All Articles Tagged "maryland"
Let’s Get A Little Church Up In Here: New Guide Celebrates Maryland’s Black Churches
From the guide.
The black church was vital to the Civil Rights movement. Many African-American leaders were born from the church. And even today, especially now at election time, politicians look to black churches to help get them elected.
Some however say the black church has lost is vitality and is dying, with many struggling to stay afloat.
Now the Heritage Tourism Alliance of Montgomery County has published a guide to African-American churches in the Washington DC area in hopes of preserving the legacy of the black church. Community Cornerstones: A Selection of Historic African American Churches in Montgomery County, Maryland is a brochure that details the history of 21 historically African-American Montgomery churches. What makes these churches so historic is that they were founded by free slaves. Although three of the churches in the guide are no longer standing, most of the churches are still in use.
“This story needs to be told rather quickly because the congregations are vanishing and the people are growing old,” Peggy Erickson, executive director of Heritage Montgomery, told the Washington Post. “We need to get their stories out.”
Among the churches are Macedonia Baptist Church, for example, which was founded in 1876 by former slave James Hungerford, who donated the land he inherited from his master Marshall Hall.
In 2006, some of the black churches in Montgomery County were victims of racist attacks. The Heritage Tourism Alliance hopes to create a better understanding of the importance of the area’s African-American churches.
Show Me The Money: Pool of Maryland Educators Winners in Historic $656 Million Lottery
If there was ever a reason to start taking lottery pools at your job more seriously, the winning pool of two Baltimore teachers and an administrator should be proof that you can’t miss out next time.
The three educators stepped forward on Monday to collect their winnings, but did so anonymously: they wore sweatshirts, gloves and hid behind one of their checks. I guess they were smart enough to realize that the minute they let the world know who they were, the sooner the “world” (and all of its many cousins) would want to get broke off too.
According to the Baltimore Sun, the individuals aren’t planning to spend their new millions on extravagant and wasteful things. After taxes, all three winners will attain $35 million in the next few days, which they plan to use on sensible things like new homes, investments (BORING! I’m kidding…), a European vacation, and probably the best idea: a college fund for one of the winner’s children.
After the big lottery on March 30, a woman by the name of Mirlande Wilson, a single mother of seven kids who played the lottery in a pool with her McDonald’s co-workers (but bought extra tickets for herself, alone), tried to claim that she was a winner. Then she wasn’t so sure if she was, causing a great deal of stress for her co-workers and lottery officials. In the end, she wasn’t the winner, we all learned the importance of making photocopies of the tickets we buy in pools, and these three winners shared a good laugh: “They were humored by it,” says Maryland Lottery Director Stephen Martino. Now that the three winners from Maryland stepped forward yesterday, and the winner from Kansas stepped up last week, the last baller winner from Illinois is the only person left to come forward.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Maryland winners are two women (one in her 20s, the other in her 50s), and a man (in his 40s), and before winning the lottery, each were said to have been working second jobs to pay the bills. Now that they don’t need a second or primary job, I’m wondering if they will chuck the deuces to their education positions? I love the kids just as much as the next person, but with $35 million??? Geez…I think I’d already be on my way to backpack through Europe. Congratulations!
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$656 million, college fund, education system, homes, illinois, investments, Kansas, lottery, Madame Noire, maryland, money, pool, rich, savings, wealthMo’ Money Mo’ Problems: Mega Millions Winner Won’t Share Money With Lotto Pool
Source: NY Post
Anybody over the age of five knows you don’t play with people’s money, and when we’re talking millions of dollars, things could get ugly.
As you know by now, there were three wining tickets in last week’s $656 million Mega Millions lotto, one of which a Maryland woman named Mirlande Wilson has laid claim to. The problem is Mirlande says the $105 million lump sum she’ll receive after taxes is all hers but her coworkers at McDonald’s say they all went in on that ticket together and the money belongs to all of them. Now Mirlande is trying to explain her way out of the million-dollar split.
“We had a group plan, but I went and played by myself. [The ‘winning’ ticket] wasn’t on the group plan,” the 37-year-old told the NY Post.
