Greene County Democrat

Tag: Emmett Till

  • Newswire : The real story behind Rosa Parks’ Bus Ride and what’s often overlooked

    Rosa Parks sitting on Montgomery bus

    By Shannon Dawson, NewsOne

     

    This wee,, we give thanks to Rosa Parks, who changed the world with her incredible bravery 70 years ago. On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks ignited one of the most significant civil rights boycotts in American history when she refused to surrender her seat at the front of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, a section reserved for white passengers. As the bus grew crowded and the driver ordered her to move to the back, the area designated for Black riders, Parks stood her ground. That single act of defiance helped launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott and transform the national struggle for civil rights.
    We give thanks to Rosa Parks, who changed the world with her incredible bravery 70 years ago. On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks ignited one of the most significant civil rights boycotts in American history when she refused to surrender her seat at the front of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, a section reserved for white passengers. As the bus grew crowded and the driver ordered her to move to the back, the area designated for Black riders, Parks stood her ground. That single act of defiance helped launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott and transform the national struggle for civil rights.
    According to Women’s History, Rosa Louise McCauley was born Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She attended an industrial school for girls and later enrolled at Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes (now Alabama State University), leaving school to care for her ill grandmother. Growing up in the Jim Crow South, she faced racism and violence firsthand and became involved in civil rights work early in life.
    At 19, she married Raymond Parks, a barber and committed activist. Together, they worked alongside numerous social justice groups, and Rosa eventually became secretary of the Montgomery NAACP. By the time she boarded that bus in 1955, she was already an influential strategist and leader within Alabama’s Civil Rights Movement. She not only resisted unjust treatment that day but also helped coordinate the Montgomery Bus Boycott that followed. Though some tried to reduce her actions to simple fatigue, Parks later made her true motivations clear.
    “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was 42 No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in,” Parks said about her courageous act at the time.
    That December evening, Parks sat in the bus’s middle section, where Black riders could sit but could be forced to move “on the whim of the bus driver,” her website notes. When the bus filled and a white man was left standing, driver James Blake ordered her row to give up their seats. He warned, “You all better make it light on yourselves and give me those seats.” The others “reluctantly” stood, but Parks—thinking of her grandfather and Emmett Till—felt that giving up her seat “wasn’t making it light on ourselves as a people.” Pushed to the brink of frustration, she refused, recalling in an interview, “I felt that if I did stand up, it meant that I approved of the way I was being treated, and I did not approve.”
    After sliding to the window to wait, two officers boarded and arrested her. 
    The civil rights icon was eventually bailed out by local activist and union organizer E.D. Nixon, with support from white allies Virginia and Clifford Durr, an attorney and social reformer active in Montgomery’s civil rights efforts, according to her website. Although already involved in community activism, Parks would soon become even more deeply embedded in the city’s civil rights movement.
    In July 1955, the Durr’s helped secure a scholarship for her to attend an integration workshop at the Highlander Folk School, an experience that strengthened her resolve to challenge the segregated bus system, Stanford University noted. Around that same time, she also connected with the Women’s Political Council (WPC) of Montgomery, an organization that helped bring her case to the spotlight.
    E. D. Nixon, Parks and Attorney Fred Gray also attracted Rev. Martin Luther King, pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, to help spearhead the efforts of the Montgomery Bus Boycott for civil rights and social justice in America.
    Throughout the movement, WPC members drove carpools, organized mass meetings, and coordinated daily operations. Burks said that “members of the Women’s Political Council were trailblazers” who mobilized Black middle-class women to challenge Montgomery’s segregated systems. Their work came at great personal cost; many members, especially educators at Alabama State College, faced retaliation and ultimately relocated after years of pressure.

  • Newswire: House Dem Leader Jeffries blasts Rep. Byron Donald on blasphemous Jim Crow comments

    Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called Donald Trump “a two-bit racial arsonist” and said that the Republican presidential nominee has done nothing, but fan the flames of bigotry. (Freddie Allen/AMG/NNPA)

