Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 16 April 2011 — Page 11

The Muncie Times • April 16, 2011 • Page 11

News Briefs

continued from page 9 sentences commuted by North Carolina’s governor, they never received a formal “pardon of innocence.” NNPA is rallying its member newspapers to support that cause in the year ahead. Mary Alice Thatch, publisher of The Wilmington Journal, provided a historical retrospective on The Wilmington Ten, explaining that her city, in southern North Carolina, had long been a bastion of white supremacy. She said Cape Fear River “ran red from the blood of our ancestors in 1898” as a result of a terror campaign that targeted the African American community decades, before Chavis arrived as an emissary from the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice. “Ben, thank you for crossing that bridge [to Wilmington] in 1971,” Thatch said. The NNPA has yet to announce its strategy around the pardon initiative, but to her peers. Thatch said she is “asking you help us repay The Wilmington Ten in what I call a very small way” for their efforts to bring social justice to the “birth place of Jim Crow in North Carolina.” While welcoming the pardon campaign, Chavis emphasized the NNPA effort as an

opportunity to educate and revitalize today’s youth to be vigilant about protecting the rights and gains so many have sacrificed to attain. Despite the election of an African American to the White House, Chavis said, “We ought to be more vocal now than ever before,” noting, for example, that the current budget discussions on Capitol Hill could result in the closure of several Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Now in his early 60s, Chavis has had a long and, sometimes, controversial career, which included a stint as the executive director of the NAACP. Chavis was cofounder, with Russell Simmons, of the HipHop Summit Action Network. From an early age, Chavis recognized the power of the press. A North Carolinian native, Chavis said he interned at The Carolina Times when he was 14. During his incarceration, he wrote not only about The Wilmington Ten, but about other political prisoners as well. Chavis said he is pleased that his editorials, like his recent one on the defunding threat to HBCUs, could be carried once again by NNPA members. NNPA Chair and Los Angeles Sentinel Publisher Danny Bakewell encouraged NNPA members to take

up the banner and “request a pardon for those 10 people,” some of whom are now deceased. He lauded several of NNPA’s corporate partners, which, through advertising in member newspapers, assist their publications. Bakewell also announced NNPA’s partnership with The Nielsen Co. to produce a report on the state of the African American con-

sumer.

As NNPA chair, Bakewell has been consistent in his message that businesses exercise corporate responsibility in advertising purchases. “I don’t expect them to advertise in markets they’re not in,” Bakewell said, but noted that African Americans often represent a significant market share for companies which return little to those communities. The message from

Bakewell and other speakers was that advertising is only a means to the end of providing a voice for African Americans. Chavis added, however, that African Americans themselves also bear responsibility for sustaining their own media. “I want the black community to step up,” he said. “We have to pay for our own freedom ... We also have to reach into our pockets.”

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