On September 25, 1957, Jefferson Thomas, a high school track star was among nine black students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas. It was the nation’s first major battle over school segregation after the rendering of the 1954 landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education. , has died. He was 68.

According to a statement from Carlotta Walls LaNier, Mr. Thomas died on Sunday September 5, 2010 at the age of 68 in Ohio of pancreatic cancer. Mrs. LaNier also enrolled at Central High School in 1957 and is president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation.

The integration fight was a first real test of the federal government’s resolve to enforce a 1954 Supreme Court order outlawing racial segregation in the nation’s public schools. Gov. Orval Faubus sent National Guard troops to block Thomas and eight other students from entering Central High.

In an extraordinary move, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the renowned 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to escort the nine students to school and uphold the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision a few years earlier ordering the desegregation of schools. On Sept. 25, 1957, the nine students, under the protection of the U.S. military, marched up the steps of Little Rock Central High School and into the history books. It was the first time that a U.S. President had ordered the military to enforce a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Jefferson Thomas with Minnijean Brown (left) and Thelma Mothershed at the federal courthouse.

The next year, Faubus closed all Little Rock high schools to avoid integration. When Little Rock high schools reopened for the 1959-60 school year, Thomas and LaNier returned to Little Rock Central High School and both of them graduated in May 1960.

Thomas and the other members of the nine hold more than one hundred awards for their work in championing Civil Rights. For more than fifty years, all nine of them have worked to advance the principles of excellence in education for young people, especially students of color, and in 1999 they created the Little Rock Nine Foundation, a non-profit organization, to further their cause.

Each of the Little Rock Nine received Congressional Gold Medals shortly after the 40th anniversary of their enrollment. President Clinton, an Arkansas native presented the medals in 1999 to Thomas, LaNier, Melba Patillo Beals, Minnijean Trickey Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Terrence Roberts and Thelma Mothershed Wair.

In 2008, then President-elect Obama sent Thomas and other members of the Little Rock Nine special invitations to his inauguration as the nation’s first black president. During his campaign, he had said the Little Rock Nine’s courage in desegregating Central High helped make the opportunities in his life possible.

Thomas played a number of sports and was on the track team at Dunbar Junior High, but others had little to do with him once he entered Central, the state’s largest high school.

“I had played with some of the white kids from the neighborhood,” Thomas said. “I went up to Central High School after school and we played basketball and touch football together. I knew some of the kids.

“Eventually, I ran into them … and they were not at all happy to see me,” Thomas added. “One of them said, ‘Well I don’t mind playing basketball or football with you or anything. You guys are good at sports. Everybody knows that, but you’re just not smart enough to sit next to me in the classroom.”‘

Beals said Monday that Thomas was nicknamed “Roadrunner, because he was so fast. You could sometimes avoid danger by running fast.”

She said by phone from her home in California that Thomas always seemed to bring a light moment to the crisis.

Jefferson Thomas

“He was funny, he had a most extraordinary sense of humor. He did sustain an enormous amount of damage and pain during the Little Rock crisis, but no matter what, he always had something refreshing and funny to say,” she said. “It could be the most horrible day and he would say ‘Yes, but how are you dressed and are you smiling?”‘

Thomas also brought a bit of levity to the 2007 commemoration marking the 50th anniversary of the integration fight — letting the audience know how angry LaNier was with him when he stood up and cheered at a Central High Tigers pep rally.

Thomas thought the white students were carrying the school flag and yelling the school cheer. He said LaNier glared at him and later set him straight: It was the Confederate flag and the students were singing “Dixie.”

Jefferson Thomas 2007

Following the 2008 election, Thomas said in an interview that he supported Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Ohio primary and he also liked former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who made a bid for the Republican nomination.

“It would have been a hard decision for me to make if Huckabee was running against Obama,” Thomas added.

Still, he said, he was overjoyed with Obama’s victory.

“This was really the nonviolent revolution,” Thomas said. “We went and cast our ballots and the ballots were counted this time. I’m thinking now we’ve got to do something. I don’t know what. But there are a lot of things Obama ran on, what he’s saying he wants to do.”

Jefferson Thomas Sr. is survived by his wife, Mary; a son Jefferson Jr.; and stepchildren, Frank and Marilyn.

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Abbey Lincoln

Abbey Lincoln, an acclaimed jazz singer, songwriter and actress who evolved from a supper-club singer into a strong voice for civil rights, has died Saturday in a nursing home in New York. Although no cause of death was given, Evelyn Mason, her niece reported that Lincoln had been in failing health. She was 80.

