Tag: African-American

When Lenwood E. Johnson, the son of Texas sharecroppers, moved into Houston’s Allen Parkway Village project housing, the Freedmen’s Town section of the city had yet to be designated historic and the village had yet to be saved. By the end of the 1990s, the village was preserved and Johnson had proved to be something of an unlikely hero here in Houston’s 4th Ward, historically one of the poorest sections of the city – but always ripe for redevelopment because of its proximity to the downtown.

On the first of January this year, 2009, Oscar Grant was murdered by a BART police officer. This crime gained national media attention and united a community as people from various walks of life came together to demonstrate, voice their righteous indignation and demand justice. People protested, marched, rallied and attended numerous community meetings. Thirty days later, on Jan. 30, my son was shot 17 times and his friend was murdered. There were no marches. There were no rallies. There were no protests.

In the Bayview, Experience Corps has partnered with Malcolm X Academy since 2004 and just expanded to Carver Elementary School at Oakdale and Keith. Of Carver's 285 students, only one in five are meeting the state standards in language arts and fewer than one in three meet standards in mathematics.

A family of Section 8 landlords, Riaz, Maryam and Mark Patras of Antioch, who have rented several homes to Section 8 families, are suing the City of Antioch and five members of its Police Department in federal court for civil rights violations, including loss of rental income, emotional distress, humiliation and loss of privacy. They are also alleging that the police department's Community Action Team (CAT) used rough and illegal tactics to force the landlords to evict their Section 8 tenants, all of whom are African-American.

WBOK has come back strong from the severe damage inflicted on its studio, offices, transmitter site and broadcast tower by the flooding in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Now broadcasting over a powerful signal, the station adopted a Black talk format - "Real Talk for Real Times" - on Nov. 1, 2007, after it was purchased and upgraded by Danny Bakewell Sr. on behalf of the Bakewell family.

Leonard Peltier was severely beaten after being transferred to another prison. Learn how you can help and read a letter from Leonard and commentary - ‘President Obama must free Leonard Peltier' - written Jan. 23 by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman.

Turning to Lennar’s recent activities, Sumchai’s politics came into focus. “We have to fight to control this property. We have to be stakeholders at the table of what goes on in the development of not only this property but other properties throughout southeast San Francisco.