January 16th, 2014 Edition

NPR host to speak at MLK event

Remembering Baraka

Father of Black Arts Movement mourned by St. Louis,

world

By Chris King Of The St. Louis American

“At

Members of the BEST Dance & Talent Center performed Saturday night at Harris-Stowe State University as part of the Martin Luther King Jr. State Celebration Commission’s statewide kickoff of MLK Day events.

100 Black Men talk spirit

Forum focuses on men connecting with themselves and their community

By Bridjes O’Neil

Of The St. Louis American

The 100 Black Men of Metropolitan St. Louis began the new year with a symposium entitled “The Power of a Man’s Spirit,” held Saturday at Vashon High School. Joseph Anderson Jr., president of the local 100 Black Men, said the symposium was an organizational effort to engage men in discussions about their spiritual health and its impact on their destinies.

n “The church has to be more open and receptive to the realities that our young men bring in.”

– Rev. Rodney Francis

“Seldom have we, as men, been willing to broach the subject of spiritual health,” Anderson said. Over 300 men and boys of all ages attended the two-hour, allmale symposium held inside the Dr. Julius C. Dix Auditorium at Vashon. Women and girls were allowed to listen separately via an audio feed in the adjacent gymnasium. Four esteemed local clergyman served as panelists:

New proposal for troubled districts

By

Rivas Of The

operate. In August, the state hired CEE-Trust, an Indianapolis-based consulting group, to create a new plan for how the state intervenes in unaccredited school districts. In the Monday presentation, CEE-Trust leaders told the Missouri State Board of Education that the plan would not privatize public education because only nonprofit organizations would be allowed to operate the schools.

Pastor

the

Saturday at

Photo by Wiley Price

Photo courtesy of Eugene B. Redmond

Eugene B. Redmond, Oprah Winfrey and Amiri Baraka at Maya Angelou’s 1994 bash for Nobel laureate Toni Morrison at Angelou’s home in Winston-Salem, N.C.

OctOber 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014

The Rev. Rodney Francis of Washington Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church speaks as

Aeneas Williams of The Spirit Church listens at

Power of a Man’s Spirit symposium held

Vashon High School.

Photo by Wiley Price

Kanye clocks teen who tossed racial slurs at Kim

Kanye West has been named a suspect by the Beverly Hills Police Department in an assault case at an area doctor’s office.

According to TMZ.com, an 18-yearold allegedly called West’s fiancée Kim Kardashian “[n-word expletive] lover” on his way into the office of a Beverly Hills chiropractor. Minutes later, Kardashian and West stormed in, she identified the source of the slurs and West let loose on him.

An eyewitness told TMZ that the 18-year-old was sitting in a chair as Kanye made a beeline for him and, without saying a word, started punching him in the face. The kid was covering his face but Kanye was unrelenting. Kim just stood there and silently watched the beating.

The receptionist was screaming, “Stop, stop,” but Kanye ignored her. The kid quickly curled up

into a ball to block the blows. The massage therapist rushed into the waiting room and pushed Kanye off the kid and ordered him out of the office. Kanye got out of the building and Kim went to another office for a meeting.

Cissy furious that Bobby Kristina jumped the broom

Bobbi Kristina and her unofficially adopted brother Nick Gordon became husband and wife over the weekend and the daughter of late singer Whitney Houston and R&B bad boy Bobby Brown announced to the world that she and Gordon were married via her Twitter account.

Bobbi Kristina and her “brother”/new husband were reportedly saying that Grandma gave them her blessing to tie the knot, but a source for TMZ says that nothing could be further from the truth.

Bobbi Kristina and Nick Gordon were said to have claimed they attended a Sweet 16 soiree and that’s where Cissy gave her thumbs up when they announced their

However a source close to the family says that the Houston matriarch was steaming mad behind Bobbi Kristina’s nuptials, but realized there was nothing she could do about it.

Bey-Z went bananas for Blue’s 2nd birthday

After spending a reported quarter of a million dollars (including diamond party favors for guests) on her first birthday bash, Jay Z and Beyoncé were said to have rented an entire zoo to celebrate daughter Blue Ivy’s second birthday. According to reports Jay Z and Beyoncé closed down the Jungle Island Wildlife Park and Botanical Garden in Miami just so Blue could enjoy the park in peace for her party.

Blue turned 2 years old January 7th.

Ciara debuts baby bump on ‘The View’

28-year-old singer Ciara – who got engaged to rapper Future in October – set the record straight about pregnancy rumors on “The View” Tuesday.

was covered up while she sat on the couch with the ladies of the hit daytime talk show. “Oh my God!” co-host Sherri Shepherd said before placing her hands on Ciara’s belly. “We’re babysitters!”

This will be Ciara’s first child. Future has three children from three previous relationships.

Did Beyoncé bite visual album concept from Kanye?

Beyoncé’s surprise self-titled album has sold nearly 1.5 million copies since its December release. But according to RadarOnline.com one person in particular is far from thrilled with the album.

According to an insider close to Kanye West, it’s hard for him to watch her album do well because he claims he had the idea to do a visual album first.

“Everybody’s saying to me, ‘You gotta ask, you gotta ask,’” co-host Barbara Walters said. “There are rumors about pregnancy. Do you want to confirm?”

“Of course I would love to,” Ciara said before standing up to cradle her baby bump that

“He wanted to do a visual album for his ‘Dark Twisted Fantasies’, but everyone around him convinced him it wouldn’t work,” the insider told Radar Online. “That’s why he ended up doing one long movie to go with it [the 35-minute short film, ‘Runaway’. He’s annoyed, but he doesn’t want to talk about how he came up with the idea first because he needs to stay on good terms with Jay Z.”

Sources: Twitter.com, Radaronline.com, NY Daily News, TMZ.com

Bobbi Kristina Ciara

THE STUFF THAT HAS PEOPLE TALKING

Kanye West

Flu causes at least nine local deaths

It’s not too late to get flu vaccinations, say experts

By Sandra Jordan Of The St. Louis American

The St. Louis region is experiencing a sharp uptick in flu cases, according to physicians at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, resulting in nine deaths in their institution, primarily among otherwise healthy young and middle-aged adults who had not received flu shots.

“We have seen a steep rise in flu cases, and we’re treating some very, very sick patients from the St. Louis area and others who have been transferred here from hospitals in the region,” said Steven Lawrence, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at Barnes-Jewish.

So far this season, 320 cases of influenza have been diagnosed at BarnesJewish, with an average of 10 to 12 new cases daily.

St. Louis Children’s Hospital physicians have treated about a dozen patients with influenza in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

As in the 2009 pandemic, the H1N1 strain of influenza is causing the most problems, disproportionately affecting younger patients.

“This year, similar to 2009, we are seeing increased disease and increased severity of disease in young adults –people in their 20s up into their 50s,” said Hilary Babcock, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at BJC HealthCare. In response, the St. Louis County Department of Health scheduled three free flu shot clinics this week. The first two were held Tuesday and Wednesday. The remaining clinic will be held noon until 4 p.m. Thursday, January 16 at the South County Health Center, 4580 South Lindbergh Blvd. in Sunset Hills.

For two days next week and while supplies last, Barnes-Jewish Hospital will offer free flu shots to persons age 18 and older from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Monday, January 20 and Tuesday, January 21 at the O’Fallon Park Rec

Complex, located at 4343 West Florissant Ave. in St. Louis (63115).

All BJH vaccines are free of latex and preservatives.

Babcock said to watch for symptoms such as a sudden onset of higher fever, cough, sore throat and body aches.

She said rapid flu tests may not detect influenza even if you have symptoms.

“If people have all of those symptoms compatible with having the flu, even if they haven’t tested as having the flu, they should talk to their doctors about getting treated with antiviral medicines,” Babcock said.

n “Most of the influenza patients we’ve seen who are sick enough to be hospitalized did not get vaccinated.”

–

Steven Lawrence, M.D.

“And if they work, they should talk to their work about staying home to protect other people.”

Doctors advise staying home 24 hours after fever has subsided.

For patients sick with the flu, Tamiflu and Relenza are available by prescription. The drugs can help reduce the duration and severity of the illness, particularly if given within 48 hours of developing flu symptoms.

Persons who have already had the

Photo by Wiley Price

flu can still benefit from a flu vaccine, because they can get it again from a different strain.

“Getting the vaccine protects you from getting a different strain of flu later in the same season,” Babcock said.

Physicians are strongly encouraging people to get the influenza vaccine if they have not already done so because the flu season has not yet peaked and the H1N1 influenza virus could be circulating for at least another month and possibly into the spring.

“It is not too late to get a flu shot,” Lawrence said. “Most of the influenza patients we’ve seen who are sick enough to be hospitalized did not get vaccinated.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends annual influenza vaccination for everyone 6 months and older. This year’s seasonal flu vaccine protects against two strains of influenza A, H1N1 and H3N2, as well as one or two influenza B strains. The vaccine takes two weeks to be fully effective, but doctors say that should not discourage people from getting vaccinated.

The risk of severe flu and flu complications generally is higher among children younger than 5, adults age 65 or older, pregnant women and people with chronic medical conditions like asthma, diabetes or heart disease.

For a fee, flu vaccine is still available in St. Louis City, County and St. Charles, ranging from sliding scale with proof of income at St. Louis health centers to $25-$40 at area urgent care centers and pharmacy clinics.

Right to Work wrong for Missouri

By Charlie Dooley St. Louis County Executive

I

wrong for Missouri. It’s the wrong approach at the wrong time. Missouri is growing jobs. St Louis County is No. 1 in the state in job growth. In the past year, we have announced more than 6,000 new jobs in St. Louis County. Companies are expanding physically and growing their workforce. We are doing all of this without devastating measures like Right to Work.

St Louis County is turning the corner from the devastating economic downturn and we are getting our union brothers and sisters back to work. Any form of Right to Work will negatively impact our progress and hurt middle-class workers.

House Speaker Tim Jones and his Republican colleagues have made Right to Work their top priority and I – along with my fellow Democrats and others who care about protecting jobs and growing our economy – are going to make defeating it ours.

Various forms of Right to Work legislation have been tossed around in the

Legislature for the past six or seven years and have gone nowhere. There is a reason for that. When responsible legislators search their conscience they know Right to Work doesn’t work.

Missouri voters have turned their backs on Right to Work measures in the past, and I believe it will be defeated again if efforts to put it on the ballot prevail. The question that must be asked is why are Republicans so intent on stripping workers of their rights and decimating the middle class?

The existing system works in Missouri. Union labor provides a high-quality workforce and good benefits and wages that strengthen the middle class. When it comes to competing for jobs in Missouri, we can count on union members to work cooperatively and aggressively with government and the private sector. Our recent effort to secure the Boeing 777x shows we are united in our efforts to create jobs and opportunity in Missouri. I believe HB 1099 is a thinly veiled attack on workers’ rights and the middle class. It is not the economic development tool its supporters would have us believe.

I respectfully urge you to vote no on House Bill 1099.

Edited from testimony delivered to the House Workforce Development and Workplace Safety Committee in Jefferson City on January 13.

Charlie Dooley

Editorial /CommEntary

What Mayor Slay did not say Christie casts himself as victim

Mayor Francis G. Slay did not say the following this week when the police department his office finally controls released crime statistics that showed a surge in murders in 2013.

“I will convene a meeting to begin to address senseless violence that scars our city,” Mayor Slay did not say.

“I will bring together mothers of children killed by that violence, with members of the law enforcement community who work hard to stop it. Members of the recovery community, who know too well the hard road back from drug and alcohol abuse, and how such abuse contributes to the violence and crime. And people who know what it takes to move away from a life of violence to become productive, contributing neighbors in a safe community,” Mayor Slay did not say.

Boston Mayor Martin Walsh did say these powerful, empathetic things – and many other things our mayor might learn from – during his inauguration speech on January 6.

What did Mayor Slay say, after his police chief reported an increase in homicides in 2013, from 113 to 120? He said nothing, not even on his Twitter account. He did, however, find time to tweet about eagle watching, the contract renewal of a baseball announcer and the birthday of a black alderman who has supported Slay’s mayoral campaigns.

Asked for a statement on the crime statistics by The American, Slay responded via his spokesperson, saying he was “disturbed” about the homicide rate and was trying to address it by pushing for a gun docket in the city. Of the crime statistics, he said, “It’s a report card that shows progress, but we still have a whole lot of work to do.”

Slay annually attends the annual New Year’s Eve vigil for homicide victims and speaks to this majority-black crowd with feeling about the murder epidemic in St. Louis. But we believe –like Walsh, who speaks of “One Boston” – Slay needs to speak to One St. Louis in one voice.

Mayor Walsh’s city lost 40 people to homicide last year – exactly one-third of the carnage in St. Louis in 2013, and Boston has almost exactly twice the population of this city. That number represented fewer homicides in Boston than the year before, but Walsh did not comprehend that number as an improvement on a test. He spoke as if painfully aware of human loss: “Forty homicides still represents 40 grieving mothers too many.”

Mayor Slay did not greet the announcement of these crime statistics by saying that 120 homicides in St. Louis represents 120 grieving

mothers too many. He spoke of “progress” on a report card, as if the city had only been quizzed.

The “progress” in fighting crime of which Slay speaks is a dip of 5.4 percent in overall crime compared to the previous year. Slay did not explain why he is emphasizing progress in overall crime when the city’s homicide rate remains high and increased last year. But Police Chief Sam Dotson offered an explanation.

“We struggle with the perception that the city is not safe,” Dotson told The American, “and if we want to spur economic development – which would improve the social conditions that lead to crime – people need to feel comfortable with the progress we are making fighting crime in the city.”

Actually, we agree with that statement. It is good news, which should be publicized, that robberies in St. Louis decreased 18 percent, from 1,778 to 1,458 – the lowest number since 1953 – and aggravated assaults in the city decreased 11.3 percent, from 3,571 to 3,167. That gives people good reason to feel safer on the streets of St. Louis, and the mayor and police chief are right to publicize this good news.

However, the mayor’s public silence this week concerning those 120 murdered citizens – nearly all of them (104) African Americans –and those 120 grieving mothers – nearly all of them African Americans – is deeply disturbing.

“We are in this together – every neighborhood,” Mayor Slay did not say.

“We are in this together – every race and religion,” Mayor Slay did not say.

Mayor Walsh did say these powerful and important things. Slay needs to take a lesson from the new mayor of Boston.

Obama’s war on ‘concentration of poverty’

When I hear African Americans contemplate President Obama’s contributions with respect to addressing the adverse conditions of minorities in America, I feel a keen obligation to offer a few reminders.

In January 2009, President Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, approving equal-pay legislation that he said would “send a clear message that making our economy work means making sure it works for everybody.” Minorities are among the millions of uninsured Americans who are benefiting from the Affordable Care Act. This 2010 law has far-reaching changes to the U.S. health-care system and is the president’s greatest domestic achievement.

The number of full-time federal judges named by President Obama has tilted the balance in Democrats’ favor; that majority will grow for the remainder of his term.

President Obama has also appointed more minorities and women to the federal bench than both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

It is an important milestone.

The federal courts –particularly the appeals courts – often set precedents in areas ranging from national security and economic regulation to abortion, immigration, voting rights, affirmative action, gun control and gay marriage.

The president’s impact on the federal judiciary is perhaps the

single-most important legacy issue for any president. Now the Obama administration is knocking at the door of what could prove to be the most important step towards parity for minorities and single parents since the flurry of civil rights legislative and court victories during the 1960s.

The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) is finalizing plans for the implementation of a 33-page rule titled “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,” giving HUD the tool necessary for social change in cities it identifies as “segregated.”

The Metropolitan areas that show the worst segregation –Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Atlanta, Memphis, Charlotte, Raleigh, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus – will be aggressively targeted for enforcement action.

HUD plans to map every U.S. neighborhood by four groups – white, Asian, black and Hispanic – and publish “geospatial data” pinpointing racial imbalances. The agency proposes using nonwhite populations of 50 percent or higher as the threshold for classifying segregated areas. HUD’s goal is to “reduce disparities in access to key community assets,” such as quality schools, jobs, transportation, parks and recreation, and even fresh air and groceries. Under the new rule, local governments will be required to conduct a “disparities analysis” that would include “comparing the employment numbers for African-American and white households.” In order to abate such disparities, HUD would require modifying

You know a politician is having a bad day when he has to stand before a news conference and plead, “I am who I am, but I am not a bully.”

Frankly, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was unconvincing on that score Thursday as he attempted to contain a widening abuse-ofpower scandal. Moreover, Christie displayed a degree of egocentrism that can only be described as stunning. His apologies would have sounded more sincere if he hadn’t portrayed himself as the real victim.

A bit of background is needed: During his successful re-election campaign last fall, Christie – shown by polls to be a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, should he decide to seek it – tried to run up the score by winning endorsements from elected officials across the state, Democrats as well as Republicans.

The mayor of Fort Lee, the town on the New Jersey end of the George Washington Bridge, declined to give Christie his support. Shortly thereafter, Christie’s deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, sent an email to an official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – the agency that controls the bridge – that said: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

The email went to David Wildstein, who was installed at the Port Authority by Christie and has known the governor since high school. He replied to Kelly: “Got it.”

Four weeks later, on Sept. 9, Wildstein ordered the closure of two traffic lanes approaching the bridge from Fort Lee, ostensibly to conduct a “traffic study.” The George Washington Bridge is one of the most heavily traveled in the country. Closing the lanes caused hours-long traffic jams in Fort Lee for four straight days, snaring commuters in hopeless gridlock. One elderly woman died of cardiac arrest after emergency responders were delayed.

Further email traffic involving Kelly, Wildstein and Christie’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien showed unalloyed glee at the mess Wildstein had created. Finally, a Port Authority higher-up discovered what Wildstein had done and reversed the order.

All along, Christie ridiculed the suggestion that there was any political motivation in the lane closures. On Thursday, faced with proof to the controversy, he apologized and said he had been “betrayed” by staff members and associates he believed he could trust.

Christie announced that he has fired Kelly – not because she helped create a maddening and dangerous situation for the people of Fort Lee, but because she lied when Christie asked all the members of his senior staff whether they had any involvement in the affair.

That was the central message of Christie’s two-hour performance before reporters: I was betrayed by people I

Letters to the editor

CORReCTIONS

local regulations and codes, constructing new developments, creating new amenities and facilitating the movement of people.

Local governments receiving HUD housing development grants would be required every five years to submit plans detailing steps to address the “concentration of Poverty,” such as integrating suburban or predominantly white neighborhoods and providing minorities greater access to “vital amenities.” HUD will be required to move with speed; a review of the plans submitted and a decision to renew federal funding would have to occur within 60 days.

The Obama administration is serious about addressing this issue. The administration is currently withholding Hurricane Sandy disaster relief funding for Westchester County, NY. HUD has also refused to renew housing grants totaling $17 million to Westchester County, after determining that zoning in seven of the county’s municipalities was exclusionary. The county was advised to sue those cities and towns to end restrictive practices, such as limiting the size, type, height and density of buildings.

The chain of events leading to a more aggressive effort against the concentration of poverty originated in September 2010 with the release of the United State Governmental Accountability Office’s Housing and Community Grants Study titled “HUD Needs To Enhance Its Requirements & Oversight of Jurisdictions Fair Housing Plans.” Pruitt is president of the St. Louis city branch of the NAACP.

In the photo to a Dec. 26 story about Fathers Support Center, Nichole Foster was incorrectly identified as Kristen Bogan. In the photo to a Jan. 9 story about Mayor Monica of Greendale, Madison County Board Chairman Alan Dunstan was incorrectly identiFIed as Jim Buford. We regret the errors.

Professional and flexible

Thank you for the article about Shirley Washington. Bridjes O’Neil did an awesome job with it! I also want you to know Bridjes was great to work with setting up the story. She was professional and flexible with her time, and she showed up for the interview on time. She’s a jewel!

Julia Hines Johnson & Whitehead Publishing, St. Louis extending unemployment benefits

At the end of December 2013, federal extended unemployment benefits ended. This immediately cut unemployment funds to 1.3 million Americans, over 21,000 of whom live in the St. Louis area. If the extended benefits are not reinstated, 4.9 million persons will not have these benefits, and 84,000 of those will be Missourians.

There are currently 11 million Americans unemployed and the unemployment rate is 7.3 percent nationally. Never in the past has Congress cut extended unemployment benefits when the rate has been this high, and in fact extended benefits were available at a time when the rate was in the 5 percent range.

Extending unemployment benefits is the right and moral thing to do. It is a measure of our care and compassion. In addition, extended benefits helps the economy. The funds are being spent on food, shelter, health care and housing. Persons receiving benefits are able to use those funds to keep

trusted. I’m the victim here. The whole episode “makes me ask ... what did I do wrong to have these folks think it was OK to lie to me,” Christie said. He described his principal emotion as “sadness” at the betrayals by associates. The governor accepted full responsibility but not an ounce of blame. “Politics ain’t beanbag,” he said, but “that’s very, very different than saying that, you know, someone’s a bully.”

But is it really all that different?

Christie maintained that he never sought the endorsement of Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich – never even met him, actually – and therefore had no reason to want him punished. What, then, would make his deputy chief of staff and several of his closest political associates think otherwise?

If Christie is truly in the mood for soul-searching, asking how his aides could tell him such lies should be secondary. The more urgent question is what Christie might have said or done to make these loyal lieutenants conclude it would be appropriate – and a lot of fun – to torment the people of Fort Lee because of the mayor’s refusal to pledge fealty.

Federal prosecutors are reviewing the whole affair. One obvious question is whether other officials who declined to endorse Christie faced retribution of any kind. If voters see Christie’s pugnacious, in-your-face political persona as refreshing, he has a big future. If they see it as thuggish, he doesn’t. In that sense, you’re right, governor. This is all about you.

seeking employment by having a means of transportation, to use a career center, to have a phone to use for work-related purposes.

What really bothers me are those that say taking away benefits lowers the unemployment rate. It only does so because if you don’t receive benefits you are no longer counted!

Jim Sahaida, president Metropolitan Congregations United, St. Louis

Will not be silenced

Even though universal background checks are supported by over 90 percent of Americans, legislation has stalled in Congress. However in 2013, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and New York legislatures toughened their gun laws to prevent criminals and the mentally ill from easy access to irearms.

Already Colorado data show that of the 4,792 background checks on private sales that were performed since their 2013 law went into effect, 72 sales were blocked because the would-be buyer was convicted of or charged with a serious crime, or was under a domestic restraining order.

We refuse to stand idly by as children and families are held hostage by gun violence.

We know background checks work so we are combining our efforts this year. Pro-gun legislators fear losing their next election and do nothing while constituents continue to grieve the loss of loved ones. We will not be silenced by the gun lobby as we work even harder to save lives.

State Rep. Stacey Newman Jefferson City

Unjust and unethical

Missourians need their elected officials to focus on creating a just economic system, because an economic system that values profit more than the dignity and worth of people is unjust and unethical. No Missourian working full time should be living in

Columnist Eugene Robinson

poverty.

Rev. Dr. Cassandra Gould Jefferson City

Adolphus A. Pruitt

St. Louis Mayor Francis G. Slay Boston Mayor Martin Walsh

Red Cross calls for blood donations

The American Red Cross is asking all eligible blood and platelet donors to help offset a weather-related shortfall in donations.

Approximately 300 blood drives across 25 states were canceled across the U.S. due to snow and extreme cold. The blood drive cancellations resulted in a shortfall of nearly 8,800 blood and platelet donations since Jan. 2.

In the Missouri-Illinois Blood Services Region, severe winter weather forced the cancellation of nearly 30 Red Cross blood drives, resulting in about 875 fewer than expected blood donations.

Platelet donors, as well as blood donors with the most in-demand blood types – O positive and negative, A negative and B negative – are urgently needed to give blood in the days and weeks ahead to offset the shortfall.

A blood donor card or driver’s license, or two other forms of identification, are required at check-in.

Individuals who are 17 years of age (16 with parental consent in some states), weigh at least 110 pounds and are in generally good health may be eligible to donate blood. High school students and other donors 18 years of age and younger also have to meet certain height and weight requirements.

To donate blood, call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767) or visit redcrossblood.org to make an appointment or for more information.

Never forget

Open mic to beneit journalism workshop

The Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists will host an Open Mic Night 6-9 p.m. Thursday, Feb 27. at BB’s Jazz, Blues and Soups, 700 S. Broadway.

The evening will include an opportunity to relax with professional journalists while enjoying live music from headliners SHE, an all-female funk/neo-soul band from Chicago, various performances from others brave enough to approach the microphone, as well as a silent auction, food and specialty drinks.

The tickets are $10 per person in advance and $15 at the door. Proceeds will fund the association’s Minority Journalism Workshop, which is tentatively planned for six consecutive Saturdays, Sept. 20 to Oct. 25 and is open to high school juniors, seniors and college freshmen.

The workshop gives aspiring minority journalists an opportunity to train with professionals and includes meals, lectures, media labs and a tour of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism. It also provides college scholarships to top workshop graduates. For more information, email GSLABJ@gmail.com.

Jefferson School: where are they now?

By Evita Caldwell For The St. Louis American

Nearly 15 years ago a developer, Richard Baron, led a major corporate effort to improve the lives of students at Jefferson School. That effort was chronicled in a series of articles in the Post-Dispatch that appeared in June of 2000. It focused primarily on one teacher, Mary Spencer, and the students in her fifth grade class. The series was called, “A Better Place to Grow Up.” It followed the class through the year as Spencer struggled with the new demands placed on her to meet higher standards and as the students were asked to embrace new technology and what were then considered state-of-the-art learning programs.

I was one of those students. Now that I’m all grown up, age 24, I am asking whether all that corporate involvement and support made a difference in the lives of my fellow classmates.

It certainly did for me. Two years ago, I graduated from Saint Louis University with a degree in communications. I am currently working as an intern at KMOV-TV. It’s a small step toward what I hope will be a long and rewarding career in broadcast journalism.

But, what about my classmates? What became of them? Did all that money and all that interest from civic leaders change the course of their lives? What can be done to continue to level the educational playing field for disadvantaged students?

I have embarked on a mission to find out those answers in my sequel, “All Grown Up.” Many of my former fifth grade classmates went on to different schools and different lives after leaving Jefferson.

Where are they now?

I am hoping that readers of The St. Louis American will help me in this quest. I have the names of many of my classmates, but not all of them. I have some pictures, but lack some names to go with them. In many cases, where I do have the names, I do not have addresses or phone numbers.

With your help, I hope to produce a report that will appear in The American and the Post-Dispatch and on the Nine Network of Public Media, and perhaps other venues as well.

Richard Weiss, the journalist who wrote the original series, is volunteering his time to work with me and edit the story. Jim Forbes, a photographer who shot the photos for the first series, is also collaborating with us.

In the sequel, you will learn how members of Mrs. Spencer’s class were able to carve out a future for themselves. You will also learn in what ways civic leaders played a role in helping students and whether they are continuing to do all that is needed for the next generation at Jefferson School and other city schools.

For more information, visit http://jeffersonallgrownup.webs.com/. If you know the whereabouts of anyone who attended fifth grade at Jefferson School 1999-2000 or their families, please email emc8911@ yahoo.com.

Evita M. Caldwell

Eugina Caldwell held a picture of her loved one, DeAngelo Caldwell, during Families Advocating Safe Streets’ 22nd annual New Year’s Eve vigil for those who lost to violence in St. Louis, held at Williams Temple Church of God in Christ.

Photo by Wiley Price

BARAKA

Continued from A1

the literary figures who will honor Baraka at his service.

Baraka was a longtime and active trustee of the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club, which will honor the departed legend with a tribute 6 p.m. Tuesday, February 18 at the Sunshine Cultural Arts Center, 630 N. 59th St. in East St. Louis.

Redmond first met Baraka in Greenwich Village in 1961, when Baraka was a jazz critic and Beat poet known as LeRoi Jones. That was the year he published his first book of poetry on his own Totem Press imprint. The collection, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, has one of the most unforgettable titles in American literature.