Lincoln “was a really gifted person and a truly wonderful actress. She was the kind of person you expected to live forever,” . These are the words by Sidney Poitier reflecting on the death of Abbey Lincoln. She was gifted in so many ways. She was quite productive, and it was quite rewarding for those of us who heard her sing and watched her act.”
These are the words by Sidney Poitier reflecting on the death of Abbey Lincoln.

In reading Mr. Poitier’s comments, I too began to reflect on the remarkable Abbey Lincoln.

Born under the name Anna Marie Wooldridge on Aug. 6, 1930, in Chicago, Lincoln was the 10th of 12 children. The family soon moved to rural Michigan.

Moving to California in 1951 she performed in local clubs, and then spent two years singing in Honolulu before coming back to Los Angeles. The move back to the mainland resulted in the birth of Abbey Lincoln. Inspired by Westminster Abbey and Abraham Lincoln, songwriter Bob Russell, Anna Marie Wooldridge’s manager thought of the name.
Lincoln had a role in the 1956 film “The Girl Can’t Help It” in which she wore a dress once worn by Marilyn Monroe. The appearance, coupled with her first album, “Abbey Lincoln’s Affair: A Story of a Girl in Love,” gave her a glamorous image. That changed when she started working with jazz drummer Max Roach, whose music would reflect the coming civil rights struggle. They married in 1962.

“I started out being a sexy young thing in a Marilyn Monroe dress,” she told The Times in 2000, “And Max Roach freed me from that.”

That freedom exploded in the 1960 release “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite” a wordless, and sometimes screaming duet between Lincoln and Roach. Critics were divided on the landmark musical statement of the civil rights movement.
“We all paid a price, but it was important to say something,” she told the Wall Street Journal in 2007. “It still is.”

That freedom was futher seen in the movie roles that followed. Two of those movies were “Nothing But a Man” with Ivan Dixon in 1964 and “For Love of Ivy” in 1968, in which she starred with Sidney Poitier.

Although “Nothing But A Man” shared the plight of the black man, Lincoln’s performance showed you the burden of the black woman as she tries to support her black man during the Jim Crow era of the deep south.

This was the first time I would lay eyes on Abbey Lincoln. Giving meaning to the phrase less means more, Abbey’s performance was simple and to the point. This was also true in “For Love Of Ivy”.

As I digress here Both films are highly recommended, but “Nothing But A Man” should be required viewing for every black male on earth starting at the age of 13.

As I sat and watched this movie at the age of 17 in a hot Brooklyn Flatbush apartment in the summer of 72, I suddenly understood the behavior of black men who fathered children but did not stick around to raise them.

Through Lincoln’s performance I also understood that the black woman was carrying the weight of the world on her back. Daily she cared for the white families she worked for often in a domestic capacity, contending with their problems, then coming home to care and nurture her own children while enduring the the physical frustration of a black man who often had difficulty supporting his family emotionally and financially.

Today we call the physical frustration domestic violence.

Abbey Lincoln With Sdiney Poitier in a scenr From "For Love Of Ivy"

Lincoln’s performance in “For Love Of Ivy” strongly reflects the liberation of the black woman from domestic work to self dependence. It shows the black woman realizing her self worth and the ability to make positive choices about her own journey through life without the help of whites, and an abusive man. It shows her selecting a mate on her own terms and not for financial support.

Getting back to Abbey, she and Roach divorced in 1970, and she returned to California to “cleanse her spirit,” she told The Times in 1993. She taught at what is now Cal State Northridge, did some television work and performed only occasionally.

Her career took off again in the late 1980s, with works including two 1987 albums paying tribute to Holiday. Living in New York, she moved to the Verve Music Group and had commercial and artistic success with “The World Is Falling Down” in 1990 and “You Gotta Pay the Band” in 1991, in which she performed with saxophone great Stan Getz. Her final new release was “Abbey Sings Abbey” in 2007.

Through her work as a performing artist, Abbey Lincoln has made an impact on generations to come.

“She opened up doors, not just in the sense of career possibilities but as empowerment to be myself when I sang,” singer Cassandra Wilson told the Wall Street Journal in 2007.

Lincoln is survived by brothers David and Kenneth Wooldridge and a sister, Juanita Baker.

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Maurice (left) & Gregory (right) Hines

Maurice Hines Sr. (left) Maurice Hines Jr. ( right)

Maurice Hines Sr., a drummer who toured for a decade in the nightclub act Hines, Hines and Dad that helped propel his tap-dancing sons to fame, has died. He was 88.

Hines died Tuesday after a brief illness at a hospice-care facility in his longtime home of Las Vegas, his family said.

His sons, Maurice and Gregory, had performed professionally as the Hines Kids since they were young boys in the 1950s, tap-dancing onstage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and touring.

