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NEWS/ The Charlotte Post
January 18,1996
Dunbar Center opens doors in East Spencer
By Herbert L. White
THE CHARLOTTE POST
A landmark in Rowan
County's black community has
a new lease on life.
The Paul Laurence Dunbar
Center officially opens Sunday
with a neighborhood gala in
East Spencer, months after
the Rowan-Salisbury Board of
Education moved former
North Rowan Middle School to
Spencer. The ceremony starts
at 3 p.m. at the center, at 820
S. Long St.
The facility, a source of pride
among African Americans
when it was Dunbar High
School, may ultimately serve
as a one-stop home to human
services programs. Satellite
offices of the Rowan Health
Department and Department
of Social Services are housed
there, as is an after-school
tutoring and activity program
for students. Also in the works
are a small business incubator
and African American cultural
center.
The Rowan school board,
which owns the building,
renamed the facility and
allowed organizers to attract
services and agencies to
Dunbar. School officials
turned part of the old school
into the family resource cen
ter; North Rowan High
School's child care class is also
housed there, as is
Livingstone College's
Academy for Academic and
Cultural Enrichment. The
school system is moving other
programs - including North
Rowan High's food production
class - to Dunbar. All pro
grams at the center pay for is
maintenance.
The center, which has its
own board of directors, won a
$100,000 grant from the
state's Family Preservation
Grant last year, and plans are
underway to launch a fund
raiser to keep Dunbar open
when the grants are tapped
out.
For more information on the
Dunbar Center, call 647-0054,
9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays.
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Farrakhan named year’s “most influential.”
By William Reed
NATIONAL NEWSPAPER PUB-
LISHERS ASSOCIATION
Nation of Islam leader Louis
Farrakhan had the most
impact on African Americans
in 1995,
according to
a poll done
hy the
National
Newspaper
Publishers
Association.
With the
success of
the Million
Man March
last October,
Farrakhan has emerged as
the most important leader of
the masses of African-
American people. Although he
has had a considerable nation
al following since the mid-
1980s - Farrakhan was voted
the "Most Influential Black
Leader” in the 1994 Black
Press of America True Voice
Poll - it became impossible to
ignore him after his "Men
Only Meetings" campaigns in
1994 and 1995 and the
groundswell of support and
endorsements among black
groups and individuals he
Farrakhan
generated before, and after,
the Million Man March. In his
40th year of public minister
ing, some believe the 62-year-
old Jesus-quoting Muslim has
eclipsed even the stature of
Martin Luther King at his
apex.
Farrakhan was born Louis
Eugene Walcott in the Bronx,
New York in 1933. He was the
youngest of two sons of Mae
Clark, a deeply religious and
strong willed woman who
immigrated to America from
Barbados in the early 1920s.
His father, a schoolteacher
and Baptist preacher, left the
family shortly after
Farrakhan's birth, and his
mother raised the family
through employment as a
domestic worker. Now an
immaculate dresser,
Farrakhan during his child
hood, is reported to have worn
clothes his mother made for
he and his brother Alvin.
Farrakhan grew up in the
Roxbury section of Boston. He
graduated from Boston
English High School, where
he was a champion sprinter,
played the violin and per
formed drama. As a young
man, he was also a choirboy in
the St. Cyprian Episcopal
Church. Farrakhan earned a
track scholarship from
Winston-Salem Teachers
College, spending two years
there. He later used his
Caribbean musical back
ground to earn a living in his
twenties as a guitar-playing
calypso and country singer.
He was recruited into the
Nation of Islam by Malcolm X
in 1955. Farrakhan became
Malcolm X's assistant in
Boston and later minister at
that Mosque when Malcolm
moved to Harlem. During that
period, he first changed his
name to Louis X, and then to
Louis Abdul Farrakhan. He
eventually followed Malcolm X
to the Harlem Mosque and
replaced him there as its min
ister, as well, after Malcolm
left the Nation of Islam in
1964. From his platform in
the Harlem Mosque,
Farrakhan started to perform
as chief spokesman of Nation
of Islam leader, Elijah
Muhammad. Under the tute
lage of Muhammad, Malcolm
X grew to national promi
nence, as would three others
in later years: Silias
Muhammad, Yahweh Ben
Yahweh and Farrakhan.
