News Digest

‘Math Camp’ for young men set for Friday August 14th

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FACT:Muskegon Heights Public Schools graduates attend the best colleges & universities in the country PROOF:

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Former MSU Standout Greg Kelser to Speak in Muskegon Heights on August 19th

The Friends of the Muske-gon Heights Library will present former Michigan State University basketball star Gregory Kelser on Wednesday August 19, 2009 at the Muskegon Heights Middle School at 6:30 P.M.Kelser will speak about his book Tales from Michigan

State Basketball and playing for the Spartans’ in the 1979 national championship game with Magic Johnson. He was drafted by the Pistons and played in the NBA for six years.

Professor Griff of the legendary rap groupPublic Enemy will lecture at the MuskegonHeights Boxing Club as part of WUVS 103.7The Beat Cultural Enrichment series. Professor Griff served as the Minister of Information for the group. He also released four solo albums. He is the author of Atlanta Musick Bizness Information Pub-lication and a highly acclaimed spoken word artist.The event will kick off at 4:00pm with a local panel discussing hip hop. For information call 103.7 The Beat at 727-5007. The event is free to the public.

Rap legend to speak onSelf Destructive Sub-cultureof Hip Hop - August 22nd

The free event is being sponsored by The Muskegon TribuneMuskegon Heights - The Mus-

kegon Tribune and the Muskegon Heights Boxing Club will host a free math assistance event for young men ages 12-18, featuring Mathematics scholar and author Shahid Muhammad of Chicago, who is known as “The Math Doc-tor”. Mr. Muhammad is the author of the book, How to Teach Math to Black Students.

The event will take place from 2pm to 4pm at the Muskegon

Heights Boxing Club located at 355. E. Broadway in Muskegon Heights.

Tribune Publisher and orga-nizer Franklin A. Fudail said the event is narrowly focused on help-ing young men overcome the fear of math and to view math more positively. “My goal for the event is for young men to leave the event feeling more math empowered. I am confident we will achieve that goal” stated Fudail.

The guest math scholar Shahid Muhammad, who is the recipi-

ent of the distinguished “Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers Award” said he looks forward to coming to Muskegon. “I am ea-gerly awaiting the extremely im-portant and pertinent math camp that is planned in Muskegon”.

Muhammad holds an under-graduate degree from Penn State University and a Master’s Degree

in Math from Lincoln Univer-sity. He says math is at the root

of technology and

our youth need to master math. “The Honorable Elijah Muham-mad stated a people who do not know mathematics will always be subject to the people who do”.

Mr. Muhammad said the idea of a math camp is needed on a national level, “we need to repli-cate and duplicate this all over the country”, stated Muhammad.

Fudail said math has in many cases been a barrier for a lot of young men and he intends to ad-

dress the issue through the boxing club. “We are planning to hire a reading and math teacher for the Muskegon Heights Boxing Club, so that we can overcome these obstacles and help young men ad-vance their education. The math camp is just a prelude to the over-all plan we have in place”, stated FudailFor more information about at-tending the Math Camp call 231-903-5523.

Afro-Mexican “mini exhibit” one of many to be displayed at Muskegon Heights Boxing Club

Tribune News WirePhotos Courtesy of Dr. Bobby Vaughn

Muskegon Heights - Muskegon Tribune Publisher Franklin A. Fudail is preparing to educate the youth. He re-cently developed an Entrepreneurship and Investment program for teenagers, he is sponsoring the upcoming Math Camp on August 14th, he has contracted with an Lathrup Village, Michigan based company Blessings of Etiquette to come to Muskegon for a series of etiquette and manners workshops, he will start a Man-hood Training Class on September 15th based off his first book and he is prepar-ing to release his third book entitled Be-coming a Global Entrepreneur.

If that wasn’t enough he is prepar-ing what he calls “mini exhibits” to be on display primarily at the Muskegon Heights Boxing Club, where he serves as President. The first mini exhibit will feature the history of Afro-Mexicans and will display photos of modern Afro-Mexicans from the areas of Costa Chica and Varacruz, Mexico. Fudail said it will take several months to com-plete the exhibits, but the finish product will be well worth it.

For the Afro-Mexi-can exhibit Fudail says he has been working with and received a lot of assistance from Dr. Bobby Vaughn , a Pro-fessor of Anthropology at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. “Dr. Vaughn has provided me with documentation that has been enlightening as well as photos from his personal collection. He is a definitive scholar on Afro-Mexicans in Costa Chica, Mexico”, stated Fudail, who also benefited greatly from the works of Dr. Runoko Rashidi on this subject, who Fudail has brought to Muskegon twice.

Fudail said he will personally do the historical presentation for each exhibit.

One of the goals of the mini exhibits is to allow young people to understand the di-versity of the world and its people. Fudail said he is not a world traveler, but he is ed-ucated. “I have read about a lot of cultures and histories. Many people who know me are aware of my knowledge of ancient civilizations and Black history. However, I am well read in the histories and current events of places like Italy, India, Australia

among other places. Many for-get my first newspaper was the “Global” Business Journal”, stated Fudail.

Fudail said the aim is not to simply relive the past, but to help young people ap-preciate geography, world cultures and to help them prepare for an ever increas-ing smaller and more diverse world. “President Obama is a good example of the culturally

diverse world we live in. His mother is from Kansas, father from East Africa. He lived in Indonesia and grew up in Hawaii”.

Fudail said the key to the success of the mini exhibits is to make the information relevant and beneficial. “I personally focus on the Black presence with the mini exhibits, so that

our kids

s e e t h e m -

selves and feel connected to the

subject. However, for example you can’t talk about Mexico without talking about the Indians, Spanish and the Europeans. The problem has been our presence, the Black presence has been excluded far too often”. But even that is chang-ing according to Fudail. A major exhi-bition has been traveling the country called The African Presence in Mexico and the Smithstonian Institute has a sec-tion called, Africa’s Legacy in Mexico. “This is not new information. Historian Aguirre Beltran published a book in

1946 entitled The Black population in Mexico”, said Fudail

Fudail said the Afro-Mexicans mini exhibit will be the first, fol-lowed by Blacks in India and then he will conclude with the

“Blacks in the Holy land” exhibit. The dates will be published in the Tribune in the coming weeks.

Mr. Shahid Muhammad, The Math Doctor

Professor Griff

Expert to teach adults how to help kids be more successful sociallyPage 5

EDUCATiOnTransgressing the Gates of HarvardPage 3

Muskegon Heights Middle School OrientationOn Tuesday August 18 through Wednesday August19, the Muskegon Heights Middle School will be holding orientation from 11:00am through 5:00pm. For more information call the Middle School at 830-3600 or the Muskegon Heights Board of Education at 830-3200.

Greg Kelser