Historic Michael Jackson Bricks for Sale - $75

Joe Jackson, father of the late Michael Jackson, honored what would have been his son’s 53rd birthday with a visit to Mister Lucky’s Lounge at 1100 Grant St., Gary, IN where 6-year-old Michael and his brothers did their first local performance.

“It was . . . 1964 when they started playing here,” Joe told the (Gary) Post-Tribune while standing near the bar and a few feet away from where Mr. Lucky located the former stage. “They did five sets a night, six shows a week. A few years later, they performed their record “Big Boy” and they would also do the Temptations and some James Brown, but in 1968 they went from performing for small lounge crowds and talent shows to playing for hundreds of thousands, then millions,” he continued.

Joe, along with Gary Mayor Rudy Clay, visited the once-thriving lounge to remove a couple of bricks and autograph them. Mister Lucky’s Lounge, owned by Joe’s friend, Lorenzo “Mister Lucky” Williams, is now undergoing a careful and strategic deconstruction that will save the bricks and let people own a piece of history (the bricks) and benefit local and nationally based music programs.

Black Unemployment Beyond Logic

The August jobs report was dismal for plenty of reasons, but perhaps most striking was the picture it painted of racial inequality in the job market reports CNN. "Even when you compare Black and White workers, same age range, same education, you still see pretty significant gaps in unemployment rates," said Algernon Austin, director of the Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy program at the Economic Policy Institute. "So I do think the fact of racial discrimination in the labor market continues to play a role."

About 155,000 Blacks got jobs in August 2011, but the group's unemployment rate still went up because those jobs weren't enough to make up for all the people who started looking for work during the month. However, the gain for Whites of 211,000 jobs was enough to bring their unemployment rate down. Black unemployment has been roughly double that of Whites since the government started tracking the figures in 1972.

Back to Banjul!

Port of Harlem is planning its annual trip to Banjul, The Gambia, West Africa. During the eleven night escorted tour, travelers (not tourists) will:

• Visit The Gambia, as a family member, not a tourist
• Visit traditional African markets visited by Gambians (not gawk at them from buses)
• Get to know professional counterparts with similar interests with lots of free time to visit the beaches, the nightclubs, casinos (hang with the people)

The trip is Wednesday, March 21 to Tuesday, April 03. (Easter is April 08) The plane fare is about $1374.

$10.44 per Gallon Gas

While Americans still complain about gas prices being more than $3,50 per gallon, in Banjul, The Gambia, West Africa, Banjulites are paying more than $10.44 per gallon.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt approved the settlement of a class action lawsuit brought against Indiana officials to bring the State into compliance with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). The NVRA requires that state public assistance agencies offer voter registration to
their clients when clients apply for benefits, and when they recertify or submit a change of address. Indiana already began implementation of the settlement prior to its approval by Judge Pratt, and the number of persons submitting registration applications through state public assistance offices in recent months has increased substantially.

Monthly average registration applications are now approximately 4,800, compared to only about 100 prior to the filing of the lawsuit in July 2009. In 2008, Obama won Indiana by about 23,000 votes out of more than 2.7 million cast.

The suit was brought by the Indiana State Conference of the NAACP on behalf of all state public assistance clients injured by the State’s violation of federal law. Plaintiff and the class are represented by attorneys from the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Project Vote, Demos, the Chicago law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland, the NAACP, and the ACLU of Indiana.

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According to a Northwestern University study on youth media consumption, “Children, Media and Race: Media Use Among White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American Children,” Non-White youth between ages 8 and 18 use cellphones, television, computers and other electronic devices an average of 13 hours daily. That’s 4-1/2 hours more than their White counterparts.

The study has renewed debate about whether youths spend too much time on media consumption and not enough on reading and studying. While some people insist that the disparity in media consumption contributes to the education gap between Non-White and White youths, others cite it as a positive that can aid a child’s educational growth.

“I think that the results of this study coupled with the other factors that we know influence student performance. When you combine all of this together, it’s another indication that we need to take extra steps to reach [Non-White] youth,” says Sharon Lewis, research director for the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocate for urban public schools and students.

“Factors such as health, such as preschool experience, such as a sibling that may not have graduated, such as coming from a single-parent household and then you add this [media consumption] to it—it’s another indication,” she continued.

Surprisingly, the Northwestern report showed little difference in numbers of computers in homes of White, Black and Latino. Homes of each of these groups have about two computers, while Asian-American homes average three.

“This runs counter to the digital divide talk of the late ’90s and early part of the millennium when they said that Black and Latino youth would be left behind technologically,” says Félix Gutiérrez, a University of Southern California journalism and communication professor who has written extensively about race and media.

Photo: Sharon Lewis.