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2019 Mazda CX-3 Packs Plenty in Small Package

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CHICAGO — The 2019 Mazda CX-3 is a small crossover. It was so small it could do a good imitation of a big hatchback. We drove one here to scope out the auto show.

On the way we encountered ice and sleet, then rain and then something akin to fog. The point is Mazda’s CX-3 handled it all relatively well.

It was powered by a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine that made 148 horsepower and 146 pound-feet of torque. It was mated to a six-speed automatic transmission with a manual shift mode and a sport mode. You don’t want to use the latter on an Interstate. It burns more gasoline because of the higher revolutions due to the gearing.

The CX-3 was rated at 27 mpg in the city, 32 mpg on the highway and 29 mpg combined. I stopped to gas up a few miles before I crossed into Indiana. I didn’t have a full tank of fuel when I left and the smaller the vehicle the smaller the gas tank; 11.9 gallons on the all-wheel-drive version which is what I had.

The power was adequate. I didn’t run anyway from anybody, but I was not trying to. This Mazda CX-3 cruised nicely; I set the adaptive cruise control at 76. When I needed to pass, the CX-3 responded smartly.

Overall, the CX-3 handled well. But this drive was not much of a test. The run from Detroit to here is basically flat and straight with a few rises and gentle curves as I-94 dipped around the southern end of Lake Michigan.

The bottom line was the utility vehicle went where I steered it without any exertion on my part. It handled well, too. But again this interstate was not very challenging. However, there was some wind noise as well as road noise, depending on the road surface.

On highway trips, even short ones like this four-hour drive, music is critical to an interesting trip rather than a boring ride. I used the CX-3’s satellite radio for most the trip. But towards the end, I used the Bluetooth connection to stream from my phone and its Pandora app.

Mazda made some incremental changes to the CX-3 but they did not alter the KODO design language, which is curved fenders over the wheel wells, a long hood and a short rump.

But they did give the CX-3 a new grille, a new color for the Grand Touring trim line which I had, black piano exterior accents, chrome accents, LED taillights and 18-inch alloy wheels.

Inside the CX-3 got an electronic parking brake as standard with auto hold, a reconfigured center console that was a bigger than the old one, a new rear-seat armrest, a front passenger seat manual lifter, red vent surrounds and high gloss piping.

I was impressed with some of the equipment. The 2019 CX-3 had a power driver’s seat. It also had adaptive cruise control, adaptive LED headlights, heated front seats and a heated steering wheel.

The CX-3 Grand Touring was stuffed with stuff. It had blind spot monitoring, advanced smart city brake, lane departure warning, keyless entry and push-button start stop and rear cross traffic alert. There was also a moon roof.

It was just a few years ago that this sort of equipment was exclusive to luxury vehicles.

The seats had been redesigned, they were comfortable and supportive. My only quibble so far was that there didn’t look like there was that much room in the rear.

I spent most of my time here traveling along Lake Shore Drive. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It looks like a boulevard in some places when it is actually a rally race course in disguise.

The lanes are narrow — after decades they installed a low separator between north- and southbound traffic. Hit it at the right (make that the wrong) angle and you’re going to sail over it into oncoming traffic. The curves are abrupt. And if you pay more attention to the lake than you do the pavement, you’ll end up in the water or on the beach.

This is no place for amateurs, drivers must be experienced at acceleration, braking and steering. You go into a sharp curve too fast you’ll end up in the wrong lane. The road surface is very good but there are some dips that can disrupt your equilibrium. In a phrase, it is a great drive.

Three of us were going to attend the Charity Preview for the auto show here in the CX-3. I told the person who would likely be in the back seat, that it was kind of close and she refused so we took her sister’s car.

I’d checked the rear seat when I returned to the Motor City and she was right. There was plenty of headroom but legroom was lacking. And that was after I moved the front passenger seat forward a bit.

However, I was pleasantly surprised. The CX-3 had a decent cargo space: 9.6 cubic feet with the rear seats up and 41.7 cubic feet with them folded.

The instrument layout as with most Mazda products was clean. It had tri-dial climate controls. Most of the other equipment could be controlled from the touch infotainment screen and the mouse on the center console.

As tested it was $29,625 which at first I thought was a little pricey. But then I went back over the CX-3 equipment and thought that it is a small crossover with plenty of stuff. Things like all-wheel-drive, a heated steering wheel, blind spot monitoring and lane departure alert made it well worth the price.

Frank S. Washington is editor of AboutThatCar.com

Frank S. Washington Special to The Informer

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#NNPA BlackPress

Black-Owned Newspapers and Media Companies Are Small Businesses Too!

