BALTIMORE – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the nation’s foremost civil rights organization, has announced that Ambassador Patrick Gaspard will be awarded the prestigious Spingarn Medal during the NAACP’s 110th Annual Convention taking place in Detroit, Michigan on July 24.
The award recognizes Gaspard’s lifelong commitment to equality and civil rights. Gaspard, a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, moved with his parents to the United States when he was three years old. He served as political director for President Barack Obama in the White House and as the Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee, overseeing the party committee’s efforts to re-elect President Obama.
In 2013, President Obama nominated Gaspard to the post of United States ambassador to South Africa. He worked to strengthen civil society and worked in partnership with the South African government to develop the country’s healthcare infrastructure and to support innovations in local governance. He also worked to connect South African entrepreneurs to United States markets; develop clean, renewable, and efficient energy technologies; and to end wildlife trafficking.
“Patrick Gaspard is a global champion for civil and human rights. Hiscontributions to campaigns to end police brutality, improve access to affordable health care, and increase dignity for working families is unparalleled,”said Derrick Johnson, NAACP President and CEO.For over 100 years, we have honored leaders who have served as pillars in the fight for justice and this year’s selection of the Patrick Gaspard is no exception.”
“The NAACP has been a beacon and an inspiration to me my entire life; Its leaders blazed the trails we now walk, and helped make my career, and the careers of countless other organizers and activists, possible,” said Gaspard. “The previous recipients of this incredible honor are among my greatest heroes, who showed us what dedication and the courage of our convictions could achieve. To be in their company is beyond humbling. I am enormously grateful for this recognition, and will do all that I can to try, now and in the years to come, to live up to its promise.”
“Ambassador Gaspard’s service within the Labor Movement as well as his tenure as a member of the Obama administration has always inured to the benefit of all Americans,” said Leon W. Russell, NAACP Chairman, National Board of Directors. “His service in the diplomatic corps as Ambassador to South Africa during a challenging period of that nation’s development was stellar.”
The NAACP Spingarn award was established in 1914 by the late Joel E. Spingarn then Chairman of the NAACP Board of Directors. It was given annually until his death in 1939. The medal is awarded “for the highest or noblest achievement by a living African American during the preceding year or years.” A fund to continue the award was set up by his will, thus, the NAACP has continued to present this award. Previous recipients of this award include: Mrs. Daisy Bates (Little Rock Nine), Jesse L. Jackson, Myrlie Evers-Williams, Earl G. Graves Sr., Oprah Winfrey, Cecily Tyson, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier and the Honorable Nathaniel Jones. Tickets to the Spingarn Dinner can be purchased on the NAACP Convention website here.
ABOUT NAACP 110TH CONVENTION: Other highlights will include a Presidential Candidates Forum, a legislative session, a CEO Roundtable, LGBTQ workshop plus the highly anticipated NAACP Experience retail expo and diversity career fair. More information about the 110thAnnual NAACP National Convention, including a detailed schedule of events may be found by visiting naacpconvention.org. Media interested in covering the event should apply for press credentials here.
WASHINGTON – At a full Committee hearing entitled, “Diversity in the Boardroom: Examining Proposals to Increase the Diversity of America’s Boards,” Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), Chairwoman of the House Committee on Financial Services, gave the following opening statement:
Today, this Committee convenes for a hearing on the lack of racial, ethnic and gender diversity on federal and corporate boards.
Strong diversity in the boardroom is critical to continued U. S. competitiveness and to ensuring that consumers of all backgrounds are served and not excluded. Unfortunately, corporate and federal boards are not living up to their responsibility to reflect America’s rich diversity.
According to the Alliance for Board Diversity, over 80 percent of new board directors at Fortune 500 companies in 2017 were white males. The Federal government also has a long way to go. For example, our own Federal Reserve System has been in existence since 1913, but it wasn’t until 2017 that Raphael Bostic became the very first African-American and first openly gay man to serve as a Federal Reserve Bank president.
At the same time, America continues to become more demographically diverse. According to the 2018 Census projections, youthful minorities will be the leading source of future workers, taxpayers and consumers.
