Former Philadelphia police officer Richard Willis has died, leaving two living suspects in the Klan’s killings of three civil rights workers in 1964.
Family members held a funeral service last week for Willis, 88, of Noxapater.
In 1967, 18 men were indicted on federal conspiracy charges in connection with the 1964 killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.
FBI agents continue to investigate the case.
“The FBI and others need to move quickly, or they will die,” Goodman’s brother, David, said Monday. “They have the money. They have the authorization.”
Willis was among law enforcement officers in Philadelphia who reportedly carried out violence. He took part in the beatings of at least seven black men in 1963 and 1964, according to FBI records.
Cleo McDonald, who ran from Willis and another officer after they threatened him with castration, said Monday of Willis, “He raised enough hell in his younger days. He was a pistol. He really was. And there’s a few more still around here.”
The two living suspects are Olen Burrage, who owned the property where the bodies of the three civil rights workers were buried, and Pete Harris, an investigator for the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Neither could be reached for comment.
Burrage told the FBI he knew nothing about the three men’s bodies being buried by a bulldozer on his property after midnight.
David Goodman said he knows about small communities because he has lived in them.
“If you went out after hours, neighbors would ask where you went,” he said. “Nothing happens of that nature without someone knowing about it.”
An informant told the FBI that Burrage had bragged beforehand about having a dam that would hold civil rights workers.
One of those involved in the killing party, Horace Doyle Barnette, told the FBI that Burrage met Klansmen after their deed was done and gave them gasoline to burn the trio’s station wagon.
As for Harris, he made calls on June 21, 1964, to gather Klansmen to abduct the three civil rights workers, FBI records show.
Under Mississippi law, a person who assists killers can be prosecuted. Known as accessories before the fact, they can be punished for the same crime as principals, legal experts say.
When FBI agents arrested Harris, a Meridian-area truck driver, on Dec. 4, 1964, they asked him if he approved of cold-blooded murder. “I don’t know, as I have never tried it,” documents show he replied.
Asked if he thought these killings were wrong, he responded, “I don’t know.”
That day, agents also found a list of dozens of Klansmen in his pocket, records show.
In the 1967 federal trial, Klansman James Jordan, who has since died, testified Harris was with him when they visited Sam Bowers, imperial wizard of the White Knights. Jordan said Bowers remarked that Schwerner was “a thorn in the side of everyone living, especially the white people, and that he should be taken care of.”
The night of the killings, Harris made telephone calls, gathering more Klansmen for the job, Jordan testified. When the Klansmen gathered to leave, Jordan said Harris told them he had to stay behind because he was a leader in the Klan.
About a month after the killings, Jordan testified, he and Harris met with Bowers, who praised their work in eliminating the three civil rights workers.
Time is running out, too, on other cases being examined by the FBI.
Stanley Nelson, editor of the Concordia Sentinel in Ferriday, La., said Monday that about a half dozen possible witnesses have died since agents reopened the Frank Morris murder case in 2007.
On Dec. 10, 1964, Klansmen attacked Morris, setting fire to his shoe shop. He died four days later.
Since February, a grand jury in Ferriday has been investigating Morris’ murder. That panel continues to meet.
In 2005, a Neshoba County jury convicted Edgar Ray Killen of three counts of manslaughter for helping orchestrate the killings of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. No one else has ever been tried for murder.
These murderers are getting off scot-free by cheating the executioner. They may be able to avoid justice in this life, but, they will not escape the wrath of God’s retribution for the crimes they have committed.
Then again, that is what happens when the so-called government, in the form of the FBI, drag their feet with bringing these monsters to justice.
If the government really gave a damn it would have prosecuted these creatures when these crimes were committed over 45 years ago.
But, such actions convey the disregard that was shown towards those who fought to make this nation a better country–then, and now.
Over at Abagond’s site he has put up a post on Egypt entitled, “Diop: Birth of the Negro Myth”, based on chapter two of Cheikh Anta Diop’s “The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality” (1974). The chapter centers around racist perceptions of Europeans that gave rise to the myth that Africans had no civilization, and that Egypt could not have been a black civilization:
“The myth is so firmly believed that the idea of ancient Egypt being a black civilization seems highly improbable if not laughable. So much so that when archaeologists find the remains of blacks in Egypt or the Middle East they are assumed – without the trouble of a proof – to be slaves.”
What is so very obvious is that in this mad push and desire to see Egypt as white (By Europeans), is another glaring fact that looms large: Why is not Algeria, Morocco, or Libya claimed as white, or non-African? Why the major fixation on Egypt?
Egyptians, Ethiopians, Somalis, Nubians, Eritreans all share a common cultural, geography, and biblical history. After thousands of years of admixture—African, European, and Asiatic—Egypt, like much of North Africa is mixed: semitic. Some civilizations and cultures defy categorization as black or white. But, its location on the continent of Africa makes Egyptians Africans. Most notably, during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut, the Egyptians also did commerce with what would be considered Africans: buying frankincense, myrrh, ebony, gold, spices, and ivory from the Land of Punt (in ancient Egyptin, Ta netjer, “land of the God”), located in what is now known as the Horn of Africa in northern Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Red Sea coast of Sudan.
