Medal of Freedom Honoree: Blacks that Elected Obama Must Remain Unified by Hazel Trice Edney

Nov. 25, 2013

Medal of Freedom Honoree: Blacks that Elected Obama Must Remain Unified
By Hazel Trice Edney

medaloffreedom-2013

President Barack Obama prepares to bestow the Presidential Medals of Freedom upon 16 American leaders. PHOTO: The White House

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Civil rights leader Rev. C. T. Vivian receives Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. PHOTO: White House

mof-oprah

Media mogul Oprah Winfrey receives Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. PHOTO: White House

(TriceEdneyWire.com)–Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Rev. Cordy Tindell “C. T.” Vivian, a foot soldier for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., says the greatest mistake that Black leaders and organizations can now make is to stray away from the unified strategy that elected President Barack Obama.

“The best strategy for today is the one that’s been already working,” Vivian said in an exclusive interview with the Trice Edney News Wire. “Not demanding unity from their followers” is the greatest mistake Black leaders and organizations can now make.

The stately 89-year-old, who now serves as interim president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, says the consistency, passion and strategic political vote demonstrated by Dr. King is the strategy that has served as a blueprint for the modern day civil rights movement; including the election and re-election of the first Black president with a more than 90 percent Black vote in 2008 and 2012.

“What we had in Martin King was a method, a means and a strategy. And that’s what kept us together. We all knew what we were fighting for,” Vivian said in the telephone interview the day after the White House Ceremony.

He says leaders must now focus on the 2014 mid-term elections in which the entire U. S. House and part of the Senate (33 seats) will be up for re-election. With an acrimonious partisanship now ruling Congress, the Nov. 4 election will be a battle for a political majority.

“People must get the word out on the telephone, sororities, etcetera and to be active…Not only for them to go to the polls, but to make certain that every Black person they know shows you their voter registration card and have us get in a habit of challenging every friend we got by themselves or in a group and show the card…And make certain they go to the polls,” Vivian said.

Vivian was among 16 recipients of the Medal of Freedom, first bestowed by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The revered Bayard Rustin, also a foot soldier for King, credited for having organized the March on Washington, was also honored posthumously. Baseball great Ernie “Mr. Cub” Banks and media mogul Oprah Winfrey were two other African-Americans honored.

Other honorees were nationally renowned newsman Ben Bradlee; Clinton Foundation founder former President Bill Clinton; World War II veteran the late U. S. Sen. Daniel Inouye; pioneering psychologist Daniel Kahneman; statesman and Rhodes scholar Sen. Richard Lugar; country music legend Loretta Lynn; visionary chemist and environmental scientist Mario Molina; first female astronaut the late Sally Ride; celebrated jazz trumpeter and composer Arturo Sandoval; champion basketball coach Dean Smith; renowned writer and women’s activist Gloria Steinem and highly respected appellate Judge Patricia Wald.

“These are the men and women who in their extraordinary lives remind us all of the beauty of the human spirit, the values that define us as Americans, the potential that lives inside of all of us,” said President Obama to the standing-room-only crowd in the East Room.

The guest list read like a who’s who in Black America. It included baseball legend Hank Aaron; children’s advocate Marian Wright Edelman; legendary vocalist Aretha Franklin; the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.; U. S. Rep. John Lewis; and civil rights icon Rev. Joseph Lowery.

“Time and again, Reverend Vivian was among the first to be in the action,” President Obama said. “In 1947, joining a sit-in to integrate an Illinois restaurant; one of the first Freedom Riders; in Selma, on the courthouse steps to register Blacks to vote, for which he was beaten, bloodied and jailed. Rosa Parks said of him, ‘Even after things had supposedly been taken care of and we had our rights, he was still out there, inspiring the next generation, including me,’ helping kids go to college with a program that would become Upward Bound. And at 89 years old, Reverend Vivian is still out there, still in the action, pushing us closer to our founding ideals.”

Among the greatest ideals of all, Rev. Vivian says, is the willingness to give all for the cause of freedom, justice and equality – another principle illustrated by Dr. King.

