Dodd is suing the all-white church for $500,000 in punitive damages for what she refers to as racial discrimination.

Religious News Service Reports:

Dodd said the church initially “treated me like family,” but that changed after three church leaders saw Dodd and her then-fiance, Michael Hampton, eating together at a Fayetteville restaurant.

“Then suddenly it went downhill. All of the sudden my clothes were not appropriate, I was not doing my job right. People stopped looking at me. They would turn their faces away from me. When my husband and a friend of his visited one week when I sang, there were comments about the ‘colored boys in the back.’”

Read More At Religious News Service

Dorothy Cooper spoke about the difficulties she experienced trying to vote appearing on Rev. Al Sharpton’s Politics Nation show. According to Cooper, she was alerted that she would need her marriage certificate to be able to vote. At another voting booth she was told she could vote absentee.

Dorothy Cooper states that she never, at the age of 96, thought that voting would be such a hassle.

“I never thought that is would be like this ever,” Cooper said.

Read more at the Grio.

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Darren Ring, a 34-year-old man from New Johnsonville, suffered a punctured lung and cracked ribs from the brutal beating.

Cops descended on Ring’s neighborhood when they heard reports of gunshots.

The incident occurred on January 23rd this year, and Ring was charged with three counts of assaulting an officer, resisting arrest, and a parole violation.

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Tennessee — Since Obama’s presidency, many have said we live in a post-racial society. This story will remind you we don’t.

A teacher at a local high school in Springfield, Tennessee found her mailbox spray painted “KKK.”

Gerlonda Hardin moved into the mostly white neighborhood a year ago and never experienced any type of racism. This was her first experience and one she hopes doesn’t repeat itself.

“There are still some cruel people, cruel things in the world. Living in the 21st century, it’s funny that things like that still float around,” said Hardin.

Read more at TheGrio

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Chastain Montgomery Sr. was indicted by a grand jury on two counts of killing a government employee in the Oct. 18 shooting inside the post office in the small West Tennessee town of Henning.

The indictment says the 47-year-old Montgomery killed Judy Spray and Paula Robinson during a robbery of the post office that he committed with his son, Chastain Montgomery Jr.

Edward Stanton, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, said the father and son aided and abetted each other in the crime, but declined to elaborate on any other details. He said the investigation is ongoing.

The 18-year-old Montgomery Jr. was killed in a shootout with police on Feb. 14 after a police chase, and his father is jailed on charges related to the shoutout. Afterwards, federal authorities began investigating whether a gun used by the teenager was also linked to the post office shootings.

The sheriff’s office in Tipton County, just north of Memphis, said Montgomery got out of a stolen pickup armed with two handguns and fired at officers several times before a deputy shot him dead.

Chastain Montgomery Sr. was arrested when he went to the scene and tried to get in the stolen pickup truck his son had been driving. He ran through crime scene tape, ignoring the shouted warnings of officers and headed straight for the truck, which was still running.

Montgomery Sr., a state prison guard, was carrying dye-stained cash, and his home in the Nashville suburb of La Vergne was searched that evening for guns, money from recent bank robberies, stolen property and dark clothing, according to warrants in the case.

The father was jailed on charges of evidence tampering, being an accessory, theft between $1,000 and $10,000 and resisting arrest. In the newly announced indictment, he also faces federal charges of robbery with a dangerous weapon, using a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, and two counts of unlawfully causing the death of a person.

The Henning post office shootings shook the town of 1,200 people about 45 miles northeast of Memphis, and residents have been praying for an arrest. Authorities have been quiet throughout the investigation, refusing to disclose details of the shootings, a possible motive, or even how many people they thought were involved.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service had offered a reward of $50,000 for information that led to a conviction.

Stanton said the victims’ families and the town’s residents have suffered. “Hopefully this does begin that process of restoring and healing for that community and for those families,” he said.

Montgomery Sr. is in the process of being transferred into federal custody and no hearing has been set in federal court.

Mike Dunavant, District Attorney for the area that includes Tipton County, said the state was deferring to federal authorities in its prosecution of Montgomery Sr. for the state charges. But he didn’t rule out additional state charges being filed against him.

John Mehr, a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent in West Tennessee, called the announcement of the indictment a glorious day for the victims’ families, but the investigation was not over.

“Although this is an occasion that they’ve been looking for, there’s lots ahead of them,” Mehr said. “They suffered tremendously in the last few months.”

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According to one group tracking the numbers, Frayser has the highest teen pregnancy rate in Memphis. The new campaign, called “No Baby!” is designed to try to get teen girls and boys to prevent pregnancies; at the same time, Memphis City School officials are working on a way to help students more effectively deal with unplanned pregnancies.

The startling news was confirmed by a high ranking city official and comes as the community plans to roll out a new initiative to help combat the problem.

However, one Frayser High School graduate says teen pregnancy is not a new problem for the school.