    By Hakeem Jeffries
    NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    In what quickly turned into a polarizing week for Black Americans, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) delivered a scathing denunciation of Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) on the House floor, while rapper and entrepreneur 50 Cent visited Capitol Hill presumably to advocate for Black entrepreneurs. Both events highlighted the stark divisions within the Black community regarding political allegiances and historical perspectives.
    Donalds, who earlier co-hosted a Donald Trump campaign event for Black voters in Philadelphia, incredulously asserted, “You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative—Black people have always been conservative-minded—but more Black people voted conservatively.”
    Jeffries responded forcefully, condemning Donalds’ remarks as inaccurate and deeply offensive. “Mr. Speaker, it has come to my attention that a so-called leader has made the factually inaccurate statement that Black folks were better off during Jim Crow,” he stated. “That’s an outlandish, outrageous, and out-of-pocket observation.”
    Highlighting the brutal realities of the Jim Crow era, Jeffries continued, “We would not be better off when a young boy named Emmett Till could be brutally murdered without consequence because of Jim Crow. We were not better off when Black women could be sexually assaulted without consequence because of Jim Crow. We would not be better off when people could be systematically lynched without consequence because of Jim Crow. We were not better off when children could be denied a high-quality education without consequence because of Jim Crow. We would not be better off when people could be denied the right to vote without consequence because of Jim Crow. How dare you make such an ignorant observation?”
    The Congressional Black Caucus echoed Jeffries’ condemnation in a statement: “This is a pattern of embracing racist ideologies that we see time and again within the MAGA Republican Party. Rep. Donalds is playing his role as the mouthpiece who will say the quiet parts out loud that many will not say themselves. His comments were shameful and beneath the dignity of a member of the House of Representatives. He should immediately offer an apology to Black Americans for misrepresenting one of the darkest chapters in our history for his own political gain.”
    On the same day, 50 Cent, meeting with lawmakers in a visit hyped as an attempt to advocate for Black entrepreneurs and Black representation in the liquor industry, commented on the political climate. Speaking to CBS News congressional correspondent Nikole Killion, 50 Cent gave a nod to an alarming trend among Black men identifying with the twice-impeached Trump, who is a convicted felon and still under indictment. When asked about his stance in the upcoming presidential election, the rapper, who supported Trump in 2020, stated he hadn’t decided yet but highlighted Trump’s appeal among Black male voters. “I see them identifying with Trump,” he explained, “because they got RICO charges.”
    Trump has more than 50 felony charges pending in three jurisdictions after a Manhattan jury convicted him of 34 felonies related to hush money payments, he made to an adult film actress to cover up their extramarital affair. A New York jury also twice found him guilty of sexually assaulting a woman, while a judge declared the former president committed massive business fraud and ordered Trump to pay nearly $500 million in fines and restitution.
    But the week underscored a significant divide within the Black community, juxtaposing Jeffries’ and the Congressional Black Caucus’s fierce defense of historical accuracy and social justice against Donalds’ and 50 Cent’s perspectives.
    Many noted that Jim Crow laws, enforced through local and federal legislation, relegated Black Americans to second-class citizenship, enforcing racial segregation and instilling systemic violence and terror. That era included the wrongful execution of 14-year-old George Stinney, Jr., convicted by an all-white jury in 1944 after just 10 minutes of deliberation. Stinney’s case epitomized the racial injustice of Jim Crow.
    Jeffries further criticized the romanticization of Black family history during that oppressive period, which included the Scottsboro Boys wrongly accused of raping a white woman in 1931, 14-year-old Emmett Till lynched in 1955 after being falsely accused of whistling at a white girl, and four Black girls murdered in a church bombing in Alabama in 1963? Not gone unnoticed, too, is that Donalds is married to a white woman, something that would have led to his lynching during Jim Crow.
    “You better check yourself before you wreck yourself,” Jeffries assailed. “I yield back.

  • Newswire: After guilty verdicts, Civil Rights Leaders exhort Black America to ‘Never Stop Running for Ahmaud’

