Mother jailed for law that's the real crime

By DeWayne Wickham

Kelley Williams-Bolar broke the law when she falsified some documents so her children would have a chance at a better education in a safer school. But that law, which has turned her into a convicted felon, breaks Ohio’s compact with its citizens.

The 40-year-old teacher’s aide was given two concurrent 5-year sentences last month after a jury found her guilty of two counts of tampering with evidence for filing forms in which she claimed her two daughters lived in a nearby suburb with her father. She did this so they could attend a school in the suburban Copley-Fairlawn district instead of one closer to the Akron, Ohio housing project where the girls actually lived with her.



Judge Patricia Cosgrove reduced Williams-Bolar’s sentence to 10 days in jail and ordered her to perform 80 hours of community service and two years of probation. She also told the distraught mother she had to serve some time “so that others who think they might defraud the school system, perhaps, will think twice.”

But, in fact, it is the state of Ohio – and the flawed system of public education it created – that has defrauded the children of Williams-Bolar.

Since its creation in 1851, the Buckeye State’s constitution has required Ohio’s General Assembly to “secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state…” But instead of doing this, state officials – like those in every other state in the union – have left it up to local school districts to manage public education.

Ohio provides only a portion of the cost of educating schoolchildren throughout the state and leaves it to local jurisdictions to come up with the rest. This has created an imbalance that, at least in part, fuels the disparities between poor inner city school districts like the one Williams-Bolar wanted her children to escape, and the better off suburban school system she lied to get them to attend.

Four times since 1997, Ohio’s Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional the state’s approach to funding public education. But despite those rulings the state provides just roughly half of the cost of a student’s education and leaves it up to a patchwork of over 600 school districts to come up with the rest.

Neither Ted Strickland, the Democrat who just vacated the Ohio statehouse, nor John Kasich, the Republican who defeated him in last year’s election, has proposed a fix that acknowledges their state’s sole responsibility to create “a thorough and efficient system of common schools.” Instead, they’ve proposed ideas that tweak the status quo system of state and local funding.

Like frustrated parents in many other underfunded, poor-performing districts around the country, Williams-Bolar wanted to get her children into a better school. In doing so, she broke a law that safeguards a system of education that treats her children as collateral damage in the tribalism produced by the state’s failure to fully fund public education.

While some might argue that school vouchers or more charter schools are the answer to Williams-Bolar’s plight, I think that debate allows states to duck a far more important – and impactful – discussion of their constitutional responsibility to provide children a quality education.

Ohio shortchanges it citizens when state officials fail to meet the state’s obligation to ensure that all children, regardless of where they live, have the same educational opportunity. As a result, Williams-Bolar was forced to deceive the guardians of Ohio’s wrongful school funding system to get her children a chance for a better education. For this she has been branded a criminal.

And that’s a crying shame.

Congressional Republicans act like members of a white citizens council

By DeWayne Wickham

Just when it seemed the GOP’s pup tent was popping its stitches, Republicans have again dashed any hope that their party might become a political big tent.

The illusion of GOP inclusion came in the wake of last year’s election when black Republicans won congressional seats in South Carolina and Florida, the first time in over a century that a former Confederate state has sent a black Republican to Congress. The election of Allen West of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina – plus Jennifer Carroll’s election as Florida’s lieutenant governor – had some people thinking the GOP had broken free of its racial myopia.

Those breakthroughs came less than three weeks after Republicans were stung by the racially charged action of Dave Bartholomew, the Virginia Beach, Va., GOP chairman who was forced to resign after he was caught passing along an email that compared black welfare recipients to a dog.

While the election of Carroll, Scott and West overshadowed Bartholomew’s bad act, it has done little to burnish the image of the Republican Party among blacks and other minorities. That’s because when it comes to burning bridges with this nation’s minorities, the GOP can’t help itself.



Proof of its propensity now to act more like a white citizens’ council from the 1960s, rather than the political party that ended slavery in the 1860s, came earlier this month. That’s when Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to stop delegates from voting on the House floor when the entire body is assembles as “a committee of the whole.”

The six delegates – minorities from the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories of Guam, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands – have historically lacked the full voting rights of House members elected from districts in the nation’s 50 states. They could vote in a committee, but not on the House floor where legislation is finally enacted.

But when Democrats took control of the House in 2007 they adopted a rule that allowed the delegates, who like full voting members of Congress represent American citizens, to have a limited vote on the House floor when the entire body acted as a committee to speed up the legislative process.

