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Top news stories personally selected by the publishers for their relevance to the Black American community.
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Is online dating capable of doing great things for the Black community?
Consider: Gallup reports that half of all Black Americans believe it's "very important" for couples to marry when they have a child -- yet according to research from Packaged Facts, more than six out of ten Black Americans are unmarried, thereby making that group the most unattached in America.
The solution may well lie in online dating, where African-Americans now constitute one of the fastest-growing segments of that market.
A passionate exponent of the belief that meaningful, lasting relationships are essential for building strong African-American families, Ron Worthy, Executive Director of BlackPeopleMeet.com -- the nation's leading online dating site for Black singles --- sees a tight connection between online dating and the integrity of the family.
A pioneer in Internet dating sites that serve the Black community, Worthy is available immediately to offer guidance and perspective to the emergence of online dating for targeted communities, citing the experiences of thousands of African-Americans who have found kinship at the site in their search for companionship, love and marriage.
BlackPeopleMeet.com is operated by People Media (www.PeopleMedia.com), the No. 1 provider of targeted online dating communities. Launched in 2002, BlackPeopleMeet has helped introduce tens of thousands of couples, with a majority of members ages 35-45. Every month, the site reaches 4 percent of the total Black population in the United States.
"In an ever more wired society, online dating has become recognized as one of the most effective ways for people to meet, and Black singles are one of the fastest growing populations within this trend," said Worthy. "As this population migrates from urban centers to suburban settings, an online community acts as a common meeting ground, a place to gather and find each other. Compared to traditional methods of meeting other singles, online dating offers the greatest pool of potential relationship partners, and it's certainly the most affordable option in today's difficult economy."
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Carol Moseley Braun during her presidential campaign in 2004
In Part 2 of our Women’s History Month series on leadership, the real reasons so few are elected.
When Ayanna Pressley decided to take a shot at a seat on the city council in her adopted hometown of Boston, Mass., she was committed to winning by any means necessary. This meant cashing in her 401(k) retirement plan—earned over 16 years as a Democratic operative in Boston and in Washington for Sen. John Kerry and other lawmakers. With a mother needing regular care, chasing a job that depended entirely on her willingness to, say, shake hands outside Fenway Park, her run was something of a gamble. “I know what it is to live in the margins; I know what it is to feel that your government doesn’t reflect you, represent you, or advocate for you,” Pressley—whose investment paid off with a win in November 2009—says today. “I was unafraid.”
Fearlessness is what it takes for a woman to run for elective office, especially a black woman. In his official proclamation designating March Women's History Month, President Barack Obama noted that America "must correct persisting inequalities" facing women in every sphere of life, such as making less money and having greater family burdens than men.
These inequalities have an impact on representation in the public sphere. Women are only 17 percent of the United States Congress, with the 21 African American, Hispanic and Asian females comprising only 4 percent. The number of black women in Congress has flat-lined since 1992, the so-called “Year of the Woman”: There were 11 black women in 1992; 13 in 2002, and only 13 today.
“It is definitely more complicated running for office as a woman,” says Andrea Dew Steele, founder of Emerge America, a nonprofit that trains women for political leadership. “We don’t feel as qualified as men; we’re not recruited in the same numbers; we feel turned off by the mechanics; we have persistent family barriers, and we don’t have the same networks as men.”
Those networks and social supports make a difference. Obama might not have been able to make his first runs for the Illinois statehouse and Congress without the stability of a two-income home and a wife who also took care of the kids. But according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, black women, especially since the 1970s, have traditionally had fewer of these support systems—and are more likely to be the single breadwinners in their household.
Lacking a Sense of Entitlement
What’s more, Obama had been tagged for greatness from his earliest days as a student at Harvard Law School. Karen Bass, a congressional candidate who was the first black woman to lead the state assembly in California, didn’t have that sense of destiny. Having spent over 20 years as an activist in her community, organizing voters, developing domestic and foreign public policy, educating elected officials, watching them term in and term out of office—her own qualifications as a candidate didn’t spring to mind. “One person who was really instrumental in me running was my congressman, Diane Watson—who tapped me and told me that I had been in the community long enough, and that I had to go to Sacramento because there were no African-American women in the state legislature,” she recalls. “And when someone like that calls on you, you respond.”
Bass’ case is not uncommon. Studies have shown that women win elections just as often as men—but it takes seven people to convince a woman to run, as opposed to a single fan for male politicians. “We are not set up with the same sense of entitlement,” says Pressley. “Which is why a 19-year-old white male will challenge an incumbent and a woman of color who is the VP of a company, who serves on nine boards, has two advanced degrees and raised four children will say no. We never think we’re ready. We never think we’re good enough.”
Flying Without a Net
The “persistent family barriers” Steele spoke of are also a contributing factor. Donna Edwards, a freshman congresswoman from Maryland who won her seat in 2008, says she could only contemplate running for office once her son headed to college, and “I didn’t have to be the mom driving him around the beltway, going to different events and back and forth to school and work.” Her decision to run for her first election came from a sense that incumbent Al Wynn wasn’t right for her district. So on a quiet Good Friday, Edwards drove alone down to a filing center, wrote a check for $100 and “became a candidate for the 4th congressional district of Maryland,” she recalls. “It’s a pretty nontraditional pathway to Congress … And I would never have done it with a small child.”
Just as child care can pose challenges for even the most politically driven woman, campaign finance laws that have raised the cost of running are also a major obstacle. “Women don’t have the same access to money to meet the challenge of modern-day campaigning,” says former U.S. ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1993 to 1999 and vied for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. “There are people who determine in the early stages where the money is going to go; and it’s rare that they will start off with the notion that the woman candidate has a shot.”
Fundraising is even tougher for women representing communities of color that are less accustomed to handing money to candidates. “Oftentimes our communities are the beneficiaries of governmental goodwill,” explains Yvette Clarke, who represents Brooklyn in the House of Representatives. “And the prospect of financing a government official, even in the political realm, is one that people haven't quite grabbed hold of yet.”
