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1HE CHRONICLE
Volume41,Number26 WINSTON-SALEM, N.C THURSDAY, March 12, 2015
SELMA 50 YEARS LATER
AP Photo/Jacqudyn Maitin
President Barack Obama,fourth from left, listens to Rep. John Lewis, (D-Ga.), as he speaks about "Bloody Sunday" as they and the first family, civil right leaders,
and members of Congress, walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma,Ala.,for the 50th anniversary of the landmark event of the Civil Rights Movement,
Saturday, March 7. From left are Sasha Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Lewis, Obama, Amelia Boynton Robinson, who was beaten during "Bloody Sunday,"
and Adelaide Sanford, also in a wheelchair. ?
Obama marks Selma March milestone
Butterfield
participates
in history
BY JAY REEVES AND DAR
LENE SUPERVILLE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SELMA, Alabama
America's racial history
"still casts its long shadow
upon us," President Barack
Obama said as he stood
near the Edmund Pettus
Bridge in solidarity and
remembrance with civil
rights activists whose beat
ings by police a half-centu
ry ago galvanized much of
the nation against racial
oppression and hastened
passage of historic legisla
tion guaranteeing voting
rights for minorities.
Tens of thousands of
people on Saturday joined
to commemorate the
"Bloody Sunday" march of
1965 and take stock of the
struggle for equality.
One of thousands in
attendance was U.S. Rep.
G. K. Butterfield of North
Carolina's First District,
chairman of the
Congressional Black
Caucus.
"It was one of the high
est honors of my life to join
President Obama,
President Bush, and dozens
of congressional colleagues
in commemorating the 50th
Anniversary of Bloody
Sunday that led to the pas
sage of the Voting Rights
Act. As Chair of the
Congressional Black
Caucus, I had the privilege
of sitting in the front sec
tion during the ceremonies
at the Edmund Pettis
Bridge, Alabama State
Capital, 16th Street Baptist
Church, Brown Chapel
AME Church, and First
Baptist Church. Butterfield
said.
Under a bright sun, the
first black U.S. president
praised the figures of a civil
rights era that he was too
young to know but that
helped him break the ulti
mate racial barrier in polit
ical history with his ascen
sion to the nation's highest
office. He called them
"warriors of justice" who
pushed America closer to a
more perfect union.
"So much of our turbu
lent history-the stain of
slavery and anguish of civil
war, the yoke of segrega
tion and tyranny of Jim
Crow, the death of four lit
tle girls in Birmingham,
and the dream of a Baptist
preacher-met on this
bridge," Obama told the
crowd before taking a sym
bolic walk across part of
the Edmund Pettus Bridge,
the same bridge where the
1965 marchers were
attacked by police.
"It was not a clash of
armies, but a clash of wills,
a contest to determine the
meaning of
America ."Obama said. He
was three years old at the
See Selma on A2
Loretta Biggs becomes U. S. judge
BY ERIN MIZELLE
SPECIAL TO
THE CHRONICLE
GREENSBORO - On
Friday, March 6,2015, his
tory was made.
At the United States
District Court for the
Middle District of North
Carolina, at 324 West
Market St. in Greensboro,
the Honorable Loretta
Copeland Biggs, a
Winston-Salem resident,
became the first African
American woman appoint
ed to the federal bench in
North Carolina as a U.S.
District Court judge.
She had been appointed
by President Obama to fill
a vacancy left open when
Judge James Beaty Jr., also
a Winston-Salem resident,
took senior status last year.
Biggs was a partner at
Allman Spry Davis Leggett
Crumpler. The Spelman
and Howard Law School
graduate was a corporate
attorney - with Coca-Cola
- before serving as an
assistant Forsyth County
district attorney. She served
as a local district court
judge for nearly a decade.
The swearing-in cere
mony on March 6 was one
Biggs spoke of as "glori
See Judge on A7
The Honorable Loretta
Copeland Biggs, left,
becomes the first African
American female
appointed to the federal
bench in North Carolina
as a US. District Court
judge on Friday, March
6,2015, at the United
States District Court,
located at 324 West
Market St. in
Greensboro, N.C.
Photo by Erm MizeUc
NBTF announces celebrity co-chairs
BY CHANEL DAVIS
TOE CHRONICLE
The city received its first taste of purple and
black for the year on Monday afternoon in the
Garden Terrace of Embassy Suites Hotel with the
announcement of the 2015 National Black Theatre
Festival's (NBTF) Celebrity Co-Chairs.
"We are very excited about this year's festival,
and we think that you'll love the things that are to
come," said Sylvia Sprinkle- Hamlin, executive
producer of NBTF.
The faces for this year's event are multiple
grammy winning "AD My Children" co-stars
Debbi Morgan and Darnell Williams.
"This coming season is going to be so wonder
ful because submissions are coming from, not just
all around the United States and Canada, but from
Japan, China and Africa. It is going to be so excit
ing," Morgan said. "It is also especially gratifying
to so many theater-goers who travel far and wide
to see stupendous theatre here at the festival."
Morgan, a Dunn, N.C. native, has appeared in
"The Hurricane," opposite Denzel Washington,
and "Eve's Bayou," opposite of Samuel L.
Jackson. She has also appeared in the movie
"Love and Basketball."
In television. Morgan was featured in the
Showtime television drama "Soul Food" and in the
late '70s could be found on "Good Times" and
"What's Happening."
See NBTF on A2
vO
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