North Carolina Now; Episode from 1999-06-28

It's Monday, June 28th tonight, a special brand of Olympic style competition in North Carolina now. Hello, and welcome to this Monday edition of North Carolina now. I'm John Arnold in for Meridim Attract. Much of tonight's program will focus on the special Olympics world summer games. Currently playing out around the triangle. The 1999 games got underway this past Saturday, beginning with a massive procession of 7,000 athletes representing 150 countries. All of the athletes were marching shoulder to shoulder into Raleigh's Carter Finley Stadium. Athletes and spectators alike were treated to an appearance by North Carolina's very own Shirley Caesar and performances by contemporary gospel singer Kirk Franklin and music legend Stevie Wonder.

The fanfare was a prelude for athletic competition of Olympic proportions. From now through July 4th, athletes with mental retardation will be competing in all kinds of Olympic style sports from cycling to track and field gymnastics to basketball. Reporter Barclay Todd went out today to catch some of the action. She brings us this report. Today was the second full day of competitions at the special Olympics world summer games. Athletes competed in all 20 Olympic style competitions. In Aquatics, the two female slimmers from North Carolina both started going for the goal. This afternoon I'm going to do 50 mere profile. I'll go do two races today. I'm a very good swimmer, a tiny swimmer. I'm very excited for the world games. Are you ready to start competing?

Yes, ma'am. I do that on my best. The two male swimmers from the state will take to the pool to compete later in the week. Organizers for the world summer games say they are impressed by the number of spectators that are coming out to see the competitions. They say they are hoping that this level of support will continue throughout the week. For parents like Mary Patchco, the games are a better way to educate the public about what people with mental retardation can accomplish. They can learn that they can do that they're able to understand that there's so many people that say you cannot be done. I want them to know that you can be done. All the stands were not full for this basketball competition between Austria and the United Kingdom. Those in attendance were very focal with their support. The excitement built even more when former Duke University basketball player and world summer games honorary chairperson, Grant Hill, stomped on and signed autographs. Earlier in the day, Hill practiced with basketball players from Team Michigan.

Hill was not the only celebrity making appearances at today's events. Actor and seven-time Mr. Olympian Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke before a group of college coaches, including Duke University's basketball coach, Misha Seski, about working with athletes with special needs. Over 1,000 international and national journalists are covering almost every aspect of the games. Tasham Yachtay is a print and electronic journalist from Zimbabwe. Over the next six days, he says he will cover every event his country competes in. Zimbabwe will be taking part in six sporting disciplines. So I have no choice. I have to cover all the events, but my specialty is a writer's track and field. Besides the competitions, journalists will also have activities at the World Game Festival held on the campus of Meredith College and Raleigh to cover. H.D. during the games, the festival has different themes, celebrating North Carolina's heritage

and the various cultures represented at the games. The 1999 Special Olympics World Summer Game is the largest sporting event ever to be hosted by the state of North Carolina. If you would like more information on what's taking place throughout the week, you can click on to the World Summer Games website. The address is www.99games.com. Well, for many, the 1999 World Summer Games raises countless questions about mental retardation. It's an issue that is getting the attention of some of North Carolina's leading scientists and top political leaders, including U.S. Senator John Edwards. This is something I believe in. I believed in it for a long time. I've worked for it hard in the Senate during the short time I've been there. One of the things that we've been working awfully hard on is providing additional funding for what's called fragile X. A lot of these athletes who are here are the victims of fragile X, which has been a worldwide problem for a long time, and in fact, some of the groundbreaking research on fragile X has been done right here in the research triangle.

