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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 10, 2002

News Release

NEA Announces Human & Civil Rights Award Winners for 2002

Washington, D.C. -- Eleven visionaries, whose efforts to right social wrongs have had far-reaching impact and focused public attention on the inherent dignity of all human beings, have earned the 2002 National Education Association (NEA) Human and Civil Rights Awards.

By fighting for the civil rights of a diverse range of people, these educators and activists have improved the quality of life for all - from minority students in Minnesota, to grade school children in Guatemala, and wrongly convicted prisoners in Illinois.

NEA President Bob Chase will present the awards at the 36th annual Human and Civil Rights Award dinner, Monday, July 1, at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Dallas. More than 2,000 educators and invited guests are expected to attend the event, held each year prior to the NEA's annual meeting. The awards are named in honor of a prominent human and civil rights leader or an NEA activist.

Among this year's extraordinary honorees are:

• Professor David Protess, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. (H. Councill Trenholm Memorial Award). During the past two decades, Protess and the students in his investigative reporting classes, have combed through documents, re-interviewed witnesses, and re-enacted crimes that led to convictions. Aided by the admissibility of DNA evidence, he and his students have helped to exonerate eight wrongly convicted prisoners, including three men on Death Row. Now it's difficult to get into his 16- student Miscarriage of Justice class. "I have 10 times as many applicants as space," says Protess. He also receives tons of mail from prisoners, "about 2,000 requests for help each year," he says.
• Congressman John Lewis, Atlanta (Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award). U.S. Representative Lewis, a freedom fighter since leaving the cotton field of rural Alabama 40 years ago, has eloquently and courageously supported his dream of an integrated society. Despite 40 arrests, attacks and incidents involving serious injury, this staunch advocate of nonviolence never gave up - not in 1961 when he was beaten by mobs for participating in the Freedom Rides and not in 1965, when his skull was fractured by Alabama State Troopers during "Bloody Sunday", when he and other demonstrators tried to march from Selma and Alabama. Lewis, who helped organize the March on Washington in 1963, has represented the Fifth U.S. Congressional District of Georgia since 1986 and is currently in his eighth term of office.
• Star Wallin, Hattiesburg, Miss. (SuAnne Big Crow Memorial Award). If we could measure social consciousness, Star Wallin, who graduated this spring from Hattiesburg High School, might be off the chart. "It's part of my family's values,'' says Wallin, who hails from a long line of educators and has Catawba Indian roots. Wallin has conducted food and clothing drives for needy families and placed unwanted animals in foster homes through Project Care, the community aid organization she founded as a high school sophomore. This captivating 17-year-old will attend Vanderbilt University as an Ingram Scholar. Recipients of this service and academic scholarship receive credit as well as a stipend to create a service project anywhere in the world.
• Professor Loni Ding, University of California at Berkeley (Ellison S. Onizuka Memorial Award). During the past 25 years, Ding, an independent filmmaker and lecturer in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California at Berkeley, has used her films to "give a voice to an invisible people, Asians living in the United States." Her most recent work, the two-part Ancestors in the Americas, captured an audience of six million PBS viewers. Ding is still working on part three. A daughter of Chinese immigrants, Ding has produced four Emmy Award-winning productions, including Practical English, a series of 65 half-hour English lessons and Bean Sprouts, a multicultural children's series. Two others pieces, Nisei Soldiers: Standard Barer for an Exiled People and Color of Honor, are tributes to the Asian American soldiers in World War II.
• Dr. James Cameron, Milwaukee, Wisc.(Carter G. Woodson Memorial Award). Two of his friends, accused of rape, robbery and murder in Indiana, died at the hands of an angry lynch mob. Although he was not with them at the time of the alleged incident, Cameron still spent four years in prison for being an accessory before the fact. Despite this, Cameron dedicated his life to promoting civil rights and racial unity - as a worker for the NAACP in the 1940s, as Director of Indiana's Civil Liberties Union in the 1950s, as an avid supporter of Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1960s, as author of numerous articles and books on civil rights and social injustice during the seventies and as the founder of America's Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee in 1988. The museum attracts 50,000 visitors annually and houses one of Cameron's most prized possessions - a 1998 pardon and apology from the state of Indiana.
