The Greene County Democrat

Category: Newswire

  • Newswire : MLK50: Fifty years after Kerner and King, racism still matters

    By Derrick Johnson (President and CEO, National NAACP)

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    Derrick Johnson
    “Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”
    – Report by the Kerner Commission, 1968

    Fifty years ago, the nation was rocked by the brutal and public assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Eerily echoing the title of King’s final book “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?”, his murder sent a powerful shock wave through the soul of America resulting in urban rebellions springing up in over 100 cities and placing the nation at a political and social crossroads.
    As cities burned with rage at King’s murder, most of America had already dismissed and forgotten the damning and prophetic report published only a month earlier by the presidential commission chaired by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner. Officially called the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the Kerner Commission identified systemic racism and poverty as the causes of the major Black rebellions in both Newark and Detroit the previous summer. The report warned that America was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal” and offered concrete suggestions for confronting immediately this “deepening racial division.”
    However, the Kerner Report’s recommendations for reconciliation and progress were never heeded; in fact, they were actively disregarded. Despite commissioning the report, President Lyndon B. Johnson went out of his way to suppress the spread of its findings. The consequences have been severe: “Whereas the Kerner Commission called for ‘massive and sustained’ investment in economic, employment and education initiatives, over the last 50 years America has pursued ‘massive and sustained’ incarceration framed as ‘law and order,’ while the ‘war on drugs’ has failed,” says a new book, “Healing Our Divided Society,” co-edited by former Sen. Fred Harris, the sole surviving member of the Kerner Commission.
    Today, many of America’s Black communities bear the sustained scars of physical and economic injuries. Even in Baltimore, the headquartered home of the NAACP, communities are still reeling from the police-custody death of Freddie Gray. The deaths of Black Americans like Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, and, most recently, Stephon Clark—shot eight times by police in his own backyard—remind us we are still not seen as full-citizens by many in our nation.
    In our recent Economic Inclusion Reports on Baltimore, Charlotte and St. Louis—three cities impacted by protests and revolts linked to police violence and misconduct—the NAACP noted “similarities between the past economic realities of African Americans during Reconstruction and legalized racism and the current economic realities more than 150 years after the abolition of slavery and promise of freedom.”
    Our reports expose that African Americans are “still living in highly segregated communities and school districts, comprising the lowest median household income, highest unemployment rate, highest poverty rate, and ongoing barriers to the creation of small businesses.” For example, the mid-2000 housing crisis caused by Wall Street excesses led to trillions of dollars in bailouts and the decimation of major portions of African American wealth—wrapped up in their foreclosed homes. This recession removed huge swaths of intergenerational wealth and many families have yet to recover.
    As the leader of the oldest and largest civil rights organization, I recognize the temporal connection between America’s past and present identities. Our country has let the pestilent wound caused by a continuing legacy of racism fester. This chronic condition is aggravated by the often-silent progressives who still cannot grasp the stark emotional reality of what partial freedom feels like to a full human being.
    In his commencement address to Oberlin College in 1965, King said, “We must face the honest fact that we still have a long, long way to go before the problem of racial injustice is solved.”
    Half a century after Kerner’s report and King’s assassination, our government continues to perpetuate an unacceptable level of systemic and structural racism, which permeates our communities and fuels our protest.
    As we remember King and Kerner, we will not do so in solemn reflection, but instead with resolve. We commit to making the social and political healing America has continued to defer become a reality. The progress for which NAACP members fight rings in harmony with the Kerner Commission’s unapologetic condemnation of White America’s failure to make democracy real for all of us.
    Derrick Johnson is the president and CEO of the NAACP, America’s largest civil rights organization. Follow him on Twitter @DerrickNAACP.

  • Newswire : Rwandans ‘remember, renew and unite’ on anniversary of genocide

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    Rwandan people observe anniversary of 1994 genocide

    Apr. 9, 2018 (GIN) – Rwandans at home and abroad marked the April 1994 Genocide that took the lives of more than a million Rwandans in just 100 days.

    In Kenya, hundreds of Rwandan citizens held a procession in Nairobi. Ambassador James Kimonyo said the walk offered a time to reflect on what happened in 1994, why it happened and what they should do to ensure that the incident does not happen again.

