September 27th, 2018 Edition

At this dance every boy and girl was king and queen

Riverview Gardens School District introduces new Junior Homecoming Dance

By Chris King Of The St. Louis American

It was a homecoming dance like no other.

The boys, in bow ties, danced alone — or in the arms of their mothers. The girls, in glittering gold shoes and silver tiaras, danced alone, or together, or were dragged across the

dance floor, laughing, by a boy.

There was no slow dancing. There was only fast dancing — and very fast dancing. The boys danced with boys. The girls danced in threes. The boys and girls danced in fives. They were, in all cases, brief episodes of dancing, interrupted by sprinting, or jumping in the air, or falling face-first onto the dance

floor, which was usually a basketball court. It was the first-ever Junior Homecoming Dance in the gymnasium of the Michelle Obama Early Childhood Academic Center in the Riverview Gardens School District, held Friday, September 21, at the end of Spirit Week.

“It’s a nice idea,” said Tracy Conley, who brought her son, Aiyden Conley, one of the center’s 241 students; about 120 families signed in and entered names in the drawing for king and queen. “Something different.”

Harris-Stowe State University senior Prentis Boyles helped freshman Briana Smith register to vote during Voter Registration Day at the university on Tuesday, September 25. Organizers said they registered more than 100 people to vote. The League of Women Voters of Metro St. Louis will register people to vote at 61 area libraries from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, September 29. You can also register to vote by clicking the top tab at www.sos.mo.gov. October 10 is the deadline to register to vote in the November 6 election.

Christian Care Home allowed rape of elderly resident, lawsuit claims

American staff

A Ferguson-based nursing home allowed an 84-year-old resident to be raped, the family of the alleged victim claim in a lawsuit filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court. The lawsuit, filed by attorneys Richard Banks and Willie Gray, alleges that Delores Green’s daughter found unusual bruising and swelling on her mother’s body while giving her a bath at Christian Care Home in August 2018. Upon returning the following day, Green’s daughter noticed additional bruises and more swelling, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that doctors at SSM Health DePaul Hospital examined Green and

determined that she had been repeatedly raped.

Christian Care Home told The American it has no comment at the moment.

Green was admitted into the Christian Care Home after she began experiencing Alzheimer’s in October 2011. For that reason, family members claim, Green “could not cry out for help, as she suffers from dementia, Alzheimer’s, and she cannot talk.” The suit asks the court for compensation for “injuries and damages, in excess of $25,000,”

n

“This lawsuit was filed to help shine a light on the under-reported evil of elder abuse in nursing homes throughout the country.”

– Willie Gray, attorney

as well as attorneys’ fees and costs and “punitive damages.”

Christian Care Home is a 150-bed assisted

Homegrown Black Males

End. Earlier that day, a Missouri Circuit Court judge acquitted former St. Louis Police Officer Jason Stockley of the first-degree murder of Anthony Lamar Smith in 2011, and protestors took to the streets soon after.

Photo by Wiley Price

See DANCE, A6

See MALES, A6

Michael P. McMillan

The Riverview Gardens School District’s inaugural Junior Homecoming Queen and King, MeKayla Evans and Darius Holmes Jr., were crowned at this district’s first-ever Junior Homecoming Dance on Friday, September 21.

Delores Green

Bill Cosby receives three to 10 year sentence

Bill Cosby was sentenced to three to10 years in state prison on Tuesday for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand.

Cosby, 81, faced a maximum of 10 years in prison after prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to merge the three counts of his conviction into one for sentencing purposes.

Prosecutors asked for a sentence of five to 10 years in prison. However, Cosby’s defense attorney asked for a sentence of house arrest, citing Cosby’s advanced age and blindness.

“This is a serious crime … a sexual assault crime. He could possibly be a danger to the community,” O’Neill said.

Realizing he wasn’t going home, Cosby removed his suit jacket, his tie and personal items and handed them to his personal representatives. Sheriff’s deputies then handcuffed Cosby and escorted him from the courtroom for the trip to prison. Cosby initially will be held at the county jail and later transferred to a state prison facility. Cosby chose not to address the packed courtroom before the judge imposed the sentence.

Cosby was convicted in April of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and assaulting Constand at his home in 2004, in the first high-profile celebrity criminal trial of the #MeToo era.

Cosby, remained calm on Tuesday as Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O’Neill sentenced him. O’Neill denied Cosby’s bail request and ordered he be taken into custody immediately.

Will Smith celebrated big 5-0 with a bungee jump over the Grand Canyon

Will Smith marked his 50th birthday on Tuesday by leaping out of a helicopter over the Grand Canyon and he thought the experience was “beautiful.”

He said, while dangling on the rope “This is some of the most beautiful stuff I have ever seen in my life.

“Nothing will ever be scarier than that. It goes from complete absolute terror to the most magnificent bliss you’ve ever felt.”

He streamed his jump live on his YouTube channel and appeared nervous as he hovered over the canyon.

But after the jump, he blew kisses to the

crowd – including wife Jada Pinkett Smith and their children – and exclaimed, “Oh my God, this is gorgeous, this is gorgeous.”

Will admitted the death of his father had made him want to live his life more “freely.”

Speaking to his “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” co-star Alfonso Ribeiro after the jump, he said, “I am not going to be able to articulate it thoroughly right now but here’s a real relationship between freedom and joy. There’s an idea bubbling in my mind, as fear as a cage, fear actually traps you.

“My father passed just little over a year ago and there’s something about the confrontation with death that makes you live life more freely. The freedom to just be and do who and what you are, is absolutely exhilarating.

“Life is hard. You might get hurt. Your heart might get bro ken. You might lose your job. But you’ve still got to commit.”

Will undertook the bungee jump as part of a partnership between the Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation and Global Citizen to sup port their ongoing advocacy work on education that allows them to support Education Cannot Wait, a global initiative that pro vides millions of children in crisis-affected areas

access to education.

‘Steve’ to be replaced by ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show’ in major markets

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Steve Harvey’s LA-based talk show “Steve” will be replaced by Kelly Clarkson’s new show.

“Less than two months after filming a pilot for a syndicated series, The Kelly Clarkson Show has been sold to NBC stations in 11 U.S. markets,” The Hollywood Reporter said. “The series, which will bow in the fall of 2019, will replace Steve Harvey’s Steve and Ellen on NBC Owned TV Station group stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, DallasFort Worth, San Francisco, Miami, San Diego, Hartford and Washington, D.C.”

Sources: CNN. com, TMZ.com, Celebretainment.com, THR.com

Will Smith

Bill Cosby

Parents as Teachers teaches financial literacy to parents

‘This program taught me how to make a budget’

American staff

On a recent Thursday afternoon, Terrence Trice sat in a financial literacy class amid a group of mostly single mothers holding infants and toddlers. He was there at the behest of Shaela, his wife of four years, and Parents as Teachers (PAT), an internationally recognized leader in the early childhood development and home visiting field.

PAT had convened 13 families to participate in its Show Me Strong Families (SMSF) community outreach program called “Goals and A$$ets: Family Conversations about Money.” SMSF is one of PAT’s 1,300 community engagement programs administered from the organization’s national headquarters here. It offers Goals and A$$ets as a six-week ongoing series designed to foster group connections and support family well-being by increasing financial education. Terrence, 28, was the lone male enrolled in the series, held at The Heights in Richmond Heights. This Thursday was graduation day. The class eagerly awaited their certificates of completion and gift cards to open bank accounts, rewards for finishing the series. Terrence and Shaela, 25, attended with daughters Shaina, 6, and Tayaina, 6-months-old, a binary dynamic that was noticeable to all.

“I thought I knew about handling money until my wife came home from the class and asked me to put together a budget. I realized then, that I had forgotten everything I

thought I knew about money managing. In fact, when I used to get paid, I would give my money to my wife to manage,” said Terrence, a North St. Louis city resident and St. Louis Public Schools product.

“You see, I was raised to keep all my money in my pocket and spend it on whatever, but this program taught me how to make a budget and list things I needed money for; more important, it gave me an outlet to stay off the streets.”

Terrence’s circumstances are not that atypical. His tumultuous childhood only foreshadowed how he would cope with maturity. Like so many facing financial challenges, his road to discovery was a rocky one. His mother died when he was a child and his father dealt with problems that prevented him from being a permanent fixture in his life.

Consequently, Terrence wound up in group homes –where he met Shaela, who also had been living on the margins. He languished there for 10

years until he broke the cycle as an adult and began climbing the ladder out of hopelessness. He toiled in menial jobs and darted in and out of street life until he married Shaela. Together they forged a path toward self-improvement. The “Goals & A$$ets” classes gave them the chance to meet other young parents, some with similar circumstances.

networks.

“We use group connections to provide parents with learning experiences that give them the ability to parent their children around other families,” Givens said.

n “This program gave me an outlet to stay off the streets.”

PAT Parent-Educator Tara Ervin; Donna Givens, manager of community partnerships and groups; Aminah Williams, parent educator; and Chiffontae Ross, model implementation specialist, look on as Terrence Trice holds his six-month-old daughter, Tayaina, as his wife, Shaela, attends to Shaina, 6, during the “Show Me Strong Families Goals and A$$ets: Family Conversations about Money” financial literacy program.

preventing child abuse and neglect in the long run and ensure that children are ready and prepared to learn when they reach school.

with the parents and helped educate and empower them to make better choices with their money. “We were thrilled to have Ms. Jones as a guest speaker,” Givens said. “Our parents, as well as our parent educators were stimulated by her genuine compassion for their circumstances.”

Parent educators are trained in the PAT model. Many of them are parents who have used PAT services. They help other parents navigate life’s ups and downs through personal home visits and, together, set goals for the parents to achieve.

“They walk alongside with the families as partners every step of the way,” Givens said. Tara Ervin is one such parent educator. She has been working at PAT for 15 months and serves 20 families. She goes into their homes at least twice a month for up to two years and helps with child development, kindergarten readiness and goal setting.

Donna Givens, PAT’s manager of community partnerships and groups, set them up with group connections, part of SMSF’s formula for strengthening families. Givens’ talent for connections is emblematic of her job. She orchestrates group connections to give single, teen or stressed out parents the opportunities to build support

– Terrence Trice

To date, SMSF has partnered with more than 400 families with nearly 500 children using PAT’s evidence-based home visiting model. The model delivers a program of services with 35 years of proven experience in increasing early learning, development, and the overall health of children by partnering trained professional educators with parents from the time of pregnancy until the child is born and enters first grade.

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These interactions have positive outcomes for

According to recent U.S. Census reports, annually about 5,000 mostly impoverished, local teens and young adults become new parents. They face financial hardships and other factors like higher rates of depression, food insecurities, and histories of surviving abuse and social isolation. These issues make it difficult for them and their children to succeed and often lead to child abuse and neglect. PAT’s home visitation model seeks to reverse that trend by helping fortify families.

Collaborating with likeminded organizations is a cornerstone of PAT’s home visiting model and an integral part of SMSF. Recently, St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones visited a “Goals and A$$ets” class as part of the city’s Office of Financial Empowerment initiative. Through the program, the city conducts free workshops on credit building and money and budget management.

Givens said Jones’ inspirational message resonated

“It’s really rewarding to see families grow towards selfsufficiency,” Ervin said. “I like to think we play a vital role in helping them reach their goals and aspirations.”

The Thursday afternoon financial education class at The Heights had finally concluded. One-by-one, the young parents accepted their accolades. Terrence, holding Tayaina, had laudatory things to say about Ervin and Show Me Strong Families. He credits them both with making his life better.

“She’s been in my life a long time,” he said of Ervin, one of his most vocal and ardent supporters. “Thanks to her and this program, I can handle my own money and don’t have to rely on my wife to budget it for me. Now, I can save money for my kids and the whole family. That makes me feel really good.”

For more information about Parents as Teachers Show Me Strong Families program, visit www.parentsasteachers.org or call 314-432-4330.

Editorial /CommEntary

We must invest in our future – our children

The Rev. Starsky D. Wilson has been extending his thought leadership at the Deaconess Foundation by commissioning important studies and convening discussions of them at the Deaconess Center for Child Well-Being in the “Just for Kids: Community Conversation” series. Last Thursday, September 20, the foundation released two reports, one on strategies for pursuing more progressive governance in Missouri and the other on the importance of investing in minority leadership of non-profit organizations. The guest who led the discussion of these reports, Manuel Pastor, a professor of Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, made some piercing remarks that speak directly to the mission of our own blackled non-profit organization, the St. Louis American Foundation, just before its signature annual event, the Salute to Excellence in Education.

“The racial generation gap peaked in 2016,” Pastor said. “The older generation is not seeing itself in the younger generation,” because it’s browner than the older generation. Pastor said this helps to explain many things, including the popularity of Donald Trump among a majority of white voters and their embrace of his message to empower wealthier, disproportionately white citizens with tax cuts at the expense of providing social services for the poor, who are disproportionately black and brown.

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 43 percent of children in the United States live in lowincome families, if a poverty threshold more realistic than the federal government’s threshold is used. Also according to the center, more than half of black (61 percent) and Hispanic (59 percent) children live in low-income families, while just slightly more than one-quarter of

white children (28 percent) live in low-income families.

So what we are seeing is a trend of older, wealthier, white Americans turning away from investing publicly in younger, browner, poorer Americans – including, crucially, their education. Whatever one may feel about this trend morally, Pastor argues, it’s short-sighted and self-destructive in practical terms.

Pastor pointed to a 2018 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago that widening inequality slows economic growth and makes the U.S. economy less resilient. He also pointed to a 2018 report by the International Monetary Fund – obviously, these are both conservative institutions – that “high levels of income inequality are associated with lower and less durable economic growth and greater financial instability.” To reduce income inequality and promote economic growth, the IMF recommended increasing “spending on health, education, and social protection and ensuring the progressivity of tax systems” – precisely the opposite of the Trump administration’s policies and the self-absorbed assumptions of his base.

It is the need for greater investment in public education

Commentary

that most deeply concerns us. We simply can’t accept a “racial generation gap” where a whiter, wealthier older generation fails to see itself in a browner, poorer younger generation and fails to see how crucial it is – for their own long-term well-being – to invest in the education of our children. Recall that 81 percent of the children in Saint Louis Public School are black. As Valerie Bell, board chair of the Saint Louis Public Schools Foundation, reminds us, “We need to invest in our future from a utilitarian standpoint. If you fail to invest in these kids now, then you’re going to pay for them somewhere else down the road – and have a lot less to show for it. They won’t have anything to contribute because we didn’t prepare them.”

This is why when people complain – as some do – that The St. Louis American does not cover violent crime, we insist that we cover it aggressively. And that is because we aggressively cover public education. Because in the end, the only solution to our crime problem is investing in public education as a means to empower low-income children, to prepare them, so they will have something positive to contribute.

The U.S. should abolish cash bail

By Marc H. Morial National Urban League

“The rich man and the poor man do not receive equal justice in our courts. And in no area is this more evident than in the matter of bail ... The man who must wait in jail before trial often will lose his job. He will lose his freedom to help prepare his own defense. And he will lose his self-respect. He is treated, in almost every jurisdiction, just like the convicted criminal. Even though he may finally be found innocent and released, he is tagged, nonetheless, as a jailbird.” - Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, 1964 Kalief Browder, a teenager who spent three harrowing years in a New York City jail on charges that were eventually dropped, took his own life as a result of the trauma he suffered.

Sandra Bland, an activist who spoke out against police brutality, died in a jail cell in Texas, arrested after a traffic stop for changing lanes without a signal. Jeffrey Pendleton, arrested on a misdemeanor marijuana possession, died after five days in a New Hampshire jail cell.

Our nation’s racially discriminatory cash bail system has left hundreds of non-violent misdemeanor suspects to die in jail while awaiting trial, simply because they are poor. A 2015 study identified more than 800 deaths in local jails and lockups; more than 75 percent of those in local jails have not been convicted, and 70 percent of those awaiting trial are detained for non-violent offenses. The unfair cash bail system

destroys lives in other ways.

Flozell Daniels Jr., CEO and president of Foundation for Louisiana, recently told the story of Nicole, a New Orleans mom who was arrested after forgetting to pay a ticket for failure to wear a seatbelt.

She spent a month in Orleans Parish jail, separated from her children, losing her job and costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars. There are hundreds of parents, accused of nonviolent misdemeanors like Nicole, in Louisiana alone, and thousands across the nation.

A report Daniels co-authored, “From Bondage to Bail Bonds: Putting a Price on Freedom in New Orleans,” found that the money bail system takes $6.4 million from New Orleans families each year – 85 percent of it paid by black people, many of whom are accused of non-violent misdemeanors.

Daniels and his co-authors wrote: “Money bail ensnares people in a system in which one’s freedom hangs on the ability to pay and removes people who are important to their families and communities. The money paid to secure a person’s freedom is not available for other essentials, thus over-burdening family and community support structures.

Those who can’t pay, or stay in jail even a few days before they can gather the money, are put at increased risk of losing their

Clean up Missouri politics with Amendment 1

By Jamala Rogers For The St. Louis American

I love working on citizenled ballot initiatives that will improve the lives of many and not a few. That’s because you get to talk to voters at the onset to persuade them to sign a petition that gets the issue before voters. One such ballot initiative is Amendment 1, also known as CLEAN Missouri.

The big donors and lobbyists have every reason to be nervous when they see their unfettered assembly of goodies coming to an end. Desperate, they filed a lawsuit to keep the initiative off the November 6 ballot.

Amendment 1 is serious biz. It’s a big leash on pulling back the big money influencing our political system. And the amendment puts some reasonable guidelines on the redistricting process that’s right around the corner with the 2020 Census.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit claimed these reasons are too broad, too vague and too many. That would be Daniel Mehan, president and CEO of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry and, Paul Ritter, a ranking officer in the Miller County Republican Club. There’s a lot at stake for them and their rich cronies when Amendment 1 passes.

A lower court judge had ordered the measure to come off the November 6 ballot, but the Western District Court of Appeals then unanimously

reversed the decision and agreed with us, the voters, that Amendment 1 should be on the ballot because it amends only one article of the Constitution. Fortunately, the appeals court has put an end to wasting taxpayers’ money with such frivolous lawsuits intended to derail the wishes of the people.

The ballot initiative proposes to lower campaign contribution limits, eliminate nearly all lobbyist gifts, require a cooling period before legislators and their staffers can become lobbyists, and open legislative records. The redistricting proposal would turn the task of drawing legislative district

n The redistricting proposal in Amendment 1 establishes clear and transparent criteria to ensure no political party is given an unfair advantage.

maps over to a nonpartisan expert and review by a citizen commission. It establishes clear and transparent criteria to ensure no political party is given an unfair advantage. It incorporates the Voting Rights Act into the Missouri Constitution so that marginalized constituents, like African Americans, will be fairly represented in the political process. Ballot initiatives take money and a lot of hard work to collect signatures. If citizenled, the effort is worth it. Surveys have shown that voter turnout is approximately 3 to 8 percent higher when there’s an initiative on the ballot. This

Letters to the editor

St. Louis NAACP president endorses Amendment 2

employment and housing and of being re-arrested than if they had not been detained. They are subject to the degradation, violence, and trauma Indeed, even when people purchase their freedom through a commercial bail bond they live in fear because the bondsman has the power to seize and surrender them at will.”

It doesn’t have to be this way. Weeks ago, California became the first state to end cash bail. Washington, D.C., has a cashless bail system.

Socially conscious innovators are finding technology-based solutions to help people navigate the cash bail system. Jay-Z, who celebrated Father’s Day last year by posting bail for dads, has invested in Promise, an app that provides clients with financial assistance with bail costs along with other services to get people out of jail. Another app, Help Bond Me, allows detainees to crowdfund their bail.

These efforts should be applauded, but we look forward to the day when they are no longer needed. Jailing nonviolent misdemeanor suspects who can’t afford bail doesn’t make our communities safer; it just exacerbates inequality and burdens taxpayers. We need to live up to the American ideal of equality under the law for rich and poor alike, as enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Debtors’ prisons were abolished in 1833, but 185 years later the criminalization of poverty persists.

Marc H. Morial is president and CEO of the National Urban League.

Marijuana and racism have long been intertwined, dating back to the post-Prohibition era in the 1930s when the country’s first drug czar gained traction for his war on marijuana by invoking a fear of black people. In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon’s war on drugs targeted black people, as well as hippies. History is replete with how officials used cannabis prohibition to target and criminalize black and brown people and throw them in jail.

The NAACP is well aware of the frustration that the wealth being generated in the other states where marijuana is legal is not reaching people of color. The broader legalization of medical marijuana in

Missouri is a social justice issue, but only if it is linked to some type of effort to make sure members of minority communities are able to participate in the cannabis industry as growers and sellers, not just workers. Amendment 2 and its backers (New Approach Missouri) offers the best opportunity for such.

The impact and dangerous side effects of opioids and painkillers are well documented and continually ruin lives in Missouri. Medical marijuana is empirically proven as a safe and effective alternative to opioids and painkillers. But right now, doctors and patients aren’t allowed to consider this option when making a personal healthcare decision.