Even Egypt has had black pharaohs on the throne:
-Taharka (Nefertemkhure) – 25TH Dynasty (690 BC – 664 BC): The Kushite pharaoh during his reign brought a period of stability to Egypt. When the Assyrians attacked Egypt in 671 BC, Taharka and his army fought them, but they were routed by Ashurbanipal. Taharka was the son of Piye, more well-known as Piankhy (Usermaatre/Sneferre), the Nubian king who previously conquered and ruled Egypt. Piankhy ruled from 747-716 BC. Taharka ruled 26 years as pharaoh. The Nubians also built pyramids, pyramids built in ancient Meroe, in present-day Sudan—pyramids that have just as fascinating a history as those built in Egypt:
The pyramid of Nuri, built by Taharka, is one of the most impressive of the Nubian pyramids.
Taharka is even mentioned in the Bible, in II Kings 19:9-10:
9 And when he heard say of Tirhakah king of Ethiopia Behold, he is come out to fight against thee: he sent messengers again unto Hezekiah, saying,
10 Thus ye shall speak to Hezekiah king of Judah saying, Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.”
Taharka is also mentioned in Isaiah, 37:9-10.
The Ethiopians are also creators of some of the world’s, and Africa’s, most beautiful artwork, manuscripts and buildings:
Adam & Eve, Abreja wa Atsabeha Church, Ethiopia.
Virgin Mary and Angels on mural in Abreha and Atsbeha church, Ethiopia.
An Ethiopian fresco of the Queen of Sheba (Kebra Nagast), traveling to meet King Solomon. The Kingdom of Sheba was located in what is now Ethiopia.
10:1 And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the LORD, she came to prove him with hard questions.
10:2And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart.
10:3 And Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not.
She is also mentioned in II Chronicles, 9: 1-12.
She is mentioned once in Acts 8:27 ,as Candace “queen of the Ethiopians”.
Ancient ruins of Lalibela, Ethiopia.
The Ethiopians (“people with the burnt face”), like the Nubians (Sudanese), Eritreans, Somali, share linguistic and DNA genetic markers with present-day Egyptians.
Are Egyptians Africans? Yes.
Yes, Egypt is not the only civilization that racist Whites/Europeans have tried to claim. Case in point, great Zimbabwe was claimed by racists to have been founded by a lost Roman legion!
The fact is, Great Zimbabwe, featuring the Great Enclosure Wall, was built by the Bantu-speaking ancestors of today’s Shona people. Zimbabwe is one of the unique and marvelous monuments on the African continent–second only to the pyramids of the Nile Valley.
Were the Egyptians white? No.
Egypt as white, and not a part of Africa?
Not so.
Egypt is as African as Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Chad, Morocco, Uganda, and all the other 48 African nations.
Portia Marshall Washington Pittman (June 6, 1883 – February 26, 1978), the daughter of Tuskegee Institute’s founder Booker T. Washington, was a pianist, music teacher, and choral director. Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, she was an accomplished pianist by the time she was ten. After attending boarding schools in New England, she studied music at Wellesley College, Tuskegee Institute, and Bradford Academy, where she became the first Black graduate in 1905. (1)
Her mother, Fanny Norton Smith, was Booker Washington’s first wife. A graduate of Hampton Institute, and a “childhood sweetheart” of the famous leader, she was born in Malden, West Virginia. Portia, born on the Tuskegee campus, was their only child. Fannie died in 1889.
Although her privileged background gained her access to schools that were not available to other Black students, her experiences at those schools were shaped by the prevalent racism of the time, which, among other things, prevented her from living with other students. After graduating from Bradford she moved to Berlin, Germany to continue her piano studies, but she returned to Tuskegee in 1907 to marry architect William Sidney Pittman.
The Pittmans moved to Washington, DC, where their four children were born. After her husband’s business began to fail, the family moved to Dallas, Texas. There Portia Pittman established herself, directing school and church choirs, giving private music lessons, teaching in the public school system, and serving as chair of the education department of the Texas Association of Negro Musicians. Other accomplishments of Ms. Pittman are as follows:
In March 1927 the National Education Association held its annual convention in Dallas. Almost 7,500 teachers attended. A 600-voice choir from Booker T. Washington High School, under Portia’s direction, sang a medley of popular and spiritual songs. It was the first time in history that a black high school group had appeared on the NEA program. Tremendous applause and cries of “encore” rose after the performance, and a spontaneous sing-along erupted as audience and choir together sang spirituals and folk songs. NEA president Randall J. Condon, a Los Angeles principal, judged the performance a “complete success.” Later that summer Portia traveled to Columbia University in order to acquire academic credentials to allow her to continue teaching in the Dallas public schools.” (2)
She now dedicated herself to a campaign to have her father’s Virginia birthplace preserved as a national monument. Before the success of that effort in May 1949, her efforts to memorialize her father bore fruit on May 23, 1946, when a bust of her father was installed in the Hall of Fame in New York, and also on August 7, 1946, when President Harry Truman signed a bill “authorizing the minting of five million Booker T. Washington commemorative fifty-cent coins.” Portia also oversaw the establishment of the Booker T. Washington Foundation to provide academic scholarships for black students. Though she had resolved to leave Texas behind her, she traveled to Dallas one last time to attend the funeral of her former husband, who died on February 19, 1958. (3)
In the later years of her life, Ms. Washington Pittman suffered from health and financial problems. Even still, she remained active in the civil rights of Black Americans, she was happy of the renewed interest in Black history during the 1960s, and that her father’s legacy as one of America’s great leaders would be remembered.
On February 26, 1978, Ms. Portia Marshall Washington Pittman died, in Washington, DC.
