The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Black History Month, February 1 to March 1

    By rmrd0000 on Mon, 02/01/2021 - 9:10am |

    Let's have a Good Month . . .

    usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2021/02/01

    Black History Month 2021: The only way forward is through, together

     

    President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month in 1976, calling upon the public to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”

     

    Link to the Staff Video

    Then 2021 arrived with an attack on the U.S. Capitol six days in by “patriots” bent on murder and destruction largely because the November election – of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black person and first woman to hold that office – didn’t go their way.

    But as House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn notes in an exclusive essay for USA TODAY, this historical moment of chaos and confusion is not unfamiliar terrain. Last year was not without some victories, and 2021 is not without hope.

    In 1967, the beloved community Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sought to build, seemingly buoyed by civil rights legislation, seemed further away than ever. Police brutality in Watts in Los Angeles exploded into rebellion just after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and white backlash to integration seemed to threaten democracy itself. Young Black activists were at odds with their elders over who should lead the movement. 

    So King put the question to the people in the title of his last book, "Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community?" This is the same question before us more than 50 years later.

    There is the promise of vaccines for COVID-19. There is excitement in the election of Biden and Harris. Presidents of historically Black colleges and universities are hoping for Biden’s support. Black women like Donna Brazile, political strategist for several Democratic presidents, and Black girls like Rep. Ilhan Omar’s daughter can’t wait for the inspiration Harris will bring.

    As King said in 1967 and Clyburn says today, we are at a crossroads. But as much as we want things to right themselves, we can’t rush the process. We can’t heal as a people, as a country, until we’ve taken time to examine everything that has so clearly gone wrong and allowed all voices to be heard.  

    Where do we go from here? The short answer: Forward. Through still-difficult times to the other, better side. There’s no going back to a “normal” that never worked that well for Black people anyway.  

    The only way forward is through.

    ---------------------------

    Nichelle Smith, USA TODAY
    -4:00 AM PST Feb. 1, 2021-

     

     

    ~~~OGD~~~

    Comments

    No, i did not post it in the manner of the cartoon - that was a mocking "Pinky and the Brain" comparison. This one's noting a well-known black dissenter on this topic left out while one goes for the white dissenter instead. How do Freeman and Williams differ? How are they the same? That's a unique discussion to have that might bring something new.

    You know, i have a number of degrees - i didn't get them by just memorizing a bunch of factoids - back in the day we evaluated information and discussed where it was appropriate and where not. You know Euclid had a 5th postulate, that parallel lines never intersect, which seems obvious. Except some smartass decided to assume it's *not* true and invented spherical geometry and topography, enabling for example planes to not crash in the North Atlantic ((where longitude "lines" get tight). Obviously you don't apply this everywhere, but still, if youre building a transcontinental railroad, you might want to pay attention to detail before you end up with 2 golden spikes miles apart.

    I was pretty amazed that I had to post the actually interesting on DC Mayor's sister. Your initial item was "the sister of a known black person died", which isn't news. But her life story and efforts was at least of some general interest, especially under the Black History umbrella (but notably even without). You're in such a hurry to post stuff here - you'd be better off with half the postings and twice the personal work in developing for whatever invisible/assumed audience the significance of these things - especially any new lenses. Putting up a link to Shirley Chisholm's Wikipedia page doesn't buy us much. Though occasionally I look at someone's page and discover a very interesting fact about them I would have never guessed - something that could be noted in the description to make us want to click. However Williams vs the Wokeng Dead or whatever is just rehash of a rehash.

    PS - God forbid i suggest taking on some complex topics like continuing extreme black murder rate in cities rather than just a celebration of anything black - especially as some suggest Black History Month should never end.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 02/27/2021 - 2:21am

    I have posted about those who work towards solving the homicide rate in the Black community 

    Others focus on repetitive posts about individual crimes 

    You yammer on about what BLM should be doing without recognizing serious work be done by others

    You are an arrogant, thin-skinned white make who is so insecure that he has to boast about his degrees

    The Black History Month blog is a celebratory post

    That hurt you to your core

    BTW, I post items about police department fuck ups all the time

    Most experts agree that lack of trust between the Black community and the police hinders solving crime

    It is good that you have such a high opinion of yourself

    I think you are a hack who cannot handle people who disagree with you

    You can't handle OGD,but you are going to give advice on matters of global import?

    You put up the cartoon because the post upset you

    With all your degrees, you could have simply told us how the counters work

    Regarding my comments about Thomas Chatterton Williams

    Dagblog is not going to solve the homicide problem

    I am free to comment about Williams whenever I want.

