A White 15-year-old student at a high school near Miami started a petition to get rid of the classification “Negro” on a racial background form, saying that he found the term “offensive.” Jake Edri, a 10th-grader at Deerfield Beach High School, said he was afraid that students would feel as if using “Negro” was OK after seeing it in the Broward County public school booklet, so he ad a friend began the tedious task of collecting signatures. The 200 names they gathered before Tuesday’s School Board meeting paid off.  “I figured, if I bring this up to the School Board, I can do something about it,” he Jake said. “I attend an ethnically diverse school,” said Jake. “I and other students have found page 9 of the code of conduct offensive.” Page 9 of the code of student conduct booklet (titled “Required Data From Parents”)  asked two questions: “Is your child Hispanic or Latino?” and “What is your child’s race?” Under the race category is Black or African American. It goes on to say that “A person having origins in any Black racial groups in Africa. Terms such as `Haitian’ or `Negro’ can be used in addition to `Black or African American.’” Parents were required to sign the form and return it to the school. The district collects the information in compliance with federal guidelines to help track  changing demographics and determine the best way to distribute school funding. Jake wasn’t the only person irked by the term “Negro.” Broward County Schools Superintendent Jim Notter said he “got a call from a parent and asked his staff to investigate. The county sent a memo to principals last week urging them to nix the language. “I couldn’t pull 250,000 books back to completely redo one page, but we gave clear direction to the principals,” Notter said.

Wholesaler Pulls Controversial Black Doll from Shelves The wholesale giant Costco Corp. has apologized to those offended by an African-American doll who wore a headband that said “Lil’ Monkey” and was cuddling a stuffed monkey. The apology followed a complaint from a North Carolina customer about the Black “Cuddle with Me, Doll with Plush Monkey,” The Associated Press reports. Costco immediately snatched the doll, which also comes in Caucasian and Hispanic versions, from its shelves. “We are sensitive to any complaint that a product we carry would cause discomfort to any segment of our membership,” Costco CEO Jim Sinegal said in a statement. “As soon as it became clear to us that this toy item was offensive to some of our members, we decided to remove it from our warehouses. We don’t believe there is room for argument in matters of this type, even though it was an honest mistake, made while we were attempting to do the right thing.” Costco only carried the Black doll in its Northeast and Southeast regions, according to AP. The version of the doll that cuddles a panda is still carried by the wholesaler.

Atlanta Mayoral Wannabes in a Race About Race Make no mistake about it; Atlanta’s mayoral race is about race. On one side is the city’s top African-American candidate, Lisa Borders, president of the Atlanta City Council. On the other is frontrunner Mary Norwood, another councilwoman, who happens to be White. A few days ago – at least publicly – this race was about, crime, housing and city services, and who’s best suited lead the city after Shirley Franklin. That was before the local Black Leadership Forum sent a memo urging African-American voters to stand behind the Black candidate. “For the last 25 years Atlanta has represented the breakthrough for Black political empowerment in the South,” read the memo. “In order to defeat a Norwood (White) mayoral candidacy we have to get out now and work in a manner to defeat her without a runoff, and the key is a significant Black turnout.” Now, in this crucible of the Civil Rights Movement, where most of the 440,000 residents are African American, this race is all Black and White. Recent polls put Norwood at about 30 percent, 2 percentage points above Borders. Kasim Reed, a state senator, who is also running, has just a sliver of potential voters with 8 percent. Both of the African-American candidates were quick to distance themselves from the racial dynamic, saying that the next leader of Atlanta should not be chosen based on skin color. Said Borders, “We have had two Atlantas for far too long.” Reed echoed those sentiments, calling the memo racially charged and vitriolic,” adding that it “dishonors the legacies” of former mayors, both Black and White. “This campaign should be waged on the merits of each candidate, not the color of their skin,” Reed said.

