ASSESSING RACE IN AMERICA, OBAMA CALLS REV. WRIGHT ‘DIVISIVE’

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

“I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election,” Barack Obama said in the speech.

By JEFF ZELENY

Published: March 18, 2008

PHILADELPHIA — Senator Barack Obama renewed his objection to the controversial statements delivered by the longtime pastor of his Chicago church, but declared in a speech here Tuesday that it was time for America to “move beyond some of our old racial wounds.”“It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years,” Mr. Obama said. “Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy — particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.”In an address at the National Constitution Center, a building steeped in the nation’s historic symbolism, Mr. Obama delivered a sweeping assessment of race in America. It was the most extensive speech of his presidential campaign devoted to race and unity, a moment his advisers conceded presented one of the biggest tests of his candidacy.For nearly a week, Mr. Obama has struggled to distance himself from a series of controversial statements by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who characterized the United States as fundamentally racist and the government as corrupt and murderous. Mr. Obama concluded over the weekend that he had failed to resolve the questions, aides said, and told advisers he wanted to address the firestorm in a speech.In his address here, delivered in an auditorium to an audience of about 200 elected officials and members of the clergy, Mr. Obama disavowed the remarks by Mr. Wright as “not only wrong, but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity.” But he did not wholly distance himself from his pastor or the church, Trinity United Church of Christ, on Chicago’s South Side.“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” Mr. Obama said. “I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”Standing against a backdrop of American flags, Mr. Obama offered the most thorough explanation to date about his association with the church and his pastor, whom he has known for nearly 20 years.“For some, nagging questions remain,” Mr. Obama said. “Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”

In a 45-minute address, interrupted numerous times by applause, Mr. Obama acknowledged the political risks facing his campaign, particularly as he tries to increase his appeal to white male voters here in advance of the Pennsylvania primary on April 22 and the remaining other contests.

“Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now,” he said.

“I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork,” Mr. Obama said. “We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.”

He spoke about his diverse upbringing, a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas. He noted that his candidacy had been successful in predominantly white states and black states, but he conceded that the nation’s racial divisions remained firmly entrenched, a notion underscored by the polarization in the presidential campaign.

“We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.”

He added: “Against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African-Americans and white Americans.”

Yet in recent weeks, as the Democratic nominating fight has intensified with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, discussions of race and gender have emerged from an underlying subtext to providing an overriding narrative of the campaign.

“The comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through — a part of our union that we have not yet made perfect,” Mr. Obama said. “And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education or the need to find good jobs for every American.”

(Article courtesy of The New York TimesL  http://www.nytimes.com )

RELATED LINKS:

The Caucus – Obama’s Speech on Race: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/obamas-speech-on-race/index.html?hp

Transcript of Obama’s Speech on Race: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html

Race and Unity Speech – Obama Response to Rev. Wright: http://www.youtube.com/user/BarackObamadotcom

Terry Moran of ABC’s “Nightline”, will interview Obama tonight. (Check local listings.)

GUILTY VERDICT IN NIXZMARY BROWN CASE

By ANDY NEWMAN

Published: March 18, 2008

A jury in Brooklyn acquitted Cesar Rodriguez, the stepfather of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown, of second-degree murder Tuesday, but convicted him of a lesser charge, first-degree manslaughter, for fatally beating her as punishment for stealing a snack and jamming his computer printer with toys.The lower charge carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison; second-degree murder carries a possible life sentence.

Nixzmary Brown weighed 36 pounds when she died, and her body was severely bruised.

Cesar Rodriguez was convicted of manslaughter in the brutal death of Nixzmary Brown, 7.

The verdict, reached on the fourth day of deliberations after an eight-week trial, brought an ambiguous end to the first trial in one of the most horrific child deaths in the city’s recent history, one that triggered an overhaul of the city’s child welfare system. Nixzmary’s mother, Nixzaliz Santiago, is to be tried later on murder charges.

The difference between second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter is subtle. In convicting Mr. Rodriguez, 29, of first-degree manslaughter, the jury determined that Mr. Rodriguez had caused Nixzmary’s death by recklessly engaging in conduct that created a grave risk of serious physical injury. To find him guilty of second-degree murder, the jury would have had to determine that he acted with “depraved indifference to human life.”

During the eight-week trial, Mr. Rodriguez’s main lawyer, Jeffrey T. Schwartz, told jurors that though Mr. Rodriguez, who admitted beating Nixzmary regularly, was a child abuser, he was not a killer and that he never thought any of his beatings would cause Nixzmary’s death.