VIDEO:

“When we would come back from summer break, there would be a thousand people pregnant. We were like, what’s going on?” joked Alicia Williamson, who graduated from Frayser in 2004.

“There were a whole lot of bellies. You had to watch out so you didn’t bump into them. Being 2011, I thought a lot of them would have thought this is not the right way to go, having babies during school time,” she added.

The organization, Girls, Inc. teaches girls about preventing pregnancy.

Deborah Hester Harrison, who heads the organization, says Memphis’ teen pregnancy rate stands at between 15 and 20 percent, almost twice the national average.

In the Frayser zip code, the rate is about 26 percent. Harrison partly blames the media.

Read more at ChicagoTribune.com

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Gene Cranick of Obion County and his family lost all of their possessions in the Sept. 29 fire, along with three dogs and a cat.

“They could have been saved if they had put water on it, but they didn’t do it,” Cranick told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.

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The U. S. Census Bureau recognized community service organizations such as the Gamma Alpha Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., the Jackson Madison county NAACP branch, and 100 Black Men of West Tennessee for their efforts in increasing participation in 10 “hard to count” areas in Madison County, according to Harrell Carter, NAACP Branch president.

These areas are defined as those in which residents largely do not mail back census forms counting the number of residents in each household. They include parts of downtown and East Jackson.

Some areas boasted a participation increase of as much as 12 percent above the national average, Carter said. All 10 “hard to count” track areas experienced at least a 5 percent increase above the national average.

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The census bureau was able to send back $1.6 billion to the federal government, but members of this community sector had to first battle years of government mistrust.

“The more people mail the form back in, the less people the census bureau had to hire to go door to door, especially in the African American community because usually African Americans do not send the forms back in because of their distrust of the government,” Parham said. “They’re not sure what they’re going to do with that information.”

Read entire article at JacksonSun.com

A school bus mistakenly dropped a 5-year-old Nashville, Tennessee boy off at his home on Tuesday, causing the child to attempt a dangerous eight-mile walk.

When school let out at 3 p.m. Antonio Easley, who is in kindergarten, was supposed to go to after-care at the school until 5 p.m. His mom would then pick him up from work.
Instead, he was put on a school bus and dropped off at his home. His mother, Courtney Easley, who works at a furniture store eight miles away, was still at work.

A panicked Antonio decided to walk along Nashville’s busy Gallatin Road to get to his mom in the pouring rain. It was a dangerous walk for the boy: Antonio had to cross five lanes of traffic at the intersection of Gallatin Road and Old Hickory Boulevard, dodging cars along the way.

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“He almost was hit by cars two times,” said Easley.

A clerk at a gas station where the child stopped to get out of the rain gave Antonio an umbrella, but offered no other help. A couple in a car driving by offered Antonio a ride in their car, which he refused because his mother told him never to get in a car with strangers.

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Read entire article at TheGrio.com

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Democratic voters in Memphis rejected their former mayor’s race-focused campaign for Congress on Thursday, delivering a landslide to incumbent Rep. Steve Cohen.

Willie Herenton had urged the majority black 9th District to elect him because he is African-American and could diversify Tennessee’s all-white, 11-member congressional delegation.

Cohen, who is white and Jewish, got 63,343 votes, or 79 percent, to Willie Herenton’s 17,128, or 21 percent according to final but unofficial results.

In other closely watched Republican congressional campaigns, a former state GOP chairwoman narrowly lost, a state senator narrowly won and a gospel singer finished far ahead in the nation’s most expensive U.S. House race.

Cohen said his victory sends a message that “Memphis is a city on the move and not a city of the past.”

Herenton, the city’s first black mayor, had never before lost a campaign. He urged his supporters to back Cohen and at age 70 said he has no immediate plans to run for another office.

“I’m the kind of guy that was always the winner. For whatever reason, it was not part of God’s master plan,” Herenton said.

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Herenton’s campaign message ranged from making the case that “diverse people ought to have representation” to chiding voters to “come off that Cohen plantation and get on the Herenton freedom train.”

Cohen, a two-term congressman and former state senator, countered that with endorsements from President Barack Obama and Harold Ford Sr., the first black elected to the seat and senior member of a powerful political family.

Cohen, 61, also built support in the black community by supporting civil rights legislation and bringing much-needed federal funding to Memphis schools and hospitals.

Brenda Garner, a 67-year-old retired health case professional, said she voted for Cohen because he has been more active in the community and has shown genuine concern for voters in his district.

“He visited everywhere to just let us know, ‘I’m not taking you for granted,’” Garner said.

After Thursday night’s victory, Cohen said he was asked by the Democratic Caucus to help other Democrats around the country hold onto or win seats in November.

In southeast Tennessee’s 3rd Congressional District, Chattanooga attorney Chuck Fleischmann prevailed over former state Republican Party leader Robin Smith. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Fleischmann had 26,860 votes, or 30 percent, to Smith’s 25,451, or 28 percent. The seat was open because incumbent Zach Wamp ran for governor.

