Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

Ms. Nicola Adonis first went to American Dreams Real Estate Development, located at 944 Fulton Street, looking to rent an apartment.  She was amazed, then, when she was told that on her $7,000 a year salary she should think instead about buying her own home.
AThey told me that it would be better to have other people pay me rent, that it=s smarter to own a home myself,@ she said of American Dream=s advice.  AIt was hard to believe, but it did sound nice.@
After seeing numerous houses in Bedford Stuyvesant, Nicola decided upon one on St. Andrews Place.  A few weeks later, American Dreams pressured her into two mortgages with monthly payments in excess of $3500.  Based on her job as a manager at McDonald=s, Nicola=s monthly house payments are greater than seven times her monthly income!  With such an unaffordable loan, she is already in danger of defaulting on the payments.
AI=ve seen my fair share of terrible loans, but this has to be the worst,@ said Erica
McHale, a Homeowner Counselor for PACC who works with many clients after they have signed predatory loans. APredatory loans can take many forms, but the most important question is whether the loan is affordable to the borrower.  To pressure a young person into a loan whose monthly payments are seven times their incomeCthat=s a disgrace,@ she added.
In response, two demonstrations have been organized in front of the American Dreams office by Pratt Area Community Council, demanding that American Dreams stop preying on unsuspecting homebuyers.  At the most recent direct action, PACC member Jackie E. Mitchell presented American Dreams with an Aaward@ for dishonesty and irresponsibility, which also officially kicked off a neighborhood boycott.  In addition, Councilman James Davis, a sponsor of recent anti-predatory lending legislation, also rallied with PACC, directly confronting an employee of American Dreams while television cameras rolled. 
AWe have no problem with legitimate businesses,@ said Davis.  ABut today we are sending a message to all businesses that are taking advantage of our community members.  We are organized, and we will fight back.@
Pratt Area Community Council (PACC), a not-for-profit community organization dedicated to neighborhood diversity and stability, organizes and counsels low-income homeowners in danger of being displaced after signing predatory loans.  Such loans, frequently characterized by hidden costs and targeted primarily at seniors and people of color, often lead to foreclosure.  The problem is especially prevalent in Bed-Stuy, whose many beautiful brownstones have risen dramatically in value over the past few years.
Predatory loans have traditionally been targeted at long-time homeowners, usually seniors, who are Acash poor but equity rich,@ which means that they live on a fixed income but own a valuable house that dishonest lenders may look to steal.  But Nicola=s case is illustrative of a new predatory danger in Bed-Stuy, the Aone-stop-shops@ where storefronts take advantage of uninformed first-time homebuyers. 
AThis is the American Dream?@ asked Ms. Adonis.  AAmerican Dreams told me to trust them, that everything would be fine.  But now what?  Where are my baby son and I supposed to go?@

On Friday, March 7, 2003, the White House announced the issuing of an Executive Order against the Republic of Zimbabwe, specifically President Robert G. Mugabe and 79 members of the Zimbabwe government. It is now crystal clear the basis on which Britain=s Prime Minister Tony Blair has marched in lock step to President Bush=s war plans on Iraq in spite of the overwhelming sentiment of the British people against this war.
According to a White House press release, the President of the United States had executed an Executive Order declaring a Anational emergency@ because the democratically elected government of Zimbabwe allegedly represents an Aunusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.@
This extraordinary Executive Order, issued on the eve of the United States (and key ally Britain=s) war against Iraq, exposes the conspiracy of the United States and Britain to reverse the historic land reform program of the Zimbabwe government. By targeting Zimbabwe=s president and 79 members of the government, the United States and Britain are trying to promote the problem as personal, rather than it being tied to Zimbabwe=s government leadership in carrying out land reform. It is this land reform program which poses one of the greatest threats to the privileged and unjust relations that former colonial powers like Britain have continued to maintain in their former colonies – land ownership.
Under the leadership of President Mugabe, Zimbabweans have enraged the British government and its financial backers by daring to make the necessity of land redistribution a national priority. This is the only possible road forward if Zimbabwe is to correct the economic injustices at the root of its underdevelopment. A road the people fought for during an extended and costly liberation war.
The issuing of President Bush=s Executive Order officially puts U.S. foreign policy on a collision course to covertly change the democratically elected government of Zimbabwe. This attempted Aregime change@ would be in favor of a government ending land reform, and placing British and United States financial interest in a position to re-colonize the country.
The Executive Order not only attempts to strangle the country economically, but is aimed towards the support that Zimbabwe has been garnering in the United States. The Executive Order directs the Secretary of the Treasury in consultation with the State Department to act against  AUnited States personsYincluding the making or receiving of any contribution of funds, goods, or services to or for the benefit of the persons designated (79 Zimbabwean government officials) pursuant to the order.@
The December 12th Movement and the Friends of Zimbabwe were directly responsible for hosting President Robert G. Mugabe when he returned to Harlem to speak on his country=s the Land Reform Program. Over 4,000 people came to hear the President and voiced their support by calling for Zimbabweans to Atake back all the land@ stolen by primarily white British colonialist.  By example, President Mugabe has continued to lead, not just Zimbabwe but African and progressive people worldwide.
The character and the success of the Zimbabwean Land Reform Program is critical to the emancipation of millions of African people on the continent and in the Diaspora. There is no turning back. A future for the dispossessed, the Awretched of the earth,@ is impossible without struggling against Western i.e., United States and British re-colonization.
The Black community, and all peace and justice-loving people will not be intimidated by the international gangsterism of the Bush / Blair governments.
As President Mugabe stated at the United Nations General Assembly this past fall, AAfrica is not an extension of Europe@, and we say ABush=s  & Blair=s foreign policy is not the foreign policy of Black people anytime or anywhere.
December 12th Movement & Friends of Zimbabwe

