The DISH
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Vol. 11 Issue 4…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…January 25, 2008
James Cameron (1914-2006)
James Cameron was born on February 23, 1914 in La Crosse, Wisconsin. After his father abandoned them, his mother moved the family to Birmingham, Alabama, then to Kokomo, Indiana. When his mother remarried, the family moved to Marion, Indiana, where Cameron attended DaPayne School through the 8th grade. Nicknamed "Apples," he carried the fruit in his pockets for lunch.
As recounted in his autobiography, A Time of Terror, Cameron's personal ordeal with racism changed his life forever. The dramatic life-altering event took place when Cameron was just sixteen. In August 1930, Cameron and his friends, Abe Smith, 19 and Tommy Shipp, 18, tried to hold up a white couple at "Lovers Lane." The attempted robbery ended in the death of Claude Deeter, a young white man from Marion, Indiana. The Grant County Sheriff arrested the trio, charging them with murder.
A mob led by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) stormed the jail, grabbed, beat and lynched one of the young men. The mob returned; another young man was beaten unconscious, dragged outside and lynched. With the bodies of his friends hanging from the tree outside, the mob returned for Cameron. Severely beaten and dragged to the tree with the rope around his neck, he recalled hearing an angelic voice that said, "Take this boy back, he had nothing to do with any killing or rape."
Miraculously, Cameron was returned to the jail. The following year, he was tried, found guilty of accessory to manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison. Eight members of the mob were charged in the lynching. Two were tried and found not guilty. The others were never tried.
Cameron served 4 years in prison. The female victim later recanted her story and confirmed that he played no role in the assault. Paroled in 1935, Cameron moved to Detroit, Michigan where he worked for Stroh's Brewing Company and attended Wayne State University.
During the 1940s, Cameron founded the local branch of the NAACP in Madison, Wisconsin and two chapters in Muncie and South Bend, Indiana. From 1942-1950, he served as the Indiana State Director of Civil Liberties. He investigated many violations of the "equal accommodations" laws. Threats of violence against his family forced him to relocate to Wisconsin in the early 1950s. Cameron continued his work in civil rights by assisting in protests to end segregated housing in the City of Milwaukee.
In the 1960s, Cameron participated in the marches on Washington. During the seventies, he published numerous articles and booklets on the civil rights struggle, including What is Equality in American Life?, The Lingering Problem of Reconstruction in American Life: Black Suffrage, and The Second Civil Rights Bill. In order to publish A Time of Terror, his memoir, Cameron mortgaged his house (1983). After hearing of plans to build a Jewish Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, Cameron decided that a Black Holocaust Museum was needed. "It seems that every group of people have a chance to erect museums and memorials and statues in our country so the that the world can never forget." In 1988, he founded America's Black Holocaust Museum, Inc., a non-profit museum devoted to preserving the history of lynching in the US and the struggle of black people for equality. Today, it is one of the largest African American museums in the country.
Pardoned by the State of Indiana in the early 1990s, Cameron returned to Marion to lead a protest against a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1995. James Cameron died on June 13, 2006. He was married to his wife Virginia for more than 50 years. The couple had 5 children, 8 grand children and 4 great grandchildren. (Sources: www.theblackmarket.com, www.blackholocaustmuseum.org, http://en.wikipedia.org and www.aaregistry.com)
Commemorating the Ending of Slavery
By John Burl Smith
The movement to end the African Slave Trade and abolish slavery had a long and storied
history. Its chief beneficiary, Great Britain led the fight that ended the slave trade in 1807. The
United States (US) grudgingly followed suite one year later. The practice itself died slowly and
during its death throes millions more Africans, as well as whites, died as the US fought to
preserve this hideous institution.
The Civil War in the US cost several hundred thousand more lives before bond slavery finally ended in 1865. However, ending bond slavery did not end the misery, pain and death it wrought. Institutions set up following slavery's abolition to maintain white's advantage and to prevent slave descendants from gaining equality remained intact, because the 3/5 Compromise was not repealed by the 13th, 14th or 15th Amendment. This fact has allowed discrimination and disparate treatment to continued which, spawning hatred, lynching and other violence against slave descendants. Even today, nooses are reminders of when public lynchings (picnics) were a national pastime.
