Racial Hatred

He is 45, a Native American who served in Vietnam before settling in the Frankford community. A few months ago he and his wife, who is white, received two anonymous hate letters that threatened violence because of "race- mixing. " The veteran and his family have not budged. "If I can fight for another man's freedom, I will fight for mine," he said Tuesday. "You have to overcome some fears and stand up for what you believe in. You can't back down all your lifetime. " The man and his wife, who asked to remain anonymous, were early victims of an escalating campaign of racial hatred in Frankford.

The judge warned the 40 Asian-Americans and the family and friends of a South Philadelphia murder victim to cool it. "I hope this animosity, this trouble will end," said Common Pleas Judge Lisa A. Richette last week, after convicting Aun Thuy, 32, of voluntary manslaughter at his retrial for the fatal stabbing of James Bischoff, 22, of 16th Street near Morris, on Christmas Day 1989. Sentence was deferred. "We are all human beings, no matter what our backgrounds are," added the judge.

I USUALLY find columnist John Smallwood's articles stimulating and entertaining, and consider him very sports-intelligent. But after looking at the paper's back cover (Sept. 26) with a geriatric Michael Jordan on it and reading his column, I'm disappointed. To make a statement like, "Once it all plays out, Jordan won't end up as one of the NBA's top 20 players" is ludicrous. Any form of MJ is better than the do-rag, hip-hop, overpaid young punks we see today. Do you think a Sixers team with 37-year-old Jordan instead of Allen Iverson would have lost to the Lakers?

My mind is still reeling from the recent article reporting that "Soldiers and Marines based at Fort Bragg and Camp Le Jeune. . . have been participating in activity with racist paramilitary groups. " And I am astounded when I read that spokesmen from the bases report that it is OK so long as "it" (racial hatred, I assume) is not subversive, brought onto the base or carried out during regular hours. As a New England 18-year-old at Camp Le Jeune in 1943, I was puzzled by the fact that we had separate camps for training white and Negro Marines.

In The KKK Boutique Ain't Just Rednecks, a 75-minute "docu-fantasy," interracial indy auteurs Camille Billops and James V. Hatch set out to examine "the way racism changes our souls. " But this satiric series of skits and interviews about America's long love affair with racial hatred - played out in a sort of boutique for bigots - is so obvious, so lacking in subtlety, that it seems to be preaching last week's sermon. Billops, who is black, and Hatch, who is white, intercut their film with scenes of them giving each other haircuts in a field of sunflowers while they chat about the racism in their own long marriage.

The last year has been the pits for a 62-year-old Northern Liberties woman who complained about her neighbor letting a friend set up a barbecue business on the sidewalk. Kathleen Hackett, who said she lives "a structured life" in her home on 4th Street near Girard Avenue, thought her troubles were over when the city's Department of Licenses and Inspections closed down the business last summer. But on July 10, 1997, her angry neighbors - Antonio Martinez, 29, and his wife, Lucy Cortez, 27 - began a campaign of terror that lasted until last month, Assistant District Attorney Lynn Nicholas said yesterday.

Charles Tyson, who gave up his job as South Harrison mayor this month, said yesterday that racism and death threats led to family pressure to step down. "My wife and family asked me to do this," he said yesterday with a trace of sadness. "They were concerned. " Tyson made his remarks after a news conference in the Moorestown office of William H. Buckman, a civil rights attorney who wants to invigorate an investigation into the threats against Tyson. Tyson, a 66-year-old retired computer technician, declined a nomination from the township committee to serve again as mayor.

George Washington sought solace and strength in pew 58 of Christ Church in Philadelphia as turbulence swirled through the newly born nation. He wasn't alone. Many of the landmark church's parishioners were the who's who of Colonial times. Benjamin Franklin. William Penn. Betsy Ross. They all worshiped at Christ Church on 2nd and Market streets. Now, on its 300th-year anniversary, the church celebrates its rich past. In keeping with its history of civic involvement, the church will celebrate with a three-day conference that examines how the religious community can end violence in the world, this country and its cities.

Denouncing the recent incidents of racial violence in Philadelphia, Mayor Goode issued a proclamation yesterday designating October as Human Relations Month. "There has been too much racial hatred in the city in the last several months," Goode said during his weekly proclamation ceremony at City Hall. "I am concerned that a number of beatings . . . are strong indications to me that there is yet a lot of work to be done. " The mayor cited two attacks that occurred in the last 10 days - the beating of two black men by a group of whites in Kensington and the beating of an Asian man by a group of black teenagers in West Philadelphia.

Mayor Goode yesterday said he hoped Philadelphians would "recommit themselves to a city which is free of bigotry and hatred and bias" in the wake of racially motivated attacks over the past several months. During his weekly proclamation ceremony, Goode declared October "Human Relations Month. " "There has been too much racial hatred in the past several months, and I am concerned about a number of beatings," Goode said. Goode noted the attack Sunday on a 33-year-old Asian graduate student, who was kicked and beaten with a metal pipe by a gang of black youths.

