Word: wilkinson
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Once was bad enough, so when Houston school authorities this fall banned his two teenage sons from classes because of their long hair for the second time, Wilburn Wilkinson, 48, decided to go to court. The divorced electronics technician sued the Spring Branch (Texas) Independent School District, charging that Northbrook High School is discriminating against his sons Brian, 17, and Travis, 15, by enforcing a dress and appearance code that controls male -- but not female -- hair length...
Since last October the boys have been exiled from class because the school prohibits male hair below the shoulders. Theirs reaches the middle of their backs. Last year short-haired Wilkinson tutored them at home, but was later fined $25 for violating the compulsory school-attendance law. He has hired a lawyer, Darrell McAlexander, with shoulder-length hair and a drooping Fu Manchu mustache...
...Alec Wilkinson...
...dying fall hardly saps the considerable strengths of Big Sugar, subtitled Seasons in the Cane Fields of Florida. Forget the comparative dangers of cutting sugarcane. Wonder instead why roughly 10,000 West Indian men, chiefly Jamaicans, come to South Florida each winter to do it. That is what Alec Wilkinson, a staff writer for The New Yorker, did when he came across this information in a 1984 newspaper story. Other questions aroused Wilkinson's interest as a reporter. Among them: Is it not odd that a major domestic cash crop should be so heavily dependent on imported black labor? What...
...Wilkinson, who has also written books about police work on Cape Cod and moonshine enforcement in North Carolina, finds and displays much genuine cause for outrage here, but he also brings back a richer, more complex story than he seems willing to acknowledge. Better pay and treatment from the growers might improve the cutters' lot, but nothing will ameliorate the reality of harvesting cane by hand. It is boring, backbreaking work, carried out in oppressive heat, surrounded by the dangers of poisonous snakes, fire ants and whirling, razor-sharp scythes. Some of those who suffer these miseries take pride...