Afro-Netizen

Black cancer survivor, 75, makes historic trek to the North Pole

If this story's not inspirational, I don't know what is.

Simply beautiful.

Here's an excerpt:

AP - The bone-numbing trek to the North Pole is riddled with enough perils to make a seasoned explorer quake: Frostbite threatens, polar bears loom and the ice is constantly shifting beneath frozen feet.

But Barbara Hillary took it all in stride, completing the trek to the world's northernmost point last month at the age of 75. She is one of the oldest people to reach the North Pole, and is believed to be the first black woman on record to accomplish the feat.

Hillary, of Averne, N.Y., grew up in Harlem and devoted herself to a nursing career and community activism. At 67 and during retirement, she battled lung cancer. Five years later, she went dog sledding in Quebec and photographed polar bears in Manitoba.

Then she heard that a black woman had never made it to the North Pole.

"I said, `What's wrong with this picture?'" she said. "So I sort of rolled into this, shall we say."

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Will Harvard be part of St. Louis student's "American Dream"?

Is Soldan High senior headed to Harvard?

By Steve Giegerich
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

David Evans is in the admissions business at Harvard University. It's not too often, he says, that "we run into what we call the American Dream."

This year, it happened. The American Dream, in this instance, is a senior at Soldan High School. His name is Jeffrey Lynn Hall Jr. The dream arrived recently by e-mail; a formal letter from Cambridge, Mass., followed.

It began, "I am delighted to inform you that the committee on admissions and financial aid has voted to offer you a place in the Harvard Class of 2011."

With the exception of graduates of Metro High School, a magnet school with admissions requirements, Hall is the first St. Louis Public Schools student to receive a Harvard invitation in at least 35 years, according to Evans.

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Blacks hurt by gap in home values

The Fragile Black Middle Class | Blacks hurt by gap in home values

BY CHERYL L. REED AND MONIFA THOMAS
Staff Reporters
Chicago Sun-Times

Her two-bedroom bungalow in Avalon Park, a middle-class, black neighborhood on the South Side, has nearly doubled in value since she bought it 15 years ago. But Laverne Haynes is certain of this: If her neighborhood was largely white, her home would be worth much more.

"Whites don't consider our property values as high because of what they think goes on in our neighborhoods," said Haynes, a receptionist downtown. "They think we have high crime rates and drugs or that we don't take care of our property."

Haynes and many other black homeowners have long suspected that home values in black neighborhoods don't appreciate as fast as they do in white neighborhoods. Now, new research shows that not only do African-American homeowners typically get less when they sell their homes, but the disparity is feeding a growing wealth gap between blacks and whites.

"There's a segregation tax that operates on home values," said Thomas Shapiro, a professor at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management who has researched the black-white wealth gap. "Middle-class, African-American homeowners feel it's just another way they've gotten shafted."

Being middle class is a far more fragile experience for blacks than it is for whites, according to interviews with Shapiro, other experts and dozens of black and white homeowners in Chicago and the suburbs. There are more hurdles to get there and stay there, and less support, a growing field of research is finding.

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Johnson Rice releases statement in Oprah-Defender spat

By Chicago Defender
Staff Report

Linda Johnson Rice, president and CEO of Johnson Publishing Company issued the following news statement Friday in response to Oprah Winfrey’s statement that a Chicago Defender column by executive editor Roland S. Martin criticizing her for not releasing a statement or attending the Aug. 15 funeral of Ebony and Jet magazines founder, John H. Johnson, was “unfair.”

“Ms. Winfrey said she sent flowers and a note to the chapel and we have no reason to question her statement. She called me yesterday and explained that she had sent the flowers and a note. Unfortunately, they did not come to my family’s attention and we were unaware that they were delivered. No one has been able to locate her note or flowers, but I do want to thank her for her supportive expression of sympathy and kind words of tribute to my father.

We thank her and look forward to the upcoming tribute to my father’s legacy on her show. We also thank the Chicago Defender and their executive editor, Roland S. Martin, for all of their truly wonderful commemorative efforts in saluting the life of my father.”

