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VOLUME 96 - NUMBER 13
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Black lawmakers call on FBI
to help on missing black girls
By Jesse J. Holland
WASHINGTON (AP) - Black
members of Congress are call
ing for the Justice Department
to help police investigate a large
number of missing children in
Washington, D.C.
The District of Columbia
logged 501 cases of missing ju
veniles, many of them black or
Latino, in the first three months
of this year, according to the
Metropolitan Police Department,
the city’s police force. Twenty-
two were unsolved as of March
22, police said.
The letter, dated March 21
and obtained March 23 by The
Associated Press, was sent by
Congressional Black Caucus
chairman Cedric Richmond,
D-La., and Del. Eleanor Holmes
Norton, who represents the Dis
trict in Congress. They called on
Attorney General Jeff Sessions
and FBI Director James Comey
to “devote the resources neces
sary to determine whether these
developments are an anomaly or
whether they are indicative of an
underlying trend that must be ad
dressed.”
An email sent to the Justice
Department seeking comment
was not immediately answered
March 25. Richmond said he
hopes to meet with Sessions
and bring up the issue. No meet
ing is currently scheduled. But
President Donald Trump assured
caucus members on Mrch 24 that
he would make his Cabinet sec
retaries available to them.
D.C. police officials said
there has been no increase in
the numbers of missing persons
in their jurisdiction. “We’ve just
been posting them on social me
dia more often,” said Metropoli
tan Police spokeswoman Rachel
Reid.
According to local police
data, the number of missing child
cases in the District dropped
from 2,433 in 2015 to 2,242 in
2016. The highest total recently,
2,610, was back in 2001.
But the increased social me
dia attention has caused concern
in the U.S. capital area, which
has long had a large minority
population and is currently about
48 percent black. Hundreds
of people packed a town-hall
style meeting at a neighborhood
school on March 24 to express
concern about the missing chil
dren cases.
“Ten children of color went
missing in our nation’s capital in
a period oftwo weeks and at first
garnered very little media atten
tion. That’s deeply disturbing,”
Richmond’s letter said.
Derrica Wilson, co-founder
of the Black and Missing Foun
dation, said that despite the as
surances from police, it was
alarming for so many children
to go missing around the same
time. On March 21 night, she
noted, her group had four reports
of missing children and only one
had been found.
“We can’t focus on the num
bers. If we have one missing
child, that’s one too many,” Wil
son said.
Wilson said she is concerned
about whether human traffick
ing is a factor, citing the case
of 8-year-old Relisha Rudd,
who has been missing since she
vanished from a city homeless
shelter in 2014. A janitor who
worked at the shelter was found
dead of apparent suicide during
the search for the girl.
“They prey on the homeless,
they prey on low income chil
dren, they prey on the runaways,
they prey online,” Wilson said.
Information from the Na
tional Crime Information Cen
ter showed there were 170,899
missing black children under 18
in the United States, more than
any other category except for
the white/Hispanic combined
number of 264,443. Both num
bers increased from the year
before, which saw 169,655 miss
ing black children and 262,177
missing white/Hispanic children.
“Whether these recent disap
pearances are an anomaly or
signals of underlying trends, it
is essential that the Department
of Justice and the FBI use all of
the tools at their disposal to help
local officials investigate these
events, and return these children
to their parents as soon as pos
sible,” Richmond said.
The African American Quilt Circle presents a new exhibit
“Dew Much Life, threads Connecting Lives” at Hayti Heritage
Center. See photos from the opening on page 6)
NAACP leader: GOP lawmakers of
fended public with policies
RALEIGH (AP) -Achief critic ofNorth Carolina Re
publican policies on everything from voting and LGBT
rights to health care and the minimum wage says GOP
legislators have offended the public and their laws must
be overturned.
State NAACP president the Rev. William Barber led a
lobbying effort March 21 at the Legislative Building for
his organization and allied groups with the “Forward To
gether” movement. Clergy and other activists went door-
to-door to House and Senate members’ offices to push
their policy agenda.
A couple of hundred people joined Barber for an after
noon news conference, where he complained about the
inaction of GOP legislative leaders, especially after court
rulings on voting laws and redistricting.
In 2013, Barber began leading peaceful “Moral Mon
day” demonstrations at the Legislative Building that ulti
mately resulted in over 1,000 arrests.
Teen held on murder charge
found dead in Durham jail cell
(AP) - A teen arrested on a
murder charge last year has been
found dead in her cell at the Dur
ham County jail.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Ta
mara Gibbs said in a news re
lease that officers were sent to
the jail around 3:30 a.m. March
23 where they found 17-year-old
Uneice Glenae Fennell unre
sponsive. Paramedics declared
her dead.
Fennell was arrested last July
and charged with murder in the
death of 19-year-old Andre Bond
of Durham.
The news release said that
based on preliminary evidence
and statements given to detec
tives, investigators think Fennell
killed herself. The department
did not say how she died.
Fennell was also charged with
firing a gun into an occupied
residence and firing a gun with
a pattern of street gang activity.
The State Bureau of Investi
gation is handling the case.
Alumna Authors Book
About Higher Education
- Alumna Tressie McMil
lan Cottom, Ph.D. au
thored novel, “Lower Ed:
The Troubling Rise for
For-Profit Colleges in the
New Economy.”
