June 17, 2019

Salacious FBI Information Again Attacks Character of MLK
By Barbara Reynolds

NEWS ANALYSIS

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In 1970, only two years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his widow Coretta Scott King received the horrific news that haters had shot into her husband’s crypt in Atlanta, using it for target practice. Though grieved by the news, she conceded it was an omen that even in his grave the assassination of Dr. King would continue by fabrications and vile assaults on her husband’s character.

To her, the words, “you can kill the dream, but not the dreamer,” were not just a catchy mantra. She used them to brace her for the backlash she feared would come.

The recent trove of salacious and ill-reported old rumors being brandied about by Pulitzer Prize winner David Garrow falls seamlessly into that anticipated outcome. Mrs. King who died in 2006 had often shared with me her distrust of Garrow because of his close ties to the F.B.I., an agency that has historically schemed to nullify black leaders and according to former FBI agent Donald Wilson, agents cheered in the Atlanta bureau upon news of his death..

The controversial information was obtained from F.B.I. bugging of hotel visits as Dr. King traveled across the country. The newest scandalous claims, according to an FBI agent, place Dr. King in a hotel room when a minister friend of his, now deceased, raped a woman, and King “looked on, laughed and offered advice” and that he also fathered a child with a mistress.

The information Garrow reportedly uncovered was recently reported in Standpoint, a conservative British magazine along with an article labeling King a “sexual predator” and “the Harvey Weinstein of the civil rights movement.”

As the news reverberated in London, Keith Magee, a senior scholar at the University College London(UCL) expressed his outrage. “This is part of the right wing’s offensive to dismantle and destroy everything revered by people of color. As President Trump visited London, certain people couldn’t bear to see a Black man being more respected than Trump, so there was a move to destroy Dr. King’s image.”

Meanwhile several right wing news outlets are blowing up the fabricated scandal; in one instance calling for the dismantling of Dr. King’s statue on the mall in the nation’s capital.

Clayborne Carson is King’s biography and oversees the Dr. King records headquartered at Stanford University. He says he has seen the same information Garrow has but reached a different conclusion. “None of this is new. Garrow is talking about a recently added summary of a transcript of a 1964 recording from the Willard Hotel that others, including Mrs. King, have said they did not hear Martin’s voice on in. The added summary was four layers removed from the actual recording. This supposedly new information comes from an anonymous source in a single paragraph in an F.B.I. report. You have to ask how could anyone conclude King looked at a rape from an audio recording in a room where he was not present.”

In my Coretta King memoir, “My Life, My Love, My Legacy, “ she talked about this material mailed to her home on Nov. 2, 1964 that her sources later confirmed were dispatched by the F.B I. “I set up our reel-to-reel recorder and listened. I have read scores of reports talking about the scurrilous activities of my husband but once again, there was nothing at all incriminating on the tape. It was a social event with people laughing and telling dirty jokes. But I did not hear Martin’s voice on it, and there was nothing about sex or anything else resembling the lies J. Edgar and the F.B.I. were spreading.”

Although she and other aides dismissed the tape, she could not dismiss the poorly typed letter in the package, suggesting the information to be released to the press was so damaging King should commit suicide. It read: “King we’ve found you out… You are done for there is only one way out.. You have thirty- four days before you are exposed and publicly defamed.”

What should be made clear is the letter was sent 34 days before Martin was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize but was not opened until the couple returned from the Nobel ceremonies in Norway. Mrs. King said that Hoover hated Dr. King and was outraged that King was receiving the honor he felt he deserved. “Our source told us Hoover had ordered the doctored tape to be sent to me in the hopes I would divorce Martin, which would bring him down. Despite all the rumors, Martin and I did not take the bait.”

Believing the FBI is a friend of Black people would require amnesia as the agency has historically worked to nullify and destroy Black leaders, author Anthony Summers says in his Hoover biography entitled “Official and Confidential.”

The long list includes orchestrating the jailing and deportation of the fiery Jamaican leader Marcus Garvey, bugging and blackballing the great singer Paul Robeson, the ruthless assault on the Black Panthers and the well-documented COINTELPRO, the FBI program waged in the 1960’s to prevent the rise of a Black Messiah, generally thought to be Dr. King.

