Best Cities For Minority Entrepreneurs

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There are essentially three ways of dealing with America’s tattered balance sheet and mounting financial obligations: curbing social services, hiking taxes and generating real, sustainable economic growth–and the first two aren’t exactly palatable.

As for growth, minority entrepreneurs are playing an increasingly important role. Just one data point: In 2010 immigrants accounted for nearly 30% of new business owners, versus 13% in 1996, according to the Kauffman Foundation.

In Atlanta, where half the residents are African American, a host of Hispanic and Asian entrepreneurs have set up shop over the last decade. Atlanta now boasts the second-highest percentage of self-employed minorities among the top 52 metropolitan areas with populations greater than 1 million.

That statistic–combined with a growing population, increasing household incomes and affordable housing–puts Atlanta atop our list of best metro areas for minority entrepreneurs, assembled with help from economist-demographer Joel Kotkin, author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. (For more entrepreneurial inspiration, check out Forbes Staff Writer Maureen Farrell’s profile of Rene Diaz, owner of Diaz Foods, a $200 million food-distribution business in Atlanta.)

Gallery: How To Make $1 Million Before You Graduate

The data correspond to 52 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), including a core city and its suburbs, with 1 million-plus populations. For each ethnicity (African Americans, Asians and Hispanics), we measured housing affordability (median value divided by household income), population growth (2000–09), income growth (1999–2009) and entrepreneurship (per capita self-employment). Each ethnicity received a rank, with entrepreneurship weighted one-half and the other half split evenly among the other variables. Those scores were then averaged to calculate overall city rankings.

Atlanta’s foreign-born population nearly doubled, to 710,000, between 2000 and 2008. Meanwhile, the ratio of the median house value divided by median household income for minorities remains one-half or less that of San Francisco, New York City and Los Angeles.

More nettlesome, fear business leaders, is the recent cry for strict anti-immigration policy. One bill, proffered by Representative Matt Ramsey (R-Ga.), would force companies to use a federal database to confirm an employee’s eligibility and also allow police officers to ask for proof of citizenship during traffic stops.

The Baltimore metro area–at No. 2 on our list–ranked third in the percentage of self-employed Asians (8.4 per 100). HBO’s The Wire, set in urban Baltimore, featured less-than-legal entrepreneurship, but legitimate minority enterprise is thriving in the greater surrounding areas–crucial, given the city’s 13.6% and 5.8% declines in its white and African American populations since 2000.

In No. 3 Nashville, the immigrant population soared 83%, to 107,000, between 2000 and 2008–the fastest growth rate among the nation’s largest cities. Just 20% of the population in 2000, minorities accounted for 44% of the city’s overall growth during the next decade. Plenty have hung out their own shingles: Of the 52 metros with populations over 1 million, the capital of country music (and health care) ranked sixth in self-employment among Asians and fourth among Hispanics.

Over the last decade Houston (No. 4) has created more jobs than most big urban areas, all while keeping rents down. Its expanse of strip malls teems with ethnic businesses. Architect Tim Cisneros, who builds offices and town houses there, calls Houston “my favorite Third World city.” Houston also ranked second in housing affordability for minorities, and it is home to the nation’s second-largest Hindu and fourth-largest Latino church congregations.

The booby prize went to the Milwaukee metro area. The former beer-brewing capital ranks in the bottom eight—or worse—in self-employment among all three major minority groups.

One big problem: fewer customers. The city has shed residents in each of the last six censuses. Another: “Milwaukee has had among the worst job-creation records of any big city in the U.S. for over a decade,” says Mark Levine, executive director of the Center for Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Here is the full ranking of the top 52 metros for minority entrepreneurs, according to Kotkin and his tag team of researchers, Wendell Cox and Erika Ozuna:

1. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA
2. Baltimore-Towson, MD
3. Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN
4. Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
5. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
6. Oklahoma City, OK
7. Riverside-Sand Bernardino-Ontario, CA
8. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
9. Orlando-Kissimmee, FL
10. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ
11. Memphis, TN-MS-AR
12. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
13. San Antonio, TX
14. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
15. Austin-Round Rock, TX
16. Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, NC-SC
17. Indianapolis-Carmel, IN
18. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
19. Richmond, VA
20. New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA
21. Jacksonville, FL
22. Tucson, AZ
23. Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, OR-WA
24. Raleigh-Cary, NC
25. Louisville-Jefferson County, KY-IN
26. Birmingham-Hoover, AL
27. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
28. Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN
29. Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Roseville, CA
30. Pittsburgh, PA
31. Kansas City, MO-KS
32. Columbus, OH
33. Las Vegas-Paradise, NV
34. Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC
35. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
36. Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO
37. St. Louis, MO-IL
38. Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY
39. New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA
40. Rochester, NY
41. Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT
42. Salt Lake City, UT
43. Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA
44. Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD
45. Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH
46. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
47. Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI
48. San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA
49. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MS-WI
50. Chicago-Naperville, Joliet-IL-IN-WI
51. Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH
52. Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI

Have a trenchant observation about which economic-development efforts are working, which aren’t and what to do about it?  Post a comment!

Bill Cosby Mad At The Hypocrisy of Black Role - Aren't We All?

http://atlantapost.com

Bill Cosby, the comedian, the grouch, the chief celebrity critic of the African-American plight, was recently in the news for alleged comments he made to Russell Simmons. They were rude comments and we wouldn’t expect any less from Mr. Huxtable. Cosby has long expressed his dismay for Black celebrity rappers and actors who promote the hood lifestyle. Recently, he told The Star Press just exactly how he felt about Simmons.

“People like Russell Simmons and that three-named fool telling people that this behavior is all right and neither one of them were brought up that way. They may have transgressed, and they were taught by people who were brought up with pride in themselves. … They were not raised that way and they know it, yet they’re gonna put it out that this is good.”

What Mr. Cosby wants is a world where people are more concerned about the welfare of others rather than their own fame. Unfortunately, those that have achieved a level of stardom and popularity are pre-dispositioned to do what’s cool, to put popularity above all else. So really, even if Simmons does know better, he got to where he is by prioritizing his path to wealth and fame. In other words, he’s the typical American dreamer.

It’s understandable why Cosby is frustrated. We have all these people who can help – not just by doing behind-the-scenes philanthropic projects- but by taking a public stand on things like African-American education, family building and financial re-investment in Black communities – who don’t. As much as we talk about the lack of wealth in the black community, it’s important to recognize that we have enough African-Americans in power who can positively impact the direction of our communities if they so wished. It’s not enough that these celebrities achieve wealth and fame, thereby becoming models of business success. They need to engage real dialogue. Why is no-one talking about Afro-centric education or supporting education models that have proven successful amongst Black youth?

All that said, can Cosby blame these celebrities for not taking a stand, when they were reared in a general culture that supports the pursuit of individual interests? Cosby’s frustration has more to do with the culture of American enterprise rather than the Black vanguard. It just so happens that the shortcomings of our leadership is so much more visible because of the severe shortcomings in our community.

Environmental justice: An old idea with a new emphasis

By CAROL SMITH
INVESTIGATEWEST

Environmental justice is an old mandate getting a new life under Lisa Jackson, the first African-American head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Environmental justice refers to the fair treatment of all communities when it comes to enforcing environmental laws and protecting them from health and environmental hazards. It was first made a federal priority with a 1994 executive order intended to right inequities in minority and low-income communities that were experiencing a disproportionate share of the nation's environmental hazards.

The order, signed by President Clinton, required all federal agencies to incorporate environmental justice into their decision-making processes.

But the mission languished for the next several decades.

A 2007 study by Sandra George O'Neil published in Environmental Health Perspectives, for example, concluded that inequities had not only persisted, but also escalated in the intervening years with fewer polluted sites in minority and low-income communities being designated for Superfund cleanup funds, compared with those in wealthier areas.

That study along with criticism of the Superfund program by the Government Accounting Office and the U.S. Office of the Inspector General galvanized a call to reform the approach to environmental justice among federal agencies.

Under the Obama Administration, the EPA along with other federal agencies has a strict new edict to take justice into account. Jackson has assumed a high-profile role in evangelizing for environmental justice. She is mid-stream in a well-publicized "Environmental Justice Tour" that is taking her around the country visiting communities beleaguered by toxic waste.

And that in turn has invigorated communities with a new enthusiasm that raising their voices will make a difference.