REFERENCES:
1. Black Women in America, by Darlene Clark, et. al., Oxford University Press, 2005.
Gilligan’s Island was a television situation comedy created and produced by the late Sherwood Schwartz. Originally produced by United Artists Television, the series aired on the CBS network. The sitcom featured Robert “Bob” Denver as Gilligan; Alan Hale, Jr. as Jonas “The Skipper” Grumby; James “Jim” Backus, as the Millionaire, Thurston Howell, III; Natalie Schafer, as his wife, Mrs. Lovey Howell; Tina Louise, as movie star Ginger Grant; Russell Johnson, as Professor Roy Hinkley; and Dawn Wells, as Mary Ann Summers. They starred as seven people on a three-hour cruise aboard the S.S. Minnow, which after a torrential thunderstorm stranded them on an uncharted desert island.
Bob Denver
Alan Hale, Jr.
Jim Backus
Natalie Schafer
Tina Louise
Russell Johnson
Dawn Wells
The series aired for three seasons from September 26, 1964, to September 4, 1967
Gilligan’s Island.
After all these years, I can still sing the original theme song:
Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale a tale of a fateful trip, that started from this tropic port, aboard this tiny ship. The mate was a mighty sailin’ man, the Skipper brave and sure, five passengers set sail that day, for a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour.
The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew the Minnow would be lost. The Minnow would be lost.
The ship struck ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle with Gilligan, the Skipper too. Themillionaire and his wife, a movie star, the professor and Mary Ann, here on Gilligan’s Isle.
Then, there’s the ending verse, which told of how the survivors would have to stick it out until help would someday arrive to rescue them:
So this is the tale of our castaways, they’re here for a long long time. They’ll have to make the best of things, it’s an uphill climb.
The first mate and his Skipper too will do their very best, to make the others comf’terble in their tropic island nest.
No phone, no lights, no motor car, not a single luxury like Robinson Crusoe it’s primitive as can be.
So join us here each week my friends, you’re sure to get a smile, from seven stranded castaways here on Gilligan’s Isle!
The original first season theme ended with the words “the movie star…and the rest, are here on Gilligan’s Isle.”
Here is the theme from the third season that many people remember and recognize:
Thanks to Mr. Sherwood Schwartz’s creative vision of Gilligan’s Island, the world has an iconic and endearing sitcom that to this day still brings smiles to my face and joy to my heart.
The castaways, usually through the mishaps of Gilligan, were always going through some screwball comedy zany antic each week, filled with inane humor. Always, Gilligan was the brunt of their anger and frustration. Always, the Skipper would hit his Little Buddy with his skipper cap when Gilligan aggravated the castaways (well, almost all the time.)
Five passengers, along with the fearless crew, set sail for a three-hour cruise that lasted three seasons.
Yes, you had to suspend disbelief that a ship struck ground on a desert isle when much of the world’s oceans had been charted. Yes, you had to suspend disbelief that the castaways, when presented with numerous opportunities to leave the island, somehow manage to stay stranded, time after time. That with would-be rescuers, such as Wrongway Feldman, who landed on the island, but for some illogical reason, never remembered to send help back to rescue the castaways. Yes, you had to suspend disbelief that the castaways never figured out how to fashion life rafts outs of the plant and tree material on the island.
Click on photo to view Episode 20, Season 3: “Our Vines Have Tender Apes”:
But my favourite episode was “Don’t Bug the Mosquitoes”, which aired December 9, 1965. I consider it one of Gilligan’s Island’s best episodes.
In a parody of The Beatles and the “British Invasion” of Beatlemania, the music sensation “The Mosquitoes” land on the island for some much needed rest. What they find instead are Mary Ann, Mrs. Howell and Ginger who have formed a group of their own, “The Honeybees”. Their singing reminded me of the girl groups of the ’60s: Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, The Marvellettes and The Supremes.
Most of all, loads of disbelief was necessary where the clothes and hairstyles of the castaways never became frayed, ragged, or disheveled. (Ginger…those evening gowns, that bouffant hairdo, the makeup–girl, how did you keep it up?) Not to mention that no one lost weight.
And then there is my question: between the two, which did men prefer the most–wholesome Mary Ann, or Ginger, the sultry movie star?
But, this was Gilligan’s Island, and you tuned in to be entertained, to laugh, and to forget any troubles you had that day.
Here is an episode entitled Lovey’s Secret Admirer, from Season 3, Episode 19:
Bob Denver (Gilligan), Alan Hale, Jr. (the Skipper), James “Jim” Backus (the Millionaire), Natalie Schafer (Lovey, Millionnaire’s wife), have all departed from this world. Tina Louise (Ginger, the Movie Star), Russell Johnson (the Professor), and Dawn Wells (Mary Ann), are still with us.
Sherwood Schwartz, who created “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch,” two of the most affectionately ridiculed and enduring television sitcoms of the 1960s and ’70s, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 94.
July 13, 2011
razer Harrison/Getty Images
Sherwood Schwartz in 2004.
His death was confirmed by his daughter, Hope Juber.
Mr. Schwartz weathered painfully dismissive reviews to see his shows prosper and live on for decades in syndication. Many critics suggested that they were successful because they ran counter to the tumultuous times in which they appeared: the era of the Vietnam War and sweeping social change.
Give or take a month or so, the original network run of “The Brady Bunch” coincided with two major upheavals in American society. The show, about a squeaky-clean blended family in California, began in 1969, shortly after Woodstock, and ended in 1974, soon after President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation following the Watergate scandal.