DNA Frees Black Alleged Rapist After 23 Years A Black Texas man sent to prison 23 years ago for rape, is now a free man, cleared by DNA evidence proving that he never sexually assaulted anybody. Jerry Evans is the 20^th Dallas man to be freed, thanks to science not available at the time of his conviction. “I knew it would come one day. I just didn’t know it was gonna be 23 years,” Evans said. Judge Thompson told Evans, who began his sentenced in March 1986, “On behalf of the citizens of the State of Texas, the court would like to apologize for the wrong that’s been done to you in this case.” Public Defender Michelle Moore attributes her client’s conviction to overzealous, perhaps even corrupt, police work. “The more that we know about the case, the more convinced I am that what was in the police report, the timeframe, is not what really happened,” she said. Dallas Co. District Attorney Craig Watkins, who has seen his share of overturned sentences, said this is a chance for the state to reexamine the process for sending people to prison. “This is an opportunity, with the 20th exoneration, for us to really, really, take a close look at what we’ve been doing for years and correct the mistakes of the past,” he said. Meanwhile, DNA evidence also confirmed that Vincent Draper, another man convicted and sentenced in Dallas County, did indeed sexually assault an 8-year-old child 24 years ago. Judge Carter Thompson ruled that he must remain in prison.

First Black New England Mayor Dies Leo Jackson the first Black mayor of a New England city, has died. He was 83. Jackson shocked the nation three decades ago when he his fellow city councilors in New London, Conn., selected him to lead the city. Read more.

Houston Leaders Try to Save Historic Site
Black leaders in Houston, walking in the footsteps of three former slaves, are trying to raise enough funds to save the city’s storied Emancipation Park. They are hoping to come up with about $2 million for improvements to the fitness trail, a children’s water park, new tennis courts and a public amphitheatre. The money would also allow for additional staff to keep the park maintained. Roughly 137 years ago, two Black preachers and a local politician, all former slaves, raised $800 – an impressive sum at the time – for 10 acres that ultimately became Texas’ first and only city park for Black people for more than two decades. As crime and neglect have chipped away at the park, city leaders are determined to restore it to a place of historic pride. Dorris Ellis, president of the nonprofit Friends of Emancipation Park Board and publisher of The Houston Sun newspaper, said that the goal is to make it a destination place once more.  “We want it to be a masterpiece,” she told The Houston Chronicle. “We have a wonderful vision. … We’re planning for 50 years, 100 years down the road,” she said. A historically protected landmark, the park opened in 1872 when pastors Jack Yates and Elias Dibble and political leader Richard Allen raised $800 to acquire the land at an interest rate 6-percent higher than White citizens were charged, Ellis said. “The park was the site of Houston’s first Juneteenth celebration and was donated to the city in 1916,” the Chronicle reports. “When Houston segregated its parks in 1922, Emancipation Park was the only facility open to Blacks.”

 
NAACP Chastises the ACC
Defying the NAACP’s boycott against South Carolina – imposed because the state continues to fly the rebel flag on statehouse grounds – the Atlantic Coast Conference awarded its future baseball contracts to the state. ACC leaders agreed last week on Myrtle Beach, S.C., as the tournament site from 2011 to 2013. In a resolution issued Saturday, the century-old civil rights group said that the ACC’s action plan was devoid of dignity, decency and respect.

Gay Marriage Catches On

Following the lead of the District of Colombia this week, lawmakers voted in favor of same-sex marriage in New Hampshire and Maine. Since Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts already have laws on the books approving gay marriage, tiny Rhode Island stands alone as the New England state without legislation in favor of the issue. Read the rest.

 
Foster Mom Taped Pacifier to Baby’s Mouth

A 30-year-old foster mother in Georgia was arrested Wednesday on charges that she killed a 9-month-old boy by taping a pacifier to his mouth to keep him quiet. Read more.