As the foreman of the 10-woman, 2-man jury in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn declared Mr. Rodriguez “not guilty” of the top charge, Mr. Rodriguez looked down. One of his lawyers, Barry Deonarine, put an arm around his shoulder. Mr. Rodriguez continued to look down as the foreman read the rest of the 12 verdicts, most of them guilty. Eventually, he closed his eyes.

Mr. Rodriguez’s main lawyer, Jeffrey T. Schwartz, who had moved for mistrials repeatedly over the course of the trial, had mixed emotions afterward.

“It’s rewarding given what we had to work with,” he said, “but it’s unconscionable because the prosecutors cheated, and that will form the basis of our appeal.”

(Article courtesy of The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com )

RELATED LINKS:

NIXZMARY BROWN TIMELINE: https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/defense-in-nixzmary-browns-beating-death-focuses-on-mothers-role/

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/03/18/child.starved.ap/index.html

UNVEILING THE BLACK AMERICAN TRAIL IN LOUISIANA

ASSOCIATED PRESS

March 17th, 2008 — Louisiana seeks to highlight its black history with unveiling of the African American Herritage Trail.

By MARY FOSTERMarch 17, 2008 — NEW ORLEANS _ Louisiana tourism officials have unveiled the first 26 sites on an African American Heritage Trail running from New Orleans to northern Louisiana.

“It will tell the stories of African Americans who have made contributions to Louisiana, to America and to the world,” said Chuck Morse, assistant secretary of the Louisiana Office of Tourism. “It makes us proud, but it’s not about pride totally. It’s also about the economy.”

There are 26 stops on the trail to begin with, although that will be expanded. Included are the expected — plantations with details about slaves’ lives, and the early roots of jazz — and the unexpected — such as Melrose Plantation, built and owned and operated by a former slave, who in turn became a slave owner.

Heritage tourism trails are routes that lead visitors to specialty points of interest. They constitute a fast-growing type of tourism, Morse said. Louisiana is in the process of developing a series of such trails, ranging from a Culinary Trail to a Civil War Trail.

According to the Travel Industry Associations of America, more and more travelers are seeking the authentic American experience offered through cultural and heritage tourism. The organization said 81 percent of the 146.4 million U.S. adults who took a trip of 50 miles or more away from home in the past year included historical or cultural activities on at least one of their trips.

“People are looking for authentic places and the stories that go with them,” Morse said. “Trails help them find them easily.'”

An old-time black-and-white photograph of two young black men, one holding an accordian, serves as the “face” of the trail.

Places on the trail include the Hermione Museum in Tallulah, which is currently hosting an exhibit on the famously successful hair-care entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker, who was born in Delta, La., in 1867, shortly after slavery ended; the state capitol in Baton Rouge, where, in the 1870s, P.B.S. Pinchback briefly served as the first black governor in U.S. history; and Congo Square, in New Orleans, where slaves were permitted to assemble on Sundays. The St. Augustine Catholic Church in Natchez, La., and the St. Augustine Church in New Orleans’ Treme neighborhood have both been spiritual centers for the black community for generations. Grambling State University in Grambling, and Southern University in Baton Rouge, both traditionally black colleges, are also on the list. The schools celebrate their rivalry at an annual football game called the Bayou Classic.

Some of the sites on the trail are associated with prominent individuals, such as the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson’s grave in Providence Park Cemetery in Metairie; and the Arna Bontemps African American Heritage Museum in Alexandria, the family home for a writer who went on to become important in the Harlem Renaissance.

Other places on the trail in New Orleans are the New Orleans African American Museum, St. Louis Cemeteries No. 1 and No. 2, the French Market and the Amistad Research Center. Elsewhere in the state, the list also includes Laura Plantation, Vacherie; Evergreen Plantation, Wallace; River Road African American Museum, Donaldsonville; Tangipahoa African American Heritage Museum, Hammond; Port Hudson Battlefield, Jackson; the African American Museum, St. Martinville; the Black Heritage Art Gallery, Central School Arts and Humanities Center, Lake Charles; the Creole Heritage Folk Life Center, Opelousas; the Cane River Creole National Historic Park-Creole Center, Natchitoches; the Multicultural Center of the South, Shreveport; Southern University Museum of Art, Shreveport; and the Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum, Monroe.

