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Cljarlotte ^os(t THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 1997 10A LIFESTYLES Cool and classic red hot THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The hottest trend in fashion today is a cool, classic look. There are tricks of the trade, according to an article in the current issue of Redbook, to achieve this pared-down look. Use a neutral, monochromatic palette to coordinate your wardrobe. It can be beige, gray, black, navy or khaki. The sleek minimalist look is not only styl ish but also makes dressing a snap. A fitted beige polo top, for instance, blends effortlessly with a camel-toned leather skirt. Wear accessories that share the same color, fabric or pattern. Examples include all suede, all animal print and aU leather. It gives you a look that is clean and uncluttered. For instance, a bag, belt, and shoes - aU in season less faux crocodile - can team up for polished a style. If you love color, add it - but sparingly and in just one shade. Remember, great style is under stated, so you want to keep the look simple. A mango-colored ribbed top, for instance, could add warmth to off-white pants. Soft yellows have the same sun-touched effect. Do not be afraid to mix tex tures - they add richness to a toned-down palette. One fool proof formula — mix a heavy, a medium and a light fabric. A cable-knit sweater, suede pants, and shiny shirt come together beautifully in shades of ivory and beige. Add an on-the-moment shirt each season, as the styles change. This is an easy and wal let-friendly way to update your wardrobe instantly. Fitted print shirts and oversize collars are all the rage right now. You could find aU these ele ments in a yellow-and-white zebra-print top. Get one great coat that can go casual or dressy. This way you will alwas^s look neat and puUed- together. A vinyl, three-quarter coat, for example, is equally at ease with pants, dresses and skirts, come rain or come shine. Find a knockout evening dress. The most stylish ones now stand on their own _ no jewelry required. A fihny, luminous gold lace evening dress lined in satin makes a statement all by itself. Pick up just one “hot® accesso ry each season. You do not want to go overboard with trendy items that will seem passe next year. Get a great bag, shoes, a belt - whatever gives you a touch of the latest trend. Right now, for instance, the short-strapped, structured, tuck- under-the-arm bag looks totally current. Century of living Charlottean shares first 100 years By Jeri Young THE CHARLOTTE POST For a Charlotte woman, living 100 years is more than a notion. Savannah Jeter Springs Morrow turned 100 Dec. 19. “I didn’t think it would be that long,” she said quietly. “I think about it sometimes - I was just founded on God.” The years have been bitter sweet. Morrow was blessed with seven children, 41 grandchil dren, 63 great grandchildren, and 34 great great grandchil dren. She also lost three children, two husbands and hved through the Great Depression and two world wars. At 100, her memory isn’t quite what it used to be. There are days when she remembers her life in vivid colors and minute detail and other days when it’s just “too much to think about,” she said. But Morrow is a survivor. “Mother was always so smart,” daughter Lessie Miller, 72, said. “She made do with what she had.” “I was bom by the river.” Morrow was bom in 1896 in Lancaster Coimty, S.C. near the Catawba River. Her mother Emma, was one of the few black midwives practic ing in upper South Carolina. “She’d be gone a lot,” Morrow said of her mother, who often spent several days away caring for sick women. “I didn’t like that.” Morrow was taught to read and write by her mother and attended a segregated church school. She joined Gold Hill AME Zion Church near Pineville as a child. “1 was a member there when the church was first bom,” she said. Morrow married for the first time in 1914. Her husband, Austin Springs, a farmer, died in in 1917, leaving her with two small children, Marian and Sam. Morrow married again in 1919. She and husband, Ben, farmed in Lancaster County. Five children were added to the family: Herbert, Emma, Lessie, Rosie and Maggie. They grew cotton and vegeta bles. They also raised chickens, hogs and cows. Ben Morrow was a peddler who often took goods to Fort Mill to sell. Morrow made and sold clothes, often without profit. “Mother would charge people what they could afford - some- PHOTOS/SUE ANN JOHNSON Savannah Morrow (above) recently turned 100. Family and friends gathered at The Renaissance Place for a party. times pennies,” Miller said with a laugh. “Mother always told us that hard work wouldn’t kfil us. If we told her our backs hurt, she’d tell us we didn’t have a back - we had a gristle.” “It wasn’t hard,” Morrow said adamantly. “I stiU miss it all the time.” During the Depression, Morrow began to work outside the home. She was part of a fed eral works project that helped preserve black cemeteries. She also taught other black people to make mattresses. The Works Projects Administration spon sored a program that provided materials for mattresses. Each person that helped make one was allowed to take it home. Morrow supervised the project. “It was a segregated commu nity,” Miller said. “Everything was separated. Mother helped make the first mattresses most black people ever slept on.” Morrow, like her mother, aided the sick, but she did not Morrow in 1946 at age 50 with granddaughter Carolyn. want to be a midwife. “1 didn’t want no part of it,” she said. “That wasn’t for Mother,” Miller said. “It would take her away from the family too much.” The family moved to Charlotte and bought a house in the Brooklyn community shortly after World War II. Morrow continued to sew, taking seam stress classes at Second Ward High School. She made outfits for all occa sions, from funerals to the annual House of Prayer Parade. After her husband died in 1956, Morrow did day work for more than 30 years. “Mother worked way into her 90s,” Miller said. “They would come pick her up and she would work at parties and things.” Morrow continues to live in her west side home, although she has been staying with her daughter after a bout with the flu. “I’m ready to go,” she said adamantly. “I like my house.” Being 100 hasn’t