Mr. Schwartz’s work may have been seen as lighthearted entertainment, but some scholars of popular culture took it very seriously. David Marc and Robert J. Thompson, authors of “Prime Time, Prime Movers,” in which they advance an auteur theory of television, considered Mr. Schwartz an innovator who made a “surgical strike into the national psyche.”
Describing the advent of “Gilligan’s Island,” which told the story of seven very different castaways stranded on a desert island, they wrote, “Schwartz was pioneering a dramatic matrix built upon the emerging cultural concept of the ‘support group’: a collection of demographically diverse characters thrown together by circumstance and forced to become an ersatz ‘family’ in order to survive.”
Mr. Schwartz, in a 1996 interview, said that he had always planned the series as a social statement, the message being, “It’s one world, and we all have to learn to live with each other.”
Once or twice a year, he added, he received word of an academic paper whose author claimed to have uncovered the “real meaning” of the series, also stating that its creator probably had no idea what he was really saying.
Not so. Mr. Schwartz remembered describing the idea of “Gilligan’s Island” to William S. Paley, then chairman of CBS, as a microcosm. Mr. Paley, he recalled, blanched and said, “Oh, God, I thought it was a comedy show,” to which Mr. Schwartz quickly responded, “But it’s a funny microcosm!”
Mr. Schwartz was also largely responsible for his shows’ theme songs, which spelled out the premises in detail. “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island,” which Mr. Schwartz wrote with George Wyle, told the story of those castaways and how they ended up on that island. It began:
Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship.
The “Brady Bunch” theme, which Mr. Schwartz wrote by himself, told the story of a woman with three daughters and a man with three sons who met and married. Viewers who swore they had never been fans of either show somehow knew the lyrics, or at least couldn’t help associating phrases like a “three-hour tour” or “the youngest one in curls” with the two series.
Sherwood Charles Schwartz was born in Passaic, N.J., on Nov. 4, 1916. He grew up in Brooklyn and was a premed student at New York University. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, he moved to Los Angeles to attend graduate school at the University of Southern California, but the master’s he earned in biological sciences was never put to use.
In 1938, while waiting for acceptance to medical school, he asked his brother Albert, who worked on Bob Hope’s radio show, if he could try writing a few jokes. Soon there were two Schwartzes on Hope’s payroll.
After World War II, during which Sherwood Schwartz wrote for Armed Forces Radio, he became a writer for “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” which was then on the radio. He made the transition to television in the 1950s with the sitcom “I Married Joan” and “The Red Skelton Show,” for which he became head writer. In 1961 he shared an Emmy Award with his brother, Skelton and two other writers for the show.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Schwartz is survived by his wife, Mildred; three sons, Lloyd, a television producer, Donald and Ross; eight grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
“Gilligan’s Island” began broadcasting in September 1964, with a cast that included Bob Denver as Gilligan, a bumbling first mate; Alan Hale Jr. as the skipper of the shipwrecked boat; and Jim Backus as Thurston Howell III, a millionaire, who managed to practice elitism while living in a hut. Guest stars turned up as British butterfly collectors, misguided aviators or headhunters in grass skirts, sometimes raising hope for the castaways’ rescue. But they were always left behind, even when the series ended in 1967.
July 13, 2011
Associated Press
“The Brady Bunch” pictured in 1975.
The castaways finally did leave the island in a 1978 reunion special, “Rescue From Gilligan’s Island.” There were other specials; then, in 2004, the show was the inspiration for a reality series, “The Real Gilligan’s Island,” starring contestants whose real-life identities (millionaire, skipper and so on) matched those of the characters. As early as 1995 and as recently as this year, there was talk of a “Gilligan’s Island” feature film.
“The Brady Bunch” had its premiere in September 1969. It starred Florence Henderson and Robert Reed as clean-cut newlyweds with children whose most serious problems were usually on the level of sibling rivalry or a student council election.
The show lasted five seasons and, in a way, refused to die. After reruns proved enormously popular, there were three attempts at spinoff series (none lasted longer than half a season); a stage show, “The Real Live Brady Bunch,” in which original episodes of the series were re-enacted; and “The Brady Bunch Movie,” which had two sequels.
In interviews Mr. Schwartz talked about having intercepted a script for the first movie in which the Brady children used four-letter words. He told Paramount that he would personally campaign against the film if the language remained.
So when the first film, set in the 1990s, opened, the obliviously wholesome Bradys appeared to be living in a time warp, still dressing, talking and behaving as if it were the early ’70s. Apparently Mr. Schwartz had his way.
After all these years, I can still sing the original theme song:
Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale a tale of a fateful trip, that started from this tropic port, aboard this tiny ship. The mate was a mighty sailin’ man, the Skipper brave and sure, five passengers set sail that day, for a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour.
The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew the Minnow would be lost. The Minnow would be lost.
The ship aground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle with Gilligan, the Skipper too. A millionaire and his wife, a movie star, the professor and Mary Ann, here on Gilligan’s Isle.
Then, there’s the ending verse, which told of how the survivors would have to stick it out until help would someday arrive to rescue them:
So this is the tale of our castaways, there here for a long long time. They’ll have to make the best of things, it’s an uphill climb.
The first mate and his Skipper too will do their very best, to make the others comf’terble in their tropic island nest.
No phone ,no lights, no motor car, not a single luxury like Robinson Crusoe it’s primitive as can be.
