Again Troy Anthony Davis, the Georgia death row inmate who has escaped execution on three previous occasions, must wait until September to learn whether the U.S. Supreme Court will make a decision that could spare his life for good. The high court was scheduled to announce Monday whether it would hear Davis’ case, which has gained international support. Read more.

The Georgia White supremacist whose life was spared on Tuesday was executed Wednesday, soon after a technical glitch was cleared up by a federal judge. William Mark Mize, a 52-year-old inmate, was sentenced to die 15 years ago for killing Eddie Tucker, a White truck driver who refused to burn down a purported crack house as an initiation rite to enter Mize’s racist organization. Read more.

As Masika Bermudez prepares to take her son to the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he is to be buried, she is looking for answers to exactly what made her 11-year-old son hang himself in their Atlanta-area apartment last week. Among those questions, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, is whether incessant bullying by his classmates triggered Jaheem Herrera’s desperate response. Did a boy’s charge that Jaheem was gay push him over the edge? Read more.

Iceberg Slim’s Wife, Collaborator Dies The woman who helped propel bestselling street-fiction author Robert “Iceberg Slim” Beck into literary fame has died. Betty Mae Beck had begun preparing a memoir about her life with Iceberg Slim before she passed away last week due to prolonged illness. Read the rest.  

Georgia Police Chief Denies Luxury Car Scam A former Atlanta-area police chief, fired for allegedly hiding confiscated luxury cars for his personal use, called the investigation into the charges a “witch hunt.” Ex-DeKalb County Police Chief Terrell Bolton is accused of falsifying documents to conceal a $32,000 Range Rover and a $55,000 Mercedes he kept for personal cruising. In addition, investigators said in a lengthy report, Bolton took almost two months of unapproved comp time, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. But Bolton described the allegations as “Mickey Mouse” and blamed the Sheriff’s department of violating his rights. “I never had a chance to address any of those issues before this report was written,” he said. “The report is much ado about nothing. It’s the culmination of a witch hunt.” But Tip Green, the officer who ran the police car pool, said that Bolton told him to “hide” the luxury vehicles, according to the Journal-Constitution. “Bolton said to hide them, and he did not want them showing up in his cost center,” Green told him.

A Georgia judge, saying he dreaded sentencing day, issued the death penalty Wednesday to a 36-year-old triple murderer. A jury had convicted and condemned to death De’Kelvin Martin for killing his girlfriend’s 12-year-old son and her grandparents in an angry rampage seven years ago. On Monday, Superior Judge John Groger scolded Martin for turning down the DA’s offer of life in prison without parole. He warned that a jury’s verdict of death would be a tragic end to his violent life. “Mr. Martin, I had hoped I would never have to do this,” Goger said. “The verdict, the jury and the evidence require me to impose … a sentence of death.” After sentencing, Martin’s lawyers – Maurice Kenner and Tom Clegg said they believe Martin suffers from schizophrenia, noting that their client reports hearing voices and hallucinates. “He believes that God is going to intervene and that at some point he will be released from prison to spread the gospel,” Clegg said. “He believes God has a specific plan for him and that he has been told this directly by God.”

Ebony and JET Trim Jobs
Ebony and JET magazines, struggling to raise revenues during an anemic economy, have made cuts so deep that they even included their editorial director. Richard Prince, in his online Journal-isms column, reported that employees who lost their jobs could reapply for new positions. Johnson Publishing, he writes, is “executing a multi-phase reorganization.” Johnson Publishing is ranked No. 1 on Crain’s 2008 list of Chicago’s largest minority-owned companies with $453.3 million in revenue in 2007. It even beat out Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Inc. However, Ebony’s ad sales dropped almost 19 percent to $14.9 million in 2008, according to Magazine Publishers of America data. Advertising revenue for Jet sank 41 percent to $5.7 million in 2008.

