Tuesday May 2nd is Election Day

The Ann Arbor District Libary Board is selected in this election.

All trustees are elected at large from the District (the Library District is the same as the Ann Arbor School District). Terms are four years long beginning July 1 of the year they are elected.

2006 Election Information:
The candidates for Ann Arbor District Library Board are:

Adye Bel Evans

Biographical information
Age: 67
Residence: Ann Arbor
Occupation: Retired teacher in Ann Arbor Public Schools (Tappan Middle School); president and founder of Aristoplay, a publisher of educational games; founder of Learning Express-Ann Arbor, an educational toy store.

• Education: Bachelor's degree, University of Oklahoma; master's degree, University of Michigan; secondary teacher's certification, U-M.
  Community Involvement: Rotary member; Greenhills School trustee; Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce board of directors; Hands-On Museum board of directors, vice-chair; University Musical Society board of directors, secretary; Bank of Ann Arbor director; Ladies' Library Association president; volunteer teacher of adult illiterates; volunteer tutor at Pattengill School.

  Answer to question

  We are fortunate in Ann Arbor to have an excellent library and an expert director committed to ever increasing access of all community members to information, whether through shelves well stocked with books or to digitized materials through High Speed Internet access. I would like to be a part of the policy-making body, the AADL Board of Trustees, that continues to stress and augment this community service. Digitization is bringing about great changes and opportunities to libraries. Assuring access will also mean instructing library users in how to access the mass of information available.

  The AADL has a role to play in helping the community prepare for a terrorist or natural disaster. I would hope to help the library build on its strength as a community information distribution center to assure information access by all members of the community before, during and after a disaster.

  There are other issues, of course, and the AADL's valuable services to the community are vast. The two matters above are just two of those that will be incorporated into the oversight responsibilities of the Board of Trustees.

  Connie L. Greene

  Barbara Murphy

  Jan Barney Newman

  Prue Rosenthal

• Age: 65.

• Residence: Ann Arbor
  

  • Family: Husband, Ami; three sons, two daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren.

  • Occupation: Community volunteer.

  • Education: Bachelor's degree.

  • Previous elective office sought or held: Ann Arbor District Library Board of Trustees.

  • Community involvement: University Musical Society, board chairwoman; University Museum of Art docent, board member and chairwoman; Hebrew Day School of Ann Arbor, board member and president; Jewish Federation Board member; Ladies Library Association; volunteer literacy teacher; Rotary of Ann Arbor; Kelsey Museum of Archeology.

    Answer to question

    1. Balancing forward vision and technological advances, with providing books and magazines on the shelves, while continuing to add services and be clearly focused on the budget limitations that any organization has.

    2. Maintain and grow the access and service the AADL already provides.

    The library is central to the cultural life of the community, providing educational forums, creating a environment where learning is exciting and readily available to all. Computer competency, reading literacy, comprehensive educational programs for all ages and skill levels. Increase services to all multicultural people of our community and our children, our elderly and the learning disabled. Provide community information distribution centers in times of disaster; deliver consumer health information, literacy and computer programs for nonreaders. I would work to maintain and grow the wealth of programs already offered.

    Compiled by reporter Jo Collins Mathis

Three candidates will be elected to each serve a four-year term.

The election will take place on May 2, 2006, and elected candidates will begin their terms on July 1, 2006. These are four-year terms, ending on June 30, 2010.

For more information, contact the County Clerk’s office at 222-6730

FBI: No Federal Charges in Till Killing

By HOLBROOK MOHR

JACKSON, Miss. Mar 17, 2006 (AP)— Although the 1955 killing helped galvanize the civil rights movement, those responsible for Emmett Till's death were never brought to justice. Now, more than 50 years after the black teen died, the FBI says too much time has passed to bring the case to federal court.

In a long-awaited report Thursday, the FBI said that no federal charges will be filed in the brutal death of the 14-year-old Till, who was beaten and shot for purportedly whistling at a white woman.

The Justice Department reopened the case last year after a documentary filmmaker claimed to have found investigative errors and concluded that some people involved in the crime were still alive.

FBI agent John G. Raucci said in a statement that the five-year statute of limitations on federal civil rights violations had expired. The FBI's report was sent to District Attorney Joyce L. Chiles, who will decide if any state charges can be filed. Chiles did not return a call seeking comment.

"It's up to Mrs. Chiles now and the state of Mississippi that's been given a rare chance to redeem themselves," said Till's cousin, Simeon Wright, who was with the teen the night he died. "They claim that they have changed. We're going to see. We're going to stand back and watch what happens."

Till's death helped show the nation what was happening in the South during the 1950s when a picture of his badly beaten corpse in an open casket was published in a magazine.

The black teenager from Chicago was visiting relatives in Mississippi in August 1955 when he was beaten and shot. His battered body, weighted down with a cotton-gin fan around his neck, was pulled from the Tallahatchie River a few days later.

In 1955, an all-white jury acquitted two white men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milan, who later confessed to the killing in a magazine interview. They have since died.

Before 1994, all federal criminal civil rights violations carried a five-year statute of limitations, even in cases involving death. In 1994, the law was amended to provide the death penalty in such cases, but the law cannot be applied retroactively, said FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden.

"It's painfully consistent there was no federal pursuit of the killers 50 years ago and now there is no federal charges against those they did not pursue," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who said he hoped state charges can be brought. "We can only hope that justice will not continue to sleepwalk through one of the most publicized lynchings in the history of our country."

In recent years, law enforcement authorities have been trying to complete unfinished business from the civil rights era.

In 1994, Mississippi won the conviction of Byron de la Beckwith for the 1963 sniper killing of NAACP leader Medgar Evers.

In Alabama, Bobby Frank Cherry was convicted in 2002 of killing four black girls in the bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963. In 2001, Thomas Blanton was convicted.

Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman, was convicted last June of manslaughter in the killings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964.