Jesse Jackson challenges Indy students to do better
INDIANAPOLIS — The Rev. Jesse Jackson urged students to accept responsibility for their education during an hour-long assembly at Northwest High School.
Jackson, founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, came to Indianapolis as part of his campaign to push students at low-performing schools to graduate. He visited after a national report highlighted low graduation rates in Indianapolis Public Schools.
Jackson told students he wanted to “cut through the madness of why we can’t learn, why we aren’t learning.
“You must accept responsibility,” he said last Friday.
He asked students to promise they would study three hours a night, reject violence and embrace their neighbors.
He also started a push to enlist 10,000 parents to pledge support for their children by taking them to school, meeting teachers and being active with their education.
Jackson’s message resonated with senior Erica Thomas.
“He’s a legend,” Thomas said. “We need somebody like that to talk to us.”
Kentucky town preparing to honor father of ragtime music
BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — Ernest Hogan has no grave marker in his hometown of Bowling Green.
But the city may soon have a historic marker honoring the native son who is credited with being the father of ragtime music.
The Hogan Historical Marker Committee in Bowling Green is petitioning the Kentucky Historical Society to erect a marker near Hogan’s birthplace in the Shake Rag neighborhood of the city. The committee hopes to know the results by summer and have the marker placed next year the centennial anniversary of Hogan’s death on May 20, 1909.
Historian Ray Buckberry, who has been researching Hogan’s life for nearly a decade, would like Hogan’s music played at the marker’s dedication.
“I think it would be appropriate,” Buckberry said.
Born Ernest Reuben Crowdus Jr. on April 17, 1865, Hogan grew up in the predominantly black Shake Rag District. Hogan’s theater performances included minstrel songs. For a time, he was considered the best known and highest paid black entertainer of the early ragtime era, Buckberry said.
Hogan joined a traveling minstrel show when he was 12 and honed his musical and comedic talents. His first big hit was the first of a new genre of music, which he coined ragtime, in 1895. Scott Joplin was quick to pick up the ragtime style in his 1898 composition, Maple Leaf Rag.
Hogan was the first black entertainer to produce and star in a New York Broadway show, “The Oyster Man,” in 1909, and one of the few blacks to star in major minstrel shows, vaudeville and musical comedy. Hogan died of tuberculosis at age 44.
Hogan’s funeral featured his favorite ragtime tunes, instead of a funeral dirge, at the musician’s request, Buckberry said.
The idea of a marker commemorating Hogan has drawn support from around the city.
Bowling Green Mayor Elaine Walker called Hogan’s legacy one of an unsung hero.
“When you look at the impact he had on music during the ragtime era, it seems like the only people who know about that are people in Bowling Green and people in the music industry,” Walker said. “I’m just happy this is increasing his exposure and were celebrating that particularly for an African American from the Shake Rag area.”
Bail denied for brothers charged in Jamaican fraud scheme
KINGSTON, Jamaica — A Jamaican judge last Thursday denied bail to two brothers accused of running a pyramid scheme that allegedly mismanaged the savings of tens of thousands of island investors.
Magistrate Glen Brown ruled that brothers Carlos and Bertram Hill must remain in jail because the unregulated “Cash Plus” investment club they founded has failed to repay roughly 40,000 investors, including many working families and retirees, according to investigators.
Detectives arrested the pair after raiding nine of Carlos Hill’s island properties, seizing cars and computers earlier this month.
The 60-year-old Jamaican businessman faces multiple counts of fraud and obtaining money by false pretenses, while brother Bertram and another business partner, Peter Wilson, each face one count of conspiracy to defraud investors, Assistant Police Commissioner Les Green said.
The three men say they are innocent.
Cash Plus, which went into receivership in December, is suspected of having defrauded local investors since 2002, amid a wave of unregulated investments now sweeping the poor Caribbean country.
Investment clubs like Cash Plus have grown popular in recent years by advertising rates of return much higher than established banking institutions. Cash Plus is the first group to be accused of mismanagement, authorities say.
Sandra Brown, a Kingston schoolteacher who socked away $4,000 to invest in Cash Plus, is worried.
“At first I trusted that he would get my money back,” said Brown, referring to Carlos Hill. “Now I’m not certain and I’m quite anxious.”
Police Commissioner Green said that evidence indicates Carlos Hill is liable for more than $4 billion in loans, bank guarantees and letters of credit at several overseas banks.
Defense attorney Churchill Neita said he may appeal the judge’s decision to deny bail to the Hill brothers.
