BINRWAY CO) aL ERATint nt Approvalsf ar mre.4 Close, DealConstruction Loans4 Fee Loanse Purchases to FOAMFEMA Buyout Loans¢ Government Programs...with no down payment necesary* Home inprovernents* Mobile HomeConstruction Loans¢ Mobile Home Financingwith Great RatesOF- 11321-7074EAST CAROLINA MORTGAGE315 Clifton St., Suite AGreenvilleHORNETcain¢ASETBNL,To WOOW R RatioI'm a lifelongbaseball fan. Itwas my first loveas a child. I still enjoy it todayattending about a dozen games aseason. During the recent MajorLeague Baseball Hall of Fame In-ductions in Cooperstown, NewYork, you heard a lot of talk aboutdelayed recognition for those whohave contributed much to the gamebut were yet to be accepted in theHall of Fame.Orlando Cepeda got in after a10-year campaign to overcome adrug possession conviction. TheVeteran's Committee finally puthim in saying his conviction hadnothing to do with what he did onthe field. The same argument isbeing used to campaign for oShoeless ? Joe Jackson and Peteeit Rose Ts induction into othe hall. ?ei Both are ineligible from consid-f eration because they are on lifetime oeee suspensions. Jackson, a White Soxa infielder with hall of fame creden- obee tials, for his role in throwing thehoe 1919 World Series ( othe Blackee Sox's Scandal). Rose, baseball's all-ect. time hit leader with the Reds and! Phillies (winning championshipswith both teams), for gamblingwhile manager of the CincinnatiReds, where he bet on baseball. Yet the campaign wages onfor both that include some very high-BETWEEN THE LINES »Curt Flood Ts s Campaign: Hall of Fame Time for the Father of Free Agency Tprofile names, including baseballlegend, Ted Williams. There areother campaigns to get more of thelegendary Latin (or Dominican)players in othe hall, ? includingformer Cincinnati Red, Tony Perez(more home runs than any playernot in the hall of fame), multiplebatting champion, Tony Olivia (wholed the American League in hitsfive times and batting three times),or flame-thrower Luis Tiant andseveral others who had so-calledborderline ohall of fame ? numbersbut are not in the hall of fame.However, there is one player whochanged the game of baseball for-ever and has yet to get his due rec-ognition. It is now time the publicdemands that Curt Flood, the manwho first challenged baseball's oslave clause, ? be recognized forhis contribution to the game "freeagency. The public should start withus because history-makers are onlyrecognized when contributions areaptly cited. Curt Flood is history.His ultimate oprops ? would be inbaseball's Hall of Fame.Curt Flood Ts credentials don'texactly make his claim to the ohall ? gome social osympathy ? cause, Hewas a star of his day, and his num-bers are better than some already inthe oHall. ? Curt Flood had 1,861hits, scored 85.1 runs, had 85 homeruns, - rns batted in (RBIs),a&esquirrel to peek over a branch.time.This is a rather- unusual story. Ita deals with a woman who had to make her ownim way in a hostile world in a timel= when women were expected to bebarefoot in the winter and pregnant_ in the summer.Gracie Smith was an unusualwoman in that she was a black womanwho lived in the hills of Kentucky.She went hunting or fishing almostevery day. She knew all of the bestfishing spots and could sit under atree for three or four hours with a.410 over-and-under, waiting for aIf he showed his head, he was- toast. Gracie never missed. For the, uninformed, a .410 over-and-underwas a.410 gauge shotgun with a .22caliber rifle barrel underneath theshotgun barrel. It was almost twoguns in one. It was a favorite amongrabbit and squirrel hunters of thatPeople driving along highway30 would sometimes have wrecks| when they watched Gracie comingback from a fishing jaunt. It was notunusual for her to catch as many as20 fish in one day. Twenty big fish.En route home, she would stop+ at the homes of people she knewand give them three or four fish fortheir dinner. Then she would gohome and you could smell fish fry-+ ing for miles around.Gracie was not an old woman.mo Kuzaver Ts KuppIneThe Strange Adventures of Greasy GracieActually, she was very young, prob-ably in her early to middle twenties.She lived in the hills because herparents had been killed in a fire thatconsumed their home back in thewoods. Nobody knew about the firefor more than a year. Houses weresometimes miles apart.By the time the fire became gen-eral knowledge, Gracie was in herearly teens and had been taking careof herself since the death of herparents. Stories that whisperedaround said her father had treatedher like a boy and when she wassmall, had her doing all the choresthat boys would normally do in thosetimes. So the die was cast and