July 27th, 2017 Edition

A Business Imperative See Insert

City jail under fire

By Sophie Hurwitz and Melinda Oliver

Ferguson Community Empowerment Center opens

‘This is a historic moment,’ said Michael McMillan of the Urban League

By Rebecca Rivas

Of The St. Louis American

Like a “phoenix rising from the ashes,” the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis and the Salvation Army opened the Ferguson Community Empowerment Center on Wednesday, July 26 at the site of the burnt-out QuikTrip convenience store, which became a symbol of racial unrest after a Ferguson Police officer killed an unarmed black teenager in August 2014. The grand opening also kicked off the 2017 National Urban League Conference, which is being held in St. Louis on July 26 to 29 with a record-high attendance of about 4,000. Kitty Radcliffe, president of Explore St. Louis, expects new local expenditures from the conference to top $7 million. “We have come to St. Louis because we

n “He decided to think big with partners and friends – not alone.” –Marc Morial, on Michael McMillan’s leadership to create the Ferguson Community Empowerment Center

want to shine a bright light on how many of you are working and have worked every day for the past three years to convert anger into action,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of

By Sophie Hurwitz

n “We work in urban communities, rural communities, tribal communities, military families. We are uniquely prepared as a model to reach families where they are.”

– Constance Gully, Parents as Teachers

Parents as Teachers provides home visits to new parents, starting during pregnancy and continuing through the first few years of a child’s life. Though the nonprofit was founded in Missouri in 1984, it has since expanded its footprint to all 50 states, 100 tribal communities, and six countries. During Parents as Teachers (PAT) home visits, they coach parents on childcare tips, provide immunizations, screen children to identify developmental disabilities early on, and help connect parents with services. Though Parents as Teachers has grown significantly from its humble origins, the organization is still heavily invested in the St.

Photo by Wiley Price

Inmates of St. Louis’ Medium Security Institution, otherwise known as the Workhouse, rallied from the inside along with citizens protesting their being detained pre-trial in a jail without air conditioning on Friday, July 21.

Photo by Wiley Price

Michael McMillan, president and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, and Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, greeted well-wishers at the opening of the Ferguson Community Empowerment Center at the site of the burnt-out QuikTrip convenience store in Ferguson on Wednesday, July 26.

Woman files suit against Usher in midst of STD scandal

last time she refused to do so.

Documents surfaced last week claiming that singer Usher Raymond paid $1M settlement for allegedly infecting a woman with herpes. Over the weekend, news broke that he was slapped with a $10 million civil lawsuit by a woman claiming he failed to disclose his herpes status before engaging in unprotected sex. According to TMZ, the victim has doubled the amount after testing positive for the virus.

“The woman, in new legal docs filed as Jane Doe, says she was devastated when she got the results Saturday,” TMZ said. “The woman said she’d gone to get tested immediately after hearing reports Usher admitted in docs he has herpes

simplex 2. “She now wants at least $20 million for emotional harm, medical bills and punitive damages.”

High profile attorney Lisa Bloom said that several women have contacted her inquiring about potentially filing additional lawsuits against the singer.

“Endangering women’s health by having unprotected sex with herpes? Three women have now reached out to me about Usher,” Bloom said via Twitter. “Stay tuned.”

Chris Brown suing promoters for being detained in Manila

Several reports claim singer Chris Brown has filed a lawsuit against the promoter claiming he suffered extreme emotional distress after he was held in Manila for several days by a concert promoter demanding $300k for a concert he canceled on New Year’s Eve.

Brown said the trouble started when he was forced to

delay a New Year’s Eve 2014 gig in the Philippines due to a “misplaced passport.”

He arranged to play the makeup show in July 2015 – and performed right on schedule.

The next day, after the rescheduled show, documents claim Brown was met with armed men who blocked his exit when he tried to leave the hotel and head home. Brown then says a lawyer for the arena walked up and told him he would be arrested unless he wired $300k

Brown refused to pay, hired an immigration attorney and eventually got clearance to leave the country. He says on his way to the airport, Biongco and his team continued to command the cash via text.

He eventually made it home safe, but now he wants the promoter to pay unspecified damages for his extreme emotional distress.

Jocelyn Savage denies being trapped in R. Kelly’s closet, family disagrees

The family of Jocelyn Savage held a press conference last week with claims that the 21-year-old is being held captive in a “sex cult” by singer R. Kelly. Timothy Savage, Jocelyn’s father, told a press conference in Atlanta, Georgia, that she was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome She was 17 when she met Kelly after being invited backstage at one of his concerts with her mother, Jonjelyn Savage Timothy claims that shortly after their meeting, she dropped out of college and went to live with him.

The grandmother also claims Jocelyn failed to attend his funeral – even though the two were extremely close.

Kelly has vehemently denied the “sex cult” claims.

Kevin Hart dismisses cheating rumors

Newly married comedian Kevin Hart found himself at the center of the rumor mill last week when photos of he and a mystery woman sitting together in the backseat of a car surfaced online. Hart married wife Eniko last year, and the two are expecting their first child together in the fall.

Hart responded to the rumors via Instagram on Wednesday by posting a photo of himself laughing with a caption that read, “At the end of the day, you just gotta laugh at the BS.”

When the chatter persisted, Hart stressed the denial of the rumors with a more serious tone.

Three women who used to live with her in one of the singer’s houses claimed he was operating a cult-like house for young women.

Jocelyn denied the claims, saying she was in a “happy place.”

Meanwhile, her grandmother told thedailymail.com that she fears for Jocelyn’s safety. The grandmother says that after her dying grandfather begged Jocelyn to come see him one

“As a successful entertainer, you are forever in the spotlight. It’s a good thing and a bad thing,” Hart said via Instagram. “You can’t love the good and complain about the bad. It’s important to understand that it comes with the territory. My advice to the world is to keep your circles small and your positivity high. People can’t penetrate what you don’t allow them into…words to live by people.”

Sources: TMZ.com, The Daily Mail, Twitter.com, Instagram.com

Usher

Kevin Hart

THE STUFF THAT HAS PEOPLE TALKING

Banos Biongco.

By Sophie Hurwitz

For The St. Louis American

Advocating for ‘education equity and racial justice for all children’

According to a national study by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, Missouri is the second-worst state in racially disproportionate suspension rates, and has the greatest gap between the suspension rate of elementary school aged children of color and that of white children.

In response to this staggering statistic, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri (LSEM), a non-profit organization that provides legal assistance and representation to lowincome people in eastern Missouri, has created a new unit with a big goal: ending the school-to-prison pipeline and creating an equitable educational system.

“The education justice program is a new unit, comprised of three people, and we are seeking to achieve education equity and racial justice for all children,” said Susie Lake, staff attorney for the new project. “And we’re going to attempt to do that through impact litigation and other impact advocacy tools.”

“We will work to address these inequities, because we know that school suspensions can have a profoundly negative impact on children, families and communities,” said Education Justice Program Director Luz María Henríquez.

“Suspended students are less likely to graduate on time and more likely to be suspended again. Moreover, suspended students are more likely to repeat a grade, drop out of school and become involved in the juvenile justice system.”

The Education Justice Program has a multi-pronged plan to do something about those inequities.

“We may be filing and litigating a school discipline issue, or other educational issue that have the potential for some sort of broad impact that will create some sort of systemic change,” Lake said. “Also, something we’re planning on doing is drafting policy papers, maybe concerning systemic issues that contribute to

Legal help with school discipline issues

If you believe your child is being discriminated against, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri is open for calls from parents, teachers, and administrators. Call (314) 534-4200.

education inequity.”

Additionally, LSEM’s Education Justice unit will be working with other community organizations, including the ACLU and Metropolitan Congregations United, both of which were heavily involved in the recent dispute at Hazelwood schools over mass student suspensions. They will be working to make sure the suggestions of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights are enforced, rather than allowing unfair school policies – whether it’s more African-American kids being suspended than white kids, children

being handcuffed in school, or homeless students being made unable to attend school at all -- to continue.

“We’re working with community partners to do community education and outreach, educate community members, parents and students, about any sort of issue – maybe a discipline issue or something like that – that can contribute to education inequity,” said Lake.

“Talking with parents, and seeing, are your kiddos reading on grade level? Do you feel like your kiddos are really learning in school? Are your kiddos getting pushed out? And

then we come in with writing up a policy paper about what we’ve heard from the community. Or trying to get at some of those issues through litigation.”

Aside from community education about these issues, the group will be taking some cases of education inequity to court. They will be working using the impact litigation model.

“We’re always trying to find things that are going to have some sort of bigger impact,” said Lake. “It’s going to address the issues that are going on for that individual client, but also, it’ll

hopefully create positive change for other kiddos.”

They hope to find cases that will create legal precedent for more equitable school discipline policies.

Lake said that if parents suspect that their child is being treated unjustly in school, “the first step is to call us.”

The Education Justice Program may be able to take on the child’s case.

“Sometimes it’s this sort of thing where we know we can write a letter [to the district], and the child’s back in. Or it might be something where we think this might be getting at a bigger issue, maybe we’ve seen this a few different times from this particular school district, or this particular school, and so it might be something that we can help them address.”

LSEM’s office phone number is (314) 534-4200. If you believe your child is being discriminated against, their office is open for calls from parents, teachers and administrators.

Photo by Wiley Price

Ashley Moore, Susie Lake, Clarissa Jackson and Justin Long discussed cases recently at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, which operates a new Education Justice Program that aims to end the school-to-prison pipeline and create an equitable educational system..

Bi-State does not need a police license

We have grown accustomed to seeing white political powers in this region settle their differences in private and then present a relatively united front that prevails over the public in-fighting of black political players, so the wide-open white-on-white political violence that is ongoing in St. Louis County holds a special fascination for us.

The latest round of political kill-shots were fired following Tony Messenger’s Sunday column in the Post-Dispatch, which quickly became the first in a series of reports on dereliction of duty on the part of some St. Louis County Police officers assigned to the MetroLink detail. A Bi-State Development surveillance camera inside a MetroLink police surveillance station (that doubles as a break room and, apparently, occasional on-duty sleeping quarters) shows a number of County cops over the last couple of years taping over the camera lens so they can do something unobserved. County Police say their officers were mostly doing innocuous things like changing clothes without being filmed as they undressed, though it appears to be worse than that, and Police Chief Jon Belmar has pledged a thorough review of the incidents.

What’s startling is that Bi-State delivered its surveillance of the County Police, along with other internal records, to a media outlet, rather than addressing the matter privately with its putative lead partner in policing MetroLink. Belmar claimed that Bi-State has not brought any of this to his attention since 2015, though he met with Richard Zott, Bi-State’s director of public safety, as recently as July 11, not two weeks before Messenger’s first report. We believe this is because Bi-State does not want to improve the County’s police work on the MetroLink, it seeks to become its own police agency – and undermining the leadership of County police is a key means to that end. Belmar told The American he agreed with that assessment and that Bi-State was not satisfied with its public safety force being licensed, at best, as corporate security rather than law enforcement.

Not subtly, one of Bi-State’s commissioners, former St. Louis mayor Vincent C. Schoemehl, promptly called for Belmar’s resignation. Belmar is not budging and, when he spoke to The American on Monday, July 24, felt the faith and confidence (though concern) of his board chair, Roland Corvington – a former FBI special agent in charge who, we believe, should and will drive Belmar to get to the bottom of any shirker behavior in the department. To make it clear that they understood where the kill-shot came from, the County police union responded by calling

for Zott’s resignation. Needless to say, Zott –who has impressive command-level experience in federal security agencies and clearly resents being kept in short pants – is dug in and has the faith of his board, including Schoemehl.

As for Schoemehl’s sincerity in denunciating Belmar’s leadership, consider that Belmar oversaw the controversial investigation of the Ferguson Police killing of Michael Brown Jr. and the first, most militant week of Ferguson protest policing without a peep of complaint or concern from the former St. Louis mayor. Schoemehl is playing for power, not sincerely faulting Belmar.

Bi-State makes the point to The American that its security force is more diverse than the County Police MetroLink detail, but those are unaccredited security officers. While we believe the County Police needs more diversity on every beat, including the MetroLink – every officer shown shielding the camera was white –Belmar’s personnel staff is led by a black man, Captain Norman Mann, and the department recently appointed a new, young, black recruiter, Police Officer Ricardo Franklin, with a mandate to diversify the department.

The St. Louis County Police Department needs to look past political resentment and seriously investigate any evidence that its officers are not patrolling the MetroLink (or any other beat) when they are being paid (increasingly well) to protect the public. At the same time, absolutely the last thing the St. Louis metropolitan area needs is another unaccredited boutique police department.

Bi-State Development has no business becoming a police agency.

We are delighted to see this controversy extend to County Executive Steve Stenger, with 2018 election season starting to heat up. Messenger’s third report revealed Stenger – an attorney who is notoriously micro-managerial –being an obstructionist in the negotiation of the policing agreement for MetroLink, reportedly fighting provisions calling for accountability of County police on the detail. When St. Louis County Councilman Sam Page called for an independent investigation of the matter at Tuesday’s council meeting, we suspect he hopes to find more bad judgment and wrongdoing on the part of Stenger, rather than Belmar. It’s ironic to note that Stenger rose to power by leaking internal material about County Executive Charlie Dooley (overheated by rumors of corruption) to Post journalists like Messenger, who ran the Post editorial page that endorsed the upstart Stenger over Dooley after more than a year of editorials castigating the incumbent. Rise by the leak, fall by the leak.

Commentary

By Rev. Starsky D. Wilson Guest columnist

Soon my baby girl will be two years old. I’m almost over being upset with her about the disorder of her playroom. You see, whenever she comes across a new thing she’s interested in she drops the toy, picture book or household item that has been her play thing for the last few moments right there. After about an hour of this – with a toddler’s attention span – there are toys all over the playroom. Unfortunately, toddlers aren’t the only ones with short attention spans. Grantmakers are notorious for attentiondeficit disorder (ADD). This goes for independent foundations, like Deaconess which I lead, and sociallyminded corporate community affairs folks as well. As a result, there’s a long trail of the last idea we were really excited about.

Social impact bonds. Collective impact. Public education reform. College access. Individual development accounts. College savings accounts. All are efforts with merit and some innovations with significant potential for community transformation. But, one of the consequences of our disorder and “Funders ADD” is that creative leaders of notfor-profit organizations are forced to react to the whims of the last book, report or article we read. They end up trying to sustain institutions on shifting funding bases when they no longer fit into our priorities. This makes a mess of our civic infrastructure, leaving distressed neighborhoods and gross disparities in public

health.

I’m concerned, now, that the last few years have offered (and many have accepted) the rhetoric, but not the rigor, of pursuing racial equity. This will make it simply the next shiny, distracting object which will soon join the litany listed above. How can we keep this from happening?

First, we must enter the equity discussion with a growth mindset. I recently sat in a convening of funders from across the nation to discuss ways we are pursuing racial equity in our work in local communities and how we might work together nationally. The facilitator asked us to discuss how we could “maintain our commitment to quality while applying a racial equity lens.”

Unfortunately, most people, like the facilitator, see addressing racism and its effects as a drain on effectiveness. To be faithful to this work, we must hear the words of St. Louis native Angela Glover Blackwell, chief executive of PolicyLink. She and her colleagues argue that in the context of growing racial and cultural diversity, “racial equity is the superior growth model.”

With a growth mindset, we begin to appreciate and evaluate the relational capacity of organizations. Relational capacity is best measured by how much the staff, the

Keep focus on killing cruel health care bill

The most urgent task right now is to make sure a stake is driven through the heart of the Republican effort to gut Medicaid and balloon the ranks of the uninsured.

Keep in mind that this isn’t the first time the GOP’s gratuitously cruel effort to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act has looked dead. Back in March, House Speaker Paul Ryan called off a showdown vote and glumly declared, “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.” But he managed to get a revised bill passed in May, prompting President Trump to hold a sophomoric victory rally at the White House.

That bill would have caused 23 million people to lose health insurance over a decade and slashed Medicaid spending by more than $800 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The action then shifted to the Senate, which came up with legislation that would grow the numbers of uninsured by 22 million and cut Medicaid by $772 billion. Experts who tried to parse the details gave differing opinions on which version was more heartless.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s attempt to ram through his monstrosity collapsed in a heap last weekend, as both the far-right and moderate wings of the GOP caucus balked. In desperation, McConnell then proposed an

approach that Trump once ruled out but now eagerly embraces: Repeal the Affordable Care Act now and worry about replacing it later.

According to the CBO, taking the repeal-only route would mean 17 million more uninsured within a year and 32 million more in a decade.

board and the volunteers of an organization reflect, listen to and are trusted by the communities they say they serve.

If you serve people of color, your organization is betterpositioned to work with and move people if it is comprised of people of color. Thinking this way, diversity is an organizational asset, inclusion is a mark of institutional effectiveness and a full commitment to racial equity is a critical to achieving our social missions.

Finally, a crucial step to making a sustaining commitment to racial equity is prioritizing and promoting people of color (particularly black people) into leadership of health and human-service organizations. In “Race to Lead: Confronting the Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap,” The Building Movement Project noted that less than 20 percent of not-for-profits in the United States are led by people of color. The study concludes that to increase the number of people-of-color leaders (and fully commit to racial equity), the social sector needs to address the biases of the boards of directors.

Before long we will know whether racial equity is just another shiny object. If it is, we’ll look up in a couple of years to another mess.

Rev. Starsky D. Wilson is president & CEO of Deaconess Foundation and pastor of Saint John’s Church. He is a trustee for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. Follow him at @revstarsky.

replacement system would look like.

Insurance premiums would soar, and in more than half the nation’s counties there would be no insurers willing to service the individual market.

Appalling. McConnell’s gambit appeared to fail on July 18 when three GOP moderates –Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia – announced they would vote no. Their stance means McConnell lacks the votes even to open debate on repeal-only, let alone pass it. But it would be a mistake to take anything for granted. For seven long years, since the day the Affordable Care Act was passed, Republicans have been vowing to eradicate it “root and branch,” as McConnell likes to say. And for seven long years, the GOP has reaped political benefit from that categorical promise – while giving no serious thought to what a

Letters to the editor

Correction

The starting salary for a police officer with the St. Louis County Police Department is $48,265, not $40,162, as we previously reported. We regret the error. This starting salary is projected to go up in January 2018, due to the passing of Proposition P in April.

Why Putin opposed Clinton

It is crystal clear from the mounting evidence that Russia was intentional and aggressive in its effort to try and do all it could to assure that Hillary Clinton would not become president of the United States. The question is: Why did Putin not want to see Hillary Clinton as the leader of the United States of America?

In short, a Clinton presidency would represent a direct challenge to Putin’s desires to destabilize NATO, to weaken U.S. influence in the international arena, to disrupt the leadership of the U.S. in the G20, and to lessen the U.S. diplomatic influence in regional and global organizations.

Hillary Clinton represented the areas of strength that threatened Putin’s world view and that challenged his desire to reinvigorate his fascination with reviving Russia’s global influence while expanding Russia’s claims of territory, which was once a part of the USSR.

During her time as a U.S. Senator and as U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton gained respect and reverence for her astute knowledge of global affairs, her strength of leadership, and her authentic compassion for improving the plight of the developing world. Putin did not want to see the U.S. continue its posture of leadership in the global community. Putin’s dislike for Clinton was not personal, it was political.

Michael A. Battle Via email

Battle is former U.S. Ambassador to the African Union and former senior

Obamacare, you will recall, was once Romneycare; it was fashioned after a system Mitt Romney successfully implemented when he was governor of Massachusetts. It is based on ideas originally developed at the conservative Heritage Foundation, ideas the Republican Party once liked – until President Obama embraced them.

While Obama was in office, Republicans in Congress could blithely pass repeal bills knowing the president would never sign them. Now that Trump sits in the Oval Office with pen in hand, however, repeal becomes a real possibility – as do the awful consequences.

McConnell says he will bring the bill up for a vote anyway. In effect, he threatens to call the opponents’ bluff. Fortunately, they do not appear to be bluffing. The right-wing message machine will continue to loudly accuse no-voters of committing political treason. So it is more important than ever to remind senators that the repeal-andreplace bill is monumentally unpopular – polls last week showed its approval rating between 12 percent and 17 percent – and that the legislation’s cost would be paid in human suffering. We would return to the days when medical expenses were the leading cause of personal bankruptcy.