Edwards was unique in that she became a darling of online progressive organizations like Act Blue and MoveOn, which raised tens of thousands of dollars for her attempt to defeat Wynn. “So many of us come to the table with big ideas, but we’re not independently wealthy,” she says. (In states like Maine and Arizona, which publicly finance state campaigns and restrict how much a candidate can raise from private sources, the rate of female political participation is much higher.)
Under the Media Microscope
And there is yet another layer to the glass ceiling for women, and particularly black women: the media. Erika Falk, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of the book Woman for President, demonstrates a strong and unsettling media bias stretching back to the first female candidates—running in the 19th century. According to her research, women are less frequently written about, and for fewer substantive issues (no matter how much they know about cap and trade). They are more often described using physical characteristics such as what they are wearing, and are more frequently referred to by their married names—such as “Mrs. Clinton” rather than “Sen. Clinton.” “The trend lines are flat,” Falk says. “When you consider the social changes that have gone on since 1872,” she adds, “the fact that the press coverage [has] not improved is really astonishing.”
These pervasive media habits serve to diminish women in the eyes of voters—and are rarely applied with such regularity to male candidates. “A woman’s hair will make or break her candidacy for high office,” says Maureen Bunyan, a longtime Washington journalist on the board of the International Women’s Media Foundation.
Sure, John Edwards was briefly known as the “Breck Girl” for his $400 hair-care regime. But it was nothing compared to the hoopla over Clinton’s pantsuits, which even spawned a debate question in the Democratic primary. And newly elected Sen. Scott Brown appeared semi-nude as a Playgirl centerfold—which did nothing to diminish his electoral chances. According to a recent Vanity Fair poll, 77 percent of women believed that a female candidate who had pulled the same stunt would have lost any hope of winning. (Strangely, only 56 percent of men thought so).
“The level of scrutiny is certainly more intense for women,” says Pressley. “But everything in life is harder to do when you’re a woman and certainly a woman of color and a progressive woman of color.”
Another contributor to the problem is the evolution and portrayal of American politics as a blood sport. Rather than being a space for public policy to be implemented by reasonable actors, Washington and many state capitals are populated with verbs like “spar,” “hammer,” “slam” and “blast,” which suggest anything but smart solutions for constituents—and punish women who jump into the fray. Elisabeth Gidengil of McGill University, who has researched racial and gender biases in politics says that “when politics is characterized or likened to arenas that we still associate with men, the not-so-subliminal message is that women don’t really belong there.”
There are studies that suggest that women come to political situations with less aggression than men, and tend to compromise more. Indeed, the two female Republican senators from Maine, as well as moderate Democratic women from Arkansas and Louisiana, are often discussed as crossover votes for key Senate legislation. And all the female senators from both sides of the aisle meet occasionally for lunch. Yes, the centrism of Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln might be a function of geography and temperament, but “people see us as sympathizers and consensus builders,” says Edwards. “The biases work in our favor.”
Black women who are not seen as conciliatory sometimes get the short end of the stick. “Behavior that’s seen as appropriately assertive [in men] is seen as inappropriately aggressive on the part of the female,” says Gidengil. “This presents women candidates with a classic damned if you do, damned if you don’t, dilemma.” Black women struggle additionally with prevailing cultural perceptions about a black woman’s “attitude.” “I say what’s on my mind, and I’m not going to not express my opinion or point of view because I’m the only girl in the room,” says Moseley Braun, who was voted out of office by Republican Peter Fitzgerald in 1998. “And I paid the price for it.”
Contributing to this dilemma, adds Bunyan, are other women—who, as the 2008 showdown between Hillary Clinton and Obama showed, are not always eager to favor gender in their voting decisions or speak up when women candidates are being treated unfairly by the media.
“I don’t hear us resoundingly expressing our concerns about the way women candidates are portrayed, the misogynistic language of the right-wing radio talk shows,” says Bunyan. “We haven’t yet found a way to think and to talk about women who are well-educated, ambitious, accomplished and good citizens who want to be leaders in society.”
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Tennessee Titans linebacker Keith Bulluck surprised nine high school students Monday night by presenting them with $1,000 in scholarship money in the name of his late teammate Steve McNair.
The scholarships were presented at the 44th annual National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame awards dinner. Bulluck chose nine winners (the same as McNair's jersey number) from among 54 recipients of a separate scholar-athlete award for Middle Tennessee high schoolers. The nine players didn't know about Bulluck's gesture beforehand.
"This was a nice surprise because I don't think any of us knew about it," scholarship winner Juwan Turner told The Tennessean. "[Bulluck] is a role model."
He also took the job of finding scholarship winners quite seriously. The Tennessean reports:
"They all filled out applications and it really was a lot of work picking nine,'' Bulluck said. "I read through all of them, looked at their GPAs, looked at their extracurricular activities, looked at their coaches' comments, saw how much they were involved in things and how many years they lettered on teams."
It's a great gesture from Bulluck, but even more so considering that he isn't expected to be in Tennessee much longer. He's an unrestricted free agent coming off an ACL injury and insiders expect Tennessee to part ways with the 10-year veteran.
It brings to mind Scott Fujita donating money to New Orleans on his way out of town. There are plenty of good guys out there in the NFL. It's nice to hear about them every once in a while.
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In Part 1 of our Women’s History Month series on leadership, a look at the roots of female empowerment.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush held a closed-door meeting at the White House to discuss law and order after the race riots in Los Angeles. Bush and the other lawmakers in attendance received an unexpected visitor in Rep. Maxine Waters, then a freshman representative from South Central Los Angeles, who had invited herself into the deliberations. The gatekeepers were taken aback, but Waters was unfazed: "I don't intend to be excluded or dismissed,” she said then. “We have an awful lot to say."
Waters, currently one of 13 black female members of the 111th Congress, is part of an American tradition stretching back to the times before slavery ended. But what role does the outspoken black female play in today’s politics?
First lady Michelle Obama, the nation’s most visible symbol of black female power, has shown a studied neutrality when it comes to political engagement. (The Harvard-trained lawyer and hospital executive has stuck to hula hoops and vegetables since hitting Washington). Nevertheless, at a spring ceremony honoring Sojourner Truth in the U.S. Capitol, she let the veil slip: “One can only imagine what Sojourner Truth, an outspoken, tell-it-like-it-is kind of woman—and we all know a little something about that, right—just to imagine what she would have to say about this incredible gathering.”