In our May 1 Diversity and Inclusion Subcommittee hearing entitled, “Good for the Bottom Line: Reviewing the Business Case for Diversity,” we set the record straight that highly inclusive companies:
· Outperform their competitors;
· Rate themselves 170% better at innovation; and
· Generate 1.4 times more revenue.
Despite the clear benefits of inclusivity and diversity, white males still remain in the majority of seats on corporate and federal boards. Women of color in particular have been excluded from participation on boards. Although some reports show that the percentages of women on boards may be increasing, the raw numbers reveal that compared to white males and white women, African-American, Asian and Latina women still have the fewest seats. In order to understand these trends, we must continue to have access to board diversity data.
Diversity is one of the best investments a company can make. Diverse boards help intentionally guide companies and industry toward business solutions that maximize returns on that diversity investment.
Before us today are witnesses who can share perspectives on the status of board demographics. I look forward to drilling down on the current state of board diversity and discussing solutions so that more women and minorities can be appointed to board seats.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), is the Chairwoman of the House Committee on Financial Services.
This is a photo of a car plowing into pedestrians and vehicles on the mall in Charlottesville during a white supremacist rally. The driver hit the knot of cars and people at high speed, then backed up and fled the scene.
The man who drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Va., killing one person and injuring 35 has been sentenced to spending the rest of his life in prison. A federal judge issued the sentence of life without the possibility of parole on Friday for self-proclaimed neo-Nazi James Fields Jr., 22, of the Toledo, Ohio, area. The judge’s punishment, announced in a Charlottesville courtroom, came after numerous survivors delivered emotional testimony about the psychological and physical toll the attack caused. After the hearing, prosecutors described the 2017 attack as heinous. “It was cold-blooded. It was motivated by deep-seated racial animus,” Thomas Cullen, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, told reporters. He said Fields’ lethal car-plowing was calculated, calling it “a hate-inspired act of domestic terrorism.” “Charlottesville is never going to be the same,” Cullen said. “It will be with this community, and the commonwealth of Virginia, and this country, for a long time.” Survivors who testified included Rosia Parker, a longtime civil rights activist in Charlottesville. She told the court she watched the attack from just feet away. “You could have done anything else but what you did,” Parker said, according to The Associated Press. “You deserve everything that you get.” In legal filings presented to the judge on Friday, Fields’ lawyers said while he committed a “terrible crime,” they asked the judge to also consider Fields’ “traumatic childhood and his mental illness,” wrote Fields’ federal public defender, Lisa Lorish. Federal prosecutors had asked the judge for a life sentence for Fields. A plea deal brokered in March took away the possibility of the death penalty, and federal prosecutors and Fields’ lawyers agreed that federal sentencing guidelines called for a life sentence. As part of the deal, Fields pleaded guilty to 29 of the 30 federal hate crimes he facedand is not eligible for parole. Prosecutors had said Fields’ crimes were “so horrendous — and the maiming of innocents so severe — that they outweigh any factors the defendant may argue form a basis for leniency,” according to a sentencing document filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Kavanaugh before the Friday hearing. Last week, Fields’ attorneys asked for something shorter than a life sentence, citing Fields’ age and history of mental illness. Fields has already been convicted of separate state charges for murdering 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of other people. The jury in that case recommended a life sentence plus 419 years and $480,000 in fines. Sentencing in that case is set for July 15. Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, said in Aprilthat she was satisfied with Fields’ federal guilty plea and was not intent on his getting the death penalty. “There’s no point in killing him. It would not bring back Heather,” she told reporters. Fields was 20 when he drove his Dodge Challengerthrough the night from Ohio to attend Unite the Right, a white nationalist rally, in August 2017. The weekend turned deadly when Fields accelerated his car into the group of protesters. Two Virginia State Police troopers investigating the day’s events also died when the helicopter they were in crashed. Before he was sentenced on Friday, Fields offered an apology for “the hurt and loss I have caused,” the AP reported. Lawyers for Fields wrote the court to say that he used Twitter in search of community and “quickly learned that provocative and hateful comments led to more exposure,” leading him to follow white supremacist accounts, including Richard Spencer and Mike Peinovich. Fields’ lawyers wrote that he found out about the Unite the Right rally through its organizers’ online recruiting campaign. His attorneys say he had no intent to commit a violent act, instead describing the attack as a “impulsive, angry and aggressive decision.” President Trump said afterwardthat there was “blame on both sides” for the violence in the college town.