So join us here each week my friends, you’re sure to get a smile, from seven stranded castaways here on Gilligan’s Isle!
The original first season theme ended with the words “the movie star…and the rest, are here on Gilligan’s Isle.”
Here is the theme from the third season that many people remember and recognize:
Mr. Sherwood Schwartz gave the world an iconic and endearing sitcom that to this day still brings smiles to my face and joy to my heart.
The castaways, usually through the mishaps of Gilligan, were always going through some screwball comedy zany antic each week, filled with inane humor. Always, Gilligan was the brunt of their anger and frustration. Always, the Skipper would hit his Little Buddy with his skipper cap when Gilligan aggravated the castaways.
Five passengers, along with the fearless crew, set sail for a three-hour cruise that lasted four seasons.
Yes, you had to suspend disbelief that a ship struck ground on a desert isle when much of the world’s oceans had been charted. Yes, you had to suspend disbelief that the castaways, when presented with numerous opportunities to leave the island, somehow manage to stay stranded, time after time. That with would-be rescuers, such as Wrongway Feldman, who landed on the island, but for some illogical reason, never remembered to send help back to rescue the castaways. Yes, you had to suspend disbelief that the castaways never figured out how to fashion life rafts outs of the plant and tree material on the island.
Click on photo.
Most of all, loads of disbelief was necessary where the clothes and hairstyles of the castaways never became frayed, ragged, or disheveled. (Ginger…those evening gowns, that bouffant hairdo, the makeup–girl, how did you keep it up?) Not to mention that no one lost weight.
And then there is my question: between the two, which did men prefer the most–wholesome Mary Ann, or Ginger, the sultry movie star?
But, this was Gilligan’s Island, and you tuned to be entertained, to laugh, and to forget any troubles you had that day.
Here is an episode entitled Lovey’s Secret Admirer, from Season 3, Episode 19:
Bob Denver (Gilligan), Alan Hale, Jr. (the Skipper), James “Jim” Backus (the Millionaire), Natalie Schafer (Lovey, Millionnaire’s wife), have all departed from this world, with Tina Louise (Ginger, the Movie Star), Russell Johnson (the Professor), and Dawn Wells (Mary Ann), still with us.
Mr. Schwartz gave so many millions fond memories that will last a lifetime.
Rob Grill, the longtime lead singer and a very nearly original member of the Grass Roots, the immensely popular rock group of the 1960s and afterward, died on Monday in Tavares, Fla. He was 67.
The cause was complications of a head injury he sustained in a fall last month, his wife, Nancy, said. Mr. Grill was a longtime resident of Mount Dora, Fla.
The band’s style married elements of folk-rock, soul, blues and R&B. Its songs, whose close-knit harmonies evoked the British pop groups of the period, were bouncy, accessible and eminently danceable, often backed by an upbeat brass section.
“The Grass Roots weren’t the hippest band on the block,” The Boston Globe wrote in 1989. “But they were — and remain — a sure-fire guilty pleasure, a blissful package of pure pop.”
The group’s longest-serving member, Mr. Grill appeared with the Grass Roots for more than four decades: first in the group’s heyday and again as the band has enjoyed a renaissance on the oldies circuit. His voice — high, sweet and supple — was memorably urgent and beseeching in the group’s many songs of love.
He also played bass and wrote some of the group’s songs, though the Grass Roots’ best-known material was written primarily by nonmembers.
The Grass Roots began life as a phantom. In the mid-1960s, two Los Angeles songwriters, Steve Barri and P. F. Sloan, were asked by their label, Dunhill Records, for songs that would capitalize on the growing appetite for folk-rock.
They wrote “Where Were You When I Needed You” and, as the Grass Roots, recorded a demo. When the song had some success on the radio, they cast about for an existing band to become the Grass Roots.
They enlisted a San Francisco group named the Bedouins, who recorded the first Grass Roots album, also titled “Where Were You When I Needed You.”
In 1967, after the Bedouins decamped, Mr. Barri and Mr. Sloan recruited the 13th Floor, a Los Angeles band comprising Creed Bratton, Rick Coonce, Warren Entner and Kenny Fukomoto. (Mr. Bratton, the lead guitarist, later worked as an actor; he is known for playing the eccentric quality assurance director — also named Creed Bratton — on the American sitcom “The Office.”)
Just as the 13th Floor was about to sign on as the Grass Roots, Mr. Fukomoto was drafted, and Mr. Grill was brought in as a replacement. He remained with the group through the late ’70s, when it faded from view, a casualty of changing popular taste.
Mr. Grill managed new incarnations of the band in 1978 and ’79, rejoining it in the early 1980s. He performed with the Grass Roots throughout much of the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s.
Mr. Grill appeared on many of the band’s albums and also recorded a solo album, “Uprooted,” released in 1979.
Robert Frank Grill was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 30, 1943. Intending to become a lawyer, he studied at California State University, Los Angeles, before pursuing a career in music.
Mr. Grill’s first marriage ended in divorce. Besides his wife, the former Nancy Pilski, whom he married in 1986, he is survived by a brother, James. A son from his first marriage, Christian, died of cancer last year.
Mr. Grill lived for years with chronic pain as a result of a degenerative bone disorder known as avascular necrosis and the multiple hip-replacement operations it entailed. In 2007, he was arrested on charges of having obtained the prescription painkiller oxycodone from multiple doctors, in violation of Florida law.