Over the history of slavery and its aftermath, individuals like Paul Bogle of Jamaica showed uncommon valor in trying to rid the world of this human degradation. An ordained Baptist deacon, Bogle gave his life fighting to make the promise of emancipation a reality. Regarded by his fellows as a peaceful man, who shunned violence, Bogle believed in the teachings of Jesus Christ, endorsed the principles of charity and endurance, while endeavoring to educate and train others. His desire to improve the poor social and economic conditions of slave descendants in Jamaica drew the ire of the British. Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s, during the 1860s, Bogle challenged the British, hoping to force changes in the harsh conditions of his people. During a protest march, British forces killed nearly 500 people. Bogle and George William Gordon, another protest leader, were lynched by the British.
Such events brought about eventual independence for Jamaica, but here in the US, slave descendants are still struggling to break the chains of economic slavery. This week the nation celebrates Dr. King's birthday. While he is hailed as a great humanitarian, the US still refuses to recognize the debt it owes to slave descendants, on whose backs America built its wealth. Today, the display of nooses and open expressions of hatred for black people are excused and rewarded. George W. Bush shows tacit support for displaying nooses; he does or says nothing to condemn such displays as un-American. There is no effort by this White House to make the American dream espoused by Dr. King a reality for slave descendants.
Although the US signed the United Nations resolution pledging to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the end of the African slavery trade in 2004, neither the White House, Congress nor state governments has planned any event to commemorate the ending of the African slave trade. Slave descendants paid a tremendous price, providing the US free labor for 244 years. No other group of people that have come to the US arrived under the extreme conditions of African slaves. No other group of people landed on America's shores in chains and remained in bondage for 12 generations, then were released and given nothing on which to survive.
Every other group of immigrants, even new arrivals today are celebrated for their work ethic, while slave descendants' trek up from bond slavery, without help from the government or people back in the country from which we came, is minimized. Nevertheless, slave descendants know our history is remarkable and do not need others to affirm that fact. We have created something out of nothing, even if whites refuse to admit that they continue to steal from us, just as they stole us from Africa -- hip hop is only the latest example. Slave descendants are creating their own agenda throughout 2008 to commemorate being released from bondage, while committing ourselves to continue our struggle until we achieve total liberation. Power to the People!!!!
Paul Bogle
By Abdel Wright
Sit with me awhile
Let me tell you about a part of our country
At the place Stony Gut back in 1865
Lived a man Paul Bogle who was everything
a good man should be
But they hanged him by the courthouse
An example for Jamaica to see
They hanged him by the courthouse
An example for Jamaica to see.
A man who followed Jesus
And whose actions were in line with his teachings
Who every Sunday morning
The gospel would endeavour to preach
Who understood the suffering of the people
He plainly could feel
But they hanged him by the courthouse
An example for Jamaica to see
They hanged him by the courthouse
An example for Jamaica to see.
With the men from Stony Gut
Paul Bogle did come down that day
Lyrics: Through the bushes by the hills
Until they reached the town of Morant Bay
The reasons for his warnings and his actions
they could not believe
So they hanged him by the courthouse
An example for Jamaica to see
They hanged him by the courthouse
An example for Jamaica to see.
That was like yesterday, Still happening today
History use to tell us
That Paul Bogle was really a traitor
Who murdered and rebelled
Against the peaceful government of the day
Now we can see clearly
And we finally know the reasons indeed
Why they hanged him by the courthouse
An example for Jamaica to see
They hanged him by the courthouse
An example for Jamaica to see.
That was like yesterday, still happening today
Unu remember Michael Gayle, Braeton 7,
Nuff youth from Tivoli, August Town, Rema and Jungle.
Do you remember? Oh yeah
Like yesterday things are happening just the same today
Many get slain, I think it's insane
It happens on and on
African Slavery and Holocaust Memorial
The year 2008 marks the 200th anniversary of the end of the Transatlantic slave trade. While
the United States banned the importation of slaves under Article 1, Section 9 of its Constitution
beginning in the year 1808, the inhumane institution of slavery continued. During the African slave
trade, colonization and slavery, more than 100 million Africans died. This holocaust, a crime against
humanity, has been largely ignored; there is no commemoration planned in the US.
According to Ehi Aimiuwu of the Paul Bogle Foundation, "On March 3, 2000, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair publicly agreed to commemorate the victims of African slavery. On September 16, 2000, the US Senate voted and agreed to do the same. In addition, the United Nations declared the year 2004 as the year to commemorate victims of the African slavery. Unfortunately, none has lived up to this promise of having a single memorial nationally or globally for the African victims."