The broader use of Medical marijuana as pharmacotherapy in Missouri is long overdue. It’s no secret that after reviewing the pertinent scientific data and applying

goes back to the fact that it was the voters who got the issue on the ballot in the first place. In Missouri, proponents of CLEAN Missouri collected 300,000-plus signatures, and we won’t buckle under the big money donors, politicians and lobbyists who are desperate to maintain the corrupt system that only benefits them. And we’re in good company. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s terrible decision that corporations are people, voters across the country have been pushed into high gear for integrity and systems accountability.

My favorite is the ballot initiative in Seattle, Washington that resulted in a creative way to finance candidates. Honest Elections leveled the playing field by establishing a fund that gave citizens up to $100 to donate to a campaign. What a gamechanger! Suddenly, candidates were paying attention to voters who often get written off because they don’t have money to be real players. A campaign donation is grocery or gas money for most of these folks. Missouri voters can be emboldened by the latest court decision, but we need to look at every opportunity to protect and expand our political power. We must hold accountable those who are supposed to be working for all Missourians not just donors with deep pockets and self-serving interests. We should know where the money is coming from, not play these finance shell games. Cleaning up the swamp was a voter rallying cry long before Trump co-opted it. Passing Amendment 1 on November 6 gets us closer to the goal of an inclusive democracy.

the principle of double effect, there is a proportionate reason for allowing physicians to prescribe medical marijuana. Seriously ill patients have the right to effective therapies. To deny patients access to such a therapy is to deny them dignity and respect as persons. Amendment 2 represents a safe, responsible, and patient-centric way forward for Missouri to become the 31st state to allow medical marijuana. Amendment 2 is about putting health decisions back in the hands of patients and their doctors, allowing medical marijuana use under the supervision and expertise of doctors, not government bureaucrats.

Adolphus M. Pruitt II, president St. Louis City NAACP St. Louis

Columnist

Jamala Rogers

Columnist Marc Morial

The Rev. Starsky D. Wilson, president of the Deaconess Foundation, speaks with Manuel Pastor, a professor of Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Photo by Wiley Price

Building bridges

Chanae Ferrell and Kenyatta Gailes, both seniors at Cahokia High School, test their bridge in a bridge building contest, which won second place at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville East St. Louis Center’s Upward Bound Math and Science ECM Program

The community must hold police and prosecutors accountable

By Christi Griffin For The St. Louis American

If there exists a broad belief that police are far removed from the staggering U.S. rate of incarcerations, it is time to change the perception. The police department is the doorway to prisons. It is law enforcement that chooses who to stop, frisk, arrest, jail, and refer to the prosecutor for further action. Without the police officer, there is no mass incarceration.

When the stops, frisks, and arrests are done in a selective and discriminatory manner, the result is prison populations in the U.S., the highest of any country in the world, are disproportionately African American. The reality is, blacks are far more likely to be arrested for low-level drug offenses despite that fact that whites are equally likely to use, sell, and be in possession of drugs. College campuses, including Ivy League schools, are known havens of marijuana and drugs, yet no raids occur.

Blacks are more likely to be stopped, frisked, arrested. Blacks are more likely to be referred for prosecution, more likely to be coerced into plea agreements, and if they stand trial, more likely to be convicted. Once convicted, blacks are given longer sentences than whites convicted of the same crimes.

became a nearly four-year demand in more than 35 churches, synagogues, community groups, schools, and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. One conversation filmed at the National Civil Rights Museum is part of the PBS documentary “The Talk: Race in America” that was aired nationally in 2017. It can be viewed at PBS.org.

When Wesley Bell is voted in as the prosecutor in St. Louis County on November 6, he and St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner will have new opportunities to reduce crime –not by harassing and arresting African-American men, jailing blacks for possession of marijuana while whites using opioids are sent to treatment, not by criminalizing a growing segment of our population suffering from mental illness, nor by sending masses of people into the criminal justice system – but by finding alternatives to incarceration, getting the community more involved in deterring criminal behavior, increasing economic opportunities within the private and public sectors, and by assuring that those individuals hired to serve and protect us all are free of racial animus.

The Blue Wall of Silence greatly impedes progress in building a community where citizens can trust the fairness and integrity of the police. Penetrating that wall requires that police leadership acknowledge the injustices that have occurred in the African-American community for generations. It likewise requires that the community take ownership of countering injustice while minimizing criminal activity.

“Incarcerations in Black and White, the Subjugation of Black America” was written to disclose glaring disparities within the criminal justice system. In 2014 I asked nine black mothers if they would participate in a conversation with white mothers about the talk we have with our black sons. No explanation was needed. All nine knew exactly what “The Talk” was, and all nine had had it with their sons. Black parents dating back to slavery have been forced to talk to their sons about interactions with the police, no matter how innocent, how well dressed or how educated their sons may be.

The intended one-time “Mother 2 Mother” first held at The Missouri History Museum, along with “Father 2 Father” conversations

If we raise the bar on the ground floor, the doorway to incarcerations, the rest of the community will follow suit. Prosecutors alone cannot change the landscape of crime, prisons and policing. They need the cooperation and support of the community. Not simply gestures of goodwill, but hands-on activism within the community that keeps a watch both on the activities of our youth and on the behavior of our police, activism that calls to bear witness on injustices known to occur throughout the system, that utilizes the power of the black church to demand change in our banking systems, lending practices, and employment benchmarks, activism that brings our children back to our city schools and neighborhoods.

As we enter into a new realm of policing and prosecuting in the St. Louis metropolitan region, it is time for us to be one community. Not us and them, but neighbors, educators, law enforcement and churches working as one to ensure that no individual feels the compulsion to resort to crime, whether that crime is committed on the street, in the police car, or in the boardroom.

Christi Griffin, is the Founder of The Ethics Project, a non-profit organization addressing the impact of crime, injustice and incarcerations, and the author of “Incarcerations in Black and White: The Subjugation of Black America.”

Christi Griffin

DANCE

Continued from A1

One mom wearing hospital scrubs dozed off at the edge of the dance floor after a long day.

Another mom, Kiara Stiles, knelt to tie the shoestring of her son, Carter Knight, who kissed his mama before returning to the dance.

“A lot of dads,” the new director of the center, Lanor Payne, said approvingly.

There were a lot of fathers, most dressed casually but toting boys in pint-sized suits and girls in frilly dresses. One father was suited and booted in a family unit that matched in a complicated color and striping pattern. The mood between parents was festive and familiar.

The dance, which was part of Spirit Week at the center — another new feature at Michelle Obama — was the new director’s idea. “I am all about building relationships,” Payne said. “This is starting a new tradition. We have been promoting

MALES

Continued from A1

education to help prepare them for success in school and life. Implementation of the plan begins now.

The plan calls for the inclusion of stakeholders, most importantly parents. To help reach that goal, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has outlined strategies addressing access, opportunity and equity, as well as support and development for

this dance for a month. The staff is excited.” He noted that staff attendance for the school year to date was at 95 percent. Payne was most recently an assistant elementary school principal in Saint Louis Public Schools. He said he took this position

n “All of you are true kings and queens. Everyone is a king and queen in our house.”

– Lanor Payne, director of the Michelle Obama Early Childhood Academic Center

because he prefers to work with the youngest children. He said that not enough men work in early childhood education, and these are the most formative years. “You have a chance to build a solid foundation,” he said.

Halfway through the two-hour dance, Payne drew the names of the Junior Homecoming Queen, MeKayla Evans, and King,

teachers and leaders. To diagnose and address sources of inequity and school failure and, thereby, TO support the success of all students, Missouri has committed to measure the following indicators: the high number of students not meeting proficiency, lack of adequate and relevant preparation of high-quality educators, extremely disproportionate suspension and expulsion rates, poor early postsecondary opportunities, chronic absenteeism, and not embedding cultural

Darius Holmes Jr. Tiny royal costumes had been prepared for them. A straw hat had to be taken off the head of the King to fit him with his crown. The Queen quietly basked in the attention and camera flashes. The King — at age three and a half, he was a half-year younger than his Queen — appeared stunned, glum, and ready for his moment in the limelight to be over.

But it was only beginning. The next day the King and Queen would ride in the Riverview Gardens Homecoming Parade.

“All of you are true kings and queens,” Payne announced. “Everyone is a king and queen in our house.”

Antranae Tannan watched her son, Anariyon Tannan, take off running after a girl wearing hoop earrings almost as big as she was, which was not very big.

“He loves it,” the proud mother said. “I love it. He just kept saying he was going to a party — a party with all of his friends.”

competencies in all school practices.

Public schools belong to the community, and the community engages educators to watch over the social, emotional, and academic performance of all students. The dilemma is: who is responsible for the high number of African-American students not being able to meet social, emotional and academic expectations? And what are the reasons?

In the last two years, the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis has been involved as an advocate of education

equity, representing the voiceless as the state developed its education plan to submit to the federal government. This work has been invaluable in many ways, but most importantly it created the communications needed for us to continue to advocate in a meaningful and proper way. It’s our responsibility to follow up, making sure that our schools are actually educating all of our students, and the ESSA plan is a great start to hold everyone involved accountable.

The Urban League plans to follow up by mobilizing and organizing parents, as well as other community allies. The agency plans to provide a platform to share information, which will allow us to learn together and collectively demand accountability from schools to ensure that all students succeed.

The vision that all students must learn at high levels, equipped with the skills and

knowledge to successfully compete in today’s global economy, can be realized if students are afforded a rich and demanding instructional environment in which priority is assigned to strong and wellprepared teachers and school leaders.

The Urban League is addressing the cause and effect of student failures, working along with DESE to impact policy changes. The plan is to design a strand of training and development for 65 principals of schools with the lowest 5 percent in student performance, mostly from urban districts such as Saint Louis Public Schools.

In the past, such actions were determined solely by the district and DESE. However, this process provided us the opportunity to advocate from within, based on data on the needs of principals in the lowest 5 percent of schools, and to identify strong leaders for those schools. We

India

need leaders who work to eliminate achievement gaps by identifying and addressing personal and institutional bias and barriers and by providing strategies to ensure all students have equitable access.

ESSA provides an opportunity to set large-scale goals, provide educators with the support they need, and hold schools accountable when service is not being delivered as designed to meet students’ success.

Simultaneously, parents need to be organized and should hold schools, districts and DESE accountable.

The Urban League was obliged to embark on new initiatives such as Save Our Sons because of the high demand of unemployed and undereducated black males who were left behind due to a second-rate education. The young males enrolled in Save Our Sons were educated throughout the St. Louis region, which indicates that the black male dilemma of suspension, low academic performance and dropouts pervades almost all school districts in the region.

Save Our Sons provides soft skills training and wrap-around services, such as HiSet/GED Training, clothing assistance and food pantry to AfricanAmerican males in need. Since it started in 2015, more than 500 men have gone through the program and found jobs with a 90 percent success rate.

One of our recent success stories is Ventarius Johnson, a 17-year-old who was orphaned in his early teens and dropped out of high school. After enrolling in Save Our Sons, Johnson was able to find both gainful employment, get promoted in his first three months on the job, and finish his HiSet/GED. There are many other young men who are fulfilling their purpose through the program. While the staff of Save Our Sons works with young African-American men who are falling through the cracks of our educational system, we also must advocate for our children who are still enrolled in the public school system. Under the ESSA plan, equity concerns are highlighted in school principals’ performance accountability, so they can now be detected and addressed. The Urban League is prepared to support the community in this life-changing endeavor. Together, we can and will make a difference.

Michael P. McMillan is president and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis and the St. Louis American Foundation’s 2018 Stellar Performer in Education.

“Homegrown Black Males” is a partnership between HomeGrown STL at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis and The St. Louis American, edited by Sean Joe, Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor and associate dean at the Brown School, and Chris King, managing editor of The American, in memory of Michael Brown.

Gant, 4, took a spin in her fairy godmother dress during the first-ever Junior Homecoming Dance in the gymnasium of the Michelle Obama Early Childhood Academic Center in the Riverview Gardens School District on Friday, September 21.

Photo by Wiley Price

Continued from A1

Green had narrowly escaped getting tear-gassed in the CWE neighborhood earlier that night by seeking refuge in a synagogue with about 150 other protestors, according to the federal lawsuit that Green filed against the City of St. Louis and its police department on September 25.

Green’s group, which was about half clergy members, were trying to go home when they passed a line of police on Kingshighway Boulevard just north of Lindell Boulevard. As they passed, the police mocked the group, the lawsuit states.

“They said things like, ‘Don’t get hurt on the way home’ and overly sarcastic remarks,” Green told the St. Louis American. “I don’t think they knew who I was, but we had some clergy with us who were definitely wearing their collars.”

As the group rounded the corner and were walking in front of the Chase Park Plaza movie theater, an armed police truck, called a MRAP, came speeding past them, the lawsuit states. Green had seen this tactic before in 2014 during

LAWSUIT

Continued from A1 care living facility and 28-bed residential facility in Ferguson. Defendants in the lawsuit include Christian Women’s Benevolent Association, which operates the home; Riley-Spence Properties, LLC, which manages the home; and CWBA Cedar Lake, a nonprofit that owns the home’s land. This lawsuit is not the first time Christian Care Home has been accused of wrongdoing. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services conducted

the Ferguson unrest, where these armored trucks would drive by and teargas protestors, Green told the American. She instructed the group to take cover, and the truck drove past. They then crossed the street and were nearing their cars when the truck made a surprise U-turn, sped by them and threw a can of tear gas about 10 feet from where they were standing on the sidewalk, according to the lawsuit. They immediately fell to the ground choking, their lungs and skin burning, Green said.

“We were pretty caught off-guard,” Green said. “What I have witnessed in both 2014 and in 2017 is that chemical agents seem to be used as a message to punish protestors, specifically protestors against police brutality. It seems to be the message that our police department is using to try to incentivize people to not protest.”

Green is suing the city and police department for First Amendment retaliation, use of excessive force and assault, among other counts of wrongdoing. Green’s case now makes 15 lawsuits that the Khazaeli Wyrsch law firm has helped file against the city’s police regarding excessive force during the Stockley protests. At that time,

a survey at Christian Care Home. The survey report, which was attached to the lawsuit, shows that Christian Care Home did not “hire only people with no legal history of abusing, neglecting, or mistreating residents” and that it did not “report and investigate any acts or reports of abuse, neglect or mistreatment of residents.”

“This lawsuit was filed to help shine a light on the underreported evil of elder abuse in nursing homes throughout the country,” Green’s attorney Willie Gray stated. “It is our hope that no other seniors will have to suffer the way Mrs. Green is suffering, as this level of depravity reaches an epic low.”

the police department was acting under the leadership of then-interim police chief Lawrence O’Toole, who is now assistant police chief. Fourteen of those lawsuits were filed last week by individuals who claim they were beaten, maced and jailed in the mass police “kettling” arrest on September 17, 2017. The nonprofit ArchCity Defenders law firm is co-counsel on 12 of these lawsuits.

A spokesman for the city said the mayor and city counselor declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Green said she experienced respiratory issues for months after being tear-gassed.

“I was in and out of Urgent Care and different respiratory doctors for almost six months, with different inhalers,” Green said. “Something got aggravated as a result of the tear gas, and I had quite a chronic cough for a long time.”

The lawsuit states that Green will donate any money she may receive to a racial equity fund that the Ferguson Commission recommended that the city establish, which the city has yet to do.

Green told the American that she hopes her suit will push the city to “get serious” about changing policies regarding the way the city handle protests.

The National Center on Elder Abuse reports that 1 in 10 elder Americans is the victim of elder abuse.

Prevalence rates for abuse in elders with dementia are much higher, ranging from 27.5 percent to 55 percent, according to the center.

State Rep. Courtney Curtis (D-Ferguson) responded to reports of the suit by calling for an immediate and complete review of the policies and practices of Christian Care Home by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHHS). The agency is responsible for inspecting and issuing state licenses to residential care facilities, assisted living facilities, intermediate care

“I think it’s important to have something codified that is clear for both police and for protestors,” Green said. “And something that can’t be changed with the stroke of a pen. The issue with just updating internal policy is that it can change without public hearings, without comment. But when you pass legislation, it is an open, transparent process.”

In October 2017, Green introduced Board Bill 134 to establish a better First Amendment policy for the city. The bill never made it out of the aldermanic Public Safety Committee because the aldermen wanted Green to try and work out an agreement with newly appointed Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards. However, Green said Edwards was opposed to the bill so it went nowhere.

The American reached out to Edwards about his view of Green’s bill and has not yet received a response.

“I think one of the biggest problems we have right now is our current unlawful assembly ordinance is so vague and so contradictory that no one knows what it means,” Green said. “So if police don’t know what it means and people exercising their First Amendment rights don’t know

facilities, and skilled nursing facilities.

Just this year, the General Assembly passed House Bill 1635, which requires that law enforcement be notified when it is suspected that a long-term care resident 60 years of age or older has been sexually assaulted. The bill expands Missouri law that requires abuse or neglect to be reported to DHHS. Its reporting requirement applies to in-home care providers, adult day care workers, medical and mental health care providers, medical examiners, funeral directors, and those in numerous other professions.

“As chairman of the House Urban Issues Committee, I

what it means, it’s going to set up a situation where people are confused and not abiding by the Constitution. It’s important that we get clear policy on the books.”

However, enforcement may still be an issue. A federal judge has already ordered that the city stop using chemical weapons and adopt other protocols to protect the constitutional rights of those observing, recording or participating in protest activity.

In October 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Missouri sued the City of St. Louis in a classaction case over the police kettling incident. The ACLU’s lawsuit seeks permanent policy changes for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. A month later, Judge Catherine Perry ordered the police to put down their chemical weapons.

Rather than going to trial, Perry ordered a mediation process between the police and the ACLU. The deadline to come up with an agreement between the two parties passed on February 1, and now a trial has been set for October 2019. The ACLU and police can still settle in mediation before the trial.

In her November 2017 order, Perry stated that the

evidence showed that “officers have exercised their discretion in an arbitrary and retaliatory fashion to punish protesters for voicing criticism of police or recording police conduct.” She found that the ACLU is likely to succeed on their claim that the city’s police have “a custom or policy” of deploying pepper spray against citizens who record police or exercise their rights of free speech to criticize officers.

Javad Khazaeli, the attorney representing Green, said the alderwoman has a strong chance of winning her case based on the findings in the ACLU case.

And while the ACLU is fighting for a permanent shift in policy, Khazaeli said it will take more than that to see change.

“Changing laws and changing policies are great, but at a certain point you have to change personnel too,” Khazaeli said. “A year later, all the supervising officers that were involved in this are still out there. They are still the faces of department. The city is basically saying that ‘not only do we not think that they did anything wrong, but we are doubling down and standing behind them.’ When that happens, you lose faith in the administration.”

GOP perverting the message and demonizing the messenger

Charles Jaco – journalist, author, and activist (on Twitter at @charlesjaco1) – who took down U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill’s Republican challenger Todd Akin six years ago in a bruising broadcast interview, has come out of retirement to write for The American before the November 6 general election. He penned this guest Political EYE.

U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, the 85-year-old Iowa Republican who chairs the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, has sandbagged the woman who’s accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault decades ago by complaining about everything except the fact that the nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court may be guilty of both sexual assault and perjury.

Grassley has complained about process and procedure, especially about the amount of time that had passed before Professor Christine Blasely Ford came forward with her charges. Grassley told reporters, “I’d hate to have someone ask me what I did 35 years ago.”

That would be 1983. Since I was a reporter covering Capitol Hill for NBC Network Radio at the time, let me refresh Senator Grassley’s memory: in 1983, you were the junior senator from Iowa, and had just been named by Washingtonian magazine as “the 2nd stupidest member of the United States Senate.” You supported Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts that led to today’s epidemic of economic inequality, and you voted against making Martin

Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday. I know. I have the receipts.

But the Iowa octogenarian wasn’t really looking for an answer. He was merely doing what conservatives have done for decades, taking a protest against a legitimate grievance and twisting it, focusing first on the method of protest (Prof. Ford’s letter making the allegations), then attacking the protestor personally (which is why Prof. Ford and her family have had to abandon their California home after a flood of death threats), and then, finally, twisting the meaning of the protest (claiming that a victim of alleged sexual assault brave enough to come forward is really a “left-wing political operative”).

These are the same tactics used to attack NFL exile and social justice quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Rightwingers ignored the reality of white cops killing and assaulting black people, and instead first focused on Kaepernick’s method (kneeling during the National Anthem), then attacked Kaepernick himself (an NFL player who couldn’t keep a job looking for publicity), and, finally, lied about the protest’s meaning (making it an insult to the flag, the military, and real, patriotic Americans. You know. The white ones.)

Rights Movement. First, they would attack King’s methods (mass marches, mobilizations, and civil disobedience were dangerous to law and order). Then, they assaulted King personally (most infamously through the J. Edgar Hoover FBI, which wiretapped King, claimed he was an adulterer, and sent him anonymous letters urging him to commit suicide).

