Volume 5 Issue 52…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…January 3, 2003

Esther Rolle (1920-1998)

"Life is not without a sense of irony." (The Matrix)

Esther Rolle was one of eighteen children born to a Florida vegetable farmer. She later recalled in a Los Angeles Times interview working in the fields with her siblings and father, who made them promise never to work as domestics. He confided, "I can't protect you in other people's houses." Rolle wondered how her father would have felt had he lived to see her gain fame as an actress on the stage, big screen and television as a maid.

After leaving Florida, an industrious Rolle worked her way through Hunter College, Spelman College and the New School for Social Research. Even after her 1962 New York stage debut in The Blacks, she worked a day job in the city's garment district. Touring extensively with Robert Hooks' Negro Ensemble Company, Rolle appeared in such Broadway productions as The Crucible and Blues for Mr. Charlie.

Rolle's breakthrough came in the 1972 Norman Lear television comedy Maude. Though she frowned on Hollywood black stereotypes, she played the outspoken maid, Florida, so well, the character was spun off into Good Times (1973), a comedic look at the problems of a poor black family living in a Chicago housing project. The sitcom enjoyed a successful run until its cancellation in 1979. Good Times can still be seen on reruns.

Rolle won an Emmy for her performance in the TV film Summer of My German Soldier (1978). She played the maid Idella in the Oscar-winner film Driving Miss Daisy (1989). In the sitcom Singer and Son (1990), she played the black owner of a Jewish deli. Rolle appeared in Scarlet (1994), sequel to Gone with the Wind, Rosewood (1997) and Down in the Delta (1998). Esther Rolle died November 17, 1998 after a lengthy illness. (Sources: www.movies.yahoo.com and www.blackgreeknetwork.com/site) More Bits of History

News You Use

Interest Rates

The Atlanta metropolitan area has more than forty financial institutions, offering everything from investments to loans. On Sunday, the local paper publishes their yields on investments and interest rates on automobile and home equity loans and credit cards.

With the Federal Reserve discount rate, the rate charged member banks for overnight loans, at a 40 year low of 1.25 %, most financial institutions' money market accounts yield less than 1%. Of the forty-four (44) Atlanta institutions, the average money market yield is .84%. The average yield for the forty-six (46) institutions paying interest on checking is a mere .54%.

While television automobile ads boast about zero percent financing, auto loans averaged 7.71 percent for the forty-one (41) institutions that published interest rates on Sunday. The thirty-nine (39) institutions that provide home equity loans charged an average 6.08 percent. Thirty-five local financial institutions offering credit cards charged an average rate of 12.35 percent.

Clearly, Atlanta consumers are being taken to the cleaners. Paid little to save and invest, they are robbed if they take out a loan or use credit. If you pay double digits in the current economic environment, you are the victim of predatory lending. Write your lender and request a lower rate! If the robber baron fails to honor your request, contact your local representative. When all else fails, start your own campaign for change by boycotting predators are asking others to do the same! News You Use Homepage

Comments from the Bat Cave

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro and his sidekick TyChi are taking a serious vacation. When asked for comments to jumpstart the New Year, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro looked put upon and declared, "I am out of here!" Back to the Bat Cave

Color Line

By John Burl Smith

A few weeks ago, the commentary world was in an uproar over the movie " Barbershop." Berated for so-called irreverent remarks regarding some civil rights icons, even Bill O'Rielly," fresh from bushwhacking rapper "Ludacris," joined the "Barbershop" furor. This week, rather than protest, the movie "Drumline" opened with praise from FOX's vice-chairman Bob Harper. Regarding Drumline, he declared, "Whoa, it works for everybody." Everybody except the "dark skinned" girls that were not hired to work on the dance line!"

Having seen only TV clips and pictures of scenes from the movie, I was struck by images reminiscent of high school and college when America enforced a legal color line. Color veiled all considerations of Sojourner Truth, Bessie Smith, Mary Macleod Bethune and Hattie McDaniels' dark skin as beautiful. In high school, it was understood, no matter how beautiful, for glamorous roles, such as majorettes, flag girls or dance troupes, only high yellow girls with straight hair needed apply. Once a young lady's skin color passed honey brown to chocolate, her prospects diminished with darker hues. A vicious cycle, high yellow girls who got opportunities in high school got them in college and returned as teachers to perpetuate the cycle.

For a brief time, from about 1966 to 76 "BLACK was Beautiful." Dark skin was in and faces like Cecily Tyson, Esther Rolle and Grace Jones' graced movie screens and magazine covers. Bearing the face of a woman who could have lived down the street, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan defied the notion color determines quality. During the brief period of black power, we threw off our slave mentality and looked beyond surface beauty to what lay beneath the skin. As a community, black people started to come to grips with the self-hatred and envy bred into us during slavery.

