Greene County Democrat

Tag: Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

  • Newswire : Civil Rights Leader Jesse Jackson Dies At 84

    Newswire : Civil Rights Leader Jesse Jackson Dies At 84

    Rev. Jesse Jackson

    Jackson taught a generation the importance of building collective power and hope in the face of adversity.

    By Anoa Changa-Peck, NewsOne

    Rev. Jesse Jackson has been called home. The civil rights leader, two-time presidential candidate, and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, passed away on Tuesday, his family said. He was 84 years old.
    “Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family statement read. “We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family. His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.” 
    As NewsOne previously reported, Jackson, who had been under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare neurodegenerative condition with no known cure, was hospitalized last November and released later the same month. In 2017, Jackson publicly shared that he was living with Parkinson’s disease. He received the updated diagnosis of PSP in April of 2025.
    The Association of Frontotemporal Degeneration explained that PSP, which can resemble symptoms found in Parkinson’s disease, is associated with a decline in motor functioning and can impact coordination and movement of the mouth, tongue, and throat. 
    After his 2017 diagnosis, Jackson shared that he and his family were adjusting to their new normal and that he was undergoing various lifestyle changes, including physical therapy, in an effort to slow the disease’s progression. At the time, he said symptoms were present for about three years, but he ignored the signs until he couldn’t ignore them anymore. Jackson’s father had also been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. 
    Jackson has been a political fixture for over 60 years, organizing at the forefront of racial and economic justice. As previously reported by NewsOne, Jackson got his start as a student organizer at North Carolina A&T. Following in the footsteps of the Greensboro four who led a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter, Jackson led a sit-in during the summer of 1960 to desegregate the Greenville County Public Library in South Carolina, where he grew up. He also organized “wade-ins” at all white pools and “watch-ins” at segregated movie theaters. 
    His experience with student organizing launched his civil rights career, putting him in the orbit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Jackson evolved into a national figure at the side of the legendary leader. Six years after leading the Greenville sit-in, Jackson was named the first Chicago director of Operation Bread Basket, a program of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) led by King. Jackson became the national director a year later. 
    Jackson’s work with Operation Breadbasket served as the foundation for Operation PUSH, a Black-led economic and political empowerment organization founded in 1971. In the wake of his first presidential bid in 1984, Jackson formed the National Rainbow Coalition. He moved to unite progressives across race and class in a “coalition of conscience.” The two organizations merged in 1996 to form the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
    In addition to his civil rights work, Jackson is remembered for his bold presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988. He taught a generation the importance of hope in the face of adversity and building collective power.

  • Rosie Lee Carpenter dies at age 102

    Rosie Lee Carpenter, educator and longtime civil rights and community leader in Greene County died peacefully, surrounded by family on August 31, 2024, at the age of 102, at her daughter’s home in Bowie Maryland.

    Born January 25, 1922, in Mantua community of Greene County. Rosie Carpenter’s father, a sharecropper, died when she was two years old. Her mother died in a 1943 tornado. Rosie and her younger siblings went to live with her older sister, Annie Thomas in Eutaw. Rosie decided to pursue a career in education after leaving the plantation where she was born.

    Carpenter started teaching at the Burton Hills School in Union, Alabama. During the summers of her teaching career, she attended Alabama State University, earning her undergraduate and master’s degrees in education. Later, Carpenter married Willie James Carpenter, her brother’s best friend. They had two children, Joyce Lynett Carpenter (Dasher) and Charles Earl Carpenter.

    Throughout her life, Carpenter was passionate about fighting for civil rights. She and her sister, Annie Thomas, were pioneers in Alabama’s Civil Rights Movement. They assisted Hosea Williams and Ralph Abernathy in designing winning strategies for the special Greene County election on July 29, 1969. Williams and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) used Thomas’s and Carpenter’s home to conduct field Voter Registration and Get Out the Vote campaigns.

    Greene County’s actions in civil rights afforded opportunities for many Black residents, including Carpenter’s close friend, Robert Brown, who served as the first Black school superintendent. Rosie Carpenter was one of the few teachers brave enough to participate in the civil rights movement despite constant attacks and efforts to get her fired.

