May 3, 2015

Three Black Baltimore Cops Among Those Charged with Freddie Gray’s Death

May 3, 2015

Reality Check

Brother Malcolm X and Baltimore 
By A. Peter Bailey

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Since the outbreak in Baltimore over the killing of Freddie Gray by Baltimore City police officers, several people have asked me how I believe Brother Malcolm X would have responded to such an event.

My response is to relay to them how Brother Malcolm responded to the 1964 Harlem uprising resulting in the killing of unarmed 15 year-old James Powell by New York City police officer Thomas Gilligan. At the time I was editor of the Organization of Afro-American Unity’s (OAAU) newsletter. Brother Malcolm was in Cairo attending the Organization of African Unity Conference as an observer.

When he called the OAAU office to get an update on what was happening, he told the brothers in charge of security to keep OAAU members out of what was happening in the streets. His position being that sometimes the cops would deliberately provoke or take advantage of such events to do mass arrests of members of organization such as ours. The cops would have jumped at an excuse to burst into our office and wreak havoc. He had already told us that if someone attending one of our meetings or rallies stood up and shouted something like “We ought to bomb the subways,” that person should be immediately evicted. Nine times out of 10, he said, that person is probably a government plant trying to set us up for mass arrests if there was even a 30-second discussion of his proposal.

Brother Malcolm believed in disciplined responses to such situations as was demonstrated when he was still in the Nation of Islam (NOI). New York City cops had arrested and beaten a NIO member and taken him to a police precinct. When Brother Malcolm, accompanied by several hundred NOI members went to the precinct and asked to see the victim of police abuse, the repeatedly said no way.

Meanwhile, outside the precinct, those NOI members stood and glared at the building in total silence. According to legendary Amsterdam News reporter, Jimmy Hicks, the cops were extremely unnerved by the disciplined total silence of the Black Muslims. Finally, he noted, a Black cop told the person in charge that it was be very wise and prudent to let Brother Malcolm see the prisoner. When he saw him and was satisfied that he was no longer under attack, he came out of the building and signaled to the NOI members that they should now leave; they did so without a word being said.

One wonders if several thousand protesters in Baltimore, instead of chanting slogans and waving posters, had stood in front of a police station, or the coroner’s office or even the mayor’s office in total, disciplined, determined silence, would have been a more effective way of finding out more quickly how Freddie Gray ended up dead while in police custody.

A. Peter Bailey, whose latest book is Witnessing Brother Malcolm X, the Master Teacher, can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Natural laws that shaped the behavior of “old folks" are often tossed aside in our modern world.  Rather than depending upon the common-sense reliability of the tried and true, we defer to some modern perspective. After reflecting on several of the "old laws" I was taught I’m convinced that they have greater applicability than many of the new.  With certainty, one of the most important is: You reap what you sow.

I believe this to be true for the current situation in Baltimore and in cities across the nation where people of all races are fed up with the indiscriminate murder of Black people by those in law enforcement who’re sworn to protect us.  Although I embrace the philosophy of non-violent resistance espoused by King and Gandhi, I’m not so unrealistic as to believe that even the most even of temperament cannot be pushed to the breaking-point.

While some of the talking-heads offer simple-minded explanations of the outrage in Baltimore, we must not forget that the unrest in Baltimore is far more complex than can be discussed on a Sunday morning talk show. Those who don’t experience what happens in some of our neighborhoods inside and outside Baltimore seem overly eager to proclaim a lessening of violence and tension. They’ve made the short-sighted miscalculation that time and the manipulation of information can assuage the rage. Even worse, they believe that the THE PROBLEM lies solely within the boundaries of that city.

It’s unreasonable to believe the Black community would allow itself to languish in poverty and suffer in silence forever. Those who agree with me are numerous, but few reside in the ranks of those sufficiently politically entrenched to make the sweeping changes necessary to create real change. Most who can initiate change seem to be trapped in the mindset that the ordained fate of Black people is to live in deprivation.

I know some will suggest that my sole focus in life is political, but I must report the things I see.  Since the election of President Obama, I’ve observed the objective of Republicans to vilifying him no matter what he does.  Instead of allowing the economic initiatives of the President to bring the nation closer to full-employment, they appear to be hell-bent on holding the nation's poor more deeply in poverty to satisfy the impression that the President is doing little to ease their plight.  This readily translates into the socio-economic deprivation that has ignited the flames of rage in Baltimore.  Logic dictates that we look for similar eruptions in other places that mirror conditions in Baltimore.

Events in Baltimore MUST start an intelligent discussion for "real" social reform. This discussion must be as comprehensive as the problem.  It's far too late for a "Band-Aid fix". Issues of malpractice in policing are only the catalyst of the problems. Festering issues of unemployment, mis-education, and the lack of real opportunity to improve quality-of-life concerns must be addressed before a remedy can be realized.

Before the greed of the wealthy became the primary interest of politicians, public policy provided the means for more to share in the bounty.  President Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System and put millions to work.  The technological and industrial renaissance that paralleled that road construction created a vibrant middle-class and growing economy.

President Obama proposed a national effort to modernize and repair our failing infrastructure.  Intransigent Republicans have thwarted these proposals for their own selfish political interests.

If we’re really committed to remedying the ills that have fostered the unrest in Baltimore, we must focus on the solution rather than in the redundant debate of why it happened.  We have all the evidence we need to answer the why.  We must address the how in concrete terms. Stop talking and act now!

(Dr. E. Faye Williams is President of the National Congress of Black Women.  www.nationalcongressbw.org.  202/678-6788)