Everything Wrong with Charter Schools on Display in New Orleans

New Orleans is the nation’s largest and most complete experiment in charter schools. After Hurricane Katrina, the State of Louisiana took control of public schools in New Orleans and launched a nearly complete transformation of a public school system into a system of charter schools.

The birthing of the charter system occurred in 2005 when the community was displaced by Katrina. Control of the public school system was taken away from a board which had an elected majority of African American officials and was given to the white majority board of the state system

The first casualty of the abrupt change was the termination of the South’s largest local union and the firing of over 7000 most African American female teachers. Attorney Willie Zanders told the NAACP of the years of struggle for those teachers which, though initially successful, ended in bitter defeat years later. The city’s veteran black educators were replaced by younger, less qualified white teachers from Teach for America and Teach NOLA.

The change to charters reduced the percentage of black teachers from 74 percent to 51 percent. There are now fewer experienced teachers, fewer accredited teachers, fewer local teachers, and more teachers who are likely to leave than before Katrina. Five charter schools have tried to unionize with United Teachers of New Orleans. Though two schools cooperated, two other charters have said they are exempt from NLRB – a position rejected by the National Labor Relations Board. One of those charter schools shut out the public in 2016 by meeting privately and online over how to respond to unionization efforts.

New Orleans now spends more on administration and less on teaching than they did before Katrina. One charter school executive, who oversees one K-12 school on three campuses, was paid $262,000 in 2014. At least 62 other charter execs made more than $100,000. This compares with the salary of $138,915 for the superintendent of all the public schools in Baton Rouge.

Read more: Everything Wrong with Charter Schools on Display in New Orleans

11 year old Shaun Stokes is missing!

The Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department is asking for the public’s help to find a missing boy who was last seen on Sunday, April 23.

Shaun Stokes, 11, was last seen around 6:00 p.m. in the 7000 block of Leghorn Street.

Shaun is described as a black male, four-feet eight-inches tall and weighing approximately 75 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing a blue plaid shirt, tan pants, and white Nike sneakers.

Shaun is known to frequent the 2100 block of Dodge Avenue and the 400 block of Mall Boulevard. He also has family in Rincon, Georgia.

Anyone with information on his location should call 912-651-6675SCMPD or 912-652-6500

Newark NJ native Shakur Stevenson wins pro boxing debut

U.S. Olympic silver medalist Shakur Stevenson won his professional debut, beating Edgar Brito by technical unanimous decision in the sixth round Saturday at the StubHub Center. Check out some of the action below.

Republican Florida state senator who used a racial slur resigns

Those who run the Republican Part in Florida think that they are slick. They released this story on a Friday in the hope that not many would notice but some of us were paying attention! George Cook AfricanAmericanReports.Com

Frank Artiles, a Florida state senator who used a racial slur and vulgar language in a conversation with two African-American colleagues resigned Friday, saying the incident is causing a distraction to the legislative process.

Republican Sen. Frank Artiles submitted a resignation letter to Republican Senate President Joe Negron and issued a separate statement.

"I clearly made comments that were hurtful, unacceptable and inappropriate. The American people and Floridians want their leaders to be accountable and responsible, and by resigning my elected office I believe I am demonstrating those qualities they desire and deserve," Artiles said in the statement released by a publicist.

Negron said the resignation was the right thing to do, and he dropped an investigation into the incident.

"All of us are accountable for our actions and our comments, so I think it's an appropriate resignation," Negron said.

The Florida Legislative Black Caucus filed a complaint about the incident on Wednesday and asked that Artiles be removed from office.

The matter began Monday night during a private conversation with Sens. Audrey Gibson and Perry Thurston at the Governors Club, a members-only establishment near the Capitol. Artiles used vulgarities in talking with Gibson, including one particularly offensive to women. Sen. Perry Thurston intervened and Artiles, a Cuban-American from the Miami area, used a variation of the "n-word" and used a vulgarity to describe Negron, according to the complaint filed Wednesday by Thurston.

Read more: Florida state senator who used a racial slur resigns

Tuskegee Airman Buford A. Johnson dead at 89

Buford A. Johnson, a Tuskegee Airman who served as a mechanic and crew chief in the Army Air Corps and U.S. Air Force and spent his retirement years introducing new generations to the history of the World War II African-American fighter corps, has died.

