‘Too Young To Be Old: The Story of Bertha Pitts Campbell’: New Biography Documents Life of Extraordinary Activist, Historian, Pioneer in Service, Racial Equality

- “I never thought I’d live to get this old,” Bertha Adine Pitts Campbell remarked at her 91st birthday celebration. She would go on to add nearly another decade to her eventful life, her death in 1990 marking more than 100 years of excellence as a pioneer, volunteer, historian and activist. Author Pauline S. Hill documents the life of this incredible woman in her revised edition of “Too Young To Be Old: The Story of Bertha Pitts Campbell”.

Born in Winfield, Kan., in 1889, Bertha would go on to become a founder of public service organization Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., which now boasts more than 250,000 predominantly African-American women members; a charter member of Seattle’s Christian Friends for Racial Equality; a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; and a local and national leader in the Young Women’s Christian Association. She grew up modestly, raised in Montrose, Colo., by her maternal grandmother, Eliza Butler, who was an ex-slave and “who doted on Bertha because she believed Bertha ‘to be the one!’” Writes Hill:

Grandma Eliza, without any formal education, knew instinctively the
importance of an education. Therefore, while Bertha and she made the
rounds returning the ironing she did to support them to families, Grandma
Eliza made careful mental notes of all the kindergarten classes in the
area. Being the only Black families in Montrose, the Pitts and Grandma
Eliza Butler knew that Bertha had to excel beyond her White counterparts.

And excel she did. Bertha made a name for herself as she matriculated through the Montrose school system, graduating from high school summa cum laude and being named valedictorian. She received a full scholarship to Colorado College but instead chose to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C. It was here that Bertha’s eyes were opened to an entirely new world of challenge and possibility.

“Her thirst for knowledge was only surpassed by her thirst for information about and interactions with and among her people whom she was experiencing en masse for the first time in her life,” Hill writes.

“Too Young To Be Old” takes readers on a memorable journey through Bertha’s battles for equality, both for women and African-Americans, and her lifelong devotion to bettering the world through selfless service. It is the tale of a woman who, through hard work, rose from obscurity and lives on indefinitely as a role model for men and women of all races, ages and backgrounds.

Author Pauline S. Hill was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., and is a graduate of Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., the University of South Carolina and Seattle Pacific University. She is a retired teacher, principal and education director and has followed Bertha’s path in a lifetime of service, devoting many volunteer hours to her community and working closely with the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., the First African Methodist Church in Seattle, and African-American and Kenyan Women Interconnect (AAKEWO).

Investigators Drop Al Sharpton Tax Probe

David B. Caruso, Associated Press

- Federal prosecutors have disbanded their criminal investigation into the financial dealings of the Rev. Al Sharpton and his Harlem civil rights group, the minister and his lawyers said Tuesday.

Prosecutors concluded that Sharpton’s substantial tax problems were better handled as a civil matter by the Internal Revenue Service rather than in criminal court, his lawyers said.

The IRS and New York state and city tax agencies claim that Sharpton owes well more than $1 million in back taxes and penalties. His organization, the National Action Network, also faces a hefty tax bill.

Sharpton said that both he and the civil rights group would pay off their debts, clean up their books and complete a reorganization intended to ensure the group’s long-term fiscal stability.

“We learn from every experience to be more cautious, more accountable,” he told The Associated Press.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn declined to comment.

The investigation was the latest in a string of government inquiries into Sharpton’s finances, dating to his earliest days as a civil rights figure.

Each time, he has emerged unscathed. In the late 1980s he was acquitted of stealing from a nonprofit group. A state case accusing him of evading income taxes also fizzled; he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failing to file a tax return and paid a small fine.

This latest investigation became public last year when several of Sharpton’s aides received grand jury subpoenas. Law enforcement officials said the inquiry focused on potential tax violations and possible election law violations during Sharpton’s 2004 run for president.

According to public tax filings and disclosure forms during his presidential campaign, he received little or no salary in recent years from the National Action Network. He earns several hundreds thousand dollars a year in personal income from his nationally syndicated radio show, book royalties and speaking fees.

Sharpton said Tuesday he was glad to be in the clear. “I’m just grateful to God and my family, and all of our supporters,” he said.

Sharpton’s civil rights group had failed for several years in a row to file income tax returns, obtain workers compensation insurance, or disclose how much it was collecting in donations or paying its top employees, as required by law.

His lawyers said many of those problems have now been resolved, and both Sharpton and his group have also begun paying down their tax debts.

The end of the criminal probe was first reported Tuesday by the New York Daily News.

Michael Hardy, Sharpton’s attorney, said he hoped the resolution of the criminal investigation would silence suggestions that the minister was profiting personally from the dealings of his nonprofit group.

“I think this really clears the air for everyone,” Hardy said.

Group calls for Jesse Jackson’s resignation

From ABC-7 Chicago

- There is a call for Reverend Jesse Jackson to resign in light of recent controversial comments he made about Senator Obama.

