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8A JUNE 15, 2000 FOCUS IN SOUTH CAROLINA By Lawrence Harrison Where we are hey brought another ver sion of the Confederate flag down to where we can more . easily view it, with lights andl fence. Only thing missing is a 24-hour recording of the rebel fi didn’t think about it, I guess. issue is not resolved; next yedr, two years from now, per haps 30 years from now, it will be revisited. There are,indeed, other corticerns to focus on. A lot of unfinished business. Education reform is a modern issue. Lip service won’t suffice. What will be needed is to make sure children learn, have the ca pacity to learn, and are prepared to learn. If we would only make the same effort as we do to so called history preservation. The most modern technology, the most vast resources really mean nothing, ifthey are not used. Théy do not absorb automatically into the child (or adult either, for that matter). It is a question of what interests us; and interests certainly are influenced by what Zoes on around us. The violence related interests, we surely can and need to address. Morality and values are of an abstract na ture; we have problems passing the;n on to future generations. Knowledge is concrete. Despite that, some, through fault and no fault of their own, have not shared completely in its inheritance. We candobetter. Learning about the past is only a first step. How we feel about the pastisnot nearly as important as how we feel about the future. Pottery can be molded. Human beings can be too. Unfortunately, the “bad” ones are not as correct able or disposable in the latter instance; evidence, a society of fear and a bulging prison indus try. Childhood is where change Enhance your reading by subscribing to the Augusta Focus $24.95 is the cost. Then .... You Will Know! Call (706) 724-7855 for details. Augusta Focus Since 1981 A Walker Group : Publication . 1143 Laney Walker Blvd. has to occur. If government is to be inclusive, it must be on all levels. The War on Poverty was never won, it was just barely be gun. That has been what we have reaped. A well-armed “militia” will not make the difference, bet ter human beings will. If we really want to learn and want learning for all of the citi zenry, no forces can stop us. We can debate the matter of funding. We did not do that this past legis lative year with the lottery pro posal. If it is approved this fall, that means more delay in its implementation ... and more money for Georgia. Politics over the common good once again. It has not been the best example for compromise in any areas or for anyone, young or old. All was not lost. Finally, we do have commitment toward eco nomicdevelopmentin rural South Carolina, to small and minority businesses. In the best effort, the benefits will be lasting and throughout. Any authority will only be as good as the people who serve on it and the plans they formulate. A vision to the future is what it represents, a hand up instead of a hand out, we are al ways abusing as cliche. It is ac tion. So, we are ... well, we have a longways togoand a short time to get there. If we have to speak about how “racial climates” are anywhere, we are not doing too well. South Carolinianshavelittle to be proud of lately. In a state so vibrant with diversity, that is a shame. Ifthe Civil War waswaged to that end, more the shame. There ought to be a better lesson to teach our children and our selves. In the year 2000, we have failed to do so. Charles W. Walker Publisher Frederick Benjamin Managing Editor Dot T. 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But everything that one reads on the Internet is not gos pel, and for the past year or so there has been one troubling piece of misinformation going around about voting rights for African Americans. That story says that the Voting Rights Act will expire in 2007 and that therefore blacks will lose our right to vote that year. That story is just not true. After receiving that Internet warning several times myself, and hearingitin my church, I decided to find out from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights unit what the reality was. I found out that this rumor is false, and was reassured that first the voting rights of African Americans are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitu tion and the Voting Rights Act and that those guarantees are permanent and do not expire. The Justice Department pointed to the 15th amendment to the Constitution, under which no one may be denied the right to vote. In addition, the Voting Rights Agt itself does not expire in any year. What will expire in CHILD WATCH By Marian Wright Edelman | Grace to lead our children home he Black Church Initiatives . waslaunchedin 1997 by the Children’s Defense Fund and the Black Community Crusade for Children we coordi nate to bring a critical mass of Black congregationstogethertothe growing crisis facing Black chil dren. . Religious institutions have al ways played a role in the develop ment of Black children and fami lies, and we believe today’s churches and mosques must be the moral locomotives for the urgently needed movement to save our chil dren from the grip of hopelessness, violence, and the juvenile justice and prison systems. Webegan with a series of gather ings in cities across the country where religious leaders advocates, judges, and young people came to gether to discuss the alarming sta tistics on the disproportionately high numbers of Black children who are victims of violence or in volved in the juvenile justice sys tem. Each gathering also featured solutions — panelists describing innovative church-based youth pro grams across the country making a difference in the lives of their 2007 are certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act which contain extraordinary remedies that ap plied to certain areas of the South because the right to vote illegally had been denied for so long. The provisions, for example, autho rize the Attorney General to send federal registrars to register vot ers in those areas, as well as fed eral observers to monitor elec tions. In addition, these special provisions require certain coun ties to gain