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Volume 29 No. 26
www.thecharlottepost.com
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The Voice of the Black Community
$1.00
WEEK OF MARCH 18-24, 2004
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Also serving Cabarri James B.
“ 100 Beatties Ford Rd
Charlotte NC 28216 5302
Proiilng shidy imiied by data
Citizens panel didn’t get to see final document before police
PHOTO/ANDREA SPOOL-WHITE
A study that concluded Charlotte-Mecklenburg
police don’t arbitrarily use racial profiling is
missing details.
By Herbert L. White
herb.white@thecharloneposl.com
A report that concludes
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police
don’t engage in arbitrary racial
profiling could be more com
plete, according to a member of portionately stop black stances of stops, such as time of
a panel charged with giving
input on the survey.
The research conducted by
researchers at N.C. State
University and released earlier
this month, foimd police dispro-
motorists and pedestrians due
to residents’ demands in higher-
crime areas.
But the final report doesn’t go
far enough to give statistics that
can further explain the circum-
day and causes, said Leonard
“Deacon” Jones, a member of
the citizens advisory board who
retired as Charlotte-
Mecklenburg’s deputy chief in
See DATA/2A
America’s
getting
browner
and older
People of color
will be half of
population by ‘50
By Genaro C. Armas
herb. white@!hecharlottepost. com
WASHINGTON - For as
long as there has been an
America, whites have made
up a clear majority. But that
will change by 2050 when
minority groups will be 49.9
percent of the population,
the Census Bureau says.
Asians and Hispanics will
see the most dramatic
increases between now and
midcentury, when the U.S.
population will have grown
by almost 50 percent to
reach 420 million, according
to bureau projections being
released Thursday.
America will get older, too.
Nearly 21 percent of its resi
dents will be age 65 or older,
compared with 12 percent
now.
The data highlight trends
long predicted. But racial
and ethnic changes are tak
ing shape faster than expect
ed, due in large part to high-
er-than-forecast immigra
tion rates for Asians and
Hispanics, said Greg
Spencer, a bureau demogra
pher.
Whites now represent 69
percent of the population,
but their growth is slowing
because of low rates of birth
and immigration. Their total
will grow 7 percent to 210
million, or 50.1 percent of
the population, in 2050.
Those figures do not
include Hispanics. The
Census Bureau counts
“Hispanic” or “Latino” as an
Please see AMERICA’S/6A
Frozen
in time
PHOTO/ANGELO FRANCESCHINA
TRUE TO THEIR SCHOOL: A seminar next w/eek at Johnson C. Smith University will help doc
ument the history of all-black schools and community assets. Top: Margaret Alexander, Second
Ward High School May Day queen in 1941. Above: Rosenwald school In Sanford, N.C., provid
ed educational opportunities for blacks when states didn’t provide funding
Preservation and protection of
histoiy is JCSU seminar’s goal
By Cheris F. Hodges
FOR THE CHARLOTTE POST
Imagine having pieces of
history sitting in an old hope
chest or having stories of
family members who attend
ed a famed Rosenwald
School stored inside family
folklore.
Johnson C. Smith
University archivist Monika
Rhue is hoping Charlotteans
with those memories and
possessions will come out to
learn how to preserve them
for future generations.
On March 27, JCSU is
hosting a seminar on pre
serving black schools.
Rhue said this is an impor
tant effort to keep a part of
Charlotte’s black history
ahve.
“This is the first seminar
JCSU is hosting,” she said.
While the original focus was
on the Rosenwald schools,
Rhue said the university
decided to broaden the semi
nar to include community
assets such as publicly-fund
ed schools and businesses as
well as family heirlooms.
‘We want to show people
what to do with family pho
tographs, papers and manu
scripts,” she said. We want to
show people how to preserve
them.”
According to the N.C. State
Historic Preservation Office,
Rosenwald schools were the
brainchild of Chicago philan
thropist Julius Rosenwald,
president of Sears, Roebuck
and Co.
Rosenwald became aware
Please see SEMINAR/6A
Brown plaintiffs to tell story at UNCC
By Herbert L. White
herb.white@thecharlonepost.com
The Topeka, Kansas children
behind the historic Brown v.
Board of Education decision will
be in Charlotte this month.
Cheryl Brown Henderson and
Linda Brown Thompson, who
were named plaintiffs against
the Tbpeka school board in the
1954 Supreme Court ruling will
give a lecture at UNC
Charlotte’s McKnight Hall
March 31 at 7 p.m.
On May 17,1954 the Supreme
Court rendered its decision on
Brown v. Board of Education, a
landmark case that ended the
“separate but equal” laws and
determined blacks could attend
the same schools as whites.
The Brown case was combined
with others that challenged
school segregation including
that of a country preacher. Rev.
JA. Delaine, from Clarendon,
S.C. as well as cases from
Virginia and Delaware.
UNCC and several community
partners will commemorate the
decision with a series of events
through April. The series also
will include book discussions,
poetry readings and documen
tary screenings relating to
Brown.
More than 50 years ago in
Please see BROWN/3A
Cheryl Brown Henderson and
Linda Brown Thompson will
speak March 31 at UNC
Charlotte.
3 strikes
law leaves
families
out, too
Relatives pushed to
provide extra support
By Kevin Herrera
WAVE COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS
INGLEWOOD, Calif — Most parents find it
rather easy and enjoyable to talk about their chil
dren. But not Freddie Lawson.
When she mentions her 43-year-old son Derik,
the elderly mother breaks down in tears, her
warm and inviting face quickly turns cold and
weary. It’s not that she isn’t proud of her son.
Quite the contrary. She loves Derik and spends
most of her waking hours fighting for him. She
cries because she’s afraid:. Afraid that she will
never again be able to . share with her oldest son
the simple things in life.
That is because Derik, a former Washington
Preparatory High School student, is serving 25-
years-to-life in state prison for burglary, his third
felony conviction under California’s controversial
Three Strikes Law, which sentences repeat felony
offenders to prison for at least 25 years if they are
convicted of a third offense. Derik, like the major
ity of those sentenced under the 1994 law, is serv
ing time for a non-violent crime, burglarizing an
Please see DRIVE/7A
Haiti withdraws from
relations with Jamaica
Peter Prengaman
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration’s
complicity in the overthrow of Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide implies that other democ
ratic nations, including those in Africa, might also
be vulnerable for coup d’etats or pre-emptive
strikes, says the president of TransAfrica Forum,
a leading research institution in the nation’s capi
tal.
“It’s particularly nations in the global South,
such as Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and
Asia. The U. S. has a history of imdermining gov
ernments so that what we’re seeing fri)m Bush is
not new on one level. What’s new is how blatant it
is,” says Bill Fletcher, head of the 27-year-old
organization.
“The implications can be seen in what happened
in Iraq and what happened in Haiti. That is that
the Bush administration is repudiating interna
tional law. That’s what they’re doing. And they’re
basically saying that there’s no law that they’re
bound to respect because they’ve got the guns. It
could happen anywhere.”
Human rights activists and politicians have
long protested the U. S. treatment of Haiti.
“I think it’s largely racism,” says former
Please see HAITI/SA
Inside
Editorials 4A
Life 4B
Religion 8B
Sports 1C
Real Estate 5C
Business 8C
A&E ID
Happenings 4D
Classifieds 5D
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