• E. Christina Diaz-Arntzen, Waukesha, Wisc. (George I. S?nchez Memorial Award). Although born in Mexico, Diaz-Arntzen teaches at Rose Glen Elementary School in Waukesha and considers Chichicastenago, Guatemala, her second home. Since 1988, Diaz-Arntzen, who came to the U.S. as a migrant worker and earned her teaching degree from the University of Wisconsin, has traveled to Chichicastenago several times and helped raise $20,000 to provide books, education materials, a library and even toilets for Rose Glen's sister school there.
• State Senator Betty Karnette, Long Beach, Calif. (Mary Hatwood Futrell Award). Karnette, who taught math for 31 years at a middle school in Los Angeles, is a longtime proponent of education and women's rights. Not only did she go out of her way to convince girls at her middle school to take more math and science courses, Karnette, elected to the California State Assembly in 1992 and the Senate in 1996, has authored legislation that has helped battered women and female inmates improve the quality of their lives. In addition to her strong interests in campaign spending reform, streamlining government and at-risk youth, Karnette plans to introduce a bill banning the horrific act of female circumcision, an issue women of many cultures are expected to rally around.
• Dr. Lloyd Elm, North St. Paul, Minn. (Leo Reano Memorial Award). Elm, a Native American educated at a reservation school, has been widely recognized and applauded for his expertise in teaching Native American students the past 34 years. This former classroom teacher and college professor left Buffalo, N.Y. in 1997 to become principal of the American Indian Magnet School in St. Paul. His understanding of and appreciation for Native American culture have inspired a unique learning technique that connects his students to their heritage. "If I had gone to a traditional school, I would have never graduated from high school," Elm says.
• Human and Civil Rights Committee, Broward NEA, Tamarac, FL (Rosena J. Willis Memorial Award): Members of the Broward NEA local's HCR Committee have gone far beyond their job description. Traditionally, such committees focus their resources on the affiliate's membership. But the Broward committee also reached the students, families, schools and communities within their area. Committee members spend free time networking and building coalitions with other community organizations, supporting political candidates who care about public education, encouraging multicultural bonds and providing students with college scholarships.
• D. (Doreen) Moritz, Omaha, Neb. (Virginia Uribe Award for Creative Leadership in Human Rights). Since retiring as a high school counselor, Moritz continues her tireless fight to advocate for the civil rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. During the past decade, this gay educator, committed to opening hearts and minds to the struggle of young people grappling with their sexual orientation, started a gay/straight support group at the high school where she used to teach. In one highly publicized case, Moritz came to the aid of a student forced to wear a gym shirt with 'homo' written on it. The student's school district later added sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination policy. A frequent lecturer, "I'm busier now than I've ever been," says Moritz.
• Titilayo Bediako, Minneapolis, Minn. (H. Councill Trenholm Memorial Award). Ms. Bediako's WE WIN Institute, started in 1995, gives students, especially low- achieving African American students in Minneapolis public schools, a chance to boost their self esteem through self knowledge. Funded by money from the Minnesota Public Schools and private contributors, this supplemental education programs combines African history with lessons in reading, writing and even math for approximately 500 students each year. "I started this program because I was tired of the dialogue about why African American students can't achieve," says Bediako, who uses community leaders, ministers and parents and others who have achieved as "models" for her class. "Our goal is to teach our students how to set goals, how to beat the odds, how to be successful themselves." WE WIN offers a Rights of Passage program for boys and girls at four Minnesota area schools and Kwanzaa Appreciation classes at nine city schools. For the past three years, Bediako has given life to her lessons by taking a select group of students to Africa. So far, they've visited Senegal, Gambia, and Ghana.

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The National Education Association is the nation’s largest professional employee organization, representing 2.7 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators, and students preparing to become teachers.