By KathyWray Coleman, editor-in-chief

CLEVELAND, Ohio- The Cleveland Chapter NAACP entertained

a discussion by community activists at its general membership meeting yesterday at the University Circle United Methodist Church  in Cleveland. Issues include education, the 137 shots Cleveland police shooting of unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Tim Russell,  housing discrimination, foreclosures, abandoned homes, the rape and murder of greater Cleveland women, and police complacency, ineptness and brutality against the Black community, women and others.

Cleveland NAACP is led by the Rev Hilton Smith, an associate minister at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland and a communications relations vice president for Turner Construction Company in Cleveland.

Attorneys Michael Nelson and James Hardiman, co-chairs of the Cleveland NAACP criminal justice and legal redress committees, attended the executive committee meeting held prior to the general meeting but left pouting because Smith agreed to hear out the activists.

The activists have demanded that Nelson and Hardiman hold monthly meetings or resign as co-chairs of the committees and have accused the slick duo of taking monies from the office of the county prosecutor and the city of Cleveland and then selling out the Black community by refusing meetings and allegedly harassing people that complain of police and judicial misconduct and seek assistance by the local Civil Rights organization.

Smith led the meeting and promised to help on the issues presented from police brutality to violence against women to legal system improprieties.

Coleman led the activists at the meeting and thanked Smith for having the courage to allow an open discussion on pertinent issues of public concern impacting the greater Cleveland Black community.

Other activists at the meeting include Dr Stewart Robinson, Valerie Robinson, William Clarence Marshall, Pier Nappier, Vickie Trotter, Shawn Hillard, Gilder Malone, Khalid Samad, David Patterson, Marva Patterson, Frances Caldwell, Rev. Pam Pinkney, Dick Peery and Genevieve Mitchell.

Nappier and Peery called for the 13 all non- Black cops that gunned down unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Tim Russell with a hail of 137 bullets in November 2012 to be indicted as the case is currently before a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury.

General requests by community activists relative to the April 14, 2014 meeting with Cleveland NAACP President the Rev. Hilton Smith, Executive Director Shelia Wright  and executive committee members, and via previous meetings with NAACP affiliates, are as follows:

The agreement of monthly open door Cleveland NAACP legal redress and criminal justice committee meetings with a monthly report to the executive committee and general body on who sought help and the outcome; A stance by the Cleveland NAACP as to the racist and sexist treatment of Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Angela Stokes by Ohio Supreme Court Disciplinary Counsel Scott Drexel and a request for the group to fight against the slated take over of the largely Black Cleveland Municipal Court; The need to request that Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson step in to ensure that the majority Black Cleveland Municipal School District does not turn lily White as to administrators and teachers; A protocol policy pushed by Cleveland NAACP for Cleveland police to do their jobs as to missing persons, the rape and murder of greater Cleveland women, negligent shootings and other community issues;The need to address the illegal and unconstitutional denial of attorneys to Blacks deemed indigent by judges of the Berea and Bedford municipal courts of Cuyahoga County and the malicious prosecutions of Blacks in Berea at the urging of Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor,  who handpicks visiting judges to send to courts throughout the state to allegedly harass Blacks, Democrats and her enemies;The need to address racial epithets via the n-word by employees of the Cuyahoga County prosecutors offices, who have also demanded that Blacks are hanged and to "hang him high;" The need for more resources relative to abduction, rape and murder of greater Cleveland women and for a county wide police missing persons communications unit as well as the implementation of the 27 recommendations by Mayor Frank Jackson's three-member commission around the Imperial Avenue Murders; The need for a mechanism for monitoring the successes and failures of Black children in the absence of a Cleveland schools desegregation court order; The support from the Cleveland NAACP in requesting felony murder and other charges against the group of Cleveland police officers, none of whom are Black, responsible for gunning down unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell; The support of area Black contractors for contracts, work and other amenities; An amendment of the state law (O.R.C. 2939.02) that permits common pleas judges to choose grand jury foremen and for the grand jury itself to choose, the latter of which is also permitted under the law; An amendment to the state law that gives welfare recipients, mainly poor women and children, three years for the subsidy when up to five years is permitted under federal law; An investigation of the foreclosure process in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas and an amendment of the state law (O.R.C. 2359.17) that allows county sheriffs to supervise the appraisal process and sale foreclosed homes for cheap with the amended state law precluding participation by the sheriff and appraisals based upon the last legal county appraisal; The compliance with the DeRolph decision handed down in 1997 by the Ohio Supreme Court that deemed Ohio's method of funding public education unconstitutional, or a sliding scale of student assessment by the Ohio Department of Education based upon how rich or how poor a school district might be; The support of a bill (Ohio House Bill 216) by state Rep. Bill Patmon (D-10) for Ohio trial court judges in multi-judge municipal and common pleas courts to at all times be assigned and reassigned to criminal and civil cases at random; A request for a push for Cleveland prosecutors to secure criminal charges under a city ordinance that secures malfeasance by corrupt mortgage companies and banks such as JPMorgan Chase Bank; A discussion with Cleveland NAACP officials  and Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Chief Judge John Russo  as to a study commissioned by the group that shows that the 34 majority White judges of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas where felony criminal cases and other matters are heard give harsher sentences to Blacks than their similarly situated White counterparts; An amendment of state law (O.R.C.2701.03) that gives the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court sole authority to decide if an Ohio trial common pleas court judge is removed from a case for bias or conflict and for the entire seven-member Ohio Supreme to decide; and, An amendment of state law (O. R.C. 2701.031) that gives the chief judge of the county common pleas court sole authority to decide if an Ohio municipal court is removed from a case for bias or conflict and for a panel of judges to decide coupled with the statutory right to appeal the decision to a state appellate court.