    By Stacy Brown, NNPA Newswire

    After nearly two years of pain, suffering, and wondering if the men who killed Ahmaud Arbery would pay for their heinous crime, the 25-year-old’s family finally received justice.
    A Glynn County, Georgia, convicted Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William Bryan of felony murder. “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty,” civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump exclaimed.
    “Nothing will bring back Ahmaud, but his family will have some peace knowing the men who killed him will remain behind bars and can never inflict their brand of evil on another innocent soul,” Crump continued.
    NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson called the verdicts long overdue. “Ahmaud Arbery’s death was unnecessary and fueled by racist ideologies deeply engrained into the fabric of this nation,” Johnson insisted. “Generations of Black people have seen this time and time again, with the murder of Emmett Till, Trayvon Martin, and many others,” he continued.
    “The actions and events perpetrated by the McMichaels and William Bryan leading up to Ahmaud’s death reflect a growing and deepening rift in America that will be its undoing if not addressed on a systemic level. “We must fix what is genuinely harming our nation: white supremacy.”
    The jury found Travis McMichael, who shot Arbery in February 2020, guilty of all nine charges, including malice murder and four counts of felony murder.
    The panel found his father, Gregory, not guilty of malice murder but convicted him on felony murder, unlawful imprisonment, and other charges.
    Bryan escaped a guilty verdict on malice murder, but the jury found him guilty of three felony murder counts, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and criminal intent to commit a felony.
    The men, who also face federal charges, could spend life in prison when sentenced. Judge Timothy Walmsley bound the men over and will soon set a sentencing date.
    “Ahmaud Arbery should be alive today. This tragedy should have never happened,” said Florida Congresswoman Val Demings, who is a Democrat. “I am keeping his family in my prayers. But we must move forward together to dispel the shadows of our past and to ensure the safety and civil rights of every American,” Demings asserted.
    Crump insisted that Black America must keep fighting for civil rights and justice. “This case, by all accounts, should have been opened and closed,” Crump demanded.
    “The violent stalking and lynching of Ahmaud Arbery was documented on video for the world to witness. Yet, because of the deep cracks, flaws, and biases in our systems, we were left to wonder if we would ever see justice,” Crump remarked.
    “[The verdict] indicates progress, but we are nowhere close to the finish line. America, you raised your voices for Ahmaud. Now is not the time to let them quiet. Keep marching. Keep fighting for what is right. And never stop running for Ahmaud.”

  • Newswire: Congress passes historic Anti-Lynching legislation

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent
    @StacyBrownMedia

    Lynching in a small Southern town


    Sixty-five years after the horrific lynching of teenager Emmett Till, the U.S. House of Representatives have finally passed H.R. 35, the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act. The legislation would make lynching a crime under federal law.
    “Today, under the leadership of Representative Bobby Rush (IL-01), and three other Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the House of Representatives finally passed legislation to address the heinous act of lynching by making it a federal crime. The first bill to outlaw lynching was introduced in 1900,” members of the Congressional Black Caucus wrote in a statement.
    “Lynching was a brutal, violent, and often savage public spectacle. They were advertised in newspapers, memorialized in postcards, and souvenirs were made from the victims’ remains,” the CBC, which is chaired by Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif), added.
    A 1930 editorial in Raleigh News and Observer noted the delight of the audience witnessing a lynching as “Men joked loudly at the sight of the bleeding body; girls giggled as the flies fed on the blood that dripped from the Negro’s nose.”
    “Make no mistake: lynching is domestic terrorism. It is a tool that was used during the 256 years of slavery to terrorize enslaved African Americans and discourage them from rebelling,” Bass said.
    “It was used for almost 100 years after the end of slavery to terrorize free African Americans and discourage them from exercising their rights as citizens. Even today, we hear reports of nooses being left on college campuses and workplaces to threaten and harass Black people,” she stated.
    Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Tim Scott (R-SC) applauded the passage of the bill, which is identical to anti-lynching legislation the three introduced in the Senate last year.
    That legislation unanimously passed the Senate. “Today brings us one step closer to finally reconciling a dark chapter in our nation’s history,” Booker stated in a release. “Lynchings were used to terrorize, marginalize, and oppress black communities – to kill human beings to sow fear and keep black communities in a perpetual state of racial subjugation.”
    He continued:
    “If we do not reckon with this dark past, we cannot move forward. But today we are moving forward. Thanks to the leadership of Rep. Rush, the House has sent a clear, indisputable message that lynching will not be tolerated. It has brought us closer to reckoning with our nation’s history of racialized violence. Now the Senate must again pass this bill to ensure that it finally becomes law.”
    Harris called lynchings racially-motivated acts of violence and terror that represent a dark and despicable chapter of our nation’s history. “They were acts against people who should have received justice but did not. With this bill, we can change that by explicitly criminalizing lynching under federal law,” noted Harris, who suspended her presidential campaign late last year.
    “I applaud Congressman Rush and the House of Representatives for speaking the truth about our past and making it clear that these acts must never happen again without serious and swift consequence and accountability. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to support this bill’s passage,” she said.
    Scott added that it’s essential to show that hate will not win while Rush compared lynching to the French use of the guillotine, the Roman Empire’s use of crucifixion, and the British use of drawing and quartering as a tool of terrorism.
    “And, for too long now, a federal law against lynching has remained conspicuously silent,” Rush noted. “Today, we will send a strong message that violence – and race-based violence, in particular – has no place in American society. I am immensely grateful to Senators Harris, Booker, and Scott for working with my office on this landmark piece of legislation, and I look forward to it being quickly passed in the Senate and immediately sent to the President to be signed into law.”
    Bass said the last known lynching was as recent as 25 years ago and only then, for the first time in the nation’s history, was the perpetrator convicted and executed. “This is an awful part of our history, but it is our history – our American history – and it is important for us to all know and remember it, especially now that we are facing a resurgence of hate crimes in America under the presidency of Donald J. Trump,” Bass stated.
    “Now there is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice to document the known history of lynching and the many reasons why Black people were lynched, such as for making eye contact with a white person, not moving to the other side of the street, or spitting in public,” she said.
    Further, Bass added that the bill makes “a long-overdue change to our laws by finally addressing the issue of lynching for the thousands of African Americans who suffered this heinous fate and the countless more we’ll never know.”

