Afro-Netizen™

Jackson Clarion-Ledger

So, justice has finally come for Clyde Kennard - 46 years late, but finally.

Forrest County Circuit Judge Bob Helfrich slammed the gavel on the state's wrongdoing Wednesday, in declaring Kennard innocent of the bogus charges for which he was convicted in Mississippi's troubled racial past.

As The Clarion-Ledger revealed, Kennard went to prison in 1960 for a crime he never committed after refusing to abandon his quest to enroll at the then all-white University of Southern Mississippi.

Kennard, a decorated Korean War veteran, was convicted for possessing stolen chicken feed and sentenced to serve time at the State Penitentiary at Parchman.

Even the late segregationist Gov. Ross Barnett, who allowed Kennard to go home from prison in 1963 to die of cancer, conceded Kennard was innocent.

But it took Judge Helfrich to put the issue to rest, with eloquent words: "It did begin here, and, yes, it should end here," he said. "To me, this is not a black-white issue. It is a right-wrong issue. To correct that wrong, I'm compelled to do the right thing and declare Mr. Kennard innocent."

The mystery is why it took so long.

Gov. Haley Barbour could have issued a pardon. His objection that it would be unprecedented to pardon someone who is no longer living seemed weak, even if he did have the law on his side.

But Barbour did support the court action and had filed his own petition supporting the exoneration. On Wednesday, Barbour praised the court's action.

As former Gov. William Winter - who with former 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Charles Pickering Sr., former state Supreme Court Justice Reuben Anderson, and former Circuit Judge Barry Ford., championed exonerating Kennard - put it, the message was crucial:

"Let the word go out from the courthouse in Forrest County, Miss., that we are committed to justice in Mississippi for all people of every race and every station and of every circumstance."

Justice came 46 years late, but justice did finally come for Clyde Kennard.

New studies find them falling further out of labor force, mainstream society

By Michael E. Ross
Reporter
MSNBC.com

Young African-American men, such as these inmates at the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, Calif., are part of a picture of continuing despair for many young black American men, according to new books.

At a time when the U.S. economy is on the upswing and more people are finding work, young African American men are falling further behind.

That’s the grim portrait painted by three new and forthcoming books by scholars at Columbia, Georgetown and Princeton universities. The picture isn't new, but the depths of its despair and pathology are.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates there are about 5 million black men in America between the ages of 20 and 39. The new books, and an earlier one from Harvard, find them losing ground in mainstream American society, despite advances made by black women, presumably part of the same socioeconomic experience.

This vexing problem, caused by a variety of social ills, is equally vexing when scholars consider what causes it.

Among the studies' findings:

• Rates of imprisonment for young black men escalated throughout the 1990s and continued climbing well into the current decade. About 16 percent of black men in their twenties who were not college students were either in jail or in prison.
• African Americans are seven times more likely to go to prison or jail than whites.
• Almost 60 percent of black male high school dropouts in their early thirties have spent time in prison.
• The percentage of young jobless black men continues to increase, part of a trend that generally hasn't abated in decades. In 2000, about 65 percent of black male high-school dropouts had no jobs, either because they couldn't find work or because they were in jail. By 2004, the studies found that number had grown to 72 percent. The numbers for young black men were higher than for whites and Hispanics similarly affected.
• Making matters worse, a forthcoming book, which includes a study of nearly 1,500 private employers in New York City, found that black job applicants with no criminal records weren't any more likely to get a job than white applicants who were just out of prison.

Persistence of imbalance

“A lot of people are skeptical that African Americans still face discrimination in the job market. But even in a diverse city like New York, the evidence of discrimination is unmistakable,” said Devah Pager, a Princeton sociology professor, in announcing “Punishment and Inequality in America.” The book, written by Princeton's Bruce Western, will be published in June.

“The 1990s were an eye-opener,” said Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. “You had the strongest labor market in 30 years; all things being equal, those were good times for African Americans. A lot of black moms were entering the labor market, but the dads kept dropping out.”

Holzer's new book, "Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men,” was co-written with two other scholars. The third book is “Black Males Left Behind,” edited by Columbia University professor Ronald B. Mincy. A 2004 book, “ Dropouts in America,” found similarly dire circumstances for young black men.

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By Jonathan D. Glater
The New York Times

Facing threats of litigation and pressure from Washington, colleges and universities nationwide are opening to white students hundreds of thousands of dollars in fellowships, scholarships and other programs previously created for minorities.

Southern Illinois University reached a consent decree last month with the Justice Department to allow nonminorities and men access to graduate fellowships originally created for minorities and women.

In January, the State University of New York made white students eligible for $6.8 million of aid in two scholarship programs also previously available just for minorities. Pepperdine University is negotiating with the Education Department over its use of race as a criterion in its programs.

"They're all trying to minimize their legal exposure," Susan Sturm, a law professor at Columbia University, said about colleges and universities. "The question is how are they doing that, and are they doing that in a way that's going to shut down any effort or any successful effort to diversify the student body?"

The institutions are reacting to two 2003 Supreme Court cases on using race in admissions at the University of Michigan. Although the cases did not ban using race in admissions to higher education, they did leave the state of the law unclear, and with the changing composition of the court, some university and college officials fear legal challenges.

The affected areas include programs for high schools and graduate fellowships.

It is far too early to determine the effects of the changes on the presence of minorities in higher education and how far the pool of money for scholarships and similar programs will stretch.

Firm data on how many institutions have modified their policies is elusive because colleges and institutions are not eager to trumpet the changes. At least a handful are seeking to put more money into the programs as they expand the possible pool of applicants.

Some white students are qualifying for the aid. Last year, in response to a legal threat from the Education Department, Washington University in St. Louis modified the standards for an undergraduate scholarship that had been open just to minorities and was named for the first African-American dean at the university. This year, the first since the change, 12 of the 42 first-year recipients are white.

Officials at conservative groups that are pushing for the changes see the shift as a sign of success in eliminating race as a factor in decision making in higher education.

"Our concern is that the law be followed and that nobody be denied participation in a program on account of skin color or what country their ancestors came from," said Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, which has been pressing institutions on the issue.

"We're not looking at achieving a particular racial outcome," Mr. Clegg added. "And it's unfortunate that some organizations seem to view the success or failure of the program based simply on what percentage of students of this color or that color can participate."

Advocates of focused scholarships programs like Theodore M. Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., challenge the notion that programs for minority students hurt whites. "How is it that they conclude that the great evil in this country is discrimination against white people?" Mr. Shaw asked. "Can I put that question any more pointedly? I struggle to find the words to do it because it's so stunning."

Mr. Shaw said protecting scholarships and other programs for minorities was "at the top of our agenda."

Travis Reindl, director of state policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said hundreds, if not thousands, of scholarship and fellowship programs historically used race as a criterion. Mr. Reindl estimated that as many as half of the four-year colleges in the United States had reviewed or modified such programs.

Neither the Justice Department nor Education Department, nor organizations on all sides of the discussions over affirmative action, have gathered statistics tracking the trend. In January, The Chronicle of Higher Education named more than 12 institutions that had made the changes.

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Stanley "Tookie" Williams is scheduled to be executed by the state of California on December 15, 2005, unless its governor, Arnold "the Govenator" Schwarzenegger, commutes Mr. Williams' sentence or postpones his execution.

Does the Govenator have the moral courage to do either of the above? Probably not. But I'm not letting my pessimism stand in the way of what I believe to be a noble cause: sparing a man who has committed himself to redemption on a scale larger than what most of us can even imagine.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media is not providing adequate coverage on this story, nor is much of what is covered about it particularly inspired.

Fortunately, we can count on Tavis Smiley -- per usual -- to shed some much needed light and perspective on this matter. And Tavis and his production staff have asked me to share with you this short audio clip as a prelude to a longer interview with Mr. Williams that he will be airing on his new nationally syndicated radio show the weekend of December 9th.

For those of you who want to share this audio vignette, please do so by copying and pasting the specific URL that will take you directly to the interview which I have provided below:

http://www.afro-netizen.com/files/stan_williams_clip_for_web_v3.mp3

Of course, while I hope you all enjoy listening to the above clip, Afro-Netizen also seeks to increasingly provide you with actionable information. So, now that you've got it, what are you going to do with/about it?

Well, if you're inclined to support the Govenator granting Mr. Williams clemency, feel free to participate in the following online petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?stw4804

For those of you who know of other actionable information that can be shared with your fellow readers, feel free to post it below by clicking on the Comments link.