Oprah Winfrey 'furious' at Chicago Defender editor over column on Johnson funeral

Linda Johnson Rice offers comment on flap

By Mark Fitzgerald
Editor and Publisher

Chicago Defender executive editor Roland Martin (left) has already published one book and he's got another one, "Listening to the Spirit Within," due out soon. But it looks like he won't invited to promote it on the one show all would-be best-selling authors aspire to: "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

Winfrey is "furious" at Martin, the editor reported in Friday's Defender, over the column he wrote in Thursday's edition criticizing her for not attending the funeral of Ebony founder John Johnson, or even issuing a public statement on the death of the black publishing giant. The paper tried just before the Thursday evening deadline to get something from Winfrey to use in Friday's special edition, a 64-page commemorative edition about Johnson.

The column, headlined, "Oprah's silence on John H. Johnson confounds many," said that the Defender tried six times to get a comment or a testimony from the talk show host, and got the run-around every time. "I've been fielding phone calls and emails from many of the folks in the Black media world over Winfrey's apparent snub of the man who single handedly made it possible for people like Oprah to launch their own magazines and media companies," Martin wrote.

Soon after the Thursday paper hit the streets, Martin received a phone call from Winfrey.
"As I said in the column, she was very respectful -- but she was clearly angry and upset with what I wrote," Martin told E&P. "I told her, we made every available effort to get a comment from her."
Friday's column quoted Winfrey as saying, "I am furious at the allegations because it's just not true. It's not true and it's unfair."

Winfrey went on to say she sent flowers and a note to Johnson's widow, Eunice, and daughter, Linda Johnson Rice. She offered to provide a copy of the note and confirmation that the flowers had been received at Johnson Publishing Company headquarters in Chicago. "I told her that was unnecessary because her word was good enough for me," Martin wrote.

Winfrey said she had been in Hawaii, and didn't get word of Johnson's Aug. 8 death for sometime. She was unable to get back in time for the funeral at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago, she said.

She said her staff did not pass any Defender messages along to her, perhaps, Winfrey added, because they understand, "I normally don't make public statements."

The contretemps between Winfrey and Martin are part of a wider discussion that has been going on among black media professionals since the death of Johnson.

First there was anger that, outside of Chicago, Johnson's passing received nowhere near the media attention paid to ABC anchorman Peter Jennings, who died a few days before.

More recently, there has been criticism of black celebrities -- many of whom owed much of their success to the early coverage they received in Ebony or Jet magazines -- who did not attend Johnson's funeral or the viewing at Johnson Publishing headquarters that preceded it.

"This was a story that had considerable buzz in the black media circles and among a number of African Americans," Martin said Friday. "Walking out of Rockefeller Chapel, that's what you heard, 'Where was Oprah? Where was Oprah?'"

Winfrey told Martin she had already planned on airing a tribute to Johnson and singer Luther Vandross, who died July 1, when her show returns from summer hiatus in September.

Martin said he promised Winfrey that her response would be carried in the same page 2 spot as his
previous column, and would be teased on the front page as it had been the day before.

"I'll even extend an olive branch by offering to take you out to lunch at Wishbone, just down the street from your headquarters," Martin wrote. "My treat."

Founder and publisher of Ebony magazines dies

By Herbert G. McCann
Associated Press

Pioneering black publisher John H. Johnson, whose Ebony magazine countered stereotypical coverage of blacks, died Monday. He was 87.

LaTrina Blair, promotions manager with Chicago-based Johnson Publishing Co., confirmed Johnson's death and said the company would release a formal statement later Monday afternoon.

Born into an impoverished family in Arkansas, Johnson went into business with a $500 loan secured by his mother's furniture and built a publishing and cosmetics empire that made him one of the wealthiest and most influential black men in the United States.

Beyond his own economic stature, Johnson broke new ground by bringing positive portrayals of blacks into a mass-market publication and encouraging corporations to use black models in advertising aimed at black consumers.

Johnson built Ebony from a circulation of 25,000 on its first press run in November 1945 to a monthly circulation of 1.9 million in 1997. Jet magazine, a newsweekly, was founded in 1951 and a third magazine, Ebony Man, a monthly men's magazine, was started in 1985.