All letters are edited for length and

advisor to the Africa Bureau of the State Department.

City police need better management

Cops want the whole enchilada, not just part of it! Mayor Lyda Krewson’s half-cent sales tax proposal will appear on the November ballot. The additional tax dollars will fund new afterschool programs, summer jobs and social workers in addition to money for the police department. But the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association (SLPOA) demands “significant raises and full funding of sergeants overtime.” The city responded by citing the comptroller’s report showing the police department exceeding their overtime budget by $5 million. It cited examples of officers who were paid tens of thousands of OT dollars and $342,400 OT dollars that

could not be verified. The most egregious cases: officers drawing undocumented OT for surveillance work that was alleged to be fraudulent. City control of the PD hasn’t changed the department mindset. It’s still “who-youknow” business as usual. While “street cops” are denied OT for valid arrests, “connected cops” draw OT for alleged “surveillance work” (or guzzling beer at home). When citizens need emergency police service, their 9-1-1 calls are answered by street-cops, not cops on surveillance. So the PD’s overtime budget priority should be focused on the cops that respond to citizens’ calls for help!

Maybe Krewson’s tax proposal should include a provision to replace police management? Better police management just might be a proposal the SLPOA can support!

Michael K. Broughton Green Park

Beginner underwater swimmer

swimming lessons at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater St. Louis’ Herbert Hoover campus on July 17.

First Amendment meets school house

The Hazelwood School District and American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU) will partner to host a community workshop, the First Amendment Meets the School House Door, 6-8 p.m. Monday, July 31 at Hazelwood Administration Building, 15955 New Halls Ferry Rd. in Florissant. The panel discussion will feature Gregory P. Magarian, Washington University School of Law professor; Eric J. Miller, Washington University School of Law professor; Jeffrey Mittman, ACLU of Missouri executive director, and Nettie Collins-Hart, Hazelwood School District superintendent. Reece Ellis, a Hazelwood East High School 2017 alumnus, will moderate. This event is free and open to the public.

Convenient Care at Hazelwood opens Aug. 7

BJC Medical Group and Christian Hospital will open Convenient Care at Hazelwood. located at 7451 A N. Lindbergh in the Elm Grove Shopping Center, on August 7. It will be staffed by boardcertified BJC providers.

Convenient Care offers walk-in care for patients of all ages, with a co-pay that is often less expensive than urgent cares. For many visitors, the co-pay will be the same as a primary care visit. The providers treat a variety of minor injuries and illnesses, including: cough, cold and flu symptoms; joint and minor muscle strains; minor scrapes, cuts or bruises; sore throat or earache; insect bites or rashes; sinus symptoms; eye irritation; infections; and fevers under 101 degrees. It will be open daily from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Appointments are not necessary. To reach BJC Medical Group Convenient Care at Hazelwood, call 314-921-2882 or visit bjcmedicalgroup.org.

Beating a negative statistic

By Danisha Hogue Guest columnist

This past May, I was among millions who obtained a bachelor’s degree. On that day, I felt pride in my accomplishment and excited for what life had in store for my future. This feeling was not what I expected months prior. At the beginning of spring semester, the question so many fear was pounding in my mind. “What are you doing after graduation?”

For months, I searched for jobs that were specific to my degree and, to be honest, I was terrified. Funds were getting low, and all the people I knew with my degree were unemployed for a while after graduating.

Not only did those people not have jobs in their field, they had to change their living styles. After living with roommates, alone or significant others, they returned home to their families.

According to a Pew Research Center study, more millennial women are living with their parents or relatives than previous generations. According to the study, 36.4 percent of women ages 18-34 resided with family in 2014. This exceeds the numbers from 1940 when this type of data was first collected.

My story is much different than my peers.

One month before graduation day, I had an employment offer that I knew I’d accept and an apartment to call my own. I would be taking the next steps into adulthood.

It is a privilege to have higher education. Even though the percentage of 18-34-yearold women enrolled in college has increased five-fold since 1960, still only 27 percent of women in this age demographic were taking college classes in 2014. An even greater privilege is finding employment that fits your goals, morals and values, a company or organization that would make you proud to be on their team.

I found employment through my alma mater, Missouri State University-West Plains, a two-year college within the Missouri State University System. Returning to a community that gives so much to students feels good. It is also because of this college I was able to have amazing opportunities and gain an exceptional education.

At Missouri State-West Plains, I was able to use my A+ Scholarship provided by the

Missouri Department of Higher Education’s partnership with designated state high schools. The scholarship pays a student’s tuition at participating two-year colleges. I could have stayed in St. Louis and attended one of the two-year colleges close to home after graduating high school. According to the Pew study, 45 percent of young females in college lived with family in 2014. (This does not include those living in a dorm and going home on holidays.) But I knew I couldn’t possibly know what else was out there in the world if I didn’t go somewhere else. My parents never gave their opinion about whether I should stay at home or go away to college. Their only concern was how affordable it would be and what finances I could take care of on my own.

After visiting the West Plains campus, my mind was made up. The distance from home was under four hours – not too close, not too far. Going from a big city to a small town was a culture shock, but the people I met made it the best decision of my life. The campus’ relationship with Missouri State University’s main campus in Springfield made my transfer significantly easier. When I arrived in Springfield after graduating from the West Plains campus with my associate’s degree, the president already knew my name and personal story as a first-generation student from St. Louis and the recipient of the West Plains campus’ Outstanding Student Award.

Two years later, he still shares my story, and he points out my return to West Plains as an employee of the university.

What if I had decided to live with my parents instead of accepting the university’s job offer? What if I insisted on following 36.4 percent of female millennials who live with family? My journey would have been completely different. I would have missed so many opportunities. Beating a negative statistic has a positive feeling. With the right resources, it’s possible to attend a college that has your back until the end.

Danisha Hogue is a new media specialist at Missouri State University-West Plains.

Danisha Hogue

Jayceon Street, 7, shoots out of the water as he learns how to hold his breath underwater during

Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI

JAIL

Continued from A1

access, he said.

In their desperation for cooler air, Brown said, “We wouldn’t listen, you know, just talk back, wouldn’t follow orders. People were fighting, and did whatever we had to do for them to send us to the hole.”

Even getting a drink of cool water, he said, could be a fight.

“It was survival of the fittest in there, you know?” he said. “They’d bring one cooler in the mornings around 9, and they’d bring one at maybe 3:30, 4 in the evening. There’s like 70 people in a dorm, and they wouldn’t police it - they wouldn’t have people get in a line, they wouldn’t make sure everyone had some. They would just set it in there and have us fend for ourselves to get it if we can.”

Conditions in the jail were such that, according to Brown, “there were fights over everything, even trying to get in the shower.” The inmates themselves broke the story of the Workhouse, after a video circulated of inmates waving towels out their windows and pleading for help. “Help us!” begged a man. “We have no A/C! We need clean water!” The video was posted to Facebook and resulted in public concern and outrage.

On Friday, July 21, some 200 protesters gathered in front of the jail on Hall Street to demand that the inmates be released or relocated until the living situation inside the jail improved.

Demonstrators carried signs condemning the jail system and shouted, “No justice, no peace! Free them from the heat!” As the protesters chanted, people could be seen silhouetted inside the jail windows, watching and chanting back.

“I’m here today because making a mistake does not mean you do not deserve human dignity,” said protester Mahina Nightsage. “A lot of

people inside there have not even been convicted of a crime yet, but they are being denied basic necessities.”

Many others echoed her concern about the conditions of the jail, and about what they believed to be gross neglect by city and state officials.

State Senator Jamilah Nasheed (D-St. Louis) was on the scene to show her constituents that there were people in government who heard their concerns and cared.

“The people in my district are upset and outraged,” Nasheed said. “They do not understand why these people, some who haven’t even been convicted, have to endure such harsh conditions. They want to see these people treated humanely, and so do I.”

Mayor Lyda Krewson issued a statement on Friday that lay blame at the feet of city voters.

“In 2015, city voters rejected a bond issue that would have funded infrastructure improvements throughout the city, including installing air conditioning at MSI,” she stated.

The proposed $180 million bond issue that Krewson

referenced did not, in fact, include any money for air conditioning at the jail. It had $500,000 allocated for “ventilation fans,” but no allocation for air conditioning.

Tension at Friday’s protest was still extremely high.

Protesters joined together to shake the outer fence at the jail. Some even found a way under the fence and gained access to the jail grounds. As they did so, dozens of policemen gathered, some in riot gear.

Chontol Calvin, who was pepper-sprayed along with two friends, stated that the protest “was never violent. We were just banging pots and yelling. There was no rhyme or reason for riot police to be there. It felt antagonistic. We were nonviolent.”

The next night, protesters came back to the jail. That time, however, the police brought out batons and tear gas earlier in the evening – by 8 p.m. – and arrested three protesters: two adult Saint Louis University students, Amelia Jade Maxwell and Wesley Schnitker, and one minor.

By Monday, temporary

order stipulating a maximum number of inmates and other improvements in upkeep. A 2009 report by the ACLU of Eastern Missouri (to which The St. Louis American contributed) revealed squalid conditions and abuse by corrections officers and other inmates.

Jeff Rainford, chief of staff for then-Mayor Francis G. Slay, responded by saying that jail “was not supposed to be Shangri-la.”

In state and federal prisons, there are laws governing the upkeep of facilities. The Workhouse, which is owned and operated by the St. Louis Division of Corrections, is excluded from these mandates.

“They need a new facility,” said Nicole Nelson, staff attorney at ArchCity Defenders. “This is not a humane place that anyone should live.”

air conditioning units were being installed, as promised by Krewson’s office. Aldermanic President Lewis Reed had first suggested this solution in a letter to the city’s Corrections Division on July 19, two days before the first protest.

But, for many activists, this small concession to the threat of continued protest didn’t fix the larger issue of conditions at the Workhouse.

Pre-trial hellhole

The jail housed around 770 inmates at the time of the last census in June – despite a 1990 District Court order that the maximum number of people incarcerated there should be 481. According to St. Louis city data from last June, about 98 percent of those imprisoned are pre-trial, meaning they have not yet been convicted of any crime and are being held because they could not afford to post bail.

Unacceptable conditions in the jail have been a matter of public record for decades.

Judge Clyde S. Cahill decried those conditions in his sincedisregarded 1990 judicial

ArchCity Defenders, along with the nonprofit Action Council St. Louis, worked to bail out as many people as possible from the Workhouse during the heat wave, and were able to pay bail for 16 people accused of nonviolent crimes by July 22.

Kayla Reed, one of the main organizers of the bailout action, said the Workhouse is among several facilities that were built to house black people – and that’s still true today.

“With 700 people in the Workhouse, we got 100 emails from people’s wives and parents,” Reed said. “We want to organize those people and put them in front of the mayor, Board of Aldermen, circuit attorney, so we can ask: Why are we holding people in jail on $200 bonds? That conversation needs to be created, and elected officials need to be held accountable to a response.”

Proposed solutions

Beyond bail reform and the temporary air conditioning units, several other solutions have been proposed. State Rep. Joshua Peters (D-St. Louis) sent a letter to Missouri House Speaker Todd Richardson asking him to create a special committee “to examine and investigate these concerns and

to receive testimony as they pertain to the condition of the Workhouse.”

Nasheed also proposed a plan to Governor Eric Greitens, calling for in-person visits by state officials to the Workhouse, an audit of the city Corrections Division by the Missouri Department of Corrections, and a review of all state funding that is allocated to the city Corrections Division.

St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones made the Workhouse a campaign issue in her bid for mayor, which she narrowly lost to Krewson in March. She said that the next step is to “look through the people who are in the Workhouse who have not been on trial, and then release them on their own recognizance,” as an alternative to the cash bail program that keeps so many incarcerated there.

Though the most recent list of charges for which people are being held in the Workhouse include more than 100 people being held for alleged possession of a controlled substance, more serious charges of detainees include armed alleged criminal action, child abuse, kidnapping 2nd degree, elderly abuse and failure to register as a sex offender.

Jones called for the circuit attorney to investigate Workhouse conditions, and suggested that funding used to keep people in the jail should be re-directed to rehabilitation and reentry programs for lessserious offenders.

“Because people shouldn’t be in jail for being black, poor, on drugs,” Jones said. She pointed out that almost 1,200 of about 1,500 people being held in the Workhouse and the City Justice Center are black men.

A spokesperson for Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner said that unless there is a criminal case to be made, the circuit attorney can’t investigate the Workhouse as an institution: “That’s the purview of City Hall.”

Photo by Wiley Price

Margaret Sherer displays her displeasure with the conditions inside the Workhouse at a protest on Friday, July 21.

CENTER

Continued from A1

the National Urban League, said at the grand opening. “To take the tragedy that occurred and, from that tragedy, try to shape a new beginning for this community – many cities, big and small, across America I hope take note.”

The old QuikTrip was looted, burned and spraypainted with “R.I.P. Mike Brown” during the unrest following Michael Brown Jr.’s shooting death by thenFerguson Police Officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014. The QuikTrip Corporation remediated the site and then donated the property, at 9420 W. Florissant Ave., to the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis.

“This is a historic moment,” said Michael McMillan, president and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis. The Urban League co-owns the building – a two-story, 13,500-square-foot facility –with the Salvation Army, and both will offer services out of the center.

The new facility will house the Urban League’s Save Our Sons workforce development program, which provides job

GULLY

Continued from A1 Louis area – as evidenced by their choice of Constance Gully, an East St. Louis native and former CFO for HarrisStowe State University, as CEO. Gully has been the permanent CEO since February and interim CEO since August 2016. She was promoted from CFO.

“As an African-American female in the nonprofit world, I think this is a very unique opportunity,” she said. “There aren’t a lot of national

Leaders of the Urban League, the Salvation Army, Centene and others celebrated the grand opening of the Ferguson Community Empowerment Center at the site of the burnt-out QuikTrip convenience store

Ferguson on Wednesday, July 26.

training and placement services for African Americans and other young men in Ferguson and North St. Louis County.

The Salvation Army will provide help with after-school tutoring, financial assistance for rent and utilities, and emotional and spiritual care for individuals reentering society after incarceration. Its Pathway to Hope program, which helps families break free of poverty,

nonprofit CEOs that look like me, and I don’t take that lightly.”

Now she is working to organize the upcoming Parents as Teachers International Conference in Philadelphia this November. Along with that, Gully is prioritizing attempts to keep funding for the program. Parents as Teachers uses a scientifically proven model for improving children’s school-readiness, so it has previously received substantial government funding.

“There are some very high stakes on the radar for early childhood evidence-based home visiting, specifically,”

will also be offered at the center.

“Together we’re responding to racial inequality and human distress experienced not only in Ferguson but across our nation,” Commissioner F. Bradford Bailey of the Salvation Army said at the event. “The center is a gathering place, dedicated to listening to people where we can learn and act together.”

said Gully. The Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV), which provides grant funding for “about 25 percent” of PAT programs in 35 states, is currently set to expire on September 30.

Though one of her priorities as CEO is to keep national funding, the funding situation in Missouri, where the program began, has been “challenging” for some time.

“We’re still at almost half of the funding level where we were, from the state of Missouri, back in 2010,” she said. So as the organization has grown, its funding in Missouri

In addition to the Salvation Army, the center also will have offices for Lutheran ChurchMissouri Synod and University of Missouri-Extension. Provident and Better Family Life plan to hold community events and offer resources there occasionally.

The construction project employed a historic number of minorities with about 75 percent of both the workforce

has shrunk.

“Many of the districts in Missouri don’t have the resources to meet their requirements today,” Gully said. “So we have to find a creative way to support the districts in Missouri, whether that’s technical assistance or helping them through in some other way.”

One program Parents as Teachers has in Missouri is a partnership with the Normandy Schools Collaborative, the region where Gully raised her own son. PAT’s office space in the district is right next to the Normandy Early Childhood Center, allowing

and business contracts on the nearly $4 million project, according to Kwame Building Group, an employee-owned local company that was the construction management group. Simms Building Group was the main contractor on the project, and most of the subcontractors were small businesses.

“Michael McMillan began as president just as the

them to collaborate on making sure children have all the immunizations required to begin kindergarten and track the developmental milestones of each child.

In her role as CEO, Gully also hopes to increase the cultural sensitivity of Parents as Teachers and to reflect the diversity of the families the organization serves.

Ferguson uprising began and that’s a daunting challenge – especially coming on the heels of a great legend, James Buford – to take over this strong affiliate under those circumstances,” Morial said. “Michael moved immediately with a vision that said, ‘Let us address many of these underlying challenges our community faces.’ He decided to think big with partners and friends – not alone.”

Michael F. Neidorff, president and CEO of Centene Corporation and board chair of the National Urban League, said Ferguson became a national symbol of systematic racism and social injustice in 2014.

“Unfortunately, what happened in Ferguson could happen to any number of communities across this nation,” said Neidorff, who also is co-chair of the 2017 conference in St. Louis. “While we recognize solutions to systemic issues, unfortunately, take time, we do believe that we have taken meaningful strides to begin to overcome the issues endemic to the problem.”

For more information about the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis and its programs, visit https://www. ulstl.com/ or call 314-6153600.

“One of the important roles that I have is to increase and improve the level of cultural competency that we have as an organization, and push that strength out to the field,” she said. “To make sure, for example, that the books that are usually passed out during every home visit reflect the families that are served.”

And that ability to reach families from every cultural background, and help with the difficult task of parenting, is why Gully fights to make sure Parents as Teachers keeps growing into the future.

“We work in urban communities, rural communities, tribal communities, military families,” she said. “I think we are uniquely prepared as a model to reach families where they are.”

in

Photo by Wiley Price

We must continue to teach the ESL race massacre

By James Ingram For The St. Louis American

If you happen to live in the St. Louis bi-state area you’ve probably read or seen extensive media coverage of the horrific events that took place in East St. Louis on July 2, 1917.

Most commonly and inaccurately described as a “race riot,” the events of that dreadful day were more akin to being a massacre of black ESL residents by mobs of white racist thugs and terrorists who cowardly beat, stoned and killed countless numbers of African Americans, torching over 300 homes and making target practice of blacks who emerged from the flames. Many were fortunate enough to flee ESL by way of the McArthur and Eads bridges, while some were intercepted and slaughtered.

Penn State professor and author Charles Lumpkins, even referred to it as a pogrom: “an assault, condoned by officials, to destroy a community defined by ethnicity, race or some other social identity.”

The powder keg was created when the Aluminum Ore Company recruited and hired 470 black workers to replace white workers who had gone on strike. The combination of racism and the fear of black migration, displacement and disruption of their democratic political structure (blacks were largely Republican at that time) is what finally lit the fuse.

The documentary never got much national attention, nor did it get the exposure that it should have in St. Louis or East Boogie, which is inexcusable. I’ve read media accounts and talked to elderly residents who largely were apprehensive about sharing that history until now.

We could take a lesson from Jews whose mantra of “Never Again,” relative to the remembrance of the Nazi Holocaust and extermination of 6 million Jews, is not allowed to be forgotten, irrespective of who wants to hear it.

To that extent, there is no reason that The 1917 ESL race massacre shouldn’t be incorporated into every history class in ESL public schools. It is a travesty that, in 12 years of an ESL public school education, I never once heard these atrocities mentioned, not even tangentially.

Those who organized the commemorative activities are to be commended, but as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked in his final book, where do we go from here: chaos or community? I’d suggest that there needs to be a permanent memorial or museum dedicated to the preservation of all of the documentaries, intellectual research and other history that has been compiled to date. Perhaps if our ESL youth knew this history, they would

I know the story all too well. In 1998, I appeared in the groundbreaking documentary “Bloody Island: The Race Riots of East St. Louis.” The producer was ESL native Thomas Gibson, who has gone on to do great things in Hollywood and now works for BET. The documentary also included St. Louis American columnist Bernie Hayes, as well as survivor of the massacre, the late Scotia Calhoun, an ESL entrepreneur.

be less prone to turn on each other in acts of violence and murder. For it has been said that “they who fail to know their history are destined to repeat it.”

I attended the kickoff commemoration at the Belleville Courthouse, along with elected officials, judges, Freemasons and citizens. Chief Judge Andrew Gleeson, whose home was directly across from mine in ESL, gave me a shoutout in reflection upon our being oblivious to that shameful history as we “innocently” played together, as children, and noting that we should learn to co-exist in a similar manner today.