    Marking the anniversary in Nigeria, Rwandan High Commissioner Stanislas Kamanzi praised the resilience of the Rwandan spirit that has aided the reconciliation and development of the nation.

    At home in Kigali, Rwandan President Paul Kagame and First Lady Jeannette Kagame and the dean of the foreign diplomatic corps laid a wreath at the mass grave that houses more than 250,000 remains of the genocide victims.

    On Saturday, Apr. 7, hundreds of youth joined in a “Walk to Remember” from the Rwandan parliamentary building to Amahoro National Stadium in Kigali for a candlelight service.

    The activities officially last a week, but the commemoration continues up to July 4. No form of entertainment is allowed during the main commemoration week from April 7 to 13.

    UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres commented: “States have a fundamental responsibility to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”.

    “It is imperative that we unite to prevent such atrocities from occurring, and that the international community sends a strong message to perpetrators that they will be held accountable. To save people at risk, we must go beyond words.

    “Today, we remember all those who were murdered and reflect on the suffering of the survivors, who have shown that reconciliation is possible, even after a tragedy of such monumental proportions.

    The head of the National Commission for Fight against Genocide, Dr Jean Damascene Bizimana, restated that the massacre began long before the 100 days when former president Habyarimana began using anti-Tutsi rhetoric to consolidate his power.

    “Even those who don’t commemorate with us know the truth,” said President Kagame. “As we say in Kinyarwanda, ‘truth goes through fire and remains intact’.”

  • Newswire : 50th anniversary of King assassination: Coretta King’s last wish to expose secrets about her husband’s killing is yet unfulfilled

     

    By Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds

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    Coretta Scott King : Library of Congress

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Efforts must be increased to break down the wall of secrecy surrounding the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was gunned down on April 4, 1968 as he stepped out onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
    That was one of the lasting wishes of his wife, Coretta Scott King. It was underscored by the findings of a rarely discussed December 9, 1999 jury trial in Memphis which concluded that King was the victim of assassination by a conspiracy involving the Memphis Police Department as well as local, state and federal government agencies, movement insiders and the Mafia. Mrs. King died on January 31, 2006. The secrecy shrouding the death of Dr. King is still in place.
    As the nation prepares to commemorate the death of the martyred leader hopefully there should be a renewed effort to bare submerged information that could finally set the record straight about the role of U.S. governmental agencies in a plan to eliminate King who had emerged as one who millions perceive as the most successful African-American protest leader of the 21st Century.
    In a civil suit filed by Mrs. King in Memphis, a jury of six Whites and six Blacks, affirmed the trial’s evidence which identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter and agreed that Ray had been set up to take the blame.
    “The trial only proved what our family had maintained all along,” Mrs. King told me in her memoir Coretta, “My Life, My Live, My Legacy.”
    The jury’s proceeding went on for four weeks. The 2,735-page transcript contains the sworn testimony and dispositions of more than 70 law enforcement agents, reporters, civil rights leaders and witnesses, some of whose statements contrasted starkly with official reports.
    Of particular interest was Loyd Jowers, owner of Jim’s Grill, which was located beneath the rooming house where the shots were supposedly fired. Jowers said that he had been given $100,000 by a man with Mafia connections to help provide a cover for the shooting. Jowers said he took the rifle from a man named Raul, moments after Dr. King was shot and hid it under his counter until it was picked up the next morning by the shooter, a Memphis police officer.
    More than 2,000 reporters covered the O.J. Simpson trial, but the mainstream media virtually ignored the sworn testimony of law enforcement agents and others who provided important insight into the assassination of Dr. King. The testimony included:

    Ed Redditt, a Memphis detective and fireman Floyd Newsum, the only two Blacks assigned to provide security for Dr. King were reassigned on April 3, the day before the assassination. Redditt said he was guarded by a man, who identified himself as a Secret Service agent, which raised questions of why an agent would, whose job is usually to focus on the president. be concerned with a lowly Memphis police detective.
    Judge Joe Brown, an experienced Memphis court official as well as a seasoned hunter, told the jury he believed the rifle that prosecutors used to implicate Ray was not the rifle used to kill Dr. King. “That weapon literally could not have hit the broad side of a barn,” he said.
    Don Wilson, an FBI agent working in the Atlanta Bureau, said that in searching Ray’s car, several days after the assassination he found pieces of a handwritten note with the name “Raul” on it ,the same name of the man who had handed Jowers the rifle for safekeeping after the assassination. Wilson, who is presently retired, also told me how the agents laughed and joked about the murder of Dr. King.

