Greene County Democrat

Category: history

  • Holds Black History Program Eutaw Housing Authority swears in new officials

    black history

    The Eutaw Housing Authority Advisory Board swore in new officials at its regular meeting held February 23, 2016. The ceremony was conducted by City of Eutaw Municipal Judge Grace Stanford.  This event was followed by a Black History Program with a special focus on Greene County.

    LaTarsha Johnson served as mistress of order, followed by a greeting from Jacqueline Davis. Faye L. Tyree recited a reading on Shirley Chisom as a pioneering African-American politician. Chisom was the first African American woman to serve in Congress and the first African American woman to run for President of the United States.
    A panel consisting of Sara Duncan, Ovetta Smith, Leo Branch, Lorenzo French and Derrick Hall reflected by on history. Mrs. Ovetta Smith recalled times pass when she, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Julian Bond worked together to get people registered to vote. She also recalled an incident where Rev. Gilmore was beaten on the side of the head. She felt the injustice of it all just for standing up for what was right.
    Leo Branch recalled the sit-in under the Oak Tree in Forkland singing We Shall Over Come. He recalled when there was a time when we were not allowed to get an education. Now you can. Every child can get the education they need.
    Derrick Hall stated as a young man, his mother instilled in them to put God first, go to school and get the best education you can and respect your elders.
    Ms. Sarah Duncan remembered that Gilmore and Branch where two main pioneers in the Greene County movement.  They had the community support back then. Everyone loved one other; helped one other. “Only when we come together on one accord can we move forward as we did back then. It is important our children know where we came from and why it is important to vote and know our history to make things better for our livelihood,” she stated.
    Lorenzo French recited a Martin Luther King Jr. speech, his last one addressing the garbage workers in Tennessee. The youth present were asked questions and received prizes. Refreshments were served. The Black History program was enjoyed by all.

  • 51st anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday March’ draws thousands to Selma

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    “This is not only a celebration and commemoration of the past but a continuation of the movement and a statement of the struggle for racial, social, political and economic justice that still face us,” said Faya Rose Toure on Sunday at the pre-march rally on the steps of Browns Chapel Church in Selma, Alabama.
    There were 40 events during the March 3-7 weekend that comprise the Bridge Crossing Jubilee in Selma, to commemorate the 51st anniversary of the marches on Bloody Sunday and subsequent marches in 1965 which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.There was a Saturday breakfast to honor footsoldiers of the movement, a parade, a beauty pageant, a Sunday Unity Breakfast, Freedom Flame Banquet, golf tournament, numerous workshops and presentations on history and current struggles. At the Unity Breakfast, Congresswomen Terri Sewell presented a replica of the Footsoldiers Gold Medal, recently awarded by Congress to participants in the 1965 marches, to Hank and Faya Rose Sanders. The Sanders have developed the Bridge Crossing Jubilee and Museum over the past three decades to help people to understand the history of the voting rights struggle in America and continue to work to preserve these basic democratic rights for all people. They said they would place the medal on exhibit in the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma.
    Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina was the keynote speaker at the Unity Breakfast. Clyburn said, “If we fail to learn the lessons of history, then they will repeat. We are seeing some similarities now in our Presidential election to the elections in Germany in 1932, when a demagogue was first elected to office and then became a fascist dictator.”
    “Things that happened before can happen again. Things do not happen in a linear fashion. They go one way and then swing back another way. The people must be ready to intervene and participate in the process.
    “Last year, we were here with a bi-partisan group of 100 Congress people and the President for the Fiftieth Anniversary but the Voting Rights Advancement Act has not had a hearing and not moved one inch since last year. People will show up for the celebration but not the work,” said Clyburn.
    He urged the audience especially young people, not to give up. “Most of us have a resume which lists only the things that went right – not the times that things didn’t go as planned.
    I ran for Congress, three times and lost. I did not win until the fourth time. Many people said three strikes and you’re out, but those are baseball rules. There are no numerical limits on trying in life,” said Clyburn.
    The names of many young Black people killed by police in the past year came up as rallying calls for actions at various times during the weekend. The case of Gregory Gunn who was shot five times, last month, by police in Montgomery was mentioned in the criminal justice workshops. Rev. Kenneth Glascow of The Ordinary People’s Organization (TOPS) introduced the mothers of Christopher Jerome Thomas of Dothan, Alabama and Cameron Massey of Eufala, Alabama. Glascow led a “backwards march” across the bridge, before the larger march, to call attention to the inequities in the justice system and the unresolved pending cases of police violence and misconduct toward Black people.
    In a Saturday workshop at the Center for Non-violence, Truth and Reconciliation, the speaker was Bryant Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative. He spoke about his life experience of working to represent and exonerate prisoners on death row in Alabama. He equated the current killing of young Black men with the prior era of lynching in the South between Reconstruction and the end of World War II. He said over 400 Black people were lynched around the South. His organization is in the process of placing historical markers at the places where these lynchings occurred.
    On Sunday afternoon about 10,000 marchers, including a large contingent of members from Alabama Masonic Lodges and their auxiliaries participated in the reenactment march from Browns Chapel Church through Selma and across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. A post march rally was held in the Memorial Park on the east side of the bridge.

