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The Central Georgian
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Central Georgian
Reflections Photography Show — Aug. 21-Sept. 11,
Middle Georgia Art Association Gallery, 2330 Ingleside Ave. For more
information, call 744-9557.
Nellie Mae Rowe: I Get a Kick Out of Drawin’ —
Through July 5, Museum of Arts and Sciences, 4182 Forsyth Road. Paintings by the
Georgia folk artist. 477-3232
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP)-- The Supreme Court ruling
in favor of white New Haven firefighters who said they were victims of reverse
discrimination will probably leave employers confused, civil rights advocates
and labor attorneys say. The court ruled 5-4 Monday that the white firefighters
were denied promotions unfairly because of their race, reversing a decision that
high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as a federal appeals court judge.
Local: Bibb County Commissioners finalize an
$89.7 million dollar budget for the upcoming fiscal year....
Supreme Court
inaction delays Troy Davis appeal
By RUSS BYNUM - Associated Press Writer
SAVANNAH-- Death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis got another legal break Monday
when the U.S. Supreme Court recessed for summer without acting on his latest
appeal, likely delaying any developments in his case until fall. Earlier, his
supporters presented Savannah's district attorney with 60,000 petition
signatures urging him to reopen the case.
Davis has spent nearly 18 years on death row after his conviction for killing an
off-duty police officer, and his case has become a rallying point for death
penalty opponents worldwide. His attorneys say Davis is innocent of killing
officer Mark MacPhail and deserves a new trial after several key prosecution
witnesses recanted testimony given at his 1991 trial.
Davis has been spared from execution three times since he was first scheduled to
die by lethal injection in 2007, as various courts have weighed and ultimately
rejected his appeals.
Davis' attorneys filed his latest appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court after the
11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their request for a new trial in April.
The Supreme Court had not decided whether it would hear Davis' appeal when
justices recessed for the summer Monday. They won't reconvene until September.
"It's definitely good news," said Jason Ewart, Davis' attorney, who interpreted
the court's inaction as a sign it wants to take a closer look at the case. "It's
not just a move buying more time."
National:
After Early Victories, Obama Faces Divided Democrats
Former governor
to swear in new chief justice
The Associated Press
ATLANTA -- Former Gov. Zell Miller, who appointed Carol W. Hunstein to Georgia's
Supreme Court, will swear her in as chief justice.
Hunstein is a former DeKalb County Superior Court judge. Miller tapped her in
1992 to become the second woman to serve on Georgia's Supreme Court. He will
swear her in at 11 a.m. Wednesday as chief justice, and also will swear in
George H. Carley as the new presiding justice.
The ceremony will take place in the Supreme Court's courtroom on the sixth floor
of the Judicial Building in Atlanta.
Outgoing Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, whose last day on the court is Tuesday,
will make the introductions.
Another update due on Vick
bankruptcy
The Associated Press
NORFOLK, Va. -- Lawyers for suspended NFL star Michael Vick are headed back to
bankruptcy court in Virginia.
Vick is not expected to attend Tuesday's hearing in Norfolk, where attorneys
will update the judge on progress toward developing a new Chapter 11 bankruptcy
plan. The judge rejected Vick's first plan in April, saying it wasn't feasible.
Vick is winding down his 23-month sentence for operating a dogfighting ring.
He's serving the last two months on home confinement in Hampton and is scheduled
to be released from federal custody July 20.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is waiting until the 29-year-old former Atlantic
Falcons quarterback completes his sentence before deciding whether to lift his
suspension.
$25,000 grant creates new
program at FVSU
(FVSU) Two-thirds of the state’s residents do not have college degrees according
to a University System of Georgia study. But soon, the number of graduates may
increase. A new initiative will help turn on-the-job training of residents into
college credit. This month, Fort Valley State University – along with Atlanta
Metropolitan College, Bainbridge College, Georgia Southwestern State University
and Valdosta State University – was named to the University System of Georgia’s
Adult Learning Consortium (ALC). The USG awarded FVSU a $25,000 College Access
Challenge Grant to create and develop the program.
When fully operational, the Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) program, that is a
feature of the consortium, will help non-traditional and low-income Middle
Georgia workers move into higher-skilled, better-paying jobs. The university
plans to target individuals in the criminal justice field and engineering
technicians at Robins Air Force Base.
FVSU’s College of Graduate Studies and Extended Education Dean, Dr. Anna
Holloway, learned about PLA last summer at a conference.