In Wilmington, a community much like South Park, but next to the Port of Los Angeles, community activists raised the alarm about diesel truck emissions and succeeded in halting a planned port expansion until the port took steps to reduce the air pollution near area schools. The Port of Seattle has followed suit with a plan to ban trucks made before 1994.Resident of South Park and Georgetown have also succeeded in getting diesel trucks to quit idling on neighborhood streets and instead use a designated parking lot.

Residents in the Duwamish communities have successfully lobbied for more studies to look at the impact of air toxics on their health, and demanded more transparency and access to inter-agency communication that affects them.

They also successfully fought off a bid to put a new garbage transfer station in Georgetown, arguing it would add risk to an already over-burdened area.

Officials at EPA Region 10 in Seattle are trying to take growing community demands for environmental justice into account, said Suzanne Skadowski, who coordinates community involvement and public information for the effort. The EPA has increased its community outreach efforts to listen to concerns from all the affected populations.

The EPA has worked to try to provide information in culturally sensitive ways and multiple languages.

But an internal review of its environmental justice efforts, completed about a year ago, shows the agency is still grappling with how to reconcile the increasing community demands for comprehensive cumulative "impacts analysis" with the EPA's statutory constraints.

Regulators in Seattle may get some clues from California's state EPA, which is tackling this issue. The California Environmental Protection Agency has begun work on new guidelines to help communities evaluate cumulative exposures. That effort is being closely watched by other regions, including Seattle's, as a possible blueprint for how best to analyze the multiple loads borne by communities with complex environmental exposures and social risk factors.

At the same time, the effort under way to deal with these issues along the Duwamish is also being watched by other regions. In February, EPA officials from Seattle traveled to Alaska for a regional meeting to share some of their experiences with policy makers from other regions.

All regions have had to do recent evaluations of their efforts to comply with the environmental justice executive order, but the Duwamish evaluation was among the most comprehensive, said one of those involved in doing it.

The review cited the EPA's multi-lingual outreach activities, its use of neighborhood activist groups to help explain information to community members, and its use of a fish consumption framework based on tribal consumption as examples of how the agency is working to incorporate environmental justice into its policies.

The community and tribes have already had a significant influence on the early cleanup efforts, the report said.

InvestigateWest is a nonprofit investigative journalism center based in Seattle. For information on how you can support independent investigative reporting for the common good, go to invw.org.

First African American Woman In North, South Poles

http://www.myfoxny.com

Updated: Wednesday, 23 Mar 2011, 10:11 AM EDT
Published : Tuesday, 22 Mar 2011, 2:11 PM EDT

MYFOXNY.COM - No challenge is too great for Barbara Hillary of Rockaway, Queens.

The 79-year-old has trekked to the North and South poles all the while overcoming lung and breast cancer. Her remarkable story does not end there.

Her most recent trip was to the South Pole in January.  She flew to Chile and then to the South Pole, accompanied by a doctor.  She stayed in the base camp for one week with a team of guides.  She took day trips from base camp.  She slept in a tent.  Temperatures at night were 25 degrees below zero.

A new conquest is on the horizon. Find out more about Hillary's next challenge when we sit down with her in the morning for an interview.

BarbaraHillary.com

Former KKK leader, mayoral candidate speaks

Lake Wales, Florida - A mayoral candidate in Lakes Wales is speaking out about his involvement wit

Submitted by Tammie Fields, Weekend Anchor/Reporter

Wednesday, March 23rd, 12:25 pm

Topics: News

Lake Wales, Florida - A mayoral candidate in Lakes Wales is speaking out about his involvement with the Klan. 

70-year-old John Paul Rogers wants to become the next mayor of Lake Wales, but critics say he could have a tough time bringing the town together because he's a former member of Ku Klux Klan.

Rogers, who is currently a commissioner, spoke with 10 News Tuesday afternoon and says, "I'm not running for the Klan for Grand Dragon." That's because Rogers has already had that title.

Photo Gallery: Pictures of a 1977 KG rally in Tallahassee (photos courtesy State Library Archives of Florida)

He blames his opponent Mike Carter for bringing up his former involvement in the United Klans of America.

"My opponent's been going around saying I hung somebody in the park two years ago. Well, we have a city ordinance against that and I'm sure the police would have put me in jail if I would have done that."