Finally, the entire purpose of the movement was twisted into a narrative of black violence and uprising (as a letter from eight white clergy on the eve of the 1963 March on Washington claimed).

explicit white male Christian supremacist beliefs of the Trump administration. While Kaepernick is demonized to divert attention from white supremacy in policing, Prof. Ford is being attacked as a misdirection so that we forget why Trump and his collaborating minions want Judge Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court in the first place. His would be the fifth and deciding vote when the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, guts the remnants of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, and enshrines into law the racist misogyny that elected Donald Trump in the first place.

dirty secret, though, is that women are along strictly as window dressing.

Just as pro-Trump blacks like Kanye West and Cleveland Pastor Darrell Scott provide camouflage for Trump’s white supremacy, Republican women like U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner and Grassley’s colleague, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, provide fig leaves to cover the naked patriarchy of the modern GOP.

do with her own body are the motives behind attacks on Prof. Ford. Blathering about the Senate’s procedures or charging that she is some sort of activist out to torpedo Kavanaugh are just more snake oil.

During Trump’s campaign it was obvious that a vote for him was a vote for white nationalism. It was also clear that a depraved narcissist who bragged about grabbing women by the genitals and paid off porn stars viewed women as objects or brood mares, and was unlikely to support a woman’s right to choose much of anything.

Yet most white women voted for him. Why? Either his racist appeal trumped his misogyny, or, having dealt with males like him, they didn’t think he was serious. But he is, as serious as his eventual heart attack.

To Trump and his supporters, Prof. Ford is not a victim of sexual assault. She’s merely a speed bump on their road toward making “The Handmaid’s Tale” a documentary.

Charles Jaco is a journalist, author, and activist. Follow him on Twitter at @charlesjaco1.

Public forums on Nov. 6 ballot issues

These are the same tactics white supremacists used to go after Dr. King and the Civil

Demonizing the messenger and perverting the message is nothing new. The same tactics have been used for the last century and more against Black Lives Matter, Vietnam War protestors, and crusaders for the women’s vote. Two things are different now: the ability of social media to amplify the voices of repression, and the

Republicans gladly go along because this is what the GOP believes. From the mass defection of racist whites to the Republican Party during the civil rights era to the GOP’s embrace of the Tea Party’s racist birtherism in 2008, the “party of Lincoln” has been careening toward becoming the White People’s Party since Harry Truman integrated the U.S. military in 1948. Their

To the Republican Party in the age of Trump, its white evangelical foot soldiers, and the big money conservative donors like the Green family (owners of Hobby Lobby), the Cathy family (owners of Chicfil-A), and the mega-rich white nationalist Mercer family, a woman’s body is a man’s property, abortion is murder, and contraception is the same as abortion.

Naked racism, not any concern for the rule of law or patriotism, was the motive for attacks on King and Kaepernick. In the same vein, outlawing abortion, restricting contraception, and controlling what and when a woman can

The League of Women Voters of Metro St. Louis will host two issues forums about issues on the statewide ballot on November 6 – Wednesday, October 3, at Manchester Parks and Recreation, 59 Old Meramec Station Rd. in Ballwin; and Thursday, October 4, at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Rd. in Clayton.

Measures on the statewide ballot on November 6 include Amendment 1 to clean up Missouri politics, three medical marijuana initiatives, Proposition B to raise the minimum wage, Proposition D to increase the motor fuels tax, and a constitutional amendment on Bingo. The League will also provide information on St. Louis County and local ballot measures. For more information, visit www.lwvstl.org.

U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, the 85-year-old Iowa Republican who chairs the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, with U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

My fight for better budgets and better schools for all SLPS kids

By Gloria Nolan For The St. Louis American

Growing up, my sphere of reference was pretty much limited to 10 blocks around where I lived in North St. Louis. I went to Farragut Elementary School. Then I studied at Williams Middle School eight blocks away. For high school I attended Beaumont four blocks away. It was like I lived in a city inside of a city. It was rare I left those 10 blocks on the North Side. With such limited exposure, I didn’t realize what was happening outside of my city – in the other parts of town. Looking back, I don’t think I was even given the opportunities I might have otherwise been granted if I lived in a different 10 blocks. By the time I was six years old, my mother was in prison and I lived with my grandmother. When I turned eight, my grandmother released custody of my brother and me to the State of Missouri. We went into foster care – into two separate homes. Foster care was difficult. I was a lost kid in the shuffle. The kids that lived in my foster home came and went a lot. Despite the circumstances, I did what was necessary to remain in the same home my whole eight years in the system. My foster mother was wellintentioned, but her main focus was providing shelter, food, clothing. Nothing else. Even in the midst of that, I was a good student. I had excellent grades. I was an anomaly in comparison to many of the foster kids. I always had the best report card, and my foster mother celebrated my success. When I excelled, there weren’t any opportunities to challenge me or extracurricular activities to enhance my educational journey. We went to school, and that was it. And, when I did struggle, there was no support. I felt a lot of anger because of the brokenness of my life.

The system wasn’t designed for kids like me – a parent in prison, a grandmother who I believed gave me away, and a father I never met. So I was angry. The fights I had with the foster kids started to spill over at school. I got into one fight, and I was almost suspended. Mrs. Blaine, who was friends with the new principal, advocated for me. She said, “Don’t suspend her. If she gets in trouble again, then you can, but let me try a different approach first.”

She created a safe space for me and three other girls who were also part of the “lunch club.” During those lunches, Mrs. Blaine sparked a fire in me. She helped me become engaged and involved. I started joining clubs and different activities that I would not have found on my own. Mrs. Blaine and another teacher, Mrs. Cowley, nicknamed the four of us the Dream Team. They told us,

“You’re going to graduate from high school. And you’re going to graduate from college.”

While I am now reunified with my mother and am helping her go back for her diploma this fall, neither my grandmother nor my mom had graduated from high school when I was a student. So for someone to tell me that I was smart enough to

and I see a spark in my own kid. I want to be her advocate, to provide her with the opportunities I didn’t know how to access when I was a student. I had heard of gifted programs, but they were a foreign concept until my coworker asked me, “So, what are you doing about school? Where’s Dylan going?”

n I’m still trying to make sense of it. Those parents are over there paying taxes, and I’m over here paying taxes. So, where’s our stuff?

go beyond was more validating than words can express.

Today, three out of four of us have master’s degrees. We’re still in contact today, still inspiring one another. Those women, that middle school – that was pivotal. It opened my eyes up to the possibilities of more.

I’m back in my hometown,

I felt a bit underprepared. Dylan was still three, and my coworker was talking about schools already. I knew the public school system as a student. But, at the time, I didn’t know it as an adult.

Based on my zip code, they placed my daughter and son at Columbia Elementary School, where they’re building

a gifted program. Kennard CJA Elementary School, in South City, was my first choice. Kennard is the premier gifted school in Saint Louis Public Schools. Kennard’s performance is comparable to many private schools in the state and affluent suburban public schools. I took a tour, and I became livid – and rightfully so.

Although Columbia’s school building has been nicely kept over the years, it doesn’t remotely compare to Kennard. Kennard has a theater program. It has foreign language, a robotics club, a science lab, access to technology. The principal has a doctorate. The list of resources and opportunities goes on and on. There is a lot of parent support. It has the crème de la crème of teachers. The environment is designed for kids to thrive, to learn, and grow.

I’m still trying to make sense of it. Those parents are over there paying taxes, and I’m over here paying taxes. So, where’s our stuff?

After my husband and I toured Kennard, we sat in the car just looking at each other, jaws dropped. Seeing that other space made me mad. Every child should have that, so why don’t they?

That, like Mrs. Blaine’s love and wisdom, lit fire in me that won’t dwindle. I wrote a long note to the superintendent, demanding a meeting. I haven’t stopped advocating and leading change since.

Mrs. Blaine’s advice still echoes in my heart and mind. She’d say, “Girl, figure it out. You know how to read!” That’s what I’ve been doing. I called some other PTO parents and learned about their approaches and strategies. I began to host fundraisers. I’m working relentlessly. I have no choice. This work needs to be done for the sake of every student – for the ones with parental support and the students like me who are especially dependent on the schools to provide guidance

and a nurturing environment. I want some answers. This must be the first step towards creating a future where every school has the resources like Kennard. Along with 15 other North City residents with connections to SLPS and a coalition of allies, we are demanding the district formally adopt and implement the following policies:

• distribute paper and electronic communications to all schools staff, faculty, and families about all budget meetings and decisions.

• host four sessions a year to gather public input into key decisions on the upcoming school year’s budget.

• release paper and electronic reports and dashboards that illustrate district-wide and school specific budget sources, allocations, goals, and strategic priorities.

I invite you to join me and the Better Budgets Better Schools campaign this Saturday, September 29 at the Julia Davis library from 2:30-4 p.m. We’re hosting a teach-in share what we’ve learned about the budgeting process and to discuss how we can collectively call for more transparency and community input from the people most impacted by the district budget every day, such as teachers, students, and caretakers.

I come to this work from a sense of love and appreciation for SLPS and the teachers there. I want our public schools to foster students to thrive. With two students – one in first grade, the other in Pre-K – I am committed to this work for years to come. I believe a lot of change can be accomplished before my kids graduate from high school. I am committed to action that will lead to true policy changes. Will you join me?

Gloria Nolan and family

One year after the Stockley verdict, we still demand change

By Jack Seigel For The St. Louis American

It’s been one year since the Jason Stockley acquittal, and I have no reason to think our city is any closer to holding killer cops accountable. Not enough has changed to protect people who are at risk of police brutality and violence. Not enough has changed to affirm that Black Lives Matter.

When people gathered in the streets of St. Louis, we made one very clear demand: stop the murder of innocent people, predominantly people of color, by the police. But that ban seems like a bare minimum. It is an absolute that police should not be killing people in the streets, but there are lots of other things they should and should not be doing.

Police should be in communities building relationships with people who live there. Police should not target people because of the color of their skin. They should not be so quick to use violent force. They should welcome accountability measures, including civilian oversight with subpoena power, and look for ways to build trust with communities they serve. Many of these demands, including the most basic call to stop killing us, have gone unheeded. The organizing community in St. Louis is still active, most notably in the election of Wesley Bell. Bell campaigned as an activist who wanted to reform aspects of the criminal justice system to be more equitable for residents. He campaigned on ending cash bail to stop targeting people based on how much money they have. He also expressed support for a rehabilitative approach to criminal justice, especially as a response to nonviolent crimes.

It is notable that to win the election, Bell had to unseat a 27-year incumbent with a significant cash advantage. To do that, Bell had to clearly articulate the need to disrupt

the status quo to make a justice system that works for everyone. Now, it will be interesting to see what changes Bell is able to make and how the office responds to new leadership.

Another example of organizers in St. Louis keeping their focus on the need for substantive criminal justice reform is the Close the Workhouse campaign. The demand here is also clear. It is past time to close the prison and not build another one. The most immediate reason is the deplorable conditions of the facility itself. People spend their days surrounded by rats, bugs, mold, and inadequate air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter.

But the most compelling reason to shut down the prison is because almost all of the occupants are pre-trial. They sit in the Workhouse having never been convicted of a crime simply because they cannot afford bail. Innocent until

proven guilty, we say, except for the poor. The final demand of this campaign calls for the money saved from closing the workhouse to be re-invested in disenfranchised communities. It would be foolish to think that years of racism, overpolicing, and purposeful underdevelopment did not create communities in serious need of investment.

But money alone is not the answer. The Workhouse campaign calls for impacted communities to have a say in how the money is spent. Who better knows how to improve a neighborhood than the people who live there? We can imagine communities that look totally different in a world that values community-driven investment.

One of the most ironic developments is the multiple lawsuits protesters recently filed against the city. There is no question that the way police officers acted towards protestors was wrong. I was there. From kettling to pepper spraying to arresting journalists to brutalizing non-violent protesters – the cops did not represent the city well at all. Their response was an all too predictable reaction. Protest is an important right. It is a way to provide feedback

A woman protested the St. Louis police on September 15, 2017, in the aftermath of Judge Timothy Wilson’s not-guilty verdict in former Police Officer Jason Stockley’s murder trial.

Photo by Lawrence Bryant

to your government and a way to collectively process emotions like fear that you or someone you love could be a victim of police violence. Or that you

live with a justice system where outcomes can be predicted by race. Or income. That “justice for all” is a lie, but we are, for the most part, content to look away. To carry on. Hours before or hours after our streets returned to normal use. And today, for many, it is like the protests never happened. Which is probably why they will absolutely happen again. We return to normal too quickly, eager to forget our discomfort, complicit in the suffering of others. Marching in the streets is a

powerful reminder that change is needed. Driving on them proves that marching won’t be enough. And the proof that this struggle must continue is in the ratio of time spent marching to time spent driving. Now, one year later, lawsuits will ask the very system that Stockley protestors were protesting, the courts, to do the very thing they failed to do one year ago: to hold the police accountable for their actions. It seems likely that this lawsuit can show how far we’ve come, and where we need to go. We are still demanding change. Time will tell if people in power are ready to respond to those demands, or if the chorus of people will need to replace those in power with more concerned and responsive representatives. The whole damn system is still guilty as hell, but we will keep fighting for change.

Guest Columnist Jack Seigel

‘Access to health

care is essential to all families’

By Sandra Jordan

n “Cancer hits all families, and access to health care is essential to all families.”

– Kwame Raoul

been systematically marginalized in every way, that in and of itself is a reason to celebrate. However, for persons with preexisting health issues whose ability to have health insurance is threatened by Trump administration attacks on the Affordable Care Act – as well as by 20 state attorneys general (Josh Hawley of Missouri included) in a lawsuit underway in Texas – Illinois state Senator Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago) is

See RAOUL, A13

By Dr. Lannis Hall For The St. Louis American

A memory I will never forget from my medical school training concerned an elderly gentleman who presented to the emergency room with failure to thrive, body pain all over, and 60 pounds of weight loss. His children reported that their father had not been himself for more than a year, so they brought him to the emergency room when he refused to get out of bed.

After an extensive evaluation, including X-rays, the gentleman was found to have abnormal areas throughout most of his bones consistent with cancer. The emergency room team sent off several vials of blood and included a relatively new test called prostatespecific antigen (PSA) to determine if the source of his disease was the prostate gland. A normal value for the PSA is approximately 4ng/ml. My patient’s PSA returned over 1000 ng/ml.

Over the next few years, the PSA blood test would be widely adopted as a means of diagnosing early prostate cancer before it spread to other organs. African-American men develop prostate cancer 70 percent more frequently and have more than double the mortality of any other racial and ethnic group. Compared to white men, African-American men develop prostate cancer at an earlier age, with more aggressive disease and a higher probability that it will spread to other parts of the body. The PSA blood test, when administered early, has been a remarkable lifesaving discovery. Before the routine use of PSA, over 50 percent of African-American men with prostate cancer presented to their physician with advanced disease, when treatment is difficult to withstand, and the window for cure has closed. Now, with routine PSA screening, less than 10 percent of men, regardless of race and ethnicity, present with metastatic disease. Because of PSA screening and improved therapies, there has been a dramatic drop in the mortality rate from prostate cancer, unlike what we have seen in any other solid tumor over the last 25 years.

n Because of PSA screening and improved therapies, there has been a dramatic drop in the mortality rate from prostate cancer.

In 2014, Dr. Arnold Bullock, Dr. Bettina Drake, Dr. Angela Brown and myself founded the Prostate Cancer Coalition, an organization composed of health care providers, survivors and health care organizations.

The coalition supports the American Cancer Society’s position that there should be a discussion about the risks and benefits of screening, beginning at the age of 45 for African-American men and younger if there is a strong family history of the disease. Our goals are to educate health care providers about the importance of prostate cancer screening. We are also committed to educating the community through church information sessions, a bus and billboard campaign, a website with educational materials, and partnering with other regional organizations that have already made a substantial difference in men’s health, such as the Empowerment Network and 100 Black Men.

the St. Louis program Kenneth W. Dobbins, the former president of Southeast Missouri State University, who also has an MBA and PhD but not an MD. University Venture Corporation is the venture capital firm, and the school is named for the city in Puerto Rico that hosts its flagship campus, which is a full-fledged medical school that grants MDs, among other advanced degrees.

Lenihan brought to Ponce an analytic model that he said offers “a new way to deliver curriculum” – and one where black and Hispanic pre-medical students fare better – that he developed as dean at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, based in Harlem. “We looked at the data, and your verbal scores have no predictive value to whether you succeed in medical school,” Lenihan told The American. “So we got rid of it. Black and Hispanic students tend to do not as well on their verbal scores, so suddenly a lot more black and Hispanic students were David Lenihan

The coalition produced a radio show podcast, Our Healthy Men, that can be accessed at prostatecancerstl.org or on the iHeart Radio app. Topics discussed include: describing the function of the prostate gland and why many men struggle with symptoms of frequency and urgency of urination; outlining the available tests for screening of prostate cancer and strategies to avoid an unnecessary biopsy; reviewing what every man should

Lannis Hall, M.D. By Chris King

Of The St. Louis American

Photo by Wiley Price

Dr. Janin Raoul practicing medicine

RAOUL

Continued from A12

a stalwart advocate. Raoul said his late father, Dr. Janin Raoul, a community physician in Chicago for more than 30 years, taught him that health care is a right, not a privilege.

“He really believes in health care as a human right, by way of the fact he would always bring medical supplies and medicine back to Haiti,” Raoul said. “As a practicing physician on the South Side of Chicago, he would never reject a patient because of their inability to pay their full bill. He would often come home with a block of cheese or a fruitcake, because folks would bring those things as gestures to try to give him something for the service he provided.” Raoul serves in the 13th District, the same district Barack Obama served in the Illinois Senate. The Affordable Care Act is an Obama legacy. Raoul understands pre-existing conditions because he lives it as a survivor of prostate cancer, a disease that affected many special men in his life, including his father.

“I lost him to prostate cancer, the same disease that took his father and his mother’s father,” Raoul told The American. “And it struck uncles of both sides of the family, so as I’ve gone to my personal physician through the years, I knew it was incumbent upon me to make sure that when I was asked that question about family history, that I was able to answer ‘prostate cancer’ and go through my screenings.”

According to National Cancer Institute data, there were 164,690 new cases of prostate cancer in 2018; that is 112.6 per 100,000 men per year, based on data from 2011 to 2015. It estimates 29,430 people will succumb to this disease. While prostate cancer is more common in older than younger men, it is more likely

to occur in men with a family history of prostate cancer and in men of African-American descent. New cases and death rates are higher among AfricanAmerican men, which makes early testing crucial (and not just in September, which is Prostate Cancer Awareness month).

Raoul and his doctors, aware of his strong family history, were watching and screening, which saved his life. Health insurance gave him choices.

“My access to health care allowed me to make that decision and shop for the best

surgeon I could find, and the surgery was successful, so in all likelihood I am cured of that cancer,” Raoul said.

“When people are debating about this notion of access to health care, and saying that some people should have it and some shouldn’t, and some people’s preexisting conditions should not be covered –knowing what it means from a very personal standpoint, that it’s lifesaving – is more than just a political talking point. It is very personal to me.”

He said the thought of repealing the Affordable Care

Act is unconscionable and makes Democratic attorneys general at the state level crucial.

“It is Democratic attorney generals that have stepped up to defend the Affordable Care Act where the federal government has not,” Raoul said. “That’s why it is so critical who we elect to these attorney general positions, not only in my state, but throughout the country, because some of these actions that are being taken by attorney generals are to protect people in life and death situations.”

PONCE

Continued from A12

qualifying.”

Of course, most medical schools can afford to be selective, rather than look for ways to admit students whose scores are less competitive. But Touro was at first a “start-up,” Lenihan said, founded in 2007, and as such not a first choice for the most promising premedical students considering a doctorate in Osteopathy. So this inclusive strategy was, in part, born of necessity.

“And,” Lenihan said, “our students did just as good on their boards” as the more

HALL

Continued from A12

know when diagnosed with prostate cancer; and providing information on the importance of clinical trials. Prostate cancer is the

As

competitive students admitted to more established schools.

Lenihan brought the same approach to Ponce when University Venture Corporation acquired what had been the School of Medicine at the University of Puerto Rico and hired Lenihan to operate it. He said his methods of composing risk profiles and data analytics for pre-medical and medical students are more accurate than those employed by traditional medical schools – and also happen to do better at grooming physicians from underrepresented minority groups.

“We track students literally day to day,” Lenihan said. “If an A student drops to a B,

second-leading cause of death in our community, and this devastation is largely avoidable with routine screening. Currently only one-third of African-American men report screening routinely. Please talk to your health care provider about this simple blood test and visit our website for

As Raoul shares his personal story about prostate cancer, he meets many others who have been affected by the disease.

“There are several people who approach me afterwards who would say they were either currently dealing with prostate cancer, or some other cancer, or had a relative who they lost to it,” Raoul said.

“This disease hits people, no matter what region you are from, and this is something that doesn’t spare people based on political party, what state they are from or

what part of the state they are from. Cancer hits all families, and access to health care is essential to all families.” Raoul said another crucial action is for men to open up about health care.

“It’s critically important for African-American men in particular to talk about health care openly because culturally, historically, we don’t,” Raoul said. “We don’t screen, and we don’t go to the doctor unless something is wrong with us. And we need to change that practice, because if we do – we save a lot of lives.”

