 ‘Macbeth was a G’ West Roxbury school puts new spin on Shakespeare
Daniela Caride
“Welcome, sophomores and my beloved seniors,” a beaming Anna Portnoy says to a crowd of 200 students at the West Roxbury Education Complex Auditorium. “Class of Oh-Nine presents ‘Macbeth!’” she exclaims. The teenage audience goes crazy, cheering and whistling as the lights dim.
Portnoy, 30, teaches humanities to 11th-graders at Parkway Academy of Technology and Health (PATH), one of the four schools of the complex, and is directing more than half of her 60 students in the Shakespearean play. Some of them act, others handle the lighting, others play sound effects. Full story
Police Safe Homes plan leads to heated debates
Kyle de Beausset and Howard Manly
State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson had heard enough.
For the last hour or so, she had listened patiently while speakers talked about the ins and outs — mostly outs — of the recently launched Safe Homes Initiative.
The Boston Police Department (BPD) measure is an attempt to rid city streets of illegal guns, thus reducing the number of gun-related crimes. But critics of the program argue that Safe Homes is unconstitutional, largely because police officers are allowed to search homes without a warrant. Full story
An unfilled prescription for racial equality
Howard Manly
“... [S]egregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. What white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Negro can never forget — is that White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it ...”
Kerner Commission Report, Feb. 29, 1968
It probably was a pretty good idea at the time.
The cities were burning. Harlem in 1964. Watts in 1965. In Detroit alone, 43 blacks were killed, anywhere between 450 and 2,000 were injured, and 7,231 were arrested before the National Guard ended the bloody mess on July 25, 1967. Full story
For more Black History Month 2008 stories, go to our Black History section below.
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OPINION
Developing the new American workforce
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Can youth exhibit help build a safer city?
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NEWS DIGEST
• Critics accuse petition gatherers of fraud
• Fisk president says it now has money to display art collection
• 1974 desegregation order lifted for NYC school
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NEWS NOTES
• State consumer affairs office: Steer clear of refund anticipation loans
• New Mass. campaign calls on adults to get involved with youth
• Essence, Berklee announce teen hip-hop songwriting contest
• Public comments welcome on MBTA police accreditation
• Library of Congress acquires civil rights activist’s papers
• MEMA, United Way team for new citizen helpline
• Division of Insurance launches AgentFinder site to simplify insurance shopping
• New Web site launched as online resource for African American history, culture
• Democrats to hold caucus for Ward 8
• Ward 12 Democratic Committee to hold caucus
• Democrats to hold caucus for Ward 14
• Democrats to hold caucus in Ward 18
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BLACK HISTORY
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