Jones’ labor writing jazz liner notes – one of the first black writers to do so – paid off in the publication of his 1963 study Blues People: Negro Music in White America, still a classic.

“His jazz criticism led a lot of young people like myself to listen to a lot of challenging, difficult music by people like Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor,” said Gerald Early, author and Washington University professor.

From poetry to prose, Jones next mastered the stage in his 1964 play Dutchman an allegorical treatment of tensions between black and white, man and woman, which opened Off Broadway in Greenwich Village.

“Amiri Baraka was heroic, poetic and iconic,” said Ron Himes, founder of the Black Rep. “Amiri Baraka showed us our blackness in all its shades and variations.”

Striving to get blacker

Indeed, Redmond and Jones/Baraka drew closer after the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 intensified the radicalization of their generation of black writers and thinkers.

“Most of us saw ourselves as striving to get black or blacker – whatever that was – at the time,” Redmond said.

“There was the Black Power Movement and the Black Arts Movement, and some of us straddled the line between them. Baraka and Larry Neal became the chief theoreticians for the Black Arts Movement.”

After the assassination of Malcolm X, Jones left his first wife, Hettie Jones, who was Jewish, and their two daughters and moved to Harlem. In 1967, influenced by Maulana Karenga in Los Angeles, he changed his name, eventually

settling on Amiri Baraka.

Troupe first met Baraka in L.A. in 1968 when he performed as Baraka’s handpicked opening act at UCLA.

“I had submitted my work to Black Fire, this seminal anthology Baraka co-edited with the late Larry Neal, and he really liked my work, but the manuscript of the book was already at the publisher,” Troupe said. “But he let Karenga know he wanted me to read with him when he came to L.A.”

Troupe had been schooled as a poet reading Jones/Baraka with K. Curtis Lyle and others in the Watts Writers Workshop.

“He taught me how to structure poetry in a new way,” Troupe said. “He taught me a new way for poetry to move.”

The choreographer, dancer and activist Katherine Dunham asked Redmond to invite Baraka to East St. Louis in 1969. It was a dangerous time for outspoken black activists.

“He had his bodyguards with him, these massive guys,” Redmond said. When Redmond visited Baraka at his new office in Newark in 1970, these same tough men checked him for weapons.

“I then go into his second floor office on High Street in Newark in July 1970 and he starts to recite my poetry: ‘Black women have thighs that agonize eyes,’” Redmond said.

“The co-conceptual genius of the Black Arts Movement, this great poet, had memorized my stuff!”

But it was Baraka who would start to get inside the head of Redmond and many

other black intellectuals, writers, artists and activists.

“He influenced me to think about black people and what we could do to achieve liberation for ourselves,” Redmond said.

“We consciously decided to withdraw, look at each other, and regroup as a people We really didn’t know each other.”

That was the Baraka who resonated most with Donald M. Suggs, the publisher of The St. Louis American

“I was deeply moved, because someone from our community was willing to forsake a promising career to stand up for our people,” Suggs said. “Baraka stood up.”

Marxist, academic

But Baraka kept moving. Profoundly influenced by a visit to revolutionary Cuba, he became a Marxist. “He was a Communist – in his thinking and leaning – when he died,” said Redmond, who visited Baraka in the hospital January 4 during his final illness.

Baraka attracted leftists just as he galvanized black artists. Redmond recalls driving Baraka to his home in the Metro East after a performance at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and being followed there by “several carloads of Marxists.”

Baraka became a professional academic, maintaining long associations with Rutgers University and Stony Brook University, among other institutions. Joe Esser, a poet from New Jersey who received his master’s

in American literature at Washington University, said Baraka always advised writers to hire agents. “You need a crook to deal with the crooks,” Baraka advised.

Redmond once sat in on a dissertation defense at Stony Brook, at Baraka’s invitation. The young scholar was writing about 19th century social movements and art in America, and Baraka picked apart the dissertation’s many blind spots on the black experience. “It was so embarrassing, the way he ate those stuffy scholars alive,” Redmond said.

A convert to Islam, Baraka published poetry that even he later admitted was anti-Semitic. As a father of daughters with Jewish blood, Baraka came to regret this. “As recently as last August,” Redmond said, ‘he told me, ‘I can’t shake it.’”

Baraka was poet laureate of New Jersey in 2002 when he publicly performed “Somebody Blew Up America,” which claims that Israel was complicit in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. New Jersey abolished the post of poet laureate to remove him from it.

That poem angered Troupe for a different reason – it imitated the structure of Troupe’s 1996 poem “A Response to All You Angry White Males” too closely for comfort. “I got really angry,” Troupe said, “and I told him, ‘Man, you stole my poem’ – in front of an audience!”

‘He told the truth’

Most of Baraka’s close friends fell out with him at

one time or another, but they tended to regroup around him. Troupe says Baraka’s fiery public image does not capture his personal warmth.

“He didn’t hold grudges,” Troupe said. “He had a great sense of humor, loved to eat, drink wine, have a good time. I am going to miss that give and take.”

Troupe himself got heated reflecting upon the public misperception of Baraka and, especially, of his work.

“They call him ‘polarizing’ because he told the truth,” Troupe said. “To say this is a racist country is not polarizing, it’s the truth. I understand that some people don’t like to hear it, but it’s the truth.”

Baraka himself was anything but racist, as anyone who knew him well could attest.

“Some think he was racist, but that was way far from the truth,” Troupe said. “His parties were full of white people who loved him.” Redmond remembered Baraka the father and grandfather.

“He was good with children,” Redmond said. “He was a great grandfather.” Redmond recalled going to see Baraka recently and being surprised that they never left the house. “He played with his grandchildren all day that day,” Redmond said.

Baraka never outlived the pain of the loss of his daughter Shani Baraka, who was murdered in 2003. “That wrecked him,” Redmond said.

In recent years, Baraka worked tirelessly on behalf of his son Ras Baraka, a Newark

councilman running for mayor. One life that Baraka may not have prized highly enough, at least in terms of maintaining it, was his own.

“He was a bad boy when it came to observing the kind of habits that might have kept a diabetic alive longer,” Redmond said. “In the 1990s, when I spent several days with him at Stony Brook, he had a drink at every meal. He’d keep a bunch of chocolates in his pocket and pop them all day. Then at dinner he’d have shots of sake and beers.”

Baraka may not have been the best caretaker of his own health, but his work survives him intact.

“For my generation, there was no black writer more influential in our youth than Baraka,” Early said. “He was the father of the Black Arts Movement, but more importantly he was the father of black literary and cultural criticism.”

“He was a master of all genres,” Redmond said, “a consummate artist-warriorthinker.”

“We won’t see anybody else come this way like him,” Troupe said.

Baraka is survived by his wife Amina; his sons Ras, Obalaji, Amiri Jr. and Ahi; daughters Dominique DiPrima, Lisa Jones Brown, Kellie Jones and Maria Jones; and several grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.

For more information on the February 18 celebration of Amiri Baraka in East St. Louis, call 618-650-3991 or email eredmon@siue.edu.

Photo by courtesy of Eugene B. Redmond

Amiri and Amina Baraka (center), renowned Black Arts Movement “power couple,” sit with artists, admirers, and supporters during Amiri’s 75th birthday celebration at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, N.Y. in 2009.

DISTRICTS

Continued from A1

does not allow the nonprofits to contract with for-profit “educational management” companies to provide school services, said Ethan Gray, executive director of CEE-Trust. Potential nonprofits could include existing successful schools in the district or enterprising educators. The school operators would sign “performance agreements” with a newly created “Community Schools Office,” which would be in charge of accountability and dispersing state funds.

School board member Mike Jones, of St. Louis County, said that he appreciated hearing a new approach, especially considering that the current educational system was created in the 19th century.

“We are trying to make that same structure work for a 21st-century, post-industrial nation,” he said. “They tried to think about it in a new way. In most of the other proposals I’ve seen, they talk about how to tweak the existing system and I don’t think that works.”

On the other hand, one of the proposals backed by Rex Sinquefield suggested dismantling the public system all together, and that is not an option, Jones said.

“I believe public education is a utility, not a commodity,” he said. “If it is commodity, then it is only available to anyone who can afford it.”

Chris Nicastro said she will review all the proposals and give her recommendation to the school board at the beginning of February. Nicastro came under fire last month when the Kansas City Star uncovered emails and other records showing that Nicastro, CEE-Trust and two private foundations that funded CEE-Trust’s work – the Kauffman and Hall Family foundations – had been working on a plan together since April.

When the consulting contract came up to bid in June, DESE favored CEE-Trust in the bid process, records show.

In December, several groups, including the NAACP, immediately protested the study, and some Democratic legislators, including state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, have called for Nicastro’s resignation. In response to the controversy, CEE-Trust leaders pleaded for the opportunity to present the plan in January. The state school board publicly supported Nicastro and CEETrust.

The state school board is not expected to vote on any proposal until March.

n “I believe public education is a utility, not a commodity.”

– Missouri State Board of Education member Mike Jones

The CEE-Trust proposal was specifically geared towards the Kansas City Public School District, but it could also be applied to Normandy and Riverview Gardens school districts.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has also received proposals from Normandy, Riverview Gardens and several other groups.

Normandy and Riverview Gardens superintendents declined interviews regarding the CEE-Trust plan, but both districts sent out statements acknowledging the proposal as just that – a proposal.

“The CEE-Trust plan is one of several under consideration and up for public input to address unaccredited school districts and the student transfer issue,” said Riverview Gardens Superintendent Scott Spurgeon. Commissioner of Education

SPIRIT

Continued from A1

Pastor Michael Jones of Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, the Rev. Dr. Freddy J. Clark of Shalom Church (City of Peace), the Rev. Rodney Francis of Washington Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church and Pastor Aeneas Williams of The Spirit Church.

The Rev. Starsky D. Wilson of St. John’s United Church of Christ served as moderator. Rev. Wilson began by asking the panelists to define the phrase “a man’s spirit.”

“The real you,” Pastor Williams answered. “It’s who you are when no one else is around. It’s your invisible thoughts that ultimately influence the seeing world.”

Pastor Williams said during his junior year in college he didn’t know his true self and sought divine intervention. He spoke of having a “broken spirit” and a personal disconnection with God, before realizing, he said, “I couldn’t run my own life.”

Pastor Williams, a 14-year NFL veteran, used a sports analogy to illustrate his point.

“What I didn’t understand growing up in the church was it’s not that you don’t have your own thoughts,” he said. “It’s just you have a different coach calling plays now.”

Rev. Wilson asked if one can mentor a man’s spirit apart from the church, referring to men without a religious affiliation or with their own personal disconnection with God. The panelists discussed

The plan

Based on CEETrust’s research, the highest-performing urban schools have two main conditions in common. First, their school leaders are in charge of major decisions, including the school calendar, staffing – and most importantly, budget. The schools also have strong systems holding them accountable. So here is what CEETrust proposed. All the schools would be operated by nonprofit organizations, and the Community Schools Office would act as the “accountability agent” that has minimal decision-making power over the schools. All school funds would be funneled through the Community Schools Office.

Last year, Kansas City Public Schools received $15,500 per student, but a majority of that money was centrally controlled, according to CEE-Trust’s analysis. In the plan, school leaders would have the power to make budgetary decisions on $10,000 per pupil versus the current $800. Basically, principals would have control over 65 percent of the school funds versus the five percent they currently control.

The plan also suggests

the importance of the church remaining relevant.

Rev. Clark said, “The institution that we call ‘church’ was the only viable and vital institution we had to make inroads into the social ills that our people faced.”

The audience applauded.

“The church has to be more open and receptive to the realities that our young men bring in terms of their lived experience in this world and the way in which they discern and engage God,” Rev. Francis said.

The church must offer something tangible, Pastor Jones said.

“The more relevant you are in their experience, the more often they will [seek] the institution,” Pastor Jones said.

Audience members called for more unified action, particularly with younger males. Rod Jennings, who serves on the University City school board, stressed the importance of positive male role models.

Rev. Wilson singled out Minister Donald Muhammad of the Nation of Islam’s Muhammad Mosque #28 from the audience to offer his perspective. Muhammad’s response reflected 100 Black Men’s theme for 2014: “Teamwork makes the dream work.”

The symposium was a part of the organization’s health and wellness initiative, one of four core initiatives that include mentorship, education and economic empowerment.

“And trust me,” Anderson said, “this has truly been a team effort and a labor love.”

providing high-quality preschool to every three- and four-year-old in Kansas City without raising taxes. In Kansas City, the analysis suggests that $28 million annually could be reallocated for preschool because the Community Schools Office structure would cut down on administrative costs, freeing up the funds.

Under the plan, nonprofits would not swoop in and start running schools. There would be a multi-year transitional period, where the Community Schools Office would train and grow the nonprofits. A “transition authority” would be responsible for schools not yet operating independently.

In an interview with The St. Louis American, Ethan Gray of CEE-Trust said that the plan was not based on the state’s charter school model.

“The charter school laws in Missouri are too weak,” Gray said. “It is one of the reasons there is not as good academic performance in Missouri charter schools as in other states, such as Massachusetts.”

Gray said the Community Schools Office has more resources and staff capacity to hold schools accountable than charter schools.

“The Community Schools Office will have a very rigorous process to make sure there are no fly-by-night school

operators,” he said.

St. Louis crisis

Normandy School District will face bankruptcy as early as March, and Riverview Gardens has enough in savings to last through the school year. The school transfer law is being debated among state legislators, as well as how to handle the two districts’ pending bankruptcies.

When asked if he believes the CEE-Trust plan would work for Normandy and Riverview Gardens, Jones said it’s hard to say at the moment.

“To be honest, the first act of this drama is in the state

University of Missouri –Columbia deputy chancellor Michael Middleton, National Urban League national board member James H. Buford and the Rev. Sammie E. Jones visited with keynote speaker Roland Martin Saturday night at Harris-Stowe State University as part of the Martin Luther King Jr. State Celebration Commission’s statewide kickoff of MLK Day event.

Legislature,” Jones said. “The State Board of Education and DESE operate inside the context that the legislature creates.”

He believes Normandy’s currently financial crisis is a result of the transfer law.

“That will be the question – can the Legislature fix that?” Jones said. “If they can, there are options. If they won’t, they will have to try and figure out what options Normandy has.”

Nicastro will meet with Normandy’s school board on Wednesday, Jan. 22 at 2 p.m. at 3855 Lucas and Hunt Road. The meeting is open to the public.

Angelene Green

Angelene (Madea) Green was born on June 18, 1923 in Darling, Mississippi to Acie and Florence Jones. She attended school in the State of Mississippi. She was received in Christ at Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church under the Leadership of Reverend Dr. M.R. Lemons.

Madea departed this life on Saturday, January 11, 2014 around 8:30 P.M. at Memorial Hospital in Belleville, Illinois.

Madea retired from Adison Home Health Care where she devoted many years of dedication and hard work. Madea was well known for cooking and sewing. She loved her family and believed family always came first. She was united in Holy Matrimony to Charlie Green Jr. for 53 years before he preceded her in death in 1999. There were eight children born from their fifty three year union. Three children preceded her in death; Charlie III, Mark and Gwendolyn (Charlice)

Chism. She leaves to cherish her memory three daughters Pauline Leigh, Beverly Ann Green, Sharon Denise Evans; two sons Virvus (Sable) Jones and Michael Green; 29 grandchildren (four of whom she reared as her own) Gerald Stanford, Carlos Stanford, Stephanie Davis and Sheila Harris; 46 Great Grandchildren; 9 GreatGreat Grandchildren. Nine (9) Sisters-In-Law Ora Lee

Green, Shirley and Linda Green of St. Louis, Missouri, Russie Davis of East St. Louis, Illinois, Curly Mae Patterson of Memphis, Tennessee, Evelyn Logan and Payola Moore of Chicago, Illinois, Dean Jones of Tutwiler, Mississippi, and Doris Handy of Aurora, Illinois and a host of nephews, nieces, cousins, and other relatives and friends.

Joselyn Chandler

Joselyn Chandler, driven by her faith that filtered throughout her work and family life, died Dec. 29 at her home in Bond Hill after a battle with pancreatic cancer. She was 58. Mrs. Chandler worked closely with her husband, Pastor Gregory Chandler of World Outreach Christian Church, for years and took pride in her career as a paralegal and legal assistant.

Gregory Chandler remembers his wife earning two degrees as an adult, an associate’s degree from the University of Cincinnati and a bachelor’s degree from the College of Mount St. Joseph, and taking their young children to class with her. “She had a mindset about her, she could just lock in and study, everything would be right, and she loved it,” he said.

A native of St. Louis, Mrs. Chandler was a cheerleader at Beaumont High School. She met her future husband in 1977 and they were married the following year.

The couple lived in North Carolina before moving to Cincinnati in 1985. Mrs. Chandler earned her associate’s degree in Applied Business from UC in 1989 and her bachelor’s degree in Paralegal Studies from the Mount in 1992.

Since 2006, Mrs. Chandler

worked for Freund, Freeze and Arnold downtown, as well as becoming an independent beauty consultant for Mary Kay Cosmetics. She enjoyed amusement parks and playing board games, where her competitive side would emerge, her husband said. “She wanted to win any game she was playing, but she would make it fun during the process,” he said.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer

Velma Adams

Velma Delores Adams, 82, passed away on Thursday, January 2, 2014 in Wake Forest, NC. Velma was born in Wilson, Louisianato Thomas Jelks and Theresa Williams Jelks.

Velma grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. She graduated from Booker T. Washington in New Orleans. After high school she attended Dillard University in New Orleans, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music. She worked as a substitute school teacher with the New Orleans Public Schools and a clerk with the United States Postal Service. She also played piano and organ for First Corinthian Baptist Church and several other local churches in New Orleans.

Velma is survived by her children; Erving Adams,Jr., Kelvin R. Adams (Karen), Lori T. Adams, Thomas E. Adams (Shelene),James B. Adams (Dione), Alice D. AdamsChew, twenty grandchildren, thirteen great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.

Velma was preceded in death by her husband Erving Adams, Sr. and her parents Thomas Jelks and Theresa Williams Jelks.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in Ms. Velma Adams honor to the Wake County Hospice of North Carolina, 250 Hospice Circle, Raleigh, NC 27607, (919)8280890. Visit www.rhodesfuneral.

com to sign the online guest book.

Johnny Koonce

Johnny Koonce was born on January 31, 1949 to Juanita Pastor and Johnny Turner. He received Christ at an early age and became a member of Bethesda Temple under the leadership of Bishop James A. Johnson. He later became a member of Lenexa Christian Center under Pastor Mike and Mary Purkey.

Johnny received his formal education in the St. Louis Public School system and graduated from Sumner High School in 1968. Johnny was a hardworking man holding several prominent jobs; his last place of employment was at Aramark. He also loved cooking, music, sports, movies and spending time with his grandchildren. He leaves to cherish his memories: daughter Shelley; sons Darren and Harold; sisters Wanda (Godfrey) and Andrea (James); brother Tony (Kimberly); Donald Porter; granddaughter Jasmine, and two grandchildren; his significant other of eighteen years Charlene; four step children, Claudell, Lopez, Auset and Lori; five step grandchildren; one step great grandchild, his closest friend Leroy Brown of Overland Park, KS; nieces, nephews and a host of other relatives and friends.

In Rememberance

In Remembrance of My Loving Husband Elkin Moore January 15, 2000 Gone but not forgotten. You will be forever missed! Your Loving Wife Dorothy Moore & Family

Angelene Green

Joselyn Chandler

Elkin Moore

Business

State gears up for disparity study

Public meeting Jan. 29 regarding inclusion in contracting

By Rebecca Rivas Of The St. Louis American

The State of Missouri recently announced a public meeting on January 29 to discuss a statewide disparity study. It’s the first peep the public has heard from the Office of Administration since August, when minority advocacy groups protested the state’s hiring of the firm Collette Holt & Associates to conduct the study.

Yaphett El-Amin, executive

n Missouri’s new disparity study will only look at contracts, not workforce. Currently, the state does not have any established workforce diversity goals.

director of MOKAN in St. Louis, questioned why the firm is just now reaching out to minority and women business owners. She said the lack of communication supports her initial concerns that the firm will not conduct a thorough analysis.

“It’s up to the state to make sure their consultant reaches out to the minority community,”

El-Amin said. “We shouldn’t have to look for her with a flashlight in the day light.”

Celeste Metcalf, director of the state’s Office of Equal

Opportunity, said she believes the firm has been busy working with state agencies to gather statistics.

“We have not heard any more rumblings since the fall,” Metcalf said. “I can’t say whether or not we’ve worked out anything. The pot could still be steaming.”

The disparity study will review the state’s minorityand women-owned business

Quality Products, quality people

Craig and Toni Brown market Momma’s sauce with help of business incubator

By Ciera Simril

For The St. Louis American

Being married to your business partner could be a tough situation, but Craig and Toni Brown make it look easy. After raising their children, they began a new journey together making Millie’s Sweet & Tasty Barbecue Sauce in 2007.

“Since my childhood, I can remember my mother, Millie, cooking so many delicious Southern dishes using her famous sauce,” Craig said.

“Millie’s memory still lives on in our family, as she has inspired my wife and I to re-create this one-of-akind sweet and tasty barbecue sauce.” To go commercial, they formed Craig & Toni Quality Products and connected with the BEGIN New Venture Center at the St. Patrick Center’s small business incubator, which provides early-stage and startup small businesses with the resources needed to grow.

n “We didn’t know anything about business. All we knew was cooking.”

– Toni Brown

After making the sauce at home for years, they had to adjust to a business mindset. “We didn’t know anything about business. All we knew was cooking,” Toni said.

“This program has helped us with every aspect of running our business.”

Next they connected with St. Louis-based Arcobasso Foods, a custom sauce manufacturer that agreed to help them with their

recipe and mass-produce their product. In addition to making sauce, they also are working on a breading and a spice rub to season meat before barbecuing.

Millie’s Sweet & Tasty Barbecue Sauce, which has won awards at competitions in Douglas, Georgia and Kansas City, is available at Straubs, Local Harvest, Goeke Produce, Figuero’s and Soulard Market in Missouri and at Cionko’s and Wenneeman Market in Illinois. Craig and Toni said they are overjoyed to see their product on

See QUALITY, A11

John Martin

John Martin has been appointed to the State Board of Education by Gov. Jay Nixon. He served as teacher, principal and assistant superintendent in University City Schools before moving to Virginia, where he was an assistant superintendent in a district. After returning to Missouri he served as superintendent of Grandview C-4 School District and deputy superintendent of St. Louis Public Schools. Most recently he served as interim superintendent of Kansas City Public Schools.

Stefanie Williams was recently appointed to serve on the boards of directors for Wesley House Association, Redevelopment Opportunities for Women, and PayBack Inc. She is Human Resources manager for Community Asset Management Company. PayBack, Inc. works in partnership with family courts to help children, their families and community break the cycle of juvenile delinquency through restorative justice programs. Melody Buckner has been named one of Thirteen

She is sales and catering manager for Palladium

Louis. Nominations were solicited from management of hospitality industry companies and judged by a panel of customer service experts.

Andre “Spyderman” Fuller has been inducted into the St. Louis Media Hall of Fame. He was the first deejay in St. Louis to play the founding fathers of hip-hop. He was appointed program director of WESL in the mid-1980s, then left for the new blackowned Z-100 FM, where he also became program director. He also worked a night shift at Majic 108 and was the first African American to attend the radio broadcasting program at Lewis and Clark College.

Deadline for Arch Grants applications: Feb. 21

The deadline for Arch Grants applications is February 21. Companies are selected to receive an Arch Grant through a Global Business Plan Competition. Winning companies receive $50,000 in equity-free cash; pro-bono accounting, legal and marketing services; and an opportunity to win an additional $100,000 grant. To apply, visit www. archgrants.org/2014.

DBE Certification Workshop Feb. 12 at Harris-Stowe

Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, Missouri Department of Transportation and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program offices will host a DBE Certification Workshop 9-11:30 a.m. Wednesday, February 12 at Harris-Stowe State University in the Telecommunity Room (Library), 3026 Laclede Ave. Attendees must register in advance by calling Metro’s EEO and Diversity office at 314-992-1400 ext. 1352 or by emailing dbe@ metrostlouis.org.

‘Growing Regional Development’ event on Jan. 23 The St. Louis Council of Construction Consumers (SLCCC) and the St. Louis

Stefanie Williams

Melody Buckner

Andre ‘Spyderman’ Fuller

Toni Brown and Craig Brown produce their Millie’s Sweet & Tasty Barbecue Sauce at the BEGIN New Venture Center located at the St. Patrick Center’s small business incubator. They also are working on a new breading and a spice rub.

Photo by Wiley Price

See STUDY, A10

Retirement plan limits largely unchanged in 2014

By Jason Alderman

Anyone who’s bought groceries, filled their gas tank or paid insurance premiums recently would probably be surprised to learn that, according to Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers (CPI-U), the rate of inflation is relatively flat – only 1.2 percent from September 2012 to September 2013. That’s bad news for people who were hoping to boost their contributions to an IRA, 401(k) plan or other taxadvantaged retirement savings accounts, since the IRS uses the CPI-U’s September year-over-year performance to determine whether or not to make cost-of-living adjustments to many of the retirement contributions you and your employer can make in the following year.

Here are highlights of what will and won’t change in 2014: Defined contribution plans. The maximum allowable annual contribution you can make to a workplace 401(k), 403(b), 457(b) or federal Thrift Savings plan remains unchanged at $17,500. Keep in mind these additional factors:

• People over 50 can also make an additional $5,500 in catch-up contributions (unchanged from 2013).

• The annual limit for combined employee and employer contributions increased by $1,000 to $52,000.

• Because your plan may limit the percentage of pay

STUDY

Continued from A911 (MWBE) program and will help the state establish new data-driven goals for hiring minority and women businesses.

Missouri state government last completed a disparity study in 1996, and that’s how state officials established its 10 percent MBE and 5 percent WBE goals on all government contract spending. However, the 1996 study is now considered out-of-date and useless in court, Metcalf said.

Many local governments and public agencies started conducting disparity studies after the 1989 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the City of Richmond’s minority participation program for municipal contracts was unconstitutional, after finding that the city failed to identify a substantial need to level the playing field for minorities and women business owners.

Richmond had a black population of just over 50 percent and had set a 30 percent goal in the awarding of city construction contracts, based on its findings of local discrimination and lack of access for minority-owned businesses.

The ruling required that a “fact-based approach” determine whether or not qualified minority firms have been underutilized.

The Croson decision led a number of local and state governments to abandon their MWBE programs, while others

you can contribute, your maximum contribution may actually be less. (For example, if the maximum contribution is 10 percent of pay and you earn $60,000, you could only contribute $6,000.)

Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). The maximum annual contribution to IRAs remains the same at $5,500 (plus an additional $1,000 if 50 or older – also unchanged from 2013).

Maximum contributions to traditional IRAs are not impacted by personal income, but if your modified adjusted gross income (AGI) exceeds certain limits, the maximum amount you can contribute to a Roth IRA gradually phases out:

• For singles/heads of households the phase-out AGI range is $114,000 to $129,000 (increased from 2013’s $112,000 to $127,000 range). Above $129,000, you cannot contribute to a Roth.

• For married couples filing jointly, the range is $181,000 to $191,000 (up from $178,000 to $188,000).

Keep in mind these rules for deducting traditional IRA contributions on your federal tax return:

• If you’re single, a head of household, a qualifying widow(er) or married and neither spouse is covered by an employer-provided retirement plan, you can deduct the full IRA contribution, regardless of income.

• If you are covered by an employer plan and are single/

proceeded to conduct disparity studies that addressed the court’s requirements for proof of harm from discrimination.

Disparity studies provide legal validity to inclusion programs. However, they can also provide evidence of racial discrimination and bring about lawsuits from MWBE communities.

