2020
WINNER OF FIVE SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS D.C. AWARDS
19 DAYS
COVID-19 Update: Vaccine Guidance from FDA Page 20 Vol. 55, No. 52 • October 15 - 21, 2020
Million Man March Director Ben Chavis Recalls Historic Event African Americans Pause and Look Back 25 Years Ago
By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Senior National Correspondent @StacyBrownMedia
5 Washington Informer photographer Robert R. Roberts captured the spirit of the day at the Million Man March in 1995. (Robert R. Roberts/The Washington Informer)
In Prince George’s County, Sample Ballot Leads to Some Residents’ Complaints
The last day of voter registration in Maryland, Tuesday, Oct. 13 created a small but hardy crowd outside the Prince George’s County Board of Elections office, creating a line dozens of people long that stretched around the building’s corner. Although most came to register to vote for the Nov. 3 general election, some also
By Stacy M. Brown WI Senior Writer @StacyBrownMedia
traveled to the election office in Largo to fill out change of address forms and handle other business in the majority Black jurisdiction which boasts more than 600,000 registered voters. “We haven’t seen a line like this since ‘08,” said Daneen Banks, deputy administrator for the board of elections who has worked in the county since 2008. For those who registered to vote on or before Tuesday, Banks said they can still
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MARCH Page 28
Slave Descendants Fight to Save Land Inherited from Ancestors
Marylanders Make the Most of Voter Registration and Early Ballot Submissions By William J. Ford WI Staff Writer @jabariwill
Twenty-five years ago, on Oct. 16, 1995, Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. helped to spearhead perhaps the most significant call for freedom, justice, and equality since Dr. King’s 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. As national director of the Million Man March, Chavis and other organizers, including the Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan, led more than 500,000 African-American men to the nation’s capital to declare their rights. Minister Farrakhan called for the march, insisting that “able-bodied African-American men come to Washington to address the ills of, and unify and revitalize, Black communities.”
He declared that Black men should take responsibility for their actions, atone and make a personal commitment of responsibility to their families and communities to help improve their lot. “I recall that the overall public reception throughout the D.C. Metro Area, including Maryland and Virginia, concerning the six months to organize and mobilize the success of the Million Man March was very enthusiastic, energetic and efficacious,” Chavis recounted this week. He noted that the Million Man March’s national office was located on Kennedy Street in Northwest, inside the national headquarters of the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.
Just about five miles east of Beaufort, S.C., a city still known for its antebellum mansions and relics of the transatlantic slave trade, sits St. Helena Island, where a community of slaves’ ancestors has called home since before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation 157 years ago. It’s also home to Penn Center, where the children of freed slaves received schooling for the first time and where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., put the finishing touches on (Courtesy photo)
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