NNPA NEWSWIRE — “Dear World, the entire planet is feeling the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic,” Cheryl Smith of Texas Metro News wrote to her readers. “We must be concerned about ourselves, as well as others. You may be aware that the media is considered ‘essential.’ So, guess what? We have a responsibility, a moral obligation to use this status to be a source of information, support, and inspiration, just as we are at all other times,” Smith wrote.

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Financial Support is Essential to Delivery of These Essential Services

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

Publishers of Black-owned community newspapers, including Janis Ware of the Atlanta Voice, Cheryl Smith of Texas Metro News, Chris Bennett of the Seattle Medium, Denise Rolark Barnes of the Washington Informer, and Brenda Andrews of the New Journal & Guide in Virginia, are desperately trying to avoid shuttering operations.

On Wednesday, April 29, Rolark Barnes, Andrews, Bennett, and Ware will participate in a special livestream broadcast to discuss how their publications are enduring as the pandemic rages on.

In a heartfelt and straight-to-the-point op-ed published recently, Ware explained to her tens of thousands of readers that The Atlanta Voice has boldly covered the issues that affect the African American community.

“Our founders, Mr. J. Lowell Ware and Mr. Ed Clayton, were committed to the mission of being a voice to the voiceless with the motto of, ‘honesty, integrity and truth,’” Ware wrote in an article that underscores the urgency and importance of African American-owned newspapers during the coronavirus pandemic. Ware has established a COVID-19 news fund and aggregated the Atlanta Voice’s novel coronavirus coverage into a special landing page within its website.

To remain afloat, Ware and her fellow publishers know that financial backing and support will be necessary. Following the spread of the pandemic, many advertisers have either paused their ad spending or halted it altogether. And other streams of revenue have also dried up, forcing Black-owned publications to find ways to reduce spending and restructure what were already historically tight budgets.

With major companies like Ruth Chris Steakhouse and Pot Belly Sandwiches swooping in and hijacking stimulus money aimed at small businesses, the Black Press — and community-based publishing in general — has been largely left out of the $350 billion stimulus and Paycheck Protection Program packages.

To make matters worse, there are no guarantees that a second package, specifically focused on small business, will benefit Black publishers or other businesses owned by people of color.

Publications like the New Journal and Guide, Washington Informer (which recently celebrated its 55th anniversary) and the Atlanta Voice have been essential to the communities they serve — and the world at large for 193 years.

Unfortunately for some publishers, the impact of COVID-19 has brought business operations to a near halt. While none are thriving, some publishers have developed ingenious and innovative ways to continue operations.

“Dear World, the entire planet is feeling the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic,” Cheryl Smith of Texas Metro News wrote to her readers. “We must be concerned about ourselves, as well as others. You may be aware that the media is considered ‘essential.’ So, guess what? We have a responsibility, a moral obligation to use this status to be a source of information, support, and inspiration, just as we are at all other times,” Smith wrote.

Smith’s statements echo the more than 200 African American-owned newspapers in the NNPA family. The majority of the publications are owned and operated by women, and virtually all are family dynasties so rarely seen in the black community.

The contributions of the Black Press remain indelibly associated with the fearlessness, determination, and success of Black America.

Those contributions include the works of Frederick Douglass, WEB DuBois, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, and former NNPA Chairman Dr. Carlton Goodlett.

Douglas, who helped slaves escape to the North while working with the Underground Railroad, established the abolitionist paper, “The North Star,” in Rochester, New York.

He developed it into the most influential black anti-slavery newspaper published during the Antebellum era.

The North Star denounced slavery and fought for the emancipation of women and other oppressed groups with a motto of “Right is of no Sex – Truth is of no Color; God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren.”

DuBois, known as the father of modern Pan Africanism, demanded civil rights for Blacks but freedom for Africa and an end to capitalism, which he called the cause of racism and all human misery.

Many large news organizations have begun targeting African Americans and other audiences of color by either acquiring Black-owned news startups or adding the moniker “Black” to the end of their brand. However, it was Black-owned and operated news organizations that were on the front lines for voting rights, civil rights, ending apartheid, fair pay for all, unionization, education equity, healthcare disparities and many other issues that disproportionately negatively impact African Americans.

Today, the Black Press continues to reach across the ocean where possible to forge coalitions with the growing number of websites and special publications that cover Africa daily from on the continent, Tennessee Tribune Publisher Rosetta Perry noted.

The evolution of the Black Press, the oldest Black business in America, had proprietors take on issues of chattel slavery in the 19th century, Jim Crow segregation and lynching, the great northern migration, the Civil Rights Movement, the transformation from the printing press to the digital age and computerized communication.

With the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling that said no black man has any rights that a white man must honor, there came a flood of Black publications to advocate for Black rights and to protest the wrongs done to Blacks.

