Frustration with being regarded as
"a marginal voice" often encourages clergy to embrace
the language of the modern state. Preachers begin to talk like
politicians, and while gaining some credibility as political
power brokers, in the process they tend to lose the prophetic
edge that they could and should bring to the political debate
and to the process of imagining a better society.
This is a temptation to which Dr. King never
yielded. He consistently employed theological concepts and
language to challenge the modern state to be more just and
inclusive. He opined on practical and concrete political
matters, but only insofar as they were outgrowths of the
theological and ethical principles he espoused.It is humbling, hopeful, and empowering to
consider that preachers, church women, and Sunday school
children led a revolution in our lifetime. They marched, prayed,
voted, and challenged the nation to, in the words of Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr., "conform America's political reality to
her political rhetoric." They have passed the baton to us.—Robert M. Franklin, "Awesome
Music, Great Preaching, and Revolutionary Action: The Mind of
Martin Luther King, Jr.," The Princeton Seminary
Bulletin, XXIII (2), 2003.
* * *
* *
His aggressive tactics backfired when the
spectacle of the brutality being broadcast on national television served
as one of the catalysts for major social and legal change in the
southern United States and helped in large measure to assure the passage
by the United States Congress of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. . . . civil rights leaders, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., began "Project 'C'" (for "confrontation") in Birmingham against the police tactics used by Connor and his subordinates (and, by extension, other Southern police officials).
King's arrest during this period would provide him the opportunity to
write his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail. The goal of this movement was to cause mass arrests and subsequent inability of the judicial and penal systems to deal with this volume of activity. One key strategy was the use of children to further the cause, a tactic that was criticized on both sides of the issue. The short-term effect only increased the level of violence used by Connor's officers, but in the long term the project proved largely successful, as noted above.—Wikipedia *
* * * *
Remembering King and The 'Fierce Urgency Of
Now'
By E. Ethelbert Miller
|
Martin Luther King Jr. may be best remembered for
his "I Have a Dream" moment, but too often
overlooked are his efforts to fight poverty in
America. Essayist E. Ethelbert Miller says that this
Monday, we should remember King in his full context.
His messages are relevant even — or especially — in
2010. |
Back in the old days of
vinyl albums and those sweet 45s, there was often a flip side of
a hit song that you wanted to dance to more than anything else.
It was the side not played on the radio but instead hummed
perhaps during the privacy of one's shower.
When I listen to Martin
Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, I'm always curious as to
why many of us overlook the opening statements of his 1963
address. It's as if we only hear one side of his speech. Why do
we quickly repeat the words "I have a dream," and not the words
"America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come
back marked 'insufficient funds.' But we refuse to believe the
bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are
insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this
nation."
The fierce urgency of now
is what Martin Luther King mentioned back in 1963. But how long
is now?
I feel these words by King
are also inspiring. King spoke of a debt before he spoke of the
dream. This is important to remember because it shows his focus
on economic conditions and problems in America. King was
concerned not only with fighting segregation and discrimination,
but also with fighting poverty. During his last year he was
organizing a poor people's campaign to come to Washington, D.C.
It was the labor demands of
sanitation workers that encouraged him to travel to Memphis in
1968. King knew it took hard work to fulfill a dream.
In 2010, poverty can
disguise itself by hiding behind unemployment lines, housing
foreclosures and the inability of a young person to afford a
college education. When we look around our nation, many
businesses are suffering from insufficient funds, as are too
many families.
Once again, we wonder if
the great vaults of America are still rich with opportunities
for everyone.
The "fierce urgency of now"
is what King mentioned back in 1963. But how long is "now"?
Every year we cling dearly to the last lines of King's speech —
because of their poetic beauty. King's words echo those of
Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. I believe he heard America
singing.
Our hearts today are too large to simply
contain sorrow songs and blues. In 2010, we need to know which
side of the record is playing — the dream or the debt. When we
celebrate King's birthday, we shouldn't just remember and
examine one speech. The man, the minister, the prophet is too
complex for that. Yet his "I Have a Dream" speech should be
understood in its entirety. Next to his speeches, we should
place his sermons. Here we will find King's compassion for his
fellow man. Here we will continue to discover words that will
provide us with the strength to love.
January
17, 2010
E. Ethelbert Miller is the board chairman
of the Institute for Policy Studies. He has been the director of
the African American Resource Center at Howard University since
1974. Miller is a former chairman of the Humanities Council of
Washington, D.C., and a former core faculty member of the
Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College. He is the
editor of Poet Lore and the author of several collections of
poetry and two memoirs.