    The assassination of Dr. King raises serious question about FBI involvement. After King questioned the FBI’s sincerity in investigating the murder of civil rights activists, Hoover in a November 1965 press conference, shot back with a war of words, condemning King as “the most notorious liar in the country,” as well as a communist.
    King quickly became a target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO, an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program that had the stated mission to surveil, infiltrate, discredit and disrupt domestic groups that the FBI deemed subversive. (This was the same high-profile program that led to the dismantling and murder of several Black Panthers.)
    One well-reported incident of COINTELPRO was a suicide letter and an audio tape the FBI secretly sent to the home of Dr. King on Nov. 3, 1964, shortly before he was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. It accused him of committing indecent sexual acts and suggested that the only way King could save himself from national disgrace was to commit suicide. Mrs. King played the tape and said she heard people telling dirty jokes, but there was no reference to her husband.
    A 1977 court order resulted in the King papers being sealed for 50 years and despite several inquiries from various groups, the King files reportedly numbering about 700,000 pages are not scheduled to be opened until the year 2027. The sealing only increases fears that many pertinent records will be destroyed before that date leaving many questions unanswered.
    Old fears are being rekindled as several reports suggest that the FBI’s COINTELPRO is being reincarnated to monitor, surveil and contain so called, “black identity extremists.” This information using that label was obtained by Foreign Policy Magazine from an unofficial FBI report.
    The document, according to the magazine, warns that “black identity extremists” pose a growing threat to law enforcement and that police attacks on Black Americans could spur “premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence” against the police. As confirmed in The Root, the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., was the catalyst for widespread violence, the FBI report says, concluding that continued “alleged” police abuses have fueled more violence.
    While the report didn’t specifically mention Black Lives Matters, it is difficult not to connect the dots. There are several Black Lives Matter activists who report being put under surveillance, which sounds like the tactics of CONINTELPRO created to neutralize the activities of Black activists.
    Mrs. King called for all files to be opened to finally lay out all the “facts pertinent to the truth of who killed my beloved Martin.” So far, her wish has been denied. And like in so many denials, history could well be on the way to being repeated.

  • Newswire : On 50th Anniversary of King Assassination, We have work to do

     

    NEWS ANALYSIS by Rev. Jesse Jackson

     

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     Dr. ML King at 1963 March on Washington

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – The 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination comes amid a fierce struggle for the soul of America. We will celebrate the progress that has been made since Dr. King was taken from us in 1968, and decry the agenda that is still unfinished.
    But we cannot ignore the systematic effort – from the highest offices of government – to roll back his legacy, to make America more separate and unequal, to reverse the progress of the last years. From the White House and across the great cabinets of the federal government, civil rights are being systematically undermined.
    President Trump has set the tone personally, slandering immigrants and seeking to ban Muslims, while noting there were “very fine people” among the neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville. He pardoned former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, allowing him to avoid accountability for racially profiling Latinos. He terminated the Obama program that protected the DACA children, and sabotaged every bipartisan effort to protect these children who know no other country than the U.S. He called for NFL players protesting against discrimination to be fired, while slurring “s–hole countries” in Africa. In different departments, his appointees have moved relentlessly to roll back enforcement of civil rights, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions leading the way.
    DOJ lawyers reversed their position on voting rights cases, like that in Texas, essentially opening the door for voter suppression. Sessions forced a review of Obama-era consent decrees with police departments, even as Trump praised brutal police tactics. He drastically limited the use of court-enforced consent decrees themselves, eviscerating the primary instrument of civil rights enforcement.
    Sessions has also declared that civil rights laws protecting against workplace discrimination do not apply to transgender workers. His labor secretary disbanded a 40-year-old division enforcing laws against discrimination in the workplace. His education secretary, billionaire Betsy DeVos, disemboweled the department’s office of civil rights and pushed to move public funds to support voucher programs, while calling for deep cuts in the staff and budget of the education department.
    His secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Dr. Ben Carson, has gutted enforcement of civil rights and fair housing laws, at the very moment the department must disburse billions in disaster recovery Community Block Grants that could help reverse past wrongs. Carson even pushed to strike the words“inclusive” and “free from discrimination” from HUD’s mission statement.Abroad, Trump has expanded the endless wars without victory that King warned against.
    He has slashed taxes on the wealthy and corporations while targeting basic programs for the vulnerable – from food stamps to Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid – for deep cuts. He sought to repeal Obamacare, which would have deprived millions of health care.This is a direct and sustained assault on Dr. King’s legacy.
    Dr. King fought for integration against discrimination. He marched for equal opportunity against entrenched inequality. He championed non-violence against violence. He campaigned for voting rights, knowing that democracy offered the best chance for change. He called for an end to the war in Vietnam, realizing that the bombs being dropped on Vietnam were landing in the poor neighborhoods of four cities.
    At the end of his life, he was organizing a broad coalition of poor people, across lines of race, religion and region, to march on Washington to demand basic economic rights. No representative of the administration will appear in Memphis as we mark the anniversary of his assassination. More reason that a new generation must take up the mission of his life.He taught us that “change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.” He knew that the progress that the Civil Rights Movement was making would generate a fierce reaction. He called on us to “rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world.” We have work to do.

