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Robinson says gooidbyo Grambling head coach Eddie ' Robinson, 78, fights , back his tears during a pregame ceremony marking his last home game in Grambling, La., Saturday, Nov. 15. Robinson, who has coached Grambling for 57 years, lost his final home game to North Carolina A&T 37-35. (AP Pholo/IAP Photo/Efic Gay) Black mayor in j former Klan town Stone Mountain, Ga., Mayor-elect j Chuck Burns sits in 1 the town's business district on Tuesday, Nov. 11. Today, the mayor's office once held by an imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan is about to be filled by Burris, who also lives in the former KKK leader's house. Elected with biracial support, he is more concerned about getting new sidewalks and more police than with Stone Mountain's old image of racial division. (AP Photo/(AP Photo/Eric S. Lesser) Peace grow* in wake of U.N. A youngster kicks the ball during a soccer game on the beach north of Maputo, Mozambique, July 27. A few years ago only armed convoys ventured out of the country's capital, Maputo. Mozambique is a U.N. success story, peacekeepers stayed until 1994 and dragged the two warring foes into fair elections. |AP Photo/Ion Woelchuk Jordan to got his ball park? !FILE ? Chicago Bulls' Michael Jordan and Oprah Winfrey share a laugh during a taping of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in Chicago Oct. 20. It was reported in the Chicago Sun-Times on Friday, Nov. 14, that Jordan and Winfrey, along with former Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton, are among a group hoping to buy the Bears. |AP Photo/Horpo Productions, Steve Greenl J DNA frees two from rape charge Ex-inmate Billy Wardell, center, embraces fellow inmate Donald Reynolds, left, and his foster aunt Cheryl Perkins as they leave prison in Joliet, III., Tuesday, Nov. 18. Both men were freed after (AP Photo/Chicogo Tribune, John Smierciok) SMART from page A1 Guilford County range from improv ing the quality and scope of child care to providing prenatal care for uninsured mothers and dental screen ings for young children. ' "The goal of Smart Start is to make sure that children are happy before they enroll in school," said Bibbs, who is helping organize the county's Smart Start effort. Goodman said the needs are preva lent. Fifteen percent of preschool children in the county are living in poverty, and 47 percent of single mothers with preschool children are living in poverty. There are 800 chil dren in the county eligible for the fed eral Head Start program who aren't being served, she said. One of the best ways to improve the achievement of children is to give them the best start possible through quality preschool attention, said Dot Kearns of High Point, a member of the Guilford County Board of Education and the board for the part nership. "We don't want children to lose hope and confidence before they have a chance to learn," Kearns said. To implement activities to help children, the partnership is seeking proposals from the community, Goodman said. The partnership will accept proposals from those wanting to take on the task of performing Smart Start activities. The current fiscal year budget for Smart Start in Guilford County is $1.4 million, which will double to $2.8 million for the 1998-99 fiscal year, Goodman said. Guilford County is one of 42 counties in the state that has begun implementing Smart Start, she said. The activities planned for Guilford County result from suggestions made at community meetings held earlier this year, Goodman said. Bibbs said members of the African-American community had a strong presence at meetings held around the county as the local Smart Start program was being planned. While Smart Start will help African-American children and their parents, Bibbs said, the benefits of Smart Start aren't based on race. "All parents, no matter what their ethnici ty, want the same thing for their chil dren," Bibbs said. "They want them to be safe, to be prepared to learn when they go to school." Goodman said the partnership wants to have most, if not all, of its 22 activities up and going by January. "Especially with welfare, when we're saying parents with young children have to be working, we have to pro vide quality care for their children," Goodman said. Providing more train ing to child-care providers through Smart Start will result in better Smart Start in Cqflford County The Guilford County Partnership for Children is implementing the state Smart Start program in the county. Smart Start is supposed to provide com prehensive services for preschool children. How to Contact?The partnership is in office 608 of the Self-Help build ing in downtown Greensboro at 132 N. Elm St. The phone number is 274 5437. Activities ? The partnership will arrange activities in three areas: child care, health care and family support. The activities including the following: ? Consultation with child-care centers and family chikl-care homes. ? Quality improvement grants to child-care centers and family child-care homes ? Incentives for specialized training and education for those with respon sibilities for children with special needs. ? Studying the transportation needs of children and families to and from child-care programs. ? Studying the issue of wages, benefits and educational levels of child-care workers, with the aim of increasing compensation. ? Providing dental screenings to children older than 2 through an on-site dental hygienist. ? Expanding the Caring Program to provide health insurance to addi tional children up to age 5. ? Arranging for public health nurses to provide nursing services to