“When we’re willing to die for something, when we’re willing to take it seriously and when we’re united and when we’re not trying to defeat each other, and when we really are committed to all of us instead of just a few of us we will do it we can do it. We’ve proven that,” he said. “And then we go from there to what is possible in the coming period.”

Blacks Comprised Nearly Half of Death Row Inmates This Year by Frederick H. Lowe

Nov. 25, 2013

Blacks Comprised Nearly Half of Death Row Inmates This Year
By Frederick H. Lowe

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from TheNorthStarNews.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - As of April 1 of this year, there were 3,108 men and women living on Death Row, including 1,300 African-Americans, who comprised 41.83 percent of the condemned population, according to the 64 page-report, "Death Row U.S.A." by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc.

The number of Caucasians confined to Death Row was 1,341, or 43.15 percent, and the number of Hispanics incarcerated on Death Row was 389, or 12.52 percent.

There were 33 Native Americans who comprised 1.07 percent of the Death Row population and 44 Asians who comprised 1.42 percent of the Death Row population. There was one person whose race was not known. He or she comprised 0.03 percent of the Death Row population.

In total, there were 3,045 men or 97.97 percent of the Death Row population compared to 63 women who were 2.03 percent of the Death Row population.

Thirty-five states have death penalty statutes, compared to 18 states that do not.

Since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976, 1,325 individuals have been executed. This includes 745 Caucasians, 455 African Americans, 102 Hispanics, 16 Native Americans and 7 Asians. States have executed 12 women and 1,313 men.

Social Security Denied to Many Ethnic Elders by Paul Kleyman

Social Security Denied to Many Ethnic Elders
By Paul Kleyman

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from New America Media

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Even in this period of intense national debate over the National Debt, Americans fiercely want to protect Social Security from benefit cuts. But while 40 million seniors received retirement support from the program in 2012, about one in 10 seniors in the United States don’t qualify for Social Security, leaving many without a safety net.

Of the approximately four million U.S. seniors not receiving Social Security old age support, a disproportionate one-third are ethnic elders. In fact, according to the U.S. Census, one-in-six African-American, one fifth of Latino—and nearly one-in-three (29 percent) Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) seniors cannot draw on the national retirement pension program to make financial ends meet.

African-Americans ‘Under the Radar’

Many older African-Americans who don’t qualify for Social Security “have lived under the radar because they have worked in domestic roles and been paid cash for their labors” with no contributions going to the program, said Karyne Jones, president and CEO of the National Caucus and Center on Black Aging (NCBA) based in Washington, D.C.

Jones continued, “With most women, it’s the child rearing and caregiving years that don’t rake up any credit towards Social Security.” She added, “Let us not forget chronic unemployment.”

Also affecting access to Social Security support, she and other experts said, may be the high incarceration level among Black men. As they get released at older ages, many will end up with little or no Social Security benefits. This would leave their spouses with inadequate incomes later in life.

Because the Social Security Administration calculates retirement benefits based on credits people receive for at least 40 quarters of covered work—10 years’ worth during one’s working life, she said, many African Americans paid cash or under the table don’t realize they benefit from the program “until it’s too late.”

Ineligibility for Social Security is particularly high for immigrants. Many who arrive at age 50 or older end up with very low coverage or none at all. About half of Hispanic seniors in the U.S. and 80 percent of older Asian Americans who receive no Social Security support are either naturalized citizens or immigrants.

While undocumented immigrants are flatly ineligible for U.S. benefits, many legally present immigrants do not have enough documented years of work to quality for eligibility.

Financial security for the growing number of black and other ethnic elders is a looming issue. A poll released in September by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found, “Nearly half of black Americans (46 percent) — and about a third of white Americans (36 percent) — say they would ‘like to save for retirement, but don’t seem to have enough money to do so.’”

Wilhelmina Leigh, who coauthored the survey report, stated in an earlier study, “Modifying the Social Security system must include voices of African Americans and other racial/ethnic subpopulations whose dependence on the system is great, but whose patterns of usage may differ from the norm.”

Barriers Facing Immigrants

Making ends meet is especially difficult for Asian retirees. Those who do get Social Security checks average $2,000 a year ($13,066) less than the total for all U.S. retirees, says a 2011 report from the Insight Center. Pacific Islanders receive even smaller benefits—if any at all—says the study. For instance, Native Hawaiian seniors, because so many had low-wage jobs, average Social Security benefits of less than half that of other Hawaiian elders, including other Asians.