P.S. Hate mail and hateful comments will be deleted, but not until they are forwarded to the appropriate authorities. (Seriously)

By Tim Molloy
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A judge has set a Dec. 13 execution date for Crips co-founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams, rejecting his attorneys' request for more time to prepare a clemency appeal for the convicted murderer and Nobel Prize nominee.

"This case has taken over 24 years to get to this point," said Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders, who signed Williams' death warrant Monday. "That is a long delay in itself and I would hate to add to that delay."

Williams, 51, was sentenced to death in 1981 for fatally shooting Albert Owens, a Whittier convenience store worker. He also was convicted of killing two Los Angeles motel owners and their daughter during a robbery.

Williams, who has maintained his innocence, has written a series of children's books disavowing gang violence during his years on Death Row. He has been nominated five times for a Nobel Prize for peace and four times for a Nobel Prize for literature.

His lawyers had requested that Pounders schedule his execution in San Quentin prison's death chamber for Dec. 22 to give them more time to craft their clemency request. The Dec. 13 execution date means they have until Nov. 8 to submit clemency papers to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Pounders said Williams' lawyers could ask the governor for more time to tell him about the good work Williams has done since renouncing his gang past.

In August, Williams received a President's Call to Service Award for his good deeds on Death Row, complete with a letter from President Bush praising him for demonstrating "the outstanding character of America."

Last year, Jamie Foxx played Williams in "Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story," a television movie that prompted thousands of e-mail messages to Williams from young gang members who said his story helped them turn their lives around.

Williams and a high school friend, Raymond Washington, organized the Crips street gang in Los Angeles in 1971.

Lora Owens, Albert Owens' stepmother, said Williams does not deserve clemency.

"I didn't convict the man and I didn't put a death sentence on him, but I want justice for Albert to be done. I will not let it go," she said in a recent telephone interview.

Dozens of death penalty opponents held a quiet demonstration Monday outside the courtroom. They held a banner praising Williams' work to prevent gang violence that read, "Keeping him alive saves lives!"

Among the demonstrators was actor Mike Farrell, who called the proceedings "disgusting."

"It's a simple, sterile, ministerial procedure in which a human life is scheduled to be expunged without consideration for his value, his change, his transformation," Farrell said.

By James Wright
AFRO Staff Writer
Afro.com

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) has authored a bill that would allow victims of Hurricane Katrina who have been convicted of felonies to receive federal benefits. The bill, Elimination of Barriers for Katrina Victims Act, has the support of the Congressional Black Caucus and other members of the Progressive Caucus of the U.S. House.

"We believe that in the case of Hurricane Katrina, people should have the right to government assistance regardless of their circumstances," Scott said. "People who have felony convictions are prohibited from certain types of aid. These people are facing the consequences of a state of emergency and have the right to resume their lives regardless of what they did in the past."
Scott is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee's crime subcommittee. He is also the Congressional Black Caucus' key legislator on the issue of crime and race.

Scott has staked his career on trying to restore voting rights for ex-offenders. He said this bill is a logical extension of his work.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said the Bush administration is working against the people affected by Katrina.

"This administration is giving no-bid contracts to companies like Halliburton and nothing to small businesses," Thompson said. "The people who are rebuilding the Gulf area do not have federal protections in terms of wages and benefits.

"This bill is a step in the right direction for people who really need the help."

The bill would allow those with felony convictions to receive government aid such as food stamps or housing subsidies. Under current laws, thousands of Katrina evacuees would not be eligible for benefits and, therefore, would be forced to sustain themselves in other ways.

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Pioneering black woman lawyer at the forefront of the civil rights struggle in America

Godfrey Hodgson
Saturday October 1, 2005
The Guardian

Constance Baker Motley, who has died aged 84, was the first African-American woman to become a US federal judge and also the first black woman to be elected to the New York state senate. Among many other groundbreaking achievements, she was also the first woman - of any race - to become president of one of the five boroughs that make up New York city, in her case Manhattan.

Her most important achievements, however, came arguably when she was a key member of the team that won the historic civil rights case Brown v School Board of Topeka, Kansas et al in 1954. This was the case in which the US supreme court ruled that there was no such thing as "separate but equal" education, and thus declared segregated schooling to be unconstitutional.

It was Motley who drafted the original complaint, which was successfully argued by Thurgood Marshall, later the first black justice on the supreme court.

In her own right, as counsel for the long-established civil rights group the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she won nine of the 10 civil rights cases she litigated before the supreme court.

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By JESSE J. HOLLAND
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court nominee John Roberts should be questioned closely about civil rights because of the Bush administration's refusal to release documents from his tenure in the solicitor general's office, black Democratic lawmakers said Tuesday.

On the second day of confirmation hearings, members of the Congressional Black Caucus urged Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to focus on Roberts and his views on civil rights. The group said Roberts turned down their request for a meeting and documents that could shed light on his opinions have been withheld by the White House.

``Our country's transformation on race could not have been achieved lawfully and nonviolently without the decisions of the Supreme Court. We hope that you agree that this achievement at a minimum deserves a central place in your examination of the nominee,'' said Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., the group's chairman, and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., the caucus' judicial nominations chair, said in a letter to the committee.

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Having just lost my father this summer, this notion of legacies left is something that I've given inordinate thought.

I have often heard in eulogies that what matters most is not the birth year or death year of an individual, but the dash that separated them.

Truth -- like legacies -- is subjective. So, when I think of the late Justice William Rehnquist's dash, I think of this, and am inspired and emboldened all the more by the legacy of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Terrorist attacks have been carried out by people of all ethnicities. What police need to look for is strange behavior, not dark skin.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By Kim Zetter
Salon.com
(Afro-Netizen heartily recommends subscribing to Salon.com)

By anyone's standard, Anne-Marie Murphy didn't look like a terrorist threat. In 1986, Murphy was a 32-year-old hotel chambermaid from Dublin, Ireland, who was six months pregnant and on her way to marry her fiancé in Israel. Authorities discovered a bomb in her carry-on bag as she boarded a plane in London on her way to Tel Aviv.

Kozo Okamoto didn't fit the profile of a terrorist, either. In 1972, he and two other Japanese passengers had just arrived in Tel Aviv on a flight from Puerto Rico when they retrieved guns from their checked bags and opened fire in the arrival terminal at Ben Gurion International Airport, killing more than two dozen people and injuring nearly 80.

Nor did Patrick Arguello seem like a state enemy in 1970 before he tried to hijack an Israeli El Al plane flying from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to New York. Arguello, who was killed by Israeli sky marshals as he tried to carry out his attempt, was a Nicaraguan who had attended high school in Los Angeles.

Enemies, Israel has learned, don't always look like the known enemy. Terrorists, both willing and unwilling (such as Murphy, who was unwittingly used by her Palestinian fiancé as a carrier for his bomb), come in many guises, including color, ethnicity and gender.

Which is why racial profiling (in which authorities target people of certain races or ethnicities) has never worked very well in any environment, including Israel.

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By Allan Lengel
Washington Post Staff Writer

Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), a veteran member of the Ways and Means Committee whose homes in Washington and New Orleans were raided by the FBI last week, had been the target of an undercover FBI sting involving public corruption for nearly a year, according to law enforcement sources.

Investigators are looking into whether Jefferson illegally pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars of an investor's money from business transactions during the sting, according to the sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case.

According to the sources, a high-tech company that was starting up in Northern Virginia agreed to cooperate with the FBI in the sting, and conversations with Jefferson were secretly recorded. Jefferson, an eight-term congressman who once was dogged by reports of defaults on outstanding loans and mortgages, allegedly agreed to invest in the start-up company and use his congressional influence to bring in business, the sources said.

Jefferson, 58, a Harvard Law School graduate and former state senator, has not been charged with wrongdoing. A federal grand jury in Alexandria is investigating the matter. The U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria and the FBI have declined to comment. A Justice Department spokesman has said that the search warrants were executed "in connection with an ongoing criminal investigation" but provided no further details.

In the raids on his homes, FBI agents seized a number of items, including a large amount of cash that was kept in a freezer, the sources said. His accountant's home and office were also searched.

It is extremely rare that the FBI targets a congressman in a sting, former and current law enforcement authorities said. They said the last such case of note they remembered was the 1978 Abscam case, an FBI undercover sting that resulted in the conviction of six representatives and a senator. FBI agents, who posed as Arab sheiks and associates, offered the politicians money in exchange for favors, raising complaints of entrapment.