Republicans argue it violates the constitution to allow delegates such a floor vote, even though a federal appeals court upheld it in a 1994 opinion. Since 1993 when Democrats who then controlled the House first allowed delegates this limited vote, it’s been a political football. Whenever Republicans were in power it was taken away. When Democrats gained the majority it was given back.

But this time there was reason to believe things would be different.

“America is more than a country,” Republicans said in the preamble to a pledge the GOP made to voters shortly before the November election. “America is an idea – an idea that free people can govern themselves, that government’s powers are derived from the consent of the governed…”

But now that Republicans control the House they’ve decided that Americans represented by the six delegates – five Democrats and one Independent – should have their ability to give consent to government actions through their elected representatives reduced again.

“If the representatives of people in Baghdad and Kabul couldn’t vote we’d call that an incomplete democracy,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson told me.

Sure we would. And we’d accuse those responsible of being political thugs. But such harsh language is no longer acceptable at a time when many people think kinder words will produce better political behavior.

So, suffice to say, I think the GOP’s pup tent has just gotten a lot smaller.

Obama bringing sense to U.S.-Cuba policy

By DeWayne Wickham

It was late in the day on the Friday before the nation’s capital shutdown for the Martin Luther King Jr., holiday that the White House signaled a long awaited change in this country’s Cuba policy that has to have a lot of people cheering on both sides of the Florida Straits.

President Obama ordered administration officials “to take a series of steps to continue efforts to reach out to the Cuban people in support of their desire to freely determine their country’s future,” the White House press release declared.

The steps, which relax restrictions on travel and money transfers to Cuba, moves this nation closer to a rational foreign policy towards the communist state, which for nearly half a century a succession of American governments have tried to topple.

Cuba is the last Cold War battleground where the United States is not just at loggerheads with an old Soviet client state but is actively trying to undermine the government. This nation's with regime change in Havana has been fueled more by domestic politics (pandering for votes among anti-Castro Cubans in South Florida) than a well-reasoned foreign policy.

Obama’s decision to relax the ban on Americans traveling to Cuba is an act of political courage and good sense. Under the new rules it will be easier for academics, students, religious organizations and journalists to travel to Cuba. Also, when this change takes effect, any American can send up to $2,000 a year to someone in Cuba as long as they are not a senior member of the Cuban government or Communist Party.

Under the old rules - and this won't change - Cuban Americans had unlimited freedom to travel to Cuba and send money to people in the Caribbean island nation that’s just 90 miles off the tip of Florida. Everyone else in this country was prohibited from sending money to Cuba and severely restricted from visiting that country.

The travel ban, its supporters have long argued, is necessary to keep dollars out of the coffers of the Castro regime. That’s laughable given the exception made for Cuban Americans. But what the ban effectively has done is reward the families of the white Cubans who disproportionately immigrate to the United States – and punish the families of black Cubans who have largely remained in Cuba – Tomás Fernandez Robaina, a senior researcher at Cuba’s national library and cultural historian, told me. Without relatives in this country to send them money black families in Cuba have been hardest hit by Cuba’s economic problems, he said.



Obama’s new policy, which allows anyone in this country to legally send money to almost anyone in Cuba, makes it possible for financial aid to find its way into the homes of many more black Cubans than before. And that’s a good thing.

The president understands that, as with Vietnam and China, American engagement – open travel and trade – is the best way to usher in democratic change to Cuba. Ironically, there is little support in Cuba for the trade embargo and travel ban that have defined America’s relationship with Cuba for almost five decades.

The vast majority of Cubans that I’ve met during my many reporting trips to Cuba – including those who oppose the Castro regime – dislike the travel ban and trade embargo. Keeping Cuba sealed off from the American people and U.S. businesses does little to alter the politics of that nation. What it does do is keep Cuba and the United States locked into a foolish Cold War standoff.

Wisely, albeit slowly, Barack Obama is rolling back this bad policy.

Chris Brown still haunted by his demons

By DeWayne Wickham

This was supposed to be a column about the rehabilitation of Chris Brown, the once wildly popular R&B singer who suffered a big fall from grace in 2009 when he plead guilty to felony assault in the beating of his then-girlfriend, pop singer Rihanna.

When the story of his brutal act surfaced, I joined the chorus of commentators who trashed Brown and warned Rihanna not to give him a second chance at love. But I’ve always believed that lawbreakers who are not imprisoned for life should – if they demonstrate contrition – be given a chance to get back on the right track.

And that’s just what I thought Brown had earned late last month when he successfully completed a year-long domestic violence course mandated by the court. That good news capped more than a year of encouraging reports about the progress he has been making from the judge who is handling Brown’s case.