In the narrative, Cot-
tom examines higher ed
ucation in the for-profit
sector. She also explores
the benefits, pitfalls, and
real costs of a for-profit
education. Cottom dis
cussed her new book as
the featured guest on
“The Daily Show ” on
March 8.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said that she has considered pursuing im
peachment proceedings for President Donald Trump, during a ceremony honoring
a Lenora “Doll” Carter, former publisher of the Houston Forward Times. (Freddie
Allen/AMG/NNPA)
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee To
Black Press: Trump Has
Endangered America
By Harry Colbert, Jr. (Insight News/NNPA Member)
WASHINGTON, DC—On a day that honored a stalwart of the Black Press and saw a liaison of the
Trump Administration walk out on a breakfast with members of the Black Press, it was the words of Rep
resentative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) in a university library that rang the loudest.
Rep. Jackson Lee delivered remarks on March 23 in memory of Lenora “Doll” Carter, long-time
publisher of the “Houston Forward Times,” who was just enshrined in the National Newspaper Publish
ers Association (NNPA) Gallery of Distinguished Publishers at Howard University’s Founders Library.
The enshrinement ceremony is one of the signature events of Black Press Week, an annual celebration in
Washington, D.C., attended by NNPA members, partners, sponsors and Black Press contributors.
The NNPA is a trade group of more than 200 Black-owned media companies operating in 70 markets
in the United States.
During her impromptu talk after the enshrinement ceremony, Jackson Lee dropped a bombshell. In
talking about the nation’s current president, Jackson Lee minced no words.
“This is not a government, right now,” said Jackson Lee in front of nearly 50 members of the Jackson
Lee added: “I’m on the route of impeachment.”
Jackson Lee said there are a litany of reasons that should disqualify President Donald Trump as presi
dent including his potential ties to Russia and its interference in November’s election, but she also said
America is unsafe under Trump.
“I’m concerned about our nation. I’m concerned about what happens when we get that call about
North Korea in the middle of the night,” said Jackson Lee. “You have in office an individual that is unread
and unlearned.”
Jackson Lee’s statement rang loud, because she is also a member of the House Judiciary and Home
land Security Committees.
Some have expressed concerns that an impeachment of Trump would leave the nation under the con
trol of Vice President Mike Pence, who is seen as a staunch conservative with far right-wing views.
Jackson Lee does not share in those concerns.
“At least he understands government,” said the Texas representative. “And I’m focused on getting him
(Pence) out in 2020, anyway.”
Jackson Lee also remembered “Doll” Carter, fondly.
“Doll was larger than life,” remarked Jackson Lee. Carter lived in Jackson Lee’s district.
Carter, who died in 2010, also served as the treasurer of the NNPA. She was remembered as a powerful
businesswoman and a loving friend.
Colleague and close friend Dorothy Leavell said Carter lived up to her nickname.
“I know why they called her “Doll,’” said Leavell, “She was beautiful on the outside and she was
beautiful on the inside, as well.”
Insight News is a member publication of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Learn more
about becoming a member at www.nnpa.org.
Death rates up for middle age
whites with little education
By Christopher S. Rugaber
WASHINGTON (AP) - A sobering portrait of less-educated middle-age white Americans emerged
March 23 with new research showing them dying disproportionately from what one expert calls “deaths
of despair” - suicides, drug overdoses and alcohol-related diseases.
The new paper by two Princeton University economists, Anne Case and Angus Deaton, concludes that
the trend is driven by the loss of steady middle-income jobs for those with a high school diploma or less.
The economists also argue that dwindling job opportunities have triggered broader problems for this
group. They are more likely than their college-educated counterparts, for example, to be unemployed,
unmarried or suffering from poor health.
“This is a story of the collapse of the white working class,” Deaton said in an interview. “The labor
market has very much turned against them.”
Those dynamics helped fuel the rise of President Donald Trump, who won widespread support among
whites with only a high school diploma. Yet Deaton said his policies are unlikely to reverse these trends,
particularly the health care legislation now before the House that Trump is championing. That bill would
lead to higher premiums for older Americans, the Congressional Budget Office has found.
“The policies that you see, seem almost perfectly designed to hurt the very people who voted for him,”
Deaton said.
Case and Deaton’s paper, issued by the Brookings Institution, follows up on research they released in
2015 that first documented a sharp increase in mortality among middle-aged whites.
Since 1999, white men and women ages 45 through 54 have endured a sharp increase in “deaths
of despair,” Case and Deaton found in their earlier work. These include suicides, drug overdoses, and
alcohol-related deaths such as liver failure.
In the paper released March 23, Case and Deaton draw a clearer relationship between rising death
rates and changes in the job market since the 1970s. They find that men without college degrees are less
likely to receive rising incomes over time, a trend “consistent with men moving to lower and lower skilled
jobs.”
Other research has found that Americans with only high school diplomas are less likely to get married
or purchase a home and more likely to get divorced if they do marry.
“It’s not just their careers that have gone down the tubes, but their marriage prospects, their ability to
raise children,” said Deaton, who won the Nobel prize in economics in 2015 for his long-standing work
on solutions to poverty. “That’s the kind of thing that can lead people to despair.”