How seven per cent of a section within a nation ruled five million white people and owned four million black people and sought to make agriculture equal to industry through the rule of property without yielding political power or education to labor.

Seven per cent of the total population of the South in 1860 owned nearly 3 million of the 3,953,696 slaves. There was nearly as great a concentration of ownership in the best agricultural land. This meant that in a country predominantly agricultural, the ownership of labor, land and capital was extraordinarily concentrated. …
Of the five million whites who owned no slaves some were united in interest with the slave owners. These were overseers, drivers and dealers in slaves. Others were hirers of white and black labor, and still others were merchants and professional men, forming a petty bourgeois class, and climbing up to the planter class or falling down from it. The mass of the poor whites, as we have shown, were economic outcasts.
Into the hands of the slave holders the political power of the South was concentrated, by their social prestige, by property ownership and also by their extraordinary rule of the counting of all or at least three-fifths of the Negroes as part of the basis of representation in the legislature. It is singular how this Athree-fifths@ compromise was used, not only to degrade Negroes in theory, but in practice to disfranchise the white South. Nearly all of the Southern states began with recognizing the white population as a basis of representation; they afterward favored the black belt by direct legislation or by counting three-fifths of the slave population, and then finally by counting the whole black population; or they established, as in Virginia and South Carolina, a Amixed@ basis of representation, based on white population and on property; that is, on land and slaves.
In all cases, the slaveholder practically voted both for himself and his slaves and it was not until 1850 and particularly after the war that there were signs of self-assertion on the part of the poor whites to break this monopoly of power. Alabama, for instance, in 1850, based representation in the general assembly upon the white inhabitants, after thirty years of counting the whole white and black population. Thus the Southern planters had in their hands from 1820 to the Civil War political power equivalent to one or two million freemen in the North.
They fought bitterly during the early stages of Reconstruction to retain this power for the whites, while at the same time granting no political power to the blacks.
Finally and up to this day, by making good their efforts to disfranchise the blacks, the political heirs of the planters still retain for themselves this added political representations as a legacy from slavery, and a  slavery and a power to frustrate all third party movements.
Thus, the planter who owned from fifty to one thousands slaves and from one thousand to ten thousand acres of land came to fill the whole picture in the South, and literature and the propaganda which is usually called history have since exaggerated that picture.  The Planter certainly dominated politics and social life -he boasted of his education, but on the. whole, these Southern leaders were singularly ignorant of modern conditions and trends and of their historical background.  All their ideas of gentility and education went back to the days of European privilege and caste.  They cultivated a surface acquaintance with literature and they threw Latin quotation even into Congress.  Some few had a cultural education at Princeton and at Yale, and to this day Princeton refuses to receive Negro students, and Yale has admitted a few with reluctance, as a curious legacy from slavery.
The leaders of the South had leisure for good breeding and high living, and before them Northern society abased itself and flattered and fawned over them. Perhaps this, more than ethical reasons, or even economic advantage, made the way of the abolitionist hard. In New York, Saratoga, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, a slave baron, with his fine raiment, gorgeous and doll-like women and black flunkies, quite turned the heads of Northern society. Their habits of extravagance impressed the nation for a long period.
Much of the waste charged against Reconstruction arose from the attempt of the post-war population, white and black, to imitate the manners of a slave-nurtured gentility, and this brought furious protest from former planters; because while planters spent money filched from the labor of black slaves, the poor white and black leaders of Reconstruction spent taxes drawn from recently impoverished planters.