NPR
*
* * * *
|
At the River I Stand
California Newsreel that, in recognition of the death of Martin Luther King Jr, which happened on this day in 1968, the Award-winning film, At the River I Stand, which chronicles the 1968 AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis, leading up to eventual assassination of MLK, will be available to watch for free, online for just this week. The film, produced by David Appleby, Allison Graham and Steven Ross, was awarded the 1994 Erik Barnouw Award for Best Documentary, by the Organization of American Historians.“The struggle and triumph of dignity over injustice is the luminous tapestry of all great social movements. . . . At the River I Stand is an inspiring visual testament and a call to witness to every viewer,” said AFSCME president Gerald W. McEntee. “‘The 58-minute documentary can be viewed in full from today, through the 11th, next week Monday. At the River I Stand - Preview |
 |
Stokely
Carmichael—We
Ain't
Goin'
/ Dr. King
Said It:
I'm
Black
and I'm
Proud!
/Reparations,
Queen
Mother
Moore
*
* * * * Amin Sharif Amin Sharif Table
A
Blues for the Birmingham Four (poem)
Bloody
Sunday at Pettus Bridge (poem)
H. Rap Brown's
Die Nigger Die! (book review)
Resurrection
in Mississippi (poem for Chaney,
Goodman, and Schwerner)
Retrospective on
Soul on Ice (book review)
Six
Killed in "Bombingham"
What
Will Be After An Iraqi War
Big
Tom the Red
by Manning Johnson
Bio-Sketches of
Civil Rights Activists
Amite
County Bob Moses & Terror in Mississippi (1960) By Jack Newfield
Beginning
[Students Sit-In
in Greensboro] By Jack Newfield
Forty
Years of Determined Struggle
by Rudolph Lewis
Karenga
on Malcolm & the Need for Struggle (commentary)
"Kish
Mir Tuchas, Baby" (Stokely Carmichael)
Kwanzaa
& Its Founder (bio-sketch)
Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party Perspective
by Jack Newfield
Mother
Mary Elizabeth Lange, O.S.P. (bio-sketch)
Philip
Berrigan, Civil Rights Activist (Obituary)
A Bio-Chronology
When
I Lay Dying Psalm
for Two Voices
Who are the Real Enemies? Widen the Prison Gates
Randolph & the
“Great White Father”
(A. Philip Randolph)
Reverend
Dr. Vashti Murphy McKenzie
Scipio Africanus Jones
Thomas Wyatt
Turner (bio-sketch and writings)
Walter
Lively: A Christ Among Us by Rudolph Lewis (essay)
What
It Means to Be Negro by Daisy Bates
What's
Next by Julian Bond (essay)
*
* * * *
 |
The Brilliant Disaster
JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs
By Jim Rasenberger
My telling of the Bay of Pigs thing will certainly not be the first. On the contrary, thousands of pages of official reports, journalism, memoir, and scholarship have been devoted to the invasion, including at least two exceptional books: Haynes Johnson’s emotionally charged account published in 1964 and Peter Wyden’s deeply reported account from 1979. This book owes a debt to both of those, and to many others, as well as to thousands of pages of once-classified documents that have become available over the past fifteen years, thanks in part to the efforts of the National Security Archives, an organization affiliated with George Washington University that seeks to declassify and publish government files. These newer sources, including a CIA inspector general’s report, written shortly after the invasion and hidden away in a vault for decades, and a once-secret CIA history compiled in the 1970s, add depth and clarity to our understanding of the event and of the men who planned it and took part in it. . . . |
With the possible exception of Castro, no one came out
of the Cuban venture smelling sweet, but over time the
CIA came to assume the rankest odor of all. Starting
with the publication of two important memoirs by senior
Kennedy aides in the fall of 1965—Arthur M.
Schlesinger’s
A Thousand Days and Theodore Sorensen’s
Kennedy—a steady stream of books championed the
view that John Kennedy was a victim in the Bay of Pigs,
and especially a victim of the CIA’s arrogance and
malfeasance. Several recently published books that treat
the Bay of Pigs suggest this view has won out and is now
conventional wisdom. One recent bestseller, David
Talbot’s
Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years
(2007), describes a defiant CIA driven by “cynical
calculation” while engaged in an effort to “sandbag”
President Kennedy with the Bay of Pigs.