     


    by rmrd0000 on Sat, 02/27/2021 - 8:37am

    You are predictable 

    Your response to the history blog is not surprising 

    You were largely ignored

    So you respond with "I have degrees, I would have done it better.

    With pictures 

    (I post from an iPad, picture formatting ends up with blank spaces.)

    When Jeff posts one of his lies, we can literally see you getting angry in a Pavlovian response.

    Somehow OGD touched a nerve, so you banned him

    The liar stays

    Predictable

     


    by rmrd0000 on Sat, 02/27/2021 - 9:18am

    Evanston, Illinois, finds innovative solution to funding reparations: Marijuana sales taxes

    Last November, Evanston, Illinois, not only adopted a resolution for reparations as part of the city budget, it found an inventive source of funds: tax revenue from newly legalized marijuana sales.

    "Evanston absolutely is the pioneer," said Nkechi Taifa, an attorney and member of the National African American Reparations Commission. "It basically is the first municipality to commit public dollars to reparations."

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/evanston-illinois-finds-innovative-solution-funding-reparations-marijuana/story?id=71826707


    by rmrd0000 on Fri, 02/26/2021 - 6:40pm

    ‘Not All Pastors Do That’: How Rev. Raphael Warnock Used His Pulpit to Fight AIDS

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/not-all-pastors-do-that-how-rev-raphael-warnocks-used-his-pulpit-to-fight-aids?ref=home


    by rmrd0000 on Fri, 02/26/2021 - 8:04pm

    ‘Not All Pastors Do That’: How Rev. Raphael Warnock Used His Pulpit to Fight AIDS

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/not-all-pastors-do-that-how-rev-raphael-warnocks-used-his-pulpit-to-fight-aids?ref=home


    by rmrd0000 on Fri, 02/26/2021 - 8:04pm

    A Commerce nominee’s formerly enslaved ancestors ran a taxi service where the department is now headquartered

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/commerce-don-graves-family-history/2021/02/23/c4c47218-75e8-11eb-8115-9ad5e9c02117_story.html


    by rmrd0000 on Fri, 02/26/2021 - 9:09pm

    Still seeking relevance

    Using your rules, you should put it in RMRD OPINIONS


    by rmrd0000 on Sat, 02/27/2021 - 2:59pm

    Shelia Washington Dies at 61; Helped Exonerate Scottsboro Boys

    She fought for decades to get their names cleared from an egregious injustice in the Jim Crow South, and created a museum in their honor.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/us/sheila-washington-dead.html


    by rmrd0000 on Sat, 02/27/2021 - 3:04pm

    This is a shock

    Lawrence Otis Graham, 59, Dies; Explored Race and Class in Black America

     

    Lawrence Otis Graham, an Ivy League-trained lawyer whose incisive, often searingly self-aware explorations of class identity and divisions among African-Americans made him one of the most widely read, and widely debated, Black writers of the 1990s, died on Feb. 19 at his home in Chappaqua, N.Y. He was 59.

    His death was confirmed by his wife, Pamela Thomas-Graham, who said the cause had not been determined.

    Mr. Graham had already made partner at a Manhattan law firm and written 11 books when, in 1992, he deleted his Princeton and Harvard degrees from his résumé and took a job in the restaurant at the Greenwich Country Club in Connecticut, an experience he then recounted in a cover article for New York magazine.

    “Quite frankly, I got into this country club the only way that a Black man like me could,” he wrote. “As a $7-an-hour busboy.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/us/lawrence-otis-graham-dead.html

    His book "Member Of The Club" is a classic. Quarters for Black workers were called "the Monkey House".


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 02/28/2021 - 10:26am

    Another sad loss to COVID

    Antoine Hodge, Opera Singer With a Powerful Work Ethic, Dies at 38

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/obituaries/antoine-hodge-dead-coronavirus.html


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 02/28/2021 - 10:29am

    African-American Sacrifice in the Killing Fields of France

    SÉCHAULT, France — The modest granite monument at the entrance to Séchault, a village in eastern France, commemorates the sacrifice of the United States 369th Infantry Regiment, African-Americans who came from Harlem to fight in the last months of World War I. A single word in brackets, “Colored,” alludes to the official name of the New York National Guard unit from which the soldiers were drawn.

    They were the Black warriors of the segregated American armed forces. Denied a send-off parade in New York before shipping out in 1917, assigned to the French Army because their own countrymen refused to fight alongside them, they gave their lives in such numbers during 191 days of continuous combat that they earned for their bravery the moniker “Harlem Hellfighters.”