Participating grassroots activists groups or some of their group members include the the Imperial Women Coalition, the Imperial Women Activists Group, the Carl Stokes Brigade, Communities United, the Cleveland African-American Museum, Sister to Sister, Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, People for the Imperial Act, Black on Black Crime Inc. and the Fairfax Business Association.(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio- The

Cleveland Chapter NAACP will entertain a discussion by community activists and affiliated victims or their family members at its general membership meeting at 7:30 pm tonight, April 14, 2014 at the University Circle United Methodist Church where regular meeting are held at 1919 E. 107th St and Chester Avenue in Cleveland. Issues include the 137 shots Cleveland police shooting of unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Tim Russell,  housing discrimination, foreclosures, abandoned homes, the rape and murder of greater Cleveland women, and police complacency, ineptness and brutality against the Black community, women and others. The open-to-the-public meeting in which all community members are invited to attend will include activists speakers of retired Plain Dealer Reporter Dick Peery, Vickie Trotter, and Kathy Wray Coleman of the Imperial Women Coalition. For more information call the Cleveland Chapter NAACP at 216-231-6260 and the Imperial Women Coalition at 216-659-0473

The Cleveland NAACP is led by the Rev Hilton Smith, an associate minister at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland and a communications relations vice president for Turner Construction Company in Cleveland. Sheila Wright is the local chapter's executive director.

Participating grassroots activists groups or some of their group members include the the Imperial Women Coalition, the Imperial Women Activists Group, the Carl Stokes Brigade, Communities United, the Cleveland African-American Museum, Sister to Sister, Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, People for the Imperial Act, and the Fairfax Business Association.

(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

Pictured are President Barack Obama (in blue stripped tie), Georgia Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), (in red stripped tie),  the longest serving Black in Congress, former George state senator and prior National Cleveland NAACP board chairmanship Julian Bond ( in black tie with designs), and former Georgia congressman Andrew Young, also a former Atlanta mayor won and once the United States Ambassador to the United Nations

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief. Coleman is an investigative, legal,  and political journalist who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper.

www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

AUSTIN, Texas.- This week marks the 50th anniversary of the passage, on July 2 five decades ago, of the historical Civil Rights Act of 1964, which President Lyndon B. Johnson, flanked by Civil Rights Icon The Rev Martin Luther King Jr and ranking congressional leaders, among others, historically signed into law among  a divided America..

A Democrat from Texas, Johnson, then the vice president, assumed the presidency in 1963 upon the assassination of Democratic President John F. Kennedy and served out the remainder of Kennedy's unexpired term. He died in 1973 of heart disease.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 , passed by Congress and enacted on July 2, 1964, is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States[4] that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.  It was intended to end  unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public (known as "public accommodations"). (References for this paragraph at Wikipedia.Com).

President Barack Obama, America's first Black president, commemorated the anniversary of the landmark legislation during the final day of a three-day summit in Austin Texas yesterday that drew three other presidents, George Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and a host of Civil Rights leaders to the LBJ Presidential Library. And he gave just due to some Black Civil Rights icons in the audience as he spoke, a press conference in fact.

"We celebrate giants like John Lewis and Andrew Young and Julian Bond and  recall the countless unheralded Americans, Black and White, students and scholars, preachers and housekeepers whose names are etched not on monuments but in the hearts of their loved ones and in the fabric of the country they helped to change," said Obama.

He described  Johnson as a genius and a masterful politician. And while the president said that  there have been accomplishments since the legislation took effect,   he said also that Americans cannot rest.

"But we are here today because we know we cannot be complacent f or history travels not only forwards,  history can travel backwards, history can travel sideways, said Obama, a Democrat and former junior U.S. senator from Illinois.  "And securing the gains this country has made requires the vigilance of its citizens."

Obama said that Civil and human rights  "must be nurtured through struggle and discipline, and persistence and faith. "

By the president's side was First Lady Michelle Obama, the country's first Black first lady.

Though Blacks have progressed since the Civil Rights Act, data show that African-Americans still lag behind Whites collectively across the board and relative to education and socioeconomic status . Black children in public schools across the country still struggle even in school districts once subject to court oversight and desegregation orders, many, if not all relived from such court orders without the required remedying of the past vestiges of racial discrimination.

Unemployment has hit the Black community the hardest, the remnants, in part, of failed economic policies of the Bush administration, the president has said, though a steady climb of economic revival is on the rise under his leadership, data show.

CLEVELAND, Ohio- Jordan's Dental Center (www.jordandentalcenter.com), a premiere dental center under the leadership of local dentist Dr. Eugene Jordan, D.D.S., announces its new location at 18013 Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.