*
* * * *
Book Reviews
Foiling
the Arsonists [Benjamin Banneker] by Winfield Swanson
Seat of Honor -- Homer Plessy
(bio-sketch0
We
as Freemen by
Keith Medley (on Homer Plessy)
Campaign 2012
Banishing Cain and Triple Nines
Raising Cain
The Real Michael Steele
Clarence Munford
Atlantic
Slave Traffic by Clarence Munford
The
Benefits of Whiteness by Clarence
Munford
Boukman and His Comrades
by
Clarence Munford
Race
and Reparations (Book
Review)
Eldridge Cleaver
Black
Panther Platform & Program
Cleaver Bio
Cleaver
Speaks to Skip Gates
Daniel
Berrigan on Cleaver
Fire Last Time
The
Fire Now
Ishmael Reed's
Preface
Maxwell Geismar's
"Introduction"
Tearing
the Goats Flesh
Retrospective on Soul on Ice
By Amin Sharif
Freedom
Ain't Come Yet! by Aduku Addae
Freedom
Journal Lynching (news report, 1827) Harold
Cruse The
Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Huey P. Newton
Defection of Eldridge Cleaver &
Reactionary Suicide
Demythologizing
Huey Newton by Cornish Rogers
I
Am We
Manifesto: Revolutionary
Suicide: The Way of Liberation
*
* * * *
|
Arizona gov. signs bill
targeting ethnic studies—The
measure signed Tuesday
prohibits classes that
advocate ethnic solidarity,
that are designed primarily
for students of a particular
race or that promote
resentment toward a certain
ethnic group.The Tucson
Unified School District
program offers specialized
courses in African-American,
Mexican-American and
Native-American studies that
focus on history and
literature and include
information about the
influence of a particular
ethnic group. For example,
in the Mexican-American
Studies program, an American
history course explores the
role of Hispanics in the
Vietnam War, and a
literature course emphasizes
Latino authors. Horne, a
Republican running for
attorney general, said the
program promotes "ethnic
chauvinism" and racial
resentment toward whites
while segregating students
by race. He's been trying to
restrict it ever since he
learned that Hispanic civil
rights activist Dolores
Huerta told students in 2006
that "Republicans hate
Latinos."—YahooNews |
 |
* * * *
*
 |
The GOP War on Voting—In a campaign supported by the Koch brothers, Republicans are working to prevent millions of Democrats from voting next year—By Ari Berman—As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. "What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century," says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C. Republicans have long tried to drive Democratic voters away from the polls. "I don't want everybody to vote," the influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1980."—RollingStone |
* * * *
*
|
Presidential
Violence!—Obama
is clearly continuing the Clinton
and Bush policies of militarizing
Africa. This is obvious in the
expansion of US military
“interventions.” For example, US
support to the Nigerian ruling
elites efforts to eliminate the
resistance movements in the Niger
Delta. Consider also the expansion
of the US International Military
Education and Training (IMET)
program as well as the increased US
arms sales to African countries. . .
. A “Black” US president is a deadly
thing because dead and dying African
(black) bodies are the grounds on
which white power stands. White
power in black-face also stands on
those same dead African and other
racialized peoples bodies. . . .
But of what value is hope predicated
on African death and dying? To the
extent that his achievements
requires that we valorize capitalist
imperialism, male supremacy,
militarism, and white supremacy . .
. we must question the value of a
“Black” US president.
BlackAgendaReport |
 |
* * * *
*
For Malcolm, the most persuasive element of
the Nation of Islam was its affirmation of black people’s
cultural history.[xxxiv]
In the “Domination system,” silence and violence
often go together, Campbell states, and notes that amnesia and a
“disconnection from history” are important allies of the
powers.[xxxv]
Human captivity to the powers often, he continues, results from
ignorance and denial about the realities of the past. Further,
when people are silenced by the System and when they feel their
voices will not be heard and do not matter, they are not only
the victims of violence, but also often become the breeding
ground of further violence, as their pent-up oppression goes
unexpressed and finally explodes.
According to Cone, Malcolm was not silent; he
was angry and he wanted the world to know that he was angry.
Malcolm could not understand, Cone notes, how anyone could be a
human being and not be angry about what white people had done to
black people in America. Malcolm was particularly angered by
white people’s assertion that he was teaching hatred and often
responded, “History is not hatred.” Malcolm believed, Cone
points out, that God is the executor of justice and notes that
Malcolm’s concept of justice was “an eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth, and an arm for an arm, and a head for a head, and a
life for a life.”[xxxvi]
As such, Malcolm believed the “solution” to the
problem of racial injustice “will be brought about by God.”
Living Scripture in Community
* * * *
*
 |
A Black Imam Breaks Ground in
Mecca—Two years ago, Sheik Adil
Kalbani dreamed that he had become an imam at
the
Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.
Waking up,
he dismissed the dream as a temptation to
vanity. Although he is known for his fine voice,
Sheik Adil is black, and the son of a poor
immigrant from the Persian Gulf. Leading prayers
at the Grand Mosque is an extraordinary honor,
usually reserved for pure-blooded Arabs from the
Saudi heartland.
So he was
taken aback when the phone rang last September
and a voice told him that
King Abdullah had chosen him as the first
black man to
lead prayers in Mecca. Days later Sheik
Adil’s unmistakably African features and his
deep baritone voice, echoing musically through
the Grand Mosque, were broadcast by satellite TV
to hundreds of millions of Muslims around the
world.
