Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 15 April 1999 — Page 1

INSIDE

EDITORIAL Page 2 LETTER TO THE EDITOR Page 3 NEWS BRIEFS Page 4 FOR YOUR HEALTH Page 9 COMMUNITY FOCUS Page 10 CIVIL RIGHTS JOURNAL Page 12 TO BE EQUAL Page 14 OUTSTANDING CITIZENS Page 19 IN COLORED CIRCLES Page 21 SOCIAL SECURITY Page22 MEN WHO MAKE A DIFFERENCE Page 30 GUESS WHO Page 33

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VOLUME 9, NUMBER 6 • April 15, 1999 “Whatsoever you do, strive to do it so well that no man living and no man dead and no man yet to be bom could do it any better.”

3000 show for Youth Awards

By Judy Mays Hundreds of students and parents were turned away during a Saturday morning ceremony honoring Muncie Community School students at the Horizon Convention Center. Jeff McSweeney, general manager of the convention center, said, “We had to turn people away because of overcrowding. We had set up 700 chairs and then an additional 700 which is the capacity. “It’s my guess that about 3,000 people showed up for the event. We were

amazed and inspired.” The students, family members and friends came to a ceremony to receive The Mayor’s Youth Appreciation Award and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Outstanding Student Award for good citizenship. Each student was recommended for inclusion by his/ her teacher. The recognition day is sponsored by The Muncie Times and the City of Muncie. “I was astounded when the manager of the convention center told me that there were people lined up for blocks who wouldn’t See YOUTH, page 3

Speaker urges minorities to examine health care

ByTabathaA.Tower-Harris The Muncie Times honored various residents during its eighth annual awards ceremony at the downtown Horizon Convention Center. Guest speaker Stephanie DeKemp, a public community health educator and advocate for the elimination of racial differences in health care, said: “As we move to the new millennium, we are taking along some very serious health problems. In Indiana, and in the rest of the country, people are dying needlessly from preventable health conditions.” She said that among African Americans, health access is poor so too many lives are being lost. DeKemp said the five lead-

ing causes of death are heart attacks, strokes, cancer, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. DeKemp said that the No. 1 killer is heart attacks. She said the the death rate for whites from cardiovascular-related diseases is 110 per 100,000, while it is 140 per 100,000 for. blacks. African Americans, who are a minority in this country, are dying at a greater rate, then non-minorities, she said. Cerebral vascular diseases or strokes cause 42 deaths per 100,000 people per year among blacks, but 29 white deaths per 100,000 people. “It is important to understand that as we move forward into the next millennium that there are some things that we can do to prevent these condi-

tions,” said DeKemp. The third leading cause of death among African Americans is cancer (cervical, breast, and prostate), according to DeKemp. She said that African American men under 65 suffer from prostate cancer at twice the rate of their white counterparts. DeKemp also said that Vietnamese women suffer from cervical cancer nearly five times the rate of white women. African American women are not very far behind that. She said that the Latino population has two times the stomach cancer rate for whites. DeKemp also reported that there has been a drastic increase in the number of black

See SPEAKER, page 3

BSU African students stage successful dinner festival

The 12th annual Ball State University African Dinner was a tremendous success, bringing together more than 250 people to sample exotic African cuisines. African Student Association President Pierre Atchade, a doctoral student from Benin, said he was quite happy with the weekend turnout at the dinner and the other activities. “We printed 210 tickets (at $9 each) for the dinner and we sold them all. We also had 40

invitation tickets that went to university administrators,” Atchade said. “There are not many organizations on campus that can get 250 or more people to come to their functions.” The dinner, held in the Ball State Student Center, was a veritable fashion show as many of the Africans, African Americans and Caucasians attending showed in Afrocentric clothing—from dashikis to elaborate caftans, walking sticks, hats and suits or

pantsuits and head wraps. “The purpose of the dinner was to give a chance to Ball State and the Muncie African American communities an opportunity to taste African and the African culture,” Atchade said. Inaani Kahikuate (ka-Hl-kuwate), a Ball State special education student from Namibia in Southern Africa, was the main hostess at the dinner.

See AFRICAN, page 25