From an economic point of view, this planter class had interest in consumption rather than production. They exploited labor in order that they themselves should live more grandly and not mainly for increasing production. Their taste went to elaborate households, well-furnished and hospitable; they had much to eat and drink; they consumed large quantities of liquor; they gambled and caroused and kept up the habit of dueling well down into the nineteenth century. Sexually they were lawless, protecting elaborately and flattering the virginity of a small class of women of their social clan, and keeping at command millions of poor women of the two laboring groups of the South.
Sexual chaos was always the possibility of slavery, not always realized but always possible: polygamy through the concubinage of black women to white men; polyandry between black women and selected men on plantations in order to improve the human stock of strong and able workers. The census of 1860 counted 588,352 persons obviously of mixed blood-a figure admittedly below the truth.
AEvery man who resides on his plantation may have his harem, and has every inducement of custom, and of pecuniary gain [The law declares that the children of slaves are to follow the fortunes of the mother. Hence the practice of planters selling and bequeathing their own children.], to tempt him to the common practice. Those who, notwithstanding, keep their homes undefiled may be considered as of incorruptible purity.@
And finally, one cannot forget that bitter word attributed to a sister of a President of the United States: AWe Southern ladies are complimented with names of wives; but we are only mistresses of seraglios.=@
What the planters wanted was income large enough to maintain the level of living which was their ideal. Naturally, only a few of them had enough for this, and the rest, striving toward it, were perpetually in debt and querulously seeking a reason for this indebtedness outside themselves. Since it was beneath the dignity of a Agentleman@ to encumber himself with the details of his finances, this lordly excuse enabled the planter to place between himself and the black slave a series of intermediaries through whom bitter pressure and exploitation could be exercised and large crops raised. For the very reason that the planters did not give attention to details, there was wide tendency to commercialize their growing business of supplying raw materials for an expanding modern industry. They were the last to comprehend the revolution through which that industry was passing and their efforts to increase income succeeded only at the cost of raping the land and degrading the laborers.
The South with free rich land and cheap labor had the monopoly of cotton, a material in universal demand. If the leaders of the South, while keeping the consumer in mind, had turned more thoughtfully to the problem of the American producer, and had guided the production of cotton and food so as to take every advantage of new machinery and modern methods in agriculture, they might have moved forward with manufacture and been able to secure an approximately large amount of profit. But this would have involved yielding to the demands of modern labor: opportunity for education, legal protection of women and children, regulation of the hours of work, steadily increasing wages and the right to some voice in the administration of the state if not in the conduct of industry.

Beneath this educational and social propaganda lay the undoubted evidence of the planter=s own expenses. He saw ignorant and sullen labor deliberately reducing his profits. In fact, he always faced the negative attitude of the general strike. Open revolt of slaves-refusal to work–could be met by beating and selling to the harsher methods of the deep South and Southwest as punishment. Running away could be curbed by law and police. But nothing could stop the dogged slave from doing just as little and as poor work as possible. All observers spoke of the fact that the slaves were slow and churlish; that they wasted material and malingered at their work. Of course they did. This was not racial but economic. It was the answer of any group of laborers forced down to the last ditch.
If the European or Northern laborer did not do his work properly and fast enough, he would lose the job. The black slave could not lose his job. If the Northern laborer got sick or injured, he was discharged, usually without compensation; the black slave could not be discharged and had to be given some care in sicknesses, particularly if he represented a valuable investment. The Northern and English employer could select workers in the prime of life and did not have to pay children too young to work or adults too old. The slave owner had to take care of children and old folk, and while this did not cost much on a farm or entail any great care, it did seriously cut down the proportion of his effective laborers, which could only be balanced by the systematic labor of women and children. The children ran loose with only the most general control, getting their food with the other slaves. The old folk foraged for themselves. Now and then they were found dead of neglect, but usually there was no trouble in their getting at least food enough to live and some rude shelter.
The economic difficulties that thus faced the planter in exploiting the black slave were curious. Contrary to the trend of his age, he could not use higher wage to induce better work or a larger supply of labor. He could not allow his labor to become intelligent, although intelligent labor would greatly increase the production of wealth. He could not depend on voluntary immigration unless the immigrants be slaves, and he must bear the burden of the old and sick and could only balance this by child labor and the labor of women.