    Even as Carpenter and Thomas sustained their leadership roles and political activities in Greene County, they traveled throughout Alabama to assist other communities with boycotts and election strategies after the historic Greene County election in 1969,  which gave control of the County Commission and School Board to Black citizens, who were the population majority in Greene County

    In 2008, Alabama’s Congressman Artur Davis dedicated the Rosie L. Carpenter Haven apartment complex on Annie Thomas Circle based on the sisters’ courageous efforts during the Civil Rights Movement. As a result of Carpenter’s life of service, Greene County has African American representation at all levels of government. Carpenter also impacted her community through involvement in non-profit organizations that provide housing services and resources to young women and community organizing.

    At the 50th Anniversary celebration of Freedom Day on July 29, 1969 (July 27, 2019), Elder Spiver W. Gordon’s Alabama Historical Movement, Inc. dedicated a monument for Justice and Voting Rights at the home of sisters Thomas and Carpenter for their tireless efforts in fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised in their community.

    Mrs. Rosie Carpenter’s funeral is now set for Saturday, September 14, 2024, at 11:00 AM at First Baptist Church in Eutaw.

  • 60th anniversary of ‘Bloody Tuesday’ commemorated in Tuscaloosa at First African Baptist Church

    Praise dancers in front of First African Baptist Church

    Special to the Democrat by John Zippert, Co-Publisher

     

    On Sunday, June 9, 2024, the sanctuary of First African Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama was packed with people to celebrate the 60th anniversary of ‘Bloody Tuesday’.

    On June 9, 1964, over 500 people gathered at the same church, in a mass meeting to prepare a non-violent march to the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse, four blocks away, to integrate the facility’s rest rooms, drinking fountains and offices which were segregated by race. The march and the Tuscaloosa movement were led by Rev. T. Y. Rogers, a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King and part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Rogers was a native of Sumter County in the Alabama Black Belt.

    As the marchers were leaving the church, they were met by Tuscaloosa Police, Sheriff’s deputies, Alabama State Troopers, and Klu Klux Klansmen who beat them violently with clubs, batons and baseball bats. The marchers retreated into the church. The police turned on fire hoses, smashing the churches-stained glass windows and then fired tear gas into the church. As the marchers fled the church they were again beaten, and some were jailed.

    In all, some forty people were injured and hospitalized, 95 were jailed and others were physically and psychologically bruised in the largest and most violent attack on a church during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. This occurred 8 months before the “Bloody Sunday’ march in Selma and laid the basis for that voting rights campaign.

    The 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress a month after “Bloody Tuesday’ opening public accommodations to Black people in the South. Rev. T. Y. Rogers continued the marches until facilities in Tuscaloosa were desegregated and open to all. The news coverage of the events of June 9, 1964, have been limited. Most followed the Tuscaloosa News’ lead, which labeled the confrontation at the church as a “Black riot”. Soon other developments like the Mississippi Freedom Summer, overshadowed the June 1964 events at the First African Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa.

    About 20 years ago, the veteran foot soldiers created the Bloody Tuesday Committee to remember and commemorate the events of ‘Bloody Tuesday’. Sunday’s program honored the 60th anniversary of the violent attack on the church and the movement in Tuscaloosa. It honored twenty surviving foot soldiers, who stood at the church to be recognized as part of the program. Many were teenagers and young people sixty years ago on ‘Bloody Sunday ‘. The leaders of the movement including Rev. T. Y. Rogers, Rev. Linton and others have already passed on.

    The program at the church featured singing of church and freedom songs, led by the church choir and joined by the full congregation. There was a liturgical dance by the Friendship Baptist Church Praise Team. Young ladies with Black t-shirts and white skirts performed the dance. Their shirts each had a single word, related to the freedom struggle: Stand Up, Oppression, Equality, Overcome, Injustice, Freedom, Resilience and Peace. The dancers received a standing ovation at the end of their presentation.

    Tiedre Owens, Tuscaloosa staff member for Congresswoman Terri Sewell, made remarks supporting the foot soldiers and the work of the Tuscaloosa Bloody Tuesday Committee. She showed a video of Congresswoman Sewell making remarks on the floor of the U. S. House of Representatives on last Friday, about the events of ‘Bloody Tuesday’ to insure they were inscribed in the Congressional Record.

    Walt Maddox, Mayor of Tuscaloosa, made remarks, saying ‘Bloody Tuesday’ helped change the city for the better and contributed to making the nation a ‘more perfect union’. He said, “We cannot wash away the sins of the past. We must remember the past and have a stronger resolve to change the conditions of injustice that remain.”

    Irene Byrd presented a tribute to the foot soldiers of ‘Bloody Tuesday’, who were asked to stand. “We have no tangible gifts for you today only our thanks and gratitude for what you did for us that day,” said Byrd.