What would Sojourner Truth think of women’s political fortunes in the age of Obama?
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At First, Empowered Behind the Scenes
In the 19th century, abolitionist leaders like Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Tubman and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, were eloquent and activist spokeswomen for their race and gender. Harper, an author who by the 1860s had become a regular on the anti-slavery speaking circuit and an ally of suffragettes like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, expressed a clearly feminist philosophy: “The true woman—if you would render her happy, needs more than the mere development of her affectional nature,” Harper wrote in her 1859 short story, "The Two Offers." “Her conscience should be enlightened, her faith in the true and right established, and scope given to her Heaven-endowed and God-given faculties."
This rejection of the romantic and embrace of the intellectual still holds up as a manifesto for black female political empowerment. Yet for decades, these women remained outliers in the narrative of African-American political history. Before and after women won the right to vote in 1920, it was black men who first broke into formal politics. Free black Joseph Rainey was elected to Congress in 1870—and it was not until a full century later, in 1969, that Shirley Chisholm became the first black female elected to Congress, representing New York state.
This delay can be understood in part as a function of antiquated gender roles in American society. Politics has rarely been considered “women’s work.” For most of the 20th century, political scientists accepted a model wherein “political participation” meant running for office, or the back and forth in Congress over a particular piece of legislation. Now, according to Zenzele Isoke’s recent work on gender, race and politics, the academy now analyzes “a long strand of variables such as voting, donating money, campaigning for an elected official, protesting, contacting elected officials, attending board or community meetings, or formally affiliating with a political organization.” In other words, what black women in the United States have been up to since the days of Harper and her sisters.
The modern women’s movement took shape after World War II, when females began to populate the factories and office spaces once reserved for men. Black women, who had long had to work and keep homes, were early entrants to a more political, more calculated second wave of feminism that would later be embraced by white counterparts. The women activists of the 1940s and 1950s—Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks and others—became the backbone of a civil and social rights movement that was surprisingly integrated by gender. While men were standard-bearers—for the ballot or the bullet—ordinary women marched side by side with them in Montgomery, Selma, Greensboro and beyond. Women like the politically savvy Parks (who “didn’t get arrested by accident,” said one acquaintance) cleared the collective throat of the black women who followed their example. By the 1960s, women like Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver could command a megaphone with as much authority—and notoriety—as their male counterparts in the Black Panther movement.
Then, High-Profile Pioneering
With the historic overhaul of civil rights in America underway, the ascension of women into formal positions of governmental authority was both novel and totally natural. “The civil rights activism was on one track and the electoral process was on another track,” says Carol Moseley Braun, the first and only black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. “They came together in the aftermath of the marches in the South. And I think I was part of that impulse,” she recalls.
“I remember when it was just Cardiss Collins and Katie Hall—before Eleanor [Holmes Norton], Barbara Rose Collins, Maxine [Waters] and Carrie Meeks,” adds Donna Brazile, a longtime Democratic organizer and legatee of the civil rights era. “Then the explosion of black women from all over.” In Congress, this included Chisholm (also the first black woman to run for president, in 1972) and Barbara Jordan, who gave a barn-burning speech at the 1976 Democratic National Convention.
What distinguished these early congressional pioneers was their commitment to women’s empowerment. “They self-identified as women, and they self-identified as feminists,” says Maureen Bunyan, a longtime Washington political analyst and television journalist. In Chisholm’s 1972 announcement, her hybrid identity became central to her political authority. “I’m black, and I’m a woman,” she said. “The hour has come in America when we can’t be passive recipients.”
This recapitulation of Harper’s ambition and Waters’ defiance had a marked impact. Indeed, the end of the 20th century was a heady time for black women in national politics. Sharon Pratt Dixon Kelly was the mayor of Washington, having taken over from an embattled Marion Barry. Though there wasn’t then a women’s bathroom near the Senate floor, Moseley Braun was representing Illinois in the upper chamber. Shirley Franklin made history as the first black woman to run Atlanta. In 1992, following what many women viewed as gendered mistreatment of Anita Hill during confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, 54 women—and 11 black women—swept into Congress.
Now, Public Office for Too Few
Yet for all of the women in the spotlight and behind the scenes, few actually made the push for elected office—even as black women are overrepresented in college and in professional life. Ursula Burns of Xerox is the first black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Condoleezza Rice was the first black female secretary of state. Women like Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College, a black women’s college, and Princeton political science professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell, are dynamic, respected leaders in academia. President Barack Obama’s cabinet is full of high-flying women like senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, UN ambassador Susan Rice and EPA administrator Lisa Jackson. But many of the black female power wielders, including Brazile, who was the top manager of Al Gore’s campaign for president in 2000, have stuck to consulting and organizing rather than running for office. Even Oprah Winfrey stayed out of politics until 2008.
The big question goes back through black history: Why didn’t Rosa run? After becoming a celebrity in her own right, with the political chops to change the nation (at the time of her arrest, she was planning a major conference for black youth), Parks never tried to play the inside game. Of her initial involvement in the civil rights movement and the NAACP, Parks noted: “I was the only woman there, and they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say no.” And before her death in 2005, she maintained that she had no interest in politics.
But today, the bar is lower, and women’s rights more solid. The real obstacles to elective office may be less about rights and more about belonging to the right club.
Read on tomorrow as Part II of this series examines why more women—and black women in particular—aren’t successfully running for office.
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Minorities make up nearly half the children born in the U.S., part of a historic trend in which minorities are expected to become the U.S. majority over the next 40 years.
In fact, demographers say this year could be the "tipping point" when the number of babies born to minorities outnumbers that of babies born to whites.
The numbers are growing because immigration to the U.S. has boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years. Minorities made up 48 percent of U.S. children born in 2008, the latest census estimates available, compared to 37 percent in 1990.
"Census projections suggest America may become a minority-majority country by the middle of the century. For America's children, the future is now," said Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire who researched many of the racial trends in a paper being released Wednesday.
