
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 20, 1991                   TAG: 9103200303
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

LEGISLATORS DISCUSS SAD TREND

The spirit of Anthony Riggs hung over the Senate hearing room Tuesday as a dozen scholars, politicians and business leaders grappled with the rising numbers of young black men who wind up in jail or in the morgue.

"Anthony Riggs was a 22-year-old black man who had just recently returned from the Persian Gulf as a war hero - only to be gunned down yesterday in Detroit," Sen. Donald W. Riegle, Jr., D-Mich., said Tuesday at a roundtable discussion on the plight of African-American men in urban America. "This tragic event is all too common for young black men."

Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder noted the irony that many Persian Gulf veterans will return "only to be caught in the cross-fire of another war, one which rages - even as a I speak - in streets across this nation." The governor said he was unaware when he wrote his statement that Riggs would illustrate his concern.

Homicide is the leading cause of death among black men age 20 to 29, the panelists were told, while some 25 percent of black men between 23 and 29 are in prison or on parole or probation.

All American youth share the pressures of reaching adulthood, said Margaret Beale Spencer, a developmental psychologist from Emory University. "For African American males, they share with black females the added dilemmas which accompany poverty and racial tensions." Special support programs may have to be developed, she said, including one to encourage young black men to stay in school.

by CNB