He entered a guilty plea, which was later vacated after he completed a pretrial intervention program, his wife said.
On the whole, however, Mr. Grill’s life — and the lives of his band mates — was so tame that it became, in some quarters, a professional sticking point.
“I asked one of the guys at VH1’s ‘Behind the Music’ why we weren’t on,” Mr. Grill told The Huntsville (Ala.) Times in 2005. “And he said, ‘Were you guys ever into heroin?’ and I said, ‘No.’ He said we just weren’t compelling enough.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 14, 2011
A picture caption on Wednesday with an obituary about Rob Grill, the lead singer of the rock group the Grass Roots, gave incorrect identifications from the Everett Collection archives for three of the four members shown. As correctly noted, Dennis Provisor is at the far left. The others are, from left, Warren Entner, Mr. Grill and Rick Coonce.
Kip Tiernan was dumbfounded when she saw women disguising themselves as men to get a meal at a men-only homeless shelter in Boston nearly 40 years ago — so much so that she went ahead and founded the nation’s first homeless shelter for women.
July 13, 2011
Bill Brett
Kip Tiernan
Ms. Tiernan died at 85 at her home in Boston on July 2. The cause was cancer, said Sue Marsh, the executive director of Rosie’s Place, the shelter Ms. Tiernan started in 1974.
It was while working as a volunteer for Warwick House, a Roman Catholic civil rights, antiwar and antipoverty ministry in Boston, that Ms. Tiernan saw those women dressed as men at the Pine Street shelter in the early 1970s.
“At that point people thought there was no such a thing as homeless women,” Ms. Marsh said. “Kip traveled to Chicago, Philadelphia and New York to see what those cities were doing for homeless women, and found there was nothing.”
With permission from the city, Ms. Tiernan opened Rosie’s Place in an abandoned supermarket in Boston’s South End. It now occupies an old church rectory in the neighborhood. Ms. Tiernan came up with the name based on the notion that everyone needs a rose in their life.
The shelter’s mission, at first, was merely to hand out coffee and used clothing and to offer a place where a few women could spend the night. That mission has greatly expanded.
In the mid-1970s, said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, “single men constituted the vast majority of homeless people and shelters served men only; women literally had no options for shelter.”
“Kip was a prescient first responder to a need that would only continue to grow,” Ms. Foscarinis said.
According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual assessment of homelessness, there were 1.59 million homeless people in the country last year, 38 percent of them women.
Ms. Foscarinis and Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said Rosie’s Place was the nation’s first shelter established specifically to address the issues confronting homeless women.
“A major cause of homelessness for women is domestic violence, and that makes the need for separate, safe and secure shelter especially acute,” Ms. Foscarinis said, adding that women with children “have a particular need for shelter that can accommodate them as a family.”
With its slogan “Diapers to Detox,” Rosie’s Place tries to meet an array of issues. While the shelter has only 20 beds, it serves lunch and dinner to 150 women a day. Its pantry provides food to about 800 women a month. It helps women find housing and avoid utility shut-offs. There are 300 students in its literacy program. It offers drug and alcohol abuse counseling. A craft cooperative allows women to sell jewelry they have made.
“This is the way Kip thought it should be,” Ms. Marsh said, “that they are our sisters.”
Born in West Haven, Conn., on June 17, 1926, Mary Jane Tiernan was 6 months old when her father died and 11 when her mother died. Raised by her maternal grandmother, she took flying lessons as a teenager and became interested in jazz.
Ms. Tiernan moved to Boston in 1947 to study at the Boston Conservatory, but was expelled for drinking. “I was raped once,” she told The Boston Globe in 1988. “I was 19. Drunk.” After achieving sobriety through Alcoholics Anonymous, she eventually became a successful advertising copywriter with her own agency and began her volunteer work with Warwick House.
Ms. Tiernan is survived by her partner of 15 years, Donna Pomponio, whom she married in 2004. Her previous companion, Edith Nicholson, died in the 1990s. Together they raised Ms. Nicholson’s three children, one of whom, Peg Wright, also survives.
“She really had no stomach for people pitying the homeless without some type of follow-through that would improve the condition of the unhoused,” Mr. Donovan, of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said. “She railed against politicians and bureaucrats for making empty promises or unfunded mandates and against homeless advocates who put their own organization or agenda first.”
July 15, 2011 | Observations of June 15th’s total lunar eclipse suggest that smoggy skies over China created unusual patterns in the umbral glow on the Moon. > read more
July 11, 2011 | By tracking two visible features in Neptune’s atmosphere, a University of Arizona astronomer has clocked a new spin rate for the blue planet. But does this mean the Voyager results from 1989 are wrong? > read more
July 13, 2011 | Two studies reveal that the white smear across Saturn’s northern face was caused by a deep seated thunder storm that discharged powerful lightning bolts for days on end. > read more
July 14, 2011 | It’s always bad news when your coolant line ruptures and spews antifreeze everywhere. It’s really bad news when the stuff leaks all over one of the world’s largest telescopes. > read more
July 15, 2011 | Early on Tuesday, July 19th, lucky observers along a 120-mile-wide path from north-central California to central Saskatchewan have a chance to watch a big, enigmatic double asteroid briefly cover a relatively bright star in Aquarius. > read more
June 30, 2011 | Look low in the west at sunset to spy fleet Mercury, toward southwest for Saturn, and in the south for red-hued Antares, the “rival of Mars.” > read more
July 15, 2011 | Saturn is lowering in the southwest these evenings, while Jupiter is climbing ever higher before dawn. And Vesta in the middle of the night has reached 6th magnitude. > read more
July 13, 2011 | Sky and Telescope‘s editor Sean Walker puts together NASA’s anniversary images of Neptune to create a movie that shows a day on the blue planet. > read more
April 14, 2011 | Want to gaze at the Milky Way all night or peer into the eyepiece of a 12-foot-tall telescope? Then escape the city lights and head for the nearest “star party.” > read more
Advocates are urging Congress to make Medicare and Medicaid programs work for three million home-care givers making poverty-wages. Shani O. Hilton explains.