Omegas partner with Target to donate coloring books to Children’s Hospital

The men of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, the Upsilon Omega Foundation, and the brothers of Upsilon Omega Chapter recently partnered with the Target Store of Florissant to present 150 coloring books with over 2400 crayons to the Child Life Department at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. With this donation, the men of Omega wanted for children who visit the emergency room or clinics or are admitted into the hospital to receive a coloring book and some crayons to lift their spirits and bring a smile to their face during a difficult time. Front: Brother Ron Johnson, event organizer Brother Jayson Jones, Human Resources Executive Team Leader Endia Lumpkins , Target Store Team Leader Jimmie White, Brother Ashley Kornegay. Back row: Brother Dave Morris, Brother Chris LaGrone, and Brother Anthony Jackson. The children are the sons of LaGrone and Kornegay.

n What is in it for venture capitalists, other than more tuition from fewer dropouts? Believe it or not, more diversity among medical professionals –which has economic value.

something happened. Most medical schools don’t care. But if something for the student is about to snowball and I know ahead of time, I can do something.” In a start-up forprofit setting, of course, student retention is worth money.

What is in it for venture capitalists, other than more tuition from fewer dropouts?

Believe it or not, more diversity among medical professionals – which has

free screening information, educational resources and support services. Get screened and save a life. Founded in 2015, the Prostate Cancer Coalition is a group of health-care providers and survivors in the St. Louis region that came together to advocate smart screening for

economic value.

“Personal interaction in the medical space is worth hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars,” Lenihan said. “It’s how well you can connect. Cultural sensitivity has economic value.”

This is not feel-good rhetoric. Patient satisfaction now figures significantly in reimbursement rates from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS),

and CMS also penalizes hospital readmissions when reimbursing medical providers. And Lenihan’s data show that culturally sensitive doctors deliver both higher patient satisfaction scores and lower readmissions.

The numbers are not small; they are definitely in venturecapital territory. “If you can improve patient satisfaction by 5 percent,” Lenihan said, “that’s worth $2.4 trillion.”

That is the big picture.

Though Lenihan envisions opening a hospital in North St. Louis that trains black doctors with high patient satisfaction scores and low readmission rates among their black patients – delivering

African-American men and men with strong family histories of prostate cancer. The coalition supports the American Cancer Society’s position that there should be a discussion about the risks and benefits of screening, beginning at the age of 45 for African-American men and younger if a strong family history. The discussion should also emphasize the significant advancements in the detection of prostate cancer and that PSA is just one of many tests available to help make an educated decision. For more information on the coalition, free screenings and community events, visit

culturally sensitive, lucrative health care – Ponce-St. Louis, at the moment, presents a very small picture. It offers two semesters of basic medical science education. The pitch to prospective student doesn’t tout only the program’s pre-medical training. “Our graduates can work in an array of healthcare-related research areas,” the website states, “are able to pursue a pharmacy degree or career in the pharmaceutical industry, or become a college or high school STEM instructor.” For more information, visit http://stlouis.psm.edu, email stl-admissions@psm.edu or call 314-499-6540.

Prostatecancercoalition@stl.

org. Lannis Hall, MD, MPH is the director of Radiation Oncology at Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital, and Clinical Trials leader for the Program to Eliminate Cancer Disparities at Washington University School of Medicine.

Healthy Kids Kids

Healthcare Careers

Fall Foods!

Nutrition Challenge:

We recently celebrated the first day of fall — and with that comes fall fruits and vegetables! Some things in season now are pumpkin, apples, squash and pears.

Fall brings cooler temperatures. It’ll no longer be too hot to enjoy the outdoors!

So put on your shoes and jacket and go out and enjoy the weather. Choose activities that raise your heart rate and increase your breathing for at least 20 minutes.

One fun fall activity is to have a leafcatch race. Stand behind a specific line

Studies show that one of the easiest ways to stay healthy and extend your life expectancy is to not smoke. Smoking affects your lungs, your heart and many other parts of your body. And smoking is very addictive. So it’s way easier not to start, than to stop later!

Learning Standards: HPE 1, HPE 2, HPE 5, NH 1, NH 3

“In season” generally means that the food is extra flavorful and yummy this time of year, but also easier to find and less expensive!

As a class, plan a Fall Foods Feast. What foods would you include, and what are nutritious, healthy ways that you could prepare them? What are ways that these foods might be served that aren’t so healthy?

Learning Standards: HPE 2, HPE 5, NH 1, NH 3, NH 5

(using sticks or a sidewalk to mark your starting point). When you see a leaf fall from a tree see who can catch it before it hits the ground. The first one to catch 10 leaves wins!

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

Banana Chips Ingredients:

5 Ripe Bananas (firm) 1/4-1/2 Cup Lemon Juice

Directions: Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Cover a cookie sheet with foil and lightly spray with cooking spray. Thinly slice the bananas and toss in the lemon juice to coat. Lay the banana slices in a single layer on the greased foil. Bake for 2 hours then flip over the banana slices and bake for another hour and a half, until crisp.

Dr. Jeanetta Stomer, Family Nurse Practitioner

Where do you work? I am the co-owner of Aspire Healthcare Solutions and Owner of NP Health Information Station (coming soon). Where did you go to school? I graduated from Eskridge Memorial High School in Wellston, Missouri. I then earned a Registered Nurse degree from Deaconess College of Nursing and a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from Chamberlain College of Nursing, both in St. Louis. What do you do as co-owner of Aspire Healthcare Solutions? I teach students how to take care of sick people and people that need a little more help at home or in a facility. Students attend class and we discuss the importance of caring for people, how they feel about taking care of people, and why they like to care for people other than themselves.

Why did you choose this career? I love taking care of people and making them smile when they feel better. It has always been my passion to care for people that need help. When teaching my students, I hope to instill in them the importance of caring.

What is your favorite part of the job you have?

My favorite part is seeing the faces of patients that know I did my best to help them. I also enjoy having time to talk with patients and their families.

Learning Standards: HPE6, NH3

“Questions or comments? Contact Cathy Sewell csewell@stlamerican.com or 314-289-5422

The St. Louis American’s award winning NIE program provides newspapers and resources to more than 8,000 teachers and students each week throughout the school year, at no charge.

CLASSROOM SPOTLIGHT

Gateway MST Elementary in the St. Louis Public Schools District 5th grade teacher Mrs. Forcha shows students

in the newspaper.

Teachers,

a Classroom Spotlight, please email: nie@stlamerican.com.

SCIENCE STARS

AFRICAN AMERICAN SKIN CANCER SCIENTIST, RESEARCHER AND EDUCATOR:

Jewel Plummer Cobb

Jewel Plummer Cobb was born in Chicago, Illinois, on January 17, 1924. Her father was a doctor and her mother was a physical education teacher. As a young child, Cobb was interested in how things worked. She would often take apart items, such as an alarm clock, to put it together again. In junior high, she began reading her father’s scientific journals. In high school, she was an honor student and began focusing on biology.

SCIENCE CORNER The Facts About Skin Cancer!

Jewel Cobb was interested in learning all about skin. One concern people have about their skin is controlling their risks of skin cancer. In this article, you’ll learn about types of skin cancer and how to protect your skin. There are three types of skin cancer: melanoma, squamous cell, and basal cell.

Of these three, melanoma is the most serious form because it can spread throughout the body and be deadly. If caught early, it is curable. Squamous cell sometimes spreads through the body, but is rarely life threatening. Basal cell is slow growing and rarely spreads throughout the body. However, basal cell can be disfiguring, especially if it is on a noticeable area, such as the face. It can also come back after it is removed.

According to The Skin Cancer Foundation, one blistering sunburn in childhood more than doubles a person’s chance

SCIENCE INVESTIGATION

Jewel Plummer Cobb studied skin. In this experiment, you will see how your skin functions as a touch receptor, which means how your skin responds to touch.

Materials Needed: A Paperclip • A Partner Process:

q Straighten the paperclip by unbending it.

w Form the paperclip into the letter “u.”

e Ask your partner to close their eyes.

MATH CONNECTION

Men and women with careers in STEM are effective problem solvers. Put your problem solving skills to work in the following math word problems.

q There are 416 students taking a field trip to the local science museum. They are taking 8 buses on the field trip, with an equal number of students riding each bus. Use the equation to solve the problem. How many students will be on each bus?

S = the number of students on the bus. 416 divided by 8 = s _________________ students on each bus.

w Jane made 16 hamburgers. She sold five, but made 3 more. How many hamburgers does Jane have? Write a number

DID YOU KNOW?

According to the Skin Cancer

One minute in the average indoor tanning machine is twice as cancercausing (carcinogenic) as one minute in the midday Mediterranean sun.

of developing melanoma later in life. People at a greater risk for melanoma include those with light colored skin that freckle easily, those with a large number of moles, and those with family members who have had melanoma. However, it is important to note that ANYONE can develop skin cancer, so it is important to protect yourself.

The Skin Cancer Foundation reports that less than half of all teenagers use sunscreen. Using a waterproof sunscreen with a high SPF can help protect your skin. Also, wearing a wide brimmed hat can shield the delicate skin on your face. Limit the amount of time you spend in the sun, especially during times of the day when the sun is at its strongest peak. Some people think that tanning beds are safer than tanning in the sun; this is not true. Any time your skin burns or tans, permanent damage has occurred. Check your skin monthly, looking for new or changing moles or growths. Share any concerns you find with your parents and doctor.

Learning Standards: I can read a nonfiction article and determine main idea and supporting detail.

r Gently press the points of the U on different points of your partner’s skin.

t Ask your partner how many points they feel. Try the forehead, the cheek, the inside of the arm, the back, the leg calf. Are there any areas where your partner feels only one point, even though there are two?

Learning Standards: I can follow directions to complete an experiment. I can make deductions from my observations.

sentence equation to represent the word problem. _________________________ _________________________ = ____________ hamburgers

e The life span of a swan is up to 50 years in captivity. In the wild, a swan lives up to 19 years. How much longer is the lifespan of a swan in captivity? ______________ years

r A fence is 20 feet long. It has posts at each end and at every 4 feet along the length. How many fence posts are there? __________ posts

Learning Standards:

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

In 1942, she began her college career at the University of Michigan, but left her sophomore year. She disagreed with the college’s policy to have all African-American students reside in one house on campus. Cobb then completed her bachelor’s degree in biology at Talladega College in Alabama in 1947. Cobb applied for graduate school at New York University (NYU), but was first denied because of her race. Cobb didn’t let that rejection discourage her. She decided to visit the campus personally so she could impress the biology teachers, who then allowed her to stay. Cobb earned her master’s degree from NYU in 1947 and her PhD in 1950 in cell physiology. While still in graduate school, she was named an independent investigator for the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. She also held fellowships at The Cancer Research Foundation of Harlem Hospital, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the National Cancer Institute.

Cobb completed research at the University of Illinois and focused on skin cancer and the ability of melanin to protect skin. She also studied how hormones, UV light, and chemotherapy drugs affected skin cells. From 1952 to 1954, she conducted the Tissue Culture Laboratory there, as well. From 1956 to 1960, she completed research at New York University and from 1960 to 1969, she completed research at Sarah Lawrence College.

In 1969, she began her work as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Connecticut. From 1976 to 1981, she worked at Rutgers University. From there, she became president of California State University, Fullerton, where she started medical and pre-dental programs for minorities and women in sciences.

In 1990, she began working with young children through the Southern California and Engineering ACCESS Center and Network and the Science Technology Engineering Program (STEP). She also led ASCEND projects for the California State University, which promoted careers in science, math, and engineering. In 1993, she earned the Lifetime Achievement Award for her work promoting science careers to children and minorities.

Learning Standards: I can read a biography to learn facts about a person who has made contributions to the fields of science, technology, and mathematics.

MAP CORNER

Use the newspaper to complete the following activities to prepare for the MAP test.

Activity One —

Natural Resources: Work in groups to find newspaper stories about shortages and surpluses of natural resources. Discuss what you read, and then write your thoughts about how such shortages and surpluses occur and how they affect the economy.

Activity Two —

Government Stability: Find a newspaper story about a government using its power to maintain order and stability. Discuss the article. Evaluate the results of the government’s action and whether those results were intended. How might the government have acted differently?

Of melanoma cases among 18-to-29-year-olds who had tanned indoors, 76 percent were attributable to tanning bed use.

Learning Standards: I can use a newspaper to locate information. I can identify shortages and surpluses in natural resources. I can evaluate the use of government power in action.

if you are using the St. Louis American’s NIE program and would like to nominate your class for

Erniece Staples, Aliza Davis and Ta’Niyah Taylor how to power light using an experiment found

Photo: Wiley Price / St. Louis American

Foundation

Selling St. Louis Public Schools

SLPS Foundation

helps district identify needs – then pay to address them

By Chris King Of The St. Louis American

Valerie Bell, board chair of the Saint Louis Public Schools Foundation, offers two good reasons why corporations and individuals should give to the foundation, which works with the district to identify priorities and then fund strategic needs and projects: because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s the smart thing to do.

“It’s the right thing to do because every child deserves to have a quality education,” Bell said. “It’s smart thing to do because we need to invest in our future from a utilitarian standpoint. If you fail to invest in these kids now, then you’re going to pay for them somewhere else down the road – and have a lot less to show for it. They won’t have anything to contribute because we

n “If you fail to invest in these kids now, then you’re going to pay for them somewhere else down the road – and have a lot less to show for it.”

– Valerie Bell, SLPS Foundation board chair

didn’t prepare them.” The foundation was established in 1997, but its presence has been felt increasingly in recent years, according to Bell and Jane Donahue, foundation president. In each of the last two years, the foundation contributed more than $2 million to the district – counting the value

of in-kind contributions by BJC HealthCare, which embedded nurses and behavioral health professionals in district schools, it was closer to $3 million for each year. Enterprise Holdings Inc. is the foundation’s lead sponsor.

Bell and Donahue speak of a “reincarnation” of the foundation in recent years. Not only is it contributing more funds to the district now, but it’s also targeting those funds more strategically.

“In the past, the foundation’s model was that people in the community would donate resources of their choice – for example, they would buy laptops or fund a new classroom in a particular school,” Bell said. “It would be a welcome addition, but there was no strategy, no game plan. Now we are being very deliberate in how we invest community resources to improve

See SLPS, B6

Veta T. Jeffery joined Midwest BankCentre as senior vice president

She will expand the Heartland St. Louis Black Chamber of Commerce

American staff

Veta T. Jeffery joined Midwest BankCentre as senior vice president of community and economic development. Her office is located at the Midwest BankCentre branch at 6810 Page Ave. in Pagedale. Her primary responsibility will be to expand the Heartland St. Louis Black Chamber of Commerce (HSBCC), serving the full metro St. Louis region. As a member of the bank’s community and economic development team, she will focus on serving established and emerging businesses.

At its July 2018 convention, Jeffery also was elected to the US Black Chambers’ board as

Veta T. Jeffery

national director of chamber relations. In that role, she will work to connect top AfricanAmerican-owned businesses with Fortune 500 companies to generate economic growth.

A unit of the US Black Chambers of Commerce, the HSBCC covers metro St. Louis and surrounding areas. It is part of the Heartland Regional Chamber, which includes Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. To achieve business and community growth, she also focuses on capacity-building for individuals, families, faith-based and community

organizations, businesses, financial institutions and others.

“Veta Jeffery adds great value to our team and to the community by blending essential financial advisory experience with proven skills in advocacy, collaboration and engagement,” said Alex Fennoy, executive vice president of community and economic development at Midwest BankCentre. “Our entire community will benefit from her multidimensional contributions.”

Prior to joining Midwest BankCentre, Jeffery was most recently manager of community economic partnerships with the state of

See JEFFERY, B6

Karla Johnson joined BMO Harris Bank Management Team as assistant vice president branch manager. She is responsible for managing the St. Louis Downtown Branch for Retail & Business Development. Established in 1882 as Harris Bank, and owned by BMO Financial Group since 1984, BMO Harris Bank has grown to become one of the largest banks in the Midwest. The Downtown St. Louis Branch is located at 603 Locust St.

Timothy Staples joined Southern Illinois University Edwardsville as director of its new Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion. The center will serve as a support and advocacy center for underrepresented students through programming, services, student retention initiatives and professional advocacy. Since 2015, Staples has served as director of campus life at South Carolina Governors School for Science and Mathematics.

Samohya Stallons was named the new assistant principal of the Normandy Early Childhood Center. Stallons joined the Normandy Schools Collaborative in 2016 as a teacher at the Normandy Kindergarten Center. She previously served as a general education teacher in the Cape Girardeau Public Schools and Riverview Gardens School District. She is committed to researchbased strategies and systems that improve student learning and staff development.

Terry Kennedy was recognized by Citizens for Modern Transit for his exemplary commitment to championing transit in the St. Louis area. He received a New Initiatives Award for his work on a new collaborative effort to help further the safety and security of MetroLink on both sides of the Mississippi River. He is Ward 18 alderman in the City of St. Louis and chairs the board’s Public Safety Committee.

Sandra Jordan will receive a “Wind Beneath Our Wings” award from The Empowerment Network, Inc. (TEN). TEN is a prostate cancer awareness and survivor advocacy organization serving the greater St. Louis area. Jordan, assistant managing editor at The American, and 13 other awardees will be recognized on September 28 at TEN’s Anniversary Diamond Gala at the Christian Hospital Atrium.

Karl Hawkins will play a lead character in both “Into the Breeches!” and “A Most Outrageous Fit of Madness,” produced by Shakespeare Festival St. Louis October 28 through November 24 at the Grandel Theatre as part of its inaugural “In the Works” program of new work. Hawkins is a local actor and singer with a BFA in Acting from the Conservatory of Theatre & Dance at Southeast Missouri State University.

Karla Johnson

Samohya Stallons

Karl Hawkins

Sandra Jordan

Timothy Staples

Terry Kennedy

Saint Louis Public Schools

board chair Valerie Bell works with Princeton Westbrook, Theodore Alexander and Elijah Jordan during class at Adams Elementary School.

Photo by Jordan Wade

By LaShana (Shan) Lewis

St. Louis American

For The

On Tuesday, September 18, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis hosted a Community Development Investment and Lending Partnership event to launch a new initiative called Investment Connection. The program sought to pair nonprofits with investors who are interested in lending loans, giving grants, or providing ongoing funding support for their efforts.

All participating nonprofits must have had plans that met the restrictions laid out in the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a 1977 piece of legislation that was designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to help meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate- income neighborhoods.

The inaugural gathering included nine nonprofits, each from various areas of the St. Louis metropolitan region, including the Illinois side. Each organization had approximately five minutes to explain its CRA-eligible project and its goal, as well as how the funding is intended to be used. Afterward, a speed networking round was held in a separate dining room, where nonprofits were established at a table and investors rotated every 10 minutes. Investors could use the time span to ask whatever questions they had about the group’s endeavors. The plan was to make the entire event quick and informative, lasting

St. Louis Fed launches Investment Connection

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis tries to connect nonprofits with investors and lenders

only a half-day. Reference material was handed out to investors earlier, with detailed information on each nonprofit and printouts of their slides for investors.

“Federal Reserve [branches] throughout other areas were already doing programs like this,” said Karen Mracek, Media Relations manager for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “We decided to jump right in. Yvonne Sparks has

n All participating nonprofits must have had plans that met the restrictions laid out in the Community Reinvestment Act.

been the driving force behind this effort.” Sparks has served as assistant vice president and director of Community Reinvestment Initiatives at the Federal Reserve Bank of St.

for two years. “I

has opened itself to all nonprofits that have projects that fit the

for

development, community development finance, financial access and empowerment, affordable housing, economic and workforce development, and community facilities and

together bankers, nonprofit organizations, foundations, and public and private funders.

there have been no deadlines established, so nonprofits can apply at any time and on a year-round basis. For more information, email investmentconnection@ stls.frb.org or visit https:// tinyurl.com/STL-Fed-CRA.

Treasurer co-hosts events for women entrepreneurs

Small Business Majority, in partnership with the City of St. Louis Treasurer’s Office of Financial Empowerment, will celebrate National Women’s Small Business Month with a host of in-person presentations, workshops and networking opportunities for women entrepreneurs in October. This month-long celebration will launch on 6-8 p.m. Monday, October 1 at the St. Louis Public Library’s Central Branch, 1301 Olive St. St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones will headline the event, which will also include panel discussions and presentations on topics like mentoring and small business lending.

St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones

Women are starting small businesses at a higher rate than men, Jones noted in a statement, and their businesses are generating jobs and business revenues above the national average. What’s more, she said, women of color are creating businesses faster than the rest of the population: 79 percent of businesses started by women since 2007 were started by women of color. “Supporting female entrepreneurs, especially women of color, has the potential to unlock tremendous growth for our communities,” Jones said. Additional events in this series will take place on October 13, 20, 22 and 24. They will include roundtable discussions, workshops and resources for women business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. For more information, visit https:// tinyurl.com/Treasurer-women. The October 1 event is free and open to the public, but advanced registration is required at https://bit. ly/2xhiqno.