The 2010 disparity study for the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT)

n The 2010 disparity study for the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) found racial discrimination in the department’s contracting process.

found racial discrimination in the department’s contracting process.

The study – contracted by IDOT in 2009 – found that disadvantaged business enterprises (DBEs) represent 25.55 percent of the available construction firms. However, they only received 8.25 percent of the construction prime contracts under $500,000 from 2006 to 2009, according to the study conducted by Mason Tillman.

No workforce diversity goals

Metcalf said Missouri’s new disparity study will only look at contract spending data – not workforce. Currently, the state

head of household, the tax deduction phases out for AGI between $60,000 and $70,000 (up from $59,000 to $69,000 in 2013); if married and filing jointly, the phase-out range is $96,000 to $116,000 (up from $95,000 to $115,000).

• If you’re married and aren’t covered by an employer plan but your spouse is, the IRA deduction is phased out if your combined AGI is between $181,000 and $191,000 (up from $178,000 to $188,000).

For more details, read IRS Publication 590 at www.irs. gov.

Retirement Saver’ Tax Credit. As an incentive to help low- and moderate-income workers save for retirement through an IRA or companysponsored plan, many are eligible for a Retirement Savers’ Tax Credit of up to $1,000 ($2,000 if filing jointly). This credit lowers your tax bill, dollar for dollar, in addition to any other tax deduction you already receive for your contribution.

Qualifying income ceiling limits for the Savers’ Tax Credit increased in 2014 to $60,000 for joint filers, $45,000 for

does not have any established workforce diversity goals among its agencies, she said. In 2010, Governor Jay Nixon passed an executive order that requires each department of the executive branch to submit an annual workforce diversity plan and to meet biannually with the state’s compliance officer about the departments’ workforce goals.

According to the order, Metcalf’s office is supposed to compare the state’s workforce data to the Census. However, in the office’s 2012 annual report, it stated, “We regret that this annual report will not contain any references to workforce diversity as in prior years.”

According to the 2011 annual report, 11.86 percent of state employees overall were African-American and 11.34 percent of the state’s population was African American, based on the 2010 Census. However, some state departments’ workforce diversity was lower than others. In the Office of Administration, only five percent of its 2,057 employees were African Americans. Also in the Department of Transportation, five percent of its 5,800 employees were black.

Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis city branch of the NAACP, said he does not understand why the state would not want to address the question of workforce diversity while it has the chance.

El-Amin said, “That’s putting money in the hands of African-American workers. Most people spend their money where they lay their heads.”

The public meeting will be held at 10 a.m. Wed., Jan. 29, in Room 510 of the Harry S. Truman Building in Jefferson City. People can participate remotely in St. Louis at the Wainwright State Office Building, 111 North 7th Street, Room 923, and in Kansas City at the Fletcher Daniel State Office Building, 615 East 13th Street Room 503. For more information, contact Collette Holt at 855692-6529 or email her at missouri_study@mwbelaw. com.

New CEO for Schnucks

Last week Schnucks Markets, Inc. announced that Todd R. Schnuck, 55, will become the chairman and CEO of the familyowned grocery business in March. He is a member of the Executive Committee and treasurer of the Board of Directors for United Way of Greater St. Louis as well as a member of the board of the St. Louis Regional Chamber. Among many other commitments, Schnuck is a member of the Board of Directors and past board chairman of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis. Schnucks Markets is celebrating 75 years of service with 100 stores in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa.

QUALITY

Continued from A9 store shelves.

Now they are working with the BEGIN New Venture Center to formulate a marketing strategy. In addition to adding more stores, they hope to sell their sauce to school systems and hospitals. They intend to expand their business, Craig & Toni Quality Products, and provide employment to people who will help them continue to grow.

“When we get ready to distribute, we will be able to hire staff and have them help with our catering business,” Toni said. Every second Monday, as a gesture of thanks for the help they receive from the business incubator, Craig and Toni feed homeless women at St. Patrick’s Center with their Women’s Night Program.

Toni said, “We want to be a blessing to other people too.” For more information, visit http://www. milliesbarbecuesauce.com/.

Momma Millie’s Pork Steaks

Here is a recipe courtesy of Momma Millie, which should be fulfilling for a family of four.

Ingredients: - 4 pork steaks - Montreal Steak Seasoning

- Paprika - Granulated onion - Millie’s Sweet & Tasty Barbecue Sauce

Instructions:

1. Wash the pork steaks in cold clean water and pat dry.

2. Season both sides of the steaks well with Montreal Seasoning, paprika, granulated onion.

3. Grill pork steaks on medium coals for a period of 40-45 minutes until done (or bake pork steaks at a temperature of 350 degrees for a period of 50-60 minutes until done).

4. Baste with Millie’s Sweet & Tasty Barbeque Sauce during the last 15 minutes of cooking.

5. Serve.

Financial Focus

By Roger M. Macon, AAMS

Once you retire, you’ll have to make some housingrelated decisions.

Photo by UPI/Bill Greenblatt

NEWSPAPER IN EDUCATION

Planting the Seeds for Success!

OCTOBER 19 - JANUARY 20

Get a bug’s eye view of their world.

By

Harry’s Big Adventure: My Bug World! presented by Terminix® is a multisensory experience that immerses you into the world of bugs. Harry the Chinese Praying Mantis and his bug friends will lead you

Take advantage of the many teacher programs we offer at the Zoo to supplement your students’ classroom experience. The Zoo Outreach Program offers instructors who can bring live animals to YOUR classroom. We offer a variety of teacher kits you can check out, and we offer other resources (videos, books, etc.) FREE for you from our library. We even designed a cool poster you can hang in the classroom!

Harry’s Big Adventure: My Bug World! presented by Terminix® is a multisensory experience that immerses you into the world of bugs. Harry the Chinese Praying Mantis and his bug friends will lead you through freestanding and interactive habitats in a hands-on, fun way!

Harry’s Big Adventure: My Bug World! presented by Terminix® is a multisensory experience that immerses you into the world of bugs. Harry the Chinese Praying Mantis and his bug friends will lead you through freestanding and interactive habitats in a hands-on, fun way!

slsc.org/hbanie2

slsc.org/hbanie4

PRESENT: Healthy Kids is a weekly series that focuses on nutrition, exercise, safety and more.

Nutrition Challenge:

Perhaps you’ve decided to eat healthier this year. Don’t think of these healthy changes as “going on a diet.” Instead, think of these smart choices as a new, healthier lifestyle. You can do this by forming new habits. For example, if you decide to eliminate sugary drinks completely, it only takes a few weeks until this becomes what you’re used to. Here are the steps to making a healthy permanent change. We‘ll use the sugary drink change as an example.

Exercise

A fun way to stay active and burn calories indoors is as simple as blowing up a few balloons. Here are a couple of balloon challenges to try.

> Have each person in your group count off to decide the order you will play. Blow up a balloon and take turns hitting the balloon to see how long you can keep it in the air. If it falls to

We’re here to help you succeed, and there are even scholarships available. Just visit stlzoo.org/teachers or call us at (314) 646-4544 to learn more.

Healthy Kids Kids

> Decide you’re going to switch from soda to water.

> Start by substituting one drink per day to water.

> Every few days increase the amount of water and decrease your soda intake.

> After 3-4 weeks, this change will become a habit.

When you automatically reach for water instead of soda, it has now become a lifestyle change!

Learning Standards: HPE 1, HPE 2, HPE 5, NH 1, NH 5

the floor on your turn, you get a point. The first to reach 10 points loses.

> Set up a kind of volleyball “net” between a couple of chairs. Sit across from a friend and take turns hitting the balloon one time to make it go to your friend’s side of the

ever play with any kind of

See how many times you can both hit it (counting as you go) before it hits the ground.

> Create your own balloon game and share your idea with your classmates.

Learning Standards: HPE 2, HPE 5, NH 1

remember that many kids are killed each year by a gun that they thought was unloaded.

Learning Standards: HPE 5, NH 5

Where do you work? I work at BJC Medical Group, West End OB/GYN.

Where did you go to school? I graduated from Mehlville Senior High School, Jewish College of Nursing (RN Diploma), and University of Missouri — St. Louis with a Master of Science degree in Nursing with a specialty as Family Nurse Practitioner. What does a nurse practitioner at BJC do? I do physical examinations on women of all ages, making sure they are healthy and teaching them about healthy lifestyles to maintain good health. I care for women who are pregnant, teaching them how to care for themselves as the baby grows and doing special tests/exams throughout the pregnancy to make sure the mother and baby are developing properly. I am able to listen to the baby’s heartbeat and do ultrasounds in my office that allow me to see on a TV monitor how the baby is moving and growing in the mommy’s stomach. Why did you choose this career? It brings me great joy to help young girls and women achieve the best possible health. I help them when they are physically sick and emotionally sick. My life feels meaningful when my patients tell me that I helped them become better at caring for themselves.

Fitness Challenge: Go to http://www.stlamerican. com/newspaper_in_education/ and download our Weekly Fitness Challenge Journal page. Keep track of your positive

and

What is your favorite part of the job you have? Because I know that most patients are stressed/scared going to the doctor, I am happy when my patients leave with a smile, telling me that I made them feel better. Most patients are very happy to be pregnant. Helping a woman have a healthy pregnancy and baby is very exciting; I am participating in the beginning of life. Learning Standards: : HPE 6, NH 3

Presented

Presented By

CLASSROOM SPOTLIGHT

Mullanphy Investigative Learning Center 5th grade teacher

Michael

SCIENCE CORNER

SCIENCE STARS

AFRICAN AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER: Donna Dansberry

St. Louis native Donna Dansberry is a Project Management Professional (PMP) at Ameren, where she has worked for over 26 years. After graduating from Beaumont High School, she earned her bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Dansberry’s high school chemistry teacher introduced her to engineering.

Have you ever wished you could be in two places at once? Thanks to engineering, doctors can do just that with a process called remote presence (RP), which uses video and sound transmitting capabilities so patients can have access to doctors 24/7. This type of technology allows doctors to collaborate with other doctors that are far away. It allows for instant feedback, which is important in medical emergencies, such as a stroke.

RP allows hospital staff and remote physicians to collaborate even if they are far away from each other. The physician uses video to diagnose the patient and make suggestions for a course of treatment. It was developed by engineers at InTouch Health, Inc.

Engineering Remote Presence !

There are a couple of downsides to the technology. First, the devices are very expensive to purchase and maintain. Second, it can be difficult to keep the Wi-Fi connection at all times. The machines that are more reliable are more expensive. Even with these concerns, allowing doctors to treat patients quickly and from any distance is invaluable.

To See an RP in Action, Check Out the Following Video: http://neurosurgery.ucla.edu/ body.cfm?id=1169

Discuss:

What are the benefits and drawbacks of RP? What other uses can you think of for the device?

Dansberry liked the fact that it was practical work and she could apply it to many parts of her life. She says, “I enjoy learning about how things work, figuring out problems, determining the best way to do things, and getting results; that’s what engineering is all about.”

Although Dansberry started out in chemical engineering because she was good at chemistry, she later switched to Industrial Engineering because she liked creating balanced systems that work well together. Her job includes developing training classes and peer-to-peer meetings, coordinating procedures, tracking PMP (Project Management Professional) statistics, and coordinating PMP educational opportunities for Ameren.

Learning Standards: I can read a nonfiction article to find main idea and supporting details. I can identify pros and cons.

SCIENCE EXPERIMENT

Engineers solve everyday problems in extraordinary ways. Have you ever ridden on a boat? If so, you probably noticed that your drink spilled as the boat moved along the waves. Work together to create a steady tray that keeps your drink from spilling. Then, think of other problems you can solve.

Materials Needed:

Small Cardboard Boxes

• Wooden Measuring Sticks

• String • Duct Tape • Scissors

• Cup of Water • Large Tray Process:

q With your partners, design a tray that will keep the cup of water steady.

You can use cardboard, measuring sticks, string, and tape. You will build your steady drink contraption on a tray to simulate a boat. First, brainstorm and

Next, create and test your design. Test your contraption by tipping the tray as if your “boat” is going over a big wave. If your drink doesn’t spill, your design is a success. Compare your design to that of your classmates.

Learning Standards: I can use trial and error to create a device to solve a problem. I can evaluate my results.

In her free time, Dansberry enjoys reading, baking, volunteering, STEM activities, and bible study. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Soriority and Christ Our Redeemer A.M.E Church. She states that she uses her skills both at work and in her day-to-day activities outside of work. Her advice to students is as follows, “If you think you’d like to be an engineer, first figure out what you really like to do most and then look for an engineering discipline that focuses on that activity. If you find one, bingo, it’s a match!” For More Information on Engineering Careers, Visit: http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/ engineering/typesofengineeringjobs.html

Learning Standards: I can read a biography about a person who has made contributions in science, math, and technology.

Use the newspaper to complete the following activities to sharpen your skills for the MAP test.

MATH CONNECTION

Engineers are problem solvers. You can be a problem solver, too, as you work through the following word problems.

q Gina saved $27. She received $10 for allowance. She spent $8 on a scarf, and $5 on a pair of gloves. How much money does she have left?

w Glen has a bowl of raspberries and blackberries. There are 8 more raspberries than blackberries, and there are 14 berries in all. How many blackberries does he have?

e A group of students went on a science field trip. They took 3 vans and 7 buses. There were 11 people in each van, and 55 people on each bus. How many people were on the field trip?

Jon baked 20 apple pies and 3 peach pies. Each apple pie has 8 slices, each peach pie has 6 slices. It takes 4 peaches to make one pie. How many slices of pie did Jon bake in all? __________ How many total peaches did he use?

Learning Standards: I can add, subtract, multiply, and divide to solve a problem.

Activity One —

Common Factors: Find two different numbers in the newspaper with two digits. List all common factors of those two numbers. For a challenge, try to find those common factors somewhere in the newspaper.

Activity Two —

Differences: Review the difference between similes and metaphors. Locate similes and metaphors in newspaper articles. Pay close attention to quotes. Explain what the similes and metaphors mean. Create three similes and metaphors of your own.

Learning Standards: I can use the newspaper to locate information. I can calculate common factors. I can identify similes and metaphors and identify their meanings.

Teachers, if you are using the

The snowboard was invented by an engineer.

Black caucus confidential

It’s been a busy week for the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus. First the caucus met with Gov. Jay Nixon last Wednesday for the first time ever, an opportunity Nixon reportedly seized to castigate then (but not for long) caucus chair Jamilah Nasheed for the many times she has crossed party lines, often to sting the governor. What could have been a substantial meeting on issues of concern to the black community became more of an attempted settling of personal scores and party grievances.

The next day, Nasheed abruptly resigned as caucus chair, citing as the official reason her need to focus on her responsibilities in the state Senate. Media reports focused on Nasheed’s most recent crossing of party lines to sting Nixon: her joint press conference with Nixon nemesis

Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder to slam Nixon for bartering low-

income housing tax credits with Republicans in the Legislature to garner approval of his (in the end, futile) tax incentives to lure Boeing’s 777x production to Missouri.

That explanation saves face for Nasheed. Her stand –even alongside a Republican opportunist like Kinder –against Nixon’s delaying lowincome housing tax credits was principled. So was her stand against Nixon’s (quickly retracted) attempt to make some cuts to the state’s food stamp rolls. No one can blame Nasheed for trying to save face. And her colleagues in the caucus are wise to keep to themselves their private grievances with a colleague who still holds a powerful position in the state Senate. But the real story has not been told. According to sources in the caucus, a majority had the votes to oust Nasheed as caucus chair before the meeting with Nixon

and Nixon’s attacks on Nasheed at that meeting. Some in the majority almost moved against Nasheed the day of the Nixon meeting, just hours before the meeting, but state Sen. Sharon “Kiki” Curls objected and the matter was not put to a vote, so the caucus could approach the meeting with the governor with at least a semblance of unity and consensus.

Nasheed identified state Rep. Michael Butler as the instigator of the majority that moved against her. “He was pushing his own agenda,” Nasheed told the EYE about Butler. “Him and [state Rep.] Clem Smith were against me.”

She said Butler stormed out of the caucus meeting when the vote to oust Nasheed was tabled and didn’t even attend

the subsequent meeting with the governor. “That shows his immaturity,” Nasheed said. Butler confirmed that he did not attend the meeting with Nixon.

This widening fracture in the caucus was already evident during a holiday meeting that Nasheed called with the caucus and The American’s editorial board. Smith called the EYE before the meeting to ask if there was, in fact, a meeting – he said Nasheed had not informed him, which (he said) was not unusual for her.

Another caucus member sat silent throughout the meeting, and later muttered that it was Nasheed’s meeting and he didn’t want to disrespect The American by avoiding it, yet didn’t want to dignify

Gov. Jay Nixon during one of his more subdued moments last Wednesday when he met for the first time ever with the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus in his office in Jefferson City.

Nasheed’s leadership by participating fully. The offthe-record meeting also was characterized by repeated interruptions and evident tension between Nasheed and several caucus members.

That was nothing, Nasheed said, compared to the tension between Nixon and her at his meeting with the caucus in his office. Nasheed said that once she mentioned the low-income housing tax credit issue, Nixon went ballistic. He started with an odd claim, for this governor.

“He played the black card!” Nasheed said. Nixon played the black card in connection to Nasheed standing up with Kinder. “He said, ‘How can the chairman of the black caucus stand with a Republican who hates Barack Obama?’”

Nasheed said with a laugh. This is funny because Nixon himself has never embraced President Obama or done much of anything to help Obama during his two presidential campaigns. Obama has lost this purple state two times while Nixon won handily without putting the Democrat at the top of his ticket (Obama) on any of his campaign literature. Nixon didn’t even attend the Democratic National Convention when Obama was nominated as the Democratic candidate for president. But Nasheed called Nixon out on another hypocrisy.

“I said, ‘Governor, didn’t you just do the same thing with low-income housing tax credits?’” Nasheed said. “’Didn’t you just go behind closed doors and make a deal with five Republicans who hate Barack Obama?’ He didn’t respond to that.”

Nasheed said she will remain a member of the black caucus and try to work with them on matters like defeating Right to Work and Voter I.D. legislation, but she did not want to go around whipping votes in an effort to keep her chair. Whether or not the votes were there for her to keep the chair, Nasheed is correct when she tells The Beacon and St. Louis Public Radio, “I don’t have to be the caucus chair to get things done.” She still has much power to do good – or ill – as one of only 34 state senators. And her successor as caucus chair – on Tuesday the caucus elected state Rep. Tommy Pierson – will only be as effective as his ability to leverage Nasheed and the other black state senators (Curls and state Sen. Maria ChappelleNadal) and enhance the effectiveness of this fragmented caucus. The black caucus chair has been a hot seat in recent years. Two of Nasheed’s predecessors as chair, then state Rep. Steve Webb and then state Rep. John Bowman, both were indicted on criminal charges. Webb, charged with misappropriation of funds in district court in November, remains innocent until proven guilty. In 2008 Bowman pled guilty in federal court to playing a role in a bank and credit card fraud scheme. Needless to say, Pierson and his colleagues have their work cut out for them in restoring the credibility of the caucus.

‘How am I plowing?’

Probably one of the last things city residents wanted to do last Thursday – five days after the major snowfall hit – was take a survey titled, “Should the city plow residential streets?”

“Stow the poll, just do your job” seemed to be the overwhelming consensus in the 27th Ward, where Alderman Antonio French finally hired Asset Towing, a minorityowned company, for $1,000 to take care of his ward’s streets on Friday.

On Thursday afternoon, Mayor Francis G. Slay had ordered the Streets Department to plow some side streets. However, on Friday morning, many streets in French’s ward were still impassable. “In a city like St. Louis that’s struggled for five decades to retain its population, customer service needs to be our No. 1 priority,” French said.

Because St. Louis city has never plowed side streets, the Streets Department didn’t have a guideline or policy on how to get it done last week. On Jan. 9, Slay said he had heard the angry cries of city residents and agreed to plow the streets that night.

“There is a tradeoff here,” he stated. “The streets will be cleared. But, the plows will create snow banks. So, be ready to shovel yourself in or out of your parking space or driveway.” Todd Waelterman, director of the Streets Department, also told residents to be prepared for cars to get damaged. These comments made it more obvious that the city didn’t have an adequate plan going into their response efforts.

There are cities where snow plows do not create tall snow banks because they don’t plow down to the bare street. Also, French’s plow service used smaller trucks with plows attached, so they didn’t scrape up cars by using the huge plow trucks on narrow streets.

NPR host to speak at MLK event

Michel

hosted

Martin

by

WU School of Medicine on Jan. 20

By Chris King Of The St. Louis American

The Washington University School of Medicine Office of Diversity Programs will host its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Lecture 4 p.m. Monday, January 20 in the auditorium at the Eric P. Newman Education Center, 320 South Euclid Ave.

The guest speaker will be Michel Martin, an award-winning journalist and correspondent for ABC News and National Public Radio.

Her lecture will address public education and workforce diversity in medicine and public health. “We’re very interested in education,” Martin said. “It’s been one of the signature issues we’ve followed since the program was launched six years ago.”

She is best known for scholarly insight and debates on a wide range of topics, from immigration to parenting in a multicultural family, as part of “Tell Me More,” the one-hour daily NPR news and talk show that made its national premiere on April 30, 2007 on public radio stations around the country.

“When we first started this program, I said that we wanted to talk about the news and what’s going on in your life, that we wanted to bring you the kinds of conversations you aren’t hearing

in other places, that we wanted to go around the world and to try to

some people called the third-rail issues of American life, issues

n “When we refuse to ask the uncomfortable question, we’re missing an opportunity to really understand the world as it is.”

– Michel Martin

Monday, January 20.

then, and I say now, it’s all part of the American story – because we are affected by those issues, whether we like it or not, whether we wish we were or not.”

She added, “I said then, and I say now, that we want to talk about those things because they are real. Because it’s where we live. Because when we refuse to ask the uncomfortable questions, we’re missing an opportunity to understand the world as it is.”

Martin, who came to NPR in January 2006 to develop the program, has spent more than 25 years as a journalist, first in print with major newspapers and then in television. “Tell Me More” marked her debut as a full-time public radio show host.

Marathon reading of MLK

find out what’s deep within your heart,” Martin wrote when the show celebrated its fifth anniversary.

“I said we’d deal with what

like immigration, race, education, ethnicity, religion and so many of the other things that mark and sometimes divide us. Why? I said

Martin joined NPR from ABC News, where she worked since 1992. She served as correspondent for “Nightline” from 1996 to 2006, reporting on such subjects as the Congressional budget battles, the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, racial profiling and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. At ABC, she also contributed to numerous programs and specials, including the network’s awardwinning coverage of September 11, a documentary on the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy, a critically acclaimed AIDS special and reports for the ongoing series

See NPR, B3

Science Center celebrates MLK

Minority Scientists Showcase this weekend

By Rebecca Rivas Of The St. Louis American

Nicole Adewale of ABNA

Engineering remembers attending a Girl Scouts’ career day at St. Louis Community College – Forest Park when she was in seventh grade. There, she met a female engineer who profoundly influenced her life and career path.

“I just remember that she was tall and had a nice blue suit,” Adewale said. “Seeing a successful woman engineer told me that this was a reasonable career to pursue, even though there was no one in my family who chose that path. I have never forgot that lesson, and I’ve tried to pay that forward.”

For the past 12 years, Adewale has impacted children’s dreams by participating in the Saint Louis Science Center’s annual Minority Scientists Showcase. Always held on the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, the three-day

Powell, 6, and Devon Hamilton, 2, learned how to make silly putty at the Sigma Aldrich Corporation’s table at last year’s Minority Scientists Showcase, organized by the Saint Louis Science Center on the Dr.

weekend.

showcase brings together scientists, engineers and other science-related professionals to share their stories and interact with young people and their families at the Saint Louis Science, 5050 Oakland Ave. The event is now in its 24th year. Beginning on January

18, the event gives children an opportunity to explore careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). More than 30 organizations, including Sigma Aldrich and Boeing, will participate.

“It’s a great opportunity for kids to learn more about the sciences,”

The event’s dates and times are:

Saturday, January 18 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Sunday, January 19 noon to 4 p.m.

Monday, January 20 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Adewale said. “It’s important for to us to present images of African Americans and other minorities. It’s one thing to see minority scientists, engineers and mathematicians on TV, but until they actually meet someone in person, sometimes it’s not real to them – as far as it being a possible career for them.”

ABNA’s team will be at the event on Sunday, January 19 and January 20. Besides speaking with families, ABNA staff will build paper bridges with the students that are strong enough to hold four pounds of canned goods. They use only plain sheets of paper and nothing else – not even glue.

Christ Church Cathedral hosts daylong commemoration

Jan. 20

American staff

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Christ Church Cathedral is hosting the fifth annual “Let Freedom Ring” – a daylong community reading of his writings, sermons and speeches – on Monday, January 20. This year it will take place from the very pulpit where Dr. King preached 50 years ago this March.

The Nave of the Cathedral (13th street between Olive and Locust, across from the Central Library) will be open from 9 a.m. through 5 p.m. for the reading, which will be accompanied by a visual display of pictures of the civil rights leader. The public is invited both to come and listen and also to take part in the reading. There is no admission charge.

Leaders sign up for half-hour reading shifts (you can sign up online at letfreedomring2014.wikispaces. com), but anyone in attendance is invited to be part of the reading as well by coming to the pulpit and indicating they wish to take over for a time. Whenever they wish to stop, someone will be ready to take their place.

“Like scripture, Dr. King’s words don’t just have meaning for the generation in which they were written, but new meaning for every generation,” says the Very Rev. Mike Kinman, dean of Christ Church Cathedral.

“We are providing an opportunity for people to come and let these words just wash over them and also participate in reading them – and, in this case, stand in the very place where he stood 50 years ago. Whether people come for 10 minutes, an hour or all day, we want to provide chance for everyone to hear these words, let them re-enter our consciousness and continue to form us today.”

King delivered a sermon at Christ

See READING, B3

Dominique

Martin Luther King Jr. holiday

Photo by Wiley Price

NPR host Michel Martin will speak at the Washington University School of Medicine Office of Diversity Programs’ Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Lecture 4 p.m.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. greeting St. Louis civil rights activist Norman Seay when MLK at Christ Church Cathedral.

Photo by Preservation Research Office

Continued from B1

“America in Black and White.”

Before joining ABC, Martin covered state and local politics for the Washington Post and national politics and policy at the Wall Street Journal, where she was White House correspondent.

“I’ve covered earthquakes, floods and hurricanes,” Martin has written. “I’ve interviewed golf pros, gangbangers, heads of state, artists, geniuses, as well as people who have done some of the dumbest things you can ever imagine.”

A native of Brooklyn, NY, Martin graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College at Harvard University in 1980 and has done graduate work at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.

“When we refuse to ask the uncomfortable question, we’re missing an opportunity to really understand the world as it is,” Martin wrote in her first essay for her NPR show. “Understanding is what it’s all about, and the only way to get there is to talk.”

Free event parking is available on Washington University School of Medicine surface lots, validated parking available in the North Garage, across the street from the Center for Advanced Medicine (CAM) Building or the Metro Garage. Please bring your parking ticket to the lobby.

To RSVP please call Michelle Patterson at (314) 362-6854 or email mpatterson@wustl.edu.

READING

Continued from B1

Church Cathedral in March 1964, preaching, “We must learn to love together as brothers or perish as fools.”

“Dr. King embodied the deepest tradition of our faith being a balance between reflection and action,” Kinman said. “President Obama has well reminded us that his birthday is an opportunity for action in our communities. We are providing an opportunity for reflection to inform our actions not just on this one day but every day.”

This is the fifth year Christ Church Cathedral is offering this observance. For the second consecutive year, John Burroughs School is incorporating the event into its annual MLK Day of Service for its students, taking part in the listening and reading as part of their reflection on both their hands-on service and the words of Dr. King.

