4th Annual Calvin “Monk” Jones Lecture Series to feature keynote address by former NFL cornerback

The 4th Annual Calvin “Monk” Jones Lecture Series is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday, April 18, 2012 at B.E.S.T. Academy, 1890 Donald Lee Hollowell Pkwy, Atlanta 30318.

Former Detroit Lions cornerback LaMar Campbell will be the featured speaker at the event, which serves an annual forum for APS student athletes to dialogue with current and former professional athletes.

The event also honors all APS graduating scholar athletes and coaches with awards presented by The Coca-Cola Company.

In 1975 Calvin “Monk” Jones became the first African-American assistant basketball coach at the University of Georgia (UGA). In June 2009, Jones was inducted into the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame. Jones is a former coach at Carver High School, who took his team to two AA division titles.

 

Two legendary APS figures are remembered this month for making history

One of the most rewarding parts of spreading the good news about what’s going on around Atlanta Public Schools is you often get to learn, and share, fascinating history lessons that show the district’s place in the growth of Atlanta and beyond. That’s why this week it was so fun to learn of two distinct figures in APS history getting their due.

Both Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Mary Frances Early made a remarkable impact as being two of the first African Americans to integrate the University of Georgia (UGA). Hunter-Gault joined Hamilton E. Holmes as the first two African-American students to integrate UGA in 1961, while Early (who entered soon after as a grad student) became the first African American to graduate from UGA. All three were graduates of APS’ now-defunct Henry McNeal Turner High School.

But they didn’t stop making history in Athens. They all have gone on to carve their own respective niches in history. As relayed in this touching piece Friday morning on National Public Radio (NPR), Charlayne Hunter-Gault went on to become an excellent journalist, for with the New Yorker, then with the New York Times, and later with NPR and CNN.

The APS community may be even more familar with Mary Frances Early, who earned her master’s in music education in 1962, taught music, band and chorus in Atlanta Public Schools for 37 years. She retired from the system in 1994, only to start a second career as a college educator with stops at Spelman, Morehouse and Clark Atlanta before retiring in 2005.

According to a press release Thursday from UGA’s press office, Early will be honored for her achivements with a reception on Thursday, Jan. 13, in the cafeteria of J.J. Harris Elementary Charter School in Athens.

First Person: Garrison Smith

Not sure how or why we missed this awesome story about and from Douglass High star defensive tackle Garrison Smith, who’s one of the top-rated prep defensive linemen in the nation and committed recently to attend and play for the University of Georgia. Neverthess, as a part of the newspaper’s “First Person” series, Smith relates on the relationship he developed with an elderly neighbor, and their mutual love of checkers. Instead of placing the whole story in block quotes (we hate all that italics), read the story in full, with no eye squinting, after the jump …