Around the time of the mid-1960s urban insurrections of Watts, Detroit and Newark, Arthur Cummings began to reconsider his promising military career. After almost two decades in the military, Cummings was one of very few African Americans on the fast track to becoming a general. He got off that fast track a Lt. Colonel with degrees from Hampton, George Washington and the University of Maryland.

Art Cummings looked around to see if there was a different train, one going where he thought he needed to go. When he saw no such train coming, Art Cummings devoted the rest of his professional life to laying the tracks, to designing and building the economic and social engine of black liberation. Art Cummings was one of the architects of the BRC's Overground RR!!©." His transition on June 18, 2007, leaves as legacy a lifetime of door-opening achievement and selfless struggle on behalf of our people.

Cummings initially founded, then left a Boston-based management consulting practice to join the transition team of Atlanta's first black mayor, Maynard Jackson. A specialist in urban planning and budgeting with long experience in tough and unforgiving bureaucratic environments, he is said to have asked the new mayor for the toughest job available. Maynard Jackson made Art Cummings the city's Director of Purchasing. When he was tasked with reforming how Atlanta purchased goods and services, African Americans were two thirds of the city's population but accounted for about 1% of city purchases and contracts.

"Art didn't just imitate the good old boys, and award contracts to his friends or friends of the mayor, either. As the city's Director of Purchasing he was all about fairness, about making opportunities available to everybody. It was a guiding principle, something he and Mayor Jackson believed in very deeply. Art Cummings completely revamped and reformed the way the city purchased goods and services to ensure fairness on every level.

"One of Maynard Jackson's chief objectives was to cut African Americans in on every level of the purchasing system, from the top to the bottom. Art co-conceived this policy and was its point man, the one more responsible than anybody else for executing it," according to his third wife Jeanette Foreman. "He was a master politician and a master budgeter, someone who knew where the bodies were buried and knew what to do about it."

"He could have taken this knowledge of his over to the private side. He could have been a consultant to people who wanted contracts themselves and been an easy millionaire, but he didn't. Art wasn't about the money. He was about justice and fairness. He preferred to remain a consultant to the first wave of African American mayors who came into power in Newark, Chicago, and a dozen other cities. He was Ernie Barefield's mentor, when Ernie went to Chicago to become chief of staff in the Harold Washington administration. Art Cummings shared, he practically gave away his knowledge of how to design and implement the forerunners of contract set-asides and affirmative action in governmental contracting to hundreds of people he mentored, schooled and advised in dozens of cities."

"If there are, as Rev. Jesse Jackson likes to say, two kinds of people, tree shakers and jellymakers, Art was a consummate tree shaker who made possible a whole generation of prosperous jellymakers," continued Foreman, a BRC board member herself. "It's hard to imagine anybody who did more than Art Cummings to elevate the cause of black businesses, and recirculating dollars - including municipal dollars, our tax dollars - something we often forget about, in our black communities. Art did all right for himself and his family, but he really wasn't about the money. He wanted to empower us as a people, to ensure that black destinies and the economies of our black communities were in black hands."

Art Cummings' lifetime of service wasn't just limited to building the foundation for thousands of local black businesses. In the spirit of looking out for the least, the lost and the left behind. SPARKS caught up with Joyce Dorsey, the past CEO and board president of the Fulton Atlanta Community Action Authority.

"Art was the founding board chair of the Fulton Atlanta Community Action Authority in 1991. he had a passion for helping people less fortunate than himself. He was the architect. He helped us set up the administrative foundation. It has operated successfully since then with successful audits and programs which have impacted hundreds of thousands of lives. He was on the board of directors up until last year when his health failed him. We use his model of leadership as a guide in everything we do.

"It was through Art's leadership that we were able to create a community housing development organization which owns a set of apartments in the Cascade area. We've also built two subdivisions all under his leadership. People who knew Art knew that he could be quite a leader, quite demanding and forceful and meticulous nature, his insistence that all your statistics be squeaky clean and all your work can be verified. He was a stickler for detail who insisted on the highest moral integrity in everything that we did." concluded Joyce Dorsey. "He set the bar very high and demanded that we measure up every day."

According to those who knew him best, Art Cummings led a great life of service, and enjoyed his many friends and family. He was married three times, had six children and was father figure and mentor to many more. He was never happier than those times he was surrounded by those he knew and loved, and who loved him, as all of us at BRC did. As his wife Jeanette told us, Art Cummings shouldn't be mourned. He should be celebrated.

On Sunday, July 1 at 11 AM, St. Mark's Lutheran Church will march into its newly rebuilt home at 4137 Washington Road in East Point. "It will be a solemn and a joyous homecoming, our procession into the building, and our first service in the new sanctuary," according to Pastor Torry O. Johnson. 'We will have a more formal consecration of the new facility at a date in August or September. We'll be sure to let SPARKS know about that one.