We want to keep that groundbreaking research going. The games being held in the triangle this week are not only raising public awareness about mental retardation, they're also helping to shed light on how the medical community is responding to the condition. Our guest this evening is the director of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at UNC Chapel Hill. He's one of the nation's foremost researchers into a genetic disorder called fragile X syndrome. Earlier today, Mitchell Lewis sat down with the doctor Don Bailey to talk about his research. Dr. Bailey, thanks for joining us. First of all, what is fragile X syndrome and how common is it? Well, the short answer to that question is that fragile X syndrome is an inherited genetic disorder that causes mental retardation and other kinds of developmental disabilities. It's actually the most common known inherited cause of mental retardation. It occurs in about 1 in 2000 to 1 in 4,000 males, and actually about 1 in 270 women is a

carrier of fragile X syndrome. Now how is this illness caused? Well, it's a disorder, it's a specific error on the X chromosome. Both men and women have X chromosomes, and there is an error in the DNA message that causes a particular protein that's necessary for brain function to shut down. Now when most people think of mental retardation, they think of down syndrome or autism. Now as far as fragile X syndrome is concerned, is it similar to those two or is it different? Well, it's similar in that all of those syndromes cause mental retardation and developmental disabilities. It's different in that it's inherited. It's passed down from generation to generation, and you can be a carrier of fragile X syndrome and not know that you have it, not know that you're a carrier, yet it can become the real

disorder in your child. One syndrome is a genetic disorder, but it's not inherited. It's not passed down from generation to generation. And autism, we think, has some genetic components to it, but no one has discovered the gene for autism yet. They all have a result in mental retardation and developmental disabilities, but in some different forms. So people with autism will exhibit lots of maybe hand-flapping or other stereotypic behaviors, whereas people with Down syndrome wouldn't typically do those. Now Dr. Bailey, males and females react differently to fragile X syndrome. What are those effects? Well, from males who are more severely affected, typically than females, the typical effect is mild to moderate mental retardation. Sometimes some social anxiety and difficulty in adjusting to changes in routines and other life situations.

For girls, the typical effect would be a milder one, a learning disability, or sometimes mild mental retardation. Many girls with fragile X syndrome have normal intelligence as well. This is because girls have two X's on each of their chromosomes, but on the average only one of them works. And so a girl will usually have one normal X and one fragile X in each chromosome. She's a nationally known researcher in fragile X syndrome. And you are conducting research right now, as we speak. What are some of your findings? Our study is the first study of the early development of boys with fragile X syndrome. It's only been recently discovered, and most children aren't identified until four, five, or six years of age. Only recently have we developed techniques to develop, to understand and identify children at younger ages. And so we haven't really known how children developed during those earliest years. Our study is describing that development in a great deal of detail.

We're trying to describe the frustrations that parents experience when they try to find out what's wrong with their child, and when they try to figure out what's the right thing to do for their child. As of right now, there is no cure for fragile X syndrome, but is there a way that the illness can be detected early? The illness can be detected early through DNA tests. This usually requires drawing of blood, and there's a very accurate genetic test that it could be done. It's not standard procedure, it has to be specifically requested. You're right, there is no cure at the time. There are clearly lots of educational and therapeutic treatments that are available to help improve quality of life. Behavioral challenges and anxiety and arousal that many of the people with fragile X syndrome experience. There's a great deal of research going on right now on gene therapy and other techniques that might ultimately lead to a cure for fragile X syndrome.

It's going to be difficult. It's going to take lots of years of really concentrated research, but a lot of us are hopeful that ultimately there will be a cure. Now what do you think some of the efforts need to be placed in perhaps educating people about fragile X syndrome and other mental retardation issues? Well, I think one of the first points is education with physicians. Many of our parents go to physicians. They're usually their pediatrician when they become concerned about their child's early development, and the pediatrician doesn't really recognize it as fragile X syndrome. It's not like Down syndrome where you can look at an infant and almost any obstetrician or pediatrician would be able to say this child has Down syndrome. It's not the case with fragile X syndrome. So the physician has to be very attentive to the specific behavioral features, but even then it can be very complicated, and usually the only way to really tell is through the genetic testing. Dr. Don Bailey, we thank you so very much for joining us here on North Carolina now, and we also like to mention that you are director of the Frank Portagram child development