Born Jan. 19, 1918 in Arkansas City, Ark., Johnson moved to Chicago with his family at age 15. After graduating from public schools, Johnson attended the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.

While working at black-owned Supreme Life Insurance Co., where he started as a clerk, Johnson founded Johnson Publishing Co. in 1942. Its first magazine was "Negro Digest" a journal that condensed articles of interest to blacks and published the poems and short stories of black writers.

Johnson used Supreme Life's mailing list to offer discount charter subscriptions. To persuade a distributor to take the magazine, he got co-workers to ask for it at newsstands on Chicago's South Side. Friends bought most of the copies, convincing dealers the magazine was in demand, while Johnson reimbursed the friends and resold the copies they had bought.

The tactic was used in New York, Philadelphia and Detroit, and within a year, "Negro Digest" was selling 50,000 copies a month. The magazine, is no longer published.

Johnson launched Ebony just after World War II, as black soldiers were returning home. At the time there were no black players in major league baseball and little black political representation.

With blacks' income far below white Americans, the idea of a black publishing company was widely dismissed. Civil rights leader Roy Wilkins advised Johnson to forget the publishing business and save himself a lot of disappointment; Wilkins later acknowledged he gave Johnson bad advice.

Ebony -- named by Johnson's wife, Eunice -- was created to counter stereotypical portrayals of blacks in white-owned newspapers, magazines and broadcast media. The monthly magazine generally shuns critical articles about black problems, instead highlighting the positive in black life.

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Dr. Maurice F. Rabb Jr: Rich legacy of firsts

Afro-American Newspapers
Afro.com

Shortly after midnight on June 6, Dr. Maurice F. Rabb Jr. succumbed to cancer. He died at home surrounded by his loving wife and two sons. He survived one day past his 39th wedding anniversary, a milestone he purposely achieved by sheer willpower and undying love for his wife, partner and muse, Madeline Murphy Rabb. He was 72.

Dr. Maurice F. Rabb Jr. was born in Shelbyville, Ky., on Aug. 7, 1932, to Dr. Maurice F. Rabb Sr., a family practitioner and civil rights activist, and Mrs. Jewel Miller Rabb, a fellow activist and math teacher, of Columbus, Miss., and Louisville, Ky., respectively. At age 14, he and a fellow Black youth represented the region comprising the states of Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky at the Boy Scout World Jamboree in Paris, France. At 15, he traveled across the country alone by train, visiting Los Angeles, Tijuana (Mexico), San Francisco, Seattle and Minneapolis. These trips ushered in a lifelong wanderlust and passion for travel and photography.

At 16, he graduated from Central Colored High School, where his mother was a member of the faculty. He matriculated at the University of Indiana in Bloomington because his home institution, the University of Louisville, remained segregated. After two years, he entered the University of Louisville when it desegregated, and became one of the first African Americans admitted to the College of Arts and Sciences, where he earned a bachelor's degree in biology.  Dr. Rabb attended medical school at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, and graduated in 1958. He did his ophthalmology residency at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

At the University of Illinois, Dr. Rabb served as chief resident in 1963. Dr. Rabb was the first African-American resident and chief resident at the institution. In 1964 in Chicago, Dr. Rabb met his wife-to-be, the artist Madeline Wheeler Murphy of Baltimore, Md., daughter of Judge William H. Murphy and Madeline Wheeler Murphy. The two wed in 1966, and their union was blessed with two sons, Maurice III and Christopher Murphy Rabb.

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Henry Louis Gates Jr. Named New Pulitzer Chair

By E&P Staff
Editor & Publisher

NEW YORK -- Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the Department of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University, has been elected chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, the board announced Tuesday.

He replaces outgoing board chairman Andrew Barnes, chairman of the the Poynter Institute, who will be leaving the board.

A member of the Pulitzer board since 1997, Gates, who also serves as director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, is "one of the leading cultural critics in the United States, and a world-renowned scholar of African and African-American studies," the Pulitzer Board said in a statement.

He is also the author of 12 books on the African and African-American experience, race, and identity, including "Colored People: A Memoir," which traces his childhood in West Virginia during the 1950s and 1960s, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man," and "Figures in Black: Words, Signs and the 'Racial' Self."