Fleischmann won the endorsement of former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. He said Huckabee called to congratulate him Thursday night.

RELATED: Black Mayor Says His Race Is Good Reason To Elect Him To Congress

Smith, whose term as GOP leader saw the party take control of the Legislature but also be criticized for 2008 literature that implied then-candidate Obama was a Muslim, was endorsed by the Club for Growth.

“The people are tired of the politics as usual,” Fleischmann said. “They wanted someone who was a true political outsider.”

After calling Fleischmann to concede, Smith thanked her supporters and told them to “stay involved — pray, pray.”

Fleischmann faces Democrat John Wolfe in November.

In the 6th District east of Nashville, Sen. Diane Black won by just over 360 votes in a race dominated by issues of illegal immigration and diversity.

With all precincts reporting, Black had 24,604 votes, or 31 percent of the vote. Party activist and businesswoman Lou Ann Zelenik garnered 24,242 votes, or 30 percent, while state Sen. Tracy had 23,875 votes, or 29.7 percent.

Tracy and Black boasted about their plans to stamp out illegal immigration, while Zelenik raised eyebrows when she said in June that plans to build a mosque in a Nashville suburb posed a threat to Tennessee’s moral and political foundation.

In the Democratic primary, Iraq war veteran and lawyer Brett Carter edged Henry Barry and another veteran, Ben Leming. Carter had 9,052 votes or 30 percent. Barry had 8,820 votes or 29 percent while Leming had 8,705 votes, also 29 percent.

Incumbent Democratic Rep. Bart Gordon is retiring, and Republicans are hoping to take the seat in the fall.

In northwest Tennessee’s 8th District, Crockett County farmer and gospel performer Steve Fincher won the GOP primary, where campaign spending hit $5.2 million.

With all precincts reporting, Fincher had 35,016 votes, or 49 percent of the vote. Jackson physician Ron Kirkland came in second with 17,638 votes, or 24 percent, while Memphis radiologist and broadcaster George Flinn had 17,309 votes, also 24 percent.

Fincher’s rivals criticized him for collecting $3.2 million in farm subsidies. Flinn was targeted for living outside the district, while Kirkland was attacked for personal and political action committee donations to Democrats.

Fincher faces Democratic state Sen. Roy Herron in the fall. Incumbent Democratic Rep. John Tanner is retiring, and Republicans think the seat is one they could pick up in November.

Republican Rep. Phil Roe was declared the winner over opponent Michael Sabri in the 1st District in northeast Tennessee and faces no opposition in November.

Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper defeated Eric Pearson in the 5th District encompassing Nashville. He will be challenged by Republican David Hall, a businessman who defeated 10 other candidates, including CeCe Heil, who had been endorsed by Sarah Palin.

Three congressional incumbents — Republicans Jimmy Duncan in the 2nd and Marsha Blackburn in the 7th and Democrat Lincoln Davis in the 4th — had no primary opposition.

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Former Mayor Willie Herenton tried to stir up his low-key congressional campaign Wednesday by claiming again that his race is a good reason to send him to Washington.

Herenton smiled for the cameras at a news conference, donned a white, red and blue cap and held up a sign reading “Just One” — a campaign slogan that reflects Herenton’s contention that Tennessee needs one African-American U.S. representative to fight for Memphis, a majority black city.

Herenton, the city’s first elected black mayor, resigned that office last year to try to unseat incumbent Rep. Steve Cohen in the August Democratic primary. Cohen is white, as are the other 10 people who represent Tennessee in Congress.

“This picture is totally unacceptable,” said Herenton, holding up a campaign handout with a photo of the state’s two U.S. senators and nine representatives.

“I’m truly urban. This is an urban district. It has some critical urban needs that you have to feel, feel within your belly.”

Herenton is pushing the race angle in a campaign criticized as inactive and lacking specifics. Herenton has made few campaign appearances and is far behind Cohen in fundraising. The incumbent has more than $706,000 on hand and Herenton has $8,400, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ database.

Democrats have held the 9th District for three decades and the party’s primary winner is expected to win in November. The district lines roughly equal the city borders, and Cohen in 2006 became the first white to be elected since 1972.

Cohen’s race was an issue in his two previous primaries, but in those elections he faced several black opponents. This time Cohen goes head-to-head with Herenton, providing a referendum on race and politics in Memphis, where about 60 percent of the city’s 671,000 residents are black.

At Wednesday’s news conference Herenton touched on issues he would tackle as a congressman, such as abating poverty, helping urban public schools and the cutting into the trade deficit. But he offered no detailed plans or strategies he would use if elected.

It resembled a sparring match at times, with references to Muhammad Ali and an invitation for reporters to “come at me as hard as you want to.”

Herenton, a former Golden Gloves boxer, traded shots with reporters who asked questions about controversies that arose during his record 18-year mayoral stint. He took jabs at Cohen, saying he has no record and “hasn’t achieved anything” in Congress.

