Florida Sentinel Bulletin

EDGEFIELD, SC — A 114-year-old South Carolina woman who was the oldest living U.S. citizen has died, two of her daughters said Saturday.

Mamie Rearden of Edgefield, who held the title as the country’s oldest person for about two weeks, died Wednesday at a hospital in Augusta, Ga., said Sara Rearden of Burtonsville, Md., and Janie Ruth Osborne of Edgefield. They said their mother broke her hip after a fall about three weeks ago.

Gerontology Research Group, which verifies age information for Guinness World Records, listed Mamie Rearden as the oldest living American after last month’s passing of 115-year-old Dina Manfredini of Iowa. Rearden’s Sept. 7, 1898, birth was recorded in the 1900 U.S. Census, the group’s Robert Young said.

Rearden was more than a year younger than the world’s oldest person, 115-year-old Jiroemon Kimura of Japan.

Going into this morning, expectations were that that the new report from Bureau of Labor Statistics would show the economy added about 160,000 jobs in December. As it turns out, in the preliminary report, the expectations were quite close.

The BLS reported that the overall economy added 155,000 jobs last month, while the revised unemployment rate was unchanged at 7.8%.

RENO, NEVADA — Jeffrey Blanck, a civil rights attorney in Reno, Nev., has become the first non-Black leader of the Reno-Sparks NAACP in the branch’s 66-year history, according to the group’s web page.

Blanck will be replacing outgoing President Lonnie Feemster, who has just completed his last of four two-year terms at the organization.

Blanck’s involvement with the local NAACP has long been established, with the lawyer serving as the second vice-president and legal redress chair. A 27-year veteran, Blanck was moved to practice law after being inspired by the Civil Rights Movement of the ’60s, according to his website. In a brief statement, Blanck spoke to the diversity of the branch he is soon to helm.

I am proud that our leadership and membership reflect the rich diversity of our community and our country,  said Blanck.

AURORA, Colo.  — SWAT officers who stormed a Colorado home where a gunman had holed up found a horrific scene – four dead bodies including that of the gunman.

Police said the armed man fired shots at officers Saturday from a second-story window before officers killed him. Once inside, they found the bodies of three other adults.

The suspect, whose name was withheld by police, held officers at bay for nearly six hours after neighbors reported gunfire at 3 a.m. inside the modest townhome in the Denver suburb of Aurora, said police Sgt. Cassidee Carlson.

It wasn’t known if officers shot the suspect or if he shot himself.

Investigators said two men and a woman appeared to have been killed before officers arrived.

JACKSON, MS — An explosive federal hate crime case in Mississippi from 2011 has sparked charges against a mob of young Whites who confessed to harassing and assaulting Blacks in the town of Jackson. On Thursday, a sixth member of the group pleaded guilty to charges of a conspiracy to commit a hate crime in federal court.

The death of Black auto plant worker James Craig Anderson was the impetus behind charging 21-year-old Joseph Paul Dominick. The Rankin County man appeared in Jackson’s U.S. District Court as Judge Carlton Reeves announced the plans to sentence him at a later date.

Dominick, the ex-boyfriend of “American Idol” finalist Skylar Laine, is the sixth man of a group of White men and women to be charged with going into Jackson and attacking groups of Black people with slingshots and bottles.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to recover in a New York hospital where she’s being treated for a blood clot in her head.

Her doctors say blood thinners are being used to dissolve the clot and they are confident she will make a full recovery. Clinton didn’t suffer a stroke or neurological damage from the clot that formed after she suffered a concussion during a fainting spell at her home in early December, doctors said in a statement Monday.

Clinton, 65, was admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday when the clot turned up on a follow-up exam on the concussion, Clinton spokesman Phillipe Reines said. The clot is located in the vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. She will be released once the medication dose for the blood thinners has been established, the doctors said.

Mrs. Lillian Miles Lewis, wife of U. S. Representative John Lewis, died on Monday.

A release from the representative’s office states that she passed away in Atlanta, Georgia. The couple married 44 years ago after meeting at a New Year’s Eve party in 1967.

“The congressman traveled from Washington, D.C. to Atlanta Monday night.”

Mrs. Lewis is survived by Rep. Lewis and one son. The cause of her death has not been released.

After decades of claims that they were wrongly convicted, nine African-American men and one white woman who were imprisoned for an arson fire in North Carolina that stemmed from racial unrest over integrated schools have been pardoned.

North Carolina Gov. Bev Purdue, who is leaving office in just one week, issued the pardons Monday.

Purdue’s office issued a statement, saying she had spent “a great deal of time over the past seven months reviewing the pardon of innocence requests of the persons collectively known as the Wilmington Ten.”

The trial of the Wilmington 10 was tainted by racial bias and key testimony was recanted. It was a case borne in an era of racial confrontation over school integration and civil rights.

Recently, Tim Tyson, a North Carolina writer and historian, uncovered notes from the prosecutor in the case. The notes include the prosecutor’s efforts to select a favorable jury based on race. When the prosecutor failed in the first instance – the selected jury was two whites and 10 Blacks – his notes written on the back of a legal pad indicate he feigned illness to cause a mistrial and succeeded. The second trial had a jury of 10 whites and two Blacks and it produced the conviction that was tossed out.

In 1980, a federal appeals court overturned the convictions in a written decision that highlighted the gross improprieties that occurred during the trial. The federal court determined as a matter of law that numerous instances of prosecutorial misconduct and other constitutional violations took place.

A Michigan woman is free on bond after spending 11 days in jail.

Her alleged crime: cursing.

Hours after a circuit court judge ordered the bond for a woman jailed for swearing reduced to the $500 she already paid, LaRue Ford walked out of the Berrien County Jail.

The ACLU filed an emergency appeal to get Ford released from the jail, where she’s been since Dec. 18 for cursing in the court clerk’s office.

She said her first thoughts when she walked out shortly before 4 p.m. were, “I’m free. You know, free.” She added, “I guess right now I’m just speechless, I’m tired. I’ve just been through so much.”

The ACLU maintains Ford’s 1st Amendment rights were violated and they allege District Court Judge Dennis Wiley abused his authority in jailing Ford and revoking her bond.

She admits cursing, but said it was to herself as she left the clerk’s office frustrated after getting the runaround while trying to clear up an old traffic ticket. When she returned with $50 to finally clear it up, Judge Dennis Wiley ordered her arrest.