NYTimes
Amin Sharif |
* * * *
*
* * * *
*
“Imagine!
Niggers Speaking French!!!” by John Maxwell
Interview
with Gore Vidal
Kil Ja Kim
Black
Immigrants Deported in Higher Numbers
Bought
Colored Kids
Image of the Black Criminal
To White Women Who Think
White Anti-Racist is an Oxymoron
Lil
Joe Lil
Joe Bio Lil
Joe Index
Comments
on Addae's "ABCs"
PaxAmerica
in Decline
WTO
Summit in Cancun and Singapore Issues
* * * * *
|
Ghosts in Our Blood
With Malcolm X in Africa, England, and the Caribbean
By Jan R.
Carew
Carew, an
activist, scholar, and journalist, met Malcolm X
during his last trip abroad only a few weeks before
he was killed in 1965. It made such an impression on
Carew that he felt compelled to search out Malcolm's
family and friends in order to flesh out the family
history. He interviewed Wilfred (Malcolm's older
brother) and a Grenadian friend of Malcolm's mother
named Tanta Bess. Comparing his family's experiences
with that of Malcolm X, he gives the most complete
picture yet of Malcolm's mother. Carew also offers a
tantalizing glimpse of Malcolm X's transforming
himself into El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, a man less
blinded by his own racial prejudices yet as
committed to the betterment of his race as ever.
Just before his death, Malcolm X became convinced
that a U.S. agency was involved with those trying to
kill him, and Carew here reveals the evidence
Malcolm X gave him to support these beliefs. The
mystery of Malcolm's death remains unresolved, and
we are once again filled with regret that he was cut
down before he could fulfill the promise of his
later days. While this book will not replace The
Autobiography of Malcolm X (LJ 1/1/66), it is an
important supplement. All libraries that own the
autobiography should also purchase this one.—Library
Journal |
 |
Malcolm X
Malcolm X Videos
1963_Debate Malcolm X_With_James_Baldwin.mp3
The
Achievements of Elijah Muhammad (commentary)
Appeal
to African Heads of State
Climbing
Malcolm's Ladder
Facebook
Remembers
Malcolm
X
Honoring Malcolm X by Junious Ricardo
Stanton (essay)
In
Remembrance of Malcolm X ”El Hajj Malik El Shabazz”
by M. Quinn
Interview:
Malcolm
X
Leon Thomas—Malcolm's Gone
(music)
Letter
to Yvonne by Rudolph Lewis (commentary)
Living
Scripture in Community by George W. Miller (essay)
Malcolm
(poem)
Malcolm X and the “Pan-African Pantheon”
Malcolm
X Birthday Observance (report)
Malcolm X Letter to
Elijah Muhammad
Malcolm
X Is Dead! by Amin Sharif (essay)
The Malcolm X
Tour 2003
Manning Marable's Malcolm X Book
Manning Marable Reinvents Malcolm X
Martin and
Malcolm on Nonviolence (James Cone)
The Meaning Of Malcolm
X By C. Eric Lincoln (essay)
Peter
Bailey
Speech on the Founding of the OAAU
To
Take One's X by Randall H. Evans (review)
Review
of My Face Is Black by Gayraud S. Wilmore. Jr.
* * * *
*
* * * *
*
1963_Debate Malcolm X_With_James_Baldwin.mp3 /
James Baldwin on Malcolm X (1 of 3)
Malcolm X on Front Page Challenge, 1965
/ Malcolm X—What Is The Black Revolution 1 /
Malcolm X—What Is The Black Revolution 2
* * * *
*
James Baldwin on Malcolm X (2 of 3) /
James Baldwin on Malcolm X (3 of 3) /
Debate James
Baldwin and
Malcolm X
Martin Luther King Jr. on Malcolm X
/ Malcolm X at UC Berkeley
* * * *
*
 |
Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties.
Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
Pulitzer Prize for History 2012 Winner—For a
distinguished and appropriately documented
book on the history of the United States,
Ten thousand dollars ($10,000). Awarded to Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by
the late Manning Marable (Viking), an
exploration of the legendary life and
provocative views of one of the most
significant African-Americans in U.S.
history, a work that separates fact from
fiction and blends the heroic and tragic.
(Moved by the Board from the Biography
category.)—Pulitzer
* *
* * *
Books by & About Malcolm X
Malcolm X:
The Man and His Times /
Seventh Child: A Family Memoir of Malcolm X
/
Martin and Malcolm and America
Ghosts in Our Blood: With Malcolm X in Africa, England, and the
Caribbean
The Black Muslims in America
/
The Autobiography of Malcolm X /
Malcolm X Speaks /
By Any Means Necessary
February 1965: The Final Speeches /
For Malcolm: Poems on the Life and Death of Malcolm X
* * * * *
Malcolm X's daughter to add to father's autobiography—Ilyasah Shabazz,
Malcolm X's daughter, has agreed to write the foreword to three chapters omitted
from the original "Autobiography of Malcolm X." Released in 1965, the classic
returned to No. 1 on the best-seller list 30 years later. The "lost" chapters
were recently discovered by Detroit attorney Gregory Reed who acquired them, at
auction, from the estate of Alex Haley, who co-wrote the book with Malcolm.