The use of slave women as day workers naturally broke up or made impossible the normal Negro home and this and the slave code led to a development of which the South was really ashamed and which it often denied, and yet perfectly evident: the raising of slaves in the Border slave states for systematic sale on the commercialized cotton plantations.
The ability of the slaveholder and landlord to sequester a large share of the profits of slave labor depended upon his exploitation of that labor, rather than upon high prices for his product in the market.
But there was another motive which more and more strongly as time went on compelled the planter to cling to slavery. His political power was based on slavery. With four million slaves he could balance the votes of 2,400,000 Northern voters, while in the inconceivable event of their becoming free, their votes would outnumber those of his Northern opponents, which was precisely what happened in 1868.
As the economic power of the planter waned, his political power became more and more indispensable to the maintenance of his income and profits. Holding his industrial system secure by this political domination, the planter turned to the more systematic exploitation of his black labor. One method called for more land and the other for more slaves. Both meant not only increased crops but increased political power. It was a temptation that swept greed, religion, military pride and dreams of empire to its defense.
In no respect are the peculiar psychological difficulties of the planters better illustrated than with regard to the interstate slave trade. The theory was clear and lofty; slaves were a part of the family-@my people,@ George Washington called them.
This was the theory; but as a matter of fact, the cotton planters were supplied with laborers by the Border States. A laboring stock was deliberately bred for legal sale. A large number of persons followed the profession of promoting this sale of slaves. There were markets and quotations, and the stream of black labor, moving continuously into the South, reached yearly into the thousands.
Notwithstanding these perfectly clear and authenticated facts, the planter persistently denied them. He denied that there was any considerable interstate sale of slaves; he denied that families were broken up; he insisted that slave auctions were due to death or mischance, and particularly did he insist that the slave traders were the least of human beings and most despised.
This deliberate contradiction of plain facts constitutes itself a major charge against slavery and shows how the system often so affronted the moral sense of the planters themselves that they tried to hide from it. They could not face the fact of Negro women as brood mares and of black children as puppies.
Indeed, while we speak of the planters as one essentially unvarying group, there is evidence that the necessities of their economic organization were continually changing and deteriorating their morale and pushing forward ruder, noisier, less cultivated elements than characterized the Southern gentleman of earlier days. Certainly, the cursing, brawling, whoring gamblers who largely represented the South in the late fifties, evidenced the inevitable deterioration that overtakes men when their desire for income and extravagance overwhelms their respect for human beings. Thus the interstate slave trade grew and flourished and the demand for the African slave trade was rapidly becoming irresistible in the late fifties.
From fifty to eighty thousand slaves went from the Border States to the lower South in the last decade of slavery. One planter frankly said that he Acalculated that the moment a colored baby was born, it was worth to him $300.@ So far as possible, the planters in selling off their slaves avoided the breaking up of families. But they were facing flat economic facts. The persons who were buying slaves in the cotton belt were not buying families, they were buying workers, and thus by economic demand families were continually and regularly broken up; the father was sold away; the mother and the half-grown children separated, and sometimes smaller children were sold. One of the subsequent tragedies of the system was the frantic efforts, before and after emancipation, of Negroes hunting for their relatives throughout the United States.
A Southerner wrote to Olmsted: AIn the states of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, as much attention is paid to the breeding and growth of Negroes as to that of horses and mules. Further south, we raise them both for use and for market. Planters command their girls and women (married or unmarried) to have children; and I have known a great many Negro girls to be sold off because they did not have children. A breeding woman is worth from one-sixth to one-fourth more than one that does not breed.@
Sexual chaos arose from economic motives. The deliberate breeding of a strong, big field-hand stock could be carried out by selecting proper males, and giving them the run of the likeliest females. This in many Border States became a regular policy and fed the slave trade. Child-bearing was a profitable occupation, which received every possible encouragement, and there was not only no bar to illegitimacy, but an actual premium put upon it. Indeed, the word was impossible of meaning under the slave system.

Moncure D. Conway, whose father was a slaveholder near Fredericksburg, Virginia, wrote: AAs a general thing, the chief pecuniary resource in the Border States is the breeding of slaves; and I grieve to say that there is too much ground for the charges that general licentiousness among the slaves, for the purpose of a large increase, is compelled by some masters and encouraged by many. The period of maternity is hastened, the average youth of Negro mothers being nearly three years earlier than that of any free race, and an old maid is utterly unknown among the women.@
J. E. Cairnes, the=English economist, in his passage with Mr. McHenry on this subject, computed from reliable data that Virginia had bred and exported to the cotton states between the years of 1840 and 1850 no less than 100,000 slaves, which at $500 per head would have yielded her $50,000,000.

The South elected to make its fight through the political power which it possessed because of slavery and the disfranchisement of poor whites.  It had in American history chosen eleven out of sixteen presidents, seventeen out of twenty-eight Judges of the Supreme Court, fourteen out of nineteen Attorneys-General, twenty-one out of thirty-three Speakers of the House, eighty out of one hundred thirty-four Foreign Ministers. It demanded a fugitive slave law as strong as words could make it and it was offered constitutional guarantees which would have made it impossible for the North to meddle with the organization of the slave empire.

The abolition of American slavery started the transportation of capital from white to black countries where slavery prevailed, with the same tremendous and awful consequences upon the laboring classes of the world which we see about us today. When raw material could not be raised in a country like the United States, it could be raised in the tropics and semi-tropics under a dictatorship of industry, commerce and manufacture and with no free farming class.
The competition of a slave-directed agriculture in the West Indies and South America, in Africa and Asia, eventually ruined the economic efficiency of agriculture in the United States and in Europe and precipitated the modern economic degradation of the white farmer, while it put into the hands of the owners of the machine such a monopoly of raw material that their domination of white labor was more and more complete.

