THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1992
HE CIAA
HOME OF
m
r
Legendary
Charlie Sitford shares his
thoughts on his book.
TOURNAMENT
28 PAGES THIS WEEK
Sequins and bows
Stars and VIPs came home for a
weekend of festivities at WSSU.
?'> PAGE A3
Winston-Salem Chronicle
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75 cents j < "The Turn C/fy's Awd-Winning Weekly" VOL. XIX, No. S
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NEWS
BR
Drug session ? . 4
WASHINGTON D C. ? JohfY Lucas, for
merly of the Houston Rockets of the Nation
al Basketball Association, left, talks with
actor Robert Guillaume prior to a hearing of,
the House Select Committee on Narcotics,
last week on Capitol Hill. The committee
was holding hearings to discuss the 22nd
annual Congressional Black Caucus Leg
islative weekend on Narcotics and Drug
Abuse.
Making room for the dead
BAIDOA, Somalia
? Relief workers at a
makeshift morgue
make room for a
dead child last week
in Baidoa. Normaliy
Muslims wrap the
dead In white cloth,
but in Baidoa, most
people don't even
have cloths for the
dead. The Red Cross
resumed its airlift to
Baidoa and other
western Somali towns eight days after flights
were suspended when a U.S. relief plane was
struck by a bullet.
Barry victory
WASHINGTON, D C. ? The recent
victory of former Washington, D.C Mayor
Marion Barry in the Ward 8 city council race
has many experts recognizing that inner-city
discontent can be transplanted into a potent
political force. By staging his political come
-back in the city's poorest and most crime
ridden ward Barry defied critics who assert
ed that he was washed-up after a 1990 con
viction on a federal drug possession charge
for which he spent six months in jail.
The former civil rights leader noted the
potential of America's inner-cities when he
told supporters on election night, "You are a
sleeping giant that has risen." Voters in pre
dominately black Ward 8 rejected the advice
of a host of white and black officials who
had charged that Barry's political reemer
gence would harm the city. They did so by
giving him a landslide 69 percent victory
over incumbent Wilhelmina Rolark.
Magic Johnson returns
Magic John
son, shown
during his
Nov., 1991,
news confer
ence when he
announced he
had tested
positive for the
HIV virus,
resigned last
week from the
National Com
mission on
Alflfc.
Johnson,
saying the disease had been ignored by the
Bush Administration, faxed his resignation
letter to the White House.
He announced that he will return to
play for the Los Angeles Lakers.
News Hriefs
Compiled from staff and A/* reports
CIAA is ours!
Tourney will attract 20,000 upscale fans
BY SHERIDAN HILL
Chronicle Managing Editor
When CIAA fans descend on Win
ston-Salem in mid-February 1994,
20,000 visitors will be spending money at
all hours of the day and night. They'll
come to enjoy strong basketball competi
tion between 14 traditionally black col
leges and universities in North Carolina,
Virginia and Maryland. They'll expect
tournament activities and local clubs and
restaurants to carry on nearly 24-hours a
?? . w i
day. Xhey'll arrive with enthusiastic
hearts and heavy wallets.
It will be a gratifying week for
Mayor Martha Wood, the 15 host com
mittee members, and public and private
enterprises that lobbied and labored the
past three years to bring the event back to
North Carolina where it started in 1965.
Since then, Virginia has hosted the Cen
tral Intercollegiate Athletic Association
(CIAA) tournament.
_4Tve seen a willingness to work
together on this thai I haven't seen
before," said Mayor Wood. "It's going to
be a lot of hard work, but I think we're
going to have a lot of fun."
East Ward Alderman Virginia
Newell, who has attended the CIAA for
the past three years, referred to the week
long festivities as a gala.
"The entire city becomes a real fes
tive occasion. They're younger people,
from 30-40 years old, and they love to do
things at night. I hope it will turn the
downtown around." The site or the tour
nament, Lawrence Joel Veterans Memori
al Coliseum, is in Newell's ward.
City and chamber of commerce offi
cials submitted a $1.7 million bid for the
three-year contract, which is expected to
generate about $8 million a year in busi
ness revenue. This week, the city was
notified that it had won the bid.
? The CIAA will beheld Feb. 20-27,
1994; Feb. 19-26, 1995; and Feb. 25-Mar.
3, 1996.
Mother worries that her
son won't get a fair trial
BY TRAVIS MITCHELL
Chronicle Staff Writer
The Winston-Salem community has
been marked by violence this summer
and in many cases the city has been
divided down racial lines. Most recently,
race relations have been strained at the
discovery that iirnest R. Cherry, a 25
year-old black man, has been charged
with kidnaping, rape and assault of
Christine L. Gallaher, a 36-year-old
white woman. Nearly two weeks ago,
police launched a massive statewide
search foe* Gallaher and traced leads to
Cheny Cherry was arrested in Colum
bus County; and then directed police to
Gallaher. She was found near Fayet
teville in a wooded area and is currently
recuperating.
