Thank you for the programs everyone had for Black History Month. My thanks to the gospel fest. I really enjoyed the praise dancers, solos, church choirs and of course the prayers. Also thanks to Xavier Hall, emcee. It was just an evening of laughter and praising the Lord. If you have not seen or heard the comedy of Mr. Hall, you are missing a lot of laughter.
This is the same young man that first brought over 500 people together for an evening of recognizing our people and the things they had accomplished.
Again Kingsport Arts, thank you for an evening’s enjoyment. This program was great.
Lillian Leeper
Church Hill
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Thanks for support
I thank the following for their help and support for New Vision Youth MLK Unity Day supper and candlelight vigil events: KHRA, Edna Potts, Julie Douglass, Alvisia Blye-Vista, Joane Jones, Community Care Mary Beatty president of Riverview Association, Riverview Boys and Girls Club, Friends of Distinction: Martha Harper, Mary Jane Treece, Mary Ann Gullette, John Bradford, Shelia Releford, Tina Releford, Barbara Greene, Pam Swagerty, Tina Glover, Carolyn Goodwin, Marsha Patrick, Kandy Davis, Lisa Williamson, City of Kingsport Parks and Recreation Christy Leonard, James (Moore), Henry, Chasity Smiley, Tish Hayes, Pastor Geraldine Swagerty, Chuck Lollar, Dennis Lytle, New Vision Youth Kids and parents Veronica Camp, Ronald Mitchell, Wendy Himmelwright, WJHL, Kingsport Times-News, Jeannie Hodges, the Rev. Lawrence Myrick, Calvin Sneed, Erica Yoon, Stephanie McClellan, South Central Kingsport Weed-n-Seed, Soto family, Bobby Lane, Hope Six, Youth Build, and the community for coming together making these events a success.
Thanks to all and see you all next year.
Johnnie Mae Swagerty
Kingsport
Thanks to all and see you all next year.
Johnnie Mae Swagerty
Kingsport
Thanks, volunteers
Thanks to all the churches, volunteers, businesses, organizations, individuals, schools, youth and everyone for donations and volunteering time to the Kitchen of Hope. Your support and thoughtfulness is very appreciated.
I know all you volunteers have put in countless hours to the Kitchen of Hope, and I appreciate each of you for taking your time to support and help out. And I think all the people who come to the Kitchen of Hope to eat.
If it weren’t for the volunteers who help and the donations that come in, we could not make it. I didn’t want to name everyone because I know I would leave somebody’s name, organization or church out. But a gracious thanks to all volunteers and community donations.
Pastor Geraldine Swagerty
Kingsport
I know all you volunteers have put in countless hours to the Kitchen of Hope, and I appreciate each of you for taking your time to support and help out. And I think all the people who come to the Kitchen of Hope to eat.
If it weren’t for the volunteers who help and the donations that come in, we could not make it. I didn’t want to name everyone because I know I would leave somebody’s name, organization or church out. But a gracious thanks to all volunteers and community donations.
Pastor Geraldine Swagerty
Kingsport
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Black History Month offers lessons for all of us
THIS EDITORIAL FROM THE EDITOR OF THE KINGSPORT TIMES-NEWS, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2011
Black history is a subject too interesting and vast to be confined to a single month, much less the shortest one. But brief as the month is, it does represent a chance to bear witness, if only in a small way, to the progress, richness and diversity of African-American achievement.
It was during the 1920s that Carter Woodson, a premier black historian, first put forward his idea of a Negro History Week. Woodson saw the celebration as a way to advance the idea of African history as a form of black cultural empowerment and emancipation.
In his view, the knowledge and dissemination of African history would, “besides building self-esteem among blacks, help eliminate prejudice among whites.”
He aimed, he wrote, both “to inculcate in the mind of the youth of African blood an appreciation of what their race has thought and felt and done” and to publicize the facts of the black among whites, so that “the Negro may enjoy a larger share of the privileges of democracy as a result of the recognition of his worth.”
In a speech at Hampton Institute in 1921, Woodson addressed the issue head on: “We have a wonderful history behind us,” he told his listeners. “(But) ... if you are unable to demonstrate to the world that you have this record, the world will say to you, ‘You are not worthy to enjoy the blessings of democracy or anything else.’ They will say to you, ‘Who are you, anyway? Your ancestors have never controlled empires or kingdoms and most of your race have contributed little or nothing to science and philosophy and mathematics.’
“So far as you know, they have not; but if you will read the history of Africa, the history of your ancestors’ people of whom you should feel proud, you will realize that they have a history that is worthwhile.
“They have traditions ... of which you can boast and upon which you can base a claim for a right to a share in the blessings of democracy.
