WILSON LIBRARY
N C COLLECTION
UNC-CH
CHAPEL HILL
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aCiiM
JaUME 79 - NUMBER 24
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA — SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 2001
TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913
PRICE:30 CENTS
Durham Committee to Hold
66th Founder’s Anniversary
Banquet August 25
"Thi Durham Commillee on the
iffairs of Black People (DCABP)
ill celebrate its 66th Founders
bniversary Banquet on Saturday,
ijust 25, at 6:00 p.m. in the W,
Pearson Cafeteria on the campus
North Carolina Central Univer-
The distinguished community
;aders being honored are: Dr.
homas B. Bass, a long-serving,
radioing dentist; and The Caw-
Tunes Family, Mrs. Vivian
ouise Austin Edmonds and Ken-
jih W. Edmonds who, through
professional sacrifice and dedicated
commitment, have ensured the con
tinuous publication of the seventy-
- nine (79) year old Carolina Times.
This independent, community-
oriented weekly newspaper
primarily, hut not exclusively,
serves the African American popu
lation of Durham and Durham
County.
The honorees in their respective
ways have been beacons of light in
the continuing struggles to make
the aspirations and ideals of the
DCABP founders reality. In August
1935, these visionary founders saw
the need to establish "a permanent
organization to represent the Negro
citizenship of Durham in all mat
ters pertaining to their educational,
economic, political, civic, and so
cial welfare.” The principal func
tion of DCABP "shall be to work
toward the elimination of racial dis
crimination or distinction in public '
and general private affairs." Great
progress has been made; yet, much
remains to be achieved.
(Continued On Page 2)
Mrs. Ernestine Holmes, president of NCCU’s GoldsboroAVayne Alumni Association,
left, Mrs. Judy Ammons, Chancellor James Ammons and Dr. Orlando Stovall meet in
Goldsboro. Chancellor Ammons was the keynote speaker at the annual
GoldsboroAVayne Alumni Banquet held at the First African Church. (NCCU Photo by
Lawson)
Blacks in State Voting at
Lower Rate Than Whites
DR. BASS
EDMONDS
EDMONDS
Bill Would Give More Money
To Help AIDS Patients,
Prevention Among Blacks
By Gary D. Robertson
RALEIGH (AP) - With blacks
iccoun(ing for most HIV and AIDS
ases in North Carolina, the state
eeds lo put more money and em-
teison disease prevention, health
xperis told a House panel.
While blacks make 'up about one-
fth of the state population, they
ccount for 70 percent of the
0.500 HIV-related cases since
.IDS was first reported through
lie end of last year, according to
iaie figures. Women and Latinos
Iw make up a greater percentage
bhe cases compared to 1990.
A bill before a Hou.se panel
^ould declare HIV/AIDS a public
lealih crisis in North Carolina. A
oniroversial . provision asks the
department of Health and Hu
nan Services to study needle ex-
^angc programs for drug users in
n attempt to reduce the spread of
■ilV,
Wc re seeing a whole society
'^ing devastated by disease," Dr.
W Primm, chairman of the Na-
J'nal Minority AIDS Council, told
^ House Health Committee. "We
so much more education."
rimm led a presentation about
^*^Hect of AIDS on North Caro
lina as lawmakers began hearing
^ ^’ill that would allocate more
n’J'ncy to help with prevention and
Vacation efforts as well as lo pay
niedicinc.
Slate supervises a program
nclp.s uninsured, HIV-positive
'n'^'iduals pay for drugs designed
’^P their disease in check.
fiscal year, - nearly 1,900
j'^nts received help to pay for
jng cocktails" and protease in-
™ from a budget of $12.3
' About $8 million came
^ fhc federal government.
House measure seeks $4.5
annually for the next two
leAth those eligible for
PS Drug Assistance Program
^ Ihose with incomes up to 125
poverty level to 250
in.i.'' poverty level. A
(n 31 250 percent of the
«r v? $24,500
ale it ^ current 125 percent
cne of the lowest among the
"People who are making under
$20,000 per year, they’re faced
with not getting a job in order to
keep gettijig the drugs, or getting a
job not being assured of the drugs,"
state AIDS director Evelyn Foust
said. "I don’t think we ought to put
people in that dilemma."
The bill also would set aside $2
million over the next two years to
fund community-based programs to
educate the public more about how
the disease is spread. The money
also would expard testing and
treatment facilities.
New testing tools are making it
easier and quicker to diagnose indi
viduals with HIV and treat them,
Bill Hinchey, a vice president at
OraSure Technologies, told the
committee.
Hinchey touted a new testing pro
duct that would take only 20
minutes to test for HIV and other
sexually-transmitted diseases using
a saliva or blood sample.
Injecting drugs with used, tainted
syringes is the second-leading
known cause of HIV cases in North
Carolina, according to the Division
of Public Health. Homosexual sex
is the leading caus\
House Republicans have been op
posed to state funding of such pro
grams they say promotes drug use..
Pilots proposed in the 1997 and
1999 sessions didn’t clear the
House.
Rep. Thomas Wright, Ihe bill
sponsor, said he’s not going to
amend the bill to add pilot pro
grams as he did two years ago,
angering Republicans.
But he believed the HHS study
could prompt private organizations
to implement needle programs. A
needle exchange program in
Asheville has been praised by some
for lowering HIV cases among
blacks.
"It’s not a government sanctioned
program," said Wright, D-New
Hanover.
Several public health groups sup
port needle exchanges, although
studies have mixed. There was no
debate by the committee on the
needle-exchange study provision.