Cohen released a statement later Wednesday touting his experience in the House, including being appointed regional whip and chairman of the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law.

Herenton said many Memphis voters know him well and respect his accomplishments as school superintendent and mayor, which included revitalizing the downtown area, improving Memphis’ economy, and increasing home ownership.

“For thousands of citizens of Memphis, I will always be their mayor,” Herenton said.

On one occasion, Herenton drew a line when comparing blacks and whites, saying the facts show whites have had better opportunities to succeed than blacks. So, more diversity is needed in Congress to level the playing field, Herenton said.

Herenton’s reliance on the black vote is an obvious move, but he’s counting on help from across the spectrum. For example, he said he doesn’t agree with everything about the tea party movement, but he does “agree with some of their frustrations.”

Later, he said: “I’m going to get a lot of white votes; you may not believe this.”

Herenton also brushed aside some questions about a previous federal investigation, saying he has already addressed it.

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MEMPHIS — For two decades, Tyrone Banks was one of many African-Americans who saw his economic prospects brightening in this Mississippi River city.

A single father, he worked for FedEx and also as a custodian, built a handsome brick home, had a retirement account and put his eldest daughter through college.

Then the Great Recession rolled in like a fog bank. He refinanced his mortgage at a rate that adjusted sharply upward, and afterward he lost one of his jobs. Now Mr. Banks faces bankruptcy and foreclosure.

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“I’m going to tell you the deal, plain-spoken: I’m a black man from the projects and I clean toilets and mop up for a living,” said Mr. Banks, a trim man who looks at least a decade younger than his 50 years. “I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. But my whole life is backfiring.”

Not so long ago, Memphis, a city where a majority of the residents are black, was a symbol of a South where racial history no longer tightly constrained the choices of a rising black working and middle class. Now this city epitomizes something more grim: How rising unemployment and growing foreclosures in the recession have combined to destroy black wealth and income and erase two decades of slow progress.

Click here to read more.

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From TheBigLead.com:

Chris Myers guest hosted the Dan Patrick Show today. During his “best of the weekend” segment the sportscaster impressively managed diaphanously veiled shots at both African-Americans and Hispanics within the same thought train.

From today’s show, at about the 2:35 mark in the second hour.

“My best is and maybe it’s a little corny, but I like it. It’s a great country here. We have disastrous issues where people pull together and help themselves and I thought the people in Tennessee, unlike and I’m not going to name names. When a natural disaster hits people were not standing on a rooftop trying to blame the government, okay, they helped each other out through this.”

“Middle Tennessee where a lot of hardworking, tax-paying, legal American citizens have been affected by the floods and are trying to rebuild their lives and they are helping out and I think that other people around the country, of course the music industry in and around Nashville helping, without making a big deal out of it and I think that’s a good thing.”

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This may trump Paul Shirley for egregious use of the bootstraps argument. Most citizens of any social status, trapped on a roof in the midst of an apocalyptic natural disaster, might expect the national guard to help them. How does one help his or herself in that situation? Should the government have let them drown and starve to death on principle? This was the poorest major city in the country being hit by one of, if not the worst natural disaster in American history. Are you human?

What jerks the New Orleans people were for “making a big deal out of it” and getting people to donate money. Have some discretion!

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From CNN:

The Cumberland River is receding in swamped Nashville, Tennessee, but Music City faces a long recovery from the historic flooding.

The floods left landmarks, homes and businesses underwater in the country music capital.

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At least 27 deaths were blamed on flooding in the Southeast, 18 of them in Tennessee. And 10 of those Tennessee deaths occurred in Davidson County including Nashville, authorities said.

The office of Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said Tuesday that the Cumberland, which runs through downtown, is expected to be below flood level by the end of the week.

Shelters remain open, and residents are being urged to check on elderly neighbors who may need help.

Floodwaters swamped a U.S. Navy base in Millington, Tennessee, and affected a large part of its operations, a base spokesman said Tuesday.

Click here to read more.

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Storms And Floods In Southern U.S. Kill 29

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Rescuers feared even more bodies would emerge as muddy flood waters ebb from torrential weekend rains that swamped Nashville, much of Tennessee and two neighboring states, leaving at least 29 dead.

The Cumberland River that has submerged parts of Nashville’s historic downtown was expected to start receeding Tuesday after being swollen by flash floods in creeks that feed into it.

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Residents and authorities know they’ll find widespread property damage in inundated areas, but dread even more devastating discoveries.

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“Those in houses that have been flooded and some of those more remote areas, do we suspect we will find more people? Probably so,” Nashville Fire Chief Kim Lawson said. “We certainly hope that it’s not a large number.”

Thousands of people fled rising water and hundreds were rescued, but bodies were recovered Monday from homes, a yard, even a wooded area outside a Nashville supermarket. By Monday night, the rapidly rising waters were blamed in the deaths of 18 people in Tennessee alone, including 10 in Nashville.

