The DISH

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Vol. 14 No. 15…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…April 11, 2011

Snapshots in the Mind

By John Burl Smith

Precious memories, how they linger

How they ever flood my soul

In the stillness of the midnight

Precious, sacred scenes unfold... John Braselton Fillmore Wright

One never knows what will guide their life's development, but most will agree that memories play a major role; and depending upon the quality of the experiences, the power of memories to motivate can have a profound impact on the decisions one makes. With that as a preamble, last week (4/2-5/11) Dot and I took our four grandchildren (ages 4,6,12 and 17) on a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, our childhood home, to visit my soon to be ninety-two year old mother. This was not the first time they have visited her; however, each time they see her, I feel the bonds of memory between them, my family and their past are reinforced. My desire is not only for them to gain some familiarity with the tree from which this acorn (me) fell, but the equally important ground from which it sprang, as well as the nutrients that fertilized its growth.

Though not a consequence of planning, our accommodations were on the bank of the Mississippi River, a body of water that holds many fond childhood memories for me but of which my grandchildren knew very little. I recounted countless hours spent roaming its banks, while learning to swim and fish, especially as it left its narrow channel and flooded the backwashes as now. We visited a park near the motel named in honor of Hernando DeSoto. Its location is on the spot it is believed he first observed the Mississippi. Also, Sieur de La Salle, a French explorer, is believed to have camped on the same spot as he journeyed down the Mighty Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

High atop a bluff, the park contains two large Native American burial mounds; plaques identify the area as sacred ground. One mound was desecrated by the Confederate Army and turned into an artillery magazine. Playing here as a child, I learned to appreciate Native People's heritage.

Walking through the park, which is nestled on one side by a petroleum storage facility, we talked of the environmental hazards our planet faces. On the other side an old dilapidated Veteran's hospital languishes, triggering images of scenes from various horror movies the kids have seen. Conversely, I remembered Vietnam and many of my neighborhood friends that convalesced there. The grandchildren did not see any connection between this former hospice for throw away soldiers and the young men wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq who face a similar fate.

Hiking along the river's bank, we passed under the old Arkansas-Tennessee Bridge, where once black bodies hung like strange fruit from southern trees. Ironically, just a few hundred yards upriver is Tom Lee Park, named for a black man, who could not swim, but used his skiff to rescue 32 white passengers from a sinking steamboat that capsized (1925) in currents much like this day's. The obvious contradiction between the two points, one where whites lynched blacks and the other where a black man risked his life saving whites, only a short distance apart, escaped the grands as pieces of their history.

Just a few blocks to the east, there is the Lorraine Motel, where I, representing the Invaders, met with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a couple of hours before he was assassinated and where we worked out strategy for the Poor People's Campaign. When I speak to my grandchildren of such events, I wonder what images flash in their minds. I can only hope that as the sands of time sift through the hour glass of life their minds' eyes capture afterglows that return like a haunting refrain that one day spur them to act.

My prayer is that by seeing their great grandmother, who knew her great grandfather, whose name became Lee, the same as the Confederate general and who was a Mississippi slave, they share images from such times with their great grandchildren. Memories are not just important because they are snapshots of one's past; they also become backdrops to one's decision-making and form the nexus of how one relates to people and circumstances.

Presently, politicians in the USA are debating whether to save money or save children. Shortsighted "Tea Partiers" believe it is better to give the rich more tax cuts than to educate children trapped in poverty. They imagine there is more value in spending $30,000 per year per inmate keeping teenagers locked up than in spending $19,000 per year per child to educate pre-K and elementary school kids at the very time that their attitudes toward the society and their relationships with people are still developing.

Dot and I can never say what the collage of snapshots in our grandchildren's minds, as a result of our trip, will motivate. However, we are certain that getting out into the world is far more wholesome for them than staring at the TV all weekend.

Intuit's Vibe

The Song of Education

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

I remember my mother, the day that we met,

A thing I shall never entirely forget;

And I toy with the fancy that, young as I am,

I should know her again if we met in a tram.

But mother is happy in turning a crank

That increases the balance in somebody's bank;

And I feel satisfaction that mother is free

From the sinister task of attending to me.

They have brightened our room, that is spacious and cool,

With diagrams used in the Idiot School,

And Books for the Blind that will teach us to see;

But mother is happy, for mother is free.

