For 130 years, prayer, faith and fellowship have sustained Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Joliet. The Rev. Lishers Mahone, the church’s pastor, sees no reason why that should change as it moves forward. The church celebrates its 130th anniversary this month. “We have had many challenges through the years, but prayer and faith have brought us through all of them,” …

BY EMMA BROWN | THE WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON -- David M. French, a former Howard University professor of pediatric surgery who tended to the medical needs of civil rights marchers during the 1960s and later spearheaded an effort to strengthen public health systems in 20 African countries, died March 31 of renal failure at the University of Virginia hospital in Charlottesville. He was 86.

French was a founding member and a national chairman of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, a civil rights organization that aimed to stop the segregation of health-care facilities and pressed for adequate medical care for patients of all races.

French played a key role in coordinating first-aid efforts at major civil rights protests, including the 1965 march for voting rights from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery, Ala.

The first attempt to complete that march, on March 7, ended bloodily when protesters were beaten and gassed by state troopers. French and other members of the Medical Committee thought federal intervention was needed to protect marchers on their next attempt.

The doctors were unsuccessful at lobbying the U.S. Justice Department for help. But a sympathetic Justice lawyer told them that if Alabama Gov. George Wallace were overwhelmed with demands for costly medical assistance from the state, he might request federal assistance on his own.

French compiled a list of requested provisions, including ambulances, water trailers, portable toilets and trash trucks. The governor, balking at the $300,000 price tag for those measures, asked the U.S. government for military aid.

On March 21, protesters left Selma under the protection of federal troops. By the time they reached the state Capitol in Montgomery several days later, their numbers had swelled to 25,000, and their journey had become a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement.

The next year, James Meredith was shot and injured while attempting to protest racism with a march across Mississippi. Thousands of activists decided to take up his cause and complete his protest. According to news reports at the time, French and his wife converted their family van into an ambulance, helping lead the medical unit that oversaw the care of marchers.

The protests gave French a chance to witness firsthand the lack of quality health care available to blacks in the South. With the aim of improving the public health of poor and underserved people, he gravitated from surgery toward a new focus in preventive and community health.

That interest took him to Boston University, where he started a department of community health in 1969. He also established a network of community health centers in Boston before moving to Africa in the 1970s.

For the next decade, he and his family lived in Ivory Coast, leading a sprawling effort to train nurses and improve public health in 20 countries in western and central Africa.

The program was a cooperative venture of the World Health Organization, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Boston University and each of the participating countries' ministries of health. Working together, the agencies trained health care workers to set up and run a network of clinics offering primary and preventive care such as immunizations and checkups for mothers and infants.

French returned to the United States in the mid-1980s and retired to Barboursville, Va., where his wife's family has deep roots. He went on to serve as medical director of Helen Keller International, a New York-based nonprofit organization that runs public health programs in developing countries.

More recently, he had served as medical officer for the nonprofit service and development arm of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

David Marshall French was born May 30, 1924, in Toledo, Ohio, and grew up in Columbus, Ohio. He attended what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland for two years before he was drafted by the Army during World War II.

The Army sent him to medical school at Howard, where his mentor was Charles Drew, the pioneering doctor who developed the first large-scale blood banks. French earned a medical degree in 1948 and then completed his residency in surgery under Drew at the old Freedmen's Hospital.

In the early 1950s, French became one of the first African-American surgeons to receive board certification. After completing a year's training in pediatric cardiovascular surgery in Chicago, he returned to establish that specialty at Howard, Freedmen's Hospital and D.C. General.

He served in the D.C. National Guard during the 1960s and received a master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University in 1969.

He became acquainted with Sen. Edward Kennedy while working on public health issues in Boston. In the early 1970s, Kennedy -- who then headed the Senate's judiciary subcommittee on refugees -- asked French and several other doctors to visit North Vietnam and survey its postwar rehabilitation needs.

French's wife of 63 years, Carolyn Howard French, died in 2009.

Survivors include their eight children, Lynn C. French of Washington, Mary Ann French and David M. French Jr., both of Barboursville, Howard W. French of New York, Joseph B. French of Oakland, Calif., James A. French of Johannesburg, Dorothy French Boone of San Antonio and Bertha M. French of Amsterdam; 14 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

By: Jenée Desmond-Harris

Ever wonder who tended to the injuries of demonstrators brutalized during the civil rights protests of the 1960s? David M. French, a former Howard University professor of pediatric surgery and one of the first African-American board certified surgeons, coordinated many of those first aid efforts, as just one piece of a long career that merged medicine and public service. He died March 31 at the age of 86.

After witnessing firsthand the lack of quality health care available to blacks in the South at civil rights protests (he once converted his family van into an ambulance to lead a medical unit overseeing the care of Mississippi activists demonstrating against racism), French became committed to improving the health of underserved people and began to focus on preventative and community medicine.

French founded Boston University’s department of community health in 1969. He also established a network of community health centers in Boston before moving to Ivory Coast in the 1970s. There, he led an effort to train nurses and improve public health in 20 countries across the continent.

