University of Chicago Law School professor Tracey Meares will return to her hometown of Springfield on Thursday as the featured speaker celebrating the 50th anniversary of the landmark court case Brown v. Board of Education. The U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in 1954, which ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional, strikes a unique chord with […]
Todd Spivak
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Talking trash
The semi-wooded, vacant lots at Melrose and Wirt, a residential intersection on Springfield’s southeast side, are a kind of cemetery for worn-out, broken-down furniture. Splintered chairs and tattered couches, with stuffing spilling out of their cushions, lay overturned in a tangled heap among rubber tires, concrete rubble, and trails of busted bottles and foil wrappers […]
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Ready, aim, misfire
Jack Ryan is making good on his promise. On the night he won the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, the former investment banker vowed to “be on the offensive” against his Democratic rival, state Sen. Barack Obama of Chicago. True to his word, he’s let the mud fly. Since the March 16 primary election, […]
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Economy class
Veteran state employee Marge Heissinger may be out of a job come July. For 16 years Heissinger has run the Central Illinois Tourism Development Office, which would be axed under Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s current budget proposal. Heissinger’s office, one of six in the state, helps market and promote tourism for smaller communities in a 28-county […]
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Banking on change
Springfield NAACP President Rudy Davenport will travel to Chicago later this month to testify against the $58 billion merger of Bank One Corp. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Davenport plans to urge the Federal Reserve Board to force the banking giants into an agreement to curb discriminatory lending practices in low-income and minority communities. […]
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To the rescue
Jerry Jacobson enters the battered old mansion at 12th Street and Cass Avenue through a makeshift side door of bent nails and corkboard. He drops his head and stoops low, steps up over piles of broken rubble and caked mud, then unfolds his lanky body in an expansive kitchen dating back to the days of […]
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Lead alert
It was a routine check-up. Springfield native Crystal Bishop says nothing was visibly wrong with her nearly two-year-old infant son, Michael. But then came the results from his blood tests, which showed Michael with enough lead in his system — six times the limit set by the federal government — to cause mental retardation. “It […]
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In the black
It can be painful to hear Ivy League-bred Barack Obama talk jive. When the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate ‘gives a shout out’ to a supporter, calling him his ‘homeboy,’ or worse, his ‘peeps,’ the inflection in his voice betrays him as perhaps more vanilla than chocolate. In the months leading up to last […]
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Pool solution
Say a student is pursuing a degree in health care at the local community college. But the school’s medical laboratory pales in comparison to the more technologically sophisticated facilities at the nearby state university. Why not share facilities? “It is utterly and completely logical that these institutions should be combined into one facility,” says Greater […]
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The contenders
From inside his West Washington Street polling place on Tuesday afternoon, Patrick “Tim” Timoney anticipated a long night ahead. Like the vast majority of party leaders across the state, Sangamon County’s Democratic Party chairman had endorsed Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes for the U.S. Senate. And, like most of the state’s political pundits, Timoney predicted Tuesday’s […]
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Head of the class
The gospel choir has finished its hymns and the pastor is well into his sermon when a tall, gaunt man with short-cropped hair and a handsome baby face appears at the edge of the dais. The pastor, fervently promoting the new Mel Gibson movie as though his paycheck depends on it, catches a glimpse of […]