Shabazz, author of "Growing Up X," says she believes "the chapters were omitted
because they showed too much of my father's humanity." Reed plans to release
them during a commemorative celebration of what would have been Malcolm's 85th
birthday on May 19 at the
Malcolm X & Dr.
Betty Shabazz Memorial & Education Center, the former Audubon Ballroom in
Harlem where he was assassinated in February 1965.—NYPost
* * * * *
* * * * *
Martin Luther King
Cardinal Bernardin on Dr. King (commentary)
Chaos
or Community
Commemoration
of the 1963 March on Washington by
Lil Joe
Chronology of the Life of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.
Edward Kennedy on Dr. King (commentary)
Ernest
Withers--Civil Rights Photographer (bio;
exhibit)
Eulogy by Five Birmingham
Girls by Dr. King
I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.
(speech)
The
Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Letter from Alabama Clergymen
Letter from
Birmingham Jail
Living
Scripture in Community by George W. Miller (essay)
Martin and Malcolm on Nonviolence
by James Cone
Martin
Luther King Speaks to AFL-CIO (speech)
Martin Luther
King’s Vision by
Kenneth L. Smith and Ira G. Zepp, Jr. (essay)
Speaks to AFL-CIO
The
State of the Dream (Since Dr. King's Death)
What Would "Dr. Kang" Say?
by. J.B. Borders
WWMLKD
|
The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me
The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Jonathan Rieder
“You don’t know me,” Martin Luther King, Jr., once declared to those who criticized his denunciation of the Vietnam War, who wanted to confine him to the ghetto of “black” issues. Now, forty years after being felled by an assassin’s bullet, it is still difficult to take the measure of the man: apostle of peace or angry prophet; sublime exponent of a beloved community or fiery Moses leading his people up from bondage; black preacher or translator of blackness to the white world? This book explores the extraordinary performances through which King played with all of these possibilities, and others too, blending and gliding in and out of idioms and identities. Taking us deep into King’s backstage discussions with colleagues, his preaching to black congregations, his exhortations in mass meetings, and his crossover addresses to whites, Jonathan Rieder tells a powerful story about the tangle of race, talk, and identity in the life of one of America’s greatest moral and political leaders. |
 |
A
brilliant interpretive endeavor grounded in the sociology of culture, The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me delves into the intricacies of King’s sermons, speeches, storytelling, exhortations, jokes, jeremiads, taunts, repartee, eulogies, confessions, lamentation, and gallows humor, as well as the author’s interviews with members of King’s inner circle. The King who emerges is a distinctively modern figure who, in straddling the boundaries of diverse traditions, ultimately transcended them all.
Beyond Vietnam /
Chronology
Other Books by Martin Luther
King, Jr.
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. /
Strength to Love /
The Measure of a Man /
Why We Can't Wait
A Testament of Hope /
A Knock at Midnight /
The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1948-1963
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community /
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
* * * * *
* * * * *
|
The People Are the True
Poets
When asked if
she
was getting
tired
of walking,
one old sister
said:
“My soul has
been
tired for a
long time.
Now my feet are
tired
and my soul is
resting.”
The rest of us
are just
journeymen
making a dishonest living.
Julius
Lester, Search for the New Land (1969) There Was No Spring in
1968
The winds of
winter died
as our northern
half
of the world
tilted
toward the sun,
but
there was no
spring, April
was scarcely
old enough
to know its
name
when Martin
Luther King
was hurled into
Death
King was not
cold
before blacks
turned
night into day.
They
knew that the
bullet
had killed a
little
of each of
them.
For ten days
blacks
“joined
together”
and “worked
together”
and the smoke
from the
purifying
flames even
drifted
over the White
House
in huge black billows.
Julius
Lester, Search for the New Land (1969; pp150-151) King Preaches His Own Funeral
If
any of you are around
When
I have to meet my day,
I
don’t want a long funeral.
And
if you get somebody
to
deliver the eulogy
tell
him not to talk too long.
Tell
him not to mention
That
I have a Nobel Peace Prize—
That
isn’t important.
Tell
him not to mention
That
I have 300 or 400 other awards—
That’s
not important.
Tell
him not to mention
where
I went to school.
I’d
like somebody to mention that day
that
Martin
Luther King, Jr.,
tried
to give his life serving others.