French returned to the United States in the mid-1980s and retired to Barboursville, Va. But his work didn’t end then. He went on to serve as medical director of Helen Keller International, a New York-based nonprofit organization that runs public health programs in developing countries. More recently, he served as medical officer for the nonprofit service and development African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Read more at The Washington Post.

In other news: Obama Invites Congressional Members to White House to Strike Budget Deal

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Inside the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Liberty City, the Rev. Kyle Gibson told his congregation Sunday: "It's a blessing to live one year. It's a blessing to live five years."

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Bay Area Indymedia

Creativity at the heart of Erie church's Kwanzaa celebration GoErie.com St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church on Sunday will hold its 20th annual celebration of Kwanzaa, a weeklong holiday honoring African American ... Practicing the seven principles of KwanzaaMinnesota Spokesman Recorder Celebrating Kwanza 12/26/10 - 1/1/11Billerica Townie News Kwanzaa events honor family, communityRochester Democrat and Chronicle New Britain Herald -Philadelphia Inquirer -Bakersfield Now all 52 news articles »

This last week I sat in a historic black American site - Mother Bethel Church in the heart of downtown Philadelphia. In keeping with the city's tradition of being a cradle of American freedom, the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church was the first black congregation founded in the north.

Poconos woman offered plaque to recognize Monroe Civil War veterans of color Pocono Record That's near Little Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which Chambers said her family and other Native American and black families founded in 1868, ...

A celebration of local civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois will take place on Saturday, beginning at 2 p.m. at the Clinton African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church at 9 Elm Court.

(CNN) -- The Rev. Mark Whitlock's church practices what he calls the 11th commandment: "Thou shalt not be boring."

Christ Our Redeemer African Methodist Episcopal Church in Orange County, California, also practices something many other black churches don't: integration.

"We're fully integrated in the workplace, schools, public restaurants everywhere, except the church," Whitlock told CNN. "It's still the most segregated place on Sunday in the United States. Our goal is to do what heaven has already done. Heaven is fully integrated."

But most churches aren't. Nine of 10 churches are segregated, according to an analysis by Christopher P. Scheitle and Kevin D. Dougherty published in the August addition of the journal Socialogical Inquiry. For the purposes of the paper, "segregated" meant 80 percent of a church's members were of one race.

The Rev. Marlowe Washington, who left Baber African Methodist Episcopal Church after declining a transfer out of Rochester in June, will open a new church Sunday.

Wave Contributing Editor Betty Pleasant spent three days in Haiti with members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Global Mission.

Wave Contributing Editor Betty Pleasant spent three days in Haiti with members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Global Mission.

Editor's Note: Wave Contributing Editor Betty Pleasant spent three days in Haiti with members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Global Mission.

Editor's Note: Wave Contributing Editor Betty Pleasant spent three days in Haiti with members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Global Mission.

Editor's Note: Wave Contributing Editor Betty Pleasant spent three days in Haiti with members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Global Mission.

Aaron Stewart, 15, left, plays bass and his brother Gary, 17, plays piano for the band at Grace African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Catonsville.

Lawrence Hill: Someone Knows My Name
Lawrence Hill is the son of American immigrants -- a black father and a white mother -- who came to Canada the day after they married in 1953 in Washington, D.C. On his father's side, Hill's grandfather and great-grandfather were university-educated, ordained ministers of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His mother came from a Republican family in Oak Park, Illinois, graduated from Oberlin College and went on to become a civil rights activist in D.C.

The story of how they met, married, left the United States and raised a family in Toronto is described in Hill's bestselling memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. Growing up in the predominantly white suburb of Don Mills, Ontario in the 1960s, Hill was greatly influenced by his parents' work in the human rights movement. Much of Hill's writing touches on issues of identity and belonging.

Lawrence Hill's third novel was published as The Book of Negroes in Canada, Great Britain, South Africa and India and as Someone Knows My Name in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It won the overall Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Ontario Library Association's Evergreen Award and CBC Radio's Canada Reads. The book was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award and longlisted for both the Giller Prize and the IMPAC Award.

Hill is also the author of the novels Any Known Blood and Some Great Thing.

Formerly a reporter with The Globe and Mail and parliamentary correspondent for The Winnipeg Free Press, Hill also speaks French and Spanish. He has lived and worked across Canada, in Baltimore, and in Spain and France. As a volunteer with Canadian Crossroads International, he has traveled to the West African countries Niger, Cameroon and Mali. He has a B.A. in economics from Laval University in Quebec City and an M.A. in writing from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:30:00 -0700
Location: Chautauqua, NY, Hall of Philosophy, Chautauqua Institution
Program and discussion: http://fora.tv/2010/07/08/Lawrence_Hill_Someone_Knows_My_Name

Christian leaders expressed support recently for President Barack Obama’s call for immigration reform. Recently, Hispanic and African-American pastors coalesced including the National Baptist Convention, USA; Esperanza for America; the Progressive National Baptist Convention; and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Christian Post said. Derrick Harkins, 19th Street Baptist Church senior pastor in Washington D.C. said, “Immigrants [...]