Has it really been 50 years? It's not that my memories of 1963 are so vivid that it seems like yesterday. It doesn't. But neither does it seem that it was half a century ago when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to my hometown of Birmingham, Ala. Man, I'm old. In 1963 I was 9 years old, in the third grade, and not paying much attention to the conversations of all the adults who were apprehensive because the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth had...

ISN'T it ironic that, on the same day the mayor announces the police and fire cuts, three idiots pulled over for being suspected of having guns come out of their car and start firing. Thank God no officer was killed. We're going through a trial now for the murder of one police officer, and these thugs try to reenact the same scenario. As these police and fire jobs are eliminated through attrition and their services are reduced, will the citizens of this city protest? No! But, if something happens and the police or fire don't respond quick enough, then you'll ask why it took so long - the same people who sit on their steps and see the crime being committed, but when the police arrive, they didn't see anything.

Attorney General Eric Holder got it half right. Americans are cowards when it comes to discussing racial issues, but not because we don't talk about race enough. If we monitored our daily exchanges closely, we would probably find that most of us invoke race a lot. People are constantly taking part in their own mini-dialogues on race, even if their comments sometimes hide snugly behind practiced euphemisms. Americans actually talk about race all the time. We just do it very badly.

Charles Tyson, who gave up his job as South Harrison mayor this month, said yesterday that racism and death threats led to family pressure to step down. "My wife and family asked me to do this," he said yesterday with a trace of sadness. "They were concerned. " Tyson made his remarks after a news conference in the Moorestown office of William H. Buckman, a civil rights attorney who wants to invigorate an investigation into the threats against Tyson. Tyson, a 66-year-old retired computer technician, declined a nomination from the township committee to serve again as mayor.

Police say they are developing more evidence to arrest the young people responsible for last week's killing of Sean Conroy, the Starbucks manager who died of an asthma attack after he was ambushed in a Center City subway concourse. "The investigation is still going on," Homicide Sgt. Bob Wilkins said yesterday. "We don't have enough to arrest anybody yet. " Investigators want to make sure the case is "solid and it sticks," said Chief of Detectives Keith R. Sadler. "I'm fully confident they're going to bring it to a conclusion.

For decades, a Chester Springs man guarded a searing secret. Now, 65 years after escaping from a concentration camp - and excelling in roles ranging from psychologist to bookseller to Chester County Court tipstaff - Joseph B. Hirt has begun writing his memoirs, giving voice to previously unspeakable trauma. "I have been silent for so long because I questioned the manner of asking anyone to comprehend" such torture and degradation, the 81-year-old Holocaust survivor said. As a result, many of Hirt's confidants had no inkling of a past that included multiple arrests, brushes with death, and eight months in a concentration camp infamous for its atrocities.

I USUALLY find columnist John Smallwood's articles stimulating and entertaining, and consider him very sports-intelligent. But after looking at the paper's back cover (Sept. 26) with a geriatric Michael Jordan on it and reading his column, I'm disappointed. To make a statement like, "Once it all plays out, Jordan won't end up as one of the NBA's top 20 players" is ludicrous. Any form of MJ is better than the do-rag, hip-hop, overpaid young punks we see today. Do you think a Sixers team with 37-year-old Jordan instead of Allen Iverson would have lost to the Lakers?

The jury convicted Louis Perpetua of stalking Channel 6 anchorwoman Lisa Thomas-Laury, but it may take a psychiatrist's help to convince him that she wasn't harassing him, said his attorney. "Even now we cannot persuade him," said defense lawyer Kirk Adams yesterday, after Common Pleas Judge Anthony J. DeFino revoked Perpetua's bail and deferred sentencing until June 22. "He still believes Miss Laury is somehow harassing him," added Adams. "It's strictly something internal in his own mind.

After deliberating just an hour, a Common Pleas Court jury yesterday convicted a Chester man of stalking TV anchorwoman Lisa Thomas-Laury and making threats including cutting out her tongue. Louis Perpetua, 55, a former Philadelphia Naval Shipyard worker, stood expressionless as the jury announced he was guilty of stalking and harassment in making hundreds of daily telephone calls to Channel 6 between 1996 and October, often delivering racial insults and once claiming he was a few blocks from the television studio.

School is a place of love, light, learning Is Bob Jones University racist? Do they hate Catholics? Could it be instead that politicians and reporters who know little about Bob Jones University have rushed to judgment to further their own careers? I think so. My opinion is based on my first-hand experience. I graduated from Bob Jones University in 1975, my wife in 1976. My oldest son is a junior studying there now. For seven years I have been the senior pastor of Bethel Chapel Church, a racially diverse congregation here in Philadelphia.