Retired judge Milton Wharton reflected on the 1903 lynching of black man that took place in proximity to the very place that the ceremony was being held. Ironically, St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern was conveniently absent from the ceremony. It was Kern’s great grandfather Mayor Fred J. Kern who allowed the lynching to take place a century ago. Wouldn’t it have been appropriate and healing for Kern to offer an apology or acknowledgement of that tragedy on behalf of the Kern family? I hope that ESL politicians are paying attention. History is an incredible teacher, and commemorations make us feel good and empowered momentarily. However, if we continue to have a political masterslave relationship, relative to Belleville and St. Clair County, then all of the pageantry, ceremonies and commemorations are all just feel-good exercises in futility.

Email: jtingram_1960@ yahoo.com; Twitter@ JamesTIngram.

James Ingram

Did the police chief lie about the friendly-fire shooting of a black cop?

Did St. Louis’ Acting Police Chief Lawrence O’Toole knowingly give a false public statement the night that a black city cop was shot by a white city cop?

At least one police officer says it’s impossible that he didn’t.

On the night of June 21, O’Toole – surrounded by Mayor Lyda Krewson and some top-ranking officers

– told media that a black, offduty city officer was shot in the arm “during the exchange of gunfire” between the suspects and other officers.

O’Toole went straight to the hospital to visit the injured officer, Milton Green, and the police chief gave that public statement to the press outside the hospital afterwards.

some commanders, sergeants, lieutenants and Green’s family.

“Everyone in law enforcement knew it,” said Taylor, who is a night-time homicide sergeant. “His family knew it. I didn’t meet anyone who said, ‘What happened?’ Word spread fast, and [Green] told the same story about three times while I was there. He consistently stated he was shot by another officer.”

n Taylor said she wasn’t in the room when O’Toole spoke to Green, but she finds it hard to believe he didn’t tell the chief the same story he told everyone else.

However, the next afternoon, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department tweeted out the incident statement, which stated that a white officer had shot the black officer.

Sgt. Heather Taylor, president of the Ethical Society of Police, said that she arrived at the hospital about 20 minutes after Green did that night, and she already knew that Green had been shot by another officer before she arrived. The chief was already at the hospital, along with

Taylor said she wasn’t in the room when O’Toole spoke to Green, but she finds it hard to believe that he didn’t tell the chief the same statement that he told everyone else.

“Why would everyone have the right information about the incident except for the chief?” Taylor said. “If you are the chief of police and you are the only one who doesn’t know what happened… It’s not possible. He provided a statement with a false narrative.”

The St. Louis American has asked O’Toole via email on July 21 where he received his inaccurate information that night and whether he purposefully gave a false or misleading narrative to the press. The American has not received a response. When he gave his statement, the chief was surrounded by Major Michael Caruso, Major

John Hayden and Captain Janice Bockstruck

Mayor Krewson was at the hospital with the chief that night, she said at a July 19 press conference at her office. She also gave a statement to the press after O’Toole. The St. Louis American asked the mayor if she would fire the chief if she found out he gave an inaccurate public statement on purpose.

“If I think someone has intentionally lied to either me or the public, then yeah, I think that’s room for dismissal,” Krewson said. “I’m not aware that that happened. That’s a hypothetical. I guarantee you that I didn’t lie to you all that night. I told you what I thought happened based on what I was told.”

Krewson heard the story directly from the police chief, she said.

“It’s my understanding that what he said to reporters was the best information that he had at the time,” Krewson said.

The American followed up with Krewson about the Ethical Society’s statement regarding O’Toole’s actions, which came out in The American’s story on Friday, July 21 after her press conference.

Krewson’s spokesman said, “There is an investigation into this incident currently in progress. In light of that,

we aren’t going to comment further than what she said at the press conference.”

The American also reached out to the St. Louis Police Officers Association for a comment regarding the allegation that O’Toole misled the public and media but has not received a response.

On June 21 at about 10:30 p.m., Green, a black St. Louis city police officer, was relaxing with his family at his North St. Louis home when he heard “commotion” nearby and went to scope it out with his department-issued weapon, according to the department’s incident statement.

At that time, three black males, two of whom were 17, had crashed a stolen car on the 5900 block of Astra. The young men fled on foot armed with firearms, according to police, and two officers chased and fired shots at them. One of the young men was hit in the ankle.

When the black officer went to assist, two officers ordered him to the ground and he complied. They soon recognized the 11-year veteran on the force and told him to stand up and walk toward them, according to the statement.

But then, another officer, a 36-year-old white officer, arrived on the scene and

Community responds

“observed this,” the report stated.

Somehow, the officer “feared for his safety,” and he shot the black cop in the arm, according to the statement.

The police department did not release the names of any of the officers involved. However, it did state that seven officers went on administrative leave after the incident, as per department policy. The Force Investigative Unit, which focuses on officer-involved shootings, responded and an investigation is ongoing.

Green has not yet provided his official statement for the investigation and therefore has not yet made any public comments.

In response to the incident, the police department is now forming a training committee on how officers who are off-duty should conduct themselves. Taylor said this is the wrong reaction.

“Green’s the victim in this,” Taylor said. “He complied and followed the rules. He needs no more training. Who needs more training is the officer who shot him when he complied.”

The African-American community is calling for a complete and independent investigation into the shooting of Officer Green, along with O’Toole’s potential false statement to the public that night, said Jamala Rogers co-chair of the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression.

That investigation should be done by the city’s Civilian Oversight Board of police work, she said. However, the board would have to wait until the police has finished its investigation to review the case, she said. The community and the coalition also expect the mayor to be vocal about demanding a fair investigation from the police department.

“Even if the chief hides and says that it was the most accurate information he had at the time, he’s already stained his reputation” Rogers said.

Prince Carter, who recently held a fundraiser for Officer Green, said that the incident is tragic for both black officers and the black community.

“We say that we want police officers to live in the communities that they serve and protect,” Carter said. “Officer Green did exactly what he was supposed to. This man left his family to go out and do good police work.”

And how is he repaid? Carter asked. He’s heard from several witnesses that after Green was shot, the other officers “disrespected that man’s wife and said nasty things to her.” And then the police chief tried to cover up what happened, he said.

“I hope the mayor goes ahead and fires him,” Carter said. “Police are constantly encouraging people to come forward and speak up about crimes they’ve witnessed. They are proving that they are not capable of doing the right thing themselves.”

Most of all Carter wants to know what the mayor is going to do about the racism and racial divide in the police department.

“You can remove a statue that represents systematic racism from a park, but can you remove racism in the police department?” Carter asked. “That statue isn’t killing no one today.”

She said the department should have instead launched implicit-bias training –which is offered free by the Department of Justice, but the department has never taken advantage of it, she said.

Photo by Wiley Price

Acting St. Louis Police Chief Lawrence O’Toole.

Pro-choice advocates protest ‘fake clinics’

State funds for needy families are going to anti-abortion facilities

American staff

On Wednesday, June 19, NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri and Reproaction held a visibility action in front of Birthright, one of 69 unregulated crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) in Missouri funded through tax credits and federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds allocated to states with the intention of feeding hungry children.

CPCs are anti-abortion facilities that give medically

inaccurate information to women and families seeking out reproductive health care. Both NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri and Reproaction have been leading efforts across Missouri to bring to light the dangers of anti-abortion fake clinics.

“We are tired of our taxpayer dollars being used to lie to and shame women for making their own personal, private reproductive health decisions,” said Kirstin Palovick, Organizing and Policy Associate of NARAL

Pro-Choice Missouri.

“It is unacceptable that Missouri prioritizes giving fake clinics millions in tax dollars while there are neighborhoods in the state with an infant mortality rate that is worse than some developing countries, like Uzbekistan and Vietnam,” said Pamela Merritt, co-director of Reproaction. “Enough is enough.”

This action was part of the “Expose Fake Clinics Week of Action” campaign happening nationally and continuing through July 26.

ACLU seeks details of Greitens’ St. Louis Crime Plan

Claims

‘predictive policing’ models lead to racial profiling

American staff

The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri sent a Sunshine Law request on July 19 to the office of Gov. Eric Greitens asking for government transparency on the details of his recently announced plan to use state resources to combat crime in the city of St. Louis. The ACLU of Missouri requested all records relating to the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s and the Missouri Department of Public Safety’s partnerships with the Mission Saves Task Force that the governor announced on July

10. The ACLU is also asking for records detailing the scope and form of these partnerships – specifically, which data is being used and how the task force anticipates interpreting interstate firearms crime data to strategically place troopers. Predictive policing models use past incidents and police encounters as data points to estimate where police officers may need to take action in the future. However, the ACLU claimed, crime prediction models rely on flawed and outdated statistics that reflect the bias of the criminal justice system.

“What predictive policing does do is racially profile and assume guilt among already over-policed neighborhoods,” said Jeffrey Mittman, ACLU of Missouri executive director. “By relying on outdated strategies, Gov. Greitens’ plan threatens to make many communities’ already strained relationship with police even worse instead

On July 10, Gov . Eric Greitens announced new state partnerships in fighting crime in St. Louis. The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri has sought details of the plan from the governor under the state’s open records law.

Black motorists in Missouri are stopped at a rate 75 percent higher than whites, according to data gathered by the Missouri attorney general. Using automated predictions based on biased data will only give St. Louis more of the same, the ACLU claimed. People of color will continue to be wrongfully pulled over, searched, jailed, and incarcerated at higher rates than whites, continuing the erosion of trust between police and communities, and failing to make any of us safer, the ACLU claimed.

The ACLU claimed Greitens’ plan to invest in predictive policing doubles down on a practice that is proven to damage this relationship and is reminiscent of the failed war on drugs – a broken effort that became a war on the poor and communities of color, the ACLU claimed. As of noon on July 20, the ACLU said it has received no response from the governor.

On June 19, NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri and Reproaction held a visibility action in front of Birthright, one of 69 unregulated crisis pregnancy centers in Missouri.

Photo by Wiley Price

Centene to open People’s clinic in Ferguson Schnucks

Michael McMillan on March 3 when the Urban League announced its 2017 national conference would come to St. Louis.

$1.3M investment and Home State Health subsidiary enables ‘potent partnership’

By Chris King Of The St. Louis American

A full-service health center is coming to Ferguson in November thanks to Centene Corporation, its Missouri subsidiary Home State Health, Schnuck Markets, which will host the clinic, and Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers, which will operate it.

Schnuck Markets is donating the space in its Ferguson store, 49 N. Florissant Rd., for the primary care and urgent care center for adults and children over the age of three. Centene will support the health center’s operations, while clinical staff from People’s will provide medical

n “We are proud of the relationship we have with Schnucks and People’s Health on this project.”

– Michael F. Neidorff, chairman, president and CEO of Centene

services. Once the facility is fully operational, it will be able to provide services to over 8,000 people annually.

Services offered at the clinic will include

immunization services, laboratories, dental services through a mobile unit, and referral to other needed services, including primary care, X-Ray and screening mammography, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) services, women’s health (OB-GYN) and social services.

Centene, a Fortune 500 company healthcare service firm based in Clayton, reported its initial investment as more than $1.3 million.

“We are proud of the relationship we have with Schnucks and People’s Health on this project. I want to compliment Schnucks for their willingness to work on this important project in

See CENTENE, B2

Marr, Williamson again cochair Charmaine Chapman Society

Last year raised a record $3.5M for United Way

The African American/Charmaine Chapman Leadership Society of United Way of Greater St. Louis kicked off its 2017 fundraising campaign on Thursday, July 20. Its cochairs are Ann Cuiellette Marr, vice president of global human resources at World Wide Technology, and Keith H. Williamson, general counsel at Centene Corporation. They also cochaired the 2016 campaign, raising $3.5 million – the first time it raised more than $3 million since the society was formed. The society, which is comprised of more than 800 local African Americans who donate $1,000 or more annually to the United Way, was formed (by St. Louis American publisher Donald M. Suggs). It has raised more than $32 million for United Way services in the 16-county metropolitan region. It’s the oldest and largest African-American philanthropic giving group associated with any United Way in the nation.

See CHAPMAN, B6

The Charmaine Chapman Society’s 2017 cochairs – Keith H. Williamson, general counsel, Centene Corporation, and Ann Cuiellette Marr, vice president of global human resources, World Wide Technology – with Orvin Kimbrough, president and CEO of United Way of Greater St. Louis, at the society’s 2017 fundraising campaign kickoff at Lumen on Thursday, July 20.

Demond Buckley has joined First Bank as an assistant vice president, senior recruiter in the Human Resources Department at the Hazelwood Operations Center (600 James S. McDonnell Blvd). He will be responsible for developing, implementing and executing a broad range of recruiting strategies across the First Bank footprint (Missouri, Illinois and California).

Toi Little graduated from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ LEAD program, which prepares participants for executive leadership through intense individual and group learning activities. A U.S. Air Force veteran, she is the acting assistant division chief for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Records Management Center in St. Louis.

Jason Randle joined KAI Design & Build as a project designer. Randle comes to KAI with 29 years of industry experience. He has a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Southern University at Baton Rouge and is a member of the National Organization of Minority Architects.

Daffney Moore has joined the Myrtle Hilliard Davis Comprehensive Health Centers, Inc.’s Community Advisory Board. She is city administrator for the City of Dellwood. Myrtle Hilliard Davis CHC is a Federally Qualified Health Center serving more than 30,000 patients annually across four site locations in the St. Louis region.

Johnathan Cunningham was promoted to sergeant in the St. Louis County Police Department. He joined the department in 2008 and is currently assigned to the City of Jennings Detail. He has also served in the Central County Precinct and the Highway Safety Unit and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice from UMSL.

Jamilah Nasheed was appointed to the board of directors of Heat Up St. Louis, which provides energy assistance in the form of education, funding and advocacy to residents in Missouri and Illinois and distributes A/Cs to qualified seniors and the disabled. She represents Missouri’s 5th District in the Missouri Senate.

Demond Buckley

Toi Little

Jason Randle

Daffney Moore

Michael F. Neidorff – chairman, president and CEO of Centene, and chairman of the National Urban League’s Board of Directors – was listened to by David Steward of World Wide Technology and Urban League national and local presidents Marc Morial and

Jamilah Nasheed

Johnathan Cunningham

Photo by Wiley Price

By Nathaniel Sillin

Could a gap year after high school make financial sense?

In some parts of the world, a gap year – a year-long break between high school and college – is the norm. It’s starting to catch on in the U.S. as well. It’s a chance for recent high school graduates to earn money, challenge themselves, explore the world and build their resume while experimenting with different career paths.

Those who take full advantage of the opportunity often find the experience to be rewarding and beneficial. And colleges report that students who start school after a gap year tend to earn higher grades, are more involved with campus life and graduate within four years at a higher rate than their non-gap-year peers.

Lessons you could learn along the way. Many people spend at least part of the year traveling, working or volunteering away from home. During the year, they may discover that what they originally wanted to study isn’t a good fit, or may come away with a newfound passion.

Entering college with this knowledge can help them focus on a major, plan their classes and graduate early. Or, at least avoid changing majors and extending their schooling. In either case, they can save tens of thousands of dollars. During a gap year, young adults also often take a more direct role in their day-to-day finances. They can develop a greater appreciation for earning, and spending, money.

In turn, this can give them a framework when taking out student loans and an extra push to apply for scholarships.

Finding structure for your gap year. To avoid squandering the year, you can look into formal programs that can help you achieve or define your personal, academic or career goals. According to the American Gap Association (AGA), a nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon, over 80 percent of gap year students

say the skills they acquired helped them be successful in their career after school.

Many choose serviceoriented work. The federally backed AmeriCorps programs place volunteers throughout the U.S. to help communities in needs. Once you complete a full-time 10- to 11-month commitment, you may be eligible for a scholarship worth up to $5,815 (in fiscal year 2017). Some colleges and universities will also match a portion of the award.

Working for a local business could be another great option. You can earn money, see if you truly enjoy the work, network and may be able to line up work during school or for future summer jobs. The industry connections and mentorship you receive can also be valuable for your postgraduation job search. Another resource for finding a program is the USA Gap Year Fairs, which profiles a broad range of gap year experiences. Privately run programs may not offer compensation, but sometimes

Many people spend at least part of the year traveling, working or volunteering away from home. During the year, they may discover that what they originally wanted to study isn’t a good fit, or may come away with a newfound passion.

you can work in exchange for room and board. The experience can also serve as a foundation for cover letters when you apply for jobs or college admissions essays.

Funding your gap year. There are gap year options for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds.

The AGA maintains a list of financial aid opportunities that can help you fund a gap year. The mix of merit- and need-based scholarships could cover the cost of a program or offset the cost of

traveling or volunteering. If you have a particular program, ask the organization for recommendations.

Also, inquire with your university to see if it recommends or runs any programs. Some schools offer scholarships to admitted students who take a gap year, and a few will give you college credit for completing certain programs. Once you start your college education, you can try to capitalize on your year off. There are many scholarships available to continuing college students and your experience could be a good jumping-off point for an essay.

Bottom line: Taking a gap year between high school and college is increasingly popular, although still not as common as it is in some other parts of the world. While jumping right into college and getting a degree is the traditional path towards employment, some parents and students see the benefit of taking a year off to better define one’s goals and gain real-world experience before going to college.

Nathaniel Sillin directs Visa’s financial education programs. To follow Practical Money Skills on Twitter: www. twitter.com/PracticalMoney. This article is intended to provide general information and should not be considered health, legal, tax or financial advice. It’s always a good idea to consult a tax or financial advisor for specific information on how certain laws apply to your situation and about your individual financial situation.

BioSTL hiring a ‘Champion’ and a ‘Catalyst’

St. Louis is embarking on creating an ecosystem of collaborative partners dedicated to making science, technology, engineering and math – or STEM – an everyday part of learning from birth through college and career.

To do so, a group of people and organizations committed to building equitable access to high-quality STEM learning for all students in the St. Louis Metro region have launched STEMSTL. Guiding principles of STEMSTL include: a youth-centered focus, a commitment to transparency, information sharing, datadriven decision-making, and continuous improvement.

This group is seeking two individuals to lead efforts to create and sustain it. The new positions will work within

CENTENE

continued from page B1

such an expeditious manner. Equally important is the partnership and longstanding relationship we have with People’s Health,” said Michael F. Neidorff, chairman, president and CEO of Centene, said in a statement. “All three of us are committed to serving the population of Ferguson and continuing with the incredible revitalization of the area.”

Todd Schnuck, chairman and CEO of Schnuck Markets, thanked Centene “for their commitment to the residents of the North St. Louis County area.” Dwayne Butler, CEO of People’s Health Centers, said People’s is “very excited to work with Centene, Home State Health and Schnucks to bring valuable primary health care resources to the Ferguson

n Interested individuals and firms can learn more about the “Champion” and “Catalyst” job opportunities online at stemstl.org/careers.

BioSTL, St. Louis’ bioscience industry builder. BioSTL will bring on a “Champion” to convene stakeholders, build networks and influence positive outcomes within STEMSTL, as well as a “Catalyst” to manage day-to-day operations.

BioSTL secured membership in, and technical support from, the STEM Learning Systems Initiative

n “Clearly, potent partnerships will be critical in our efforts to help heal our vulnerable communities.”

– Dwayne Butler,

CEO of People’s Health Centers

This national effort aims to make a significant impact on STEM education and workforce development. It provides a structured, two-year community alignment process to create systemic change that will mean more students, particularly underserved and underrepresented students, develop STEM knowledge and skills. Interested individuals and firms can learn more about the “Champion” and “Catalyst” job opportunities online at stemstl. org/careers.

BioSTL also plans to open a dialogue with those who wish to participate and help shape a comprehensive, equitable STEM culture in St. Louis. Sign up at http://stemstl.org/ participate/.

community, together providing and increasing access to quality healthcare in that community. Clearly, potent partnerships will be critical in our efforts to help heal our vulnerable communities.” Centene made a series of major investments in Ferguson after it received international attention for the unrest following the Ferguson police killing of Michael Brown Jr. In 2016, Centene invested $30 million by opening a service center in Ferguson, providing 250 new jobs to the Ferguson area. The 45,000-square-foot facility, located at 2900 Pershall Rd. includes a state-of-theart bistro, fitness center, and on-site early childhood development center, as well as a community center available to the Ferguson community. Centene was also a partner to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater St. Louis to launch Ferguson’s first club. Additionally, Centene contributed to the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis to build a job training center at the site of the bombed out QuikTrip – Ferguson “Ground Zero” – on West Florissant Avenue. Neidorff chairs the National Urban League’s Board of Directors. When it opens in November, the clinic’s hours will be Mondays through Fridays 9

“McGregor is going to get killed boxing. He doesn’t stand much of a chance.”

– Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, on the upcoming Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor bout

Ward wins men’s long jump

Alecia ‘Sug’ Sutton leads USA to victory over Mali

A pair of talented athletes from the St. Louis metro area are currently representing the USA in international competition and doing quite well for themselves.

Earl Austin Jr.

Former Cahokia High track and field star Ja’Mari Ward added another championship to his already impressive resume as a top-flight jumper. Ward won the men’s long jump at the Pan America Junior Championships in Lima, Peru. A sophomore at the University of Missouri, Ward won the competition with a jump of 25 feet 5 ¾ inches. Ward is coming off an outstanding first college campaign at Mizzou, where he was the Southeastern Conference Freshman of the Year after winning the league title in the long jump.

It was Ward’s second competition as a member of the USA Track and Field team. Last summer, Ward finished sixth in the long jump at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Poland. Ward has been a spectacular performer in all of the jumps since his freshman year at Cahokia High.

n Ward won the men’s long jump at the Pan America Junior Championships in Lima, Peru.

Former Parkway North girls basketball star Alecia “Sug” Sutton is a member of the USA Women’s team that is competing in the FIBA

U19 World Cup in Venice, Italy. In her first game, Sutton had a team-high 19 points along with four rebounds and three assists to lead the USA to a 95-58 victory over Mali.

Sutton is heading into her sophomore year at the University of Texas, where she averaged 14 minutes a game as a freshman for the Longhorns, who finished 25-9 and advanced to

Cavs in turmoil as Irving asks for trade I

2017 has not been very kind to the Cleveland Cavaliers. After the year 2016 delivered the city of Cleveland its first major sports championship in 52 years, the soaring Cavaliers franchise has hit a patch of turbulence.

First, the Cavs got out-super-teamed by the Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals.

Next, owner Dan Gilbert chose not to re-sign GM David Griffin. The man who brought Cleveland’s ‘big three’ together was shown the door after his contract expired, reportedly over a money dispute. The move could not have made LeBron James happy. In April, James openly lobbied for Griffin to be given a contract extension.

be able to compete for a championship.”

“It makes no sense why [Griffin] shouldn’t get an extension,” James told ESPN.

“He’s pulled every move -he’s tried to make every move happen -- to better this team to

The Cavaliers pursued Chauncey Billups as a potential replacement for Griffin, a move that may have placated James. However, Gilbert reportedly offered Billups less money to run an NBA franchise than he earns serving as a basketball analyst for ESPN. The lowball offer forced “Mr. Big Shot” to pass on the position. If that weren’t enough, Gilbert has caught much flack for what’s being called a “racially tone-deaf” advertisement for one of the billionaire’s other business ventures. Bedrock real estate firm posted a graphic on the windows of its ground floor with the tag line “See Detroit as we do.” The issue with the ad is that nearly everyone in the (very populated) image was white. The

Kyrie Irving has become tired of playing in the shadow of LeBron James in Cleveland. He requested a trade because he wants to prove he is one of the best players in the world.

Former Cahokia High track and field star Ja’Mari Ward added another championship to his already impressive resume as a topflight jumper. Ward won the men’s long jump at the Pan America Junior Championships in Lima, Peru.

SportS EyE

With Alvin A. Reid

The odyssey of O.J. Simpson is one all Americans share

My daughter Bryson and her mom had just returned from her two-day orientation at Dominican University in the Chicago suburb of River Forest, Ill., last Thursday as O.J. Simpson’s parole hearing was being televised.

Born on Feb. 16, 1999, Bryson hadn’t graced the world when Simpson’s infamous murder trial was staged in Los Angeles. She was just 9 years old when he somehow ended up in a Nevada prison on a series of robbery charges.

But like most young adults her age, they know the O.J Simpson saga quite well.

On Friday morning, she said, “Hey dad. If O.J. Simpson goes on a speaking tour or makes appearances around the country, I want to get tickets.”

My reaction was, “I want to go too.”

That’s the fascination of O.J. Simpson. I never liked O.J. Simpson. My mother can vouch for me on that being a true statement.

I never wanted to wear No. 32, wasn’t thrilled when Simpson topped 2,000 yards in 1973 as a member of the Buffalo Bills and wasn’t overjoyed the day he was found not guilty in the deaths of his ex-wife and one of her friends.

But the June day that millions of people say Simpson “got away with murder” is one I remember like it was yesterday. I was working for the Regional Commerce and Growth Association (RCGA). Pizzas were ordered and dozens of us huddled around TVs in various offices.

When the verdicts were read I didn’t celebrate, but I wasn’t sad either. The look I saw on many white faces that afternoon was one that black people have been forced to wear for hundreds of years.

“This can’t be right. This just didn’t happen. This isn’t fair.”

The same American justice system that freed O.J. Simpson is the same one that sent him to prison in Nevada, even though he was overcharged and oversentenced. It’s the same one that, justly, paroled him.

It’s the same American justice system that sets some police officers free after they face grand jury investigations or trial for shooting and killing unarmed people.

It’s the same American justice system that has been systematically proven to go easier on the wealthy, while

being more punitive towards poor and minority people.

O.J. Simpson is not a hero. While it looks as though he killed two people, he just doesn’t come off as pure evil, either.

O.J. Simpson is a guy that has been grinded through the machinery of the American justice system twice and will once again be a free man come October. He’s Hamlet and Othello. He’s a creation of America.

Yes, I’ll go see O.J. Simpson. I won’t cheer. I won’t boo. I’ll just take it all in. “Would you take a picture with him?” Bryson asked. “I would.”

My response was “I guess I would too. I’d try not to smile, but hey…”

Bryson isn’t a fan of O.J. Simpson. She’s an honor student who appreciates American history. O.J. Simpson is a part of our nation’s history and his story is unique.

That’s the fascination. God help us all.

Celebrating 125 years

Johnson C. Smith (Biddle University) traveled to Livingstone in Salisbury, N.C., for a football game 125 years ago.

Johnson C. Smith won 5-0, according to the African

American Registry website. An odd score for a game that has been pretty much lost in the annals of college football.

According to the Registry, it was the first football game between HBCU teams.

The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) prides itself on being the oldest black college athletic conference in the United States, and its commissioner said that first game will be honored throughout the 2017 season.

“As the oldest historically black athletic conference in the nation, one of the pillars we pride ourselves on is tradition,” Jacqie McWilliams said in a press release.

“We invite everyone to join us in celebrating such a milestone and witness the rich history and uniqueness of black

college football, an experience like no other.”

According to the Registry: The historic game was played on a snowy day.

It was played on the front lawn on campus at Livingstone. There were two 45-minute halves.

W.J. Trent scored what appeared to be a Livingstone touchdown on a fumble recovery, but it was ruled he recovered the ball out of bounds. The snow, no doubt, had an impact.

Livingstone’s uniforms were made by the women in the school’s industrial department.

The two schools renew their rivalry on Nov. 4 at Livingstone’s Alumni Stadium.

Livingstone coach Daryl Williams said, “It goes beyond my imagination to think about

O.J. Simpson is not a hero. While it looks as though he killed two people, he just doesn’t come off as pure evil, either.

how many coaches and players came before all of us over such a long period of time.”

Hopefully, the game will get noted nationally by ESPN or CBS, the largest providers of NCAA college football.

Congrats to Tim Raines Tim “Rock” Raines will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. on Sunday. For those of us who watched him play many a game at Busch Stadium while with the Montreal Expos, we can only say “congratulations and what took so damn long?” Media members who vote like to play morality police and Raines was suspended for his role in a cocaine scandal. It pales in comparison to ongoing use of steroid and performance enhancing drugs, but a black guy on cocaine was more than many white voters could tolerate, regardless of how ridiculous that sounds. Raines was named to seven consecutive National League All-Star teams from 1981 to 1987. He totaled 2,605 hits, 1,571 runs scored, 980 RBIs and a .294 batting average during his career. He received 86 percent of the vote among BBWAA writers – in his last shot on the ballot.

He said social media played a role in his jumping from 24 percent in 2016 to 86 percent a year later. It takes 75 percent of ballots to reach the Hall of Fame.

I think … a lot of people didn’t really know about what Tim Raines did as a player for the 23 years that he played,” he said.

Alvin A. Reid is a panelist on the Nine Network program, Donnybrook and appears on ABC’s The Allman Report and several sports radio shows, including Frank Cusumano’s “The Press Box” on KFNS. His Twitter handle is #aareid1.

Alvin A. Reid

InsIde sports

With Earl Austin Jr.

Coach Earnest Riggins Sr. passes at 80

Our sympathies and prayers go out to the family of girls’ basketball coaching legend Earnest Riggins Sr., who passed away last week at age 80.

Riggins enjoyed a remarkable coaching career at the high school and collegiate levels, but he will be best known as being the architect of the great East St. Louis Lincoln Tigerettes program that was dominant in the state of Illinois in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Before the great St. Joseph’s Academy dynasty of the early 1990s featuring Kristin Folkl and Mollie Pierick, there was Earnest Riggins and the Lincoln Tigerettes.

Before the great Gateway Tech dynasty of the late 1990s featuring the coaching excellence of Sherman Curtis and a host a great players, there was Earnest Riggins and the Lincoln Tigerettes.

Before the current Incarnate Word Academy dynasty of the early 21st century with coach Dan Rolfes and stars Napheesa

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Continued from B3

been tenuous since the Cavs’ owner publicly slammed James when he left the Cavaliers for the Miami Heat in 2010. While everyone was gearing up for the reality soap opera to come next season, Kyrie Irving had other plans.

Tired of playing second fiddle and under James’ largerthan-life shadow, Irving met with the Cavs front office and requested a trade. We are currently in an era where superstars are teaming up together for the chance to win a championship. Durant went to the Warriors. Chris Paul joined James Harden in Houston. Talented veterans like David West and Derrick Rose are signing for minimum contracts in order to contend for rings. Uncle Drew, however, is not here for the All-Star family reunions. He wants to be the man After all, Irving was the No. 1 overall pick of the 2011 NBA Draft. Just weeks before James announced he would return to Cleveland, Irving signed a 5-year, $94M contract extension. Without James, Irving had established himself as the go to guy. Once juggernaut James came along, Irving was relegated to the background. When the Cavs won the

TRACK

Continued from B3 the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. Sutton had 10 points and three assists to help the Longhorns to a victory over North Carolina State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

A former McDonald’s All-American at Parkway North, Sutton did a great job of bouncing back from a knee injury that she suffered midway through her senior year at Parkway North.

Area track athletes compete in Junior Olympics

Several of the area’s top summer track clubs will be headed to Michigan to compete in the Amateur Athletic Union Junior Olympics. The event will run from July 28-August 4 at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, MI. The USA Track and Field National Junior Olympics

Services Friday at Faith Miracle Temple Church

Collier and Felicia Chester, there was Earnest Riggins at the Lincoln Tigerettes. Riggins had an incredible run of success at Lincoln as its head coach from 1978-83. During that short span, the Tigerettes posted a staggering record of 148 victories and eight losses. Riggins led Lincoln to six Illinois regional championships, five sectional championships, three Final Four berths, two secondplace finishes and a Class AA state championship in 1980. The 1980 Tigerettes were one of the best teams in the history of the St. Louis metro area. They finished the season with a 31-0 record and won their four state-playoff games by an average margin of 35 points, including a 64-47 victory over powerhouse program Chicago Marshall in the state championship game. Lincoln’s lineup included a host of talented players, led by Barbara Gilmore, Debra Powell, Crystal Coleman, Justin Moore and a young two-

championship in 2016, the accepted narrative was that it was because King James led the team to the promised land. When the Cavs lost to the Warriors in 2015 and 2017, it was because James “didn’t have enough help.”

After all, James has reached the NBA Finals in seven consecutive seasons with the Heat and Cavs. He is already considered one of the greatest players in the history of the game. He has a legitimate opportunity to be the GOAT when it’s all said and done.

Before James’ Cleveland homecoming, a then-21-yearold Irving led the Cavs to a paltry 33-49 record. So regardless of his scoring average, the shots per game, the eye-popping layups he converts or the rising number of clutch opportunities he converts, Irving will never have top-billing playing alongside No. 23. The signs were always there that the adjustment was tough for Irving.

“I’m naturally an Alpha,” Irving told ESPN in 2016. “I know I am. I know I am. I have that type of personality but I also understood coming to this team, I couldn’t be all of what I envision myself being in terms of taking control.”

He’s not the first NBA star to want to escape the shadow of a teammate. In 2000, Tracy McGrady left the Toronto Raptors for

will be held this week in Lawrence, KS. Area athletes will be competing in age groups from primary (8 years and under) to the 17-18 age division. Athletes from the

sport superstar named Jackie Joyner. You might have heard of her. Jackie was the leading scorer and rebounder for the Tigerettes.

Riggins’ final teams at Lincoln in the early 80’s were led by Toni Wallace and superstar forward Tina Hutchinson, who was a prep All-American and the Parade Magazine National Player of the Year in 1983.

After the 1983 season, Riggins left Lincoln to become a Division I collegiate head coach at San Diego State University. He spent six seasons at SDSU, where he posted a record of 118-67. He led the Aztecs to four 20-victory seasons, two NCAA Tournament berths and a berth in the championship game of the WNIT. Hutchinson and Wallace followed Riggins

to San Diego. Hutchinson averaged 29.9 points a game as a freshman and enjoyed one of the best freshman seasons in the history of collegiate women’s basketball. Riggins returned to the area, where he coached at MICDS from 1992-96. He also started the St. Louis Crusaders, a summer grassroots girls’ basketball program that produced many top players

the Orlando Magic in order to become the top dog. In Toronto, he was Robin while his cousin Vince Carter played the role of Batman. McGrady flourished in Orlando and later in Houston and became one of the biggest stars of his era.

Speaking of Houston, the Rockets’ Harden was dealt away from Oklahoma City after he became frustrated being the

third wheel behind Durant and Russell Westbrook. Harden is now one of the biggest superstars in the league.

Even Shaquille O’Neal left Orlando and Los Angeles partially because he did not want to share the spotlight with Penny Hardaway and Kobe Bryant

Just like those players had enormous success, so will Irving.

St. Louis metro area have annually performed at a high level at these national meets. Expect more gold medals and impressive performances to come in the upcoming national competition.

Football practice begins next week Don’t look now, but we are

Over the past three seasons, Irving has used the spotlight to show off his amazing handles and dazzling finishing skills. He helped the Cavs earn the first championship in franchise history in 2016.

At 25-years-old, Irving is likely just now entering the prime of his career. Irving averaged 25.2 points and 5.8 assists per game during the 2016-17 season with James on his team. He could potentially challenge Westbrook and Harden for the scoring title and emerge as a MVP candidate next season as the sole star on another team.

Since the trade request was made public, rumors have been flying around everywhere about potential deals. Irving’s preferred destinations are the New York Knicks, San Antonio Spurs, Miami Heat and Minnesota Timberwolves. Without a coveted no-trade clause though, there’s no way he can force the Cavs to deal him to one of those teams. It’s entirely possible that Cavs could refuse to trade the star point guard. It’s likely the team will find a suitor and make a deal sooner than later. Teams across the league know that Irving’s potential is through the roof. If he remains in Cleveland, the potential for a nuclear meltdown between him and James is even more likely. The two stars already shared a few side eyes and arguments on the sidelines last season.

Kyrie wants to be king.

There’s only one crown in Cleveland (for now). Just like in HBO’s Game of Thrones, nobody has any idea how this fight will play out. What we do know is that it will add another compelling storyline and main character to the upcoming NBA season. Wherever Kyrie lands, he’ll be on a mission to prove he really is an Alpha dog.

Follow Ishmael and In the Clutch on Twitter @ IshmaelSistrunk

on the verge of another season of high school sports. Official practice for high school football will begin on Monday, July 31 around the area. The season will begin in the third week of August. It promises to be another exciting year of high school football.

Services for girls’ basketball coaching legend Earnest Riggins Sr. will be held Friday, July 28 at Faith Miracle Temple Church (5320 North Hwy 67 in Florissant).

Earnest Riggins Sr.

Staffing One has provided temporary staff for 20-plus years

American staff

Staffing One Services specializes in providing temporary staffing, but it’s become a stable fixture in the St. Louis service economy with more than 20 years in business.

Tom and Merrill Nelson started the company in 1996 to address a dual need: Many people were looking for local employment, while the local hospitality industry was looking for qualified, reliable and hard-working people. What was needed was a broker to connect them.

Staffing One works with America’s Center, various St. Louis-area school districts, sporting events, corporate dining facilities, hotels, caterers and many other clients. Diners at many St. Louis American Foundation Salute to Excellence in Education galas at America’s Center were served by Staffing One employees.

“Our staff is our family, without them we don’t survive. We are there for each and every one of our employees and do what we can to enrich the future of their lives,” said Tom Nelson, whose community services includes

CHAPMAN

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The United Way’s other local leadership societies and their 2017 chairs are the de Tocqueville Society: (Dr. Timothy Eberlein, professor, Washington University of Medicine, and chairman of the department of surgery and surgeon-in-chief, Barnes-

most recent past board chair at New City School.

“Keeping everyone happy and looking forward to work is the key. We believe if we are supportive and appreciative, our employees will deliver the

Jewish Hospital); the Men’s Leadership Society (Arindam Kar, partner, Bryan Cave, and Michael W. Lawrence, market integration executive, Merrill Lynch); the Multicultural Society (SiSi Beltrán, director of integrated marketing, Build-A-Bear Workshop, and Santiago Beltrán, logistics manager, Build-A-Bear Workshop) and the Women’s Leadership Society (Ellen Theroff, vice president of

level of service we expect –and so far, it’s been working. Staffing recruitment will always be held to the highest in quality.”

The company fares well in online reviews of work places.

“A great company that gives you a lot of hours,” a cook who works through Staffing One posted. “Not a lot of days. The harder you work the more days you get. Management is good. It’s very clean. It is mostly hot.

n “Our leadership givers account for nearly one third of our annual campaign funds.”

– Orvin Kimbrough, president and CEO of United Way of Greater St. Louis

corporate and shared services governance and standards and corporate secretary, Spire Inc.).

“United Way’s Leadership

Societies are communities of generous and committed individuals from around the St. Louis region and we

Merrill and Tom Nelson own and operate Staffing One Services, which has provided temporary staffing in the St. Louis region for more than 20 years.

Great pay.” A banquet server posted, “Every day would be new and exciting, working at a different or fundraiser.

Management was excellent in setting up assignments for the

are grateful to have such exemplary leaders serving as our societies’ campaign chairs this year,” said Orvin Kimbrough, president and CEO of United Way of Greater St. Louis. “Our leadership givers account for nearly one third of our annual campaign funds.”

“When you talk to member agencies and see how they have changed the lives of people, it makes you

n Diners at many St. Louis American Foundation Salute to Excellence in Education galas at America’s Center were served by Staffing One employees.

day. The hardest part of the job was the long late hours at night. The most enjoyable part was meeting new people everywhere I worked.” Staffing One Services is located on 5615 Pershing Ave., Suite 24, one block from The Missouri Historical Museum in Forest Park and around the corner from the Forest Park MetroLink station. Applications are accepted on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. For an appointment, call 314-361-2444, or e-mail info@ staffingoneservices.net. For more information, visit http:// staffingoneservices.net.

want to dig deeper and give more,” Ann Cuiellette Marr, cochair of the 2017 African American/Charmaine Chapman Leadership Society, told The American. “It inspires you and makes you want to support them.”

For more information about joining the Charmaine Chapman Society, contact Ashley Edwards at ashley. edwards@stl.unitedway.org or 314-539-4104.

Photo by Wiley Price

PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Wyman Center is seeking a qualified candidate to fill the role of Program Director for our Teen Leadership Program. The Director is responsible for providing life changing opportunities for over 300 engaged and motivated middle, high school and college students from low-income and first-generation college backgrounds. As a result of Wyman’s Teen Leadership Program, teens across the region are able to build academic success, healthy behaviors and relationships and life and leadership skills. To be considered, please apply online at www.wymancenter.org

PASTORAL VACANCY

Mount Ivory Missionary Baptist Church is seeking candidates for the position of Pastor. The candidate for pastor should be licensed, trained and ordained in the Baptist Ministry. To request an application, please e-mail lbs11@att.net or call 314-303-6837. Mail to: Linda Simms, Pastoral Search Committee, 4111 Goodfellow Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63120 by August 15, 2017.

RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT MANAGER

The Community Action of St. Louis County (CAASTLC) is seeking a Resource Development Manager. We are committed to helping the families and communities of St. Louis County prevent the conditions of poverty for present and future generations. Our mission is to end poverty.

Responsible for planning, organizing and executing all resource development activities. Research potential grant opportunities, write grants and follow up, monitor and report on the status. Work with Agency staff to determine program needs and develop and implement plans to obtain needed resources. Research potential donors, cultivate and maintain relationships. Coordinate with the Executive Director and Board Resource Development Committee to create a resource development plan to support the strategic direction of the Agency.

Must have a Bachelor’s degree or a minimum of 10 years of experience in the field and proven track record of successful fundraising. If you have the experience and want to be a part of our mission, we’d like to talk with you. Please forward cover letter and resume to smoss@caastlc.org.

PARAMEDICS

Mehlville Fire Protection District is accepting applications for the position of CRITICAL CARE PARAMEDIC

Starting $55,352; $59,352 w/CCP-C $83,001 after 4 years

Benefits include health insurance, pension, tuition reimbursement, sick leave, attendance bonus, vacation, life & disability, holiday pay, uniform allowance, wellness benefits

REQUIRED: EMT-P certification through the State of Missouri

PREFERRED: CCP-C certification Applications accepted July 17 – August 25, 2017, weekdays 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Headquarters, 11020 Mueller Rd. 63123. Download application packet at www.mehlvillefire.com Equal Opportunity Employer.

RECREATION MANAGER

The City of Richmond Heights is accepting applications for Recreation Manager--Aquatics. Apply at www.richmondheights.applicantpro.com/ jobs/. Applications accepted until position filled. EOE

BURSAR

Webster University is a seeking a Bursar in the Bursar-Cashier Office. Please apply online at http://webster. peopleadmin.com/postings/2561. No phone calls please. Webster University provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin, ethnicity, age, protected veteran or disabled status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

NORTHWOODS

PUBLIC WORKS LABORER

City of Northwoods has a position in public works to perform skilled and semiskilled tasks related to maintenance of park grounds, municipal facilities, special event implementation, code enforcement for vacant/delinquent properties, etc. Individual must have proven supervisory experience, a current drivers license, ability to read/interpret equipment operations manuals.

Applications due by 5 p.m., Friday, August 4, 2017 to 4600 Oakridge Blvd., Northwoods, Mo. 63121. Call City Hall 314-385-8000 for details/directions.

MANAGER

TECHNICAL OPERATIONS

MAINTENANCE TECHNICIAN 2

Webster University is a seeking a Maintenance Technician 2 in the Facilities Operations Department Please apply online at http://webster. peopleadmin.com/postings/2570. No phone calls please. Webster University provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin, ethnicity, age, protected veteran or disabled status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

PASTOR

Local Baptist Church is accepting applications for Pastor. We are a strong core of faithful members seeking a committed and spiritual leader.

Please forward resume to 3927 N. Market Street, St. Louis, MO 63113.

ASSEMBLY

JOBS Window mfg. co. has assembly jobs now! Temp-to-perm, 1st shift, 40 hr/wk, mid-Stl County. Tape measure & power tool skills and 75# lifting req’d. $10.00/hr, We take Appl. Mon.Wed., & Fri. 9am-11am Nextemps Staffing, 314-727-1060, Jerry. Search Nextemps on craigslist.

24:1 Construction Company, L.L.C. MECHANIC JOB POSTING

Essential Functions:

• Perform routine and preventative maintenance on heavy equipment; including: loaders, excavators, skid steers, trucks, trailers, lawn equipment etc.

• Build, rebuild, and repair all parts for the equipment

• Diagnose any mechanical, electrical, and any other breakdown or failure.

• Perform pre- and post-inspection of equipment as it is used on an ongoing basis

• Perform welding when applicable using welding skills in a safe and efficient manner.

• Maintain a log or other documentation for all maintenance and repairs to equipment

BETTER BENEFITS, BETTER CULTURE, BETTER THAN A BANK –BRANCH MANGER

Anheuser-Busch Employees’ Credit Union is seeking a Branch Manager for our Florissant, MO location. The Branch Manager is responsible for the administration and daily operation of a branch office, including operations, lending, sales, member service and security and safety in accordance with Credit Union policies.

Actively promotes a sales and service culture, responsible for maintaining branch goals, and will seek new business ventures by participating in community events. Please apply at: http://www.abecu.org/ home/about-us/careers

RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT LIBRARIAN

Webster University Library is seeking a Resources Development Librarian. Please apply online at http://webster. peopleadmin.com/postings/2587. No phone calls please. Webster University provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin, ethnicity, age, protected veteran or disabled status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

CHEF/NUTRITION CENTER ASSISTANT

Food Outreach, FT Cluinary/Nutrition Degree/ServSafe Cert. Some evenings/weekends. Email resume to marysue@foodoutreach.org

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS

Webster University is a seeking a Director of Operations in the College of Arts and Sciences. Please apply online at http://webster.peopleadmin.com/postings/2558. No phone calls please. Webster University provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national origin, ethnicity, age, protected veteran or disabled status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

DW-Groundskeeper

http://jobs.stlcc.edu/postings/6094

• May perform other duties as assigned.

Experience and Qualifications:

• High School Diploma or GED required. Must demonstrate the ability to read, write and understand written and spoken English

• Formal training in welding and/or fabrication skills from an accredited school or training program plus 2 years of heavy equipment mechanic work experience preferred.

• 1 year of experience demonstrating knowledge and application of OSHA Haz Com; OSHA Lock Out Tag Out and all OSHA Fire Protection regulations required

• Must furnish own tools

• Must possess a valid Driver’s License

• Salary and Benefits: Full-time position with benefits

Application Instructions: To apply for this position submit your cover letter and resume to hr@241clt.org

INSTALLERS IN ST. LOUIS

Responsible for oversight and management of technical operations related to the software systems utilized by the Policy Services Administration (PSA) department. Responsible for departmental efforts regarding the development, testing and maintenance of internal applications utilized by PSA. Responsible for management of the technical impact of new products and new systems to departmental users and processes. To apply, please visit: www.safetynational.com and click on the Careers tab. WEB DEVELOPER The Missouri History Museum seeks a Web Developer. Visit www.mohistory.org for position details. An Equal Opportunity Employer

Pacific Studio is looking for several Installers to install in an exhibit/custom production/custom manufacturing environment. Familiarity with hand tools, production work experience, basic shop skills, and previous installation experience required. Apply at www.pacificstudio. com. EEO Employer/Vets/Disabled

POLICE OFFICER (TRAINEE)

This is a Police Officer (Trainee) position with the St. Louis Police Division. Incumbents perform duties to patrol a specific area to protect life and property and enforce laws and ordinances using tactful and courteous treatment of the public and conscientious and efficient performance of duties. The Police Division is a 24-hour per day, seven days a week service; therefore, work involves shift, weekend, holiday, and overtime assignments.

Applicants must be twenty-one years of age at the time of filing the Employment Application. United States citizen. High school diploma or equivalent. No prior police or law enforcement experience is required. Applicants must possess and maintain a valid Missouri driver’s license while employed by the City of St. Louis. Applicants must meet eligibility standards for licensing as a peace officer, as determined by the Missouri Department of Public Safety, Peace Office Standards & Training (POST) Program. Bi-weekly rate of pay for a Police Officer (Trainee) is $1,539.00. For Police Probationary Officer, the annual rate is $41,815.28. To apply, visit the City web site at http://stlouis-mo.gov/jobs. Additional information concerning the Police Officer (Trainee) process can be found on the St. Louis Police Division’s website at http://stmpd.org.careers.shtml Or contact: City of St. Louis Department of Personnel 1114 Market Street, Room 700 St. Louis,

CHECK US OUT ON FACEBOOK

METROPOLITAN ST. LOUIS

SEWER DISTRICT

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is accepting proposals in the Purchasing Division, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 631032555 until 10:00 a.m. on October 2nd, 2017 to contract with a company for: I T Network Managed Services.

Specifications and bid forms may be obtained from www.stlmsd.com, click on the “MSD AT WORK” link, (bid opportunities). The bid document will be identified as 9097 RFP. If you do not have access to the internet, call 314.768.2735 to request a copy of this bid. Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

METROPOLITAN ST. LOUIS

SEWER DISTRICT

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District will receive sealed bids in the Purchasing Division, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103-2555 until 10:00am August 30, 2017 for: Compressor, Heated Blower Air Dryer.

Specifications and bid forms may be obtained from www.stlmsd.com - click on “MSD At Work”, then “Bidding on Projects”. The bid document will be identified as 9089 RFQ. If you do not have access to the internet, call (314) 768-6314 to request a copy of this bid. Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is

METROPOLITAN ST. LOUIS

SEWER DISTRICT

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District will receive RFQ’s in the Purchasing Division, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 631032555 until 10:00 a.m. on August 29, 2017 to contract with a company for: BAGGED CEMENT, COLD PATCH ASPHALT, RIP RAP, SPEED CRETE. Specifications and bid forms may be obtained from www.stlmsd.com, click on the “MSD AT WORK” link, (bid opportunities). The bid document will be identified as 9098 RFQ. If you do not have access to the internet, call 314-768-6254 to request a copy of this bid. Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

Request for Proposal # 57817205 for Food Service

Harris-Stowe State University (HSSU) is requesting proposals from Contractors to operate the University’s dining hall and provide food services on the University’s campus. A mandatory pre-bid conference will be held on Wednesday, August 16, 2017 in the AT & T Library (AT 108 Telecommunity Room) located at 3011 Laclede Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63103. Interested parties may obtain a copy of the RFP by emailing: morrowb@hssu.edu or barskys@hssu.edu, faxing a written request to HSSU, (314) 340-3322 or by calling (314) 340-5763 and leaving an address and telephone #. Proposals must be submitted to room 105 in the Dr. Henry Givens, Jr., Administration (HGA) building no later than 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, September 6, 2017 and will then be opened and the names read at 10:15 a.m. in the Clay Education Center 204 Professional Development (Prof Dev) room, 10 North Compton Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63103 (Higher Ed side of building).

Request for Proposals

Workflow Analysis and Configuration of Cityworks AMS/PLL System

willbe receivedby FMDC, StateofMO, UNTIL 1:30PM, 8/10/2017. Forspecificproject informationand orderingplans,go to:http://oa.mo. gov/ facilities

Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority (LCRA) will receive sealed bids for a workflow analysis and configuration of Cityworks AMS/PLL system for tracking and monitoring St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC) projects and incentives. The work required for this opportunity includes a complete workflow analysis of how projects are completed within all SLDC boards and authorities, configuration of the Cityworks AMS/ PLL platform to create a database for completing and cataloging all projects, creating a public user interface, integrating GIS and DEVNET systems, and training and maintenance of the platform. The selected general consultant must be a Cityworks Gold or Platinum Implementation Partner.

Proposals will be received at 1520 Market Street Suite 2000 St. Louis, Missouri 63103 (Attention: Austin Korns), until 3:00 PM on August 18th 2017, at which time all bids will be publicly opened.

The full invitation, relevant dates, and all other documents related to this opportunity may be found at: https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/sldc/procurement.cfm

REQUEST FOR SEALED BID

The YWCA St. Louis Head Start/Early Head Start Program is accepting sealed bid packages through 5:00 p.m., Wednesday August 9, 2017, for contract food services for the 2017-2018 school year. Bid packages may be received from and returned to: YWCA St. Louis Head Start/ Early Head Start Program, Business Office, 1911 Beltway Drive, St. Louis MO 63114. Any questions may be directed to Eileen Fraser at 427-4765, ext 1027. All bids will be publicly opened at same office on Friday, August 11, 2017 at 11:00 am. YWCA Metro St. Louis reserves the right to reject any or all bids. An EOE.

SEALED BIDS

Sealed bids for a Post Bid Addendum on the St. Louis County Library Master Plan Phase B project are being received by Brinkmann Constructors on Aug 11, at 2:30 pm

All sealed bids to be hand delivered to Grand Glaize Branch 1010 Meramec Station Rd Manchester, MO Attn Steve Hunter, St Louis County Library on Aug 11 at 2:30 pm Plans may be viewed or downloaded at https://secure.smartbidnet.com/External/ PublicPlanRoom .aspx?Id=317334&i=1

Contact Brinkmann

CITY OF ST. LOUIS BOARD OF PUBLIC SERVICE

REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS for DESIGN SERVICES FOR REPLACEMENT OF MISCELLANEOUS HVAC EQUIPMENT FOR TERMINALS AND CONCOURSES AT ST. LOUIS LAM-

Employers

NOTICE OF INTENT TO REQUEST RELEASE OF FUNDS

This shall provide notice of the request for release of funds for a single project with two HUD funding sources- the State of Missouri CDBG and the City of St. Louis CDBG. Contact information is provided for both.

First Date of Publication: 7/26/2017

Name of Responsible Entity (RE) – City of St. Louis 1520 Market Street

St. Louis, MO 63103 (314) 622-3201

Name of Responsible Entity (RE) – State of Missouri 301 W High St. Jefferson City, MO 65102 (573)751-5091

On or after 8/3/2017 the City of St. Louis and the State of Missouri will submit a request to HUD for the release of Community Development Block Grant funds under Title I of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 (PL 93-383) to undertake the following project: Project Title: T-REX Building Renovation Project

Purpose: The project is for the interior office renovation on the third floor of a downtown office building business incubator, consisting of: open offices, private offices, suites with moveable walls, shared conference space, copy/fax/printer and break areas, and installation of a

kitchen. Location: 911 Washington, St. Louis, MO 63118

Estimated Cost: $300,000.00 City of St. Louis CDBG funding and $500,000.00 State of Missouri CDBG funding, with approximate total project cost of $999,150.00

The activities proposed are categorically excluded under HUD regulations at 24 CFR Part 58 from National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements. An Environmental Review Record (ERR) that documents the environmental determinations for this project is on file at two locations: (1) 301 W High Street, Room 770 Jefferson City, MO 65102 and may be examined or copied weekdays 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. and (2) City of St. Louis Planning & Urban Design Agency (PDA), 1520 Market Street, Suite 2000, St. Louis, MO 63103 and may be examined or copied weekdays 8 A.M to 5 P.M.

PUBLIC COMMENTS

Any individual, group, or agency may submit written comments on the ERR to the State of Missouri at P.O. Box 118 Jefferson City, MO 65102 (attn: Kaitlyn Thomas, Suite 770) or to the City of St. Louis at City of St. Louis PDA, 1520 Market Street, Suite 2000, St. Louis, MO 63103 (attn.: Mark Jefferies). All comments received by 8/2/2017 will be considered by the City of St. Louis and the State of Missouri prior to authorizing submission of a request for release of funds.

ENVIRONMENAL CERTIFICATION

The City of St. Louis certifies to HUD that Lyda Krewson in her capacity as Mayor of the City of St. Louis consents to accept the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts if an action is brought to enforce responsibilities in relation to the environmental review process and that these responsibilities have been satisfied. HUD’s approval of the certification satisfies its responsibilities under NEPA and related laws and authorities and allows the City of St. Louis to use program funds.

The State of Missouri certifies to HUD that Eric Greitens capacity as Governor of the State of Missouri consents to accept the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts if an action is brought to enforce responsibilities in relation to the environmental review process and that these responsibilities have been satisfied. HUD’s approval of the certification satisfies its responsibilities under NEPA and related laws and authorities and allows the State of Missouri to use program funds.

OBJECTIONS TO RELEASE OF FUNDS

HUD will accept objections to its release of funds and the City of St. Louis’s and the State of Missouri’s certification for a period of fifteen days following the anticipated submission date or its actual receipt of the request (whichever is later) only if they are on one of the following bases: (a) the certification was not executed by the Certifying Officer of the City of St. Louis or the State of Missouri; (b) the City of St. Louis or the State of Missouri has omitted a step or failed to make a decision or finding required by HUD regulations at 24 CFR part 58; (c) the grant recipient or other participants in the development process have committed funds, incurred costs or undertaken activities not authorized by 24 CFR Part 58 before approval of a release of funds by the State of Missouri; or (d) another Federal agency acting pursuant to 40 CFR Part 1504 has submitted a written finding that the project is unsatisfactory from the standpoint of environmental quality. Objections must be prepared and submitted in accordance with the required procedures (24 CFR Part 58, Sec. 58.76) and shall be addressed to 400 State Avenue, Room 200 Kansas City, KS 66101-2406 regarding the State of Missouri CDBG Funds, or 1222 Spruce Street, Suite 3.203 St. Louis, MO 63103-2836 regarding the City of St. Louis CDBG Funds. Potential objectors should contact HUD directly to verify the actual last day of the objection period.

Lyda Krewson, Mayor of the City of St. Louis Eric Greitens, Governor of the State of Missouri

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

For Driver & Officer Training

City of St. Louis

St. Louis Fire Department

The St. Louis Fire Department (City of St. Louis) is seeking qualified instructors to submit sealed bid proposals to conduct Driver and Officer Training.

The Request for Proposals (“RFP”) may be obtained via the St. Louis Fire Department Website, mail, email, or picked up by request to Cynthia Dixon, ph#314-289-1950, email: dixonC@stlouis-mo.gov commencing Wednesday, July 26, 2017. It is also available at https:// www.stlouis-mo.gov/fire/index.cfm

Sealed proposals will be received until 12:00PM on Friday, August 11, 2017

The bids must be mailed to: St. Louis Fire Department, Attn: Battalion Chief Derrick Phillips, 1421 N. Jefferson Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri 63106-2136

The St. Louis Fire Department (City of St. Louis) is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and Respondents shall comply with the Mayor’s Executive Order #28, as amended.

The St. Louis Fire Department (City of St. Louis) reserves the right to accept or reject any or all responses to this RFP and/or to cancel this RFP in part or in its entirety.

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

RFP BIDDING

La Salle Middle School is now running a request for proposal to operate its food service program for the 2017 – 2018 school year. La Salle Middle School serves breakfast, lunch and snacks to approximately 120 students, Monday through Friday, and follows the USDA Federal School Lunch guidelines set by DESE. Interested companies may visit the school on July 19th, form 9am to 3pm in order to view the cafeteria and ask any questions. There will also be a public opening July 21st from 9am to 1pm. Proposals will not be accepted after July 28th, 9am. All RFP are to be submitted in a sealed envelope labeled Food Service Management and addressed to 1106 North Jefferson, St. Louis, MO 631036. You may contact Sherida Williams at 314-531-9820.

METROPOLITAN ST. LOUIS SEWER DISTRICT

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District will receive sealed bids in the Purchasing Division, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103-2555 until 10:00am August 28, 2017 to: Carbon Media Replacement-MRTP

Specifications and bid forms may be obtained from www.stlmsd.com - click on “MSD At Work”, then “Bidding on Projects”. The bid document will be identified as 9073 RFQ. If you do not have access to the internet, call (314) 768-6314 to request a copy of this bid.

Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

BIDS

The Great Rivers Greenway District (District), the Developer, is soliciting sealed bids for Deer Creek Greenway – Deer Creek to Lorraine Davis Park in Webster Groves, Missouri. Bids for Federal Project Number TAP-9900 (678) will be submitted electronically until 3:00 p.m. prevailing Central time, August 22, 2017. See https://greatriversgreenway.org/jobs-bids/ for the full bid package.

METROPOLITAN ST. LOUIS

SEWER DISTRICT

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is accepting proposals in the Purchasing Division, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103-2555 until 10:00 a.m. on August 25th, 2017 to contract with a company for: Records Management Storage & Related Services.

SEALED BIDS

f o r L i g h t i n g

Upgrades, Capitol Building, Jefferson City, MO, Project No. O1619-01 will be received by FMDC, State of MO, UNTIL 1:30 PM, 8/3/2017. For specific project information and ordering plans, go to: http://oa.mo. gov/facilities

CHECK US OUT ON FACEBOOK & TWITTER

SEALED BIDS

forOffice

BID

KCI Construction requests subcon-

tract proposals from MBE, WBE, DBE, Veteran Owned and SDVE businesses for the East Campus Plant Growth Facilities Complex, Phase 1 and the East Campus

Site Utilities & Infrastructure, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO.

