The Greene County Democrat

Tag: President Lyndon B. Johnson

  • Newswire :US Justice Department releases files on the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

    By: Blackmansstreettoday.com


    The U.S. Justice Department recently released on July 21 files regarding the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., despite some members of the King family opposing the release, though one family member supports it.
    The release contains 230,000 pages of documents and comes following President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order 14176, said U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi.
    Dr. King was assassinated on April 4th, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, while staying at the Lorraine Motel. 
    He was shot by James Earl Ray, a petty criminal. Ray was arrested in London, but not everyone is convinced that he was the assassin.
    Before he died of prostate cancer, Dexter Scott King, Dr. King’s youngest son, met with Ray in prison, shook his hand, and concluded that Ray did not kill his father. Dexter King died on January 22. He was 62 years old,
    J. Edgar Hoover hated Dr. King, believing that he would become a Black messiah. Organized crime figures also may have had a hand in his assassination. There are also suggestions that Carlos Marcello, the mob boss of New Orleans, was involved in the killing of Dr. King because he was challenging the way things had been done in the past.
    The FBI tapped Dr. King’s phone calls and even had people working for Dr. King who reported to the FBI. The FBI showed photographs to President Lyndon B. Johnson and other government officials of Dr. King having sex with other women, not his wife, Coretta Scott King.
    The release by the Trump administration is controversial. It comes after AG Bondi refused to release the Epstein files. Some observers feel this document release is part of efforts to divert public attention from the Epstein files.
    “We recognize that the release of documents concerning the assassination of our father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has long been a subject of interest, captivating public curiosity for decades,” the family said in a statement. But “the release of these files must be viewed within their full historical context. During our father’s lifetime, he was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
    The recent disclosure is the product of months of collaboration between the Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). DOJ attorneys spent hundreds of hours preparing and digitizing these documents for release.
    “The American people deserve answers decades after the horrific assassination of one of our nation’s great leaders,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “The Department of Justice is proud to partner with Director Gabbard and the ODNI at President Trump’s direction for this latest disclosure.”

  • Newswire : Trump revokes executive order banning discrimination in federal contracting

    By Dareh Gregorian, NBC News

    President Donald Trump this week revoked an executive order aimed at banning discrimination by federal contractors and subcontractors as part of his sweeping effort to crack down on federal diversity programs.

    The White House said in a memo Wednesday that the order signed a day earlier “protects the civil rights of all Americans and expands individual opportunity by terminating radical DEI preferencing in federal contracting and directing federal agencies to relentlessly combat private sector discrimination.”

    The revoked order had required “affirmative action and prohibits federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin,” according to a summary by the Department of Labor. It was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, and initially covered government employees but was later narrowed to contractors.

    Trump’s order on Tuesday also revoked executive actions by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama that sought to further promote diversity and inclusion in hiring across the federal government.

    Trump said in his order that the diversity efforts “violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws” and “undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”
    The White House memo described Trump’s order as “the most important federal civil rights measure in decades.It terminates ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) discrimination in the federal workforce, and in federal contracting and spending,” the memo said.

    While the order is focused on the federal level, it also has implications for the private sector. It calls for the U.S. attorney general to work with other agencies and submit a report by May “containing recommendations for enforcing Federal civil-rights laws and taking other appropriate measures to encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI.”

    The report should focus on the “most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners in each sector of concern,” the order says, and should include a “strategic enforcement plan,” including the possibility of civil rights litigation.

    “As a part of this plan, each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars,” the order says.

    The memo suggests that effort will be focused on corporations and colleges.
    “In the private sector, many corporations and universities use DEI as an excuse for biased and unlawful employment practices and illegal admissions preferences, ignoring the fact that DEI’s foundational rhetoric and ideas foster intergroup hostility and authoritarianism,” the memo said.

    In another executive order Monday, Trump directed an end to DEI programs within the government. On Tuesday, his administration ordered all federal employees in DEI roles to be placed on paid leave starting Wednesday.

    A memo from the Office of Personnel Management asked federal agencies to submit a written plan for dismissing employees in DEI roles by Jan. 31.

    Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents hundreds of thousands of federal workers, said Tuesday that the “federal government already hires and promotes exclusively on the basis of merit.”
    He called Trump’s action a “smokescreen for firing civil servants, undermining the apolitical civil service, and turning the federal government into an army of yes-men loyal only to the president, not the Constitution.”

    The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kelley’s remarks.

  • Newswire: NAACP, Black Leaders demand Congress act on voting rights

    Derrick Johnson, President of NAACP

    By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    With voter suppression laws taking shape in Texas, Georgia, Arizona, and just about every GOP-led state in the nation, NAACP President Derrick Johnson is pleading for Democrats and the White House to show a sense of urgency. In a scathing op-ed, Johnson said, “we cannot out-organize voter suppression.”“We organized in November to put people in office to address the issue of voter suppression. We did not organize in November to let elected officials off the hook to organize again and overcome a new hurdle. Voters did their job as citizens, and now they’re simply asking elected officials to do their job to protect our right to vote,” Johnson remarked. Nearly six decades after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights activists led the 1963 March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom, that helped establish voting rights for millions of Black Americans, African American leaders will again descend on the nation’s capital to demand Congress protect the rights. Martin Luther King III, Yolanda King, Andrea Waters King, and others plan to march with more than 140 organizations and thousands of Americans on Saturday, August 28, to advocate for eliminating the Jim Crow filibuster and passing three critical voting rights bills – the For the People Act, John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the Washington D.C. Admission Act. The mobilization comes just months after Black voters overcame significant barriers to the vote and organized their communities to change the course of the country — “and now ask that the White House and Congress do their part to protect our democracy and stand on the right side of history,” the leaders said in a news release. In his op-ed, Johnson declared that “voting rights shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Yet the contentious dispute on whether to defend every American’s right to vote has taken center stage in Congress, and for an unnecessary amount of precious time.” He continued:“With time not on our side, there is no reason we should still be debating whether to pass a civil rights bill that will indubitably strengthen our fractured democracy by achieving the one goal our nation’s essence depends on – lending a voice to the people.” Johnson contradicted Republican Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who infamously and erroneously stated that “it is easier for eligible Americans to vote than ever before in American history.” “State legislators around the country have introduced more than 400 bills that will make it more difficult for Americans to exercise their constitutional voting rights, and at least 18 states have passed such legislation,” Johnson wrote. “Ingrained in these attacks on voting rights are generations-long patterns of discrimination targeting communities of color, particularly Black communities. The overwhelming evidence of voter suppression speaks to this truth: It is easier for privileged, eligible Americans to vote than ever before in American history.” Any decision not in favor of significant voting legislation under consideration by Congress will cost the lives of millions of Americans whose very voices are jeopardized, Johnson insisted. “For instance, in May, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed legislation to ban curbside voting, consequentially forbidding poll workers to set up curbside voting centers and preventing voting machines from being stationed outside a polling place,” Johnson noted. “While many proponents argue that this restriction is rightfully erected to honor the integrity of our elections, this rationalization completely disregards the lack of accommodating resources for the elderly and people with disabilities – and the overall safety and wellness of voters who reside in a state where COVID-19 vaccinations are abysmal and infection rates are rising.” When signing the 1965 voting rights legislation, President Lyndon B. Johnson understood that the right to vote is an issue of human dignity, Johnson continued. “He once said, ‘It is wrong, deadly wrong, to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of states’ rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.” “Elected officials hold the invaluable key to ensuring that our future elections are fair and accessible. Those in power who have given an oath to serve their district, their state, and inherently their country have a responsibility to commit to their purpose of guaranteeing that the people they represent and champion will be heard and not be silenced.”