Johnson explained there are now more Hispanic women of prime childbearing age who tend to have more children than women of other races. More white women are waiting until they are older to have children, but it is not yet known whether that will have a noticeable effect on the current trend of increasing minority newborns.
Broken down by race, about 52 percent of babies born in 2008 were white. That's compared to about 25 percent who were Hispanic, 15 percent black and 4 percent Asian. Another 4 percent were identified by their parents as multiracial.
The numbers highlight the nation's growing racial and age divide, seen in pockets of communities across the U.S., which could heighten tensions in current policy debates from immigration reform and education to health care and Social Security.
There are also strong implications for the 2010 population count, which begins in earnest next week, when more than 120 million U.S. households receive their census forms in the mail. The Census Bureau is running public service announcements this week to improve its tally of young children, particularly minorities, who are most often missed in the once-a-decade head count. The campaign features Nickelodeon's Dora the Explorer, the English- and Spanish-speaking cartoon character who helps "mommy fill out our census form."
The population figures are used to distribute federal aid and redraw legislative boundaries with racial and ethnic balance, as required by federal law.
"The adults among themselves sometimes forget the census is about everyone, and kids should be counted," said Census Bureau director Robert Groves. "If we fail to count a newborn that is born this month, that newborn misses all the benefits of the census for 10 years."
Whites currently make up two-thirds of the total U.S. population, and recent census estimates suggest the number of minorities may not overtake the number of whites until 2050.
Right now, roughly 1 in 10 of the nation's 3,142 counties already have minority populations greater than 50 percent. But 1 in 4 communities have more minority children than white children or are nearing that point, according to the study, which Johnson co-published.
That is because Hispanic women on average have three children, while other women on average have two. The numbers are 2.99 children for Hispanics, 1.87 for whites, 2.13 for blacks and 2.04 for Asians in the U.S. And the number of white women of prime childbearing age is on the decline, dropping 19 percent from 1990.
For example:
_In Gwinnett County, Ga., an Atlanta suburb, the population has shifted from 16 percent minority in 1990 to 58 percent minority in 2008. The number of blacks and Hispanics nearly doubled, while the number of white young people stayed roughly the same.
_The population of Dakota County, Neb., increased from 15 percent minority in 1990 to 54 percent in 2008, due largely to an influx of Hispanics who came looking for work in meatpacking and other labor.
_In Lake County, Ind., a suburb of Chicago, the minority population grew from 43 percent in 1990 to 53 percent in 2008 as the number of white children declined, the number of blacks stayed stable and the number of Hispanics increased.
The 2008 census estimates used local records of births and deaths, tax records of people moving within the U.S., and census statistics on immigrants. The figures for "white" refer to those whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity.
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John T. Greilick
Monica Conyers arrives at the Theodore Levin Federal Courthouse in downtown Detroit for her sentencing on her bribery conviction, Wednesday, March 10, 2010. Conyers is a former Detroit City Council member
A former Detroit city councilwoman was sentenced to more than three years in prison Wednesday for bribery after a federal judge refused to set aside her guilty plea during a stormy court hearing dominated by a dispute over evidence of other payoffs.
As guards cleared the packed courtroom, Monica Conyers yelled that she planned to appeal. The wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., wanted to withdraw her guilty plea, suggesting she was the victim of "badgering" last year when she admitted taking cash to support a Houston company's sludge contract with the city.
But U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn, reviewing a transcript of the June hearing, said Conyers had denied any coercion and voluntarily pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
Conyers, 45, is the biggest catch so far in the FBI's wide-ranging investigation of corruption in Detroit city government. Nine people have pleaded guilty, including two former directors of the downtown convention center, and prosecutors have promised more charges are coming.
"Bribery is a betrayal of trust," Cohn told Conyers after announcing a 37-month prison term for her "egregious" crime. She quit the council after pleading guilty in June.
Conyers' plea deal was limited to taking bribes to support a contract with Synagro worth $47 million a year. But the recent trial of her former aide, Sam Riddle, exposed a series of alleged schemes involving others making payoffs to do business at city hall.
Prosecutors said Riddle and Conyers collected $69,500 by shaking people down and urged Cohn to consider the alleged crimes when sentencing her. Defense lawyer Steve Fishman firmly objected and demanded a separate hearing.
Conyers declared, "I'm not going to jail for something I didn't do."
Cohn had handled the Riddle trial and said he agreed with prosecutors that the evidence was relevant. Considering it in the sentencing would have boosted Conyers' guidelines and given the judge justification to send her to prison for as long as five years. But Cohn changed his mind - and she got a break.
"The sentence will be based solely on conviction," Cohn said.
Earlier this year, jurors at the Riddle trial heard secretly taped phone calls in which he and Conyers discussed money, bank deposits and how to split cash.
In a November 2007 call, Conyers told Riddle, "You'd better get my loot." On another call, businessman Rayford Jackson, who passed bribes to Conyers for her sludge vote, said, "You're my girl. Don't forget that."
Conyers told the judge some taped conversations would exonerate her.
"They have taken tapes and used them out of context," she said of the U.S. attorney's office. "I will take the blame for things I did do."
Fishman asked Cohn to keep Conyers out of prison and urged him to consider factors filed in a sealed document. At one point, Conyers said she had been examined by a mental-health expert at the judge's request.
She wants to appeal but her plea deal with prosecutors prevents her from objecting to a sentence of under five years.
"This case is over," Fishman said outside court.
Before the hearing, Conyers moved around the courtroom like a playful host, blowing kisses to supporters while wearing dark sunglasses. Her husband, who has an office in the federal courthouse, was not in the courtroom. Spokesman Jonathan Godfrey said he didn't know his whereabouts.
Associated Press Writer Corey Williams contributed to this report.