Jefferson's attorney, Michael Fawer of New Orleans, said yesterday that he was "satisfied in what we're involved in is a sting operation on the part of the FBI or some other law enforcement organization that has been pulling strings behind the scenes just as they had in Abscam."

"If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and smells like a duck, then it's a sting," he said, declining to say what information he based his comments on.

Fawer said he was confident Jefferson "did not pocket any money." He declined to comment on what was seized in the raids.

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Key provisions of anti-bias law are up for renewal in 2007

Erin McCormick
Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle

As a 7-year-old in Richmond's Iron Triangle, the Rev. Andre Shumake was riveted to his parents' television, watching Martin Luther King Jr. celebrate the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

"I remember thinking, 'This means I'll no longer be a second-class citizen,' " he said.

As he ministers 40 years later to a Richmond congregation torn by poverty and violence, Shumake is appalled at how much hasn't changed. In his community and among nonwhites across the United States, political disenfranchisement and voter apathy still reign, and charges of racism regularly crop up.

"Here we are in 2005, still dealing with the issues we were dealing with the '50s and '60s,'' Shumake said.

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the act on Aug. 6, 1965, civil rights advocates hoped the new law finally would demolish the wall of racism that largely excluded nonwhites from the American political process. The law banned literacy tests and the other barriers that southern states had erected since blacks won the vote in 1870 to prevent them from voting. And in the three years after it passed, more than a million new nonwhite voters cast ballots in southern states.

But the law's biggest effect since 1968 has been on the complex question of how race should be used in drawing legislative boundaries. Court battles, amendments and legal interpretations have transformed the law into a key weapon in a seemingly endless battle against race discrimination in the electoral process.

As civil rights advocates launch a campaign to renew provisions that will expire in 2007, the law is still invoked in election discrimination debates stretching from Georgia's gerrymandered congressional districts to Monterey County's sprawling farmland.

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Display includes 'jelly bean test' used to keep blacks from voting

Associated Press

ATLANTA - From a bloody attack on an Alabama bridge to a bill-signing ceremony in the White House, a new exhibit traces the history of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Organizers of the free exhibit, at the Martin Luther King Jr. historic site, say they hope to show both the difficult struggle to pass the law and the lasting effects it has had.

“What we’re really hoping people come out with is not just that it was a struggle, but that overall, it was a successful struggle,” said Dean Rowley, co-curator of the exhibit, “Of Ballots Uncast: The African American Struggle for the Right to Vote”.

Back to Bloody Sunday

The act, signed by President Lyndon Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965, officially guaranteed the right to vote to every American, regardless of race. Its basic tenets are permanent, but certain provisions must be renewed by Congress by 2007.

At the exhibit, visitors enter via a replica of Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, site of the “Bloody Sunday” attack in March 1965. Alabama state troopers stopped civil rights marchers on the bridge, turning them back using nightsticks and tear gas.

“It was really the Bloody Sunday march that got the nation’s attention and raised interest in getting the Voting Rights Act passed,” Rowley said. “People didn’t want to be associated with something so oppressive.”

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Ruben Navarrette Jr.
San Diego Union-Tribune

San Diego -- I CONFESS that upon learning of the nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court, I gave into a wee bit of sarcasm. "Good," I couldn't resist telling colleagues, "A white male got it. They never get anything."

Overachieving and highly accomplished women and minorities have the right to feel sucker-punched by the Roberts nomination. Not because President Bush, in selecting a replacement for the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor, didn't nominate a woman or a minority, but because of the giddy response to the nomination by conservatives and some members of the media. People are acting as if, after years of trying to diversify once all-white and all-male institutions, the Holy Grail of meritocracy has been restored.

It used to be that we waited until a Supreme Court nominee faced off with senators before discussing his or her views on affirmative action. Now, it's the physical characteristics of the nominee that prompt us to discuss our own view of affirmative action.

New York Times columnist David Brooks commended Bush for moving beyond the "tokenism of identity politics." In an op-ed article for the Los Angeles Times, a contributor insisted Bush sent women and minorities a message by nominating a "garden-variety" white male: There are no set-asides on the high court. And a caller to "The Rush Limbaugh Show" gushed that what he liked most about the Roberts nomination was that Bush withstood the pressure -- even from his own wife, Laura, who said she hoped he would choose a woman -- and he had just picked "the most qualified person he could find." I'm hearing that line over and over again from pundits and television commentators.

This whole line of thinking is offensive. For starters, I have never considered those two concepts -- merit and diversity -- to be mutually exclusive.

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The Associated Press

Verdict delivered 41 years after three civil rights workers disappeared.

Philadelphia, Miss. - An 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was convicted of manslaughter Tuesday in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers - exactly 41 years after they disappeared.

The jury of nine whites and three blacks reached the verdict on their second day of deliberations, rejecting murder charges against Edgar Ray Killen.

Prosecutors had sought murder charges, but included the manslaughter charges just before the trial began.

Killen could get up to 20 years on each of the three counts of manslaughter.

Killen showed no emotion as the verdict was read. He was comforted by his wife as he sat in his wheelchair. He was breathing through an oxygen tube. Heavily armed police a barrier outside a side door to the courthouse and jurors were loaded into two waiting vans and driven away.

The verdict was delivered 41 years to the date after James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were ambushed, beaten, and shot. Their bodies were found 44 days later.
Prosecutors had asked the jury to send a message to the rest of the world that Mississippi has changed and is committed to bringing to justice those who killed to preserve segregation in the 1960s.

They said the evidence was clear that Killen organized the attack on the three victims in the case that was dramatized in the movie "Mississippi Burning."

"Because the guilt of Edgar Ray Killen is so clear, there is only one question left," prosecutor Mark Duncan said in closing arguments. "Is a Neshoba County jury going to tell the rest of the world that we are not going to let Edgar Ray Killen get away with murder any more? Not one day more."

The 12 jurors deliberated Killen's fate for about two and a half hours Monday before going home without a verdict. At the end of the day, the judge polled jurors to determine how they were progressing, and the panel reported being deadlocked 6-6.

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By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate on Monday formally apologized for having blocked decades of efforts to make lynching a federal crime as victims' descendants watched from the chamber gallery.

On a voice vote and without opposition, the Senate passed a resolution expressing its regrets to the nearly 5,000 Americans -- mostly black males -- who were documented as having been lynched from 1880 to 1960.

These deaths occurred mostly in the South, often with the knowledge of local officials who preached white supremacy, fanned racial hatred and allowed mob lynchings to become picture-taking, public spectacles.

During this period, nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress, three of which passed the House of Representatives.

But despite the support of the legislation by seven U.S. presidents, the Senate prevented all the measures from becoming law, with much of the opposition coming from southern lawmakers who raised procedural roadblocks.

Such legislation would have made lynching a federal crime and allowed the U.S. government to prosecute those responsible, including local law enforcement officers.

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By Mike Colias
Associated Press

Three days after his body was exhumed for an autopsy 50 years after his murder in Mississippi, the relatives of Emmett Till gathered Saturday at a suburban Chicago cemetery for his reinterment.

Till, who was black, was visiting family in 1955 in Money, Mississippi when he was abducted from his uncle's home and found dead three days later, legend has it for whistling at a white woman.

His body was exhumed at the request of federal investigators last week and reburied in a new blue casket.

Simeon Wright, a cousin who was sleeping in the same bed with Till the night he was taken, described the 40-minute service Saturday as emotional and somber.

He said it brought back memories of the night Till was abducted and reminded him of the lasting impact his cousin's death has had. The crime galvanized the Civil Rights movement.

"Emmett's blood is still crying out all over the world," Wright said.

Federal investigators exhumed Till's remains Wednesday, saying DNA or other evidence could provide new information on the circumstances surrounding the 14-year-old's murder. Results from the autopsy have not been released.

An agent at the FBI office in Jackson, Miss., declined comment Saturday and referred questions to District Attorney Joyce Chiles in Greenville, Miss, who is leading the investigation. A message left for Chiles was not immediately returned.

Wright said FBI officials told him Till's body was remarkably well-preserved and the autopsy results offered good news.

"They said I'd be very pleased, but they couldn't divulge what was in the results," he said.

Till was dragged from his uncle's home on Aug. 28, 1955. Fishermen found his mutilated body in the Tallahatchie River.

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Bank satisfies Chicago ordinance requiring companies with city contracts to disclose slavery ties.