center at UNC Chapel Hill. Once again, thank you for your research, and hopefully we can come up with a cure. Well, thanks for having me. Researchers say fragile X syndrome tends to increase in severity as it passes down from generation to generation, and it may take four to five generations before symptoms of the mental retardation is detected. Well, coming up, the life experience of a North Carolina woman who helped break the education color barrier in this state, but up first here again is Mitchell Lewis with today's statewide headlines. Thanks, John. Good evening, everyone. Topping the news, a plan being prepared by the state's Senate could bring tax breaks to North Carolina tobacco companies. Manufacturers like R.J. Reynolds would get millions of dollars in breaks as long as they keep jobs in the Tarheal state and increase exports of North Carolina made cigarettes. The proposal was developed in an effort to help R.J. Reynolds survive both a settlement with states across the country and a shrinking demand for cigarettes. The proposal calls for the establishment of a five billion dollar bank trust fund for

tobacco growers that would be exempt from state income taxes. The state Supreme Court is ruled that the public does not always have a right to attend court proceedings. The state's high court rule that while the open court's provision of the state constitution allows the public to attend civil court proceedings, there are times in which the provision can be outweighed by the right to keep some records or testimony private. The ruling was the first on the issue of keeping civil hearings close to the public. Some North Carolinians may be getting a few dollars back as a result of another state's Supreme Court decision regarding car insurance. The court has ruled that car insurance rates should have been lower in 1996. Insurance commissioner Jim Long estimates consumers could get up to two-thirds of the $33 million that was disputed in the 1996 rate case. Long-sass consumers could also get refunds from another contested rate case dating back to 1994. If refunds are spread evenly among North Carolina drivers, motorists could get up to four dollars from the 1996 case and as much as $32 from the 1994 case.

State coastal management officials are gearing up for the year 2000, but it's not computer problems they're worried about. The group must remove 90 percent of the sandbags positioned on North Carolina beaches. State law prohibits sandbags or seawalls on Tar Hill beaches, but that law was temporarily amended in 1995 to allow for sandbags to be used over a five-year period. With the temporary provision soon due to expire, coastal management employees are preparing for a massive sandbag removal effort next summer. Increased spending flexibility is one distinguishing characteristic that sets the University of North Carolina apart from other state agencies. Campuses within the UNC system do not have to revert unspent salary money back to the state treasury, and accounting measure otherwise required of entities receiving state government funds. The trend toward greater spending flexibility afforded to the university system has been growing over the past decade. The latest being a Senate budget proposal allowing individual campuses to raise tuition over the next two years without approval by the UNC Board of Governors.

North Carolina City is one of ten across the country that has received a special award. Rocky Mount has been named one of the all-America cities by the National Civic League. The award goes to cities across the country that showcase community involvement and problem-solving. Rocky Mount was awarded for its partnership of schools, parents, and childcare agencies to improve education and child welfare. The cities of Hickory and Morganton were also finalists for the award. And now for a look at tomorrow's weather, highs across the state will range from the low 80s to low 90s. Most areas can expect partly cloudy skies with a good chance of showers and thunderstorms. In business news, plans for a paper recycling plant in Halifax County are on hold, possibly permanently. Wisconsin Tissue Company was scheduled to build a facility along the Roanoke River. The plant would have brought 155 jobs to Northeastern North Carolina. But those plans are now up in the air after Wisconsin Tissue announced that it will merge with Georgia Pacific Corporation's Tissue business. Governor Hunt has reportedly been in contact with leaders at Georgia Pacific and Wisconsin

Tissue to reiterate the state's commitment to making the company succeed in North Carolina. Hydroelectric dam operators in North Carolina are turning to lawmakers for help after experiencing a 60% reduction in the amount of money utility companies are paying to receive electricity from them. Bill's filed in the General Assembly would require the state's retail electric companies to let customers decide if they want to receive part of their power from small operators. Without that protection, dam operators say they will be forced to go out of business. While the Dow was up 102 points today, now here's a look at the rest of what happened on Wall Street. As Charlotte's historic school desegregation lawsuit came to an end last week, it left many

people with more questions than answers. Tonight, Shannon Vickery looks at some of the issues surrounding school desegregation through the eyes of one woman. A woman who in 1957 was a catalyst for change and who, like so many, now wonders, where do we go from here? You won't find Josephine Boyd Bradley's name in most history books, but in the spring of 1958, the Greensboro native did indeed make history by becoming the first African-American in North Carolina to graduate from a previously all-white high school. You fight for what you believe in, and you may win, you may not win, but it's how you fought the battle that matters most. To find out more about her battle for school integration, we recently met with Bradley in Atlanta, where she now teaches African-American studies at Clark University.

