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Jet, May 20, 2002 by Simeon Booker

CONFIDENTIAL: How Gone with the Wind author Margaret Mitchell helped hundreds of students at Morehouse College and secretly worked with President Benjamin E. Mays to solve financial problems of the school in past decades is the emerging story in Atlanta. Because of the hostile race relations at the time, the interracial partners never used the postal service but relied on secret communications via Mays' chauffeur and Mitchell's maid. Mays wrote of Mitchell, "She perhaps is the greatest author the South has produced" although many Blacks never regarded her as a liberal and compassionate writer ... In her first newsworthy House appearance, frosh Calif. Rep. Diane E. Watson called for a Congressional Gold medal for Dr. Dorothy Height for "a 65-year career of advocacy and leadership in the cause of justice for the whole nation." At her 90th birthday party in D.C., Height raised more than $5 million to pay off the mortgage of her historic Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters ... Announcing that he will soon seek legislation "to provide equal opportunity for all children," Philadelphia Rep. Chaka Fattah told urban educators who convened in Washington that "no state is meeting the test for the 40th anniversary of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Ed. Supreme Court decision" ... Although the news media failed to rate his recent Mid-East visit "a successful venture," Secretary of State Colin Powell managed to elude Republican conservatives who saw only failure in the mission. White House aides said the trip opened "a path to achieve peace" ... The Senate approved designation of the James L. Watson building at I Federal Plaza in New York City's courthouse section.

Simeon Booker, Washington Bureau Chief