Empowering teenage girls is the goal of a conference being sponsored by Webb Grove African Methodist Episcopal Church, in conjunction with the Yellow Diamonds Service Organization, on June 26.

Two Philadelphia-based national organizations, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, are launching a landmark partnership aimed at helping children of single, low-income and incarcerated parents succeed. The Father's Day weekend announcement comes as Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies across the nation face waiting lists disproportionately represented by African American boys.

Historic bust of Richard Allen returns to Phila. Philadelphia Inquirer The bust of Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and one of the seminal figures in American history, stands about two feet high and is ... and more »

Shorter Community African Methodist Episcopal Church is ready for its checkup. The Rev. Timothy E. Tyler's finger is on the pulse of this congregation of roughly 1,200, and he has a vision of vitality that includes fiscal, physical and spiritual health.

A church in Hutchinson is being sued by its parent church over issues including money, property and independence.

A hearing is scheduled Thursday in Reno County District Court in a lawsuit filed by African Methodist Episcopal Church. The parent church is seeking a temporary restraining order against the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church of Hutchinson Inc. and some church leaders.

The parent church wants to prevent the Hutchinson church from access to church-related bank accounts, and from doing anything with its Hutchinson property.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the LAPD, and faith-based community organizations are teaming up for the second time to run a citywide Gun Buyback on Saturday.

As part of efforts to reduce gun violence in our communities, individuals who voluntarily surrender their firearms will be rewarded with gift cards from either Visa or Ralphs grocery store. Giving up your handgun gets you a $100 card, while your assault weapon will get you a $200 card. Not sure which gun you have? "The LAPD Gun Unit will be on site to determine the type of classification on the firearm surrendered."

Oh, but make sure you get your trade-in weapon to the exchange location safely. Your guns need to be brought in unloaded, and in the trunk of your car. We've got the addresses of the 5 exchange locations after the jump.

East Los Angeles Area
Legacy LA (Hollenbeck Area)
1350 N. San Pablo Street
Los Angeles, California 90015

South Los Angeles Area
Park & Ride Parking Lot (Harbor Area)
1300 West Pacific Coast Highway
Wilmington, California 90744

Valley Area
Facey Medical Building (Mission Area)
11165 North Sepulveda Boulevard
Mission Hills, California 91345

South Los Angeles Area
Bethel African American Methodist Episcopal Church (77th Area)
7900 South Western Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90047

West Los Angeles Area/ Hollywood Are
Farm Fresh Ranch Grocery Store
5520 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90028

By: Kenneth Walker

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA--Most African Americans who visit Cape Town around the New Year are initially shocked by what is traditionally known here as The Coon Festival--a weeklong reverie of parties and parades where mixed race or "colored" people dress up in costumes and blackface to perform minstrel shows.

The Coon Festival, more recently renamed the Minstrel Festival, has been an annual affair in Cape Town for over 150 years and may be the most public manifestation of an engagement between African Americans and black South Africans that goes back to the U.S. Civil War.

The interaction between the two groups has ebbed and flowed at critical moments in history, and recently, it has been near its nadir. But an esteemed group of South Africans and African Americans living in South Africa have joined to reclaim that history and to plot a way forward that will expand a frayed relationship.

The newly minted South African American Partnership Forum (SAAPF) held a recent day-long symposium at the University of Johannesburg to explore the history and future prospects of the relationship in the areas of education, arts and culture, business, the media and politics.

The symposium was part of a week-long series of activities called USA Week produced by Kennedy Khabo, a South African and American resident. Khabo also produces a South Africa Week in Washington, D.C., every September. The goal of both organizations is to increase the number of people-to-people contacts. There are an estimated 3,000 African Americans living in South Africa--which appears to have overtaken Ghana as African Americans' preferred point of return to the continent.

Moeletse Mbeki, a businessman and deputy chair of the South African Institute of International Affairs, kicked off the day with brief history of the relationships between South Africans and African Americans. "One could argue that without African Americans, the South African liberation struggle could not have been born when it did, or unfolded the way it did," said Mbeki, one of the founding organizers of SAAPF who is also the brother of ex-President Thabo Mbeki.

"Just before the turn of the 20th century, black South African Christians began to express a desire to control their own churches," Mbeki said. "So they reached out to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in America. They sent missionaries who proved much too radical for white South Africans and the British, who complained bitterly about them.

"When the Brits defeated the Boers in 1902," Mbeki continued, they formed a commission to investigate the effect of African-American radicalization on black South Africans. Bishop Henry McNeal Turner was very much involved the formation of the leadership of the black liberation movement. It was the AME priests who brought the phrase 'Africa for the Africans' to South Africa."

Mbeki believes "there are huge opportunities that need to be exploited on both sides. The kind of cooperation we saw between the two peoples in the anti-apartheid struggle seems to have fallen by the wayside. SAAPF wants to revive this."

