[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 43 (Thursday, March 18, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E496-E497]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            EXPOSING RACISM

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 18, 1999

  Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, in my continuing efforts to 
document and expose racism in America, I submit the following articles 
into the Congressional Record.

       Officers Accused of Using Racial Slurs, Breaking Boy's Arm

       Las Vegas (AP).--Two Las Vegas off-duty police officers are 
     accused of taunting schoolchildren with racial slurs and 
     breaking the arm of a 12-year-old boy while arresting him.
       The Metropolitan Police Department is investigating, and 
     the mother of Parrish ``Pookie'' Young Jr., shose arm was 
     broken, has contacted an attorney.
       Police Department spokesman Lt. Rick Alba said Thursday the 
     department began an internal investigation after the 
     Wednesday morning incident through Tammy Lyons, Pookie's 
     mother, has yet to file a compliant with the department's 
     Internal Affairs Bureau.
       Lyons' aunt, Caroline Lyons, said Pookie was cited for 
     resisting arrest and impeding traffic, both misdemeanors. She 
     said her great-nephew's arm was broken between the elbow and 
     the shoulder.
       Twelve-year-old Alex Solomon said the incident began when 
     he, Dwayne Childs, 13, and Pookie met to go to school about 7 
     a.m. Wednesday. After making their morning trek to a doughnut 
     shop, they walked to their school bus stop at Mojave Road and 
     Charleston Boulevard.
       Alex said their friend, Zaya Thompson, 12, had a can of 
     potato chips, which she tossed to them. The can went into the 
     street, Alex said, and he and pookie chased after it. Then, 
     he said, they started ``play fighting''over it.
       An unidentified woman stopped her car at that time and told 
     them to stay out of the road because they could get hurt.
       Just behind her was a Las Vegas police squad car and a 
     white vehicle. An officer in uniform got out of the squad 
     car, and another man, who identified himself as an officer, 
     got out of the white vehicle.
       The officers scolded the children for running into the 
     street at the school bus stop, but Alex and another student, 
     Candance Reynard, 11, said the officers then started using 
     racial slurs. All the children involved in the incident are 
     black.
       One of the girls at the bus stop yelled an expletive to the 
     officers. Another girl repeated the derogatory rebuff, and 
     Pookie started laughing.
       ``I said, `A-hahaha,' '' the 12-year-old said. ``One of the 
     men said, `This ain't no joke. Bring your little ass over 
     her.' ''
       Pookie said he dropped his school books and walked toward 
     the two. When he was within arm's reach, they grabbed him and 
     slammed him against the police car, he said.
       ``Pookie walked over to the cop, to the car, and as he was 
     walking over, as soon as he got near them, they took him,'' 
     said Gary Hamilton, 26, who was driving the school bus the 
     children were waiting to board.
       ``And one cop has his head down, and the other tried to 
     get, I guess, what looked like an arm bar,'' he said, 
     referring to a method of immobilizing someone's arms.
       Pookie's left arm then ``just gave away,'' Hamilton said. 
     The officers then took Pookie to University Medical Center.
                                  ____


   Free Speech at Heart of Case Involving Student Denied Law License

                           (By Tara Burghart)

