The History in Your Attic by Julianne Malveaux

Feb. 22, 2015

The History in Your Attic
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - We gather together this month to lift up the names that have been frequently lifted, to call the roll of those African Americans who have made a difference. While some names are the tried and true names of important leaders, we need to pay as much attention to the legacies of those whose lives and contributions have been swallowed.

Madame CJ Walker’s life and legacy is no secret. There is a woman who shares her name though, and she is rarely lifted up when the roles of black women in our nation’s history are mentioned. Maggie Lena Walker, with a second grade education, established Penny Savings Bank in Richmond, Virginia. She was the first African American woman to establish such a bank. Through the Great Depression, and through bank regulation shifts, some version of Penny Savings Bank existed until the early twenty-first century. This woman’s contribution has been swallowed because it is easy to ignore her contribution to history.

Madame CJ Walker garnered public attention, and few realize that she was not the first to do “black hair”. Annie Malone developed a thriving hair care business in St. Louis and surrounding areas. According to some sources, she had at least two dozen training schools in the early twentieth century. Some say she mentored Madame CJ Walker. Many acknowledge that her hair care educational foci were a model for Madame Walker. Did Walker, more flamboyant and better connected, establish a place in history while Annie Malone and Maggie Lena Walker could not? What does it say about Black history when the glitz and glitter are substitutes for sacrifice and substance?

Far too often, we expect leaders to embrace and lift up our black history. And far too often, we ignore the history in our attics. We forget the uncle who was a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters – an independent union of sleeping car porters and maids established in the 1920’s to advocate for their rights. We forget the aunt who was a domestic worker in New York City. We remember the cousin who was a teacher in Mississippi, Alabama, or Louisiana (the last states to desegregate schools), but we have never explored the sacrifices she made to manage such a segregated environment.

We glorify those whose names are represented in the headlines. We ignore those whose contributions, albeit important, hover on the sidelines. We know that we stand on mighty shoulders, but we are unwilling and sadly sometimes unable to call their names.

These are the names we must call. We call them when we pour libation. We call their names and say ache’. Our next responsibility is to lift their names up, to claim them as the postal workers, the civil rights workers, and the activists. Our next responsibility is to remind ourselves and those around us that we don’t have to have a name to have “cred”.

We call their names when we read Howard Zinn’s “A Peoples History of the United States” that exemplifies “the people’s history”, not the celebrity history. We own our history and affirm our connection to it, when we own the papers in the attic.

As I move around during this Black History Month, people tell me stories that they need to tell others. There was the uncle who took his horn through the “chitlin circuit” backing up major artists, and leaving the circuit when the pull of family took him home. These are the revolutions that will not be televised, the stories that will only be told when we tell them.

We need to tell them year round. It is a travesty of history to reduce an accounting of our heritage to a one-month commemoration of the history that defines our nation. When we are unable to recount the occurrences of Tulsa and Rosewood, of the Red Summer of 1919 and the Poor People’s Campaign, we allow our history to be swallowed and appropriated.

Commemorate Black History Month if you will. Attend the gatherings at your churches and colleges. And then go home and pull the history out of the attic. If you are a citizen of the world, race notwithstanding, you have some hidden history in your attic. When you share your family stories, you take ownership in a Black History Month that is not about those named, but those unnamed who have made a critical difference in our lives.

Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist based in Washington DC

Dr. Jeremiah Wright Speaks at Southern by Dr. E. Faye Williams

Feb. 22, 2015

Dr. Jeremiah Wright Speaks at Southern
By Dr. E. Faye Williams

williams2

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Dr. Jeremiah Wright spoke at Southern University in Baton Rouge, LA a few days ago. Some objected. A university should be able to invite any speaker on any subject because it’s a place where different points of view should be discussed and analyzed. Education should teach us how to think, not what to think. Listening is the best way to learn both how and what to think.

I’m not sure how we can express opinions about speakers unless we hear what they say. Hearing and reacting to snippets of a speech is one of the biggest problems critics have.

Dr. Wright preaches Black liberation sermons to enlighten oppressed people so we understand what America did to us. We’re not excused from trying to overcome the impact of racism, but it’s insane to take our cues from those who deny our humanity, then want to judge us by their standards.

