94-NUMBER 14 DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - SATURDAY, APRIL 11, 2015 TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913 PRICE: 30 CENTS Economic Recovery Eludes Black Workers By Freddie Allen NNPA Senior Washington Correspondent WASHINGTON (NNPA) - he slow-moving, uneven eco- omic recovery continues to ude black workers and some •onomists predict that even jth a falling unemployment te, at the end of 2015, blacks ill still be further away from ill recovery than whites. A recent study by the Eco- imic Policy Institute (EPI), a /ashington, D.C.-based think increases in the share of workers employed,” also known as the employment-population ratio or EPOP ratio. The study continued: “On the other hand, declining unem ployment in those states without increasing shares of workers em ployed may suggest workers are simply dropping out of the labor force.” Valerie Wilson, director of the Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy for EPI, analyzed 2014 data for the unemployment rate, the EPOP ratio, and the long-term unemployment rate, and said that using the unem ployment rate to determine the health of the labor market may be overstating the progress of the economic recovery in the U.S. “Between 2013 and 2014, the annual black unemployment rate declined most in Arkansas (6.5 percentage points), Indiana (4.6 percentage points), and Tennes see (3.6 percentage points). Of these, only Arkansas (Continued On Page2) M AYA ANGELOU A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” ink focused on low- and mid- le-income families, said that the fourth-quart of 2014, the ational unemployment rate for bites was “within 1 percent- ■.■e point of pre-recession levels, fhile the black unemployment ate was 2.4 percentage points igher than it was at the end of 007.” The report also explained at, “True labor market im- ovements are more likely in ose states experiencing both remployment declines and Obama family worships at historic Baptist I church in Virginia By Stacy Anderson ALEXANDRIA, Virginia \P) - President Barack Obama id his family are attending Eas- r services at the Alfred Street aptist Church in Alexandria, irginia, which says its his- iry goes back to the time when homas Jefferson was in the /hite House. According to the church’s .ebsite, the Alexandria Bap- st Society was formed in 1803 Some young people who were at the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist church Eas ter Egg Hunt. See photos on page 12. Author, poet, actress, and champion of civil rights Dr. Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was one of the most dy namic voices in all of 20th-century American literature. The book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, an auto biographical account of her childhood, gained wide ac claim for its vivid depiction of African-American life in the South. The stamp showcases artist Ross Rossin’s 2013 por trait of Dr. Angelou. The oil-on-canvas painting is part of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s collection. In the bottom left corner is the following phrase quoted by Dr. Angelou: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” Above the quota tion is her name in black type. The words “Forever” and “USA” are along the right side. Children’s author Joan Walsh Anglund told The Wash ington Post that she originated the sentence. “Yes, that’s my quote,” Anglund, 89, said Monday night. It appears on page 15 of her book of poems A Cup of Sun, published in 1967. The bright red-colored sheet also includes a short ex cerpt from Dr. Angelou’s book Letter to My Daughter. It reads: “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.” Art director Ethel Kessler designed the stamp. The Maya Angelou stamp is being issued as a Forev er® stamp in self-adhesive sheets of 12. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce price. Issue Date: April 7, 2015 (hen members split from an ther church in the Northern Vir- inia city, and a slave was bap- zed that year as its first black lember. Three years later, black mem- ers established the Colored laptist Society as a “conjoined” hurch. In 2000, President Bill Clin- )n visited Alfred Street a few ays before the November elec- on as he sang with the gospel hoir and appealed for a large arnout of black voters for Vice ’resident Al Gore in his race gainst Republican George W. lush. US state lacks evidence, frees man after 30 years By Kim Chandler BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (AP) - A man who spent nearly 30 years on Alabama's death row walked free two days after prosecutors acknowledged that the only evidence they had against him couldn’t prove he committed the crime. Ray Hinton was 29 when he was arrested for two 1985 killings. Freed on April 3 at age 58, with grey hair and a beard, he was embraced by his sob bing sisters, who said “thank you Jesus,” as they wrapped their arms around him outside the Jefferson County Jail. Hinton had won a new trial last year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that his trial counsel was inadequate. Prosecutors on April 1 moved to drop the case after new ballistics tests contradicted those done three decades ago. Experts couldn’t match crime scene bullets to a gun found in Hinton’s National Archives digitizes Little Rock Nine film LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - ’he National Archives has digi- ally remastered a film about the .ittle Rock Nine for the anniver- ary of its Academy Award win or best short documentary 50 'ears ago. The Arkansas Democrat- lazette reports that it’s the fifth ilm the archives’ Motion Picture ’reservation Lab has restored to inema quality. The film will be town at the National Archives ater in the spring and is avail able online. The archives says the 18-min- te film, titled Nine from Little lock, was never intended for American viewers but was town in hundreds of cities iround the globe. The film fol- ows the lives of several of the line black students years after Shey integrated Central High chool in Little Rock. The film is narrated by one of le Nine, Jefferson Thomas, who ied in 2010. home. “I shouldn’t have sat on death row for 30 years. All they had to do was test the gun,” Hinton said. The state of Alabama offered no immediate apology. “When you think you are high and mighty and you are above the law, you don’t have to answer to nobody. But I got news for them, everybody who played a part in sending me to death row, you will answer to God,” Hinton said. “They just didn’t take me from my family and friends. They had every intention of executing me for something I didn't do,” Hinton said. Hinton was arrested in 1985 for the murders of two Birmingham fast-food restaurant managers after the survivor of a third restaurant robbery identi fied Hinton as the gunman. Prosecution experts said at the trial that bullets recovered at all three crime scenes matched Hinton’s mother’s .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. He was convicted despite an alibi: He had been at work inside a locked warehouse 15 minutes away during the third shooting. “The only thing we’ve ever had to connect him to the two crimes here in Birmingham was the bullets matching the gun that was recovered from his home,” Chief Deputy District Attorney John R. Bowers, Jr. told The Associated Press on April 2. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that Hinton had “constitutionally deficient” representation at trial because his defense lawyer wrongly thought he had only $1,000 to hire a ballistics expert to rebut the state’s case. The only expert willing to take the job at that price struggled so much under cross-examination that jurors chuckled at his responses. Attorney Bryan Stevenson, who directs Alabama’s Equal Justice Initiative, called it “a case study” in what is wrong with the U.S. judicial system. He said the trial was tainted by racial bias and that Hinton, an impoverished African-American man, did not have access to a better defense. “We have a system that doesn’t do the right thing when the right thing is apparent. Prosecutors should have done these tests years ago,” Stevenson said. The independent experts Stevenson hired to re-examine this evidence after taking on Hinton’s case in 1999 “were quite unequivocal that this gun was not connected to these crimes,” he said. “That’s the real shame to me. What happened this week to get Mr. Hinton released could have happened at least 15 years ago.” Stevenson then tried in vain for years to persuade the state of Alabama to re-examine the evidence. The bullets only got a new look as prosecutors and defense lawyers tangled over a possible retrial following the Supreme Court ruling. The result: Three forensics experts could not positively conclude whether the bullets were fired from Hinton’s revolver, or whether they came from the same gun at all, according to the state’s request to dismiss the case against Hinton. Bowers said the “bullets were so badly mutilated that they did not have the necessary microscopic markings to make a conclusive determination.” Hinton was one of the longest-serving inmates on Alabama’s death row, and is one of the longest-serving inmates to be released in the United States. But Stevenson said there are many others behind bars who were convicted “based on bad science.” “We’ve allowed too many people to assert things in court that are not credible or reliable, painted over with this kind of scientific expertise which means there could be a lot of wrongful convictions,” Stevenson said.

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