       East Peoria, IL. (AP).--In three years of law school Matt 
     Hale made decent grades, participated in student groups, 
     played violin in two orchestras--and worked to revive a white 
     supremacist group that advocates ``racial holy war.''
       A state panel that reviews the ``character and fitness'' of 
     prospective lawyers says that's reason enough to refuse Hale 
     a law license. That ruling in turn has prompted debate about 
     the balance between free speech and an attorney's obligation 
     to uphold the nation's bedrock belief of equal justice under 
     the law.
       ``The idea that I can't be lawyer because of my views is 
     ludicrous. Plain and simple,'' Hale says, sitting in a home 
     office where an Israeli flag serves as a doormat, swastika 
     stickers decorate the walls and the flag of Hale's group, the 
     World Church of the Creator, hangs from a window.
       Hale's effort to gain a law license has attracted some 
     unlikely supporters, including the Anti-Defamation League and 
     renowned attorney Alan Dershowitz, who says he may help Hale 
     appeal the inquiry panel's ruling.
       ``Character committees should not become thought police,'' 
     Dershowitz said. ``It's not the content of the thoughts I'm 
     defending, it's the freedom of everybody to express their 
     views and to become lawyers.''
       Hale, 27, grew up in East Peoria, a blue-collar town on the 
     Illinois River. By his own account he was immersing himself 
     by age 12 in books about Nazis and formed a ``Little Reich'' 
     group at school. In high school and at Bradley University he 
     attended ``white power'' rallies and sent letters filled with 
     racial slurs to newspapers.
       He also had a few brushes with the law, including a 
     citation for littering after trying to distribute racist 
     newspapers to homes in Pekin.
       While attending Southern Illinois University law school 
     Hale was elected head of the World Church of the Creator. The 
     Anti-Defamation League says the group was one of the most 
     violent of its kind in the early 1990s; one member was 
     convicted of killing a black Gulf War veteran in 1991 in a 
     Florida parking lot.
       After the veteran's family won $1 million from the church 
     in a lawsuit and its founder died, the church foundered, only 
     to experience a resurgence under Hale, according to the 
     league. Hale's claim of up to 30,000 supporters cannot be 
     verified.
       Hale graduated from SIU in May 1998, passed the bar exam 
     and was hired by a

[[Page E497]]

     Champaign law firm that now says it knew nothing about his 
     views.
       To receive a law license, Hale and other prospective 
     lawyers are required to appeal before a judge or attorney 
     working on behalf of the Illinois Supreme Court's committee 
     on character and fitness who look for problems including 
     dishonesty, criminal activity, academic misconduct or 
     financial irresponsibility.
       All but 25 of more than 3,000 applicants last year were 
     approved at that initial stage.
       Hale was not, and then a three-member inquiry panel voted 
     2-1 in December not to give him a license.
       ``The balance of values that we strike leaves Matthew Hale 
     free, as the First Amendment allows, to incite as much racial 
     hatred as he desires and to attempt to carry out his life's 
     mission of depriving those he dislikes of their legal 
     rigthts,'' panel members wrote.
       ``But in our view he cannot do this as an officer of the 
     court.''
       Illinois officials say the last case similar to Hale's was 
     in the early 1950s, when a law student refused to take an 
     anti-Communist loyalty oath. The U.S. Supreme Court last 
     considered a similar case in 1971, when two applicants for 
     law licenses in other states would not reveal their political 
     beliefs. The court ruled in their favor.
       The Anti-Defamation League believes Hale shouldn't be 
     denied a law license because of the ``slippery slope'' it 
     creates, said Andrew Shoenthal, assistant director in the 
     group's Chicago office.
       For instance, Shoenthal asked, could a prospective lawyer 
     who opposes abortion or supports school prayer be denied a 
     license if a majority in his community held an opposite view?
       The Illinois State Bar Association has yet to take a 
     position on Hale's case, but spokesman Dave Anderson said the 
     case ``is a hot topic (among lawyers) right now, with 
     spirited debate on both sides.''
       Hale, meanwhile, was fired in November by the law firm 
     because he couldn't obtain a license. He lives with his 
     parents in East Peoria, operating out of an office in their 
     home.
       When he's not talking about his white supremacist beliefs, 
     Hale seems intelligent, polite, and articulate.
       ``I can't name a Hollywood movie that made white 
     supremacists look good,'' he said. ``We're always portrayed 
     as hate mongers, villains, uneducated, missing all our teeth, 
     having a shotgun in the backseat and chewing tobacco.''
       Hale is optimistic he'll get his license and plans to open 
     a solo practice because no law firm is likely to hire him. 
     His plans include challenging affirmative action laws and the 
     littering law for which he was cited.
       ``For me, the true test of character is whether a person 
     says what they think, which is what I have always done,'' 
     Hale said. ``I believe I show more character than most 
     attorneys in that I actually practice what I preach.''