He adds, "It's a shame that in a small city like Lake Wales where most everyone knows one another you have this kind of muckraking and character assassination." 

In this small town of a little more than 13,000 people, times have changed since the Jim Crow laws of segregation and Rogers isn't apologizing or renouncing his time with the Klan.

He says, "Well I resigned years ago, about 30 years ago. Jesus said, 'He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone,' and so far no one's hit me with a rock. I don't know of any act of any violence that was sanctioned by our organization, either national or in Florida."

But Darryl Paulson, a USF professor, who is an expert in the Klan, points to a case in which two Klansman with the United Klans of America were convicted of attacking 19-year-old Michael Donald in 1981 in Mobile, Alabama. Donald was beaten up and his throat was cut.

Paulson says, "They hung him from a tree and they were sued in court and the civil judgment was launched against the United Klans of America. The jury awarded a six million dollar settlement to the mother of the slain child."

Click here to learn more about the civil case.

He adds, "When Rogers says he resigned. He had no other choice. The United Klans couldn't pay off the six million dollar settlement but they lost their headquarters. Their headquarters was sold as part of the judgement so in essence they were forced out of business. They were financially bankrupt."

Paulson says, "I think that they were the most violent of the Klan organizations. I think their fingerprints are on a lot of different things that happened - most of them negative with respect to racial incidents during the 1950's and 1960's. Rogers had to know there was no way he couldn't know it."

Rogers says, "I'm very fair minded. I work good with people and no one can point to me ever disrespecting anyone or violating anyone's rights." 

Voters will make the final decision when they cast their votes in the non-partisan mayoral race on April 5. Though party affiliation is not a factor in the race Rogers and Carter are both Democrats.

New NAACP seeing more gay, diverse chapter leaders

WORCESTER, Mass. — The NAACP's newly revived Worcester chapter elected a 28-year-old openly gay black man as its president this month. In New Jersey, a branch of the organization outside Atlantic City chose a Honduran immigrant to lead it last year. And in Mississippi, the Jackson State University chapter recently turned to a 30-something white man.

This Aug. 24, 2010 photo shows Ravi Perry, who was elected president of the greater Worcester, Mass., chapter of the NAACP Saturday, March 5, 2011. Perry, an openly gay political science professor at Clark University, is among the new leadership diversity at chapters of what was historically a largely black and aging organization. (AP photo/The Telegram & Gazette, Jim Collins)

In this Nov. 17, 2010 photo, Jackson State University senior Michael Teasley walks the campus in Jackson, Miss. Teasley, from rural Rankin County, was recently elected president of the JSU chapter of the NAACP. (AP Photo/The Clarion-Ledger, Barbara Gauntt)

This Jan. 14, 2011 photo shows Victor Diaz, president of the greater Waterbury, Conn., chapter of the NAACP, as he poses at a book store in Waterbury. Diaz, a Dominican American, is among the new leadership diversity at chapters of what was historically a largely black and aging organization. (AP Photo/Republican-American, Erin Covey)

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Founded more than a century ago to promote black equality, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is seeing remarkable diversity in its leadership ranks — the result of an aggressive effort over the past four or five years to boost NAACP membership and broaden the civil rights organization's agenda to confront prejudice in its many forms.

"This is the new NAACP," said Clark University political science professor Ravi Perry, the new chapter president in Worcester. "This is a human rights organization, and we have an obligation to fight discrimination at all levels."

NAACP branches have been recruiting gays, immigrants and young people who grew up in a world far removed from the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that outlawed school segregation. Now, leadership positions that were once held only by blacks are being filled by members of other racial or ethnic groups.

The group does not keep track of numbers, but in recent years NAACP chapters in New Jersey, Connecticut and Georgia have elected Hispanics as president. A white man was picked to lead the chapter in Aiken, S.C. And two years ago, NAACP members in Hamtramck, Mich., a Detroit suburb, selected a Bangladeshi American to revive their long-dormant chapter.

"Some people mentioned that it wouldn't be possible for me to be president," said Victor Diaz, 32, a Dominican American who ran against an incumbent and was elected president of the Waterbury, Conn., branch in November. "But when I ran, I won 3 to 1."