BLACK WOMEN ARE NOT FEELING THE FEMINIST’S PAIN

By Marjorie Valbrun | TheRoot.com

Is the sisterhood in peril?

March 17, 2008 — Note to Geraldine Ferraro, Gloria Steinem, and complainer in chief, Hillary Clinton: Get over yourselves.Your cries of reverse racism, your complaints about overt sexism in the campaign, your vocal protests about media favoritism being shown Barack Obama, ring hollow.We are not feeling your pain. None of you are symbolic of female oppression. You are all well-educated and well-connected. You are influential and have ready access to the media. You have had more opportunities than most black women  could ever dream of and we doubt you could ever relate to the level of sexism and racism we regularly face. We know you couldn’t even begin to understand what it’s like for black men.

Last time we checked, none of you were struggling with the challenges that average working women – both black and white – deal with everyday: making ends meet, finding safe and affordable childcare, paying the rent or mortgage, getting jobs that pay a living wage and offer opportunities for advancement. Amid all of this, regular working women are trying to find personal fulfillment and build a sense of self.

You privileged ladies already have a huge sense of self, and an even bigger sense of entitlement. Your words have only served to widen the divide between us and you, and your faulty and misguided perspective that Obama, a black man, is the enemy only serves to underline the divide. 

Obama is not getting a free pass because he’s black; he’s getting more scrutiny because of it. He did not get where he is simply because he’s a black man; he got where he is in spite of it. Your piling on Obama is one very warped expression of “girl power.”

Somehow we don’t believe this was what Betty Friedan was thinking when she wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963 and launched the modern women’s movement. The movement was built on the premise that women were smarter than men believed, wanted more than men felt they deserved, were more ambitious than men were comfortable with, and had dreams bigger than the boundaries men set for them. It was about being politically affirming, not politically divisive.

The movement was not about being nasty, and calculating, and intellectually dishonest. And it was definitely not about playing dirty politics – like men. You make us wonder if you ever were really one of us now that we clearly see you have become one of “them.”

Hillary Clinton, earlier in the campaign you complained that your Democratic opponents were “piling on” and “taking a page from the Republican playbook.” The truth is you’ve taken a page directly from Karl Rove’s playbook and appropriated his defining doctrine of win at any cost, take no prisoners, and when everything else fails, resort to shameless race baiting. How unoriginal.

The sisterhood, at least your version of it, has been unmasked. You have proven you will do and say whatever it takes to win, even if that means doing irreparable harm to your political party and the good relationship you once had with black women. Honest and fair political discourse is being hijacked by your hypocrisy and that is certain to hurt the genuine efforts of white and black women working hard to form alliances on common and larger feminist causes.

Geraldine Ferraro, you said that Obama was “lucky” to be where he is and should “thank” you.

“In all honesty, do you think that if he were a white male, there would be a reason for the black community to get excited for a historic first?” You asked. “Am I pointing out something that doesn’t exist?”

What you fail to point out is that black people overwhelmingly voted for Bill Clinton for president not once, but twice. And we did the same for John Kerry, Al Gore, and other white candidates that came before them. Over the years, black voters have also supported plenty of white female candidates for Congress – including Hillary Clinton – and in statewide races.

When many Americans turned their backs on Bill Clinton after Monica Lewinsky and impeachment, black people stood by him as steadfastly as they would any member of their family. That’s because we believe deeply in the power of forgiveness and redemption, but if you and other Clinton cohorts keep this up, we won’t be so forgiving at the polls, even if Clinton is the nominee.

We remember, Geraldine, that you also derided Jesse Jackson when he ran for president in 1988. “If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race,” you said then. Your comments then, and now, seem to consistently imply that no black male candidate can legitimately run for office or engage voters with his ideas, policies proposals or vision for a better America. We can probably guess what you think of black women candidates.   

And by the way, what’s wrong with the black community getting excited about a historic first? Aren’t you in fact excited as well about the possibility of a historic first female president? Or did this point elude you even though you once tried to become that historic first? Gloria Steinem, you wrote in the New York Times that Obama would not have succeeded if he were a woman because gender is “the most restricting force in American life.” Yeah, right. Tell that to the thousands of unemployed black men in America who would gladly trade places with you and women like you whose lives bear few examples of social and economic deprivation.Black men don’t control a whole lot in this country; not the media, not Wall Street, not Capitol Hill. So when did they start holding you back or becoming your oppressors? White women have benefited from generations of white privilege and now that one black man has managed to play, and win, by the rules, you cry sexism?