“The purpose of the PLA is a way of evaluating a person’s prior work experience,
see what learning outcomes they have, and then choose the appropriate college
courses they correspond with,” said Dr. Anna Holloway, the principal
investigator for the grant.
“This is an opportunity for those who work in the law enforcement area to gain
credit and continue their education, hopefully at FVSU,” said Dr. Jean Wacaster,
who was named FVSU’s ALC coordinator. “The program will be individualized, and
we will be trained to assess skill sets to determine how much college credit
each student is eligible to receive.”
This week, Wacaster and representatives from the colleges of agriculture, arts
and sciences, and education, and offices of institutional research and planning,
financial aid and veteran affairs, information technology and the registrar are
attending a conference to learn how to implement the program.
The USG received a $2 million grant for up to two years from the U.S. Department
of Education to start the initiative. The system will work with the Governor’s
Office, community and business groups statewide, and the Alliance of Education
Agency Heads (AEAH), which creates policies to ensure a quality education for
all students in the state from pre-K to graduate school.
Health Matters
ATLANTA -- Health
officials say more than 47,000 elderly Americans end up in emergency
rooms each year from falls involving walkers and canes.
That's almost 3 percent of
all falls among people 65 and older. Government researchers came up with
the estimate by looking at six years of ER medical records. Nearly 9 out
of 10 of the injuries involved walkers, rather than canes.
Officials with the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday their study shows that
doctors should take more time to better fit patients with walking aids
and to teach how to use them safely. The study is being published this
month in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
The following is a list of five books that tell
the stories of black American troops.
American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the
Revolution to Desert Storm by Gail Lumet Buckley
and David Halberstam. Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks. Pub. Year: 2002.
PP. 608. Ages Grade 7 and up. $12.75. "Buckley originally wrote Patriots for an
adult audience, and this abridgment is still a deeply moving and inspiring
account of the history of African Americans in the U.S. military and their
unrecognized heroism in the face of overt racism."
School Library Journal
Miracle at St. Anna by James
McBride. Republished by Riverhead Trade in 2008 as a tie-in with the movie
directed by
Spike Lee. $5.00 paperback, 320 pp. "McBride offers a powerful and emotional
novel of black American soldiers fighting the German army in the mountains of
Italy around the village of St. Anna of Stazzema in December 1944. This is a
refreshingly ambitious story of men facing the enemy in front and racial
prejudice behind; it is also a carefully crafted tale of a mute Italian orphan
boy who teaches the American soldiers,
Italian villagers and partisans that miracles are the result of faith and
trust." Publisher's Weekly.
Brothers
in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heroes
by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anthony Walton. Published by Broadway in paperback,
2005, 336 pp., $14.95. This book is
headed to the big screen. Director, actor, and producer Denzel Washington
recently hired a writer for the screenplay.
The Negro's Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted During
the War for the Union by James M. McPherson.
Published by Vintage, 400 pp., 2003, paperback $14.95. "McPherson shatters the
belief that [blacks] were passive about their freedom. His evidence is telling
and, what is more, it is absorbingly retold."
The New York Times
Black Union Soldiers in the Civil War
by Hondon B. Hargrove. Published by McFarland, 2003, 250 pp. $35. Like
McPherson's book, "this book refutes the historical slander that blacks did not
fight for their emancipation from slavery."
Atlanta college
students investigate cold cases
(AP) ATLANTA --The single moms and young college students sit in a circle,
throwing out names, dates, anything that could lead them to the suspect in the
unsolved lynching of four black sharecroppers killed decades ago.
On the wall hangs a long piece of paper with dates written on Post-it notes:
stabbing, meeting, lynching. It's a timeline waiting for the details, a story to
be told.
"Write down means, motive and opportunity, because you've got to figure out all
three," says Sheryl McCollum, who oversees this group of aspiring sleuths.
"Don't try to make this hard. Murder ain't ever complicated."
More....
AFRICAN AMERICAN BUYING POWER EXPANDS: Georgia's
Selig Center says it's approaching $1 trillion.
In 1990, the buying power of the nation’s African American population stood at
$318 billion.
However, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth, in 2008 that
spending power had grown to nearly a trillion dollars - $913 billion to be
exact.
In a recent report, the Center projects that by 2013, Black buying power will
shoot up by 35.7 percent to stand at $1.24 trillion.