The push for diversity troubles some members of the NAACP's old guard, who worry that problems in the black community may get short shrift. But some social scientists say the new diversity is merely a return to the group's roots as a biracial organization.

In 1964, the NAACP's membership peaked at 625,000 paid members. By the middle of the past decade, that had dropped to just under 300,000. Now it has reversed course and climbed to more than 525,000, in large part because of an increase in young members, group officials say. The NAACP said it does not keep track of the organization's racial and ethnic breakdown.

Stefanie Brown, the NAACP's 30-year-old national field director, said the under-25 crowd is the organization's fastest-growing age group. In fact, the NAACP has slots on its 60-plus member board of directors reserved for people under 25. In addition, Brown said, young professionals under 40 are taking leadership roles — something that hadn't happened until recently.

Some in the group say the diversity push weakens the NAACP's identity. Jamarhl Crawford, editor of the Blackstonian, a Boston website that covers the city's black population, said he fears it could "water down" the focus on problems in the black community.

"I think there's going to be some loss there in terms of actual activism, actual protest" on behalf of blacks, said Crawford, a 40-year-old member of the NAACP's Boston branch.

The diversity push was started a few years ago under then-NAACP chairman Julian Bond. Later, Benjamin Todd Jealous, who in 2008 became the group's youngest leader at age 35, ramped up the effort and also urged the organization to take up gay rights.

"At our core, we want to end discrimination and have equality for all people," Brown said.

In a reflection of how it has broadened its agenda, the NAACP came out against California's Proposition 8, the ballot measure banning gay marriage. Last year, it spoke out against Arizona's anti-immigration law. It also strongly supported the federal DREAM Act, a proposal to give illegal immigrant students a pathway to citizenship through college or military service.

Perry, the openly gay chapter president, said: "I'm just one example of younger individuals who find a home in the NAACP for issues that they might represent."

Patricia Sullivan, a history professor at the University of South Carolina and author of "Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement," called the new push for diversity thrilling and said: "It's really reflecting what the NAACP has represented historically and what its vision has been."

Founded in 1909 partly in response to race riots in Springfield, Ill., NAACP begin as a coalition of black and Jewish activists with whites serving in leadership position in many chapters, and it was only later that it became a predominantly black organization. Sullivan also noted that the NAACP spoke out against the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Tatcho Mindiola, director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston, said that while some Hispanics were NAACP members during the civil right years, their election to leadership roles is a new phenomenon. Mindiola said the NAACP has won over some Hispanics because of recent positions it has taken on issues important to Latinos.

"The group has shown it is fighting for civil rights for all minorities," said David Alcantara, 52, president of the Pleasantville-Mainland chapter in New Jersey. "And it's time that all minorities support the NAACP."

___

March 23, 2011 07:01 AM EDT

Copyright 2011, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Michael Vick returns to prison

AVON PARK, Fla. -- I got a good view into Michael Vick's world over the weekend, visiting a Florida prison with Tony Dungy and another one of our NBC Football Night in America colleagues, Dan Patrick. (Dungy invited us to come along to see the prison ministry group he's become so involved with.) It was a good time to see Dungy and his friends at work, and to see how Vick is progressing in turning his life around. Can he really overcome the stigma of masterminding the dogfighting ring the way he did, causing him to spend 19 months of his life in prison?

The signs have been good. "I want to be an instrument of change,'' he told about 700 prisoners at the Avon Park Correctional Institute, 90 minutes south of Orlando. And he was terrific in his five hours here, signing autographs, talking to two large groups of prisoners and then talking to men in smaller groups informally. He also spoke to eight men in solitary confinement.

I can tell you from being in the solitary cellblock, with the tiny cells and the knowledge that these men will leave these cells for only three hours each week ... the depression was palpable. Vick, who had been in cells like these before, got right up to the bars, stuck his hand through them and tried to tell the men their lives aren't over.

So I saw him doing the right thing, and he's been doing the right thing in Philadelphia. Those who monitor Vick, including Dungy and commissioner Roger Goodell, think he's doing well.