  • Ali’s stance on Vietnam War emboldened MLK to oppose conflict

    By George E. Curry Editor-in-Chief

    EmergeNewsOnline.com

     

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    WASHINGTON – Muhammad Ali’s decision to risk going to jail by opposing the Vietnam War provided Dr. Martin Luther King with the strength to come out against the war publicly for the first time, according to the board chairman of King’s old organization.

    Bernard Lafayette, a longtime Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) field organizer and current board chairman, said in an interview with EmergeNewsOnline.com: “He was the reason Martin Luther King had the courage to come out and take a stand against the war, even though Martin Luther King’s own board was not in favor of it.”

    He added, “I don’t remember any exact quotes, but Muhammad Ali is the one that pushed Martin Luther King to take a stand.”

    Ali, who was a global icon in and out of the boxing ring, died June 3 in a hospital in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he had been admitted with respiratory problems. He was 74 years old. A private funeral service will be held Thursday in his hometown of Louisville, Ky. followed by a public memorial on Friday.

    On April 28, 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted into the U.S. Army, citing religious reasons. He said, “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” Ali, who had converted to Islam three years earlier and changed his name from Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. to Muhammad Ali, was immediately stripped of his heavyweight championship title.

    He was convicted of draft evasion on June 20, 1967, sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000 and banned from boxing for three years. He remained free while his case worked its way through the appeals process.  On June 28, 1971, a unanimous Supreme Court overturned his conviction, granting him conscious objector status.

    Ali’s standoff with the federal government captured the attention of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the preeminent civil rights leader of that period.

    Like Ali, he took a stand against the Vietnam War, a position that was opposed by many of his fellow civil rights warriors, including NAACP Executive Director Roy Wilkins and National Urban League President Whitney Young, Jr. On April 30, 1967 – just two days after Ali refused to take a step forward to be inducted into the Army – King gave a major address against the war at Riverside Church in New York City.

    “I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world,” King said. “I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism.”

    While then-president Lyndon B. Johnson objected to King’s opposition to the war, the nation’s first African American president praised Ali for his unpopular stand. In a statement, President and Mrs. Obama said, “Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all better for it.”

    They explained, “He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.”

    The former heavyweight champion occupied a special place in Black America. Like Joe Lewis had instilled mass pride in an earlier generation, he did the same for the succeeding generation.

    The Louisville, Ky. native won a gold medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome and turned pro later that year. On Feb. 25, 1964, Ali scored an upset knockout over Sonny Liston in the sixth round, becoming heavyweight champion. In addition to predicting the round his opponent would fall, Ali provided the most colorful quotes of any boxer before or afterward.

    “The Louisville Lip,” as he was sometimes known, was famous for saying, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee – his hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see.”

    In case you didn’t get the point, he said, “I done something new for this fight. I wrestled with an alligator. I tussled with a whale. I handcuffed lightening. I thrown thunder in jail. Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. I’m, so mean I make medicine sick.”

    Not all of his lines were original, but that did not seem to matter. For example, he often said, “I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and got into bed before the room was dark.” A variation of that quote is widely attributed to Negro League baseball great Josh Gibson describing Cool Papa Bell. But Ali could get away with claiming it.

    After being banned from boxing, Ali returned to the ring against Jerry Quarry in Atlanta on Oct. 26, 1970. Ali knocked him out in the third round.

    Many of Ali’s fights had catchy titles, most of them supplied by him. His 1971 fight against Joe Frazier was billed as the “Fight of the Century.” He defeated George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle” in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), knocking out Foreman in the eighth round. After splitting two bouts with Joe Frazier, Ali defeated him in 14 rounds in the “Thrilla in Manila.”