By 1963, his sons decided to emphasize singing in addition to dancing and asked their father to join the group. The elder Hines had been a salesman for White Rock soda when he taught himself to play the drums.

Father and sons toured until 1973, performing in nightclubs in New York, Las Vegas and Europe. They also appeared on TV variety and talk shows.

“The highlight for us was when Johnny Carson saw us at the Playboy Club in Chicago and he said, ‘I’m going to put you on my show,’” said Maurice Hines Jr., laughing at the recollection because the trio had seven failed “Tonight Show” auditions behind them.

“He was true to his word, and he put us on many times,” Maurice Jr. told The Times on Friday. “He made us stars and made us hot in the business.”

After Hines, Hines and Dad broke up, the senior Hines attended maitre d’ school and ran the gourmet room at the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas.

His younger son, Gregory, became an innovative and influential tap-dancer and actor. He died of cancer at 57 in 2003.

“My father has always been my hero,” Gregory said in a 1997 interview while promoting “The Gregory Hines Show,” a short-lived sitcom that he said was inspired by his relationship with his father.

“I grew up in the ’50s, a tough time for African Americans. I had friends whose fathers would openly say, ‘Just bite your tongue, don’t cause any problems.’ My father was not like that,” he said. “Even in the toughest times racially, if somebody disrespected his family, they were in trouble.”

Maurice Jr. is a Tony-nominated actor who has choreographed and directed his own original musicals on Broadway.

From his father, the junior Maurice said, he “really learned to be your own man, to have your own principles and to not let people take away your principles, especially in this business.”

Maurice Robert Hines was born Feb. 9, 1922, in North Carolina and never knew his father. His mother, Ora Hines, danced at the Cotton Club in Harlem in the 1920s.

When his sons were featured in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Cotton Club,” Maurice served as consultant to the 1984 film and brought his mother to the set.

During World War II, the senior Hines joined the merchant marine and met his future wife, Alma, through her brother, who served with him.

After marrying in 1942, Hines settled in Harlem and was a “tough guy” who worked as a bouncer, said his nephew, Richard Nurse.

About 30 years ago, Hines moved to Las Vegas and often golfed. His nephew said he was “a great cook, precise about everything” and a “great dresser” who “always had a hundred pairs of shoes.”

Hines’ first wife died in 2000.

Besides his son Maurice Jr., he is survived by his second wife, Gloria J. Hines; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.

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For many Americans, the ability to call 911 for help in an emergency is one of the main reasons they own a wireless phone. Other wireless 911 calls come from “Good Samaritans” reporting traffic accidents, crimes or other emergencies. Prompt delivery of these and other wireless 911 calls to public safety organizations benefits the public by promoting safety of life and property.

While wireless phones can be an important public safety tool, they also create unique challenges for public safety and emergency response personnel and for wireless service providers. Because wireless phones are mobile, they are not associated with one fixed location or address. A caller using a wireless phone could be calling from anywhere. While the location of the cell site closest to the caller may provide a very general indication of the caller’s location, that information is not usually specific enough for rescue personnel to deliver assistance to the caller quickly.

That may have been a factor in the Lorenzen Wright case.

Investigators say Wright was shot to death. The police also confirmed that hours after he was seen by family members, a 911 call was made from his cell phone. Sources indicate that the sound of gunshots could be heard on the call.

Cell tower signals from that call helped investigators find the body. However, it did not help to rescue Lorenzen Wright after he was shot by his assailant(s). Wright was found in a wooded area in Collierville, Tenn., more than a week after the 911 call was made and one day before Wright was reported missing.

Wright’s grandmother asked a question that many are wondering about.

Namely, who knew about the 911 call, and when was that information passed onto the authorities in Collierville?

Five days leading up to the discovery of Wright’s body, investigators insisted that there was no sign the former basketball star was the victim of foul play.

Sources say the 911 call where the gunshots could be heard came into the Germantown dispatch.

A spokeswoman there wouldn’t say if or when that information was turned over to neighboring Collierville police. The two towns border each other.

Collierville investigators were working the case after a missing person’s report was filed four days after Wright was last seen by his family.

Wright’s mother reported he was probably carrying a large amount of cash.

So the issue is whether it was a breakdown in communications or a failure of communications on the part of the Germantown 911 dispatch.

The nation’s 911 emergency response system was built in 1967. Needless to say, it was built for landlines since wireless phones were not even a thought during that time period. The address from a landline call to 911 immediately appears on the 911 operator’s screen.

Now, with more people using cellphones exclusively, calls that bounce from tower to tower have posed significant challenges for the 911 system. Cellphone users assume that they are going to be located, but that’s not a fair assumption.