The fact that few recognized the absence of dark skinned girls in the dance line of "Drumline" illustrates the subtle and insidious nature of slavery's legacy today. Drumline may be a very interesting and entertaining movie. However, its adherence to the color line stereotype makes it very difficult to understand how it is possible to pick so many girls of the same complexion, without real intent. Dark-skinned girls with nappy hair, braids or locks need not apply.

Atlanta Vibe Homepage or Other Essays by John Burl Smith

"I Believe I Can Fly"

By R. Kelly

I used to think that I could not go on

And life was nothing but an awful song

But now I know the meaning of true love

I'm leaning on the everlasting arms

If I can see it, then I can do it

If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

See I was on the verge of breaking down

Sometimes silence can seem so loud

There are miracles in life I must achieve

But first I know it starts inside of me, oh

If I can see it, then I can be it

If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

(Repeat 1)

Hey, cuz I believe in me, oh

If I can see it, then I can do it

If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

(Repeat 1)

Hey, if I just spread my wings

I can fly

I can fly

I can fly, hey

If I just spread my wings

I can fly

Fly-eye-eye

About Me: This song by veteran songwriter, producer and performer R. Kelly is on his fourth album entitled R (1998). "I Believe I Can Fly" is also on the soundtrack of the motion picture Space Jam, which stars basketball great Michael Jordan and a host of cartoon characters. Other Artists in The Venue

By John Burl Smith

Religion in the United States is synonymous with Christianity. Black people did not choose Christianity, it was given to them. Forbidden to practice their native religions, African slaves could not express the spiritual and emotional reality that sustained them. Dominated physically and oppressed mentally, some slaves pursued spirituality undercover, clinging to their African heritage. Slave masters channeled slaves' emotional expression and spiritual longings into Christianity as a means of control.

First, whites preached to slaves to insure they identified the master with Christ. Blacks trained as preachers led slaves like Judas goats. Expanding on that role, some dynamic individuals emerged. Richard Allen, Rev. Benjamin E. Mays and Bishop Charles Harrison Mason typified this breed. Still guided by whites in 1950, most preachers favored Booker T. Washington's accommodation with white supremacy and segregation. Although there were rebels and visionaries, such as Nat Turner, Rev. Burl Lee and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in general, preachers opposed blacks' demands for civil rights, but responded to their congregations' leanings.

Comparing and contrasting this historical backdrop with today, black preachers still defend the status quo and teach their congregations to accommodate institutionalized racism. Just as slave masters gave preachers a little extra for keeping slaves on their knees praying for rewards in heaven, George Bush offers them faith-based money for votes to stay in office. Paying his political supporters, like Democrats used welfare as their key to the promised land, vouchers and faith-based programs are Bush's 40 acres and a mule.

A vision of the anti-Christ, Bush's despicably cynical plan is another way he is using the federal government to re-segregate the USA. Universally, Christian churches are the most segregated institutions in the USA. During slavery, segregation and the fight over busing, white churches were the bulwarks against equal opportunity, access and racial unity. Looking at the church's history of justifying and supporting slavery and segregation, its lurid sex scandals and penchant for pedophilia, con artists scamming parishioners and preachers stealing money to live lavishly, given the fraud and theft, administering social programs under the faith-based initiative will be far more costly than the Medicare, Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing debacles.

The inability to scrutinize church financing makes investigating waste and fraud impossible. More importantly, without firewalls to keep federal money separated from tithes and collections, fraud detection will be a sham. Then, there is the intimidating affect of receiving service in churches on those needing help. Subtle religious images can impinge on an individual's sense of obligation and identification.

The reality is, we are talking about charity not faith. First Corinthians Chapter 13 is the ultimate authority on Christian charity. Apostle Paul clearly points to charity as the mission of Christians. Bush's faith-based initiative blocks Christians' path to penitence by shifting the federal government's responsibility to help its needy citizens onto the church. "Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" is Christ's admonition. It is classic "The Devil and Daniel Webster." If embraced, Bush's promises obligate Christians to serve the government's cause. The legacy of slavery and its outcroppings of hate, lynching, segregation and the faith-based initiative confirm Revelation's prophecy: The anti-Christ will destroy the church from within! Other John Burl Smith Essays

Disgruntled wants to know: In a CNN in-depth look at the cult that stunned the world by claiming to have successfully cloned a baby girl, Raelians engaged in free love and danced to R. Kelly's hit "I Believe I Can Fly." Christians believe in a heavenly reward in the hereafter for doing good deeds on Earth; Raelians believe they will live forever through cloning. When this biosphere becomes too toxic to support their human forms, will Raelians board their spaceship and fly to another world?