  • Newswire: The historic Chicago Defender among Black media icons scaling back, others possibly closing

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press

    Front page of Chicago Defender


    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – It has been a rough few days for the Black media.
    First, Ebony magazine and its sister publication, JET magazine, may be closing their doors for good.
    And then the publisher of the storied Chicago Defender newspaper announced last week that it will no longer publish a print version.
    In announcing the move to digital-only beginning Thursday, July 11, Real Times Media CEO Hiram E. Jackson said last Friday that the newspaper has made significant investment in digital media because of changes in the publishing landscape.
    Jackson noted the Defender currently prints 16,000 newspapers. He said the newspaper reaches at least 10 times more people on its digital platform.
    Jackson said Real Times’ other newspapers, the Michigan Chronicle and the New Pittsburgh Courier, will continue to offer a print version.
    The newspaper was founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott and reached the peak of its influence at mid-century when it was a frequent critic of racial inequities in the nation’s Southern states.
    The Defender delivered news of monumental events — the funeral of Emmett Till, the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the election of President Obama — but also of everyday life for Black Americans.
    Jackson said the decision was an economic one. Newspapers throughout the industry have seen a decline in print advertising and readers turning to the internet.
    Black newspapers often are an afterthought when it comes to advertising dollars, Jean Patterson Boone, publisher of the Richmond Free Press told the New York Times.
    Regardless of the financial challenges, the Richmond Free Press, which has a weekly circulation of 35,000 and a draw of around 130,000 readers, has no intention of going the way of The Defender and eliminating its print edition.
    “We’re a miracle,” Mrs. Boone told the New York Times. “We are a miracle and most black newspapers
    are a miracle.”
    The National Newspaper Publishers Association, a trade organization for African-American-owned newspapers, currently counts 218 such publications across 40 states that attract 22.2 million readers between print and online each week.
    Although the country may look different now, the enduring challenges of racism make the black press just as essential now, said Benjamin Chavis Jr., NNPA’s president and chief executive. The Greene County Democrat, weekly newspaper is a
    Member of the NNPA.
    As for Ebony and JET, former employees of the company took to Twitter last week using the hashtag #EbonyOwes to air their frustrations with the company, as it has fired all of its employees with little to no notice.
    According to USA Today, members of Ebony magazine’s digital team say they’ve been fired and haven’t received their final paychecks in the latest controversy to hit the struggling publication that has chronicled black life in America for decades.
    Michael Gibson, co-chairman and founder of Austin, Texas-based Clear View Group, which owns Ebony, declined to comment to USA TODAY on the digital team’s dismissal, citing a “policy of not commenting on any employment practices or issues.”
    The Chicago Tribune previously reported how Ebony was being pressed by the National Writers Union to pay more than $200,000 it alleged the magazine owed to freelance writers who contributed stories back in 2017. The drama sparked the hashtag #EbonyOwes on Twitter.
    According to a report on Ebony.com, the magazine’s previous owner, Johnson Publishing Co., filed for bankruptcy liquidation in April, which Ebony said would not affect its operations.
    “EBONY Media Operations, LLC brands, which include EBONY magazine, EBONY.com, digital magazine JET and jetmag.com and its related businesses, have viably operated independently of Johnson Publishing Company dba/ Fashion Fair Cosmetics (JPC) since Black-owned Ebony Media Operations, LLC (EMO) purchased the media assets of JPC in 2016. Black-owned investment firm CVG Group LLC assisted in the formation of EMO,” a statement read. “EMO is unaffected by the Chapter 7 bankruptcy announcement regarding the dissolution of JPC. EMO is not able to comment further and is not familiar with the facts or events of the JPC business.”
    The first issue of the iconic magazine hit stands 74 years ago and took the industry by storm. Founded by John H. Johnson in November 1945, the black-owned publication has always strived to address African-American issues, personalities and interests in a positive and self-affirming manner.
    Timeless editions of Ebony featured some of the biggest stars in black America, including issues covered by Diana Ross, Sidney Poitier, as well as President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama.