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Juanita Goggins is seen in a 1974 file photo in Rock Hill, S.C. Goggins was the first black woman elected to the the South Carolina Legislature in 1974, and was hailed as a trailblazer at the time. Three decades later, Goggins died alone and freezing in the home she rented for 16 years, just four miles from the gleaming Statehouse dome
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Horace W. Goggins II poses in his family home Wednesday March 10, 2010, in Rock Hill, S.C. His mother, Juanita Goggins was the first black woman elected to the South Carolina General Assembly from Rock Hill. She served from 1974-1980. |
When Juanita Goggins became the first black woman elected to the South Carolina Legislature in 1974, she was hailed as a trailblazer and twice visited the president at the White House.
Three decades later, she froze to death at age 75, a solitary figure living in a rented house four miles from the gleaming Statehouse dome.
Goggins, whose achievements included key legislation on school funding, kindergarten and class size, had become increasingly reclusive. She spent her final years turning down help from neighbors who knew little of her history-making past. Her body was not discovered for more than a week.
Those neighbors, as well as former colleagues and relatives, are now left wondering whether they could have done more to help.
"I'm very saddened. People like her you want to see live forever. She had quite a gift for helping others," said state Sen. John Land, a fellow Democrat who was first elected to the House the same year as Goggins.
Goggins, the youngest of 10 children, grew up the daughter of a sharecropper in rural Anderson County, about 130 miles northwest of the capital. She was the only sibling to earn a four-year college degree. Her bachelor's in home economics from then-all-black South Carolina State College was followed by a master's degree.
She taught in the state's segregated schools, married a dentist and got into politics. In 1972, she became the first black woman to represent South Carolina as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Two years later, she became the first black woman appointed to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
"I am going to Columbia to be a legislator, not just a black spot in the House chambers," she told The Associated Press in 1974 following her victory over an incumbent white man from a district just south of Charlotte, N.C.
Voters "were weary of poor representation. They were ready to accept a person who was sincere and concerned about things. Those feelings go beyond color," Goggins said.
She sat on the powerful House budget-writing committee and was responsible for funding sickle-cell anemia testing in county health departments.
The former teacher also helped pass the 1977 law that is still the basis for education funding in the state. Her proposals to expand kindergarten and to reduce student-teacher ratios in the primary grades were adopted after she left politics in 1980, citing health issues.
"She was not bashful or anything. She liked to talk. I used to say she could sell an Eskimo ice," recalled Ilese Dixon, 88, of Pendleton, Goggins' last surviving sibling. "She was just lively and smart. She thought she could fix the world."
Her colleagues say they never learned the specifics of her illness and, since she didn't talk about it, they didn't press.
Several years after leaving the Legislature, Goggins divorced and then moved to Columbia in the early 1990s, renting the brick ranch house in a quiet neighborhood off North Main Street where she lived for 16 years.
Her son said she worked several years as a case manager for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, although a spokesman said the agency had no records of her employment. At one point, she also started a nonprofit tutoring service called the Juanita W. Goggins School of Excellence.
Neighbors said she was always a private person. One neighbor said she would return her waves, but refused to let visitors in the door.
Last year, about the same time the Legislature voted to name part of a state highway after her, Goggins was mugged near her home. She changed the locks on her door and stopped taking walks, according her neighbors and landlord.
Police found Goggins' body March 3 — two weeks after she was last seen. Her landlord contacted police after a next-door neighbor realized he had not seen her lights on in some time.
Coroner Gary Watts said she died of hypothermia, probably about Feb. 20, and said he found indications of dementia. When she died, during a cold snap, Goggins was wearing several layers of clothing, yet her heat was working at the time.
She had money to pay her bills, but the utility company said it shut off the electricity for nonpayment Feb. 23. Watts said it appeared Goggins was using Sterno to cook, but her stove was still functioning when police climbed through a window and found her.
"I miss her," said Erskine Hunter, an 83-year-old neighbor who ensured Goggins' lawn was mowed and hedges were trimmed. "I don't know why I didn't go over there and hammer on the door."
Hunter said Goggins occasionally came to his home and visited with his granddaughter. She refused to let anyone drive her anywhere, and refused rides to and from the bus stop, so he often went to the grocery store for her. But he had not done that in several months.
State Sen. John Scott, whose realty company owns Goggins' home, said he and his sister tried to take care of Goggins as best as they could without prying.
"We lost a great trailblazer," said Scott, a Democrat from Columbia. "Our family's very saddened this happened to a person who's given so much."
His sister who manages the property, Linda Marshall, said Goggins declined help from the county.
"She needed someone to assist her, but anyone who tried to get close, she'd block them off," she said. "She was very fragile. This was something I always dreaded."
Why she withdrew remains a mystery even to her son. He attributes it to her illness, which was never fully diagnosed.
"That's something I've been trying to get my head around for the last 15 years," said Horace Goggins Jr., 42, of Powder Springs, Ga.
He last saw her about six months ago. She would not let him help her either, he said.
He wants to focus on her accomplishments and the good times at his mother's funeral Friday in Rock Hill.
"I would like for her to be remembered as a woman who cared about her community," he said. "I want her to be remembered as a positive role model, not only for African-American girls, but also any young girl who has a want and a desire to make a change and do something positive."
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The latest news out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is very troubling, to say the least.
A jaw-dropping 48 percent of black women between ages 14 and 49 have the virus which causes genital herpes, says the federal agency. Blacks in general are more than three times as likely as whites to have herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) (39.2 percent vs. 12.3 percent).
Why is it so much higher among black women? It is likely that biological factors make women more susceptible to genital herpes than men, says the CDC. American women in general are nearly twice as likely as men to be infected (21 percent vs. 11 percent). Then add on top of that socioeconomic factors that negatively affect blacks' general state of health, and it's no surprise that black women draw the short straw when it comes to getting genital herpes.
What's worse, most don't even know they've drawn that short straw. Up to 80 percent of genital herpes infections in the United States are undiagnosed. "Many individuals are transmitting herpes to others without even knowing it," said John M. Douglas Jr., director of CDC's division of STD prevention. "It is important that persons with symptoms suggestive of herpes-especially recurrent sores in the genital area-seek clinical care to determine if these symptoms may be due to herpes and might benefit from treatment."