Johnson, of Highland, died Saturday, April 15. He was 89 and a retired master sergeant after an Air Force career that included World War II and the Korean War, according to his family obituary.

Johnson served from 1945 to 1966, starting with the famed 99th Fighter Squadron formed for African-American service members in Tuskegee, Ala.

Johnson was with the 99th from 1946 to 1948, the year President Harry S Truman issued an executive order desegregating the armed forces.

[SOURCE: http://www.pe.com]

Atoning for Slavery Ties, Georgetown University Renames Buildings

On Tuesday, April 18, with a Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition and Hope, Georgetown University performed more penance for its 1838 sale of slaves, owned by the Maryland Jesuits, that directly benefited the fledging college financially.

There were mea culpas offered during a moving liturgy in Gaston Hall in the school's landmark Healy Building and at dedications in the Quadrangle, where newly renamed buildings stand near Dahlgren Chapel.

The two buildings, which once bore the names of the 19th-century Jesuit priests who managed the deal that sent 272 slaves from Maryland to Louisiana, were dedicated in the names of former slaves: Isaac Hawkins, whose name is shown at the top of the bill of sale, and Anne Marie Becraft, a freed African American woman who founded a school for Catholic black girls in Georgetown.

At the Gaston Hall ceremony, attended by descendants of the slaves sold off by the university, Georgetown's president, John DeGioia, said the school — like others on the East Coast — participated in America's "original sin," slavery. "We offer this apology for the descendants and your ancestors humbly and without expectations, and we trust ourselves to God and the Spirit and the grace He freely offers to find ways to work together and build together," DeGioia said.

Rev. Timothy Kesicki, S.J., president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, said, “Today the Society of Jesus, which helped to establish Georgetown University and whose leaders enslaved and mercilessly sold your ancestors, stands before you to say: We have greatly sinned, in our thoughts and in our words, in what we have done and in what we have failed to do.” He added: "We betrayed the very name of Jesus for whom our least society is named."

“Penance is very important,” said Sandra Green Thomas, president of the GU272 Descendants Association. “Penance is required when you have violated God’s law.”

The university selected the day because it was a few days after D.C. Emancipation Day, which commemorates the freeing of slaves in the District of Columbia by President Abraham Lincoln on April 16, 1862.
[SOURCE: Georgetowner]

DEATH OF APPEALS COURT JUDGE SUSPICIOUS, POLICE SAY

Police are calling the death of Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam suspicious because there is no clear indication of suicide or criminality.

"We're looking it at as a suspicious death at this point. We haven't found any clear indications of criminality, but at this point we can't say for sure. We're hoping if anyone could shed any light into the hours before her disappearance, it would help us establish what happened," said Stephen Davis, NYPD Spokesman.

The Medical Examiner is still planning to perform an autopsy on Abdus-Salaam, after the body of the 65-year-old Court of Appeals judge washed up on the shore of the Hudson River.

Police say Abdus-Salaam was last seen around 7 p.m. Monday, then spoke last Tuesday morning with her assistant by phone. Detectives are now looking for any possible surveillance video in her Harlem neighborhood, for any clues to how and why she ended up in the Hudson.

[SOURCE: abc7ny.com]

Maxine Waters vows to fight everyday until Trump is impeached

During a protest where people marched asking that President Trump release his tax returns, Rep. Maxine Waters vowed to fight everyday until Trump was impeached. Watch her comments below.

Dodgers unveil statue of Jackie Robinson at Dodger Stadium

The Los Angeles Dodgers unveiled a Jackie Robinson Statue at the Left Field Reserve Plaza the first in Dodger Stadium history on the 70th anniversary of Robinson breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier on April 15, 1947 prior to a Major League baseball game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium on Saturday, April 15, 2017 in Los Angeles. Take a look at a few photos of that statue below.

Man Beaten by Georgia Cops Speaks Out

Video shows Demetrius Hollins, 21, was kicked in the head by a Georgia officer during a traffic stop. He told NBC Nightly News on Friday that he also had an earlier encounter with one of the officers.

The annual conversation on the decreasing number of African Americans in Major League Baseball

Hi all, this George Cook of African American Reports. Baseball season has started and it's time for that annual conversation about the lack of black kids playing baseball and the decrease of black players in the Majors. Check out my thoughts below.