The weekend storms also killed six people in Mississippi and four in Kentucky, including one man whose truck ran off the road and into a flooded creek. One person was killed by a tornado in western Tennessee.

In Nashville, the Cumberland also deluged some of the city’s most important revenue sources: the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center, whose 1,500 guests were whisked to a shelter; the adjacent Opry Mills Mall; even the Grand Ole Opry House, considered by many to be the heart of country music.

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“That’s the hub of the whole deal down here,” 82-year-old businessman John Hobbs said of the entertainment complex. “Without them nobody would be down here. That’s like the star of the whole family.

Floodwaters also edged into areas of downtown, damaging the Country Music Hall of Fame, LP Field where the Tennessee Titans play and the Bridgestone Arena, home to the NHL’s Nashville Predators and one of the city’s main concert venues.

Carly Horvat, 29, lives in a downtown condo and ventured out with a few friends to look at damage Monday night.

“I have never heard the city so quiet,” Horvat said. “Usually, you hear whooping and hollering from Broadway.”

Damage estimates range into the tens of millions of dollars. Gov. Phil Bredesen declared 52 of Tennessee’s 95 counties disaster areas after finishing an aerial tour from Nashville to western Tennessee during which he saw flooding so extensive that treetops looked like islands.

The severity of the storms caught everyone off guard. More than 13.5 inches of rainfall were recorded Saturday and Sunday, according to the National Weather Service, making for a new two-day record that doubled the previous mark.

Dramatic rescues continued into Monday as water crept into areas that had remained safe during weekend downpours.

Authorities and volunteers in fishing boats, an amphibious tour bus and a canoe scooped up about 500 trapped vacationers at the Wyndham Resort along the river near Opryland. Rescuers had to steer through a maze of underwater hazards, including submerged cars, some with tops barely visible above floodwaters the color of milk chocolate.

Bill Crousser was riding his Jet Ski past a neighbor’s house when he rescued a man, his wife and their dog moments before flames from a fire in the garage broke through the roof.

“We just got the hell out of there,” Crousser said.

The water swelled most of the area’s lakes, minor rivers, creeks, streams and drainage systems far beyond capacity. It flowed with such force that bridges were washed out and thousands of homes were damaged. Much of that water then drained into the Cumberland, which snakes through Nashville.

The Cumberland topped out around 6 p.m. Monday at 51.9 feet, about 12 feet above flood stage and the highest it’s reached since 1937. It began to recede just in time to spare the city’s only remaining water treatment plant.

Still, about 50 Nashville schools were damaged and floodwaters submerged hundreds of homes in the Bellevue suburb alone, including Lisa Blackmon’s. She escaped with her dog and her car but feared she lost everything else.

“I know God doesn’t give us more than we can take,” said Blackmon, 45, who lost her job at a trucking company in December. “But I’m at my breaking point.”

JACKSON, Tenn. — A white supremacist has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiring to kill then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and dozens of other black people.

U.S. District Judge J. Daniel Breen on Thursday sentenced 19-year-old Paul Schlesselman of Helena-West Helena, Ark. He had pleaded guilty in January.

Twenty-one-year-old co-defendant, Daniel Cowart of Bells, Tenn., also pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.

Authorities have described the pair as white supremacist skinheads who hatched a plan to go on a cross-country robbery and killing spree that would end with an attack on Obama in 2008.

Their plan was to kill 88 African-Americans and behead 14 others before trying to take out Obama. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist movement.

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Police in Memphis have charged at least four people after a fight broke out at a child-themed restaurant there.

The Commercial Appeal reported the ruckus Saturday night began when someone asked a woman how long she planned on being at a vending machine.

Police reports stated that when the woman said she “was going to take her time,” a man punched the woman, she and a companion fought back and the victim’s family got into the brawl.

Police said other customers panicked and fled the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant with their children.

Authorities charged Juaneka Key and Terrence Dickerson with disorderly conduct and inciting a riot.

Steven Henderson and Juanita Hopkins, who police said were shouting and cursing and making threats, are charged with disorderly conduct and marijuana possession.

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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Three freshman Tennessee football players are charged with an attempted armed robbery.

Knoxville police say wide receiver Nu’Keese Richardson and defensive backs Janzen Jackson and Mike Edwards were arrested after the incident early Thursday.

The victims told police they were in a parked vehicle near Tennessee’s campus when two men, one brandishing a handgun, approached. The suspects demanded whatever the victims had but left empty-handed when victims showed they had no money.

The suspects drove off with a third man in a Toyota Prius. Police located the car and the victims identified Richardson and Edwards.

Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton says he is evaluating the incident. It was not immediately clear if the players have attorneys.