Dennis Jackson (second from left), executive director of Mt. Sinai Development Corp.

Photo courtesy of Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

n “I just can’t believe I pulled this off.”

– Tiger Woods, after winning The Tour Championship

Sports

PreP FooTball noTebook

Pattonville is hot again

Last year’s Class 5 runner-up has won four in a row

The Pattonville Pirates made a surprise run to the Class 5 state championship game last season and were just seconds away from pulling off a big upset against undefeated Staley in the state-championship game. Several talented players graduated from that Pirates team, including four-year standout Kaleb Eleby at quarterback. After stubbing their toe in the season opener against Columbia Hickman, the Pirates are looking strong once again this season. Pattonville has won four consecutive games and delivered a statement win last Friday night when they knocked off Kirkwood 42-32. It was the second consecutive year that the Pirates have defeated Kirkwood. Much of the offensive load is being carried by senior running back Sam Sanderson, who has rushed for 623 yards and 16 touchdowns, including five against Kirkwood last weekend. Quarterback Andrew Webb has passed for 401 yards and rushed for 347 yards while scoring four touchdowns.

The Pirates have a strong defensive end with 290-pound senior Deandre James, 240-pound defensive end Isaiah Wilkes and junior defensive end Jatarius Battle. Both Battle and Wilkes have three quarterback sacks each. Linebackers Donovan Prott and Hayden Lezear lead the team in tackles while senior Reggie Oliphant has a team-high two interceptions.

*A few top performances

*Quarterback Phillip Johnson of Carnahan passed for 325 yards and three touchdowns against Sumner.

*Quarterback Aiden McDaniel of Francis Howell was a perfect 18

Hooray for Vontae Davis

Buffalo Bills CB should be lauded for halftime retirement

Buffalo Bills cornerback Vontae Davis made waves when he abruptly retired during halftime of the Bills Week 2 game against the Los Angeles Chargers. According to Bills’ coach Sean McDermott, Davis “pulled himself out of the game.” He informed his coaches that he was “done” and no longer had a desire to play football. The 10-year NFL veteran then removed his gear, changed back into his street clothes and took it to the crib. There was no beef with the coaching staff. Davis did not have a contract dispute. He hadn’t gotten into it with any teammates. He wasn’t injured. He simply decided that he was done.

“Reality hit me fast and hard,” Davis later wrote in a statement. “I shouldn’t be out there anymore.” Fans and media roasted Davis’ decision. He was called selfish. He was called a terrible teammate. He was branded a

coward. He owed his teammates more, many believed. Nonsense. If Davis’ love and desire to play the sport had abandoned him, he did exactly what he needed to do. Despite new rules that basically outlaw tackling quarterbacks, football is a physically taxing sport. It’s also a sport where an injury, contract dispute or even a political stance could instantly end a career. In fact, my three alltime favorite football players all had their careers end prematurely. In 1991, the Raiders’ Bo Jackson suffered a career-ending hip injury during a playoff game against the Bengals. A remarkable two-sport athlete who also starred in the MLB, Jackson’s football career ended after just four seasons due to a dislocated hip.

A few years late in 1994, one of the most-talented wide receivers in league history had his career cut short due to injury. The Packers’ Sterling

Earl Austin Jr.

Ishmael H. Sistrunk

(10)

Hawks

Buffalo Bills’ Vontae Davis (22)

Photo by Wiley Price

SportS EyE

With Alvin A. Reid

St. Louis should settle in for a great NBA season featuring Tatum, Beal

St. Louis NBA fans would love to see an Eastern Conference Finals showdown between the Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards.

Jayson Tatum against Bradley Beal. The two Chaminade products going head-to-head for a berth in the NBA Finals.

With LeBron James’ departure from Cleveland and arrival in Los Angeles, the Cavaliers are far from favorites in the East. The Philadelphia 76ers are picked by many pundits to prevail, but don’t count out the Wizards and Celtics. In past years, the Wizards were quick to tell the world of their talent, that they would win more than 50 games and go deep in the playoffs.

we don’t have the season we have or the success that we have down the line. But that doesn’t change my opinion on our team.”

Both Beal and backcourt mate John Wall were All-Stars last season, with Beal turning in his finest NBA season.

In his sixth year with the Wizards, Beal averaged 22.6 points, 4.4 rebounds and 4.5 assists – all career highs.

After last years’ 41-win season and firstround elimination, this year’s version of the Wizards is talking less and carrying the motto “no excuses.”

“You can’t just talk about it, you have to put it into action,” Beal said during Monday’s media day in D.C.

“There is nothing more to talk about it. There’s nothing more to continue to sit here and harp on and say that we’re better than such and such or the best backcourt; I’m done talking about all of that. It’s old, it’s water under the bridge. The main objective is whomever wins the championship. That’s all that is important.”

Beal said he isn’t ashamed of last year’s boasting “because I believe in my teammates.”

“I believe in us. I believe in who we are. Sometimes we don’t play like it. Sometimes

Washington added center Dwight Howard, forward Jeff Green, traded for Austin Rivers and drafted Troy Brown Jr. In the first round, they have a blend of youth and veteran talent and will feature one of the league’s deepest benches. But talk is cheap, and Beal said his focus this season is on “the three A’s of approach, accountability and adversity.”

Maybe for-

ward Markieff Morris didn’t get the “less talk, more success” memo.

“I think we’re the No. 1 team [in the East],” he said, citing the Toronto Raptors trade of DeMar DeRozan while also dismissing Philadelphia.

“Boston has never been better than us. The record shows it, but internally, we don’t think they were better than us last year. We’ve just gotta play up to our ability, and we’re better than anybody in the East.”

Speaking of Boston

If any team is happy to see James in an L.A. Lakers uniform, it is the Celtics. The team lost superstar free agent Gordon Hayward for the season with a broken leg on opening night last year. Then, star guard Kyrie Irving saw his season end in March with a knee injury.

Yet, the Celtics went 55-27 and took the Cavaliers to a decisive seventh game before bowing in the East Final – in large part because of Tatum’s play.

He averaged 13.9 points, five rebounds and 1.6 assists in his rookie season. A member of the NBA All-Rookie team, Tatum became the only player in NBA history to score 20 or more points in seven consecutive postseason games at 20-years old or younger.

He spent the summer improving his game around the rim – and learning from one of the NBA’s greatest players of all time, Kobe Bryant

“Kobe asked me to work out; my favorite player. So, he was at the top of the list,” Tatum told the media on Monday as the Celtics training camp started.

“It was one of the cooler basketball experiences of my life. He’s my biggest basketball inspiration. Just to have the interaction with him on a personal level, I still have to go look at the pictures to remind myself that it actually happened. He was very helpful in just having our relationship.”

Tatum looked beyond winning the Eastern Conference when asked if the Celtics could prevail over the Golden State Warriors.

“Obviously they’re the defending champs,” Tatum told The Athletic.

“Everybody respects them, we respect them. But we believe in ourselves ... We definitely feel like we can compete and beat anybody in a seven-game series.”

This will be an interesting and entertaining NBA season for St. Louisans – even without an NBA franchise.

Topping on NBA cake

ESPN completed its 201819 top 100 NBA player rankings this week and Tatum checks in at No. 24. While rookies are eligible to make the Top 100, Tatum was unranked coming into his first season.

Beal is at 29. How could he fall from 28th with the All-Star season he turned in last year?

Hopefully, this won’t put Wall into a funk, but he ranked

behind Beal at No. 32. He was 15th last year but missing games to various injuries set him back.

Their teammate, Missouri native Otto Porter Jr., is ranked No. 38. Here’s the Top 10 with last year’s ranking in parentheses: 10. Damian Lillard, Portland Trailblazers (18); 9. Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers (32); 8. Kawhi Leonard, Toronto Raptors (3); 7. Russell Westbrook, Oklahoma City Thunder (5); 6. Anthony Davis, New Orleans Pelicans (6); 4. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks (9) and Kevin Durant Golden State Warriors (2); 3. James Harden, Houston Rockets (8); 2. Stephen Curry, Warriors (4). Of course, at No. 1 is LeBron James of the L.A. Lakers. He has been the top NBA player each of the eight years ESPN has compiled the list.

A swipe at the Tigers?

Denver Nuggets training camp opened Tuesday and GM Arturas Karnisovas said Michael Porter Jr., “is moving in the right direction” but there is no timetable for his return to action after a second back surgery last summer.

In August, Porter said he hoped to be ready for the regular season. His tune had

changed at Monday’s media day.

“After back (surgery), you want to make sure everything around it is super strong, so every day we’re doing core stuff and getting there, getting really, really strong so there’s no risk of injury once I’m back on the floor,” Porter Jr. said.

“It’s so cool seeing (the training staff) care about you. In college, it’s all about getting back on the floor, but with these guys, it’s about the long haul.”

That does not sound like a ringing endorsement of Missouri’s athletic medical and training staffs.

The Reid roundup

Congratulations to Earl Austin Jr., on his enshrinement into the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame. I thought I knew something about basketball until I met Earl. He’s a hoops genius, and more importantly, one of the nicest men that you will ever meet … Speaking of Earl, I texted him late last Thursday as Baker Mayfield became the toast of Cleveland and said, “If you’re not watching the NFL, you’re (bleeping) crazy … Jayson Tatum is sporting big tattoos on his respective thighs entering the new NBA season. One shows Tatum wearing a St. Louis Cardinals jersey and holding his son. The other is a mushroom cloud with “St. Louis” written on the top and “Till the world blows” on the bottom. Lil Joe, a Missouri rapper, has a mixtape called “Till the World Blow,” which I take Tatum must enjoy. Photos of his leg art are on Instagram … Another day, another three touchdown passes last Sunday for Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs. He now holds the record for most TD passes in the first three games of a season with 13 … Cardinals outfielder Dexter Fowler told the P-D he is looking forward to contributing to the team next year. If the Redbirds can find a deal for him, which probably means part of his salary, and he approves the trade, he’ll be elsewhere … Hate on Stan Kroenke all you want, but his franchise was barely worth $1 billion when he left for L.A., and it’s now worth $3.2 billion, says FORBES … I picked Missouri to beat Georgia and if you take away the first 10 minutes of the game they did … There will be no KU-Mizzou exhibition game this year to benefit hurricane relief in the Carolinas. The evil NCAA is allowing just two exhibition games and both teams have two scheduled.

Alvin A. Reid was honored as the 2017 “Best Sports Columnist – Weeklies” in the Missouri Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest and is a New York Times contributor. He is a panelist on the Nine Network program, Donnybrook and appears monthly on “The Dave Glover Show” on 97.1 Talk.” His Twitter handle is @aareid1.

Alvin A. Reid

ESPN completed its 2018-19 top 100 NBA player rankings this week and Jayson Tatum checks in at No. 24.

With Maurice Scott

Rivals East St. Louis, Belleville West meet this weekend

The last time the East St. Louis Flyers lost a Southwestern Conference football game was on September 26, 2015.

The Flyers were defeated by the Belleville West Maroons. It was the game in which a video was produced of all of the fictional penalties that were called against East Side which led to their demise on this day. It would also be the last game of the season as a teacher’s strike in East St. Louis put an abrupt end to the season.

Since then, the Flyers have won 17 consecutive conference games and they look to make it 18 this weekend against Belleville West when the two heavyweights clash on Saturday for the conference championship. Make no mistake; these two really don’t like each other, so the intensity will

Continued from C5

Sanders was coming off a season in which he rushed for 1,491 yards and was just one season removed from a season in which he became on the third player to eclipse 2,000 rushing yards in a single season. However, Sanders was tired of losing. He attempted to force a trade. Teams trade away disgruntled players all the time. John Elway refused to play for the Baltimore Colts. Eli Manning refused to play for the San Diego Chargers. Marshall Faulk was dealt to the St. Louis Rams after the Indianapolis Colts refused to pay him top dollar. The Lions? They refused to accommodate their star’s request. Sanders walked away from the field forever. What do these players have to do with Vontae Davis? Davis wanted to control his own destiny. He did not want to end up being carted off the field like Jackson or Sharpe. He didn’t want to allow his team to dictate his future.

be at an all-time high. More than 6,000 fans are expected to be in attendance at Clyde C. Jordan Stadium in East St. Louis for his big showdown. Kickoff is at 1 p.m.

The Flyers (3-0 in SWC play, 4-1 overall), will be supercharged on Saturday afternoon for the homecoming queen and her court after giving Collinsville the boot in the backside 74-13 last week. The Kahoks will no longer compete in football in the SWC after this year and East Side gave them a parting gift by scoring 61 points in the first half while amassing 623 yards of total offense.

Sophomore quarterback Tyler Macon has combined for 17 touchdowns while passing for 851 yards and rushing for 456 yards. Receivers Antonio “AJ” Johnson and LaWaun

Powell Jr. and Keontez Lewis all pose as scoring threats whenever they touch the ball. Defensively, the Flyers are led by Demond Taylor (49 tackles) and Sidney Houston Jr. (60 tackles), while Johnson has a team-high three interceptions as a defensive back.

The Maroons enter the game with a 5-0 record and they will try to spoil East Side’s homecoming with quarterback Jackson McCloskey leading the way. He has passed for 1,016 yards and 20 touchdowns. Running back D.J. Johnson has rushed for 638 yards and six touchdowns.

The heart and soul of the Belleville West defense is twosport star Keith Randolph Jr.

He was a starting forward on the Belleville West basketball team that won the state championship last season and he has 25 Division I scholarship offers for football. East St. Louis has played in front of some electric atmospheres this season, including a crowd of 9,000 in Detroit and 12,000 against Trinity. This weekend, we will see more of the same on Homecoming weekend.

Scott’s Pick: East St. Louis 37 Belleville West 18.

Scott’s Notes A couple of weeks ago, the East St. Louis administration found out during a special meeting of conference affiliates that the Flyers will no longer

be able to petition the Illinois High School Association to play in the Class 7A playoffs, beginning next year. East Side is a Class 6A school by enrollment (and sometimes Class 5A), but it has been able to play in the Class 7A playoffs with bigger schools by petitioning the state.

The strange thing here is that neither Southwestern Conference commissioner Bill Schmidt, nor SWC president David Snyder will make a public comment as to why East Side won’t be allowed to do this, despite the fact that the IHSA has been allowing the Flyers to do so for years.

I smell a rat here. The conference allows Granite City to leave on what we now know was a lie, and for Collinsville to leave the conference next year in football only. But they

How many players have we witnessed who were released following an injury, only to get paid pennies on their non-guaranteed contracts? How many players have been forced to play through injuries in fear of

Continued from B3

for 18 for 367 yards and five touchdowns in a victory over Troy.

• Quarterback Sean Stephens of Hazelwood Central passed for 290 yards and four touchdowns in a victory over rival Hazelwood East.

• Freshman Luther Burden of Cardinal Ritter had five receptions for 178 yards and two touchdowns in a victory over Tolton.

Pick Game of the Week

St. Johns College (4-0) at CBC (5-0), Saturday, 1 p.m.

The top powerhouse program in the St. Louis area gets an opportunity to take on one of the nation’s top football teams as nationally ranked St. John’s Prep of Washington D.C. comes to town. Ironically, both teams are nicknamed the Cadets. St. John’s is currently 4-0 and ranked No. 5 in the nation in the latest USA Today Super 25 national polls. Last week, the Cadets defeated Marietta (GA) 21-14 in Washington D.C. They have also defeated Alabama state power Hoover and Miami Central in a five overtime thriller. St. John’s is led by senior running back Keilan Robinson, who has committed to Alabama and junior wide receiver Rakim Jarrett.

landing on the waiver wire? How many players have kneeled during the national anthem only to get blackballed out of the league?

In all of those instances, people say it’s just business. When Davis eased on out of

The CBC Cadets have been running roughshod over the competition over the first five weeks of the season. Senior running back Bryan Bradford has rushed for 744 yards and 13 touchdowns while averaging 10 yards per carry. Senior quarterback Brett Gabbert has passed for 1,256 yards and 16 touchdowns while receiver Julian Williams has 508 yards and six touchdowns.

On Tap this Weekend

Thursday, September 27

• Parkway North (2-3) vs. Ladue (5-0) at Kirkwood, 7 p.m.

Friday, September 28

• Christian-O’Fallon (3-2) at

the New Era Field, suddenly it became all about “family” and “brotherhood.”

Once Davis realized that he was ready to go, he went.

“It’s more important for me and my family to walk away healthy than to willfully

Jennings (3-2), 6 p.m.

• Trinity (3-2) at Lutheran St. Charles (5-0), 7 p.m.

• Fox (5-0) at Marquette (4-1), 7 p.m.

• DeSmet (3-2) at Chaminade (2-3), 7 p.m.

• Fort Zumwalt West (2-3) at Francis Howell (3-2), 7 p.m.

Saturday, September 29

• Belleville West (5-0) at East St. Louis (4-1), 1 p.m.

• Lutheran North (2-3) at MICDS (5-0), 1 p.m.

• McCluer North (3-2) at Hazelwood East (3-2), 1 p.m.

(You can follow Earl Austin Jr.’s high school sports updates on twitter @earlaustinjr. #earltimeupdate)

embrace the warrior mentality and limp away too late,” Davis

want to punish the black students at East St. Louis. East St. Louis is a charter member of the Southwestern Conference and it has always represented the conference very well and has been invited to participate in numerous state sanctioned events throughout the country for more than 50 years. But the more I think about this, it smells even worse because league Commissioner Bill Smith is the former Athletic Director at Belleville West as well as its former basketball coach. And guess who usually ends Belleville West’s football season in the Class 7A playoffs every year? You guessed right. East St. Louis! I will have much more to talk about in the future, regarding this situation.

wrote.

People presumed that Davis had lost his marbles. He was walking away from millions of dollars and the fame that so many people covet. Maybe CTE began to creep in on the cornerback. In reality, it seems that the opposite is true. Davis appears to be as clear-headed as ever and at peace with the decision that earned him so much scorn and ridicule.

“The crazy thing is that people automatically assumed that something was wrong with me mentally,” Davis told Domonique Foxworth of The Undefeated. “I feel great. I haven’t felt like this in… well, in my whole life.”

Now, at just 30 years old, Davis has his entire life ahead of him. He walked away on his own terms, and his own two feet, that’s more than many pro athletes can say.

Follow Ishmael and In the Clutch on Twitter @ishcreates.

The senior quarterback threw a total of six touchdown passes to lead the Hawks to a pair of

threw two TD passes in the Hawks’ come from behind 15-12

at Hazelwood West. Just five days later, Stephens completed 18 of

32 for 302 yards and four TDs in a 27-20 victory over rival Hazelwood East on Homecoming weekend at Central. For the season, Stephens has passed for 666 yards and eight TDs for the 3-2 Hawks. Hazelwood Central will visit McCluer on Saturday at noon.

Maurice Scott

Vontae Davis decided to end his 10-year career during halftime of the team’s Week 2 game against the Los Angeles Chargers.

SLPS

continued from page B1 prospects for kids in the district.”

Working with the district, they have identified four funding priorities: early childhood education, college and career readiness, recruitment and retention of strong principals, and student well-being.

“We are working closely with the district to implement a strategic plan to address these needs,” Donahue said.

Early childhood education is critical, she said, because these are the child’s most formative years and the state does not fund it, so the district is the city’s largest provider of early childhood education.

College and career readiness – “on the very other end,” Donahue said, of the district’s educational efforts – has been greatly spurred by foundation efforts. Donahue said the district had one college counselor when this strategic priority was identified, and it now has five. Every high school now has a college and career center, and the district has 13 advisers when the ranks of near-peer college advisors are included. Every high school in the district also now offers ACT preparation, “which didn’t exist before,” Donahue said.

The focus on principals comes straight from the superintendent. Donahue said that Superintendent Kelvin R. Adams told her, “If I had 68 great principals, I could retire.” It’s not easy to develop, recruit and retain the best principals. “We can’t change the salary rate,” Donahue said, “and we don’t pay the most.” However,

JEFFERY

they are seeing results, she said, as the principal retention rate has risen from 66 percent in 2014 to 83 percent in 2017. The focus on student well-being is not difficult to understand, in a district where more than 5,000 students were classified as homeless in the state’s most recent data.

“Students learn best when their basic health and emotional health needs are tended to,”

n “We are working closely with the district to implement a strategic plan to address its needs.”

– Jane Donahue, SLPS Foundation president

Donahue said. Between the new partnership with BJC and professionals provided by other non-profits and the state, the district now has more than 15

embedded behavioral health professionals.

“We’re trying to get more people to think we can make St. Louis great by making

Saint Louis Public Schools great,” Donahue said (with the echo of the Trump campaign surely unintentional). “It’s part of the city’s vitality and its infrastructure. We need a really strong school system to prepare tomorrow’s leaders.”

For more information, visit http://slpsfoundation.org, email info@slpsfoundation.org or call 314-436-2025.

Schnucks hosts hiring fairs to fill 1,000 jobs

With 1,000 open positions to fill, Schnuck Markets, Inc. will host hiring fairs on Thursday, September 27 and Friday, September 28, with a goal of fully staffing its 69 existing metro St. Louis stores as well as the 19 local stores the company is acquiring from SUPERVALU.