    Rev. Ramsey O’Daniel, Pastor of Christ Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa was the guest speaker. He spoke on the theme for the occasion, ‘where do we go from here’. First, we need to vote in all elections and use our vote to elect people who will make policy changes to support our interests. Second, we must develop a direct-action economic development plan in the Black community, as part of a local and national effort. We must execute this plan. Third, we must run back to Jesus, instead of running away from Jesus, because Jesus is our friend.

    The program ended with about half the people gathered there, re-enacting the four block march to the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse, on Greensboro Avenue. This time, the march was escorted by Tuscaloosa Police and Sheriff’s deputies to accent the difference that sixty years of change and progress makes.

    At the Courthouse rally, leaders of the Bloody Tuesday Committee made remarks. Tuscaloosa County Sheriff Ron Abernathy gave words of reconciliation, saying, “I was one year old on Bloody Tuesday. I have a hard time relating to the laws and policies of the past. We must learn from the past so we can do better in the present and the future.” Some members of the Committee, were looking for a formal apology from the Sheriff and other political officials, but Abernathy’s statement was the closest they heard to an official apology.

    The crowd marched back to the church for a reception and book signing by University of Alabama history professor, Dr. John M. Giggie, of his newly published book entitled “Bloody Tuesday- The untold story of the struggle for civil rights in Tuscaloosa”. This book is the result of research and interviewing survivors of Bloody Tuesday, including many foot soldiers, police and Klansmen over the past ten years.

  • Newswire: Civil Rights Leaders 2024 insights on Martin Luther King’s courage

    Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at 1963 March on Washington

    By Stacy M. Brown
 NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    During his short life, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stepped on all kinds of powerful toes in his fight for civil rights, and he was a courageous and determined leader who refused to let prison or violence sway his end mission. He also never lost sight of the fact that civil rights—addressing racial and economic injustice—were inextricable from liberation, freedom, equality, and world peace.
    As the founding leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Dr. King led a nonviolent movement to abolish the triple evils crippling American society: racism, poverty, and militarism. Associates said he believed those forces were contrary to God’s will for humanity and that they could only be effectively opposed by a interfaith-inspired nonviolent, multiracial social change movement.
    On April 4, 1967, King spoke publicly and eloquently against the tragedies of the U.S.-led war in Vietnam. Today, as the nation observes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, civil rights leaders, including those who knew the slain leader, offered their thoughts on what his position might be on conflicts in the Middle East and Russia and on the twice-impeached and four-times indicted former President Donald Trump.
    “At the March on Washington in 1964, Dr. King talked about Alabama Gov. George Wallace having his lips dripping with interposition and nullification,” said the Rev. Peter Johnson, who began working for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Plaquemine, La., and later was recruited by Andrew Young to work for King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta. “What’s the difference between George Wallace and Donald Trump? You’re not going to hear Trump publicly say the n-word, that’s the only difference,” Johnson remarked. “King would easily have seen that Trump is a bigot in the true sense of the word who actually believes he is superior to people of color.”
    Johnson, Rev. Dr. Jesse Jackson Sr, Rev. Dr. Benjamin Chavis Jr, and others said that the wars between Israel and Hamas and Russia and Ukraine would have stirred Dr. King courageously to declare in King’s own words that “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  Dr. King would again say, “Peace is not just the absence of war; it is the presence of peace.”
    Rev. Jesse Jackson noted that King spoke of a deeper malady in American society. His view was that presidential administrations have been embroiling themselves in conflicts across the globe for the wrong reasons.
    “Dr. King was outspokenly anti-war and anti-racism,” said Rev. Mark Thompson, a civil rights leader who recently joined the National Newspaper Publishers Association as the trade association’s global digital transformation director. “There’s no question King would oppose the war in Ukraine and seek diplomatic solutions. I believe he would also call for a ceasefire in Gaza.”
    “I believe his posture on Congress’s dysfunction would be consistent with the words he used to describe segregationist intransigence in his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech—interposition and nullification,” Thompson declared.
    NNPA President and CEO Rev. Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., also an SCLC youth coordinator alum back in the 1960s, concurred. “Dr. King was a nonviolent freedom fighter who believed that we all members of one humanity. His concept of the ‘beloved community’ was all-inclusive and not discriminatory to anyone,” Chavis insisted. “Today’s world realities of racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, oppression, war, hatred, and bigotry are void of love for one another. We need Dr. King’s wisdom, inclusive theology, and leadership courage today more than ever before.”
    Johnson said there’s little doubt about where King would stand on today’s issues because the icon never wavered. “I don’t think he would have changed his position fundamentally,” Johnson determined.
    “The Black Press of America, through the NNPA, salutes and pays an eternal salute to the wisdom, vision, and courage of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” Chavis declared.  “May the 2024 Martin Luther King National Holiday be a day of reflection, action, freedom movement building, and constructive social change for all people in America and throughout the world.”