For more information, contact the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at mkinman@ christchurchcathedral.us or 314-348-6453.

Continued from B1

Sometimes ABNA’s team also conduct soil tests, similar to those that they conduct for their engineering projects.

Throughout the years, Adewale has seen the significant impact that the event has had on children and

families.

“I can’t tell you how many families I have met and have helped get involved in the National Society for Black Engineers or the First Robotics program,” she said.

Many students also learn about pre-college STEM programs and internships, and even make connections for future class assignments that require interviewing STEM professionals, she said.

On Saturday, there will also be presentations from award-winning teachers, who are recipients of the Carol B. and Jerome T. Loeb Prize for Excellence in Teaching Science and Mathematics in partnership with the center.

On Monday there will be jazz music from Storman Academy and Irish dancing from Clarkson School of Irish Dance on the lower level of the center’s main building.

Mavus Brooks, an AfricanAmerican technical scientist at Sigma Aldrich, has participated in the showcase for about three years.

Sigma Aldrich hosts several experiments for the students – the most popular being a bouncy ball made with starch and Elmer’s glue.

“It generally has the longest line,” Brooks said. “I just love seeing them get excited.” Brooks believes the

event truly influences future scientists in the region.

“Students really want to know what’s going on,” she said. “We have information sheets if they are interested in doing experiments at home. It makes a profound difference for kids.”

For more information about the event, visit the Science Center’s website at www.slsc. org or call Margie Walsh at 314-286-4621.

Free lunch for MLK Day

St. Catherine of Siena feeds community on Jan. 20

American staff

To celebrate and remember the life and service of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the community of St. Catherine of Siena ANCC will host a Free Community Luncheon on Monday, January 20 from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. The lunch will take place in the lower level fellowship hall of the church located at

2613 Potomac St., the corner of Jefferson and Potomac in the Cherokee Street neighborhood. As a community committed to social justice outreach, St. Catherine of Siena American National Catholic Church, an independent Catholic community, strives to reach out to help those less fortunate, rejected, discriminated and underserved, organizers said. “Our mission is simple: to live by faith in the Catholic tradition; to be known by love for all of humanity; and to be a voice of hope for those in need,” said Fr. Phillip Lichtenwalter, pastor of St. Catherine’s. “We do this by creating a faith community that is fully inclusive, being motived by love in service to

others and providing hope for those who are suffering.”

St. Catherine of Siena ANCC strives to make modern the ancient traditions of the Catholic faith. Embracing diversity and inclusion, St. Catherine of Siena ANCC welcomes all people to celebrate their Catholic faith. It has married clergy, female priests, full gay and lesbian inclusion, samesex marriage and lay-governed parishes.

St. Catherine of Siena

American National Catholic Church located at 2613 Potomac St., worships with Mass on Sundays at 11 a.m. and Saturdays at 4 p.m. For more information, please call Parish Office at 314-329-8207 or visit www. SaintCatherineSTL.org.

St. Stanislaus celebrates MLK

Commemoration includes re-enactment of ‘Dream’ speech

American staff

The life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will be celebrated in an ecumenical commemoration at St. Stanislaus Kostka Polish Church on Monday, January 20 at 4 p.m. A light reception

will follow in the Polish Heritage Center at 2014 North 20th Street.

The special event will feature a live re-enactment of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech” by a coalition of civic and community leaders, including state Senator Joe Keaveny and Terry Crow, councilman for University City. In addition, the Dr. King Commemoration will feature live music, multidenominational prayer and a personal reflection by Otis Woodard, a St. Louisan present at the scene of Dr.

King’s assassination in 1968.

“Polish people have long been associated with civil rights, beginning with a strike for workers rights in the Jamestown colony in 1619,” noted Fr. Marek Bozek, pastor of St. Stanislaus.

“We are grateful to Dr. King for his achievements in the civil rights arena and want to honor his enduring message of unity and respect for all.”

The MLK Commemoration is open to all. For more information, contact Jim Nowogrocki at 314-922-7657.

Featured Speaker Ayana Mathis

“The Twelve Tribes of Hattie”

Saturday, February 15, 7:00–9:00 p.m. LIBRARY HEADQUARTERS 1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd.

Highlighted Events

“Witnesses to Freedom” presented by the Black Rep

Friday, February 7, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

LIBRARY HEADQUARTERS

1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd.

Gift of Gospel Celebration

Saturday, February 22, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

LEWIS & CLARK BRANCH

9909 Lewis–Clark Blvd.

Set the Night to Music

Friday, February 28, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Wendy Gordon & Friends will perform. FLORISSANT VALLEY BRANCH 195 New Florissant Rd., South

Children’s Programs

African Percussion

Explore the percussion traditions of Africa with Freedom Arts and Education Center. Ages 8-16.

African Dance Dance company Afriky Lolo returns to St. Louis County Library. All ages.

Br. John’s African Folktales Join acclaimed storyteller Br. John as we explore the continent of Africa through interactive folktales. Ages 3 and up.

Children’s events are hosted by mulitple branch locations throughout February.

CHECK WEBSITE FOR SCHEDULE AND DETAILS.

CBTU hosts awards banquet

36th annual MLK event to be held Jan. 20 at Sheet Metal Workers hall

American staff

Monday, January 20 will mark the 29th observation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. birthday as a national holiday. The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists is sponsoring the 36th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Human Rights Awards Banquet in honor and observation of his birthday. The banquet will take place 5:30 p.m. Monday, January 20 at the Sheet Metal Workers Local 36 Union Hall, 2319 Chouteau Ave.

Awards will be presented to the following individuals for their contribution to the struggle of social justice, labor and human rights issues in the tradition of Dr. King:

• Steve Hollis, president, American Federation of Government

May will be one of the awardees at the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists’ 36th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Human Rights Awards Banquet.

Employees Local 3354

• State Rep. Karla May (Democrat, Missouri 84th District)

• State Rep. Clem Smith (Democrat, Missouri 85th District).

Brooks Sunkett, international vice president of the Communication Workers of America, AFL-CIO will keynote the event.

“In the spirit of labor/ community solidarity,”

organizers stated, “we invite all to join us and participate in the presentation of the awards and the celebration of Dr. King’s birthday.”

For more information, contact the St. Louis Metro Chapter of the CBTU: Lew Moye, president (314-4955635; lewcbtu@aol.com) or Mark Esters, vice president (314-496-2198, markesters@ hotmail.com).

Art Museum to host MLK event

Tony Artz, Sunny Mount choir among performers on Jan. 18

American staff

Saint Louis Art Museum will host an Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Freedom Celebration in its Farrell Auditorium 8:30-10 a.m. Saturday, January 18.

The keynote speaker will be Wayne C. Harvey, attorney and counselor at law. Visual art, music and dance will be presented by Tony Artz.

Born in St. Louis and raised in Los Angeles, California, Paducah, Kentucky and Metropolis, Illinois with the assistance of his grandparents, Tony Artz taught himself how to paint.

He knew he wanted to be an artist at the age of 7. After being burned with a cigarette and thrown into a scolding hot shower and beaten repeatedly by his dad’s girlfriend, Artz said, he decided to express himself to take the pain away. With a pencil, paint, oil pastels and the music in

his headphones, he began to transform his pain into art.

His style combines music, art and dance. “Picture a music producer with paint in their hands laying a foundation of emotion to the rhythm of the beat,” Artz said. He moves about the canvas, drumming the canvas with his hands. Once he creates the pattern of the tone and melody he wants, he transforms the canvas into what he calls “a visual musical production.”

“My process is simple,”

Free Presentation by Simeon Wright at 6 PM Beneit Jazz Concert at 7:30 PM with an appearance by Denise Thimes ($15 in advance, $20 at the door) Friday, January 17, 2014

Special thanks to our event sponsor Millennium Financial Group For more information or to purchase tickets go to chaminade-stl.org and click on the Martin Luther King, Jr. banner

Proceeds beneit Chaminade’s St. Jude/St. Joseph Scholarship for minority students

State Rep. Karla

Photo by Wiley Price

Tony Artz will perform visual art, music and dance at the Saint Louis Art Museum as part of its Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Freedom Celebration on Saturday, January 18.

Martin Luther King Day activities

Fri., Jan 17, 4 p.m., Throwing and Growing Foundation presents Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: Still Keeping The Dream Alive 50 Years Later, The Youth And Family Center, 818 Cass Ave. For more information, all (314) 650-1008 or visit www. throwingandgrowing.org.

Sat., Jan. 18, 8 a.m., Sheraton City Center hosts American Heart Association Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Health Fair & Luncheon. The goal of the event is to increase awareness of risk factors and warning signs in the African American community. Guests will be treated to a heart healthy lunch, free CPR training and heart related education. The event is free, but pre-registration is required. 400 S 14th St., 63103. For more information, visit http://www.heart.org/stlouis.

Sat., Jan. 18, 8:30 a.m., Saint Louis Art Museum presents a Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Freedom Celebration, Saint Louis Art Museum, One Fine Arts Drive in Forest Park. For more information, visit www. slam.org.

Sun., Jan. 19, 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., Movie Documentary on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Afro World, 7276 Natural Bridge Rd. For more information, call (314) 3895194.

Sun., Jan. 19, 2 p.m. A Day On Not Off Community Cleanup, Martin Luther King Drive. For more information, call (314) 385-6499.

Sun., Jan. 19, 2 p.m., Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Sunday Supper – Salute to Veterans and Military Families, Omega Center, 3900 Goodfellow. For more information, call (314) 5184438.

Sun., Jan. 19, 3 p.m., New Perfect Peace Missionary Baptist Church Annual Youth Awareness Program, 2801 Arlington Ave.

Sun., Jan. 19, 3:33 p.m., The Connection United Methodist Church presents a Service of Remembrance and Commitment, 6701 Virginia Ave. For more information, call (314) 256-0545 or e-mail Tish@connectingnow.org.

Sun., Jan. 19, 4:30 p.m., Local 19th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Celebration to be held Sunday, January 19. This celebration is for the five communities that comprise the Webster Groves School District. The event will begin with a march from Webster Groves City Hall to Steger Sixth Grade Center in Rock Hill, to be followed by a community celebration – which will include a dinner reception and worship service.

Marchers will assemble at 4:30 p.m. at the steps of Webster Groves City Hall, 4 E. Lockwood Ave., and walk to Steger Sixth Grade Center at 701 N. Rock Hill Road. The dinner reception will begin at 5:00 p.m., followed by a community worship service at 5:45 p.m. in Steger Auditorium.

Christi Griffin, J.D., Founder and President of The Ethics Project, will be the keynote

speaker. Ms. Griffin is a graduate of Webster College (now University) and St. Louis University. Special music will be presented by the Praise Band of Riverside Community Church and a Combined Webster Choir directed by Lamar Fitzgerald and Dan Yokley. Essay Contest winners as well as recipients of the Martin Luther King Scholarship Awards in honor of Ras Jones will be recognized. The Alliance for Interracial Dignity will also make a special presentation.

Sun., Jan. 19, 7 p.m., 12th

Annual Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Hazelwood Civic Center East, 8969 Dunn Rd. For more information, call (314) 731-0980.

Mon., Jan. 20, 9 a.m., Let Freedom Ring, Christ Church Cathedral, 13th and Locust. For more information, call (314) 348-6453.

Mon., Jan. 20, 9 a.m., HSSU MLK Day Of Service, Boys and Girls Club of Greater St. Louis, 2901 N. Grand. For more information, call (314) 340-5300.

Mon., Jan. 20, 9:45 a.m., Civic Ceremony, March of Celebration and Interfaith Service, Old Courthouse, 4th and Market. For more information, call (314) 4844027.

Mon., Jan. 20, 10 a.m., Blanche M. Touhill

Performing Arts Center hosts Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Observance 2014 featuring a keynote address by Wes Moore, A program for children ages 5 to 11, hosted by the University’s College of Education, also will run concurrently in the lobby. 8001 Natural Bridge Rd., 63121. For more information, visit www. touhill.org.

Mon., Jan. 20, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. St. Louis Metropolitan Area Chapters and Veterans for Peace present MLK, JR. Day of Service Program 2014. Foundations of Money Management at 12:30 p.m., register at www. mlkjrmoneymgmt.eventbrite. com. MLK, Jr. Day of Service Program with keynote speaker Reverend Starsky D. Wilson of St. Johns United Church of Christ. Centenary Church, 1610 Olive St., 63103. For more information, email event@akaomicroneatomega.org.

Mon., Jan. 20, 10 a.m., Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. St. Louis Metropolitan Area Chapters and Veterans for

Peace present MLK, JR. Coat and Blanket Drive 2014 To benefit Armed Services Veterans Living Without a Home of Their Own at “The Bridge.” Jennings Junior High, 8831 Cozens Ave., 63136. For more information, contact eyl. omicronetaomega@gmail.com.

Mon., Jan. 20, 10 a.m., Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. St. Louis Metropolitan Area Chapters and Veterans for Peace present MLK, JR. Coat and Blanket Drive 2014. To benefit Armed Services Veterans Living Without a Home of Their Own. Centenary Church, 1610 Olive St., 63103. For more information, call (636) 256-0848 or (314) 4580921.

Mon., Jan. 20, 4 p.m., Washington University School of Medicine Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Lecture featuring NPR “Tell Me More” host Michel Martin, Eric P. Newman Center, 320 S. Euclid. For more information, call (314) 362-6854.

Mon., Jan. 20, 7 p.m., Washington University’s 27th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration, Graham Chapel, Danforth Campus, 1 Brookings Drive. For more information, call (314) 935-5059 or e-mail: rudolphc@wustl.edu.

Thurs., Jan. 23, 4 p.m. Black History Storytelling Quilt, St. Louis Library Mid-County Branch, 7821 Maryland Ave. For more information, call (314) 994-3300.

continueD on B9

Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center hosts Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Observance 2014 featuring keynote speaker Wes Moore.

A speech that changed the nation, touched the world

Dr. Martin Luther, King, Jr., delivered his most famous speech on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury

of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. And as we

walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to

Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are

presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

WORLD WIDE TECHNOLOGY, INC.

We honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and pay tribute to the accomplishments of African-American leaders past and present.

World Wide Technology, Inc. understands that a critical component of our success is our ability to leverage diversity and our core values—that is the strength of our people and why we celebrate Black History Month year round.

“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.”

Edward Jones honors Dr. King’s memory and achievements. – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Sat., Jan. 25, 2 p.m., Remembering Martin Luther King Jr., St. Louis County Library – Bridgeton Trails Branch, 3455 McKelvey Rd. For more information, call (314) 994-3300.

Sat., Jan. 25, 3 p.m., Afro World Black History Gospel Fest/Award Celebration featuring Tony Metcalf, Vance Watt and Jean Vann, Afro World, 7276 Natural Bridge. For more information, call (314) 389-5194.

Sat., Jan. 25, 4 p.m., OBS/ YCPD 34th Anniversary Celebration, Gateway Classic Sports Foundation, 2012 Dr. Martin Luther King Dr. For more information, call (314) 368-5086.

Sun., Jan. 26, 3 p.m., St. Alphonsus Ligouri (Rock) Catholic Church Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Essay Contest Awards and Church Celebration, 1118 N. Grand. For more information, call (314) 382-9545,

Through Sun., Jan. 26, The Black Rep presents The Meeting, Harris-Stowe State University’s Emerson Performance Center, 3101 Laclede. For more information, call (314) 534-3810 or visit www.theblackrep.org.

Thurs., Jan. 30, Annie Malone Children and Family Services Center Day of Community Service. For more information (314) 340-5042.

January 31 – February 7, Rethinking Black History Through Art with Ron Young, St. Louis Public Library – Julia Davis Branch,

4415 Natural Bridge. For more information, call (314) 5390343.

February 1, Deadline for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Opportunity, Saint Louis University. Act of 23 or higher and GPA of 3.5 required. Total award of $13,000. For more information, visit www.slu.edu/x5175.xml.

Sat., Feb. 1, 10:30 a.m., Black History Bingo, St. Louis Public Library – Barr Branch, 1701 S. Jefferson. For more information, (314) 539-0343.

Sat., Feb. 1, 1 p.m., Drawn To Civil Rights: Learn to Draw, St. Louis Public Library – Walnut Park Branch, 5760 W. Florissant. For more information, call (314) 5390343.

Tuesdays in February, 6:30 p.m., Black History Month Film Series, St. Louis County Library – Mid County Branch, 7821 Maryland Ave. For more information, call (314) 9943300.

Feb. 15 – Feb 28, Gitana Productions’ Global Education through the Arts program will present “Living the Dream: 50 Years and Beyond.” The 45-minute music, drama and dance performance promoting nonviolence and acceptance are scheduled throughout the region during February, Black History Month, to celebrate the messages of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. For more full schedule, locations and more information, visit www. gitana-inc.org or call Gitana Productions at (314) 721-6556.

Sat., Feb. 1, 3 p.m., Dr. Eugene Redmond, Poet Laureate of East St. Louis, Afro World, 7276 Natural Bridge Rd. For more info, call

(314) 389-5194. Feb. 1 – Feb. 28, Black History Month: African American Inventors, St. Louis County Library – Rock Road Branch, 10267 St. Charles Rock Rd. For more information, call (314) 9943300.

Feb. 1 – Feb. 28, African Chairs Exhibit, St. Louis County Library – Rock Road Branch, 10267 St. Charles Rock Rd. For more information, call (314) 9943300.

Feb. 2 – Feb. 25, 6:30 p.m., Created Equal Film Series, St. Louis Public Library –Central Branch, 1301 Olive. For more information, call (314) 539-0315.

Feb. 3 – Feb. 28, Urban Landscape Art: The Birth of the Movement in the Inner Cities featuring Yemane Hughes, St. Louis Public Library – Divoll Branch, 4234 N. Grand. For more information, call (314) 5390315.

Feb. 3 – Feb. 28, Collaborate Black History Art Display featuring Zuka Arts Guild, St. Louis Public Library –Cabanne Branch, 1106 N. Union. For more information, call (314) 539-0315.

Feb. 3 – Feb. 28, Afrika Identity Lost and Found Art Exhibit featuring Kiarra Lynn Smith, St. Louis Public Library – Schlafly Branch, 225 N. Euclid. For more information, call (314) 5390315.

Feb. 3, 10:30 a.m., Freedom

Mural, St. Louis Public Library – Kingshighway Branch, 2260 S. Vandeventer. For more information, call (314) 539-0315.

By Melanie Adams

Hip-hop, black males and schools

History Museum remixes education

The Missouri History Museum is happy to continue its series Remixing Education. This innovative series, a partnership with the Rockwood and Parkway school districts, invites scholars to have discussions with educators and community members on how to provide the best education for students.

This month’s program, “Hip-Hop Culture’s OGs: A Narrative Inquiry into the Intersection of Hip-Hop Culture, Black Males, and Their Schooling Experiences,” on Thursday, January 16 at 7 p.m., features Dr. Ian Buchannan. I had an opportunity to ask Dr. Buchannan a few questions about this upcoming lecture and its relevance to today’s students.

First, tell us a little about your background.

Ian Buchannan: I’m a proud product of E. St. Louis School District 189. While I was academically unprepared for college, my teachers gave me the confidence to believe I could run through a brick wall. I went off to Mizzou to pursue an industrial engineering degree.

While I did finish the degree in the early ‘90s, during my tenure there, I caught the teaching bug when given the opportunity to serve as a tutor at a local middle school.

Two smart, underperforming black boys caught my attention, and I developed a strong mentoring relationship with them. I decided then to commit my life to education. I have seen too many of my friends and former students fall by the wayside, and it is my obligation to stand in the gap.

Ian Buchannan will speak at the Missouri History Museum on “Hip-Hop Culture’s OGs: A Narrative Inquiry into the Intersection of Hip-Hop Culture, Black Males and Their Schooling Experiences” on Thursday, January 16 at 7 p.m.

data suggest just the opposite. Teachers’ expression of humanity and care is something that resonated with a lot of my research participants.

What can teachers/parents do to help support black males in school?

I completed as Master of Education degree in 1995 and immediately began teaching mathematics at McCluer High School. From there, I went on the serve as a school leader for 11 years. I now work for Teach For America.

I’m also happily married and the father of a 21-year-old Alabama A&M graduate.

What two or three things would surprise us to be the experience of black males in schools?

Ian Buchannan: I’m not sure if these things would surprise us, but I discovered a few interesting things in my research.

As a point of information, my research participants were all black males who went to schools in either low income or working class communities in the Midwest. All were college graduates, and 75 percent of the participants had advanced degrees. Almost all of them suggested that they were woefully underprepared for the academic rigor of college.

Interestingly though, they could point to teachers who gave them the confidence to believe in themselves and persist -despite challenges. It tells us that we need to consciously and purposefully build resilience and grit in our students – along with academic skills, of course.

Also, several of the research participants talked about the importance of teachers who pushed them beyond their respective comfort levels. In fact, some of the great teachers were sometimes downright aggressively confrontational with the young men. One participant, who is now a practicing attorney, even talked about how a college professor nearly brought him to tears (but inspired him at the same time) with his personal challenges.

Also, I think we assume that black men are looking for tough, rugged teachers. My

Ian Buchannan: First, there is no magic bullet. If one existed, we wouldn’t be where we are. Teachers must challenge, affirm, and allow boys to express creativity. At the same time, because boys tend to be rather active, we must change the “sit and get” model of teaching if we want our boys to be successful.

In addition, we should provide males with opportunities to makes sense of the world outside of their respective classrooms. Most importantly, we need to make sure our boys are literate. This is something that both parents and teachers can do. If they can’t read, they are likely headed to a low income job, incarceration, or premature death.

Hip-Hop Culture’s OGs: A Narrative Inquiry into the Intersection of HipHop Culture, Black Males, and Their Schooling Experiences

Thursday, January 16, 2014

FREE • 7:00pm AT&T Multipurpose Room

Utilizing a critical race lens, Dr. Ian Buchanan explores the ways that black males’ engagement with hip-hop culture might inform the outcomes of liberatory education.

I May Not Get There With You: A Multimedia MLK Commemoration

Sunday, January 19, 2014

FREE • 6:00pm

Focusing on the speeches delivered in the last year of Martin Luther King Jr’s life, I May Not Get There With You explores key moments through poetry, imagery, and sound.

Wes Moore, Author, Army Veteran and Rhodes Scholar

Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church Men’s Chorus

Jasmine Huda, KMOV-TV

Art Museum Celebrates

Dr. King’s Birthday This Saturday

The Saint Louis Art Museum will celebrate its annual Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Celebration this Saturday, January 18 at 8:30 am in The Farrell Auditorium. This free family-friendly sunrise program will commemorate Dr. King’s dreams for educational, economic, and social equality through a showcase of some of St. Louis’ finest visual, performing, and musical artists.

The Art Museum will open its doors at 7:30 am with a complimentary pre-program reception. The program will begin promptly at 8:30 am with a tribute to Dr. King by visual and performing artist Tony Artz. Wayne C. Harvey, attorney and member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., Epsilon Lambda Chapter, will examine today’s social issues, successes, and challenges in the context of Dr. King’s dreams in his keynote address titled: “Where do we go from here?” The Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity led the campaign to build the King National Memorial in Washington D.C. on the grounds of the National Mall between the Lincoln and Washington monuments. This effort was headed by President and CEO Harry E. Johnson, Sr. also an attorney and former president of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the same fraternity as Dr. King.

Glorious sounds of interfaith gospel and spiritual music will be performed by two of St. Louis outstanding choirs.

Just Friends, under the musical direction of Harry Moppins, includes members from the Saint Louis Symphony In Unison Chorus, Agape Seventh Day Adventist Church, Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church, Antioch Baptist Church,

Jamison Memorial CME Church, St. Michael & St. George Episcopal Church, and other churches.

The award winning New Sunny Mount Missionary Baptist Church Chancel Choir under the direction of musical minister Anita WatkinsStevens will also take to the stage. In 2008 The Chancel Choir received the first place

award in the “Verizon Wireless How Sweet The Sound” Choir Competition (2008 & 2010) and was named “The Best Church Choir” in the St. Louis/ Kansas City Region. We look to our youth to keep the hopes and dreams of Dr. King alive. We are pleased to welcome back by popular demand Young Artists for Peace and Justice who will perform an excerpt from their new show, “We Carry the Dream” – a 40 Corners production. 40 Corners is the brainchild of Artistic Director, Marsha Cann, who was inspired by the life and work of Jim McGinnis (who passed away in 2009) and his organization, The Institute for Peace & Justice (IPJ)

The Dr. King Freedom Celebration at the Saint Louis Art Museum is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and tickets are required. Same-day and advance FREE tickets are available at the Museum Information Centers during regular Art Museum hours. Advance tickets are also available through Metrotix. The program tickets are FREE, but tickets acquired through Metrotix will incur a Metrotix service fee. For additional ticket information, please call 314.655.5444

UMSL celebrates MLK

Author Wes Moore to speak Jan. 20 at the Touhill

American staff

One Wes Moore is a best-selling author, Rhodes scholar, decorated combat veteran and now a TV host. Another Wes Moore is a convicted felon in prison for killing a police officer.

Westley Moore, author of The Other Wes Moore – the story of two young men with the same name growing up in the same neighborhood at the same time with two very different outcomes – will bring his message to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday observance at the University of Missouri–St. Louis on Monday, Jan. 20. The event, “Is Dr. King’s Voice Still Speaking Today?”, will begin at 10 a.m. at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center on UMSL’s North Campus. In addition to the speaker, the event includes music and dramatic presentations. It is free and open to the public. Born in Baltimore in 1978, Westley Moore and his two sisters were raised by their widowed mother. There were tough times for the family, and Moore had academic and behavior problems in school. His mother sent

him off to military school, and he ran away five times before his life turned around. He graduated with honors from the military school and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

As Moore left in 2000 to study in London on a Rhodes scholarship, Baltimore media bristled with a story of another Wes Moore. Wesley John Moore had been arrested for killing a police officer and faced life in prison. Haunted by the fate of this man he didn’t know and their parallel lives, Moore later wrote and visited him in prison. He met with the other Moore family to learn more about him. Moore’s website recalls what he learned from those visits.

“The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine, and the tragedy is that my story could have been his,” he says. Moore travels the country addressing the issues he raises in his book and speaking about opportunity, faith and our priorities as a society. A portion of the proceeds of Moore’s book goes to US Dream Academy and City Year Also appearing at UMSL’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s event will be the Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church Men’s Chorus. Actors will perform a scene from the play “Mountaintop,” directed by Jacqueline Thompson, and UMSL students Aleshia Patterson and Gustavo Perez Diaz will perform “A Letter to Dr. King.”

Wes Moore

Gospel great graces MLK event

Heart association hosts Power to End Stroke Health Fair & Luncheon

Jan. 18

American staff

The American Heart Association will host the Power to End Stroke Health Fair & Luncheon honoring the memory and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday, January 18 at Sheraton St. Louis City Center Hotel & Suites, 13th floor, 400 S. 14th St.

The goal of this event, according to organizers, is to increase awareness of the risk factors and warning signs of stroke in the AfricanAmerican community. “The issue we are addressing is the lack of knowledge and care for the under- and uninsured population of the AfricanAmerican community,” organizers stated.

This event also highlights one of the American Heart Association’s newest initiatives, Check. Change. Control. Check. Change. Control focuses on increasing physical activity, healthier eating, and better management of high blood pressure through education, tracking and coaching individuals to control their blood pressure.

A Health Fair will be held 8-11 a.m., offering important health information and free health screenings. A Luncheon

Program will be held 11:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m., with CPR

Essence last year. “I grew up in the church and started

n “Sometimes you have to go where people are to show them the love of Jesus.”

