Afro American

The nation's oldest black-oriented newspaper will move its headquarters to a midtown Baltimore Charles Street location by the first of the year, the president of the Afro-American Co. of Baltimore City Inc. said yesterday."

Baltimore's Afro-American newspaper has a rich photo archive - 1.5 million images dating from the Depression, World War II and the civil rights era up to today. But one of the nation's oldest African-American newspapers didn't have the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to digitize its historic images for the Internet age. Now, thanks to a little robot built by a former Johns Hopkins student, the effort has gotten a lot cheaper. Using off-the-shelf electronics, Thomas Smith, a 2011 Hopkins graduate, built Gado, a swiveling, motorized arm with a nozzle that uses vacuum suction to "grab" photos and place them on a scanner.

Robert W. Matthews III, retired executive editor of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper and former television and radio newsman, died Friday of cancer at his Roland Park home. He was 75.Even after he retired from the Afro-American in 1990, Mr. Matthews still wrote his popular column, "All That Jazz," until a month ago. He started his career at the Afro-American in 1948 as a columnist and magazine editor."He was a consummate newspaper man," said Sam Lacy, longtime sports editor at the Afro-American.

Beatrice I. "Bea" Jefferson, a retired educator who taught in city public schools for more than two decades, died Jan. 24 of cardiac arrest at Sinai Hospital. She was 89. The daughter of a butcher and a homemaker, Beatrice Irene Knotts was one of eight children. She was born and raised in Wilmington, Del. After graduating in 1939 from Howard High School in Wilmington, Mrs. Jefferson earned a bachelor's degree in 1943 from what is now Morgan State University. Mrs. Jefferson worked for the Social Security Administration while earning her teacher's certification from what is now Coppin State University.

Ida Peters, a reporter for the Afro-American newspaper in Baltimore for more than 35 years who was known for her finely crafted stories about the world of entertainment, died Saturday of a heart attack. She was 77.She suffered the heart attack while covering "For Sisters Only," a program for young and middle-aged African-American women at the Baltimore Convention Center.Mrs. Peters, who lived on Ruxton Avenue, gave equal attention to the big-name Hollywood personalities and the smaller acts that appeared in Pennsylvania Avenue nightclubs.

Wiley A. Hall III sees his new role as executive editor of the Afro-American Newspapers as watchdog to make sure the publications live up to their mission "to validate and document the African-American experience." "My goal is to see that mission reflected in every story of every edition of the newspaper," said Hall, 48. Hall, who was a columnist for The Evening Sun for a decade until the paper folded in September 1995, had been director of communications at Morgan State University. He plans to continue writing a column for the City Paper.

John Jacob Oliver Jr., chairman of the board and publisher of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, was found guilty and received probation before judgment yesterday in connection with two traffic incidents.He was ordered to pay a $50 fine, plus $18 in court costs."I'm disappointed because I still think I was right," said Oliver, 50, of the ruling by District Court Judge Martin A. Kircher.The case received much attention in February after Oliver wrote a front-page account in the Afro about his arrest and 8 1/2 -hour stay in jail.

Sam Lacy stretches the slim, tapered fingers of his left hand and ticks off the "best remembered" stories of his 60-year writing career.There's track star Wilma Rudolph winning three Olympic gold medals in Rome. Joe Louis defeating Max Schmeling. Tennis great Althea Gibson winning titles at Forest Hills and Wimbledon, and Arthur Ashe doing the same 20 years later.And, oh yes, enough Jackie Robinson stories to fill a book."People often ask me what was the biggest story I've covered," says Lacy, at 93 still a columnist with the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper.

Ninety-four years of swimming upstream, and you'd think it would be enough for Sam Lacy just to tread water.Not a chance.Lacy is still working, still writing, still making waves.Check out this week's edition of the Afro-American. Lacy's column calls for the end of the designated hitter, arguing that the only way to stop pitchers like Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens from throwing at hitters is to force them to bat.Another story with his byline states that the Orioles built their 10-2 record by feasting on weaker opponents, and suggests that Texas manager Johnny Oates and pitching coach Dick Bosman were stealing signs last weekend.

When Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color line on April 15, 1947, the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper treated it as an epochal event; The Sun, as an afterthought.Typical, given the times.The Afro-American celebrated Robinson's debut in grand style: seven stories, seven photographs, an editorial and cartoon.The Baltimore Sun's coverage was scant - three paragraphs on the sports page of the morning paper and one in the evening, which mentioned Robinson in the last sentence of its baseball roundup:"Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn's Negro first baseman and first of his race to reach the majors since 1884, failed to get a hit in three official trips to the plate, but his sacrifice-error play in the seventh inning set up the subsequent tying and winning runs."

