Guess Who’s Back, Back Again
Activist Clinton Adams Jr., was heard singing Eminem‘s latest hit, “Without Me,” in the halls of Kansas City School District offices recently.
For the past month, Adams — who has been repeatedly rebuked for interfering with district operations — has been back to his old ways, haunting the halls of 1211 McGee, bumbling in and out of offices and sticking his nose in people’s business, according to several district sources.
He’s been more or less absent from the central office since the late 1990s, sources say, when former superintendent Benjamin Demps banished him from the premises and forbade staff from speaking with him. Back then, Kathy Walter-Mack, the district’s top in-house lawyer, was believed to be Adams’ chief source of inside information until Demps fired her [“Taylor Made,” October 4].
After Demps resigned, Federal Judge Dean Whipple, who presides over the district’s ponderous desegregation case, admonished Bernard Taylor, Demps’ replacement, from allowing a certain “individual to walk the halls of the administrative building.” It was clear to nearly everyone present that the judge was referring to Adams.
But by then, a slim majority of board members had told Taylor to rehire Walter-Mack.
With Walter-Mack back in place, Adams again had an ally inside. Yet his resurrection may have been inevitable with Elma Warrick, a close friend and associate of Adams [“Adams Family,” November 8], still on the board. She selected him to serve on a task force that’s meeting this summer in district headquarters.
So guess who’s back.
On a recent Friday visit, Adams was apparently so happy to be inside district headquarters that he burst into an imitation of the rascally white rapper Eminem, several sources say.
Adams won’t tell us why he decided to bust this particular rhyme near the elevators outside the superintendent’s office on the tenth floor. “You know I have nothing to say to you,” he says before slamming down the phone.
But Eminem’s chorus seems to say it all: Now this looks like a job for me/So everybody just follow me/Cuz we need a little controversy/Cuz it feels so empty without me.