– Lady Tramaine Hawkins

training and musical guest Lady Tramaine Hawkins. “I’ve been in the business now for more than 45 years and am very proud to be a gospel artist,” Hawkins told

singing when I was four years old. I recorded my first album with The Heavenly Tones at 12. We were produced by the late, great Reverend James Cleveland. I’ve always

Lady Tramaine Hawkins will perform at the American Heart Association’s Power to End Stroke Health Fair & Luncheon honoring the memory and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on January 18 at Sheraton St. Louis City Center Hotel & Suites.

believed I was born to sing and have a calling on my life to sing gospel music.”

Regarding singing gospel outside the confines of church, she said, “Sometimes you have to go where people are to show them the love of Jesus.”

Among many career honors, she was requested in 2005 to sing at the funeral service of civil rights activist Rosa Parks Hawkins was also part of the Rosa Parks tribute recording “Something Inside So Strong” from A Celebration Of Quiet Strength featuring other gospel artists such as Vanessa Bell Armstrong and Daryl Coley

Power To End Stroke is an education and awareness campaign that embraces and celebrates the culture, energy, creativity and lifestyles of African Americans. It unites African Americans to make an impact on the high incidence of stroke within their communities.

Stroke is the third leading cause of death and a leading cause of severe, long-term disability in the United States and more than 100,000 African Americans have a new or recurrent stroke every year. African Americans are at higher risk for stroke compared to other ethnic groups. Compared to whites, blacks have almost twice the risk of first ever stroke.

To learn more or to get involved, call 1-800-AHA-

MLK meets Malcolm (onstage)

Black Rep production of ‘The Meeting’ continues through Jan. 26

American staff

“The Meeting,” a play dramatizing a fictional meeting between Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, opened at The Black Rep on Friday, January 8 and will run through January 26 at The Black Rep’s new location at the Emerson Performance Center at Harris-Stowe State University.

“This play manages to give a balanced perspective,” said actor/director/filmmaker/actor Ka’ramuu Kush told Kenya Vaughn of The American “My hope is that anyone who sees it at the very least says, ‘Wow, I thought Malcolm was all this way, but he’s not – or I thought Martin was all this way, but he’s not.’”

Kush is playing Malcolm X in Jeff Stetson’s play, which is centered around a fictional conversation between Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the eve of Malcolm X’s assassination in February 1965. Directed by Ron Himes, the production also stars Matthew Galbreath as Dr. King. Kush, a native of Detroit, and has made frequent appearances at The Black Rep. was last seen at The Black Rep in the title role in Shakespeare’s “Pericles,” and as Elijah McCoy in Andrew Moodie’s “The Real McCoy.” Current work includes “Die Enormous,” an action drama feature film inspired

by Assata Shakur featuring Omari Hardwick; “Suite,” a three-part feature film on the lives, loves and music of John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis; and “Solomon,” a cable TV pilot in development with John Singleton.

Galbreath is a native of Jefferson City, Missouri. He has spent the last five years working regionally with New Stage Theatre in Jackson, Mississippi, and he graduated from Jackson State University in 2011. This will be his fifth production with The Black Rep. Most recently he appeared in “Black Nativity: A Holiday Celebration.” Last season he was featured as Chance in “Smash/Hit!” He was also seen as Nick Bottom

in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“Seeing these two titans engage and sharing their thoughts and concepts is really powerful,” Kush told The American. “I don’t think you can walk away from this play and say this one was all right and that one was all wrong. You see that they were in fact mirror images of each other in a lot of ways.”

Kush shared with The American rare footage of Dr. King he stumbled upon during his research for “The Meeting.” It was filmed just days before his assassination as he prepared for the Poor People’s Campaign to march on Washington, D.C.

“When we go to Washington, we are coming to

get our check,” King said in the clip.

“He sounded like Malcolm on that clip, didn’t he?” Kush said. He added, “Malcolm also evolved into embracing whites and realizing that it wasn’t so much about color as it was about a mentality. I think they both really start to resemble each other towards the end of their lives.”

The Black Rep’s presentation of “The Meeting” continues through January 26 at Harris-Stowe State University’s Emerson Performance Center. For tickets or more information, call 314-534-3807 or visit www.theblackrep.org.

Save your sight for MLK Day

Free glaucoma screenings at holiday health fair

American staff

January is National Glaucoma Awareness Month, an important reminder for at-risk adults to visit an eye doctor for a full, dilated exam.

Saving Sight is celebrating by offering free healthy vision screenings for glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration to help identify people at high risk, including an event in St. Louis on Saturday, January 18 that is free and open to the public.

The Healthy Vision Screening will be held at the American Heart Association’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Health Fair and Luncheon at Sheraton City Center, 400 S. 14th St. Glaucoma screenings will be available from 8-11 a.m. Pre-registration for the event is required.

The event is intended to increase awareness of risk factors and warning signs in the African-American community.

According to the National Eye Institute, African Americans over the age of 40 are at higher risk for glaucoma. Using a non-contact tonometer, a Saving Sight technician will screen adults at the health fair for elevated eye pressure, and people who receive a high-pressure reading will be urged to visit an eye doctor for a vision exam and any necessary treatment to prevent vision loss.

According to the Glaucoma Research Foundation, glaucoma is the leading cause of preventable blindness, accounting for 9-12 percent of all cases of blindness. Glaucoma causes vision loss when elevated eye pressure damages the optic nerve. In most cases, this vision loss is gradual and painless, often making the disease undetectable, which is why it is also known as the “sneak thief of sight.”

For this reason, screenings and regular eye exams are useful in identifying glaucoma so vision loss can be prevented.

Saving Sight is a 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization with a mission to change lives by saving sight. Founded in Columbia, Mo. in 1960, the organization introduced eye donation and the gift of sight to Missouri. Today, Saving Sight operates vision health programs that serve nearly 50,000 people worldwide each year, and its offices are located in Missouri, Kansas, and central Illinois. For more information about the screening, please contact pr@saving-sight.org or Tamara Oberbeck, vision screening program manager, directly at 1-800-753-2265 x8518. For more information about the organization, please visit saving-sight.org.

January 18

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

The St. Louis Public Library salutes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Baden Branch | 8448 Church Rd.

1-3 p.m.

Fourth Annual Rhythm & Rhyme: A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Rhyme Man” Stanley Pitchford and guests recite poetry and read their works. Baby Ra performs a musical tribute. Ages 12 & up/Families

January 27

Schlafly Branch | 225 N. Euclid Ave.

6-8 p.m.

Monday Movie Madness (The Fight for Civil Rights: Yesterday & Today): Sisters of Selma—Bearing Witness for Change.

Sr. Antona Ebo recounts her journey with Catholic nuns from across the country in answer to Dr. King’s call to join protests in Selma, Alabama. (60 min.)

SAVE THE DATE: February 9, 2014

Black History Month Keynote Address by Wil Haygood

Central Library | 2 p.m.

The Library is proud to present a keynote address by Wil Haygood, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Butler.

Matthew Galbreath plays Dr. King and Ka’ramuu Kush plays Malcolm X in the Black Rep’s current production of Jeff Stetson’s play “The Meeting.”

MLK spoke here

Finding traces of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in St. Louis

By Michael R. Allen

For The St. Louis American

Our city’s enduring legacy to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. consists of the renamed Veterans Memorial Bridge (built 1951, renamed 1968) and the several miles of combined Franklin and Easton avenues (renamed in 1968).

The bridge is ever-functional and well-maintained, but the street honoring America’s greatest twentieth century political leader generally is a poor testament to the man. No matter how many miles of fresh concrete sidewalks and pink granitoid old-fashioned street lights go up on Martin Luther King Drive, the street’s condition generally is depressing, and most of its miles lack even basic beautification measures like street trees.

Of course, that street named for the slave-owning founding father Thomas Jefferson is not much better off in many stretches.

A better setting for honoring Dr. King is in the pleasant, tree-covered ellipse of Fountain Park. The placement even enshrines the changes in housing equality wrought in St. Louis’ west end neighborhoods in King’s lifetime. Fountain Park was the centerpiece of Aubert Place, laid out in 1857 and developed as a middle-class streetcar suburb on the edge of the elite Central West End. The neighborhood was segregated through the real estate practice of restrictive covenants, until the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Shelley v. Kramer in 1948 – a case that originated in St. Louis not far away at 4600 Cote Brilliante Ave.

An earlier case of fighting

deed restrictions dates back to 1943 at nearby Lewis Place, where African-American dentist Dr. Richard Layne successfully purchased a house on the restricted private place. With housing restrictions dropped, Fountain Park and surrounding areas transitioned from white to largely AfricanAmerican. African-American homeowners finally enjoyed the freedom to live where they wished to live in the city, and the spacious middle-class houses of Fountain Park were desirable dwellings. On May 7, 1978, Mayor James Conway and other leaders unveiled an 11-foot bronze statue of Dr. King designed by Rudolph Torrini, who was on the faculty of Fontbonne University. Torrini had the bronze statue cast in Florence, Italy, and the casting is very fine work. King’s pose in the statue is heroic, with the subject’s right arm upstretched and his face expressing concentrated equanimity. Visiting the statue today, one will see a neighborhood whose future again is transitory.

Yet perhaps the best way St. Louis remembers Dr. King is through the preservation of those places where King spoke to audiences in St. Louis during his lifetime – places that actually were part of his life. King made several documented speeches in St. Louis between 1960 and 1963, and all of the buildings in which he spoke still stand.

First, there is Washington Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church, at the southwest corner of Washington and Compton avenues, which is one of the city’s designated City Landmarks. King spoke at the church on May 28, 1963 to a large crowd; this was one of

350 speeches he made that year around the nation.

This event took place on King’s tour leading up to the celebrated March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, during which King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963. Washington Tabernacle, which is still going strong, purchased the massive limestone Gothic Revival church in 1926. The Washington and Compton Avenue Presbyterian Church built the building between 1876 and 1879 from plans by Charles K. Ramsey.

Then, there are the several locations to which St. Louis’ Jewish community invited Dr. King to speak. Not long after King’s famous speech in Washington, he returned to St. Louis to speak at Temple Israel on September 20, 1963. Speaking to over 3,000 people on the Shabbat between Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, Dr.

King spoke about the type of selfless love known in Christian theology as agape.

King’s appearance came early in the life of the modernist synagogue, which had been completed in the previous year. Hellmuth Obata & Kassabaum designed the building, whose horizontal buff-brick box presents a sober base for an exotic tower sculpture by Robert Cronbach. Inside, the main sanctuary and auditorium are hexagonal with recessing walls that can draw the spaces together. The spaces had to be connected to accommodate the crowd gathered for Martin Luther King.

King’s Temple Israel appearance is not as wellknown as his earlier speech at United Hebrew Congregation at 225 S. Skinker Blvd. in the city (now the serene home of the Missouri Historical Society Library and Collection Center).

With support from Jewish Community Center (JCC)

President Isadore E. Millstone, then-JCC Executive Director

Bill Kahn invited King to speak at the annual Liberal Forum held on November 27, 1960.

King’s work was gaining rapid national attention at the time. King chose his topic as “The Future of Integration,” drawing significant interest in the event. Rabbi Jerome Grellman of United Hebrew arranged to move the event, which attracted 2,500 people, to his spacious synagogue so that no one would be turned away.

Maritz & Young in collaboration with Washington University professor Gabriel Ferrand designed the domed, Byzantine-influenced temple on Skinker, which opened in 1928 and was used through 1989. At the time of completion, the impressive building was supposedly within the ranks of the nation’s three largest

synagogues. King’s words would have reached the azure ceiling in the dome, which is emblazoned with gold patterning and the Star of David. Underneath the dome King received a 15-minute standing ovation. King returned in March 1964 to deliver a sermon at Christ Church Cathedral downtown. The Gothic cathedral, originally designed by master church architect Leopold Eidlitz, opened in 1867. Yet the Eidlitz plan for a 1,000-seat sanctuary had been adopted in July 1859. Construction of Christ Church Cathedral had been disrupted by the civil rights strife of one century prior, the Civil War. The city’s moral quandary was embodied by the actions of its leading citizens, including founding Christ Church founding vestryman James Clemens, Jr., who had aided his relative Major William Harney when Harney fled St. Louis after beating a slave to death in 1834 (Harney returned to be acquitted). Within the walls of a the sacred space built amid the convoluted Civil War St. Louis, King offered the eternal truth: “We must learn to love together as brothers or perish as fools.”

Today, the buildings where King spoke still stand in service to ideals of peace and enlightenment. St. Louis is very fortunate to retain landmarks where Dr. Martin Luther King’s urgent and powerful words were heard by large audiences. King’s visits also took him into homes, offices, restaurants and other religious buildings. His hosts drove him across miles of city and county roads, where he saw for himself the condition of St. Louis during the nation’s civil rights struggle. Dr. King’s likeness presides over one city park, and his name resonates on street signs running nearly the whole length of the city. St. Louis has a ways to go toward honoring Dr. King’s dream, but we retain many landmarks that remind us of the necessity of doing so. Michael R. Allen is director and architectural historian for Preservation Research Office.

Rudolph Torrini’s bronze statue of Dr. King has stood in Fountain Park since 1978.

‘Ride Along’ creeps by

Kevin Hart and Ice Cube show up for different movies in cop comedy

By Kenya Vaughn Of The St. Louis American

In his first of three films to be released in 2013, Kevin Hart is working relentlessly to maintain his crown as the “it” black comedian for mainstream America. This weekend he’ll be doing so from the passenger’s seat with Ice Cube along for “Ride Along.” Hart plays Ben, a high school security guard recently accepted into the Police Academy who is seeking to earn the approval and blessing of his fiancée’s older brother James (Ice Cube), a seasoned Atlanta detective. James challenges Ben to a “ride along” to prove he’s up to the task of safeguarding Angela (Tika Sumpter) and worthy of her hand in marriage

– and what sets out to be just another day on the APD turns out to be anything but.

“Ride Along” is the traditional buddy cop movie – with the exception that Hart’s character Ben is not quite a cop.

The film doesn’t in any way attempt to recreate the wheel as they provide every familiar element of the standard police comedy –mismatched partners, a straight man, comic relief, a double cross and an accidental stumble upon “the big case.”

There is absolutely nothing fresh about the storyline – but thanks to Tim Story’s direction and the shameless antics of Hart, audiences are spared from absolute boredom. What he lacks in cleverness

and wit, Hart compensates with physical comedy, energy, timing and charisma. His role as Ben Barber in “Ride Along” is the perfect illustration – and makes him a standout among the urban comedian-

turned-actors in recent years.

As Hart playing Kevin Hart as Ben Barber, he takes full

Local designer among talent for newest fashion reality franchise

By Kenya Vaughn Of The St. Louis American

Design counselor/advisor Tim Gunn’s dry, pretentious tone and biting jabs have made him a household name in the fashion world and reality television thanks to the hit show “Project Runway.” And as he goes solo this Thursday on The Lifetime Network’s premiere of “Under the Gunn.” local designer Shan Keith will be tied to Gunn’s history as a contestant on the fashion design competition program that bears his name.

“At first I said, ‘I’m not going to do it’ – because I tried out for ‘Project Runway’ in the past,” Keith said. “But then I thought, ‘Let me see what happens.’”

After receiving an e-mail regarding another casting call, Keith presented his pieces to a panel of judges and made the cut.

“Project Runway” host Heidi Klum temporarily stepped away from the show to do “America’s Got Talent.” She and Gunn had made a pact that neither would do the show without the other. Gunn decided to take a stab at going solo with a spin-off, and Keith

See FASHION, C4

African travels include safari – and shopping

Local authors nominated for NAACP award

‘Curly’ Nikki and Ernessa T. Carter recognized for ‘Better than Good Hair’

By Kenya Vaughn Of The St.

Louis American

“I was actually back in St. Louis with my family when I got the news,” Nikki “Curly Nikki” Walton said. “I had absolutely no words – I stuttered trying to tell my husband what was going on.”

An e-mail popped through her phone saying that she was one of the nominees for the 45th Annual NAACP Image Awards.

“My mom and sister were there with me, and my husband was at his mother’s house – we’re both from St. Louis,” Walton said. “I called him. Then I called everybody else. It was absolutely unbelievable and amazing.”

Her book Better Than Good Hair - The Curly Girl Guide to Healthy Gorgeous Natural Hair! is in the running for Outstanding Debut Literary Work. The book was written with fellow St. Louis native Ernessa T. Carter.

“This whole journey has been amazing,” Carter said. “I don’t know if I will ever write a nonfiction book again with anyone other than Curly Nikki.”

They’ll join Welcome To Sweetie Pie’s (nominated for Outstanding Reality Television Series, which it won last year) in representing St. Louis when they head to L.A. next month for the awards program. The Image Awards will air live on TV One.

“I’m honored to be among those who are in my category and the other categories, but to be able

Nathan and Thelma Cook, Elinor Hancock and Clarence Williams enjoy themselves at the Mandela House in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Tim Story’s “Ride Along,” starring Kevin Hart and Ice Cube, opens in theatres nationwide on Friday, Jan. 17.

“Under the Gunn” featuring St. Louis designer Shan Keith debuts this Thursday at 8 p.m. on The Lifetime Network.

How to place a calendar listing

1. Email your listing to calendar@stlamerican. com OR

2. Visit the calendar section on stlamerican.com and place your listing

Calendar listings are free of charge, are edited for space and run on a space-available basis.

mlk day

Fri., Jan 17, 4 p.m., Throwing and Growing Foundation presents Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: Still Keeping The Dream Alive 50 Years Later, The Youth And Family Center, 818 Cass Ave. For more information, all (314) 650-1008 or visit www. throwingandgrowing.org.

Sat., Jan. 18, 8 a.m., Sheraton City Center hosts American Heart Association Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Health Fair & Luncheon. The goal of the event is to increase awareness of risk factors and warning signs in the African American community. Guests will be treated to a heart healthy lunch, free CPR training and heart related education. The event is free, but preregistration is required. 400 S 14th St., 63103. For more information, visit http://www. heart.org/stlouis.

Sat., Jan. 18, 7:30 a.m., St. Louis Art Museum presents MLK Sunrise Freedom Celebration: Where Do We Go From Here? Keynote address by Attorney Wayne Harvey. Visual art, music, and dance by Tony Artz. Theatrical excerpt by Young Artists for Peace and Justice. Interfaith gospel and spiritual music by Just Friends and New Sunny Mount Missionary Baptist Church Chancel Choir. This event is FREE. 1 Fine Arts Dr., 63110. For more information, call (314) 6555444.

Sun., Jan. 19, 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., Movie Documentary on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Afro World, 7276 Natural Bridge Rd. For more information, call (314) 3895194.

Sun., Jan. 19, 2 p.m. A Day On Not Off Community Cleanup, Martin Luther King Drive. For more information, call (314) 385-6499.

Sun., Jan. 19, 2 p.m., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Sunday Supper – Salute to Veterans and Military Families, Omega Center, 3900 Goodfellow. For more information, call (314) 5184438.

Sun., Jan. 19, 7 p.m., 12th Annual Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hazelwood Civic Center East, 8969 Dunn Rd. For more information, call (314) 7310980.

Mon., Jan. 20, 9 a.m., Let Freedom Ring, Christ Church Cathedral, 13th and Locust. For more information, call (314) 348-6453.

Mon., Jan. 20, 9 a.m., HSSU MLK Day Of Service, Boys and Girls Club of Greater St. Louis, 2901 N. Grand. For more information, call (314) 340-5300.

Mon., Jan. 20, 9:45 a.m., Civic Ceremony, March of Celebration and Interfaith Service, Old Courthouse, 4th and Market. For more information, call (314) 4844027.

Mon., Jan. 20, 10 a.m., Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center hosts Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Observance 2014 featuring a keynote address by Wes Moore, A program for children ages 5 to 11, hosted by the University’s College of Education, also will run concurrently in the lobby. 8001 Natural Bridge Rd., 63121. For more information, visit www. touhill.org.

Mon., Jan. 20, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. St. Louis Metropolitan Area Chapters and Veterans for Peace present MLK, JR. Day of Service Program 2014. Foundations of Money Management at 12:30 p.m., register at www. mlkjrmoneymgmt.eventbrite. com. MLK, Jr. Day of Service

Calendar

Program with keynote speaker Reverend Starsky D. Wilson of St. Johns United Church of Christ. Centenary Church, 1610 Olive St., 63103. For more information, email event@aka-omicroneatomega. org.

Mon., Jan. 20, 10 a.m., Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. St. Louis Metropolitan Area Chapters and Veterans for Peace present MLK, JR. Coat and Blanket Drive 2014 To benefit Armed Services Veterans Living Without a Home of Their Own at “The Bridge.” Jennings Junior High, 8831 Cozens Ave., 63136. For more information, contact eyl. omicronetaomega@gmail.com.

Mon., Jan. 20, 10 a.m., Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. St. Louis Metropolitan Area Chapters and Veterans for Peace present MLK, JR. Coat and Blanket Drive 2014. To benefit Armed Services Veterans Living Without a Home of Their Own. Centenary Church, 1610 Olive St., 63103. For more information, call (636) 2560848 or (314) 458-0921.

Mon., Jan. 20, 4 p.m., Washington University School of Medicine Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Lecture featuring NPR “Tell Me More” host Michel Martin, Eric P. Newman Center, 320 S. Euclid. For more information, call (314) 362-6854.

Mon., Jan. 20, 7 p.m., Washington University’s 27th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration, Graham Chapel, Danforth Campus, 1 Brookings Drive. For more information, call (314) 9355059 or e-mail: rudolphc@ wustl.edu.

Sat., Jan. 25, 2 p.m., Remembering Martin Luther King Jr., St. Louis County Library – Bridgeton Trails Branch, 3455 McKelvey Rd. For more information, call (314) 994-3300

concerts

Sat., Jan. 18, 8 p.m., Magic 100.3 presents Charlie Wilson. The event will be held at the Fox Theater. 527 N Grand Blvd., 63103. For more information, visit www. metrotix.com.

Fri., Jan. 17, 7:30 p.m., Jazz at the Bistro hosts Jahmal Nichols CD release party. 3536 Washington Ave., 63103. For more information, visit

www.metrotix.com.

Sat. Jan. 25, 5:30 p.m., The Fox Theater presents The Fresh Beat Band - Live in Concert. Children’s TV show with original pop songs produced for Nick Jr. The Fresh Beats are Shout, Twist, Marina, and Kiki, described as four best friends in a band who go to music school together and love to sing and dance. 527 N Grand Blvd., 63103. For more information, visit www. fabulousfox.com.

Fri., Jan. 31, 7:30 p.m., Jazz St. Louis presents Jazz at Lincoln Center Quartet. Featuring veteran JALC Orchestra musicians Vincent Gardner on trombone, Walter Blanding on tenor sax, Kenny Rampton on trumpet, and Herlin Riley on drums, this is sure to be one of the best swinging shows of the season. Jazz at the Bistro, 3536 Washington Ave., 63103. For more information, visit www. metrotix.com.

Friday, Feb. 14, 8 p.m., St. Louis Music Festival with Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly with Anthony Hamilton and Joe, Chaifetz Arena. For more information, visit www.ticketmaster.com.

Fri., Feb. 14, 7:30 p.m., Powell Symphony Hall presents Lift Every Voice: Black History Month Celebration. This annual concert celebrates AfricanAmerican cultures and traditions that have influenced the history of St. Louis, as well as cities around the world. 718 N. Grand Blvd., 63103. For more information, visit www. stlsymphony.org.

local gigs

Wed., Feb. 12, 7 p.m., Blueberry Hill presents J Boog. 6504 Delmar Blvd., 63101. For more information, visit www.blueberryhill.com.

Feb. 14 & 15, Jazz at the Bistro presents Valentine’s Day with Erin Bode. Bode consistently wins over audiences with her sweet personality and sincere performances, the perfect combination to celebrate this romantic holiday. 3536 Washington Blvd., 63103. For more information, visit www. grandcenter.org.

Saturdays, 3 p.m., The Kendrick Smith Quartet, Premier Lounge, 5969 Dr. Martin Luther King Drive. For more information, call

St. Louis Music Festival with Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly (left) with Anthony Hamilton and Joe. See CONCERTS for details.

(314)385-5281 or e-mail crusadersforjazz@hotmail. com.

Sundays, 6 p.m., Chuck Flowers Live, InSpot, 5854 Delmar. For more information, visit www.artistecard.com/ cflowers

Sundays, 6:30 p.m. (6 p.m. doors) Jazz @ Eventide, featuring Black and White Trio. Sip N Savor, 286 DeBaliviere, 1/2 block north of the Forest park Metro link. For more information, call (314)361-2116.

special events

Thurs., Jan. 16, 10:30 a.m., The Peabody Opera House presents Sesame Street Live. 1400 Market St., 63103. For more information, visit www. sesamestreetlive.com.

Thur., Jan. 16, 7 p.m., Lila: The Life of a Missouri Slave. Cultural preservationist Angela daSilva has given voice to Lila and brings her forward to tell her story and to give voice to slave women whom time and memory have forgotten. Maplewood Public Library, 7550 Lohmeyer Ave., 63143. For more information, call (314) 781-2174.

Fri., Jan. 17, 7:30 p.m., The Scottrade Center presents WWE Live. 1401 Clark Ave., 63103. For more information, visit www.scottradecenter.com.

Sat., Jan. 18, 10 a.m., Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater St. Louis presents Boys and Girls Club of Greater St. Louis 5K Resolution Run Fundraiser Event. Start your New Year off right, and keep to your New Year’s Resolution to be fit and healthy. Proceeds support programs that teach our kids healthy lifestyles. 7620 Forsyth Blvd., 63105. For more information, visit www.Onestoprace.com.

Sat., Jan. 18, 8 p.m., The Big Muddy Dance Company presents Happy 250th St. Louis: A Celebration through Dance. 6445 Forsyth Blvd. # 203, 63105. For more information, visit www. thebigmuddydanceco.org.

Sat. Jan. 19, 10 a.m., The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts presents History of a Culture: The Real Hip Hop. Celebrate the history of hip-hop with a day of break dancing & street art. Watch Mr. Freeze, from the legendary Rock Steady Crew & creator of the Ultimate B-boy Championship, emcee a break dancing battle with cash prizes for 1st & 2nd place. 3716

Washington Blvd., 63108. For more information, visit www. pulitzerarts.org.

Sun., Jan. 19, 6 p.m., Grand Renaissance Hotel hosts St. Louis Baseball Writers Dinner. Celebrate the amazing season that defined the 2013 World Series Cardinals as one of the all-time great clubs. Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the 1964 World Champion Cardinals by welcoming many of the star players from that legendary roster like Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Mike Shannon, Tim McCarver, Bob Uecker, Ray Sadecki, Ernie Broglio, Dick Groat and more. 800 Washington Ave. St Louis, MO 63150. For more information, visit www. lockerdome.com.

Sun., Jan. 19, 1:30 p.m., 101 ESPN presents 101ESPN Championship Bash. Join 101ESPN on-air talent, sports celebrities, and football fans at UMB Champions Club at Busch Stadium to watch the AFC-NFC Championship game in style while helping kids in foster care. Proceeds benefit Foster & Adoptive Care Coalition. 700 Clark Street, 63102. For more information, visit http://www. foster-adopt.org/for-donorsvolunteers/events/101-espnchampionship-bash/. Mon., Jan. 20, 6 p.m., Sidney Street Café presents 10 Years, 10 Chefs Anniversary Dinner. Ten of Sidney Street’s chef friends from near and far will join Kevin Nashan and his team in the kitchen for a very special dinner to mark this milestone; you won’t want to miss it. 2000 Sidney St., 63104. For more information, visit www.sidneystreetcafe. com.

Fri., Jan. 24, 11 a.m., The Hilton Ball Park Hotel hosts 2014 Missouri Lawyer Awards. Join us for networking, lunch and honoring lawyers, judges and law firms for their outstanding accomplishments throughout the year. Nearly 250 members of the legal community join us to recognize the year’s winningest trial and appellate lawyers, law firm innovators and more, capped off with a tribute to Missouri Lawyers Weekly’s Lawyer of the Year. 1 S. Broadway, 63102.

