Author: Reginald Stuart

By Reginald Stuart Thinking of getting a costly gift for the holidays may seem out of reach for many people, especially during the persistent health pandemic and normal scrambles to make household financial ends meet. There is a special gift to give, that will only take time, effort and determination, some say, adding it will last forever and can’t be taken away. Learning and boosting language skills pays countless earnings that help you and others, say reading advocates. “Without reading or the inability to read, it is difficult to exist,” says LaMona Prince McCarter, language teacher and author of the…

By Reginald Stuart For the first time in the last three years, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s), including Nashville’s Fisk University, did not top the list of institutions facing some sort of accreditation trouble with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), the influential peer group ratings organization based in Atlanta. The group’s last fall meeting of the year ended earlier this month with actions on 197 accreditation items from colleges and universities across the Southwest to Texas to Louisiana and Florida and up the East Coast to Delaware. Absent were institutions that appeared to…

By Reginald Stuart WASHINGTON, DC — When James Clyburn was a college student at the South Carolina State College and local leader of student non-violent protests of racial segregation in local stores, he visited Jefferson Street in North Nashville often to visit the Jefferson Street Bakery, once a retail cornerstone of the area run by his late uncle. For sure, much has changed since. Segregation has been outlawed due to the persistence and courage of young people like Clyburn and the late John Lewis, the Nashville area college student who helped lead student non-violent civil rights protests in Nashville. Once…

By Reginald Stuart WASHINGTON, DC — Razor thin elections across the nation last week, kept Democrats in control of the nation’s political agenda, defusing former President Donald Trump’s efforts to shift the nation’s political gears into a hard right political conservative direction. With final resolution of this fall’s elections possibly days away, former President Donald Trump has hopes voter results next month in Georgia will resuscitate his derailed campaign to return to the nation’s top political post in the White House. Otherwise, victorious Democrats across the country have sustained their control of the United States Senate despite the widespread losses…

By Reginald Stuart WASHINGTON, DC — Starting a new job is always a challenge. The new job is for far-right extremists Congressman Andrew Ogles, selected by Republican voters this month to represent them in the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee’s District 5th District, to speak and vote in on their behalf, is a tall order with many rewards and challenges ahead, say Capitol Hill observers. Stepping into to the political major league nationally differs significantly in real time from the civics class taught in public and private school and colleges throughout the area, Ogles and his family will learn.…

By Reginald Stuart This week’s baseball victory by the Houston Astros clinching the World Series, brought a special meaning hundreds of miles away in Nashville. “I feel like I’m on that team,” said an ecstatic Harriet Kimbro-Hamilton, daughter of the late Henry Kimbro, a Nashville award-winning outfielder in the nationally known Negro Baseball League. His nearly 20 years in the league which began in Nashville with Elite Giants playing at Hadley Park in North Nashville, carried him to Washington D.C., New York City, Birmingham, Alabama and Havana, Cuba. “I knew Houston had several players from the Caribbean, but I was…

By Reginald Stuart A new report on people running for key state and higher education leadership positions across the South, suggests many of the politicians support diverting more state tax dollars toward paying for private school at the expense of public education. The report, titled “Voting for Justice in Education,” was issued this month by the well-known Southern Education Foundation (SEF), a non-partisan no profit Atlanta-based organization that has promoted public support for education for all inhabitants of the 11 southern states for more than 150 years. The report, based on responses to surveys of political candidates by the…

By Reginald Stuart NASHVILLE, TN — By most standards, it is very important to be orderly in court. Outside the chambers of the Judge A. A. Birch Court on Second Avenue North, however, there was plenty to celebrate this summer on the swearing in of Nashville’s most diverse group of General Sessions Judges in Nashville’s history. “Diversity not just in background, but in experiences,” said General Session court presiding judge Melissa Blackburn, a graduate of Lipscomb High School and College and the Nashville School of Law. “We have judges who have been in office for a few days and judges…

By Reginald Stuart As gestures of concern reach from far and near, the people of Jackson, Mississippi and Jackson State University are getting help to rebuild and sustain a recovery from the collapse of the city’s aging public water system. The central Mississippi community is battling a tainted water system that urges inhabitants not to drink it now. “People have been very kind and generous” to the Jackson State community, said Tennessee State University (TSU) President Dr. Glenda Glover, a Memphis native and TSU graduate who served as business school Dean at Jackson before coming to run TSU. Dr. Glover…

By Reginald Stuart A decision this month by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, one of the major daily papers in the South, to end its daily distribution of the award-winning print newspaper, struck a stunning blow to the ability of the region’s voiceless to make themselves heard, say news media and communications people on the front lines of spreading the word. “It’s a terrible decision,” said Paul Delaney, a veteran reporter who got his start at the Atlanta Daily World then moved up in the ranks of Cox Newspapers and on to being a top editor in New York for The New…