Early last week Cherry's mother,
Dorothy Cherry, checked her mail box
and was greeted with a letter signed Ku
Klux Klan.
"I thought it was a joke because 1
thought people were more mature than
that in 1992," she said. The letter read:
"Dear Scumbag, pray you never get out
of prison. What you did to Ms. Gallaher
is nothing compared to what we'll do to
you. Sincerely, Your Worst Nightmare."
The return address read "KKK."
"I am still real nervous and numb
Ernest R. Cherry
about what is going on," she said. "This
is really affecting me"
During the past week, letters of
encouragement and support have been
expressed for the Gallaher family, but
Cherry said that her family is suffering
Dorothy Cherry
too. "I am praying for the Gallaher fami
ly because it not only affects her family,
but mine also," she said. "I am hoping
that Ms. Gallaher will recover fully.
Please see page A2
Redistricting process frustrates school board
BY TRAVIS MITCHELL
Chronicle Staff Writer
The Forsyth County school board com
mittee on redisricting voted last week to
approve redisricting guidelines which call
for: a reduction of busing; new elementary
schools in East Winston; racial balance; two
new middle schools in the eastern and west
em parts of the county; and * pattern that
allows students to move from elementary,
middle and high schools with their peers.
However, several members expressed reser
vations about these guidlines saying that it
was virtually impossible to achieve all of
those stipulations and keep an integrated
school system, but newly-elected board
member Geneva Brown disagrees.
"There are a lot of complex problems,"
she said. "But most of the problems center
around the fact that people are not ready to
accept an all-black school (98%). It seems
to be okay for schools to be all white, but
all-black schools seem to scare some peo
ple. I believe in integration and I don't
believe in segregation, but I am going to
work for what is best for kids. Parents in the
black community are tired of our kids bear
ing the burden for integration. We are
bussed all over the county to achieve racial
balance, but no one wants white children
bussed into the inner-city."
During the past year the school board
has been embroiled in controversy and
indecision.
On Friday, June 19 the (then) all-white
school board voted to proceed with redis
tricting talks without black representation,
which infuriated the black community. Next
on July 2, Carlton Eversley, a representative
of the Citizens United for Justice, led black
leaders in civil disobedience in a successful
attempt to stop the school board from pro
ceeding without including the newly elected
black members, Walter Marshall and Gene
va Brown. During the following school
board meeting, on August 6, board member
Dr. Gerald Hewitt proposed the creation of
an ad -hoc committee, which would include
Marshall and Brown and set the criteria for
the redistricting process, but during the ad
hoc committee's first meeting, September 8,
the board became frustrated over the Vol
ume of issues and voted to create a Sub
committee which would set the criteria for
the board to follow.
\
Genealogy research hard for blacks
Searching for
roots is important
BY SHERIDAN HILL
Chronicle Managing Editor
The question: Who am I and where did I
come from? is hardest for black Americans,
whose ancestors were stripped of their identi
ty the day their feet hit American shores.
Their names were changed. According to
Ethnic Genealogy, a good African name like
M'chiba might have bccome Cato, then Cae
sar, then George, and finally Little Buck.
But experts say practically every black
American can trace his or her roots to 1R63,
when one-seventh of all African-Americans
were free. Sixty percent of all black Ameri
cans have a mixture of Indian blood in their
veins.
Rita Kilgorc found her grcat-grcat-grand
parcnts listed as slave property in the last will
and testament of Reuben Kendall of Stanley
County, N.C.
/ xivc and hrqucath unto my son l.lc
Please see page A2
(L-R) Tesheka Crawford and Bobby Wilson clean up a
gravesite at Odd Fellows Cemetery on Shorefair Dr.
\
To learn more The Forsyth Genealogical Society meets meets twice
monthly at the main library, and members ate available in the N C
Room on Thursdays 9 a.m. -12 p.m The society also researches sur
names (last names) of its members, as time permits. Call President
Lucille Bowles at 983-9237 or Vice President Jerry Brinegar at
788-1253 for more information.
Black cemeteries
are long forgotten
BY SHERIDAN HILL
Chronicle Managing Editor
Bobby Wilson has led a local effort to
preserve the three remaining cemeteries that
were originated as black cemeteries: Odd
Fellows, Silver Hill, and Evergreen. Across,
America, black cemeteries have been forgot
ten. grown over, dug up. and covered with
fill dirt. In 1988. when construction was
underway for an RJR building, a construc
tion worker mistakenly dumped a truckload
of dirt on a part of Odd Inflows Cemetery.
Before that, its state of disrepair was the
subject of many complaints from the com
munity. In 1941. the last graves from the
former Liberty Street Cemetery were moved
to make way for business construction.
Several weeks ago, in New York,
Mayor Oavid Dinkins urged landmark status
to the newly -discovered "Negro Burying
Ground" found buried 20 feet below Man
hattan. containing 20. (XX) graves of blacks
who died in the 17th and 18th centuries.
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