An expose in Ebony Magazine in 1965 alerted the world to a Black female engineer, Bonnie Bianchi, who was the first woman to graduate from Howard University in Electrical Engineering.

It was through the pages of the Black Press that the world learned the horrors of what happened to Emmett Till.

The Black Press continues to tackle domestic and global issues, including the novel coronavirus pandemic and its effects on all citizens – particularly African Americans.

It was through the pages of the Black Press that the world learned that COVID-19 was indeed airborne and that earlier estimates by health experts were wrong when they said the virus could last only up to 20 to 30 minutes on a surface.

Now, it’s universally recognized that the virus can last for hours on a surface and in the air.

“A few short weeks ago, life as we know it, was pretty different,” Ware told her readers. “These are unprecedented times, and we are working around the clock to provide the best possible coverage, sometimes taking risks to keep Metro Atlanta informed.”

Tune in to the livestream at www.Facebook.com/BlackPressUSA.

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#NNPA BlackPress

D.C. Declares State of Emergency Amid Coronavirus Outbreak

WASHINGTON INFORMER — A 58-year-old woman who contracted the virus had also traveled to a high-risk country while a 39-year-old made contact at a large public gathering with someone who tested positive. A 24-year-old man — the youngest among the group mentioned by Nesbitt — had no known exposure before health officials determined that he, too, had contracted the coronavirus.

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**FILE** D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (Courtesy of the Mayor's Office)

By Sam P.K. Collins, The Washington Informer

Just days after District officials reported its first case of the novel coronavirus, the city declared a public health state of emergency Wednesday.

The heightened level of scrutiny has, for the time being, brought large public social and cultural gatherings — indoor and outdoor alike — to a halt.

As Dr. LaQuandra S. Nesbitt of the D.C. Department of Health has stressed, such measures have been intended to quell the spread of the life-threatening virus at a time when much of the world is reeling from what the World Health Organization has designated a global pandemic.  

“We made a recommendation of nonessential mass gatherings for a group of a thousand or more at a specific location to be postponed or canceled through March 31,” Nesbitt told reporters Wednesday.

“As we collect guidance, we want [people hosting] nonessential activities [of less than a thousand people] to have a consideration of how to postpone,” she said. “This is a recommendation that we want organizations to take seriously. The current advisory gives us a chance to flatten the curve. It’s a rapidly evolving situation.”

As of Wednesday, 10 local coronavirus cases have been reported, including two men, ages 38 and 59, who traveled to a level-three country on separate occasions.

A 58-year-old woman who contracted the virus had also traveled to a high-risk country while a 39-year-old made contact at a large public gathering with someone who tested positive. A 24-year-old man — the youngest among the group mentioned by Nesbitt — had no known exposure before health officials determined that he, too, had contracted the coronavirus.

Some of those diagnosed with the coronavirus had traveled from Ohio, New York, Los Angeles and Toronto to attend the AIPAC conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Northwest earlier this month.

Symptoms of the coronavirus include severe difficulty breathing, fever, runny nose and coughing. Cases worldwide have surpassed 115,000, including more than 1,000 in the United States. Experts recommend that people avoid contact with the sick, wash their hands and abstain from touching their eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands.

Since Saturday, when a rector at Christ Church of Georgetown tested positive for the coronavirus, Mayor Muriel Bowser had alluded to the possibility of a public health emergency earlier this week. As members of the Northwest-based church started their period of self containment, various D.C.-based offices took similar precautions.

On Monday, School Without Walls High School closed for the day and custodians deeply cleaned the building upon the realization that an employee had been exposed to the coronavirus. D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) Chancellor Lewis Ferebee later announced the cancellation of DCPS-sponsored international study tours that had been scheduled for up until May 1.

Early next week, teachers across the D.C. public school system will meet during a professional staff development day to further discuss prevention efforts.

The D.C. Council has also followed suit, with Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) announcing that he and his colleagues will spend next week’s Committee of the Whole meeting planning how to further enable Bowser to carry out her plans. The mayor said taking the proper precautions helps prevent future catastrophe.

In a public statement, Events DC announced the suspension of large gatherings and activities up until the date recommended by the D.C. Department of Health. In the interim, officials will facilitate deep cleanings of the Washington Convention Center, Entertainment and Sports Arena in Southeast, and the D.C. Armory and R.I.S.E. Demonstration Center, both of which are also in Southeast.

“We are making it clear that science tells us that mass gatherings over a thousand doesn’t help our goal of flattening the curve,” Bowser told reporters. “We’re pulling permits for public events. The organizers are fine with that and we should further discussions with our [social and cultural] institutions to give them information they need to keep D.C. safe.

“We’re constantly evaluating and it’s a fluid situation,” the mayor said. “We’ll come back to you if we have more information.”

