Introductions
over. Bobcats
coach SAM
VINCENT jumps
into new job/1 C
Volume 32 No. 37
REV. CLAUDE
ALEXANDER
earns bishop-
designee status
from national
organization
Page 3B
$1.00
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The Voice of the Black Community
Adams Wright
Caucus
backs
embattled
colleague
Lawmakers slam
critics of Rep.
Thomas Wright
By Sommer Brokow
JhE TRIANGLE TRIBUNE
RALEIGH - North
Carolina’s Legislative Black
Caucus members are not
ready to give up on Rep.
Thomas Wright.
Wright D-New Hanover, a
Wilmington Democrat and
former chairman of the
NCLBC, is accused of com
mitting perjury and
accepting illegal campaign
contributions.
The State Board of
Elections voted unani
mously on May 15 to ask
Wake County District
Attorney C. Colin
WilloughDy to mount a
criminal investigation.
Their move came after
SBOE Chief Investigator
Kim Strach testified that
Wright could have pocket
ed up to a quarter million
dollars in campaign funds
for his personal use over
the past six years.
Wright was a top ally to
former speaker Jim Black,
who pleaded guilty to fed
eral public corruption
charges in February. He is
awaiting sentencing.
Initially, House Speaker
Joe Hackney fell short of
asking for Wright’s resig
nation, saying only that he
could no longer be effec
tive unless he had some
satisfactory explanation.
A week later, Hackney
asked Wright to resign.
“He has not offered any
sort of explanation and
without explanation he is
inefficient in this chamber
and that level of inefficien
cy has reached the point
where he should resign,”
said Bill Holmes, a
spokesman for Hackney.
See LEGISLATIVE/6A
Breaking cycle to
keep families intact
By Michaela Duckett
FOR THE CHARLOTTE POST
Children of incarcerated parents are six times more
likely than other children to get caught up in the
criminal justice system.
According to Stacy Renee Sutton, executive direc
tor of Charlotte’s Summit House, “There are a lot of
kids in the system, and at least 9 out of every 10 of
them have been separated from a parental figure at
some point in their lives.”
Summit House helps break the multi-generational
cycle of poverty, substance abuse, and crime by
keeping families together. The diversion program
provides an alternative to prison for pregnant
women, or those with young children, who have
been convicted of non-violent felonies.
Please see DIVERSION/2A
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PHOTO/PAUL WILLIAMS III
Charlotte crty workers Nothanette Mayo (left) and Victoria Hamilton (third from left) Joined their
peers at Chaitotte-Mecklenburg Government Center last week to demand a pay raise and
better work conditions.
The cost to be bossed
City workers demand raise, better work conditions
By Michoelo Duckett
FOR THE CHARLOTTE POST
It’s hard keeping a growing
city clean on stagnant wages.
Holding signs that read, "The
City Works because We Do,”
Charlotte city workers took to
the streets last Friday to protest
unjust work conditions. Their
message: Wc’rc fed up with
being mistreated, overworked
and underpaid.
"We want the public to know
how we are being treated,” said
Ravon Motley. "We keep the city
clean. We keep sewer out of the
streets. We maintain the water.
We do the city a great justice
and they don’t want to pay us.”
According to the North
Carolina Public Service Workers
Union, approximately 75 per
cent of all African American
women and 65 percent of
African American men working
in state agencies are in the three
lowest pay grade ranges.
The statistics are similar for
city workers.
"Some of us are paid any
where from 12 to 13 percent
below the national average for
our job and as you go down the
pay scale the gap widens," said
Tim Lackey, president of the
Charlotte City Workers’ Union.
"In upper management they
are within 1 percent of their
market value and we feel that
everybody regardless of their
job should be brought within
market value or at least as close
as possible,” said STS worker
James Anderson.
"City Council has acknowl
edged that we have been paid
well below average and they
know the pay could be better,"
said Lackey. Nevertheless,
nothing has been done.
“Charlotte has the money. We
are the biggest banking city in
America now and with this
city’s growth, it has the money
to treat its workers better than
it does."
City workers say it is difficult
to support a family on their
wages and are forced to drop
insurance coverage because it
has become unaffordable.
“They give us a 3.7 percent
raise when insurance is going
up 33 percent, so I’ll always be
behind. I’ll never see a raise,”
said Stan Carter.
