Farewell to one of the giants of Pittsburgh. Thelma Lovette died last week at the age of 98. Lovette was one of the people who made a big, big difference in Pittsburgh. She made a difference in not only the Civil Rights struggle but for human rights as she simply did the right thing when it came to working for a better Hill District community. Her work with the Centre Avenue YMCA for most of her adult life was so outstanding that they named the new Centre Y building after her. We will miss her.
Following in Lovette footsteps is Wayne Henderson. After being arrested and verbally bullied by a Pittsburgh police officer, Henderson is proving to be a bigger man by not holding a grudge against all police.
Last week he along with police Zone 1 Commander Rashall Brackney put together a gathering to introduce young Black kids to the police in a positive light. Most Black kids only see the police in a negative light when they are arresting someone in their family, or confronting someone in the community.
After being arrested, Henderson could have held a negative attitude toward all police, but instead he realized that this was just one individual who had a negative attitude, so he helped pull this event together. It apparently worked because all the feedback was positive. The kids loved it, and the police officers got to see Black kids in a non-confrontational manner, helping them realize that these are just kids, like any other kids.
Henderson is to be commended for his attitude and concern for the well being of the young kids in our community. Commander Brackney is also to be commended, in accepting the challenge of working with a person who had been front page news several times with his confrontation with a Zone 5 officer, which is still pending in court. I’m sure she probably took some flack from fellow officers and the FOP, but she understands that if the police are ever going to receive the trust and cooperation of the Black community, programs like this must continue.
“When Mr. Henderson approached us, we said this would be an amazing opportunity to engage youth in a positive manner, not in a moment of crisis or negativity,” Brackney said. “I would love to see this expanded to other parts of the city and other schools.”
Henderson followed by saying that it’s a great step toward building trust.
Hopefully the new mayor and new Public Safety Director Stephen Bucar read the article in the Courier and will make this a part of every Zone in the city, Black and White neighborhoods, and schools.
Think about it. Many of us grew up wanting to be a fireman, so why not a policeman. The pay is good, the benefits great, you get respect, and even though people talk about the dangers how many police officers are killed in Pittsburgh. It’s more dangerous growing up in the inner city than being a police officer. Just look at the monthly homicide lists, or shootings in the community compared to police officers shot or killed.
This would eventually create such a flood of Blacks applying for police jobs that the city and whoever else is responsible for not hiring Blacks on the police force could no longer make excuses. It would also lead to more homicides being solved.
One of the big tragedies last week was the killing of an unborn baby when a gunman shot a 15 year old girl four times when she answered the door of her Duquesne home. Da Rae Delgado was seven months pregnant. The baby died, but the mother survived. The doctors said that the baby saved the mother’s life, because it absorbed the bullets. Too bad there are no special prisons set aside for people who commit crimes like this.
I’m from the old school. There should be prisons for rehabilitation and prisons for punishment. The rehabilitation prisons should be set so that once they’ve served their time they are released and the slate is clean. But people who commit crimes like this should serve hard time with no release. Hard times means get up early every morning working in the sun, or cold all day, instead of being able to set in a jail cell with three meals.
Who could they have been looking for? Was it her twin brother they were looking for? Was it the father of the baby not wanting her to tell? Was she a witness to something? Why gun down a 15-year-old girl, even if she wasn’t pregnant? Hopefully we will get answers soon.
The latest news on the August Wilson Center for African American Culture is pretty much what we expected. Judge O’Toole has told the politicians to get out of the way of the sale of the center, unless they plan to shell out some cash. The New York group is the only one who has offered enough money to pay off the bank, taxpayers and all the other loans. But even more importantly they are willing to keep the AWC intact while building a 200-room hotel on top of it. Hopefully most of the programming will remain Black and it will not only keep its name but it will be profitable enough to remain an art center.
I will close with why all the fuss over the soldier being released in Afghanistan? The Republicans are screaming from the rooftops about how wrong it is to negotiate with terrorists. Yet I thought we have been having prisoner exchanges for years. It would just be wrong to leave this young man over there with the US leaving the country. So we gave up some war criminals but we did not leave our soldier behind. I do have a problem with us giving up five for one. If a Republican president had been in office, he would have done the same, and the Republicans would not have said a word. It’s all about politics. That’s a shame.
(Ulish Carter is the managing editor of the New Pittsburgh Courier.)
