You need to think big

Honor among friends
(Original publication: May 3, 2007)

Nearly 20 years ago, Carolyn Butts was a young reporter at the Amsterdam News, when longtime Rockland arts advocate Eleanor Charles called, trying to generate interest in a group of teen chess players from Harlem called the Raging Rooks.

She did the story. The team, made up of young people Butts says had been encouraged to use their brains, went on to win a chess championship.

Butts and Charles stayed in touch and in time became close. “She became like an aunt to me,” says Butts, now publisher of African Voices, a nonprofit black literary arts magazine, an outgrowth of a program Charles founded. “She was always an inspiration, telling me, ‘You need to think big,’ ” Butts says of Charles, who died in 1999 at age 68.

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