We understand your frustration with the campaign and the failings of the packrat media coverage, we have our frustrations too. Nonetheless, it’s entirely too convenient to try and turn Obama into a symbol of sexism, or reverse racism, or the manifestation of biased gender politics. The media is fascinated and obsessed with “firsts” and the possibility of the first black or woman president will undoubtedly continue to drive much of the focus and narrative of the campaign coverage.

So how about taking a deep breath and a couple of steps back to get some perspective.

Obama is appealing to voters of both genders and all racial stripes precisely because he’s not playing the racial victim. Perhaps if Clinton stopped playing the female victim, other voters would flock to her too.

Marjorie Valbrun is a journalist based in Washington, D.C.

(Article courtesy of The Root:  http://www.theroot.com )

RELATED LINKS:

https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/clinton-feminists-frustrated-at-shift-towards-obama/

IS OBAMA WRONG ABOUT WRIGHT?

By Michael C. Dawson | TheRoot.com

Among black Americans, Jeremiah Wright may not be that far out of the mainstream.

March 17, 2008 — Senator Obama is mistaken.  The problem with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago minister who is the Obama family’s pastor and the subject of recent fierce attacks in the media, is not, as Obama has stated, that “he has a lot of the…baggage of those times,”  (those times being the 1960s).The problem is also not, as one paper characterized Obama’s position on his minister, that Wright is stuck in a “time warp,” in a period defined by racial division.

No, the problem is that Wright’s opinions are well within the mainstream of those of black America.  As public opinion researchers know, the problem is that despite all the oratory about racial unity and transcending race, this country remains deeply racially divided, especially in the realm of politics.

Most white people and the mainstream media tend to be horrified (in a titillating voyeuristic type of way), when they ‘look under the hood’ to see what’s really on blacks folks’ mind.  Two thirds of whites believe that blacks have achieved or will soon achieve racial equality. Nearly eighty percent of blacks believe that racial justice for blacks will not be achieved either in their lifetime or at all in the U.S.  In March 2003, when polls were showing strong support among whites for an invasion of Iraq, a large majority of blacks were shown to oppose military intervention.

In a survey I took during the week that the U.S. went to war, blacks not only opposed the war in large numbers, but a very large majority also thought that protest against the war was one’s patriotic duty. A majority of whites thought protesting the war was unpatriotic.

The same type of divides, as I noted in an earlier essay, have appeared in evaluations of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, of evaluations of President Bush during the first six years of his administration, during most of the Clinton administration, and for the entire Reagan presidency.

More specifically, Reverend Wright’s blend of leftism and Afro-Centrism remains one of the classic patterns of black political ideology.  His philosophy is very similar to a number of honored black theologians, including the esteemed Reverend James Cone of Union Theological Seminary.

Indeed, one could argue that Reverend Wright’s criticism of racial dynamics in the U.S. and American foreign policy is milder than the biting criticism of American capitalism and imperialism found in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the last years of his life. During the 1990s, seventy percent of black Americans believed the country was racially, economically, and socially unfair toward blacks and the poor (See my 2001 book Black Visions for statistical details and the question wording for these three separate questions).

 The black community is angry about race relations in this country.  The black community is angry about the bankrupt foreign policy that this nation has pursued since before 9/11.  Blacks are angry about what is perceived as the political and moral blindness of white Americans.  This anger is spread across the black ideological spectrum (with the exception, perhaps, of within the ranks of black conservatives).

 Black nationalists, black leftists, black feminists and black liberals may differ on their solutions for what America’s ills, but they all generally agree on the overarching problems Not surprisingly, the last time a scientific survey of black political ideologies was conducted, a large segment of the black population fell into the category of those who believed in the principles of liberalism, yet they held no hope, the survey indicated, that this country would ever live up to its democratic and liberal creed.

So Barack Obama is wrong.  Reverend Wright does not represent outdated thinking. The critical views he expresses are all too rooted in the present.  The racial divisions that Obama seeks to transcend with his message of hope and unity are not a feature of the past, but a deep structural fixture in this nation’s present.

Obama will be continually called upon by the mainstream media to prove that he’s not a nationalist like Minister Farrakhan, or an Afrocentric leftist like Reverend Wright.  The suspicion will always be that he holds opinions closer to those expressed by Rev. Wright than those he is voicing in the campaign.