No one else has lived our experience so they can’t know the impact years of racism continue to have on us. It’s easy for one who administers a beating to say, “Get over it." Black people’ve been beaten down so intensely that many may never recover. Dr. Wright tells the painful truth about what America has done to us.

There’re many different methods for telling this truth. Dr. M. L. King and Malcolm X had different ways of teaching, yet both were effective. I don’t deny Dr. King because I prefer the way Malcolm X said something, and vice versa. I’ve listened to both and find something in each that helps me to maneuver around racism. Dr. Wright said and did things I didn’t like when the uproar about his God bless America… remarks came to light, but that doesn’t make everything he said wrong. I still find the good and praise it.

We listen to a lot of people who speak in public places. Many express racist views and are not stopped from speaking because freedom of speech is a fundamental right not one of us would give up. Through all the craziness, we’re charged with working together where we have agreement in order to advance our nation for the common good.

Problems occur when we judge others without understanding their history. How one says something often has a lot to do with the way it’s received. People’s guilt or ignorance won’t allow them to hear a speaker out, but that doesn’t mean the speaker is wrong. If we listen, we might find there’s some measure of truth even when we think it’s controversial.

Black liberation preachers say the message of Old Testament prophets—and Jesus Christ – is “a condemnation of the nation and of the religious establishment…for oppressing the poor.” Can we expect Black people to say “God bless America” for everything America’s done to us? Whites haven’t had our experiences and don’t know why we worship the way we do.

America’s come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. America is now taking a few steps back, but Black people still have the audacity to hope. We have a great and brilliant President who may not use Black liberation language—and look at the way he’s treated!

Truth isn’t always easy to hear. It’s not easy for a person who hasn’t known racism to hear someone say the opposite of God Bless America for the atrocities committed against Black people. Would we expect the Jews to say “God Bless Germany” for what was done to them? Put things in perspective. What a Black person says about racism doesn’t have to be validated by Whites, but I‘m grateful for the efforts that’ve brought us this far. Let’s get to work to perfect our union for all of us.

(E. Faye Williams is President of the National Congress of Black Women. www.nationalcongressbw.org.)

CBC Discusses Agenda in Meeting with President by Zenitha Prince

Feb. 15, 2015

CBC Discusses Agenda in Meeting with President

By Zenitha Prince

In this White House file photo, President Barack Obama meets with the Congressional Black Caucus in the State Dining Room of the White House three years ago. PHOTO - Pete Souza/The White House

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Congressional Black Caucus met with President Barack Obama at the White House Feb. 10 in a 90-minute pow-wow on issues relating to criminal justice, the economy, trade and more.

“Members of the CBC just wrapped up a productive meeting with President Obama at the White House. The CBC looks forward to working with the White House to improve the lives of all Americans,” a CBC statement read following the meeting.

CBC lawmakers have been among the staunchest supporters of the nation’s first African-American president, though the group’s relationship with its former member has been complicated and he has not escaped their criticism. But many also place blame for the president’s handicaps squarely at the feet of obstructionist Republicans.

“There have been isolated disappointments with the White House,” said CBC Chairman G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) said last month in an interview with The Hill. “But generally speaking I think — and I think that the vast, the overwhelming, majority of CBC members feel — that this president has been unfairly isolated by the Republicans. And his legacy is going to be a good legacy.”

Among the chief issues addressed in the White House meeting was criminal justice reform—something Black lawmakers have long championed which gained greater urgency last year in the wake of several police killings of unarmed Black men.

President Obama emphasized the “critical need” to build trust between communities and law enforcement officials, according to a White House statement.

“We had a very robust conversation about criminal justice reform, not only about police misconduct, but also about prosecutorial misconduct,” Butterfield said as quoted by The Associated Press. The chairman said members also raised the need to reduce incarceration in the United States.

The issue of Black unemployment was also a central concern of the CBC members, a concern the president shared, according to the White House statement. Jobless rates among Blacks have usually been double that of the national average—in January, for example, unemployment among African Americans was 10.3 percent, compared to 5.7 percent for the overall population.

CBC members and the president discussed targeted spending in areas with persistently abject poverty rates—an idea long championed by South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn—and how to reach those who are not benefitting from the economy, according to the AP report.

Part of the solution could lie in the administration’s trade agenda, which “would provide new opportunities for workers and support economic growth by opening markets, enforcing high-standards in our agreements, and leveling the playing field for our workers,” the president told the CBC.

