ee .
"Anytime lind
nywhere d I've ot 20
people bee li me, ith
no ecurity nd police
t nding by nd nybody
could take wipe t me, to
me th r t nt mount to
being in hell," Sh rpton
id.
The civil ri ht ctivi t
flew to I rael on n un uc­
ce ful mi ion to erve
p per for civil uit on
Yo ef Lif h, the Ha idic
. driver who f t lly struck 7-
year-old Gavin C to in the
CroWD Height ection of
Brooklyn I t month.
The incident touched
off everal day of distur­
bance in which a r bbini­
cal tudent from Australia
bled to death after stab­
bing.
Sharpton said he will
pay a $10,000 reward to
anyone who c n give him
'information about Lifsh's
hereabout.
A gr and jury ex­
onerated Lifsh earlier this
month of criminal
wrongdoing in the boy's
death.' .
Minor Ie tip
balanc In 22
big cille
WASHINGTON CAP)
Heavy Hispanic and Asian
immigration tipped the
demographic balance in
favor of minority groups in
22 big U.S. cities during the
last decade; the 1990 cen-
'sus shows.
Demographers cau-
tioned the new racial and
ethnic majorities may not
act as a group because of
their rich diversity. •
The, category
"minorities" includes
Blacks, Hispanic ,
American Indians and
people of Asian and Pacific
Island origin.
The 10 largest cities
'where the ethnic balance
changed: New York 57 per­
cent minority in 1990;
Houston, 59 percent; Dal­
las, 52 percent; San Jose, 50,
'percent; San Francisco 53
percent; Memphis, 56 per­
cent; Cleveland, 52 per­
cent; Long Beach, Calif.,
50 percent; Fresno, Calif.,
50 percent; Stockton,
Calif., 56 percent.
Amne ty to
Inve tlgate
LA pollee
. brutality
LONDON (AP) - Repre­
sentatives of Amnesty In­
ternational, the human
rights organization, said •
they would investigate al­
legations of brutality by
Los Angeles police.
The probe follows com­
plaint about police be­
havior arising from the
videotaped beating of Rod­
ney King during a traffic
stop in March.
/' A three-member Am­
nesty fact-finding team wa
to arrive in Lo Angeles
last week and planned to
stay for a week.
The London-based
group is an independent
worldwide movement that
seeks the release of all
prisoners of conscience, .
prompt trials for political
prisoners and an end to tor­
ture and executions.
WORLD AND NATION
ASKED WHETHER he ever
received military trainin , Deng . d
no. Deng . d he received his educa­
tion in tb refugee camps in Ethiopi
d hoped to be ble to continue on
to university and become a doctor.
The chances will achieve that
goal are lim.
Ngor Cuang, 16, aid he bad.
wal ed from a viII ge Malakal,
150 mil from Ethiopia' border.
Speaking through transl tor, he
said he bad lived t cattle camp
before it w ttac ed by militia. "I
don't kno w happened to any­
body in my family," he said.
Daniel Akoi, 10, aid his greatest
. h to continue his education.
� if e an� to be reunited
with his family if possible, he aid:
"Not if the education is not there."
Before the southern war erupted
. 1983, there were only a dozen
chools that took students beyond
the elementary Ies ODS of reading
and writing in southern Sudan, a
region the size of France and home
to an estimated 6 million people.
No there are DOne.
The predominantly Christian and
animist rebels are seeking greater
autonomy for Sudan's south from the
nation's Muslim�ominated northern
government They control an esti­
mated 90 percent of the region.
Deng Chol w among hundreds
of thousands of people who went
eestward in 1986-87 fleeing mas­
sacres by Arab militia armed by
Sudan's northern government and es-
Africa
o asevae drought
.::cording to relief wotkels, killed
'an estimated 250,000 people.
"It a ter," aid Deng,
who poke in Dinka through an in­
terpreter. "We were being hot at."
THE TREK to refugee camps in
Ethiopia .. ted weeks and sometimes
months. Those who survived did so
on leaves and berries. Tens of thou­
sands died en route and many more
perished upon arrival.
Many of tho e maki ng the trip
were young, unaccompanied boys.
Relief workers explain the phenome­
non as due part to tribal custom and
part to the attraction of schools at the
camps.
Southern Sudan e boy tradi­
tionally leave the family early 10 live
in cattle camps as far 75 miles
from their villages to tend the herds
with the older men.
. '�
After'Ethiopia new government
expelled the Sudanese guerrill in
May, the gucrrill nd the boys re­
turned to Sudan.