changed Morrow much. She doesn’t give it much thought. “All 1 know is I found the Lord,” she said. “That’s all 1 know.” Hampton honors early students By Nancy Feigenbaum THE ASSOCIATED PRESS HAMPTON, Va. - They baked bricks and milked cows, shaped propellers and grew vegetables. And along the way they earned college degrees. Many early students of Hampton University - original ly called Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute - got an education like nothing their children and grandchildren receive today. The bricks they made went into campus build ings. Their boat motor pro pellers were bought by local fishermen. Books and theory were confined to morning and evening classes. Days were set aside for hands-on work that would teach them to earn a liv ing. On Sunday, Founder’s Day, the university honors students of its trade-school era, which later gave way to such programs as engineering, physics and architecture. While the trade school's machine-shop days are long over, its hands-on philosophy has survived in programs creat ed worldwide by Hampton stu dents. “You can bet we started it everywhere we went after we left here,” said Tamfin Antoine, who earned a machinist degree in 1938 and a bachelor’s degree a year later. Now 79, Antoine used his Hampton education to work as a machinist, including a stint at Newport News Shipbuilding, before spending 26 years with the United Nations setting, up trade schools internationally. Living in India, Taiwan, Sri_ Lanka and the Sudan, Antoine made sure trade schools taught their student work skills, not - just theory and practice. ! “It worked for us, and it works) for the fellas who need it most, i the working fella,” he said. t Hampton University began as a school for teachers, with extra! vocational training to helpV teachers earn a living year-” round, said Jeanne Zeidler,; director of the Hampton University Museum. 1 The trade school expanded* Hampton’s mission, adding 111 four-year programs for black* and Native American students. With training in such skills .as plumbing, printing and autof repair, students could start"' their own businesses and boost the economy in black communi ties, Zeidler said. He also would like to see more' reminders on campus of the old' trade school, whose bams and' workshops have been renovated ’ into obscurity, gears, he said. 1 “I don’t want to hurt anybody's-’ feelings about today’s opera-i tions,” he said, “but we think wel had the best in the world.” I Utah’s first black sorority defies the odds, racism By Carey Hamilton THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SALT LAKE CITY- Lakissha Robinson has encountered prejudice as a black woman in Utah; misconceptions about her race, difficulty getting ser vice and rare - but unforget table - racial slurs. But the 21-year-old junior at the University of Utah refuses to let the bad experiences dis suade her from giving some thing back to the community as president of Utah’s first black student sorority. “In Utah, it’s hard to see African American presence in the community,” she said. “That’s what we're really try ing to work on, is making the African American community a known cornerstone in Utah.” A tall order, given less than 1 percent of the populace is black. But Robinson and the four other members of Sigma Omicron are undeterred. Sigma Omicron is a chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Inc., the largest black women’s organi zation in the world with 190,000 members and 870 active chapters nationwide. There are chapters in every state but Maine, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, ■Vermont and Wyoming. Utah’s collegiate chapter, chartered last spring, is used to surmounting obstacles. One of the first was convincing Delta’s national chapter, headquartered in Washington, that a student sorority could thrive here. Another was geography: the five members are divided between the University of Utah and Utah State University. Still another was finding students who could meet the sorority’s stringent admission standards - a strong background in community service and a GPA above 2.5. “Being the first at anything is always hard,” Robinson said, “but it makes you stronger.” Delta’s high standards tend to attract the best and bright est, said Bettye Gillespie, president of the Ogden Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta, formed in 1988. “We have some very sharp, intelligent, articulate young women who can speak to whatever the issues are,” Gillespie said. Robinson family moved to a Utah military base in 1980. She and fellow soror Nita Lee got a taste of black Greek life when they attended “Being the first at anything is always hard, but it makes you stronger. ” Maryland’s Bowie State University, 24 miles south of Baltimore. Compared to Baltimore, Utah's metropolitan areas seem forbidding to blacks, she said. “Utah’s a really transient' state and it’s hard to keep a lot of black people here because they come and they’re like, ‘Where is everybody? Where is everything? I can’t stay here,' It’s a culture shock.” USU senior Nikki Ezzell, 21, experienced that shbck first hand in high school when the military brought her family to Utah. “I like the moun tains and the snow,” Ezzell said. “But I’m used to big cities and more diverse conditions, and here you don’t really find that.” The hardest thing to get used to? “Nobody was the same color as 1 was.” The Deltas say that feeling of alienation in a predomi nantly white state makes the bond between them stronger. “1 like to have a sisterly bond with African-American women in Utah cause there, are not a lot of them here,”, said Lee, a 21-year-oldj University of Utah student.] “It’s like having an extended, family.” ] Robinson, too, speaks about the “beloved sisterhood part that's so unique and wonder-) ful.” And Robinson, who “eats,- breathes and sleeps Delta,”., maintains an ambitious com,, munity service agenda in, keeping with the national- bod/s focus. “We’re there for the commu nity and that's the biggest thing on our list,” Ezzell saySi, “A lot of people look at sorori-^ ties and fraternities as being; mostly social. Ours isn’t. It’s a] lot of business.”
The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Jan. 30, 1997, edition 1
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