"St. Marks has been in this community for all of 24 years and a little more now, and offers a full suite of ministries to address the needs of our church, its children, its families, and its elders. We are especially uplifted by the response to our youth basketball project, the Pure Grace Youth League which serves youngsters in the immediate area in which our church is located. Participation in the Pure Grace Youth League for the current cycle is closed, as we're full up. That proves there's definitely a need for what we're doing.

"There's also a crying need for us to support the best of our black businesses. Along with our churches and community organizations, they are the pillars of our community. St. Marks utilized a local African American general contractor, Accou-Wall Interiors of East Point, to construct our new sanctuary. He did a tremendous job for us, bringing in the project on schedule and well under budget. They're so good, C.L. Moody hired them to do his place. If Accou-Wall is not a BRC member yet, I strongly endorse him to the BRC, and the BRC to him. It's time for more of us to get on board."

This Friday, June 29 the Atrium on Sweet Auburn presents its 5th Friday Cabaret, featuring Najuma. A native of Chicago, now residing in Morrow GA, she defines her musical style as "the conscience of R&B" with a sensuous touch of jazz. Her music touches the mind, moves the body and enriches the soul. An accomplished stuent of West African dance, Najuma and her husband Barake have excited audiences with their unique fusion of R&B, jazz and African rhythms. BRC members and friends are urgued to come out Friday night and experience Najuma, the Voice of Love.

Tickets are $15 for individuals, and $25 for couples, which includes setup & hors' dourves.. Art for your viewing pleasure by Devi McDonald. Old school dancing sounds by Barake. BYOB. For more info contact S. Jill Fields at 404-524-7921.

BRC member Joe Shorter is a former Deputy Commissioner of Insurance for the State of Louisiana. A native New Orleanean, he is a former head of that city's Office of Manpower and Training, and also served as Louisiana's Director of Minority Business Development. He's been in the insurance industry a long while, 15 years as a regulator, and four years as a consultant.

"I came to Georgia as a national VP with Primerica, assisting agents in getting certified and working with regulators. I'm now a representative for AFLAC, the largest supplemental insurance company in the country.

"As the term indicates, it supplements your primary insurance policies. Your supplemental carrier pays funds directly to you in the event of an accident or injury. You decide where to apply them whether to your co-payments or to your other living expenses like rent or mortgage, food or transportation.

"AFLAC policies are typically very affordable, with premiums running as little as $6 a week, and payouts can be very lucrative. AFLAC coverage is also portable. If you join while working from Business X and get a better offer to go to work for Business Y whether they have AFLAC or not, not only you can take that coverage with you, its cost stays at the same rate. If you sign in 2007 you keep it at the same rate in 2010 or ad infinitum until you reach your maximum age, unless you change the type of coverage.

"The greatest thing about this job, is that I get paid for helping people. I walk into small businesses all the time and ask if they offer benefits to their people. It's not that they don't want to, it's not that they don't care, it's that the margins are very tough. Here's the thing about AFLAC - it doesn't cost the employers anything. And in any workplace where three or more employees come in, we offer a deeply discounted group rate.

So we are helping black businesses be more competitive with other, larger firms by enabling employee access to benefit packages which would otherwise be unavailable.

"All that said, AFLAC is not a substitute for major medical insurance. It's a shame that our country has not had the political will to provide medical insurance to everybody. But in the situation as it exists now, we are striving to make complete benefit packages more possible in situations where it would otherwise be beyond reach.

"Black Americans, if you look at us as an economic power would be among the top dozen on the planet. How much better off would we be if that wealth were deployed and recirculated within our communities? True, we don't have some of the basic advantages - there are no black owned supermarket chains I know of, so we are reliant on the Krogers and the Publix and others, but there are still things we can do.

"So the work of the Atlanta Black Agenda and the Business Resource Center is so vitally important. The BRC provides some of the necessary tools for cooperation between our churches, our businesses and our community organizations. It's a place where we can be mutually supportive of each other, and work for the advancement of all our communities. That's why I stand with the BRC, and why if you're in business, you should to. It's time to get on board."

Providence Missionary Baptist Church will celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the pastorate of Rev.Dr. Gerald E. Durley at the Sheraton Gateway Saturday August 18. Tickets are $50. For more information call 404-752-6869

Woods Memorial Baptist Church holds its Summer Revival Wednesday July 11, through Friday July 13 at 5865 Old National Highway in College Park GA 30349. Featured speaker is the powerful pastor of Jackson Memorial Baptist, Rev. Gregory Sutton. All are welcome.

Elizabeth Baptist Church humbly invites all to its Family & Friends Days, Saturday and Sunday July 28 and 29. Saturday services are at 6PM, and Sundays at 7:30, 9:30 and 12 noon. Bring 3 unsaved or unchurched friends or family members to share and worship. Casual attire, of course.