Consequently, if the Obama campaign wishes to bring this campaign to a successful conclusion, it will have to realize that it cannot run away from the issue of race and racial division, but will have to find a language that both addresses our hopes for the future while recognizing the difficulties and divisions of the present.  The nation’s in real trouble if its politicians and pundits continue to believe that that the only road to racial harmony is through denying the past and refusing to discuss the injustices of the present.

Michael C. Dawson is the John D. MacArthur professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

(Article courtesy of The Root:  http://www.theroot.com )

OBAMA PLANS SPEECH ON RACE TODAY

ASSOCIATED PRESS

March 18, 2008 — He is expected to address concerns raised by controversial video of his former pastor.

By TOM RAUMMarch 18, 2008 — Democrat Barack Obama is seeking to distance himself from statements by his longtime pastor that have aggravated racial divisions in the contentious Democratic primary battle. He is calling for both sides to tone down their rhetoric.

The Illinois senator is using a speech at a site near the nation’s birthplace to present what his campaign said would be a comprehensive take on “race, politics, and unifying our country.”

Among other things, the Illinois Democrat was seeking to calm the uproar over racially tinged sermons by his former pastor at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, remarks that have threatened to undercut Obama’s campaign theme of easing the racial divide.

Wright had been Obama’s pastor for nearly 20 years until retiring recently, and officiated at Obama’s wedding and baptized his two daughters. His inflammatory statements have been cited by Obama detractors, including comments that blacks continue to be mistreated by whites and a suggestion that U.S. “terrorism” helped bring on the Sept. 11 attacks.

Obama was addressing supporters at the National Constitution Center, a museum dedicated to the U.S. Constitution.

Jen Psaki, an Obama spokeswoman, said that Obama wanted to deliver the speech because “the issue of race has received an enormous amount of attention” over the past few weeks and “he thought it was an appropriate moment to discuss his thoughts on the issue.”

Obama, seeking to be the first black U.S. president, has been calling on Democrats to look past racial divisions and to guard against intemperate rhetoric that he says has been sprouting on both sides.

These include Wright’s fiery comments and a recent statement by former Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton supporter and fundraiser, suggesting he had gotten so far mainly because he was black. “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” Ferraro said in an interview with a California newspaper.

Obama last week called on the Clinton campaign to repudiate the remarks as “a perpetration of the same divisive politics that has done us so much damage.” Ferraro later stepped down as a member of an advisory panel to Clinton after Clinton said she did not agree with her remarks.

Earlier, a top Obama foreign-policy adviser, Samantha Power, was forced to step down after calling Clinton a “monster” in an interview with a Scottish newspaper.

Obama, in a speech in Indiana on Saturday, decried “the forces of division” over race and gender that he said were intruding into the Democratic nomination contest.

“We’ve got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. We’ve got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding. … This country wants to move beyond these kinds of things,” Obama said.

CIVIL RIGHTS EXHIBIT HONORS 20 BLACK WOMEN

ASSOCIATED PRESS

March 17, 2008 — Exhibit looks at the role of black women in the 20th Century.

An exhibition of African-american women who shaped the 20th Century has opened in Cincinnati.

By LISA CORNWELLMarch 17, 2008 — A veteran civil rights leader says the Democratic presidential field this year represents what she and others who have worked for equal rights have long anticipated.Myrlie Evers-Williams was in Cincinnati on Friday to preview a new Smithsonian traveling exhibit called “Freedom’s Sisters” that showcases the pivotal roles she and 19 other black women played in the struggle for civil rights.Referring to the strong candidacies of a woman and a black man, Evers-Williams said, “I knew this day would come; it was a matter of when.”She urged people to look at the campaigns of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton as the result of years of work by many people — including those represented in the exhibit — who have struggled for equal rights, regardless of race or gender.”It’s more than time for this to happen,” Evers-Williams said.

placeAd2(commercialNode,’bigbox’,false,”)Fellow civil rights activists and honorees Dorothy Height, Sonia Sanchez and Charlayne Hunter-Gault also attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Cincinnati Museum Center, where the exhibit opens to the public Saturday. The four, along with activist and professor Kathleen Cleaver, are the only living women among the 20 whose lives are chronicled in the exhibit.

Evers-Williams’ husband, NAACP leader Medgar Evers, was assassinated in their driveway in Mississippi in 1963, and she continued her activism after his death. She served as chairwoman of the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and became the first black female commissioner of public works in Los Angeles.

