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Volume10 Issue 46…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…November
16, 2007
Bit of History
Andrew Goodman
(1943-1964)
Born in New York City on November
23, 1943 into a wealthy Jewish-American family, Andrew Goodman was the middle
of three sons born to Robert and Carolyn Goodman. His family had a long history
of community and social activism. He became a civil rights activist.
Goodman attended Walden School, a progressive institution that influenced his
outlook on life. After graduation, he enrolled in the Honors Program at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. He fell ill with pneumonia, withdrew from
school after a semester and returned home. Goodman worked in several off
Broadway productions as an actor and did construction work with his father. He
planned to study drama, but switched to anthropology after enrolling at Queens
College.
Along with fellow student
activist Michael Schwerner, Goodman joined the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1964 and volunteered to work on the
"Freedom Summer" project. Before going to Mississippi to register
black voters, the young men attended a three-day training session in Oxford,
Ohio at Western College for Women.
On the night of June 20, 1964 the two reached Meridian, Mississippi, where they
were joined by James Chaney, a black civil rights activist. The following
morning the trio went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, to investigate the Ku Klux
Klan (KKK) firebombing of the Mount Zion Methodist Church, which was to be used
as a Freedom School.
On the return trip to CORE's office in Meridian,
Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price arrested them for driving 35 miles over the speed
limit. They were jailed in Neshoba County; Chaney was charged with speeding and
Schwerner and Goodman were booked "for
investigation." Chaney was fined $20 and the men were released and told to
leave the county. Before reaching Meridian, KKK members stopped them on a rural
road. Shot and killed, their bodies were buried in an earthen dam.
When Attorney General Robert Kennedy learned the men were missing, he ordered Federal
Bureau of Investigations agents to investigate their disappearance. On August
4, agents found their bodies buried at Old Jolly Farm.
In October, KKK member, James Jordon agreed to co-operate with the FBI.
According to his testimony, Deputy Sheriff Price released Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney, but re-arrested them before they
reached Lauderdale County and took them to the deserted Rock Cut Road where he
handed them over to the KKK. Eventually nineteen men were arrested and charged
with violating the trio's civil rights, including Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and
Deputy Price.
On February 24, 1967, Judge William Cox dismissed 17 of the 19 indictments. The
Supreme Court overruled him and the 'Mississippi Burning' trial began in
October. On October 21, 1967, seven men, including Deputy Price, were found
guilty of conspiring to deprive Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner
of their civil rights. None was found guilty of murder. They were sentenced to
prison terms ranging from three to ten years; Sheriff Rainey was acquitted.
On September 14, 2004, Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood announced
that he was gathering evidence for a charge of murder and intended to take the
case to a grand jury. On January 7, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen was arrested and
found guilty of manslaughter -- not murder -- on June 21, 2005, exactly 41
years to the day after the murders. (Sources: www.law.umkc.edu,
http://en.wikipedia.org/, and www.aaregistry.com)
Black Man's Burden
By Kerri-Ann Smith
Take up the BLACK man's burden,
Take up the BLACK man's load,
Take up the BLACK man's burden,
Can you handle his
soul?
Try fitting every description
Try dropping out of school for lack of funds
Try joining the military
Of a country that
hates her sons.
Try growing up with no father
Avoiding the strains of the streets
Try hearing your mother cry
For lack of money,
food and warm sheets
Try supporting a family that never sees you
Try loving God but fearing life
Try waking up early hours and working hard
With no insurance, a
time card, and a miserable wife
Try walking into a store
And watching everybody watching you
Try stepping on the bus
Watching the old
white women's faces turn blue
Try fighting for life under the influence
Of pepper sprayed eyes and detained arms
Try telling that judge and those lawyers
That you are
innocent, while remaining calm
Try upholding a family of ten
Sending them all to college
Try standing tall and proud
As they walk down the
isles of knowledge
Try resisting negative glances,
Try having unrecognized talent
Try working 40 hours while studying
To compete with those
whose paths have been set by their parents.
Try holding your head high
Despite the storms and tempests of manhood
Try doing this without aging
Without one wrinkle,
without gray hairs, just stay looking good
Try wearing FUBU or Rocawear
Sean John and Phat Farm gear
Try writing a rhyme or a lyric
Try preaching God's
love to a world that will never hear
You say what you'd like about my brothers
They're strong and steadfast in all that they do
They may fit your description, they may seem negative
But unless you can take up my BLACK man's burden
Then none of what you
say is true.
Cutting Crack
Sentences
On Tuesday, the U.S. Sentencing
Commission, which sets guidelines for federal prison sentences, considered a
proposal to make its new more lenient guidelines for future crack cocaine
offenses retroactive. Applying the new guidelines retroactively will cut an
average two years off the sentences of thousands of federal inmates. Nearly
20,000 will become immediately eligible for early releases.