Dr. Sibusiso Vil-Nkomo, an official at the University of Pretoria, spoke of the need for much greater cooperation with African Americans on education issues in South Africa. Vil-Nkomo was one of about 8,000 black South Africans who studied in the United States in order to escape the apartheid system. He holds degrees from Lincoln University and the University of Delaware.

Vil-Nkomo said, "we must learn from U.S. programs like Upward Bound that help black children perform in school and get ready for university. We need a kind of GI bill for the liberation veterans. We need black think tanks. We must open up the top five South African universities to African-American professors. More South African students must attend black U.S. universities. We need the historically black colleges in the U.S. to participate with us--both in educating South African students and using their expertise in helping us educate South Africans here."

Clara Priester--an African-American educator who has lived in South Africa for 12 years, now lectures at Witswatersrand University, and is the U.S. State Department education adviser for Eastern and Southern Africa--was charged with the responsibility of helping Africans apply to U.S. universities. Currently, she said, there are only 1,700 South Africans studying in the United States--this out of a total of 617,000 foreign students in America. "We need to do much better."

Julialynne Walker, who describes herself as an African-American repatriate, gave a history of the Coon Festival. "There were two inspirations for that," she said. "black American sailors--many of whom jumped ship to stay in South Africa starting just after the civil war--used to perform minstrel shows in South Africa. And Orpheus McAdoo, a former slave from Greensboro, N.C., brought a group he founded, the Virginia Jubilee Singers to South Africa in the 1880s--performing before black and white audiences initially."

McAdoo's group traveled through South Africa and is regarded as having profound influences on chorale music among the Zulus and the Xhosa peoples.

Hotep Idris-Galata, one of South Africa's noted jazz pianists and historians, left the country at the age of 21. "There are many areas in need of closer cooperation with African Americans," he said. "South Africa badly needs unionization here so that artists can protect their work with access to royalties. The Soweto Gospel Choir is owned by an Australian. We need African-American business investment in arts and culture here. Black South Africans produce a lot of content, but that is mostly owned by whites. We need the hip-hop artists and the Spike Lees to bring their investments and business models here."

Francis Kornegay, a Detroit native who moved to Johannesburg and married a South African almost 20 years ago, said it now seems inevitable that the people-to-people movement between the two countries would have died after the end of apartheid.

"Resistance to apartheid gave rise to a wide range of engagements," said Kornegay, who worked as a staffer on Capitol Hill--first for Michigan Rep. Charles Diggs and later for Congressman Walter Fauntroy, where he helped craft the financial sanctions bill. "There were linkages between churches, students, civil society," Kornegay added. "The post-apartheid situation radically changed that. There was a normalization of government and business relations and the anti-apartheid movement was marginalized."

There was a consensus that business relations between African Americans and black South Africans are the most distressing. Gabby Magamola is chairman of Thamanga investments, and the author of From Robben Island to Wall Street. After spending five years on Robben Island for his political opposition to apartheid, Magamola went on to become a Fulbright Scholar and spent many years in exile in the United States. "There is not really a culture of entrepreneurship among black South Africans, and that is where we really could use some help and collaborations," he says.

But many African Americans tell of tremendous difficulty in reaching out to black South Africans. Eugene Jackson describes himself as "the largest African-American investor in South Africa." Jackson earned his fortune in the United States in cell phone, radio and cable TV. "I had the American Dream," he says. "But I gave it all up for the African Dream. But the business relationship between African Americans and black South Africans is very bad. We don't know each other. We have a relationship problem."

Many South Africans acknowledge the estrangement but attribute it to a general black South African wariness to all foreigners who come to their country seeking their fortunes--which of course was what led to colonialism and apartheid. "This could be the single greatest, Promised Land on earth for African business people," Jackson continued. "If we talk together, we could take over this country from the whites who own the economy."

The new organization resolved to create committees in these core areas and move forward with implementing new forms of cooperation. Jackson and Magamola even agreed to consider forming a new South African African American Chamber of Commerce to facilitate greater business cooperation.

Kenneth J. Cooper, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a freelance journalist based in Boston.

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Attorney General Jerry Brown, center, wraps up a whirlwind Democratic convention weekend Sunday at First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

LOS ANGELES – Jerry Brown was having a good morning Sunday.

The 72-year-old candidate for governor had just finished a whirlwind weekend of speeches and caucuses at the state Democratic Party's convention, where the party faithful lauded him as California's savior during dark economic times.

Now, the former governor was taking the pulpit of First African Methodist Episcopal Church to the joyous applause and cheers of hundreds of congregants. About two years ago, Barack Obama had stood on the same stage before becoming president.

"This is the best morning I've had in a long time," Brown told the congregation.

As about 3,000 Democrats wrapped up the convention Sunday, Brown's campaign will try to build on that excitement in what promises to be the most expensive gubernatorial race in U.S. history.