By Mark Hedin, Ethnic Media News Services Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Ethnic Media Services
Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Ethnic Media Services 2020 Census logo (TriceEdneyWire.com) – The Census Bureau has said it expects to hire about a half-million people nationwide to help in its all-important counting of everybody living in the United States, something the government has done every 10 years since 1790. That half-million hiring target is a sizable decrease from the last census, in 2010, when the bureau was more dependent on shoe leather than silicon to get the work done. Instead of the 635,000 people hired in 2010 to knock on doors to fill out questionnaires with people who hadn’t gotten theirs to the mailbox, in 2020, for the first time, the government is counting on people filling out their forms online. The half-million Census Bureau jobs are open to any U.S. citizen who can pass a background check, is at least 18 and possesses a Social Security number. In California, census officials project they will fill or already have filled about 12,800 positions. “It’s a relatively fluid number, just a projection,” said Celeste Jimenez, assistant regional census manager based in Los Angeles. That’s because for “enumerators,” the biggest category of census workers, the number of people hired will depend on how many people didn’t complete their census questionnaires promptly next year, leading the Census Bureau to hire people who know their communities and languages and can go out into the field and come back with completed questionnaires from the non-responders. This year, the Census Bureau is focused on setting up and staffing offices across the country and checking and updating the list of addresses used to send people reminders and instructions on filling out the 2020 Census questionnaire online when it is released in mid-March. The next wave of hiring, for “listers” who will do the address verification work this year, is under way. Those jobs pay from $16.50 to $33 per hour and are expected to last only for a couple of months, including paid training. To apply for these positions, go to https://2020census.gov/en/jobs.html. Yolanda Lazcano, recruiting coordinator for the “Los Angeles Region” ꟷ which covers the entire West Coast from California to Alaska, plus Hawaii, Idaho and Nevada is hoping to recruit 11,000 applicants for approximately 3,500 lister positions in California. Next year, after mailings are sent out with instructions on the legally required process of filling out the census questionnaires, the biggest wave of hiring will begin: for “field staff” or “enumerators” to do the “non-response follow-up” work that in large part consists of knocking on doors at addresses where residents didn’t file completed questionnaires. These positions also will be filled through the Census Bureau website: https://2020census.gov/en/jobs.html. The Census Bureau hopes that having people file their questionnaires online will yield billions of dollars in savings on the shoe leather it’s always needed to get those questionnaires completed. It expects at least half of the country’s more than 300 million people to take the online option. Nonetheless, Lazcano expects that each of California’s 30 census offices will need about 300 enumerators. In the past, with questionnaires submitted through snail mail, the cost per person of gathering census data had grown to $92 in 2010, from just $16 in 1970, as measured in constant dollars. The ability to bridge language barriers will be invaluable, and in fact is a requirement for some of the managerial positions the Census Bureau still has open in California, such as this one for a Spanish speaker in Bakersfield (https://census.gov/about/census-careers/opportunities/positions/region-field/cfm/LARO-CFM-CA22.html) or this one for a Chinese-language speaker in the Contra Costa County city of Concord: (https://census.gov/about/census-careers/opportunities/positions/region-field/cfm/LARO-CFM-CA47.html). (The application period for those two positions closes June 14.) The Census Bureau is touting its jobs as ideal for people just starting their working life who need to establish a record of reliability, for people who can use the frequently evening or weekend hours to supplement jobs they already have, or for retirees who would like to re-enter the workforce in a limited way. As for the background checks, Lazcano said that hiring will be on a case by case basis, so having a felony conviction, for instance, isn’t necessarily a disqualifier. Lazcano said bilingual census staff will be needed wherever 5% or more of a community is believed to primarily use another language. Payday comes every