National Urban League

WASHINGTON -- NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said last night that the nation's largest civil rights group has reduced its debt to $250,000, down from $3.2 million when he took charge of the organization in February.Mfume made the remark in a talk to the Capital Press Club, a black journalists group. He shared the podium with Hugh B. Price, president of the National Urban League, another major civil rights organization.Mfume said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which has headquarters in Baltimore, expects to wipe out the debt "very shortly."

From The Sun Oct. 2-8, 1844Oct. 5: The funeral of John Henry Krager, who was inhumanly murdered by a set of ruffians on Thursday night, will take place this afternoon at 4 o'clock from his late residence in Bond Street, Fell's Point.Oct. 8: A portion of the Democratic procession on Friday night was saluted, at the corner of Twelfth and Lombard streets, by a shower of bricks from a gang of ruffians, and Mr. Alexander Brown, of the Northern Liberties, was struck in the head and nearly knocked from his horse.

WASHINGTON -- Black Americans are worse off than a year ago, but hard times are exposing the "dirty little secret" that most poor people are white, says a National Urban League leader.John E. Jacob, president of the civil rights group, said yesterday in releasing the organization's 17th annual "State of Black America" report that the league still hoped to see its 2-year-old proposal for a $50 billion-a-year "Urban Marshall Plan" adopted by Congress.The original Marshall Plan directed large amounts of aid to Europe to help it recover from the devastation of World War II.The Urban League outlined several broad recommendations mostly aimed at improving the lot of low-income blacks.

NAACP Chairman Julian Bond named a nine-member search committee yesterday to replace Kweisi Mfume, who announced last week his resignation as president of the Baltimore-based civil rights group. The committee includes members and staff of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as people from outside the organization. In addition to Bond, they are NAACP Vice Chairwoman Roslyn Brock; NAACP board member Rupert Richardson; Jack Kemp, a former Republican congressman from New York and former secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Hugh B. Price, former president of the National Urban League; NAACP board member Alice Huffman; Philip Murphy, managing director of the investment management division at Goldman Sachs & Co. and board member of the NAACP Special Contribution Fund; Coleman Peterson, president of Hollis Enterprises LLC and board member of the NAACP Special Contribution Fund; and Nicholas Wiggins, a member of the NAACP youth board.

The new head of the National Urban League said something over the weekend that very much needed to be said by a black leader: "We must not let ourselves, and particularly our children, fall in the paranoid trap of thinking that racism accounts for all that plagues us," said Hugh Price, the league's new president.Neither he -- nor we -- believes white racism is dead in the United States. It is alive and well, and its impact on black advancement is often potent and harmful. But the truth is, there is far less white racism -- individual and institutional -- than in the past.

THE MARYLAND General Assembly session has a critical month left, but it is evident thus far that the legislature is taking highway safety more to heart. Some bills that didn't get a sniff in years past are being voted through committee and then some.Part of the reason is a general impression that driving has become more dangerous. Part is statistical: Some 500 killed and 14,000 injured yearly, with drunken driving up for the first time this decade. And part is anecdotal: Studies showing that cellular phone gabbers are as distracted as drunken drivers, and news of asphalt-cowboys engaging in fatal brinkmanship contribute to a mood of vulnerability.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Blacks have won legal equality through the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement, but they are not on a level playing field in terms of economics, health, education and social justice, according to a national study being released today. Blacks have become more active in civic groups and are making slight improvements in overcoming poverty, National Urban League study found, but are not as well off as whites when hundreds of quality-of-life indicators are measured.

WASHINGTON - The Democratic presidential contenders have been invited to appear at a candidate forum next month at Morgan State University, according to Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Baltimore. The event Sept. 9 is to be formally announced at a news conference today at the school. It is one in a series of almost weekly joint appearances around the country by the nine candidates. The forum in the Murphy Fine Arts Center - scene of a contentious gubernatorial debate last year between then-U.

How does Rep. Kweisi Mfume, Maryland's only black member of Congress, assess the Clarence Thomas nomination to the Supreme Court? In a meeting yesterday with Sun editorial writers, the Baltimore lawmaker made these assertions:* It is his "gut feeling" that Judge Thomas, a black conservative nominated to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall, will be confirmed.* The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, taking the same path as the National Urban League, will wind up taking no position ("the best position for civil rights organizations")

Hermione Elaine Wharton, a lifelong resident of Baltimore who was principal of four city public schools, died in her sleep Friday at Keswick. She was 91.Services for Miss Wharton, will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at St. Katherine's Episcopal Church, Presstman and Division streets.Miss Wharton taught English and other subjects in Baltimore's schools for more than 25 years before becoming an administrator.At her retirement in 1963, she said that her "happiest days were in the classroom with the children.