Texas Metro News 2-3-22

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T E X A S

MetroNews DELIVERING NEWS YOU NEED

• Vol. 10 • Feb. 3 - Feb. 9, 2022

MY TRUTH By Cheryl Smith PUBLISHER

Committed and making a difference I am so excited about this year’s Person of the Year. A good friend who is not a football fan questioned the choice. She said she didn’t like football. So what, I told her. I’ve been taking a knee for years! Also, I am from Jersey, so give me baseball or basketball any day!

Deion Sanders

Now, while this year’s choice wasn’t because he was a football player, we can’t deny his legacy. Yes, he is Black history; someone who has done so much for football and baseball, and today he is doing so much for college football and HBCUs overall. This year’s Person of the Year is Deion Sanders, who is better known as, “Coach Prime.” As the coach of Jackson State University’s football team, he is elevating all HBCUs because he’s addressing systemic issues that have led to the disenfranchisement of HBCUs and the people who choose to attend. Sure he’s constantly trending and people are speculating about his motives, but I am looking at the heightened awareness, the challenging of the status quo, the pride on the See MY TRUTH, page 2

WWW.TEXASMETRONEWS.COM

PRIME Person of the Year: Deion Sanders For times like these, we need Coach Prime!

By Edward Hill

Texas Metro News

When former Dallas Cowboy Deion Sanders was hired as head coach at Jackson State University, you could line up the list of doubters like mile markers from Texas to Mississippi. Everybody, it seemed, had an opinion. The biggest question? Whether the NFL Hall of Famer, called “Primetime,” would use JSU as a ploy, a stepping stone toward a more lucrative coaching gig. Nevertheless, JSU Athletic Director Ashley Robinson had a vision, albeit an out-of-box one: She wanted to re-energize a once proud program that produced 93 NFL players and four Pro Football Hall of Famers - Lem Barney, Walter Payton, Robert Brazile,

Coach Prime and players talk to media after Orange Blossom Classic victory Credit: Cheryl Smith/TMN

and Jackie Slater. Problem was, JSU had not had a winning season since 2013 nor a conference title since 2007. The ultra-confident Sanders, who had never coached on the college level, but also had never failed athletically in his life, saw the light. He wanted to change lives - and shake up college football. “God called me to Jackson State,” Sanders said upon his hiring in SepSee DEION SANDERS, page 6

The Person of the Year - Deion Sanders

Credit: The Dallas Morning News

Death of Joe Bell spurs JOB WELL DONE, RECOGNIZE GOD HAD gratitude for Black trailblazers BIG MAMA SAID:

A PURPOSE FOR YOU, HOLLYWOOD

By Terry Allen When any of us completed a chore, task or assignment, my grandmother, Lucille “Big Mama” would publicly tell us that we did a good job then she would also tell her sister circle when we were standing in their presence. She believed that giving a person her roses while you were alive was way important. She took that familiar stance where she would gather with the voice and that familiar stance--placing her hands on her hips and looking at us as she spoke the words, “Job well done.” We all knew what that

Dozens of Black journalists paved the way decades ago as the news media was striving to widen its access to minority audiences. homage to the collective memory of the “cloud” as I acknowledge Bell’s One of our local pioneer Black place among them and the footprints journalists died recently, and his he left. I called on pioneer Ken Smith, passing sent my mind on a journey one of the cloud members, back in time. to help me verify key facAn equivalent of the biblitors about the era these cal “so great a cloud of witpioneers occupied, how nesses” took over my brain they came to be among the as I rummaged through cloud, and why rememmemories of scores of Dalbering them is important las-Fort Worth-area Black to local history. I will talk pioneer journalists whose names are foreign to gener- Joseph "Joe" Bell about Smith later in my retrospective from my own ations of newcomers. Joseph “Joe” Bell, who died Dec. personal local-Black-media archives. 15 at age 92, was among that mighty But first, a tribute to Bell. See JOE BELL, page 3 cloud. The time seems right to pay

By Norma Adams-Wade

Hollywood Hernandez with Terry Allen

meant. Praise and recognition had an important role in our house. She clearly used her biblical foundation, anchored by. “Matthew 25:23: His lord said to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been See JOB WELL DONE, page 12


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