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WILS 08/20/95 **CHW.II
WILSON LIBRARY
N C COLLECTION
UNC-CH
CHAPEL HILL NC P7514
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2015
PLUME 94 - NUMBER 21
TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913 PRICE: 30 CENTS
NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL UNIVERSITY
North Carolina Central University Awarded
$50,000 Grant From The Home Depot
North Carolina Central University (NCCU) has been selected as a top winner in The Home Depot
15 Retool Your School Campus Improvement Grant Program, receiving a $50,000 award.
NCCU’s improvement project is designed to enhance the approach to Eagleson Residence Hall (im-
e attached), creating a formal entryway and landscaped green space for a more functional and aes-
iically appealing addition to this section of campus.
The grant program, established in 2010, provides support for campus improvement projects at His-
■ically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) across the country and has awarded $1.2 million
liars in grant money to date. NCCU won a $10,000 grant in the 2014 contest that was used for im-
ovements to the A.E. Student Union. The Retool Your School Campus Improvement Grant Program
omotes sustainability by providing special consideration to eco-friendly project proposals. Winning
tool Your School projects will break ground in the summer of 2015.
“North Carolina Central University is excited about winning the $50,000 Retool Your School grant,
lichwill allow us to create an additional green space for students, faculty and alumni to enjoy on our
mpus,” said NCCU Chancellor Debra Saunders-White. “We are grateful to The Home Depot for of-
hng NCCU and other HBCL^he opportunity to improve and highlight the beauty of our institutions.”
This year, The Home Depot awarded a total of $255,000 to nine accredited HBCUs in $50,000,
5,000 and $10,000 grant denominations. The Retool Your School winners were chosen by a combi-
iion of online voting, social media activity and proposal reviews by a distinguished panel of judges.
“This has been one of the most exciting years for The Home Depot’s Retool Your School program
is far,” says Melissa Brown, senior manager-marketing for The Home Depot. “The HBCU commu-
y and beyond showed their unrelenting support for our HBCU’s and this program. We began with
HBCU’s submitting their proposals and now we have determined the winners. The Home Depot
judly congratulates all of the 2015 grant recipients.”
North Carolina Central University prepares students to succeed in the global marketplace. Flagship
tgrams include science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines, nursing, education,
business and the arts. Founded in 1910 as a liberal arts college for African-Americans, NCCU re-
lins committed to diversity in higher education. Our alumni are among the nation’s most successful
ientists, researchers, educators, attorneys, artists and entrepreneurs. Visit www.nccu.edu.
B.B. King breaks out in laughter as he’s presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom Fri-
iy, Dec. 15, 2006, by President George W. Bush in the East Room of the White House. Introduc-
8 the musician, President Bush told the audience, when speaking of the blues, “two names are
iramount... B.B. King, and his guitar, Lucille. America loves the music of B.B. King, and America
res the man, himself.” (White House Photo)
B.B. King memorial to mourn blues legend in Las Vegas
By Ken Ritter
LAS VEGAS (AP) - B.B. King played tens of thousands of gigs around the world and often said he
as blessed to play for presidents and the common folk.
On Saturday, the music legend will be mourned and praised as the King of the Blues and father to 15
lildren during a family-and-friends memorial in Las Vegas, where he died May 14 at age 89.
“He was the best,” said 83-year-old alto sax blues player Earl “Good Rockin” Brown, one of the first
( more than 1,000 people who viewed King’s open casket during a public viewing on Friday. Brown
membered being inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1990, the same time as King, who won 15
rammys, sold more than 40 million records worldwide and was also inducted into the Rock and Roll
all of Fame.
“Everyone else copied after him,” Brown said.
Some of King’s 11 surviving adult children are feuding with LaVerne Toney, his longtime business
lent and power-of-attorney, who is now executor of his estate.
Attorney Larissa Drohobyczer, representing a group of heirs, said Saturday that she met with five
lult King daughters - Patty King, Michelle King, Karen Williams, Barbara King Winfree and Claudette
ing Robinson - before issuing a statement saying they’ll contest the blues legend’s will and the actions
fToney.
The statement alleges Toney has misappropriated millions of dollars, has been untruthful and is un-
ualified to serve as executor of the B.B. King estate.
Toney told The Associated Press that she would not immediately respond.
A Call to Curb Expansion
of Charter Schools in
Black Communities
Choosing
CHARTER SCHOOLS
By Freddie Allen
Senior Washington Corre
spondent
WASHINGTON (NNPA) -
Parents, students and advocates
for strong neighborhood schools
continue to pressure civic lead
ers to end the expansion of char
ter and contract schools in Black
and Latino communities across
the nation.
Jitu Brown, the national di
rector of Journey for Justice Al
liance, a coalition of community,
youth and parent-led grassroots
organizations in 21 cities, said
that the fight for public educa
tion which suffers with the ex
pansion of charter and contract
schools “is a human and a civil
rights issue.