By Katie Benner
Staff writer
CNN/Money

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Wachovia Corporation has apologized for its ties to slavery after disclosing that two of its historical predecessors owned slaves and accepted them as payment.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia issued a 111-page report to comply with a Chicago ordinance that requires companies that do business with the city to disclose whether they profited from slavery, which ended in the United States in 1865.

"On behalf of Wachovia Corporation, I apologize to all Americans, and especially to African-Americans and people of African descent," said Ken Thompson, Wachovia chairman and chief executive officer, in the statement released late Wednesday. "We are deeply saddened by these findings."

Historians at the History Factory, a research firm specializing in corporate archival work, found that the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company and the Bank of Charleston -- institutions that ultimately became part of Wachovia through acquisitions -- owned slaves, Wachovia said in the statement.

Records revealed that the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company owned at least 162 slaves, Wachovia said, and that the Bank of Charleston accepted at least 529 slaves as collateral on mortgaged properties or loans. The Bank of Charleston also acquired an undetermined number of people when customers defaulted on their loans.

"We know that we cannot change the past, and we can't make up for the wrongs of slavery," said Thompson. "But we can learn from our past, and begin a stronger dialogue about slavery and the experience of African-Americans in our country."

"We want to promote a better understanding of the African-American experience, including the unique struggles, triumphs and contributions of African-Americans, and their important role in America's past and present," he added.

Slavery disclosures

The announcement comes as a handful of cities nationwide propose initiatives requiring banks and other large companies to investigate and disclose ties to slavery.

Lawsuits have also been filed over the past few years by descendents of slaves, who seek billions of dollars in reparations from companies for their ties to slavery. These companies include R.J. Reynolds (up $0.29 to $82.90, Research) and Aetna (down $0.12 to $78.73, Research).

Fellow banking giant J.P. Morgan (down $0.39 to $35.37, Research) released a similar disclosure in January, also in order to comply with Chicago's slavery ordinance, bank spokesman Tom Kelly told CNN/Money.

After revealing that a predecessor institution in Louisiana used slaves as collateral, JP Morgan apologized for its ties to slavery, and established a $5 million college scholarship program for African-American students from Louisiana.

The Chicago ordinance, which went into effect January 2003, was designed, "to promote full and accurate disclosure to the public about any slavery policies sold by any companies, or profits from slavery by other industries (or their predecessors) who are doing business with the city."

There is no penalty for companies that disclose they had ties to slavery, but as with any disclosure, companies that make false statements can have their contract with the city voided.

Along with Chicago, Richmond, Va., Philadelphia and Los Angeles also require companies that do business within city limits to disclose financial ties with slavery. City council members in Berkeley, Calif., proposed an ordinance this week that would nullify city contracts with companies that do not acknowledge past practices that aided slavery.

Wachovia has made the full research report available on its website, and said it plans to partner with community organizations to further awareness of African-American history.

By Christabel Nsiah-Buadi
Producer, The Laura Flanders Show
Air America Radio

This week, in their first article in Newsweek since the magazine was dressed-down by Scott McClellan in a White House press conference, Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas’ quote a Defense Department spokesman Lawrence DiRita, who alleges that Guantanamo commanders followed up each and every complaint they received from detainees about disrespect for Islam.

But DiRita's comments cry out for corroboration.

What DiRita has to say couldn’t be further from the experience of Martin Mubanga, a British Muslim who was arrested in Zambian by local authorities after returning from Afghanistan, handed to the U.S. and subsequently detained in Guantanamo Bay for 33 months until July 2005.

In his first broadcast interview with the US media on Sunday May 22, Martin Mubanga told Laura Flanders, host of The Laura Flanders Show, broadcast on Air America Radio, that offensive treatment of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay was routine – and complaints by inmates about the desecration of the Koran fell upon deaf ears, and often resulted in severe punishment, including pepper-spraying of prisoners.

Mubanga told Laura Flanders that US Military Police at Guantanamo often used religion as a means to provoke the inmates. Mubanga himself was forced to watch Military Police officers thrown his Qur’an on the floor during a search:

‘…there were two (Military Police officers) on either side of me, holding my wrists as I was kneeling down, and they had me in wristlocks. And one of the three that were searching took my Qu’ran. And instead of replacing it, to its place, one military policeman threw that on the floor… ‘

And, according to Mubanga, disregard of Muslim practices didn’t end at mishandling the Qur’an either:

‘The officials or the hierarchies used to punish us with regard to our religion by shaving our hair or shaving our beards…there was a particular bloc ‘Quebec Bloc’ and ‘Romeo Bloc’, which is in Camp Three of Delta Camp, where they would give shorts to brothers. And in our religion, you are not permitted to pray whilst your knees are uncovered.’

DiRita also says that in 2002, partly in response to an incident where a guard ‘inadvertently knocked a Qur’an from its pouch onto the floor of a detainee’s cell’, Guantanamo commanders issued ‘precise rules to respect the “cultural dignity of the Koran thereby reducing the friction over the searching of the Korans.”

Again, Mubanga’s first-hand experience of Guantanamo directly contradicts the comments of DiRita. He told Laura Flanders that it was the detainees who created guidelines that would ensure more respectful treatment of the Koran – not camp officials. When the detainees asked Camp officials, including General Jeffrey Miller, to enforce these guidelines, their requests, were, ‘refused point blank…subsequently, (the inmates) thought that they should do some sort of actions to show their anger and to try and reverse this decision, which resulted in many people being ‘earthed’.

Mubanga, describes ‘being earthed’ as a procedure that involves a minimum of five Military Police officers, dressed in riot gear with riot shields who, ‘would come in and manhandle you and put you to the floor. On occasion, you would be pepper sprayed, you’d be tied and carried out to the place that you are supposed to go’.

What the Defense Department won’t tell you is how its policy is translated by the guards in Guantanamo Bay – Mubanga provided some interesting insight:

‘…There were a few (soldiers) who were quite simply following orders and rightly or wrongly they would follow those orders because they saw no alternative other than themselves being remonstrated or reprimanded. You know, there were a few who had a hatred for the Islamic religion and the Islamic way of life… and people from the East and had a general ignorance toward the religion, and um, anything that was not American.’

Mubanga’s view of his treatment in Guantanamo Bay is clear and damning, ‘I was not given my rights, my legal rights as a British citizen, or as an individual. I was not treated humanely… I feel that they wanted to do whatever they had to do to bring back the result that they required or that they wanted’. And Human Rights advocates, lawyers, detainees, their families, even former Guantanamo Bay would agree with his version of events.

Erik Saar, a former US army sergeant, who was a translator in Guantanamo Bay from December 2002 until June 2003, describes how one female interrogator who smeared a prisoner with red ink, claimed it was menstrual blood and left, saying, "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself" in his book, Inside the Wire. Likewise, you can read written testimony from current and former Guantanamo Bay detainees, who cite examples of offensive behavior towards the Koran in the Report into the Systematic and Institutionalized U.S. Desecration of the Qur’an and other Islamic Rituals, which can be found on the Islamic human rights website, CagePrisoners.com.

Meanwhile, advocacy groups for one reason or another can’t corroborate or refute the Defense Department’s recent statements about prisoner abuse. Jumana Musa, an Advocacy Director for Amnesty International USA says, ‘It’s impossible for most human rights organizations to get access to any of these US detention facilities to see what really happens. And I think that if all of these detentions were acting in compliance with International law, we wouldn’t have this problem . . .".

One human rights organization that has some access to detention facilities like Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay is the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC). Unfortunately, the ICRC refuses to make any more public comments on the issue, as I found out when I asked Simon Schorno, spokesperson for the ICRC.

One gets the feeling that the White House is conducting a huge PR offensive, but how long can it last?

By Karen Pride
Chicago Defender 

CHICAGO (NNPA) – A majority of Emmett Till's family members say that they object to plans by the Justice Department to exhume his body in order to find clues to solve his brutal murder 50 years ago.

Speaking at a news conference at Rainbow/PUSH headquarters, Bertha Thomas, a cousin and president of the Emmett Till Foundation, said she saw no point in disturbing her cousin's remains so forensic pathologists could look for the true cause of death.

''They had over 40 years to do this,'' she said. ''My question to the FBI, the Department of Justice and anyone else involved in this is, why now? I understand Mr. Beauchamp wants his film out there, but I refuse to let him or anybody else use Mamie or Emmett in any way to gain notoriety.''

Kenneth Beauchamp is the director of the documentary, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, which details new information in the death of Till on Aug. 28, 1955.

