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Community
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Blacks losing battle
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75 cents WINSTON-SALEM GREENSBORO HIGH POINT y~ ?
TW, CHRONICLl -
~.Se Choice for African'American News tN? uk>n?ry
Fate of
Diggs in
hands of
parents
BY SAM DAVIS
Till CHKONICI I
Martin
Whether Jefferson D. Diggs
Elementary becomes a charter
school depends on the consen
sus of the parents whose chil
dren attend the schtxtl and that
of the teachers, according to
Don Martin, superintendent of
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County
Schools.
Martin and members of the
Arts Based Elementary Charter
School tARFSl violet Ihmiv
irfr
Monday
night to
meet
with par
ents and
interested
commu
n i t y
members
to discuss
the pro
posed
merger
u.?.
UC I W tvll
ihe local school system and
ABES that would make the
school an arts-based charter
school. Martin told the audience
that the local School Board's
decision about whether to con
vert the school would be contin
gent upon the acceptance of the
concept by the parents and
teachers at the school.
In late October the idea of
converting Diggs to an arts
based elementary charter sur
faced. Martin and the School
Board approached ABES with
the idea as a means of increasing
Diggs' enrollment. The school
has been underpopulated and its
student body nearly 100 percent
African American ever since
implementation of the school
system's redisricting plan sev
eral years ago.
However, many parents and
community members in Happy
Hill Gardens believe that neither
the school system nor ABES
have been forthright in dealing
with parents and teachers at the
school and that has caused them
to be unreceptive to the idea.
Thelma Westbrook. a resi
dent of Happy Hill Gardens and
vice president of the community
residents council, articulated
many of the residents' concerns.
"Within the community the
greatest concern of the parents is
that there was no information
submitted to them." she said.
"They are uninformed and
they're not sure of what's going
to take place. Some people feel
that this is being shoved down
their throats."
Si Diaas , A9
AP Photo/Steve Helber
Bryan Logan sits on the granite steps of the Virginia State Capitol in
Richmond. The granite used to make the steps was taken from a
quarry on land once owned by Logan's ancestors.
Photo by Bruce Chapman
> The City Christmas tree was lighted Friday for the first time this holiday season. The 40-foot-tall Norway
spruce is covered with more than 20,000 lights, and it is surrounded by about 100 smaller trees covered
with white lights. The tree has caused many drivers to slow down on Interstate 40 and'take notice.
Investigation reveals
vast theft of black land
This is the first of a three
part series done by The Asso
ciated Press documenting how
black Americans, especially in
the South, lost family land over
the last / 60 years.
BY TODD LHWAN
AND DOLORES BARCLAY
THE ASSOC'IATI I) PRESS
For generations, black
families passed down the tales
in uneasy whispers: "They
stole our land."
Some of those whispered
bits of oral history, it turns out.
are true. In an 18-month inves
tigation. The Associated Press
documented a pattern in w hich
black Americans were cheated
out of their land or driven from
it through intimidation, vio
lence and even murder.
In some cases, government
officials approved the land tak
ings; in others, they took part
in them. The earliest occurred
before the Civil War; others
are being litigated today.
Some of the land taken
from black families has
become a country club in Vir
ginia. oil fields in Mississippi,
a major-league baseball spring
training facility in Florida.
The Associated Press - in
an investigation that included
interviews with more than
1 .(MX) people and the examina
tion of tens of thousands of
public records in county court
houses and state and federal
archives - documented 107
land takings in 13 Southern
and border states.
In those cases alone, 406
black landowners lost more
than 24.000 acres of farm and
timber land plus 85 smaller
properties, including stores
and city lots. Today, virtually
all of this property, valued at
tens of millions of dollars, is
owned by whites or by corpo
rations.
Properties taken from
blacks were often small - a 40
Stv Lost land on A4
Role of black
contractors
uncertain
School system says price, quality
top factors; superintendent says he
can V assure that black businesses
will be used in building blitz
BY SHERIDAN HILL
THE CHRONICLE
Marshall
Curtis
Local leaders want assurance that black business
es will be included in bids for a piece of the $150 mil
lion pie that is on the table, now that the school bond
iia> i it v. 11 a|;piutcu
by voters.
The bond package pro
vides $64.5 million for con
struction of lour new schdols
and $68.X million for renova
tions and repairs to 46 of the
existing 68 schools.
Several months ago, the
University of North Carolina
Board of Governors set a
goal to use historically
underutilized businesses
(HUBs) for 10 percent of the S2.5 billion in con
struction it plans to spend on state college campuses.
HUBs include businesses owned by ethnic minori
ties. women, and physically handicapped persons.
Winston-Salem /Forsyth County School Superin
tendent Donald Martin is not guaranteeing that a per
cent of construction and renovation business w ill go
to non-white companies.
"We do not have a formal, written goal nor a con
tract requirement for using minorities." he said. "We
are always looking for good contractors, and price
and quality are controlling factors. When you get into
using percents. you have to consider the actual as ail
ability - the percentage of businesses that are actual
ly prepared and qualified. ^
"We don't have a quota system because we are
spending taxpayer dollars, and we have a duty to use
the lowest responsible bidder." Martin said. "We do
have a policy that deals w ith overall use of minority
contractors, and we want to make it easy for minori
ty v endors to secure a bid."
However. School Board policy 3310, adopted in
January 1984 and revised in April 1996, sets a goal of
10 percent of construction monies spent to go to his
torically underutilized busi
nesses.
Fray da Bluestein at the
Institute of Government in
Chapel Hill explained that,
according to state law. local
seh(x?ls are required to make
outreach efforts to include
minorities, but are not per
mitted to have setasidc.
"North Carolina law
establishes a 10 percent goal
for all statewide acencies.
which includes local school systems, and requires
them to make a good faith effort, but assuming that
has been done, they are required to award to the low -
est responsible bidder." she said.
Martin said he invited a representative of the
Winston Salem Minority Business Association to
attend construction pre-bid meetings, and that his
office consistently encourages contractors to use
minority subs.
s.. Bonds A9
The Real World
A student holds a
grocery receipt.
rtl.Mos bv Kc\in Walker
Kelley Dean, right, and Shontay Hayes arrange groceries they pur
chased for a fictional uooer-middle-class family.
Students get a
taste of what it
means to he
poor, rich in
Forsyth County
BY T KEVIN WALKER
nil CHRONICLE
Textbooks and lectures
gave them a general con
cept of the haves and the
have-nots. A recent class
project, though, had a
group or waKe rorest uni
versity students clinging onto rungs of
the country's ever-stretching socioeco
nomic ladder.
Assistant professor of
sociology Angela Mattery
gave students in one of
her classes the arduous
task of putting themselves
in the situation local fam
ilies find themselves each
payday trying to make
ends meet while juggling
bills, schedules, taxes and
those unscheduled, and
often costly, occurrences
that all families are faced
with from time to time.
Near the beginning of
the semester, students
were divided into groups
and charged with creating
lictitjnal families with \er\ real cir
V ru.. A1A
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