    Ali retired in 1981 with a 56-5 record and the only person to hold the heavyweight championship three times. In 1984, he was diagnosed with Parkinson disease.

    “Later, as his physical powers ebbed, he became an even more powerful force for peace and reconciliation around the world,” Obama said of Ali. “We saw a man who said he was so mean he’d make medicine sick reveal a soft spot, visiting children with illness and disability around the world, telling them they, too, could become the greatest. We watched a hero light a torch, and fight his greatest fight of all on the world stage once again; a battle against the disease that ravaged his body, but couldn’t take the spark from his eyes.”

    Jesse L. Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, said of Ali, “He sacrificed the heart of his career and money and glory for his religious beliefs about a war he thought unnecessary and unjust…He was a champion in the ring, but, more than that, a hero beyond the ring. When champions win, people carry them off the field on their shoulders. When heroes win, people ride on their shoulders. We rode on Muhammad Ali’s shoulders.”

    Another civil rights leader, Marc H. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, said: “I believe Muhammad Ali was the greatest athlete of the 20th century. Whether he was the greatest boxer in history may be debated for generations. But none has had a greater impact on American culture and social justice.”

    On Twitter, Rev. Al Sharpton, president and founder of the National Action Network, said Ali “was and always will be the greatest.” Sharpton said, “We should all strive to embody the virtues he possessed.”

    Even Ali’s former opponents had nothing but praise for him. “It’s like a part of me just passed w/him,” George Foreman Tweeted. “It’s hard for me to think about being n a world without Muhammad Ali being alive.”

     

  • Congressional art contest winner depicts police brutality and protests

    By Lauren Victoria Burke (NNPA News Wire Contributor)

    CBC art competition winnerCBC art contest winner

                Cardinal Ritter College Prep High School Senior David Pulphus won this year’s congressional art competition with a painting called “Untitled #1.” The first place winner is from Congressman Lacy Clay’s district (D-Mo.)

    Congressional art competition entitled, “An Artistic Discovery,” features a nationwide art contest coordinated by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The contest recognizes the talents of high school students across America. Over 200 Members of Congress and over 50,000 high schools students have taken part in the popular and competitive program.

    Each year, members of Congress put out a call for students to compete in the contest and the resulting work is displayed on the white walls of a long tunnel that connects House Office Buildings to the U.S. Capitol. The work is seen by members of Congress, staffers, lobbyists and the thousands of visitors to the U.S. Capitol complex each year.

    Inadvertently, the annual art contest has become a reflection of what’s on the minds of young people in America.

    Pulphus’ work is an acrylic painting featuring a downtown street scene with the St. Louis’ iconic arch displayed in the background and three police officers with animal heads, two with guns in hand, and a large group of marchers approaching moving toward the police. The lead marcher carries a sign that says the word “history.” Pulphus’ painting includes several signs, one of which says “Racism Kills,” and another reading “Stop Killing.” On the right you can see man being crucified wearing a graduation cap holding the scales of justice in his hands.

    Pulphus,’ “visually stunning acrylic painting on canvas entitled, “Untitled #1” will be displayed at the U.S. Capitol Complex. Pulphus will travel to Washington, DC, courtesy of Southwest Airlines, to unveil his winning entry. The painting portrays a colorful landscape of symbolic characters representing social injustice, the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri and the lingering elements of inequality in modern American society,” read a May 6, release from Rep. Clay’s office.

    Rep. Clay represents greater St. Louis and Ferguson, Mo., where in August 2014, Black teenager Michael Brown, Jr., was shot and killed by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.

    During an interview with the NNPA News Wire, Rep. Clay was asked about Pulphus’ work. The Congressman will greet the artist in Washington, D.C. and be present with Pulphus,’ when the painting is presented for display in the U.S. Capitol complex.

    “I think that the art work selected for this year — winner of the Congressional art competition has to be the most creative expression that I’ve witnessed over the last 16 years,” Rep. Clay said between votes on the House floor.” I’m very proud of the young man who is the artist responsible for this work he depicts the St. Louis community in the way he envisions it. I respect that and I’m so glad that the judges picked his work number one as the winner.”