Brown may face in November Republican billionaire Meg Whitman, who has already smashed campaign finance records in her bid for the state's top job. Whitman has caught up to Brown in public opinion polls and built a commanding lead over her main Republican rival, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

Several Democrats at the convention said they were reassured by what they saw from Brown this weekend although many still worried about Whitman's wave of TV and radio ads. As of mid-March, Brown had barely spent any of the $14 million in his war chest, while Whitman had already burned through $46 million.

Brown made Whitman's high-priced campaign a focus over the weekend while framing his own frugality as a selling point. He played populist notes: bashing Wall Street bankers and promising to elevate families over commerce.

When talking to college Democrats, Brown won thunderous applause by slamming rising tuition rates, declaring, "Enough is enough. We have to stop it and roll it back. That's what we've got to do!"

Before the California Teachers Association, Brown denounced standardized tests, which he said were being overused, and praised the bond between teachers and students.

Brown courted the women's caucus by touting his controversial nomination of Rose Bird as chief justice of the state's Supreme Court during his first stint as governor.

At the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender caucus, Brown pledged to continue defending same-sex marriage.

Brown got his supporters most fired up by going after Whitman's campaign commercials and spending.

"Campaigning and democracy is not about buying hundreds of millions of dollars of 30-second TV ads," Brown told the Saturday general session, sparking a roar of approval from delegates. "When we live in a democracy, we're not consumers of advertising. We're agents of democratic choice."

Brown challenged Whitman and Poizner to a pre-primary debate. Poizner accepted the challenge. Whitman declined.

Whitman spokesman Sarah Pompei complained that Brown wasn't providing policy details.

"While Meg's been meeting with the grass roots of California and talking about her policy positions around the state, Jerry Brown has been nowhere to be found," Pompei said. "He's not talking about any specifics or his plan for the state. Instead, he's relying on the unions to prop up his campaign."

Democrats such as school nurse Marcia Schneider of Northridge said Brown's performance had calmed some of her worries. She, like other union members, said she was ready to work phone banks and knock on doors to get Brown elected.

"Before the convention, I was like 'Are you ready to do it? Are you ready to do it?'" Schneider said. "And I saw that he's ready to do it. … He needs to do more, and he's going to do that in the coming weeks."

But Brown troubled UC Santa Cruz sophomore Robert Singleton, who said the candidate appeared "past his prime," and hadn't inspired many of his fellow college Democrats.

"He definitely seemed out of touch," Singleton said. "He was fumbling over himself a little bit. I think this is going to be one of the toughest governor races we've fought in many years."

Brown said Sunday that he was happy with the state of the race seven months before Election Day.

"I think people are excited," he said, "as excited as one gets in April, and also given the rather depressing state of the economy and the lack of exciting options that government has at the city level, the school level, the state level or the federal level."

If anything, Brown's appearance at the convention marked a comeback after his political career appeared over in the mid-1990s when he lost his third presidential bid. At the First AME Church, Brown swayed to the gospel music and sang along to the hymns at Sunday morning's music-filled service.

"He rose, he rose," Brown sang along with the congregation. "He rose from the dead."

Attorney General Jerry Brown, center, wraps up a whirlwind Democratic convention weekend Sunday at First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

LOS ANGELES – Jerry Brown was having a good morning Sunday.

The 72-year-old candidate for governor had just finished a whirlwind weekend of speeches and caucuses at the state Democratic Party's convention, where the party faithful lauded him as California's savior during dark economic times.

Now, the former governor was taking the pulpit of First African Methodist Episcopal Church to the joyous applause and cheers of hundreds of congregants. About two years ago, Barack Obama had stood on the same stage before becoming president.

"This is the best morning I've had in a long time," Brown told the congregation.

As about 3,000 Democrats wrapped up the convention Sunday, Brown's campaign will try to build on that excitement in what promises to be the most expensive gubernatorial race in U.S. history.

Brown may face in November Republican billionaire Meg Whitman, who has already smashed campaign finance records in her bid for the state's top job. Whitman has caught up to Brown in public opinion polls and built a commanding lead over her main Republican rival, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

Several Democrats at the convention said they were reassured by what they saw from Brown this weekend although many still worried about Whitman's wave of TV and radio ads. As of mid-March, Brown had barely spent any of the $14 million in his war chest, while Whitman had already burned through $46 million.

Brown made Whitman's high-priced campaign a focus over the weekend while framing his own frugality as a selling point. He played populist notes: bashing Wall Street bankers and promising to elevate families over commerce.

When talking to college Democrats, Brown won thunderous applause by slamming rising tuition rates, declaring, "Enough is enough. We have to stop it and roll it back. That's what we've got to do!"

Before the California Teachers Association, Brown denounced standardized tests, which he said were being overused, and praised the bond between teachers and students.

Brown courted the women's caucus by touting his controversial nomination of Rose Bird as chief justice of the state's Supreme Court during his first stint as governor.

At the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender caucus, Brown pledged to continue defending same-sex marriage.

Brown got his supporters most fired up by going after Whitman's campaign commercials and spending.

