mmm
m
Crash course
Newest Panthers prepare for
team’s second minicamp in
Charlotte/16A
Dance fever
Former Honeybee taps into a new
market with studio/8A
Sizzling
swimwear
How to find
the proper
attire for the
beach or
pool/1 B
AIDS Factoid
Women are more susceptible to HIV
transmission through sexual contact than
men because the vagina is covered by a
mucous membrane.
tlPfie Qarlotte
Volume 25 No. 36
httpy/www.thecharlottepost.com
The Voice of the Black Community
$1.00
Also serving Cabarrus, Chester, Rowan and York counties
THURSDAY, MAY 25
Soldiers on a different front
PHOTOS/WADE NASH
Ruth Gaddy, who served with the 6888th Centrai Postai Directory during Worid War li, ieafs through a scrapbook chronicling her tour of duty in Engiand
and France. Of 350,000 women who served in the armed forces during the war, 4,000 were African American.
World War wasn’t only battle women fought
By Herbert L. White
THE CHARLOTTE POST
Ruth Gaddy did more than sort
mail during World War II.
She helped shape history.
Gaddy, who was attached to the
6888th Central Postal Directory,
typed and sorted mail for delivery
to Allied troops in Europe during
..World War II. Stationed in England
and France, the 6888th worked
' around the clock under German
bombing raids to break a logjam of
mail.
“We were very proud of the 6888
CPD,” Gaddy said. “That was the
postal unit that took care of all the
European Theatre’s mail when it
was backed up. We were the first
battalion of women to go over peri
od and the only black battalion,
which made it much more signifi
cant.”
Gaddy was among the rarest of
Members of the
6888th Central
Postal Directory
stand at attention
during World War
II. The unit broke a
backlog of mail for
delivery to Allied
troops stationed in
Europe.
soldiers in World War II: An African
American woman. Of the. 350,000
women who served in the U.S. mil
itary, only 4,000 of them were black,
according to Betty Carter, a UNC
Greensboro archivist and
researcher for the Women’s
Veterans Historical Project. The
project is especially interested in
the recollections of African
Americans who served in World
Warn.
‘We know they are out there, but
how do we find them?” Carter asks,
“You always hear about the
Tuskegee Airmen, but for black
women, the situation was even
worse. They not only were black,
but were women. They expected
them to be maids.”
The Women’s Auxiliary Army
Corps, or WAAC, was created in
1942 to recruit women for clerical
and medical jobs that freed men for
duties overseas. The notion of
women joining the corps, which
became WAC after the Army
dropped “Auxihary” from its name,
was difficult for some men to swal
low. The reason? Putting women in
non-combat roles meant more men
went off to fight.
“Some thought if we weren’t
there, maybe they wouldn’t have to
go into combat," said Henrietta
Ingram, a Statesville native who
now lives in Greensboro.
Gaddy, 82, was lured to the WAC
after spotting an advertisement in
a Charlotte newspaper. The mih-
tary was also a family affair: her
brother Andrew Gaddy survived
the sinking of the USS Helena off
the Solomons in 1941. Another
brother, Edward, served in the
Army Air Corps in World War II
and the Air Force in Korea and
Vietnam.
“We always said a Gaddy will do
anything once,” said Gaddy, who
retired as a Charlotte-Mecklenburg
teacher in 1983.
Ingram, who now lives in
Please see WOMEN/2A
Board finally agrees: We need some help
By John Minter
THE CHARLOTTE POST
The sharply divided Charlotte-Mecklenburg
School Board made a unanimous decision Tuesday
night. Bring in a mediator.
The mediator would work with the board for up to
two days to resolve differences over a pupil assign
ment plan to replace the current forced racial bus
ing one outlawed under a federal court order last
year.
That order is stayed for now and a three-judge
panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
Richmond will hear the board’s appeal of U.S.
District Court Judge Robert Potter’s ban of race-
based busing.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP and Swann
Fellowship, both supporters of racial diversity, have
chartered a bus to Richmond for the appeals court
hearing.
The community has sprm in turmoil over the
school system since the board in a 6-3 vote killed a
pupil assignment plan based on controlled choice.
That vote brought the board’s most conservative
and most liberal members together. A $261 million
bond referendum for school needs hangs in the bal
ance. Mecklenburg County commissioners won’t put
the bond package on the November ballot until the
school board approves a student assignment plan.
Afiican American board members who opposed
the plan said they did so because it - like others pre
sented since Potter’s ruling - stiU concentrates too
many low-income and low-achieving students in
Please see SNOW/3A
Radio’s
sonic
boom
WCCJ-FM included in Radio
One’s national buying spree
By John Minter
THE CHARLOTTE POST
A $1.4 bilhon deal - bringing an additional 21
urban radio stations under
black ownership - has shaken
the Charlotte market.
Wayne Brown, vice president
and general manager of FM
stations WPEG and WBAV and
WGIV-AM, has been named
vice president and regional
manager of Lanham, Md.-
based Radio One, Inc., a net
work ovmed by Kathy Hughes
and run by her son, Alfred
Liggins III.
The company went public last year and is Black
Enterprise’s 2000 Company of the Year, Brown
said.
Radio One, which acquired the 22 stations from
Clear Channel, also purchased stations owned by
African American Greg Davis, which included
Charlotte’s WCCJ (FM 92.7), The purchase price
is an estimated $22 million.
“Their whole mission is to be the largest urban
Hughes
Please see WCCJ/3A
Sierra Leone
rebels relent; free
157 peacekeepers
By LaWanda Johnson
NATIONAL NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION
WASHINGTON - Amid rumors that Foday
Sankoh, leader of the Revolutionary United
Front, the rebel force in Sierra Leone, is dead,
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan
praised Liberian President Charles Taylor for his
role in securing the release of 157 of the 500
detained peacekeepers who had been taken cap
tive by the RUF.
The releases came on the heels of a visit by the
Secretary-General’s Special Representative
Oluyemi Adeniji to Monrovia to consult with
President Taylor on the detainee issue. Taylor had
been asked by West African governments to facil
itate the release of the United Nations detainees.
Annan said the release of the peacekeepers was
a welcome development, while the UN continues
to work had to get the other hostages freed and
Please see REBELS/7A
PHOTO/WADE NASH
Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board member Vilma Leake (left),
Rev. Rickey Woods of First Baptist Church West and Chairman
Arthur Griffin (right) participated in a forum Monday at the church.
Comments? Our e-mail address is:
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