What irritated the planter and made him charge the North and liberal Europe with hypocrisy, was the ethical implications of slavery. He was kept explaining a system of work which he insisted was no different in essence from that in vogue in Europe and the North. They and he were all exploiting labor. He did it by individual right; they by state law. They called their labor free, but after all, the laborer was only free to starve, if he did not work on their terms. They called his laborer a slave when his master was responsible for him from birth to death.
What the planter and his Northern apologist did not readily admit was that this exploitation of labor reduced it to a wage so low and a standard of living so pitiable that no modern industry in agriculture or trade or manufacture could build upon it; that it made ignorance compulsory and had to do so in self-defense; and that it automatically was keeping the South from entering the great stream of modern industry where growing intelligence among workers, a rising standard of living among the masses, increased personal freedom and political power, were recognized as absolutely necessary.
The ethical problem here presented was less important than the political and far less than the economic. The Southerners were as little conscious of the hurt they were inflicting on human beings as the Northerners were of their treatment of the insane. It is easy for men to discount and misunderstand the suffering or harm done others. Once accustomed to poverty, to the sight of toil and degradation, it easily seems normal and natural; once it is hidden beneath a different color of skin, a different stature or a different habit of action and speech, and all consciousness of inflicting ill disappears.
The Southern planter suffered, not simply for his economic mistakes-the psychological effect of slavery upon him was fatal. The mere fact that a man could be, under the law, the actual master of the mind and body of human beings had to have disastrous effects. It tended to inflate the ego of most planters beyond all reason; they became arrogant, strutting, quarrelsome kinglets; they issued commands; they made laws; they shouted their orders; they expected deference and self-abasement; they were choleric and easily insulted. Their Ahonor@ became a vast and awful thing, requiring wide and insistent deference. Such of them as were inherently weak and in efficient were all the more easily angered, jealous and resentful; while the few who were superior. physically or mentally. conceived no bounds to their power and personal prestige. As the world had long learned, nothing is so calculated to ruin human nature as absolute power over human beings.
On the other hand, the possession of such power did not and could not lead to its continued tyrannical exercise. The tyrant could be kind and congenial. He could care for his chattels like a father; he could grant indulgence and largess; he could play with power and find tremendous satisfaction in its benevolent use.

Thus, economically and morally, the situation of the planter became intolerable. What was needed was the force of great public opinion to make him see his economic mistakes and the moral debauchery that threatened him. But here again in the planter class, no room was made for the reformer, the recalcitrant. The men who dared such thought and act were driven out or suppressed with a virulent tyranny reminiscent of the Inquisition and the Reformation.
This whole system and plan of development failed and failed of its own weakness. Unending effort has gone into painting the claims of the Old South, its idyllic beauty and social charm. But the truth is inexorable. With all its fine men and sacrificing women, its hospitable homes and graceful manners, the South turned the most beautiful section of the nation into a center of poverty and suffering, of drinking, gambling and brawling; an abode of ignorance among black and white more abysmal than in any modern land; and a system of industry so humanly unjust and economically inefficient that if it had not committed suicide in civil war, it would have disintegrated of its own weight.
With the Civil War, the planters died as a class. We still talk as though the dominant social class in the South persisted after the war. But it did not. It disappeared. Just how quickly and in what manner the transformation was made, we do not know. No scientific study of the submergence of the remainder of the planter class into the ranks of the poor whites, and the corresponding rise of a portion of the poor whites into the dominant portion of landholders and capitalists, has been made. Of the names of prominent Southern families in Congress in 1860, only two appear in 1870, five in 1880. Of 90 prominent names in 1870, only four survived in 1880. Men talk today as though the upper class in the white South is descended from the slave holders; yet we know by plain mathematics that the ancestors of most of the present Southerners never owned a slave nor had any real economic part in slavery. The disaster of war decimated the planters; the bitter disappointment and frustration led to a tremendous mortality after the war, and from 1870 on the planter class merged their blood so completely with the rising poor whites that they disappeared as a separate aristocracy. It is this that explains so many characteristics of the post-war South: its lynching and mob law, its murders and cruelty, its insensibility to the finer things of civilization.
THE PLANTER