More than 600 Shop ‘n Save employees at the 19 stores have already accepted Schnucks job offers. Schnucks anticipates that it will need to hire 1,000 additional employees even after all acceptances.

The Thursday, September 27 hiring fair will take place at Orlando’s Event Center, 2050 Dorsett Village Plaza in Maryland Heights. The Friday, September 28 hiring fair will take place at the Gateway Convention Center, One Gateway Center, in Collinsville, Illinois. Schnucks recruiters will interview job seekers from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. No appointment is necessary. No experience is required and on-the-job training will be offered. To expedite the process, visit www. schnucks.com/careers and click “Apply Now” to complete an online application.

Missouri’s Department of Economic Development. She also served as community

continued from page B1 development officer with the Missouri Office of Community Engagement. Previously, she held various senior management and diversity strategy positions with private sector companies, including

Prudential Financial Services. Her work is informed by her experience as an entrepreneur, business consultant, elected official and community advocate.

Jeffery’s current and past civic involvement includes

leadership roles with the St. Louis Regional Unbanked Task Force; the Money Smart School of Finance for Children; and the Workforce Diversity Council in the state of Missouri’s Office of Equal Opportunity.

She is a graduate of the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

“I am pleased to be able to work toward creating and expanding opportunities for our city and our metro region to grow together,”

Jeffery said. “This work matches my strong desire to be a servant-leader, with the aim of helping everyone in our community rise together.”

Adams Elementary School preschool teacher Albert Sanders goes through a word-building exercise with students as Saint Louis Public Schools Foundation president Jane Donahue and board chair Valerie Bell observe the class.

Photo by Wiley Price

Living It

Introducing Roland Burrow

Emerging local artist makes lasting impression with ‘The Renaissance Revolution’

By Kenya Vaughn Of The St. Louis American

“The reaction was instant,” Scott Kerr said of the art he saw hanging on the walls of a popular South city hip-hop spot nearly two years ago. “I said, ‘This is genius-level quality’.” It isn’t a compliment that Kerr just throws around. His family has been in the art business since 1840 by way of McCaughen & Burr Fine Arts – the oldest continuously operating art gallery west of the Mississippi River. If 32 years of looking at art for a living has taught Kerr anything, it’s to know something special when he sees it. It was suggested that Kerr stopped by Blank Space on Cherokee to check out the work of an emerging local artist. The one-stop shop for the progressive creatives within the hip-hop community became the place where he discovered visual artist Roland Burrow.

He was so impressed with Burrow’s work, that McCaughen & Burr Fine Arts came to represent him. His “The Renaissance Revolution” exhibition opened at their Webster Groves Gallery two weeks ago. It will remain on display for another two weeks. The journey from Kerr’s discovery to the exhibition was a yearand-a-half in the making – and the beginning of what Kerr hopes (and expects) to be a national and international presence for Burrow, just as

the industry has made space for the likes of Kehinde Wiley and Kerry James Marshall.

“He’s a generational artist – and one that will stand the test of time,” Kerr said. “His work connects with everyone who sees it.”

It certainly did with the guests who browsed the gallery. The exhibition is mostly portrait work. Burrow captures the beauty of blackness in many forms – and in his own unique way. In “Bakay” the detail on his subject’s perfectly

n “I intend to use my art to create a bridge of understanding between black and white communities and begin to close the divide. The whole point of my art is to have everybody connect with it.”

- Roland Burrow

lined box haircut rivals that of a masterful barber. “Iris” was a flower dripping with swag, thanks to gold undertones and neon accents. It was an amazing introduction for Burrow. And Kerr feels it is only the beginning. While other kids were outside playing, Roland Burrow was drawing. His mother kept

See ART, C4

There goes ‘The Neighborhood’

Cedric The Entertainer leads new CBS Monday night sitcom

By Kenya Vaughn Of The St. Louis American

“My family has been here for decades,” Cedric The Entertainer says as he provides the voice-over for the series premiere of the CBS sitcom “The Neighborhood.” “I live in a proud, black neighborhood – and I intend to keep it that way.”

He stars as Calvin Butler, a family patriarch, suspicious of what he sees as an early sign of the gentrification within the neighborhood and surrounding community he’s been a part of for decades. When the Butlers hear the Johnsons would be the family moving in next door, Calvin Butler is eager to welcome them to the neighborhood upon hearing their last name.

They walk over to introduce themselves. A white man opens the door.

“We’re looking for the Johnsons,” Calvin Butler said.

“Dave Johnson,” the man says while extend-

‘Team J-Hud’ for Kennedy Holmes

Cedric The Entertainer’s new CBS sitcom ‘The Neighborhood’ will premiere at 7 p.m. on Monday, October 1. Urban sitcom veteran Tichina Arnold (“Martin,” “Everybody Hates Chris”) plays opposite Cedric as his wife Loretta Butler.

ing his hand. And so begins “The Neighborhood,” which

By Kenya Vaughn

American Whom she selected as her coach was the only thing not revealed during the extended teaser for Kennedy Holmes’ audition for “The Voice” ahead of the September 24 season premiere. But the truth is, Adam Levine, Kelly Clarkson and Blake Shelton never stood a chance. Once Jennifer Hudson hit the button to throw her hat in the ring to become celebrity coach for 13-yearold Florissant native Kennedy Holmes during her blind audition for “The Voice,” it was a wrap. “I honestly knew,” said Holmes, an eighthgrader at John Burroughs School. “One of my earliest performances was “I am Changing” by Jennifer Hudson. So, it was like, ‘I want to meet her, I want to sing with her and I want to learn from her.’” She did, she has – and she will. Holmes’ blind audition for the 15th season premiere served as the sneak preview for the season. She sang Adele’s “Turning Tables.”

n Maroon 5 front man Adam Levine went so far as to say that she could be the biggest talent to emerge from “The Voice.”

“I was so nervous,” Holmes admitted. “Over the years, I’ve become good at hiding how nervous I am. I was on stage. It was really dark. Then, the band started playing and I was like ‘Okay, it’s go time. Turn it on.’”

Did she ever! All four judges, including Hudson, wanted to be her coach. Maroon 5 front man Adam Levine went so far as to say that she could be the biggest talent to emerge from “The Voice.”

“When I was on that stage and I saw all four of them turn, I was just so focused on finishing the song and telling the story,” Holmes said. “I remember all of them saying that they want to be moved – that they don’t want just singing.” Country star Blake Shelton asked to be her coach so that she could teach him how to sing like her. “They were telling me I have a shot and I can make a career out of my voice, that I can do this,” Holmes said. “It was a confidence boost that made me believe in myself – and very happy with where I am in life.”

Kennedy

Thur., Oct. 11, 5:30 p.m.,

The Community Action Agency of St. Louis County presents Doors of Opportunity. Enjoy entertainment and auction activities while raising funds to move people from poverty. 2709 Woodson Rd., 63114. For more information, visit www.eventbrite.com.

literary

Sun., Sept. 30, 3 p.m., 4th Annual STL Black Author’s Book Fair. Featuring 11-yearold bestselling author, Mikey Wren. 14th Street Artist Community, 2701 N. 14th St., 63106. For more information, visit www.facebook.com.

Fri., Oct. 5, 7 p.m., Left Bank Books hosts author Charlene Carruthers, author of Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. 399 N. Euclid Ave., 63108. For more information, visit www.leftbank.com.

Mon., Oct. 8, The Lee Institute Speaker Series welcomes Michael Sandel, author of Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? Sandel discusses, The Lost Art of the Democratic Argument. Ladue Chapel, 9450 Clayton Rd., 63124. For more information, visit www.leeinstitute.net.

Tues., Oct. 9, 7 p.m., St. Louis County Library hosts author Justin Driver, author of The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, The Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind Library Headquarters, 1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd., 63131. For more information, visit www. slcl.org.

theatre

Sept. 28 – Oct. 14, Upstream Theater presents CHEF. The story of how one woman went from being a head chef to a convicted inmate running a prison kitchen. Starring Linda

Kennedy. The Kranzberg, 501 N. Grand Blvd., 63103. For more information, visit www. metrotix.com.

Oct. 11 – 14, UMSL Theatre presents Chasing the White Rabbit. An adaptation of Alice in Wonderland with a focus on the opioid epidemic that is currently ravaging our country. Touhill Performing Arts, UMSL, 1 University Blvd., 63121. For more information, visit www.touhill.org.

Oct. 18 – 21, Variety Theatre presents Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Sing, dance and swim along as we follow Ariel’s journey to walk on land and find true love. Touhill Performing Arts, UMSL, 1 University Blvd., 63121.

Fri., Oct. 19, 7:30 p.m.,

City/Cité St. Louis. Amala Dianor will perform his solo work “Man Rec” alongside a performance by poet Treasure Shields Redmond. Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 3716 Washington Blvd., 63108. For more information, visit www. pulitzerarts.org.

Fri., Oct. 19, 8 p.m., Je’Caryous Johnson and Snoop Dogg present The Redemption of a Dogg Tour with Snoop Dogg and Tamar Braxton. Stifel Theatre, 1400 Market St., 63103.For more information, visit www. ticketmaster.com.

art

Through September 30, Let’s Play Ball! Field House Museum, 634 S. Broadway, 63102. For more information, visit www.facebook.com.

Sun., Sept. 30, 10 a.m., Art in the Park St. Louis Hills. 70 artists will come together to showcase their creative wares amid live music, tasty food and kids’ activities. Francis Park, 5399 Donovan Ave., 63109. For more information, visit www.artintheparkstl.com.

Oct. 6 – 7, The Shaw Neighborhood Improvement

Association presents the Historic Shaw Art Fair. Featuring 135 artists and includes food, music, art demonstrations and kid’s activities, and more. 4100 & 4200 blocks of Flora Pl., 63110. For more information, visit www.shawstlouis.org.

Wed., Oct. 10, 6:30 p.m., RE: Black Visual Mourning. Panelists explore ways that black artists use visual culture to memorialize black bodies in response to Sanford Biggers. Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 3750 Washington Blvd., 63018. For more information, visit www. camstl.org.

lectures and workshops

Thur., Oct. 4, 7 p.m., The League of Women Voters of Metro St. Louis presents Missouri Ballot Issues. Come to hear explanations from

experts – pro and con - for the November ballot issues. Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Rd., 63117. For more information, visit www. facebook.com.

Sat., Oct. 6, 9 a.m., STL Leadership Summit: Empowering Leaders and Building Relationships. Connect with business and community leaders, hear from inspiring speakers, and more. Deaconess Center, 1000 N. Vandeventer Ave., 63113. For more information, call (314) 580-9353.

Mon., Oct.8, 10:30 a.m., Maryville University hosts Women & Leadership Seminar: A Conversation with Jackie Joyner. Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, 975 N. Warson Rd., 63132. For more information, visit www.maryville.edu.

Tues., Oct. 9, 4 p.m., The Links, Inc., St. Louis Chapter presents Increasing Minority Engagement

in Alzheimer’s Disease Research. Eric P. Newman Education Center, 320 S. Euclid Ave., 63110. For more information, visit www. alzheimer.wustl.edu.

Wed., Oct. 10, 7 p.m., Jazz St. Louis presents Whitaker Jazz Speaks: 1950: The Year Jazz Changed on Two Coasts. Marc Myers explores the impact of outside factors on the genre. Ferring Jazz Bistro, 3536 Washington Ave., 63103. For more information, visit www.jazzstl.org.

Fri., Oct. 12, 7 p.m. Ron Stallworth, a retired black police detective who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the late ‘70s. Spike Lee’s latest film BlacKkKlansman is based on Stallworth’s autobiography. He will speak at Webster University, Grant Gymnasium on the Webster Groves Campus. The event is sponsored by Webster University Multicultural Center and International Student

Affairs. For more information, visit www.webster.edu.

Sat., Sept. 29, 5 p.m., The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Gateway Chapter presents Light the Night Cricket Field, Forest Park, 4210 Forest Park Ave., 63108. For more information, visit www.registration.lightthenight. org.

Sun., Sept. 30, 7:30 a.m., SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital presents a Sun Run. 5k and 1-mile fun run. Ballpark Village, 601 Clark Ave., 63102. For more information, visit www. glennon.org/sunrun.

Sat., Oct. 6, 8 a.m., 9th Annual Sista Strut Breast Cancer Awareness Walk 2018. Increase awareness about the issues of breast cancer in women of color, learn about resources and celebrate survivors. Gateway Arch, 11 N. 4th St., 63102. For more information, visit www. thebeatstl.iheart.com.

Sat., Oct. 13, 8:30 a.m., Autism Speaks Walk St. Louis. Walk and fundraise together to enhance the lives of people living with autism. Upper Muny Parking Lot, Forest Park, 63112. For more information, visit www. autismspeaks.org/site-wide/ st-louis.

Sat., Oct. 13, 9 a.m., Shalom Church City of Peace presents HealthFest 2018. Hazelwood East High School, 11300 Dunn Rd., 63138. For more information or to register, call (314) 653-2322 or email healthfest@shalomccop.org.

spiritual

Sun., Sept. 30, 11 a.m., Higher Heights Deliverance C.O.G.I.C. invites you to Family and Friends Day. 2127 California Ave., 63104. For more information, call (314) 776-2996.

Kenya Vaughn recommends

4th Annual STL Black Author’s Book Fair featuring 11-year-old bestselling author Mikey Wren For more information, see LITERARY.

their home stocked with art supplies, which he used mostly to recreate cartoon characters.

He enjoyed drawing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles most of all. A pop culture phenomenon of the late 1980s and early 90s, the crimefighting crew of turtles were raised and mentored by a rat to fight off crime and peril in New York City. They happened to be named after four great Italian Renaissance artists, Donatello, Raphael, Leonardo (DaVinci) and Michelangelo – which was his favorite to draw.

“I never made that connection until right now,” Burrow said with amusement. The artist who inspired the cartoon characters’ name has since made the list of people who have inspired him on his creative journey.

Burrow could easily be one of the interesting portraits he creates with his dark glasses (in the daytime), free form fade, mesh sleeveless shirt and kicks with zebra print and bling accented Velcro straps. He is quiet, but not shy. He doesn’t waste words. Each one comes as the result of an intentional thought. He doesn’t seem particularly keen on talking about himself. He later confessed that he’d rather have the art speak for him.

“Who I am doesn’t’ matter,” Burrow said. “What I leave behind matters.”

His formal arts training began at McCluer High School and continued at University of Missouri-St. Louis, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in in Fine Arts Studies. Most of his art in “The Renaissance Revolution,” which is inspired by both the European Renaissance and The Harlem Renaissance, features imagery of the African American experience.

His goal is portraying his subjects in a positive light, for the sake of his community –and himself personally.

n “It’s a blessing,” Burrow said. “I want to work for people who have a love for the work I do, not just to make money.”

“Growing up on the North Side, growing up black, leaves little opportunity to view your community in a positive light. Historically, the images seen of the black community are of slavery, gangs, thugs and poverty,” Burrow said in the companion booklet for the exhibition. “The people that I paint are drawn from everyday scenes from my community.” They are paintings of black people by a black artist, he doesn’t see them as black art. Burrow feels his work reflects his interpretation of humanity –the world as he sees it. He feels that the work and other artists

of color should be categorized in the same way, as opposed to “black art.”

“I intend to use my art to create a bridge of understanding between black and white communities and begin to close the divide,” Burrow said. “The whole point of my art is to have everybody connect with it.”

He is particularly proud of the work he did with Sara Kerr, Scott Kerr’s daughter – who is also a part of McCaughen & Burr Fine Arts team – in bringing historical snapshots of black life in St. Louis around the first few decades of the 20th century.

“I enjoyed putting the pieces together to make these historical paintings that are a visual reflection of what happened,” Burrow said. “You hear stories and read words, but there isn’t very much imagery to show about that time. It was a lot of pressure, kind of like films that are based on true stories that spark arguments and debate about accuracy, but I enjoyed the challenge.”

He’s also enjoying the partnership that has grown between him, the Kerr family and their gallery.

“It’s a blessing,” Burrow said. “I want to work for people who have a love for the work I do, not just to make money.”

Burrow also wants to inspire other artists – especially to invest in themselves and have faith enough in their talent to pursue their passion.

“There’s a lot of hustle, but you just have to put as much effort into working for yourself as you would working for somebody else,” Burrow said. “You won’t make it if you waste your time thinking, ‘What if I don’t make it?’”

You have to make the decision that you will make it and go from there.”

“The Renaissance Revolution” is currently on display at McCaughen & Burr Fine Arts, 117 West Lockwood, Webster Groves, Mo. 63119. For more information, visit www.mccaughenandburr.com or call (314) 961-7786.

Continued from C1

But the biggest moment of the show came when Hudson sang her praises. Holmes lost control of her emotions when it was Hudson’s turn to speak. Through the tears, she told Hudson that she always wanted to sing with her. Hudson obliged. “I’m ready,” Hudson said as she was handed a microphone and made her way to the stage.

Holmes still can’t believe it happened, even though the clip went viral and has been viewed nearly 13 million times and counting.

“When she said that, I was just trying not to cry again,” said Holmes. “I have no words for it. I was like, ‘The Jennifer Hudson wanted to sing with me. This can’t be happening. I must be in a dream.’ I was trying not to cry so that I could be able to sing – because singing and crying don’t really go

together.”

She got her emotions in check, and wowed Hudson, the rest of the coaches and the viewers all over again.

“As many probably predicted, she went with Hudson. “Before even going on ‘The Voice,’ I remember just watching videos of Jennifer, and coming across her talking about The Voice and saying when it comes to ‘J-Hud productions,’ she will take you under her wing and she truly cares.”

It was her mother Karen Holmes’ idea that she audition for “The Voice” once they lowered the age requirement to 13. “As soon as I turned 13, my mom was like, ‘You are auditioning, right now.’

Karen and Kennedy traveled to Indianapolis for the open call and “things went from there.”

She’s only been performing before audiences for four years, but that’s nearly a third of her life. “My mom says that as soon as I started talking, I started singing,” Kennedy said. “I began performing in front of audiences since I was about

my African American audience over to the network, I think there is the potential for great conversation.”

Continued from C1

will premiere as part of the CBS fall lineup of new shows on Monday, October 1.

“The Neighborhood” marks Cedric’s “big three” network sitcom debut. The show’s premiere comes a few short months after the St. Louis native’s legacy within the entertainment industry was cemented by a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“My career is a diverse career, but my core audience has been African American,” he told The Los Angeles Times “And then CBS is a unique environment in the sense that it is a largely … white American network. To be able to bring my urban audience,

He made a name for himself nationally on the small screen as host of the second season of BET’s Comic View. He went on to have a game show and a handful of sitcoms under his belt, beginning with “The Steve Harvey Show” as righthand-man to the fellow King of Comedy. Cedric is returning as a supporting player for the second season of the TBS sitcom, “The Last O.G.” starring Tracy Morgan and recently enjoyed a successful run as leading man of TV Land’s “The Soul Man,” alongside Niecy Nash.

“The Neighborhood” was created is written by Jim Reynolds and directed by James Burrows. Urban sitcom veteran Tichina Arnold, who plays Calvin’s wife Loretta Butler, is among

nine. I saw the way crowds reacted – and singing was a passion of mine – and it made me want to pursue this.” At 10, she blew St. Louis audiences away with her performance as Little Inez during The Muny’s 2015 presentation of “Hairspray.”

Three years later, all eyes are on her as she moves forward as a music star in the making. She is grateful to her parents, brother, extended family, friends, teachers and the whole region for their love and support.

“I’m extremely happy to be representing my city of St. Louis,” Kennedy said. “We need a confidence boost to tell people that we need to come out of our box and strive for things we thought we could never reach.

“We have a lot of talented people out here in St. Louis –and we just need to show the world.”

NBC’s “The Voice” airs at 7 p.m. Monday nights on NBC. Check local listings for channels. For more information on the show, visit https://www.

the show’s co-stars. CBS has ordered 13 episodes of “The Neighborhood.”

Cedric and fellow St. Louis native Eric Rhone (Cedric’s longtime friend and business partner) serve as executive producers for the show by way of their A Bird And A Bear Entertainment. They share executive producer responsibilities along with Reynolds, who created also the show. “What we deliver, it has a degree of truth and really great humor and sensibility in what represents a black family in this day and age,” Cedric told The Los Angeles Times. The Neighborhood airs at 7 p.m. Monday nights on CBS starting October 1. Check local listings for channels. For more information on the show, visit https://www.cbs.com/shows/theneighborhood/.

Kennedy Angeline Sams Crowned Miss FASHIONETTA(SM) 2018

$71,500.00+ Scholarships Awarded

The Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated® Gamma Omega Chapter presented its 34th Annual FASHIONETTA(SM) Scholarship Cotillion on Sunday, May 27, 2018 in the Marriott St. Louis Grand Hotel in St. Louis, MO with over 800 people in attendance.

Eighteen lovely young ladies were presented at the annual event:

Fumilola Adewale, Zari Anderson, Jailyn Barnett, Bria Dunn, Jazmine Fullerton, Emoni George, Kennedi Ginger, Myiah Hall, Kamryn Haynes, Cameron Jefferies, Khalia Rucker, Kennedy Sams, Clarke Shead, Chrishana Smith, Lydia Stewart, Mary Townsend, Valarie Whitted and Jessica Wilson.