Height, who was elected president of the National Council of Negro Women in 1957, was often the only woman in attendance at top civil rights meetings in the 1950s and 1960s. Poet and playwright Sanchez was a leading voice in the Black Power movement of the 1960s, while journalist Hunter-Gault and another student won a court case enabling them in 1961 to become the first black students at the University of Georgia.

Height, 95, said she also was thrilled to live to see the strong candidacies of a black man and a woman, as well as an exhibit honoring some of the many black women who contributed to the growth of civil rights — women she said have not always received enough recognition for their efforts.

“When I look back and see all these women who always had a positive outlook and knew what could happen, it makes me so grateful to be part of this,” Height said. “I hope the young people seeing these stories will realize that we have come a long way, but we also have a long way to go.”

The exhibit was created by the Cincinnati Museum Center in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and funded by a grant from Ford Motor Co. It includes large-scale photos of the women, accompanied by information about their contributions and several interactive displays.

Among the honorees is Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 led to the end of segregation in public transportation and helped spark the civil rights movement. But also honored are lesser-known women such as Septima Poinsette Clark.

Clark, fired in 1956 after 40 years as a South Carolina teacher because of her NAACP membership, later started the Citizenship Schools that taught adults reading and writing skills required to pass voter literacy tests.

Clark’s granddaughter traveled from her home in Atlanta to see the exhibit. She said it would have made her grandmother proud, but humble.

“She didn’t think anyone should think big things of her,” said Yvonne Clark, who cried when she saw the exhibit. “She just did what she felt was the right thing to do.”

RELATED REFERENCES:

1.	Black Women in America (3 Vol. Set) by Darlene Clark Hine (Hardcover – May 19, 2005)  (2)

2.  Notable Black American Women: Book II (Notable Black American Women) by Jessie Carney Smith (Hardcover – Nov 1995)  (2)

3.  Notable Black American Women: Book III : Cumulative Indexes (Notable Black American Women) by Jessie Carney Smith and Shirelle Phelps (Hardcover – Dec 2002)

4.  In Praise of Black Women, Volume 1: Ancient African Queens by Simone Schwarz-Bart, Andre Schwarz-Bart, Rose-Myriam Rejouis, and Val Vinokurov (Hardcover – Oct 1, 2001)  (5)

5.  In Praise of Black Women, Volume 2: Heroines of the Slavery Era by Simone Schwarz-Bart, Andrem Schwarz-Bart, Rose-Myriam Rejouis, and Val Vinokurov (Hardcover – Dec 2002)  (1)

6.	In Praise of Black Women, Volume 3: Modern African Women by Simone Schwarz-Bart, Andre Schwarz-Bart, Rose-Myriam Rejouis, and Val Vinokurov (Hardcover – May 2003)

7.  Black Women Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement (African-American Experience) by Zita Allen (Library Binding – Oct 1996)  (1)

8.  Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965 (Blacks in the Diaspora) by Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods (Paperback – Oct 1993) 9.  Sisters in the Struggle : African-American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement by Bettye Collier-Thomas and V.P. Franklin (Paperback – Aug 1, 2001)  (2) 10.  Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby (Hardcover – Dec 4, 2002)  (3)

RELATED REFERENCES:

“Queens of Africa and Heroines of the Diaspora”, by Sylvia Serbin – Publishers: Editions Sépia, Paris,
2005

OUR JEREMIAH: WHY WE STILL NEED PROPHETS LIKE OBAMA’S PASTOR

By Melissa Harris-Lacewell | TheRoot.com

March 17, 2008

Why we still need prophets like Obama’s pastor.

March 17, 2008–A black orator stood before a rapt audience, his voice rising to a crescendo as he made this fiery statement: “Statesmen of America beware what you do!  The soil is in readiness, and the seed-time has come. Nations, not less than individuals, reap as they sow. The dreadful calamities of the past few years came not by accident, nor unbidden, from the ground. You shudder today at the harvest of blood sown in the springtime of the Republic by your patriot fathers.”  Sound familiar?These are not the words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the embattled minister of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. These words were uttered by Frederick Douglass in his appeal to the U.S. Congress for African-American voting rights. Douglass, like Wright, was speaking as a patriot and as a Christian. Douglass, like Wright, was speaking out of an honored tradition in black church life.  Douglass, like Wright, was speaking in the tradition of biblical prophets. In his 1993 text, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth, historian Wilson Moses labeled this tradition the black jeremiad.  Like Rev. Wright himself, it is named for the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was among the biblical truth tellers who regularly warned the government that divine destruction was imminent if the nation continued to oppress the powerless. Frederick Douglass was a master of the jeremiad.  He called slavery a curse to the nation and argued that, “we shall not go unpunished.” He said it was the patriotic duty of blacks “to warn our fellow countrymen” of the impending doom they courted and to dissuade America from “rushing on in her wicked career” along a path “ditched with human blood, and paved with human skulls.”