This post originally appeared in The Washington Informer.

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Suffragist Coralie Franklin Cook: First Descendant of Monticello Slave to Graduate College

NNPA NEWSWIRE — “No woman and no class of women can be degraded, and all womankind not suffer thereby … and so Miss Anthony,” Coralie Franklin Cook said, addressing Susan B. Anthony directly in a speech at the Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York, in 1902. “In behalf of the hundreds of colored women who wait and hope with you for the day when the ballot shall be in the hands of every intelligent woman; and also in behalf of the thousands who sit in darkness and whose condition we shall expect those ballots to better, whether they be in the hands of white women or Black, I offer you my warmest gratitude and congratulations.”

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Coralie Franklin Cook, (Courtesy of Monticello)

By Stacy M. Brown, Special to The Washington Informer

This is part of an ongoing Washington Informer series about the Women’s Suffrage Movement and an initiative that includes Informer Publisher Denise Rolark Barnes that will use the lens of history, the fabric of art and culture and the venue of the public square to shine a light into dark places, equipping all with a compass to chart the way forward. The initiative lives in the institutional home of the Washington Informer Charities.

Get to know Coralie Franklin Cook, who taught elocution and English at Howard University.

Born into slavery in Lexington, Virginia, in 1829, Cook became the first descendant of a Thomas Jefferson Monticello slave known to have graduated from college. In 1880, she graduated from Storer College in West Virginia before becoming a teacher.

In 1898, she married Howard University professor George William Cook and served for more than 12 years as a member of the District of Columbia Board of Education. She founded the National Association of Colored Women but was mostly known as a committed suffragist.

Historians said she admired Susan B. Anthony, but eventually was turned off by the women’s suffrage movement because it ignored the plight of black women.

“No woman and no class of women can be degraded, and all womankind not suffer thereby … and so Miss Anthony,” Cook said, addressing Anthony directly in a speech at the Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York, in 1902. “In behalf of the hundreds of colored women who wait and hope with you for the day when the ballot shall be in the hands of every intelligent woman; and also in behalf of the thousands who sit in darkness and whose condition we shall expect those ballots to better, whether they be in the hands of white women or Black, I offer you my warmest gratitude and congratulations.”

The 19th Amendment granting the women the right to vote in 1918 was certainly a victory. However, as noted in a publication published by the League of Women Voters, for women who were not white, wealthy, or educated, it remained an incomplete one.

“Black men had been granted the right to vote in 1870 with the 15th Amendment, yet actual attempts to exercise that right had been repeatedly met with mob violence and lynching,” according to the article written by Kathryn S. Gardiner. “Black women now faced those same obstacles to their rights, and women like Cook who had carried the suffrage banner found themselves standing alone in facing them. Seemingly, as far as white women were concerned, the battle was over.”

In 1915, Cook continued her crusade for women’s and equal rights. She published “Votes for Mothers” in the NAACP magazine The Crisis:

“I wonder if anybody in all this great world ever thought to consider man’s rights as an individual, by his status as a father? yet you ask me to say something about ‘Votes for Mothers,’ as if mothers were a separate and peculiar people. After all, I think you are not so far wrong.  Mothers are different, or ought to be different, from other folk. The woman who smilingly goes out, willing to meet the Death Angel, that a child may be born, comes back from that journey, not only the mother of her own adored babe, but a near-mother to all other children.  As she serves that little one, there grows within her a passion to serve humanity; not race, not class, not sex, but God’s creatures as he has sent them to earth.

“It is not strange that enlightened womanhood has so far broken its chains as to be able to know that to perform such service, woman should help both to make and to administer the laws under which she lives, should feel responsible for the conduct of educational systems, charitable and correctional institutions, public sanitation and municipal ordinances in general.

“Who should be more competent to control the presence of bar rooms and ‘red-light districts’ than mothers whose sons they are meant to lure to degradation and death?

“Who knows better than the girl’s mother at what age the girl may legally barter her own body?  Surely not the men who have put upon our statute books, 16, 14, 12, aye be it to their eternal shame, even 10 and 8 years, as ‘the age of consent!’

“If men could choose their own mothers, would they choose free women or bondwomen?  Disfranchisement because of sex is curiously like disfranchisement because of color.  It cripples the individual, it handicaps progress, it sets a limitation upon mental and spiritual development.

“I grow in breadth, in vision, in the power to do, just in proportion as I use the capacities with which Nature, the All-Mother, has endowed me.

“I transmit to the child who is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh and thought of my thought; somewhat of my own power or weakness.  Is not the voice which is crying out for ‘Votes for Mothers’ the Spirit of the Age crying out for the Rights of Children?”

Information from The Crisis Magazine, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and the League of Women Voters of Delaware County (Indiana), was used in this story.

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