New Psalmist

Martin Luther King III will lead the nation's new crop of civil rights activists into Baltimore today to participate in the city's first African-American Economic Summit.The two-day free event at New Psalmist Baptist Church hopes to lure young black entrepreneurs into the city to create new business and jobs.Baltimore City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III organized the conference as the next step in the African-American civil rights movement. Bell hopes new black-owned businesses can begin to replace companies and jobs that have fled Baltimore in the past 30 years.

Linda Ervin didn't wake yesterday intending to chase blue sky.But the 44-year-old owner of E & S Janitorial & Associates couldn't help steering her car toward New Psalmist Baptist Church after hearing a radio report about Baltimore's first African-American Economic Summit.Ervin joined 175 fellow black entrepreneurs for the two-day free event aimed at attracting more black businesses and jobs to the city. Ervin and her partner, Valerie Daniel, started their janitorial service a year ago, after working 10 years for other companies.

BEFORE CAMPAIGN '98 fades entirely, a recollection of images, voter wisdom, home truths and famous last words:Clinton's charisma is the real thingTo watch Bill Clinton at New Psalmist Baptist Church was to think of Frank Sinatra, The Beatles and other matinee idols whose presence brought audiences to peaks of excitement.After his talk the Sunday before the election, the president went to meet parishioners who had watched him from the basement on closed-circuit television. He paused for a moment in the doorway, taking in the electric enthusiasm of the crowd -- marveling at it himself, or so it seemed.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will venture out of Meyerhoff Hall to the sanctuary of Southwest Baltimore's New Psalmist Baptist Church tomorrow night to perform a free concert in honor of the congregation's 100th anniversary.The concert will include a work by contemporary African-American composer Katherine Gladney Wells and will feature soprano AnDraea Keene, a student at Morgan State University.Sponsored by the BSO's Community Outreach Committee, this is the second concert the symphony has held in recent years in one of Baltimore's well-known African-American churches.

A watchdog group has filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service claiming that West Baltimore's New Psalmist Baptist Church improperly engaged in partisan politics when it welcomed President Clinton and Gov. Parris N. Glendening this month.Officials from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State said the Nov. 1 service at New Psalmist, two days before Glendening was re-elected, was essentially a Democratic Party rally.Edward Smith Jr., an attorney for New Psalmist, said neither he nor the church has been informed by the IRS of any investigation.

A pageant of electioneering -- of the democratic process -- unfolded in a West Baltimore neighborhood on Sunday.Tasha S. Brown and her neighbor, Geraldine Carter, brought chairs and cushions to their shared porch to watch the president of the United States arrive and depart."

President Clinton stood in the pulpit of a West Baltimore Church yesterday and urged African-Americans to honor the heroes of their "long march to dignity" by voting tomorrow for the Clinton administration agenda and for Democratic candidates in Maryland."

Psalmist Christian School celebrates ties to educationThe New Psalmist Christian School is celebrating "A Decade of Dedication to Excellence and Education" with a banquet from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. tomorrow at New Psalmist Baptist Church, 4501 1/2 Old Frederick Road.The school has begun a $50,000 endowment campaign to fund scholarships. Tickets are $25; $10 for alumni. Information: 233-3133.Adams Chapel AME Church plans homecoming serviceThe annual homecoming service at Adams Chapel AME Church will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday.

Ann Marshall Nichols, who fought to rid her West Baltimore neighborhood of drugs and gathered children into her home for fun and learning, died at her home Thursday of a suspected heart attack. She was 68."First and foremost, she loved children," said City Council President Mary Pat Clarke, in whose office Mrs. Nichols was committee clerk. "We have to make sure all these children continue to receive nurturing from the community. That's what we have to do for Ann."She said Mrs. Nichols stayed busy sending out birthday cards, keeping in touch with community members and representing the council president around the city.

One of Baltimore's biggest and fastest growing congregations won approval yesterday to build a new sanctuary on the grounds of an old religious institution in Irvington.With softly murmured prayers and promises to be good neighbors, about 70 members of the New Psalmist Baptist Church persuaded the city's Planning Commission to permit the construction of a $7.5 million complex on a 20-acre estate the church owns in Southwest Baltimore.Several residents near the wooded campus at 4501 Old Frederick Road, once a home for elderly Episcopalians, expressed concern that their community would be clogged with traffic on Sundays.

