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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

The House That Love Built

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Thursday, July 23, 2009   

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Two years ago, a young black woman, Megan Williams, was kidnapped and tortured by six white people in Logan County - a brutal crime remembered vividly by many in the African-American community. In an effort to heal the wounds, volunteers recently built and furnished a new home for Zett Coleman and Linda Cowen, two African-American sisters with disabilities who are in their seventies.

Ron Jones with the American Friends Service Committee Appalachian Center for Equality says its completion will be celebrated on Saturday with a ribbon-cutting.

"We had seen through that incident what hate could do, but we wanted to demonstrate what love could do also, here in Logan County. Zett put it best when she said, 'You can feel the love in the house.'"

Jones says the generosity local people have shown is a lot more indicative of Logan County that the Megan Williams case.

This project was chosen because the property is on a steep hill, and the stairs had deteriorated to the point that the sisters were essentially prisoners in their own home. If nothing had been done, Jones says, in time it would have become a difficult problem for the city and the state.

"The house would have eventually deteriorated to a point to where they couldn't live in it, just because they were unable to keep up with maintenance."

Impoverished seniors living in unsafe conditions represent a kind of invisible homelessness in Appalachia, he adds.

"Homelessness has a different face here. It's not someone laying in the street, but it may be someone living in a house that's not up to occupancy standards."

The ribbon cutting on the new house will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday at 197 Wood Ave. in Aracoma, near the edge of the town of Logan.



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