“I was in the group, but this was separate. The winning ticket was a separate ticket.”
“She can’ t do this to us!” said Suleiman Osman Husein, a shift manager and one of the 15 people in the pool. “We each paid $5. She took everybody’s money!”
A man named Allen, who is the boyfriend of one of the McDonald’s managers named Layla, was part of the pool and said Mirlande bought tickets for the group at the 7-Eleven in Milford Mill, where the winning ticket was sold. The group’s tickets and a list of those who contributed to the pool were left in an office safe inside the store. Later that evening before the lotto drawing, the owner of the McDonald’s, Birul Desai, supposedly gave Wilson $5 to buy more tickets for the pool on her way home from work, and she went back to the 7-Eleven and bought them then took those tickets home with her, Allen said. However, Mirlande says she bought the second batch of tickets with someone else outside of the pool and the winning ticket came from that pile.
When Mirlande called the store after the winning numbers were announced, crying, “I won, I won,” they knew something was up. Allen says he and Layla went to her home and pounded on the door for 20 minutes until she finally came out and he told her not to play with people’s money:
“These people are going to kill you. It’s not worth your life!,” Allen said he told her.
He then claims Mirlande responded, “All right! All right! I’ll share, but I can’t find the ticket right now.”
Making the entire situation even more shady, the winning Maryland ticket has yet to be claimed and Yohannes Michael, a clerk at the 7-Eleven where the woman bought the tickets says she doesn’t even think Mirlande won. She said lottery officials have reviewed the store’s video and believe that a man bought the winning ticket but lottery rep Carole Everett would not confirm that.
Either way, Mirlande is probably going to catch a beatdown. I just don’t know which will make it worse—lying about winning the money in the first place or keeping the money to herself?
If Mirlande is the winner do you think she should share the money with her coworkers regardless?
Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.
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Radio Shack Receipt Labels Customer ‘Ugly Itch’ from ‘Ghettohood, USA’
Source: Gadailynews.com
I swear you can’t make this stuff up. Shanae Lewis, a young black woman who stopped in Silver Spring, MD, to pick up a cassette tape adapter at Radio Shack on her way to DC, had a less than positive customer service experience when she found inappropriate comments on her receipt.
It seems the store clerk wasn’t too thrilled that Shanae requested a refund after asking for a bag to place the adapter in. Montgomery County charges a mandatory five cents for disposable bags as part of its Water Quality Protection Fund and Shanae didn’t want to pay the fee. She insists she requested the refund nicely, although the clerk was noticeable annoyed—and then she found this description of her on the receipt:
ugly itch,
ghettohood, usa,
Tattooville, MD
Shanae said she couldn’t believe what she read when she saw the receipt outside of the store. She immediately returned and requested to speak with a manager, who greeted her with curse words as the employee, who is black, excused the words as a joke. Shanae said her shock quickly turned to anger because the words were not only inappropriate, they’re not true. She told ABC news:
“To be displayed as something like that because of my ethnicity or because I’m from Baltimore is discriminatory. I just got the tattoos on my arm for my son that passed away from SIDS and my mother that died 10 months later. I’m not a ‘hood, ghetto person –that’s just totally not me.”
Shanae escalated her complaint to Radio Shack’s corporate office who apologized for the incident and offered her a $100 gift card. The company also says it has taken the “strongest action available” against the employees, but Shanae says if that doesn’t mean they’re fired, the action isn’t strong enough.
“I think both employees need to be terminated and I don’t believe they should even receive unemployment benefits. If they wanted their job, they would know how to treat a customer.”
At the very least, Shanae says she will never shop at Radio Shack again and she plans to return items she purchased over the last several weeks to the store as well.
How do you think the store manager and clerk should be punished for their actions?
Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.
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Weight Loss Biz Says It's Easy as Pie
(Black Enterprise) — In business, it’s important to know your target market intimately, and Carmyn Robey certainly does. By age 14, she weighed 260 pounds and was a size 24. “One day I made up my mind that I was tired of being depressed,” says Robey. “I started researching information about nutrition. Over two years, with diet and exercise, I lost 140 pounds and dropped from a size 24 to an 8.” Seeking to help other women in similar straits, she founded Easy As Pie, a Hyattsville, Maryland–based company that offers custom meal plans, individual cooking lessons, pantry walkthroughs and grocery assessments to help women achieve optimal nutrition and lead an overall healthier lifestyle.