week and people using their cars will be reimbursed. Although the jobs are in most cases temporary, the work occasionally can lead to a career.million people nationwide to help in its all-important counting of everybody living in the United States, something the government has done every 10 years since 1790. That half-million hiring target is a sizable decrease from the last census, in 2010, when the bureau was more dependent on shoe leather than silicon to get the work done. Instead of the 635,000 people hired in 2010 to knock on doors to fill out questionnaires with people who hadn’t gotten theirs to the mailbox, in 2020, for the first time, the government is counting on people filling out their forms online. The half-million Census Bureau jobs are open to any U.S. citizen who can pass a background check, is at least 18 and possesses a Social Security number. In California, census officials project they will fill or already have filled about 12,800 positions. “It’s a relatively fluid number, just a projection,” said Celeste Jimenez, assistant regional census manager based in Los Angeles. That’s because for “enumerators,” the biggest category of census workers, the number of people hired will depend on how many people didn’t complete their census questionnaires promptly next year, leading the Census Bureau to hire people who know their communities and languages and can go out into the field and come back with completed questionnaires from the non-responders. This year, the Census Bureau is focused on setting up and staffing offices across the country and checking and updating the list of addresses used to send people reminders and instructions on filling out the 2020 Census questionnaire online when it is released in mid-March. The next wave of hiring, for “listers” who will do the address verification work this year, is under way. Those jobs pay from $16.50 to $33 per hour and are expected to last only for a couple of months, including paid training. To apply for these positions, go to https://2020census.gov/en/jobs.html. Yolanda Lazcano, recruiting coordinator for the “Los Angeles Region” ꟷ which covers the entire West Coast from California to Alaska, plus Hawaii, Idaho and Nevada is hoping to recruit 11,000 applicants for approximately 3,500 lister positions in California. Next year, after mailings are sent out with instructions on the legally required process of filling out the census questionnaires, the biggest wave of hiring will begin: for “field staff” or “enumerators” to do the “non-response follow-up” work that in large part consists of knocking on doors at addresses where residents didn’t file completed questionnaires. These positions also will be filled through the Census Bureau website: https://2020census.gov/en/jobs.html. The Census Bureau hopes that having people file their questionnaires online will yield billions of dollars in savings on the shoe leather it’s always needed to get those questionnaires completed. It expects at least half of the country’s more than 300 million people to take the online option. Nonetheless, Lazcano expects that each of California’s 30 census offices will need about 300 enumerators. In the past, with questionnaires submitted through snail mail, the cost per person of gathering census data had grown to $92 in 2010, from just $16 in 1970, as measured in constant dollars. The ability to bridge language barriers will be invaluable, and in fact is a requirement for some of the managerial positions the Census Bureau still has open in California, such as this one for a Spanish speaker in Bakersfield (https://census.gov/about/census-careers/opportunities/positions/region-field/cfm/LARO-CFM-CA22.html) or this one for a Chinese-language speaker in the Contra Costa County city of Concord: (https://census.gov/about/census-careers/opportunities/positions/region-field/cfm/LARO-CFM-CA47.html). (The application period for those two positions closes June 14.) The Census Bureau is touting its jobs as ideal for people just starting their working life who need to establish a record of reliability, for people who can use the frequently evening or weekend hours to supplement jobs they already have, or for retirees who would like to re-enter the workforce in a limited way. As for the background checks, Lazcano said that hiring will be on a case by case basis, so having a felony conviction, for instance, isn’t necessarily a disqualifier. Lazcano said bilingual census staff will be needed wherever 5% or more of a community is believed to primarily use another language. Payday comes every week and people using their cars will be reimbursed. Although the jobs are in most cases temporary, the work occasionally can lead to a career.
