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At 14,‘THE LION
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Lighting it up
Davidson sophomore Stephen
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Volume 32 No. 42
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The Voice of the Black Community
WEEK OF JULY S-11.2007
Ends
don’t
meet at
NAACP
Fly on the Wall is rumor,
innuendo, and a smattering
of truth for ali you first-time
readers and those who Just
don’t know any better.
Not you. Of course, you're
too savvy a reader. We’re
talking about that character
reading over your shoulder.
Anyway, the disclaimer is
brought to you courtesy of
Dewey, Cheatham and
Howe, barristers to the beau
tiful. Let's get going before
the leftover barbecue turns
up missing.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s
NAACP is waiting with bait
ed breath the results from a
probe from the national
office regarding a complaint
about - you guessed it -
finances. Shucks, the hijinks
even has its own blog, cour
tesy of journalist/activist
John Minter.
Fly's spies report that
chapter members sniff
something rotten regarding
how money was spent (or
not) on the 2006 Ashanti
Awards banquet. Among the
allegations: finance records
wound up going with former
branch president Yvonne
Pettis rather than the branch
address and the executive
committee couldn’t get a full
accounting from former
treasurer Danny Davis.
The national NAACP,
which has its own money
issues, hasn't breathed a
word about its findings. Of
course, the locals won't, call
ing it a non-story.
That’s why you're in
FOTW.
Anthony Aldrich D isn’t
your typical Boy Scout.
He’s the King of Kernels,
the Prince of Popcorn and
High Priest of
salesman at
2006. according to the Boy
Scouts, who feted the 13-
year-old at the organiza
tion’s national annual meet
ing in Atlanta last month.
Anthony has been the top
seller in Mecklenburg
County four of the last five
years and one of the perks of
being No. 1, he spoke at a
popcorn sales seminar and
rubbed elbows with the likes
of Mike Weaver, CEO of Pop
Weaver.
Please see IS RADIO/3A
Also serving Cab 23216 S9 PI
[ James 8. Duke Library
F= 100 Beatties Ford Rd
Charlotte NC 28216-5302
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR PHOTO/NICOLE HILL
Norman Payne leaves the statehouse where he took his oath to become a U.S. crtfizen last
Thursday afternoon. An immigrant from Panama, he has lived In the U.S. for 16 years and has
two children, Tafadzwa, 5, and Munashe, 3 (srHing.) Payne’s wife Joy is on the right.
American dream,
many possibilities
Results differ among immigrants and native-born citizens
By Peter Grier
THE CmSnAN SCIENCE MONITOR
If the American dream means
doing better than your parents
did, then Mike Brockman’s not
living it.
Single, with a 10-year-old
daughter, he's a server at a
Black Angus restaurant in
Mesa, Ariz. His father at his age
had a good, steady job as a
machinist at TRW.
Today "there aren't the kind
of jobs available you used to
get with a high school educa
tion, and work yourself up,”
says Brockman. “Now you have
to have training or experience
to start, then you can work
your way up from there.”
Norman Payne, on the other
hand, thinks the American
dream is alive and well. An
immigrant from Panama, he's
lived in the U.S. for 16 years
and on June 28 in Boston he
was sworn in as a U.S. citizen.
Payne works in customer ser
vice at Kodak and has high
hopes for his young son and
daughter.
"1 don’t think the American
dream has changed,” he says.
"I am trying to do everything 1
can do so that they can do bet
ter than 1 did."
Two hundred and thirty-one
years after the 13 colonies
declared their independence
from Great Britain, is the
United States still the land of
opportunity, the light of hope
for the poor of the world?
The economic dream that
has united a diverse popula
tion for generations, that chil
dren would be more prosper
ous than their parents, is in
question as perhaps never
before.
See LAW SCHOOLy2A
Debate reveals stratified constituency
By Haze! Trice Edney
NATIONAL NEWSPAPER
PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATTON
WASHINGTON - The All-
American Presidential Forum held
at Howard University last week not
only showcased domestic issues
of interest to African-Americans,
but has also revealed a black con
stituency that, although admires
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, is clearly
stratified in its support for several
candidates.
“My favorite candidate at this
Summer camp gives
kids a taste of skills
needed to succeed
in business/6C
point is still John Edwards. I think
that his views are most aligned
with mine and he presented him
self very well,” says Rochelle Ford,
a Howard University advertising
and journalism professor who
attended the debate.
At the same time. Ford, like other
members of the vastly black audi
ence interviewed as they pressed
their way out of Howard’s
Crampton Auditorium, also held a
special allegiance to Obama, the
loan black candidate who has
reached rock star fame as he runs
neck-and-neck with Sen. Hilary
Rodham Clinton for the
Democratic nomination.
"1 am an Obama supporter. I’d
love to see an Obama-Edwards
ticket,” says Ford.
She says she did an online test to
see which candidate’s views most
aligned with hers. "John Edwards
was number one and Obama was
number two. And so, a president-
vice president kind of thing 1 think
Please see DEBATE/2A
PHOTO/CALVIN FERGUSON
Last week’s Supreme Court decision all but
bans race in student assignment, a model
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has used
since 2001.
Widiout
race, can
schools
diueisifyP
Supreme Court decision
mirrors what CMS student
assignment has become
By Herbert L. White
herb.while@lhechot1otleposl.com
In the 1970s, Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Schools were a national model of busing for
desegregation.
In 2007, it's a national model of resegre
gation with race removed as a factor in
school assignment.
Last week’s U.S. Supreme
Court decision struck down
voluntary desegregation
plans in Louisville, Ky., and
Seattle that relied too heavily
on race. The 5-4 decision was
tempered by Justice Anthony
Kennedy - the Court’s swing
voter - who left open the pos
sibility of racial demograph- Gorman
ics.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg switched to a
race-neutral policy in 2001 after losing a
lawsuit brought by white parents who
argued the district's pupil assignment plan
was discriminatory. The result: Mostly all
black and Hispanic low-income inner city
schools surrounded by higher-income and
mostly-white suburban campuses.
"CMS does not use race as a factor in stu
dent assignment, so we were not impacted
by the recent ruling,” district
Superintendent Peter Gorman said.
Please see ETHNICITY/3A
The Post earns
national a'wards
By Herbert L. White
herb.whife@lhechai1otlepost.com
The Post earned a pair of honors at the
National Newspaper Publishers Association
Awards last week in Seattle.
The Post's Jim Hunt earned first place in
editorial car-
t ' ' tooning for his
March 9, 2006
lampooning of
the Federal
Emergency
Management
Agency's
response to
Hodges Hurricane
Katrina. The
Post also earned a second-place award for
overall reporting in its Life section, edited by
Cheris Hodges.
NNPA is a trade publication representing
150 black-owned publications in the U.S.
Hunt
Life 1B
Religion 4B
Sports 1C
Business 6C
A&E1D
Classified 4D
MSIIE
To subscribe: (704) 376-0496 FAX (704) 342-2160.© 2007 The Charlotte Post Publishing Co.
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