Newspaper Page Text
Ike Turner
To Stand Trial
For Shooting
Page 3
Volume 11 Number 13
Speaker Says
Separate But Equal’ In Richmond County
Dr. Kenneth S. Toilet,
a constitutional lawyer and
distinguished professor of
Higher Education and
director of the Institute for
Ihe study of Educational
Policy at Howard
University, said the
Supreme Court’s most
Richard Pryor Suing
Enquirer For Libel
Comedian Richard
Pryor has joined a lenghty
list of celebrities who have
filed libel suits against the
National Enquirer.
The veteran entertainer
is seeking $lO million from
the tabloid, contending he
was libeled in a story which
it printed last September
about his stay at a hospital
in the San Fernando Valley.
Through his attorney,
Terry Giles, Pryor, 40,
charged the Florida-based
publication published a
defamatory story which
allegedly claimed he was
using hard drugs,
Huey Newton Gets
Three Yr Sentence
OAKLAND, CALIF. - A
judge Thursday sentenced
Black Panther Leader Huey
P. New ten ,33, to three years
in state prison for his
conviction on a charge of
being an ex-convict in
possession of a weapon.
However superior
Court Judge Joseph Karesh
allowed Newton to remain
free on $50,000 bond while
his lawyers appeal the case.
He ordered Newton
back into court June 22 for
a hearing on * defense
motions.
Karesh a retired San
Francisco judge on loan to’
Bl Ajl
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Hired Hispanic Teenager Sets Fire, Six Dead
A teenager allegedly
hired by three welfare
tenants to set a tenement
fire that killed a woman
and five children was held
on $500,000 bond Sunday,
charged with six counts of
murder and arson.
Police arrested Jose
Mercado, 16, of Bridgeport,
Saturday evening when he
walked into police
headquarters and told a
Auiuis ta N euiH -SUtiiew
“ridiculous and amazing”
ruling was made in a
Richmond County case. The
ruling sanctioned the
"separate but equal"
doctrine that legalized
segregation.
Toilet was the speaker
at the 99th Baccalaureat -
reportedly smuggled in by
close friends, while a
patient at the Sherman
Oaks Bum Center.
At the time, Pryor was
recovering from severe
burns incurred in an
explosion at his home
several weeks prior.
There was no
indication of what would
happen in Pryor’s civil
petition, filed in Los
Angeles Superior Court, nor
in any of the myriad of
others against the National
Enquirer which are
currently pending.
Alameda County rejected a
defense motion that Newton
be placed on probation.
During a two-hour
bearing Newton stood at his
attorney's desk and said he
was apologizing to Karesh
"for the pressure I realize
you’re under” to place him
behind bars.
“I don’t operate under
pressure” the judge
replied.
“I don’t believe you’’
Newton snapped.
In arguing for a prison
term Deputy District
Attorney Tom Orloff told
the judge “If the court
placed this man on
probation the court will
take the word ‘justice’ out
of our criminal system.”
Defense Attorney
Michael Kennedy said the
prison sentence would be
"for all the convictions they
(prosecutors) failed to
get."
A jury convicted
Newton on the weapons
charges after two pistols
were found in Newton’s
apartment in 1974 by police
investigating a case
involving an assult on bis
tailor. Newton was
acquitted of the assault
charges.
The weapons
possession charges -were
filed because of a appeal of
the 1964 assault conviction.
Mercado and I Mndersiauu
the cops are out looking for
me today.”
Mercado was charged
with setting the fast-moving
blaze early Thursday in a
predominantly Hispanic
neighborhood. The fire
killed six and injured 10,
induing a teen-age mother
who jumped three stories
with her infant in her arms.
Lt. Arthur Buchanan.
Huey Newton
Sentenced To 3
Years In Jail
Page 1
Commencement
Convocation at Paine
College Sunday.
The "Separate but
equal” doctine was first
applied in Richmond
County in the case of
Cummings vs. Richmond
County, he said. The case,
he said is "expressive of
the hypocrisy of this
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Klan demonstration at Floyd County's Pepperell High: The 'sex orgy’ on the bus was brought on by school integration, one Klan leader declared
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Some News-Trion
Students Ruth Springsteen (left), Holty Farr say the black youth got a raw deal
commander of detectives,
said Mercado was to be
paid "a sum of cash” by
three female welfare
recipients who lived in the
building and hoped they
would be relocated by the
state if it were destroyed.
Buchanan said the
women apparently were
dissatisfied with their living
conditions. «
The three women
country and the most
outrageous decision the
Supreme Court has ever
made.”
The court said that
Richmond County did not
have adequate resources to
educate Blacks. And
because there weren’t
adequate resources did not
mean that Blacks could go
including Mercado's sister,
were charged Saturday with
r criminal liability for the
■ acts of another and held in
• lieu of SI,OOO bond each.