The Justice Department and the FBI are planning to re-open the case, beginning with an exhumation of Till's body. But Thomas said Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, never asked for an autopsy prior to her death in 2003.

Read more

San Pablo man was found guilty of murder by white jury after blacks were removed

By David G. Savage
Los Angeles Times

Washington, DC -- Supreme Court justices said during arguments Monday that they were inclined to make it harder for California prosecutors to remove blacks and Latinos from juries without explaining their reasons for doing so.

At issue was how to enforce a two-decade-old rule that forbids the use of race as a reason for excluding people from a jury.

While most states tell judges they should question prosecutors whenever there is a hint of racial bias in the selection of jurors, California courts say prosecutors should be questioned only when there is a "strong likelihood" of racial bias.

A lawyer for a convicted child murderer from Contra Costa County told the justices that California's rule allows racial bias to go unchallenged and undetected.

"Here, the prosecutor struck all three black jurors and left a black defendant to be tried by a nearly all-white jury," said attorney Stephen Bedrick of Oakland.

The defense lawyer had complained, saying there was no apparent reason to remove one of the black women "other than her racial identity."

But the trial judge rejected the complaint and did not require the prosecutor to explain his reasons.

Read more

By Michael Graczyk
Associated Press

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Frances Newton waited in a small holding cell outside the Texas death chamber as Gov. Rick Perry considered a rare recommendation from the parole board that would postpone her execution scheduled for Wednesday.

Newton, 39, would be the first black woman and only the fourth female put to death in Texas since the Civil War. She was convicted of fatally shooting her husband and two young children more than 17 years ago but denies any involvement in the slayings.

"Somebody murdered my family and they haven't had to account for that," she told The Associated Press in a recent interview on death row.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, in a 5-1 vote Tuesday, endorsed a plea from Newton and her lawyers that the punishment be put off for 120 days.

The former tax accounting clerk may be innocent, her lawyers said, and additional scientific testing needed to be conducted on the murder weapon and on the clothing she was wearing the night of the slayings.

The .25-caliber pistol and blue dress prosecutors said had traces of gunpowder residue were introduced as evidence at her trial, where appeals attorneys insisted her legal representation was shoddy.

"We're just asking for time and it's hard to see how anybody can really be against giving us time," David Dow, one of her attorneys, said.

The board historically has turned aside such requests from condemned prisoners. In May, the panel recommended the life of a mentally ill convicted murderer be spared. Perry, however, rejected the vote of the board, whose members he appoints, and the inmate was executed.

Perry's decision then marked the first time a Texas governor rejected a parole board's clemency recommendation for a condemned killer since executions resumed in the state in 1982. During that period, 336 inmates received lethal injection, two of them women: Karla Faye Tucker in 1998 and Betty Lou Beets two years later. Before them, it was 1863 when a woman executed, hanged for the ax slaying of a South Texas rancher.

The Texas governor is empowered to issue a one-time 30-day stay of execution, but beyond that, any pardon, commutation or clemency first must be recommended by the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Prosecutors said Newton hoped to collect $100,000 in life insurance benefits on policies she recently had purchased, including one where she forged her the signature of her husband, Adrian, 23, who was killed along with their son Alton, 7, and daughter Farrah, 20 months.

Newton acknowledged hiding the existence of the policy from her husband but said from death row she didn't want him to know she had been saving money to purchase the insurance.

"With my husband, if he knew we had any extra money at all, it would be gone," she said.

Newton maintained a drug dealer she knew only as Charlie, whom Adrian Newton owed $500, was likely responsible for the 1987 slayings.

Prosecutors opposed any additional delay in the punishment, saying her claims to the parole board and in late appeals rejected this week by state and federal courts offered nothing new.

"We have a jury system," said Harris County assistant district attorney Roe Wilson, who handles capital case appeals. "The jury gave a verdict 17 years ago. We have an obligation to carry out that verdict after due process has occurred. And in this case due process has occurred."

Newton would be the 24th Texas inmate executed this year, equaling the total number of executions in the state last year. A record 40 were injected in 2000.

Nationally, she'd be the 11th woman executed and the first since Florida injected a woman in 2002.

The Supreme Court explores the subtleties of sex and basketball.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Slate.com

Talk about taking one for the team. …

Roderick Jackson bitched to his bosses about the second-class treatment accorded the girls' basketball team he coached at Ensley High School in Birmingham, Ala. Banished from the school's new gym, Jackson's team practiced in an unheated, rickety facility where its hoops literally drooped from age. When Jackson's bosses fired him, he filed suit under Title IX, a federal sex discrimination statute. The district court and then the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his claim that being fired for protesting gender discrimination itself constitutes an act of gender discrimination for which he was entitled to sue under Title IX.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 bars gender discrimination in educational and other programs receiving federal funds and permits the government to stop funding entities engaging in sex discrimination. In a 1979 case, Cannon v. University of Chicago, the Supreme Court held that victims of sex discrimination also had a private right to sue under Title IX. The question for the Supreme Court today is whether Title IX additionally created a private cause of action for people who were fired for complaining about sex discrimination against others. The court will decide whether the statute covers whistle-blowers or just victims.

Walter Dellinger (whom I know and edit) represents Jackson, and he argues this morning that it does no good to protect teenage athletes in a vacuum. "People like Coach Jackson need to come forward," he argues. "Students are minors, they don't know about budgets." Justice Antonin Scalia points out that the civil rights statutes that sought to protect against retaliatory firings "expressly provide for that." It's not logical to infer that Congress intended for the word "discrimination" to also include "retaliation" unless Congress explicitly said so. Dellinger responds that Title IX is identical to Title VI, which has long been understood to include retaliation in its definition of discrimination.

Quoting the statute, Scalia says he can't see where Coach Jackson was "on the basis of sex … excluded from participation in … denied the benefits of, or … subjected to discrimination under any education program." He asks whether that "even remotely describes" Jackson's experience.

Justice Anthony Kennedy notes that the '60s are so over: "This is not the heyday of private causes of action anymore." And Scalia objects to adding a new list of possible lawsuits to beleaguered school boards: "When the states signed on," he says, "they couldn't know this door to litigation was being opened to them." Dellinger counters that there is "no way that when the school districts accepted these [federal] funds, they thought they'd be free to retaliate."

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who will likely be the deciding vote in this case, asks whether Jackson availed himself of the administrative remedy available to him under Title IX before trying to sue own his own behalf. David Souter rephrases that question as: "Why do we need a private cause of action and not just this administrative remedy? Is the administrative remedy too draconian?" The justices confirm that termination of federal funding for schools based on Title IX violations are rare. At which time Scalia points out that maybe Title IX works "because the sanctions are so draconian. No one in their right minds wouldn't rehire a coach" if faced with a withdrawal of federal funds.

Irving Gornstein is an assistant to the solicitor general, and he argues for 10 minutes on Coach Jackson's side of the case. Many oral advocates have accidentally called Justice Ginsburg "O'Connor" over the years. Gornstein calls O'Connor "Justice Kennedy" this morning, thus proving that the two swing justices are merging inexorably into one great fungible Justice of Goo. Gornstein points out that in 1969 in Sullivan v. Little Hunting Park, the Supreme Court found that the statutory ban on racial discrimination encompassed retaliation and that Congress was well aware of the Sullivan rule when it passed Title IX in 1972.

Scalia asks wryly, "Do you think we take the same approach to implied causes of action today that we took in 1969?" He rejects the idea that "we'd go skipping along forever as we did in 1969." Bong in one hand, bong in the other. … And O'Connor reminds him that "Mr. Jackson was not discriminated against because of his gender." Gornstein replies that any "person who is victimized by retaliation because he complained about sex discrimination is a victim of sex discrimination."

The Birmingham Board of Education is represented by Kenneth Thomas, whose accent makes Dellinger's soft Carolina drawl sound Brooklynesque. Thomas opens with the claim that when there's a Title IX complaint, the Office for Civil Rights swoops in, and then there's hell to pay at school. "We know about OCR. They're in Atlanta, 167 miles away," he says. "And when they come, they come. …" Thomas goes on to argue that a private cause of action under Title IX offers no benefits to the team itself: "With a private suit, the award goes only to the coach," he says. "Nothing would go to benefit the girls' basketball team."

Full story

Harry R. Weber
Associated Press

Lafayette, Ga. - A former crematory operator pleaded guilty Friday to dumping 334 corpses on his property and giving the relatives of the dead cement dust instead of ashes.

Under a deal with prosecutors, Ray Brent Marsh could get up to 12 years in prison.

