ADW Atlanta Daily World
Powered by Real Times Media
www.adwnews.com
Rep. Hank Johnson makes $1.2 million grant - Page 3
Kathleen Bertrand honored - Page 4
Bernice King announces 50th events - Page 5
Volume 86 • Issue 2
Atlanta’s C.T. Vivian Among 2013 Presidential Medal Winners By Dion Rabouin ADW Digital Editor
Photo By M. Alexis Scott C.T. Vivian (left) stands with Bernice King, daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King and CEO of The King Center, and President Jimmy Carter on Aug. 11 at a special 50th anniversary event at The Carter Center. Vivian congratulations and received a round of applause for being named a 2013 Presidential Medal honoree. For C.T. Vivian, being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom isn’t about recognition for what he has done so far, but about the good that he still can do. The 89-year-old Atlanta resident, who currently serves as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was informed last week that he would be among those given the nation’s highest honor for a civilian. But rather than reflect on a life of accomplishment and honor, the civil rights legend chose to look forward to the greater positive impact that the award could bring. “I was thankful. I was just thankful, because here’s the thing, I know how much good you can do with that,” Vivian told the Daily World. “Programs and ideas that I’ve wanted to do in order to push things ahead and make things better [could be done]. But it’s so difficult, number one, to get attention and difficult to raise money.” Among the good works Vivian wants to focus on are lowering the nation’s high dropout rate, particularly for African-American students; creating a C.T. and Octavia Vivian library to share the archives of himself and his wife; and working for social justice. Vivian spoke specifically about the importance of education in what he called a “racist culture.” “We’re living in a global world where education becomes even more valuable now than ever,” he said. “And here we are, this is what W.E.B. DuBois called the coalition of people trying to function within a racist culture, where a child can be murdered and they don’t even pick up the White guy that murdered him for over a month -- about a month and a half really.”
Vivian will be honored along with 15 others, including television superstar Oprah Winfrey. Vivian will travel to the White House where President Barack Obama will present the award later this month. “Of course Oprah Winfrey’s name is going to be above ours, but that makes the point that when you are receiving an honor with people like that, it makes it easier to get things done,” he said. “More people know about what you’re doing and what you’re thinking and who you are and what your past has been, so they can trust you and move forward on the things that you’re trying to do. This is what was on my mind.” A longtime member of the SCLC and a lieutenant of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Vivian has been a leader for nonviolent social change and civil rights in the U.S. He was a member of the Freedom Riders and helped organize numerous sit-ins, most notably the Nashville Movement, and pushed for justice and racial equality alongside King and leaders from the Congress of Racial Equality, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and other luminary organizations. In a press release, the White House said: “C.T. Vivian is a distinguished minister, author, and organizer. A leader in the Civil Rights Movement and friend to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he participated in Freedom Rides and sit-ins across our country. Dr. Vivian also helped found numerous civil rights organizations, including Vision, the National Anti-Klan Network, and the Center for Democratic Renewal. In 2012, he returned to serve as interim President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.”
Toni Braxton loses song rights - Page 8 August 15 - 21, 2013
Federal Judge Rules New York Stop-and-Frisk Policy Unconstitutional By CNN and Staff Reports The New York Police Department’s controversial stopand-frisk policy violates constitutional rights and must be altered, a federal judge ruled Aug. 12. Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s ruling stems from a class-action lawsuit claiming that the city’s police officers routinely stopped minority men, particularly Blacks and Latinos, without legal reasons. Scheindlin said that an outside monitor will be appointed to oversee changes to the policy. “This is a groundbreaking victory. Judge Scheindlin recognized what the NAACP has been saying for years: the racial profiling tactic of stop-and-frisk has no place in our enlightened society,” stated NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous. “We hope that Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly will heed this decision and end their crude and abusive policy.” The police department had said that the policy -- in which police stop, question and frisk people they considered suspicious -- is used to deter crime. The practice is widely criticized. The lead plaintiff in the case is David Floyd, a medical student who was stopped twice -- once in the middle of the afternoon when he was in front of his home in the Bronx, according to the suit, which was filed in 2008. The trial, which ended in May, featured nine weeks of testimony, including from men who say police stopped them for no reason and from police officers who say quotas forced them to make unnecessary stops. Closing arguments gave conflicting accounts of stopand-frisk incidents. While attorneys for the city argued that one man was stopped because he appeared to be smoking marijuana, the plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that he was simply talking on a cell phone. Another man was reportedly stopped because he fit the description of a wanted man in a high-crime area with a recent string of burglaries, but the plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that he was more than a mile from where the burglaries occurred and that the last burglary in that area occurred more than 25 days earlier. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, the police department logged its 5 millionth stop-and-frisk under Mayor Michael Bloomberg in March.