    It appears that this nickname was given the unit by their German enemy, who called them “Höllenkämpfer.” But it took the U.S. Army more than a century to adopt it as the official special designation for the 369th Infantry Regiment, a distinction approved by the Army only last September and announced this year by the New York National Guard on the eve of Black History Month.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/28/world/europe/france-world-war-1.html


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 02/28/2021 - 6:53pm

    The Extraordinary Life of Pioneering Bartender Prince Martin

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-extraordinary-life-of-pioneering-bartender-prince-martin?ref=home


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 02/28/2021 - 7:10pm

    Still active to this day . . .

    Elaine Brown is an American prison activist, writer, singer, and former Black Panther Party chairwoman who is based in Oakland, California. Brown briefly ran for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2008. She withdrew from the party, however, because she did not believe it represented acceptable change for the future.

     

     

     

    Brown was born (March 2, 1943) in North Philadelphia and raised by her mother. Although she grew up in a single-parent home and experienced economic hardship, Elaine had the opportunity to attend a private school where she participated in extracurricular activities such as classical piano and ballet. She was noted to have had many white friends because of this. After high school, Brown briefly attended Temple University before withdrawing to pursue a music career in Los Angeles. While there, she enrolled in University of California, Los Angeles.

    In Los Angeles, Brown became involved with Jay Richard Kennedy, a music executive who educated her on capitalism, communism, and social justice movements. Eventually Brown became active in the Black Liberation Movement. After their breakup, Brown began working for the African American newspaper Harambee. She attended her first Black Panther meeting after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in 1968.

    As a member of the Black Panther Party, Brown helped set up the first Free Breakfast for Children program in Los Angeles as well as its first Free Busing to Prisons Program and Free Legal Aid Program. Soon after, she became the editor of the publication The Black Panther for the South California Branch. In 1971, Brown became a member of the Party’s Central Committee as Minister of Information, replacing Eldridge Cleaver, who had been expelled. In 1973, Brown was commissioned to record some songs by Founder and Minister of Defense, Huey P. Newton that resulted in the album Until We’re Free.

    Brown was chosen by Newton to lead the BPP in 1974 when he moved to Cuba to avoid criminal charges. She led the Party from 1974 until 1977. During her leadership, Brown chaired the successful political campaign of Lionel Wilson, Oakland’s first African American mayor, and she founded the Panther Liberation School. She left her leadership position in the BPP in 1978 after Huey Newton’s return and after he ordered the beating of a female Panther. Her decision was driven by her rejection of the negative attitudes toward women in the party. Brown moved to Los Angeles to raise her daughter.

    Brown's later activism included radical prison reform and providing educational resources for African American children living in poverty. In 2007, she declared herself a candidate for the Green party in the 2008 presidential election. She left the party later that year because it was dominated by white people who, in her opinion, were not really trying to effect change or help her do so. Presently, Brown lectures frequently on prison reform at conferences, colleges, and universities.

    Complete info found at Elaine Brown - Wikipedia

    ~TOD~

    ...............


    by The_Old_Duck (not verified) on Sun, 02/28/2021 - 11:43pm

    This was a fun month.

    I have heard Elaine Brown lecture

    An interesting life.

     


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 8:19am

    Finishing up . . .

    There can be no history in the future without
    reoccuring-evolution in the present.

    LA City Council allocates funds cut from LAPD to
    policing alternatives, homelessness prevention.

    LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Almost a year ago, massive protests against police brutality and racism forced legislators across the country to respond to a demand for justice in Black communities.

    The Los Angeles City Council already voted to cut LAPD's budget by $150 million and direct those funds toward alternative resources. Tuesday, the city council voted on the allocation of $32 million among six of the 15 council districts; directing that money toward policing alternatives, homelessness prevention and aid, and other resources.

    Council District 9 - which includes much of South L.A. - is expected to receive the largest allocation.

    "These families are struggling financially, emotionally. Our communities are clamoring for alternative policing strategies," said Council District 9 councilmember Curren Price.

    "We know that this money, this allocation is based on the spilled blood of people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, but also in Los Angeles, people like Wakiesha Wilson and Kenney Watkins, and so many others," said Black Lives Matter co-founder Melina Abdullah. "We need to make sure that those dollars go directly to Black communities that are most impacted through police abuse, through neglect, through lack of investment," she added.

     

    ~OGD~

     


    by The_Old_Duck (not verified) on Thu, 03/04/2021 - 5:14am

    Chadwick Boseman Wins Best Actor Golden Globe; His Widow Accepts in Emotional Speech

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/28/movies/live-golden-globes


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 02/28/2021 - 11:10pm


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 03/04/2021 - 6:02am

    Funny, but not surprising 

    Facebook’s Moderators Took Down the Tech Giant’s Own Pro-Equality Ads

    Just weeks after Facebook purged its own Black History Month ads by mistake, Women’s History Month ads are also being flagged and deleted. 