The most advanced 911 systems do not allow a dispatcher to get a specific street address for a wireless call. About 93% of the nation’s 911 centers have technology that lets the dispatcher immediately see the caller’s phone number and the location of the cell tower that picks up the call. Nevertheless, the dispatcher must request the caller’s GPS coordinates from the wireless carrier that operates the tower. This process can take several seconds and may yield a location as far as 300 meters from the caller. This is not much help in a high-rise apartment building.

Further, cellphone calls are commonly mis-routed to the wrong 911 center. Unlike landline calls, which are sent to the 911 center for their jurisdiction, wireless calls can hit the wrong tower, further slowing the response. Mis-routing also happens in metropolitan areas where multiple jurisdictions are bunched together. Problems run deeper still in areas where wireless carriers and 911 centers have not adopted the latest technologies.

As part of its efforts to improve public safety, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted rules aimed at improving the reliability of wireless 911 services and the accuracy of the location information transmitted with a wireless 911 call. Such improvements enable emergency response personnel to provide assistance to 911 callers much more quickly.

The FCC’s wireless 911 rules apply to all wireless licensees, broadband Personal Communications Service (PCS) licensees, and certain Specialized Mobile Radio (SMR) licensees.

Basic 911 rules require wireless service providers to transmit all 911 calls to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), regardless of whether the caller subscribes to the provider’s service or not.

Enhanced 911 (E911) rules require wireless service providers to within six minutes of a valid request by a PSAP, provide the PSAP with the telephone number of the originator of a wireless 911 call and the location of the cell site or base station transmitting the call.

Phase II of the E911 rules require wireless service providers to within six minutes of a valid request by a PSAP, provide more precise location information to PSAPs; specifically, the latitude and longitude of the caller. This information must be accurate to within 50 to 300 meters depending on the type of technology used.

It appears that the call from Wright’s cellphone was mis-routed to Germantown.

Assuming that Germantown is equipped with the latest technology, the question now is when did the Germantown PSAP or dispatch contact the service provider for a telephone number and location of the cell site or base station transmitting the call and when did Germantown forward the information to the Collierville police department?

In the timeline released by the Memphis police there is a mention of a meeting between area law enforcement including investigators from Germantown and Collierville. That meeting didn’t take place until six days not six minutes, but six days after Wright was reported missing.

Could Lorenzen Wright have been saved had the Germantown dispatch acted immediately on the call and sent the information regarding the sound of gunshots to Collierville?

That question may have to be resolved in a civil suit. The answer may also play a significant role in the prosecution of Wright’s assailant(s).

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There is always something a little disingenuous about Elisabeth Hasselbeck. It always appeared that she disagrees for the sake of disagreeing rather than having a valid reason for doing so. There is never much thought or substance to her comments, and her questioning style is that of a rude spoiled bratty adolescent.

This behavior was very apparent when she shamefully accused Mrs. Shirley Sherrod of violating the Hatch Act during Mrs Sherrod’s visit to the View last week. Of course when the audience did not applaud her stupidity she backed down like a dog with it’s tale between it’s leg.

Hasselbeck has a history of putting her foot in her mouth. Remember when she had to apologize for her remarks about the Dancing With Stars outfit being worn by Erin Adrews? Andrews was the ESPN reporter who was filmed naked by a hidden camera. With her usual I’m not a bad person tears, Hasselbeck apologized for criticizing Andrews , who has been a stalking victim twice in the last year, for wearing “next to nothing” on ‘Dancing with the Stars.’

“In light of what happened and as a legal [matter]–and as inexcusable as it was for that horrific guy to go in and try to peep on her in her hotel room,” Elisabeth said. “I mean, in some way if I’m him, I’m like, ‘Man! I just could’ve waited 12 weeks and seen this–a little bit less–without the prison time!’” No thought, no substance.

So I think people were curious as to what bone head comment she would make when President Obama paid the ladies of the View a visit this past week.

Hasselbeck didn’t disappoint. In Joe Wilson style she accused President Obama of lying to the American people about the employment outlook. When the President sited statistics to support his employment contentions, Hasselbeck could only look at him with that stupid egg on your face look. Once again no thought or substance: just an accusation without any facts to back them up.

The following day, Elisabeth revealed her crush on President Barack Obama. Jungle fever! Who knew?

Maybe Barbara Wah Wah Walters can help Elisabeth through her infatuation with Mr. President. After all Walters had her black experience with former Massachusetts Senator Edward Brookes.

All kidding aside, Elisabeth need to stop acting like an adolescent and present herself as a mature adult with two kids. It’s okay to disagree with the President or anyone else. However, it wouldn’t hurt to have a little substance. It would make it easier to understand her view.

Take a look at what Hasselbeck had to say about President Obama in the clip above.

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