Camille Cosby

CHICAGO - Inside the 7,000-square-foot office of a renovated warehouse on south Michigan Avenue, it is almost as if the walls can talk. Boxes of labeled videotapes neatly line shelves where the tales of a century and a people are stored. Some of the stories are familiar, some not so familiar. And some of those telling their stories are famous - Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Terry McMillan and Julian Bond - though many are not so famous. But all are deemed to be history makers, their voices and faces captured on tape as lessons for generations to come.

RECENTLY Earl G. Graves, a successful entrepreneur, pledged a gift of $1 million to Morgan State University. It is among the largest donations ever made by an alumnus to a public, historically black college.What is equally significant is that Mr. Graves and his family dedicated the donation to Morgan's School of Business to help to create future African-American businesspersons and entrepreneurs -- resources that are greatly needed in the black community.Sadly, Mr. Graves, publisher and founder of Black Enterprise magazine, is probably unknown to most young African-American males.

WASHINGTON -- Learning about America's one-time addiction to slavery is like peeling back layers of a tough white onion. For example, how many know that New Yorkers kept slaves through 1840, or that a fifth of New York City's population in 1776 was slave? Outfitting slave ships was a churning engine of the city's prosperity, according to black historian W.E.B. Du Bois. How many schoolchildren in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana, Delaware, New Jersey, Ohio and Rhode Island are taught that the federal census of 1840 counted slaves in their states?

HUMOR: 1. the quality that makes something seem funny, amusing or ludicrous; comicality. 2. the ability to perceive, appreciate, or express what is funny, amusing or ludicrous. 3. the expression of this in speech, writing or action."That definition is from Webster's New World Dictionary. A reiteration of the definition of humor is necessary for those folks who need to get reacquainted with it. Take, for example, those humorless souls whose sphincters were tightened when black comedian Chris Rock appeared in whiteface on the cover of the August issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

You won't find the names of Moe Brooker, Camille Billops, Nora Mae Carmichael or Margo Humphrey listed anywhere in Janson's History of Art, the standard introductory text for college undergraduates in the field. Does this mean that these artists, all African-Americans whose works are on display in a marvelous exhibition at Morgan State University, somehow don't count, that they deserve the invisibility conferred upon them by academic art history? Last year's big retrospective of Romare Bearden at Washington's National Gallery of Art, a first for a black artist, brought new visibility to a whole tradition of African-American art-making that previously had been mostly overlooked by mainstream scholars, critics and museum curators.

Parking czar must find spaces for downtown hotelWhy has the city created the position of parking coordinator when it allows a hotel to be built at 300 E. Pratt Street with only 200 parking spaces ("Drivers seek out shrinking car space," Aug. 13)?Will the new parking czar's job be to sell us the idea that the city is working on our behalf, when the results will be worse than the current situation?Where will the 200-plus cars currently using the lot on the property park? Where will guests in the 600 rooms park?

At St. Frances Academy, don't think of scary nuns that rap knuckles for misbehavior. The Roman Catholic high school in East Baltimore uses counseling and extra attention to help its students overcome the problems of city life and succeed academically. So students such as 15- year-old Chanaye Jackson come to St. Frances with average grades and find ways to excel. About one-third of the students, including Chanaye, receive some kind of counseling once a week. Chanaye lost both parents when she was young, and a good friend was recently fatally stabbed, so she joined the school's grief and loss group for help.

Few attempted-murder suspects can count on the support of a nun at their court hearings. But Sister John Francis Schilling, president of St. Frances Academy, sat yesterday in the witness stand of a Baltimore courtroom to ask a judge to release from jail Karrell Jones, one of her students. She and Brother Gregory Cavalier, who came to court in religious garb, assured Circuit Judge John M. Glynn that they would keep Jones off the streets and out of trouble until his attempted-murder trial, which could be months away.

Eddie and Sylvia Brown have hung the provocative artwork in a can't-miss-it spot in their Glen Arm home, giving them ample opportunity to ponder its message. The piece, by African-American artist Betye Saar, features three washboards hung vertically, each with a poignant image of old, tired washerwomen primed to tackle the day's laundry. The work's title is imprinted in bold lettering: Lest We Forget, Upon Whose Shoulders, We Now Stand. "Every day when we head to our garage," said Eddie Brown, "it's there."