To rectify this oversight, the Paul Bogle Foundation and Edofolks.com are planning 100 Million Candle Lights to commemorate African Slavery and Holocaust. The planned event will take place worldwide on October 19, 2008 at 7 A.M. Eastern Standard Time. The organizations' goal is to light 100 million candles worldwide with at least one million candles in every nation's capital and at least two million candle lights in Washington, DC on that day at that hour.
This project, which is the brainchild of Constantine Bogle, the great great grandson of Paul Bogle, is supported by other organizations worldwide, including the Atlanta chapter of the National Action Network. For those interested in making this project a worldwide success, email info@edofolks.com.
Foreclosed: State of the Dream 2008
By FairEconomy.Org
For tens of millions of people in the US, owning a home is the essence of the American
dream, representing as it does economic achievement and some measure of security. Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., would undoubtedly agree, and he aspired to make the dream more broadly
available--to people of color as well as whites, the poor and wealthy.
But the culture and the environment have worked against people of color in this respect as in many others, putting many obstacles in the way. There is a long tradition of economic and, more specifically, housing discrimination in the US, ranging from a century of legal slavery to exclusion from participating in wealth-building programs like the Homestead Act of the 1800s and the GI Bill of the late twentieth century. These are programs that gave millions of Americans the assistance and tools they needed to improve their economic lives, and they fostered the growth of a strong, flourishing middle class--one of the main hallmarks of America's strength and appeal.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, millions of people at the lower end of the economic spectrum face a new obstacle, one that has spread its tentacles across the country and across the globe. The subprime lending crisis has occurred because a financial product intended for limited use by a limited number of people has been parlayed into another ill-fated bubble by some mortgage lenders lacking in integrity, foresight, and any vestige of civic concern. The crisis has ruined many economic lives and many communities. It has cost the financial institutions that underwrote massive numbers of shaky subprime loans hundreds of billions of dollars. There is talk of a government bail-out. These losses in turn triggered an ongoing global economic crisis, the end of which we have not yet seen. And the next chapter in the subprime crisis could well be a deep US economic recession.
More important than all of these consequences is the targeting of people of color and poor people as the best candidates to sign up for one of these loans. In the hands of the mortgage lending industry, subprime loans became predatory loans--a faulty product that was ruthlessly hawked even though financial institutions were aware of its defects. Even a surface check of the demographics shows that a solid majority of subprime loan recipients were people of color.
Hungry for new and different products, the financial services industry added features to these loans--exploding adjustable rates, balloon payments, penalties for early re-payment--that hobbled their recipients, making it unlikely they would be able, after a brief honeymoon period, to repay the loans all.
A deeper look into the crisis reveals that the subprime lending debacle has caused the greatest loss of wealth to people of color in modern US history. The spillover effect from the wholesale writing of bad loans is that communities are torn apart. As one house after another in a neighborhood goes vacant, squatters move in, crime and the likelihood of fires spike, local stores and businesses close. The value of the houses other people in the vicinity, who have not taken out subprime loans, live in deteriorates by thousands of dollars. The tax base for the municipality or the state erodes, since many fewer people are living there and paying taxes. This in turn leads to revenue shortfalls and the need to save money by spending less on public services, teachers, police and firefighters, repairs to bridges and schools, and other government activities that enable communities to offer residents quality of life.
The subprime crisis has pulled a large chunk of wealth away from many, many middle- and lower-income people, in the form of homes and home equity--a primary, even sole, asset for those without great wealth. The government has remained silent and inactive. But there are things that can be done.
Just as rules have favored one group of individuals or another throughout US history, so can rules be used now to help the victims of this crisis regain productive lives, wealth, and homes. There are many things that residents and their governments, working together, can do to alleviate the crisis: federal investment in financing homes, lowering the cap on the mortgage deduction, providing incentives for developers to build affordable homes, regulating the mortgage industry, and dedicating estate tax revenues to housing disaster relief.
It won't happen on its own. Your opinion and your actions matter. Take a moment to visit www.faireconomy.org/dream and register your thoughts.
About Me: Written by Amaad Rivera, Brenda Cotto-Escalera, Anisha Desai, Jeannette Huezo,
and Dedrick Muhammad, this executive summary is from Fair Economy's 2008 report, Foreclosed:
State of the Dream. Basically, the report documents how people of color were targeted by subprime
lenders and the huge wealth transfer that occurred as a result of disparities in financial markets.
On Your Assistance!
By Dot
For ten (10) years, The DISH has provided an online weekly newsletter and maintained a
website for its worldwide audience. Always a work in progress, it has been an act of love and
commitment by those who have tirelessly worked and artistically contributed without compensation
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and commitment.
