Ticker Tape

Jet, Oct 23, 2000 by Simeon Booker

Confidential: As soon as the first presidential Gore-Bush debate was over, scores of Black politicians across the country were griping about the lack of civil rights issues in the discussion .... Atty. Derrick Humphries of the Black Congress on Health, Law, and Environment campaigns that Blacks can have a massive election turnout of voters by keeping open for the day all inner-city churches and using their resources to reach neighborhood residents ...

Of three Black Republicans trying to be elected to Congress, two are opponents of Black incumbents--Dylan Glenn trying to unseat Rep. Sanford Bishop in Georgia and retired naval Commander Jennifer Carroll against Rep. Corrine Brown in Florida. Islip, NY, town clerk Joan Johnson seeks to replace Rick Lazio, the Senate opponent of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York ... Texas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, who served as first vice chair and directed the fall legislative program, expected to sail in easily as the third woman to head the Congressional Black Caucus succeeding Rep. James Clyburn, the first Caucus chairman from South Carolina. She was surprised when Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, who launched the caucus' "market initiative" and soon raised $500,000, announced that he, too, would run for the top slot. The result: An unpredicted battle royal ... Attorney General Janet Reno asked Congress to spend $145 million to develop a program to help convicts adjust to the civilian world ... When American University's admission director Sharon Alston received her latest degree, she found her son holding onto her robe during the presentation ceremony. "Why not?" she wrote in an article, "He's earned it, too."