Fri., Jan. 24, 7 p.m., Chase Parks Plaza Hotel hosts The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis’ 12th Annual St. Louis Food & Wine Experience. 212 N. Kingshighway Blvd., 63108. For more information, visit www.repstl.org.

Sat., Jan. 25, 7 p.m., The St. Louis Underground Music Festival presents The 2014 SLUMFEST Hip Hop Awards. This award show spotlights the contribution to the St. Louis Hip Hop Community from Hip Hop Artists, DJ’s, Producers and B-Boys/ B-Girls throughout 2013. 3224 Locust St., 63103. For more information, visit www.slumfest.com.

Fri., Feb. 7, 8 p.m., Alive Magazine presents Buzz List Party 2014. Buzz List celebrates St. Louis’ most influential people, organizations and ideas of the year. This is your chance to meet, greet and party with the go-getters enriching the city. Lucas Park Grille, 1234 Washington Ave., 63103. For more information, visit www. eventbrite.com for tickets.

Sat., Feb. 8, 6 p.m., University of Missouri

Columbia Black Law Student’s Association hosts 28th Annual Lloyd L. Gaines Scholarship Banquet. This year’s keynote speaker will be Administrative Hearing Commissioner Mary E. Nelson. Additionally, MU BLSA will present two scholarships to exceptional law students. Stotler Lounge, Memorial Union, 518 Hitt St., Columbia, MO. 65201. For more information, call (205) 641-9987 or visit law.missouri. edu/blsa.

comedy

Sat., Feb. 1, 7 p.m., Lumiere Place presents Keenen Ivory Wayans. 999 N. Second St.

theatre

Thurs., Jan 23, 6 p.m., RockShow Academy host Auditions for Disney’s “Beauty & the Beast Jr.” Step into the enchanted world of Broadway’s modern classic, come prepared with 16 bars of a song and sheet music; accompanist provided. 8809 Gravois Rd., 63123. For more information, visit www. rockshowacademy.com.

Jan. 24 – 25, Ballet Memphis presents The Wizard of OZ. Touhill Performing Arts Center, One University Blvd., 63121. For more information, visit www.touhill.org.

Through Jan. 26, The Black Rep presents The Meeting, Harris-Stowe State University Emerson Performance Center. For more information, call (314) 534-3807 or visit www. theblackrep.org.

Jan. 30 – Feb. 9, The Black Rep presents For Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf. Missouri History Museum, 5700 Lindell Blvd., 63112. For more information, visit metrotix.com.

Feb., 6 – 8 at 8 p.m., and

Feb., 9 at 2 p.m., Mustard Seed Theater presents Gee’s Bend. The story of the Pettway women, quilters from the isolated community of Gee’s Bend Alabama. Beginning in 1939, the play follows Alice, her daughters Sadie and Nella, and Sadie’s husband, Macon, through segregation, family strife and the Civil Rights movement. 6800 Wydown Blvd., 63105. For more information, visit www. mustardseedtheatre.com.

Fri., Feb. 7, 8 p.m., The Fox Theater presents Mamma Mia. 527 N Grand Blvd., 63103. For more information, visit metrotix.com.

Feb., 14 – 16, Peabody Opera House presents Shen Yun. The words evoke a sense of wonder, magic, and the divine. Discover the glory of a fantastically rich culture, that of classical China, brought to life through brilliantly choreographed dance and mesmerizing, all-original orchestral compositions. 1400 Market St., 63103. For more information, visit www. shenyun.com.

Thurs., Feb. 20 – Fri., Feb. 21, The Gaslight Cabaret Festival featuring stage and screen veteran Ken Page, The Gaslight Theater 358 N. Boyle St. Louis MO 63108. For tickets, go to www.LicketyTix. com.

literary

Tues., Jan. 21, 6 p.m., St. Louis Public Library and Left Bank Books presents hosts Meet Local (Children’s) Authors. Susan Grigsby, Patricia McKissack, Bobby Norfolk, and Jeanie Franz Ransom will speak and sign books in the Juvenile Fiction Room. 1301 Olive St., 63103. For more information, visit www.left-bank.com or call 314.367.6731.

Mon., Feb. 3, 7 p.m., Greg Kot signs and discusses I’ll Take You There Greg Kot

presents the untold story of living legend Mavis Staples-lead singer of the Staples Singers. St. Louis County Library, 1640 S. Lindbergh, 63131. For more information, visit www.left-bank.com.

Thurs., Feb. 13, 7 p.m., Moses signs and discusses The Sittin’ Up When Mr. Bro. Wiley, Bean’s adopted grandfather and the last slave man around, dies in the summer of 1940, Bean and his very best friend Pole are some kind of hurt. Left Bank Books Downtown, 399 N Euclid Ave., 63105. For more information, visit www.leftbank.com.

arts

Fri., Jan. 24, 7 p.m., Grand Center hosts I Killed Kenny. Joyce Pensato: I Killed Kenny, the artist’s first museum survey, features monumental enamel paintings and a largescale painting rendered directly onto CAM’s gallery walls. 634 N. Grand Blvd., 63103. For more information, visit www. grandcenter.org.

Fri., Jan. 31, 6 p.m., Julia Davis Branch Library hosts Miles from Here. Ron Young

The Gaslight Cabaret Festival featuring stage and screen veteran Ken Page. See THEATRE for more information.

presents a series of paintings of legendary jazz trumpeter and East St. Louis native Miles Davis. Ron’s uses color in his compositions to express the emotional energy created in Miles‘ music. 4451 Natural Bridge Ave., 63115. For more information, visit www. fabulousartbymeronyoung. com.

Sun., Feb. 2, 11 a.m., The Contemporary Art Museum hosts Artist Talk: It is What it Is: Conversations About Iraq. The unique discussion brings together key participants in artist Jeremy Deller’s 2009 project about the war in Iraq. The discussion will reflect on how the active engagement of the audience in the experience of art can transform one’s understanding of the world. 3750 Washington Blvd., 63108. For more information, visit www.webster.edu.

lectures

Thurs., Jan. 23, 7 p.m., St. Louis County Library hosts a Candidate Reflection Session. Ever wonder what it takes to become a candidate for public office? Come and meet former candidates, learn about the

Libertarian Party, and learn the requirements for the different offices. 1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd., 63131-3598. For more information, visit http://lpmo. org/.

Sat., Jan. 25, 1 p.m., St. Luke’s Hospital’s Spirit of Women presents “Girl Talk,” A FREE event for moms and daughters ages 11 and older enjoy an inspiring and fun afternoon filled with health information, communication tips and self-esteem strategies. St. Luke’s Hospital - Institute for Health Education. For more information, call (314) 5424848 for more information.

Sat., Feb. 1, 10 a.m., Mary Institute Country Day School hosts Summer Opportunities Fair. Discover exciting programs for children ages 3-18. Over 150 day and overnight camp representatives from local, national and international camps, foreign study and travel, specialty camps, academic enrichment, and volunteer opportunities will be on hand. 101 N. Warson Rd., 63124. For more information, visit www. summeropportunitiesfair.org.

health

Sun., Feb. 2, 1:30 p.m., As part of its ongoing Parkinson Education there will be a panel presentation on Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson Disease. Topics for the panel discussion include: who is a candidate for DBS, what is DBS therapy and how does it work, what is involved in DBS surgery, and what can be expected after the stimulators are turned on. Congregation Shaare Emeth, 11645 Ladue Rd in Creve Coeur (63141). For more information, call 314-362-3299 or visit www.stlapda.org

St. Peter’s United Church of Christ in Ferguson is partnering with the Muslim Community of St. Louis physicians to provide free

basic healthcare to adults. The clinic is offered at the St. Peter’s UCC at no charge each Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on a walk-in basis Call 314-521-5694 for more information.

Monday – Thursday, 9 – 12 a.m. & 1 p.m. – 3 p.m., Free Confidential HIV Testing. Results are available in 20 minutes. No appointments necessary. Anyone testing positive will be linked with quality HIV medical care and there is assistance available for those who are uninsured. Washington University Infectious Disease Clinic, 4570 Childrens Place, 63110. For more information, call (314) 747-1237 or (314) 747-1237. Tuesdays, 6:30 p.m., Alcohol and Drug Information Meeting, a certified substance abuse counselor talks about the addiction of alcohol and drugs, warning signs and symptoms, treatment and recovery, how families are affected by addiction. Meetings are free and open to the public. Christian Hospital Building 2, Suite 401 (I-270/Hwy 367 interchange) For more information, call 314-839-3171 or 1-800-447-4301.

Sat., Feb. 15, 1 p.m., 100th Birthday Celebration for Ms. Sarah Jane Stafford lifelong member of The Mercy Seat Baptist Church, The Mercy Seat Baptist Church, 4424 Dr. James Brown, Sr. Dr., St. Louis, MO 63108.

Fri., Jan. 17, Ride Along starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart opens in theatres nationwide.

Fri., Feb. 14, About Last Night starring Kevin Hart, Regina Hall and Michael Ealy opens in theatres nationwide.

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The group headed next to Cape Town’s Waterfront district, a shopper’s delight filled with chic stores, great restaurants and grand malls.

The journey continued as they drove down the southern coast of Africa stopping at Hout Bay Harbor for more shopping. They described breathtaking views as they passed along the coastline. They stopped for lunch at Cape Point’s 2 Ocean’s Restaurant where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans cross. The group also explored the South African wine country. They took a boat ride to Robbin Island to see where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. Once in Johannesburg the group stopped at the Lessedi Cultural Village. There they learned about all of the native tribes with South African origins. They braved the wild on a land safari to see wild animals in their natural habitat. They marveled at buffalo, zebra, giraffes and gazelles. There were many more exciting memories for our St. Louisans on this trip. When you see them, definitely take the time to discuss.

The Honorable Joan K. Miller hosted a Chili Party last weekend to honor sister Jane Miller Brown, Esq.’s visit to her home town.

Jane’s old friends and family flocked to the lovely CWE home to welcome Janie and visit with old friends. Joan’s scrumptious menu included an open bar, four-alarm vegetarian and beef chili, chili con queso, spicy secret recipe salsa, chocolates, trifle and Miss Hulling’s original cakes.

A few of the guests enjoying the company and holiday music selections were Denise Dugas, Nina and Dave Chasnoff Liz Costello Jeff and Vivi Costello Wolf

Sheila Triplett, Beverly and

Ron Riddick, Don Thomas, Cheryl Whalen, Holiday décor design consultant Gregory B. Smith (Chicago, IL.), Mike White, D.D.S. (Baltimore, MD), Randy Randolph, M.D., Billy and Kathy Kuper Foster (The Big O Liqueur company founders) and Earnestine Benford (Los Angeles, CA.).

Bill and Kathy Foster are enjoying the success of their popular ginger liqueur, The Big O. Earnestine Benford is excited about the upcoming release of her book !Text Hugs! Daily Digital Inspiration for children, teens and young adults. For a glimpse of Earnestine’s vision on how to effectively communicate with the young people in your life, check out www.textahugtoday.com.

Mike Claiborne, Marnita Spight and Kymberly Smith Jackson, Esq. hosted their 8th Annual Happy New Year and Holiday Soiree at the Ritz-Carlton Lobby Bar and Lounge in Clayton a couple of weeks ago. A good time was had by all, especially St. Louisans home for the holidays.

A few of the mingling guests included Rita Kirkland (SLPL), Honorable Joan Miller Audrey Miller

M.D. (Columbia, SC.), Dave Calloway, Esq., Pam Jackson D.D.S. Dr. Charles Quigless, Paul Randolph, Esq. Bernard C. Randolph Jr., M.D., Kathy Smith , Judi Coleman, Keith Williamson,Esq. (Centene), Richard Banks, Esq. and Larrisa Steel, Sheila Banks Morgan McKenzie (Washington, DC.), Honorable Don McCullin Eric Banks, Esq. Jerry Hunter,Esq., Gabriel Gore, Esq. Ollie Dowell Janet Jackson Williams, Nancy Thompson, Susan and Wayman Smith,Esq. Gina Cheatham, Stacy Givens, Vern Fuller Hilliard Hicks Aaron Fields Vanita Davidson, Les Bond Jr., Don Calloway, Esq. John Shivers, Anisha Morrell and Kelley Powell Don’t miss “The Meeting,” the story of an imagined meeting of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at The Black Rep, being performed at the Emerson Performance Center at Harris Stowe State University through January 26. Please call the box office for your tickets at 314-534-3810.

Dana Grace: dgrandolph@ live.com.

FASHION

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was presented with the option of either waiting for the next season of “Project Runway” or being a part of the debut of “Under the Gunn.”

Keith opted to roll the dice with Gunn.

“I said I’ll just leave it in God’s hands and whatever he has for me is for me,” Keith said. “They called back and asked if I would do it and I said yes.”

He said the name fits the show.

“We are literally under the Gunn,” Keith said. “It’s intense and it’s a lot of pressure.”

Gunn himself has been anything but a disappointment.

“When I first met him I was a little intimidated, but once we really got to know each other I responded to everything he was saying,” Keith said. “Tim is an amazing person.”

He joins a handful of

to provide a platform for the readers – this is for us,” Walton said. “The nomination is for us and if we get the award, it will be for us.”

Better Than Good Hair uses expert advice, testimonials and style tutorials to take readers from the big chop to their happily-ever-after of flowing natural hair. The book is an extension of the CurlyNikki. com community that Walton established as she worked through her own natural hair woes and exploration nearly five years ago.

“CurlyNikki.com community became what it is because there is such a need – because I wasn’t the only one,” Walton

St. Louis natives who have showcased their design talents via reality television – Qristyl Frazier, Michael Drummond and Santino are just a few of the “Project Runway” alums.

“There is some amazing talent in St. Louis,” Keith said.

“It’s not a massive city, as far as being a fashion capital, but it has the potential to be. When we get the opportunity to be exposed, people are going to gravitate towards us.”

And Keith is beyond excited to be next on deck.

“It feels good to represent the city, and you just want to stick to your point of view and your own personal aesthetic,” Keith said. “There is some pressure, because not only do you have your family and your friends, but you have a city riding on your back.”

As for his family, his grandmother taught him to sew as a youngster. By his late teens he was dabbling in making his own pieces. He would later flourish into making men’s, children’s and women’s wear for all occasions (he considers

said. “We’ve come together for support and inspiration for one another, and the book is what has grown from it.”

Since its inception, the CurlyNikki.com community has grown to reach millions and touch 200 countries. Walton had just returned from meeting with her “Curlfriends” in Cape Town, South Africa when she received word of her nomination.

“I am grateful and thankful,” Walton said. “Writing the book with Ernessa T. Carter – being able to share the experience that I’ve had over the years in a way that was accessible to everyone – that in itself was dream come true for me.”

The teamwork that would ultimately birth Better Than Good Hair seemed as organic and natural as the hair style the book promotes. Carter, who is the author of the novels 32 Candles and The

jackets to be his specialty).

Keith became a staple on the St. Louis style scene with appearances in St. Louis Fashion Week as well as having his one-of-a-kind designs available at local boutiques.

“Being self-taught you don’t have as many doors open to you and the exposure isn’t there and you may not know which avenues to go down,” Keith said. “So you have to study twice as hard to figure out and learn what you need to do.” Now he has faith that the show will create a national platform for Shan Keith Designs – and motivate others.

“I hope that through ‘Under the Gunn’ I can be an inspiration for somebody who never thought they could do something,” Keith said – “whether it’s design or anything.”

“Under the Gunn” debuts this Thursday at 8 p.m. on The Lifetime Network. Check local listings and/or visit www. mylifetime.com.

Awesome Girl’s Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men is still beaming nearly two weeks after she was notified that her work with Walton garnered her first Image Award nomination.

“Every black artist dreams of being nominated for an NAACP award, so it’s really huge,” Carter said. “I was joking to my husband, saying, ‘I don’t have business cards, but I want to get them just so I can put ‘NAACP Image Award-Nominated’ on there.” For Walton, the nod is further confirmation that she took the right path in creating CurlyNikki.com community.

“It continues to be a passion of mine,” she said. “It was a hobby, and I wanted to help women – to provide inspiration, education, options and versatility with their hair. We’re putting natural hair on the map, and this nomination is just the latest – the latest and greatest.”

The 45th Annual NAACP Image Awards will air live on Saturday, February 22 at 8 p.m. Check local listings for channels.

Continued from C1

responsibility for entertaining the crowd in every scene – which is a good thing, because Ice Cube tends to play his character entirely too straight-laced.

Cube’s rigid portrayal of James is unconvincing, uncomfortable and boring as he barely cracks a smile. Cube and Hart appear to have showed up to two different movies. Hart is in the throes of a slapstick cop comedy, while Cube obviously believes he’s starring in a crime thriller.

Clearly an odd couple, in “Ride Along” the two don’t muster up the chemistry to make their pairing convincing – or funny – until the film is almost over.

When Laurence Fishburne enters the film, it becomes apparent that a more commanding cast could have made all of the difference. In his cameo, Fishburne leaves more of an impression than most of the cast – including Sumpter, John Leguizamo, Gary Owen and Bryan Callen. “Ride Along” offers scattered chuckles and a handful of seriously funny moments, but falls short when paired against the likes of its contemporaries in the funny cop movie subgenre. Casting choices and a clever spin on the screenplay could have meant otherwise. The film will be remembered (if at all) as a cute but formulaic comedy – and a stepping stone for Kevin Hart.

Ride Along” opens in theatres nationwide on Friday, Jan. 17. The film is rated PG-13 with a running time of 100 minutes.

Marnita Spight and Rita Kirkland at the Ritz-Carlton Lobby Bar

Birthdays

Beaumont High Class of 1964 has started planning for its 50 year class reunion. We are currently looking for participants to help with the planning. Please provide your contact information to: beaumont64alumni@gmail. com.Send your ideas as well as the best time for meetings.

Beaumont High Class of 1968 is invited to plan and organize the June 2014 46th Class Reunion Family Picnic, Jan. 25, 2014 3- 5 p.m. at Cookies n Popcorn Factory 8149 Delmar. For more information email bhsco1968@att.net or call 869-8312.

Beaumont High Class of 1969 reunion planning committee meeting is set for Sat, Jan. 25, 2014 from noon—3 pm at the Vagabond

~ Celebrations ~

Rashid Bivens, Jr.’s family would like to wish him a Happy 18th Birthday on January 16. Rashid has grown up to be a very handsome and charming young man. Rashid graduates from high school this year and will attend Tennessee State University pursuing a pharmacy degree. We love you Rocko!

Mrs. Carrie Lane celebrated her 104th birthday on January 12. She is a member of Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church. She loves babysitting, cooking and sewing. We love you! From, Your Family and Church Family

Happy Birthday to Mrs. Alma Cross-Adair who will be 95 years young on January 17. Happy Birthday Mother, Grandmother, Great-Grandmother, Great-GreatGrandmother, Aunt, and Friend to many!

House, 4315 Westminister Pl. Contact info: LaDonne at 314 277-5095 or beaumontclassof1969@yahoo. com.

Beaumont High Class of 1984 is looking for participants to begin planning its 30 year class reunion. Please provide your contact information to: beaumont_1984@yahoo.com.

Soldan Class of 1965 Presents Washington, DC: Our Nation’s Capital, June 19-24, 2014. For more information contact: Corinne Parker-Stukes 636-294-4373, Brenda Wallace-Yancey 314-830-1334, Isaiah Hair, Jr. 314-387-7592 or email: soldanclassof65@ gmail.com.

SumnerAlumni Association hosts its 11th Annual RoundUp of Sumner Alumni Sunday, February 23, 2014, 1 - 4 p.m. at Sumner High School. This year’s honorees are alumni that have served in any area associated with the Transportation Field. Also, we will honor alumni that have volunteered at Sumner on a regular basis from 2008-14. A Reception will be held in the gym from 12:45 - 1:45 p.m. with displays, souvenir items, photographer, and more. New and renewal of alumni memberships accepted

in the foyer. Program starts at 2 p.m. in the auditorium. For more info, contact P. Mason at 314.556.3944, J. Vanderford at 314.454.0029 or email: sumnersince1875@ yahoo.com. Vendors are welcome ($50 in advance); contact B. Louis at 314.385.9843.

Sumner High Class Of 1974 has started planning its 40th class reunion. Meetings are held each third Saturday of the month from 2-4 pm at New Beginnings Missionary Baptist Church, 4055 Edmundson Rd. 63134. Please contact Marsha D. Roberts-Moore at sumnerclassof1974@ yahoo.com, 314-367-3159 or Joyce Bush-Cruesoe at cruesoe2195@att.net, 314484-1552.

Sumner High Class of 1969 has started planning its 45th class reunion. Please email shsclassof69@yahoo.com for more information or call Leonard at 314-413-3104 or Meredith at 314-306-2349.

Sumner High Class of 1979 is looking for classmates to participate in activities leading up to its 35th Class Reunion, June 20-22, 2014 in Lake Ozarks, MO. Please forward contact information

to sumner1979@ymail.com or call Sara at 314-482-1558. Various activities are planned.

Sumner High School Class of 1984 have planned their 30th reunion weekend for August 22 - 24, 2014. For more information contact: Robin Allen 314 369-9549, or Priscilla (Ms. Prissy) Mason at 314 5563944.

St. Louis Community College has created a districtwide Alumni Association, and needs your help identifying the 1.5 million STLCC alumni. An alum is anyone who has completed at least one course at STLCC. Alumni are encouraged to visit the website: www.

Wishing Beverly (Bryant) (Wayne) Wilson a happy and blessed birthday on January 18 with one to grow on! Love, Your Family

stlcc.edu/foundation/, to become members or update information. For more information, contact Ashley Budde, coordinator of alumni relations, at abudde6@stlcc.edu, or 314539-5145.

Sumner High Class of 1964 Reunion Committee is looking for classmates we have lost contact with. Please call or email any changes to your name, address, telephone number, and/or email to Patricia Wells Sheltonat (314) 8392214 or patricia.shelton@ att.net or Carol Strawbridge at (314) 524-8504 or strawu@AOL.com.

Do you have a celebration you’re proud of? If so we would like to share your good news with our readers. Whether it’s a birth, graduation, wedding, engagement announcement, anniversary, retirement or birthday, send your photos and a brief announcement (50 words or less) to us and we may include it in our paper and website – AT NO COST – as space is available Photos will not be returned. Send your announcements to: kdaniel@stlamerican. com or mail to: St. Louis American Celebrations c/o Kate Daniel 4242 Lindell Ave St. Louis, MO 63108 FREE OF CHARGE

Reunion notices are free of charge and based on space availability. We prefer that notices be emailed to us! However, notices may also be sent by mail to:

Kate Daniel, 4242 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108. Deadline is 10 a.m. on Friday. If you’d like your class to be featured in a reunion profile, email or mail photos to us. Our email address is: reunions@ stlamerican.com

Happy “Sweet 16” to our daughter, Rachel Rodgers. On January 8, Rachel celebrated her special day with family and friends. Our Birthday wish for you is that all your hopes and dreams will come true.

Love Always, Mom & Dad and your family

Online gospel singing competition

Heart and stroke associations accepting submissions through March 2

American staff

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Most Powerful Voices gospel singing competition returns in search of dynamic gospel performers who will raise stroke awareness – particularly in the AfricanAmerican community – through the power of music.

The online competition is open to independent artists, groups and choirs who sing gospel, praise, worship and holy hip-hop. This is the fifth year of Most Powerful Voices and the fifth year the contest has been presented by UP. Participants can visit mostpowerfulvoices.org and upload a video or MP3 file of their performance between now and March 2. Voting is already underway so artists are encouraged to enter as soon as possible. Fans have until April 28 to vote for their favorite artist.

Public votes will determine the top 10 artists. Industry experts such as RCA Inspiration Artist Latice Crawford, A&R executives and a Roland Corporation musicality expert will review the top 10 and select the winner.

More than 100,000 African Americans will suffer a new or reoccurring stroke this year, which is why those who register to compete or vote will receive potentially lifesaving

emergency to help improve stroke outcomes.”

The winner will be announced May 23 and will receive:

• A performance opportunity at a 2015 Stellar Awards Weekend Showcase (travel and hotel provided by RCA Inspiration)

• $1,500 cash prize

• $3,500 of vocal performance equipment from Roland Corporation

• Personal coaching session with renowned RCA Inspiration Artist Deon Kipping

• A Digital Download of the Week from UP

• National recognition on UPtv. com.

Most Powerful Voices is an initiative of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Power To End Stroke cause campaign aimed at African-Americans, who are disproportionately affected by stroke. Power To End Stroke strives to close the stroke gap through culturally relevant events, tools and educational resources.

Contest participants must be 18 or older. For more information and to register, visit mostpowerfulvoices.org.

Bach at St. Paul’s

stroke information.

“Stroke is a leading cause of severe, long-term disability and death for all Americans, and African Americans are at increased risk due to higher prevalence of risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes and previous heart attack

and/or stroke,” said Dr. Rani Whitfield, a family practitioner in Baton Rouge, La., and an American Stroke Association spokesperson.

“We need to reach as many people as possible to help them to reduce their risk and to know what to do in a stroke

One of the keys to my personal salvation was the acknowledgement that through Christ I cannot put any limits on God. As much as I want to, it is impossible for me to see God via some human definition that I’ve concocted after reading some metaphysical narrative on the spirituality of nature and the cosmos or some other human-driven explanation of why I’m alive and here.

Rather, my faith and my experiences tell me and confirm for me that I have no idea about the real power and the omniscience of Almighty God. That’s why I refuse to place Him in one religious denomination as opposed to another.

M

and the Omega, as if we could understand endless time without beginning and without end. God is everything and every thing. He exists in neither time nor space and He also exists as time and space. Even the terms “time” and “space” are words we use to capture concepts that allow us to relate to the world in which we live. They are finite to us. I’m just not so sure they are accurate measures of a God who created both.

Would you dare say God is Catholic? Maybe He’s Baptist. So you believe God is Interdenominational?

The question about God’s religion presupposes that God somehow can be defined in human religious terms based on secular beliefs. That’s tough for me because denominations have doctrine. Denominations have rules.

One would have you believe theirs is better than yours. How ungodly is that?

Music at St. Paul’s is a vital, self-sustaining component of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church of Des Peres’ music ministry. On Sunday, February 9 at 7 p.m., organist Jeannine Jordan from Portland, Oregon will present Bach and Sons – a unique, multi-media presentation of the life of the Lutheran composer, Johann Sebastian Bach. The church is located at 12345 Manchester Road, Des Peres, MO 63131.

One of the beautiful things about faith is that it allows you to dwell in possibilities that befit the best dreams you’ve ever had. The best way to say it is that God is all that. He is the Alpha

My point? Faith in the unknown is a powerful thing, and faith in the known is even more powerful.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not upon your own understanding; in all ways acknowledge Him and he will make your path straight.” Proverbs 3: 5-6.

I don’t know about you, but the awesomeness of that trust and that reality has made me grateful to know that my acceptance of Christ has straightened my path, and I truly wish the same for you. I no longer try and make the image fit the mind. It’s too confining and restrictive and, if the truth be told, God ain’t having it. His nature is that after He meets you on His terms, you’ve got to meet Him on His. If you do, I guarantee you will be better for it.

The American is accepting Inspirational Messages from the community. Send your column (no more than 400 words) as a Word document and pasted text to cking@stlamerican. com and attach a photo of yourself as a jpeg ile. Please be patient; we will run columns in the order received.

James A. Washington

RCA Inspiration artist Latice Crawford will be one of the judges of the final winner of American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Most Powerful Voices gospel singing competition.

“It’s going to be a knockdown, drag-out game.”

– San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, on the upcoming NFC Championship against the Seattle Seahawks

PreP BasketBall NoteBook

With Earl Austin Jr.

Incarnate Word No. 1

Red Knights top national rankings

Incarnate Word Academy is now the No. 1 team in the nation. The Red Knights achieved the top spot in last week’s USA Today Super 25 girls national rankings.