If adopted, the proposal will not cover the vast majority of crack cocaine
offenders, which are housed in state correctional facilities.
While the chemical properties of crack and powder cocaine are the same, the sentencing
guidelines mandate more stringent federal penalties for crack than powder
cocaine crimes, which generally involve whites. Because crack is relatively
cheap, most crack offenders are poor blacks. Its use and the stringent
sentencing guidelines have been cited for the explosive growth in the number of
blacks behind bars, especially black men. Of the federal inmates that would be
affected by the sentencing change, nearly 86 percent are black. Ninety-four
percent are men.
The Bush administration opposes the proposal. It claims applying the new
guidelines retroactively will overburden federal courts and release a large
number of potentially dangerous drug offenders. To the contrary, most drug
offenders are non-violent criminals.
In addition, reducing drug sentences and making the decisions retroactive is
not new. The commission, which was established in 1984, has reduced sentences
and made the decisions retroactive for LSD, marijuana cultivation and the
painkiller OxyContin. What is new is the racial
impact, since those released from prison for crack cocaine offenses will be
disproportionately black men.
Unarmed and Dangerous
On Monday, November 12, 2007, New
York police shot and killed 18-year-old Khiel Coppin, a young man with a history of mental illness.
According to press reports, Coppin's mother called
police to report a domestic disturbance. Coppin was
heard on his mother's 911 tape claiming to have a gun.
Eyewitness accounts of Coppin's actions after police
arrived on the scene vary. The five officers involved in the shooting must have
felt "threatened," because they shot at Coppin
twenty times. While they supposedly acted appropriately in discharging their
firearms, Coppin had no weapon. For killing a kid
armed with a hairbrush, the policemen were routinely placed on paid
administrative leave.
Although this young man's death
sounds bizarre, such killings have become commonplace in the United States of
America (USA). Were these deaths transpiring with such frequency in any other
country, particularly one not an ally, the USA would label these acts human
right abuses and call for the United Nations to take some actions, including
the possible imposition of sanctions. But, these
killings are excused and viewed as justified homicides in America. The
murderers go free. While mainstream America and US law enforcement officials
would like to dismiss race as a factor in these bizarre deaths, cops are not
killing unarmed white people.
On Friday, November 16, 2007, thousands marched and rallied in the nation's
capital. Initially called in response to the Jena 6 tragedy, the march's
organizers called for the demonstration to highlight the nation's dual justice
system and asked the US Justice Department, under new Attorney General Michael Mukasey, to take a more active role in the investigation
and prosecution of hate crimes.
Many of the march's participants were family members of the victims of police
shootings, including the fiancée of 23-year-old Sean Bell, who was
killed in a hail of 50 bullets on November 25, 2006. Ironically, Bell's death
occurred on the thirtieth anniversary of the murder of Randolph Evans, an
unarmed black, Brooklyn youth, who was killed by New York City cops. Members of
this same police force pumped 41-bullets into unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo in 1999.
Falling Through Cracks
In 1967, President Lyndon B.
Johnson established the Kerner Commission to
investigate the causes of the race riots of the mid-1960s. The
commission, headed by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner,
placed most of the blame for the riots on "white racism." The commission concluded that the US was
moving towards two societies, one black and one white - separate and unequal.
It suggested improvements in schools and housing and better police protection
for residents of black communities. Forty years later, little has happened to
prevent the Kerner Commission prediction from
becoming reality.
Since they are generally the last hired and first fired, the incomes of blacks
lag behind the incomes of their white counterparts. Racism plays a prominent
role in the employment process. According to a study by the University of
Chicago, even when job applicants possess identical qualifications, job seekers
with names associated with black persons are far less likely to receive
interviews or calls back from prospective employers than applicants with
non-black sounding names.
Blacks are last in line for home ownership, but the first to be discriminated
against for a mortgage loan or any other kind of financial transaction. A
three-year undercover investigation by the National Fair Housing Alliance found
that real estate agents steered whites away from integrated neighborhoods and
steered blacks toward predominantly black neighborhoods. Other studies have
shown that blacks receive higher interest rates than whites, even when their
incomes and credit ratings are similar or better than those of whites receiving
lower interest rates.
Given the lack of progress in implementing the recommendations of the Kerner Commission, it is not surprising that the income gap
between black and white families continue to widen. On Tuesday, the Economic
Mobility Project released a set of three reports on the economic mobility of
families that chart this lack of progress. For more about the project, which is managed by the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the reports log
on to www.economicmobility.org.
Disgruntled wants to know:
When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led peaceful demonstrations for justice
and equality during the Civil Rights Movement, there were plenty of blacks that
believed he should tone down his rhetoric or better still sit down and shut up.