  • Emmett Till bill reauthorized

     

    Will it spur more of an effort to solve civil rights murders than the original legislation

    By Frederick Lowe

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

    emmetttill-183x300

     Emmett Till

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – President Barack Obama has signed legislation permanently reauthorizing a law that expands prosecution of civil rights-era murders after an earlier version of the law failed miserably to live up to expectations.

    The President, Dec. 16, signed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Bill of 2007, which expands the authority of the Department of Justice and FBI to investigate and prosecute race-based murders.

    The legislation is named in honor of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy who was kidnapped and murdered on Aug. 28, 1955,  in Money, Miss., by Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam for allegedly whistling at Carolyn Bryant, a White woman.

    The teenager’s beaten and horribly mutilated body, tied to a heavy industrial fan, floated to the surface of the Tallahatchie River, where it was discovered by two boys swimming in the river.

    An all-White male jury found Milam and Bryant not guilty, but the two admitted killing Till in a Jan. 24, 1956 interview with Look magazine for which they were paid. Bryant operated a store and it went out business after blacks launched a boycott.

    The current Emmett Till legislation was scheduled to expire on Sept. 30, 2017, the end of the government’s fiscal year.  The legislation was passed in 2008, after being introduced by Congressman John Lewis, a veteran of the civil rights movement. Lewis’ bill limited investigations to violations that occurred before 1970.

    The original legislation failed to live up to its promise, according to a U. S. Senate review of the law. There has been only one successful prosecution as result of the bill. The Senate also noted other challenges such as the Fifth Amendment protection against double jeopardy and a pre-1994 five-year statute of limitations on federal criminal civil rights charges.

    “Ultimately, a DOJ report stated that it is unlikely that any of the remaining cases would be prosecuted,” the Senate reported. The Cold Case Justice Initiative of the DOJ last year closed 115 of the 126 cases on their list, often without pursuing potential witnesses or victims’ family members, the Senate said.

    Last year, civil right activists testified before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, that the DOJ and the FBI have not done enough to solve the murders of civil rights workers in the 1940s, 50s and 60s despite the Emmett Till legislation.

    The murders of black men, women and children have been extensive and almost no perpetrators have been brought to justice.

    The Equal Justice Initiatve, which is based in Montgomery, Ala., reported that nearly 4,000 black men, black women and black children were lynched between 1877 and 1950. Many lynching were extrajudicial but others were either organized or encouraged by law enforcement officials.

    Congress passed the expanded Emmett Till legislation on Dec. 13th. The legislation was introduced into the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Senate bill, S. 2854, and House bill, H. R. 5067, require the Department of Justice to reopen and review cases closed without an in-person investigation conducted by the DOJ or the FBI. The DOJ also must establish a task force to conduct a thorough investigation of Emmett Till Act Cases.

    “Perhaps most significantly to us is that the FBI will be required to travel to the communities to do their investigative work, not simply read over old files from a desk in Washington and make a couple phone calls,” said Janis McDonald, co-director of the Cold Case Justice Initiative, which is based at Syracuse University.

    The DOJ must indicate the number of cases referred by a civil rights organization, an institution of higher education or a state or local law enforcement agency.  The bill also requires the DOJ to report the number of cases that resulted in federal charges, the date charges were filed and whether DOJ declined to prosecute or participate in an investigation of a referred case and any activity on reopened cases.

    In addition, the law enforcement agencies must coordinate information sharing, hold accountable perpetrators or accomplices in unsolved civil rights murders and comply with Freedom Information Act requests.

    The legislation also allows DOJ to award grants to civil rights organizations, institutions of higher education and other eligible entities for expenses associated with investigating murders under the Emmett Till Act.

    One major issue facing this legislation is the extent to which it will be implemented in a U. S. Justice Department headed by Trump Attorney General nominee, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who did not vote for this and other civil rights legislation during his Senatorial career.