Notorious South African white supremacist Arthur Kemp has added a new project to his portfolio of transnational activism. In addition to writing for white supremacist publications and running a prominent website for British racists, he has opened an online bookstore featuring reprints of previously impossible-to-find racist tracts from times gone by.
According to its website, Ostara Publications (which Kemp founded in 1999 as a means of distributing his own white supremacist screeds) was “developed in response to anti-white discrimination the world over” and “intends to be the world’s primary Eurocentric resource.”
The collection so far is small – but what Kemp’s bookstore lacks in breadth, it makes up for in nastiness. One of the most striking resurrected titles is Arthur Compte de Gobineau’s 1853 tract The Inequality of the Human Races, the first book to promulgate the concept of a superior “Aryan race.” Tremendously popular among late 19th- and early 20th-century “Pan-Germans,” the book inspired generations of white supremacists and anti-Semites – including a young aspiring artist named Adolf Hitler.
Kemp is also hawking several civil rights-era tracts that were used to fight school desegregation in the South. Among them is Race and Reason: A Yankee View by Carleton Putnam, whose pseudo-scientific “proof” that blacks were biologically inferior to whites was used by the White Citizen’s Councils (predecessors to today’s Council of Conservative Citizens) in their battle to keep black children out of white schools. Also for sale is the equally influential The Biology of the Race Problem, commissioned in 1962 by Klan-endorsed Alabama Governor John Patterson and authored by Wesley Critz George, once a department head at the University of North Carolina Medical School.
Ostara offers some new titles as well. It is the U.K. and European distributor for White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century, by racist ideologue Jared Taylor, editor of the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance. Of course, the complete works of Arthur Kemp are also available, including a new 90-page text in which he states as fact that the I.Q. range in predominantly Muslim countries is between 70 and 79 (100 is an “average” I.Q. on most tests).
Looking at Kemp’s career, it’s no surprise that he would open a bookstore stocked primarily with hateful racist texts. Starting with his attempt in the early 1980s to revive a pro-apartheid student club at South Africa’s University of Cape Town, Kemp has spent the bulk of his years trying to breathe new life into fading pro-white causes. He was a pro-apartheid journalist in the 1980s and early 1990s, ultimately going to work in the South African security forces, which were implicated in assassinations and other violence directed at the African National Conference and other militant opponents of apartheid.
Kemp moved to England in 1996 and fell in with the National Alliance, which was at the time America’s leading neo-Nazi group. Always a fan of a losing white supremacist cause, Kemp threw himself into saving the collapsing group after founder William Pierce’s unexpected death in 2002. He wrote for and helped edit the Alliance’s National Vanguard magazine, and he drafted speeches and radio essays for its leader. He eventually got fed up, and in 2009 denounced Pierce’s recommendation that his followers abstain from participation in the democratic process and plan instead to seize power after the system’s collapse as “possibly the single most damaging influence in pro-white politics in American history.”
Between 2004 and 2011, Kemp worked in a variety of capacities for the whites-only British National Party. He resigned in March to become editor-in-chief of a British nationalist website owned by European Parliament member Andrew Brons.
There is nothing like old hate to shore up the same ‘ol hate that has been with this nation since its beginning.
“According to its website, Ostara Publications (which Kemp founded in 1999 as a means of distributing his own white supremacist screeds) was “developed in response to anti-white discrimination the world over” and “intends to be the world’s primary Eurocentric resource.”
“Anti-White discrimination”?
Really?
So, I guess the majority of Whites in America face constant racial profiling, gentrification of neighborhoods they have lived in for generations, racist and venomous stereotypes, economic racism, environmental racism, judicial racism….I could go on and on.
Proof, man, proof.
Show me the evidence of anti-White discrimination.
Come on.
Convince me.
Prove it to me.
Yeah, I thought so.
Whites in America hold all the cards, including the Ace of Spades.
In better health care.
In better education.
Higher paying jobs.
Higher rates of employment.
Safer physical security in their rights as citizens and human beings.
Greater generational wealth and assets.
They live longer than Blacks, and get to receive more of their Social Security benefits (as well as get the remains of SS that deceased Blacks did not live long enough to collect.)
So, I do not want to hear any snotting and crying about all the horrific anti-White discrimination that is assailing the millions of Whites who live in America.
Sister Somalia and A Thousand Sisters are two non-profit organizations dedicated to the humanitarian missions to end sexual violence against women in Somalia and the Republic of the Congo.
Women in these areas suffer from abduction and imprisonment through forced marriage, gang rape, beatings, genital mutilation, and murder. If accused of adultery, women face two forms of punishment: stoned to death or beheaded.
The five worst places to be a female are India, Afghanistan, Somalia, Republic of the Congo, and Pakistan, and they all had help from the United States in becoming that way in their devaluing of women’s economic independence, the right to assert themselves against male patriarchy, the fight against domestic abuse, and lack of access to rights and privileges that men enjoy–education, political office, and financial independence.