After all, they argued, things were not as bad as he made out. There was
nothing wrong with black folks sitting in the back of the bus. A hard day's
work never killed anybody. And, of course, there is nothing wrong with being a
servant. Be still, they admonished. They advised blacks to accept their earthy burden, their station in this life is meaningless, because
they will receive their reward in heaven. There were preachers delivering this
second class citizenship sermon and subservient congregations saying
"Amen" every Sunday. Fast forward to the 21st
century. A black preacher on CNN criticizes the marches and
demonstrations for the Jena 6. He complains that these boys are no angels and
are therefore unworthy of being treated as heroes like Rosa Parks. To all the naysaying house Negroes of
this new century, what does being angels have to do with our demand for
equality and justice?
Disgruntled
feels: Duplicitous! George W. Bush has presided over an historic
increase in the national debt, which has ballooned from five to nine trillion
dollars. Architect of an historic decline in the value of the dollar and
meteoric rise in the nation's balance of payment deficits, he has squandered
the nation's goodwill in international relations, despite its super power
status. Given this radically spendthrift record, Bush's sudden fiscal
conservatism is downright duplicitous and must be taken with a boatload of
salt. It is disturbingly reminiscent of his publicly expressed concern for US
troops. As long as they are on the frontline in harm's way, he can lambast Congress for not providing timely war funding. Yet,
once US soldiers no longer serve as fodder for his endless war on terror,
Bush's concern for their welfare dissipates as quickly as puffs of smoke driven
by the likes of those powerful Santa Anna winds and wildfires that recently
ravaged California. Bush is a flaming radical; just as there is nothing
conservative about his fiscal policy record, his claim
of support for the troops is duplicitous!
Disgruntled
says: In the world of US espionage, they called him Curveball. While
known as Rafid Ahmed Alwan,
his real name is not a household word. Yet, Curveball was the main source of US
intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. His erroneous information
was used by the Bush administration to justify a course of action that had been
planned well in advance of 9-11. Curveball, the liar, and those who used his
lies to wage war face no criminal charges, not even an investigation. On the
other hand, there is Barry Bonds, a baseball player, that
has been the subject of an intense years' long investigation into the use of
steroids. Even if found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice in this
matter, no one died because Bonds lied. Ironically, US mainstream media are all
over the Bonds steroid story, while they leave the US public ignorant about
Curveball.
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and
Telephone Calls
Email http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com
ADHD Drugs Stunt Kid's Growth...By Cathy Burke...Drugs treating attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder in kids have no long-term benefits - and
actually stunt their growth, a study shows. UNY Buffalo study that tracked 600
kids since the early 1990s concluded that drugs like Ritalin and Concerta worked for a while, but not after three years.
Report co-author Dr. William Pelham said he believes earlier findings on the
drugs' effectiveness were overstated. "I think that we exaggerated the
beneficial impact of medication in the first study," he told the BBC
yesterday. "We had thought that children medicated longer would have
better outcomes. That didn't happen to be the case." Instead, he said, the
kids "had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth so they weren't
growing as much as other kids, both in terms of their height and in terms of
their weight. In the short run, [medication] will help the child behave better,
in the long run it won't. And that information should be made very clear to
parents."
Email http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk...DNA
of the KKK...Jonathan David Farley...When I was a graduate student, one episode
seared on to my consciousness the very great difference between British and
American academics in terms of how racism is tolerated. Oxford University
awarded me the Senior Mathematical Prize and Johnson University Prize, its
highest mathematics awards - something that would have been inconceivable in
the United States because I am African-American. Obviously there is racism in
Britain too, but I find that there is also an intolerance
for intolerance. And that is why I believe James Watson, despite years of
espousing his eugenics mush in America, met his El Alamein
in Britain. As you probably know, the American biologist and Nobel laureate
recently stated that Africans are less intelligent than whites - it's in the
genes - and, to its credit, the Science Museum in London canceled a talk Watson
was to give. By contrast, many Americans still defend the man.
Email Glenn.Wilson@phila.gov...Re:
The DISH Vol. 10 No 41...Thanks for another thought provoking issue of the
DISH. We must continue to fight for our issues. However in the case of Jena 6
Mr. Bell, we also must preach/teach personal accountability. He knew, should
have known, what could happen to him as a black male on probation in the south.
Fighting for issues and being personally accountable is not either/or, its and/
both. Was the judges decision to send Mr. Bell to a juvenile facility
revenge.....we know it was, but we can't raise that argument because Mr. Bell
probation agreement was in place WAY before the "white tree"
incident. We must teach our young people that they can behave in such a way that
they will not become fodder for the prison system.