  • Newswire : In South Africa, pain and shock at passing of Winnie Madikizela Mandela

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      Winnie Mandela

    (TriceEdneyWire.com/GIN) – Tributes to anti-apartheid icon Winnie Madikizela Mandela filled the South African radio air waves this week as news of her untimely passing reached the far corners of the nation and the continent.
    Heart-rending classics from the American songbook – from The Song for Mama by Boyz to Men to Donny Hathaway’s A Song for You – expressed the somber mood in the nation while social media filled with remembrances by those whose lives she touched – sometimes with a single word, sometimes with a long eulogy.
    “The big tree has fallen the #MotherOfTheNation, a nation builder ulale kahle mama you have fought a good fight,you’ll remain in our hearts,” wrote AndileKaMajola on Twitter. “How I wish to have met you,” wrote Sego Bae we EFF from South Africa’s city of Randburg. “You are a woman of steel and no one will ever take away that from you mama Winnie Nonzamo Mandela. May your lovely soul rest in peace.”
    The former wife of Robbin Island prisoner later president Nelson Mandela, Winnie had been in and out of Netcare Milpark Hospital battling a kidney infection, according to her spokesman, Victor Dlamini. A message from the family read: “Altho we are gutted by her passing, we are grateful for the gift of her life.”
    Recently, she was an observer during the ANC’s struggle over corruption allegations that enveloped past president Jacob Zuma. She expressed confidence in the new leadership of the ANC under Cyril Ramaphosa. “We’re going to surprise the country. I’ve told them they must watch this space. I’m back,” she declared.
    Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela was one of nine children – six of them daughters – of two teachers and devout Methodists, Columbus Madikizela and his wife, Gertrude.
    When Madikizela-Mandela moved to Johannesburg, she studied social work. There she met lawyer and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in 1957 and they married a year later and had two children.
    The marriage was short-lived as he was arrested in 1963 and sentenced to life imprisonment for treason. Mandela was eventually released in 1990.
    Winnie was a strong single parent who raised two children while her “larger than life” husband was in prison. This was a time that the ANC and the country overall was “gendered”, spurring her struggle for women’s rights.
    In May 1969, Winnie was jailed supposedly for political agitation, but more likely for simply being the wife of Nelson Mandela. Held for 17 months, she spent most of the time in solitary confinement, and was interrogated and kept awake for up to five days at a time.
    The picture of her hand-in-hand with Mandela as he walked free from prison after 27 years became one of the most recognizable symbols of the anti-apartheid struggle.
    The Mandela family says it will release details of the memorial and funeral services once
    these have been finalized. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced an official
    memorial on April 14 in Orlando Stadium in Soweto.
    GLOBAL INFORMATION NETWORK creates and distributes news and feature articles on current affairs in Africa to media outlets, scholars, students and activists in the U.S. and Canada. Our goal is to introduce important new voices on topics relevant to Americans, to increase the perspectives available to readers in North America and to bring into their view information about global issues that are overlooked or under-reported by mainstream media.