The Insight Center report’s author Meizhu Lui noted cultural and other barriers to assistance for Asian and other immigrants. “Language barriers lead to a lack of knowledge about the Social Security program,” she wrote.

Among other barriers to Social Security that Asian elders encounter, says Lui, are “cultural aversions to large bureaucracies, pride in being independent and a fear of government based on home-country experiences can make eligible foreign-born Asian seniors hesitant to apply.”

A University of Southern California analysis of Latino retirement cites another reason for many low-income immigrants. It calls agricultural labor “a telling example of sub-minimum wage employment where salaries and Social Security contributions for workers often go unreported.”

Ironically, the Social Security Administration has estimated that unauthorized immigrants contributed more than $12 billion alone to the program’s trust fund in 2010 more than the $1 billion the agency says it paid out in fraudulent benefits to undocumented residents. Many undocumented immigrants pay into the system through jobs they got using fake Social Security cards. But they can never collect benefits when they need them.

Serial Killer of 14 Black Men Executed by Frederick H. Lowe

Nov. 25, 2013

Serial Killer of 14 Black Men Executed
By Frederick H. Lowe
Acquitted of Shooting Vernon Jordan, Franklin Later Admitted to It
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Joseph Paul Franklin

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from TheNorthStarNews.com.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Missouri Department of Corrections officials have executed Joseph Paul Franklin who was convicted of killing 14 black men and boys during a racist cross-country serial killing spree in the 1970s and 1980s.

Franklin also admitted to the shooting and wounding of Vernon Jordan, then president of the National Urban League, on May 29, 1980.

The Department of Corrections executed Franklin in the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, after a federal appeals court turned down his request for a last-minute stay of execution. He was scheduled to be put to death at 12:01 a.m. on Nov. 20. But a court hearing delayed his execution. Franklin was pronounced dead at 6:17 a.m.

A spokesperson for the Death Penalty Information Center told The NorthStar News & Analysis that Franklin's execution was the 35th this year in the United States and the first this year in Missouri.

His shooting of Jordan brought Franklin notoriety, largely because of Jordan's prominence and the all-White jury's verdict. A federal jury acquitted Franklin, 63, of shooting Jordan outside a Marriott Hotel in Fort Wayne, Ind.

In 1996, Franklin said in a newspaper interview the jury was wrong. Franklin, an acknowledged white racist, said he parked his car near Jordan's room. When he saw a black man get out of the passenger side of a car, Franklin fired his hunting rifle, loaded with 30.06 bullets. The bullet hit Jordan in the back near his spine. A physician said the bullet left a hole so big that he could put his fist in it.

Franklin recruited for United Klans of America, and he was an avowed Nazi. He reportedly changed his first name to Joseph to honor Joseph Goebbels, Third Reich minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany. He was born James Clayton Vaughn, Jr. on April 13, 1950, in Mobile, Ala.

For two decades, Franklin traveled the country, killing Black men. He targeted interracial couples. Jordan was with Martha Coleman, a white woman, when he was shot. All but a couple of the black men who were murdered were with white women. In many of cases, Franklin either murdered or wounded the women. He also murdered a white prostitute, Mercedes Masters, when he learned she serviced black-male clients.

During his spree of violence, Franklin also bombed a Jewish Synagogue.

In addition, Franklin wounded and left paralyzed in 1978, Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt.

Franklin confessed to 17 murders, but he is believed to have murdered as many as 21 people.