The escorts for this event were: Amir Ali, Allen Buckner, Lyell Champagne, William Clay, Zachary Coleman, Robert Givens, Aric Hamilton, Jalen Head, Isaiah Jones, Joshua Morton, Amechi Ramsey, LaGrant Sanford, Kristopher Wilson, MacKenzie Stamps, Ephriam Todd, Keion Willis, Kayvon Wilson, Desmond Woods and Henry Woods.

FASHIONETTA(SM) is a trademark of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated® and a fundraising activity for the sorority’s philanthropic endeavors. Debutantes and escorts participate in an eight month timeframe experience which includes church service, college preparation workshops, community service, entrepreneurial workshops, etiquette & fine

dining experiences, healthcare, Mother – Daughter Luncheon and an overnight retreat. Debutantes and escorts receive monetary awards at the Scholarship Cotillion. Over $71,500.00 was awarded to the debutantes and escorts in scholarships.

Kennedy Angeline Sams was crowned Miss FASHIONETTA(SM) 2018, daughter of Dr. Alvin and Karen Sams. Kennedy is a 2018 graduate of Clayton High School, will attend Spelman College and major in Biology. Her career goal is to become a Pediatric Dentist.

First runner-up was Miss Kamryn Jordain Haynes, daughter of James Haynes and Robin Britt. Kamryn is a 2018 honor graduate of

Webster Groves High School and will attend Washington University in St. Louis, MO majoring in Psychology. Her career goal is to become a Neuropsychologist.

Second runner-up was Miss Kennedi Lynn Ginger, daughter of Kevin and LaVonne Ginger. Kennedi is a 2018 graduate of Whitfield High School and will attend Tulane University and major in Biomedical Engineering. Her career goal is to design prosthetics to enhance the lives of disabled children.

Third runner-up was Miss Zari Taylor Anderson, daughter of Drs. Reynaldo and Denise HooksAnderson. Zari is a 2018 graduate of Metro-Academic and Classical High School and will attend Jackson State University, majoring in Biology and her career goal is to become a Physician.

Fourth runner-up was Miss Jessica Camille Wilson, daughter of Kevin and Loren (Stevenson) Wilson. Jessica is a 2018 graduate of Westminister Christian Academy High School and will attend High Point University, majoring in Strategic Communications. She plans to pursue a career in Public Relations.

Debutantes Colleges for Fall 2018 Fumilola Adewale – Benedictine College, Jailyn Barnett – University of Missouri, Bria Dunn – Alabama A & M University, Jazmine Fullerton – Spelman College, Emoni George – Tennessee State University, Myiah Hall – University of Missouri –Kansas City, Cameron Jefferies – Jackson State University, Khalia Rucker – Tennessee State University, Clarke Shead – Duke University, Chrishana Smith - University of Memphis, Lydia Stewart – University of Kansas, Mary Townsend –Washington University in St. Louis, and Valarie Whitted – DePaul University. Other awards and winners presented at this event included: Entrepreneur Awardees –Fumilola Adewale, Allen Buckner, Aric Hamilton, Kamryn Haynes, Mary Townsend, Amechi Ramsey, Kayvon Wilson Buck – Bohannon Liberal Arts

Awardee – Zachary Coleman Buck – Bohannon Liberal Arts 2nd Awardee – Joshua Morton Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, Eta Boule Awardees – Robert Givens, LaGrant Sanford, Kristopher Wilson, Ephriam Todd and Keion Willis Ethel H. Lyle Awardee

Photos by Jennifer Williams/ JW Photography

ESL celebrates college-readiness week

East St. Louis School District 189, a GEAR UP program site, is participating in National GEAR UP Week 2018, September 23-29. This week celebrates Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP), a college-access program. On Monday, parents, staff, band members and local college mascots welcomed students with pictures and giveaways. On Tuesday during homeroom, juniors and seniors participated in timed game of college trivia – with prices

awarded to top competitors from each grade. Families joined students and staff on Wednesday for Family College Night at East St. Louis Senior High School. On Thursday, staff will be wearing college shirts and teachers will be sharing their “teacher college journey” with students during advisory period. This summer, District 189 GEAR UP students visited 13 colleges in the states of North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Students were exposed to a variety of campuses, including

historically black colleges like Norfolk State and North Carolina A&T, to private schools such as Duke and the College of William and Mary. The District 189 GEAR UP program serves students starting in 7th grade and follows them through their first year of postsecondary education.

For more information about the GEAR UP program at the East St. Louis School District, contact Staccy Lampkin at staccy.lampkin@estl189.com.

Sierra Club lists ‘environmental heroes’

Chappelle-Nadal, Franks among legislators with perfect voting record on environment

American staff

State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal and state Representatives Bruce Franks (D-St Louis) are among eight St. Louis-area legislators – all Democrats – who received a perfect score on the Missouri Sierra Club’s 2017-2018 Environmental Legislative Scorecard. This scorecard details the voting record of all Missouri General Assembly members on critical environmental issues. The scorecard tracks legislators’ voting performance

on 14 separate bills. Politicians were graded on votes cast for issues such as protecting waterways from factory farm pollution and poisonous coal ash, reigning-in monopoly utility companies, and proposed sales of public parklands.

The other area legislators with a perfect score on their environmental vote records are state Senator Jill Schupp (D-Creve Coeur) and state Representatives Deb Lavender (D-Kirkwood), Tracy McCreery (D-St Louis), Sue Meredith (D-St Louis), Stacey Newman (D-St Louis) and Sarah Unsicker (D-Shrewsbury).

“Our representatives in Jefferson City are responsible for protecting clean air and water and it’s their job to sensibly steward our public lands,” said Missouri Sierra Club’s Chapter Director John Hickey. “Holding our leaders

accountable for their decisions can literally help Missourians breathe easier.”

In contrast, several St Louisarea elected officials – all Republicans – have a 0 percent environmental voting record, including: state Representatives Phil Christofanelli (R-St Peters), Bruce DeGroot (R-Chesterfield), David Gregory (R-St Louis), Derek Grier (R-Chesterfield), Dean Plocher (R-Chesterfield), and Dan Shaul (R-Imperial).

“Before going to the polls this fall, we hope voters consult this legislative scorecard in order to support environmental heroes and to vote-out the zeros,” Hickey said. Election day is Tuesday, November 6. The deadline to register to vote in election is October 10.

Please visit http://bit.ly/ sclegscorecard to view the scorecard.

Be a Tourist in Your Own Town

St. Louis’ shining stars of hospitality

By Kiara Bryant For the St. Louis American

At its Annual Meeting and Hospitality Heroes Recognition ceremony on Thursday, September 13, Explore St. Louis honored hospitality industry workers who go above and beyond the call of duty to make sure visitors enjoy their stay in St. Louis. Because frontline employees are the backbone of the hospitality industry, we celebrated over 155 of our heroes in hospitality from area hotels and attractions such as the Crowne Plaza St. Louis Airport, Drury Inn & Suites St. Louis Convention Center and the Saint Louis Zoo.

Hospitality superheroes are individuals who consistently provide high quality customer service, go the extra mile to “wow” guests and pull out all the stops during unexpected situations, and make sure all visitors to St. Louis have positive and memorable experiences. Here are the stories of 10 outstanding industry workers. They continue to amaze us and give us a sense of pride in the great work that people in our community are doing.

Shafonda Tobar of the Hilton St. Louis Airport helped a young boy who was hesitant about staying in a hotel because he heard that strange things happen in hotels. Shafonda reassured the boy and allowed him to inspect the hotel room for monsters under the bed. After looking around the boy gave her his approval. Later that day, she brought him treats to ensure he had a nice stay. She left a lasting impression on him, and when it was time to leave he didn’t want the trip to end. He even wrote her a little note.

Tim Byrne, Geof Godfrey and Bethany Hernandez of Hilton St. Louis Downtown at the Arch saved a man’s life. When Tim received a call from a diabetic guest’s wife that he had fallen ill, Tim, Geof and Bethany sprang into action.

They brought the guest orange juice, a candy bar, a turkey sandwich and a blanket while they called 911. They also notified his wife of the situation and stayed by his side until he was well.

Sabrina Armstrong of the Hollywood Casino St. Louis learned that a guest’s sister had just passed away and was very empathetic and understanding when taking her reservation. The guest also mentioned where she worked. A few days later, Sabrina brought the guest flowers, a card, and a fruit tray with condolences to her job. The guest was grateful for Sabrina’s actions.

Lashawna Harper of the Marriott St. Louis Grand Hotel met a guest in the restaurant who had spilled coffee on his shirt and needed to wear the shirt the following day at an

n Nikki Guest and Paul Torno of the Saint Louis Zoo helped return all five class rings lost at the zoo last year. They researched the schools and initials on each ring using the internet.

important meeting. She took the guest’s shirt home to clean it and brought it back the next day. The guest was appreciative for Lashawna’s help in his time of need.

Denise Dunn of the Parkway Hotel helped a couple who was staying at the hotel while the husband had surgery. After a stressful few days it was time to leave the hotel, and the wife realized that she had misplaced her wallet. Denise comforted the couple, helped them to retrace their steps and offered them some money for their drive home. The wallet was returned after the guests returned home, and the guests mailed a thank you card to Denise with a token of their appreciation.

Nikki Guest and Paul Torno of the Saint Louis Zoo helped return all five class rings lost at the zoo last year. Paul and Nikki researched the schools and initials on each ring using the internet. They identified the owners of all of the class rings. Owners resided in several states. Not only did they spend hours researching schools, but they also contacted the schools to get the owners’ information.

Scott Sparks of St. Louis Lambert International Airport –Whelan Security answered the call when a guest was looking for her lost pin. He found the pin face down in a hole in between the seats of a vehicle, and 45 minutes later Scott called back and told the guest he could meet her in the lobby with her pin. The guest was very happy that Scott made her day by returning the gift that her husband gave to her. Because of the hard work of these individuals and many others every day, St. Louis welcomes nearly 26 million visitors for leisure, conventions, meetings and business travel each year. These visitors spend $5.5 billion in St. Louis and help create 88,000 jobs for area residents generating annual wages of $2.87 billion. The America’s Center Convention Complex is a key part of driving our local travel and tourism industry and is hugely important for the City of St. Louis, St. Louis County and the State of Missouri. On an annual basis, the complex hosts an average of 109 events generating over 600,000 attendees, 350,000 hotel room nights, and $258 million of direct spending to the regional economy, supporting the equivalent of 3,340 full-time jobs. Find more information about the St. Louis hospitality industry at www.explorestlouis.com.

East St. Louis School District 189 GEAR UP students with a mascot from UMSL celebrating National GEAR UP Week.

its Annual Meeting and Hospitality Heroes Recognition ceremony on September 13, Explore St. Louis honored 155 of heroes in hospitality

attractions/

Celebrations

Arts Awards Leaders

Pat Smith-Thurman and Solomon Thurman, owners of 10th Street Gallery, will co-chair the Arts and Education Council’s St. Louis Arts Awards in January 2019. Pat, a retired IT executive at Mastercard, served on the Arts and Education Council Board of Directors from 2003 to 2006. Solomon Thurman is a respected artist, researcher and teacher, widely recognized for his painting commissions. Celebrating its 28th year, the St. Louis Arts Awards is the region’s preeminent event honoring artists, educators, individuals and organizations that achieve a legacy of artistic excellence and enrich St. Louis’s arts and cultural community. Adrienne Davis, William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law and Vice Provost of Washington University in St. Louis, will emcee the event.

Reunions

All reunion announcements can be viewed online!

Beaumont High Class of 1978 40th Reunion Extravaganza, Save the Date: October 5-7, 2018. Call or text Marietta Shegog Shelby at 314-799-5296 for further details.

East St. Louis Sr. High School Class of 1968 will celebrate its 50 year reunion

on Friday, October 12, 2018 at the Main Street Brewing Center, 6435 West Main Street, Belleville, IL. 62223. For more information contact Linda Ward Spencer (618) 830-8221 or laws50@aol.com.

Hadley Teach classes of 1962-1963 will host their Annual Picnic on Saturday, Aug. 18 at Marvin’s Park, 4003 Camellia. Hot dogs, soda and water provided. Bring chairs, family and friends! For more information, contact: Virdell Robinson Stennis 314773-8177, Ora Scott Roberts 314-222-3662, Wilhelmina Gibson Baker 314-630-9647 or Marvin Young 314-422-5757.

Northwest High Class of 1979 is planning on cruising for our 40th class reunion and

would love for you to join us!

Date to sail is set for July 20, 2019 and you can feel free to contact: Duane Daniels at 314-568-2057 or Howard Day at 414-698-4261 for further information. Please don’t miss the boat!

Southwest High School Longhorns would like to announce the class reunion for the classes 1985-1989, Date: September 14-16, 2018. For more information please contact Revitra Greco (314) 358-9522 or Kim Taylor (314) 369-3537.

St. Rose of Lima (Goodfellow & Etzel, closed 1977) will host an all-class reunion on Saturday, Sept. 8, Jewel Center, 407 Dunn Rd. See www.strosereunion.com for details.

Sumner High Class of 1979 will hold its “Bulldogs Rock the Boat” BIG 4-0 Reunion Cruise, June 22-27, 2019. For further information, email your contact information to sumner1979@ymail.com or call 314-406-4309. Join our Facebook group at Sumner High Class of ‘79.

Vashon High School Class of 1973 will celebrate its 45th reunion on Saturday, August 11, 2018 in St. Louis. We’re still in the process of rounding up all of our graduates and would love for you all to contact us. Please email us at tpjgramells@aol.com for additional information. You may also RSVP and pay by going to VashonHigh1973.

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 Pine St. St. Louis, 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

myevent.com. For those not on the internet, please call Terri (Bell) Johnson 314-313-2113.

O’Fallon Tech will be celebrating its “50th” Class Reunion on Nov. 2-3, 2018 at Hollywood Casino, 777 Casino Center Dr. Maryland

Heights, MO 63043. Class of 1969 and others are invited. To RSVP for the head count, so please contact: Joann Durham Harris 314-363-4260, Donnell Jackson 314-494-4807, Gloria Houston King 314-591-7306 or Kelvin Murphy 314-616-1007.

Frederick and Elaine Johnson will celebrate their 5th anniversary on September 28. Thanks for being the sweetest part of my life. I’m looking forward to years ahead of discovering us together. Loving you forever, Elaine

On the cusp of Salute. If you don’t know that the St. Louis American Foundation’s 31st Annual Salute to Excellence in Education Scholarship and Awards Gala is going down this weekend, I don’t know what to say other than something is seriously wrong with you. I’m so excited I can barely see straight! I know my opinion may seem partial, but it is seriously one of the most inspiring and uplifting experiences you will ever attend. Giving praise where praise is due to scholars and educators in front of one of the city’s most influential citizens is a sight to behold. And when the formal program is over, we party like its 1999. Denise Thimes is going to slay her cabaret, and DJ Kut will have the tables blazing for the afterparty. I don’t know if it’s sold out yet, but it’s worth it to find out by visiting stlamerican.com or calling (314) 533-8000.

Standing ovation for ‘Static.’ Before I say anything, I must say this: wasn’t it a good weekend to be black and in St. Louis? Well, every weekend is a good weekend to be black and in St. Louis, but it sounded catchy and there were some major festivities catered to us that had me feeling like St. Louis was temporarily a lightweight Wakanda. Shall we get into it? We must. Things got started Thursday night with the premiere of young St. Louis filmmaker David Kirkman’s long awaited debut of his film ‘Static’ in its entirety. The trailer for the film won the local Real to Reel short film competition presented by Gentlemen Jack over the summer – and the full “Static” was all the rage, do you hear me? Folks were wrapped around the Tivoli to get a glimpse of the Kirkman’s take on the classic comic book super hero “Static Shock.” The theater actually low-key looked like opening day of “Black Panther” with all of us coming through to show support for a cinematic effort. I won’t give the details of the film away, because he is dropping it on Facebook by way of the film’s page on Sunday. Be sure to check it out so he can get the kind of views that get the attention of studios, producers and/ or sponsors.

Naturally ever after. The melanin movie magic continued as Tendai “The Hair Whisperer” Morris celebrated her new partnership with retail giant Macy’s with a screening of the Netflix film “Nappily Ever After” and one of her famed Texture Talks, based on how folks related to Sanaa Lathan’s character’s hair drama and extreme big chop - and the turn of events that took place in its wake. Sanaa was about the only one who didn’t show up for the red carpet celebration that was so full of beautiful sistas dressed to the nines that I was surprised the House of Soul wasn’t leaning over. I got my life! And I was so thrilled with the outpouring shown to Tendai as she continues her work to provide options for the exploding natural hair market. The grand entrance with a toast and “Girl on Fire” performance by Tish Haynes-Keys that put Alicia Keys (no relation at least not as far as the voice goes) to shame brought Tendai to tears. The whole evening was just magical – even when the folks were talking back to the screen like they used to do at the late, great Halls Ferry Cine.

Tasting black St. Louis. Satan was clearly involved in the scheduling of the Taste of Black St. Louis as I made my last push to be able to take deep breaths while wearing my salute gown, but the event itself was still wonderful. I was expecting to have a nice experience when I made my way to Tower Grove Park before noon in the hopes that the smells wouldn’t be poppin’ to the point where temptation got the better of me. I was too late. Tara’s Tasty Treats and Yashica’s Desserts Out The Jar will be the responsible party if I have to resort to bedazzling a trench coat to top off my gala look in an effort to hide a halfway up zipper. But back to the taste. The logistics, the organization, the vendors and the crowd make me eager to not only see Taste of Black St. Louis return, but expand. I ran into some folks who came all the way from Chicago to check it out (I see you Black Foodies!) – and they were thrilled with their experience, saying it was definitely worth the drive. I know I wouldn’t hesitate to head from North County to South City for a 2019 Black Taste!

Nice effort from the Natural Hair Expo. The Downtown Holiday Inn Express was transformed into the Natural Hair Express as the 4th Annual Natural Hair and Black Cultural Expo got underway this weekend. Yes, another black people event – and it ain’t over. I told y’all the city was Wakanda on the low this weekend. Anyway, I got a t-shirt, some samples and fellowshipped with friends during the youth fashion show hosted by a woman who was giving me equal parts KiKi Shepherd and grown up Olivia from “The Color Purple.”

Kudos to Conciousfest. The blackest event of them all was saved for last. Just when I thought I couldn’t get any more woke from a weekend of events for us and by us, I headed downtown for Conscious fest – an event that had some the most Afrocentric performances and retail vendors in one place at one time in St. Louis. The aroma on the whole block of South 4th street was a blend of incense, African oils and Shea Butter –and it was on ten. And the dashikis and head wraps were deep, the beautiful irony is that it was right near parking for Busch Stadium. Listen, my favorite rap from the evening of folks that graced the stage had a line in it that said, “I thank God for being black.” I was like, “Get out of my head!”

Skylar’s birthday ball. My weekend closed out with the birthday extravaganza of the wonderful designer and stylist Skylar Barnes on Sunday at the Central West End Bed and Breakfast. He really outdid himself with the four wardrobe changes. I think I’m partial to the tuxedo paired with the sequined ski mask inspired by Beyonce’s original On The Run get up. All the stylish tastemakers came through – including some I hadn’t seen in awhile, like Shaki’s super fashionable baby sister Shemelle. I didn’t stay long, but I was surrounded by folks long enough to have a blast and get my entire life – as well as some last-minute salute accessory ideas. If the weather doesn’t cooperate, I might try to borrow Dameon Christian’s glorious top hat for humidity’s sake.

Tish Haynes-Keys and Katrina Reece came through to show love to Tendai @ the Healthy Hair Solutions celebration Friday @ The House of Soul

Self-described black foodies Coretta and Dion were delighted with the inaugural Taste of Black St. Louis Saturday @ Tower Grove Park

Jaron and Kim came through for the inaugural Taste of Black St. Louis Saturday afternoon @ Tower Grove Park

Cyrhonda, Nicholas and Jemella helped Skylar celebrate his birthday with style Sunday @ CWE Bed and Breakfast

Janai, Alicia and April were among the fashion tastemakers toasting to Skylar on his birthday Sunday @ CWE Bed and Breakfast

Skylar made an entrance with his second of four birthday looks during his gathering Sunday @ CWE Bed and Breakfast

Brooklynn and Anthony were a stylish part of the melanin magic happening @ Consciousfest Saturday evening

Cliff and Pam were on hand for the premiere of David Kirkman’s film ‘Static’ Thursday night @ The Tivoli

Longtime friends Tendai and Nichol enjoyed a capacity crowd Friday @ House of Soul

Elizabeth Donielle and Will C were among the movers and shakers who helped the 4th Annual Natural Hair Expo a Success @ Holiday Inn Express

Nationally renowned Comic View alum and Martin Lawrence 1st Amendment Stand Up winner B-Phlat and Jessie Taylor brought the house down with their sets Sunday night at The Laugh Lounge.

