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http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-764476.html
New Duke students lending helping hands

By Ray Gronberg, The Herald-Sun
August 26, 2006 9:48 pm

DURHAM -- Student volunteers from Duke University fanned out into several north Durham neighborhoods Saturday to help residents with their yard work.

The effort, sponsored by Keep Durham Beautiful Inc. and Duke's Community Service Center, targeted the Old Farm neighborhood and several subdivisions along Holt School Road and was intended to benefit elderly and disabled homeowners.

Organizers expected about 100 students to participate. A group of about 35 descended on the Old Farm neighborhood. The students split up into five teams to cover as many houses as they could in the four hours allotted to the project.

One team converged on the home of Old Well Street resident Betty Williams, who's disabled and has been preoccupied by her 81-year-old mother's hospitalization for a stroke. A couple of students split off to work at a house across the street.

The Duke students said they welcomed a chance to lend a hand. "Durham is going to be my home for the next four years," Kaitlyn Shackelton, a freshman from Reno, Nev., said when asked why she volunteered to participate in the effort. "I figured, 'Anything to pitch in.' "

Organizers worked with the Old Farm Neighborhood Association to identify homeowners who could use the help. The predominantly black neighborhood is mostly middle class, but association leaders said they felt the volunteer effort was well-targeted.

They said helping and staying in touch with the neighborhood's elderly residents was an important community stabilization measure.

The neighborhood has "been nice, but it's getting older and things are changing," said Carolyn Young, an Old Farm Neighborhood Association activist who was working with Shackelton and the rest of the team at the Williams house. "When we moved out here, this was the area to move into. Old Farm was it, and we want to help it keep that reputation."

Duke students have participated in similar clean-ups in years past, but this year campus leaders elected to make the effort part of the school's orientation week activities for freshmen.

The so-called "Into the City" effort, which on Saturday also included several faculty-led tours of different parts of Durham, has gotten increased attention this year in the wake of last spring's rape charges against members of the Duke lacrosse team.

But Carly Wheeler, a junior from San Diego, said campus leaders were thinking about holding a cleanup effort during orientation week before the lacrosse scandal broke.

"It's something the First-Year Advisory Counselor board and the university had been discussing for awhile," Wheeler said, adding that the point of the change was to "incorporate community service" into the orientation effort.

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http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-764485.html
Black advocacy groups applauded

BY RAY GRONBERG, The Herald-Sun
August 26, 2006 10:46 pm

DURHAM -- The need for groups like the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People hasn't diminished in the 71 years since its formation, the president of the South Carolina chapter of the NAACP told members at the committee's anniversary dinner Saturday.

That's because the problems facing blacks are just as dire as they were in the midst of the Great Depression or at the dawn of the 20th century, keynote speaker Lonnie Randolph told the packed house at Greater Emmanuel Family Life Enrichment Center.

Randolph, who's gained notice for leading the battle against the South Carolina state government's continued use of the Confederate battle flag, singled out the country's education system as being a continued impediment to the progress of blacks.

"Education in this country is still a mockery," he said. "Our children ? are in poor educational environments, unfunded environments, [with] unqualified people in those environments, incompetent people as administrators and principals in those environments. Our school system is still under siege."

Groups like the Durham Committee matter because they hold public officials accountable for their actions, Randolph said.

"You hold the reins," he said. "When they no longer answer to your requests, get you a new model."

The Durham Committee's perceived clout is still strong enough that Saturday's dinner was attended by an array of local, state and federal officials -- mainly Democrats -- that included U.S. Rep. David Price and N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Sarah Parker.

Gov. Mike Easley and Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue penned letters of greeting that appeared in the banquet program distributed to those present, and many officials who are running for office this fall or who anticipate running sometime in the near future purchased full-page advertisements in the program.

Officials like state Rep. Larry Hall, District Attorney Mike Nifong, City Councilman Mike Woodard and Police Chief Steve Chalmers worked the room, leaving few hands unshaken.

The committee is coming off a May primary that saw four of the five candidates it endorsed for the top offices on the ballot -- all three school board selections and its pick for district attorney -- go down to defeat. But Randolph said the group's continued influence remained obvious.

Of the elected or would-be elected officials present, "several of them told me they didn't have any choice but to be here tonight if they had any chance of winning," Randolph said. "I'm glad to know there are groups and individuals holding public officials accountable."

North Carolina NAACP President William Barber introduced Randolph and hit on the same point.

"There's always the need for somebody to take a special look, not just at how policies impact the community, but at how they affect minorities," Barber said. "Somebody needs to go back and read the fine print and make sure they include everybody. Somebody needs to call on counties and communities to stop for a minute and make sure in the actions they carry out that they don't disenfranchise a whole people."

The Durham committee, Barber added, has a clear history of "demanding a second look."

In his comments, Randolph said the country's efforts to guarantee equal rights continued to fall short, in ways that can be measured by economic and health care statistics.

He made it clear that he believed few institutions were blameless, including churches and the black middle and upper classes.

Civil-rights pioneers "made a substantial investment in us, but I'm deeply troubled because I don't see a return on that investment," Randolph said.

In the schools, "too many adults are missing in action," and in the pulpit, "some people become so heavenly bound they don't do no earthly good," he said.

He faulted a preoccupation with individualism at the expense of community, among both whites and blacks. "Far too many of us are an impediment to progress because of our selfish ways, our bigoted ways, our mean-spirited ways and our greed," he said.

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