As we enter our eleventh (11) year, operating on fumes, your assistance is needed in helping us to continue to move forward in maintaining our effort to provide an alternative source of news and information from our unique perspective. In an earlier edition, we encouraged readers to consider purchasing John Burl Smith's new book, Archangel, as a way to help in this effort; a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book goes to support The DISH. That remains one way you can assist in keeping The DISH up and running.
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Over these ten years, many of you have expressed your appreciation for what we do. Now, we need your assistance to continue to improve this operation. Thanks in advance for your consideration.
Disgruntled says: In the news stories of today, we see lynching is not done, as in over, finished, no longer relevant to our contemporary existence. Carried by white supremacists while marching and calling for a lynching in Jena, Louisiana on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s holiday and gracing the cover of Golfweek magazine, nooses tell the tale of ongoing struggle for justice and equality. While some brothers and sisters pretend we have overcome, they do so by ignoring the nooses and disparities across the spectrum in the lives of black Americans; their silence on the issues speaks volumes. True, some blacks have plenty of bling, money to burn and all manner of material things; they think they are living the American dream. So, they view, through opaque glasses, the problems of the masses. Unconcerned, they operate above the fray. Built on a shaky foundation, these good times do not always last. Ask O.J. Simpson how fast the dream can end and the nightmare of lynching begins.
Disgruntled feels: Debacle! After 9-11, George Bush jawboned down the economy to justify the
largest tax cut in the nation's history. The tax cuts disproportionately benefitted the wealthy. Bush's
negative jawboning was unprecedented. Mainstream media published no negative reports on Bush's
action and Congress went along for the ride. When more was needed to help the greedy, former
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan fired up the printing presses, lowering interest rates and
encouraging everyone to borrow and spend beyond their means. Goodbye budget surplus and hello
a mountain of federal debt. Countless individuals are also in debt up to their necks, but they did as
advised by Bush and Greenspan - spend and keep the dream alive. With the lie that consumption
supports the war, they went to the mall and hocked their children's future. The current
administration's economic policies have created a debacle of astronomical proportions. The
chickens are coming home to roost; so, be prepared for the worst.
Disgruntled wants to know: George W. Bush spent more than a week in the Middle East ostensibly to aid the peace process. Far from bringing peace, his visit seemed to herald more strife. As soon as he left, Israel instituted punitive sanctions that have created an humanitarian crises in the Gaza Strip. Shutting down power and closing border crossings leave Gaza in the dark, while its inhabitants starve. Israel's collective punishment is a crime against humanity, but Israel is forgiven its transgressions by the US because it is home to "God's chosen people." For a people that experienced a holocaust in the last century, they seem to act without mercy. It all makes one wonder, what role does genocide play in securing Middle East peace?
Mailbox: E-mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email www.globalresearch.ca...2008 presidential charade promises deepening of government
criminality and expansion of war...by Larry Chin...Every election in modern US history has been a
criminal manipulation, choreographed and rigged by political elites and performed by hand-picked
elite puppets, each backed by their teams of corrupt war criminals, intelligence/security "advisors"
and think tank assets. The 2008 affair will be no different. It is time to dispel the mass insanity and
unfounded hopes as another fresh election hell ensues. There will be no savior, no end to the
continuing world crisis, and absolutely no "change."
Email www.smithsonian.com Portraits of Resistance...By Lucinda Moore...Drawn from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, the photographs span the years from 1856 to 2004 and make up the inaugural exhibition of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, which was established by Congress in 2003 but won't have a home of its own before 2015. The exhibition title, "Let Your Motto Be Resistance," is from an 1843 speech to the National Convention of Colored Citizens in Buffalo, New York, by Henry Highland Garnet, a noted clergyman, activist and former slave. "Strike for your lives and liberties," Garnet urged his listeners. "Rather die freemen than live to be slaves.....Let your motto be resistance! Resistance! RESISTANCE!"
Email harryape@gmail.com On Friday, Golfweek apologized for putting a noose on the cover of its magazine. The cover related to the previous week's controversy over Golf Channel's anchor Kelly Tilghman's use of the word lynching in answer to a question posed by co-anchor Nick Faldo on how other golfers can beat the world's number one this season. Tilghman was suspended for two weeks for suggesting they lynch Tiger Woods in a back alley. Woods has called the brouhaha a non-issue. Either he does not know his father's history or he chooses to stick his head in the sand like an ostrich, leaving his backside exposed.