RHEA COUNTY, Tenn.
County schools to receive grant
Tennessee Sen. Ken Yager and state Rep. Jim Cobb announced the Rhea County Schools system will receive $95,000 in state Department of Education grants for the 2011-12 school year, according to a news release.
The Perkins IV Secondary Reserve Fund grant money will be distributed by the department’s Division of Postsecondary Access and Success/Career and Technical Education in support of Yager’s and Cobb’s proposal to develop professional-minded communities.
Cobb, R-Spring City, said the grants will ensure students receive training needed “to be competitive in the job market.”
Yager, R-Harrison, praised school officials for their efforts to secure the grants and said that preparing students for the future would help “as we work to bring new jobs to Rhea County.”
Rhea County was among 33 school districts to receive the funding.
WASHINGTON
Freedom Riders anniversary noted
This week marks the start of the 50th anniversary of the civil rights Freedom Riders, who traveled by bus to confront segregation in the South.
Two buses carrying 13 Freedom Riders embarked from Washington 50 years ago Wednesday in 1961. They traveled south through Richmond, Va.; Greensboro, N.C.; and eventually to Rock Hill, S.C., where they met strong resistance.
Georgia Rep. John Lewis was among the Freedom Riders attacked at Rock Hill for attempting to enter a whites-only waiting room at the bus terminal.
The riders continued through Georgia and Alabama, facing firebombs and the Ku Klux Klan. They completed their journey to New Orleans by plane before returning to Mississippi.
FLINTSTONE, Ga.
Lions Club offers Vidalia onions
The Chattanooga Valley Lions Club is offering Vidalia onions in its annual fundraiser to benefit sight and hearing conservation.
Onion prices are $5 for a 5-pound bag, $10 for a 10- pound bag and $20 for a 25-pound bag. Club members will be selling them Saturday at the Dinner Bell Restaurant in Flintstone, Ga., beginning at 8 a.m., and at Chickamauga’s Down Home Days from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
For more information or to place phone orders, call Leon Ellis at 706-931-2551 or Lebron Carden at 706-820-9452.
ATLANTA
Jewish group aids mosque backers
A Jewish civil rights group has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of a Muslim congregation that claims its expansion project was blocked unlawfully.
The Anti-Defamation League said Wednesday it was intervening in the case to support the Islamic Center of North Fulton. The congregation claims Alpharetta, Ga., illegally has blocked its plan to build a new worship center.
The city has rejected the application, saying the congregation vowed it would not expand when the center was built in 1998.
The Interfaith Coalition on Mosques filed a similar motion in federal court.
The group contends that the rights of the Islamic Center should be protected under a law designed to safeguard the religious freedom of houses of worship involved in land disputes.