I'll tell you what concerns me: the adulation and the nonstop attention. That contributed to Vick thinking before his conviction he could live by different rules than the rest of the planet, and the adulation hasn't stopped. He was swarmed in the morning by men desperately happy to see him. In the evening, when he went with Dungy and the former coach's wife, Lauren, to a fundraising banquet for the Abe Brown Ministries, one of Dungy's favorite causes, a constant procession of people to Vick's seat in the crowd made it hard for him to eat -- and he finally gave up trying to do that.

At the end of the night, Dungy and Vick had to disappoint scores of people by not signing or posing for photos with every last one. "This is not just today,'' Vick said. "It's every day.''

The people were nice, to be sure, and well-meaning. But we saw what happened to Vick when the daily treatment of him like Michael Jordan in the public was combined with having money. And if he keeps playing football like he played in his reborn 2010 season, he's going to have money again, even after he takes care of his debts from bankruptcy court. Lots of money.

He appears to be on his way to changing his life. But time will tell if the change can stick. I just know if I were being told every day how wonderful I am -- not once, but 300 times -- my wife telling me to take the recycling out might fall on deaf ears.

Driving back from dinner Friday night, Dungy, looking to make a slight adjustment, came to an intersection with a U-turn prohibition. He took a left into a parking lot, turned around, and got back on the street going the right way.

"That's the kind of thing I used to just say, 'I don't see a cop, I'm doing the U-turn,' '' Vick said. "That happens now, I'm wrong, I get picked up, and I'm on the front page. It's not a big deal, but if I do it, it is. I understand. That's OK. To alleviate any chance of a problem, I've always got to do the right thing now. But it's a good thing. I've got to hold myself accountable in everything I do.''

Back to Avon Park. Vick brought his message to about 700 prisoners, to loud applause. "I can tell them the theoretical,'' Dungy said on the ride to Avon Park. "Mike can tell them what it's really like, and how to use this time in their life to prepare for the world again.''

When Vick arrived, he looked at the gleaming wire and the sprawling white-bricked complex of cellblocks. "Don't look like Leavenworth,'' he said. "It's nicer.''

Most of the men wanted to talk to him about football, and he did a lot of that. But when Dungy got him on stage in the courtyard, following some rousing spiritual songs by the volunteers from Tampa, he was intent on delivering a message, with Vick's help. Dungy has been doing this for 15 years, going to prisons several times a year. It started by following the lead of the late Abe Brown, a high school football coach in Tampa who saw the crushing cycle of imprisonment badly affecting men from Tampa Bay.

In the crowd at Avon Park, Dungy was surprised -- but not shocked, because nothing shocks him about crime anymore -- to see one of his son Eric's classmates from Plant High in the crowd. "When I started to come to prisons [with Abe Brown],'' said Dungy, "I was so surprised. I thought it'd be all these older guys. But they're so young, most of them. They made one mistake, in many cases, and it can ruin their lives. We try to come here and just give them hope that their lives aren't over, that they can take control of their lives and rebound.''

Vick had been a little tight Friday night. "I'm nervous about going,'' he said, "but this time, I get to leave at the end of the day.'' When Vick strode into the courtyard to meet the men, he wore AVON PARK VISITORS BADGE 307; the inmates wore their prison IDs clipped to the front of their prison-issued blue uniforms. In the informal chatting and signing, much of the talk was football. "You gonna learn to slide now?'' one 25ish inmate asked.

"No. No,'' Vick said. "Not how I play. In 20 years, I'll look back at my career and say, 'I never learned to slide.' ''

"Need you on the Giants!'' another inmate shouted.

"Nope,'' he said. "Eli's team.''

When Dungy faced the prisoners Saturday morning, he used his guest from Philadelphia as a beacon.

"I have a lot of friends in the National Football League,'' Dungy said from a podium, with the flags of Florida and the United States bookending him. "And a lot of them have done great things. But I don't have a friend that I'm more proud of than Michael Vick.''

Vick liked the trip more than he thought he would. "It was therapeutic for me,'' he said. "I got so much out of it.''

Dungy's fond of saying you never know how many people you're going to influence on trips like this, and if it's only one, you've had a worthwhile day. You never know which one. One day, that would be a fan letter Vick would like to get.