In February, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg complimented Brown for his diligence in complying with the terms of the plea bargain agreement that kept him out of jail. In addition to the domestic violence counseloring, Brown was ordered to perform six months community service in his home state of Virginia.
“It looks like you’re doing really, really well. That’s always good to see,” Judge Schnegg said at the time.

Then in November the judge gushed praised for him after getting another good report from probation officials. “Out of thousands of probationers, no one has done a better or more consistent job than you have, and I really want to commend you for taking responsibility and for actually working diligently to complete all the things the court has required of you,” she told Brown.

That most recent praise for the 21-year-old Brown came five months after a series of concerts he was scheduled to perform in Europe was cancelled when he was denied a visa to enter the United Kingdom. That hardly seemed fair given the progress the talented performer had made in battling his dark side.

In fact, I though Brown had earned a chance to reboot his career, which has floundered since his beating of Rihanna. He appeared to be genuinely committed to making amends for his bad behavior – and really determined to prove he is no longer a crude brute.

Then he snapped on Twitter.

In a series of tweets on the social network, Brown proved to still have a hair-trigger temper when he lashed out Raz B after the former boy band singer tweeted that he couldn’t understand why Brown had been so disrespectful of Rihanna.

Brown responded with a homophobic term to describe the molestation Raz B claimed – and later retracted – he suffered while a teenage member of the R&B music group B2K.
Brown’s crass reference to anal sex in regard to the alleged assault was mean-spirited proof that while he passed the court’s domestic abuse class he needs to take an advanced anger management course – something he seemed to acknowledge a day after his Twitter war of words with Raz B.

"Yesterday was an unfortunate lack in judgment,” Brown told TMZ.com. "Words cannot begin to express how sorry and frustrated I am over what transpired publicly on Twitter. I have learned over the past few years to not condone or represent acts of violence against anyone."

In a 2009 video apology to Rihanna and his fans, Brown said he takes “great pride in me being able to exercise self-control.” But he didn’t two years ago during his physical encounter with Rihanna and he didn’t last month in his verbal clash with Raz B.

Brown’s rehabilitation is far from complete. He’s a talented – but greatly troubled – entertainer, who appears to be closer to teetering on the brink of self-destruction than exorcising his demons.

Those demons are what Brown must confront and defeat if he wants to get others to give him a second chance.

25 Years: Reflection no. 3 on my quarter century as a columnist

The following column appeared in USA TODAY on April 29, 2004.

By DeWayne Wickham

I've always liked Colin Powell. Very soon, I will like him even more.

I liked Powell the day we first met on Aug. 17, 1989, shortly after then-president George H.W. Bush nominated him to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Powell was the keynote speaker at the annual gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), and, as the group's president, I introduced him that day.


In his speech, Powell made it very clear that he owed his success to the service and sacrifices of many unsung blacks. His "appointment would not be possible without the sacrifices of those black soldiers who served this great nation in war for over 200 years," he said.

I liked Powell even more in 1992, when, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he interceded to get me on a military charter flight to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I was a critic of the first Bush administration's policy of seizing Haitian refugees in international waters and interning them on the U.S. naval base in Cuba to keep them from reaching American soil.

While Powell surely knew I would not paint a rosy picture of what I'd find in Guantanamo Bay -- and I didn't -- he nonetheless got a reluctant military bureaucracy to allow me to make the trip. In doing so, he was probably mindful of his NABJ convention speech three years earlier, when he spoke of the special responsibility black journalists have.

"There's a dream in this land with its back against the wall," Powell had said, paraphrasing a Langston Hughes poem, "to save the dream for one, it must be saved for all."

My fondness for Powell turned to worry in 1995, when he came under a blistering attack from right-wing Republicans determined to keep him from becoming the GOP's presidential nominee.

"Colin Powell has the political convictions of Bill Clinton and the loyalty to the Republican Party of John Warner," said Michael Farris, one of a band of right-wingers who massed in Washington in November of that year to lob verbal shots at Powell from the safety of a National Press Club podium.

A few days later, Powell announced that he had decided against seeking the Republican nomination. I had mixed emotions. Powell would forgo the chance to become this nation's first black president, but he also would avoid being the standard-bearer of the party of Newt Gingrich.

My affection for Powell grew in 1996, when he gave a commencement address at Bowie State University. The speech made him sound like a Republican cut from the cloth that produced former Massachusetts senator Edward Brooke, a liberal and the first black senator since Reconstruction, and not from the gunnysack that bore Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a right-wing conservative.

In that address, Powell made a spirited defense of affirmative action.