Authorities set aside half the courtroom for the victims' relatives, who were horrified to find out two years ago that Marsh had let the bodies pile up on his property - behind his house, in the woods, in buildings and crammed into burial vaults.

"He has a sentence of 12 years," said Teri Crawford, whose brother was supposed to have been cremated in 2001 after dying of cancer. "I will be tormented for the rest of my life wondering what happened to my brother."

Marsh, 31, apologized to the families as he pleaded guilty to 787 counts, including theft, abuse of a corpse, burial service fraud and making false statements.

"The answers that many of you have come here today to hear I cannot give you," Marsh told the family members.

"To those individuals who were genuinely harmed emotionally as a result of my actions, I apologize."

Security at the hearing was tight as police officers in plainclothes surrounded Marsh, who has received nu merous death threats. After ward, they es corted him through a throng of victims' relatives to a car.

A sentencing hearing was set for Jan. 31 and could take several days. Several dozen relatives have already told the prosecutor's office they want to speak at the hearing, and others plan to send letters.

Relatives have reached an $80 million settlement with Marsh, though it is unclear how much of that will ever be paid.

A lawsuit against funeral homes that sent bodies to Marsh's crematory was settled for $36 million, and much of that has been paid.

Marsh also is expected to plead guilty to corpse abuse in Tennessee, where some funeral homes that sent bodies to his crematory were located. That prison sentence would be served at the same time as the one he receives in Georgia.

Marsh allegedly stopped cremating bodies at the Tri- State Crematory in Noble, Ga., in 1997, when he took over the family business. Authorities discovered the ghastly scene on his property after receiving an anonymous tip.

Defense attorney McCracken Poston said that he could offer little insight into Marsh's motives.

Observer Staff Reporter
Sacramento Observer

New data released recently by the Justice Policy Institute reveals that California's Three Strikes law disproportionately locks up African Americans and Latinos compared to Whites.

African Americans constitute 6.5 percent of California's state population, but nearly 30 percent of the the prison population and 44.7 percent of those sentenced to life under the Three Strikes law.

According to this first-of-its-kind analysis of the racial and ethnic makeup of Three Strikes defendants, African Americans are given life sentences under Three Strikes at nearly 13 times the rate of Whites; and, the Latinos are incarcerated under Three Strikes a staggering 82 percent more than Whites.

According to "Racial Divide: An Examination of the Impact of California's Three Strikes Law on African Americans and Latinos," African Americans and Latinos are penalized at every stage of the criminal justice system at rates disproportionate to their share of the general population.

"Three Strikes is systematically funneling African American and Latino defendants into prison for longer and longer sentences, mostly for non-violent crimes," said Vincent Schiraldi, executive director of Justice Policy Institute (JPI), and co-author of the report.

Schiraldi added that the racial disparities for African Americans were particularly harsh by criminological standards. "Rarely does one see any law imposed so disproportionately against one racial group," he added.

The report found that African Americans constitute 6.5 percent of California's state population, but nearly 30 percent of California's prison population and 44.7 percent of those sentenced to life under Three Strikes.

By contrast, Whites constitute 47.1 percent of the population, 29 percent of the prison population, and 25.4 percent of third strikers. When comparing arrest and incarceration rates between African Americans and Whites, African Americans are arrested at 4.4 times the rate of Whites, imprisoned at 7.5 times the rate of Whites and ‘struck out' for life at nearly 13 times the rate of Whites.

Full story

By Phil Rosenthal
Television Critic
Chicago Sun-Times

The murder of Emmett Till, a story by now as familiar as it is sad, is one of those episodes in history that needs to be revisited time and again so that the evil mankind can do is never forgotten.

It's the story of a 14-year-old African- American boy from Chicago who was abducted, tortured and killed because he whistled at a white woman in 1955 Mississippi. His two accused murderers were acquitted in short order by an all-white jury, which apparently bought the defense contention that convictions would upend Southern life as they knew it.

No longer at risk of jail time, the two men later confessed to the crime without an iota of shame, only compounding the outrage and injustice.

CBS' "60 Minutes" this Sunday is the latest to review the incident, which, as correspondent Ed Bradley notes, helped ignite this nation's civil rights movement.

Full story

Commentary
Javier Starling and Geraldine Washington,
Justice Policy Institute

This year, voters in California will have an opportunity to change the Three Strikes Law. By voting for Proposition 66, we can return Three Strikes to the original intent of the voters and focus it exclusively on violent offenders. This would make the law fairer and more effective, and would be a start in creating the kind of criminal justice system that all Californians deserve.

New research released this month by the Justice Policy Institute reveals that African Americans and Latinos are far more likely to be imprisoned under California’s Three Strikes law than their white counterparts. African Americans are sent to prison for life under Three Strikes at nearly 13 times the rate of whites while Latinos' rate of incarceration under the Three Strikes law is 82 percent higher than whites.

Worse still, nearly two-thirds of those imprisoned under Three Strikes are locked up for non-violent offenses—crimes like stealing a package of AA batteries, buying a macadamia nut thinking it was a rock of crack cocaine, or writing a bad check for $94. This is a far cry from the “tough on violent crime” approach most voters thought they were enacting in 1994. It is bad public policy, and is made even worse by the racial disparities: Latinos and African Americans tend to be increasingly drawn into the system at greater and greater rates.

African Americans constitute only 7 percent of the state population, but they make up 22 percent of the felony arrests, 30 percent of the prison population, 36 percent of the second strikers and 45 percent of the third strikers. Conversely, whites constitute 47 percent of the population but only 36 percent of felony arrests and 29 percent of the prison population. Whites are 26 percent of second strikers and 25 percent of third strikers. Comparing the rates of arrests per 100,000 people, African Americans are arrested at 4.4 times the rate of whites, imprisoned at 7.5 times the rate of whites, and 'struck out' for life at nearly 13 times the rate of whites.

Full story"

Acquittal of Former Officer Sparks Request

LOUISVILLE, Sept. 30 -- Civil rights activists, outraged by a white police detective's acquittal in a black teenager's death, have asked congressional black leaders to look into race relations.

The activists also threatened demonstrations that would fill jail cells with protesters if the police officer, McKenzie Mattingly, successfully appeals his firing by the city's police chief.

McKenzie Mattingly, a former Louisville police detective, was acquitted in the fatal shooting of Michael Newby during an undercover drug buy. (Brian Bohannon -- AP)

"Louisville is a mud hole in the South when it comes to race relations," the Rev. Louis Coleman said Thursday.

The city remained calm after Mattingly was cleared Wednesday night of murder, manslaughter and reckless homicide charges by a Jefferson County Circuit Court jury consisting of 10 whites and two blacks.

Mattingly, 31, shot 19-year-old Michael Newby three times in the back on Jan. 3 when an undercover drug bust went awry. Newby was the seventh black man killed by Louisville police since 1998. Mattingly was the first officer to be criminally charged in any of the shootings

Full story

By Robert Kampia
As published in the Chicago Sun-Times

Robert Kampia is executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C.

Chicago Police Sgt. Tom Donegan has provoked a useful debate by suggesting that people possessing small amounts of marijuana should be fined rather than arrested and jailed. Donegan's idea is a useful step that doesn't go far enough.

In fact, a strong factual and scientific case can be made that the best way to reduce the harm associated with marijuana is to junk our current policy of prohibition and replace it with a system of common-sense regulation.

Full story

By Frank Main
Crime Reporter
The Chicago Sun-Times

The nation's drug czar said Wednesday that a plan being considered by Mayor Daley to fine -- rather than arrest -- people possessing small amounts of marijuana could help control the use of a drug he sees as being more potent than many people realize.

It's clear from the high dismissal rate of marijuana-possession cases in Chicago that authorities are not treating pot as seriously as they should, said John Walters, the White House's top drug-fighting official.

His remarks came in an interview a day after Daley embraced a Chicago Police sergeant's plan to impose fines on pot smokers ranging from $250 for up to 10 grams to $1,000 for 20 to 30 grams.

Sgt. Thomas Donegan, fed up with seeing pot arrests evaporate in court, presented top police brass with a report last week showing that 6,954 cases -- 94 percent of those involving less than 2.5 grams of pot -- were dismissed in 2003.

Donegan suggested that fines for possession of less than 30 grams of pot -- a misdemeanor -- could have raised $5 million last year.