licensed child-care centers. ? Providing prenatal substance abuse counseling for expectant mothers. ? Providing education and support for parents through a home visiting program. ? Assessing the existing family support services in Guilford County, with an eye toward identifying gaps and overlaps instruction and preparation for chil dren, Bibbs said. Also, subsidies for low-income families will help parents afford qual ity child care that otherwise would be beyond their budgets, Bibbs said. A single, working mother making 515,000 annually would have to pay more than 30 percent of her income for child support, Goodman said. RECORDS from page A J alarming escalation of youth violence here. And according to the organiza tion's literature, those affiliated with Forsyth Futures hope to use their "collective clout to direct system wide policies and procedures which affect how we deliver services to youth." The group's roster includes those who do indeed have clout. The chief of the Winston-Salem Police Department is a member, as are the county manager, the city manager, the director of the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem and the sheriff. Pooling resources is at the top of their collective agenda, specifically sharing records and information maintained on computer databases. If the initiative proceeds as plantied, officials at the Department of Social Services, the Mental Health Department, Forsyth County Public Schools and the Police Department will be able to tap into each other's computer files. The idea is that some agencies may have information that would benefit another agency in serving a particular family. For example, if the Mental Health Department had access to reports and data maintained by the Department of Social Services, time, money and human resources could be used more efficiently, offi cials contend. Currently, there are duplicative efforts. The story of "Jason" is perhaps one of the most widely repeated examples of what can happen when agencies don't communicate. Jason made straight A's in first grade. A's and B's in second grade. B's and C's in third grade. "After that, though, his grades continued to decline because he missed school so much," said Sylvia Oberle. "During elementary and mid dle school, he changed schools 13 times, falling further and further behind each time." Still, he was an intelligent lad; his IQ was well above average. He scored the highest score of anyone in his middle school. "That fact alone seems to gnaw at us as we learn more about his story," Oberle said. "In all, eight different agencies in this community provided services for Jason and his family. Though individual agencies were working well within their mandates, no real progress was made." Little contact or coordination took place between the agencies. Referrals for treatment were made, but no one was responsible for coor dinating the effort. Individual family members received services, but no one seemed to be focusing on the family or on the root causes of their prob lems. By age 13, while his mother was in prison, Jason was repeatedly running away from home, the home he was liv ing in with his alcoholic grandfather. He also ran away from foster homes, where he was periodically placed. By 14 he already had a drug problem, extending the substance abuse in his family to the third generation. By 15, he had a juvenile record. "Angry aggressive, unkept, he was roaming the streets and admitted to continued drug abuse. He's not really a bad kid," Oberle read from a social worker's account. "He's just floating out there with no stability at all." During a house break-in, Jason was badly burned by the fire he and other juveniles allegedly set. Now, at age 16, he is being charged as an adult for the crime. "That means he is now in the adult court system, and in effect, lost to just about anything this communi ty could have done to help him," Oberle said. Because of Jason and similar case studies, members of Forsyth Futures asked attorneys to examine North Carolina's confidentiality laws. The result was the creation of the "Jason Network." "We asked the attorneys to look at what was in fact mandated by law to be kept confidential and what was merely policy, policy that could be changed," Oberle said, adding that Forsyth Futures has spent more than 14 hours with the Department of Social Services to learn more about how decisions are made in abuse and neglect cases. Sharing information, however, poses some legal concerns. "We're going to challenge confi dentiality laws," said Assistant Attorney General Laurie Robinson. She said some laws prevent agencies from having access to information that could result in more efficient delivery of services. At the same time, however, giving all agencies access to information could be a violation of privacy. "We have to balance criminal jus tice and civil rights," U.S. Attorney Walter Holton said following the meeting with Forsyth Futures. Holton said that he hopes the com munity will participate in the ongoing planning of the Jason network to guarantee that such a balance is achieved. About SO people attended the meeting in Winston-Salem; fewer than 10 were black. Although state Rep. Larry Womble commended the Justice Department for encouraging and supporting the "holistic approach" to reducing juvenile crime, others noted that the plan is not com plete. Loretta Biggs, an assistant U.S. attorney, noted that parents, as well as members of the clergy, have been out of the picture so far. Nigel Alston, an executive with Integon Insurance, attended the Forsyth Futures meeting. Alston said he had not realized a potential disad vantage until