    Pulphus’ work will travel to Washington, D.C. in a few weeks where he will attend a reception for all of the winners around the country. This year’s first place winner will receive a scholarship, according to Rep. Clay’s office.

    The contest is in its 32nd year and this is the 16th year that Congressman Clay has conducted the competition in Missouri’s first Congressional District. Terri Sewell, 7th District Alabama Congresswoman also conducts the art competition in her district which includes Greene and many counties in the Alabama Black Belt.

     

  • Jimmy Carter, seeing resurgence of racism in Trump campaign , plans Baptist Conference for Unity

    By LAURIE GOODSTEIN, New York Times

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    Former President Jimmy Carter, who has long put religion and racial reconciliation at the center of his life, is on a mission to heal a racial divide among Baptists and help the country soothe rifts that he believes are getting worse.

    In an interview on Monday, Mr. Carter spoke of a resurgence of open racism, saying, “I don’t feel good, except for one thing: I think the country has been reawakened the last two or three years to the fact that we haven’t resolved the race issue adequately.”

    He said that Republican animosity toward President Obama had “a heavy racial overtone” and that Donald J. Trump’s surprisingly successful campaign for president had “tapped a waiting reservoir there of inherent racism.”

    Mr. Carter conducted telephone interviews to call attention to a summit meeting he plans to hold in Atlanta this fall to bring together white, black, Hispanic and Asian Baptists to work on issues of race and social inequality. Mr. Carter began the effort, called the New Baptist Covenant, in 2007, but it has taken root in only a few cities. The initiative is expanding to enlist Baptist congregations across the country to unite across racial lines.

    Mr. Carter, 91, began treatment last year for cancer that had started in his liver and spread to his brain. He announced in December that doctors had found him free of cancer but that he was still receiving treatments for metastatic melanoma. On Monday, he said he was feeling well.

    Mr. Carter, a Democrat who was the 39th president, grew up on a farm in Plains, Ga., where many of his friends were the black children of neighboring farmhands. He was raised a Southern Baptist and was the first United States president to call himself a born-again Christian, bringing national attention to the evangelical movement.

    Mr. Carter said the election of Mr. Obama was a hopeful sign, but he added, “I think there’s a heavy reaction among some of the racially conscious Republicans against an African-American being president.”

    He said recent reports showing high unemployment and incarceration rates among black people, “combined with the white police attacks on innocent blacks,” had “reawakened” the country to the realization that racism was not resolved in the 1960s and ’70s.

    He said Mr. Trump had violated “basic human rights” when he referred to Mexican immigrants as criminals and called for a ban on Muslims’ entering the country.

    “When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that’s a violation of basic human rights,” said Mr. Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work with the Carter Center in promoting human rights and democracy in many countries.

    Asked why polls showed high support among evangelical Christians for Mr. Trump’s candidacy, Mr. Carter said: “The use of the word evangelical is a misnomer. I consider myself an evangelical as well. And obviously, what most of the news reporters thought were evangelicals are conservative Republicans.”

    “They have a heavy orientation to right-wing political philosophy, and he obviously is a proponent of that concept,” Mr. Carter said, referring to Mr. Trump.

    He pointed out that the evangelicals in the Southern Baptist Convention had aligned themselves with the Republican Party and organized the Moral Majority, a conservative Christian political group, only in the late 1970s, while he was president. Mr. Carter announced that he was leaving the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000, after the denomination solidified its turn to the right and declared that it would not accept women as pastors.

    Mr. Carter founded the New Baptist Covenant by reaching out to black and white Baptist associations, many of which had split many years ago over slavery. Nearly 15,000 people from 30 Baptist associations attended the founding meeting in 2008.

    Hannah McMahan, the executive director of the New Baptist Covenant, said the group had been in a “pilot phase” for the last two years. She said black and white churches had formed partnerships, called covenants, in Dallas; Macon, Ga.; St. Louis; Birmingham, Ala.; and Atlanta. But the process is painstaking, Ms. McMahan said, adding, “What this has given me an appreciation for is how deep the divides are, and that this kind of work will not happen overnight.”

    The work is especially challenging in this climate, said the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was once a pastor. Ebenezer Baptist is participating in the New Baptist Covenant.

    “This is a dark moment in our national conversation,” Pastor Warnock said. “Those of us who understand that we are better together had better raise our voices, because there are others who are trafficking in theater, in paranoia, and they ply the trade of fear as part of their political craft.”

