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Volume 32 No. 8
The Voice of the Black Community
28216 S12 PI
Also serving Ca James 8. Duke Library
100 Beatties Ford Pd
Charlotte NC 28216-5302
Pushing
for new
Second
Ward
Alumni group
wants county
to support
land plan
By Herbert L White
herb. viTiifeOfhechorfoffeposf,com
Alumni of Second Ward
High School want
Mecklenburg County com
missioners to clear the way
for a new school in the neigh
borhood.
A letter delivered to com
missioners Chairman Parks
Helms last month by the
Second Ward
National
Alumni
Foundation
lobbies com
missioners to
: “do everything
' in its power to
support and
fund rebuilding” of a new
Second Ward High School.
The original,
opened in 1923
as the first
hi^ school for
African
Americans in
Mecklenburg,
was razed in
1969 as part of
Helms
Jones
Charlotte’s urban renewal
drive that obliterated the his-
torically-black neighborhood.
A complicated land swap
proposed by Charlotte Center
City Partners that includes
the coTinty city of Charlotte,
Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Schools and Mass Mutual
would result in Brooklyn
Village, a mixed-income,
mixed-use community built
with private funds. AbasebaU
stadium for the AAA
Charlotte Knights would also
be included in the plan.
Coimty Manager Harry
Jones has proposed the coun
ty partner with the Knights
to biuld the staditun, which
would sit on coimty land.
Mecklenbm^ - not the city —
would be responsible for $7.8
million in infrastructure.
City Council is expected to
vote on the proposal by year’s
end.
Second Ward alumni are
pressing for a magnet school
in the area — a project that
Please see SECOND/6A
Swept up by
electoral change
In front - for now: N.C. Rep.
Jim Black. The N.C. House
speaker (center) prevailed
over Republican Hal
Jordan by a razor-thin
seven votes Tuesday night.
▼
First for N.C.'s top court: Judge
Patricia Timmons-Goodson.
Fayetteville Jurist is first black
woman elected to the state
Supreme Court. She is the only
African American on the
panel.
Access to power:
U.$. Rep. Mel Watt
Charlotte Democrat
becomes a deal-maker as
chair of the Congressional
Black Caucus. He's also in
line toJead his choice of
subcommittees which
oversee financial services
Clyburn
Heavy hitter:
U.S. Rep. Jim
Clyburn
S.C. lawmaker is
in line to become
majority whip -
the No. 3-post in
that chamber of
Congress.
industry.
Historic election alters government at every level
By Herbert L. White
r)erti.wfi/te@#Tec/Toriotteposf.com
Afiican Americans will have
unprecedented power in
Congress, while a scandal-taint
ed ally in Raleigh may have just
enough support to keep his seat.
Democrats rode a wave of d^-
content over Iraq and how
Cor^ress conducts fhe nation’s
affairs to a majority in the
House of Representatives. U.S.
Rep. Mel Watt of Charlotte,
chairman of the Congressional
Black Caucus, wiQ be in a posi
tion of strength to deal with fel
low Democrats on issues of
importance to Afiican
Americans.
“The American people have
spoken and African Americans,
in particular, have overwhelm
ingly voted for new leadership in
Congress and around the coun
try,” Watt said. ‘We will now
have a Congress that works for
all Americans.”
The CBC, which grows to 45
members in January with the
election of Yvette Clarke (D-
N.Y.), Keith Ellison (D-Minn.)
and Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), has
been out of the political loop
since President Bush took office
in 2001. With Bush forced to
deal with a Democrat-controlled
House, the landscape has
changed.
Please see CONGRESSIONAL7A
King memorial first to honor black American on Mall
By Derrill L Holly
THE ASSOC(ATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - On a hot
August afternoon in 1963, Rev
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered
his “I Have a Dream” speech to a
mostly black audience from the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
On Nov. 13, a half-mile from
Lincoln’s iconic statue, a diverse
group of celebrities, corporate
leaders and ordinary Americans
will help turn the first shovels of
dirt for a memorial honoring the
dvil lights leader who was slain
38 years ago. It wUl be the first
monument to an African
American on the National Mall,
the long stretch of grounds
between the U.S. Capitol apd the
Washington Monument.
“He’s an American hero, and
beyond that he’s a hero for all
sorts of people,” said poet and nov
elist Maya Angelou, who is sdied-
uled to join talk show host Oprah
Winfrey and others who have
been working for more than a
decade to hdp build the monu
ment.
Angdou, 80, said the groimd-
breaking is even more special
because it comes almost a year
Caucus
pursues
demency
for inmate
N.C. prisoner is mentally
ill, advocates insist
By Estes Thompson
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
GREENSBORO - A condemned man who
represented himself at trial should be spared
fiem execution because he’s mentally ill,
black leaders and his defense team said
Wednesday
Guy T. LeGrande, 47, was sentenced to
death in April 1996 for the shooting death of
EUen Munford in Stanly
County His appellate lawyer I
said no physical evidence such I
as fingerprints, blood or hair I
link LeGrande to the slaying. I
“Only the grand dr^on of I
the Ku Klux Klan would dare
to call it justice,” said CameU
Robinson, chairman of the LeGrande
North Carolina Black
Leadership Caucus, addir^ that carrying out
the sentence would make the state’s dtizens
“unwilling parties to a legalized lynching.”
District Attorney Michael Parker, who
wasn’t chief prosecutor at the time, said
LeGrande committed a calculating murder
after the victim’s estranged husband offered
him $6,500 fixim a $50,000 insurance policy
LeGrande didn’t seem insane, he said.
“He’s intelligent,” Parker said. “He’s clearly
competent. He’s articulate.”
The North ^Carolina Supreme Court’s
review of the conviction said LeGrande was
properly examined by a psychiatrist who
found he had no “smous mental disorder ...
(and was) competent to waive representation
by an attorney”
Please see ACT1VISTS/2A
after the death of King’s widow.
“She never was a p^on to say
‘Why didn’t it happen sooner?’
That would not be Coretta Scott
King,” Angelou said of her fiiend,
who died in January at 78.
Following the deaths of Coretta
Scott King and civil rights pioneer
Rosa Parks, who died in October
2005, efforts to raise the neces-
Please see MLK/3A
thebox
NEWS, NOTES & TRENDS
Nobel Prize
laureate to
visit Cbarlotte
FROM STAFF REPORTS
Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka will be
in Charlotte for a reading of his auto
biography Nov 12.
Soyinka, the first Afiican to earn a
Nobel Prize in literature, will read
and sign copies of‘You Must Set Forth
at Dawn” from 3-4 p.m. at Borders
books, 3900 Colony Road. His visit is
sponsored by The Echo Foundation,
an education and human rights orga
nization
Soyinka has partici
pated in three previous
Echo programs, includ
ing a 2002 visit as
keynote speaker for the
Voices Against
Indifference Initiative.
Soyinka is
Alphonse Fletcher
Fellow at Harvard
Soyinka
University’s W.E.B. DuBois Institute
for Afiican and Afiican American
Research.
J. Hale Turner grew up a fan of
children’s books. As an adult,
she’s writing them/1 D
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