INsIde sPorts

Blue-collar Bills

SLU works its way into Top 25

In its first game as the No. 1 team, IWA defeated No. 6 Regis Jesuit (CO) 68-50 in the Coaches vs. Cancer Shootout at the Scottrade Center. Junior standout Napheesa Collier had 26 points and 15 rebounds while senior guard Nakiah Bell added 16 points, including four consecutive 3-pointers in the second quarter rally IWA from an early deficit.

The Red Knights then followed up that victory with a 60-33 victory over Chicago Marian Catholic in the Prepcasts.com Girls Shootout at St. Joseph’s Academy. Marian Catholic is the defending Illinois Class 4A state championship team. The Red Knights have won 44 consecutive games, dating back to last season.

Edwardsville cracks top 25

Edwardsville High’s girls also joined the national rankings as they checked in at No. 25 in the USA Today polls. The Tigers are currently 14-0. They are led by 6’2” senior Kortney Dunbar, who has signed with Tennessee and 5’11” senior Aalyah Covington, who is headed to Saint Louis University.

Emerging Jennings

One of the emerging teams on the boys’ scene in recent weeks is the Jennings Warriors. Coach Travis Wallace’s squad posted impressive back-to-back victories over McCluer North and Ladue, which are two quality Class 5 programs. The Warriors defeated McCluer North 57-53, then followed up with a 72-67 at Ladue in a big Suburban East Conference game. Jennings also took Hazelwood Central into overtime in the quarterfinals of the Meramec Holiday Tournament. Central went on to win the tournament. The Warriors have been led by 6’6” senior Brandon Hollins, who is averaging 19.2 points and 10 rebounds a game. Junior guard Jermaine Fleming is averaging 10 points a game. He scored 19 points at Ladue. Junior Lee Anthony Bogan is averaging 8.8 points and 5.3 rebounds a game while junior guard Jordan Cook is averaging 8.1 points. Sophomore forward

Ronnell Baker is averaging five points and four rebounds a game. Jennings will be a dangerous team to watch down the line in Class 4.

Quality in Kirkwood

The Denver Miller Classic at Kirkwood will feature several quality teams this weekend.

With Ishmael H. Sistrunk

Broner prepping for payback;

Golden Boy Promotions

CEO Richard Schaefer confirmed that Adrien “The Problem” Broner has exercised his contractual rematch clause and will challenge his

The top seed in the tournament is Chaminade. The Red Devils are followed by Duchesne, Kirkwood, Jennings and Normandy. The action gets underway on Thursday with Chaminade vs. Riverview Gardens, Jennings vs. Normandy, Duchesne vs. Hazelwood West and Kirkwood

See PREP, B5

leads the Atlantic 10 in scoring defense, field goal percentage defense and 3-point shooting defense. They guard folks relentlessly with passion and togetherness to the point where is just wears on opponents.

n Once again, the Billikens’ formula for success has been a stingy defense that is among the best in the nation.

The senior-laden Billikens are led by 6’5” senior Dwayne Evans, who is averaging 15.1 points and 6.2 rebounds a game. Fellow senior Jordair Jett has emerged as one of the top all-around players in the Atlantic 10. Jett was the A-10 Player of the Week after leading the Bills to two road wins last week, including a 31-point masterpiece in SLU’s 59-58 victory over Rhode Island. Center Rob Loe and guards Mike McCall Jr. and Jake Barnett round out SLU’s all-senior starting lineup. Sophomore guard Austin McBroom has provided some instant offense off the bench while juniors Grandy Glaze and John Manning have provided defense and rebounding in the post. It has been fun to watch this team create its own identity and develop into another A-10 championship contender. It has not always been pretty at times, but these kids have learned how to grind out games and play with composure in tough times. SLU’s nation-leading 6-0 record in road games can attest to that.

The Billikens are blue-collar basketball at its finest. That is what has made this three-year run so special to watch. In 2012 and 2013, SLU has won 54 games, won the A-10 championship, the A-10 Tournament and have been to two NCAA Tournaments,

See RAMS, B4

undefeated Broner twice and frustrated the champion with his unorthodox, highpressure fighting style. The cocky champion was never allowed to get comfortable in the ring and was pummeled for most of the bout. The beating came much to the delight of fans who had grown weary of Broner’s crass and disrespectful persona. After the bout, the deposed champ refused to give an immediate post-fight interview and instead stormed away

causing fans to pelt him with concessions.

n Can Broner fight a more disciplined fight in the sequel, or will it be more of the same?

Though he was outclassed by Maidana in the bout, even Broner’s harshest critics must give him credit for the heart and determination he showed by surviving his opponent’s onslaught, fighting back and making it to the final bell. By taking an immediate rematch, Broner is showing that while the loss cost him his title, it did not strip him of his confidence. Many fighters would have asked for a tune-up fight or tried to find an easier path back to the title.

How the rematch will turn out is anybody’s guess. From a skill standpoint, Broner seems to have the hand speed and boxing ability to defeat

Photo by Wiley Price

Earl Austin Jr.

With Earl Austin Jr.

In order to win a rematch with Marcos “El Chino” Maidana, Adrien Broner (left) will have to be more active with his hands and less hittable with his face.

McCluer North Stars guard Zeke Moore (24) shoots over Gateway’s Carlos Gordon (30) during their Tuesday night game at Gateway.

Jordair Jett

The Alex Rodriguez story seems to have run its course. The commissioner has ruled and the arbitrator has ruled, yet Rodriguez continues to fight and search for someone to hear his case and see things his way. While Rodriguez has continued to deny any wrongdoing with performance-enhancing drugs, he has yet to produce one shred of evidence that would sway anyone to think he has told the truth.

A-Rod was Major League Baseball’s Public Enemy No. 1. The way MLB went after Rodriguez was one for the books when it came to spending money, manpower and making deals to get what they wanted. They were going to go to whatever extreme to try and convict him in the court of public opinion, and they succeeded.

Yes, Rodriguez has played his last game in MLB. Any team that thinks of signing him after his deal is done with the Yankees may have to find a new league to play in. Rodriguez is still due $61 million over two more years on this current contract, by the way. Will the Yankees find a legal reason not to pay him?

Rodriguez is not the only cheater in baseball. He just

Claib’s Call

With Mike Claiborne

End of A-Rod story

happened to be the one who makes the most money and, like Barry Bonds, he actually thought someone would believe him when he said he didn’t do it. MLB and its players have to get still tougher on PEDs if they want to clean up the game. Longer suspensions and heavier fines would be a start. It certainly warrants a conversation between players and owners that sends a clear message to everyone that they really mean business. In addition, the recent 60 Minutes report may have put the final nail in the coffin of A-Rod’s public image. They devoted two full segments to the story. How can he recover from that? He cannot. No one believes him – and no one cares, especially since he is a player with diminished skills. Rodriguez has spent millions on this fight and has little to show for it. Now that he has decided to sue MLB and the Players Association, he is truly on an island. The Players Association, which may have contributed to help his legal battle with the league, will now be fighting him. Once things move to a courtroom, federal authorities will be paying attention to what A-Rod says on the witness stand. Yet, some

While Rodriguez has continued to deny any wrongdoing with performance-enhancing drugs, he has yet to produce one shred of evidence that would sway anyone to think he has told the truth.

dirty laundry may be hung out on the line from both sides before the saga ends.

Fantasy camper

Last week I embarked on an experience with no idea what to expect. In the end, it turned out to be one of the most rewarding things I have ever done in my life short of family moments.

The St. Louis Cardinals held a baseball fantasy camp at their spring training site in Jupiter, Florida. The camp featured 28 former Cardinal players and four Hall of Famers. Yes, Lou Brock, Whitey Herzog, Bruce Sutter and the incomparable Ozzie Smith were on the field to watch fantasy campers live the dream. Each player was attired in their own personalized Major League uniform as they went through the paces of a big league camp. One station featured Herzog and former Cardinal pitchers John Tudor and Al Hrabosky. Another featured Brock and current Cardinal hitting coach John

n Yes, Rodriguez has played his last game in MLB. Any team that thinks of signing him after his deal is done with the Yankees may have to find a new league to play in.

Mabry. Station number three was all about defense as the Wizard was there to show you how to make the plays on the infield (without the back flip) while outfield duties were handled by one of the best of his era, Larry Walker If you ever wondered what it was like to talk about how relief pitchers come in and save games, maybe the 1,479 saves combined between Sutter, Jason Isringhausen and Lee Smith would suffice. Each of these sessions lasted for at least 20 minutes, during which you could ask about anything related to the game. To cap off the week, Cardinal General Manager John Mozaliek came in to speak at the awards dinner about how the Redbirds have arrived where they are today and the team’s future. Then there were the games. While none of us are as good as we thought we used to be, playing against these legends was easy. You knew you were going to lose even with Lou Brock as your manager. The hard part was playing the other teams that were supposed to be evenly matched. That was the case until parts of the human body stepped in and wanted to be heard. Barking came from hamstrings, shoulders, backs, legs and ankles. Even eyesight was a challenge. One camper said to me after reaching first base that he did not realize that baseball had changed the rules. After inquiring what rules, he responded “I think they moved second base further away from first base this year. It looks like it is farther away.” I just told him they were experimenting with the rule and he could stop running whenever he thought it was too far. Moments like these were special and memorable, as some participants had their own personal battles with health and this was one time they could live a true fantasy. The aches will subside soon, and the swelling will go away before we know it. The memories of how those things came about will be with us forever.

Mike Claiborne

Claire meets with hoops ‘ambassadors’

U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill met with the St. Louis University women’s basketball team during their recent visit to Washington, D.C., where they took on George Washington University. “These talented and smart student athletes are perfect ambassadors for one of Missouri’s top universities,” McCaskill said.

PREP

Continued from C7 vs. Eureka. The semifinals will be held on Friday night at 5:30 and 7 p.m. The championship game will be on Saturday at 2 p.m.

MLK Girls Showcase at North Tech

The St. Louis Martin Luther King, Jr. Girls Basketball Showcase will be held on Sunday and Monday at North Tech (1720 Derhake) in Florissant. The two day event will bring together several teams from the two-state area. The schedule is as follows: Sunday, Jan. 19: Miller Career Academy vs. Parkway North, 2 p.m.; DuSable (Ill) vs. North Tech, 3:30 p.m.; Chicago Whitney Young vs. Kirkwood, 5 p.m. Monday, Jan. 20: DuSable vs. Marquette, 11:30 a.m.; Whitney Young vs. Rock

Bridge, 1 p.m.; North Tech vs. Normandy, 2:30 p.m.; Cahokia vs. East St. Louis, 4 p.m., Francis Howell vs. Fort Zumwalt South, 5:30 p.m.

Rucker returns

One of the bright stories of the season has been the return of senior power forward Dimitri Rucker of the Whitfield. The 6’5” Rucker suffered a torn ACL injury in his knee early in his junior year, which forced him to miss the entire 2013 season and the whole summer season. Rucker has come back with a vengeance this season, averaging 16.4 points and 10 rebounds a game. In a 52-47 victory over Pattonville last week, Rucker had 16 points, 18 rebounds and six blocks.

Webster wins in Joplin

Webster Groves made its annual trek to the Southwest part of the state and came home

CLUTCH

Continued from C7

Maidana. That’s part of the reason Broner was such a big betting favorite in Las Vegas leading up to the first bout. Of course, all the skills in the world don’t matter much if you can’t remain upright for most of the fight. In order to win, Broner will have to be more active with his hands and less hittable with his face.

For Maidana, he has the will, power and effectiveawkwardness to keep Broner on the defensive all night. If he can manage to hurt Broner early, as he did in the first fight, he will likely gain an insurmountable mental edge. Broner’s power as a welterweight is also in question, which should give the new champion confidence in a repeat victory.

Can Broner fight a more disciplined fight in the sequel, or will it be more of the same? Regardless, it should be an exciting fight. Hopefully Broner calms down on the prefight antics and doubles down on the preparation for this potential Fight of the Year.

with the championship of the Kaminsky Classic last week in Joplin. The Statesmen defeated Joplin High 75-48 in the championship game. Forward Stephen Harris came off the bench to score 23 points to lead the Statesmen.

Two wins in two days Belleville Althoff had a very productive two-day stretch last week. On Thursday, the Crusaders defeated Fort Zumwalt North 69-60 in the Coaches vs. Cancer Shootout. Sophomore forward Brendon Gooch had 23 points and 11 rebounds while freshman Jordan Goodwin had 17 points and 11 rebounds for Althoff. The following night, the Crusaders defeated Centralia 69-58 in a South Seven Conference game to knock the Orphans from the ranks of the unbeaten. Goodwin and sophomore Keenan Young scored 18 points while senior Kevin Renner added 17.

Celtics and Rondo need to proceed with caution

Rondo’s return, all parties need to exercise extreme caution.

INSIDE

Continued from C7 with a victory in each of those tournaments.

n The beating came much to the delight of fans who had grown weary of Broner’s crass and disrespectful persona.

Boston Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo has been hinting to an upcoming return. The four-time All-Star has been suited and booted on the sidelines for nearly a year after tearing his ACL on Jan. 27, 2013 in a game against the Miami Heat. They dynamic playmaker recently tweeted “29,233,380 secs” on his Twitter account, which points to Friday, Jan. 17 as a return date if calculated from the date and time of his ACL surgery.

Celtics first-year coach Brad Stevens has not confirmed nor denied the rumors but is certainly looking forward to the return of his star player. While it’s understandable why the slumping Celtics would be foaming at the mouth for

While Rondo was on the shelf, the team traded away all most of its talent to Brooklyn, leaving Boston with a young, inexperienced team. In other words, even with Rondo running the show, the Celtics are more likely a lottery contender than a title contender. While an 8th playoff seed in the awful Eastern Conference isn’t impossible, the vicious beat down they would surely receive from the Indiana Pacers or Miami Heat might not be much consolidation. A quick look around the league will show that recent All-Stars returning from serious injury have not fared very well. Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook and Kobe Bryant all came back this season only to be reintroduced to the IR. Surely Rondo must return at some point, but he and the organization should make sure he’s 100% and not try to rush him for the sake of the standings.

Follow Ishmael and In the Clutch on Twitter @ IshmaelSistrunk and on Google+.

The Atlantic 10 race will be ultra-competitive this season with the likes of VCU, UMass, George Washington and Dayton all in contention. But, if the Billikens continue play great defense, play together and make some shots, they can achieve their goal of an

Prep Athletes of the Week

Brandon Hollins

Jennings – Boys Basketball

The 6’6” senior forward led the Warriors to two impressive victories over Class 5 teams McCluer North and Ladue.

Hollins had 24 points, 14 rebounds and four blocks in the Warriors’ 57-53 victory over McCluer North. He followed up with 22 points, 14 rebounds and four blocks in a 72-67 victory at Ladue in a Suburban East Conference showdown. For the season, Hollins is averaging 19.3 points, 10 rebounds and 2.8 assists for the 7-3 Warriors, who are competing in the Denver Miller Classic at Kirkwood High this week.

Aalyah Covington

‘Hard work will pay off’

ESL Charter High School student receives state award

American staff

Starr Gibson, a senior at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville East St Louis Charter High School (CHS), recently received a 2013 Charter Excellence Award from the Illinois Network of Charter Schools (INCS).

The 17-year-old was one of five charter high school seniors honored in the state at the INCS convention Dec. 2 and 3. The award also came with $1,000.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d get the award because there are a lot of charter schools in Illinois,” said Gibson, who has a 4.0 grade point average. “But I do work hard. Grades don’t come easy. I study about two hours every day after school.” Gibson added that she is working to be the class valedictorian.

“Starr is the absolute model of everything I think a student should be,” said Colin Neumeyer, CHS language arts teacher. “She has the greatest work ethic of any student I’ve been around. She’s thorough; and she really engages the activities.”

and a member of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Club at CHS.

When Gibson came to the school as a freshman, a few students called her an “overachiever.” “But I didn’t let it bother me,” she said. “Hard work will pay off.”

Gibson, who has an ACT score of 21, has been accepted to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Tennessee State in Nashville, Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Lincoln University (Mo.) in Jefferson City and SIUE. The high school senior, who wants to be a dietician, has not made any final decisions as to which college she will attend.

n “Starr has the greatest work ethic of any student I’ve been around. She’s thorough; and she really engages the activities.”

– Colin Neumeyer, CHS language

arts teacher

Bridget Nelson, teacher of English IV and women and literature, gave an assignment to her class. Students were instructed to write an essay about the book, “Things Fall Apart” by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe.

“Starr sent an email before the assignment was due,” Nelson said. “She said, ‘I’m attaching the beginning of two essays.’ And she asked me my opinion on which one to pursue.

“I never had a student do that before.” Gibson has truly developed as a student and learner, Neumeyer said: “She’s not just working for a grade. She’s focused on learning and the process of learning.”

Gibson’s courses last semester included: pre-calculus and introduction to engineering and design, college and career readiness, honors English IV, women in literature and physical education. Her school activities include serving on the Principal’s Advisory Council and CHS Student Council. She is also senior class vice president

“Starr is a prime example of a CHS student,” said Gina Washington, CHS director. “Her academics and 4.0 GPA speak for themselves. I also am impressed with her community service and church involvement.

Washington continued by using a CHS slogan: “I can truly say that ‘failure is NOT an option’ for Starr!”

The mission of the SIUE East St. Louis Charter High School is to prepare students who are career-and college - ready upon graduation.

To achieve this mission, the school and its staff will positively impact the educational and economic lives of East St. Louis youth through individualized instruction in core academic subjects, exploration of career interests and aptitudes, assistance in realizing students’ talents, high academic goals and expectations that graduates will become competitive employees for the 21st Century.

Summer marketing internship

College students interested in gaining work experience in the fields of marketing, public relations, journalism and agricultural communication have until Feb. 28 to apply for summer internship

positions with the Missouri State Fair.

Up to three interns will be hired for temporary, fulltime employment within the Fair’s marketing office this summer. According to Missouri State Fair Director Mark Wolfe, the positions are paid and offer some limited benefits. An additional internship is being offered by the Youth in Agriculture (YIA) Committee for management

of the annual Sale of Champions event. The person hired for this position will work Aug. 4-17.

“Interns can expect to be engaged in activities such as extensive press release writing, coordinating and executing special events and other communicationrelated experiences,” Wolfe said.

Application forms for the positions are available by sending an e-mail to Tammie.Nichols@mda. mo.gov. A completed application,

cover letter, resume and list of references are required and must be submitted to the Fair by Feb. 28. For more information about these positions, visit www.mostatefair.com.

The 112th Missouri State Fair, themed “Harvest the Fun!”, will be held Aug. 7-17 in Sedalia.

Kaplan University Career Fair

Kaplan University’s St Louis campus is hosting its annual career fair providing networking and career opportunities for all members of the community. Over 25 local employers, including UPS, Waste Management, Starbucks, Hollywood Casino, St Louis County Police Department, McKesson, and Shop n’ Save will be present to talk about current job openings. Attendees are encouraged to bring copies of their resumes and dress appropriately for a job interview.

The Career Fair will be held 4-7 p.m. Thursday, January 23 at Park 270, 1807 Park 270, Suite 105, St Louis, MO 63146.

New Fulbright student program

Undergraduate students looking for an exciting storytelling opportunity through National Geographic and the U.S. Department of State are encouraged to explore the options available through a new Fulbright Student Program. The application deadline for those interested is Feb. 28.

The National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship is open to U.S. citizens and provides students the chance to spend an academic year overseas engaged in digital storytelling in as many as three countries. Students chosen to participate in the program will tackle a globally significant social or environmental topic.

Fellowships are made possible through a partnership between the U.S. Department of State and the National Geographic Society.

According to the Fulbright website, “Fulbrighters will undertake an in-depth examination of a globally relevant issue, comparing and contrasting how that issue is experienced across borders. Using a variety of digital storytelling tools, including text, photography, video, audio, graphic illustrations and/ or social media, Fellows will tell their stories, or the stories of those they meet, publishing their work on National Geographic media platforms with the support of National Geographic’s editorial team.”

Benefits of receiving the fellowship include funding for travel, as well as a stipend and health insurance, and instruction by National Geographic editors in digital storytelling techniques, such as blog writing, video production and photography.

Applications are being sought for the following themes: Biodiversity, cities, climate change, cultures, energy, food, oceans and water. More information is available at http:// us.fulbrightonline.org/fulbright-natgeo-fellowship#faq.

Starr Gibson, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville East St. Louis Center Charter High School senior.

Celebrity Swagger Snap of the Week

Liquid Assets and LooseCannon had The Coliseum on lean once again for their Coliseum Fridays joint venture. Last week Phil’s Capricorn Bash Edition was met with rap and reality television star Fabolous.

Young Leaders: Take Four. I know y’all have been waiting on it. Isn’t the suspense of who will be in the mix of the top 20 movers and shakers under 40 as Emerson and The St. Louis American Foundation’s present Fourth Annual Salute to Young Leaders Networking Awards Reception? Me too…I even tried to break into the executive offices to give you a sip of the 2014 honorees. Well, maybe I didn’t, but I thought about it. But please know that are surely be some heavy hitters on the list – as per usual. (See the ad on page A14 that lists this year’s awardees). We’ve stepped up the swag as we take our Young Leaders show to the Four Seasons. Having year four at the Four Seasons seems to be a sign that we’re going to go four for four with holding a MUST.NOT.MISS opportunity to be in the midst of the rising leaders from all angles as it relates to our city. It’s going down on Thursday, Feb. 13 at 5:30 p.m. For those who don’t already know, Young Leaders WILL sell out, ask your friends if you don’t believe me. So I’m going to go ahead and take the liberty of saying “you’re welcome” for giving y’all a three week heads up. Tix are only $25 y’all. For more information or to purchase tickets, call (314) 533-8000 or email kdaniel@stlamerican.com. Regular, but relentless Homie Quan. I decided to kick it with the newly legal and their rap priest Rich Homie Quan Thursday night and when I tell you I caught some cackles folks would have to see to believe. First off, I must give the girls who picked the worst possible night to step out in their first pair of stilettoes an “E” for effort. That being said, I had to pray for my own forgiveness at the way I gagged as the girls dropped like dominoes as their heels hit the glaciers that the polar vortex left behind all the way down Halls Ferry. Young ladies, you need more experience than homecoming and prom to rock pumps like a pro in the snow. But what truly made my heart melt with disgraceful joy was seeing this young lady in a freakum dress and Aldi bags….yes, Aldi bags…no seriously, Aldi bags tied around her feet to protect her shoes from the snow. Okay, wait…what? Yes, she did. I wanted to tell her that the next time she knots her ankles with grocery sacks to make sure the chain’s colors coordinate with her outfit, but I didn’t want to risk it. Who knows what a person willing to strut down the street adorned in Aldi-wear is capable of? Okay, I know y’all are eager to know what went down on the inside to see if it coincides with what your children said. After watching the young ladies get violated by a….let’s just say liberal frisk by the female security, I made my way inside to see what all the fuss was about with Rich Homie. He drew a nice crowd – especially considering we were still in the throes of needing snowmobiles as secondary transportation. And while he isn’t necessarily clever with his flow – or talented at all, in my opinion – he really did put on a show for the young folks. I thought he only had two little measly songs, but he pulled a whole set out of his bag of rising trap star tricks and those 18 and ups couldn’t have been more thrilled.

Frontin’ Fabolous. I’ll give him that he had the Coliseum the most packed I’ve seen in a minute, but was I the only one who thought Fa-bo-lo-us was being a bit much as I watched him prep to make his entrance as the latest celeb to hit the Coliseum Fridays stage courtesy of LooseCannon SLIM and Liquid Assets? I mean honestly…if I can’t remember when the last time you had a hit on the radio, why are you torturing us with these Secret Service style security antics? I’m sorry but your security tactics should coincide with your fame level. And in Fab’s case all he needed is a dude with nice pecs and a pot belly to do the job. They crammed folks up in other folks’ VIP section (without their approval, mind you) to make sure that the path met the standards of Fab and crew before he would emerge. I thought to myself “He must be preparing to start the show with a tumbling passage or something?” He didn’t. He moseyed on stage and rapped along to some tracks just like everybody else. I was so put off that they put the folks through for the sake of a mediocre offering from Fabolous that I hit it after the third song.

The return of Mr. Jones. Since I’m already speaking on Coliseum Fridays, I feel the need to bring up the fact that the dustiest rapper alive a.k.a. Jim Jones a.k.a. Mr. Chrissy will be in the building NEXT Friday. If I recall correctly, he hasn’t been to town since the days of club Karma, so I expect things to be ______________ (insert 2014 slang for “turned up”). I hope he’s had time to grow back some less than fresh cornrows to take me back down memory lane! I also hope that he basks in his TV celebrity and brings his boo and the mob voiced mama along with him. Even if he doesn’t, I’m sure of three things: the crowd will be on lean, I will be at bare minimum entertained and he will not wash up.

Liquid Frosting relaunches. After nearly a year of wanting and waiting, my girl Brendolyn Marie (formerly known as…or maybe still known as Harlem B) has dropped some new polishes on me and the rest of the folks that will surely give Maybelline and Sally Henson’s Hard as Nails a run for its money. I stopped by her launch party and was met with a sickening side shaved short do and tasteful Mary Mary style “Sunday Best” freakum dress that had me ready to hit the casting couch of extreme makeover to get my life together. After I soaked in the life she was serving as she greeted the folks, I made my way to the inside where I was blessed with a manicure and samples of her colors. I’m telling you, it was the perfect Sunday blessing and I’m expecting the best as I feast my eyes on my mani that was topped off with the Harlem Nights shade!

DJ A-Eye had the tables sizzling and Devon stopped by the booth to give him props Saturday @ Soho

Karla and her girl Taka from Shi Salon stopped through to see Fabolous rip the stage Friday night @ The Coliseum

Elise and Brendolyn looked as lovely as the line of polish that was

Academy Award nominated director John Singleton was in the building – as was stage and film star Phyllis Yvonne Stickney – for the Black Rep’s opening night of ‘The Meeting’ Friday night @ HSSU’s Emerson Performance Center

DJ Trife, Rocky and Tricky soaked in the sounds of The Real Music Lounge Saturday night @ EXO

Countess and Valerie were granted the opportunity to meet and greet with Def Jam’s newest rising rap star Rich Homie Quan Thursday night @ The Ambassador Photo by Arlis Davis

Mojo, Nicole, birthday girl Tamara and Tammy were gracefully turned up b-day style for Umbrella Group’s We Party Hard Saturday night @ Lola

The Nupes were deep in the building Saturday night for the Real Music Lounge @ EXO following their Founder’s Day Dinner

Trell, Doughboy and Porscha were on deck Saturday night @ The Loft

Joielle, Theresa, Andrea and Keeya came out for some authentic sounds Saturday night @ The Real Music Lounge @ EXO

Photos by Lawrence Bryant

By Denise Hooks Anderson, M.D. Medical Accuracy Editor

Every year new medical recommendations and guidelines are released which are intended to improve healthcare, universalize practices across the country, and simplify patient care. As a provider, I can attest that generally these guidelines do just that but occasionally not all the sources agree on the proposed changes. Therein lies the problem and resultant controversies such differences potentially evoke like the mammography recommendations by the United States Preventative Services Task Force in 2009.

Over the last couple of years and months, a few changes in medical practice have been recommended and providers are slowly implementing these new guidelines. For example, pap smears, routine screening tests in women to check for cervical cancer, are now every three to five years instead of yearly. Pap smears without HPV (human papilloma virus) testing are recommended for women between the ages of 21-30 every three years. Pap smears with HPV testing are recommended for women over age 30 and can span every five years if

Hot off the presses

HPV testing is negative. This change was instituted because of the high prevalence of HPV in the general population, particularly in younger women, and the association of HPV with cervical cancer. Women over age 65 will no longer need to be screened for cervical cancer.

