By Vickie Evans-Nash
Contributing Writer
At noon on Thursday, March 8, the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, Minnesota Black Pages and the LTL International Leadership Institute hosted the first annual Launa Q. Newman Community Services Awards. The luncheon at the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis was in recognition of Women’s History Month.
The theme for this event, Lifting as We Climb, honored women who have shown exceptional commitment to their community through both their careers and volunteer activities.
Launa Newman was the first African American to join the Minneapolis Woman’s Club. At the event, speakers gave thanks for her commitment to her community as a newspaper publisher and by serving as a role model for women in business. 
“Whatever kind of emergency, drama, or important event, we were either on the phone or in the office of the Spokesman,” said retired Judge LaJune Lange before announcing award winners. “Establishing a scholarship in her honor and having these recognitions is just fitting and proper to carry on the legacy, because she always carried out her work with style, with a smile, and with extreme competence.”
Newman’s daughter, Norma Jean Williams, detailed the events that would take Launa Newman from a wife working side-by-side with her husband in the day-to-day operations of the newspaper to becoming publisher and modernizing the publishing process after his death. Newman’s son Wallace “Jack” Jackman told stories of his mother’s determination.
“One day, she said we’re going to grow some trees in our yard, and you’re going to do the digging,” Jackman recalled. “Those trees are now 40 feet tall on 34th and 4th Avenue. So you can be what you want to be, when you want to be, and she was all of that.”
Tracey Williams-Dillard, publisher and CEO of the MSR, presented the Launa Q. Newman Community Justice Award to Professor Nakima Levy-Pounds, J.D., director of the Community Justice Project (CJP), providing civil rights legal services in an effort to address issues that affect the poor.
The Launa Q. Newman Young Leadership Award recipient was Aeryuana Powell, an eighth-grade Benilde-St. Margaret’s student who participated in several volunteer activities over the past four years such as helping to stuff over 500 backpacks with school supplies, clipping and counting box-tops for her school’s fundraiser, and reading one-on-one with students with literacy challenges.
The recipient of the Launa Q. Newman Community Service Award and keynote speaker for the event was Reatha Clark King, Ph.D., former president of Metropolitan State University and a past president and board chair of General Mills Foundation.
“Most of all,” said King when accepting the award, “I want to thank Tracey [Williams-Dillard], my daughter. We have two sons, no daughters, so I just go about adopting the best ones in the community.”
King said that the award was a special privilege because it gave her the opportunity to celebrate the pioneer contributions of Mrs. Newman and others in the Twin Cities community.
“She was the first one [with] this quality that I’m going to describe, that I sought to imitate when my family and I moved here 34 years ago. I needed to prove quickly that I could be president of a university that serves all of the people, and not just Black people. Being that I was a Black woman, I needed to dispel the notion that as president of Metropolitan State University, I could not be a credible leader of the whole community…”
King says that many African Americans have been faced with this challenge, among them President Barack Obama, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and women of our judicial system: Judge LaJune Lange, Judge Tanya Bransford, Judge Wilhelmina Wright and Judge Pamela Alexander.
“In this regard, Mrs. Newman was my special encouraging friend and counselor. Along with her, Harry Davis, Jr. and his wife Charlotte, Phoebe Givens, Gladys Brooks, Rhoda Lund, Josie Johnson, I was able to stand tall as the president of Metropolitan State University, because they were lifting me up.”
She concluded by reading an inscription from the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in Washington, D.C.: “Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country and a finer world to live in.
“Thank you for the award,” King said. “It means a lot to me. It really does. It’s coming from a sister.”
For 17 years the MSR has honored African American high school graduates with Cecil E. Newman college scholarships and a celebration dinner. The proceeds from the Launa Newman Community Services Award luncheon will provide for the first Launa Q. Newman scholarship for young women with developing leadership skills.
Tracey Williams-Dillard thanked attendees for supporting the community awards ceremony and luncheon, and for their contributions to the Launa Q. Newman Scholarship Fund, which will be presented to recipients during the May graduation celebration.
Watch the MSR for ongoing information on the 2012 graduation gala.
Vickie Evans-Nash welcomes reader responses to vnash@spokesman-recorder.com.
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