     
                                  ____
          Student Pleads Guilty To Sending Threatening E-Mails

       Los Angeles (AP).--A college student has pleaded guilty to 
     federal civil rights charges that he e-mailed hate messages 
     to dozens of Hispanics around the country.
       Kingman Quon, 22, of Corona pleaded guilty Monday in 
     federal court to seven misdemeanor counts of interfering with 
     federally protected activities.
       Specifically, he was accused of threatening to use force 
     against his victims with the intent to intimidate or 
     interfere with them because of their national origin or 
     ethnic background.
       It was only the second federal civil rights prosecution 
     involving e-mail threats.
       Quon could face up to seven years in prison and nearly 
     $700,000 in fines when he is sentenced on April 26, although 
     he is expected to receive a 2-year sentence under a plea 
     bargain.
       Quon, who was charged in January, remains free on bail 
     pending sentencing.
       Quon, a Chinese-American, said outside court that he 
     ``snapped'' and sent the messages in March because he 
     couldn't stand the pressures of being ``a high-achieving 
     college student.''
       He is a marketing major at California State Polytechnic 
     University, Pomona.
       Quon sent the same racially derogatory e-mail to 42 
     professors at California State University, Los Angeles and 25 
     students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
       ``The only reason you people are in state colleges is 
     because of affirmative action,'' the message read.
       One copy went to Assemblywoman Gloria Romero, D-Alhambra, a 
     former Cal State psychology professor.
       Quon also sent the message to employees of Indiana 
     University, Xerox Corp., the Texas Hispanic Journal, the 
     Internal Revenue Service and NASA's Ames Research Center.
       Outside of court Monday, Quon apologized for the messages 
     and asked the victims to forgive him.
       The only other federal hate e-mail prosecution involved 
     Richard Machado, 21, a naturalized citizen from El Salvador 
     who flunked out of the University of California, Irvine. He 
     was convicted last year of sending messages to 59 Asian 
     students on campus, allegedly out of anger because he felt 
     their good grades were raising the standard for others.
       He was sentenced to a year in jail and was ordered to 
     undergo racial tolerance counseling.


     
                                  ____
     Speedy Ruling Sought for Ayers Issue Affecting USM-Gulf Coast

       Jackson, Miss. (AP).--The State College Board will meet 
     Thursday with its lawyers to discuss questions raised in a 
     complaint over whether university expansion on the Gulf Coast 
     will impact the historically black colleges.
       Last week, plaintiffs in a long-running college 
     desegregation lawsuit filed papers asking U.S. District Judge 
     Neal Biggers Jr. of Oxford to hold up the University of 
     Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast expansion.
       Alvin Chambliss Jr., a law professor at Texas Southern 
     University and lead attorney for plaintiffs in the lawsuit, 
     questioned the admissions policies at USM/Gulf Coast 
     operations.
       Chambliss also said he feared the USM upgrades could 
     interfere with state funding needed for court-approved 
     remedies.
       The desegregation case began in January 1975 when the late 
     Jake Ayers Sr. of Glen Allan sued, accusing Mississippi of 
     neglecting the state's three historically black 
     universities--Jackson State, Alcorn and Mississippi Valley 
     State. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that Mississippi 
     operated a segregated college system.
       USM wants $2 million for Gulf Coast expansions. That 
     includes funds for USM-Long Beach and creation of a multi-
     university higher education center. The Legislature has not 
     yet acted on the money.
       ``We all hope it doesn't hold up things,'' said College 
     Board member Nan Baker of Winona. ``A speedy ruling (from the 
     judge) would be best for everybody concerned.''
       The College Board endorsed the USM/Gulf Coast expansion by 
     a 7-5 vote last month. Critics say Mississippi can't afford 
     what may become a ninth university.
       Reports from the College Board did not spell out the racial 
     makeup of USM/Gulf Coast programs, Chambliss said.
       The USM plan would add 150 freshmen next fall to the Gulf 
     Park campus at Long Beach and 750 freshmen and sophomores 
     over a five-year period. The board plan also proposes a USM-
     led higher education center on the Gulf Coast. It would allow 
     five universities including Jackson State and Alcorn State, 
     and a community college, to teach classes.
       ``Persons from every sector of the Gulf Coast support what 
     we are doing,'' said USM President Horace Fleming Jr. ``We 
     have support from leaders in the black community. We think it 
     would help everybody.''
       Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, is urging the Legislature 
     to more than triple the $4.7 million the College Board is 
     seeking for Ayers funding for the three historically black 
     universities.

     

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