As voices from the commu
nity were increasingly drowned
out by philanthropic groups
seeking wholesale educational
reform, the state takeover of
schools, corporate charters and
appointed school boards have
become the status quo, Brown
said.
According to Education
Week, a magazine published by
Editorial Projects in Education,
a nonprofit that produces K-12
educational content in print
and online, more than 60 per
cent of philanthropic donations
tunneled into education young
people in the United States went
to charter and contract schools
in 2010. Less than 25 percent of
funding went to those programs
about 15 years ago.
“What would actually be rev
olutionary, brand new, and fresh
is if community wisdom was
listened to and [corporations]
worked with the people who are
directly impacted by the institu
tions that they have to live with
everyday,” said Brown.
9 The number of children
attending public charter schools
1 has more than quadrupled in
the last decade.
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Brown described two separate and unequal sets of expectations,
one for White and middle class children and another, lower set of
expectations for Black and Latino children that often influence edu
cation policy. Those disparities will continue until society finds the
courage to confront them.
“We want what our friends in other communities have, said
Brown. “They don’t have contract schools, they don’t have charter
schools in middle class White communities they have world-class
neighborhood schools.”
Daniel del Pielago of Empower DC agreed.
As the education organizer for Empower DC, a grassroots group
that supports low- and moderate-income District residents living in
the nation’s capital, said that when communities work together, and
when they’re given the chance to put together solutions that work,
they find success that doesn’t require corporate intervention.
That success is embodied by the community school model cham
pioned by groups such as the Alliance.
According to the Coalition for Community Schools, a network of
educational groups that provide support for youth development fam
ily and health services, community schools feature an “integrated fo
cus on academics, health and social services, youth and community
development and community engagement” that promotes “student
learning, stronger families and healthier communities.”
Helen Moore, the co-chairperson of the Keep the Vote/No Take-
over Coalition in Detroit, Mich., said that the reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently work
ing its way through a Republican-led Congress still at odds with
President Barack Obama, should give communities the power to
control the destinies of their children.
Moore said that neither “No Child Left Behind” Act, George W.
Bush’s education initiative, nor President Obama’s “Race to Top” ful
filled what was supposed to really happen: giving Black and Brown
school systems the power and resources they needed to implement
high-quality educational programs for their children.
“What’s lost in the minutiae of school closures is the dismantling
of good neighborhood schools,” said Brown. “There were actually
solid well-performing schools in our community that were receiving
schools for students that lost their schools due to closures.”
(Continued On Page 2)
Concealed Carry Permit Holders Kill Hundreds
By Freddie Allen
NNPA Senior Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NNPA) George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watchman
who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager in Sanford, Fla., three
years ago was involved in another shooting in the Sunshine State, again raises questions
about concealed carry permits and the billion-dollar gun industry that advocates for leg
islation aimed at making it easier for Americans to carry firearms everywhere, all of the
time.
Matthew Apperson of Winter Springs, Fla., who said that Zimmerman threatened him
following a road rage incident last year, claimed that he was acting in self-defense when
he fired a single shot through the passenger side window of the truck that Zimmerman was
driving.
Last Friday, police charged Apperson with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon,
aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and firing a deadly missile into an occupied
vehicle, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
The dispute with Apperson follows a series of events where Zimmerman has been ac
cused of threatening people with guns. In September 2013, just a few months after Zim
merman was acquitted of second-degree murder, his estranged wife and her father said
that Zimmerman threatened them with a gun and in November 2013, Zimmerman’s then-
girlfriend accused him of threatening her with a shotgun.
The Orlando Sentinel reported that Don West, Zimmerman’s lawyer, said that his cli
ent was armed and but didn’t wave the gun or shoot at anyone during the altercation with
Apperson. West added that Zimmerman has a concealed weapons permit and often travels
with a gun for protection.
Despite the self-defense claims propped up by the supporters of concealed carry laws,
the Violence Policy Center (VPC), a nonprofit group that seeks to address gun violence as
a public health crisis, concealed carry permits holders are more likely to kill themselves or
others during non-self defense events.
The center tracks fatalities associated with concealed carry gun permit holders at
ConcealedCarryKillers.org and found that 743 people have been killed, including 17 law
enforcement officers.
“In the vast majority of the 561 incidents documented (468, or 83 percent), the con
cealed carry permit holder either committed suicide (222), has already been convicted
(184), perpetrated a murder-suicide (46), or was killed in the incident (16),” stated a press
release about the website.
More than 70 people have been killed in Florida alone by concealed carry gun permit
holders.
In a press release about ConcealedCarryKillers.org, Kristen Rand, the legislative direc
tor of VPC, said that research shows that concealed carry permit holders are involved in
murders or suicides far more often than they act in self-defense. Rand added: “The NRA
is relentlessly lobbying state and federal lawmakers to allow more concealed handguns in
public despite the clear evidence that doing so puts more people in danger.”