Jeremiah Wright is a modern Douglass.  Both men are like the Old Testament prophets who condemn the injustice and corruption of the rulers of their government.  

Let’s be clear. American democracy has always coexisted with vicious, state-sponsored racism. The nation’s first presidents worked to establish an innovative, flexible, radical democratic republic while simultaneously codifying enslaved blacks as a fraction human and relegating them to intergenerational chattel bondage. After emancipation, as blacks helped make America the greatest industrial and military power on earth, the country stripped blacks of the right to vote, segregated public accommodations, provided inferior education to black children, and allowed and promoted the terrorist rule of lynch-mob violence.   placeAd2(commercialNode,’bigbox’,false,”)

This week Barack Obama was pressured to denounce Jeremiah Wright.  But in the hundred years following the end of the Civil War more than five thousand African Americans were lynched and not a single president denounced the atrocities. Because of this history, black patriotism is complicated. Black patriots love our country, even though it has often hated us. We love our country, even while we hold it accountable for its faults. 

I understand why the Obama campaign felt they had to distance themselves from Wright’s post 9-11 comments. But I am worried that Obama has missed a chance to talk about the rich and complex tapestry of black religious life. Not all black people are Christian. Not all belong to large, urban churches. Even fewer worship with such an outspoken, unapologetically political minister.  But Trinity UCC does represent an important segment of black religious tradition. It is not scary, racist or un-American. Quite the opposite, Rev. Wright is integral to the broad prophetic tradition that informs many black churches.

Prophetic Christianity allowed African Americans to retain a sense of humanity in the face of our country’s racism. Like many people of faith, black Americans have to grapple with how an all-loving and all-powerful God can coexist with evil. For African Americans, evil takes the very specific and identifiable form of white supremacy, first through enslavement, then through Jim Crow and lynch mob rule, and into what many today experience as seemingly intractable racial inequality.  Black Americans struggle to reconcile the sin of racism with the idea of a loving and powerful God. Different churches resolve this issue in various ways.   

In churches like Trinity UCC, black folks read the Bible with an eye on what it has to say about experiences of bondage and oppression.  In this way the Bible is both a moral guide and a political text. Even though slaveholders declared that God wanted slaves to obey their masters, black people believed that God wanted them to be free. They believed this because they read the story of Moses. Though the confederate states claimed that God instituted segregation; black Americans believed differently because they read Amos. Today many black Americans worry when our country engages in self-righteous foreign policy because we have read Isaiah.    

African American religious traditions are rich and complex.  The hope-filled candidacy of Barack Obama is also part of our tradition.  Obama’s broad multi-racial coalition makes many African Americans feel like part of the Joshua generation finally laying claim to the American promised land.  But we cannot enter that promised land together if white America refuses to acknowledge the prophetic truths of black religiosity. We cannot learn from our prophets if we denounce them. Silencing Jeremiah Wright will not makes us forget hundreds of years of racial inequality.  Now is the time to listen to each other carefully.   

I attended Trinity United Church of Christ during the seven years I lived in Chicago.  Although I do not know him personally, I heard Rev. Wright preach on dozens of Sundays.  His sermons soothed my broken heart while I divorced, they eased my mental anguish when my sister was ill, and they helped give me strength as I watched the destructive power of racism, sexism and homophobia within my Chicago community. In short, his words did what a pastor’s words are supposed to do.  I am grateful for Jeremiah Wright and for his prophetic witness. 

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University. She is also a seminarian at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

(Article courtesy of The Root:  http://www.theroot.com )

Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s 2003 sermon: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4443230

Hasselback of “The View”, attacks Obama and Rev. Wright at the above link.