Nevertheless, white spending power remains approximately ten times larger than
that for Blacks and currently stands at $9.1 trillion.
In addition, with the nation’s fastest growing population, Hispanic American
buying power recently surpassed that of Blacks and stands at $951 billion.
[Note: Hispanics can be of any race.]
The Selig Center for Economic Growth is based in the Terry College of Business
at the University of Georgia.
Evan Ross, the son of singing legend Diana Ross, is
making a name for himself as an actor and drawing praise for his talent and
passion in his roles.
The 20-year-old is turning heads in Hollywood with noted performances in 2007’s
“Life Support” and last year’s “Gardens in the Night.” In his newest project,
Ross plays the part of "Romeo" in the addiction movie drama, "Life is Hot in
Cracktown,” showing in selected cities starting June 26.
Poll: Nearly two-thirds of black Southerners
worried about job security
By WAYNE WASHINGTON
The (Columbia) State
Almost two of every three black Southerners are worried they could lose their
jobs this year in what they see as a deteriorating economy, according to a
Winthrop University/ETV poll.
Just under 62 percent of black Southerners polled Feb. 6-22 in South Carolina,
and 10 other Southern states said they were very or somewhat concerned about the
possibility of losing their job in the next year.
That concern is far higher than in the U.S. population as a whole.
A national poll, conducted Feb. 12-27 for The Associated Press, found 47 percent
of Americans said they were worried about losing their jobs.
The Winthrop/ETV poll found more than 69 percent of black Southerners think
economic conditions in the country as a whole are getting worse.
The state's unemployment rate is the third-highest in the country. In 2008,
South Carolina's monthly unemployment rate averaged 6.7 percent. The black
unemployment rate was higher, averaging 10.1 percent.
In each of the 11 states polled, the black jobless rate was significantly higher
than the unemployment rate of the state as a whole.
In Georgia, the average jobless rate in 2008 was 6.4 percent. But the black
unemployment rate averaged 10.2 percent.
North Carolina's overall unemployment rate averaged 6.4 percent in 2008; the
black jobless average was 8.6 percent.
The great sense of fear gripping many black households is no surprise to William
Darity, a professor of African-American studies and economics at Duke
University.
"Historically, if black folks have jobs, the jobs are held with fragility,"
Darity said.
Yet many black Southerners surveyed by Winthrop/ETV said they don't think they
have it harder than white residents.
Almost half of those polled said the economy has had the same effect on black
residents as it has on white residents.
"There may be two factors going on here," Darity said. "Everybody's boat is
sinking and sinking rapidly. But there may also be what I call 'the Obama
boost.' People are somewhat more optimistic about how their situation compares
to that of others."
(By Van Jones) We've brought to light real solutions to
the economic and environmental problems facing the country so well that the
White House itself wants to hear what we have to say -- and wants to make
sure everyone else is listening, too.
An excerpt
from Maya Angelou's 'Letter to My Daughter'
Excerpt from "Letter to My
Daughter," By Maya Angelou
(Random House, $25)
From the chapter "Keep the Faith":
"One of my earliest memories of my grandmother, who
was called 'Mamma,' is a glimpse of that tall, cinnamon-colored woman with a
deep, soft voice, standing thousands of feet up in the air with nothing visible
beneath her.
"... Whenever I began to question whether God exists, I looked up to the sky and
surely there, right there, between the sun and moon, stands my grandmother,
singing a long meter hymn, a song somewhere between a moan and a lullaby and I
know faith is the evidence of things unseen."
Both Chris Brown, Rihanna
could be facing career fallout
By Steve Jones, USA TODAY
The legal case moving forward against Chris Brown could reverberate into his
once very bright future. It also could tarnish Rihanna's.
Brown, 19, who was charged Thursday in Los Angeles with felony counts of
assault and making criminal threats after a Feb. 8 incident with his
girlfriend and R&B singer Rihanna, could face up to four years and eight
months in prison. He may have also suffered irrevocable damage to his
squeaky-clean, boy-next-door image.
The baby-faced, limber-limbed singer had been one of R&B's fastest-rising
stars, with a budding acting career (Stomp the Yard and This Christmas).
