Clara Cheeks speaks @stlouisamerican
Mikel Neil’s mother talks about the questionable vehicular death of her son and Townsal Woolfolk, and view other testimonials about black life in St. Louis.
@stlouisamerican
Video at www.stlamerican.com
St. LouiS AmericAn The
CAC Audited AUGUST 23 – 29, 2018
Vol. 90 No. 22 COMPLIMENTARY
stlamerican.com
Community forces How 400 investigation of crash days in Homegrown BLAck mALeS
Witnesses say county police were involved, yet officers drove past By Rebecca Rivas Of The St. Louis American Lorenzo Johnson, a Berkeley resident and former Atlanta police officer, was driving home at about 9:30 p.m. on August 10 when he saw a St. Louis County Police vehicle n “I came here and I said, ‘This chasing a car down Airport Road at high speed with its does not look like a fatal onelights flashing. Johnson was car accident.’ I plan to get to the going the opposite direction bottom of it.” and had just turned on his street, Whitewater Drive, when he heard a huge crash – Clara Cheeks, across the street. mother of Mikel Neil He jumped out of his car and ran to the scene of the accident at Airport Road and Tyndall Drive, where two African-American men had driven into a tree and had died on impact, he said. The men were later identified as 59-year-old
See CRASH, A6
Photo by Rebecca Rivas
Penny Daughtery, 16, attended a community press conference on Thursday, August 16 at the scene of a fatal car crash in Berkeley on August 10. Her sign reflects eyewitness statements that a St. Louis Police car was involved in the crash, but the officers fled the scene.
Hoopin’ at People’s
Ferguson changed my life Part of a year-long series, presented by The American and the Brown School at Washington University, on changing the narratives and outcomes of young black males in St. Louis. By Bruce Franks Jr. For The St. Louis American August 9, 2014 changed my life. That date is burned into our memory as the day Michael Brown was killed. But it’s also the date my son, King, turned 1. So we’re getting ready for his get-together – blowing up balloons, firing up the barbecue – when my social media starts going crazy. I get the picture of a young man lying motionless in the middle of the street. I didn’t know what to do. But something compelled me to Bruce go out there. Before I saw that Franks image, I wasn’t an activist. I’m from 4300 Gibson, the South Side of St. Louis, the ‘hood. I had seen 30 or 40 Mike Browns in my life, young men between the ages of 16 and 24 killed by the police. What was
See FRANKS, A6
Kaliah Moody, 4, a student at Hamilton Elementary School in St. Louis Public Schools, took a spin on a hula hoop at Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers’ Community Resource Health Fair on Saturday, August 18.
Johnetta Haley is 2018 Lifetime Achiever in Education Former director of SIUE’s East St. Louis Center, helped integrate Kirkwood schools By Rebecca Rivas Of The St. Louis American Johnetta Randolph Haley has never stopped teaching – not since she began her educational career as a music teacher in East St. Louis in the early 1940s. “I hope I don’t ever do that,” said the Alton, Illinois native. Haley believes the most profound moment in her long, impactful career came towards the end of it, when she was appointed director of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s East St. Louis Center beginning in 1982. As director, she traveled to Washington, D.C. to ask the U.S. Department of Education to allow the university to operate a Head Start program – an unusual request at the time. She also encouraged Photo by Wiley Price
See HALEY, A7