For mother is dancing up forty-eight floors,

For love of the Leeds International Stores,

And the flame of that faith might perhaps have grown cold,

With the care of a baby of seven weeks old.

For mother is happy in greasing a wheel

For somebody else, who is cornering Steel;

And though our one meeting was not very long,

She took the occasion to sing me this song:

"O, hush thee, my baby, the time will soon come

When thy sleep will be broken with hooting and hum;

There are handles want turning and turning all day,

And knobs to be pressed in the usual way;

O, hush thee, my baby, take rest while I croon,

For Progress comes early, and Freedom too soon."

Bit of History

Archibald Grimké (1849-1930)

Archibald Henry Grimké was born on Aug. 17, 1849, near Charleston, S.C. He was the eldest of three sons born to Nancy Weston, a slave by birth of European and African descent. She was the property of Henry Grimké, a prominent member of a large slaveholding planter family in Charleston. Nancy was the most beautiful black woman in Charleston by some accounts and following the death of his wife Selina, Henry Grimké took Nancy, who had nursed her and cared for their three children to live on his plantation outside Charleston. Nancy became his mistress and gave birth to three sons: Archibald, Francis and John. Grimké never considered Nancy and his sons slaves and tried to free them, but South Carolina law denied such manumission.

Grimke taught Nancy and the boys to read and write. When all attempts to free them failed, he entrusted their care in his will to Montague, his eldest son with Selina; they were to be treated as "family." However, the ownership of Nancy and the boys was an issue with Montague, who gave them only limited freedom in the house they shared. Eventually, Nancy Weston sold some livestock, which allowed her to purchase a small cottage.

Amidst the racial tensions spawned by the approaching Civil War, Charleston proved to be a hostile place for Archibald. Southern states were seceding from the Union, and by 1860 many free blacks had been re-enslaved. Montague Grimké took advantage of the repressive atmosphere and converted Archibald into a house servant. Unwilling to accept his re-enslavement, Archibald fled to the Union lines where he became an officer's boy. Shortly after the Union seized control of Charleston, public education was made available to all black children. Archibald, age 12, and his brother, Francis, enrolled in a school run by Frances Pillsbury and her husband Gilbert, the Reconstruction mayor.

Impressed by the boys' superior academic ability, the Pillsburys arranged for them to attend Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and found sponsors to pay their way. After a year of preparatory classes they began college-level course work in 1867 and Grimké finished undergraduate studies in three years then completed a master's degree in 1872.

Years earlier, Henry Grimké's sisters, Angelina and Sarah, appalled at their family's willing support of slavery, moved up North and became abolitionists. They learned of their nephews from a newspaper article (1868) and vowed to provide financial and moral support whenever they needed it. The Grimké sisters were instrumental in getting Archibald into Harvard and his aunts introduced him to many of their influential, abolitionist friends in Boston.

Following in the footsteps of George Lewis Ruffin, the first African American law graduate (1869), Archibald Grimké enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1872. Another patron of Grimké was Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), who after learning of his financial struggles, working several jobs to pay for his schooling, wrote the Dean of the Harvard Law School, Christopher Columbus Langdell, pledging to help pay his tuition. Mr. Clemens explained, "We as the white race have grinded all the manhood out of them making a good life for ourselves. It is the least we owe them for taking so much from the black man."

After graduation in 1874, and assisted by his aunts, Grimké settled into a world in which white and black men and women interacted in elite social circles as equals and friends, at least on the surface. It was in that world he met and married Sarah Stanley, a white woman. Although the marriage was short lived, they had a daughter, Angelina Weld.

Grimké established a law practice with a classmate in Boston, Massachusetts (1874) and enjoyed modest success. He edited the Hub (1883-1885), a Boston newspaper devoted to the welfare of African Americans. He also wrote biographies of two antislavery leaders: William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist (1891) and The Life of Charles Sumner, the Scholar in Politics (1892), as well as columns for several newspapers and publications including the Atlantic Monthly.

He served as U.S. consul to Santo Domingo (1894-1898) and upon his return to the U. S., he moved to Washington, DC, where he could champion civil rights and the fight against racism. He became a member of the American Negro Academy almost from its inception (1897), serving as president from 1903 to 1916. In 1899, representing the Colored National League, he wrote an open letter to President William McKinley on behalf of black voters.