Like his direct tutor, Elijah
Muhammad, Farrakhan is
devoted to the teachings of
Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican
black nationalist who galva
nized the American black
community in the early 1920s.
Fundamental tenants of
Muhammad and Farrakhan
come from Garvey and his
United Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA), which
taught blacks should be proud
of their color and heritage
while pursuing economic self-
sufficiency and self-help.
Farrakhan's West Indian
background, and the success
of most Caribbean-born
Americans during his younger
days, as well as the present,
all point to Garvey's teach
ings.
Farrakhan now lives in
Chicago's Hyde Park section.
He and his wife, Khadijah,
have nine children and two
scores of grandchildren.
Nation of Islam business
interests include Clean n'
Fresh grooming products, the
newly opened Salaam
Restaurant complex in
Chicago, security firms that
guard government-owned pub
lic housing projects nation
wide as well as private sector
firms such as Federal
Express. The Nation of Islam
is currently building a print
ing plant for the Final Call
and other pubUcations.
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want to cut services to the
elderly. Medicare and
Medicaid. They want to cut
services to the poor popula
tion, programs that give
opportunity to young children.
Blue commended President
Clinton for resisting the
Republican pressure in the
present balanced budget nego
tiations.
“America is about giving
opportunity to those who may
not be basically well off in
life,” Blue said. “If we start
cutting back on medical care,
that’s going to put an inordi
nate burden on
individuals...first senior citi
zens, ultimately their fami
lies. People are living longer.
They use Social Security
longer. Congress is counting
Social Security into their bud
get calculations.”
Blue said he believes the
N.C. House will return to a
Democratic majority after the
November election.
“I think people realize the
smokescreens have been going
away,” Blue said. “People are
realizing the N.C. legislature
under Democratic leadership
had done a tremendous job on
education.
“The Republican administra
tion has pretty much given up
on public education and they
want to abandon it. They
want a system of vouchers
and to take everybody out of
public schools who can match
the voucher.
“People realize the whole
thing with early intervention
was done by a Democratic leg
islature and Republicans tried
to destroy it. Those kinds of
issues will bring people back
to the fold. The policies of the
Democratic legislature looked
down the road at where we
could be and tried to create
opportunity.”
Blue, who was a sophomore
at N.C. Central University in
Durham when King was killed
in 1968, said slain civil rights
leader would be in the thick of
today’s policy debates if he
were alive.
King had favored such issues
as affirmative action, a fair
criminal justice system, social
programs to aid the poor and
elderly and jobs creation. Blue
said.
“As I reflect on Martin and
how he is universally
embraced, it reminds me...the
fact that he is so lovingly
remembered today is a sure
sign that he is forgotten,” Blue
said. “Those who were coming
of age in '60s remember that
people hated him back then,
blacks and whites. Blacks felt
he was moving too slow or
that he was grabbing the
power of local black leaders.
It frightened people who
thought about the movement.
“What you have to realize is
that the goals of justice we
identify with Martin Luther
King are still goals we have to
strive toward. They are not
things we have achieved. The
world does not change that
much in one generation.
Congress is not taking steps
to really address some of those
kinds of issues. Blue said.
“Dr. King would be talking
about the ‘glass ceiling’
beyond which very few African
Americans move in corporate
America...about real opportu
nity in emplosrment. Some sta
tistics show no tremendous
change in the ability of blacks
to earn a living vis a vis
whites, than it was in the
1960s,” he said.
“Dr. King would he talking
about educational attain
ment...the number of high
school dropouts is very dis
couraging and for those who
go to college, what opportuni
ties are available?
“Dr. King would be talking
about responsibility, not just
rights. Dr. King would be a
moral force for responsibility
on part of all Americans,
blacks and whites.
Blue said King’s admonition
to young blacks to be best at
whatever they do “has mean-
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Correction
An article in the Dec. 28 Post omitted the West Charlotte
School National Alumni AssociationciTorts to con
vert a libraiy into a museum. The association, headed by
prefrident Geraldine Powe of Charlotte, i.s lobbying the
Public Library of Charlotte-Mecldenburg to convert the
iiaSalie Street branch into a museum of African American
history
Laura Olive Monnett
ATTORNEY AT LA'W
Laurence L. Olive
ATTORNEY AT LA’W
C. Randolph Emory
ATTORNEY AT LAW
Leon Olive
ATTORNEY AT LAW
President
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