Sores aren't the only sign you've been infected, and many people don't even experience them. Redness and itching are other symptoms, and the disease can still be transmitted without visible sores. The high rate of genital herpes infections among blacks may contribute toward the high rate of HIV in the black community by making transmission easier, says the CDC.
The high rate of genital herpes infections among blacks may contribute toward the high rate of HIV in the black community by making transmission easier, says the CDC.
So what do we do? If you know you have genital herpes, you definitely should avoid sex when symptoms or sores are present. Remember that genital herpes can still be transmitted when sores are not present. Using condoms consistently and correctly, and limiting the number of people you have sex with are also important to limiting the spread of the disease.
For more information on the disease, check out the CDC's genital herpes fact sheet.
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Let’s face it. An early “departure” from a coveted position in the White House is a re-branded way of saying you were fired—plain and simple. It broke my heart to see a brilliant, beautiful black woman “fired” in such a way for making a mistake—a dangerous mistake—but a mistake nonetheless. Personally, I blame those in charge of security and protecting the President’s life more so than America’s Chief-Event-Planner, but they did not ask me.
With an MBA from Harvard and an awe-inspiring career history, the past several months following the infamous White House state dinner debacle must have been beyond embarrassing and disappointing for Desirée Rogers. As such, I am sure that the end result is not reflective of the tremendous amount of effort and energy she exerted during her time as the Social Secretary for the White House.
Still, the fairytale journey is about to end, as Rogers announced last week that she would step down from the position, effective later this month. The question is, Why? There is a major issue with the retention of top African-American talent in every competitive industry in this country. So, I ask, what was the real reason behind her departure? Sure, we will continue to receive perfectly scripted answers from the White House and Rogers (unless she decides to write a book—hey, I’d buy it!). I gather President Obama was most disappointed not with her abilities (she is unquestionably talented), but rather her failure to execute in a manner that aligned with the Obama brand. Yes, I said the Obama B-R-A-N-D. I believe the ultimate mistake here was Rogers taking her eye off the prize.
As the owner of a brand management firm working with professional athletes, entertainers, and also high-end companies like Rolls-Royce Motor Cars and Tiffany & Co, I notice that many people easily make the same mistake. It is a very thin line, but the line still exists. People, even those with the best of intentions, get caught up in the glamour of an industry and forget whose star is the one that is supposed to be shining. In this economy, there is no such thing as job security.
Here are two critical personal branding lessons you can learn from the potentially misplaced, misaligned, and misfired desire of Ms. Desiree Rogers.
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Arne Duncan Secretary of Education And President Obama
Obama administration plans to toughen civil rights enforcement in the nation's schools with a broad review touching on everything from academics to discipline.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced the initiative Monday during a speech in Selma, Ala., where he helped commemorate the 45th anniversary of a bloody confrontation between voting rights demonstrators and law enforcement. He spoke from the bridge that marchers had crossed when the attack took place in 1965.
Duncan said the Education Department's civil rights office hasn't been as vigilant as needed in the past decade.
The agency will soon begin conducting reviews to determine whether students have equal access to opportunities, including college preparation classes.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
The federal Department of Education wants to intensify its civil rights enforcement efforts in schools around the country, including a deeper look at issues ranging from programs for immigrant students learning English to equal access to college preparatory courses.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan was to speak Monday in Alabama to outline the department's goals. Duncan was there to commemorate the 45th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" — the day in 1965 when several hundred civil rights protesters were beaten by state troopers on Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge during a voting rights march.
"Despite how far we've come as a country over the last 45 years, we know there are still ongoing barriers to equal educational opportunity in this country," Duncan told reporters before his speech.
The department is expecting to conduct 38 compliance reviews around 40 different issues this year, said Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department.
"For us, this is very much about working to meet the president's goal, that by 2020 we will regain our status in the world as the number one producer of college graduates," Ali told The Associated Press.
Although the investigations have been conducted before, the department's Office of Civil Rights is looking to do more complicated and broad reviews that will look not just at whether procedures are in place, but at the impact district practices have on students of one race or another, and if student needs are being met.
In his prepared remarks, Duncan highlights several jarring inequities: At the end of high school, white students are about six times more likely to be college-ready in biology than black students, and more than four times as likely to be prepared for college algebra.
Other statistics he will highlight in Selma:
_ A quarter of all students drop out before their graduation, and half of those come from 12 percent of the nation's high schools. Those roughly 2,000 schools produce a majority of the dropouts among black and Latino students.
_ Black students without disabilities are more than three times as likely to be expelled as white students, and those with disabilities more than twice as likely to be expelled or suspended — numbers which Duncan says testify to racial gaps that are "hard to explain away by reference to the usual suspects."
_ Students from low-income families who graduate from high school scoring in the top testing quartile are no more likely to attend college than the lowest-scoring students from wealthy families.
"This is the civil rights issue of our generation," Duncan said, adding that the Office of Civil Rights has not been as vigilant as it should have been in the past decade.
In addition to the reviews, the department will also be sending guidance letters to all districts and post-secondary institutions receiving federal funding. Ali said the topics cover everything from food allergies to law enforcement procedures for victims of sexual violence and equitable education spending.
The Education Department will work with districts and states to find a voluntary resolution if a violation is found. In extreme cases, Ali said funds could be withheld or ended.
Duncan's visit sparked some controversy among some black politicians who were upset that the Education secretary picked Robert E. Lee High School — a school named after the Confederate general and where its principal at the time had opposed King and the 1965 voting rights march — to hold his news conference. Democratic Rep. Alvin Holmes of Montgomery had objected, but Duncan refused to move to another location. Agency officials said that the school is now majority black and that its current principal was 2 years old at the time of the march.
Instead, Duncan added a school to his visit — Martin Luther King Elementary School — and met with fifth-graders there. He also met with Holmes and another black lawmaker, Democratic Rep. Thad McClammy of Montgomery. The education secretary did not comment on their discussion, but Holmes said he explained to Duncan that it "wouldn't be right" to visit only Lee and not a school in a predominantly black neighborhood.
McClammy said Duncan asked why Alabama legislators oppose charter schools — a measure by Republican Gov. Bob Riley to create charter schools was killed recently in House and Senate committees. McClammy said he told Duncan, an advocate of charter schools, that more assurance is needed that such schools will be available to all and not become private schools for whites.
Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, said he has seen more collaboration and communication with civil rights organizations under the Obama administration, along with a renewed focus on ensuring the civil rights tenets of No Child Left Behind are being enforced, among other measures.
"They have been very deliberate about enforcing our nation's civil rights laws in the area of education," he said.
Others said they are still waiting for stepped up enforcement to take place.
"We haven't seen anything yet," said Raul Gonzalez, director of legislative affairs of the National Council of La Raza. "But I can tell you there's a lot of hope in the civil rights community that we are going to get some really good enforcement around a variety of issues, including education."
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In this Oct 19, 2009 file photo, Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford, arrives at the federal building for his trial in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Langford was convicted of taking bribes from an investment banker and is to be sentenced Friday March 5, 2010 in federal court. Prosecutors filed papers Wednesday asking that he spend at least 24 years in prison
Former Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford was sentenced Friday to 15 years in federal prison for taking clothes, Rolex watches, loan payments and cash worth more than $240,000 as bribes in return for lucrative bond work.
U.S. District Judge Scott Coogler imposed the sentence on Langford, 63, who told the court, "I am sorry all this has occurred."
The sentence was about nine years shorter than the minimum term sought by prosecutors. Asked outside court whether he was pleased, Langford sneered at a reporter.
"Are you?" said Langford, who claims he did nothing wrong.
Langford and his wife have blamed his conviction on vindictive prosecutors, inattentive jurors and racism. Langford is black; most of the jurors were white.
Defense lawyers already are working on an appeal.
Langford, a dapper political figure, was convicted in October of taking cash, loans and gifts - including expensive clothes and jewelry - while he was president of the Jefferson County Commission. In exchange, prosecutors said, he steered county bond work to an investment banker who paid the bribes.
"He sold Jefferson County out," said Assistant U.S. Attorney George Martin.
He said Langford committed a "gross abuse of trust" with every Italian suit, Rolex watch and cash payment he received. Initially valued at $235,000, authorities said a final tally of the bribes came to $241,843 - which Langford was ordered to repay, along with about $119,985 in back taxes. Langford must report to federal custody by April 5.
The defense claimed the cash and other items were personal gifts and loans from friends and did not influence Langford's decision on the bond work.
But investment banker Bill Blount pleaded guilty to making the payments, and lobbyist Al LaPierre admitted being the middleman. Blount, the former state Democratic Party chairman, last week was sentenced to more than four years in prison. LaPierre, the former executive director of the state Democratic Party, got four years. Blount also was ordered to pay $1 million to the government, and LaPierre $470,000.
Prosecutors had argued Langford showed no remorse and should spend up to 30 years in prison.
The defense said Langford had been ridiculed by news media and, based on another Jefferson County official's sentence for corruption, should spend no more than five years in prison.
Defense attorney Michael Rasmussen also argued Friday that the bond deals were in the best interest of the county at the time.
"Unfortunately, since that time things went sour, but they didn't go sour because of Mr. Langford," he said.
Defense attorneys previously asked the judge to ignore new allegations that Langford won excessive jackpots at a longtime supporter's casino - at least 555 over a recent three-year period ranging from slightly more than $1,000 to more than $14,000. Court filings said his tax returns showed he won $1.5 million during that time from gambling at various casinos, and also claimed to have lost $1.5 million.
Nonetheless, Rasmussen - Langford's lawyer - was the only one who tried to bring up the gambling allegations. The judge cut him off.
"I'm not going to consider that at all," Coogler said. It wasn't clear what Rasmussen planned to say.
Blount's Montgomery firm was accused of making $7.1 million off the bond deals with Jefferson County. The bonds were part of risky financing of sewer debt that has grown to more than $3 billion and pushed Alabama's most populous county to the brink of filing the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.
Langford was accused of telling major Wall Street banks JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers to include Blount's investment banking firm if they wanted to handle the county's bond work.
Elected mayor in 2007, Langford was known for his rapid-fire ideas to revive the city. But some drew ridicule, such as his proposal to try to bring the 2020 Olympics to Birmingham, a city without a major sports franchise. He was automatically removed from office after his conviction.
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Mo'Nique became the fifth black woman to win an acting Oscar, 70 years after Hattie McDaniel won the same honor for "Gone With the Wind" — the first Academy Award ever given to a black performer.
The 42-year-old standup comedian portrayed an abusive mother in "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire."
"I want to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel for enduring all she had to so that I would not have to," Mo'Nique said in accepting the Oscar.
Mo'Nique, who has insisted on being considered a standup, not an actress, was asked backstage if she still feels that way.
"I am a standup comedian who won an Oscar," she said, laughing. "Oh, baby, that tickled me."
She noted that her outfit evoked McDaniel, who also wore a blue dress and a gardenia in her hair the night she received her award.
"For you Miss Hattie McDaniel," she said. "I feel you all over me and it's about time that the world feels you all over them."
At the Golden Globes, Mo'Nique revealed hairy legs under her glamorous gown. Did she clean up for the Academy Awards?
"Of course not!" she said earlier on the red carpet, laughing again. "I didn't shave my arms nor did I shave my legs. I think Oscar would really like this."
She was asked backstage what would happen if more actresses didn't shave their legs or worry about their size.
"They'd win Oscars," the full-figured entertainer said.
In "Precious," Mo'Nique's character, Mary Jones, inflicts relentless physical and verbal abuse on her daughter, allowing the teen's own father to sexually assault the girl, impregnating her twice. It was an eye-opener for audiences accustomed to seeing Mo'Nique in brazen, bawdy comic roles. She is chilling in presenting Mary's heartlessness and brutality, revealing startling dramatic depths in scene after scene.
Mo'Nique, who hosts "The Mo'Nique Show" on BET, was the overwhelming favorite in the run-up to the awards show, having racked up supporting actress wins at the Golden Globes, Spirit Awards and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards, among others.