shefollowed the pattern in front of her.Her formal academic skills werevery limited. She understood thealphabet, little else, the Bible washer mainstay. By reading and strug-gling through the Bible, she wasable to learn more than most peoplewho had gone to school.She came down from her placein the hills four or five times aweek. She spoke to people she knew,but never lingered any where verylong.Her nick.ame of oGreasyGracie ? came about one year whenshe helped some of the neighbors athog-killing time. Because of herprowess with a butcher knife and aboning knife, she was in demand athog-killing time. She would startthe rendering of the fat to make lardThe Minority Voice: September I 6,1999- October 4,1999and quite often, the grease from theanimal would cover her from headto toe. Hence, Greasy Gracie wasneighborhood or local legend, sincethere were really no oneighbor-hoods ? for black folk in that town.With the exception of hog-kill-ing time, she was always neat and .clean. The exception was when shehad been sitting on a river bank allday or all night, or had been stalkingsome game for a long period of time.Although she was fairly attrac-tive, (or would have been if she hadbeen afforded an opportunity,) shewas never seen with anyone of theopposite sex from a personal per-spective. People just assumed shewas asexual.It was thought by some that shewould be like Miss Lucy, anotherhill woman who never married norhad children. She died at about 80years old, alone in her shack on theside of the hill.One day, in the early spring, anew fella came to town. The warwas over and he was looking for aquiet place to build a farm and fam-ily. He was about six feet-plus andweighed around 200 Ibs. He couldlift a railroad cross-tie with easeand walk a mile with it on his shoul-der. He got a job working on therailroad nearby and started lookingaround for the land he wanted. Hehad saved all of his mustering outpay as well as most of the $37monthly he had been paid in thearmy for three years.He didn Tt drink nor hang aroundwith the railroad workers. He got aroom at Mr. O TBannion Ts house andwould sit on the steps every evening.One day, Gracie came by withseveral squirrel over her shoulder.She stopped to give Mrs. O TBanniona squirrel and she saw the new fella.More important, he saw her. Theyexchanged pleasantries and Gracieleft. But she kept looking back andthe fella kept looking at her.Now, Gracie passed this wayeveryday and the fella was sittingon the steps, waiting for her. Therewas never much conversation be-- tween the two of them. Then oneday, the fella stood up when Gracie .arrived. He took off his cap, walkedto within a foot of her and said, oLet Ts go get married. ?Gracie didn Tt blink an eye. Shejust reached out took his hand andsaid, olet Ts go. ?Gracie died a while back. Shewas the mother of 11 children,grandmother of 22 and great-grand-mother of six. When she died, herhusband was standing at the foot ofthe bed. She was 89 and he was 92.He said, oI'll be seeing you. ?Three days later, he sat down ina rocking chair and closed his eyesfor the last time. The doctors saidthey could find nothing wrong withhim other than his age. They didn Ttunderstand.A recent report by the AppliedResearch Center in Oakland ex-amines various aspects ofteaching policies and practices. The report isentitled oCreating Crisis: How California TsTeaching Policies Aggravate Racial Inequali-ties in Public Schools. ? It supplies informationlittle known to the general public and sheds light| onthe problems and complexities of urban edu-cation. As a matter of community education,excerpts from the report follow:California has a teaching crisis. In the 1997-98 school year, the California Commission onTeacher Credentialing issued a record 33,994"emergency permits and credential waivers. Thissummer, school district recruiters scrambled to- find 27,000 new teachers. Abundant evidenceshows that well-trained, fully-credentialed teach-ters can help students reach their academic po-| tential. That is not what is happening in Califor-. nia today. The teaching shortage is, in effect, T also acrisis in teaching quality and thus, a crisisof the entire public school system.Given the need, it would seem that stateeducation officials and local districts would movedecisively to sweep away barriers to recruit-ment. Instead, teacher training programs are fullof roadblocks, including high costs, standard-ized tests which bear no measurable relationshipto teaching success, and low pay and lack ofrespect for those who do jump the hurdles. Oncehired, new teachers find few supports to helpthem become successful in their new profession.Perhaps most alarming is the disproportion-ate