As a youngster growing up in North Carolina in the early 1800s, a child came  face-to-face with the institution of slavery. One day while he was out with his father chopping wood by the side of a road, a group of slaves, handcuffed and chained together, passed by on their way to be sold in Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana. Questioned by the young boy=s father about why they were chained, one of the men sadly replied: AThey have taken us away from our wives and children, and they chain us lest we should make our escape and go back to them.@ After the dejected company had left the scene, the youth wondered to himself how he would feel if his father were taken away from him.
The incident by the side of the road marked the first awakening of Levi   Coffin=s sympathy with the oppressed, which, he observed in his memoirs,   together with a strong hatred of oppression and injustice in any form, Awere  the motives that influenced my whole after-life.@ Coffin, who moved to the  Indiana town of Newport (Fountain City today) in 1826 and became an important merchant there, acted on his beliefs. From his simple eight-room house in Wayne County, and with the help of his devoted wife, Catharine, he managed over the next twenty years to offer a safe haven to thousands of African Americans fleeing slavery=s evils on the AUnderground Railroad@ along major escape routes leading from Madison, and Jeffersonville.
ASeldom a week  passed,@ said Coffin, Awithout our receiving passengers by this mysterious  road. We found it necessary to be always prepared to receive such company and properly care for them.@ Coffin=s efforts won for him the designation
  APresident of the Underground Railroad@ and for the Coffins= home the title   AGrand Central Station@ on the path for slaves eventual freedom in the north and Canada. One of the refugees who found shelter in the Coffins= home was later immortalized as the character Eliza, the heroine of Harriet Beecher Stowes classic novel, Uncle Tom=s Cabin. Levi and Catharine Coffin are supposedly depicted in the book as Simeon and Rachel Halliday.
 Levi Coffin was born on 28 October 1798 on a farm in New Garden, North  Carolina, the only son of seven children born to Levi and Prudence (Williams)   Coffin. Because his father could not spare him from work on the farm, the  young Levi received the bulk of his education at home, under instruction from  his father and sisters. His home schooling proved to be good enough for Coffin to find work as a teacher for several years. He shared with his relatives an abhorrence for slavery. ABoth my parents and grandparents were opposed to slavery,@ Coffin noted in his reminiscences, published in 1876, Aand none of   either of the families ever owned slaves; and all were friends of the oppressed, so I claim that I inherited my anti-slavery principles.@
 In 1821, with his cousin Vestal Coffin, Levi Coffin ran a Sunday school for blacks at New Garden where the slaves where taught to read using the Bible.
Alarmed slave owners, however, soon forced the school to close. Coffin, who  married Catharine White, a woman he had known since childhood, on 28 October   1824, decided two years later to join his other family members who had moved to the young state of Indiana. Establishing a store in Newport, Coffin prospered, expanding his operations to include cutting pork and manufacturing linseed oil. His business success led to him being elected director of the State Bank=s Richmond branch.
Even with his busy life as a merchant, Coffin was Anever too busy to engage in   Underground Railroad affairs.@ In fact, his business success aided him  immeasurably in helping slaves to freedom. AThe Underground Railroad business  increased as time advanced,@ he said, Aand it was attended with heavy expenses, which I could not have borne had not my affairs been prosperous.@
Also, his thriving business and importance in the community helped deflect   opposition to his Underground Railroad activities from pro-slavery supporters and slave hunters in the area. Questioned by others in the community about why he aided slaves when he knew he could be arrested for his activities, Coffin told them that he Aread in the Bible when I was a boy that it was right to take in the stranger and administer to those in distress, and that I thought  it was always safe to do right. The Bible, in bidding us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, said nothing about color, and I should try to follow out the teachings of that good book.@

 The fearlessness the Coffins displayed in offering assistance to the fleeing slaves had an effect on their neighbors. Levi Coffin noted that those who had  once Astood aloof from the work@ eventually contributed clothing for the fugitives and aided the Coffins in forwarding the slaves on their way to freedom, but were Atimid about sheltering them under their roof; so that part of the work devolved on us.@ Fugitives came to the Coffins= home at all hours of the night and announced their presence by a gentle rap at the door. AI  would invite them, in a low tone,@ said Coffin, Ato come in, and they would follow me into the darkened house without a word, for we knew not who might be watching and listening.@ Once safely inside, the slaves would be fed and made comfortable for the evening. The number of fugitives varied considerably   through the years, Coffin noted, but annually averaged more than one hundred.

