WHITE RAGE

2018 John F. Morgan Sr. Distinguished Faculty Lecture
Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies
April 9, 2018

Sytematic Racism

As the year 2020 is coming to an end we should stay on course to change and break down systems that exist that holds Black Americans from success. This is the time to come together as a race that has endured slave history, fought for “civil” rights that are granted others but not us and the right to be successful. Activist Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow” explains a system in place to disenfranchise the Black man.

December 13th in Black History

December 13, 1903 – Ella Baker is born in Norfolk, Virginia. A civil rights worker who will direct the New York branch of the NAACP,     Baker will become executive director of the Southern      Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960’s during student integration of lunch counters in the southern states. She also will play a key role in the formation    of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and its     voter registration drive in Mississippi. She will join the ancestors on December 13, 1986 in New York City.

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All Rights Reserved by the Information Man in association with
The Black Agenda.

Congressman John Lewis RWG

We lost a great man.  Congressman John Lewis died July 17, 2020 after battle with pancreatic cancer at 80 years old.  Congressman John Lewis is one of the heroes of the civil rights movement.  The world seemed a little safer place for African American with John Lewis in it.  He will be missed.  Thank you for your service not only to this country but your humanitarian efforts in the struggle of your people.

CNN states, “Lewis died on the same day as civil rights leader the Rev. Cordy Tindell “C.T.” Vivian, who was 95. The dual deaths of the civil rights icons come as the nation is still grappling with racial upheaval in the wake of the death of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests that have swept the nation. ”

Dr Leon Sullivan OIC

OIC stand for Opportunities Industrialization Centers.  OIC was created in 1964 by Dr Leon Sullivan. Dr Sullivan was the pastor of Zion Baptist Church in Philapdelphia and a civil rights activist.  Dr Sullivan created the program to provide job training and life skills to poor Blacks.  This was during President Johnson’s war on poverty when government efforts were made to address poverty in America.  Johhson expanded the government’s role in education and health care.

I went through OIC in the early 70’s in Pittsburgh.  The Pittsburgh area had more than one  location.  I went to the one located in the Hill district.  Most of the teachers were young Black college graduates and you were made to feel you had a chance to make a better life than your parents.  This youtube presentation says it all.

Dick Gregory Rest In Peace

Dick Gregory
Oct 12, 1932 – August 19, 2017

My First Hero

In my youth, I was consciously aware of the Black and white divide by living in a predominately white middle to low-income neighborhood.  Have I been called a “nigger” in this environment?  Yes.  I have two distinct memories as a child under the age of 8 years old being called “nigger” by little chubby white girl with red hair, Susie.  And by the way, she was the same age as me.  Just saying!

Moving forward to the civil rights movement, I was a young teenager who didn’t really believe in turning the other cheek but I wasn’t for violence meeting with more violence.  My eyes were opened to the country I lived in by Dick Gregory.  His cowboy analogy, I cleaned house by.  “When mother America forgets ….”, “ … the cowboy always needs an Indian” and “… history repeats itself and 4 lay dead…”  Awesome man, comedian, and activist.

RWG

DICK GREGORY 84th HAPPY BIRTHDAY

October 12th

 
1932 – Richard Claxton Gregory is born in St. Louis, Missouri.
He will be better known as “Dick” Gregory and in the
1960’s will become a comedic pioneer, bringing a new
perspective to comedy and opening many doors for Black
entertainers. Once he achieves success in the
entertainment world, he will shift gears and use his
talents to help causes in which he believes.  He will
serve the community for over forty years as a comedian,
civil and human rights activist and health/nutrition
advocate. On October 9, 2000, his friends and
supporters will honor him at a Kennedy Center gala,
showing him their “appreciation for his uncommon
character, unconditional love, and generous service.

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“The TRUTH shall make you free” _______________________________________  Munirah(TM) is a trademark of Information Man. Copyright 1997 – 2016,
All Rights Reserved by the Information Man in association with
The Black Agenda.

Happy Birthday H. Rap Brown

 

 

 

 

 
October 4, 1943 – Hubert Gerold Brown is born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
He will be better known as H. Rap Brown, become a Black nationalist and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s, and later the Justice Minister of the Black Panther Party. He will be most famous for his proclamation during that period that
“violence is as American as cherry pie”, as well as once
stating that “If America don’t come around, we’re gonna
burn it down”. He is also known for his autobiography “Die
Nigger Die!”. He will spend five years (1971-1976) in
New York’s Attica Prison after a robbery conviction. While
in prison, he will convert to Islam and change his name to
Jamil Abdullah al-Amin. After his release, he will open a
grocery store in Atlanta, Georgia and become a Muslim
spiritual leader and community activist, preaching against
drugs and gambling in Atlanta’s West End neighborhood. He
will be sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of
parole, for the 2000 shooting of two Fulton County Sheriff’s
deputies, one of whom dies.  Both deputies were Black.

 

50 years: The origin of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964

President John F. Kennedy gave a civil rights speech June 11, 1963 from the oval office that was broadcasted on radio and television where he ask there be legislation “giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments”, as well as “greater protection for the right to vote”.   This came after several pleas from Black organization and the Birmingham, Alabama campaign lead by Dr, Martin Luther King.  Dr. King said that Birmingham, Al was a Ku Klux Klan stronghold and the most racist city in America.

The civil rights bill composed by Kennedy included the ban of public discrimination in accommodation and the US Attorney General could join lawsuits against state and governments that operated segregated school systems.  Unfortunately, the bill didn’t include some essentials wanted by Black civil rights leaders.  Like the protection against police brutality, giving the justice department the power to initiate desegregation or job discrimination lawsuits.

What did this mean to Black folks?  Well, I remember my grandfather being very interested in what Kennedy had to say.  As a Black child growing up in my grandfather’s house, I got a sense of what was important and what wasn’t.   My grandfather watching television was very unusual.  You see the TV was something new in the house and I was allowed to watch as much as I wanted and my favorite cartoons that day was replaced by a white man giving a speech. That man, I learned later, was President John F Kennedy who was assassinated, November 22, 1963.

John Henrik Clark on History

Born in 1915, the oldest son of an Alabama sharecropper family, the young John Henrik Clarke left the South in 1933 by way of a freight train, for a life of scholarship and activism in New York. He developed his skills as a writer and lecturer through the radical movements of the Depression years and his assiduous participation in study circles like the Harlem History Club and the Harlem Writers’ Workshop. He studied history and world literature at NYU, at Columbia University and at the League for Professional Writers. The greater part of his education came from studying at libraries and from his early association with prominent historians and bibliophiles like Arturo Schomburg, Willis Huggins, Charles Seiffert, John Jackson and William Leo Hansberry. “I was well-grounded in history before ever taking a history course,” he confide

~~from John Carlo website

My favorite quote:

If you expect the present day school system to give history to you, you are dreaming. This, we have to do ourselves. The Chinese didn’t go out in the world and beg people to teach Chinese studies or let them teach Chinese studies. The Japanese didn’t do that either. People don’t beg other people to restore their history; they do it themselves.”

John Henrik Clarke