impact of the teacher crisis. The highest-need schools, mostly in large urban areas, bearthe brunt of the crisis. These schools have thehighest concentrations of people of color, low-income students, and those whose primary lan-guage is not English. Yet, these schools alsohave the majority of the state Ts undercredentialedteachers. This situation aggravates existing ra-cial, economic and academic inequities.In the past 30 years, the racial and culturalURBAN PERSPECTIVE #Teaching Policies Aggravate Racial Inequalities in Schoolsface of the student population has changed dra-matically. California Ts public school studentstoday are 60 percent of color, frequently borninto homes where English is not their parents Tlanguage, and often foreign-born. Yet there hasbeen little change in the racial composition of theteaching force "nearly 4 out of 5 of the state Tsteachers are white. Though being academicallyproficient in teaching does not depend on one Tsrace, the ability to understand and relate to stu-dents often has everything to do with race.There is a voluminous body of literature onevery educational problem. There are also vastnumbers of experiments, initiatives and innova-tive models in the field. Although this reportmakes extensive reference to the literature, itsfocus derives from interviews.Over a period of three months, the AppliedResearch Center talked about the teaching crisiswith scores of individuals associated with K-12public education in seven key California schooldistricts: Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Diego,Fresno City, San Francisco, Oakland and SanJose. Those interviewed included: teachers, para-professionals, school administrators, students,parents, present and past school board membersand district recruitment offices. The Center alsointerviewed members of the education facultiesat private institutions and at various schools inthe California State University system, as wellas administrators at the State Department ofEducation.Based on this research the report outlines di-mensions of the problem from training to recruit-menttoretention. Itdescribes who currently teachesand examines teacher education. It includes de-scriptions of the form the teaching crisis takes in thestate Ts seven largest districts. And, to give the fullflavor of the problem as those at the ground levelexperience it, the report adds extended accountsfrom a teacher recruiter, a teaching candidate tak-ing the C-BEST test and an experienced teacher ofcolor watching newcomers being disempoweredand unsupported by the system.No short report on the teaching crisis canpretend to be exhaustive. Although many facetsof the problem are dealt with in the report, othersignificant ones are not touched upon. In par-ticular, this document leaves aside the thornyissues created by fragmented governance of edu-cation. Local school boards, the State Depart-ment of Education, teachers T unions, organizedparents, right-wing ideologues ad politicians atevery level and of every stripe vie to preserveand extend their influence over the schools.The chapter, oWho's Teaching California TsSchool Children,? ? investigates the demographicprofile of current teachers and explores the edu-cational value of increasing the racial and cul-tural diversity of the profession. oPathways toTeaching ? explores the history and practice ofteacher training. oSome Views from the Teach-ing Trenches ? presents in-depth interviews. And, oA Look at Seven School Districts ? details thcracial dimensions of the crisis in teaching inthose districts.The report's main recommendations to ex-pand the quality, quantity and racial diversity ofCalifornia Ts teaching force areas follow: 1) Fullyinvest in the development of teaching talent andresources at high-need schools by creating olo-cal education actions projects, ? one of whosefeatures would be to recruit and train local resi-dents to become high-quality, long-term teach-ers in their local schools. 2) Develop a fully-prepared, highly-skilled teaching force, bettertrained and supported in dealing with the diverseCalifornia school populations. 3) Eliminate bar-riers which prevent qualified people from be-coming teachers, including the C-BEST. 4) In-crease teacher compensation and provide incen-tives for teaching in high-need schools. 