Throughout this period Grimké published articles and pamphlets concerning black life and history. These included "Right on the Scaffold, or the Martyrs of 1822" (1901), recounting the events of Denmark Vesey's slave revolt; "Why Disfranchisement Is Bad" (1904), detailing its harmful effect on African Americans, the South, and the nation; "The Heart of the Race Problem" (1906), one of his most powerful and provocative essays on slavery, segregation and moral corruption, which maintained that white racism would persist as long as segregation continued and black women did not receive equal protection under American law; "The Ballotless Victim of One Party Governments" (1913), attacking disfranchisement; "The Sex Question and Race Segregation" (1915), a protest against the double standard and "The Shame of America, or the Negro's Case against the Republic" (1924).

The segregationist policies of Pres. Woodrow Wilson (1912) became a critical issue for black Americans, especially in Washington, DC (1913). Grimké, then president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Washington, wrote Wilson, protesting segregation of government employees. He also testified before the House Committee on Reform in the Civil Service against bills calling for the segregation of black employees in government service. When the United States entered World War I, he spoke out against the practice of sending black men to fight and die for a country that denied black citizens their fundamental rights, and he spearheaded efforts to ensure that black soldiers that did serve received fair and equal treatment.

Grimké withdrew from the public arena in 1925. Disheartened by the rising tide of American racism, he placed his hopes for the future in the coming generation of "New Negroes." He declared, "The black soldier returning from France after World War I, having experienced the liberty and largesse of French society, had come back prepared to challenge injustice in his own land and to fight wrong with a courage that will not fail him in the bitter and perhaps bloody years to come."

Archibald Grimké belonged to many organizations among them were the American Social Science Association; Emmeline Cushing Estate (trustee); Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association (president); Authors' Club, London and the United States. He also received many awards including the Spingarn Medal, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1919. Grimké died on February 25, 1930, after a long illness.

Politics Y2K11

A Child Will Lead Them

The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. Isaiah 11:6

The gang scare of the 1990s and the misnomer "Generation X," along with several tragic high school shootings created a climate of fear in US regarding children. This perception spawned the view that children were a violent threat to society and their unacceptable behavior should be dealt with harshly. The rhetoric of "zero tolerance" pictured children as slothful, ungrateful, self-indulgent bullies only interested in loud music, sex, fashions and drugs. Even if that portrait had some validity back then, a recent incident in SW DeKalb County (3-12-11) indicates that the coming generation may be emerging from the shadow of that stigma.

Following a vote by the DeKalb County, Georgia Library Board to close the Scott-Candler branch which has served the less affluent Southwest community for 47 years, a 12-year old black boy, Sekondi Landry, rallied the community with a petition drive and saved the facility. Although surprised by the action of this child, most do not see a revolution on the horizon. However, considering that local black officials said they tried to prevent the closing but failed, something more than personality was at work.

The initiative of this courageous young man is reminiscent of young blacks that powered the sit-in/civil rights movement during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Apropos, as America approached another "King Week," which commemorates the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Sekondi's action reminds us that Dr. King's dream was a demand for economic justice. Sekondi's example requires black people to do more than come together, reminisce and sing "We Shall Overcome." Flying in the face of current snapshots and sound bites of young blacks, especially males," as apathetic, lazy, disinterested video game junkies who never pick up a book and are opposed to excellence in education, Sekondi fought to keep the library open; without which, he could not complete daily assignments.

Showing true leadership in this situation, this young man highlighted huge inequities and disparities between Southwest and North and East DeKalb County. Southwest DeKalb has never received a fair return on its tax dollars and the services and development obtained. One can only hope elected representatives and officials will follow Sekondi example of persistence and not hide behind his successful effort. They should take up his aggressive style and dig for answers to address the many questions residents in SW DeKalb are asking about the inequitable distribution of tax revenue, which not only resulted in the proposed closure of Scott-Candler, but cuts in bus service by MARTA (Metro Atlanta Regional Transportation Authority), DeKalb School Board closing 7 schools in South DeKalb, Grady Hospital Authority closing the South DeKalb Health Center and many other cuts all under the guise of budget reductions.

Although the majority of residents in DeKalb are black with a predominately black legislative delegation, County commission, school board and County CEO, budget balancing continues to rest on their backs. Black politicians acquiesce with decisions, like the Scott-Candler closing, which benefit affluent white residents. These boards and agencies have a bull's eye on SW DeKalb and target it first for budget cuts but place it last when spending on improvements. Moreover, the only economic developments that come to the Southwest area are funk factories, like the gasification plant slated for Lithonia, and the only job creation is low-end retail businesses. SW DeKalb needs businesses that will expand its tax base and bring money into the community rather than money being sucked out. Then Southwest DeKalb can keep productive young minds with vision like Sekondi Landry that it has educated.