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]]> http://newsone.com/352637/three-university-of-tennessee-football-players-arrested-for-armed-robbery/feed/ 6 Three University Of Tennessee Athletes Arrested For Armed Robbery (thumbnail) ionenewsone TG_TENN_111209-thumb-400xauto-4978 http://newsone.com/280847/police-shoot-man-43-times-in-tennessee/ http://newsone.com/280847/police-shoot-man-43-times-in-tennessee/#comments Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:20:04 +0000 Smokey D. Fontaine http://newsone.com/?p=280847 ]]>

Alonzo Heyward carried a rifle around his low-rent neighborhood one day last month, ranting about suicide and ignoring the pleas of friends for hours before six Chattanooga police officers surrounded him on his front porch and decided it had to end.

His father says Heyward told the officers, “I’m not out here to hurt anybody.”

But the police, who tried unsuccessfully to disarm Heyward, fired 59 rounds to kill him on July 18. The medical examiner found 43 bullet wounds in his chest, face, arms, hands, legs, buttocks and groin. Police contend Heyward was a danger to others and threatened the six officers.

Chattanooga police spokeswoman Jerri Weary described the case as “suicide by cop.”

As questions continue to surround the shooting, Heyward’s family and civil rights leaders take issue with the police response.

“We have a large concern about the amount of shots fired,” said Valoria Armstrong, president of the NAACP branch in Chattanooga.

A Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial cartoon asked “IS THIS EXCESSIVE FORCE?” — spelling out the question with letters labeling the wounds in a drawing based on Heyward’s autopsy report.

His father, James Marine, 61, does not believe Heyward really wanted to kill himself or that he was trying to commit “suicide by cop.”

“He just needed somebody to talk to,” Marine said. … “I believe he was just depressed at that time.”

A Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe is ongoing. Federal and local authorities are awaiting the TBI report before they do their own examinations of the case. Hamilton County District Attorney Bill Cox said he wants to see the TBI report before deciding whether to pursue a criminal case.

Heyward, a 32-year-old moving company employee, was black. The six officers are white. They were temporarily placed on administrative leave but have since returned to work.

Police spokeswoman Weary said the officers confronted Heyward when they responded to a report of three men wrestling over a gun in the street just after 4 a.m.

Heyward’s father said there was never any wrestling over the .44 Magnum rifle that his son was carrying and sometimes pointing at his chin.

Police said the officers tried but failed to disarm Heyward with a stun gun. Weary said Heyward ignored repeated commands to drop the rifle and officers fired when they felt threatened by the way he moved it.

Police accounts and a patrol car video indicate the shots were fired in three volleys, all within 30 seconds. Each officer used a .45-caliber pistol. Some officers emptied their magazines, reloaded and fired again, while others didn’t fire all their bullets, Weary said.

Some of the gunshots ripped through the unoccupied front room of the house Heyward was renting from his employer, the owner of a local moving company. No one else was injured.

The FBI and Justice Department do not keep national “suicide by cop” statistics. FBI records from September 2008 show 391 “justifiable homicides” by law enforcement in 2007, up slightly from the previous year.

Eugene O’Donnell, a former policeman and prosecutor who is now a professor of police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, said there is “no magic number” when it comes to officers firing at a suspect.

If death is believed to be imminent “there isn’t anybody in the country who can tell the cops 10 shots and no more,” O’Donnell said.

“Unfortunately this is replicated all over the country. When you send the police they bring deadly force with them. They come armed and they come predisposed to use force,” O’Donnell said.

According to court records, Heyward had been charged three times in the past with domestic assault. The first two were dismissed. The third, from a January 2008 incident, remained pending at the time of his death.

He was sentenced in 2005 to 11 months, 29 days in the county workhouse for passing worthless checks, but the sentence was suspended for good behavior and he was given probation.

He also had a few driving related charges on his record, including a violation of the auto registration law for which he received a 30 day suspended sentence in 1997.

The morning he died, Heyward was distraught after returning from a party where he had been drinking, his father said.

“He didn’t think anybody cared about him,” Marine said.

Heyward was also upset about not seeing his children — a daughter and two sons — according to brother James Heyward.

The video shows that police were told Heyward was drunk and talking about killing himself before they started shooting.

Chattanooga police officers get two to four hours of training annually on dealing with people who are mentally ill or under the influence of drugs or narcotics. But Weary said the training could not be applied in this case because the situation was too fluid and unfolded too quickly.

Weary wouldn’t say whether Heyward had a history of mental health problems, citing the ongoing investigation. Marine said his son had no history of mental illness.

Amanda Counts, Heyward’s girlfriend, and neighbor Darrell Turner said they witnessed the shooting. They said Heyward was lying on the porch on top of the rifle when officers opened fire.

“Before the first shot was fired he was down,” Counts said. “Not one time did he threaten anyone.”

Citing the ongoing investigation, police declined to answer questions about Heyward’s position when officers started shooting.

Counts and Turner both said that during the first brief interruption in the barrage of police gunshots, they heard Heyward ask, “Why are you shooting me?”