RICE PLAYS TOURIST ON TRIP TO TOWN WITH SLAVE PAST IN BRAZIL

By ANNE FLAHERTY Associated Press Writer

March 14, 2008

SALVADOR, Brazil—Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stopped her typically fast-moving motorcade on Friday to stroll the streets of Salvador, a Brazilian town known historically for its slave trade.It was a rare move for Rice, who is busy trying to re-ignite Middle East peace talks and disarm the North Koreans. On Sunday, one day after she was to return from Latin America, Rice planned to travel to Moscow to persuade the Russians to back U.S. missile radars in Europe.

Instead of blowing through Brazil after meeting with political officials, as would normally be the case, Rice insisted on taking a side trip to the country’s Bahia region, where slaves were once brought from West Africa.

During her visit, Rice signed an agreement with Brazil to promote education on racial equality.

In Salvador’s historic Pelourinho town square, she visited a church built by slaves in the 18th century. She clapped along to a song by church members that told of a day when blacks have “no opponents” and women have equal rights.

Later, after touring a museum of Afro-Brazilian culture, Rice told reporters that she had been struck by the parallels with the slave struggle in the United States. Like in America, slaves relied on their church for hope, she said.

“It reminds me how faith can help people overcome anything,” she said.

Rice’s visit to South America was not entirely free of controversy. In both Brazil and Chile, small groups convened to protest U.S. policies, particularly against the war in Iraq.

In Brasilia, one Rice protester held up a sign outside the presidential palace that said in Portuguese: “A trillion dollars for war. Not one cent for peace. Get out of Brazil Condoleezza Rice.”

In Santiago, some 90 people gathered at a plaza in front of the presidential palace and set a hat painted with the U.S. flag colors on fire. A sign by the protesters read, “Condoleezza, persona non-grata in our country.”

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Associated Press writer Eduardo Gallardo contributed to this report.

STORMS RISING OVER OBAMA’S PASTOR

OBAMA DENOUNCES PASTOR’S 9/11COMMENTS

By NEDRA PICKLER
March 14, 2008 — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday denounced inflammatory remarks from his pastor, who has railed against the United States and accused its leaders of bringing on the Sept. 11 attacks by spreading terrorism.

As video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has widely aired on television and the Internet, Obama responded by posting a blog about his relationship with Wright and his church, Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, on the Huffington Post.

Obama wrote that he’s looked to Wright for spiritual advice, not political guidance, and he’s been pained and angered to learn of some of his pastor’s comments for which he had not been present. A campaign spokesman said later that Wright was no longer on Obama’s African American Religious Leadership Committee, without elaborating.

“I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies,” Obama said. “I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Reverend Wright that are at issue.”

In a sermon on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Wright suggested the United States brought on the attacks.

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Wright said. “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” placeAd2(commercialNode,’bigbox’,false,”)

In a 2003 sermon, he said blacks should condemn the United States.

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

He also gave a sermon in December comparing Obama to Jesus, promoting his candidacy and playing down Clinton.

Questions about Obama’s religious beliefs have dogged him throughout his candidacy. He’s had to fight against false Internet rumors suggesting he’s really a Muslim intent on destroying the United States, and now his pastor’s words uttered nearly seven years ago have become an issue.

Obama wrote on the Huffington Post that he never heard Wright say any of the statements that are “so contrary to my own life and beliefs,” but they have raised legitimate questions about the nature of his relationship with the pastor and the church.

He explained that he joined Wright’s church nearly 20 years ago. He said he knew Wright as a former Marine and respected biblical scholar who lectured at seminaries across the country.

“Reverend Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life,” he wrote. “… And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.”

He said Wright’s controversial statements first came to his attention at the beginning of his presidential campaign last year, and he condemned them. Because of his ties to the 6,000-member congregation church — he and his wife were married there and their daughters baptized — Obama decided not to leave the church.

Obama also has credited Wright with delivering a sermon that he adopted as the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope.”

“With Reverend Wright’s retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good,” he wrote.

Also Friday, the United Church of Christ issued a 1,400-word statement defending Wright and his “flagship” congregation. John H. Thomas, United Church of Christ’s president, lauded Wright’s church for its community service and work to nurture youth. Other church leaders praised Wright for speaking out against homophobia and sexism in the black community.

“It’s time for all of us to say no to these attacks and to declare that we will not allow anyone to undermine or destroy the ministries of any of our congregations in order to serve their own narrow political or ideological ends,” Thomas said in the statement.

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AP Religion Writer Eric Gorski in Denver contributed to this report.

(Article courtesy of The Root:  http://www.theroot.com )