"We must resist misguided government efforts that seek to shut it all down, efforts such as the California Civil Rights Initiative, which poses as an equal opportunity initiative, but which puts at risk every outreach program" he said. "It sets back the gains made by women, and puts the brakes on expanding opportunities for people who are in need."

And then on Dec. 16, 2000, when President-elect George W. Bush nominated him to become this nation's first black secretary of State, my warm feelings for Powell helped simmer the rage that boiled within me over the outcome of that election.

Like President Truman's secretary of State, George Marshall, Powell gave new meaning to the term citizen-soldier. In the short span of 11 years, Powell went from being the nation's top military officer to its top diplomat. Though the election of 2000 didn't give me the president I wanted, it gave me -- and the nation -- a secretary of State who, I thought, would rise above the ideological bog in which so many petty politicians dwell.

But during the past four years, Powell has struggled to meet the challenge of my expectations.

His failure to attend the international conference against racism in South Africa and the role he played in the ouster of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's democratically elected president, have disappointed many blacks in this country. His mealy-mouthed defense of affirmative action, while Bush was using his bully pulpit to try to end it, exposed a frailty that Powell had not displayed earlier.

I like Colin Powell the soldier and statesman, but I have no fondness for Colin Powell the politician. That's why I rejoice at the news that he is leaving the Bush administration. Now, I think, I'll come to like him a lot more.

An anniversary that looks to the future as much as the past

By DeWayne Wickham

I’m not a big anniversary person, but 2010 is a benchmark in my journalism career that has me thinking as much about the future as the past.

It was 25 years ago that I started contributing to the opinion page of this and many other Gannett newspapers – a job which has allowed me to occupy space in some of the most prized real estate in the newspaper industry. And over the past quarter century I’ve had a lot of memorable experiences.

And what a quarter century it's been.

I ate dinner with Fidel Castro in Havana’s Palace of the Revolution; had lunch with L. Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first black elected governor, in a room where Confederate President Jefferson Davis used to eat his meals; and I sat in the cabinet room of the White House sipping soda and nibbling low calorie cookies with President Bill Clinton.

I flew with Secretary of State Warren Christopher on the Air Force plane that returned deposed Haitian President Jean Bertrand-Aristide to Haiti; was a member of the press corps that accompanied Nelson Mandela on an 8-city tour of the United States just a few months after his release from a 27-year imprisonment in South Africa, and flew to Montreal with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a conference on aid to Haiti after it was ravaged by an earthquake.

I was a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show twice. And in 1991, I interviewed George Wallace, the former Alabama governor who proclaimed in his 1963 inaugural address “segregation now…segregation tomorrow…segregation forever.” Wallace told me his racism was driven by the politics of his state, not a feeling in his heart.

I attended the state dinner President Clinton gave South African President Thabo Mbeki. I was in Paris the day White House candidate Barack Obama met with French President Nickolas Sarkozy at the Elysee Palace, and in the Denver stadium the night Obama went there to accept the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

But with all the ringside seats I’ve had over the past 25 years, there remains much I want to see and do before my column is put out to pasture. Here’s my bucket list.

I want to interview O.J. Simpson, who is serving a 33-year sentence in a Nevada prison for armed robbery and kidnapping. I covered his 1995 double murder trial in Los Angeles. While others still debate Simpson’s guilt in that “trial of the century,” I want to talk to him about his penchant for whistling “If I Only Had a Brain” – a song for the “Wizard of Oz” – during subsequent scraps with the law. I suspect getting to the bottom of that question will reveal more about the former NFL superstar than all the books that have been written about him.

I want to spend a couple days with George W. Bush talking about the things that interest him now that he’s not “the decider” of this nation’s fate. I want to know what it’s really like to go from being the world’s most powerful leader to the afterlife of the American presidency. And I want to know what he worries about now that he no longer gets a daily briefing on the real and perceived threats to this country.

I want to interview Graca Machel, a leading African political activist and advocate for children's and women's rights, who married two African heads of state. Her first husband, former Mozambique President Samora Machel was the unelected leader of a one-party socialist state. Her current husband, Nelson Mandela, served two terms as president of a multi-party democracy in South Africa that he had a big hand in creating.I want to know what attracted her to each man – one of whom brutally suppressed his enemies while the other used a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to heal his country’s wounds.

These are the conversations that top of my “to do list” – the truth and understanding I want to pursue – as I begin this next phase of my journalism career.

25 Years: Reflection no. 2 on my quarter century as a columnist

The following Q and A with the nation's first black elected governor ran in USA TODAY on January 11, 1990.