Plans and specifications are available

• To view electronically at no charge from: http://operations-webapps.missouri.edu/ pdc/adsite/ad.html

• To view at our Camdenton office

• By a request for a Dropbox Link from jmorrow@kciconstruction.com

Subcontractor bids are due by 1:00 p.m. Tuesday, August 22, 2017. You may email bids to jmorrow@kciconstruction.com or send a fax to 573-346-9739. Please call if you have any questions: 314-200-6496.

METROPOLITAN ST. LOUIS

SEWER DISTRICT

Notice is hereby given that The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (District), the Owner, will receive sealed bids for Lemay Public I/I Reduction (2018) Contract A under Letting No. 12051-015.1, at its office, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103, until 2:00 PM, local time, on Tuesday, August 22, 2017. All bids are to be deposited in the bid box located on the first floor of the District’s Headquarters prior to the 2:00 p.m. deadline. Bids may, however, be withdrawn prior to the opening of the first bid. BIDS WILL BE PUBLICLY OPENED AND READ IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE BID DUE DATE/TIME AT 2350 MARKET STREET, AT A PLACE DESIGNATED.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

The St. Louis County Port Authority (the “Authority”) is soliciting proposals from qualified contractors to provide universal waste removal and disposal services for certain parcels located at the former Jamestown Mall in North St. Louis County, Missouri. The parcels to be serviced are set forth in the Request for Proposals.

To be considered, proposals must be received no later than 3:00 PM on Thursday, August 17, 2017. Proposals should be sent by e-mail to dallison@stlpartnership.com, or to St. Louis County Port Authority, c/o St. Louis Economic Development Partnership, ATTN: Dustin Allison, General Counsel, 7733 Forsyth Blvd., Suite 2300, St. Louis, Missouri 63105. DBE, MBE, and WBE firms are encouraged to bid.

The Request for Proposals may be obtained from the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership’s web site at www.stlpartnership.com. The Authority reserves the right to reject any or all proposals and to waive informalities therein. Any questions should be directed to Dustin Allison, General Counsel, St. Louis Economic Development Partnership at (314) 615-7663 or dallison@stlpartnership. com.

St. Louis Economic Development Partnership Equal Opportunity Employer

CITY OF ST. LOUIS BOARD OF PUBLIC SERVICE

Public Notice of Single Source Procurement

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is proposing to procure: ARI Air Release Valves. The District is proposing single source procurement to HD Supply. Any inquiries should be sent to dlegrand@stlmsd.com

Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

CHECK OUT THE BIDS & NOTICES ON OUR WEBSITE AT www. stlamerican.com

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

The Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority of the County of St. Louis (the “LCRA”) is soliciting proposals from qualified contractors to provide lawn care services for multiple, scattered parcels located throughout St. Louis County, Missouri. More than one contractor may be selected to perform the services, which generally consist of performing seasonal lawn maintenance, including grass cutting and debris removal. The parcels to be serviced are set forth in the Request for Proposals.

To be considered, proposals must be received no later than 3:00 PM on Monday, July 24, 2017. Proposals should be sent by e-mail to dallison@stlpartnership.com, or to Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority of the County of St. Louis, c/o St. Louis Economic Development Partnership, ATTN: Dustin Allison, General Counsel, 7733 Forsyth Blvd., Suite 2300, St. Louis, Missouri 63105. DBE, MBE, and WBE firms are encouraged to bid.

The Request for Proposals may be obtained from the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership’s web site at www.stlpartnership.com. The LCRA reserves the right to reject any or all proposals and to waive informalities therein. Any questions should be directed to Dustin Allison, General Counsel, St. Louis Economic Development Partnership at (314) 615-7663 or dallison@stlpartnership.com.

St. Louis Economic Development Partnership Equal Opportunity Employer

Specifications and bid forms may be obtained from www.stlmsd.com, click on the “MSD AT WORK” link, (bid opportunities). The bid document will be identified as 9063 RFP. If you do not have access to the internet, call 314.768.2735 to request a copy of this bid.

Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Renovation,Blair Bldg,Sex Offender Rehabilitationand Treatment Services, Farmington,MO, ProjectNo. M1607-01 willbereceived byFMDC,Stateof MO,UNTIL1:30 PM,8/24/2017. Forspecificproject informationand orderingplans,go to:http://oa.mo. gov/ facilities

Notification of Outreach Meeting for the City Foundry At Cortex Project:

S. M. Wilson and Lawrence Group will hold a second outreach meeting for the City Foundry at Cortex phase one redevelopment project to be held at the Moto Museum, 3441 Olive Street, St. Louis, MO 63103, on Thursday, August 10, 2017 from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM. The purpose of this meeting is to provide an overview of the forthcomming bid package to encourage collaboration between majority subcontractors and minority subontractors as well as minority contractors teaming together. S. M. Wilson and Lawrence Group will also provide additional details of the project and will be available to answer questions.

Please join us for this opportunity to learn about the City Foundry at Cortex redevelopment project and network with fellow Tradesmen.

For the most up-to-date bidding information, please refer to the S. M. Wilson & Co. website.

We look forward to meeting you.

Respecfully,

S. M. Wilson & Co.

MWBE Pre-bid Meeting Notice

The SITE Improvement Association is hosting a Pre-bid meeting for Qualified and Certified MWBE contractors to discuss working on MSD’s Kirkwood Middle School, Simmons, Wilson W. Sarah I & I Reduction [Manchester Rd. & Kirkwood Rd.] Project Contract Letting No. 11995-015.1

A pre-bid meeting is being held on behalf of the following SITE contractor members:

Fred M. Luth & Sons 4516 McRee Ave. St. Louis, MO 314/771-3892

Bates Utilities Company 841 Westwood Industrial Dr. Weldon Spring, MO 636/939-5628

The meeting will take place at 10:00 a.m. Thursday, July 27, 2017 SITE Improvement Association 2071 Exchange Drive, St. Charles, MO 63303

For questions regarding this pre-bid meeting, contact the SITE Improvement Association office at 314/966-2950

The Work to be performed under these Contract Documents consists of: The work to be done under this contract consists of the rehabilitation of approximately 8,899 lineal feet of sanitary sewers, varying in size from 8-inch to 21-inches in diameter using cured-inplace pipe (CIPP) methods, 86 manholes, and 201 service connections. The project is within the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District Boundaries, inside the city(ies) of Varies in the State of Missouri. The work will be performed in various quantities at various sites. All prospective bidders must prequalify in the Cured-In-Place Pipe (CIPP) category, and be certified prior to the Bid Opening. Prequalification forms for obtaining said certification may be obtained from the Owner at the above mentioned address. All bidders must obtain drawings and specifications in the name of the entity submitting the bid.

This project will be financed through the Missouri State Revolving Fund established by the sale of Missouri Water Pollution Control bonds and Federal Capitalization Grants to Missouri. Neither the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, its divisions, nor its employees will be party to the contract at any tier. Any Bidder whose firm or affiliate is listed on the GSA publication titled “List of Parties Excluded from Federal Procurement or Non-Procurement Programs” is prohibited from the bidding process; bids received from a listed party will be deemed non-responsive. Refer to Instructions to Bidders B-27 for more information regarding debarment and suspension.

Nondiscrimination in Employment: Bidders on this work will be required to comply with the President’s Executive Order 11246. Requirements for bidders and contractors under this order are explained in the specifications.

Plans and Specifications are available from free electronic download. Please go to MSD’s website and look for a link to “ELECTRONIC PLANROOM.” Plans and Specifications are also available for viewing or purchase at Cross Rhodes Reprographics located at 1710 Macklind Avenue, St. Louis MO 63110. All bidders must obtain a set of plans and specifications in order to submit a bid in the name of the entity submitting the bid. The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS for PROFESSIONAL WEATHER FORECASTING SERVICES FOR CITY OF ST. LOUIS STREET DEPARTMENT. Proposals due by 5:00 PM CT, August 3, 2017 at Board of Public Service, 1200 Market, Room 301 City Hall, St. Louis, MO 63103. RFP may be obtained from website www. stl-bps.org, On Line Plan Room – Plan Room, or call Board of Public Service at 314-622-3535.

REQUEST FOR BIDS

MINORITY SUBCONTRACTORS

Tarlton Corporation is seeking proposals from MBE (African American and Hispanic) businesses on Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District Sulphur Yard, Vactor Truck Disposal Building project, 1900 Sulphur Avenue, St. Louis 63110. Work includes the construction of a two bay pre-engineered metal building. Tarlton is soliciting bids for site demolition, earthwork, hauling, fencing, asphalt paving, concrete, grout, rough carpentry, insulated metal roof &

panels,

sealers, steel doors and frames, overhead coiling doors, door hardware, painting, aluminum louvers & vents, accessories, traffic coatings, signage, metal building systems, mechanical, plumbing, electrical, and site utilities work.

MSD will have a pre-bid meeting on-site July 27, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. Tarlton’s prebid meeting will be July 28, 2017 at 10 a.m. at Tarlton’s offices, 5500 West Park Ave., St. Louis 63110. Please contact Frank Hale 314-633-3300 or DFHale@tarltoncorp.com if you plan to attend. Subbids are due at 12 p.m. on August 14, 2017 via email to bids@tarltoncorp.com. Questions should also be directed to Frank Hale.

Plans, specifications and bid Documents are available by visiting MSD or Tarlton’s website at http://tarltoncorp.com. An Equal Opportunity Employer

NOTICE TO MINORITY BUSINESS ENTERPRISE

Korte & Luitjohan Contractors, Inc. 12052 Highland Road, Highland, IL 62249 (618) 654-9877 (Phone) 618654-9778 (FAX), is seeking qualified MINORITY BUSINESS ENTERPRISES for METROPOLITAN ST. LOUIS SEWER DISTRICT, SULPHUR YARD – VACTOR TRUCK DISPOSAL BUILDING CONTRACT LETTING NO. 12835-015.1 ST. LOUIS, MO,: Subcontracting opportunities in the following areas: Site Work, Concrete, Thermal, Openings, Painting, Electrical, Mechanical, Fences, Asphalt, Hauling, and Seeding/Fertilizing. All interested Minority Business Enterprise Businesses should contact, IN WRITING, (certified letter, return receipt requested), Hal Klaus, to discuss the subcontracting opportunities. All negotiations must be completed prior to the bid opening bid date of August 15, 2017. Proposals will be evaluated in order on the basis of low responsive bid received.

IL 62249 PH: (618) 654-9408 Fax: (618) 654-6454 bids@plocherco.com

is seeking MBE (African American and Hispanic American) businesses for the MSD Branch Floodwall ORS Pump Station Rehabilitation for Union Subcontracting

Notice to MBE Businesses

Plocher Construction Company, Inc.

2808 Thole-Plocher Road

Highland, IL 62249

PH: (618) 654-9408

Fax: (618) 654-6454

bids@plocherco.com

is seeking MBE (African American and Hispanic American) businesses for the MSD Sulphur Yard – Vactor Truck Disposal Building for Union Subcontracting & Supply opportunities in the following areas: Concrete, Rebar, Doors, Painting, Specialties, Metal Building, Mechanical and Electrical

All interested and qualified business should contact Chuck Wagner or Russ Zurliene in writing or via email to discuss the subcontracting and supply opportunities. All quotes are requested to be received one day prior to the bid opening date of August 15th, 2017. All proposals will be reviewed for the lowest, responsive, and responsible quote.

MSD will host a non-mandatory Pre-Bid conference, including site visit. It will be held at 10:00 AM on Thursday, July 27, 2017, at the Sulphur Yard Administration Building, 1900 Sulphur Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63110. Plocher Construction will hold its own Prebid meeting on July 31, 2017 at 9:00am at Plocher’s office: 2808 Thole-Plocher Rd, Highland, IL.

Plans and Specifications are available for free electronic download. Please go to MSD’s website and look for a link to “ELECTRONIC PLANROOM.”

PUBLISHER’S NOTICE:

Advertised herein is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to advertise any preference, imitation, or discrimination because of race,color, religion, sex, handicap, familial\status, or national origin, or intention to make any such preference,limitation, or discrimination.“We will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate which is in violation of the law. All persons are hereby informed that all dwellings advertised are available on an equal opportunity basis.”

Call Angelita at 314-289-5430 to place your rental/real estate ad today!

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

Notice is hereby given that

METROPOLITAN ST. LOUIS SEWER DISTRICT

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District will receive sealed bids in the Purchasing Division, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103-2555 until 10:00am August 1, 2017 for: Rebuild Two Belt Filter Presses

Specifications and bid forms may be obtained from www.stlmsd.com - click on “MSD At Work”, then “Bidding on Projects”. The bid document will be identified as 9032 RFQ. If you do not have access to the internet, call (314) 768-6314 to request a copy of this bid. Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

3 Bedroom Home for Rent Riverview School District in North County, Sec. 8 ready no basement, fenced yard, C/A 314-601-5703 314-707-7707

RENT

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‘Bring It Live’ dances back to STL

Stars from Lifetime Network hit return to Peabody Opera House stage

By Kenya Vaughn Of The St. Louis American

Miss D does not play. Anybody who has watched her star in the Lifetime Network hit “Bring It” over the past few seasons knows this to be true of the dance troupe leader.

“I’m a coach and I’m passionate” said Miss D, also known as Dianna Williams. “Just like any other coach – whether it’s little league sports or something like that – I want my girls to give their all…and to win.”

She uses dance as a platform to get her team in the habit of exhibiting excellence and hopes that the show inspires other young people to do the same.

When the show debuted in 2014, audiences instantly connected with Williams and her Dancing Dolls of Jackson, Mississippi. An unlikely place for reality shows, young dancers and dance moms saw themselves in the personalities on the show.

See DANCE, C4

It

D and her

Grown women gone wild

Adult humor fuels the fun of ‘Girls Trip’

By Kenya Vaughn Of The St. Louis American

With “Girls Trip” director Malcolm Lee gives audiences a film that is “How Stella Gets Her Groove Back” meets “The Hangover.”

The film opened in theatres nationwide on Friday and lives up to the hype that has been surrounding it for months.

Is the plot original? No. Could the story –and script by Kenya Barris, Karen McCullah, Tracy Oliver and Erica Rivinoja– use some fine tuning? Absolutely. But “Girls Trip” is so much fun that the film’s shortcomings are forgivable. The two-hour film, which is long for a comedy, breezes by as viewers live vicariously through as the ultimate weekend getaway unfolds on screen.

Adding another milestone memory to their twenty-five year bond, the four college friends who make up the “Flossy Posse” have the experience every one of the hundreds of thousands who make the pilgrimage to New Orleans for the ESSENCE Music Festival each year dream of. Thanks to the success of Flossy Posse member turned self-help guru and

best-selling author Ryan Pierce (Regina Hall), the crew gets an all-access VIP experience for the weekend that brings together black entertainment’s biggest stars. At this year’s ESSENCE, Ryan is the brightest star of them all, though a dark cloud looms over her life and threatens to shatter the brand built on her mantra “You can have it all.”

“Girls Trip” - starring Jada Pinkett-Smith, Regina Hall, Queen Latifah and Tiffany Haddish - is so much fun that the film’s shortcomings are forgivable. The twohour film, which is long for a comedy, breezes by as viewers live vicariously through as the ultimate weekend getaway unfolds on screen.

Though they prove to have her back, The Flossy Posse refuses to let Ryan’s secret drama rain on their parade in New Orleans and take #friendshipgoals to a new level.

The film earns every bit of its R rating with the shenanigans – a fresh concept for a comedy driven to African-American females. It works – mainly because of the film’s breakout star Tiffany Haddish and the chemistry between her and co-stars Hall, Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith. Their willingness to “go there” as far as selling the uninhibited humor will be a pleasant surprise for audiences.

There aren’t any weak links in the ensemble cast of “Girls Trip.”

Though Haddish’s Dina is a scene bandit as the comedic relief, each of the co-stars holds their weight in the film. It’s particularly refreshing to see Pinkett Smith carry on in a way that fans haven’t seen since her “Low Down Dirty Shame” days as ordinarily reserved Lisa Cooper goes with the flow and lets loose for the

See GIRLS, C4

By Kenya Vaughn Of The St. Louis American

Much like the road to hell, most bad movies are made with good intentions. The hope is that was the case with Kathryn Bigelow’s “Detroit.”

The film is being touted as “the true story” of a tragic sidebar within the Detroit riots of the 1960s. One has to sit through the entire movie to learn that’s not “exactly” the case. But the fictionalization being promoted as fact is the least of the problems for the film. There is a dangerous lack of context as to the full scale of elements that pushed the black community to the point of unrest, a failure to humanize those who suffered through the experience and a spin on the moment in history that perpetuates the myth that the black community makes itself a target of police.

Considering the current and ongoing narrative surrounding the relationship between law enforcement and people of color, “Detroit” just might have the opposite reaction of what was surely Bigelow’s point of the film – to shed light on a little known stain of injustice that was overshadowed by the riots.

The opening uses images from painter Jacob Lawrence’s “Migration Series” to give a brief pictorial with a bit of text of the

Miss

Dancing Dolls return to St. Louis when ‘Bring It Live’ lands at the Peabody Opera House at 7 p.m. on Sunday, July 30.

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.

concerts

Sat., July 29, 1 p.m., Gateway Jazz Festival featuring Najee, Maysa, Nick Colionne, Julian Vaughn and more, Chesterfield Amphitheater, 631 Veterans Pl Dr., 63017. For more information, visit www. gatewayjazzfest.com.

Sat., July 29, 7 p.m., The Ambassador presents Monica With special guest Dirty Muggs. 9800 Halls Ferry Rd., 63136. For more information, visit www.metrotix.com.

Sun., July 30, 7 p.m., United Negro College Fund of St. Louis presents An Evening of Stars Benefit Concert with Chante Moore. Additional performances by Denise Thimes, Cedric the Entertainer and more. Grandel Theatre, 3610 Grandel Sq., 63108. For more information, visit www. metrotix.com.

Fri., Aug. 4, 5 p.m., Peda Peda presents NBA Youngboy. The Ambassador, 9800 Halls Ferry Rd., 63136. For more information, visit www.metrotix.com.

Sun., Aug. 6, 7 p.m., The Ready Room presents Jidenna – Long Live the Chief Tour. 4195 Manchester Ave., 63110. For more information, visit www. thereadyroom.com.

Thur., Aug. 10, 7 p.m., Herbie Hancock Live. Powell Hall, 718 N. Grand., Blvd., 63103. For more information, call (314) 534-1700.

Fri., Aug. 11, 6 p.m., Blues at the Arch with Carolyn Mason, David Dee and Mickey Rodgers. For more information, visit www. bluesatthearch.com.

Fri., Aug. 11, 8 p.m., Delmar Hall presents David Cook 6133 Delmar Blvd., 63112. For

more information, visit www. ticketmaster.com.

Aug. 11 – 12, 8 p.m., 2nd Annual Louis Armstrong Festival. Webster Groves Concert Hall, 103 E. Lockwood Ave., 63119. For more information, visit www. websterconcerthall.org.

Sat., Aug. 12, 6 p.m., An Evening of Tea and Tunes feat. Anita Jackson. Proceeds will benefit Changing Lives Today Mission Home for Women. Creative Arts Building, 3617 Grandel Sq., 63108. For more information, visit www.eventbrite.com.

local gigs

Fri., July 28, 7 p.m., All-N1 Entertainment presents You Know I Got Soul Live Tribute Concert. Mandarin Banquet Hall, 8008 Olive Blvd., 63130. For more information, call (314) 6903660.

Sun., July 30, 3 & 6 p.m., JPEK Creative Works Theatre presents Teena Marie and Chaka Khan Music Revue. Performed by Willena “Mz. NV” Vaughn and Paige Oatis. Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 N. Grand Blvd., 63103. For more information, visit www.metrotix.com.

special events

July 27 – 28, National Urban League Hackathon For Social Justice. An opportunity to use technology to create a viable solution to a social issue. America’s Center, 701 Convention Plaza, 63101. For more information, visit www. nulhackathon.eventbrite.com.

Through July 29, National Urban League Annual Conference, America’s

The Guide

The St. Louis American recommends

www.eventbrite.com.