Norfolk State Gets $3.5 Million Gift The president of historically Black Norfolk State University said she’s not sure where the windfall came from, but she was happy to receive a $3.5 million donation – the largest in school history – during these tough economic times, Black College Wire reports. “We have no idea who gave that money, but we have a lot of people taking credit for it,” university President Carolyn Meyers joked. Jevonya Hughes reports that Meyers announced the gift at last month’s Board of Visitors meeting. A total of  $3 million has been designated to provide financial assistance for NSU students, according to Black College Wire. A second gift of $500,000 will assist the institution in meeting its priorities in areas such as faculty support, research and equipment. “I love the fact that someone donated to the university, because NSU can use that money for so much. The donor should be honored that they gave; they should not want to be kept anonymous,” sophomore music education major Anthony Moody told Hughes. Said Meyers, “We want to make the donor proud to invest in us.”

Several key Black members of Congress are pressing the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether at least five Native American tribes are denying basic rights and benefits to Black descendants of the tribes. In recent years, according to such powerful Democrats as civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, the Cherokee Nation and other tribes, systematically have been removing the “freedmen” from their membership and cutting off their voting rights and other benefits. They want Attorney General Eric Holder to look into whether their actions violate treaties and otherwise break the law. “Over 40 years after enactment of the landmark Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, there is a place in the United States that African Americans cannot vote or receive federal benefits as a matter of law,” the lawmakers state in a letter to the Justice Department. “They are called `freedmen,’ but they are anything but free.” Freedmen, descendants of slaves and other Blacks who were taken in by the tribes mostly during the 19th century – some of them were even owned by Indians at one time but later freed – are now being prevented from accessing millions of dollars in federal tribal funding for housing, health care and other services. But Mike Miller, a spokesman for the Cherokee Nation said the issue is being distorted, which he said is “sad but not surprising. As the Cherokee Nation has explained to more than 100 members of Congress through meetings, this issue has never been about race but only about who is a citizen of an Indian Nation,” Miller said. Jon Velie, the lawyer who has worked painstakingly to keep the Cherokee Nation from revoking freedmen’s tribal citizenship said, “The letter sent from six of the most influential members of Congress is a great sign of hope for the Freedmen, who have endured a second-class status for too long. Congress’ champions of civil rights have taken the issue of the Freedmen to Attorney General Eric Holder — a man who has shown great courage in taking on the issue of race.”

With the economic crisis kicking America’s butt for 15 straight months, it’s Black folks with four-year college degrees who’re feeling the most pain. While there were relatively few college-educated Whites without jobs – about 3.8 percent, according to national employment figures for March 2009 – there were nearly twice as many jobless Black degree-holders (7.2 percent). That is a 4.5 percent higher than a year earlier, when the recession officially began. Job-holding Latinos and Asian Americans with bachelor’s degrees (both at 5 percent) fared worse than Whites but better than Blacks. The findings suggest that while education is viewed as an avenue to decent job, particularly for African Americans, it cannot be viewed as a surefire means to employment. In fact, at every level of education, Blacks are far more likely to be without a job than their White counterparts and, according to labor experts, even if Blacks earned the same number of degrees as Whites they would still have significantly higher unemployment. This reality, they say, begs for a higher commitment to anti-discrimination efforts in employment and job creation in the Black community.

Historically, Walt Disney Studio has had a less than savory record regarding images of African Americans in its animated works, so it was with great excitement that the Black community received the media giant’s first Black princess – well, after Disney tweaked the role here and there following a healthy dose of Black outrage. Read the rest.

Obama Calls on You to Make A Difference The call to service is now be immortalized in a bill signed Tuesday by President Barack Obama, giving $5.7 billion to triple the size of the AmeriCorps national service program and expanding opportunities for students and seniors wanting to earn money for college while volunteering for the country. Read more.

Candidate Hopes to Become First Black Woman Gov A New Jersey woman is hoping to become the nation’s third African-American governor. The Rev. Shannon Wright, an Independent candidate, announced her bid to lead the Garden State just days after resigning as campaign manager for Republican Brian Levine. On Thursday, Levine, the mayor of Franklin Township, was nixed from the GOP primary ballot after judges ruled that his petition did not contain enough valid signatures to justify his nomination. Wright, 42, was a registered Democrat in 2008, so she must obtain 1,000 signatures to run as an independent. She named health care, education and economic development as her focal points. She and her husband are co-founders of Faith, Grace and Mercy World Outreach Ministries.