Rev. Martin Luther King, at Atlanta Univ. for SCLC-sponsored student conf. (Photo by Howard Sochurek//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
TriceEdneyWire.com) – In 1970, only two years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his widow Coretta Scott King received the horrific news that haters had shot into her husband’s crypt in Atlanta, using it for target practice. Though grieved by the news, she conceded it was an omen that even in his grave the assassination of Dr. King would continue by fabrications and vile assaults on her husband’s character. To her, the words, “you can kill the dream, but not the dreamer,” were not just a catchy mantra. She used them to brace her for the backlash she feared would come. The recent trove of salacious and ill-reported old rumors being bandied about by Pulitzer Prize winner David Garrow falls seamlessly into that anticipated outcome. Mrs. King who died in 2006 had often shared with me her distrust of Garrow because of his close ties to the F.B.I., an agency that has historically schemed to nullify Black leaders and according to former FBI agent Donald Wilson, agents cheered in the Atlanta bureau upon news of his death.. The controversial information was obtained from F.B.I. bugging of hotel visits as Dr. King traveled across the country. The newest scandalous claims, according to an FBI agent, place Dr. King in a hotel room when a minister friend of his, now deceased, raped a woman, and King “looked on, laughed and offered advice” and that he also fathered a child with a mistress. The information Garrow reportedly uncovered was recently reported in Standpoint, a conservative British magazine along with an article labeling King a “sexual predator” and “the Harvey Weinstein of the civil rights movement.” As the news reverberated in London, Keith Magee, a senior scholar at the University College London(UCL) expressed his outrage. “This is part of the right wing’s offensive to dismantle and destroy everything revered by people of color. As President Trump visited London, certain people couldn’t bear to see a Black man being more respected than Trump, so there was a move to destroy Dr. King’s image.” Meanwhile, several right-wing news outlets are blowing up the fabricated scandal; in one instance calling for the dismantling of Dr. King’s statue on the mall in the nation’s capital. Clayborne Carson is King’s biography and oversees the Dr. King records headquartered at Stanford University. He says he has seen the same information Garrow has but reached a different conclusion. “None of this is new. Garrow is talking about a recently added summary of a transcript of a 1964 recording from the Willard Hotel that others, including Mrs. King, have said they did not hear Martin’s voice on in. The added summary was four layers removed from the actual recording. This supposedly new information comes from an anonymous source in a single paragraph in an F.B.I. report. You have to ask how could anyone conclude King looked at a rape from an audio recording in a room where he was not present.” In my Coretta King memoir, “My Life, My Love, My Legacy, “ she talked about this material mailed to her home on Nov. 2, 1964, that her sources later confirmed were dispatched by the F.B I. “I set up our reel-to-reel recorder and listened. I have read scores of reports talking about the scurrilous activities of my husband but once again, there was nothing at all incriminating on the tape. It was a social event with people laughing and telling dirty jokes. But I did not hear Martin’s voice on it, and there was nothing about sex or anything else resembling the lies J. Edgar and the F.B.I. were spreading.” Although she and other aides dismissed the tape, she could not dismiss the poorly typed letter in the package, suggesting the information to be released to the press was so damaging King should commit suicide. It read: “King we’ve found you out… You are done for there is only one way out.. You have thirty- four days before you are exposed and publicly defamed.” What should be made clear is the letter was sent 34 days before Martin was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize but was not opened until the couple returned from the Nobel ceremonies in Norway. Mrs. King said that Hoover hated Dr. King and was outraged that King was receiving the honor he felt he deserved. “Our source told us Hoover had ordered the doctored tape to be sent to me in the hopes I would divorce Martin, which would bring him down. Despite all the rumors, Martin and I did not take the bait.” Believing the FBI is a friend of Black people would require amnesia as the agency has historically worked to nullify and destroy Black leaders, author Anthony Summers says in his Hoover biography entitled “Official and Confidential.” The long list includes orchestrating the jailing and deportation of the fiery Jamaican leader Marcus Garvey, bugging and blackballing the great singer Paul Robeson, the ruthless assault on the Black Panthers and the well-documented COINTELPRO, the FBI program waged in the 1960’s to prevent the rise of a Black Messiah, generally thought to be Dr. King. Over the years, Mrs. King has defended her husband’s reputation attesting he was faithful to his marriage. Others, however, such as Carson, a historian, do not put King in a category of perfection. “There are no perfect men, but it is still wrong to use undocumented, tainted evidence to smear a man when history shows that many men with documented sordid private lives, still remain heroes.” While the scandal is brewing, the words of Mrs. King are worth remembering: They may kill the dreamer, but Dr. King’s dream of diversity and justice will outlive his enemies. Dr. Barbara Reynolds a former editorial writer and columnist for USA TODAY, has written for numerous publications, such as The Washington Post, Essence Magazine, Playboy Magazine, and the Trice Edney News Wire. She is an author of seven books. The latest is Coretta Scott King, My Life, My Love, My Legacy.