Center. For more information, visit http://conference. iamempowered.com/

Sat., July 29, 10 a.m., Hazelwood School District hosts Back to School and Community Fair. Hazelwood East High School, 11300 Dunn Rd., 63138. For more information, visit www. hazelwoodschools.org.

Sat., July 29, 10 a.m., Citizens United for Social Change presents Unity in the Community Resource Fair. We will have career training, vision screening, children’s services, free backpacks and school supplies. Fairground Park, 63107. For more information, visit www. citizens4sc.org.

Sat., July 29, 12 p.m., Midwestern HBCU and Greek Summer Picnic. Tilles Park, 9551 Litzsinger Rd., 63124. For more information, visit www.facebook.com.

Sat., July 29, 7 p.m., Mind Over Magic. A modern, edgy, family friendly, interactive magic show. The Monocle, 4510 Manchester Ave., 63110. For more information, visit www.eventbrite.com.

Sun., July 30, 7 p.m., Peabody Opera House presents Bring It! Live. They’re back with hotter than ever, never before seen performances. 1400 Market St., 63103.

July 31 – Aug. 4, Ozzie Smith’s Sports Academy Basketball Camp. Brentwood High School 2221 High

School Dr., 63144. For more information, call (314) 9638689.

Thur., Aug. 3, 6 p.m., YWCA

Metro St. Louis invites you to the 5th Annual Walk A Mile in Her Shoes. A walk to show support of the importance of sexual assault awareness. Ballpark Village, 601 Clark Ave., 63102. For more information, visit www. ywcastlouis.org.

Aug. 3 – 4, Little Chef Dj’s Eat Colorful Garden. Little Chef DJ continues to strive to start his garden to serve the north county community. St. Louis Bread Company, 4561 Forest Park Ave., 63108. For more information, visit www. facebook.com.

Thur., Aug. 3, 6 p.m., YWCA

Metro St. Louis invites you to the 5th Annual Walk A Mile in Her Shoes. Join us in walking to show support of the importance of sexual assault awareness. Ballpark Village, 601 Clark Ave., 63102. For more information, visit www. ywcastlouis.org.

Sat., Aug. 5, Miss Divine Destiny Pageant. An to promote positive self-image, wellness, and unity among girls in the community. RLCC Banquet Hall, 1651 Redman Rd., 63138. For more information, call (314) 246-9498 or visit www. thequeensguidetolife.com.

Sat., Aug. 5, 10 a.m., Beyond Housing/Back to School Normandy High School, 6701 St. Charles Rock Rd., 63121. For more information, visit

United Negro College Fund of St. Louis presents An Evening of Stars Benefit Concert with Chante Moore and also performances from Cedric the Entertainer and Denise Thimes. For more information, see CONCERTS.

Sat., Aug. 5, 4 p.m., KlassCPromotions, LLC and SwagToMyLou present the Glo Up Fashion Show. 2543 N. Grand Blvd., 63106. For more information, visit www.eventbrite.com.

Sat., Aug. 5, 5 p.m., Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., Alpha Eta Chapter presents Midwest Marchdown Scholarship Stepshow. Harris Stowe, 3026 Laclede Ave., 63103. For more information visit www. eventbrite.com.

Sat., Aug. 5, 7 p.m., Families United hosts its 2nd Annual Community Benefit Megafest.. 9001 Lucas & Hunt, 63136. For more information, call (314) 772-2260 or visit www. healthyrelationshipstl.com.

Sun., Aug. 6, 11 a.m., St. Louis Bride & Groom Magazine presents The Wedding Show. America’s Center, 701 Convention Plaza, 63101. For more information, visit www. eventbrite.com.

Thur., Aug. 10, 6 p.m., Pins and Needles Designer Competition. Six designers from across the country will showcase their designs. Majorette, 7150 Manchester Ave., 63143. For more information, visit www. eventbrite.com.

Tues., Aug. 1, 11 a.m., Kiwanis Club of Jennings Charity Golf Tournament. 1 Norwood Hills Country Club Dr., 63121. For more information, visit www. eventbrite.com.

Fri., Aug. 11, 2 p.m.,

Wyman invites you to Summer Fest: Together in the Pursuit of Success festival and golf tournament. Norman K. Probstein Golf Course, Forest Park, 6141 Lagoon Dr., 63112. For more information, visit www. wymancenter.org/summerfest.

Sat., Aug. 12, 10 a.m., Etiquette for Youth. Spencer Road Library, 427 Spencer Rd., 63376. For more information, call (314) 374-2804 or visit www. jacksonetiquette.com.

Sat., Aug. 12, 11 a.m., Missouri History Museum presents Dred Scott Festival of Freedom. Commemorating Scott’s sacrifice and commitment to justice with live art, music, and more. 5700 Lindell Blvd., 63112. For more information, visit www.mohistory.org.

Aug. 17 – 26, St. Lou Fringe Festival 2017. A performing arts festival showcasing theatre, dance, spoken word, and more. For more information, visit www. metrotix.com.

Aug, 19, 11 a.m., A Step Beyond Inc. Back to School Fair, Musick Park, 8617 Latty Ave. Hazelwood Mo. 63042. For more information, e-mail astep.beyond@yahoo. com

Fri., Sept. 29, 8 p.m., The Sumner Alumni Association presents its Maroon & White Homecoming Dance, Machinist Hall, 12365 St. Charles Rock Road 63044. For tickets, call 314.556.3944 or 314.452.1275. For more info email: sumneralumniassn@ yahoo.com.

comedy

Fri., July 28, 7 p.m., The Laugh Lounge Comedy Club presents Paul Mooney Live. 11208 W. Florissant Ave., 63033. For more information, call (314) 9212810.

July 28 – 29, Funny Bone

St. Louis presents Tim Meadows. 614 West Port Plaza, 63146. For more information, visit www. stlouisfunnybone.com.

Sun., Aug. 6, 7 p.m., Hang 10 Productions presents the #FunniestMfrsInTheLou

Featuring Jamie Fritz, HD Reeves, Precious J, and more. Live Juke Joint Dueling Piano Bar, 7376 Manchester, 63143. For more information, visit www. hang10productions.com.

Sat., Aug. 12, 6 p.m., The Pageant presents Lavell Crawford: Home for the Holiday Comedy Special. 6161 Delmar Blvd., 63112. For more information, visit www.thepageant.com.

literary

Mon., Aug. 7, 7 p.m., St. Louis County Library hosts author Donald Ray Pollack author of The Heavenly Table. In 1917 in the border between Georgia and Alabama, Pearl Jewett ekes out a hardscrabble existence while Ellsworth Fiddler is swindled out of his fortune… until their lives collide.

Sat., Aug. 12, 7 p.m., Ethical Society of St. Louis hosts author Sen. Al Franken, author of Al Franken, Giant of the Senate 9001 Clayton Rd., 63117. For more information, visit www. left-bank.com.

art

Thur., Aug. 3, 6:30 p.m., Ferguson Voices Exhibit Opening Panel and Reception. The exhibit will be on display all of August. The panel includes people featured in the exhibit. St. Louis Public Library –Schlafly Branch, 225 N. Euclid Ave., 63108. For more information, visit www.slpl. org.

Through October 7, The Pulitzer Arts Foundation presents Blue Black curated by Glenn Ligon, The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 3716 Washington Blvd. For more information, visit www.

lectures and workshops

July 31, 6 p.m., The Hazelwood School District and American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU) partner to host a community workshop, First Amendment Meets the School House Door. Hazelwood School District Office 15955 New Halls Ferry Road, Florissant, MO 63031.

Thur., Aug. 10, 5:30 p.m., FOCUS St. Louis presents a Jobs, Skills & Innovation Forum. Building 100, Boeing Company, 63134. For more information, visit www. focus-stl.org/events.

theatre

July 28 – 30, The Fox presents Mamma Mia! 527 N. Grand Blvd., 63103. For more information, visit www. fabulousfox.com.

July 28 – Aug. 6, Hawthorne Players present Once Upon A Mattress This beloved musical version of “The Princess & the Pea”. Florissant Civic Center Theatre, 1 James J. Eagan Dr., 63033. For more information, visit www. hawthorneplayers.info.

Aug. 3 – 5, Ragtime the Musical. Tower Grove Abbey, 2336 Tennessee Ave., 63104. For more information visit www.brownpapertickets. com.

July 28 – 30, The Fox presents Mamma Mia! 527 N. Grand Blvd., 63103. For more information, visit www. fabulousfox.com.

July 28 – Aug. 6, Hawthorne Players present Once Upon A Mattress This beloved musical version of “The Princess & the Pea”. Florissant Civic Center Theatre, 1 James J. Eagan Dr., 63033. For more information, visit www. hawthorneplayers.info.

July 29 – Aug. 4, The Muny presents A Chorus Line 1 Theatre Dr., 63112. For more information, visit www. muny.org.

Aug. 7 – Aug. 13, Musical Theatre Workshop for ages 8-15 (flexible), STLCC –Forest Park Student Center. For more information, visit

www.HowToDance.us or Eventbrite.com.

Through Aug. 17, Stages St. Louis presents 9 to 5 The Musical. Robert G. Reim Theatre, 111 S. Geyer Rd., 63122. For more information, visit www.stagesstlouis.org.

health

Sat., July 29, 10 a.m., St. James Ville Community Health Fair in Recognition of Homer G. Phillips Hospital. 4301 St. Ferdinand Ave., 63113. For more information, visit www. stjamesstl.org.

Fri., Aug. 4, 9 a.m., ARCH’S STL Educare:

Child Care & Development Fund Health and Safety Training. Harris Stowe, 10 N. Compton Ave., 63103. For more information, visit www.eventbrite.com.

Sat., Aug. 12, 9 a.m., Grace Hill invites you to Strong Women and Families Health and Resource Fair. 2600 Hadley St., 63106. For more information, call (314) 822-2344.

Sat., Aug. 12, 10 a.m., Agape Christian Center hosts Healthy Body, Soul & Spirit: Community Health Fair & Back To School Event. 2410 Gardner, 63136. Visit www.agape-cc.org.

spiritual

Through July 28, Missouri Midwest Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, under the leadership of Bishop Elijah Hankerson III, presents its COGIC Second Annual Holy Convocation, Theme: “In This Changing World, Let Us Hold On To Our Unchanging Faith” 1 Corinthians 15:58;Colossians 1:9-23; II Timothy 3:1-17; Jude 3-4 Kennerly Temple Chruch of God In Christ, 4307 Kennerly Ave. St. Louis, Missouri 63113. For more information Call Pastor Travis J. Cox 314-761-5148.

Sat., July 29, 1 pm. And Sun., July 30, 2 p.m., St. Matthew C.M.E. Church will celebrate the 10th anniversary of spiritual leadership of its pastor, Rev. Renee T. Johnson. Pastoral Appreciation will begin on Saturday, July 29th at 1 pm at Greentree Community Church and continue on Sunday, July 30th at 2 pm at St. Matthew C.M.E. Church located at 312 Attucks St., Kirkwood, MO.

Sat., July 29, 10 a.m., All Nations Christian Church Back 2 School Giveaway and Health Fair. We will be give away free school supplies, offer health screenings, and more. 10047 Jeffrey Dr., 63137. For more information, call (314) 853-6365.

Thurs., Aug. 3 – Sun., Aug. 6, 2017 Joint Holy Convocation “Living the Christian Life with Consistency,” featuring Bishop J. Drew Sheard (Thurs., Aug. 3, 7 p.m.), Dr. Michael Eric Dyson (Fri., Aug. 4, 7 p.m.) and host pastor Bishop Luther J. Blackwell, Jr. (Sun., Aug. 6, 10:30 a.m.), 10191 Halls Ferry Rd., St. Louis, MO 63136. Aug. 5 – 11, EMFJ 36th Annual Women’s Conference. We have planned a week of inspirational speakers, prayer, and worship. Kennerly Temple Church of

God in Christ, 4307 Kennerly Ave., 63113. For more information, call (314) 5356708.

Sat., Aug. 5, 1 & 3 p.m., Aiming for the Truth. To help good people be able to protect themselves but also reduce the amount of overall violence we all encounter. Good Samaritan Church, 1488 Belt Ave., 63112.

Sat., Aug. 12, 5 p.m., Joy Bryant CD Release “Higher Ground”. Ark of Safety Christian Church, 2529 Charwood St., 63301. For more information, visit www. joybryantministries.com.

Sun., Aug. 13, 8 a.m., Southern Mission Baptist Church 92nd Anniversary with featured speaker Pastor Jimmie Daniels of Shiloh MB Church in Summit Argo, IL, 8171 Wesley Ave, Kinloch, MO. For more information, call (314) 521-3951.

Wed., Aug. 2, 6:30 p.m., A Call to Conscience, Inc. invites you to The Price of the Ticket: Celebrate James Arthur Baldwin. Screening of the documentary The Price of the Ticket followed by a panel discussion. St. Louis Public Library – Schlafly Branch, 225 N. Euclid Ave., 63108. For more information, visit www. slpl.org.

Fri., Aug. 4, Detroit starring John Boyega, Anthony Mackie, and Jacob Latimore opens in theatres nationwide.

Fri., Aug. 4, Kidnapped starring Halle Berry opens in theatres nationwide.

Aug. 4 – 8, Tivoli Theater presents City of Ghosts. The story of a handful of anonymous activists who banded together after their homeland was taken over by ISIS in 2014. 6350 Delmar Blvd., 63130.

A Call to Conscience, Inc. presents ‘The Price of the Ticket,’ a film celebrating the life and legacy of James Arthur Baldwin. See FILM for details.

The St. Louis American recommends

DETROIT

Continued from C1

story of black people coming up north for opportunities and escape from oppression.

This introduction also states that as black people came to neighborhoods, the white people left – which starved the neighborhoods of resources.

The opening implies that white flight resulted in Detroit –and other urban areas across the nation – becoming little more than overcrowded ghettos riddled with crime and nefarious activities.

The systems in place that prevented African Americans from achieving the so-called American Dream are absolved of any responsibility.

Bigelow starts the series of events that ultimately lead to the tragedy the film sought to expose inside an illegal after hours joint in the summer of 1967. A black policeman facilitates a raid of the establishment. As the patrons are carted off by police, onlookers attack the officers with rocks and bottles.

The situation almost instantly explodes into looting as a response to the police simply

doing their job by making the arrests. For the next hour of the film, unruly rioters are seen wreaking havoc on Detroit and ignoring law enforcement from the local, state and national level who are attempting to restore calm.

Looters are victimized because they defy order. Police are doing the best that they can, considering the stressful circumstances.

After pounding this into the brain of the viewer, they are finally introduced to African Americans as human beings who are attempting to navigate life in the midst of their city burning to the ground.

Shortly afterwards, the incidents of the Algiers Motel play out – which left three innocent victims dead and several others brutally beaten at the hands of city police.

One of the few things the film gets right is illustrating the terror of the incident and how a blind eye is often turned when it comes to police brutality against black citizens. The film also shows that injustice towards blacks don’t end with officers on the streets, but permeates throughout the entire criminal justice system.

The final of the sparing bright spots in “Detroit” are

found in the performances.

John Boyega is believable as the security guard that takes it upon himself to aid law enforcement in their efforts –and who naively believes in the beginning that justice will prevail. Jacob Latimore and Algee Smith are compelling as two young men who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Will Poulter is effectively vicious as Officer Krauss.

At the film’s end, “Detroit” admits to taking the liberty of inserting fiction to fill in the blanks to complete the story –but the fictitious moments are glaringly obvious. The tragedy of the Algiers Motel didn’t need more drama for the sake of drama. But “Detroit” was in desperately longing for balance. In doing so, the film could have honored the memory of the lives lost and survivors of that particular moment in history, the lives were forever changed because of the riots – and the individuals who still suffer the generational curse of being criminalized because of the color of their skin.

“Detroit” opens in theatres nationwide on Friday, August 4.The film is rated R with a running time of 142 minutes.

GIRLS

Continued from C1

weekend.

Hall shows off her dexterity as an actress with her portrayal of Ryan. She’s been seen exclusively in urban films –mainly comedies – Hall hasn’t been pigeonholed into one particular role, though often serves up comic relief of her own. Her take on the straight laced people pleaser willing to sacrifice personal happiness for the sake of her career and brand will resonate and give a new appreciation for her as an actress.

DANCE

Continued from C1

Enough can’t be said about the impeccable timing of Haddish’s jokes and slapstick over the course of “Girls Trip.” Though the film itself is predictable, Haddish also provides the lone surprise element – because it’s anyone’s guess what she will do next.

Queen Latifah is a solid, steady presence as Sasha, journalist who has to reduce herself to celebrity gossip blogger in an attempt to pay the bills. Over the course of the film, Latifah seems to generously allow Haddish to make the most of the comedic moments that she herself would typically pounce upon.

“Queen Sugar” star Kofi

“Bring It” was a breath of fresh air that stood out against the several franchises of reality programming that perpetuated negative stereotypes of black women. “Bring It” gave a platform to a woman using her background in dance to sow into the lives of young girls in her community. Sure the show has its drama, but it’s harmless –and helps push the show’s narrative that reality for black women also includes shaping the lives of young girls in the community.

Miss D and the Dancing

Wildin’ out with Waka

Rap star Waka Flocka Flame went hard for fans during his high impact show at The Pageant Thursday night. The energy level went through the roof when he hopped off stage and performed while maneuvering through the crowd.

Siriboe serves as the man candy for the movie, though the forever young Larenz Tate also gives the ladies reason to swoon. Mike Colter of “Luke Cage” fame rounds out the testosterone in “Girls Trip” as Ryan’s husband Stewart Pierce. The drama and conflict within the film are typical for a Malcolm Lee film, but the humor make “Girls Trip” the ideal summer fun flick – and will probably inspire more than a few treks down to ESSENCE in the coming years.

“Girls Trip” is now open in theatres nationwide. The film is rated R with a running time of 122 minutes.

Dolls struck such a nerve that they were being asked to visit places all over the world. The unyielding requests spawned the idea to take their show on the road by way of “Bring It Live.” She was all for it.

“Even though you are watching it on television, you don’t get to see it all,” Williams said. “This way you get to see the girls up close and personal and get to be a part of the actual live experience of their performances.”

Last year Williams and the Dancing Dolls came to St. Louis and danced the Peabody Opera House down. They had such a ball that they are coming back on Sunday (July 30). She wants St. Louis to be ready for them to do what they do best – bring it – for a second time.

“We are giving them a show like they’ve never seen before,” Williams said. “As you’ve seen on the show, the girls give their all.” It seems like they give even more live. The high kicks, “death drops” and seamless formation the Dancing Dolls inspire even more awes when seen in the flesh.

For Williams, “Bring It” goes beyond dancing. She started the Dancing Dolls 16 years ago to use her love of dance to empower other young women – to build confidence, self-esteem and to become comfortable expecting the best from themselves and others. She is thrilled to be embraced by those who have been doing the same for generations outside of the limelight and happy that others are inspired by what she does on television each week and with “Bring It Live” on stages across the nation.

“This is a movement, and we are happy to be a part of that,” Williams said. “Seeing a trend that includes people who have same passion that we have for dance, our youth, community involvement and uplifting and empowering young African American girls is definitely something we want to stand on.”

Bring It Live will take place at 7 p.m.

One of the few things the film gets right is illustrating the terror of the incident and how a blind eye is often turned when it comes to police brutality against black citizens. The

Photo by Lawrence Bryant

History Museum pays tribute to Sister Ebo

By Philip Deitch

For The St. Louis American

“Oh, God, this is going to be real trouble,”

Sr. Antona Ebo thought.

It was just days after Bloody Sunday in 1965, and she was again at the forefront of a voting rights march in Selma, Alabama. Fortyfive years later to the day – on March 10, 2010 – this humble Franciscan Sister of Mary would receive a kiss on the cheek from President Obama here in St. Louis, an acknowledgment of her efforts in his election campaign.

The PBS documentary Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change recounts the story of the Missouri nuns who traveled to Selma during the Civil Rights Movement, and in particular it focuses on Sr. Ebo. She was the only African American in the entire 48-person interfaith delegation from St. Louis, a fact that hit her when she got off the plane. “If you get arrested, you ain’t gonna be with the group of sisters,” she recalls in the film.

