By MARTHA WAGGONER
Associated Press

GREENSBORO, N.C. – The four college freshmen walked quietly into a Greensboro dime store on a breezy Monday afternoon, bought a few items, then sat down at the “Whites only” lunch counter – and sparked a wave of civil rights protest that changed America.

Violating a social custom as rigid as law, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. and David Richmond sat near an older White woman on the silver-backed stools at the F.W. Woolworth. The Black students had no need to talk; theirs was no spontaneous act. Their actions on Feb. 1, 1960, were meticulously planned, down to buying a few school supplies and toiletries and keeping their receipts as proof that the lunch counter was the only part of the store where racial segregation still ruled.

“The best feeling of my life,” McCain said, was “sitting on that dumb stool.”

“I felt so relieved,” he a.
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One-on-one exclusive with Mehcad Brooks
By IMANI EVANS
The Dallas Examiner

The Dallas Examiner feature We Examine, looks at the career of actor Mehcad Brooks, a Texas native and one of the stars of ABC’s The Deep End, a midseason drama about the legal profession that was shot on location in Dallas. Brooks, 29, is the son of Austin-American Statesman reporter Alberta Bledsoe and former NFL player Billy Brooks Sr., and the stepson of longtime Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe.

At least as compared with most young Black actors, Brooks has had a highly varied career. From 2005 to 2006, Brooks played the role of Matthew Applewhite on the ABC TV drama Desperate Housewives. He appeared in Glory Road, portraying Harry Flournoy, basketball player at Texas Western University, and was also in the 2007 film In the Valley of Elah. Brooks played Benedict “Eggs” Talley in the second season of HBO’s True Blood. He now appears as hotshot young attorney Malcolm Bennet in The Deep End.

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Chicago public schools focus on security
By WENDELL HUTSON
Chicago Defender

(NNPA) CHICAGO – Chicago Public Schools (CPS) officials say they realize that unless their students are safe in school, they won’t learn.

That’s one reason why it increased its security budget to $8 million this school year from $6.5 million last school year, an increase of $1.5 million. Upon hiring a new chief executive officer in 2009, it also hired a new security boss, Michael Shields.

Shields, a retired deputy superintendent from the Chicago Police Department, said students should be able to feel safe once on school grounds.

“My job is to make sure our students are safe and I am prepared to do whatever it takes to make that happen,” Shields, director of the Office of School Safety & Security for CPS, told the Defender. “We don’t want kids to be fearful while in school because it can take away from their productivity in class.” During the 2008–2009 school year, there were 116,000 incidents rec.
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