Davis Wins Special Election
(Washington Post) — Early support from Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III and several other county leaders helped Derrick Leon Davis win the Democratic nomination for the vacant District 6 seat on the County Council. With all 26 of the district’s precincts reporting, Davis received 3,570 votes, or 55 percent of ballots cast. Arthur A. Turner Jr., with 1,254 votes, or 19 percent, was a distant second among the primary’s 14 candidates. In the predominantly Democratic county, Davis, a former school system official and the current chairman of the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund, becomes the strong favorite to succeed Leslie Johnson, who resigned in disgrace this year.
Friends of Accused Bowie State Student Express Shock
(Washington Post) — Alexis Simpson had been distressed to leave Clark Atlanta University, where she attended last year as a freshman, friends said. And the 19-year-old wasn’t easily settling into a new life at Bowie State University, where she was randomly housed in a suite with three other students. “She said she hadn’t been comfortable with her roommate,” Simpson’s friend, BreYonna Conrad, 18, said on Saturday. “She said they had argued and it almost turned into a fight. She said the roommate would target her. She was thinking about leaving the dorm and just living at home because she didn’t want to deal with it anymore.” But her friends never imagined those tensions would turn deadly. Simpson is charged with murder in the Thursday night fatal stabbing of one of her suite mates, Dominique Frazier, 18, of Northeast Washington. She is expected to appear in court Monday.
Behind the Scenes with TV One's CEO
(Washington Post) — I loved television growing up. It was the first place I saw a great representation of African Americans in environments different from mine. I watched TV, and it made me feel something. How many products can make people think, feel, cry and take action? That was so powerful to me. So when I would hear people say that I should follow my passion, I knew I was passionate about being in a medium that can do all of that. After business school, I decided to go into brand management with Clorox and Coca-Cola to understand marketing and, more importantly, to understand how to influence a consumer’s behavior to drive business results.
Torrential Rains Inundate D.C. Region: 3 Killed, Roads and Schools Closed
(Washington Post) – Torrential rains swept over the Washington region Thursday, triggering flash floods that killed two people in Fairfax County and one in Anne Arundel, trapped scores of terrified motorists, forced hundreds to evacuate their homes and shut major highways, including Interstate 66 and the Capital Beltway. The victims included 12-year-old Jake Donaldson, who was swept away by the flood-swollen waters of Piney Branch Creek in Vienna; 67-year-old Arsalan Hakiri, who was killed near his stranded vehicle in Great Falls ; and a 49-year-old man who drowned in Pasadena, Md., authorities said. Fairfax County Police identified the victims Friday morning after family members were notified. The name of the Pasadena man has not been released. The Virginia Department of Transportation and State Police ordered the Beltway closed from Route 1 to the Mixing Bowl at Interstate 395, as the waters of Cameron Run spilled onto the highway, VDOT spokeswoman Joan Morris said. Maryland officials closed the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to keep cars off the flooded portion of the Beltway in Virginia. Interstate 66 was also closed westbound near Route 50.
St. Michaels New Hot Spot for Well-Heeled Blacks
(The Root) — African Americans have had a tradition of summering in coastal resort towns since the 19th century. Areas such as Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and Sag Harbor, N.Y., have been attracting black families for more than a century. The primary reason blacks flocked to certain areas was that they were barred from or made unwelcome in other places. In our modern, “postracial” times, many blacks have the freedom, money or clout to vacation wherever they choose. Like their white counterparts, affluent black families have acquired second homes that are used for more than a summer respite. One town creating buzz among East Coast buppies and black boomers today is St. Michaels, Md. Historically a waterman and shipbuilding town, St. Michaels has evolved into an elegant yet quaint getaway for the Washington, D.C., power elite. Former Vice President package Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have homes there, and the late Michael Jackson reportedly looked at property in St. Michaels before his death.