     

  • Newswire : Clark autopsy reveals he was shot in the back six times

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    Renowned pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu reveals his findings of the independent autopsy he performed on the body of Stephon Clark. Dr. Omalu said Clark, who was killed by Sacramento police officers, was shot six times in the back. PHOTO/Robert Maryland

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Sacramento Observer

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Trice Edney News Wire) – The eight bullets that struck unarmed Stephon Clark hit him in the back or side, and none came from the front, clearly refuting the contention by police that Clark was moving toward them when they gunned him down. Those are the findings of an independent autopsy performed at the request of Stephon’s family by internationally renowned pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu.

    “These findings from the independent autopsy contradict the police narrative that we’ve been told,” said attorney Benjamin Crump, who has been retained by members of the Clark family to obtain justice.

    “From the time this investigation began, statements provided by the Sacramento Police Department have proven to be self-serving, untrustworthy, and unreliable. This independent autopsy affirms that Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances,” Crump continued.
    “The children lost their father and deserve justice. We are conducting a thorough investigation to determine how this happened,” co-counsel Attorney Brian Panish said.
    Crump said the Clark family requested the independent autopsy after Stephon’s body was released to them by the medical examiner. Dr. Omalu has been widely hailed as the man who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, and its relationship to brain damage in football players. His story was illustrated in the theatrical film “Concussion,” in which he was portrayed by Will Smith.
    According to Dr. Omalu’s findings, Clark was shot eight times with no front entry wounds. His independent autopsy identified four entry wounds in the lower part of Clark’s back; one in the side of his neck, with an exit wound elsewhere in his neck; one in the back of his neck; one under an armpit entering from the side, with an exit wound on the other side of his body; and one in the outside of a leg.
    Crump said this information shows that Clark clearly was not moving toward officers in a threatening manner and they could have given him time to comply with their commands to show them his hands at the time they opened fire.
    “Beyond the fact that police at first said Stephon’s cellphone was mistaken for a gun, but then changed their story to say they thought it was a crowbar, our autopsy has shown that he was shot repeatedly in the back – which is certainly not characteristic of someone menacing officers or preparing an imminent attack,” Crump said.
    Crump said he expects that authorities will try to dispute or minimize Dr. Omalu’s findings because they directly contradict the official story of this unjustifiable shooting.
    “When Dr. Omalu said football players were suffering brain damage, the NFL tried to dismiss his findings as completely wrong, but later had to reverse themselves. I’m sure the police will similarly try to discredit his findings about Stephon Clark, but once again the truth will win out.”

  • Newswire : No criminal charges for officers Involved in the shooting death of Alton Sterling

    By Michele McCalope (NNPA Member/The Drum)

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     Quinyetta McMillon, the mother of Alton Sterling’s son Cameron, speaks to reporters following the announcement that the officers involved in the shooting death of Alton Sterling would not be charged. (Michele McCalope/The Dru