The federal agents went through the lesson plans, step by step. How do you deal with someone who is screaming at you? How do you say "no" to the popular girl who wants you to smoke a joint? How do you tell your friend you don't want to join a gang? That's when the harsh realities of Baltimore streets ran into the four walls of the classroom at New Psalmist Baptist Church on Old Frederick Road on Thursday. "What if the gang members find you snitched and come to try to kill you?" one little boy asked.

Thousands of churchgoers walked through a gate adorned with royal purple and gold balloons and ribbons. A large sign trumpeted: "Holy City of Zion." To many, they had arrived at a promised land - despite the mounds of dirt, the construction equipment and chain-link fences. "In the providence of God, we have come of age," said Bishop Walter S. Thomas, senior pastor of New Psalmist Baptist Church. He stood in front of about 2,000 from the congregation who brought lawn chairs and parasols to a field where the church's new sanctuary will stand.

On Friday, April 27, 2007, 8 P.M., after a lengthy illness, an angel of love took MAMIE CAMPBELL GASQUE from labor to reward. Mamie was born July 8, 1930 in Fairmont, WV, to the late Randall Campbell and Hattie Jefferson Campbell. Mamie graduated from Dunbar High School on May 27, 1948. She accepted Christ at an early age and attended Morning Star Baptist Church in Fairmont, WV, where she san on the chior. In the early 1950s, Mamie moved to Baltimore, MD, and lived with her aunt Adeline (Nana)

With just 3 1/2 weeks until Election Day, a group of African-American political, religious and business leaders from Baltimore unveiled a six-point agenda yesterday challenging candidates running for statewide office to confront such concerns as racial disparities in criminal justice and black business development. Led by U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, state Sen. Verna L. Jones and Bishop Walter Thomas of New Psalmist Baptist Church, the group has taken the name Strategic Alliance and comprises about 40 prominent African-Americans.

Letha W. Alston, a retired secretary and longtime deaconess at New Psalmist Baptist Church, died of breast cancer Thursday at Mercy Medical Center. The Edmondson Village resident was 65. The Baltimore native was born Letha Willen Meggett and raised in the McCulloh Homes public housing neighborhood. She was a 1958 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School and Cortez Peters Business School. Mrs. Alston began her career in the typing pool at the Social Security Administration's old headquarters in the Candler Building in Baltimore and later moved to its Woodlawn facility.

ANNAPOLIS Crash that killed officer nets man a 3-year term A Queenstown man who pleaded guilty yesterday to auto manslaughter in the death of a Maryland Transportation Authority police officer will spend three years in prison, according to the Anne Arundel County state's attorney's office. Albert G. Antonelli slammed his pickup truck into a police cruiser at 10 a.m. July 20 on the shoulder of U.S. 50, just west of the Bay Bridge. The officer in the car, Duke G. Aaron III, died hours later at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore.

Community leaders in Southwest Baltimore expressed satisfaction yesterday at the news that New Psalmist Baptist Church is relocating to a Northwest Baltimore business park and that its property would be joined with a sprawling vacant apartment complex to create the city's largest residential housing development in decades. "I think it's what you call a win-win," said Angela Bethea-Spearman, president of the Uplands Community Association. "New Psalmist appears to be very happy, and we're happy for them."

In what officials are calling a historic opportunity, Baltimore is assembling land for its biggest housing development in decades by relocating a prominent church and clearing a vacant, sprawling low-income housing complex to create space for 1,100 new apartments, homes and condominiums. Plans for the nearly 100-acre Southwest Baltimore site near the Baltimore County line call for some of the housing to be affordable and the majority to be sold at market rates, with some expected to command prices of $400,000 or more.

The crowd could see the spirit welling up inside Bishop Neil Ellis. For more than an hour, the preacher from the Bahamas roamed the stage at Baltimore's convention center yesterday, shadow-boxing, bouncing on the balls of his feet and citing Scripture until his voice grew hoarse. "The devil is putting a beating on you," said Ellis, as his image filled five giant TV screens and organ music swelled to punctate his sentences. "Some of us are catching hell. The devil is fighting us and winning."

The Rev. Agnes Norrine Fields, visitation pastor at New Psalmist Baptist Church and a former claims examiner for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland, died of heart failure Dec. 3 at Franklin Square Hospital Center. The Northwest Baltimore resident was 65. Born Agnes Norrine Snell, she was raised in Elkridge and graduated in 1956 from Howard County's old Harriet Tubman High School. She worked for 30 years at Blue Cross, retiring from its Towson offices in 1988. Mrs. Fields returned to school while working for the medical insurer and graduated from the Baltimore School of the Bible.