    Though the tech giant received media praise for its “refreshing” Black History Month content, it was one of dozens of advertisers that saw its ad campaigns about Black history removed from the social network in February. Among the others were a Fortune 500 energy company, the Chicago Bulls, the city government of Denver, a church, a grade school, health-care providers, a book store, universities, and history museums.

    The cycle appears primed to start again, this time targeting Women’s History Month ads. Facebook eliminated a Feb. 26-Mar. 1 campaign on the women’s suffrage movement created by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. Promotions focusing on women from AmeriCorps, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Connecticut Office of Tourism, a New Zealand salmon brand, a tutoring company, and a historical museum have also been erased since the start of March. 

    Facebook’s moderation system flagged and removed 14 “Facebook celebrates Black History Month” promotions run via the company’s main page, according to the Facebook Ad Library. The ads were axed for appearing without disclaimers noting they concerned “social issues, elections or politics.” All featured photos and videos of Black women speaking about their work and their lives—one as a therapist, others as skaters, another as a doula.

    One of the deleted ads began, “Ashley M. is writing Black History by progressing free mental health for the Black community. Ashley started the Washington Therapy Fund Foundation to help clients and therapists eliminate barriers to Black healing.”

    When contacted by The Daily Beast, Ashley McGirt, the analyst in the advertisement, did not know that some versions of the ads she appeared in had been flagged and pulled from the platform.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebooks-moderation-system-took-down-the-tech-giants-own-black-history-month-ads?ref=home


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 03/11/2021 - 10:31am

    Another tidbit

    Preserving history of "The Great Migration"

    Projects underway across the Midwest are aimed at saving these structures and sharing the Great Migration’s complex story with a country again confronting the deep roots of systemic racism. Amanda Lewis, director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, believes they are “gestures in the right direction” and critical for connecting the present with the past

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-push-to-save-landmarks-of-the-great-migration--and-better-understand-todays-racial-inequities/2021/03/12/c510ceb0-7b88-11eb-85cd-9b7fa90c8873_story.html

     


    by rmrd0000 on Sat, 03/13/2021 - 12:14pm

    Dark History Month was made to zero in consideration of the contributions of African Americans to the United States. It honors all Black individuals from all times of U.S. history, from the enslaved individuals originally brought over from Africa. The foremost reason for Black History Month is to make all Americans mindful of this struggle for opportunity and equivalent freedom.


    by Thompson Andrew (not verified) on Tue, 06/29/2021 - 6:21am

    *My* foremost reasons are a) there's black history that *didn't* just involve slavery, that b) there are figures like Obama, Thurgood Marshall, Miles Davis, Jackie Robinson, Barbara Jordan, the black lady "NASA calculators" honored in film, Malcolm Gladwell, and others with humanity-affirming stories and achievements.

    Thomas Edison is famous for inventing the lightbulb, Tesla for making practical alternating current, Lindbergh for flying across the Atlantic, Shockley the transistor. We can dig into Edison being a jerk towards Tesla, or Tesla having some weird pigeon perversion, or Lindbergh giving comfort to Nazis or Shockley thinking blacks were inferior. But we celebrate achievements more than human flaws - Michael Jackson was a genius, even tho Stevie Wonder's more admirable as a person. But to look at every black person as 1st thing "descended from slaves" is just wrong, it's discrediting. Coal Miner's Daughter has a nice story, but she's not loved for being from a Coal Mine - if you see her on the street it's not "oh, there's that coalmine girl" - it's that she sings a beautiful song. 

    Yes, it's good to know about Tulsa and other horrific events in many blacks' journeys - but it's also important to know their achievements, their potential. One black candidate shows himself dreaming as a boy to be an engineer, to go to space, and he became a NASA astronaut. How irrelevant would be for a guy from the 60s-70s to then start bringing in slavery instead of say Star Wars (though the civil rights era may or may not have had a big effect or been a hurdle - for Obama it wasn't the same as Jesse Jackson). And that astronaut is running for political office, so while NASA is nice for character and achievement, his next grading comes as Senator - little else.

    (to make clearer - Black History is not just about black contributions to America or black struggles for freedom. While i appreciate a James Baldwin, Forrest Whitaker just being a good actor is notable enough, Sugar Ray's boxing doesn't need political or exaggerated racial overtones, Simone Biles and the Williams Sisters being breakthrough athletes is sufficient. 


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 06/29/2021 - 6:47am

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