A hearing would still be held for people fined for having pot, but the standard of proof would be lower than in a misdemeanor case, and the ticket would not go on their criminal record, making it likely that they would pay instead of fighting it, Donegan said. Police could still make arrests on a state misdemeanor drug charge, if, for example, the suspect were a repeat drug offender.

Full story

"Only Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the administration's view that the president can order the arrest and the indefinite detention of Americans who he believes to be terrorists or enemy fighters."

--David G. Savage, L.A. Times (June 29, 2004)

BUSH DOESN'T HAVE `BLANK CHECK' TO IMPRISON TERROR SUSPECTS

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the Constitution gives all persons held under U.S. control a right to their day in court, rejecting President Bush's claim that the war on terrorism gives him, as commander in chief, the unchecked power to imprison ``enemy combatants.''

"We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens,'' Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote. Even in wartime, the Constitution ``assuredly envisions a role for all three branches'' of government ``when individual liberties are at stake.''

While U.S. soldiers may capture enemy fighters on the battlefield and U.S. agents may seize suspected terrorists at home, that is not the end of the matter, the justices said. Detained persons still have a right to challenge the basis for holding them.

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

By William Bunch
Philly.com

The story of La-Van Hawkins seems too good to be true: A former gang leader from Chicago's worst housing project kicks a $1,000-a-week cocaine habit and puts his swagger to work in the fast-food industry, becoming a multimillionaire and one of America's best-known black capitalists.

With the girth of an offensive lineman, Hawkins is a literally larger-than-life figure whose posh homes in Atlanta and Detroit, private jet and fund-raising work for presidential hopeful Al Sharpton won him glowing profiles, like one that appeared in Ebony last year.

"Fresh crab cakes and carved beef tenderloins were washed down by $200-a-bottle Cristal champagne," the magazine wrote of a fund-raising event for Sharpton that Hawkins hosted in 2003 at his hilltop Atlanta mansion. "Hawkins worked the crowd, at times talking business and world politics with guests, at other times, seeming to 'shake down' guests for donations."

Even before Hawkins was indicted yesterday on fraud and perjury charges, there were increasing signs that the La-Van Hawkins story actually was too good to be true.

In building a fast-food empire that's included Burger King, Pizza Hut and Checkers Drive-In franchises across the country, Hawkins also has left a growing trail of lawsuits. Since fall 2001, companies claiming that Hawkins owed them money have won more than $1 million in judgments against him.

"La-Van Hawkins will vigorously defend himself against these allegations, and he will prevail," Hawkins' spokesman, David Payne, said yesterday.

The indictment accuses Hawkins of working with power attorney Ronald A. White and then-city treasurer Corey Kemp to defraud a businessman in a deal to buy Church's Fried Chicken franchises.

It also accuses him of lying to the grand jury, and describes how he flew with White and Kemp to the 2003 Super Bowl and helped White funnel $5,000 to the city official. If convicted, Hawkins, 46, faces a maximum sentence of 125 years in prison and a $1.75 million fine.

Hawkins is head of Detroit-based Hawkins Food Group LLC, which owns Pizza Huts in Michigan, Blockbuster video stores and a Detroit upscale restaurant, Sweet Georgia Brown. He claims annual revenues of some $300 million.

The ties between Hawkins and White go all the way back to the mid-1990s, when the two men incorporated a food company called Philadelphia Connection Inc. Hawkins was owner of some Checkers franchises in the area at the time.

According to grand jury testimony released yesterday, Hawkins testified that once in 2002 White asked him to borrow $40,000, and so he lent it to him, no questions asked. Pointedly reminding the grand jury "that I'm a multimillionaire," Hawkins testified the money came "out of a drawer."

Given Hawkins' hardscrabble story, which started in Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing project, it may take more than an indictment to count him out.

"The one thing that has helped me is that I have an MBA and Ph.D. in streetology," Hawkins told Ebony. "It certainly has allowed me to take it to the next level. I will not be denied."

A Question of Justice

by Jennifer Gonnerman
The Village Voice

The call came early in the evening on September 30, 2003. Ashley O'Donoghue, 20, could feel his cell phone vibrating in the holster on his right hip. He flipped open the phone and glanced at the caller ID. "Hey, Peter," he said. "What's going on?" Every time Peter called, Ashley knew he was going to make some money.

Ashley didn't know much about Peter, not even his last name. He didn't know that Peter's father is a leader in the drug-abuse treatment field, or that Peter had just graduated from Collegiate, one of Manhattan's most prestigious prep schools. All Ashley knew was that Peter liked to buy cocaine two grams at a time, two times a week.

Then, at the end of the summer, Peter's buying habits had changed. He'd left the city for Hamilton College in Oneida County. No longer could Peter meet him on Upper East Side street corners. Now Peter wanted the coke delivered to him upstate.

A few weeks into the fall semester, Peter called looking for 30 grams—a huge order. The prospect of such a large sale excited Ashley; his customers usually wanted only a gram or two. Ashley boarded an Amtrak train to Utica and met Peter and two friends outside the station. He handed over the bag of coke; they gave him $2,000.

Peter called again several days later, wanting an even larger delivery. The next morning, on October 1, Ashley took the train up again. This was to be his biggest deal ever. In exchange for 70 grams, Peter had promised to pay $5,000.

Soon after Ashley's train pulled into the station, Peter called to say he was running late. Ashley wandered over to a vending machine for a pack of Newports. When Peter phoned again, he told Ashley, "I'm out front." Ashley headed for the exit.

Just outside the door, Ashley turned to a stranger and asked for a light. Moments later, that man and three others tackled him. "State police!" one of them shouted. "Get on the ground!" They yanked his arms behind his back and cuffed his wrists together. Lying facedown on the concrete, Ashley realized Peter had set him up.

To read the rest of this article, please visit The Village Voice's website website.

By Frank Main
Crime Reporter
The Chicago Sun-Times

As the "king" of Chicago's notorious Black Disciples street gang, Marvel J. Thompson ran a recording studio, owned a lounge and even operated a pirate FM station that warned his underlings when the cops were coming, prosecutors say.

Thompson, 35, is accused of sitting at the helm of a massive criminal corporation that raked in as much as $300,000 a day in drug profits and kept its members in line with baseball bats and guns.

But a 185-page indictment unsealed Thursday is likely to dethrone Thompson and put dozens of his top leaders behind bars for a long time, said U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

"These defendants are alleged to be not just drug dealers, but individuals who had their own laws, territory, justice system and economy," Fitzgerald said. "They operated as if they were an independent nation, subject only to the laws of the streets."

Chicago Police launched the investigation, code-named "Marvel Less," six years ago after a federal indictment decimated the hierarchy of another murderous organization, the Gangster Disciples. Police will monitor BD turf to make sure violence does not fill the vacuum created by arrests of the gang's leaders, said Police Supt. Phil Cline.

Chicago Police and federal agents executed a dozen search warrants Wednesday, seizing more than $300,000 in cash from one of Thompson's properties along with 11 guns, bulletproof vests, jewelry and boxes of gang documents, authorities said.

With the help of the Federal Communications Commission, they also shut down 104.7 FM, a station running out of a building Thompson owns at 6723-29 S. Parnell, officials said.

The station was automated most of the day, but it broadcast live at night, playing uncensored rap and even sending a car around Englewood to take requests and have listeners give "shout-outs" to friends over the radio. Its signal went from Cermak to 110th and from the lakefront to Western, said Larry Langford, a city spokesman. The city's Office of Emergency Communications helped authorities locate the station, which was broadcasting without a license, and record its illegal transmissions, he said.

"They played rap music, unedited, uncut," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Alesia. There were also "almost public service announcements to the other gang members alerting them to surveillance in certain areas of the South Side."

A studio for M.O.B. Records operated in the same building on Parnell, officials said. Thompson, president of M.O.B., produced "Cha-Cha Slide," a hit album.

The indictment charged 47 people with participating in a 15-year drug distribution conspiracy that could lead to sentences of 10 years to life. Thirty-two of the defendants, including Thompson, were in custody Thursday.

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Probe to examine slaying that ignited civil rights movement

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department said Monday it is reopening the investigation into the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager whose death while visiting Mississippi was an early catalyst for the civil rights movement.

Till was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Mississippi, on August 28, 1955. The mutilated body of the 14-year-old from Chicago was found by fishermen three days later in the Tallahatchie River.

Pictures of the slaying shocked the world. Two white men charged with murder -- Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam -- were acquitted by an all-white jury. Both men have since died.

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By Gary Reaves
WFAA-TV
Dallas/Fort Worth | Channel 8

A Dallas man's painful journey home to Mississippi leaves him facing personal loss and a possible hate crime.

