wm
JAN - 9 2004
Jt:.
MLK HOLIDAY
Mecklenburg has a
longest of signature
^ rights activlst’?-^'^^^:
January 19
Volume 29 No. 16
www.thecharlottepost.com
W^t Cliarlotti
$1.00
Duke Library
00 Beat
ford Rd
Charlotte -tc 28216- 5.80,
The Voice of the Black Community
WKK OF JANUARY 2004
CAROLINA PANTHERMONIUM
PHOTO/WADE NASH
Cai'olina Panthers receiver Steve Smith is mobbed by fans at Ericsson Stadium after the Panthers beat the Dallas Cowboys 29-10
in a first-round NFL playoff game last week. The Panthers, who are in the playoffs for just the second time in the franchise’s nine-
year history, will play at the St. Louis Rams Saturday at 4:15 p.m. Details in Sports, Page 1C.
Seat-belt safety campaign targets high-risk groups
Burgess
By Herbert L. White
herb.whue@thecharlottepost.com
Charlott e-Mecklenburg
Police Officer Don Eubanks
sees first-hand what happens
to people in wrecks. And he’s
finding Afifican Americans are
more likely to be maimed and
killed when they
don’t buckle up.
Eubanks, a
member of the
CMPs Highway
Interdiction and
Traffic Safety
unit, is working
on a campaign
with Mecklenburg Safe
Communities to encourage
black and Hispanic motorists
to wear seat belts. The pro
gram comes on the heels of a
fatal wreck in Iredell County
last week that killed seven
teen-agers - all of them black.
’’Since the accident where the
kids in Statesville were killed,
it came to me that more needs
to be done to get the word out
in the Afncan American com-
WSOCTV
news
connection
PHOTO/CALVIN FERGUSON
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Darrell Stephens reads a
poster to be used as part of the seat belt awareness campaign.
munity,” Eubanks said.
Statistics bear out the lack of
seat belt use among black dri
vers and passengers. The per
centage of overall seat belt use
in North Carolina drivers is 84
percent, but among African
American drivers in
Mecklenburg, it’s 73 percent.
Fifty-nine percent of black
front passengers buckle up.
Afncan Americans have the
RITUAL PREVALENT ACROSS CONTINENT
More Africans openly challenge female mutilation
By Susan Kreimers
WOMEN'S E-NEWS
On a day she will never for-,
get, Soraya Mire expected to
receive a "gift” in her native
Somalia. She was only 13
years old and anxiously await
ed her mother’s promise.
The present turned out to be
her worst nightmare. What
she saw upon entering the doc
tor’s house was a surgery
room. Shock'froze every bone
in her body, yet she couldn’t
flee.
"How can you run away
when the person who loves you
the most - and is supposed to
he protecting you - is right
there allowing this to happen?”
says Mire, who is now 40 and.
lives in Los Angeles, where
she’s working on her second
feature film about female geni
tal mutilation. "So, at the
moment, you say, TVIaybe what
she’s doing is right.’ But then
you know that deep down in
you, something awful is going
to happen.”
The pain under local anes
thetic was so horrendous that
she wanted to die. Infibulation,
the extreme form of female
•genital mutilation, involved
removing the entire external
genitalia and stitching togeth
er the vulva, leaving only a
small hole.
Also serving Cabarrus, Chester, Mecklenburg, Rowan and York counties
Clock’s
Ockoigoii
housing
subsidy
City Council weighs
HOPE VI support
By Herbert L. White
herb, white @ ihechartoltepo.'U.com
Charlotte City Council doesn’t have much time
to debate whether it should sup
port a federal application to revi
talize the Piedmont Courts and
Belmont communities.
The Communities Within A City
committee will meet Friday to dis
cuss the city’s options in applying
for $20 million in HOPE VI fund
ing finm the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development.
The committee will forward its
recommendation to the council for
a final vote Monday.
Among the council’s options are
voting for an immediate commit
ment of $15.5 million to build
infrastructure or a housing bond
referendum on November’s ballot.
HUD’s demand that applicants
declare monetary support up front
is a major council concern.
"The city manager has suggest
ed we make a contingency based
on approval of housing bonds,” council member
Susan Burgess said. “I believe the sentiment
among council is to go forward anyway and
depend on the good people of Charlotte to approve
Please see CITY COUNCIL/6A
Application time
for new students in
school district
By Herbert L, White
herb, white @ thecharlottepost.com
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools started its stu
dent assignment process this week.
The 2004-2005 school application process began
Monday with students who must select a choice
for next year taking applications home. Students
who will be starting 6th grade and entering 9th
grade as well as those impacted by the home
school boundary changes voted on the school
board must make a selection for the 2004-2005
academic year. Personalized applications as well
as a student assignment application guide will be
sent home with these students this week.
Families new to the district with students start
ing kindergarten or coming to CMS for the first
time must complete a new student enrollment
form. The forms can be picked up at any school or
the Family Application Center at 124 Skyland
Ave. or on the Internet at www.cms.kl2.nc.us.
Once families complete the new student enroll
ment form, a personalized application will be
mailed to their home. Families have until
Wednesday to complete the new student form in
order to receive a personalized application by the
Jan. 30 deadline.
Families now enrolled in CMS who do not have
to select a school for next year but want to consid
er other options must complete a request for appli
cation form. This request form can be filled out at
any school or the Family Application Center. Once
Please see APPLICATIONS/3A
highest rate of motor vehicle
occupant injury among ethnic
groups, with people age 20-24
at the highest risk.
Blacks make up 26 percent of
Mecklenburg’s population.
“I’ve been looking at a lot of
numbers, and a lot of fatali
ties,” Eubanks said. “Quite a
few of them have involved
blacks who were not buckling
up.”
The reasons vary. Vanity and
apathy top the list, Eubanks
says. Other drivers see buck
ling up as an individual deci
sion that shouldn’t be legislat
ed despite laws that provide
fines for drivers and passen
gers who don’t strap in.
“The number one answer is
they don’t want to wrinkle
their clothes,” Eubanks said.
“Some women even say it’s
uncomfortable if you have
large breasts. Kids say they
like playing with the police and
grabbing their seat belt when
the police come by.”
Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Please see SEAT BELT/6A
Graham
In Somalia and Sudan, 98
percent of women in Mire’s
generation were mutilated,
most by age 5 because their
mothers and grandmothers
believed the younger the bet
ter, thinking the torture would
be easier to forget. Mire’s fami
ly waited so long because her
father, who had seen the suf
fering inflicted upon his three
older daughters, wanted to
Please see MORE/6A
Inside
Editorials 4A
Weather 8A
Life IB
Religion 8B
Sports 1C
Real Estate 5C
Business 8C
A&E ID
Classified 4D
To subscribe, call (704) 376-0496 or FAX (704) 342-2160.
© 2003 The Charlotte Post Publishing Co.
Please
Recycle
o
'OI