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Edith
Sampson: A Cold War Warrior
Defends American Democracy Around
the World Before 1964
excerpts from "The American
Way" by Helen Laville & Scot Lucas
Our government has been employing Negro
intellectuals, entertainers, ministers, and many others to play
the roles of ambassadorial Uncle Toms for years. They are
supposed to show their well-fed, well-groomed faces behind the
Iron Curtain as living proof that everyone is free and equal in
the U.S. and the color bar is a myth. -- Paul
Robeson, Here I Stand
I was not a lackey for the State Department I assailed racism
and racists whose names were known to the Indians in my
audiences. I simply went from Darjeeling to Patna to Cuttack to
madras, saying good things about my country because I believed
that the society that had given me a break was in the process of
taking great strides toward racial justice. -- Carl
Rowan, Breaking Barriers
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By the time of her death in 1979, Edith
Sampson had become a footnote in African American history. Few
would have known of her work for the U.S. government between
1949 and 1962. She served as the first black woman on the
permanent U.S. delegation to the United Nations, gave several
international lecture tours, and held membership on the U.S.
delegation to NATO.
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By 1948, Edith Sampson had already had a
remarkable career. Born in 1901, one of eight children of a
launderer in Pittsburgh, she attended the New York School of
Social Work but decided in her twenties to change her
profession. Married, raising two children left by a deceased
sister, and working full-time, she obtained a law degree through
evening classes at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. She
failed the bar examination but earned a master's degree at
Loyola University and passed the bar on her second attempt.
Quickly moving from the probation officer to assistant referee
in juvenile court to assistant state's attorney in Cook county,
she finally established a successful private practice and, in
1934, became one of the first women to argue before the U.S.
Supreme Court.
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"The countries of the world are looking
to America for leadership and democracy. . . . We will not win
their confidence, especially the confidence of Asia's
dark-skinned millions, if they continue to read about
discriminatory practices in America. Therefore, I say, the best
answer to communist propaganda to divide the white against the
colored people." Sampson in Delhi, India
"Unfortunately, Mr. Robeson had all his
training in America, and he has forgotten that he owes a great
deal to our democracy. he does not represent any
organization--only a lunatic fringe in America." Sampson
in Delhi, India
"I think one of the great instruments in
quickening the pace of the American white man is the report that
we at the Town Hall are going to take back to white America. I
am sure, when they hear of the unrest we have found throughout
the world, they're going to clear up their own backyard."
--Sampson in Delhi, India
"You have got to open these closed doors
and end segregation if you are going to save yourselves.
Communist agents have used the story of segregation as a
propaganda weapon. . . . It is bad enough, but the story they
get abroad is worse than is actually true. if we had a real Fair
Employment Practices Commission, it would mean more than having
millions of dollars spent through the Marshall Plan. The people
of the eastern and backward countries do not want gratuities,
they want to be able to believe in you." Sampson
in Des Moines (1950)
"We Negroes aren't
interested in Communism. . . . We were slaves too long for that.
Nobody is happy with second-class citizenship, but our best
chances are in the framework of American democracy." Sampson
to Soviet Ambassador Malik (1950)
"Only a few American
Negroes have been unable to overcome the 'slave mentality.'
These few, lost without a master to serve, have found that
master in Moscow." Sampson in
Austria (1951)
"I believe that you, more
than any man in public life today, represent something very
special: a Southerner dedicated to an honorable and peaceful
solution of a grave conflict between races and between sections
of the country. Your voice has been the voice of decency and the
voice of commons sense. the fact that it has a Southern accent
makes it all the more powerful." Sampson
to Lyndon Johnson (1961)
"Hundreds, thousands of
our people have walked city streets and county highway in
demonstration. They've sat in, waded in, knelt in. I admire
them. . . . You, though, i admire even more. You reassure me. .
. . What you've been demonstrating is that the disadvantaged,
which is what we are, can make their way to usefulness despite
the disadvantages." Sampson to a
YMCA Job Opportunities through Better Skills Program (1965)
"We learned that you can
work within the establishment, the system, without necessarily
knuckling under to it. You can change the system, little by
little, without destroying it completely. Democracy really is
better than the chaotic anarchy that some New left fanatics
advocate. . . . We learned that person-to-person contact
was far more important than any laws on the books or any
administrative actions or any decisions from the high courts of
the land." Sampson at George
Williams College (1969)
Source: "The American Way" by Helen
Laville & Scot Lucas in Diplomatic
History, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall 1996)
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 |
Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 21 December
2011
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