The only other black women to win supporting actress Academy Awards were Jennifer Hudson for "Dreamgirls" (2006) and Whoopi Goldberg for "Ghost" (1990). Halle Berry is the only black woman to win the best actress honor for "Monster's Ball," in 2001. Seven black men have won acting Oscars.
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Before a book can be transformed into a film, there must first be a screenplay...and a gifted screenwriter.
Tonight, that winning scribe was Geoffrey Fletcher, who masterfully crafted the story of an abused, illiterate teenager into a gripping film by the name of "Precious."
"I don't know what to say," Fletcher began his acceptance speech. "This is for everybody who works on a dream every day...boys and girls everywhere, all the cast and crew and anybody who's kept believing in me. [To] my two brothers, who supported me--my role models, my heroes, Buddy and Todd--my mother, Bettye, angel of my world; my father, Alphonse who spent so much time with us and taught us everything. I'm sorry, I'm drawing a blank right now, but I thank everyone."
To you, Geoffrey Fletcher, we say, "Big Congratulations!"
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Brian Hamlin, program leader for the Diverse Male Student Academy at Prince George's Community College in Largo, speaks at the kickoff event Feb. 24.
The numbers speak for themselves.
Of the approximately 40,000 students enrolled at Prince George's Community College in Largo, 62 percent are female and only 38 percent are male.
To help even out those numbers, the Largo school has launched the college's Diverse Male Student Academy, an extracurricular program that aims to help develop male, minority participants as leaders through weekly workshops.
The academy, which kicked off with a program overview Feb. 24, is open to the school's black and Hispanic male students ages 17 to 27 because this demographic often is disappearing and missing from higher education, said Brian Hamlin, the college's manager of diverse male student initiatives and the program's leader.
"We want to help them realize their goals and dreams," Hamlin said. "We are going to increase participant knowledge of social, cultural and economic drivers."
Charlene Dukes, the college's president, said the academy is one way the college is taking a proactive approach to retaining its male students.
The proportion of the male students at the school has not drastically changed in the past 15 years but has continued to be considerably lower than women's enrollment. In 1995, the school was about 35 percent male, in 2000 the school was about 34 percent male and in 2009, the school was nearly 38 percent male.
"Over the years, the number of men attending college has decreased while [the number of] women has increased," Dukes said. "At Prince George's Community College we are looking at that — the success rates of men — [and] determining that coming to college and being successful in college can impact their careers and quality of life after college."
The topics that will be highlighted at weekly workshops, which begin Tuesday, include the importance of personal goals and development, education, time management, career readiness and networking, communication skills and financial literacy, Hamlin said.
Hamlin said he will run the workshops, and experts will be brought in when needed. The first academy, open to up to 100 students, will run through the end of the spring semester, with the first full year of the program beginning in the fall.
"We want you to stay [in college] and thrive," Hamlin said to the nearly 75 students who attended the program overview Feb. 24. "We're going to teach you to step up and be leaders. If you want to be successful, be involved, be about it."
Dukes is among nearly 150 presidents of predominately black community colleges who are members of the Presidents' Round Table, a virtually based organization for leaders of black community colleges that aims to increase the success and graduation rate of black students enrolled in community colleges.
As a result, the college launched the Diverse Male Student Academy to increase the graduation rate and success of minority male students enrolled in the college, Dukes said. A version of the program is at only three other community colleges, in Texas, California and Illinois.
"This is a regional approach to deal with the collegiate success of a diverse male student population," Dukes said to the students at the program overview. "Your success is our success. Thank you for being concerned about your futures."
Tyjaun Lee, the college's vice president for student services, said she and Hamlin spent the fall conducting research, which included talking to the school's current male students about their needs and experiences on campus and researching program components, both online and in a library, of what makes diverse males successful on college campuses.
Lee said the research showed that diverse males are disappearing from higher education because of their everyday realities, which may be coming from a single-family home or being around peers who are selling drugs.
"It's just teaching them that their current situation does not have to determine their destination," she said. "We want to give [them] coping skills to navigate that and move beyond."
The end result was the development of the academy. Lee said the academy's goal is to "guide them on a path to success."
Terrence Minor, 20, of Kettering said he is excited for the program.
"There's a lot of benefits you can get — [such as] respect for yourself and others," Minor said. "I feel that education is a major issue and people don't take it seriously."
Oluseyi Oyegunie, 20, of Largo said he hopes to gain networking skills.
"I think that school in general can give you a lot of primary skills, but networking, if you know people, you can get far," he said. "The feeling you get when you see everyone together [is positive]. If this is a positive turnout, it will be a good way to exemplify why could happen in the future."
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In this Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010 photo William Holley of Holley Enterprises Inc. poses for a photograph at in Philadelphia. Holley was subcontracted by James J. Anderson Construction to perform demolition and salvage operations on a subway station repair project in Philadelphia.
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Hispanic and black businesses are receiving a disproportionately small number of federal stimulus contracts, creating a rising chorus of demands for the Obama administration to be more inclusive and more closely track who receives government-financed work.
Latinos and blacks have faced obstacles to winning government contracts long before the stimulus. They own 6.8 and 5.2 percent of all businesses, respectively, according to census figures. Yet Latino-owned business have received only 1.7 percent of $46 billion in federal stimulus contracts recorded in U.S. government data, and black-owned businesses have received just 1.1 percent.
That pot of money is just a small fraction of the $862 billion economic stimulus law. Billions more have been given to states, which have used the money to award contracts of their own.
Although states record minority status when they award contracts to businesses, there is no central, consistent or public compilation of that data, according to Laura Barrett, director of the Transportation Equity Network.
Minority businesses are often too small to compete for projects; do not have access to the necessary capital, equipment or bonding requirements; or lose bids to companies with well-established relationships. There also has been an emphasis on spending stimulus money quickly, which favors businesses that have won past contracts.
But minority advocates say that blacks and Latinos have been harder hit by the recession, and getting a fair share of stimulus contracts is key to the recovery of these communities.
The Obama administration has taken steps to address minority concerns. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wrote governors in December urging them to work with disadvantaged businesses. LaHood suggested unbundling large contracts to make them more accessible to small businesses, and emulating a Missouri contracting project that made community groups and openness part of the process.
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