Georgia Lawmaker Says Close Black Colleges
Republican State Sen. Seth Harp, who heads Georgia’s Higher Education Committee, is asking the state Board of Regents to phase out the historically Black 3,400-student Savannah State University with nearby Armstrong Atlantic State University, a majority White school with 6,800 students. He would also like to see historically Black Albany State University, which has about 4,100 enrolled, merged with nearby Darton College, which has a predominantly White student body of about 4,700 students. Harp calls the Black institutions a holdover from the Jim Crow era there merely “perpetuate segregation in our state.” Said Harp, “It is time we close this chapter in Georgia.” He said that in light of the state’s rapidly evaporating finances, it makes good money sense. Georgia has a $2 billion budget shortfall. Still, critics of the plan say, closing the schools would mean losing a significant piece of history, borne out of the civil rights struggle. “This is a matter of pride in the African-American community,” state Sen. Emanuel Jones, chairman of Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, said. “He is not just talking about merging institutions, he’s talking about a way of life with roots that go back to slavery. That’s the nerve that he’s touching.” Jones and others note that HBCUs provide an opportunity for postsecondary educations to students who otherwise might not attend college.

 A Georgia teen convicted of nine burglaries and the rape of a 15-year-old girl was sentenced to life in prison plus 110 years. Darrian Bryant was a 17-year-old Parkview High School student when he was arrested for the crimes two years ago. Read more here.

Two more historically Black colleges will disappear in an era when funding has threatened similar schools, if a legislator has his way. But Georgia senator Seth Harp says combining Black Savannah State with majority-White Armstrong Atlantic State and HBCU Albany State with nearby Darton College would end a racist legacy that forced Blacks to form their own institutions. “I think we should close this ugly chapter in Georgia’s history,” says Harp, a Republican. As chairman of Georgia’s Higher Education Committee, he proposed the plan as a remedy for $2 billion in budget shortfall. Opponents, though, say the Black schools, which have roughly 7,000 total students, should remain independent. “We can’t afford to run away from our history,” says Leonard Haynes, executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges. Harp’s proposal this week was in preliminary stages with few details about how any merger would take place.

Sub-prime mess crushed Black America. Nobody got hit by the mortgage crisis like Blacks and Latinos. A study by the nonprofit United for a Fair Economy found that people of color lost an unbelievable $164 billion to $213 billion over the past eight years, thanks to the subprime lending mess. When you go to minority communities all over America, there is evidence of a dramatic economic distress, United concluded. There is an increase in abandoned homes, the devaluation of neighboring houses, increased crime, struggling commercial centers and tax base erosion, it found. “It’s important to realize just how much ground middle- and working-class Black Americans have lost in the subprime crisis,” said Amaad Rivera, a spokesman for United for a Fair Economy and co-author of the report. Rivera says that Blacks saw between $71 billion and $92 billion of their wealth dry up over the past eight years. Latinos, between $75 and $98 billion of wealth evaporated during the same time period. Why? The best answer is that they fell prey to predatory lenders, who disproportionately targeted them, the study says, noting that the subprime mortgage crisis will cost minority homeowners 40 percent more wealth than White homeowners in similar circumstances. “There’s no doubt in looking at the data … these predatory loans were targeted at racial minorities,” Austin King, a spokesman for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now told Black Voices. “Even when you zero out all the other factors like income and credit scores, even then a high-income African American was still as likely to be sold a subprime loan as a low-income White person.”

Georgia lawmaker says Black colleges unnecessary. In Georgia, where state officials are grappling with a $2 billion budget deficit, one lawmaker wants to merge to historically Black colleges with nearby White ones. Republican Seth Harp, who is chairman of the State Senate Higher Education Committee, says Harp. Harp believes that fusing the two campuses would save the cash-strapped Peach State millions and would allow Georgia to do away with what he contends are discriminatory institutions. But many Black educators, politicians and alumni say the historically Black colleges are serving a special need. “Historically Black institutions play a vital role in the community, the state and the nation,” said Dwayne Ashley, the president of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund, which supports Black colleges. “They provide educations to a number of young men and women who might not otherwise attend college.” Joining Ashley is a host of other state officials, which is why the measure likely will not see the light of day. “This proposal would continue a long history of White officials implementing an economic plan that disintegrates institutions in the Black community,” said Ruby Sales, the founder of SpiritHouse Project, a social justice organization, drafted a petition to save the Black schools Sales. “Black educational history has been decimated under these types of desegregation plans.”

Former TLC member’s Georgia mansion will be auctioned. Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins Georgia mansion could be the latest celebrity crib lost to foreclosure. The singer’s five-bedroom, 10,000-square-foot spot is set for courthouse auction next month. She reportedly defaulted on a $530,000 mortgage. News of T-Boz’ trouble at home comes on the heels of word that “American Idol” Fantasia Barrino also faces foreclosure. Barrino’s North Carolina crib is set to go to auction in January as well.