Village Life Section :: Page 205

• Village youth say race is still an issue

  By Brooke BryanFebruary 25, 2010

  

  Yellow Springs can be a supportive town for black youth to grow up in, according to a group of 10 current Yellow Springs High School students and recent graduates in recent interviews. But the village is not immune to the issues that tend to divide the community by color and burden some African-American families disproportionately. Instances of discrimination are very subtle, and can be unintentional, but they do occur here, the youth said, and they pose obstacles both of perception and in actual practice that young people of color are challenged to overcome.

• Achievement gap complex, but true

  By Brooke BryanFebruary 18, 2010

  

  When Joyce McCurdy accepted a teaching position in the Yellow Springs School District, there was a black chief of police, a black member of Council, and a black member of school board. The principal of the high school was black, and three of McCurdy’s colleagues were also black — and actively involved in the social issues of the day. The year was 1965.

• Bye-bye-athlon

  By YS News Staff

  

  Robert Hasek got his wintertime thrills, making his way home in the dusky hours over a fresh blanket of snow.

• Wright’s lifelong love for Japanese poetry across the ages

  By Stephanie BeasleyFebruary 11, 2010

  Harold Wright has what is sometimes referred to as a “hard head.” The stubbornness of this 79-year-old retired college professor has been one of few consistencies in a life that has taken him to places as distant as Hawaii, Tokyo and New York City.

• Diversity gap creates social divide

  By Lauren Heaton

  

  When Isabel Newman graduated from Bryan High School in 1943, Antioch Bookplate President Ernest Morgan hired her to work for the company. Soon after, he sent her to a six-week course at the Mergenthaler linotype school in New York, and upon her return, she worked for the company for over 40 years, retiring as a manager. At that company, whose president actively promoted racial integration, she recalled that typically a fourth of the employees were minorities. The support for a racially diverse staff appeared to be the same at Vernay Laboratories, where two of Newman’s sisters worked, Yellow Springs Instruments and Antioch College, the place that bred all three companies and their socially minded leaders.

• Shovelin’ in a winter wonderland

  By YS News Staff

  

  Late on Saturday morning, Francisco Cronin and Casey Grisco showed some metal by putting in a hard morning’s shovel.

• A history of racial diversity

  By Diane ChiddisterFebruary 4, 2010

  

  When Robert Harris graduated from college with a degree in physics and math, he sought an engineering job in his hometown of Philadelphia. But the year was 1952, and companies weren’t hiring blacks for professional positions.

• New spin on old tunes

  By YS News StaffJanuary 28, 2010

  Copies of this and other photographs may be purchased from the News; please contact us via e-mail at ysnews@ysnews.com, or by phone, between 9:30 a.m. and 5: 30 p.m., Mon.–Fri.

• DeWines long committed to Haiti

  By Lauren Heaton

  Before the earthquake, Haiti was a country that struggled to support human life. Haiti was already the poorest country in the Americas by most standards; 80 percent of the people lived in poverty and many of those were malnourished or infected with AIDS or other diseases. And in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, about 400,000 people lived in the squalor of a lowland trash dump besieged with standing water, through which rag-clad children would dig for their daily sustenance.

• Unstoppable Nonstop

  By YS News Staff

  Copies of this and other photographs may be purchased from the News; please contact us via e-mail at ysnews@ysnews.com, or by phone, between 9:30 a.m. and 5: 30 p.m., Mon.–Fri.