Selma was on Americans’ minds in the days following Bloody Sunday. News of Sr. Ebo’s upcoming trip swept through St. Mary’s Hospital, where she was the director of medical records. A friend offered her this advice: “You don’t know the Deep South. Stay with the group, and keep your mouth shut.” After she heard that activist Rev. James Reeb had been beaten there and later died from his injuries, Sr. Ebo remembers thinking, “Are you out of your mind?”

Another moment of truth came when a federal agent advised her to take off her glasses if she could see well enough without them. “That was when I came through with that silly thought, ‘Oh, God, this is going to be real trouble. We’re not down here to play pick-up sticks.’ I don’t know why I thought of pick-up sticks, except maybe somebody might have been ready to pick us up after everything was over!”

Her presence, along with that of the other sisters, helped fortify the marchers as they entered Selma’s historic Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church. Among them was Rev. Andrew Young, a civil rights leader who would go on to become Atlanta’s mayor and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Young invited Sr. Ebo to speak, telling the marchers, “Ladies and gentlemen, one of the great moral forces of the world has just walked in the door.” It was a moment she had never imagined but a moment she trusted to God nonetheless. They marched again later that day, but only made it a short distance before being blocked

by the mayor and police. But the press was everywhere. Sr. Ebo told reporters that she was proud to be black: “I’m here because I’m a Negro, a nun, a Catholic, and because I want to bear witness to the right to vote by all the citizens of Selma as well as the whites.” She and five other sisters, all at the front of the protest line and dressed in black habits, landed on the front page of the New York Times

She has led an extraordinary life, fighting for justice, breaking barriers, and inspiring people across the country.

The Missouri History Museum will honor Sr. Ebo’s legacy on Sunday, July 30, at 2:30pm, as part of the exhibition “#1 in Civil Rights: The African American Freedom Struggle in St. Louis.” The event is free and open to the public. Learn more at mohistory. org/node/59014#.

Philip Deitch is a community activist and community collaborator at the Missouri History Museum.

Sister Ebo timeline

At St. Clare Hospital in Baraboo, Wisconsin, in 1967, Sr. Ebo became the first African-American woman religious to run a Catholic hospital in the United States. She was also the institution’s first African American state hospital association president.

In 1968 she helped found the National Black Sisters’ Conference and later served as its president.

After earning a master’s degree from Aquinas Institute of Theology, Sr. Ebo spent six years in the 1980s working as a chaplain at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

In 1999 she and civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks received the Eucharist from Pope John Paul II during his visit to St. Louis.

That same year she traveled to central Mississippi, where civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were killed in 1964. She called for the state to bring murder charges, and it finally did. Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of three counts of manslaughter in June 2005.

On May 10, 2012, Sr. Ebo was honored by the St. Louis American with its Lifetime Achievement Award in Health Care.

In 2013 she marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma with Congressman John Lewis and met Vice President Joe Biden. Sr. Ebo and Andrew Young were reunited at the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis’s annual dinner on March 10, 2014. It was the 49th anniversary of the day they met.

a Tourist in Your Own Town

Fun in the sun this August

By Kiara Bryant For the St. Louis American

The final days of summer in St. Louis will be here before we know it. There’s still time to enjoy all that our town has to offer before the kids go back to school in August. Explore the great outdoors and seasonal attractions and exhibits while you can.

Have you met the baby rhino in River’s Edge by the name of Moyo? He’s just one of the many reasons you should visit the Saint Louis Zoo There’s Sea Lion Sound, Polar Bear Point and Big Cat Country just to name a few more. As if you needed another reason to visit the Saint Louis Zoo, did you know that more than three million people visit the zoo each year? And the new ‘Grizzly Ridge’ will be the latest addition to America’s top free attraction in fall 2017. But if you can’t wait until then, Jungle Boogie offers live music every Friday from now until Labor Day.

n For a trip around the world in one weekend, journey to Tower Grove Park and enjoy an international experience at the Festival of Nations on Aug. 26 and 27.

There’s a new ride at Six Flags St. Louis. If you’re up for taking it out for a spin, Spinsanity will send you soaring ‘round and ‘round. For those brave souls who are 48 inches or taller, the thrill ride is now open near the Tsunami Soaker so don’t miss your chance to visit Six Flags and all its attractions that help it live up to the name of Missouri’s Coaster Capital.

This summer, there’s a Garden of Glass at Missouri Botanical Garden. Floral glass artist Craig Mitchell Smith has had his work on exhibit at Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center, Michigan State University, various botanic gardens as well as HGTV. You can see the art work from now until Aug. 13.

For a trip around the world in one weekend, journey to Tower Grove Park and enjoy an international experience at the Festival of Nations on Aug. 26 and 27. From Spanish

flamenco to a Vietnamese lion dance, from thundering drums to Irish harp, the festival celebrates many diverse cultures with over 40 ethnic food booths, dancing, music, arts and gifts from across the globe. Friday nights in August will be filled with the sounds of music at the Gateway Arch as Blues at The Arch takes center stage at The North Gateway near Eads Bridge (Aug. 4-25). Stay tuned for these local artists: Big George Brock and Lil’ Ray Neal on Aug. 4, followed by and Carolyn Mason, Mickey Rodgers, and David Dee on Aug. 11, after that Green McDonough Band, Joe Metzka, and Mark “Muleman” Massey on Aug. 18, and the grand finale will be Marquise Knox and Dexter Allen on Aug. 25. Well known comedian, actor and author Finesse Mitchell will perform for audiences 18 and up at the Helium Comedy Club on Aug. 17-19. So whether it’s your birthday or not, laugh as this comedic veteran from Comedy Central and Shaq’s All-Star Comedy Jam Tour brings his show to St. Louis. Jam along to a “Serenade by Brian McKnight and Ginuwine” at the Fabulous Fox Theatre on Saturday, Aug. 26. Listen to the smooth sounds of these two hit makers for a good cause benefitting The Mathews-Dickey Boys’ & Girls’ Club.

In case you haven’t heard we’re having a big bang moment of our own when the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse makes its way near St. Louis. Science enthusiasts have been waiting for years to witness this eclipse that is set to create a blackout over parts of the greater St. Louis area on Monday, Aug. 21, 2017. Be sure to get your special viewing eyewear and take the family to experience this part of history at one of the events surrounding the eclipse. For more fun in the sun over the remaining summer months visit www.explorestlouis.com.

The Saint Louis Zoo has a new baby rhino in River’s Edge named Moyo.

The Missouri History Museum will honor Sr. Antona Ebo’s legacy on Sunday, July 30, at 2:30 p.m., as part of the exhibition “#1 in Civil Rights: The African American Freedom Struggle in St. Louis.” The event is free and open to the public.

Celebrations

Anniversary

Nuptials

Congratulations to newlyweds Deja Strong and Marion Malone, who were joined in Holy Matrimony on Saturday, July 8, 2017 on the beautiful, sunny beaches of Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

Reunions

Beaumont High Class of 1967 will meet at the Normandy County Library, 7606 Natural Bridge Rd., 63121 on Saturday, July 22, 2017 at 1 p.m.

Beaumont High Class of 1968 Reunion Committee will begin planning for our 50th Class Reunion to be held in

St. Louis, Missouri in 2018. For more information contact Vanetta Cobbs, 314-869-5665, or email vanetta.cobbs@ sbcglobal.net.

Beaumont High Class of 1978 will celebrate its 40-year reunion in 2018. For further information, please contact: Marietta Shegog Shelby, 314-799-5296, madeshe@ sbcglobal.net.

Cleveland High School is hosting a reunion for all attending 1980-1984 on August 19, 2017 at Catering To You Banquet Center (12775 New Halls Ferry Rd., Florissant, MO 63033) For information, please contact Babette Perkins-Anderson at 314-345-0939.

Kinloch High Class of 1967 Committee has finalized plans for an outstanding “50th Year Class Reunion.” If you haven’t received your registration letter or email, please call 310-346-7235. You may also email your contact information to alreemc@aol. com .

Northwest High Class of 1978 is planning its 40 year reunion for next year. PLEASE reach out to our classmates, tell them get ready for this. If you have any questions please contact Sly at ( 314) 397-0311 or email us at northwestbluedevils@78gmail. com. Check us out on Facebook Northwest High School-Class of 1978.

Engagement

Mr. and Mrs. Royce Boone are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Brianna Boone, to Jabril Whitmore, son of Ms. C. Sophia Williamson and Mr. Jason Whitmore. Brianna graduated Suma Cum Laude from Claflin University and is an ocean transportation analyst with Mercedes Benz. Mr. Whitmore graduated with honors from Claflin University and is a Production Supervisor at TEKNI-PLEX.

Soldan High Class of 1965 will be holding first Luncheon on August 8, 2017 at 2 pm at Bristol Seafood Grill’s Creve Coeur Room, 11801 Olive Street, 63141, 314-567-0272. No need to send any money. Each person will pay for their meals at the restaurant. Your family members and Friends are welcome to join us.

Sumner High Class of 1972 reunion will be held September 15-17, 2017 at the Airport Hilton, 10330 Natural Bridge Rd., 63134. Please contact Earlene Brown 314-2267019/314-534-0467 or Jazelle Brown 314-954-1470 or Kathi Washington Scott 314-4454715.

University City High Class of

1982 has planned a awesome weekend for our 35th reunion July 29-31, 2017. For tickets and information please call Kimberly Milton-Nelson at (314)541-9568 or Patricia Yates-Mcintosh (314)2291675.

Vashon High School will celebrate its 90th anniversary October 5-7, 2017 for alumni, students and community activities to celebrate educational commitment and tradition. For additional information, go to Vashonhigh. org or contact Elvis Hopson, elvishopson@att.net, (314) 535-0243, Pearl Lake, lakep6@aol.com, (314) 3880743 or Cozy W. Marks, Jr., jr3810@sbcglobal.net, (314) 383-5682.

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, 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 2315

MO 63103 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, 2315 Pine St., St. Louis, MO 63103

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

to Willie and Carrie Parker, who celebrated 15 wonderful wedded years together on July 20. God has blessed them!

San Francisco Temple & Mega Church host Joint Holy Convocation

August 3-6 with kick-off community event on

Saturday, July 29

By Angelita F. Jackson

Of The St. Louis American

You are invited to be a part of this year’s 2017 Joint Holy Convocation hosted by San Francisco Temple C.A. of St. Louis and Mega Church of Cleveland, Ohio, which will be held August 3-6 at San Francisco Temple CA, 10191 Halls Ferry Rd. St. Louis, Missouri 63136. The theme is “Living the Christian Life with Consistency.” On Saturday, August 5 at 10 a.m. there will be a book signing with a question and answer session. You will also have the opportunity to get an autographed copy of Michael Eric Dyson’s best-selling book, “Tears We Cannot Stop.”

What host Pastor Dr. Luther J Blackwell Jr. said what he likes most about convocations is the fellowship of the saints and the opportunity to hear “fresh voices.”

Many churches, pastors, leaders, musical guest, choirs and ministries will come together and will be spiritually refreshed. You will hear from an dynamic lineup of speakers such as Bishop Drew Sheard, Dyson and Bishop Blackwell. The special musical guests will be Kierra Sheard, Jonathan Nelson, Voices of Mega,

SFTCA Inspirational Choir and many more. When you leave this convocation you will be blessed, inspired, strengthened and renewed as singers minister and worship to bring in God’s presence.

Knowing the challenges and struggles that the community face on a daily basis, Bishop Blackwell wanted to bridge the gap between the church and the community. There were several community events that took place leading up to the convocation to get the community involved, such as Community Day in Honor of the Late Rev. Carlton Lee. Other events were Community Shred Day, with activities for the children, Bubble Bus, Hygiene Kits, food, SSM & BJC Safety Booths, St. Louis

People really react to you differently when you tell them you’re studying the bible, particularly if they’ve known you as someone who has lived a bible-free life. I’m not talking about other believers. I’m talking about people who know you, perhaps those with whom you work, are in the same organizations as you, or whom you simply socialize with from time to time. Maybe you even “ran the streets” with them. Their reaction is distinctly different from when you tell them you’re studying a foreign language or returning to school to learn computers or something as innocuous as taking a cooking class or ball room dancing.

For the most part, people tend to respond positively to a genuine effort to get closer to God. However, there is almost a universal questioning about whether or not you’re serious. The question of your faith always comes up because most people have a hard time putting you and the Lord in the same thought pattern.

County Police and a fire truck.

The next community event will be held on Saturday, July 29 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on San Francisco Temple’s parking lot. There will be free snacks, professional organizations that will show video clips that promote community awareness and build relationships that will strive to strengthen the community.

“The challenge is to get the church involved in the needs of the community. Once that happens, the community will reciprocate,” stated Bishop Blackwell.

“There are opportunities that come our way only one time in life! I feel very strongly that this is one of those opportunities, in which we will never see this mix again in our churches or community. So, it is my prayer that all who possibly can will take full advantage of this spiritual and community event, and involve as many others herein.”

Bring a friend and spread the word so that many will be encouraged and blessed. This event is free and open to the public. For more information please call San Francisco Temple at 314-388-3300.

It’s inevitable, then, that people become a little standoffish towards you because they really don’t know where you’re coming from. Some are compelled to remember the sins you committed together. Some just heard rumors about you, but have little proof that the rumors are indeed true. For whatever the reasons, people have a hard time believing you because they can’t or haven’t made the effort themselves.

I’ve experienced astonishment, disbelief, skepticism and, yes, genuine joy, all because

I’ve told someone I’m in bible study.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised that a lot of people I’ve known for a long time have opened up to me in ways that have been truly remarkable. I know things now about them spiritually that I would never have guessed before my admission of being in bible study. I can honestly say before then, I hardly knew them at all. Our conversations have changed and subsequently, our relationship has changed, all because I let it be known that I had changed.

Somewhere along the line I said something, did something that opened a side of me to others that allowed them to see me, hopefully in a different light. In the resulting conversations, dialogue has gone on for hours. In other cases, it has brought to my attention that some people, rather than question me, question others about me.

When that has happened, I’m told, it’s usually brought up in such a way as to question my sincerity or, to be insulting at my audacity to think that I actually could be trying to order my steps to put me on a clear path to God. Like I said earlier, you need to be prepared to hear all kinds of things when you let people know you’re studying the Word.

The good news is, if there was no reaction, there would probably be no real difference that anyone could see in you. So for those of you, who have wondered or worried about this, don’t. Keep doing what you’re doing.

Columnist James Washington

Bishop Luther J Blackwell Jr. is pastor of San Francisco Temple C.A, 10191 Halls Ferry Rd.

Swag Snap of the Week

Waka Flocka went hard. I was preparing myself to slam Waka Flocka’s visit to the Pageant because it was uncharacteristically empty up in there when he came through Thursday night. But the show was so ________ (insert new slang for lit) that I have to give him all props. But before I get to Waka, let me shower some praise on Zeus Rebel – the artist formerly known as Ruka Puff– for getting that crowd of EDM (techno) skateboarders turnt (yes, turnt) up to his so St. Louis hip-hop. Waka came out flinging those dreads so tough that I thought he was going to jump right into a trap remix of Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair.” Plenty of artists will see a struggle sized crowd and mail it in, but Waka gave all those West County kids every single bit of their money’s worth. He jumped into the crowd, rapped from the top of the wrap around tables, took selfies, joined them on Snapchat and Facebook Live. I could care less about all but two of his songs, but he did his thing on that stage.

Baking at Ballpark Village. The second installment of 95.5 FM’s District Rhythms outdoor concert starring Jon B. and Silk had me feeling like I was cooking on top of somebody’s barbecue grill Friday evening at Ballpark Village. But the heat got enough news, so let me get on with the show. The folks still came through in spite of the heat advisory. Jon B. sounded great and put on a cute little show that featured his own hits and some R&B classics – including New Edition’s “Can You Stand The Rain.” And I was like “of all the songs…Not only can I stand the rain, but I would be perched with it pouring down sipping on a Slurpee.” My only note for Jon B is that he didn’t keep the heat index in mind when he tried it with those high notes. He learned the hard way that his falsetto works best in climate controlled environments. Silk did their thing as well – and still got quite a few gyrations and didn’t suffer a heat stroke. Lil G and the one with the high voice sounded better than they do on the radio. I also ran into too many of my faves to mention – including my boy Vito Bracy, who is one of the movers and shakers who make District Rhythms possible. I also caught Larry Blue hanging with Jon B so tight you would’ve sworn they went to high school together. Grooving to new school throwback classics. I got a second

By Delores Shante dshante@stlamerican.com

dose of live soul when I scooted over to The Ambassador to catch former Blackstreet front man Dave Hollister and Lyfe Jennings live in concert. As per usual, DJ Kut was killing it on the tables. Hollister was up first – and that voice of his was absolutely every single thing. He didn’t spend a lot of time on stage, but it was enough to blow me away. Lyfe Jennings with his oppositional defiant self came out on stage complaining that the promoters cut his time. I don’t know how much more time he would have needed, because it seemed like he had a full allotment. What made the whole thing ironic is that he did mostly snippets the whole night. As his name suggests, he gave life though. I was actually the most impressed than I’ve ever been with him after Friday’s show. He sounded great and had all kinds of energy. I can’t wait to get back to The Ambassador to check for Monica on Saturday night (July 29).

Confusion in Bloom at the Suite Soul Spot. You couldn’t have told me that I wouldn’t be three for three as far as my live music weekend when I headed to the Grandel for Vanita Applebum’s July installment of her Suite Soul Spot monthly concert series. However, headliner Timothy Bloom is the blame for one of the strangest concert experiences of my whole entire life – I’m talking Rachelle Ferrell at the OG Ambassador or R. Kelly dusting Jay Z mid-show at the “Best of Both Worlds” concert strange. First let me tip my hat to Vanita, because none of the foolishness was her fault. Second, let me give a shout

out to St. Louis’ own Jon B. Dakota Pagan for his opening performance that ended up being the best in show. He surprised, and then impressed the folks with soulful covers of greats like Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind and Fire and more. Immediately afterwards, the foolishness started. National act Chante Cann came out being all bossy about the sound. I was like, “is this a live sound check, or a show? I’m confused.” Then she had the nerve to be vocally lackluster. Don’t get me wrong, the arrangements to the covers she did were quite cute, but she did not have the range to be set tripping with the soundman or the band. After she got done, things went from “ ‘Okay!’ to ‘Okay.’ To ‘Okay?’” Timothy Bloom – who, for the record, hit the ball out of the park with his show at The Kranzberg last year –came up from downstage doing a Negro Spiritual style call and response. He spent an hour pointing people out for not giving him enough energy, making people come on stage to assist with songs they had never heard before and/or giving psychic reading style prophecies. The “visions” were good news and I hope they come true, but I didn’t come for a Miss Cleo moment. I don’t think he played a whole song – it was a whole mess.

Packed out with Patrick McCaw. Wellston’s own NBA champ Patrick McCaw (of The Golden State Warriors) came to Mood and made a movie on Saturday night. Listen, I don’t know what else to say except for after the weather finally broke thanks to much needed rain, McCaw caused the club to need its own heat warning for what was happening on the inside as the celebrity guest for the special edition of Lifestyle Saturdays. Folks came in looking all fresh, but left looking like they had been in the oven with the temperature set to broil.

Photos by V. Lang

Brianna and Chester danced the night away @ That 90’s Jam Friday @ Blank Space

Cynthia and Paris stepped into the Olive Bar on Sunday to unwind just before beginning the work week

Jennifer, Brandon, Christopher and Brittany attended Orlando Watson’s I’m A Survivor Cancer Gala @Randall Gallery on Sunday

Courtney and Jo Jo showed up just because it was Saturday night @ MOOD

The entire city joined Jiro, Patrick McCaw and Triky @ McCaw’s Championship Celebration on Saturday @ MOOD

Kel and Natasha arrived @ Ballpark Village on Friday to see Silk perform their favorite song live

Truly coordinated the backstage as Barbara and many more models prepared for the next walk @ Hats Off Alopecia on Sunday @ The Polish Heritage Center

Promoter Kool Aid with rap star Waka Flocka Flame Thursday night @ The Pageant

Timothy Bloom, Chante Cann, and Dakota Fanning brought the heat as they performed live during Suite Soul Spot concert @ Grandel Saturday

Tiff, Pierre and Shelby shared a family chuckle as they were photo bombed by Brittany on Sunday @ The Hats Off Alopecia fashion showcase @ Polish Heritage Center

Lino Mbroh and D. Baldwin hosted Lyfe Jennings for The After Hours concert Friday @ The Ambassador