Frances Louise Murphy II was raised in the newspaper business. The granddaughter of the founder of The Afro-American Newspapers chain, she learned the trade in classrooms and newsrooms, working as a reporter, editor and eventually publisher as she pushed to improve quality. "Mrs. Murphy helped tell the story of the African-American struggle for equality in the 20th century," Mayor Sheila Dixon said yesterday. "No matter the difficulty or danger, The Afro-American pursued news that others overlooked or ignored."

Thomas Stockett, whose career as an illustrator and political cartoonist at the Afro-American newspaper spanned more than half a century, died Wednesday of a heart attack at Maryland General Hospital. He was 82. Mr. Stockett, who lived in the Sutton Place Apartments, was en route to work at the Afro-American's editorial offices, where he had worked for 53 years, when stricken. "When he told a story with his artwork, he told it completely, and for the last 50 years, he captured all the important moments," said Afro publisher John "Jake" Oliver.

For John J. Oliver Jr., the ebullient publisher of The Afro American, it is only a few strides from the portrait of his great-grandfather, John H. Murphy - a former slave who in 1897 bought the newspaper for $200 - to his office next door, where a gleaming computer screen displays a harbinger of the future: the paper's new electronic edition. Oliver, whose 114-year-old weekly paper, with editions in Baltimore and Washington, is the second-oldest black-owned publication in the country, has no time for people who say newspapers are dying.

Sam Lacy, a Baltimore sportswriter whose crusade for integration rattled the cage of big league baseball and helped erase the game's color line more than a half-century ago, died Thursday of heart and kidney failure at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. He was 99. In a professional career that spanned eight decades, Mr. Lacy always kept his edge. His columns in the Afro-American agitated for change, championed the underdog and chronicled the rise of black athletes, especially early on, when minorities were largely ignored by the mainstream press.

Wiley A. Hall III sees his new role as executive editor of the Afro-American Newspapers as watchdog to make sure the publications live up to their mission "to validate and document the African-American experience." "My goal is to see that mission reflected in every story of every edition of the newspaper," said Hall, 48. Hall, who was a columnist for The Evening Sun for a decade until the paper folded in September 1995, had been director of communications at Morgan State University. He plans to continue writing a column for the City Paper.

John J. Oliver Sr., former president and chief operating officer of the Afro-American Newspapers, died Friday at the Genesis ElderCare nursing home in Silver Spring. He was 87. During a 47-year career at the newspaper founded by his grandfather, Mr. Oliver oversaw the mechanical and technical sides of the publishing operation. "The thing he was most noted for was he [kept] up with all the modern changes, from cold type to hot type, and he came along when all the newspapers reduced their size when newsprint prices went out of sight," said John H. Murphy III, former publisher of the Afro-American Newspapers and a cousin of Mr. Oliver.

Leon Robert Brown, retired production supervisor for the Afro-American Newspapers in Baltimore, died at his Lochearn home Sunday of complications after surgery. He was 79. For 42 years, he worked at the newspapers' plant at Druid Hill Avenue and Eutaw Street, helping prepare the printing plates. He retired in 1988. "He was a man who would help you," said Clarence White, an Afro-American employee who trained under Mr. Brown beginning in 1960. "And he would instruct you if you needed it."

BY LATE FALL, Washington expects to have its first memorial dedicated to black Civil War veterans. As many have acknowledged, it's a long overdue tribute.More than 180,000 black men participated in the war, and the overwhelming majority of those fought for the Union. Many were slaves who became free men by enlisting in the military. A large number were from Maryland, mostly Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland plantations and some from Baltimore.One of those soldiers went on to play a key role in black people's fight for racial equality in Baltimore.

MARYLAND'S largest architecture firm, RTKL Associates, is well-known as a designer of office buildings and retail centers. It also creates hospitals, hotels and "urban entertainment" centers. Now, RTKL is part of the team tapped to design Baltimore's newest attraction, a $26 million Maryland Museum of African-American History and Culture. The Maryland African-American Museum Corp., a quasi-public group that is building the 72,000-square-foot museum, disclosed this month that it has selected a joint venture of RTKL and the Freelon Group, a design firm from Durham, N.C., as the new architects for the project, which is planned for the northeast corner of Pratt and President streets.