    BATON ROUGE—Following a 10-month investigation into the extrajudicial killing of Alton Sterling, Louisiana’s Attorney General Jeff Landry announced that his office would not pursue criminal charges against the officers involved.
    Sterling, a 37-year-old Black man, was shot six times by a White Baton Rouge police officer on July 5, 2016, in front of a Triple S convenience store. The officers, Howie Lake II and Blane Salamoni were responding to a call about a man with a gun, who was assaulting someone. Sterling had been selling CDs in front of the store with permission from the owner.
    Officials said Salamoni shot Sterling, while Lake, his partner, looked on. “After careful thought and review of the evidence, the Louisiana Department of Justice will not proceed with prosecution of Officers Lake or Salamoni,” Landry said. “This decision was not taken lightly.”
    Landry said his office thoroughly investigated the case, even re-interviewing witnesses in the case. He said the evidence just didn’t warrant pursuing criminal charges.
    “We must analyze the evidence and draw a conclusion, but we’re always mindful of the family,” Landry said. “I know the Sterling family is hurting.”
    The Attorney General’s office received the case in May 2017, after the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Louisiana determined during its own investigation that there was not enough evidence to pursue criminal charges or civil rights violations.
    Family members, community leaders, and the Sterling family’s attorneys said that they weren’t surprised by the latest findings.
    “We didn’t get any justice,’ said Quinyetta McMillon, the mother of Alton Sterling’s son, Cameron. “The system failed us. We’re all out of tears. We all knew what it was going to be. We may not get justice down on this earth, but when God comes…as a family, we just got to stay strong.”
    Community activist Gary Chambers was more direct. “It was total B.S.,” Chambers said.
    Sandra Sterling, Alton Sterling’s aunt, said that, putting “Blane Salamoni back on the street, you’re putting a murderer back on the street.” Sandra Sterling has suffered two strokes since the incident. “Shame on you Blane Salamoni,” she said. “You took an oath to protect and serve, not protect and kill.”
    Sterling’s attorneys are filing a civil suit and have called for the firing of both officers, who have remained on paid leave since the incident. Together, the officers have been paid more than $130,000 in salary while on leave.
    “We’re putting the city of Baton Rouge, the mayor and the metro council on notice,” said attorney Michael Adams. “We’re disappointed, but this fight is not over. We have filed a civil suit and justice will be served. The officers will have to talk to us and explain their actions. Baton Rouge will have to hear the truth about what happened. We plan to put it all out there in the light of day.”
    Meanwhile, Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul said a disciplinary hearing has been scheduled for the officers, this week, so police can determine if any policies or procedures were violated.
    The officers will have a chance to tell their side of the story to the chief and his three deputies. The hearing will not be open to the public.
    “We’re asking the community for a little more patience and to keep our community in your prayers, so we can begin the healing process,” Paul said.
    Paul also said all videos, audio, and 911 calls regarding the incident will be released after the disciplinary hearings for the officers conclude.
    Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, who has already said publicly that she wants the officers fired, said during the press conference that she still feels that way. “Our focus for our community, city and parish is to have justice and equity not just for some, but for everyone,” Broome said.
    The Drum is a member publication of the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

  • Newswire : Linda Brown, named plaintiff in landmark school desegregation case, has died

    By Frederick H. Lowe

     

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     Linda Brown in front of school
    Linda Brown, the named plaintiff in the 1954 landmark civil rights case “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka” in which the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the nation’s public schools to desegregate, has died.
    Ms. Brown died Sunday, March 25, in Topeka, Kansas, where she was born on February 20, 1942. She was 76 and had lived in Topeka most of her life. Tyson Williams, a spokesman for Peaceful Rest Funeral Chapel, confirmed her death.
    She became part of American history on May 17, 1954, when a unanimous Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, the court’s 1896 decision that declared separate but equal facilities were constitutional.
    In its 1954 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were inherently unequal and ordered the desegregation of the public schools with “all deliberate speed.”
    The fight to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson began years earlier. In 1950, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. asked group of black parents if they would attempt to enroll their children in all-white schools knowing they would be denied admission because of school segregation.
    Brown, who was in third-grade, lived in an ethnically diverse neighborhood but like the area’s other black children, Brown had to walk four miles to a school that was segregated for black children although Sumner Elementary, an all-white school, was only four blocks away.
    Her mother and father were Leola and Oliver Brown. They were parents of three girls. Brown said her father, a pastor, questioned why his daughter had to walk so far to attend school. “My father pondered, ‘Why? Why should my child walk four miles when there is a school only four blocks away,” she recalled.
    The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. wanted to file a lawsuit on behalf of 13 families nationwide, challenging De Jure school segregation, which is based on laws or actions of the state. It is unlike De facto segregation which happens by fact rather than by legal requirement.
    Thurgood Marshall, who in 1967 would become the first African-American Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, was one of two lead attorneys and strategists. The other was Charles Hamilton Houston, former dean of Howard University Law School.
    In 1952, the NAACP filed a lawsuit consolidating five cases. Linda Brown’s name was alphabetically at the top of the list of plaintiffs, making her the named plaintiff in the consolidated case.
    When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision, Linda Brown was in junior high school and at a grade level that had been integrated before the 1954 decision.
    In the late 1970s, Brown worked with the ACLU. She argued the district’s schools were still segregated. The Court of Appeals ordered three new schools constructed.
    Although she was a civil rights activist, speaker and education consultant, Brown complained that the media treated her as a lofty historical figure, not a human being.
    After the Supreme Court ruling, the family moved in 1959 to Springfield, Missouri. Two years later, her father died. Remaining members of the family returned to Topeka.
    She attended Washburn University and Kansas State University
    Linda Brown was married three times. She was divorced and later widowed. She married William Thompson in the mid-1990s.
    Sherrilyn Ifill, president and Director-Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said “Linda Brown is one of that special band of heroic young people who, along with her family, courageously fought to end the ultimate symbol of white supremacy-racial segregation in the public schools.”
    Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer tweeted: “Linda Brown’s life reminds us that sometimes the most unlikely people can have an incredible impact and that by serving our community we can truly change the world.”