So impressed, State Rep. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield, D-Atlanta, plans to recognize the intrepid Mr. Landry with a legislative resolution and Commissioner Johnson appointed the 12-year old to next year's Scott-Candler transition committee. The fact is Sekondi certainly deserves to be commended for his intestinal fortitude, but unfortunately DeKalb's black officials should hang their heads in shame, having to praise a child for doing their jobs. Does the community now have to wait for another adolescent like Sekondi to stand up or will the men and women being paid stand up and do their jobs? And, a little child will lead them!

Venue for an Artist

The Value of an Educated Mind in a High-Tech World

By Paul Krugman

And now for something completely different. About 15 years ago, before I became a regular columnist, The New York Times asked me and other people to contribute to a special edition celebrating the 100th anniversary of its Sunday magazine. The stated rule was that the pieces should be written as if submitted in 2096, looking back at the magazine's second century.

As I recall, I was the only contributor who obeyed instructions; everyone else was too concerned about loss of dignity. Anyway, I decided to write the piece around a conceit: that information technology would end up reducing, not increasing, the demand for highly educated workers, because a lot of what highly educated workers do could actually be replaced by sophisticated information processing -- indeed, replaced more easily than many types of manual labor. It was titled "White Collars Turn Blue."

So here's the question: Is this starting to happen?

On March 4 The Times published an interesting and, if you think about it, fairly scary report about how software is replacing the teams of lawyers who used to do document research. And then there's Watson, of course, I.B.M.'s supercomputer who -- or which? -- can beat almost everyone except my congressman, Rush Holt of New Jersey, at a game of "Jeopardy."

Getting a bit more serious: Larry Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in the March edition of The American Prospect magazine about the overselling of education, pointing out that in the United States the college wage premium, after rising sharply in the 1980s and 1990s, has stagnated lately. Indeed. Look at the ratio of earnings for full-time working men with college degrees versus those with high school diplomas, on this page.

This raises several questions. One is whether emphasizing education -- even aside from the fact that a big rise in inequality has taken place among the highly educated -- is, in effect, fighting the last war. Another is, how can we have a decent society if and when even highly educated workers can't command a middle-class income?

I know, this is rushing ahead a bit. But remember, the Luddites weren't the poorest of the poor; they were skilled artisans whose skills had suddenly been devalued by new technology.

News You Use

Emory Expresses Regret over Slavery Ties

"...Emory regrets both this undeniable wrong and the university's decades of delay in acknowledging slavery's harmful legacy. As Emory University looks forward, it seeks the wisdom always to discern what is right and the courage to abide by its mission of using knowledge to serve humanity."

A private research institution located in metro Atlanta, Emory University was founded in 1836 by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of John Emory, a well-known Methodist bishop. The founders of Emory owned slaves and used slave labor to build its campus. Their pro-slavery views helped create the North-South division within the Methodist Episcopal Church leading up to the Civil War. This division over slavery has long been a part of the university's history, casting a shadow over the noble ideas expressed in its mission statement "to create, preserve, teach, and apply knowledge in the service of humanity."

According to Emory President James Wagner, issuing the statement of regret allows Emory to be clear about its past. An apology, Wagner said, could be viewed as "inappropriate and an attempt to force today's value and our own words in the mouths of the dead." Still, if Emory's goal is to educate students to become smarter and better citizens the institution must model this behavior. "If we think society must admit its mistakes so it can deal with future challenges, then Emory must live by those words as well. We want our students to lead and we want to model on our campus, and in our community, what a better world could look like."

Emory is by no means the only institution of higher learning in the US built by slaves. However, it is one of the few that has issued a statement of regret for its past ties to slavery and created a program to examine the role slaves played in building Emory and other institutions of higher learning in America. Recently, Emory held a four-day conference on its program to research the university's past and discuss race.

