The Milwaukee Times Weekly Paper
Thursday July 2, 2015 - Wednesday, July 8, 2015
An NCON Publication
Local & National News
Rebuilding Our Community
3
By Dr. Andrew Calhoun, Ed.D. Special to the Milwaukee Times
Not a moment but a movement The recently mass shootings in the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, SC are a vivid reminder to all of us that the struggle for racial equality, equal rights, human rights, justice and religious freedom continues. This shooting also opened up a number of old wounds that have long been issues of contention and debate in that state as well as across the nation. These wounds have been a part of the American journey for most ethnic groups, especially African Americans. From all of what has happened over the past decade or so, this struggle is as real as it can get.
As African Americans we are not alone in our struggles with the rising number of mass shootings in recent years at places of worship, schools, and public spaces and on our shores. How we protect ourselves and the institutions we hold so dear will continue to be up for debate. But we as a nation, unlike so many other industrialized countries, are out of balance in terms to the number of guns and weapons available on our streets, homes and communities. The easy access to guns of all types is central to the ongoing argument and how do we keep those weapons out of the hands of the criminals, youth and the mentally ill?
For many in this 21st century it seems odd that we continue to find ourselves in this place in history. This new upcoming generation is trying to come to grips and understand the legacy of racism from America’s past. And what they are finding out is shocking. Many believe that there are a
number of underlining issues unresolved from the past and that these violent episodes and more will continue to be a part of America’s future, if not addressed. Without resolving few, if any, of the underlining root causes that lead to gun violence, we are just taking a brief pause in this ongoing narrative. Some of the underlining issues that continue to fester include growing poverty, unemployment, poor health, mental illness, and lack of education, crime, poor housing and a breakdown in the family. What is missing in all of this are the people, faith community, civic leaders and major businesses willing to
step forward to support a “movement” to make change happen. It is just not enough to have a “moment” in which to offer some prayers, personal reflections, cite scriptures, identify a number of issues to address and hold a press conference. But a “moment” needs to turn into a “movement” and that requires more effort. The question is then…what more can we do to get things started? What do you think? Dr. Andrew Calhoun, can be contacted at andrewiiicalhoun@ gmail.com, Twitter #AC53, and Facebook. You can hear Dr. Calhoun each Sunday at Grace Fellowship Church, 3879 N. Port Washington Rd. Milwaukee 414-265-5546.
Marva Collins, educator who aimed high for poor, Black students, passes at 78 Marva Collins, a former substitute teacher whose success at educating poor black students in a private school she founded made her a candidate for secretary of education and the subject of a television movie, died on Wednesday, June 24, 2015 in a hospice near her home in South Carolina. She was 78. Her death was confirmed by Hospice Care of the Lowcountry in Bluffton, SC. After working as a substitute teacher for 14 years in Chicago public schools, Ms. Collins cashed in her $5,000 in pension savings and
opened Westside Preparatory School in 1975. The school originally operated in the basement of a local college and then, to be free of red tape (the same reason she said she had refused federal funds), in the second floor of her home. She began with four students, including her daughter, charging $80 a month in tuition. Enrollment at the school, on Chicago’s West Side, grew to more than 200, in classes from prekindergarten through eighth
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Marva Collins grade. It remained in operation for more than 30 years. Ms. Collins set high academic standards, emphasized discipline and promoted a nurturing environment. She taught phonics, the Socratic method and the classics and, she insisted, never expected her students to fail. “Kids don’t fail,” she once said. “Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures — they are the problem.” At Westside Prep, she said in 2004 when she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, “there are no dropouts, no substitute teachers, and when teachers are absent, the students teach themselves.” “We’re an anomaly in a world of negatives,” she added. “Our children are selfmotivated, self-generating, self-propelled.” An article about the school in 1977 in The Chicago SunTimes attracted national attention, an interview on 60
Minutes and the interest of filmmakers, who went on to produce The Marva Collins Story, a 1981 television movie on CBS with Cicely Tyson playing Ms. Collins and Morgan Freeman as her husband. She even appeared briefly in a video for Prince’s song “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” As her stature as an educator grew, she began to train other teachers from around the country and published several books, including ‘Ordinary’ Children, Extraordinary Teachers and Marva Collins’ Way, written with Civia Tamarkin. Speaking engagements followed. In 1980, President-elect Ronald Reagan was said to be leaning toward choosing Ms. Collins for secretary of education, but she said she would reject the job if it were offered. By that time she had already turned down offers to run the public school systems in Chicago and Los Angeles. Marva Delores Knight was born in Monroeville, AL, on Aug. 31, 1936. Her father, Henry, was a merchant, cattleman and undertaker. Her mother was the former Bessie Nettles. Raised in Atmore, near Mobile, in the segregated South, she graduated from Clark College in Atlanta (now Clark Atlanta University), and taught in Alabama schools before moving to Chicago. There she worked as a medical secretary before
becoming a substitute public school teacher. She married Clarence Collins, who died in 1995. They had three children, two of whom, Eric and Patrick, survive her, as does her mother, Bessie Mae Johnson; a sister, Cynthia Sutton; and her second husband, George R. Franklin. In 1982, Ms. Collins was stung by accusations that she was not certified as a teacher and that she had overstated her record of success, but parents of the children in her school rallied to her defense. Her supporters said that as a substitute teacher she had not needed formal certification; others said their children had shown great progress after enrolling in the school. “I’ve never said I’m a superteacher, a miracle worker, all those names they gave me,” she told The New York Times that year. “It’s unfair to expect me to live up to it. I’m just a teacher.” Ms. Collins later turned over the operation of Westside Prep to her daughter, Cynthia. It closed in 2008, with annual tuition at $5,500 and enrollment dwindling. Ms. Collins moved to Hilton Head, SC, where she organized programs to train teachers and administrators. She insisted that she never craved awards or publicity. All she wanted, she told The Island Packet, the local newspaper, in 2007, was “to be able to say I got an A-plus on the assignment God gave me.”