  • Newswire : Black cop Involved in deadly shooting of unarmed Stephon Clark

     

    But it’s not that unusual; Black cops are more likely to shoot to death other blacks

    By Frederick H. Lowe
    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

    Stephon Clark  and  a family photo

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – A Black Sacramento, Calif., police officer and his partner shot to death a 22-year-old unarmed African-American man whose killing has sparked protests, more unanswered questions about deadly police shootings, the reliability of witness identification and whether the police killed the wrong man for a property crime.
    The office of John Burris, a prominent civil rights attorney based in Oakland, California, on Friday identified the officers as Jared Robinet and Terrence Mercadal. They have been assigned to desk duty, following the deadly shooting of Stephon Clark. Mercadal is Black.
    A protest march in the aftermath of the shooting shut down Interstate 5 and almost disrupted the game between the Sacramento Kings and the Atlanta Hawks. Angry protestors chanting Clark’s name and “Black Lives Matter” also blocked Golden 1 Center’s entrances, the Kings’ home court. This forced employees to the lock doors, preventing most of the fans from getting inside. Nonetheless, a small number of fans did get inside, and the game went on though it was delayed. Sacramento won.
    Vivek Ranadive, the Kings’ majority owner, spoke to the crowd from center court after the game. Ranadive called for unity. NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal also owns a piece of the Kings.
    Sacramento residents were protesting the March 18 deadly shooting of Clark in his grandmother’s backyard. The two police officers each fired 10 shots at Clark, claiming he was armed with a gun. He was holding only a cell phone.
    After the shooting, the police officers reloaded their guns and waited five minutes for other cops to arrive before administering CPR. The cops also switched off their microphones and body cameras.
    Police were dispatched to the 7500 block of 29th Street after a caller claimed a man was breaking car and truck windows. The caller said the alleged thief was a man about 6’1’’ to 6’ 3” inches tall and thin. He did not mention the person’s race. The caller said the burglar was wearing a hooded sweatshirt with white dots and stripes on the front.
    The Sacramento Sheriff’s Department helicopter trailed the suspect in the air, leading police to Clark’s grandmother’s backyard where Robinet and Mercadal confronted him. Clark approached them with his cellphone in one hand. The cops started shooting, later claiming that they believed he was armed and that they feared for their lives.
    Clark was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, with a “North Face” logo on its front. Clark’s brother said Stephon was either 5’8’ or 5’9.”
    The Right Man or Not?
    On Wednesday, a reporter asked Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn, who is Black, if he believes Clark was the man neighbor reported was breaking car windows.
    “Do I believe he was the one based on what we know now? I believe that, yeah, but can we factually say it yet? No. But when and if we can, we will put that out,” Hahn told The Sacramento Bee newspaper.
    In the book “Chokehold: Policing Black Men,” author Paul Butler points out that the most-common fear about African-American men is that they are responsible for committing most crimes.
    “For young black men, this stereotype is so deeply entrenched that unless they affirmatively demonstrate they are not criminals, people assume they are,” Butler wrote.
    For example, a White woman in Evanston, Illinois, near Chicago, saw a Black man getting into a car. She called police and said he was trying to steal it.
    Four Evanston cops rushed the man, later identified as Lawrence Crosby, a Ph.D student at Northwestern University, and violently threw him to the ground. It was later learned that the 25-year-old Crosby was getting into his own car.
    Butler added another surprising fact. Although most deadly shootings of Black men by White cops receive a lot of media attention, studies show it is more likely for a Black cop to shoot a Black person.
    A study by ProPublica, referenced in Butler’s book, analyzed federal data from deadly shootings from 2010 to 2012. Seventy-eight percent of people African-American officers shot were Black compared to 46 percent of the people killed by White cops.
    The deadly shooting of Clark occurred in Sacramento where Advance Peace, a civic organization, and police have developed a unique program to reduce shootings and deadly shootings.
    .