Health and Human Services Sec
retary Carmen Hooker Buell said
the department supports the bill.
"Clearly HIV/AIDS is an exam
ple of the health dLspariiies in
North Carolina between white
North Carolinians and minority
black North Carolinians," Buell
said. Eliminating the.se kind of dis
parities "is without a doubt my top
priority within the department."
CHARLOTTE (AP) - Blacks in North
Carolina vote at a lower rate than whites
despite constant registration drives and laws
making it easier to cast ballots, according to
a newspaper study.
In Mecklenburg County, 56 percent of
voting-age whites went to the polls in No
vember compared to 45 percent of blacks.
Overall, North Carolina’s gap was more
than 12 percentage points, the Charlotte Ob
server reported Monday.
"We’re well aware of the gap," said Fred
Yates, political action chairman for tlie
NAACP’s N.C. chapter^. "We’ve got a long
way to go."
The study reflected a national pattern
caused primarily by socio-economic factors.
Poor and low-educated people are less likely
to vote than others, studies show, and blacks
make up a disproportionate share of that
group.
Black voting ri.ses at the higher end of the
socio-economic ladder,
"If you could correct for (income) nation
wide, then blacks are actually more likely to
participate than whites in the same status,"
said political scientist John Aldrich of Duke
University. "(The gap) is almost ail class
and educational background."
The Observer reviewed data for 82 of tlte
state’s 100 counties. Nowhere did the black
participation rate top that of whites.
Experts cite several rea.sons for the voting
gap, including historical discrimination, the
number of black men in pri.son or on parole,
and feelings among black residents they
have little at'stake in an election.
"If for years you’ve been told your vote
doesn’t matter, that you don’t count, then
why should you go to the polls?" asked the
Rev. Charlene Hendricks, pastor of Solid
Rock Missionary Baptist Church in Char
lotte.
Angelo Sharpless, a 40-year-old black
truck driver from the Charlotte area, said he
doesn’t vote becau.se "everybody lies and
tells you what they’re going to do, and then
when they get up there, they don’t do noth
ing."
Yet Duane Muhammad, a leader of Hick
ory’s predominantly black' Ridgeview com
munity, said he votes out of respect for his
family. His mother marched in Detroit with
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and other rela
tives also felt passionately about civil rights.
"Those who have gone before us literally
died for us to be able to vote," Muhammad
said. "For that alone, we should vote."
Also contributing to the gap is the fact that
a disproportionate number of people in
prison, probation or parole in the Carolinas -
'about 59 percent - are black. They cannot
apply to vote until their sentence has ex
pired, which contributes to the gap.
Because politicians reflect their 'voters'’
agendas, experts said the gap means that
black interests are underrepresented in city
halls, legislatures and Congress.
Add the fact that lower-income voters are
less likely to contribute to campaigns or get
active politically and you have the makings
of a system geared toward the wealthy, said
Claudine Gay, a Stanford University politi
cal scientist who studies ethnic voting pat-
lerns.
"One should be concerned about how to
engage otherwise unengaged Americans,"
she said. "And among the most unengaged
Americans are African Americans."
High Court Sustains Victory for
Award-Winning Louisiana Inmate
By Anne Gearan
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S.
Supreme Court refused lo consider
a Louisiana prosecutor’s attempt to
reinstate a murder sentence for an
award-winning prison journalist.
The high court’s action, taken
without comment June 18, means
Wilbert Rideau will either be
retried or set’free after four decades
behind bars.
A federal appeals court over
turned Rideau’s conviction last De
cember for the abduction and kill
ing of a white bank teller because
blacks were improperly excluded
from the grand jury that indicted
Rideau, who is black.
The 20-member jury had only
one black member.
District Attorney Rick Bryant has
said he would seek a new convic
tion if the Supreme Court refused
to reinstate Rideau’s verdict.
"In this case, there were two
living victim witnesses, several
confessions and much physical evi
dence," Bryant said in December.
"No grand jury in the history of the
world would not have indicted."
The facts of Rideau’s crime are
not in dispute. In 1961, when he
was 19, Rideau robbed a Lake
Charles bank of dlrs 14,000, took
three hostages and shot them as
they begged for their lives. Two
lived; teller Julia Ferguson died.
Rideau arrived at the Louisiana
Stale Penitentiary in Angola with
an eighth-grade education and a
death sentence. While waiting for
his date in the electric chair, he
taught himself to read and began
writing. His sentence was changed
to life in prison without parole after
the U.S. Supreme Court threw out
Louisiana’s death penalty in 1972.
Under his editorship, the prison
magazine. The Angolite. has won
the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism
Award and the American Bar Asso
ciation s Silver Gavel Award. It has
included articles about rape and a
killing in prison, inmate suicides,
riots, prisoner rights and execu
tions.
Rideau also co-directed a '1998
documentary about the Louisiana
State Penitentiary called "The
Farm," which won the Grand Jury
Prize at the 1998 Sundance Film
Festival.
Despite recommendations for a
commutation, four governors have
refused lo free Rideau.
While Rideau has never denied
killing the bank clerk, his attorney
has said a new and fair trial could
result in conviction for a lesser
crime, perhaps manslaughter,
resulting in a shorter sentence and
Rideau’s ultimate release.
Durham Branch NAACP
Monthly Meeting
Sunday, June 24, 4 p.m.
Bell-Yeager FWB Church
128 East Cornvi/allis Road
• The Public is Invited •