In the very building where Martin Luther King Jr. wants met with civil rights leaders, we talked about the past and future of school integration in North Carolina. Describe if you could Greensboro in 1957. Greensboro was segregated at that time, there were schools for black students, schools for white students. I lived not too far, about five miles, maybe less than that, from the white high school, which we had to pass every day on our way across town to the black high school. And I can remember, my neighbors always say, one day you all would go to the school and of course, you don't be young, you say no, I can't go there. But in 1957, that would change. In response to the historic 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown versus the Board of Education, the Charlotte Greensboro and Winston-Salem school boards decided to take the first move

to integrate North Carolina public schools. On August 27th, 1957, Josephine Boyd was allowed to enter Greensboro high school, the only African American among almost 2,000 white students. What I remember about it was this long walkway that seemed like it was never going to end. And there were all these people standing there, some of them hissing and making sounds. It was really a very scary kind of feeling and I sort of felt unsafe because I didn't trust the adults in that place to protect me since it already. Let me know that I was not wanted there. Were there any costs to being the first African American to go to Greensboro high school? I think that it was very difficult in that I think I lost a lot of me in the process. I think I found a lot of me in the process, but I think I lost a lot of as well.

We often had in the mornings, like if we were ready to go to school, people would have been down to our house and punctured our tires or cut trees down across the road so we couldn't go. So sort of like being locked in in a sense and always feeling that you were, it wasn't safe to live in your own space. What were the goals of this very early desegregation movement? It was about, I think, looking at a system and saying how can we make this system fair or how can we make this system more equal so that everyone will benefit. I did mean that if you allowed the part of the population, which had not been given the same opportunities, level playing ground, then the whole society would benefit.

But those goals would remain unrealized for another 14 years. Few additional steps were taken to integrate Greensboro schools, even after Boyd's historic 1958 graduation. Why do you think it took until 1971 to have widespread school desegregation in Greensboro? Because I don't think anyone else wanted to do it. I don't think anyone else really was willing to do it because it would have meant people may have had to do it by themselves and I don't think anyone was willing to go through that. Even after a federal court order, Greensboro to completely integrate at schools in 1971, questions about school desegregation would remain. Questions to which Josephine Boyd Bradley still seeks to answer. Why did the issues concerning school desegregation still haunt us in 1999?

I think part of it is that we never integrated, we desegregated. And what I mean is that for me to integrate means that you become a part of the whole. We never got that far, even after 30 years. And so I think what we're seeing now is the outcome of that. That we as parents and as school board members and as members of society have failed. It's not that children's fault, I think, is outfalled in that we were willing to accept the few crumbs of desegregation rather than saying, let's put it all together so that everyone is going to reach the maximum or gain the maximum benefits from it. But like I say, just this experience I have for you, I think it meant having to really come to grips with my blackness, come to grips with where society said I fit it and where

I thought I did. And it meant coming to grips with my own capability to do something people said, I shouldn't do, I'm disappointed in the fact that it really hasn't made that much difference when you really look at it. That it seems as though we're coming full circle again and I keep wanting to know why we have to reinvent the wheel because after 30 years we should have gotten it right by now. In 1995 as part of her PhD dissertation at Emory University, Josephine Boy Bradley wrote down her remembrances of her 1957 efforts to help integrate Greensboro schools. She's now thinking about possibly turning her experiences into a new book so that others can share her story.

And that's our show for tonight, please make plans to join us again tomorrow for another edition of North Carolina now, until then, goodnight.