Prairie View's band director dies
PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (Houston Forward
Times/NNPA) - Prairie View A&M University is mourning the
death of Professor and Director of Bands George Edwards. He
directed PVAMU's world renowned Marching Stomi Band for
30 \ cars before his death on May 28.
Affectionately known around cam
pus as "Prof Edwards." Edwards first
arrived at Prairie View A&M in 1978.
Under his tenure, the university's
Marching Storm Band entertained audi
ences around the U.S. and the world and
developed a reputation for its unique
sound. Prairie View A&M's band, once
known as the "Funky 50,'' was renamed
under Edwards' leadership and v ision in
1984.
Edwards
Today, the Marching Storm is now
considered among the most dynamic and skilled bands in the
world- for its unparalleled musical artistry , and electrifying and
adventurous drum line, which is showcased during each per
formance .
A highlight in his distinguished career, Edwards directed
the Marching Storm Band's inaugural performance in the 120th
Tournament of Roses Association Rose Parade in Pasadena,
Calif., on New Year's Day 2(X>9 Prairie View A&M's band was
the first band to perform in the Rose Parade pilot program to
include bands from historically black colleges and universities
(HBCUs). in the parade each year.
SCLC promotes poverty march
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - The interim president of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference is promoting a June
30 march in Jackson, Miss., he says will revive civil rights
leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Poor People's Campaign"
The march to the Mississippi capital will begin on
Fortification Street in downtown Jackson at 1 p.m.
Byron Clay told a group at the Shiloh Baptist Church in
Norwood that the SCLC. has a moral imperative to expose
poverty, promote "safe and decent housing and a working wage.
King was the co-founder of SCLC in 1957.
Memphis mayor running for Congress
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) ? Memphis mayor Willie
Herenton says he's running for Congress.
Herenton's office confirmed that he has filed notice with
the Federal Election Commission that he will be a candidate
next year for the 9th District House seat from Memphis.
Herenton, 69, is in his fifth term in office and is the longest
serving mayor in Memphis history.
He said in April that he was consid
ering challenging incumbent Rep. Steve
Cohen in the Democratic primary.
Herenton, a former superintendent
of schools, is the city's first elected
black mayor. He defeated a popular
white incumbent in the closest mayor's
race in Memphis history in 1991 and
since then, has had little serious trouble
winning re-election.
Memphis is majority black and.
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of Congress in more than three decades.
Former Rep. Harold Ford Sr. represented the 9th District
for 22 years and was followed by Harold Ford Jr., who held the
seat for 10 years before resigning to run for the U.S. Senate in
2006. He was not successful.
For much of the past year, a federal grand jury reportedly
has been asking questions about Herenton's involvement in a
downtown real estate project and an annual Christmas party
organized under his name.
Grand jury witnesses have included a top Herenton aide
and the mayor's son. Herenton says he has done nothing ille
gal.
Clinton: Franklin was 'angry, happy'
DURHAM ( AP) - The late historian John Hope Franklin
was "an angry, happy man" whose work as the head of a com
mission on race helped pull the country together, former
President Bill Clinton said last Thursday.
Clinton was one of a dozen speakers
at a service at Duke Chapel to Hbnor the
Oklahoma native and his wife, Aurelia,
who would have celebrated their 69th
wedding anniversary last Thursday.
The former president elicited laugh
ter from the crowd when he related a
story about Franklin handling a
woman's racial insensitivity in 1995,
the night before the historian was to
receive the Medal of Freedom, the
nation's highest civilian honor.
Franklin
A white woman approached
Franklin at a gathering he was holding at a club in Washington,
D.C., ordering him to get her coat from the check room.
Franklin wrote in his autobiography, "Mirror to America," that
he advised the woman to approach a club employee, all of
whom wore uniforms.
"Now. we're laughing," Clinton said. "But the man was 80
years old. He was perhaps the most distinguished living
American historian. He did write this in a funny way. And he
wrote it in a way that you knew he didn't think it was funny.
He was a genius at being a passionate rationalist. An angry,
happy man. A happy, angry man."
Franklin, who taught for a decade at Duke University and
was a professor emeritus of history, died in March at age 94.
His wife died in 1999.
In 1997, Clinton appointed Franklin to lead his Initiative
on Race. Because of that report and Franklin's work on it, "we
are a different country."
The Chronicle (USPS 067-910) was. established by Ernest H.
