the universities." Barnes described visits to Spangler and later to Gov. Jim Hunt and others in Raleigh as a "pre-emptive strike" to keep anything from happening to Jenkins. He also said the alumni want to bridge any gaps with whites who feel shut out. "We believe Dr. Jenkins and Elizabeth City State University are victims of their own success," Barnes said, citing doubled enrollment and development of the campus and its programs under Jenkins. Kenerly’s 13-page report included details of the findings by the state medical examiner and the State Bureau of Investigation. "Mostly, remain calm," Mathis said. "This is the State Bureau of Investigation report I don’t know if the U.S. Justice Department or the Federal Bureau of Investigation will have a report ... there are sUll questions." Mathis said the city needs to look at the Concord Police Department’s policy or procedure on handling prisoners and the use of pepper spray. "If there is nothing criminal, I am concerned with the policy or procedure, and whether the situation was managed properly," he said. "I assume there will be an investigation of this. We need to look at our policy for handling prisoners and t^e a close look... this concerns me deeply." Robinson died while in police custody after officers used pepper spray to subdue the 308-pound former Concord High School and college football player. He was taken into custody to be charged with disorderly conduct and assault on a government official at the Waffle House on U.S. 29, Kenerly said. Robinson died after being taken by police to the county jail entrance and then to Concord police headquarters. It was reported that officers tried to resuscitate Robinson. Eleven minutes transpired between Robinson’s arrival at police headquarters and when an ambulance was called, according to police radio transcripts. £ The 24-year-old’s death torched off a riot in the predominantly black Logan Community, during which more than $130!000 property damage was caused, a convenience store was burned and several officers and firefighters were injured by bricks and debris thrown at them. After the riot. Concord was in a state of emergency for a week. ‘ Police Chief Bob Cansler called in the SBI to investigate and put three officers on desk duties until the investigation was completed. UNCF Head William Trent Dead At 83 GREENSBORO (AP) - William J. Trent Jr., who help^ form the United Negro College Fund and ran it for 20 years, died over the weekend. He was 83. TrenL adviser and friend to presidents, died Saturday of natural causes at Moses Cone Memorial Hospital, said his daughter, Kay Holloway. Trent was an economics teacher and basketball coach at Bennett College in Greensboro when he joined the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 as an adviser on black affairs. In 1944, Trent was asked to help form an association of private black colleges. He helped raise millions of dollars for 41 colleges and universities during his 20-year stint as executive director of the fund. A Yale University smdent named George Bush introduced himself in 1948 after one of Trent’s lectures about the fund at Yale. The conversation grew into a lasting friendship with the future president. "One of the highlights of our lives was to ride in Air Force One," said Viola Trent, his wife of 59 years. Trent left his director’s post in 1964 to become an executive with * publishing giant Time Inc. before returning to Greensboro in the mid- 1970s. — "I think Bill was most proud of his work with the United Negro College Fund," Mrs. Trent said. "The fund was so far-reaching, has helped so many people and has kept so many black colleges from closing." Besides his wife, Trent is survived by three daughters, eight grandchildren and five great grandchildren. lohn Hope Franklin Looks Back And Ahead By Christopher Sullivan iP) - More than half a century into a distinguished willing and :liing career, John Hope Franklin has lived African-American history ile toiling to illuminate it. lere have been high points - most recently, he has been at work in his ;e University office, finishing a seventh edition of his classic btxtk, im Slavery to Freedom." But there also have been low points in his iitge career" as a black scholar of U.S. and particularly Southern Dry. the 1940s, his insistence on conducting research at slate archives in segregated South led to alternately sad and "farcical" scenes. Louisiana, he could use the archives only when they were closed for iliday; in North Carolina, he received his own vault key so Uiat white ks would not have to serve him. Vith that experience, what do you think I expected when 1 got to bama, with the Confederate flag flying (over the archives building)? hesitated even to go in," Franklin said. MethelSss, in he went. tere, he studied the papers of Alabama’s secession-era governor, ntually, he even had civil conversations with the archive director, I at first referred to him as the "Harvard nigger." And history moved ly the way,” Franklin said, as off-handedly as he could, "one of my I Ph.D.’s is now head of that archives." Bom in strictly segregated ■homa in 1915, son of a lawyer and a schoolteacher, Franklin has leased and chronicled black Americans’ hard-won progress toward )1 rights and status. But it’s not enough, he says. We’re going in two directions at one time," he said. "More and more eks are moving up into the middle and upper classes, but more and. more of them arc sinking. ... We still have to confront the basic problems of poverty, and the relationship between poverty and race." The many blacks who have advanced cannot rejoice, he said, as long as many others remain trapped in ghettos. "The most tragic thing is, they arc being dehumanized and alienated and destroyed; if they’re not being destroyed, then we put guns and dope in their hands and say, ‘Destroy yourself,"’ he said. This is a part of living history that Americans turn their backs on, Franklin said. "It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the greamess of this countty. It’s just another kind of thing," he said. He paused in his office, lined with shelves where a biography of abolitionist John Brown stands near one titled "Klanwatch." "I hope we’re beginning to address it," he said, allowing just a glimmer of the optimism that shows through his writings and lectures. Gesturing to an office window, he said, "I’d jump out of the building if 1 weren’t hopeful." Much of his work has emphasized the role that blacks have played in American history: Black patriots fought at Lexington and Concord, he points out in "From Slavery to Freedom." They crossed the Delaware with Washington, explored with Lewis and Clark. And this is not to mention his work on those who made their names in history as stalwarts for equal rights, among them W.E.B. Du Bois, who as he grew older became a friend of the young Franklin. Franklin himself has led national scholarly societies and served on presidential commissions. As a candidate. President Clinton sought out the tall, graying professor for a one-on-one seminar. In October, CUnton honored Franklin with the Charles Frankel Prize, recognizing scholarly contributions that give "eloquence and meaning ... to our ideas, hopes and dreams as American citizens." Yale historian C. Vann Woodward and Franklin served together on a committee that ‘ helped prepare the legal brief in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education . case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed "separate buLequal" schools. \ - Woodward noted Franklin’s theme of blacks’ inclusion in U.S. hrstory, despite the exclusion his colleague endured during segregation. 'T’ve seen him leave the library in search of a place to relieve his bladder.'^e recalled - blacks were not allowed to use the facilities. And today? "The color line is alive, well and flourishing in the finai. decade of the 20th century," Franklin said in a lecture delivered last year at the University of Missouri, just after four police officers were ‘ acquitted in the bating of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King, setting off deadly riots. "There is nothing inherently wrong with being aware of color as long as it is seen as making distinctions in a pleasant, superficial and unimportant manner," he said, adding: "It is only when character is attached to color, when ability is measured by color, when privilege is tied to color, and a whole galaxy of factors that spell the difference between success and failure in our society are tied to color - it is only when such considerations are attached to color that it becomes a deadly, dreadful, denigrating factor among us all." Then, he concluded, in an echo of the Kemer Commission, "We have two nations, black and white, separate, hostile, unequal." John Hope Franklin - professor emeritus, former ■ president of the American Historical Association, author and editor now working on his late father’s autobiography - still watches history unfold. The prosperous black households featined on television comedies will "encourage what I call denial of the real iwoblems of the country.” "But;"- he added, "I don’t see how that can drown out the noises made by the Los Angeles riots."
The Carolina Times (Durham, N.C.)
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Dec. 4, 1993, edition 1
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