Milk River PAC Focus on Black Female Political Empowerment

On March 30 in Washington DC, Milk River PAC hosted a dialog on the Impact of Women in Politics that featured Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and political commentator Ana Navarro.

The goal of Milk River PAC is to inspire more African American women to run for Congress. Along with The Collective, Democracy in Color, and Higher Heights, Milk River PAC is another effort focused on galvanizing support behind people of color running for office.

Milk River PAC and Higher Heights are specifically focused on Black women. Black women were number one of any group on America in voting percentage for the 2008 election cycle. But exactly how to create political power at at time when Republicans control Congress and the White House was one of many challenges.

The piece of the puzzle that has yet to be perfected is the money. But with the growing influence and power base of Black women in politics may soon fix that problem.

The specific goal of Higher Heights is to “identify, educate, and engage Black women across the socio-economic spectrum to elect Black women, influence elections and move public policy.”

As these political organizations grow stronger the money is soon to follow.

[SOURCE: POLITICS 365]

'Hidden Figure' Katherine Johnson to Deliver Hampton University Commencement Address

Hampton University is pleased to announce that Katherine G. Johnson, one of the leading inspirations behind the Hollywood feature film Hidden Figures, will serve as the University’s 147th Commencement speaker on May 14, 2017. Commencement will be held at Armstrong Stadium at 10 a.m.

Considered to be one of NASA's human 'computers,' Johnson performed the complex calculations that enabled humans to successfully achieve space flight. In 1961, Johnson was tasked with plotting the path for Alan Shepard's journey to space, the first in American history. Johnson was later responsible for verifying calculations of the "machines" and giving the "go-ahead" to propel John Glenn into successful orbit in 1962.

Johnson has been honored with an array of awards for her groundbreaking work. Among them are the 1967 NASA Lunar Orbiter Spacecraft and Operations team award, and the National Technical Association’s designation as its 1997 Mathematician of the Year. On Nov. 24, 2015, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, from President Barack Obama.

“With her razor-sharp mathematical mind, Katherine G. Johnson helped broaden the scope of space travel, charting new frontiers for humanity’s exploration of space, and creating new possibilities for all humankind," said Obama. "From sending the first American to space to the first moon landing, she played a critical role in many of NASA’s most important milestones. Katherine Johnson refused to be limited by society’s expectations of her gender and race while expanding the boundaries of humanity’s reach.”

Johnson earned a B.S. degree in mathematics and French from West Virginia State College. In 1999, that university named Johnson "Outstanding Alumnus of the Year."

Johnson had three daughters with her late husband James Goble. All of the daughters are graduates of Hampton University: Joylette Goble Hylick, '62, Constance Goble Garcia (deceased), ’73, and Katherine Goble Moore, ’70. Johnson is married to Lt. Col. USA(ret) James A. Johnson, ‘52. Johnson has six grandchildren (three of whom graduated from HU) and 11 great-grandchildren.

North Miami Police Officer Charged in Shooting of Unarmed Black Man

A North Miami police officer who shot an unarmed caretaker of a man with autism last summer has been charged in the shooting, the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office said Wednesday. Officer Jonathan Aledda is charged with attempted manslaughter and culpable negligence in the July 2016 shooting of behavioral therapist Charles Kinsey.

Colson Whitehead wins Pulitzer Prize for 'Underground Railroad'

The Underground Railroad, an inventive and searing take on slavery in 1850s Georgia, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction Monday, adding to author Colson Whitehead’s list of accolades and bolstering the case for the book to be included in the pantheon of Great American Novels.The novel mixes harsh reality — slavery in the antebellum South — with a vividly imagined alternative world, one in which the Underground Railroad is a literal subterranean network of tracks and stations.

Whitehead’s heroine is a headstrong teenage runaway slave named Cora, who escapes a brutal cotton plantation and tries to find her way to freedom.

The Pulitzer committee lauded Railroad "for a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America."
In an interview with USA TODAY after learning he'd won the Pulitzer, Whitehead said: "My baseline happiness level has been pretty high the last 10 months."

He said when he wrote the first 100 pages of The Underground Railroad, he felt he was "firing on all cylinders." But he had no idea the novel would "have this kind of reception. I try to do the same old thing and hope it works out. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. This time it really did."
[SOURCE: USATODAY.]