They were identified as
Anna Mercado, 25; Marilyn
Garcia, 25, and Nancy
Conley, 27.
Miss Conley, tearful
and trembling in an
interview with UPI the day
of the fire, described the
Richard Pryor
Sues The Enquirer
For Libel
Page 1
June 20,1981
to white schools."
Toilet told the graduate
not to let the Brown vs.
Board of Education decision
be turned against Blacks.
Black colleges, he said,
should be defended because
they provide "models of
success for the
disadvantaged. Those
models show that "a Black
"nightmare” that left her
and her two young children
homeless and claimed all
her belongings.
She also said the
building was “a mess”
becore the fire. With
exposed electrical wires,
gaping holes in walls and a
fire escape that most tenant
couldn’t reach.
Also arrested was
Mercado's live-in girlfriend.
can make it no matter bow
modest bis background."
Additionally, he said
Black colleges provided a
' ‘ psycho-sociologically
congenial setting in which
Blacks can develop in a
way they cannot develop at
white schools.”
Black colleges provide
a 'transitional conclave
With Klansmen’s Help,
Incident On School Bus
Disrupts Two Lives
A 15-year-old boy has
become the target of a hate
campaign spanning two
northwest Georgia counties,
and Ku Klux Klansmen
brag openly about keeping
him out of school, in the
latest chapter of a
membership drive fueled by
untruths, innuendos and
threats of physical violence.
The student, a Black
youth, was transferred out
of Pepperell High School in
FJoyd County "for his own
..safety” last winter, school
• officials say, after
’ Klansmen picketed the
school to protest his part in
an alleged “sex orgy”
with a white girl abroad a
school bus.
Klan leaders had
publicly accused the boy- a
hard-working student, who
had never been in serious
trouble at school-of raping
the girl, despite police
reports, that the girls own
admission, that no rape
occurred.
The Klan then pursued
y» the youth across the Polk
County line to nearby
Nancy Crespo, 25, who was
charged with hindering
prosecution and giving a
false statement to police.
Buchanan said Crespo
told police Mercado was
with her at the time of the
fire.
She was freed on a
written promise to appeal
Monday in Superior Court
for arraignment. The others
also, were to be presented
How Moscow
See The
Atlanta Tragedy
Page 2
wheie Blacks can move into
the mainsstream without
den caning competition with
whiles. Sometimes it is
gixxl for whites to be in a
minority and experience
taking orders." be said.
"Blacks sometimes
need to be alone to develop
self esteem and whites
sometimes need to be with
Rockmart, where it
circulated flyers denouncing
him by name, and staged a
cross-burning and rally at
which it claims to have
signed up 15 new
members. The youth, who
had entered Rockmart High
School, fled in February,
leaving his schoolbooks,
behind, and has been kept
out of school ever since, in
what Klan leaders tout as a
victory for “white
womanhood."
"That boy would still
be in school up there, if we
hadn’t had the rally,”
bragged Edward R. Fields,
the grand titan of the
Klan’s Marietta-based
"New Order.”
"When I was a child,
you wouldn’t have had to
have a rally to get an
individual such as that out
of school,” added Fields,
who is also secretary of the
anti-black, anti-Semitic
National States Rights Party
and editor of its newspaper,
the Thunderbolt.
Fields blamed the
incident on intergrated
in court Monday.
Police said Mercado
allegedly poured a soda
hottie of gasoline on the
walls of the second floor
hallway at about 12:50
am.. then ignited the fire.
Authorities said
w itnesses reportedly saw
Mercado at 58-year-old six
family apartment building
when the fire broke out.
Flames raced through
25C
us to learn to respect us."
Tollett said the Black
college and . the Black
church are the "bedrock of
our existence and are
necessary to our
existence."
Paine awarded degress
to N 2 students. Mrs. Evelyn
Gilbert Etheridge was the
honor graduate.
schools, saying it "never
would have happened in
the first place, if we had
white schools for whites
and Black schools for
Blacks.”
Many of students and
teachers disagreed, saying
that the color of the boy
and girl were of no
concern- until tjbe Klan got
on to it.
The KKK deliberately
spread lies for its own
purposes, without concern
for the young lives that
would be shattered by their
public statements, declared
Roger Selman, pupil
personnel director for the
Floyd County Schools.
"Those children made a
tragic judgmental error, but
it's sad that the Black child
gets the brunt of the Klan's
hate when both were
responsible,” he said.
If not for the Klan's
intervention, Pepperell
principal Gary Holmes
added, the entire matter
would have been handled
confidentially in J uvenile
(juounued on nge /
the four-story brick
tenement, forcing tenants
who lived on upper stories
to jump to safety.
The bodies of the
woman and four children
were found in a bedroom of
their fourth floor
apartment, where they
apparently had been
sleeping. The sixth victim
was found hanging out a
third-flour window. /