Obama called on the CBC to support his bid for trade promotion authority, which would block Congress from changing trade deals negotiated by the White House—though retaining lawmakers’ power to reject or approve the plans.

But Democrats and their allies are skeptical, blaming past trade agreements for lost jobs.

“He acknowledged that there have been some problems in the past with some trade agreements but believes this trade agreement will be infinitely better in terms of safeguards,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, according to the AP. “The bottom line is what we have to make a decision on is how much trust and confidence we have in the president because there is nothing that we’re going to know until it’s been negotiated.”

Report: Nearly 4,000 African-Americans Were Lynched in Acts of Terror by Whites by Frederick H. Lowe

Feb. 15, 2015

Report: Nearly 4,000 African-Americans Were Lynched in Acts of Terror by Whites
The overwhelming majority were men

By Frederick H. Lowe

Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, said nearly 4,000 African-Americans have been lynched.

Crowd stands around and smiles after a Black man has been lynched.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Nearly 4,000 Black men, Black women and Black children were lynched between 1877 and 1950 in 12 Southern states, and their violent murders were celebrated, attracting huge crowds including some who used the occasion to hold picnics.

The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has published, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror.” They reported that 3,959 African-Americans were victims of terrorist lynchings in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

More than 90 percent of terrorist lynching victims were Black men, and some of the victims were boys as young as 12 and 13, Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative told NorthStar News Today.com and BlackmansStreet.Today. EJI is based in Montgomery, Ala.

The study noted that at least 700 more African-Americans were murdered in lynchings than had been previously reported. The report focuses on racial terrorist lynching, which Whites, including the police, elected officials, ordinary citizens and federal bureaucrats participated in the murders or condoned them to enforce Jim Crow laws and racial segregation.

“These lynchings were not frontier justice because they generally took place in communities where there was a functioning criminal justice system that was deemed too good for African Americans,” the report stated. “Terror lynchings were horrific acts of violence whose perpetrators were never held accountable….Indeed, some of public spectacle lynchings were attended by the entire white community and conducted as celebratory acts of control and domination.”

Terror victims were murdered without being accused of any crime; they were killed for minor social transgressions, including bumping a White person, wearing their military uniforms after World War I and not using the appropriate title to address a White person.

For example, General Lee, a Black man, was lynched in 1904 by a White mob in Reevesville, Ga., for knocking on the door of a White woman’s home. In 1919, a White mob in Blakely, Ga., lynched William Little, a soldier returning from World War I, for refusing to take off his uniform.

And in 1916, White men lynched Jeff Brown in Cedarbluff, Miss., for accidentally bumping into a White girl as he ran to catch a train.

In one newspaper report, between 3,000 and 10,000 individuals attended the lynching of John Hartfield in Ellisville, Miss., on June 26, 1919.The mob murdered Hartfield for allegedly assaulting a White girl.

Mississippi Gov. Theodore G. Bilbo, one of this nation’s most racist governors, ordered police to hold Hartfield in custody before releasing him at 5 p.m. to the mob. The NAACP asked Bilbo to intervene, but he, the sheriff and federal officials said they were powerless to stop the lynching.

New Orleans States, a newspaper, described Hartfield as “sullen and jerky” hours before his lynching.

The study reported that most terror lynching resulted from a wildly distorted view of interracial sex, casual social transgressions, and allegations of a serious violent crime. The murders included public spectacle lynchings, lynchings that targeted entire African-American communities and lynchings of sharecroppers, ministers and community leaders who refused to be mistreated.

The data and stories for the report were gathered over four years by Equal Justice Initiative staff.

The report names the states that were particularly terrifying for African-Americans. Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana had the highest statewide rates of lynchings. Georgia and Mississippi had the highest number of lynchings. And Phillips County, Ark., and Lafourche and Tensas parishes in Louisiana were sites of mass killings of African-Americans.

Fearing they would be lynched, African-Americans fled the South for the North and West during the first half of the 20th Century. Ironically, the state of Rhode Island was the epicenter of the nation’s slave trade.

“Black people living in Oakland, Calif., Chicago, and New York are refugees from terror. They fled the South to escape lynching,” Stevenson said.