I’d
like somebody to mention that day
that
Matin
Luther King, Jr.,
tried
to love somebody
I
want you to say that day
that
I did try
to
feed the hungry
I
want you to be able to say that day
that
I did try in my life
to
visit those who were in prison.
And
I want you to say
that
I tried to love and serve
humanity.
Yes,
if you want to
Say
that I was a drum major.
Say
that I was a drum major for justice
Say
that I was a drum major for peace
Say that I was a drum
major for righteousness
* * *
* * Only a dying culture would seek to save itself
by feeding upon its dead. Only a dying culture would exult about
putting some men on the moon while half of mankind lives on the
starvation level. (Julius
Lester, Search for the New Land (1969;
p. 148)
Martin Luther King,
Jr., called upon black people to be as Christian as Christ.—Julius
Lester, Search for the New Land (1969; pp151-153)
Revolutions proceed, not by the intensity of
one’s desires, but by their own laws. The revolutionary’s duty
is to know that what to do can never be separated from when to
do. There is, however, always something to do.—Julius
Lester, Search for the New Land (1969; p. 160)
(Jet—April 18,
1968) |
* * * * *
NATO
or the UN Supporting
the Interests of Capital By Connie White
Positively Black
Table
Race,
Racism & Reparations by J. Angelo Corlett
(Book Review)
Ralph Garlin Clingan
Against Cheap Grace
Nuking Westerns
and White Manliness
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
Related Files
Addendum: An Apologia The African World
America Beyond the Color Line
Black Panther
Platform & Program
A Blues for the Birmingham Four
The
Confessions of the Murderers (commentary)
Conversations with Kind Friends
Funeralizing Mahalia
George
H. White & Ida B. Wells Lynching Index
Mahalia Jackson
Moore v. Dempsey
Myths of Low-Wage Workers
NAACP Takes Voting
Rights ID Issue to United Nations
Portraits of Blacks Positively
Black Table
The
Old
South
Press
Release from United for a Fair Economy
Religion and
Politics2
Response to Addae
Responses to Skip Gates
Sanctions on Zimbabwe
Skip Gates and the Talented Fifth
Six
Killed in Bombingham
Social
Role of Black Journalism
State
Of Black America
The State of Black Journalism
state of black nation 2005
State
of the Dream
The State of the Dream 2005
The State of HBCUs
Victory Is Assured By Stanley Crouch What Would "Dr. Kang" Say?
White Privilege
Shapes the U.S.
Work, Labor & Business
Editor's Page
Zimbabwe Crisis
Slavery
The 200th Anniversary of
the Haitian Independence by Manes Pierre
African
Slavery -- Religion and Colonial Brazil
Anarcha's
Story by
Alexandria C. Lynch, MS III J Marion Sims
Aristotle
and America to 1550 by Lewis Hanke
The
Atlantic Slave Trade by Madge Dresser
The
Black Hearts of Men By
John Stauffer (book review)
Latin
America's Indian Question by David
Maybury-Lewis and Paul
H.Gelles
Pre-Reformation
Religious Ideas
by
James T. Moore
“Time
Longer Dan Rope” by
Dr. Acklyn Lynch
What
It Means to Be Negro by Daisy
Bates
Some
New Light on the Garvey Movement
Southern
Needs by Michael Manley
Stokely
Carmichael
Amite
County, a perspective on SC by Jack Newfield
Beginning, a perspective
on SC by Jack Newfield
Black Power
"Kish
Mir Tuchas, Baby" , a perspective on SC by Jack NewField
A
Tribute to Kwame Toure/Stokely Carmichael
War, Peace, & Empire
ACTION:
all out to stop the war
Another
look at Israel Table
The
Congressional Black Caucus Statement on War with Iraq
The
Color Line and the War By Roy
Wilkens
ChickenHawks
Crow for War by Matt Bivens
The
Fight for Global Justice by
Danny Glover
Hard
Truths: September 11, 2001
by Haki Madhubuti
How
the Riots Might have Turned Out by Cornish Rogers
How
To Stop The Killing in the Pan African Hood
by Marvin X
The
Letters of David Parks
(& Vietnam)
Life of
Black Army Chaplains
Lynching
Index
The
Military Industrial Complex by Junious
Ricardo Stanton
Official:
George Bush is Not God
Opium in
the Far East
The
Pain of Violence and Death in the Hood
PEACE
YES / WAR NO by Kalamu ya Salaam
Plummer,
Allensworth, Steward, et al
Poll
Finds Blacks Least Likely to Back War Against Iraq
Prayers
for Fellow Prisoners by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The
San Francisco Anti-War March
Securing
My Homeland by Judy Simmons
"A Son
Goes to War" By Gordon Parks
Thinkable Genocide: the Tragedy of Rwanda
Unending
War By John
Maxwell
What
is Fascism by Junious
Ricardo Stanton
What
Price the American Empire by Patrick J. Buchanan
What's
Next by Julian Bond
World
Empire and the Balance of Power by James Burnham
W.E.B. Du Bois
Bio-Chronology
Credo or Affirmation of Faith
Dawn
of Freedom
Du
Bois & Civil Religion
Du Bois More Man Than Meets the Eye
Jacob and Esau
Letter to Yolande 1958
Negro
Church DuBois'
The Souls of Black Folk (table)
Speaks to Africa
Toussaint L'Ouverture and Nat
Turner
Related files
Fifty
Influential Figures
Myths of Low-Wage Workers
Press
Release from United for a Fair Economy
Religion & Politics
Skip Gates and the Talented Fifth
Responses to Skip Gates
State
Of Black America
The State of Black Journalism
The State of HBCUs
The State of the Dream 2005
state of black nation 2005
State of the Dream
White Privilege
Shapes the U.S.