But after turning himself in to police, Brown was dropped from ad campaigns
for Got Milk? and Doublemint gum. Both he and Rihanna canceled heavily
promoted performances at the Feb. 8 Grammy Awards, and he dropped out of his
appearances at the NBA All-Star Game in Phoenix the following weekend. Some
radio stations pulled his music. Rihanna, meanwhile, canceled a concert in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
"Prior to this, he was a teen idol with a fan base largely of teenage
girls," says Entertainment Weekly music writer Margeaux Watson of Brown,
whose two albums — 2005's Chris Brown and 2007's Exclusive— have sold more
than 4 million copies combined and spawned such hits as Run It, Kiss Kiss,
Wall to Wall and With You
"He was the guy all the girls wanted to date, and the guy that all of the
guys wanted to be friends with. Now that's shattered."
The violence involved makes this case different from celebrity scandals
about sex, substance abuse or other self-destructive behavior, says Cori
Murray, entertainment director of Essence.
"It isn't like he was caught with drugs or was drunk," Murray says. "It's
not like he was some bad boy, and this was just one more thing. It's so
completely out of character for what audiences saw."
Rihanna, 21, is an even bigger crossover star than Brown. Her albums —
2005's Music of the Sun (582,000 copies sold), 2006's A Girl Like Me (1.3
million) and 2007's Good Girl Gone Bad (2.4 million) — have garnered
increasingly larger sales, and she has more than a dozen endorsement deals,
including Cover Girl, Totes, Nike and Fuze.
So far, she has maintained her corporate support and received an outpouring
of sympathy. But public opinion could change in reaction to reports that the
couple may have reconciled.
Regardless of the outcome of the court case or any reunion, both will carry
a burden for years to come.
"She will always have support because she's a victim, but she has a
difficult road ahead," says Murray. Promoting future music projects will be
problematic because they'll be asked about the incident. "Just like he is
always going to have to answer questions, she will also have to answer: 'Why
did you take him back?' "
Watson says that question also could give sponsors pause.
"She's supposed to be a role model, and that isn't role model behavior," she
says. "It goes counter to everything young girls are raised to do and
believe. If I'm an executive, I would have to reconsider whether she's the
proper spokesperson for my brand.".
FVSU
launches transportation service
Fort Valley State students, staff and faculty who need
transportation can now jump on a bus to get from one
side of campus to another, visit downtown shops in Fort
Valley, or grab groceries at the store. This week, the
university officially launches a new service: Wildcat
Transportation. Four brand-new, spacious 24-passenger
buses will take riders to downtown destinations and
Harveys Supermarket – at no cost. An employee or student
identification card is required. The shuttle service
runs every thirty minutes from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The Shuttle Bus Pilot Program is the brainchild of Dr.
Dwayne Crew, associate vice president for business and
finance. Crew believes the new program will provide an
important nexus between the Fort Valley community and
the university.
“This is the beginning of plans to ensure that our
students are connected to the downtown community,” he
said.
So far, there are only a handful of stops, but routes
may expand. The university is also looking at the
feasibility of developing weekly trips to shopping
districts in Centerville, Warner Robins and Perry.
The buses have several pick up locations:
* Stadium Parking Lot 8:15 a.m.
* Wildcat Commons Clubhouse 8:20 a.m.
* Carnegie Hall 8:25 a.m.
* Evans Building 8:30 a.m.
* Harveys Supermarket 8:38 a.m.
* Lottie Lyons Student Center 8:45 a.m.
Local:
Upward Unlimited teams up with Campus Club
of Macon in basketball venture
YES, WE CAN !!!!!
Macon Regional
CrimeStoppers names Jarrod
Walker Executive Director
The Macon Police Department would like to
announce that officer Jarrod Walker will be the new face for Macon Regional
CrimeStoppers. Officer Walker has been employed with the Macon Police Department
for two years.
Before joining the force, the Macon
native and Central High School graduate served in the military.
" Well we're excited today to announce the addition of the CrimeStoppers team
Officer Jarrod Walker and we're excited that he's our new executive director and
we're here today to make that announcement. CrimeStoppers has over 14-hundred
arrests and has paid almost 160-thousand dollars in rewards so we're excited
that he's a part of the team again and we look forward to him taking the program
to new levels."
Nation's
largest African-American religious group tackles AIDS
ST. LOUIS (ABP) -- For the first time, the nation's largest African-American
religious body has corporately addressed the HIV/AIDS crisis.
AIDS awareness and prevention figured prominently on the agenda for the annual
meeting of the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. Scheduled to meet June
18-22 in St. Louis, leaders of the 7.5-million-member group said 45,000 National
Baptists were participating in the gathering.
More...
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