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• Preparing To Follow Elie Wiesel's Footsteps

  Holocaust survivor Susan Cernyak-Spatz (from left), her daughter Jackie Fishman, Stephanie Ansaldo. Enlarge

  Posted: February 5th, 2010 Greg Lacour

  The Echo Foundation, a humanitarian and educational organization in Charlotte, exists because of Elie Wiesel.

  It was founded on Wiesel’s suggestion after the internationally renowned professor, activist and Holocaust survivor visited Charlotte in 1997. Since then, The Echo Foundation has hosted prominent humanitarians and developed educational programs for students.

  This year, the foundation is preparing for the release of perhaps its most ambitious project: “In the Footsteps of Elie Wiesel,” a 56-minute documentary that follows a group of 12 Charlotte high school students who traveled to Europe during the summer of 2007 to learn about Wiesel’s life. Over 12 days, they traced Wiesel's journey from his birthplace in Romania to the concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland to Versailles, where he was given refuge after World War II, to Berlin, where new generations of Germans are trying to atone for the sins of their forebears.

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• Community Connector: Janis Caracappa

  Posted: February 5th, 2010 Greg Lacour

  

  Crossroads Charlotte occasionally spotlights individuals who are improving the city’s social capital.
  
  Janis Caracappa and her husband, Steve, began collecting clothes for the homeless in early January, after their daughter bought a cup of coffee for a homeless man in uptown Charlotte. They decided to follow up the following week by bringing coffee and sausage biscuits to the cold and hungry on the street. Then they took it further. On Jan. 5, the Caracappas named their fledgling charity Hats & Gloves, set up a Facebook page and began handing coats and blankets to the homeless wherever they found them. In less than a month, the Facebook page has collected 356 members, Janis and Steve have set up a Web site, and they’ve forged a partnership with a Methodist church in Marion whose pastor is trying to run a similar charity in the N.C. mountains. “There’s just so much need,” Janis Caracappa says. “All of our friends who’ve joined us on Facebook have said, ‘Well, we wanted to help but just didn’t know where to start.’ And neither did we, except we took that first ride and couldn’t look away.”

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• International Civil Rights Museum Opens In Greensboro

  Posted: February 5th, 2010 Tonya Jameson

  The Civil Rights Movement has always fascinated me. I watched the documentary “Eyes on the Prize.” I read books about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., FBI surveillance of black leaders and anything related to the struggle.

  As an intern at the Montgomery Advertiser, I drove down the streets where protesters marched. I peered at the church where King preached and the home where he lived. It’s the closest I’ve been to the movement as a journalist.

  This week, I met a journalist who was in the thick of things. Matthew Lewis photographed the March on Washington, the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and JFK’s funeral.

  On Monday, Lewis was part of the throng of people celebrating the opening of the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro.

  Feb. 1 also marked the 50th anniversary of when four N.C. A&T students – Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, David Richmond and Ezell Blair Jr. – sat at the lunch counter to order food. Their sit-in ignited college students to protest throughout the South. The museum is in the old Woolworth building where the sit-in took place.

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• Weekly Round-Up: Haitian Child Finds Home And Foxx Says Job Loss "Issue Of Year"

  Posted: February 3rd, 2010 Meaghan Clark

  1. For two-year-old Avery Bonoffski, home no longer means a disaster-strewn street in Haiti; it’s a warm loving family in Huntersville.

  2. Residents share stories of job losses. Mayor Anthony Foxx says it’s “the issue of the year”.

  3. BofA found to be discriminating against African-American job seekers. The bank denies any allegations and plans to appeal decision.

  4. The town of Fort Mill is back on track to take over sports and recreation from private company.

  5. Get out your wallets and be prepared for Craft Attack, a marketplace for local artists and artisans.

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• Imam Akbar: 'We Are All The Children Of Adam'

  Posted: February 3rd, 2010 Greg Lacour

  

  Of all the combinations that the Xchange Sermons series is setting up, this may seem to some people an unlikely one: a Muslim Imam at a Baptist church.

  On Feb. 2, a cold, rainy morning, Imam Khalil Akbar told Providence Baptist Church staffers that, as far as he’s concerned, they’re not terribly different.

  “The Qur’an talks about one God,” said Akbar, the resident Imam, or prayer leader, at Masjid Ash-Shaheed Islamic Center in Charlotte. “Muhammad said you should want for your brother what you want for yourself. It’s the same Golden Rule.”

  One of the Xchange Sermons series’ goals is to educate congregations with limited knowledge of the other's faith. Providence Baptist’s senior pastor, Dr. Al Cadenhead Jr., will speak to the faithful at Masjid Ash-Shaheed on Feb. 14.

  Akbar didn’t go to Providence Baptist to deliver a sermon to the congregation; he engaged church staffers in a conversation during their monthly meeting.

  But Akbar was a particularly good choice to speak to a group of Baptists. He once was one.

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• XChange Sermons: A Sincere Welcome, A Flood Of Hope

  Posted: January 27th, 2010 Rhiannon Bowman

  

  As a child, I was fortunate to have a wonderful pastor, B. Gene Williams, who entertained all of my questions about faith and religion as seriously as he would any other question from any other member of our church. Unfortunately, as pastors do, he eventually moved on to another congregation. No other pastor has, to this day, taken my sincere curiosity as seriously.

  Until I was about 16, church was a huge part of my life. Though my parents never attended, my grandfather would drive half an hour – one way – to pick me up Sunday mornings and make sure I was in Sunday school, with a dollar for the offering. I eventually taught Sunday school, children's church and art class during vacation Bible school. The members of the youth group were like the brothers and sisters I didn't have.

  However, as we studied the Bible, I couldn't help but wonder why certain people weren't welcome in my church. And, it wasn't my imagination. I clearly remember wondering why our entire congregation was Caucasian, why the Koreans who worshiped downstairs didn't join us, and I definitely remember asking the new pastor why our denomination thought homosexuality was a sin, smarting when he said, "Because it is."

  That didn't make sense to me. I thought Jesus loved everyone equally and no matter what. It wasn't long after that I left that church, the one that once felt like home.

  From there I went on a search. I read book after book on religions. I visited mosques, synagogues, temples, cathedrals and circles around campfires. While I found people were willing to discuss their faith one-on-one in a coffee shop, I often felt a chill in the sanctuary.

  That is, until a couple weeks ago when I visited C.N. Jenkins Memorial Presbyterian Church as part of the Xchange Sermons for this blog.

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