NPR host to speak at MLK event Michel Martin hosted by WU School of Medicine on Jan. 20
MLK Special Section
CAC Audited JANUARY 16 – 22, 2014
Vol. 84 No. 41 COMPLIMENTARY
stlamerican.com OctOber 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014
Remembering Baraka Father of Black Arts Movement mourned by St. Louis, world By Chris King Of The St. Louis American
Photo courtesy of Eugene B. Redmond
Eugene B. Redmond, Oprah Winfrey and Amiri Baraka at Maya Angelou’s 1994 bash for Nobel laureate Toni Morrison at Angelou’s home in Winston-Salem, N.C.
“At his wake and funeral on Friday and Saturday there will be an overflow of all kinds of people,” the St. Louis author Quincy Troupe said of his longtime friend Amiri Baraka, who passed January 9, 2014 in his native Newark, N.J., at the age of 79. “People will be sad, deeply sad. A lot of people care a lot about him, people of all races from all over the world.”
A co-founder of the Black Arts Movement, Baraka will be remembered at a wake 4-9 p.m. Friday, January 17 at Metropolitan Baptist Church, 149 Springfield Ave. in Newark. His homegoing service will be held 10 a.m. Saturday, January 18 at Newark Symphony Hall, 1030 Broad St. in Newark. Troupe and East St. Louis poet Eugene B. Redmond, a friend of Baraka’s for more than 50 years, will be among
See BARAKA, A6
New proposal for troubled districts State releases plan by controversial consultant CEE-Trust By Rebecca Rivas Of The St. Louis American
Photo by Wiley Price
Giving your BEST for MLK Members of the BEST Dance & Talent Center performed Saturday night at Harris-Stowe State University as part of the Martin Luther King Jr. State Celebration Commission’s statewide kickoff of MLK Day events.
On Monday the state’s controversial consultant CEE-Trust presented a plan for unaccredited school districts that gives individual schools more autonomy and eliminates the districts’ “central office” administration – a model similar to how charter schools operate. In August, the state hired CEE-Trust, an Indianapolis-based consulting group, to create a new plan for how the state intervenes in unaccredited school districts. In the Monday presentation, CEE-Trust leaders told the Missouri State Board of Education that the plan would not privatize public education because only nonprofit organizations would be allowed to operate the schools. Under state law, only nonprofits are allowed to operate charter schools, as well. However unlike charter schools, the plan See DISTRICTS, A7
The Rev. Rodney Francis of Washington Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church speaks as Pastor Aeneas Williams of The Spirit Church listens at the Power of a Man’s Spirit symposium held Saturday at Vashon High School.
100 Black Men talk spirit Forum focuses on men connecting with themselves and their community By Bridjes O’Neil Of The St. Louis American
n “The church has to be more open and receptive to the realities that our young men bring in.”
“Seldom have we, as men, been willing to broach the subject of spiritual health,” Anderson said. The 100 Black Men of Over 300 men and boys of all Metropolitan St. Louis began the ages attended the two-hour, allmale symposium held inside the Dr. new year with a symposium entitled – Rev. Rodney Francis Julius C. Dix Auditorium at Vashon. “The Power of a Man’s Spirit,” held Women and girls were allowed to Saturday at Vashon High School. listen separately via an audio feed in Joseph Anderson Jr., president of the adjacent gymnasium. the local 100 Black Men, said the Four esteemed local clergyman served as panelists: symposium was an organizational effort to engage men in discussions about their spiritual health and its impact See SPIRIT, A7 on their destinies.
Photo by Wiley Price