L. Douglas Wilder, 58, is governor-elect of Virginia. On Saturday, Wilder will take the oath of office to become the first black elected governor in the nation's history. Wilder, a Democrat, has held elected office in Virginia for 20 years, the last four as lieutenant governor. Wilder was interviewed by DeWayne Wickham, USA TODAY and Gannett News Service columnist.

USA TODAY: Is your election as the first black governor a sign that race is playing less of a role in politics?
WILDER: I think to put it in that context is a disservice to the seriousness of racism. Working to thwart, to defeat and to eliminate racism has been something fair-minded people have always tried to do. So it's never dead, it's never killed. It's a question of constantly working to overcome. I think my election is another instance of overcoming.

USA TODAY: There are many who point to you as the political opposite of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Does that make you uncomfortable?
WILDER: No, it doesn't make me uncomfortable, but it's not a factual appraisal. I have been in elected office for 20 years. I have chosen to hold elected office. I have chosen to effectuate compromises. I have tried to work to build coalitions to get things done. For the most part, Jesse, prior to 1984, has been an activist. There's plenty of room for the two kinds of thoughts, the two kinds of actions, to exist. I regard him as a friend.

USA TODAY: Your name is on the short list of blacks being mentioned as possible vice-presidential candidates in 1992. Do you discourage such speculation?
WILDER: Well, you've seen short lists develop before. It's always a speculation that people like to engage in. I don't discourage it or become upset by it. But I can tell you, I've got more to say prayers and grace over with reference to the issues confronting Virginia today and the leadership that's required to continue our momentum and to make sure that progress and prosperity aren't thwarted.

USA TODAY: Are there lessons to be learned by the national Democratic Party from your election?
WILDER: Oh, I think so. I think national Democrats have got to be more concerned with the perceptions. And the per-ception is that Democrats are soft on crime and weak on defense and will tax at the drop of a hat, and will spend quicker than that. I think Democrats will have to make that mainstream appeal. In the process of doing that, you might run the risk of losing some voters. You might have to lose an election in order to win one.

USA TODAY: Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who intends to run for governor of Georgia, points to your elec-tion as a model for his campaign. Is there a Virginia model?
WILDER: I don't know that there's a Virginia model. I've discussed with Andy a couple of times the race he's involved with, and I think you'll see him going out into rural areas. As I've said to him, Atlanta isn't Georgia. He must, of neces-sity, make an appeal to voters of every description and not be seen as the black candidate.

USA TODAY: Can black candidates successfully appeal to white voters without abandoning those issues most im-portant to their black constituents?
WILDER: Oh yes, without question. You can't be a black candidate and put limitations on yourself. Blacks have an obligation to be the best we can in what fields we choose. And, in that regard, we would become more sensitized to is-sues affecting African-Americans and should reflect that. This doesn't mean, however, that our thoughts are so colored that we would be other than objective.

USA TODAY: Was there ever a time during your campaign when you thought you might not win?
WILDER: Never. Absolutely never. From the time I announced, I never had any question as to whether I would win. I never thought it would be easy, I never thought it would be a cakewalk. But I never had any doubt.

USA TODAY: After your narrow victory in November, there were some who complained that you were slow to make appointments. Were you distracted at all by the recount?
WILDER: Not at all. What I was doing was getting the best possible people I could to serve.

USA TODAY: You come into office at a time when there are demands in Virginia for road construction and higher teacher salaries, but voters also expect you to hold the line on taxes. How will you juggle that?
WILDER: By making certain that we spend what we need to spend, and only that. I believe in fiscal responsibility. We're not in a crisis, we're in a crunch, and I intend for it to be a temporary, short-lived crunch.

USA TODAY: What will be your major priorities?
WILDER: I've dedicated my administration to youth and family. We've lost some family values, we've lost opportuni-ties for seeing young people develop. I will be attacking drugs. I want help in terms of education, reaching out to young people at risk. I want more opportunities for affordable housing, which will strengthen family ties. And I intend to broaden our economic expansion.

USA TODAY: What do you want historians to say about you?
WILDER: That I was governor at a time when I could make a difference, and I did.

USA TODAY: And what do you want historians to say about the people of Virginia who elected you to office?
WILDER: I think that to the extent that the reputation of a state precedes it by so many generations, the people of Virginia have been maligned. It's so fittingly ironic that the same state to which a Dutch frigate came with some 20 black slaves, could, 380 years later, elect a descendant of one of those slaves to be in a position of leading the state. A state that preached nullification and interposition, a state that seceded from the union, the capital of the Confederacy, known then as the mother of presidents, might very well be known as that again.

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To see Reflection no. 1, visit my Facebook page.