Tbe largest concentration of boys
is in Oorkuo, here the Red C
ys it has registered approximately
10,000.
CONRADIN PERNAR, head of
the Red C delegation in Pochala,
said the boys have n isolated from
a main group of SO,OOO refugees.
He said it was a decision by the
Red Cross and the Sudan Relief and
RebabilitationAssociation, the rebel
army's relief arm.
"We wanted them away when
the crops came in," said Pernar,
speaking of the refugees' recent plant-
in and fears the hungry boys might
prove difficult to control and would .
mvage the harvest before it bad grown.
The rebels' relief group hopes to
children.
BUfREUEF or ers, ome al­
lied ith the guerrill ,say the chil­
dren j t Idds desperate for food
and education. They aid they also
want to resettle the bo b in the
villag hen they can.
The boys are mainly of the Dinka
tribe, an ethnic group that is among
the lars t in Sudan outh and
dominat the southern rebel Sudan
People' Liberation Army.
Tbeeld toftheboy is 160r17,
the youog t about 6. Most of them
left their homes when they were 4 or
5 and no longer know where their
parents are or if they're alive.
ON A RECENT visit, the boys
ere engaged in thoroughly domes­
tic and childlike ctivities. There
w no evidence of warfare or mili­
tary personnel in their camp stretch­
ing 1 1/2 miles along the Akobo
River, the boundary with Ethiopia.
Some of the boys played volley­
ball with balls carried from refugee
. camps in Ethiopia. Others prepared
food for their ole meal, a midmorn­
i� bowl of porridge made with grain
airlifted to the region by the Red
Cross.
Still others fashioned storage sacks
out of the woven plastic bags in
Shackles among remains of slave ship brought ashore
KBYw5T, F1a. (AP)-The wreck of
an English slave ship first discov­
ered two decades ago 11m- yielded
encrusted iron shackles and other
artifacts from the ocean floor. The
Henrietta Marie, a British slave ship,
was ported lost in 1701 off Key
West.
Las t week, divers from the Mel
, FISher Maritime Heritage Society
returned to shore with the shackles,
an ivory elephant's tusk, cannons
and more from the Ship.
The museum plans to create a
display about the ship, now buried in
mud in 15 to 30 feet otwater ncar the
Marquesas, a cluster of islands west
ofKcy West. '
Uttle of the Henrietta Marie bas
been excavated in the past 20 years.
...... We knew there was still more
stuff out there, but as it's not a treas­
ure galleon, people don't go out of
their way to do it," said Brad Fabian,
spokesman for the society's museum.
The SO-foot wooden sailing Ship
earned from 300 to 350 slaves for
the one- to two-month voyage, ac­
cording to research that includes the
wills of sailors lost at sea.
The ship had unloaded slaves in
Jamaica and picked up cotton, in­
digo and sugar to be sold in England
before it was wrecked off the Key ,
said archaeologist Corey Malcom,
who led the expedition.
Afrocentrism:
Sometimes scholarship,
sometimes religion
NEW YORK-(BtBlNESS WIRE)-- ment, argues that the goal of Afro­
African-American scholars must centrism is not racist or anti-Semitic,
reject dubious sciences of race and but to-place "African people within
avoid acting like "thought police" our own historical framework:."
who decide who, or what, is "BtaCk, "
a noted African-AIIierican scholar "AFROCENTRICTIY IS A
writes in an essay for Newsweek's
Sept. 23 cover story,
"For a scholar, "'Afrocentrism'
smuld mean more than wearing Kattc
cloth and celebrating Kwanzaa in­
stead of Christmas," writes Henry
Louis Gates Jr., chair of Harvard'
African-American StudieS Depart­
ment.
"Bogus theories of .. sun and ice'
people, and the invidious scapegoat­
ing of ethnic groups, only resurrects
the worst of19th century racist pseu­
doscience - which too many of the
Pharaohs of "Afrocentrism' have
accepted ithout realizing."
Gates' essay is part of a cover
package on Afrocentrism. In asepa­
rate ay, author Molefi Kete As­
ante, cbair of Temple University's
African-American Studi Depart-
struggle against extreme misorien­
tation, where many of us believe that
we share the ame history whites;
indeed, that we came across on the
Mayflower," Asante writes. "This is
not an idea to replace all things
European, but to expand the dia­
logue to include African-American
information. "
'Another story surveys the cur­
rent debate over Afrocentrism, not­
ing that although the movement bas
won many adhcralIs among the Black
middle ClMS, ome Black intellectu­
als are uncomfortable with the con­
cept. "We are not educating chil­
dren t� live in African, but to live in
the Wcstern World," ays Spencer
Holland, director of the Center for
Educating African American males
in Baltimore.
