After reading your June 4th "METRO" article entitled "Cardinal cautious on St. Sabina" I was disheartened, dismayed and confused as to why Cardinal George and the representatives of the athletic league refused to recognize and admit the inherent dangers that African-American children from St. Sabina's parish would face when traveling into their parishes and neighborhoods. Certainly the Cardinal and the athletic league have not forgotten the vicious racial slurs spoken by a Brother Rice basketball team during an athletic event just a few years ago. While the slandered members of the opposing team and the nation awaited an apology, the Brother Rice parish deliberated the necessity of one.

As an African-American alumni of St. Sabina, just walking across South Ashland Avenue was sufficient to bring forth shouts of racial obscenities and threats from white adults living in those areas who had allowed themselves to be mentally and emotionally poisoned by the racist dogma and tactics of a Catholic priest, Father Lawlor. Father Lawlor and his legion of Catholic followers spread their hate-filled literature throughout their communities as well as St. Sabina's in much the same way that Matthew Hale, Benjamin Smith and their followers do today. This one-sided concern for the safety of only white children is evidence of today's sad and sometimes deadly reality of racism.