Karen Baynes-Dunning, SPLC’s interim president and CEO; Bryan Fair, SPLC Board Chair
Following a tumultuous change in leadership, including the firing of its co-founder and the resignation of its president, the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the nation’s leading civil rights organizations, has two African Americans leading the Montgomery, Alabama-based organization.
Bryan Fair, Thomas E. Skinner Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law, is SPLC’s board chairman, and Karen Baynes-Dunning is the organization’s interim president and CEO, succeeding Richard Cohen, who resigned in May in the wake of a scandal precipitated by the ouster of Morris Dees, SPLC’s co-founder.
Baynes-Dunning, who will remain in her position until SPLC completes a nationwide search for a permanent president and CEO, is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley Law School. She also served as a juvenile court judge and as a visiting professor at Emory University School of Law and as an associate professor at the University of Alabama.
After serving for 15 years as president and CEO, Cohen resigned in May. SPLC fired Dees in March.
In a front-page article published in SPLC Report, the organization’s newspaper, Fair said the past few months have been challenging, but he expects the organization to become stronger.
Father Augustus Tolton, the Roman Catholic Church’s first Black priest, who is slated to become a saint, was forced to attend seminary in Rome because no American school would admit him despite his intellect, special abilities (he spoke several languages) and his devotion to the church because of his race.
Tolton, a former slave from Missouri, attended seminary at The Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide.
Father Augustus Tolton is destined for sainthood
He arrived in Rome on March 21, 1880. Church officials ordained him as a priest on Holy Saturday, April 24, 1885, at Basilica St. Lateran Church in Rome.
Tolton lived in Rome for six years as one of 70 seminarians who attended the school and had come from different parts of the world. The other seminarians called him Gus, for U.S.
What they didn’t call him was “nigger” or go out of their way to make him feel uncomfortable or unwanted, according to his biography.
In his free time, he walked around the neighborhoods of the “Eternal City”, sketching more than 600 churches and the city’s architecture in his artist’s notebook.
Tolton’s career will soon make another dramatic turn.
On Wednesday, Pope Francisapproved a decree recognizing Tolton’s “heroic virtues,” which is a step in the process toward sainthood, following a five-year investigation by the church, which began in 2010 when Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George announced Tolton’s cause for canonization. Pope Francis made Toltonvenerablewithin the church, which is two steps away from canonization.
On November 4, 2011, Chicago dedicated “Honorary Father Augustus Tolton Street.”The honorary street sign is located at the corners of 41st Street between State Street and Michigan Avenue.
Other events honoring Father Tolton also have taken place throughout Chicago, where he founded in 1889 the parish of St. Monica at 36th and Dearborn Streets for black Catholics. He was parish priest until his death in 1897 from heatstroke. Father Tolton was only 43.
Born into slavery
Tolton’s historical journey began on a small plantation in 1854 in Monroe County, Missouri, where slaveholders that owned his family baptized him a Catholic.
In a dangerous escape to the Underground Railroad city of Quincy, Ill., from Missouri, his mother led the family to freedom. Confederate soldiers shot at the family, but no one was wounded.
His father escaped slavery – and probably underwrote the family’s successful escape. He was a member of the Colored Infantry in the Union Army. He reportedly died in a prison camp in Arkansas, according to The Catholic Telegraph, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
After ordination, Father Tolton believed he would be assigned to a parish in Africa because of racism which was sewn deeply into America’s fabric. Catholic leaders, however, had other plans. They sent him to U.S.