Pitt and Ndubisi Egemonye in 1974 and is published every
Thursday by Winston-Salem Chronicle Publishing Co. Inc., 617
N. Liberty Street, Winston-Salem. N.C. 27101. Periodicals
postage paid at Winston-Salem. N.C. Annual subscription price
is $30.72.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:
The Chronicle, P.O. Box 1636
Winston-Salem, NC 27102-1636
flimpjuttl
r;
is
If3 Cooper
Raleigh's
Cooper
featured
on stamp
SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
WASHINGTON
Educator, scholar, feminist,
activist and North Carolina
native Anna Julia Cooper,
who gave voice to the
African-American communi
ty during the 19th and 20th
centuries ? from the end of
slavery to the beginning of
the Civil Rights movement
? was immortalized on a
postage stamp last week.
Cooper, best known for
her groundbreaking collec
tion of essfcys and speeches,
"A Voice from the South by a
Black Woman of the South,"
also exhibited educational
leadership, most notably
challenging the racist notion
that African Americans \yere
naturally inferior. -
1 he U.5>. Postal Service
dedicated the stamp at
Washington, D.C.'s Paul
Laurence Dunbar High
School, where Cooper taught
math and science and ulti
mately served as principal.
"Anna Julia Cooper once
said, 'The cause of freedom
is not the cause of a race or a
sect, a party or a class ? it is
the cause of humankind, the
very birthright of humanity.'
Her actions to support these
memorable words during her
life are the reason the Postal
Service has chosen Ms.
Cooper as the subject of the
32nd stamp in the Black
Heritage series," said
Delores Killette, vice presi
dent and Consumer
Advocate.
Cooper was born into
slavery around 1858 in
Raleigh. As a child, she
developed a love of learning
and wanted to become a
teacher. In 1868, she
received a scholarship to
enter the inaugural class at
St. Augustine's Normal
School and Collegiate
Institute (now St.
Augustine's College), a
school for African
Americans created by the
Episcopal Church and the
Freedmen's Bureau, where
she earned part of her tuition
by tutoring fellow stu
dents. She continued to teach
at St. Augustine's after com
pleting her studies in
1877. That year, she married
George A.C. Cooper, who
was studying for the ministry
at St. Augustine s.
Two years after her hus
band's unexpected death in
1879, Cooper enrolled at
Oberlin College in Ohio. In
1884 she graduated with a
degree in mathematics,
becoming one of the first
African American women to
graduate from the
school. Cooper returned to
Raleigh and taught math,
Greek and Latin
at St. Augustine's
until 1887, when she was
invited to teach math and sci
ence at the Preparatory High
School for Colored Youth
(later known as M Street and
today as Dunbar High
School) in Washington, DC,
the largest and most presti
gious public high school for
African Americans in the
nation.
In 1892, Cooper pub
lished "A Voice from the
South by a Black Woman of
the South," the first book
length volume of black femi
nist analysis in the United
States.
Cooper retired from
teaching at Dunbar High
School in 1930 but continued
to give lectures, publish
essays, and be active in com
See Cooper on AI0
Kennedy suggests right-wing
TV hosts are spurring violence
tin \SS(K lATfct) PRKSS
JACKSON, Miss.
Robert Kennedy Jr. says thai
some right-wing broadcast
hosts are feeding the sort of
hatred behind this year's rise
in hate
crimes.
1 11
Jackson
for *
memorial
for slain
civil
rights
leader
M e d g a r
E v e r s ,
Kennedy
' said Rush Limbaugh, Bill
O'Reilly and Glenn Beck are
among those who have
drummed up anger against
abortion doctors and others.
"They're driving this
kind of hatred," Kennedy,
co-host of the Ring of Fire
radio show, said in a brief
session with reporters last
Friday after his speech.
"If you listen to right
wing radio, including so
called Christian channels,
there is little to do with
Jesus Christ's values," he
said.
Kennedy had been asked
what he thought was the rea
son for the increase in
killings such as the fatal
shooting of a security guard
at the, U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum in
Washington and last month's
killing of abortion provider
Dr. George Tiller in Wichita,
Kan.
Kennedy was the keynote
speaker for a longstanding
annual memorial to Evers,
bftifRSOFARHMV IHEDCTOMOU'EXPlAM :
Newsweek
PRNewsFotoo
Rush Limhaugh on the March 16 cover of Newsweek.
the Mississippi NAACP
leader who was killed out
side his home in Jackson on
June 12, I ">63. during Robert
F. Kennedy's term as attor
ney general.
Kennedy said his lather
wrote separate letters to hini
and each of his eight broth
ers and sisters the night of
Evers' murder, saying Evers
had died fighting for his
country.
"That crystallized the
importance of what Medgar
Evers had done," he said.
"The battles he and others
fought helped to make this
nation a true constitutional
democracy."
Sec Hate on A10
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