There were no records of why the
ship was lost. .... This is such a vital
time" in history, said Madeleine
Burnside, executive director of the
society ....... rmjust glad that this ship
didn't go down with the cargo of
slaves aboard. At least it was not a
tragedy of the scope that it could
have been.'
The Henrietta Marie was first
, discovered by FISher's divers in 1972
They thought it might be the treasure,
ship Nucstra Senora de A1ocba, which
was not found for another 14 years.
Charles VII at the Homes or�
GreatV k
A tragedy in five acts '
By Alexandre DUJIl.a, pere
Introduction and commentary on
the African Heritage of AIaxandre
Dumas
By Dorothy Trench-Bonett
We all kmw Alexandre I)un]m .
the famous French author of
such enduring classi� as 11u! 'lhree
Musmteers, and 1'Iu! Count of
Mon,�Cristo,and 1'Iu!Man in the
Iron Mask. Wbat mostofus don't
know about Dumas, however, is
that he was of African heritage
and that he wrote passionately
about the position of the minority
in society.
He was never more eloquent
on this issue than he was in Char­
les VII at the Homes of H� Great
About the author
While studying French in high
scmOl, Dorothy Ttmch-BoDCtt en­
joyed Alexander Dumas' famous
novels, including The Three
Muskateer, unaware that the au­
thor w Black or "de couleur.'
Not until she was fulfilling her
life-long dream, living and study­
ing in Paris, did he discover that
this powerful writer was Black:.
Dorothy continued her stud­
. in FnD:e, wb=� pUlSed
an in rest in Mandarin Chinese.
Returning to the United States,
Vassals which is presented here in its
first-ever English translation.
The play centers around the Black
slave Yacoub who is taken from his
THE FOOD provid 400
per person, half the normal r ugee
tion of 800 grams and I than the
500 grams co idered urviv ra­
tions. Since they arrived in June, the
boy:s' th declined, said Per­
nar.
In the P t few ee , there bave
been charg from Sudan' govern­
ment and dissident iDsurgen who
have broken with the SPLA that the
boy are being used by the rebels
child oldiers.
REBElrAI I lED relief orters
and the boys' teachers, who accom­
panied the children to Sudan, y the . :
charge is ab unt. ; I
"These boys are the educated .
future of southern Sudan," said
Mecak, the rebel-allied relief group ,
director of education. "This ques­
tion of military training is-clearly out
of the question. We give education."
The organi2ation and the Red
Cro s are educating the boy with ,
Kenyan textbooks and UNICEF
schoolbooks. During the visit, there '
was no sign of indOctrination by the ,
�rrillas. .
The Michigan
Citizen
welcomes
letters from its
readers. Mail
to: Michigan
Citizen, P.O.
Box 03560.
Highland Park,
MI 48203
BOOKS
homeland in Africa and brought
to France, where, he serves the
� of King Cbades VB. LDng­
ing for his freedom and yearning
to return to his native land, Yacoub
refuses to assimilate into French
society and resign to his fate. But
his love for the countess keeps
him form taking flight-until he
is offered one last chance to win '
both his love and his freedom.
WITH PROFOUND insight
and detail, Dorothy Trench-Bonet
examines, in depth, Dumas' Afri­
can heritage and its impact on the
author and the man. Together
with translation, she restores to
the Black community a signifi­
cant source of pride, and to ev­
eryone a story of high adventure,
emotion, and inspiration.
Dorothy received her B.A. and M.A.
in East Asian Studies fr6m Yale
University aI¥lliwid in Asia for awhile
before beginning her writing career,
writing about her exotic experiences
in other lands.
COMING ACROSS a copy of
Maurois' biography of the DUJIl.a
family quite by ccldent, Dorothy
was again fascinated by the lives of
these French Black people, and even
more fascinated by a brief reference
to a play by Dumas-Charles vn chez
ses garas vassaux.
Ftnally tracking the play down in
the Yale library, she read it with
great enjoyment and realized that
others might be interested in this
unknown side of D\llDM. This,
translation is the result. It is the
filst English tramlation of an 1831
play by Alcxanda'I>umm in which
he protests againSt the slave trade
and racism.
, DOROTHY'S PREFACE dis­
cusses Dumas' African heritage,
its influence on his life, and his
other works including The Count
of Monte Cristo and The Three
Muskateers.