Roman Catholic authorities believed it was time America lived up to its self-image as an enlightened, “Christian nation.”He was assigned to St. Peter Church in Quincy, Illinois, where he had grown up after escaping slavery.
When he first arrived in America, however, he gave his first Mass on American soil atSt. Benedict the Moor Churchbefore a majority black congregation in New York City.
It was the first time congregants had seen a Black Catholic priest. Many parishioners traveled from other towns and other states to see and hear him. In Quincy, it was a different story. The new pastor of St. Boniface Church referred to Tolton as that “nigger priest.” The Catholic Church discouraged blacks from attending Mass. In Chicago, priests in white parishes often called blacks “niggers” and told them they weren’t welcome to pray to God among the white Christian worshippers. Blacks were so poor that it was heartbreaking. They attended Mass to keep warm because they did not have shoes or adequate clothing. After three years in Quincy, the Roman Catholic Church reassigned Father Tolton to Chicago. A parade welcomed him to the city. Now the church has opened the door to his sainthood.
The monument in Nashville’s Centennial Park lists the names of more than 500 Confederate soldiers.
By Nina Golgowski
Defaced Nashville Confederate monument
A Tennessee monument honoring hundreds of Confederate soldiers was painted over the weekend to read “They were racists.”
Police said the vandalism, which was discovered Monday in Nashville’s Centennial Park, likely occurred sometime late Sunday. Metro Nashville Police Department Capt. Chris Taylor told the Tennessean there are surveillance cameras in the park that authorities will review.
The parks department removed the red paint, some of which had been splashed across the monument, a police spokesperson told HuffPost on Tuesday.
Park and city officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The bronze monument, called the Confederate Private Monument, features a single Confederate soldier. He is seated above a plaque listing the names of more than 500 members of the Frank Cheatham Bivouac, a camp that was named after a Confederate general following the war. It was commissioned in 1903 and dedicated in 1909, according to the Smithsonian’s website.
This type of vandalism is rare, Taylor told the Tennesseean.
“The parks do experience vandalism, usually it’s tagging, more of a neutral nature. This is more focused, obviously, with a political statement associated,” he said. “A political-nature vandalism hasn’t happened in at least seven or eight years.”
There has been a rise in vandalism to Confederate War memorials across the country amid growing protests to have them removed.
A monument erected in 1903 for Confederate soldiers in Austin, Texas, was similarly painted earlier this month with the word “RACISTS.”
A monument to a Confederate commander in Harrisonburg, Virginia, was also found vandalized with eggs, raw meat and other substances, according to local station WHSV.
In April, a monument honoring Confederate soldiers in a cemetery in Durham, North Carolina, was found vandalized for the second time. That monument was erected in 2014 by the Durham camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the News Observer reported.
People examining the vandalism in Nashville’s park on Monday expressed shock and disappointment while speaking with a local reporter.
“I don’t think that this helps anything. I don’t think this moves the conversation forward. This is just someone who wanted attention,” Meehan Rahman, who was visiting Nashville from Pennsylvania, told 5 News.
“People don’t take the time to think about it but there were controversial figures in the Civil War that were unfortunately racist and then there were men who were just following what their state believed in and they were just soldiers,” he said. “It’s like, not everyone who was fighting in the union was fighting for civil rights.”
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. and Rev. Dr. William Barber II
(TriceEdneyWire.com) – This week in Washington, the powers that be are hearing from a vital
new democratic force in this country.
For three days, the Poor People’s Campaign will bring poor and low-wage Americans to the nation’s capital to call for a moral renewal in this nation. They will question many of those who are seeking the Democratic nomination for president. Congressional hearings will showcase their Poor People’s Moral Budget.
Their actions should be above the fold of every newspaper in America; they should lead the news shows and fill the talk shows. A movement for common sense and social justice is building, putting every politician on notice: lead or get out of the way, a new moral majority is building and demanding change.