“Let us, then, study ... this history ... with the understanding that we are not, after all, an inferior people. We are going back to that beautiful history and it is going to inspire us to greater achievements. It is not going to be long before we can sing the story to the outside world as to convince it of the value of our history ... and we are going to be recognized as men.”
Many decades have passed since Woodson spoke those words. But the pride and the passion in them are as fresh today as they were 90 years ago.
The week-long celebration Woodson first envisioned has become a month-long period for Americans of all races to reflect on the history and teachings of African-Americans whose contributions are still too little known and appreciated.
Along those lines, there is an African proverb that seems especially appropriate for this time of year: “Know your history,” it urges, “and you will always be wise.”
Good advice, that. Indeed the collective history of the African-American community contains invaluable lessons for us all.
Black history is a subject too interesting and vast to be confined to a single month, much less the shortest one. But brief as the month is, it does represent a chance to bear witness, if only in a small way, to the progress, richness and diversity of African-American achievement.
It was during the 1920s that Carter Woodson, a premier black historian, first put forward his idea of a Negro History Week. Woodson saw the celebration as a way to advance the idea of African history as a form of black cultural empowerment and emancipation.
In his view, the knowledge and dissemination of African history would, “besides building self-esteem among blacks, help eliminate prejudice among whites.”
He aimed, he wrote, both “to inculcate in the mind of the youth of African blood an appreciation of what their race has thought and felt and done” and to publicize the facts of the black among whites, so that “the Negro may enjoy a larger share of the privileges of democracy as a result of the recognition of his worth.”
In a speech at Hampton Institute in 1921, Woodson addressed the issue head on: “We have a wonderful history behind us,” he told his listeners. “(But) ... if you are unable to demonstrate to the world that you have this record, the world will say to you, ‘You are not worthy to enjoy the blessings of democracy or anything else.’ They will say to you, ‘Who are you, anyway? Your ancestors have never controlled empires or kingdoms and most of your race have contributed little or nothing to science and philosophy and mathematics.’
“So far as you know, they have not; but if you will read the history of Africa, the history of your ancestors’ people of whom you should feel proud, you will realize that they have a history that is worthwhile.
“They have traditions ... of which you can boast and upon which you can base a claim for a right to a share in the blessings of democracy.
“Let us, then, study ... this history ... with the understanding that we are not, after all, an inferior people. We are going back to that beautiful history and it is going to inspire us to greater achievements. It is not going to be long before we can sing the story to the outside world as to convince it of the value of our history ... and we are going to be recognized as men.”
Many decades have passed since Woodson spoke those words. But the pride and the passion in them are as fresh today as they were 90 years ago.
The week-long celebration Woodson first envisioned has become a month-long period for Americans of all races to reflect on the history and teachings of African-Americans whose contributions are still too little known and appreciated.
Along those lines, there is an African proverb that seems especially appropriate for this time of year: “Know your history,” it urges, “and you will always be wise.”
Good advice, that. Indeed the collective history of the African-American community contains invaluable lessons for us all.
Monday, January 17, 2011
It’s up to each of us to bring King’s dream to fruition
EDITORIAL FROM THE KINGSPORT TIMES-NEWS, MONDAY, JANUARY 17, 2011 ON THE OCCASION OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR,'S BIRTHDAY
Today marks the national observance of the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. In a noonday parade in Kingsport, King’s legacy of nonviolence in the pursuit of justice will be remembered and extolled, as it rightly should.
But if the civil rights leader were alive today, he would surely urge those who seek to honor him and that struggle to make this a day of action, rather than a day of rest and recollection.
That’s not to say there hasn’t been progress, for, of course, there has been. If nothing else, the election of Barack Obama is evidence of that. But there are abundant examples of progress beyond the political and symbolic.
In Dr. King’s time, census statistics revealed that nearly nine of every 10 blacks lived in poverty. Today, more than 40 percent of blacks are solidly middle class. And college attendance rates for blacks are now indistinguishable from whites. Indeed, in many ways, the progress has been so dramatic it tends to obscure the extent of a bigotry that was once a condition of life — and not just in the Jim Crow South.
The world of segregated bathrooms and lunch counters King helped to abolish is as remote in time to the average schoolchild of today as Lincoln’s assassination or the Civil War. It is a world they have seen in pictures, but can never truly know, since they did not live through it. Such is the measure of King’s success in helping to reorder society itself. King’s dream of a world in which people would be defined, “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” is now a touchstone of modern American life.
Dr. King did more than any other single figure in American history to give that dream dimension and meaning. The Martin Luther King remembered and celebrated today is a figure dramatically invoking that dream of racial harmony at the rally on the mall in Washington, D.C. in 1963.
Virtually forgotten are the later years, after the passage of the Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, when King started to decry the huge income gaps between rich and poor and began to call for radical changes in the structure of society.