A hero is a person who is admired by many.  He has the qualities of a good human being. He is someone who goes beyond expectations and works against all odds. Newspapers are filled with their names, streets are named after them.
The actions of heroes bring them recognition, but no hero you know comes close to the guy I admire.  He can be found in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
My hero made a difference in my life.  People used to tell him that he would never make it.  Whenever he heard this he would respond with these words, AThanks for the challenge.@ 
When I read what he had said for the first time I felt confident in myself.  From that moment on I knew I had a chance to make it.  Heroes are known for making a difference in other people=s lives.  My hero is the highest scorer in the league.  His name is Tracy McGrady.
Like many heroes, my role model faced many hardships along the way.  The biggest obstacle he faced was hiding in the shadow of his cousin, Vince Carter. Both men were ballplayers, but all the attention and fame went to Carter.  One day this, too, changed.  It was Tracy=s time to shine.  He made the decision to leave the Toronto Raptors.  Tracey=s choice hurt Vince.  He was not aware of the feelings his cousin had towards him. Their relationship suffered when this happened.  The cousins didn=t speak for years.
Tracy signed with the Orlando Magic and everything changed in his favor:  he became a famous star.  McGrady went to play with the Magic while Carter signed with the Raptors.  Something had to be done.  The two cousins needed to be brought together; there is no room for enemies within a family.
The time came and both teams were scheduled to play each other.  This situation forced the two cousins to speak for the first time in a long time.  The reunion made them both realize that they didn=t need to fight each other because each made a different choice.
Tracy is now scoring an average of twenty points per game.  As for Carter, he is still one of the best dunkers in the League.  Now that they have learned to give each other room, they both have time to shine with their own light.  The audience can expect that when the cousins play, these will be great games.
The lesson here is that heroes are human.  They have limitations and weaknesses.  They sometimes suffer from a low self-esteem and sometimes have to learn important lessons from their mistakes.
JERMAINE AICE@ PRESTER: FAMILY HERO
by Shathora Tinsley, Class 804
February 19, 1984, was the day my hero Jermaine Prester was born.  September 13, 2002 was the night he was killed.
Jermaine=s street name was AIce@ (meaning: I Control Everything).  He grew up in the Fort Greene Projects along with his older brother Mark and T.J., his younger brother. 
In charge of the boys were Jermaine=s abusive foster parents.  The situation at home was so difficult that one day Mark made the decision to run away from home.  He escaped, leaving behind his two brothers.
Ice attended Middle School 265 until the day he was transferred to 117, another Middle School in District 13.  He was kicked out of that school due to his behavior.  After leaving school, Jermaine=s name was added to the list of drop outs. The streets received him with open arms and they became his playground B maybe because he was well-respected there. Everyone in Athe hood@ adored Jermaine. 
Don=t get me wrong: it=s not that the streets were the only thing that mattered to him.  He had a higher love for his family. He had a great deal of respect for them.  He was willing to do anything in the world in their defense.

Years passed and one day Jermaine=s older brother Mark returned.  Mark told him that his biological mother wanted to see him.  As a result of this meeting, the boys moved in with their natural mother and settled in Crown Heights.  His mother and his two sisters shared a special bond. Perhaps moving in with his family was the best thing that happened to Jermaine.  Finally, he had a chance to (get close to) those he loved and to make up for lost years.
Jermaine and I shared a special bond.  He also showed a great deal of love towards my mother, Patricia Lee. Aunt Pat as he called her held a very special place in his heart. She was behind him every step of the way and supported him even when he was wrong.  Jermaine was so attached to his family that he would do anything on their behalf.
To show the type of person that Jermaine was I will describe some of the ways in which he showed his affection.  His younger cousin Shathora was facing problems B an older guy was giving her too much attention. All she had to do was confide in Jermaine.  As soon as he heard her plea he found a solution and solved her problem.
On June 25, 2002 Jermaine (interceded) when he saw a 17-year-old boy touching his ten-year-old cousin..  He became furious and came to her defense. 
Hours passed and the 17 year old boy recruited other boys.  They went looking for revenge.  Four gunshots were heard going towards the direction where Jermiane was.  The boys shot at Jermaine but luckily they missed and he wasn=t hurt.
Later that day, Jermiane was arrested and charged with assault on a boy under eighteen.  The arrest, in fact was the sacrifice Jermaine had to pay for protecting the welfare, honor and safety of a family member.  For his actions, courage and loyalty to his family, I feel that Jermaine qualifies to be called a hero.
My love for Jermaine is strong that today I celebrate his life because he was my shield, also..  He protected his loved ones from danger and the harm that came their way.  He was outspoken and expressed his opinion freely. 
The last time anyone saw Jermaine was the night he was killed, September 13, 2002.  He was playing outside with his little sisters and cousins.  After he finished playing with them, he walked up to me and gave me a hug and a kiss.   He said, AI=ll see you later, cuz.@  When I heard his words I didn=t realize that those same words would one day mean, AI=ll see you in eternity.@
After the goodbyes, my little sister and I went upstairs.  We heard three gunshots but those were not the shots that actually killed him.  A second set of shots were heard in the early morning of the next day.
Later during that morning, I heard my Aunt Pat run up the stairs, screaming.  AOpen the door,@ she yelled.  AThey=ve killed Jermaine.@  I jumped out of my sleep and ran towards my mother=s room.  I told her the bad news.  I can still remember that hysteria-filled morning..  All I could think about and see were the good times we both shared.  I don=t know the number of times I pictured him running up the block and laughing.  The pain I felt caused me to cry uncontrollably as I replayed his life over and over again. 
The day of the wake was the worst day of my life.  How could I have ever imagined that one day I would see my favorite cousin lying in a casket?  The next day was worse.  During the funeral I had to go through the pain of seeing him being buried.  It was the worst time in my life.  My hero gave up his life to shield his family from dishonor. 
Unfortunately, at the end, my popular cousin, ICE, lost control.