5) Ag-gressively institute programs to attract moreteachers of color..The Applied Research Center believes thesemeasures would significantly improve teachingin California Ts racially and culturally diversepublic schools.with acareer batting average of .293over a 15-year career. A career cutshort by a political decision on theowners T part and a moral decisionon Flood Ts part. Flood Ts numbersexceed Luis Aparicio who had 83homers, 791 RBIs, and a lifetimebatting average of .263. His num-bers exceed Nellie Fox who had 35HRs, 790 RBIs, and a lifetime bat-ling average of .273. His numbersexceed the recently deceased oPeeWee ? Reese who many thoughtdidn Tt have ohall of fame ? numberswith 126 HRs 885 RBIs and and alifetime batting average of .269.Reese's claim to fame was that hehelped usher in othe other change ?baseball experienced, the breakingof the ocolor line ? when he be-friended Jackie Robinson. His oquietleadership on and off the field ? gothim his oHall of Fame ? pass.Flood was a leader also. Heplayed on two World Champion-ship teams (1967, 1968) with the St.Louis Cardinals (more than two ofthe four named above)..He was atthe top of the class in fielding everyyear. Between 1961 (when baseballwent from awarding one to threeoutfielders Golden Gloves for field-ing excellence, which is the case tothis day) and 1972 (the year afterFlood left baseball), only two otheroutfielders won more Golden Glovesthan Curt Flood, Roberto eyse CC eeswon 12, Willie Mays won 11, andCurt Flood won seven (and he didn Tteven play in 1970 and most of 1971).Flood also batted over .300 six timesduring those years. The other twoare in the Hall of Fame. But notCurt. Why not? Particularly, whenit was he who broke othe moneyline ? in professional sports. Beforethen, owners paid what they wanted,when they wanted. But not now.Isn't that worth the same (if notmore than Reese's contribution), tonot just black players, but to allplayers whose careers were length-ened, and values were increasedbecause of his sacrifice? I wouldsay so, and so should every ballplayer who left their original teamto sign a millign- dollar contractwith another team, oof their choos-ing, ? by selling their skills.For all to really understandFlood's contribution to America Tsgame, baseball, you have to under-stand the politics of baseball andthe status it holds in this nation.Baseball has only undergone twosignificant changes in the last 100years, One was social, the otherwas economic.Both changes were followed bythe other sports (football and bas-ketball) who waited to see whatbaseball was going to do.Baseball was one of the few in-dustries exempt from the nation Tsanti-trust laws, which are policiesdesigned to restrict monopolies andpromote competition in free mar-kets. The way one would promotecompetition was to allow players tosell their services to the highestbidders. Well, -this was illegal inany industry except baseballwhereby players were owned forlife and could be traded, sold, orcut, or paid what owners thoughtthey were worth.Teams like the New York Yan-kees, the Brooklyn Dodgers and theSt. Louis Cardinals literally heldmonopolies over other teams, andnothing competed with baseball.When owners thought you were othrough, ? they could trade you,cut your salary, demote you (to theminors), or cut you period. Therewas no playing out your option.You had no options. You were theowner's property, a slave to yourcontract, When the St. Louis Cardi-nals tried to cut Flood Ts contract, herefused to take the cut. When theytraded him, he refused to reportsaying, ohe was nota piece of meat. ?Baseball punished Curt Flood forthat move. He went to case and lost,but two years | later, AndyMessersmith, using Flood's sameargument, won, and baseball play-ers started selling their services tothe highest bidder, or the teams oftheir ssid Visa their contracts.expired.There would be no $105 milliondollar man in the Dodgers KevinBrown, had there not been a CurtFlood, Nearly every professionalsportsman has been able to prolonghis career because of free agency. Itused to be when management saidyour career was over, it is. Nowplayers whose careers are on thedown side still get top dollar as orole ? players. Baseball Ts desig-nated hitter rule in the AmericanLeague is a direct advent of freeagency, where players whose field-ing skills had diminished but couldstill hit, were no longer benched butinserted in starting line-ups in lim-ited roles. Curt Flood sacrificed hiscareer but changed the game, andthe way players did business.Now it Ts time for us to be aboutthe business of making sure CurtFlood gets his due honors. This isthe start of a national campaignamong journalists (black and white)to get Flood Ts application beforethe Hall of Fame Veterans Commit-tee. Send letters to Mr. Edward W.Stack at the National Baseball Hallof Fanie.and Museum at P.O. Box$90, Cooperstown, New York13326, or fax them at (607) 547-2044, Let him know you supportthis campaign. A campaign to honorthe man who ofreed ? professionalathletes from slave contracts to mil-lion dollar contracts.