Kudos to Pugh for MLK Unity Award honor
Congratulations to a veteran Columbus public servant, Evelyn Turner Pugh, this year’s recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Award.
Pugh has served on Columbus Council for almost a quarter-century, in recent years in the important role of mayor pro tem, but she knew public service long before becoming an elected official.
She joins a distinguished and diverse honor roll of leaders who have received this annual honor presented by Alpha Phi Alpha. All, in their own ways, contributed to bridging racial and cultural chasms and working for the common good.
Alpha Phi Alpha, chartered more than a century ago in Ithaca, N.Y., was the first traditional intercollegiate fraternity founded by and for African Americans, though it has been open to men of all races since 1940. Among those in its distinguished membership, in addition to King himself, are fellow Georgian Andrew Young and the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Mayor Teresa Tomlinson called Pugh “a treasure,” and the honoree said she has tried to be “a voice for those who can’t speak.” For somebody with access to power, there is probably no more important calling.
Clearing the innocent
Certainly, justice needs to be stern and decisive in the public school cheating scandal that has rocked Georgia, and Atlanta in particular.
But punishment of the guilty is not the only component of justice. Identifying and restoring the reputations and careers of the innocent is at least as important.
Erroll Davis, former University System of Georgia chancellor now serving as interim Atlanta schools superintendent to restore sanity and integrity to a tarnished system, is proceeding on both fronts.
Davis told reporters last week that the Fulton County district attorney has begun clearing the names of educators and administrators who were not part of the conspiracy -- and that is in no sense too harsh a word -- to falsify student test results.
Expediting that process is good fiscal policy, because it’s costing Atlanta taxpayers about $600,000 per month in paid administrative leave for teachers suspected in more than half the city’s schools. Proportional expenses likely are taking a toll in other school districts around the state, including Dougherty County (Albany), where cheating has been uncovered or suspected.
But it’s important for more reasons than money. The reputation of every honest, hard-working educator in Georgia, and even beyond Georgia, has been at least subtly tarnished (and maybe not so subtly) by the cynical dishonesty of the guilty. Those teachers and principals not implicated in this shameful mess have waited long enough to have their names cleared.
This story was originally published January 18, 2012 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Kudos to Pugh for MLK Unity Award honor."