ADVENTIST NEWS Round up

Posted August 24th, 2007 by Linda Greer

 

Article originally appeared in the Washington Post (13 August 2007)

"Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, 90, who died of Alzheimer's disease August 10 at her home in Gloucester, Virginia, quietly changed history in 1944 when she refused to give up her seat on a crowded Greyhound bus to a white couple. Her case resulted in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in interstate transportation and sparked the first Freedom Ride in 1947.

Mrs. Kirkaldy's defiance of the discriminatory Jim Crow laws of Virginia came 11 years before Rosa Parks's similar act in Montgomery, Alabama, galvanized the civil rights movement and made her a national icon. Without fanfare, Mrs. Kirkaldy's early case provided a winning strategy for fighting racial segregation in the courts.

On the July morning in 1944 when she boarded a Greyhound bus in Gloucester bound for Baltimore, Mrs. Kirkaldy was not thinking about tackling racial segregation. Instead, the 27-year-old mother of two, who was recovering from a miscarriage, just wanted a comfortable seat for her lengthy ride home to see a doctor.

She settled into an aisle seat in the fourth row from the back -- in the section designated under Virginia's segregation laws for black passengers. Beside her sat a young mother cuddling an infant.

About a half-hour into the trip, the bus stopped, and a white couple boarded. When the driver ordered Mrs. Kirkaldy, then known as Irene Morgan, and her seatmate to give up their seats, Mrs. Kirkaldy refused. She also told the young woman to stay put.

'I can't see how anybody in the same circumstance could do otherwise," Mrs. Kirkaldy told Washington Post reporter Carol Morello in 2000. "I didn't do anything wrong. I'd paid for my seat. I was sitting where I was supposed to.'

The Greyhound bus driver, however, thought otherwise. He drove to the jail in Saluda, Virginia, in Middlesex County, where a sheriff's deputy boarded the bus and gave Mrs. Kirkaldy a warrant for her arrest.

In a daring and dangerous move, she tore up the warrant and threw it out the window. The deputy then grabbed her arm and tried to yank her off the bus. She didn't go peacefully."....

"After being dragged off the bus, she was thrown in jail. Mrs. Kirkaldy pleaded guilty to the charge of resisting arrest and was fined $100 but refused to plead guilty to violating Virginia's segregation law.

At her trial in Middlesex Circuit Court, her attorney, Spottswood Robinson III, argued that segregation laws unfairly impeded interstate commerce. Robinson, who later became chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District, made a strategic decision not to argue that the laws were unfair under the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection, because racial segregation, while unjust, was the law of the land.

The strategy failed the first time around. Mrs. Kirkaldy was found guilty and fined $10.

Success came, however, when two young NAACP lawyers, Thurgood Marshall and William H. Hastie, appealed her conviction of violating segregation laws all the way to the Supreme Court. (Marshall became the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court; Hastie, the first African American judge on a federal appeals court.)

On June 3, 1946, in Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in interstate travel was unconstitutional as 'an undue burden on commerce. ' ".... [Click here for entire story]

 

To Air Is Divine, Say Backers of Imperiled Station
By Marc Fisher, Washington Post (29 July 2007)

" God, reason, education, classical music and the news are all mixed up in a clash of values and priorities at a little radio station in Takoma Park.
A new public station featuring local and global news appears to be the most likely outcome in a battle involving two big media players, a struggling college, a proud religious faith and a flock of listeners who believe they are hearing God's will. At stake is the future of WGTS (91.9 FM), a station owned by Columbia Union College, which in turn is controlled by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
The station, for many years a fringe player with microscopic ratings, dropped its longtime classical music format in 1997 and switched to a 'family-friendly' program of inspirational Christian music -- a move that resulted in a nearly tenfold increase in audience and a similar boost in listener donations.
But now the college faces a severe financial crisis -- $7 million in debt and a steadily declining supply of tuition-paying students. And its board has decided that among the moves it must make to survive as a liberal arts school is selling its radio station. Bids for the station have topped $20 million, according to college sources.
Columbia Union's board voted this month to negotiate with 'a potential buyer . . . to protect and grow the future of Columbia Union College as an Adventist Christian college in the nation's capital,' a statement from the college said. Station sources, who declined to be named because the college asked them not to reveal details of the transaction, said the Columbia Union board has decided to negotiate with the highest of three bidders and expects to finalize the deal in September.....
WGTS's own board has not given up hope. 'WGTS is God's radio station and always has been,' the station's general manager, John Konrad, wrote in an appeal to loyal listeners to pepper the college and the church with messages of support. ' We've all done our share of worrying about the future of WGTS in recent days, but you know what, God is completely in control. We have nothing to worry about. He has a purpose for WGTS and that purpose is being worked out every step of the way.'
Listeners have responded with hundreds of letters attesting to the station's transformative role in their lives. WGTS's music -- a kind of soft rock with Christian lyrics -- provides solace and encouragement to listeners who have filled message boards at http://savewgts.net with testimonials such as ' I find it most comforting to keep the station on all night. It is a blessing because it encourages me, lifts up my spirits and teaches me life.'
'This seems to be an attempt at a quick fix to cover up the horrible financial and substantive state of affairs at the college,' says Noel Gould, a Washington Adventist and donor to WGTS, who has hired a law firm from the District to look into ways to halt the sale.....
WGTS stalwarts say their only hope for saving the Christian format is to appeal to fellow Adventists. 'If the overall mission of the college and the station is winning souls, then you don't sell off the station,' Walker says. 'The college's board has to decide whether to save the college or the station.' " [Entire story]