This right reverend is not dearly beloved by everyone, but that's because he's made it his business for the past four years to remind the emperors of the Fort Worth ISD -- the school board, the superintendent, and his cohorts -- that they prance around buck-nekkid when it comes to the education of minority students here. While it is true, as his detractors charge, that he's too quick to play the race card when some injustice pops up on the school ground, it's also true that most of the time he's right. Bell is one of a dying breed, a protester with a cause who won't shut up, and his old-style, black-preacher voice with a cadence that rises and falls somewhere between Martin's and Jesse's, brings an eloquence and persuasiveness to his public speaking that has no peer in Fort Worth public life today. He should be on the school board, not picketing outside.

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