"Campaigning and democracy is not about buying hundreds of millions of dollars of 30-second TV ads," Brown told the Saturday general session, sparking a roar of approval from delegates. "When we live in a democracy, we're not consumers of advertising. We're agents of democratic choice."

Brown challenged Whitman and Poizner to a pre-primary debate. Poizner accepted the challenge. Whitman declined.

Whitman spokesman Sarah Pompei complained that Brown wasn't providing policy details.

"While Meg's been meeting with the grass roots of California and talking about her policy positions around the state, Jerry Brown has been nowhere to be found," Pompei said. "He's not talking about any specifics or his plan for the state. Instead, he's relying on the unions to prop up his campaign."

Democrats such as school nurse Marcia Schneider of Northridge said Brown's performance had calmed some of her worries. She, like other union members, said she was ready to work phone banks and knock on doors to get Brown elected.

"Before the convention, I was like 'Are you ready to do it? Are you ready to do it?'" Schneider said. "And I saw that he's ready to do it. … He needs to do more, and he's going to do that in the coming weeks."

But Brown troubled UC Santa Cruz sophomore Robert Singleton, who said the candidate appeared "past his prime," and hadn't inspired many of his fellow college Democrats.

"He definitely seemed out of touch," Singleton said. "He was fumbling over himself a little bit. I think this is going to be one of the toughest governor races we've fought in many years."

Brown said Sunday that he was happy with the state of the race seven months before Election Day.

"I think people are excited," he said, "as excited as one gets in April, and also given the rather depressing state of the economy and the lack of exciting options that government has at the city level, the school level, the state level or the federal level."

If anything, Brown's appearance at the convention marked a comeback after his political career appeared over in the mid-1990s when he lost his third presidential bid. At the First AME Church, Brown swayed to the gospel music and sang along to the hymns at Sunday morning's music-filled service.

"He rose, he rose," Brown sang along with the congregation. "He rose from the dead."

Coincidentally, the message the pastor preached at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church: "Yesterday's victory does not guarantee victory today." The symbolism is apt for Democrats and the 72-year-old Brown as he seeks to return to the governor's office he occupied from 1975 to 1983.

From The New York Times…

Call and Response on the State of the Black Church

By Samuel G. Freedman

In the first decade of the American nation, a former slave turned itinerant minister by the name of Richard Allen found himself preaching to a growing number of blacks in Philadelphia. He came to both a religious and organizational revelation. “I saw the necessity,” he later wrote, “of erecting a place of worship for the colored people.”

Allen’s inspiration ultimately took the forms of Bethel African Church, founded in 1794, and the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, established in 1799. As much as it can be dated to anything, the emergence of a formal African-American Christianity can be dated to Allen’s twin creations.

Over more than two centuries since then, the Black Church has become a proper noun, a fixture, a seeming monolith in American society. Its presence is as prevalent as film clips of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering the “I Have a Dream” speech and contestants on “American Idol” indulging in the gospel style of melisma.

In the conventional wisdom that accompanied the popular imagery, the Black Church was regarded by insider and outsider, by ally and opponent, as a fount of progressive politics expressed through the prophetic tradition of Moses, Amos, Isaiah and Jesus.

Now a young scholar has taken a rhetorical wrecking ball to the monolith, and the reverberations are rippling through religious and academic circles of African-Americans. To mix the metaphor, the broader public has been allowed to eavesdrop on the theological equivalent of a black barbershop, a place of glorious disputation that is usually kept out of white earshot.

The debate took off in February when The Huffington Post published an essay by Eddie S. Glaude Jr., a professor of religion at Princeton, under the deliberately provocative headline “The Black Church Is Dead.”

“When I came up with the title, I said, ‘Lord, what am I doing?’ ” Professor Glaude, 41, recalled in a telephone interview this week. “And as I was thinking that, I hit the send key. With the understanding that I would be in the firestorm.”

Early in the obituary, Professor Glaude declared, “The idea of this venerable institution as central to black life and as a repository for the social and moral conscience of the nation has all but disappeared.” He added later, “The idea of a black church standing at the center of all that takes place in a community has long since passed away.”

Professor Glaude argued that many black churches espouse conservative politics, especially on social issues, and have failed to address current liberal causes like health care reform. Ministries devoted to self-help or the so-called health and wealth gospel, some led by whites, draw black followers.

In large measure, Professor Glaude explained in the interview, he wrote the essay in response to two recent developments. The election of Barack Obama, a black Christian, as president has complicated if not blunted the black church’s traditional role of confronting the establishment, “speaking truth to power.” The social conservatism of some black churches meanwhile figured prominently in the ballot measure against same-sex marriage in California and an anti-abortion billboard campaign in the Atlanta area.

There have been internal criticisms of the black church almost as long as there has been a black church. A 19th-century bishop of the A.M.E. denomination scorned call-and-response praise songs as “cornfield ditties.” E. Franklin Frazier, the eminent black sociologist, depicted the church as an obstacle to assimilation. Malcolm X ridiculed Christianity as “the white man’s religion.”