A group of men calling themselves ‘AmeriCan’ want Jackson to step down from his position with the Rainbow Push Coalition.

Before an appearance on Fox News, Jackson said Obama had talked down to African Americans during a Father’s Day speech.

The reverend did apologize to Obama, who accepted his apology.

Jackson later said he thought the controversy had helped the Obama campaign.

“He didn’t receive any pain, I felt the pain and the embarrassment and the hurt,” said Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rainbow Push Coalition.

“You can’t tell me that Jesse Jackson has been in the media for over 40 years, that when somebody hooks a mic up to him, that he don’t realize that it’s live,” said Harold Davis, AmeriCan.

The members of AmeriCan say it is hard to teach young people about respect when they hear comments like Jackson’s.

John McWhorter: the most unpopular black man in America?

Clive Davis, The Sunday Times (UK)

- If Barack Obama is the most admired black man in America right now, it may be no exaggeration to say that John McWhorter is a candidate for the unpopularity prize. Which is an odd thing to say about a courteous academic from the arcane realm of linguistics. Yet by venturing onto the mean streets of hiphop with a dispassionate critique of a multimillion-dollar industry, he risks becoming a target of drive-by shootings by enraged academics, book reviewers and bloggers.

McWhorter is not all that surprised that critics have given him a pummelling. He lets out a sigh of resignation: “By its very nature, this book cannot be received fairly. It’s difficult for people to separate feelings from thought. Tempers are going to have to cool.”

So, what is the incendiary message of his book? Interestingly enough, McWhorter doesn’t align himself with that beleaguered minority of sceptics who see rap as a cultural dead end, a bloated, bragging perversion of the American Dream. He may be in his forties, he may be a devotee of musical theatre (Cole Porter is one of his deities, and he met his wife at a sing-along cabaret bar), yet McWhorter admires the best that rap has to offer. He likes the Roots; he occasionally listens to Snoop Dogg while cooking dinner.

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Former Bush press secretary Tony Snow dies

DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press

- Tony Snow, a conservative writer and commentator who cheerfully sparred with reporters in the White House briefing room during a stint as President Bush’s press secretary, died Saturday of colon cancer. He was 53.

“America has lost a devoted public servant and a man of character,” President Bush said in a statement from Camp David, where he was spending the weekend. “It was a joy to watch Tony at the podium each day. He brought wit, grace, and a great love of country to his work.”

Snow died at 2 a.m. at Georgetown University Hospital, according to former employer Fox News.

Snow, who served as the first host of the television news program “Fox News Sunday” from 1996 to 2003, would later say that in the Bush administration he was enjoying “the most exciting, intellectually aerobic job I’m ever going to have.”

Snow was working for Fox News Channel and Fox News Radio when he replaced Scott McClellan as press secretary in May 2006 during a White House shake-up. Unlike McClellan, who came to define caution and bland delivery from the White House podium, Snow was never shy about playing to the cameras.

With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster’s good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts — he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses.

He served just 17 months as press secretary, a tenure interrupted by his second bout with cancer. In 2005 doctors had removed his colon and he began six months of chemotherapy. In March 2007 a cancerous growth was removed from his abdominal area and he spent five weeks recuperating before returning to the White House.

“All of us here at the White House will miss Tony, as will the millions of Americans he inspired with his brave struggle against cancer,” Bush said.

Snow resigned as Bush’s chief spokesman last September, citing not his health but a need to earn more than the $168,000 a year he was paid in the government post. In April, he joined CNN as a commentator.

As press secretary, Snow brought partisan zeal and the skills of a seasoned performer to the task of explaining and defending the president’s policies. During daily briefings, he challenged reporters, scolded them and questioned their motives as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing.

Critics suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation. He was the first press secretary, by his own accounting, to travel the country raising money for Republican candidates.

Although a star in conservative politics, as a commentator he had not always been on the president’s side. He once called Bush “something of an embarrassment” in conservative circles and criticized what he called Bush’s “lackluster” domestic policy.

Most of Snow’s career in journalism involved expressing his conservative views. After earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1977 and studying economics and philosophy at the University of Chicago, he wrote editorials for The Greensboro (N.C.) Record, and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk.

He was the editorial page editor of The Newport News (Va.) Daily Press and deputy editorial page editor of The Detroit News before moving to Washington in 1987 to become editorial page editor of The Washington Times.

Snow left journalism in 1991 to join the administration of the first President Bush as director of speechwriting and deputy assistant to the president for media affairs. He then rejoined the news media to write nationally syndicated columns for The Detroit News and USA Today during much of the Clinton administration.

Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News, called Snow a “renaissance man.”

Robert Anthony Snow was born June 1, 1955, in Berea, Ky., and spent his childhood in the Cincinnati area. Survivors include his wife, Jill Ellen Walker, whom he married in 1987, and three children.

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