Page 27 - 7-1-15 Friday's Edition

National
Legendary Educator Marva Collins Dies
Legendary Chicago school teacher and ed- ucation trailblazer Marva Collins has died.
Ms. Collins started
West Side Preparatory
school in Chicago’s
Garfield Park neigh-
borhood with her own
money when she grew frustrated with the city’s school system.
She ran the school for more than 30 years until it closed in 2008.
Collins was most widely publicized in the 1981 biographical television movie “The Marva Collins Story” starring Cicely Tyson.
She was 78.
Girl, 13, Arrested After Fight Video Goes Viral
Trial Of 5 White Police Supervisors Moved To Predominantly Black Suburb
DALLAS -- - A 13-year- old Texas girl was arrested on Monday after a video that went viral showed her beat- ing a classmate who was holding a toddler at a Dallas- area elementary school ear- lier this month, police said.
Rowlett police said the teenager faces a charge of third-degree felony injury to a child and a misdemeanor assault charge for the June 19 incident that left a 14- year-old girl and her 3-year- old cousin with scrapes and bruises.
The suspect's name was not released because she is a minor.
The one-minute video of the incident has had more than 1.2 million views on LiveLeak.com since it was posted on Thursday.
In the clip, the suspect is shown yanking the older teen from a bench by her hair, causing the toddler who was sitting on her lap to fall screaming to the ground.
The victim is then dragged to a grassy area and punched repeatedly.
Detective Cruz Hernan- dez told the Dallas Morning News that Rowlett police be- lieve the attack was caused by a dispute during school hours.
shooting, McGinty said.
The chase ended in East Cleveland but mostly occurred on streets and freeways in Cleveland. More than 100 Cleveland officers in 62 patrol cars participated in the 22- mile-long chase, which
reached speeds of 100 mph. The judge who acquitted Patrolman Michael Brelo was set to preside over the su- pervisors' trial. McGinty, when asked if he thought the move to East Cleveland would improve the chances of a con- viction, said that would be
speculation.
Defense attorney Henry
Hilow, speaking for the attor- neys representing the supervi- sors, said that race appears to be a factor in the trial move, which he called "inappropri- ate." He said East Cleveland prosecutors had a chance more than two years ago to
charge the officers.
The lone municipal judge in
East Cleveland is Black. If the trial is held in East Cleveland and the supervisors ask for a jury trial, the pool of potential jurors would be drawn from a city with a Black population of 93 percent.
By contrast, about 30 per- cent of Cuyahoga County's residents are Black, as are about 53 percent of Cleve- land's residents, according to 2010 U. S. Census Bureau sta- tistics.
McGinty raised issues of race before Brelo's trial when the patrolman asked that a judge and not a jury decide the case. McGinty objected and filed an unsuccessful motion that said a bench trial would deprive Black Cuyahoga County residents of a chance tobepartofajurytohearthe charges.
MARVA COLLINS
CLEVELAND, OH — The misdemeanor trial for five white Cleveland police super- visors accused of failing to control a high-speed car chase that led to two unarmed Black people being killed in a 137- shot barrage of police gunfire will be held in a predomi- nantly Black suburb, not in county court, prosecutors said Monday.
Cuyahoga County prosecu- tor Tim McGinty said offi- cials in East Cleveland, where the November 2012 car chase ended and the shooting oc- curred, contacted his office about trying the case in that suburban city after a judge ac- quitted a white Cleveland pa- trolman last month on felony manslaughter charges for his role in the shooting deaths of driver Timothy Russell and passenger Malissa Williams. The patrolman's acquittal sparked protests among Blacks.
McGinty said the same misdemeanor charges against the supervisors will be filed in East Cleveland and county prosecutors will help try the case, which had been set for trial in county court on July 27.
East Cleveland Municipal Court is an appropriate venue because the five supervisors endangered the lives of East Cleveland residents and other police officers by not ending the chase and preventing the
Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams were fatally shot after 137 shots were fired at their car.
Ku Klux Klan Approved For Rally In South Carolina
String Of Arson Fires At Black Churches Being Investigated
COLUMBIA, SC --- The white supremacist Ku Klux Klan has received approval from South Carolina officials to hold a pro-Confederate flag rally at the State Capitol, a newspaper reported on Monday, less than two weeks after a white man killed nine people in a Black church.
The suspect in the church shooting, 21-year-old Dy- lann Roof, has confessed to the killings.
The shootings on June 17, in which all nine victims were Black, unleashed shockwaves across the United States and triggered calls for South Carolina to stop displaying the Confed- erate flag on the statehouse grounds.
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has called for the flag's removal, and told the Post and Courier that she did not endorse the Klan's planned rally.
But according to the news-
CONFEDERATE FLAG
paper, the South Carolina Budget and Control Board approved an application filed by the "Loyal White Knights" chapter of the Ku Klux Klan for a July 18 rally in favor of the flag.
Budget and Control Board spokesman Brian Gaines told the newspaper that space to demonstrate was provided at the site when not already reserved.
An answering machine for the South Carolina chapter referred to Roof as a "war- rior," according to the Post and Courier.
A string of churches with predominantly Black congre- gations – from Florida to Ten- nessee -- have reported fires in the past week, officials say.
The circumstances sur- rounding the six fires in five states differ in each case, but their occurring in the past eight days has prompted closer scrutiny.
So far only two of the six cases are being investigated as arson, and federal authorities have not launched any official hate crime investigations.
Arson was a notable prob- lem for Black churches in the mid-1990s and prompted then-President Bill Clin- ton to push for the creation of the Church Arson Prevention Act in 1996, though a related U. S. Department of Justice task force was suspended at the end of his second term.
This week's fires come amid a tense time in some Southern cities after a shoot- ing by an alleged racist at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, left nine dead. The result has been a push for the removal of the Confederate flag from sev-
eral state Capitols amid reignited debates over the re- gion's racial history.
A senior official from the U. S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said they have special agents, cer- tified fire investigators, look- ing into the different fires.
The ATF is also reportedly checking the fires against its Bomb Arson Tracking System to see whether there are any commonalities among the fires.
Mark Potok, a senior fel- low at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, a hate group-moni- toring organization, said only three of the six fires appear to be true cases of arson. And while those three -- in Ten- nessee, Georgia and North Carolina -- may have been in- tentionally set, he said he be- lieves it's unlikely they were done in an organized and uni- fied fashion.
The first fire was reported at the College Hill Seventh Day Adventist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Sun- day, June 21. Stacks of hay and soil were placed against
the church's metal doors and set on fire, according to ABC affiliate WATE-TV.
The second church was in Georgia two days later.
Fruitland Presbyterian Church in Gibson County, Tennessee, was also set on fire that same day and officials have not released any updates about the investigation.
The fourth fire burned down a portion of the Briar Creek Road Baptist Church in East Charlotte, North Car- olina, in the early morning hours of June 24, and investi- gators immediately classified it as arson.
The investigations into the final two churches that re- ported fires Friday June 26 are still underway and their respective cause has not yet been determined.
Further south, the state fire agency is also looking into the blaze at Greater Miracle Tem- ple in Tallahassee, Florida, that caused an estimated $700,000 in damage early Friday morning, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
No injuries were reported at any of the fires.
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