“True compassion,” he said, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
All too soon, however, Dr. King’s exhortations would be silenced by an assassin’s bullet in 1968. He was just 39.
From noon until 1 p.m. today, the 11th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Parade will be held in downtown Kingsport.
The event will begin at the intersection of East Sevier and Center Street (Rikki Rhoton Allstate Insurance Co.’s parking lot) and conclude at Shelby Street at the city parking lot between Kingsport City Hall and the Justice Center.
The theme of the parade is summed up in three words: “Remember! Celebrate! Act!” Parade sponsors include Eastman Chemical Company, Food City, Office Depot, Joshua Generation, My Brother’s Keeper, Putting Babies First and the Upper East Tennessee Human Development Agency.
In these local ceremonies as well as many others, we honor the icon that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has become. But hero worship was never King’s interest. Changing society was. His life was all too brief, but the dream he had goes on. More than four decades after his tragic and untimely death, it’s up to each of us to do our part in making that dream a living reality.
Today marks the national observance of the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. In a noonday parade in Kingsport, King’s legacy of nonviolence in the pursuit of justice will be remembered and extolled, as it rightly should.
But if the civil rights leader were alive today, he would surely urge those who seek to honor him and that struggle to make this a day of action, rather than a day of rest and recollection.
That’s not to say there hasn’t been progress, for, of course, there has been. If nothing else, the election of Barack Obama is evidence of that. But there are abundant examples of progress beyond the political and symbolic.
In Dr. King’s time, census statistics revealed that nearly nine of every 10 blacks lived in poverty. Today, more than 40 percent of blacks are solidly middle class. And college attendance rates for blacks are now indistinguishable from whites. Indeed, in many ways, the progress has been so dramatic it tends to obscure the extent of a bigotry that was once a condition of life — and not just in the Jim Crow South.
The world of segregated bathrooms and lunch counters King helped to abolish is as remote in time to the average schoolchild of today as Lincoln’s assassination or the Civil War. It is a world they have seen in pictures, but can never truly know, since they did not live through it. Such is the measure of King’s success in helping to reorder society itself. King’s dream of a world in which people would be defined, “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” is now a touchstone of modern American life.
Dr. King did more than any other single figure in American history to give that dream dimension and meaning. The Martin Luther King remembered and celebrated today is a figure dramatically invoking that dream of racial harmony at the rally on the mall in Washington, D.C. in 1963.
Virtually forgotten are the later years, after the passage of the Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, when King started to decry the huge income gaps between rich and poor and began to call for radical changes in the structure of society.
“True compassion,” he said, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
All too soon, however, Dr. King’s exhortations would be silenced by an assassin’s bullet in 1968. He was just 39.
From noon until 1 p.m. today, the 11th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Parade will be held in downtown Kingsport.
The event will begin at the intersection of East Sevier and Center Street (Rikki Rhoton Allstate Insurance Co.’s parking lot) and conclude at Shelby Street at the city parking lot between Kingsport City Hall and the Justice Center.
The theme of the parade is summed up in three words: “Remember! Celebrate! Act!” Parade sponsors include Eastman Chemical Company, Food City, Office Depot, Joshua Generation, My Brother’s Keeper, Putting Babies First and the Upper East Tennessee Human Development Agency.
In these local ceremonies as well as many others, we honor the icon that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has become. But hero worship was never King’s interest. Changing society was. His life was all too brief, but the dream he had goes on. More than four decades after his tragic and untimely death, it’s up to each of us to do our part in making that dream a living reality.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
New Year's Challenge from Alumnus Larry Bowditch
This is how I am challenging myself to "get better".
Are you big enough to take it on, too?
Spend one hour today, just one, totally focused on the wants, needs and interests of others.. and not yours.
Who has done it for One, Full, Hour?
All the Best to you,
~ Larry
Are you big enough to take it on, too?
Spend one hour today, just one, totally focused on the wants, needs and interests of others.. and not yours.
Who has done it for One, Full, Hour?
All the Best to you,
~ Larry
Sister's Kidney Donation Condition of Mississippi Parole
JACKSON, Miss. – For 16 years, sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott have shared a life behind bars for their part in an $11 armed robbery. To share freedom, they must also share a kidney.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour suspended the sisters' life sentences on Wednesday, but 36-year-old Gladys Scott's release is contingent on her giving a kidney to Jamie, her 38-year-old sister, who requires daily dialysis.
The sisters were convicted in 1994 of leading two men into an ambush in central Mississippi the year before. Three teenagers hit each man in the head with a shotgun and took their wallets — making off with only $11, court records said. Jamie and Gladys Scott were each convicted of two counts of armed robbery and sentenced to two life sentences.
"I think it's a victory," said the sisters' attorney, Chokwe Lumumba. "I talked to Gladys and she's elated about the news. I'm sure Jamie is, too."
National NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous thanked Barbour in a news conference Thursday at Mississippi's capital, calling the suspension of the sentences "a shining example" of the way a governor should use the power of clemency. Civil rights advocates have for years called for the sisters' release, saying the sentences were excessive. Those demands gained traction when Barbour asked the Mississippi Parole Board to take another look at the case.
The Scott sisters are eligible for parole in 2014, but Barbour said prison officials no longer think they are a threat to society and Jamie's medical condition is costing the state a lot of money — approximately $200,000 a year, according to Mississippi Department of Corrections Spokesman Kent Croker.
Lumumba said he has no problem with the governor requiring Gladys to offer up her organ because "Gladys actually volunteered that as part of her petition." Lumumba said it's not clear what caused the kidney failure, but it's likely a combination of different illnesses over the years.
Barbour spokesman Dan Turner told The Associated Press that Jamie Scott was released because she needs the transplant. He said Gladys Scott will be released if she agrees to donate her kidney because of the significant risk and recovery time. "She wanted to do it," Turner said. "That wasn't something we introduced."
Barbour is a Republican in his second term who has been mentioned as a possible presidential contender in 2012. He said the parole board agreed with the indefinite suspension of their sentences, which is different from a pardon or commutation because it comes with conditions. An "indefinite suspension of sentence" can be reversed if the conditions are not followed, but those requirements are usually things like meeting with a parole officer.
The Scott sisters have received significant public support from advocacy groups, including the NAACP, which called for their release. Hundreds of people marched through downtown Jackson from the state capital to the governor's mansion in September, chanting in unison that the women should be freed.
Still, their release won't be immediate. Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said late Wednesday that he had not received the order. He also said the women want to live with relatives in Florida, which requires approval from officials in that state.
In general, that process takes 45 days.
Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson said the Scott sisters' release will be "a great victory for the state of Mississippi for two individuals who received an excessive sentence" and he has no problem with the kidney donation requirement because Gladys Scott volunteered.
"I think it's encouraging that she's willing to share a kidney so her sister can have a better quality life," Johnson said.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour suspended the sisters' life sentences on Wednesday, but 36-year-old Gladys Scott's release is contingent on her giving a kidney to Jamie, her 38-year-old sister, who requires daily dialysis.
The sisters were convicted in 1994 of leading two men into an ambush in central Mississippi the year before. Three teenagers hit each man in the head with a shotgun and took their wallets — making off with only $11, court records said. Jamie and Gladys Scott were each convicted of two counts of armed robbery and sentenced to two life sentences."I think it's a victory," said the sisters' attorney, Chokwe Lumumba. "I talked to Gladys and she's elated about the news. I'm sure Jamie is, too."
National NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous thanked Barbour in a news conference Thursday at Mississippi's capital, calling the suspension of the sentences "a shining example" of the way a governor should use the power of clemency. Civil rights advocates have for years called for the sisters' release, saying the sentences were excessive. Those demands gained traction when Barbour asked the Mississippi Parole Board to take another look at the case.
The Scott sisters are eligible for parole in 2014, but Barbour said prison officials no longer think they are a threat to society and Jamie's medical condition is costing the state a lot of money — approximately $200,000 a year, according to Mississippi Department of Corrections Spokesman Kent Croker.
Lumumba said he has no problem with the governor requiring Gladys to offer up her organ because "Gladys actually volunteered that as part of her petition." Lumumba said it's not clear what caused the kidney failure, but it's likely a combination of different illnesses over the years.
Barbour spokesman Dan Turner told The Associated Press that Jamie Scott was released because she needs the transplant. He said Gladys Scott will be released if she agrees to donate her kidney because of the significant risk and recovery time. "She wanted to do it," Turner said. "That wasn't something we introduced."
Barbour is a Republican in his second term who has been mentioned as a possible presidential contender in 2012. He said the parole board agreed with the indefinite suspension of their sentences, which is different from a pardon or commutation because it comes with conditions. An "indefinite suspension of sentence" can be reversed if the conditions are not followed, but those requirements are usually things like meeting with a parole officer.
The Scott sisters have received significant public support from advocacy groups, including the NAACP, which called for their release. Hundreds of people marched through downtown Jackson from the state capital to the governor's mansion in September, chanting in unison that the women should be freed.
Still, their release won't be immediate. Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said late Wednesday that he had not received the order. He also said the women want to live with relatives in Florida, which requires approval from officials in that state.
In general, that process takes 45 days.
Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson said the Scott sisters' release will be "a great victory for the state of Mississippi for two individuals who received an excessive sentence" and he has no problem with the kidney donation requirement because Gladys Scott volunteered.
"I think it's encouraging that she's willing to share a kidney so her sister can have a better quality life," Johnson said.
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