That cannot be heard in the recording provided by police.

Police Chief Freeman Cooper this month told Chattanooga radio station WGOW the simultaneous shooting by all six officers shows they acted properly.

“We are saying that our people did what we trained them to do,” the police chief said.

The officers involved in the shooting had between three and six years on the force.

Heyward’s father said he thinks a different police response could have brought the incident last month to a peaceful conclusion.

“I believe he would have put that weapon down,” Marine said. “They should have said, ‘Mr. Heyward, put the weapon down. We’re here to help you.’ … He wasn’t threatening no one.”

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A federal judge says a Tennessee school’s ban on Confederate clothing was a reasonable attempt to prevent disruptions because of previous racial threats at the school.

U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan threw out a former student’s free speech lawsuit against the school dress code, ruling Tuesday that there would be no retrial.

Anderson County High School had banned Tommy Defoe from wearing a belt buckle and T-shirt bearing the Confederate flag.

A jury had failed to reach a verdict in Defoe’s case nearly a year ago.

Defoe’s lawyers say the ruling, which was based on a federal appeals decision in a similar case, will likely be appealed.

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Neighbors in a northwestern Tennessee community are questioning why a teenage girl fatally shot by the father accused of abusing her was placed with a foster family just two doors down.

Christopher Milburn, 34, killed the 15-year-old, her foster father and wounded her foster mother before taking his own life Sunday, authorities said.

Neighbor Frank Hipps said Milburn was good friends with Todd Randolph, the 46-year-old foster father, and had worked for him in the past. Hipps, who had known both men for about eight years, said he didn’t know the details of the abuse allegations but questioned why the girl had been placed so close.

“That kid shouldn’t have been in that house,” he said. “This might have been preventable if she had been placed with foster parents out of the community.”

Neither Dyersburg police nor child services agency spokesman Rob Johnson would elaborate on the abuse allegations other than to say the investigation began last week.

The girl, whose name was not released, had been staying with Todd and Susan Randolph while the state Department of Children’s Services investigated the abuse claim, Dyersburg Police Capt. Steve Isbell said. Susan Randolph was released from a Memphis hospital Monday.

Frank Hipps’ wife, Tammy, said the 15-year-old was Milburn’s daughter by a previous relationship. He was married and the couple had two younger daughters. The girl’s mother was living out of state and police were waiting for her to arrive before releasing the girl’s name, Isbell said.

Police found the teenager and Todd Randolph dead at the Randolph home and Milburn about a block away, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Charles Wootton, 71, who lives across the street from the Randolphs, said he heard five pops. He looked out the window and saw Randolph on the ground near the mailbox.

“My wife opened the door and walked out and seen the blood. That’s when I called 911,” he said.

Wootton said neighbors started to gather at the Randolphs’ house and a nurse performed CPR on Todd Randolph, who had been shot through the neck. Wootton said when he first looked at Susan Randolph, he thought she was dead, too.

“She told me who did it,” Wootton said.

The Randolphs have two young children who were at their grandparents’ house during the shootings, Wootton said.

Wootton had moved to the neighborhood about two weeks ago, and Todd Randolph had mowed his yard several times.

“The people around here are just about the friendliest you’ve ever met,” said Wootton. “I don’t know what happened to that guy.”

Isbell said Milburn had no criminal record in Dyersburg, a city of approximately 18,000 people about 70 miles northeast of Memphis.

Tammy Hipps said Milburn worked as a counselor at the McDowell Center for Children, which helps at-risk and troubled children.

The shootings marked the second domestic killing rampage in Tennessee in just over two weeks.

Jacob Levi Shaffer of Fayetteville, a small town near the Alabama border about 70 miles west of Chattanooga, is accused of fatally stabbing his estranged wife, three members of her family and a neighbor boy to death on July 18. He also is accused of beating an acquaintance to death in nearby Huntsville, Ala.

The first elected black mayor of Memphis has officially resigned after a record 18 years in office to focus on his run for Congress.

Willie Herenton submitted his resignation letter Thursday. He says he wants to focus on the race against U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen in the August 2010 Democratic primary.

Herenton was the first black man to be elected Memphis mayor. Cohen became the city’s first white congressman in more than three decades when he was elected in 2006.

The 69-year-old Herenton says he’s running for Congress because none of Tennessee’s congressmen is a minority — the same thing that motivated him to run for mayor.

Herenton announced his resignation last month but didn’t leave office until Thursday because he had to wrap up “important city business.”

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Steve Cohen, a two-term white congressman from a mostly black House district, faces a bruising Democratic primary next year and race again will likely be at the center of the campaign.

Willie Herenton, the first elected black mayor of Memphis, recently filed with the Federal Election Commissionto run for Cohen’s 9th District House seat. Cohen has shrugged off black challengers before, but none with the political savvy and combative style of the 6-foot-6 mayor — a former Golden Gloves boxer who doesn’t shrink easily from a fight.