PHOTO GALLERY: Shots from Vick's return to prison

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/peter_king/03/20/mmqb/index.html#ixzz1HHH8YvYA

Nine-year-old loses leg while saving little sister’s life - Video

Nine-year-old Anaiah Rucker is being hailed as a hero after saving her sister from being hit by a truck last month. Anaiah told The Today Show's Ann Curry today that she didn't think twice before pushing her little sister out of the path of the vehicle as the pair crossed the street in Madison, Georgia to get to the school bus stop.

Anaiah took the hit, instead, and lost a leg and a kidney for her bravery.

"I love her more than anything," Anaiah told Channel 2's Tom Jones of her five-year-old-sister, Camry. Anaiah said it was raining and her sweatshirt hood was covering her eyes as she and her sister crossed the road. The girls' mother, Andrea Taylor, witnessed her older daughter's act of bravery from the porch of their home, where she watches the girls catch the bus each morning.

"I saw the truck and I was like, 'No,'" Taylor told Channel 2. "I seen my daughter kinda snatch my 5-year-old back, and if it wasn't for that, my 5-year-old would have ... I don't think she would have made it." The driver wasn't charged after police decided he was not at fault.

Today, Anaiah told Curry that she doesn't feel she deserves to be called a hero. She said her sister "was too young to be hit like this, and if she got hit she wouldn't hardly be alive. She would be probably gone forever."

Anaiah might also not be alive if it weren't for bus driver Loretta Berryman. Berryman pulled over immediately and started performing CPR on Anaiah, who wasn't breathing. "I instructed her mom to hold her head while I gave mouth-to-mouth, chest compressions," Berryman told NBC News. "As she took a breath, my first thing was, 'Thank God.'"

Taylor recently lost her job and her car. The community held a BBQ to raise funds for Anaiah's medical bills and renovations needed to make her house handicap accessible. Thousands of classmates and Madison residents took to the streets to welcome Anaiah back when she got out of the hospital last week, after a month of care. You can contact United Bank in Madison to donate to a fund to help with the family's medical bills, which is in Anaiah's name.

"Anaiah has a really, really big heart," her mother said. Anaiah's grandmother told the Morgan County Citizenthat her first words after regaining consciousness were, "Am I going to chorus today?" She's active in Sweet Home Baptist Church and the Boys and Girls Club in Madison.

Watch the segment below:

(Screenshot of Anaiah: MSNBC.com)

After 27 Years In Prison, New DNA Evidence Sets Va. Man Free

Washington Post/Getty Images

Thomas Haynesworth greets his great niece, Da'Niya Haynesworth, 4, at his mother's home.

Back in 1984, when Thomas Haynesworth was 18, he set out to buy some groceries for his mother. A woman, who had been attacked days before, sought a police officer and told him Haynesworth was the one who did it.

Eventually five women identified him as the attacker and Haynesworth spent the next 27 years in prison.

The Root reports on what happened next:

In 2005, in the wake of the exonerations of five other wrongly convicted men, then-Virginia governor Mark R. Warner (D) ordered a sweeping review of thousands of criminal cases from 1973 through 1988. Haynesworth's was among them. Using technology that wasn't available in the 1980s, authorities tested DNA collected from a January 1984 rape for which Haynesworth was convicted. The results cleared him and implicated a convicted rapist named Leon Davis.

The state of Virginia released Haynesworth, now 46, yesterday. He's a free man but the courts still have to clear his name.

Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said in a statementthat he supported Haynesworth and wanted not just to free him but to clear his name.

"I believe in Mr. Haynesworth's innocence," Cuccinelli said. "And I will continue to work toward a complete vindication."

The Washington Post caught up with Haynesworth, yesterday, at his home in Richmond, Va. They report that he spoke on a cellphone for the first time in his life; he ate Chinese takeout and fried rice and he met his two nieces:

"He's home," his mother, Dolores Haynesworth, said as she tucked her arm around her son. "It's still hard to believe. I'm holding him, but it's still hard to believe."

Haynesworth has never googled, used an ATM or traveled on an airplane. He doesn't have a driver's license. During nearly three decades behind bars, he was told when to eat, exercise and go to bed. He said he's ready to catch up with a world he knows only from television and books.

But for starters, he craves simple things. He wants to sit on a porch, reconnect with old friends and enjoy some of his mother's fried trout.

"It's been a long journey," Haynesworth said. "I just want to reflect and sit down and talk to my momma and eat a meal with her."