the approval of the U.S. Attorney General before implementing new voting prac tices. These special provisions of the Voting Rights Act were origi nally set to expire in 1970, but were extended that year and again in 1975 and 1982. They are now set to expire in 2007, if they are not further extended. Evenifthese provisions expire, however, they can be reinstated by court order if there is evidence of discrimina tory practices in these counties. Over the past few years I have watched carefully to see what the percentage of African Americans voting acrossthisnationhasbeen. I tried to get the percentage of blacks who voted in the recent presidential primaries, but so far have been unsuccessful. But in 1998, according to the Joint Cen community’s children, because sharing positive solutionsis key to change. In order to share these exampleswithother congregations we have profiled 10 of these suc cessful programsin anew manual, Grace to Lead Our Children Home. Thebudgets, staffsizes, number of children served, and activities pro vided bythe programsdescribed vary widely sothat almost any church can find a model they can use. For ex ample, St. Augustine’s Church in Washington, D.C., Freedom Temple Church in Garner, N.C., and Metro politan Baptist Church in Memphis all run after-school or evening en richment programs that can be staffed primarily with volunteers from a congregation. The Church of Saint Adalbert in Cleveland also re lieson volunteerstorun twosuccess ful group-mentoring programs, one for boys and one for girls. ' Mt. Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri, is one of nearly 60 sites across the country currently hosting one of the summer Freedom Schools which CDF/BCCC sponsor and which will serve over 5,000 children this sum mer. Freedom Schools’ paid staffs of college-aged servant-leaders inte Editorial ter for Political and Economic Studies, the black share of the vote was 10 percent, the same as in 1994. I know that African Americans are more than 10 percent of the U.S. population and I remember the 1984 and 1988 campaigns of Rev. Jesse Jackson, who helped us see the potential power of the black vote in determining not only who is president, but who repre sents usin the U.S. Congress and it state houses. If every person whosent that false Internet warn ing about the Voting Rights Act was registered to vote and voted, if every African American who is eligible tovote in this nation would do so, we would not have to worry about anyone taking anything away from us. Most African Americans are more likely to lose our right to vote by our own apa thy than by anything else. Make no mistake about it, 35 years after the Voting Rights Act, there are still counties in this nation where African Americans are still fighting for their right to cast their ballots. But the vast majority of us are stopped only by our own laziness, our own apa thy. In April one of our greatest black unsung heroesdied. Albert Turner gratereading, conflictresolution,and social action into well-developed ac tivity-based curriculum that pro motes cultural and historical aware ness and provides summer options for children where there are none. Parents Attend weekly parenting workshops. Other programs provide arange of opportunities for young people over the course of the year. Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston has an excellent program that focuses solely on girls and uses a small paid staff and dozens of vol unteers to provide everything from HIV awareness programs and CPR/ baby-sitting training to mother daughterluncheonsandcollegetours. West Angeles Church of Godin Christ in Los Angeles provides over adozen programs throughits popular Youth Ministries including a Rites of Pas sage program that prepares adoles cents for the critical transition from middleschool tohighschooland then from high school to college. The Cathedral ofthe Allen A.M.E. Church in Jamaica, N.Y., reaches outtochildreninitscommunitywith a dynamic youth worship service which draws several hundred young people each week, many of them was an advisor to Dr. Martin LutherKingJr.,in facthe was the onechosen tolead the mule wagon that carried Dr. King’s body at his funeral. Albert Turner lived in Alabama all his life, helping to lead the Selma march where civil rights marchers were badly beaten, as well as many other demonstrationsin Alabama. Said J. L. Chestnut, the Selma civil rights attorney, “Whenever there was somethingof unusual danger and nobody wanted to, you could count on the fact that Albert ... would lead it.” Mr. Turner was one of the 40 first African Ameri cansregistered to vote in Marion, Ala.in 1963 and the lawsuits sur rounding their effort culminated in the Voting Rights Act itself. Albert Turner’s determination to vote meant that he was threat ened, he was beaten, he was im prisoned. Mr. Turner’s civil rights work did not end in the 1960 s however. I met Albert Turner in the 1980 s when abusload of usdid a 25 year anniversary ofthe Freedom Rides and went to Alabamabecause Mr, Turner and other black leaders were under indictment by the Reagan Justice Department for See VOTING, page 9A from families who would not other-l wise attend church. 3 New Canaan International Church in Richmond, Va., is one of the first churches to participate in One, Church... Ten families, a new pro-- gramsponsoredby CDR/BCCC. Oné Church... Ten Families provides an alternative to the juvenile justice system by giving juvenilejudges the option of “sentencing” young offend ers to regular involvement with a’ family from a local church who have' agreed to become mentors for the' youth’s entire family. Volunteers' from the congregation are trained to' participate. Finally, the Boston Ten Point Coa-’ lition, founded by three Black minis-- ters, is a coalition of churches from many denominations, the police, the juvenile justice system, and many other public and private organiza-’ tions who have come together to' work on behalf of that city’s young' people. The Ten Point Coalition is' now being replicated by other com-’ munitiesacrossthecountrywhowish' to duplicate Boston’s dramatic de-’ creaseinitsyouth crime and murder” rates. See GRACE, page 9A