Your WYSO Morning News Update for June 21, 2022, with Mike Frazier:
- Redistricting Update
(AP) - State leaders are continuing to spar over whether the Ohio Supreme Court should force the Ohio Redistricting Commission to answer for defying a court order. The panel refused to redraw an unconstitutional Statehouse map despite a court order to do so. Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose told justices Friday that a federal court subsequently ordered him to impose the unconstitutional map for the August 2nd primary. So LaRose says it's too late in this cycle to draw new maps that meet Ohio's constitution. But Democratic commissioners say Republicans should not be allowed to break the law without consequences or they will continue to “do what they want.”
- Daytonians's namesake track renovation
(WYSO) - Morehouse College in Atlanta has restored their Edwin C. Moses track complex. Moses is an alumnus of Morehouse and an Olympic Champion. Moses, who grew up in Dayton, says the restoration will lead to the historically Black college having a world-class track and field team. The stadium and track were originally built and named after Moses in 1986. Moses won gold medals in the 1976 and 1984 Olympics. The complex was last restored in 1996 for the Olympic Games that year in Atlanta. The restoration project cost about $4.5 million dollars.
- Dunbar Anniversary
(WVXU) - June 27th marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Born in 1872 to parents who had been enslaved, Paul Laurence Dunbar was raised in Dayton. He would become one of the most important and influential African American poets of all time. Minnita Daniel-Cox is founder of the Dunbar Music Archive and the Dunbar Library and Archive. She says part of Dunbar's legacy is how he helped change narratives. "He uses both standard English and dialect poetry but he takes the dialect poetry which has been used in a really racist and stereotypical way and he turns it on its head and his characters are these similar tropes but they're giving this scathing, critical commentary on society," Daniel-Cox said. A year-long commemoration of the 150th anniversary is underway at the Dunbar House in Dayton
- Wilberforce Juneteenth
(WYSO) - In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. But it took another two years on June 19th before slaves in Galveston, Texas discovered they were actually free. Yet in Ohio, Wilberforce University was actively educating African Americans at that time. WYSO’s Kathryn Mobley spoke with its current president about the vital role Wilberforce and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities play in the national history of Black Americans.