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The World’s 5 Worst Places for Women — And How U.S. Policy Helped Make Them That Way
The plight of women in Afghanistan, Congo and other difficult places owes much to the machinations of Washington politicians.
June 30, 2011 |
Photo Credit: Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images
When checking the nuclear ambitions of dictators or building “democracy” in Baghdad, politicians tend to justify foreign policy by touting America as an international “beacon” of freedom and equality. A new report on the world’s five most dangerous countries for women is a predictable listing of places not yet reached by the light of America’s democratic promise. Beneath the surface, though, many of the misfortunes that plague women in places like Afghanistan can be traced back to a cruel political consensus in Washington.
According to a report by Thomson Reuters Foundation, the most dangerous countries for women are Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India and Somalia. The ranking, based on a poll of gender experts (with a statistically based methodology), measures major threats to the welfare of women and girls: “sexual violence; non-sexual violence; cultural or religious factors; discrimination and lack of access to resources; and trafficking.” Some of the more dismal points:
About nine in 10 Afghan women are illiterate.
In Somalia, where maternal mortality remains extraordinarily high, fewer than 10 percent of women give birth in a standard health facility.
Some 100 million people in India, mostly girls and women, fall victim to trafficking. Female infanticide and “feticide” (referring to sex-selective abortion) are also widespread.
One study estimated that 420,000 rapes occur over the course of a year in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Women in Pakistan earn about 80 percent less than men, and 90 percent of them experience domestic violence in their lifetimes.
Siphoning these injustices into categories is a bit misleading: poverty, inadequate health care, sexual exploitation and violence are all links in a chain of gender oppression, roping women into a cycle of political and economic disempowerment.
And these problems share another connection, to Washington’s foreign policy.
Both Washington and Kabul have exposed the bankruptcy of promises of gender equity by ignoring and abetting the systematic abuse of women. It is appalling that young girls are attacked for attending school, but it’s unconscionable for Western powers to wield the tragedy as a cudgel to defend imperial warfare.
Washington’s military aid to Pakistan has been fueled by a similar approach toward “stabilizing” the region through war and “counter-terrorism.” Raining bombs on Pakistan won’t relieve the country’s deep poverty, now exacerbated by last year’s catastrophic flooding. Nor do the Pentagon’s drone attacks win hearts and minds when they kill and injure civilian families and stoke even more local resentment.
Despite some reform measures to combat sexual crimes, the brutalization of women continues, abetted by twisted U.S. posturing. While Washington has poured aid into the D.R.C., its political machinations in the region have failed to comprehensively address military involvement by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda. Activists have called on the U.S. to ramp up support for peacekeeping and civil society institutions, international diplomatic efforts, and the inquiry of the International Criminal Court. Michael Poffenberger, executive director of Resolve, criticized the Obama administration’s position on the Lord’s Resistance Army:
“Congress gave the Obama administration an unprecedented mandate to end LRA atrocities and help affected communities recover… The administration has improved some of its efforts, but, by and large, has failed to strengthen civilian protection or apprehend the LRA’s top leaders.”
From more privileged corners of the globe, we’re tempted to respond to reports about all the forsaken women out there by sadly shaking our heads at those intractable, faraway crises. But these women are closer to us than we think. And hope for them begins with justice here at home, by demanding that our government take responsibility for its complicity in making the world unsafe for women everywhere.
Michelle Chen has written for the South China Morning Post, Clamor, INTHEFRAY.COM and her own zine, cain.
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A Thousand Sisters seeks to give counseling, financial aid (through donations), food, clothing, medical care, and education.
Sister Somalia offers the first sexual violence hotline in Mogadishu, Somalia, with the hope to serve women with counseling, medical care, and business skills.
The women of Somalia, Congo, and other places where life of women is devalued and considered cheap, may feel that no one cares for them. But, there are those who do, and these two organizations are willing to go into the lion’s den to stand by their sisters and give them the help they so desperately need.
That many of these brave, loving and courageous souls are women says a lot about the men who despise and mistreat the very women who live in their midst.
By destroying the women in their communities and nations, these men are in essence, destroying themselves.
The United Nations’ (UN) World Population Day is annually observed on July 11 to reaffirm the human right to plan for a family. It encourages activities, events and information to help make this right a reality throughout the world.
World Population Day aims to increase people’s awareness on various population issues such as the importance of family planning, including gender equality, poverty, maternal health and human rights. The day is celebrated worldwide by business groups, community organizations and individuals in many ways. Activities include seminar discussions, educational information sessions and essay competitions.
Public life
World Population Day is a global observance and not a public holiday.
Background
In 1968 world leaders proclaimed that individuals had a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and timing of their children. About 40 years later modern contraception remains out of reach for millions of women, men and young people. World Population Day was instituted in 1989 as an outgrowth of the Day of Five Billion, marked on July 11, 1987. The UN authorized the event as a vehicle to build an awareness of population issues and the impact they have on development and the environment.
Since then, with the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) encouragement, governments, non-governmental organizations, institutions and individuals organize various educational activities to celebrate the annual event.
Symbols
The UN logo is often associated with marketing and promotional material for this event. It features a projection of a world map (less Antarctica) centered on the North Pole, enclosed by olive branches. The olive branches symbolize peace and the world map represents all the people of the world. It has been featured in colors such as blue against a yellow background.
Ann