Friday's meeting. During his presentation of the shared computer data base, Police Chief George Sweat said that his department would seek access to con fidential information contained in school records. This is in addition to the routine information that officers will be able to see as soon as the sys tem is up and running, data such as any student's attendance records, clubs and classes. Minority youths are over-repre sented in the juvenile court system, according to research on the juvenile justice system conducted by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Yet Sweat did not say how his department's access to such infor mation would help prevent wayward youth from getting into trouble. Neither did Superintendent Don Martin. Since the school system's computer files could be used to aid police investi gations, parents of black youths ought to think about safeguards that should be put in place to prevent this idea for helping youth from becoming a tool to be used against them, Alston said. According to Martin, parents would have to specifically state that they don't want information on their children shared with anyone outside the school system in order to block police access. Many parents, however, may not know to do this. Although police and other government agents have been discussing how the comput er system will operate, Martin said par ents have not been consulted or given an opportunity to express their feelings on the matter. FREEDOM from page A1 ture. Farmers response was that the rides would continue. "We have been 'cooling off' for 350 years. If we 'cool off' any more we will be in a deep freeze." Farmer speculated that this answer may have caused him to be the "least popular" of the civil rights leaders with the Kennedy White House. The Kennedy Administration acti vated both the Alabama and Mississippi national guards. The guardsmen joined the Freedom Riders for the last leg of the trip between Montgomery and Jackson, Miss. This was considered by CORE strategists to be dangerous territory for the integrationists. There were constant rumors of planned bomb ings. Farmer said that some journal ists and photographers left the bus at the Mississippi border in response to the rumors. Farmer told his audience he watched young black activists from CORE and from the Student Non violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) write names, addresses and telephone numbers of their next of kin on handkerchiefs, under clothing and on outer clothing. "It seemed many did not expect to live through this trip," Farmer said. At the border, the Mississippi National Guard took over the escort from the Alabama Guard. The bus doors were closed. Farmer said, "The bus drivers were barreling through this area ? they were flying low." A group of white men stood inside the terminal, apparently jour nalists, photographers and plain clothes policemen. But there were no hostile mobs waiting for the demonstrators. Farmer led the demonstrators off the buses and into the nearly empty ter minal. Lucretia Collins, a young, black woman who was a leader in the Nashville Student Movement, took his arm. Stopping at the white-only water fountain, Farmer asked, "Lucretia, are you thirsty?" "Now that you mention it, yes!" Collins said. "So how about some water?" Farmer asked. "She sipped and I sipped," Farmer later said. There was no immediate response to their sipping from the fountain. Farmer then led the group into the white-only restaurant. They were asked to leave by the police. They refused to leave and were arrested. Farmer told the audience that these arrests were deliberately civil. He surmised that state and regional officials had advised local police to avoid excessive reaction to civil rights demonstrations in several areas. It was feared, Farmer said, that televised reports showing officially sanctioned violence would hurt the region's attempts to bring industry and investments into the South. Farmer's arrest subsequently led to the incarceration of hundreds of other Freedom Riders. None of those arrested would pay the $500 bail fee. They chose to spend the full 60-day sentence in jail. The bail was raised, after a few days to $1,500. Farmer said the mass arrests crip pled the infrastructure of the city of Jackson and its environs. Officials could not handle the overflow of inmates. Within weeks, Farmer said, 'Bobby Kennedy asked the Interstate Commerce Commission to issue an order that would remove signs sup porting segregation and officially - declare segregation by race on inter state buses unconstitutional." Farmer then ended the Freedom Rides. He had been successful in desegregating interstate travel in the United States. Sponsored by Philip Morris Companies Inc. and the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, the Farmer lecture was the third in a series that began last Spring. The series began with a lecture by Federal Judge Robert L. Carter, a for mer NAACP lawyer who argued alongside Thurgood Marshall for the end of segregation in public schools. Julian Bond, the second lecturer in the series, discussed the NAACP's influence in the civil rights movement. "This lecture series and the muse um's programs are highly valuable in educating new generations of Americans about the challenges and triumphs of the civil rights piove ment,' said Frank Gomez, director of public programs, Philip Morris Companies Inc. "We are pleased to have made Mr. Farmer's lecture possi ble and applaud him and the International Civil Rights Center and Museum for their work."
Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
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