As the co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign, the Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, write in their forward, this movement is not partisan. It calls not for liberal or conservative reforms, but for a moral renewal. It is not a deep-pocket lobby. It is mobilizing the 144 million Americans who are poor or one crisis away from poverty into a “new and unsettling force” to “revive the heart of democracy in America.”
This movement launched on Mother’s Day in May 2018. In 40 days, it triggered 200 actions across many states with 5,000 nonviolent demonstrators committing civil disobedience, and millions following the protests online. Forty states now have coordinating committees build a coalition of poor people and people of faith and conscience across lines of race, religion, region and other lines of division.
They are morally outraged that the richest nation in the world would in a “willful act of policy violence” condemn 140 million — more than 40 percent of the population — to live in poverty or near poverty. This includes 39 million children, 60 percent — 26 million — of African Americans, 64 percent — 38 million — of Latinos, more than one-third — 66 million — of white Americans.
These realities — and the extreme inequality that scars this society — pre-date the Trump administration, but now Trump is fanning increasing policy violence against the poor. In response, the Poor People’s Campaign is doing deep organizing and power building among the poor, turning them from victims to subject actors in history.
This week, the campaign releases their Poor People’s Moral Budget. It details authoritatively that the cost of our current inequality, the cost of mass poverty is far greater than what it would cost to invest in people, put them to work at a living wage and guarantee basic economic and political rights. It costs society big time to not provide health care or quality education or clean water and air, to suppress voting rights and to keep wages low.
The moral budget is detailed and authoritatively sourced. The numbers are clear, as is the conclusion.
As the document concludes, “We have been investing in killing people; we most now invest in life. We have been investing in systemic racism and voter suppression; we must now invest in expanding democracy. We have been investing in punishing the poor; we must now invest in the welfare of all. We have been investing in the wealthy and corporations; we must now invest in the people who build this country.”
This is not a time for incremental change, but for fundamental transformation of our priorities and our direction. The budget details large reforms — from automatic voter registration, a living wage, health care for all, quality education from pre-k through college, investment in clean energy and modern infrastructure. It details how these and other reforms can be easily afforded by fair taxes on the wealthy and corporations and by ending our effort to police the world.
The Poor People’s Campaign picks up the unfinished work of Dr. Martin Luther King. It realizes that ending the policy of violence on the poor at home cannot be achieved without challenging the costly endless wars and constant arms buildup that only make us less secure. It understands that change will come not from the top down, not from our corrupted big money politics, but from the poor, the worker, people of conscience coming together to revive our democracy and to change our course.
In these troubled times, the promise of this new force is powerful. Across the country, working and poor people are beginning to move. If this movement can continue to grow, it will transform our politics. And it is the only force that can.
The Greene County Commission acted on various considerations at its monthly meeting held Monday, June 10, 2019. The commission approved Lee’s Wildlife Services’ proposal to trap and remove Beavers under designated roads where Beaver dams are erected. According to engineer Branch, nine sites have been targeted. Branch explained that this is a situation we have to continuously manage in the county.
According to action taken at the meeting, the Commission will be seeking to fill a part-time labor position for the Solid Waste Department as well as a van driver for the Eutaw Nutrition Site.
The commission also acted on the following:
Approved an ABC license for Atkins’ Bar-B-Q.
Approved the county’s contract renewal with Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Approved Mr. J.E. Morrow to serve on the County Board of Equalization.
Approved Ms. Dotha Williams to serve as District 5 representative on E911 Board.
Tabled appointment to E911 Board for District 2.
Approved Engineer Willie Branch’s request to submit HRRP application.
Authorized Engineer Branch to proceed with allocating remaining federal funds for infrastructure.
Approved travel for CFO to County Government Institute June 19-20, 2019 in Prattville; and travel for office manager to ACCA Annual Convention August 20-22, 2019 in Perdido Beach.
Approved the finance report, payment of claims and budget amendments.
The CFO reported the following bank balances as of May 19, 2019: CitizenTrust Bank – $3,410,113.02; Merchants & Farmers Bank – $1,957,146.20; Bank of New York – $955,253.61; and CD. Bond Investments – $932,332.28