  • Newswire: Aretha Franklin’s unsealed FBI files shows Bureau tracked her Civil Rights Activism

    Aretha Franklin

    By Nina Corcoran and Jazz Monroe, Pitchfork

    The FBI has declassified its file on the late Aretha Franklin. The document, which spans 270 pages and includes reports from more than a dozen states, shows that the FBI extensively tracked Franklin’s civil rights activism, particularly her friendships with Martin Luther King, Jr., and Angela Davis. Elsewhere, the file outlines reputable death threats against the singer and a massive copyright infringement case spawned from a Yahoo! Groups message board in 2005.
    The notes on Franklin’s friendship with Dr. King include close documentation of her performances at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), of which King was president. The FBI characterizes the shows—which took place in Atlanta, Georgia, and Memphis, Tennessee, in 1967 and 1968—as “communist infiltration” events. A subsequent note in the file is titled “Assassination of Martin Luther King. Racial matters.” It alleges that Franklin was said to be involved in a free, “huge memorial concert” at Atlanta Stadium, donated by the Atlanta Braves. The show “would provide emotional spark which could ignite racial disturbance this area,” according to an FBI source. In the end, the SCLC scrapped that memorial service and held a three-mile procession to Morehouse College instead.
    The tracking of Franklin’s ties to Angela Davis includes notes on her performance at a 1972 fundraiser in Los Angeles for the Angela Davis defense fund. The file notes that Davis was “facing murder-kidnapping charges in California” and that the concert was sponsored by the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis—“an organization founded by the Communist Party, United States of America.” Franklin had previously offered to post bail for Davis, though this was not documented.
    The FBI identified Franklin as a prospective performer at supposedly threatening events far more often than she actually appeared at them. In 1971, for instance, an FBI source infiltrated the Boston branch of the Young Workers Liberation League, which was apparently planning an Angela Davis benefit that “might be held at the Boston Garden with Aretha Franklin.” Her planned performance at a Black Panther Party event in Los Angeles, which she cancelled due to timing issues (for which she later apologized), is documented in a file covered in “Top Secret” and “Classified” stamps. “Bobby Seale, Chairman of the Black Panther Party, has directed the Los Angeles Black Panther Party to initiate plans for a major rally culminating in free food distribution to the poor black people in Los Angeles,” it reads. “Source also advised that Gwen Goodloe wanted to contact Negro singing stars Aretha Franklin and Roberta Flack to possibly assist in the event.”
    The bureau also pursued links between Franklin and the Black Liberation Army (BLA) after claiming to find her address among BLA documents. The FBI characterized the BLA as a “quasi-military group composed of small guerrilla units employing the tactics of urban guerrilla warfare against the established order with a view toward achieving revolutionary change in America.” The bureau eventually conceded that it could not determine Franklin’s association with the BLA. 
    Perhaps most bizarre is a 1976 document linking Franklin with the Coordinating Council for the Liberation of Dominica (CCLD), which an FBI source called “a black extremist group bent on disturbing the tranquility of the Island of Dominica.” The source added that the CCLD “may have established a base of operation in the New York City area” and identified Franklin as an associate of Roosevelt Bernard Douglas, a “black extremist of international note.” Douglas went on to become the Dominican prime minister. The bureau appears not to have found any further links between Franklin and the CCLD. 
    Three death threats against Franklin are documented, including a Cook County jail inmate’s attempt to extort her for $1 million while posing as an FBI agent, suggesting she would suffer repercussions for failing to pay. In 1974, a stranger told Franklin she was on a “hit list.” And five years later, one person extensively harassed her at home, by letter and telephone, with threats to her life.
    More than 170 pages of the file pertain to a copyright infringement case, which began in 2005 after Franklin’s lawyers asked the FBI to locate a Yahoo! Groups message board moderator. It took several months and multiple grand jury subpoenas to find the culprit, who is a self-proclaimed “anti-fanatic” who “keeps it real with respect to his perception of the flaws in Aretha Franklin’s performances,” as well as allegedly selling pirated DVDs and CDs of her performances.