* * *
* *
|
Lyndon
Baines Johnson Signs 1964 Civil Rights Act |
|
The Civil Rights Act of 1964was passed after increasing political pressure
and violence against African-Americans. The drive for its
passage was boosted by the assassination of JFK. This was the
most far-reaching legislation of its kind since
Reconstruction. It included 11 titles which dealt with voting
practices, segregation, provided financial aid to
desegregating schools, extended the life of the Civil Rights
Commission for four more years, outlawed federal funds for
educations institutions or programs practicing discrimination,
outlawed employment and union discrimination, required
gathering census data by race in some areas, prevented federal
courts from sending a civil rights case back to state or local
courts, established the Community Relations Service (CRS) to
arbitrate local race problems and provided right of jury trial
in any case that arose from any section of the act.—Civil
Rights Acts and Other Remedies
The Civil Rights
Act of 1964 (Pub.L.
88-352, 78 Stat. 241,
enacted July 2, 1964) was a landmark piece of
legislation in the United States that outlawed major
forms of discrimination against African Americans and
women, including racial segregation. It ended unequal
application of voter registration requirements and
racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and
by facilities that served the general public ("public
accommodations").
Powers given to
enforce the act were initially weak, but were
supplemented during later years. Congress asserted its
authority to legislate under several different parts of
the
United States Constitution, principally its power to
regulate
interstate commerce under
Article One (section 8), its duty to guarantee all
citizens
equal protection of the laws under the
Fourteenth Amendment and its duty to protect voting
rights under the
Fifteenth Amendment. The Act was signed into
law by
President
Lyndon B. Johnson, who would later sign the landmark
Voting Rights Act into law.—Wikipedia
|
* * *
* *
Once Malcolm was dead and the finger was pointed at the
Nation of Islam, many of Malcolm's own followers forgot what their leader
was before his conversion to the Nation of Islam. They forgot that Malcolm
was a self-admitted criminal with little or no regard for his people. This
Malcolm was erased from their memory. Only the iconic firebrand of their
cause remained. Malcolm the black revolutionary was much more preferred by
his well-meaning followers than Malcolm the Black Muslim.
Oddly enough, many in the Nation of Islam, long
after Malcolm had left their ranks, tried to hold on to Malcolm
the Black Muslim. They insisted that Malcolm was solely the
product of his experience and training in the Nation of Islam. To
believe this is to believe that Malcolm never entertained an idea
that was not passed down to him by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
We know that history does not bear this out. Malcolm was no robot.
He and his mentor had many disagreements over many things. Malcolm
X Is Dead *
* * * *
 |
Occupy Wall Street movement at a crossroads—26 October 2011—The ruling class has responded with a two-pronged strategy. Attempts to channel political discontent back within the political system have been combined with a growing wave of arrests and stepped-up police violence. The latest action was the most brutal. Hundreds of police officers from 12 agencies, decked out in riot gear, surrounded an encampment in Oakland, California early Tuesday morning. Under the direction of Democratic Party Mayor Jean Quan, the police used tear gas, bean bag guns and a sonic cannon to attack and arrest about one hundred peaceful demonstrators and lay waste to the occupation site.
Riot
police maintained a heavy presence in Oakland throughout the day. In the
evening, hundreds of police met further demonstrations with more tear
gas and flash grenades.
|
There were reports of many
injuries. Arrests have been carried out in dozens of US
cities, including New York, San Francisco, Dallas,
Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Phoenix and Denver. Across the
Pacific Ocean, encampments in Sydney and Melbourne,
Australia have been forcefully shut down and the
participants rounded up.
