O 0 O LOVE-HATE EMPLOYEES Small business supervisors v^alk a tightrope handling productive but troublesome^ employees 4C ,.ESB. OWE MEMORIAL UBSM: Mhmson c. smith university Volume 31 No. 46 The Voice of the Black Community Also serving Cat A toast to voting rights victory Proponents hail federal extension, more work is yet to be done ' By Hazel Trice Edney NAF/ONAL NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION WASHINGTON - Wade Henderson, executive- direc tor of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, standing behind a wooden podiiun at a hotel just blocks from the White House, offered a toast. Holding hi^ in the air a half-filled glass of wine, he said: ‘We had the commitment, we had the expertise, we had the drive and we had the optimism of the most wonderful civil rights coahtion, men and women light here in this room.” he said, smiling broad ly as the racially-mixed audi ence cheerfully applauded. ‘We also had an incredible team of congressional leaders who were willing to spend hours mastering the sub stance of these issues and working the politics...And it worked, better than we could possibly have imagined.” Everyone in the chande- hered parlor of the Capitol Hilton Hotel had something to celebrate. The bi-partisan bill to reauthorize key sec tions of the Voting Rights Act for 25 more years had finally been signed by President Bush after months of antici pation and struggle. Just as there were cheers on this night, there were also pervasive fears, a poignant reminder that, in the Shakespearian words'etched above an old entrance to the National Archives a few blocks away on Pennsylvania Avenue, what is past is pro logue. See VOTING/3A 28216 S9 PI James B. Duke Library 100 Beatties Ford Rd Charlotte NC 28216-5302 BlacRness can lead to death penalty Study: Juries influenced by stereotypes when deciding fate of some defendants By Fitzroy A. Sterling fNTERNATfONAL PRESS SERVICE NEW YORK — Juries in the U.S. tend to hand down the death penalty twice as often to black defendants with stereotypically black features like darker skin, bigger noses and fuller hps, than to those perceived to have less stereotypically black features, accordir^ to the findings of a new study The study published in the May issue of Psychological Science, the jornnal of the Association for Psychological Science, noted that previous research already has proven that black defendants in capital cases receive the death sentence more fi'equently than white defendants. The death penalty is, sta tistically speaking, \mlikely when both the defendant and victim are black. When the \ictim is white, however, the matter of race as an influential factor in ‘’death-eligible cases” is emphatically evi dent, according to the study A team of edu cators headed by Stanford University Psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt conduct ed the study titled “’Looking Death worthy” “’Race and the death penalty is a compli cated topic,” communications director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty David Elliot, said. "In Marjdand alone, 60 percent of aU homicide victims are black, yet there is only one person currently on death row for tiie killing of a black po-- son.” The victims of the five defendants executed in that state between 1976, the year the death penalty was rdnstated, and April 2006, were all white. Eberhardt and her team conducted the study by presenting black and white head shots, in slide show format, of black capital defendants in Philadelphia, Pa. between 1979 and 1999. ‘Naive” participants ju(^ed Please see STEREOTYPES/3A PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONA2ALVIN FERGUSON Hundreds of students drop out of school, but some are urged out to boost mandated test score results By Erica Singleton FOR THE CHARLOTTE POST Marcus TVimer dropped out of Myers Park High School two years ago. He insists school officials helped. Tbmer is one of scores of stu dents who sources in Charlotte- Mecklenbiug Schools say have been coerced or forced off cam pus in recent years. Turner left Myers Park, High, which records obtained by The Post show labeled students as' hav ing left for private or public schools outside the district when in fact they were in the coxmty As a resiflt, Myers Park, CMS’s only School of Distinction, had artificially enhanced test scores without beir^ exposed to No Child Left Behind sanctioirs based on enrollment The Post obtained a copy of 2004-2005 Myers Park dropout records that listed Timer as an in-state transfer. “[I was kicked out in] • February 2005,” said Turner, who was an 11th grader at the time. “I was at Ixmch ...and then me and somebody had walked off.. .just on the side of the school. They said it was some spot on campus that we weren’t supposed to be at.” Turner said he was then taken to the office, where he was searched- “They asked me if they could search me, and I said yeah cause I didn’t have anything on me,” he said. Timer said he was not given a reason as to why he was searched, but was told to to sub mit. “They searched me and found a [marijuana] seed in my pock et,” Timer said. “After I got searched, I got suspended for a week and the day I came back ... I had a hearing ... in school.” Timer’s motha' was givm a choice: he would either be expelled or prosecuted. “It was either I was going to go through a hearing, get put in jail, or get kicked out for good,” he said. “They told me I should just drop out and go to another school.” So he dropped out. Researchers have foxmd that nearly 1 out of every 3 high school students won’t make it to graduation. In North Carohna i see AT-RISK/2A the box NEWS, NOTES & TRENDS For organ donors, the life you save will be another’s By Herbert L. White he*. Jhechortotfeposl.com . Would you save a life by givir^ a piece of yourself? Mdth a 382 peivent increase in the number of Afiican-Americans await ing organ transplants since 1991, Afiican-Americans are being asked to become donoirs. On Tiesday, LifeShare of The Carolinas observed tiie lOlh armnal National Minority Donor Awareness Day to increase donor awareness in the U.S., especially among ethnic groups. Activists say education is often a barrier to recniiting black see BLACK ORGAN/6A J.C. Smifr) opens camp eyeing an end to 24- game losing streak/1 C LffelB Rdigion 4B Sporto 1C Business 6C A&E1D Classified 4D To subsoibe, call (704) 376-0496 or FAX (704) 342-2160.© 2(X)6 The Charlotte Post Publishirrg Co, Please Recycle o