Neighbors found Alvin Blakes' cousin hanging from a tree in Woodville, the hometown of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Now, Blakes fears the mysterious death is a flashback to one of the South's most haunting and horrific legacies.

The state flag flying over Woodville reminds visitors of Mississippi's history, but it's a mysterious hanging death of family last week that has Dallas engineer Blakes wondering how distant that past really is.

"Everybody is in disbelief, and they are not satisfied with what they are hearing," Blakes said. "It just doesn't add up."

It was at the end of a long, muddy road that turkey farmers found Roy Veal, hanging from a tree near his mother's house, his head covered with a pillow case.

While Veal was born in Mississippi, he actually lived in Washington state. He had only returned to his birthplace to resolve a dispute involving land that had been in the family for more than a century. The man suing was white, and that fueled speculation Veal may have been lynched.

"I just can't imagine anybody wanting to out and out murder somebody like that," said Charles Whetstone, owner of local hangout the Back Porch Cafe.

At the cafe, locals are comforted that authorities believe Veal committed suicide. The sheriff, who is getting help from the FBI, said all the evidence - including the autopsy - indicates Veal hanged himself.

"I feel confident it is not a hate crime, and we have not seen any indication to lead us to that suspicion," said Wilkinson County Sheriff Reginald Jackson.

At the hanging scene, Jackson found journal writings indicating Veal was depressed. The cousin who often saw him researching old deeds at the courthouse, however, doesn't buy it. The sheriff said he found no connection between the land lawsuit and the hanging.

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By focusing on the notorious co-founder of the Los Angeles street gang, The Crips, F/X's Redemption, an original film, asks us if we believe that a death row inmate can be redeemed.

By Ronda Racha Penrice
Africana.com

As Christians everywhere gather for Easter this weekend to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Stanley "Tookie" Williams, a death row inmate and co-founder of the notorious Crips street gang, will sit in his cell. His agenda for the day, like every other day, will be atonement.

Anyone who tunes into Redemption, the F/X original film starring Jamie Foxx and based on Williams's life, renunciation of gang violence and his fervent dedication to deterring children away from gang life, will more than likely take it for granted that they're exercising a privilege that Williams lost twenty-three years ago. This reality of prison life and, more specifically, life on death row, doesn't get much play in the hip hop music that has glorified, be it intentional or unintentional, the gangster lifestyle Williams helped create.

"First and foremost, I always tell people that I never experienced an epiphany or anything like that. I had to undergo years and years of soul-searching and edification to battle my inner demons."
Prison is not supposed to be luxurious. Crime should not pay. There is little to debate here. But when the question of whether a person who has walked a path of evil for nearly half of his life can really change arises, the debate gets heated. It is the primary thesis of Redemption and the ongoing life story of Williams' battle against execution. The irony of his increasingly probable day of reckoning is his claim that he is not guilty of the four murders of which he has been sentenced. Now, of course, as the saying goes, everyone in jail is innocent. But Williams isn't claiming sainthood. He is simply saying that he did not commit these four crimes.

According to the January 11, 2004 Los Angeles Times article "Made-for-TV Atonement" by Bob Baker, in 1979 Williams was arrested for two robbery-murder incidents. He was accused of murdering Albert Owens, a 7-Eleven clerk in Whittier, California, as well as Los Angeles motel clerk Yen-I Yang, his wife and their adult daughter. "Lacking eyewitnesses," writes Baker, "prosecutors relied on the testimony of several people who said Williams told them about the crimes — in one case, laughingly describing Owens' last breaths."

The sketchiness of Williams' conviction is not why F/X made this film. It is what Williams has done during his time on death row that is most compelling. Since 1996 he has penned nine books against gang violence. Titles such as Tookie Speaks Out Against Gang Violence, Gangs and Wanting to Belong and Life in Prison are the backbone of the curriculum of the Internet Project for Street Peace, which Williams conceived. He also has his own web site, Tookie's Corner. According to some people who work closely with children, Williams' work has stirred countless youths across the globe away from gang violence. His message has been so powerful that he has been nominated for the Nobel Prize seven times — four times for the Peace prize and three times for the Literature prize.

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How President Bush sent a message with his court appointments.

By Jack Bass
Salon.com

March 24, 2004 | CHARLESTON, SC -- The recent recess appointments by President George W. Bush of two controversial Deep South Republicans to federal courts of appeals indicates that the Republican "Southern strategy" remains alive and well. Much of the Democratic opposition in the Senate to confirming Charles W. Pickering of Mississippi and William H. Pryor of Alabama focused on matters suggesting insensitivity to civil rights issues. Opponents cited the records of both men that included criticism of or efforts to limit important remedies or provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

The use of recess appointments to the federal courts has its place. To overcome the opposition of the then-solid phalanx of Southern Democrats in the Senate, President Lyndon Johnson used a recess appointment to place Thurgood Marshall on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. That appointment provided a steppingstone for promoting Marshall to serve as the first African-American on the Supreme Court.

For years Marshall, who took the lead role in Brown vs. Board of Education, had directed the legal assault on segregation. The Supreme Court decided that case 50 years ago this May, launching a revolution in race relations.

Near the end of his term President Bill Clinton -- gain to break new ground in African-American judicial representation -- appointed Roger Gregory to be the first African-American judge on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The jurisdiction of that court, based in Richmond, Va., extends from Maryland to South Carolina.

Clinton made that appointment to overcome obstructionist tactics by Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, which blocked a vote by the Senate. More than four decades earlier, Helms as a TV commentator in Raleigh, N.C., had helped sow the seeds of the Southern strategy.

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While lamenting Tulsa atrocity, he cites late deadline

By Lyle Denniston
Globe Correspondent
The Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge has denounced "the terrible devastation" caused by the Tulsa race riots in 1921 but ruled that it was too late for a historic lawsuit seeking to force the state and city governments to pay reparations for the harm done to black residents.

US District Judge James O. Ellison, ruling in Tulsa Friday, dismissed a case that a team of lawyers representing survivors of the riots or their descendants had hoped to make into a test case against government agencies, the first of what they expected would be several such cases around the country.

Other lawsuits, seeking reparations for slavery, have been dismissed, but those were against businesses. The Tulsa case was an attempt to open a broad legal assault that would hold governments financially responsible for discrimination against African-Americans.

The riots, occurring over two days in the late spring of 1921, destroyed the prosperous black community of Greenwood just north of Tulsa's downtown. The violence killed between 100 and 300, destroyed about 1,250 homes, and leveled every structure in the neighborhood. Judge Ellison called the riots "the worst civil disturbance since the Civil War."

Oklahoma's legislature in 2001 accepted "moral responsibility on behalf of the state and its citizens" and vowed never again to "subordinate another race," but it refused to pay reparations. That refusal led to the lawsuit by more than 200 individuals, seeking reparations from the state and the city of Tulsa and its police department.

The judge, however, ruled that the lawsuit was many years too late. He stressed that he was ruling only on the legal question of when a deadline for suing had passed and his ruling was not intended to "speak to the tragedy of the riot or the terrible devastation it caused."

Ellison also said he felt "no comfort or satisfaction in this result" and commented that "there should be none" for the state and city.

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NYPD Admits to Rap Intelligence Unit

By Dasun Allah
The Village Voice

Recent reports of a rap intelligence unit in the Miami police force developed with the assistance of the New York Police Department has refueled old questions about whether there is a "Hiphop Task Force" inside the NYPD.

While earlier this week the department acknowledged consulting with Miami authorities, over the years the police brass have consistently denied that there is a team keeping tabs on rap stars and their entourages. A two-month investigation into the existence of such an intelligence squad produced revelations from a retired detective who says he was its founder and architect, and an admission from the NYPD that indeed there are officers assigned to do surveillance on people in and around the hiphop music scene.

"We have an intelligence division and we have detectives that monitor the music industry and any incidents regarding the music industry,"says Officer Doris Garcia, an NYPD spokesperson. "And in regards to Miami P.D. we did exchange information, and that’s it."

Hiphop music and fashion titan Russell Simmons thinks that the NYPD needs to contend with more serious concerns than surveillance of rap stars, and questions their utilization of resources. "They don’t follow around every rock and roll outlaw. They should be following around all these drug dealers that are real obvious," he says. "You know who the drug dealers are. You know all of their names. Why are you wasting your police force energy on singers?"

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Teen found guilty of have sex with a 15-year-old white schoolmate