  • Newswire : Fifty years Later, Fair Housing Act has failed to deliver full justice

    By Charlene Crowell

    drking_presidentjohnson_ovaloffice_wc_web120.jpg
    Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Oval Office with President Lyndon B. Johnson

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – Although golden anniversaries are often considered milestone moments accompanied by festive celebrations, two such observances in April 2018 are bittersweet memories for much of Black America. One took the life of an unparalleled preacher, orator, author, activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. The other marks the enactment of what many would argue is the strongest of the civil rights laws enacted during the 1960s: The Fair Housing Act.

    As observances begin across the country, now is an appropriate time to recall how fair housing was a key issue for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, Chicago became his chosen battleground for fair housing, bringing a national spotlight to the multiple ills of segregated and sub-standard housing. In early 1966, Dr. King moved his family into one of the city’s ghetto apartments to dramatize how people were forced to live.

    On August 5, 1966 during a march through an all-White neighborhood, a riot exploded with racial taunts and hurled bricks. Remarking on the hostility encountered, Dr. King said, “I have seen many demonstrations in the South; but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today.”

    By the time Dr. King’s life was snuffed out by a sniper’s bullet in Memphis on April 4, 1968, the cause of fair housing was also on the minds of Congress. The same day Dr. King was martyred, the U.S. Senate passed a fair housing bill and sent it to the House of Representatives for further consideration. On April 10, the House passed the measure.

    With a signing ceremony the following day, on April 11, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signature enacted a federal law that banned discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing. Legally, no longer could people be rejected due to their race, religion, or ethnicity.

    In his remarks, President Johnson said in part, “With this bill, the voice of justice speaks again. It proclaims that fair housing for all – all human beings who live in this country – is now a part of the American way of life…We all know that the roots of injustice run deep.”

    Unfortunately, 50 years of legal roots supporting fair housing has failed to deliver full justice. For many Blacks and other people of color, fair housing today remains just as elusive as it was in 1968.

    A year-long analysis of 31 million records by the Center for Investigative Reporting found that:

    The homeownership gap between Blacks and Whites is now wider than it was during the Jim Crow era. Another independent research report by the Economic Policy Institute found that the difference in Black homeownership between 1968 and 2018 is virtually the same – 41.1 percent (1968) compared to 41.2 percent (2018);

    In 61 metro areas across the country, Blacks were 2.7 times more likely than Whites to be denied a conventional mortgage loan;

    As the number of non-bank mortgage lenders rise, these businesses are not required to adhere to the Community Reinvestment Act that requires lending to low-income borrowers and in blighted areas.
    Each year, the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) releases an analysis of the annual Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the most comprehensive mortgage lending report, and the only one that includes data on lending by race and ethnicity. CRL’s most recent analysisfound that in 2016, conventional mortgage lenders continue to serve white and wealthier borrowers. Despite broad support for large banks following the most recent housing crisis, Blacks, Latinos, and other borrowers of color are mostly accessing government-insured mortgage programs such as FHA or VA. Even upper income Blacks are overrepresented in FHA.

    In plain English, that means fewer banks are offer mortgage loans to average Americans and talks about the future of mortgage lending fail to provide for greater access. Once again, the same communities that suffered the worst losses during the Great Recession remain at a financial disadvantage. Homeownership is still a solid wealth building block. As home values appreciate, financial gains are achieved. But for those shut out of these opportunities, the chance to safely build family wealth is denied.
    Further, a recent report by CRL and the National Urban League analyzing a proposed draft of legislation from Senators Bob Corker (TN) and Mark Warner (VA) to reform the nation’s housing finance system found it will harm access to affordable mortgage loans and the overall housing market. The proposal removes key affordability mechanism such as the broad duty to serve, including affordable housing goals. It also weakens fair lending enforcement under the Fair Housing Act by inserting business judgment protection for guarantors’ decisions on access – despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that such claims are permissible under the Fair Housing Act.
    Just as President Johnson stated 50 years ago, “We have come some of the way, not near all of it. There is much yet to do.”

    Despite the passage of a half century, our journey towards fair housing remains unfinished

    Charlene Crowell is the Center for Responsible Lending’s Communications Deputy Director. She can be reached at Charlene.crowell@responsiblelending.org.