    However, he said, “I’m much more fired up than discouraged, because the ugliness of the rhetoric we’re seeing in this election cycle really just brings into sharp focus the ugly underbelly of bigotry that has always been there.”

     

     

  • The Obama family will live in a 9 bedroom, $5.3 million D.C. mansion after presidency ends

    BY LINDSAY KIMBLE           obama's house in Washington, D. C.-800.jpg

    Home Obama family will lease in Washington, D. C. 

    The Obama family will be served a White House eviction notice come January, but luckily, they’ve already found new digs to lay down roots.

    President Barack Obama, wife Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha, will lease the Kalorama, D.C., mansion of Joe Lockhart and Giovanna Gray, according to Politico. The home, which is 8,200 square feet, was built in 1928 and has nine bedrooms, in addition to eight and a half baths.
    White House officials, contacted by PEOPLE, had no immediate comment on the story.

    According to public record, Lockhart bought the mansion in 2014 for $5,295,000. Lockhart, the former White House Press Secretary for President Bill Clinton and current EVP of communications for the NFL, and wife Gray, a Glamour editor, have relocated to Manhattan, Politico reported.
    The president announced his plans to stay in D.C. after his term ends earlier this year. The family will stay at least until daughter Sasha, who is a sophomore, finishes high school, Obama said.

    Before moving into the White House in 2009, the family lived in Chicago, where Obama was an Illinois state senator and where the family still owns a home.

     

     

  • Black Belt Folk Roots Festival – August 27-28 in Eutaw Annual festival strengthens community bonds

    By: Carol Prejean Zippert

     

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    Months before the tent goes up on the old courthouse square in the center of town, inquiries have steadily poured in seeking confirmation that the annual Black Belt Folk Roots Festival will fill those grounds again on the fourth Saturday and Sunday of August.
    The calls about the festival are a reminder of how the community has taken ownership of this special event. The festival dates are an automatic imprint on the minds and hearts of so many. Local groups plan class reunions, family reunions, vacation time and other summer events on the week end of the festival. The Black Belt Folk Roots Festival itself has become a grand reunion.
    In is 41st year one may ask what is still so attractive about this festival; what is so compelling about this festival?IMG_7373.JPG Is it the array of handmade crafts such as theme designed quilts, baskets of pine needles, bullrush grass and corn shucks, hand-bottomed chairs, wood carvings, leather works and uniquely deigned jewelry? Is it the aroma of the foodways expressed on the grounds calling attention to the soul food dinners, fried fish, chicken, and pork skins, a range of barbeque meats, Polish sausage and bear burgers? The attraction may also be the homemade sweet treats including cakes, pies, funnel cakes, preserved fruits, sno’ cones and homemade ice cream churned on the spot.
    Perhaps the festival crowd returns to be once more enthralled by the ole timey blues music that dominates the sounds of the festival on Saturday. The musicians sing and strum stories of struggle, hardship, loss, pain and perseverance. The ole timey gospel stage that follows at Sunday’s festival brings reassurance that a people’s strong faith, commitment and sacrifice defines how we made it over. The spirit of the gospel music brings out the church in the crowd.
    Most significant, the festival brings together people to see people, to hear people, to touch people and strengthen a community bond they already share.
    The folk artists featured at the festival include craftspersons such as Odessa Rice, Mary Hicks, Martha Kimbrough, Eloise Jeter and Meloneal Hobson.
    Blues artists who return each year include Clarence Davis, The Liberators, Little Jimmie Reed (Leon Atkins), Russell Gulley, Davey Williams and Lemon Harper and others. Sunday’s gospel music is shared by The Echo Singers, the Echo Juniors, The Webb Gospel Singers, The Golden Gates, The Mississippi Traveling Stars, Son of Zion Gospel Duo, New Generation Male Chorus, Mrs. Eddie Mae Brown and more.The two day festival, held on the old courthouse square in the center of town in Eutaw, AL, is open to the public free of charge, The 2016 schedule is Saturday, August 27 from 11:00 a.m to 6:00 p.m.; Sunday August 28 from 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
    The festival is produced by the Society of Folk Arts & Culture. It was started in 1975 by Jane and Hubert Sapp who were part of the Miles College Eutaw Extension Program in an effort to document, preserve and celebrate the history, culture and traditions of the region. For more information contact Carol P. Zippert at 205-372-0525; carolxzippert@aol.com