Fifteen-year-old sophomore Cully Little and 16-year-old junior Cece Garcia both attend East Chapel Hill High. They are both capable students, according to teacher Bob Brogden, who has had them in his history class. The two students also share a healthy disdain for the 110-minute end-of-course exams in five different subjects they are required to take […]
Damien Jackson
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Fear of a Black Jesus?
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,” preaches the Rev. Curtis Gatewood to the 25 people crammed into the small red building on Carroll Street in Durham’s West End. Formerly a residence, the one-story property was converted into an anti-violence museum two years ago in an attempt to combat the […]
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Free to Go
Through the rear-view mirror, I watch the first officer approach the driver’s side of my pulled-over car, his left hand straddling the bulging holster strapped to his hip. From the moment of being jolted by the shrieking sirens and alternating lights careening toward me, the usual barrage of questions and anxieties has been running through […]
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Self Insufficiency
self insufficiency Nearly three-and-a-half years after the enactment of federal welfare reform, government officials across the country are touting its success. The Clinton administration recently boasted that national welfare rolls declined from 12.2 million in 1996 to 6.9 in 1999, resulting in the “fewest number of people on welfare since 1969.” Here in North Carolina, […]
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Payment Due
The Rev. Curtis Gatewood leans over a large, cluttered desk while fielding a phone call in his downtown Durham office. The walls behind him are adorned with gold-plated plaques and wood-framed certificates received during his six-year tenure as president of the Durham NAACP. A number of these awards bear the seals of local, state and […]
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Dynamic Recovery
At the edge of the Dorothea Dix Hospital campus in Raleigh is a large clearing of land bordered by tall trees on three sides. On a recent sunny afternoon, a yellow crane extends its long mechanical neck to scoop up chunks of the rocky red clay that covers the surface. A green bulldozer pauses to […]
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Illuminating Suspension
“How in the hell could you be elected Superintendent of the Year when you are not doing your job?” shouts Carol Walthour, pointing a finger at Superintendent Ann Denlinger during a recent Durham School Board meeting. Her sharp remark comes after Walthour has told the audience of 50 about the plight of her grandson, a […]
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Something About Mary
Something About Mary By damien jacksonThe story goes that George Smuin began proselytizing on a soapbox in London’s Hyde Park in 1846 at the age of two. The illegitimate son of a Scottish domestic by way of her much-rumored affair with an English landlord, Smuin spent most of his childhood under the influence of the […]