“The history of terror lynching complicates contemporary issues of race, punishment, crime and justice,” the report stated. “Mass incarceration, excessive penal punishment, disproportionate sentencing of racial minorities and police abuse of people of color reveal problems in American society that were framed in the terror era.”

Stevenson said EJI intends to place markers where lynchings occurred.

He said, “I live in the South and there are all these statutes honoring the Confederacy and the defense of slavery. Now we want some truth and reconciliation about the real consequences of what happened to blacks after the Civil War."

A Lesson from Black History by U. S. Rep. Elijah Cummings

Feb. 15, 2015

A Lesson from Black History
By U. S. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.)

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - For most American families, it is extremely difficult to both earn a living and successfully raise our children.

This reality is certainly the truth for families who are poor, of whom minorities constitute a disproportionate share. Yet, it also is true for any of us who consider ourselves to be middle class.

Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of American families with children have either two working parents or a single parent — and a majority do not have a stay-at-home parent to provide child care. Balancing child care and work is a major challenge.

A key obstacle is financial. Far too many families simply do not have the financial resources to pay for the quality child care and early child education their children need.

President Obama has been making the case that affordable child care and education must be a national priority. Our families need help, our economy would benefit, and the next generation would be far better qualified to strengthen our middle class.

The President reminds us of some eye-opening facts. For example, the average annual cost of full-time care at an infant child-care center was about $10,000 per child in 2013.

That’s higher than the average cost of in-state tuition at a public 4-year college.

From the perspective of public policy, our current approach is inadequate, even where tax credits and Early Head Start are available. These shortcomings are preventing tens of millions of American families from raising themselves into the middle class — and even more affluent families are being stressed.

In his recent remarks on “Middle-Class Economics” at the University of Kansas, the President recalled how his grandmother worked on an assembly line for bombers during WWII. Since women in the workforce were critical to the war effort – and a national priority – our country provided universal child care.

Many economists would agree that supporting families in the workforce must become a national economic priority once again — as do the President and I.

The President is proposing that we increase the maximum child care tax credit to $3,000 per year per young child and expand access to child care assistance for all eligible families of moderate income (below 200 percent of the poverty line).

The President’s FY 2016 Budget would also expand access to high-quality early childhood education for low and moderate income families, long a top priority of my own.

If adopted by the Congress, these actions would be a substantial down payment on making parenting more affordable for all American families. They would help our current economy and make a critical investment in the next generation of Americans.

Some conservatives in the Congress may resist President Obama’s initiatives, despite the fact that reducing net taxes on working families is a cornerstone of any viable tax reform.

Those who are reluctant to confront the challenges of family and work should take a Black History lesson to heart.

Consider this: Some of the most compelling lessons of history for our own time are subtle — among them, the truth that our desire for freedom and our love of family have always been mutually reinforcing.

No American historical figure exemplifies this insight about our core humanity more fully than did Araminta Ross, better known to history as Harriet Tubman.

Last month, I was invited by Governor O’Malley to participate in the official unveiling of the Harriet Tubman bust at a time when Ms. Tubman also is being honored with national parks in Maryland and New York. In preparation for that ceremony, I re-read her March 1913 obituary from the annals of the Auburn, NY Citizen.

Although seldom stressed by historians, it was thought-provoking to me that Harriet Tubman’s likely sale and separation from those she loved upon the death of her owner, one Edward Brodess, was a driving force in her decision to escape to freedom. Once liberated in the North, her initial forays in her 19 journeys as a conductor on the Underground Railroad were to rescue her own loved ones.

Enduring hardship and risking life and liberty in pursuit of her calling to reunite her family, she repeatedly traveled across the Mason-Dixon Line and into our history.

A century and a half later, Americans honor Harriet Tubman for her courage — and those of us who are Americans of Color revere her as “the Moses of our People.” Yet, to fully grasp her relevance for our own time, we should remember that Ms. Tubman’s driving motivation, at least initially, was love of family.

Those who are tempted to resist the President’s child care and education initiatives on economic grounds would do well to remember this historical truth.

In the 19^th Century, the slave-based economy failed, in part, because it refused to recognize and support the critical importance of family to those upon whose labor that economy depended.

In our own time, we should take Harriet Tubman’s example to heart and not make a comparable error.

Making child care more affordable and supporting early childhood education must become national priorities.

Congressman Elijah Cummings represents Maryland’s 7^th Congressional District In the United States House of Representatives.