All those precedents notwithstanding, Professor Glaude’s jeremiad brought on the predicted firestorm. A panel of leading scholars of African-American religion published responses on the Religion Dispatches Web site. Professor Glaude debated another one of his peers, Prof. Josef Sorett of Columbia University, on bloggingheads.tv. Private e-mail accounts sizzled with contention.

And only some of the criticism dealt with Professor Glaude’s thesis. A fair amount assailed his very right to criticize. As a born Roman Catholic without a church membership presently, and as a faculty member in a privileged university, Professor Glaude was vulnerable to attack from the mainstream of working-class, African-American Protestants.

“I am sick and tired,” went an e-mail message from the Rev. Dr. J. Alfred Smith Sr., pastor emeritus of Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, Calif., “of black academics who are paid by rich, powerful ivy league schools, who have access to the microphone and the ear of the press pontificating about the health of black churches.” The e-mail message continued, “None of these second- or third-generation black academics talk to us in the trenches. They are too elitist to talk to us.”

Lawrence H. Mamiya, a professor of religion at Vassar and co-author of the seminal history “The Black Church in the African American Experience,” levied similar complaints, albeit in less strident language. “Theologians and philosophers like Eddie Glaude don’t go to black churches,” Professor Mamiya said in a telephone interview. “They haven’t been out in the field. And unless you’re in the field, you can’t see what’s happening.” (Professor Glaude’s scholarly specialty is the philosophy of religion; he is not a social scientist regularly engaged in field work.)

Among his own generation of scholars, though, Professor Glaude has received plenty of credit for stirring discussion. “It causes us to complicate how we think about African-American Protestantism,” said Jonathan L. Walton, 36, a professor of religious studies at the University of California, Riverside. “The term ‘black church’ is in so many ways unsubstantiated. So this debate is very healthy.”

One of Professor Glaude’s forebears in criticism, Prof. James H. Cone of Union Theological Seminary in New York, appreciated a certain paradox.

“Eddie Glaude is doing the black church a service,” said Professor Cone, 71, the author of several books of black liberation theology. “By saying it’s dead, he’s challenging the black church to show it’s alive. But the black church, like any institution, does not like criticism from outside the family. It wants to be prophetic against society, but it does not want intellectuals to be prophetic against it.”

Paul Quinn College is celebrating 20 years in Dallas, and 138 years in existence, while it fights to stay accredited. Today the historically black college held its annual founders' day convocation honoring the African Methodist Episcopal Church preachers More......

By: Dayo Olopade

Thirty-thousand kids and parents attended the Obama White House's second annual Easter Egg Roll during a beautiful spring day in Washington Monday. The president and first lady, along with their daughters, Malia and Sasha, and first grandmother, Marian Robinson, greeted the crowds from the south portico of the White House, overlooking a stretch of lawn "transformed ... into a playground" for the day, said Michelle Obama. "Our hope today is that in addition to having fun and doing some of the traditional activities like the egg roll and the Easter egg hunt, that you can learn about beginning to live a more healthy life," she added.

The White House, under the direction of new social secretary Julianna Smoot, who replaced Desiree Rogers in late March, managed the crowds and invited several celebrities to help with the celebration. Actress Reese Witherspoon and Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling were on hand to read to the guests, and musicians Justin Bieber and the cast of Fox's high school musical television hit Glee sang and danced on stage. Players from NFL and MLB, as well as Olympians like Apolo Ohno also joined the festivities.

The Obamas celebrated Easter Sunday at predominantly black Allen Chapel, an African Methodist Episcopal church, in Southeast Washington's Ward 8.

After the first family's remarks at the White House, singer Amber Riley, who plays the character "Mercedes" on Glee belted the national anthem, and then the games were on.

The first daughters gamely cheered as children half their age tried the traditional White House "Easter egg roll," a race in which hard-boiled eggs are turned with wooden spoons toward a finish line. Before reading to kids at the "Storytime Stage" and shooting hoops for a moment, the president blew the whistle for an egg race for which he played favorites: His 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe, who recently rejoined the White House team as a political adviser, brought his baby daughter--born the day after Obama's historic election victory.

The president later threw out the first pitch of the baseball season for the Washington Nationals, his adopted hometown team. Wearing a cap from his old team, the Chicago White Sox, Obama pitched one high and to the left. No surprise, Fox commentators might say.

The East Wing put more of an emphasis on fitness and nutrition in this year's event, primarily because of Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" healthy eating and exercise campaign. Local celebrity chefs Art Smith, José Andrés and others manned the "Play With Your Food" station, where thousands of kids and parents sampled healthy snacks. "There's a lot more this year," says White House chef and Kitchen Garden director Sam Kass. "There's a farmer's market, fresh food; people are handing out seeds for folks to take home." The "Hop To It" station, also new this year, featured hula-hooping and jump-rope activities to reinforce the first lady's message of getting exercise every day.

The first lady, "the smartest and best-looking of the older Obamas," said the president, introducing his wife, seemed happy to get the kiddies' heart rates up by any means necessary. "You guys know Justin Bieber?" she asked, to wild screams from the tween set. "You've heard of Justin Bieber? Well, he's here."

