TICKERTAPE

Jet, June 14, 1999 by Simeon Booker

Confidential: The last reception South African President Nelson Mandela wanted to host was for America's famed civil rights heroine Rosa Parks. But the idea never materialized because Ms. Parks was unavailable. On one of the suggested dates, she was scheduled to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor in Washington ...

Guests attending a recent celebration for the late U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson in Austin, TX, discovered that a Black man was dean of the LBJ foundation's school of public affairs. He is Dr. Edward Dom, who earned his doctoral degree from Yale University and has written more than 50 articles in national journals ... Representing his family's second generation to serve in the U.S. House, Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. celebrated his 29th birthday by announcing his engagement to girlfriend Jennifer Baltimore after he proposed on a balcony of the U.S. Capitol. Friends are urging young Ford to try to unseat GOPer Sen. Bill Frist in the 2000 race, but he has made no decision ... The UN's criteria for refugee camps has Africans furious over the difference in standards. Here are the reasons: Rations are 11 cents daily in Africa while Kosovorians get $1.23. Rations range from wheat and sorghum in Africa to chicken, cheese, oranges, milk, coffee and tarts in the Balkans. In Africa, many thousands of people suffer maladies with upwards of 5,000 dying daily from cholera. There have been no deaths reported, so far, in Macedonia ... Writer St. Clair Bourne died peacefully in his sleep in his Brooklyn home on May 11. The family said that in accordance with his wishes, his body was cremated ... Soaring toward the best-seller lists is Rachel Bagby's Divine Daughters, a racial and spiritual legacy from childhood in urban Philadelphia to receiving a law degree at Stanford University.