Alcorn President Resigns to Take Michigan Post

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Alcorn State University President George E. Ross is leaving the Mississippi campus to take a job in Michigan.

The state College Board announced Dec. 3 that Ross, 58, will relocate to Central Michigan University on March 1 to become its president.

Some say Ross’ unexpected departure comes at a bad time for Alcorn State. Gov. Haley Barbour has proposed merging Alcorn with the two other historically black schools — Jackson State University and Mississippi Valley State University — to reduce state budget costs.

“We certainly wish Dr. Ross all the best, but it couldn’t have been at a more difficult time when we’re dealing with real difficult questions on how we’re going to proceed with higher education,” said House Universities and Colleges Committee Chairman Kelvin Buck, D-Holly Springs.

Buck said he’s hopeful the process to replace Ross will move swiftly. He said legislators opposed to Barbour’s recommendation will “try to come up with some solutions that won’t involve closing or merging.”

Ross and the other black college presidents have criticized Barbour’s proposal, which will be presented to lawmakers when the Legislature convenes in January.

Last month, Ross said Alcorn State should remain independent because it’s an economic engine for the southwest Mississippi region.

Morgan State University Selects New President

BALTIMORE (AP) — The supervisor of Wisconsin’s two-year colleges has been selected to lead Morgan State University.

Officials at the historically black school in Baltimore announced Dec. 3 that David Wilson will replace Earl Richardson, who plans to step down at the end of June after 25 years.

Wilson attended Tuskegee Institute — now Tuskegee University — in Alabama, and says historically black institutions hold a special place in his heart.

The son of Alabama sharecroppers who earned a doctorate from Harvard, Wilson says he was impressed with Morgan’s faculty and its production of African-American engineers and scientists. He says he plans to expand the university’s doctoral programs.

Wilson will take the job officially on July 1.

Top School Retaliated Against Black Teacher, Jury Rules

BOSTON (AP) — A jury has found that the elite Boston Latin School retaliated against a black teacher who claimed discrimination after administrators stripped him of his teaching position and replaced him with a less experienced white teacher.

Jurors in Suffolk Superior Court this week awarded Jonathan Bonds $341,000 for his claim that the school refused to appoint him chairman of its history department in 2006. The jury, however, rejected his discrimination claims.

Bonds told The Boston Globe that his case was about “reputation and honor.”

A spokesman for the Boston public schools says administrators intend to file additional motions in the case.

Boston Latin, founded in 1635, is the oldest public school in the nation and students must pass a rigorous exam to attend.

NAACP Files Complaint against NC School District

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — An eastern North Carolina public school system has deliberately segregated schools, putting black students at a disadvantage and creating “a district of apartheid education,” the NAACP said in a federal complaint filed Dec. 1. 

State NAACP president Rev. William Barber said at a news conference Dec. 1 that the organization filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Justice and Education departments against the Wayne County school district in Goldsboro. If the Department of Justice approves the complaint, it would go to court, Barber said.

NAACP attorney Irving Joyner said the school system is accused of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which makes it illegal to distribute federal funds on the basis of racial discrimination.

Barber cited policies that he says have resulted in lower graduation rates, higher suspension rates and more and stiffer discipline for black students. He says the central attendance district in Goldsboro has a student population that’s almost 100 percent black while another district in Goldsboro is almost 90 percent white.

Plan for Museum at Home Where Black Students Met

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Every day before heading to Little Rock Central High School toward the end of 1957, nine black students gathered at Daisy and L.C. Bates’ home to prepare for the angry mob they would face as they integrated the all-white Central High School.

“It was kind of like a war room in a sense,” said Carlotta Walls LaNier, one of the black students commonly known as the Little Rock Nine. “It was a place that we gathered and got ready to go to school and where we would come back to. It was a place of nurturing and a place of debriefing where we could at least have a laugh or two from that day.”

The small tan brick home in south Little Rock is easy to miss, with a plaque in the front yard marking it as a national historic site. But a nonprofit organization hopes to change that by eventually opening the house as a museum. Among its visitors have been Civil Rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The L.C. and Daisy Bates Museum Foundation Inc. and the Christian Ministerial Alliance, which owns the house, has made $75,000 in repairs and hopes to promote the site as a complement to a museum about the desegregation crisis near Central High.