CHECK OUT THE BOOK

Texas voter ID law struck down AGAIN as intentionally discriminatory

A federal judge ruled Monday for the second time that Texas' 2011 voter identification law was filed with discriminatory intent -- another blow to the state in a six-year legal battle over the legislation.

Last July, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law discriminated against Latinos and other minorities but made no ruling on whether it was intended to be discriminatory. It sent the case back down to a district court to reconsider that question. On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzalez Ramos ruled that it was.

The 10-page ruling could land Texas back on the list of states that need approval from the U.S. Justice Department before changing its election laws. A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling took Texas off that list.

In her opinion, Ramos said plaintiffs had proved that "a discriminatory intent was at least one of the substantial or motivating factors" behind the passage of the law and that it had been up to the state to prove it would have passed without its discriminatory purpose.

"The State has not met its burden," Ramos wrote. "Therefore, this Court holds, again, that SB 14 was passed with a discriminatory purpose."

Read more:Federal judge rules -- again -- that Texas voter ID law was passed to intentionally discriminate

Dylann Roof Gets Nine Life Sentences in State Case

Convicted Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof was given nine consecutive life sentences in state prison after he pleaded guilty to state murder charges Monday, leaving him to await execution in a federal prison and sparing his victims and their families the burden of a second trial.

Judge J.C. Nicholson imposed the sentences following a hearing in which church members and Roof's grandfather testified about the personal toll of the case.

Standing at the defense table with his attorneys, clad in a gray and white striped jail jumpsuit and handcuffed to a chain at his waist, the self-avowed white supremacist entered his guilty pleas.

Under a plea agreement, Judge J.C. Nicholson sentenced Roof to life in prison on the state murder charges. The deal with state prosecutors, who also had been pursuing the death penalty, comes in exchange for a life prison sentence on the state charges.

Read more: Dylann Roof: Charleston Church Shooter Gets Nine Life Sentences in State Case

Jalisa Lafay Mils is missing.

WAKULLA COUNTY, Fla. Sheriff Jared Miller and the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office is seeking the public’s assistance in finding a missing juvenile.

Jalisa Lafay Mils, 15, was last seen at her Wakulla County home on April 9, 2017, at 2:00 a.m.

Jalisa is described as an African-American girl, around 5’3” tall, weighing 115 pounds, and is believed to be wearing a white shirt with black and pink shorts.

Jalisa may possibly be in the southern part of Leon County, Florida.

Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Jalisa is requested to contact Detective Sergeant Eddie Wester, Criminal Investigations Division, at 850-745-7100.

[SOURCE: WTXL]

99 year old Tuskegee Airman to lead Memorial Day parade

One of World War II's Tuskegee Airmen will lead the township's 55th Annual Memorial Day Parade this year.

Charles Nolley, a 99-year-old Edison N.J. resident, has been named the Grand Marshall in the upcoming parade, Mayor Thomas Lankey announced Friday.

Nolley was drafted into the second World War in 1943 and served as one of the first black aviators in the history of the U.S. armed forces.

He trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama to become part of the Army Air Corps' four squadrons of all all-black servicemen. Nolley flew combat mission over Europe for three years with the 99th Pursuit Squadron.

"Not only is Mr. Nolley a witness to history, he is living history. His story is one of perseverance, dedication, service and success," Lankey said in release. "We are privileged to have Charles and his wife Martha as neighbors, and we are honored to have him as our parade Grand Marshal."

[SOURCE:NJ.COM]

Chicago Student Earns Acceptance From 22 Black Universities

Ariyana Davis is an 18-year-old senior at Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School. She was able to apply to dozens of schools thanks to the Common Black College Application that allows students to apply to up to 50 HBCUs for a mere $35. She was accepted by 22 HBCUs, as well as Eastern Illinois University, a predominantly white institution.

“It was important for me to go to an institution that feels like home,” Davis added.

When her acceptances started to trickle in, Davis said she felt “excited and overjoyed.” The second-generation college student, who was offered a total of $300,000 in financial aid from all the schools, added that she felt “really grateful.”

Davis will attend Alcorn State University in Mississippi and is thinking about a master’s degree possibly at the University of Illinois.