In 1989, Gates won the American Book Award for "The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism." With Princeton’s Cornel West, he also co-authored "The Future of the Race and The African-American Century." He has not, however, won a Pulitzer Prize.

Gates announced this week that he will step down as chair of the Department of African and African American Studies in July 2006, but he will continue as a professor and the director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute.

BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport: Flying into Thurgood!

By Sean Yoes
AFRO Staff Reporter
The Afro-American Newspapers

Emmett Burns Jr., the delegate representing District 10 in Baltimore County, recently said when he dies, he wants his body flown from Thurgood Marshall Baltimore Washington International Airport in Baltimore to Medgar Evers International Airport in his home state of Mississippi.

Earlier this week, at least one part of Burns' vision has come to fruition. On the last day of this year's legislative session in Annapolis, the Senate passed a bill to rename Baltimore Washington International Airport to BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport.

The Senate vote was 33-13. The House had previously passed its own version of the legislation, HB 189, which was sponsored by Burns. The final amended version of the House bill passed with a 101-31 vote.

"I'm elated. It was an uphill battle from day one and it was uphill until the Senate voted," Burns said the day after the vote.

Sen. Joan Carter Conway (D-Dist. 43) is co-chair of the Committee on Education, Health and Environmental Affairs, which held final hearings on the bill. And although she acknowledges being "very happy" about adding Marshall's name to BWI, she says the battle to make it happen isn't really over.

"I worked really hard to get the bill out of committee. I wasn't confident that it was going to happen. Right now, we know that the airport will be renamed, but we don't have a timetable for when it will happen," said Conway.

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Chalkboards? Try Using Chessboards

By Susan Saulny
The New York Times

The games drew about 15 chess enthusiasts to a windowless conference room at City College in Harlem, where pawns and rooks were moved with such intensity of purpose that the scene could have passed for yet another high-stakes tournament.

The grandmaster and bona fide chess luminary Maurice Ashley was there, calling out commentary as he often does when championship matches are broadcast around the world. He is known to use lines like, "Pawns are attacking mercilessly!" and "The bishop is slicing and dicing!"

But what Mr. Ashley had to say about chess on this night was more academic. Literally. "A lot of times in education we try to teach kids the one right answer and that leads, in my opinion, to robotic thinking," he told the players, encouraging them to think of multiple possible moves before choosing the best play. "Real life isn't like that. Is there ever one right answer? Generating alternatives for the sake of alternatives is a good thing."

The players, mostly New York City public school teachers, nodded. This routine, the playing of chess followed by deep thoughts on education, happens every Wednesday night during a new class Mr. Ashley is teaching called "Introduction to Logical Thinking Through Chess" for the mathematics department at City College. Mr. Ashley and the dean of the college's school of education, Alfred S. Posamentier, organized the class with a lofty goal: improve teaching by guiding a group of teachers through the problem-solving strategies that are part of a good chess player's arsenal.

The seminar, an elective class worth two graduate credits, meets once a week for two and a half hours. Mr. Ashley tries to get the teachers to do what he does in chess and in life: think backward with a desired outcome in view, generate multiple options as possible solutions to any question, consider the perspectives of others, and give respect to the least powerful, the pawns of the game.

"Over the years, we have tried many different approaches to developing the most effective teachers," Dr. Posamentier said. "We have regulated the size of the class, the material the teacher uses, the kind of content background that is most desirable, and the philosophy that should work best. However, it seems we have not concentrated enough on the general thinking strategies that a teacher should master to maximize his effectiveness."

Now the educators are thinking about their thinking.

Before class on Wednesday night, Mr. Ashley explained a personal distaste for memorization and facts, and laid out his education philosophy, the one he hopes the teachers will take from the class: "Knowledge flips every day. What we know becomes wrong tomorrow. We need kids who know how to think."

The class seems a natural fit for Mr. Ashley. Unlike many of the country's top players who spend a lot of time preparing for tournaments, Mr. Ashley, a native of Jamaica who grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and lives in Queens, has been teaching children chess for years. He had never taught teachers before, but was willing to try.

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