Mainstream media learns no lessons

Shirley and Charles Sherrod each have more than four decades of civil rights activism in southwest Georgia.

Editor’s note: The controversy surrounding the forced resignation of Shirley Sherrod from her U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) job is now well-known. However, the personal history of Mrs. Sherrod’s husband, the Rev. Charles Sherrod, also deserves to be known.

The NNPA News Service interviewed the Sherrods separately last week. Rev. Sherrod’s reflections appear here.

BY HAZEL TRICE EDNEY
NNPA EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Born in 1937, Rev. Charles Sherrod first became aware of racism at age two, when his mother yanked him out of a front seat and pulled him to the back of a bus. He became a teenage activist in 1954 when he and a friend "sat-in" at White church services in his Petersburg, Va. hometown.

Carl and Emma Calhoun, owners of Body Rest Mattress Co. in St. Petersburg, have had to lay off employees due to the recession. (BRIAN BLANCO/MCT)

Checks will keep coming through December

BY DAVID ROYSE
NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

Last week, President Obama signed legislation that extends federal jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed for another six months.

Not content to wait for lawmakers to act later this year, Gov. Charlie Crist almost immediately issued an executive order last week that will make nearly a quarter-million Floridians who have been out of work for a long time eligible for additional benefits.

Jamal Jacques, 12, right, practices playing a song during the “Guitars Over Guns Operation” program at North Miami Middle School. (CARL JUSTE/MIAMI HERALD/MCT)

COMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON – Florida is once again a finalist for the "Race to the Top" grant program administered by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) – a program now under fire from civil rights organizations.

Eight groups, including the NAACP, contend in a document released Monday that DOE is promoting ineffective approaches for failing schools. They also claim the $4.35 billion Race to the Top competition – a program with a goal of spurring innovative reform in states – leaves out many minority students.

Concern about racial, ethnicity data collected prompts requests

FROM WIRE REPORTS

MIAMI – The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida asked the FBI this week to turn over records related to the agency’s collection and use of race and ethnicity data in local communities.