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MICHAEL JORDAN: AN AMAZING HERO
By Murray DeRamus, Class 802

A hero is a person who has a kind heart.
He can be smart and talented.  He shows by his actions that he cares for the well being of others.  Heroes do not care if the person they end up helping comes from one place or another.  One can learn about important heroes in books, movies or on the Internet.
We can also learn about them from storytellers.  People like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. Malcolm X,  Michael Jordan are some good examples of heroes.  Many heroes are so well known that anyone can be questioned about them and they will tell you something about who they are and why they are so well known.
My hero, Michael, Jordan, is a man that has overcome many obstacles throughout. his life. He has been challenged by his career and by life.  He got where he is because of his hard work and talent.  He did what he had to do to accomplish his goals.  He has made a difference in our lies because of his accomplishments.

During his early years, Michael went through a lot.  His love for basketball went so deep that he played everyday after school.  As he grew older he played for his college team.  As time went by Michael became an exceptional player,  dunking over people=s heads like it was the most natural thing.  While Michael was in college he did  his best to make it to the top.  He dream was to get to the NBA to play professional basketball. He achieved his dream and became the best ball player there is.
Michael=s career in the NBA took a turn for the worse when tragedy struck his family. Michael=s father was killed. This tragedy marked a new direction in Michael=s life at a time when his professional career had been at its best.  He played  for the Chicago Bulls and took them to the Finals, winning six NBA championships.  His father=s death forced Michael to make one of the toughest decisions of his life.  He stopped playing ball for a while.  After two years, Michael returned to the NBA.  He played for the same team but under a different number.
Michael is an extraordinary hero.  He overcame many obstacles by doing something people thought was impossible to do. He resigned as an NBA star then returned to six help score six championships.  He then retired from the NBA, and made a come back in 2001, dropping a season high 66 points.
Michael Jordan is a star and his life and career are unbelievable.

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WHO ARE OUR HEROES?
By Valencia Todd, Class 503
 A hero is someone who does his part in making this world a better p[lace in which to live.  Heroes are attracted to actions that are good and just.  To be a hero one does not have to be a member of a special rave or be physically strong.  A hero is a person that has an open mid and heart.  Role models like Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr. and Al Sharpton have the character traits heroes are made of.  They became heroes because of the choices they made when they were faced with difficult challenges.  Heroes voice their opinion on important issues and take difficult and unpopular stands on these issues.  When they speak they do it to communicate how they feel even if they end up paying prices such as fines, jail sentence or the loss of their lives.  To put across their ideas, believes and opinions heroes make use of writing and language.  They also make use of the legal systems and the lases to bring about needed changes.
Most [people live among anonymous heroes.  These are ordinary citizens who make heroic acts but few people notice or acknowledge them..  Their actions do not make the headlines of any newspaper.  One person that did make the headlines and became a hero to millions was rap star Tupac Shakur.  His mother, Afina Shakur, was an important influence in his life.  Afina was a well-known member of the Black Panthers, one of the most confrontational groups of the 1960=s founded by Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver.  The group pushed for African Americas to arm themselves and confront white society in order to force whites to give them equal rights.
In my opinion, Tupac is a hero because he brought about changes his own way.  The lyrics he wrote were used to attack different kinds of situations in society.  The words to his songs had their own definitions and interpretations of things. Tupac, like his mother, tried to make African Americans aware of the issues of the time.  Issues like AIDS, racism and discrimination.
Tupac=s love for learning and reading was another one of his traits.  During his High School years, Tupac participated I campaigns to raise public awareness. He felt that kids should be give the change ot take part in subjects that could help them become aware of their Civil Rights.  This way they could learn about issues such as police brutality.  Many kids my age need training on survival skills, self=-protection, and in something as simple as filling out a job application.  Tupac thought, for example hat subjects like Gym were a waste of time.  I disagree with him on that.
Friendship was something very important to Tupac.  One of his friends was Biggie Smalls (Christopher).  His friendship with Biggie came to an end the day he was shot.  Biggie Smalls became the prime suspect because of his song,@ Who Shot Ya.@  After that incident his friendship with Biggie ended.  Tupac then signed a contract with Death Row Records.
Another of Tupac=s qualities was compassion.  One time he heard a news report about a boy who was attacked by a dog.  He felt compassion for the boy and went to visit
him at the hospital.  This is one more example of how caring he was.
In the music industry many people though Tupac was a thug, but once learn about his actions outside of the industry one realizes that he was a very special kind of guy.  He was compassionate and caring, Tupac Shakur died in 1995 in a drive-by shooting.  To this day, police have not charged anyone with the crime.  They don=t know who actually killed him.  To a fan like me he lives on and is remembered as an extraordinary hero.