These acts of political repression—which if they occurred in Iran or Syria would be condemned by the US political establishment and media—are being carried out with the tacit approval of the Obama administration. Quan’s order came two days after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former White House chief of staff, oversaw the arrest of 150 protesters.—WSWS
Non-violent protesters shot with rubber bullets. / Oakland PD Used Crowd Control Methods Prohibited in War Zones
*
* * * *
King’s views on this entire question grew
out of his early championship of an egalitarian, socialistic
approach to wealth and property. "A life," he wrote,
"is sacred. Property is intended to serve life, and no
matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has
no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is
not man." He repeatedly condemned the United States’
economic system for withholding the necessities of life from the
masses while heaping luxuries on the few.
One of our major goals, he declared, should
be to bridge the gap between abject poverty and inordinate
wealth. To this end he began, during the latter part of his
life, to advocate a variety of economic programs, including the
creation of jobs by government and the institution of a
guaranteed annual minimal income. He was impatient with phrases
like "human dignity"’ and "brotherhood of
man" when they did not find concrete expression in the
structures of society.
The point is that King believed it was God’s
intention that everyone should have the physical and spiritual
necessities of life. He could not envision the Beloved Community
apart from the alleviation of economic inequity and the
achievement of economic justice. Harvey Cox has aptly pointed
out that King combined with this emphasis two traditional
biblical themes: the "holiness of the poor" and the "blessed
community." In the movement King led, blacks were the embodiment
of "the poor" and integration represented the vision of "the
holy community."
Beloved Community
*
* * * *
Public media leaders from ITVS, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting joined the rising chorus of voices congratulating Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, her co-patriot Leymah Gbowee, and pro-democracy campaigner Tawakul Karman of Yemen . . .
Pray the Devil Back to Hell / Leymah Gbowee Wins 2011 Nobel Peace Prize
* *
* * *
 |
Becoming American Under Fire
Irish Americans, African Americans, and the Politics of Citizenship
During the Civil War Era
By Christian G. Samito
In Becoming American under Fire, Christian G. Samito provides a rich account of how African American and Irish American soldiers influenced the modern vision of national citizenship that developed during the Civil War era. By bearing arms for the Union, African Americans and Irish Americans exhibited their loyalty to the United States and their capacity to act as citizens; they strengthened their American identity in the process. . . . For African American soldiers, proving manhood in combat was only one aspect to their quest for acceptance as citizens. As Samito reveals, by participating in courts-martial and protesting against unequal treatment, African Americans gained access to legal and political processes from which they had previously been excluded. The experience of African Americans in the military helped shape a postwar political movement that successfully called for rights and protections regardless of race. |
For
Irish Americans, soldiering in the Civil War was part of a
larger affirmation of republican government and it forged a bond
between their American citizenship and their Irish nationalism.
The wartime experiences of Irish Americans helped bring about
recognition of their full citizenship through naturalization and
also caused the United States to pressure Britain to abandon its
centuries-old policy of refusing to recognize the naturalization
of British subjects abroad.
/
For Love of Liberty
* *
* * *
|
The Shadows of Youth
The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights
Generation
By Andrew B. Lewis
With deep admiration and rigorous
scholarship, historian Lewis (Gonna
Sit at the Welcome Table) revisits
the ragtag band of young men and women who
formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee. Impatient with what they
considered the overly cautious and
accommodating pace of the NAACP and
Martin
Luther King Jr., the black college
students and their white allies, inspired by
Gandhi's principles of nonviolence and moral
integrity, risked their lives to challenge a
deeply entrenched system. Fanning out over
the Jim Crow South, SNCC organized sit-ins,
voter registration drives, Freedom Schools
and protest marches. Despite early
successes, the movement disintegrated in the
late 1960s, succeeded by the militant Black
Power movement. The highly readable history
follows the later careers of the principal
leaders. Some, like
Stokely Carmichael and
H. Rap Brown,
became bitter and disillusioned. |
 |
Others, including
Marion Barry,
Julian Bond and
John Lewis, tempered their idealism and
moved from protest to politics, assuming
positions of leadership within the very
institutions they had challenged. According
to the author, No organization contributed
more to the civil rights movement than SNCC,
and with his eloquent book, he offers a
deserved tribute.—Publishers
Weekly
* * * *
*
Michelle Alexander: US Prisons, The New Jim Crow
/
Judge Mathis Weighs in on the execution of Troy Davis
 |
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
By
Michelle
Alexander
The
mass incarceration of people of color through the War on
Drugs is a big part of the reason that a black child
born today is less likely to be raised by both parents
than a black child born during slavery. The absence of
black fathers from families across America is not simply
a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time
watching Sports Center. Hundreds of thousands of black
men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away
for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed
by whites. Most people seem to
imagine that the drug war—which has swept millions of
poor people of color behind bars—has been aimed at
rooting out drug kingpins or violent drug offenders.
|
* * * *
*
update
13 January 2012
|