Disgruntled says: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's article in the New York Times (12/29/02) put a human face on the AIDS pandemic that is ravishing the African continent. It killed more than two million Africans in 2002 and orphaned more than eleven million children since it started. AIDS is a manmade virus. Annan identified black women as its most likely victims, but he failed to give the USA credit for its invention.

Disgruntled feels: Culture shock! According to a funny article in the Washington Post by Darryl Fears, Latino immigrants come to the USA thinking they are white. Flagrant racism rudely disabuses them of that notion. Welcome to the US! Now these newly arrived blacks can place Trent Lott's comments into proper context. Dark skin is a passport to culture shock! More Disgruntled Moments

The Commonwealth and Dr. Cornelius Rhoads

Puerto Rico is a Caribbean island. Populated for centuries by Arawak Indians, Spain claimed it as a possession in 1493. Under its rule, the Arawak were decimated. Around 1510, African slaves were imported to work on sugar plantations. Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States (1898) at the end of the Spanish-American War. In 1917 Puerto Ricans were granted US citizenship. The island became a commonwealth with its own constitution (1952). While Puerto Ricans are USA citizens, they do not vote in US presidential elections.

For years, Puerto Rican nationalists have sought independence. Since 1999, activists from around the world have joined in their struggle to force the US to vacate the island, especially Vieques, where US Naval operations have endangered the delicate ecosystem and compromised the health of the island's inhabitants.

Revelations that Puerto Ricans were guinea pigs in biological and chemical experiments conducted by Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads in the 1930s and the US Department of Defense in the 1970s have strengthened demands for an executive order from George Bush guaranteeing the Navy's departure and an environmental cleanup. Activists are also demanding an epidemiological study to assess the health and welfare of Puerto Ricans. For more about Cornelius Rhoads, for whom the prestigious American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Rhoads Memorial Award is named, his cancer experiments on Puerto Ricans and US germ warfare in general, see www.counterpunch.org/germwar.html. Hood Notes' Homepage

Bushmen and Reparations

Since the end of the Civil War (1865), slaves and their descendants have sought compensation for the free labor provided during slavery, the legal repression they endured during segregation and ongoing discrimination.

The World Conference on Racism (WCAR) energized reparations efforts throughout the Diaspora. From New York to Mississippi, slave descendants are filing lawsuits seeking compensation from corporations that used slave labor or otherwise profited from slavery.

In an odd twist, George Bush nominated John Snow, the CEO of CSX, and William Donaldson, former CEO of Aetna, Inc., for Treasury Secretary and Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), respectively. Both corporations are named in reparation litigation. Slave descendants are urging members of Congress to carefully vet these nominations.

In addition, Public Citizens, a non-profit advocacy group (www.citizen.org) has filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the SEC and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) seeking information about loans from CSX to Snow, their forgiveness and other matters. Snow may have been the beneficiary of many of the questionable corporate practices that came to light after the Enron scandal. More Politics Y2K2

Email missustkb@aol.con Watch Night Services, church gatherings on New Year's Eve, can be traced to December 31, 1862. Also known as "Freedom's Eve," blacks gathered in churches and homes across the nation to await news that the Emancipation Proclamation had become law. At the stroke of midnight on January 1, 1863, slaves in the Confederate States were declared legally free. On hearing the news, there were prayers, shouts and songs of joy. Black folks have gathered in churches on New Year's Eve ever since. It's been 140 years since that first Freedom's Eve; many of us were never taught the history of Watch Night, but tradition still brings us together to celebrate "how we got over."

Email aanewsn@unityfirst.com Amnesty International has appealed to Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove for mercy in the case of Chris Foster, scheduled to be executed in Mississippi on January 8, 2003. Because of his youth at the time of the crime, racial disparities in the application of the death penalty and mitigating circumstances, the organization asked Gov. Musgrove to commute his death sentence. Under international law, executing juvenile offenders is illegal. If Musgrove does not commute his sentence, Foster will be the fourth black juvenile to be executed in the state.

Email www.guardian.co.uk The Reagan Administration and its special Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, aided Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s. Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons "almost daily" against Iran. US support for Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war was a bulwark against Shi'ites. Declassified documents detail Rumsfeld's role and Reagan administration knowledge of Iraqi use of chemical weapons. As the Bush Administration's Defense Secretary, Rumsfeld is one of the leading hawks on Iraq, frequently denouncing it for its past use of such weapons 'against his own people.' More Mail

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