WBHM A report out Tuesday published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute ranks the health of all 67 counties in Alabama. This year, Shelby County comes in first. Jefferson County ranks in the top third. The report compares differences based on location as well as race and ethnicity. Read more.
WBHM Ali Massoud, a 2011 graduate of Hoover High School, says he was disappointed at a video depicting white students who attend Hoover schools using the N-word and anti-Semitic slurs. But he wasn’t surprised. “I think a lot of students of color who have been through the Hoover High School system have seen small aggressions on display, and so the fact that this was caught on camera shows the rest of the world that those things are not just in our minds” Massoud says. “They are real and they are happening.” Massoud and others want to know what school officials plan to do about it. Recently, Massoud started a petition demanding Hoover City Schools take meaningful action to address racism within the system. Read more.
WBHM Hoover parents had their say on discrimination in city schools Thursday night, and their words could help shape how school leaders in Hoover deal with race issues. Hoover schools want to emerge from federal oversight, required by an ongoing desegregation lawsuit. Part of the process involves drafting a plan around diversity and seeking community feedback.
Demopolis City Schools Superintendent Kyle Kallhoff will make a series of recruiting trips to Alabama’s education colleges looking for the best new teachers for his schools. He’ll try to sell candidates on what his small, rural district can offer them. There are $4,000 signing bonuses for high school math and science teachers and special education teachers in any grade. There are attendance bonuses for all employees. Perfect attendance gets $400 at the end of the year. Kallhoff has even taken steps to help new teachers find homes, putting together a list of area landlords happy to rent to them. Some of the benefits for teachers aren’t monetary. For example, the system runs a “teacher bus” between its four schools at the end of the school day, picking up children and taking them to their educator parents. Alabama has a teacher shortage that educators say has reached crisis level, especially in rural areas, and there are fewer new teachers coming out of colleges. So, Kallhoff and other superintendents are doing whatever they can — whatever their budgets allow — to attract and keep educators. A state task force also has been studying the shortage and possible solutions to it. Even with the $4,000 signing bonus, something not all systems can afford to offer, Kallhoff has had a special education position open for more than a year. Systems need help, he says. “There need to be some statewide initiatives,” Kallhoff said. “We’re quick to give tax breaks to large corporations. Why not a tax break for math, science and special education teachers?” Read more.
Students at colleges in the Birmingham area researched lynchings of 30 victims, including facts they found mostly in government documents and press reports, along with some of their impressions of the situations. Here are links to the victims’ stories.
George Taylor was born in 1905 in Washington County, a rural county in southwest Alabama that was home to many plantations. He was one of seven children of Ike and Allien Taylor. There is no record of Mr. Taylor’s occupation or why he was in Birmingham, but the industrial city provided jobs for many from
During the last week of June 1933, Elizabeth Lawrence, an African-American mother and school teacher, was killed by a mob in her own home near Birmingham. Ms. Lawrence was walking along a country road about five miles from her home when a group of young white children began taunting and throwing rocks and dirt at
Will McBride, 60 years old, from Adamsville, Alabama, was murdered on the night of Thursday, July 12, 1923. No more personal information is available about him, except that he was described as an “old man” by a crowd of school children. Mr. McBride first came before the court on a charge of assault after children
Wilson Gardner was born in 1861 and married to Hattie Gardner in 1898. On August 23, 1913, Wilson Gardner was hung by a belt under a trestle in Kilgore, Alabama. The authorities stated that there “were no clues to the Jefferson County lynching.” It is believed that Mr. Gardner was beaten to death before he
On Sunday, January 28, 1912, at about 3 p.m., a white mob lynched John Chandler in Bessemer, Alabama. Reports from the time say Mr. Chandler was also known as John Prentiss, but no other information is known about his age, family, or occupation. Mr. Chandler, along with Forney Smith and Charles Paige, had been arrested