"A lot of people are leaving
because they are so frustrated.
Please see CITY/6A
Swain
historic life-saving station resurrected
By Kristin Dovis
THE V(RG(N)AN-BLOT
MANTEO - Michael Berry
played in the sturdy little cook
house when he was a boy.
It was in Rodanthe then, where
the owner used it for storage.
Berry knew it only as a place to
play, a faded old building whose
walls he once helped paint. Now
he knows more.
He knows it was built in 1930,
that it once sat perched on the
beach six miles south of Oregon
Inlet and that it was part of the
Pea Island Life-Saving Station,
the only one in the nation with
an all-black crew.
His grandfather, M.M. Berry,
served as a captain.
The family connection has
made Michael Berry’s recent
work doubly meaningful. After
leaving his National Park Service
job in mid-afternoon. Berry
would head to the cookhouse to
hang pine paneling, put in new
wood floors, clean up old trim
and put it back in place. It was
set to open Monday at its new
home in Manteo as the Pea
Island African American
PHOTO/PAUL WILLIAMS III
Stacy Renee Sutton, executive director of Summit House, holds Joseph Marrow
as his mom Brittany Housand, looks on. The diversion program prowdes women
an altemattve to prison and keeps their families together.
Also serving Cabarrus, Chester, Mecklenburg, Rowan and York counties
Secure
border or
access to
labor?
U.S. immigration reform
likely to be tedious process
By Herbert L. White
heit>. while g'ffiecLiartoffeposLcom
The battle over U.S. immigration reform has
political and economic implications.
But it probably won’t be decided quickly -
or without national angst.
A joint congressional panel earlier this
month agreed on a reform package that
President Bush said he’d support. Liberals
assailed the proposal as exces
sively punitive with a "touch-
back” provision that would
require undocumented immi
grants to return to their home
country as a condition of
returning to American soil.
Conserviatives howl it
amounts to amnesty for law
breakers.
“I doubt very seriously
there’ll be any immigration reform before the
200 presidential election,” said Carol Swain
PhD., a political science and law professor at
Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Term.
“The bigger problem is the bill is terrible and
doesn’t fix anything."
North Carolina has an estimated 206,000
illegal residents according to the U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service. Of
Please see IMMIGRATION/3A
Candidate
unbowed by
threats on life
By Hazel Trice Edney
NATTOHAL NEWSPAPER PUBUSHERS ASSOCIATION
WASHINGTON - Democratic Presidential
Candidate Barack Obama, who
has received earliest-ever
Secret Service protection -
apparently because of race-
oriented threats on his life -
says he will not be deterred by
intimidation. Another former
black presidential candidate
says the threats indicate
resistance to change i
America.
"It’s not something that I’m spending a lot
of time worrying about or spending a lot of
time talking about.” Obama told the NNPA
News Service last week. “I think that all can
didates for the presidency have some securi
ty risks. I don’t make these assessments.
Others make the assessments for us. And I’m
very happy for the professionalism and the
dedication of the Secret Service folks who are
with me, but I'm just spending most of my
time thinking about how I can be the best
See CANDIDATE/3A
Controversial
MLK statue
returns to park
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ROCKY MOUNT - It’s hard to tell whether the
residents of Rocky Mount like the statue of
the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. any more now
than they did two years ago when it was first
placed in the park that bears the name of the
slain civil rights leader.
Marilyn Lewis said she saw the statue when
it was first erected, but “it looks different
now."
"It kinda looks like him, and it kinda does
n’t," she said Wednesday, the day the statue
returned to the park.
Please see MLK/2A
Heritage Center Museum at
Collins Park.
A year and a half ago, the
cookhouse was worn down,
overgrown and full of old
papers and little creatures. But a
couple of people had a plan to
move it from Rodanthe to
Manteo, restore it and open it as
a museum.
Eugene Austin, whose grand
father and great-grandfather
served at the Pea Island station,
along with Carole Scott of the
East Carolina Pathway to
I see HISTORIC/2A
Obama
Malcolm X to Do The
Right Thing: One fans
DINAH WASH!!
list of Spike Lee s best
flicks ever/1 D
INSIDE
Life IB
Religion 56
Sports 1C
Business 6C
A&E ID
Classified 3D
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