Dayo Olopade is Washington reporter for The Root. Follow her on Twitter.

Become a fan of The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

 

Just another sign that the media just don't get religion. Here's the ABCNews.com headline for an April 4 story on President Obama's attendance of Easter Sunday service at Allen Chapel AME Church in Southeast D.C.:

Of course, the term Easter Mass would connote a Catholic liturgical celebration, but the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) is a thoroughly Protestant denomination, as its articles of faith Web page makes clear.

For a closer look at the media's treatment of Obama's Easter church visit, check out this excellent post by Mollie Z. Hemingway of GetReligion.org.

As millions commemorated Easter around the globe Sunday, the Obamas attended services at Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historically African-American congregation in Southeast Washington, D.C.'s poorest neighborhood. Local residents...

Filed under: Barack Obama, The Daily FLOTUS with Lynn Sweet, Michelle Obama

For the fifth time since moving into the White House, President Obama attended a church service in Washington, spending part of Easter Sunday with his family and mother-in-law Marian Robinson at the Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The church where the First Family worshipped is in a Washington neighborhood about three miles from where, less than a week ago, four people were killed and five injured when four armed men in a minivan allegedly went on a shooting spree.

The Rev. Dr. Michael E. Bell Sr. said it ``was no accident that he (Obama) is here in light of what happened here last Tuesday,'' referring to the drive-by shootings.

 

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The First Family traveled to the poorest section of Washington, D.C. to attend Easter Sunday services.

President Barack Obama and his family worshiped at Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church. According to the Washington Post the Obamas chose the church because it offers many community service programs for families, youth and ex-convicts.

The visit comes days after a massive shooting incident in another neighborhood in Southeast Washington that is not far from the Allen Chapel church. 

UPDATE 3:27 p.m.

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty (D) and former mayor and current City Council member Marion Barry were in attendance. Here is some more information about Obama's apperance from the White House pool report:

The overflow crowd of congregants was standing, clapping and singing "Alleilua’" when the first family entered via a side door at 11:05 a.m. and walked along the edge of the sanctuary to sit far stage right in the second pew, setting off applause, cheers and cell-phone cameras. The altar was flanked by the American flag, in front of the Obama’s pew, and the Episcopal Church’s flag on stage left.

The pool was positioned at the back of the church, 20 pews behind the Obama family. Ten badged ushers in dark suits and bowties and white gloves lined the two aisles.

A 50-person choir arrayed on three rows in the sanctuary facing the congregation sang several gospel songs, clapping and waving to the beat of a key-board ensemble. The president swayed gently to the strong beat and the amped-up sound system.

A number of speakers referred to the president’s attendance. "the president of the United States and his family," "our black president," "the commander in chief,’"

The Rev. Dr. Michael E. Bell Sr., pastor of the church, referred to the president as the "most intelligent, most anointed, most charismatic president of American.’’ He called Mrs. Obama "his beautiful wife – TV cameras don’t do her justice."

"God has His hand all over you,’’ Pastor Bell said, referring to the president. "Anyone would be foolish to come up against him.’"

WASHINGTON - O presidente dos Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, participou de um culto de Páscoa neste domingo em um dos bairros mais pobres de Washington, em uma igreja da comunidade negra fundada durante a Guerra Civil americana por escravos emancipados. Ao lado da mulher, Michelle Obama, e as duas filhas, Sasha e Malia, o presidente uniu-se à comunidade de 2.500 paroquianos da capela de Allen, da Igreja Eposcopal Metodista Africana (Apllen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church) em Anacostia, área majoritariamente habitada por negros do sudeste de Washington. O templo foi escolhido porque conta com mais de 50 programas de ajuda à comunidade local, incluindo de alimentação e aulas extracurriculares, segundo o jornal The Washington Post.

WISC Madison

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Obama celebrates Easter mass near site of DC shootings Washington Post President Obama and his family will worship this Easter Sunday at Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a 2500-member ... Obama urges people to retain values amid rancorNewsday (subscription) Obama Sends Easter WishesVoice of America Obama calls for embracing common aspirations...Benedict celebrates Easter Vigil9&10 News New York Times (blog) -AFP all 439 news articles »

President Obama and his family are worshiping this Easter Sunday at Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a 2,500-member congregation in the poorest section of the nation's capital.

President Obama and his family are worshiping this Easter Sunday at Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a 2,500-member congregation in the poorest section of the nation's capital.

In an age where little girls are told they can be or do anything, there still remain some places they cannot go. Women cannot become Catholic priests. They also cannot pray in the same area as their Orthodox Jewish male counterparts. To discuss the role of women in religion, host Michel Martin talks with a diverse group of women: author Leora Tanenbaum, an observant Jew; Sister Maxine Kollasch a Catholic nun; and the Reverend Renita Weems, a minister ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

For several months I've been in conversations with organizations working to bring about comprehensive immigration reform. All of these organizations are engaging the religious community...