The Black men and boys he murdered were:

Ted Fields, 20, and David Martin, 18, on Aug. 20, 1980, after they finished jogging in Salt Lake City's Liberty Park

Cousins Darrell Lane, 14, and Dante Evans Brown, 13, as they walked to a store in Cincinnati, also in 1980

Alphonse Manning, Jr., 23, in a mall parking lot in Madison, Wis., Aug. 7,1977

Johnny Brookshire, 22, in Atlanta, February 1978

Bryant Tatum at a Pizza Hut restaurant near Chattanooga, Tenn., July 29, 1978

Harold McGiver, 29 as he left his job at a Taco Bell in Doraville, Ga., Aug. 18, 1979

Raymond Taylor at a Burger King in Falls Church, Va., Aug. 8, 1979

Jesse Taylor, 42, in Oklahoma City, Okla., Oct. 21, 1979

Leo Thomas Watkins, 19, at an Indianapolis, Ind., shopping mall, Jan. 14, 1980

Lawrence Reese, 22, at a fast-food restaurant, Jan. 8, 1980

Arthur Smothers,22, in Johnstown, Pa., June 15, 1980

Myron Brooks, 32, in Indianapolis, April 23, 1980

Franklin once said he traveled the country killing enemies of the White race. He supported his criminal activity by robbing banks.

He murdered individuals in Wisconsin, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Utah and Oklahoma, according to research by the Department of Psychology at Radford University.

Missouri officials executed him for killing Gerald Gordon, a white man, outside of a St. Louis-area synagogue. Prosecutors had convicted him of the other murders, but Missouri was the only state that had the death penalty.

Franklin later said he regretted his serial killing, but a newspaper reporter noted that he continued to refer to Blacks as 'niggers.'

Man Charged in Shooting Death of Motorist Seeking Help by Frederick H. Lowe

Nov. 18, 2013

Man Charged in Shooting Death of Motorist Seeking Help
It is the second deadly shooting of a black motorist seeking help since September
By Frederick H. Lowe

renishamcbride
A Dearborn Heights, Mich., man has been
charged in the murder of Renisha McBride.
She was seeking help following an automobile
accident.

Jonathan Ferrell also was shot to death while seeking help after an automobile accident.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from TheNorthStarNews.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Wayne County, Mich., prosecutor Kym Worthy today charged Theodore Paul Wafer with second-degree murder in the death of Renisha McBride, a 19 year-old Detroit woman, who sought help following an automobile accident in Dearborn Heights, Mich.

Worthy also charged the 54 year-old Wafer with manslaughter and with felony firearm. The second-degree murder charge carries a penalty of up to life in prison, and the manslaughter charge carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison. The felony firearm charge carries a penalty of two years in prison.

McBride, who appeared to be disoriented, knocked on Wafer's door on Nov. 2, 2013, following a traffic accident. The white Ford sedan she was driving crashed into a parked car in the 7200 block of Bramell at approximately 12:57am. McBride was seeking help following the accident.

McBride knocked on Wafer's door in the 16800 block of West Outer Drive in the Dearborn Heights. At 4:42 am, police responded to a 911 call, and they found McBride's lifeless body lying on the porch. She had a large gunshot wound to her head.

"It is alleged that McBride was unarmed when she was shot in the face by Wafer as she knocked on the front screen door of the house. There were no signs of forced entry at the location," Worthy said in a statement.

Wafer said through his attorney he believed someone was breaking into his house. He said he fired in self defense.

"We have issued these charges because we believe the evidence will show that self defense was not warranted," Worthy said. "Under Michigan law, there is no duty to retreat in your own home, however, someone who claims self defense must honestly and reasonably believe that he is in imminent danger of either losing his life or suffering great bodily harm and that the use of deadly force is necessary to prevent that harm. This 'reasonable belief ' is not measured subjectively by the standards of the individual in question, but objectively, by the standards of a reasonable person."

McBride is the second Black motorist shot to death since September while seeking help following an automobile accident. Jonathan Ferrell, who also was unarmed, was shot to death by Randall Kerrick, a cop with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (N.C.) Police Department, after Ferrell sought help following a traffic accident.

Ferrell knocked on the door of a woman homeowner seeking help. Instead, she called the police and accused Ferrell of attempting to break into her house.

When Kerrick and another officer arrived at the scene, Ferrell approached them with his arms outstretched. One of the officers fired a Taser gun at Ferrell who was not harmed.

Kerrick then pulled his revolver, firing 12 shots at Ferrell, hitting him 10 times. He died at the scene. Police charged Kerrick with voluntary manslaughter. Kerrick said he killed Ferrell because he feared for his life, a defense routinely used by the police.