Emory's effort to examine its past is more than an academic project; the colleges intends to share its research on campus, in schools and throughout the community, according to history professor Leslie Harris, who leads the Transforming Community Project, which promotes open and honest conversation about race. "What we have now is the challenge to move beyond racial inequity to racial equity," Harris said. "How does the statement of regret translate to policy? When that happens the words become a meaningful statement." Harris said Emory already has meaningful actions through the program she leads, the annual State of Race lecture and the Emory Advantage scholarship program that has allowed for greater diversity on campus.

See a brief overview of the program online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvSF1lZN-YM&feature=player_embedded. The lecture on Slavery and Its Legacies at Emory University: Reflections on History and Accountability is available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5h8iES7k1w&feature=related.

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email http://timesfreepress.com ...Tennessee House OKs bill shielding teachers who doubt evolution, global warming...By Andy Sher...The House voted 70-23 for a bill backers say shields teachers from being disciplined if they discuss alternatives to evolution and global warming theories with students. The debate ranged over the scientific method, "intellectual bullies," hair spray and "Inherit the Wind," a 1960 movie about the 1925 Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tenn. Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, said the bill's intent is to promote "critical thinking" in science classrooms. Critics contend it's a shield to allow the teaching of evolution alternatives such as intelligent design and creationism. Bill supporter Rep. Richard Floyd, R-Chattanooga, said that "since the late `50s, early `60s when we let the intellectual bullies hijack our education system, we've been on a slippery slope." "This is a common-sense bill," Floyd said. "Thank you for bringing this bill to protect our teachers from the other intellectual bullies."

Email www.wsws.org ...Tennessee attacks teachers, funds charter operations...By Naomi Spencer...As the Tennessee legislature pursues a slew of bills aimed at curbing collective bargaining rights and cutting teacher compensation, Republican Governor Bill Haslam has announced a multimillion-dollar project to create 40 privately run charter schools in the state. The plan funnels $40 million into half a dozen charter school management organizations, to build one of the first statewide charter school systems. Some $20 million of the funding comes from the private Charter School Growth Fund and the Center for Charter School Excellence in Tennessee. Another $14 million is from the state's First to the Top program, modeled after the Obama administration's Race to the Top; the remaining $5.8 million comes from a federal Investing in Innovation grant that rewards schools for fostering "partnerships with the private sector that will provide matching funds." Public school districts around the state, staggering from insufficient funding, have closed schools, consolidated operations, and laid off employees for the past few years. Because of the lack of state income tax revenue, many school districts are facing insolvency. On March 9, for example, residents of Memphis voted to dissolve the City School Board into the less populous but better-funded county district, the Shelby County Board of Education. The move triggered a lawsuit and countersuit between the two administrations. Memphis schools serve 100,000 children, 87 percent of whom are low-income and are dependent upon the schools for subsidized lunches and basic supplies. Shelby County oversees 47,000 children, 37 percent of whom are low-income.

Email www.newdeal20.org ...Educating College Graduates So They Can be Unemployed...By Mike Konczal...College graduates entering the recession face a lifetime of consequences -- and more education isn't going to solve the problem. Aw hamburgers...A new Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco paper, Recent College Graduates and the Labor Market by Bart Hobijn, Colin Gardiner, and Theodore Wiles, argues that unemployment is particularly bad for those just graduating from college. It explains how this puts pressure on structural or "recalculating" arguments of unemployment: The current labor market outcomes of recent college graduates closely mirror those observed during the 2001 recession and the subsequent jobless recovery...recent college graduates are not subject to the kinds of structural factors that have been posited as the main sources of weakness in the overall labor market. Unemployment rates during the 2001 recession are widely recognized as cyclical in nature. Similarities in the experiences of recent college graduates in the labor market during the two recessions and recoveries are evidence that high unemployment rates in the current downturn are also mainly cyclical. Children: Teach them well and let them lead the way. Or not.

Email www.informationliberation.com ...Texas Cops Ticket Thousands of Schoolchildren to Raise Revenue, Some as Young as 6-Yrs-Old...Flashback: The Government Would Rather You Die If It Nets More Revenue. This is how low your government will go. Cops in Texas have been writing thousands of tickets to schoolchildren for $250-$500 each for the "crime" of "misbehaving in school" so the government can raise revenue. This has been going on now for over five years. The Texas Tribune reports: With the rise of get-tough juvenile crime policies across Texas, the municipal courthouse has become the new principal's office for thousands of students who get in fights, curse their teachers or are generally "disorderly" on school campuses -- even in elementary schools, according to data collected from school systems by Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit research and advocacy group focusing on social and economic justice.