Now mayor longer than any predecessor, Herenton, 69, first won office in 1992 by beating a popular white incumbent by 142 votes in one of the closest mayoral elections in Memphis history. He has faced little serious re-election opposition since and is now in his fifth four-year term.

Cohen, 60, is one of just two white members of Congress representing predominantly black districts and the only one to follow an African-American into office. He is the first white congressman from Memphis since 1974 and the only Jewish member of Tennessee’s congressional delegation.

Voters in the August 2010 Democratic primary will face a sensitive question that has dogged Cohen since his first House election in 2006: Should Tennessee’s only majority black district have a black representative in Washington?

“I think all along, Steve Cohen has known that’s his vulnerability,” said political scientist Marcus Pohlmann atRhodes College of Memphis. “It’s not so much that he’s disliked because he’s white, but he’s running in a district that was created to elect an African-American.”

In the 9th District, which is 60 percent black and 35 percent white, the Democratic primary is tantamount to election. No Republican has been elected since 1972.

In 2006, Cohen led a 15-candidate Democratic primary with 31 percent of the vote, with the four top black candidates combining for 57 percent. In the 2008 primary, he trounced a black lawyer who campaigned heavily on race and produced a TV ad featuring a picture of Cohen and a photo of a hooded Ku Klux Klansman. Cohen breezed through the general elections with only weak Republican and independent opposition.

But Herenton is seen as his most formidable challenger yet.

A talented boxer who grew up poor in a racially segregated city, Herenton still stays in trim physical shape and easily mixes it up verbally with his critics — whether city council members, political foes or local journalists.

Herenton has also taken on federal prosecutors he accuses of trying to help his political enemies.

According to witnesses who have appeared before a federal grand jury now in session, prosecutors have asked about some $90,000 Herenton made in a land deal and $50,000 he reportedly collected from an annual Christmas party financed by well-heeled supporters.

Cohen, a lawyer, spent 24 years in the state Senate earning a reputation as a civil rights advocate and champion of minority causes. He has won high marks in Congress from minority and liberal groups.

Both men have long public records but Herenton may have “deeper roots” among African-American voters, said David Bositis, a senior researcher with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C.

“I would make him the favorite, even though Cohen is the incumbent,” Bositis said, noting Cohen has not faced “topflight opposition” before.

Herenton didn’t respond to a request to be interviewed.

But he recently wrote in The Commercial Appeal newspaper that he wants to go to Congress because attacking urban problems will be a priority with President Barack Obama‘s administration.

The congressional election should focus on “pressing and important issues,” Herenton wrote. “However, it remains a fact that the 9th Congressional District provides the only real opportunity to elect a qualified African-American to the all-white 11-member delegation representing Tennessee in Washington.”

From Washington, Cohen said he wasn’t overly worried about Herenton.

“As long as I perform for the 9th District and the 9th District likes what I do, it doesn’t really matter who runs against me,” he said. “Working with people is what’s important up here … I’ve got friends and I know how to do it.”

From the DailyNews.com:

Southern hospitality only goes so far.

A grand Memphis hotel slapped the Rev. Al Sharpton‘s group with an $88,000 suit charging the nonprofit didn’t pay bills from its national convention.

The famed Peabody Hotel is suing the National Action Network for $70,300 and $17,000 in attorney’s costs and other fees, stemming from the April 2008 conference.

A complaint filed by the hotel in Shelby County
Circuit Court did not clarify whether the charges relate to an unpaid
final tab or other charges, according to the Memphis Daily News. The
contract between Peabody
and the National Action Network included a clause that the group would
be charged for space it booked but didn’t use, the newspaper reported.

Click here for more.

From Examiner.com

As if Octomom wasn’t bad enough, a Tennessee man, 29 year old Desmond Hatchett has now fathered at least 21 children he can’t support. Hatchett was in child support court again last week.  His name appeared on the dockett 11 times in one day, representing 15 of his children.

Hatchett says he wasn’t out to set a record.  He says he never intended to have this many children, “It just happened.”  He fathered the children by at least 11 different women and he claims all of the mothers knew about his large family.  The children range in age from newborn to 11 years old.

The question Knox County officials now face is how to support all these children.  Hatchett works a minimum wage job and by law the state can only take 50% of his paycheck for child support.  By the time that money is split 21 ways, some of the mothers get less than $2 per month.  That leaves the taxpayers footing a large portion of the bill for these children.

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Sandra Rose reports:

A transsexual who filed a lawsuit against the Memphis police after a February beating at the hands of an officer, was found shot to death in North Memphis late Sunday.

Duanna Johnson, 43, was shot in the head and died at the scene. In June, she offered to settle the lawsuit against the city of Memphis and the Memphis Police Department, but the parties could not reach an agreement.

According to online reports, one of Johnson’s attorney’s say the lawsuit will continue as planned.

Click here for the full story.