Recently the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology proposed changes for who would benefit from cholesterol medications. In the past, the initiation of meds was based solely on current health conditions and total cholesterol, LDL, and HDL levels but now the focus will be on four main issues:

1. Do you have diabetes?

Denise Hooks Anderson, M.D.

2. Do you have atherosclerotic disease?

3. Is your bad cholesterol (LDL) higher than 190?

4. Are you between the ages of 40 and 75 and have a 10-year estimated cardiovascular risk of 7.5% or

higher?

If “yes” was the answer to any of those questions the new guidelines would recommend starting a moderate to high intensity statin medication. With these latest criteria, many additional individuals will qualify for therapy and while others will no longer need the cholesterol lowering agents. Likewise, this also means that fewer lipid panels will need to be drawn because providers do not need to follow cholesterol levels as routinely once therapy has been started.

In December, the panel members appointed to the Eighth Joint National Committee released the latest hypertension guidelines which included some less stringent blood pressure thresholds for the elderly and a slight variation in recommendations for initial hypertension management. For example, in people over the age of 60, blood pressure management should begin if pressures are 150/90 or higher. Previously, therapy would have begun at a blood pressure elevation of 140/90 per the JNC-7 guidelines. In addition, in the general black population, initial therapy should either be with a calcium channel blocker or a diuretic (water pill). Previous guidelines recommended that all populations start with a diuretic.

My patients often ask me how these experts establish these guide-

lines and by what method. In regards to the hypertension and cholesterol recommendations, the authors looked at the evidence surrounding outcomes from previous studies. The bottom line: did the medication or treatment change morbidity or mortality?

Of course any new recommendations are not without its naysayers and plenty of doctors across the country are weighing in on the discussion. However, I think these guidelines give patients an opportunity to engage in open dialogue with their primary care providers about their individual care plans and if they are within the correct targets for their ethnicity, age or disease state. Patients should empower themselves and also try to stay current with these rapidly changing recommendations. Optimum healthcare should be team oriented with the patient as the center of that team.

On the other hand, I caution individual patients not to stop any of their medications based on these guidelines alone but to schedule an appointment with your provider to discuss. Every patient is different and only you and your provider know what is best for you. Guidelines are intended to be tools and should be used appropriately in order to achieve the stated goals.

Yours in Service, Denise Hooks-Anderson, M.D. Assistant Professor SLUCare Family Medicine yourhealthmatters@stlamerican.com

bi-monthly special supplement of the St. Louis American´

January 16, 2014

Your Health Matters provides up-to-date information, from an African-American perspective, about one of the most important subjects in evryone’s life – their personal health.

Donald M. Suggs, President and Publisher

Kevin Jones, Senior Vice President, COO

Dina M. Suggs, Senior Vice President

Chris King, Editorial Director

Denise Hooks Anderson, M.D., Medical Accuracy Editor

Sandra Jordan, Health Reporter

Debbie Chase, Director of Health Strategy & Outreach

Onye Hollomon, Barb Sills, Pamela Simmons, Sales

Michael Terhaar, Art/Production Manager

Angelita Jackson, Cover Design

Wiley Price, Photojournalist

the

Filling the gap for urgent care

By Sandra Jordan Of The St. Louis American

St. Louis area health centers are providing or contracting to outside sources for urgent care services.

Urgent care involves walk-in visits for treatment of medical issues requiring immediate attention, though not serious enough to require hospital emergency visits, such infections, stitches for cuts, bone breaks, x-rays, and some breathing treatments.

For patients enrolled in the Gateway to Better Health demonstration project, the stop-gap for low income residents (in the absence of Medicaid expansion), services are now offered at some of the area health centers or contracted out to other health system urgent care facilities.

n “We are going to be responsive to the community.”

– Dwayne Butler, CEO of Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers

Myrtle Hilliard Davis Comprehensive Health Centers in St. Louis recently expanded its medical services at its Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. location to include urgent care with Monday through Saturday hours.

Dwayne Butler, CEO of Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers, said Gateway patients at People’s would go to SSM Urgent Care because of its long track record in this area.

“The partnership to use SSM Urgent Care for our Gateway clients gives them a level of service in urgent care that I think is unequal in the community. Opening up that option to our clients, we believe is a win-win for everyone,” Butler said.

“Another thing we are doing … the beginning of February, we will offer our services on Saturdays. That will be for all Peoples Health Center patients.”

People’s Saturday hours will begin with 9:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. at its Delmar site.

“We will be focusing on pediatrics and pediatric dental health as well,” he added.

Butler said that focus on children’s health through appointments and walk-in is in response to its backlog of needed services for patients in pediatric medical and dental care.

“We are going to be responsive to the community, so if our hours need to change, if we need to add hours, perhaps later hours, we are going to do that as well,” Butler said.

SSM is also the go-to urgent care provider of choice for Family Care Health Centers.

“They are our hospital partner; that’s where our physicians admit,” said Bob Massie, CEO at Family Care Centers.

St. Louis County has no plans to offer urgent care at its locations, according to a St. Louis County Department of Health spokesperson.

Urgent care and specialty care for

low-income residents provided at St. Louis ConnectCare and its Smiley Urgent Care Center ceased when it closed operations and filed for bankruptcy late last year.

As with the specialty care, the St. Louis health community has stepped in for the continuum of care, according to the St. Louis Regional Health Commission.

“Within six weeks of ConnectCare

closing, those folks turned around and were able to open new services,” said Robert Freund, CEO of the St. Louis Regional Health Commission. “In the six weeks in-between, it’s not like patients were not getting care; the health centers were doing an excellent job of making sure the patients got in for urgent visits if they sick. We’ve expanded that ability now, so that they are official urgent care sites.”

Exercise for a better work-life balance

Researchers say exercise plays a role in how individuals feel they can manage their work-life balance.

“Individuals who exercised regularly were more confident they could handle the interaction of their work and home life and were less likely to be stressed at work,” said Russell Clayton, assistant professor of management at Saint Leo University and lead author on the paper. Researchers Saint Leo, Saint Louis University, University of Houston – Victoria and Illinois State University also were a part of the findings.

Conflict between work and home can be categorized in two ways. Work interference with family describes typical job-based pressures that can lead to interference (either time or psychologically) of family time. Family interference with work is when personal issues find a way into the workday and compete with “work time.” Researchers wanted to find if exercise and reduction of stress actually helped empower individuals to feel they had a better work-life balance.

“The idea sounds counterintuitive. How is it that adding something else to our work day helps to alleviate stress and empower us to deal with work-family issues? We think exercise is a way to psychologically detach from work – you’re not there physically and you’re not thinking about it either –and, furthermore, it can help us feel good about ourselves.”

Researchers examined responses of 476 working adults to survey questions. Respondents were asked on a four-point scale (1 never – 4 always) questions about exercise behavior. For example, “I exercise more than three days a week.” Respondents were then asked a number of questions on a 7-point scale (strongly disagree –strongly agree) about their confidence in handling work-family conflicts.

“Our findings suggest that employers can help employees with work-life balance by encouraging them to exercise.”

“Individuals who exercised regularly were more confident they could handle the interaction of their work and home life and were less likely to be stressed at wor.,”

– Russell Clayton

HealtHy Recipe

Chicken Breast & Lentils

Serves 4

Ingredients:

3/4 lb Skinless, Boneless Chicken Breast

1 cup Lentils, Dry

1 ½ cup Chicken Broth, Low-Sodium*

1 Tbsp Onions, Chopped

2 tsp Oil, Canola

Preparation:

Chicken Breasts: Bake Chicken Breasts at 350° for 20 minutes (until thoroughly cooked)

Lentils:

• Sautee onions in canola oil over medium heat.

• Add the lentils and the chicken broth.

• Cover, bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer.

• Cook until lentils are tender; 15-20 minutes.

• Serve the sliced chicken breast over the lentils.

Nutrition Information: (per serving)

Calories: 296; Total Fats: 4g (Monounsaturated: 1.8g, Polyunsaturated: 1.2g; Saturated: .7g); Trans Fatty Acid: 0; Cholesterol: 51mg; Carbohydrates: 30g; Sugar: 1g; Dietary Fiber: 15g; Protein: 34g; Potassium: 700mg; Sodium: 166mg

*We used Campbell’s Ready-To-Serve Low Sodium Chicken Broth. (chicken broths can vary in sodium by brand, check the label)

Established in 1988, Food Outreach continues to be the only nonprofit organization in greater St. Louis that focuses on providing nutritional support to low-income men, women and children battling cancer or HIV/AIDS. The on-staff Chef and Registered Dietitians are pivotal to the program. Through a combination of freshly prepared frozen meals, groceries and nutrition counseling, clients have access to critical dietary needs to help them best optimize their treatments and enhance their quality of life. In 2011, Food Outreach provided more than half a million nutritious meals at no cost to 2000 clients of all ages living in 174 Missouri and Illinois zip codes. For more information, call 314652-3663 x121 or visit www.foodoutreach.org.

Program to save women from abuse, addiction receives $25,000 grant

Magdalene St. Louis is the recipient of a $25,000 “Wildcard Grant” from Trinity Wall Street in New York to assist in its start-up operations.

Magdalene St. Louis helps women who have survived lives of prostitution, trafficking, abuse, addiction and life on the streets by providing a community where they can recover and rebuild their lives. The program offers two years of housing, support and education at no cost and is scheduled to open its first house later this year.

Trinity’s Wildcard Grants, are designed as “resources for innovative leaders, for work that inspires positive transformation of people and, by extension, societies. The onetime award is offered to organizations whose leaders have a ‘wow’ idea that lacks only money to help get it off the ground.

“In the midst of acquiring our first residential home and planning its rehab, this generous grant could not have come at a better time”, said Magdalene St. Louis Executive Director Tricia Roland-Hamilton. “Our circle of support now includes Trinity Wall Street.”

Magdalene St. Louis is based on the highly successful Magdalene/Thistle Farms program in Nashville, Tennessee.

“Trinity is an inspiring example of a church consistently using its resources to support transformative ministries,” Magdalene St. Louis Board President the Very Rev. Mike Kinman said. “We are honored they have entrusted us with this grant and share our belief that in addition to this being about the women who will be in our first community, this is about changing a culture where women are bought and sold.”

For more information, visit magdalenestl.org.

HealtH Briefs

Washington U. scientists discover odor receptors in human lungs

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Iowa have found odor receptors in the lungs, once thought to be the exclusive territory and function of the nose.

The newly discovered class of cells in human airways are called pulmonary neuroendocrine cells, or PNECs. They were found by a team led by Yehuda Ben-Shahar, PhD, assistant professor of biology, in Arts & Sciences, and of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, including colleagues Steven L. Brody, MD, and Michael J. Holtzman, MD, of the Washington University School of Medicine, and Michel J. Welsh, MD, of the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.

Unlike the receptors in your nose, which are located in the membranes of nerve cells, the ones in your lungs are in the membranes of these PNEC cells. Instead of sending nerve impulses to your brain that allow it to “perceive” odors, the flask-shaped neuroendocrine cells to dump hormones that make your airways constrict.

“We forget,” said Ben-Shahar, “that our body plan is a tube within a tube, so our lungs and our gut are open to the external environment. Although they’re inside us, they’re actually part of our external layer. So they constantly suffer environmental insults,” he said, “and it makes sense that we evolved mechanisms to protect ourselves.”

In other words, the PNECs, described in the March issue of the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology, are sentinels, guards whose job it is to exclude irritating or toxic chemicals. Researchers say cells may be responsible for the chemical hypersensitivity that characterizes respiratory diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. Patients with these conditions are told to avoid traffic fumes, pungent odors, perfumes and similar irritants, which can trigger airway constriction and breathing difficulties.

PNECs cells might be a therapeutic target, Ben-Shahar suggests. By blocking them, it might be possible to prevent some attacks, providing better disease control and allowing people to cut down on the use of steroids or bronchodilators.

For more information, visit http://tinyurl.com/owv2f84.

Red Cross offers cold weather preparation, safety tips

The American Red Cross Greater St. Louis Region is reminding residents to stay safe in the snow, precipitation and bitter temperatures of winter.

While the organization teams with local partners to support warming shelters and respond to emergencies as they arise, it is important for households to prepare in advance and have their own emergency supplies that are easily accessible, including:

• At least a three-day supply of water (one gallon per person per day) and non-perishable food;

• A flashlight, battery-powered NOAA Weather Radio and extra batteries;

• A well-stocked first aid kit;

• A week’s worth of medications and medical items; and

• Supplies for babies and pets.

In cold weather, the Red Cross suggests staying inside if possible. If you must venture outside, wear layers of lightweight clothing for warmth, and hats and gloves to prevent losing body heat. In addition:

• After a snow storm, be extremely careful if you have to shovel snow. It is physically strenuous work, so take frequent breaks and stay hydrated.

• Seek medical attention immediately if you have symptoms of hypothermia, including confusion, dizziness, exhaustion and severe shivering.

• Watch for symptoms of frostbite, including numbness, flushed gray, white, blue or yellow skin discoloration, numbness, or waxy feeling skin.

• Don’t forget your pets – bring them indoors. If they can’t come inside, make sure they have enough shelter to keep them warm and that they can get to unfrozen water.

For the automobile, keep emergency supplies in your vehicle, including a blanket, food, water, winter coat and accessories, flashlight, first aid kit and vehicle powered phone charger. Also, the Red Cross advises to winterize your vehicle and keep the gas tank full because a full tank will keep the fuel line from freezing.

To avoid frozen pipes - run water, even at a trickle, to help prevent them from freezing. Open the kitchen and bathroom cabinet doors to allow warmer air to circulate around the plumbing, but be sure to move any harmful cleaners and household chemicals out of the reach of children. Keep the garage doors closed if there are water lines in the garage. And, thermostats should be kept at the same temperature day and night.

Sat., Jan. 18, 8 a.m., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Health Fair & Luncheon by the American Heart Association, Sheraton City Center, 400 S. 14th St., 63103. Event goal is to increase awareness of risk factors and warning signs in the African American community. Guests will receive a heart healthy lunch, free CPR training and heart related education. The event is free, but pre-registration is required. For more information, bisit http://www.heart. org/stlouis.

Sat. Jan. 18, 6 pm – 11 pm, 2014 Ranken Jordan Crystal Ball, The Ritz-Carlton, 100 Ritz Carlton Drive, St. Louis MO 63105. For more information, call 314-8726414.

Wed., Jan. 18, Creve Coeur Park 6K, Tremayne Shelter, Winter Park Series , 13236 Streetcar Drive, Maryland Heights, Mo. Entry fee $20, $30 Jan.17-18); $10 Race-DayOnly entry fee for ages $19 and under (no t-shirt). For more information, visit onestoprace.com.

Calendar

Sat. Jan. 25, 1 p.m. – 4 p.m., St. Luke’s Hospital Girl Talk, Institute for Health Education, North Medical Office Bldg. Level 2, 232 South Woods Mill Rd. Chesterfield, Mo., 63017; a free event for mothers and daughters age 11 and older. Breakout sessions on a healthy body, healthy skin, and kindness; and a special performance and a healthy snack. Register by calling 314-542-4848.

Thurs., Jan. 30, St. Louis Walk to End Lupus Now Launch Party, The Heights Community Center, 8001 Dale Ave. Richmond Heights, Mo. Free event but registration is required by calling 314-644-2222 or emailing brich@lfaheartland.org.

Sat. Feb. 1, 6:30 p.m. – midnight, Doorways Rio Red Carnival benefitting individuals affected by AIDS, Regency Ballroom at Hyatt Regency St. Louis at The Arch, 315 Chestnut, 63102. Cocktail reception, dinner/auction, entertainment and dancing; black tie optional. For more information, visit www. DoorwaysRED.org.

Sat. Feb. 1, 2014, 9 a.m., Carondelet

Park 4 Mile, Winter Park Series, Rec Plex, 930 Holly Hills Ave. St. Louis, $20 entry fee, $30 Jan.31-Feb. 1. $10 RaceDay-Only fee for ages $19 and under (no t-shirt). For more information, visit www.onestoprace.com.

Sat. Feb. 8, 2014, 8:30 a.m. – 12 Noon, Christian Hospital’s Annual Heart Fair, Detrick Building Atrium, 11133 Dunn Road, St. Louis, 63136. Free screenings for cholesterol, glucose, blood pressure; stress & heart disease information, refreshments; lecture 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. For more information, call 314-747WELL (314-747-9355).

Fri. Feb. 28, 8 a.m. – 4 p.m., 7th Annual African-American Nurses’ History Conference, “Health Disparities that are Bridging the Gap,” by the College of Nursing at University of Missouri – St. Louis, J.C. Penney Auditorium. Health screenings available for weight/height/BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, HIV/AIDS, mental health, glucose, mammograms and prostate. Registration is $40. For more information, call 314-516-5655 or visit pcs.umsl. edu/aanhc.

Sat. March 22, 6p.m. – 10 p.m., Lupus Foundation The Purple Ball, Renaissance St. Louis Grand Hotel Majestic Ballroom, 800 Washington Ave. For more information, visit lfaheartland.org.

Sundays, 10 a.m. – Alcoholics Anonymous Group 109 meets in the 11th floor conference room at Christian Hospital, 11133 Dunn Road at I-270/Hwy. 367. This is an open meeting for alcoholics, drug addicts and their family and friends.

Mondays, 7 p.m. – “Tobacco Free for Life” support group – free weekly meetings at St. Peters Mo. City Hall. Supported by SSM Cancer Care; RSVP initial participation to 636-947-5304.

Tuesdays, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. –Alcohol and Drug Informational meeting, Christian Hospital, Professional Office Building 2, Suite 401. For information, call 314-8393171.

Avoiding hypothermia

Frigid weather can pose special risks to older adults. The National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, has some advice for helping older people avoid hypothermia – when the body gets too cold – during cold weather.

Hypothermia occurs when the core body temperature falls to 95 degrees Fahrenheit or lower, from outdoor cold or loss of body heat production. Older adults are especially vulnerable to hypothermia because their bodies’ response to cold can be diminished by underlying

medical conditions such as diabetes and by use of some medicines, including over-the-counter cold remedies. Hypothermia can develop in older adults after relatively short exposure to cold weather or even a small drop in temperature.

Symptoms of hypothermia in persons who have been exposed to cool temperatures includes slowed or slurred speech; sleepiness or confusion; shivering or stiffness in the arms and legs; poor control over body movements; slow reactions, or a weak pulse.

To avoid hypothermia, the NIH advis-

es keeping inside temperatures warm enough and taking cold weather precautions outdoors.

• Set the thermostat to at least 68 to 70 degrees. Even mildly cool homes with temperatures from 60 to 65 degrees can lead to hypothermia in older people.

• Wear long underwear under your clothes, along with socks and slippers. Use a blanket or afghan to keep your legs and shoulders warm and wear a hat or cap indoors.

When going outside in the cold, wear a hat, scarf, and gloves or mittens to prevent loss of body heat through your head and hands. A hat is particularly important because a large portion of body heat can be lost through the head.

• When going outside in the cold, wear a hat, scarf, and gloves or mittens to prevent loss of body heat through your head and hands. A hat is particularly important because a large portion of body heat can be lost through the head. Wear several layers of warm loose clothing to help trap warm air between the layers.

• Check with your doctor to see if any prescription or over-the-counter medications you are taking may increase your risk for hypothermia.

Safety first when using supplemental heating sources

To avoid fire danger, you should remember the following when using supplemental heating sources, such as space heaters, fireplaces and generators:

• Never use a stove or oven to heat your home.

• If you are using a space heater, place

it on a level, hard surface and keep anything flammable at least three feet away – things such as paper, clothing, bedding, curtains or rugs. Turn off space heaters and make sure fireplace embers are out before leaving the room or going to bed.

• If you are using a fireplace, use a glass or metal fire screen large enough to

catch sparks and rolling logs.

• Use generators correctly – never operate a generator inside the home, including in the basement or garage.

• Don’t hook a generator up to the home’s wiring. The safest thing to do is to connect the equipment you want to

power directly to the outlets on the generator.

The Red Cross also reminds everyone to check in on your neighbors – especially those requiring special assistance and those living alone.

For additional tips and for more information, visit redcross.org/mo/st-louis.

HealtHy Q&a

Palliative care provides comfort through serious medical conditions

By Sandra Jordan Of The St. Louis American

Q. What is the difference between palliative care and hospice care?

A. Hospice care provides compassionate, humane and family-centered care for persons with incurable illness. It focuses on comfort, not curative treatment, accepting death as the final stage of life. Hospice care typically becomes an option when a person is expected to live about six months or less.

Palliative care is comprehensive treatment of the pain, symptoms, and stress of serious illnesses and provides emotional support to the patient and families. Palliative care is a part of hospice care; however, palliative care is useful for any formidable diagnosis and can be given in the home. A supplement to traditional care, a palliative care team includes doctors, nurses, social workers and other health professionals. Furthermore, a campaign just launched by the National Institute of Nursing Research (a component of the

Brittany Farrell HealtH Profile

Deaconess scholar pursues community health

By Sandra Jordan Of The St. Louis American

Working with the Black Women with Breast Cancer Survivor’s project at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, along with being president of the National Minority Student Nurses Association shaped the direction that nursing student Brittany Farrell wants to take her career – in community health.

“We work really closely with the community on health, wellness, and prevention,” Farrell said.

Farrell is in her junior year at UMSL and graduated from Hazelwood East High School. She is a recipient of the Deaconess Scholarship, which is a collaborative effort by Deaconess Foundation, The Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis and the St. Louis American Foundation. The foundations have committed more than $100,000 annually in resources and support over a five-year-period to assist future nurses in their education and training.

Farrell said being a Deaconess Scholar is something she has to live up to.

“I really hold it to a high esteem and it kind of keeps pushing me to do what I am doing now,” Farrell said. “And to know that once I am finished I will be able to help somebody by giving back to the Deaconess Foundation.”

Farrell said the study of nursing lives up to its reputation.

“It’s really challenging and oftentimes when people tell you something is hard but you think it couldn’t be that hard. It lives up to the rumor,” she said. “It requires a lot of time management skill.”

Farrell said her work with the national organization is a big part of how she reaches back to bring along other people.

“If I hadn’t developed relationships with certain people along my path, I don’t know how I would have gotten through some of the challenges I had to face along the way. It’s important to me that I am bringing other people with me while I am completing my education. So I make time for all of that because it’s all important.”

As she is learning, Farrell is advising others.

National Institutes of Health) aims to increase the use of palliative care for children with serious illness.

The campaign emphasizes that palliative care works along with other treatments to enhance quality of life for children of any age living with a broad range of serious illnesses. In particular, the campaign strives to break the common association between palliative care and hospice care, stressing that palliative care is appropriate throughout illness, not only at the end of life.

NINR research has shown that pediatric palliative care services may also increase overall satisfaction with care for patients and their families. Yet, many health care providers hesitate to recommend palliative care for their youngest patients, and parents and caregivers are often unaware of its benefits.

For more information, visit http:// www.ninr.nih.gov/conversationsmatter.

Email your health questions to YourHealthMatters@stlamerican.com. The answer may be published in a future edition.

“I am working with sophomore students – I definitely took them under my wings as mentees and I also have mentors that help me along the way still,” she said.

Although she hasn’t narrowed down where she wants to work, Farrell said she does want to continue her education.

“I want to get Doctorate’s, I want to be able to practice,” she said. “I’m trying to steer away from the research side of it. I think I would rather do practice, hands on – engaging with the people.”

The nursing student who leads a national organization of student nurses is also the mother of a 5-year-old.

“I also work and have a 5-year old daughter too so its definintely possible to make it happen when you set your mind to what you want to do.”

Deaconess Foundation Nursing Scholarships are awarded to 10-15 students annually (avg. award $6,000). Students must be permanent residents of the St. Louis metropolitan area and pursuing nursing (RN, BSN) at an accredited, nonprofit school. The awards are based on financial need, strength of character, and academic potential.

Applicants are required to have a valid email address when beginning the application as all correspondence will be arrive by email.

To apply, students are required to complete the two applications by April 15: the Deaconess Foundation Nursing Scholarship and The Scholarship Foundation Interest-Free Loan in Scholarship Central atwww.sfstl.org.

If selected, Deaconess Scholarship recipients may also be given an opportunity to accept or decline an interest-free loan or other grants through SFSTL.

For more information, call The Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis at 314725-7990 or via email at info@sfstl.org.

For applications, select the link “Deaconess Foundation Nursing Scholarship” at https://stlouisgraduates.academicworks.com.

Brittany Farrell

Behavioral Christian Hospital offers free and confidential psychiatric and chemical dependency evaluations at the Christian Hospital Center for Mental Health. For more information, call 314-839-3171.

Christian Hospital Key Program offers support and education to patients with chronic mental illness to prevent increased severity of symptoms and to reduce the need for inpatient re-hospitalization. Call confidentially to 314-8393171 or 1-800-447-4301.

Crime Victim Advocacy Center provides no cost support for persons affected by criminal acts. Email peggy@supportvictims.org, visit or call the 24-hour hotline 314-OK-BE-MAD (652-3673) or visit www.supportvictims.org.

Bike helmet safety

The St. Louis County Health Department provides free bicycle helmets to St. Louis County residents between ages 1 and 17 by appointment only. Proof of residency is required. For the location nearest you, visit www. tinyurl.freebikehelmets.

HealtH ResouRces

Breast Cancer Gateway to Hope offers no-charge medical and reconstructive treatment for uninsured breast cancer patients in Missouri. Contact 314-569-1113.

Dental

Free Dental Hygiene Clinic - No charge dental exams, x-rays, cleanings and other dental services for children and adults provided by dental students at Missouri College. Patients needing more extensive dental work (fillings, crowns, etc.) will be referred to local dentists. For information, call 314-768-7899.

Diabetes

SSM St. Mary’s Health Center provides free, Diabetes Support Group sessions the second Tuesday of every month from 6 – 7 p.m. to address health management issues. It’s located at Meeting Room 1 on the second floor, 6420 Clayton Rd. in St. Louis. To register, call toll free 866-SSM-DOCS (866-7763627).

Health Partnerships

The Center for Community Health and Partnerships: Building Bridges for Healthy Communities works to develop and support beneficial community-ac-

ademic partnerships to address the health needs of the St. Louis. For more information, email publichealth@wustl. edu; phone 314-747-9212 or visit publichealth.wustl.edu.

Information

Missouri 2-1-1 offers referral and information on a wide range of social service and helpful resources. Call 2-1-1.

Medical

Boys & Girls Clubs Dental & Vision Clinic at Herbert Hoover Club, 2901 N. Grand, St. Louis. Open year-round for members at no additional fee by appointment only. Teeth cleaning, braces, x-rays, root canals, some extractions; vision mobile unit, comprehensive exam and glasses, if required. Make an appointment by calling 314-355-8122.

Salam Free Saturday Clinic, 10 a.m. –2 p.m. at the Isom Community Center at Lane Tabernacle CME Church, 916 N. Newstead, St. Louis, Mo. for those who are uninsured. For more information, call 314-533-0534.

Nutrition

Food Outreach provides food, meals and nutritional education/ counseling to

eligible persons living with HIV/AIDS or cancer in St. Louis. For more information, call 314-652-3663 or visit www. foodoutreach.org.

St. Louis Milk Depot - SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital is a breast milk depot for the Indiana Mother’s Milk Bank. Milk Depot staff will store and ship your milk to IMMB. For more information, call (314) 242-5912.

Prostate Cancer

The Cancer Center of The Empowerment Network at 6000 W. Florissant in St. Louis provides information on prostate and other types of cancer, and services and support. For more information, call 314-385-0998.

Prescription Cost Help

Schnucks Pharmacies – now offers certain prescription prenatal vitamins for free and offers no-cost generic prescription antibiotics at select locations.

Wal-Mart Pharmacies – offer select prescriptions for $4 or less for a 30-day supply or $10 for a 90-day supply. View the complete list at www.walmart.com/ pharmacy.