INTERIM PASTOR

Missionary Baptist Church is seeking a Interim Pastor. Please submit resumes to Johnsonc1625@yahoo.com

Contact Person

FIREMEDIC

Pattonville Fire Protection District is accepting applications for a FIREMEDIC position. Must meet minimum qualification, please see website www.pattonvillefd.com for details. Apply at 13900 St. Charles Rock Road, Bridgeton, Missouri, 63044; from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., October 1st through October 12th, 2018.

CCC&C INC. ARMED AND UNARMED

SECURITY NEEDED APPLY IN PERSON, EXPERIENCED OFFICERS

6000 W. FLORISSANT AVENUE, STL 63136 NO PHONE CALLS

HANDYMAN NEEDED

Handyman needed for city apartment complex. The job pays $10 per hr. Carpentry, plumbing, painting and drywall experience preferred. To inquire call Tim 314-319-8597

PARAMEDICS

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

Starting $56,294; $60,294 w/CCP-C $84,344 after 4 years Benefits

REQUIRED: EMT-P certification through the State of Missouri PREFERRED: CCP-C or FP-C certification Applications accepted September 24 – October 31, 2018, 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.

DAYCARE HELP WANTED Full & Part time

Experienced Needed Wee Care Childcare Call Mrs. Simone 314-868-9909

JOB POSTING CORRECTION LIEUTENANT

TEACHER

Building Futures needs design and build teacher for grades K-12 to teach model-making, wood-working, design, computer programs and problem solving. Full time; 35- 45K. Must love working with young people and learning new skills.

Call: 314 – 518 – 5279 or info@building-futures.org.

Applications are currently being accepted the position of Correctional Lieutenant, responsible for administration of the jail and supervision of correctional officers.

Duties include, but are not limited to, overseeing jail functions, enforcing rules and regulations, overseeing training of new employees, preparation and monitoring of departmental budget, working with other agencies. Five years of experience as a correctional and/or police officer and four years management experience required. Must have a valid driver’s license.

Starting salary is $39,750 (C14).

If interested, you must complete a corrections application available at Jennings City Hall, 2120 Hord Ave. or online at www.cityofjennings.org. NO RESUMES

ACCEPTED WITHOUT COMPLETED

APPLICATION! Returned application must include a current record check from St. Louis City and County Police Dept. The deadline to submit applications is September 28, 2018 at 5:00 p.m.

Cynthia Johnson 314-922-8396 FINANCIAL REPORTING MANAGER

Ensure accuracy and timely completion of responsibilities within the financial reporting and analysis area. Ensure accuracy and timely completion of responsibilities within the reporting analysis area with regard to internal management reporting.

To apply, please visit: https://www.safetynational.com/ careers-page/.

VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION COUNSELOR

The State of Missouri is accepting applications for a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor in the St. Louis area. Starting salary is $38,808-$40,776. View job description, benefits and application instructions at https://dese.applicantpro. com/jobs/application instructions at https://dese.applicantpro.com/jobs/

New Openings with Missouri Botanical Garden!

Utility Worker (Full Time) How to Apply:

Missouri Botanical Garden has a work environment that promotes diversity and is committed to equal employment opportunities for all employees and applicants. Applying is now easier than ever! With our online employment application system, you can easily search available positions, receive alerts when new jobs become available, store your résumé and background information for quick access, and more. Visit us at www.mobot.org/jobs

Now Hiring

Brooking Park, a not-for-profit, faith-based Life Plan Retirement Community for active seniors, offering a full spectrum of health services is seeking to hire compassionate individuals who enjoy enriching the lives of others. We offer competitive salaries and excellent benefits. Immediate opening include:

• RN/LPN/CMT/CNA

• Maintenance tech

• Music Therapist

• Servers & Cooks

Please visit our website at www.brookingpark.com. or apply in person at: 307 S. Woods Mill Road, Chesterfield, MO. 63017.

BID PROPOSALS

IMPACT Strategies, as the

and Interiors Scopes

Work (Bid Package #4) for the BJC Memorial Hospital East MOB II project in Shiloh, IL. This is a tax-exempt project and will require subcontractor conformance to a Project Labor Agreement.

IMPACT Strategies has partnered with BJC to meet Diversity Spend and Workforce Participation goals for this project. There will be a Pre-Bid Meeting held on Tuesday September 25, 2018 at The Four Points Sheraton (319 Fountains Parkway, Fairview Heights, IL 62208) at 3:30 PM. All interested Subcontractors are encouraged to attend. The meeting will be held in the Conference Room.

Bids are to be submitted to IMPACT Strategies, Inc no later than 2:00pm on October 4, 2018.

Please contact Emily Yost, Preconstruction Administrator at IMPACT Strategies, Inc. to obtain the link to download the bid documents. eyost@buildwithimpact.com ; (618)394-8400.

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

Sealed bids for Old Jamestown Road (West) Resurfacing, St. Louis County Project No. CR-1573, will be received at the Office of the Director of Procurement for the County of St. Louis, County Government Center Administration Building, 41 South Central Avenue, 8th Floor, Clayton, Missouri 63105, until 11:00 a.m. on October 10, 2018

Plans and specifications will be available on September 17, 2018 from the St. Louis County Web Site (www.stlouisco.com), or by contacting County Blue Reprographics, Inc., 1449 Strassner Drive, St. Louis, Missouri 63144, (314) 961-3800.

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

Sealed bids for Laclede Station Road Resurfacing, St. Louis County Project No. AR-1639, will be received at the Office of the Director of Procurement for the County of St. Louis, County Government Center Administration Building, 41 South Central Avenue, 8th Floor, Clayton, Missouri 63105, until 11:00 a.m. on October 10, 2018

Plans and specifications will be available on September 17, 2018 from the St. Louis County Web Site (www.stlouisco.com), or by contacting County Blue Reprographics, Inc., 1449 Strassner Drive, St. Louis, Missouri 63144, (314) 961-3800.

Public Notice of Single Source Procurement

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is proposing to procure temporary help services from Nova Software in an effort to support the IT Technology Plan. The District is proposing single source procurement for this service because it does not have the internal expertise to fulfill this Information Technology role. Any inquiries should be sent to strenz@stlmsd.com. Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Public Notice of Single Source Procurement

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is proposing to procure temporary help services from Sirius Computer Solutions in an effort to support the IT Technology Plan. The District is proposing single source procurement for this service because it does not have the internal expertise to fulfill this Information Technology role. Any inquiries should be sent to strenz@stlmsd.com.

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 RFQ’s in the Purchasing Division, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103-2555 until 10:00 a.m. on October 25, 2018 to contract with a company for: Caulks A Pump Station Channel Grinder. 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 9587 RFQ. 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.

BIDS

Ross Group Construction is hereby soliciting bids for the renovation of the existing Beaumont Building, located at 2654 Locust Street.

Bidding documents may be obtained by submitting an email request to travis.magers@ withrossgroup.com and bobby.spurlock@withrossgroup.

Public Notice of Single Source Procurement

Notice is hereby given that the

St. Louis Sewer District is proposing to procure: Sulzer Submersible Pump. The District is proposing single source procurement to Municipal Equipment Company, Inc for this equipment because they are the sole distributor in the St Louis Metro Area. Any inquiries should be sent to ameyer@stlmsd.com.

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

Public Notice of Single Source Procurement

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is proposing to procure: Sulzer Submersible Pump. The District is proposing single source procurement to Municipal Equipment Company, Inc for this equipment because they are the sole distributor in the St Louis Metro Area. Any inquiries should be sent to ameyer@stlmsd.com.

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

Public Notice of Single Source Procurement

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is proposing to procure temporary help services from Byrne Software Technologies in an effort to support the IT Technology Plan. The District is proposing single source procurement for this service because it does not have the internal expertise to fulfill this Information Technology role. Any inquiries should be sent to strenz@stlmsd.com.

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

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

Sealed bids for the 2017 South County ITS Segments, St. Louis County Project No. AR-CR-1645, will be received at the Office of the Director of Procurement for the County of St. Louis, County Government Center Administration Building, 41 South Central Avenue, 8th Floor, Clayton, Missouri 63105, until 11:00 a.m. on October 17, 2018.

Plans and specifications will be available on September 24, 2018 from the St. Louis County Web Site (www.stlouisco.com), or by contacting County Blue Reprographics, Inc., 1449 Strassner Drive, St. Louis, Missouri 63144, (314) 961-3800.

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

Sealed bids for the 2018 CRS

Collector Rehabilitation Program, St. Louis County Project No. CR-1766, will be received at the Office of the Director of Procurement for the County of St. Louis, County Government Center Administration Building, 41 South Central Avenue, 8th Floor, Clayton, Missouri 63105, until 11:00 a.m. on October 17, 2018

Plans and specifications will be available on September 17, 2018 from the St. Louis County Web Site (www.stlouisco.com), or by contacting County Blue Reprographics, Inc., 1449 Strassner Drive, St. Louis, Missouri 63144, (314) 961-3800.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

City of St. Louis Department of Health Bureau of Communicable Disease Grants Administration

Starting Monday, September 24, 2018, The City of St. Louis, Department of Health (DOH), Bureau of Communicable Disease - Grants Administration is requesting proposals from local organizations, community agencies, universities, local governmental entities and other interested parties eligible to receive federal funds to provide the following services: Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) Housing to people living with HIV/AIDS in the St. Louis Transitional Grant Area and portions of Illinois.

A copy of the Request for Proposals can be obtained from Regina Smith, Contract Compliance Officer, DOH, 1520 Market Avenue, Room 4027, by either calling 314-657-1581 or via email smithre@stlouis-mo.gov.

Interested parties may also download the RFP from the City of St. Louis website at http://www.stlouis-mo.gov/govemrnentlprocurement.cfm. If interested parties who have downloaded the proposal from the website, must register with Ms. Smith in order to be notified of any changes or amendments to the RFPs. The deadline for submitting proposals is 4:00 p.m., Monday November 19, 2018, at the address referenced above.

Public Notice of Single Source Procurement

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is proposing to procure temporary help services from Amitech Solutions in an effort to support the IT Technology Plan. The District is proposing single source procurement for this service because it does not have the internal expertise to fulfill this Information Technology role. Any inquiries should be sent to strenz@stlmsd.com.

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

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

Notice is hereby given that The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (District) will receive sealed bids for Huron Storm Sewer Repair (IR) under Letting No. 13013-015.1, at this office, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103, until 02:00 PM on Tuesday, October 30, 2018, at a place designated. Bids will be received only from companies that are pre-qualified by the District’s Engineering Department for: SEWER CONSTRUCTION – St. Louis County drainlayer’s license required

Plans and Specifications are available for 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 1712 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.

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

2350

BIDS

Great Rivers Greenway is seeking bids for two 48” walk behind lawn mowers. Check https://greatriversgreenway.org/jobs-bids/ and submit by October 12,

The

MO 63303

(Announcements).

MWBE Prebid Meeting Notice The SITE Improvement Association is hosting a Prebid meeting for Qualified and Certified MWBE contractors to discuss working on St. Louis County’s 2018 ARS Improvements Program, Area B Project Project No. AR-1757 This meeting is being held on behalf of the following SITE contractor members:

for Replace Chillers, Administration & School Building, Missouri School for the Blind, St. Louis, Missouri, Project No. E1804-01 will be received by FMDC, State of MO, UNTIL 1:30 PM, 10/18/2018. For specific project information and ordering plans, go to: http://oa.mo. gov/ facilities SEALED BIDS for Chiller Replacement & Controls, Joseph P. Teasdale State Office Building, Raytown, Missouri, Project No. O1803-01 will be received by FMDC, State of MO, UNTIL 1:30 PM, 10/11/2018. For specific project information and ordering plans, go to: http://oa.mo. gov/ facilities

CREEK CLEAN-UP PROJECT

BID NOTICE

The City of Northwoods, MO is accepting sealed bids from qualified contractors with experience in tree/vegetation removal and conservational cleanup to address forested areas of the Baden Creek within the Northwoods jurisdiction.

Contractors that wish to submit a bid may obtain a copy of the complete packet in person at the City Hall during regular business hours Monday through Friday or requests can be made via email at dgriffin@cityofnorthwoods.com. Two (2) sealed bids must be returned to the City Hall either in person during regular business hours or by mail no later than Thursdays, October 17, 2018 at 4:00 p.m. at the following address: City of Northwoods, Attention: Baden Creek Clean-up Bids 2017/2018, 4600 Oakridge Boulevard, Saint Louis, Missouri 63121. Questions can be directed to City Administrator, Denise Johnson at 314.385.8000 or dgriffin@cityofnorthwoods.com.

The City of Northwoods hereby notifies all solicitees that it will affirmatively ensure that minority business enterprises will be afforded full opportunity to submit qualifications in response to this bid invitation and will not be discriminated against on the grounds of race, color, or national origin in consideration for this award. MBE/WBE/DBE/Section 3 participation is encouraged. This activity is funded in whole or in part with Community Development Block Grant funds pursuant to Title I of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, as amended. All applicable federal regulations shall be in full force and effect.

NOTICE TO CONTRACTORS

Sealed bids for the 2018 Seal Coat Program, St. Louis County Project No. AR/CR-1783, will be received at the Office of the Director of Procurement for the County of St. Louis, County Government Center Administration Building, 41 South Central Avenue, 8th Floor, Clayton, Missouri 63105, until 11:00 a.m. on October 17, 2018

Plans and specifications will be available on September 17, 2018 from the St. Louis County Web Site (www.stlouisco.com), or by contacting County Blue Reprographics, Inc., 1449 Strassner Drive, St. Louis, Missouri 63144, (314) 961-3800.

ST. LOUIS COMMUNITY

COLLEGE

Responses for St. Louis Community College on RFP B0003723 for Media Buying

Services will be received until 2:00 P.M. (local time) on October 5, 2018 at the Dept. of Purchasing, 300 S. Broadway, St. Louis, MO 63102, and immediately thereafter opened and read. RFP documents can be accessed on our website at www. stlcc.edu/purchasing or by calling (314) 539-5227. EOE/AA Employer.

CITY OF ST. LOUIS ST. LOUIS LAMBERT INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

Solicitation For Bids (SFB) for Interior Live Plant Maintenance Services

Bids Wanted

Bid documents may be obtained at St. Louis Lambert International Airport, Airport Properties Division, Monday through Friday between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., or by calling (314) 890-1802. This SFB may also be obtained by visiting our website at www.flystl.com/business/ contract-opportunites.

Robert Salarano Airport Properties Division Manager

Public Notice of Single Source Procurement

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is proposing to procure several educational institutions in the region per the District’s education assistance program. The programs policy does not require employees to attend a specific school but an accredited institution. The District is proposing a single source procurement in order to fulfill this program. Any inquiries should be sent to strenz@stlmsd.com. 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 is accepting proposals in the Purchasing Division, 2350 Market Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63103-2555 until 10:00 a.m. on October 23rd, 2018 to contract with a company for: Shredding 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 9582 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

SEWER DISTRICT

ST. LOUIS

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 October 24, 2018 for: Ferrous Tank Replacement 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 9585 RFQ. If you do not have access to the internet, call (314) 7686314 to request a copy of this bid.

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

Public Notice of Single Source Procurement

Notice is hereby given that the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is proposing to procure several educational institutions in the region per the District’s education assistance program. The programs policy does not require employees to attend a specific school but an accredited institution. The District is proposing a single source procurement in order to fulfill this program. Any inquiries should be sent to strenz@stlmsd.com.

Metropolitan St.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

The

Hawley, Kavanaugh and Danforth use religion to discriminate

Religion a cloak for outlawing abortion and restricting female contraception

By Charles Jaco For The St. Louis American

Piety and fraud are as American as burgers and fries, so it’s no wonder Missouri GOP Senate candidate (and state attorney general) Josh Hawley, his mentor, former Missouri GOP Senator (and Ralston-Purina heir) John Danforth, and Supreme Court nominee (and accused sexual assaulter) Brett Kavanaugh are using “religious freedom” as an excuse to discriminate against women.

St. Louis region), is owned by the Green family of Oklahoma City, headed by David Green, a white evangelical Christian conservative. Green’s evangelical fervor led him to spend a half-billion dollars to build The Museum of the Bible just down the street from the U.S. Capitol. Green spent $1.6 million to buy over 5,500 “Biblical” artifacts that were looted from Iraq in the chaos after the U.S. invasion, and was forced to pay a $3 million fine and return them. According to many archeologists, including Iraq expert Dr. Amr Al-Azm, this was no mistake, and Green “clearly” knew he was buying antiquities stolen from Iraq.

American Enterprise Institute, Kavanaugh wished there “were no Constitutional right to abortion.” In his confirmation hearings this month, he falsely claimed the “morning after” birth control pill is the same as abortion. Both of those positions – outlawing abortion and restricting female contraception – dovetail nicely with Hawley and Danforth’s beliefs.

Hawley, who’s running a set of breathtakingly racist antiimmigration TV ads against Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, is a huge fan of both Kavanaugh’s and Trump’s. This presumably includes Trump’s attitude toward women, since Hawley has dismissed allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh by Prof. Christine Blasey Ford, sniffing that “Democrats have played politics with this whole process. They don’t care about the truth.” Hawley subordinates investigating sexual assault to installing an extremist antichoice justice on the Supreme Court, an identical copy of the position taken by the man who’s mentored and guided him, John Danforth. Of the assault allegations, Danforth said, “I feel so terribly sorry for Kavanaugh and what he’s going through. Here’s a man who’s had a marvelous reputation as a human being, and now it’s being trashed. I felt the same way about Clarence.” That, of course, is Justice Clarence Thomas, arguably one of the most unfit members of the High Court in at least the last half-century. In 1991, when Anita Hill charged Thomas with repeated sexual harassment and was trashed by the same Senate Judiciary Committee that’s preparing to ambush Prof. Ford when she testifies on Thursday, Danforth led the cheerleading squad on the sidelines. He called Thomas “the real victim” in the same way he dismisses allegations against Kavanaugh now.

Danforth and Hawley have different styles. Hawley’s a sharp-elbowed 38-year-old right-wing ideologue, while Danforth is a genteel 82-year old with the avuncular charm of Mister Rogers and the policy positions of Donald Trump. But both want to restrict the rights of women using religious sanctimony as cover.

Danforth, an ordained Episcopal priest, was known to his Senate colleagues as “Saint Jack” for his alleged ethical rigor clothed in piety, and he still trails a miasma of sanctity that gives his pronouncements a certain throw weight.

Washington University’s John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics uses both his name and his money to stage “nuanced” discussions of religion in public life. Through

the decades, Danforth’s support for right-wingers like Hawley, Kavanaugh, Thomas, and John Ashcroft favors the Moral Majority conservative white Christian version of religion in politics, not the social justice gospel of black churches nor the liberation theology of the Hispanic Catholic church.

Hawley became Danforth’s acolyte, successfully arguing that “religious freedom” was more important than a woman’s rights before the Supreme Court. In what’s become known simply as “the Hobby Lobby case,” Hawley was part of a team that convinced the court that an employer’s “religious freedom” could determine what health insurance benefits it gives employees.

The Hobby Lobby chain, with 822 stores (nine in the

Hawley argued before the Supreme Court that Hobby Lobby should be allowed to deny female employees insurance coverage for contraception because the owners had “religious objections” to some contraceptives. The Court agreed, so now employers are free to deny all sorts of benefits to workers if, somehow, those benefits offend the business owner’s religious dogma.

Discriminating and calling it religious freedom goes back to the schisms in the Baptist and Lutheran churches before the Civil War, when pro-slavery congregations went their own way, and continued through the Mormon’s (only recently recanted) dogma that black people couldn’t join the church because their dark skin was “the mark of Cain.” Whether anti-gay or anti-female, that same strain of bigotry infects much of America’s public religious life still.

Judge Kavanaugh’s conservative judicial activism doesn’t overtly use religion. But his beliefs align with conservative white Evangelical and Catholic dogma. In a speech to the

As Hawley once wrote, “Government serves Christ’s kingdom rule; this is its purpose. And Christians’ purpose in politics should be to advance the kingdom of God.” And since Hawley has sued both to limit contraceptive coverage and to allow insurance companies to once again deny coverage if you have any preexisting medical condition, it would seem that his kingdom of God isn’t covered by Obamacare.

Obamacare, the Civil Rights Act, Title IX, voting rights, and reproductive rights are all on the chopping block should Kavanaugh be confirmed to the Supreme Court. Whether that happens depends on what happens Thursday, when the 11 GOP white men (median age 65) who make up the Senate Judiciary Committee grill Kavanaugh’s accuser, Prof. Ford.

Much like Hawley and Danforth, all of them seem to have already made up their minds that Kavanaugh will be on the court, no matter what happens. And the driving force won’t be judicial ethics or precedent. It will be a conservative (almost exclusively) white Christian agenda aimed at controlling women.

Charles Jaco is a journalist, author, and activist. Follow him on Twitter at @charlesjaco1.

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley (seen here at the St. Louis airport with President Trump in March) argued before the Supreme Court that Hobby Lobby should be allowed to deny female employees insurance coverage for contraception because the owners had “religious objections” to some contraceptives. The Court agreed.

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