Over the years, Mrs. King has defended her husband’s reputation attesting he was faithful to his marriage. Others, however, such as Carson, a historian, do not put King in a category of perfection. “There are no perfect men, but it is still wrong to use undocumented, tainted evidence to smear a man when history shows that many men with documented sordid private lives, still remain heroes.”

While the scandal is brewing, the words of Mrs. King are worth remembering: They may kill the dreamer, but Dr. King’s dream of diversity and justice will outlive his enemies.

Dr. Barbara Reynolds a former editorial writer and columnist for USA TODAY, has written for numerous publications, such as The Washington Post, Essence Magazine, Playboy Magazine, and the Trice Edney News Wire. She is an author of seven books. The latest is Coretta Scott King, My Life, My Love, My Legacy.

Editor's Note: Editors and publishers, we realize that the following story is much more lengthy than we normally publish. If possible, it can be used in its entirety. But, please feel free to cut and delete as you deem necessary. Thank you.

June 11, 2019

Lessons from Black Fathers
By Barrington M. Salmon

Warren Shadd, the nation's first African-American piano manufacturer, recalls how he tagged along behind his father, James Shadd, a piano tuner at the historic Howard Theatre.

Cinematographer Nigel Thompson recalls how his father's lessons - and example - guided him after his father, John Thompson, died when he was only 13.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) Although many fathers grouse about the short shrift they get on Father’s Day, the power and importance of fathers in shaping the lives of their children and grandchildren cannot be understated or ignored.

With Sunday, June 16, set aside to honor fathers, we asked some men to reflect on the most important lesson they learned from a father, father figure, mentor, teacher or other male with influence in their lives. The following are parts of their stories.

Dr. Dana Dennard, 66, university professor, psychologist, social justice activist, co-owner of Nefeteri’s Restaurant in Tallahassee, Fla.

“My father was absent and the most important thing I learned from that was to be present and be a father. I was raised with my grandparents. My grandfather was a model for me. The main lesson I learned was to be committed and handle it.”

Dennard, who grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida during the Jim Crow era, said Papa Joe wasn’t his biological grandfather.

“He married my grandmother and raised her seven children,” Dennard recalled. “He was the male figure in my life and continues to be the model. He was very soft-spoken and tinkered with things. He was a marksman in the military and took me out at age 8 to shoot a gun. He never laid a hand on any of us, but I never wanted to disappoint him.”

Dennard, who’s been married for more than 30 years to Dr. Sharon Dennard and is the father of three grown children, said Sgt. Joe Johnson’s impact has lasted his whole life and he recently wrote a dedication to his grandfather in a book.

“My mom had me in college and I didn’t move out of my grandparent’s house until I was eight,” he said. “The first Christmas without them tore me up. Sgt. Joe Johnson was the entire man. I never saw a flaw in my entire life – that’s who I came from.”

Nigel Thompson, 46, film director, visual and graphic artist, Trinidad and Tobago.

“I would say that the lessons I learned didn’t happen at one time,” said Thompson, a noted cinematographer in demand around the world. “I had him for 10 short years. He was the calmest person I’ve ever met in my entire life. Mom would shout and carry on and he’d be perfectly calm. He was the one who got me into the arts when I was a child.”

Thompson said his father, John Thompson, was a police officer and in his off time, he’d read poetry and was part of a theatre group.

“He was grooming me for a life in the arts and he didn’t even know it,” he said. “He taught me patience and how to solve things. I am that way, particularly with work. The main question I have is ‘how can I fix it?”

Thompson said his father’s death when he was 13, threw him into a tailspin but forced him to grow up quickly.

“When he died, as often happens, you’re not sure what to do or what to think,” Thompson said softly. “For a year after he died, I was in a haze. Mother forced me into doing adult things like ironing my clothes to go to school and ironing my siblings’ clothes too. I was responsible for everything after that. I had to get up at three in the morning to arrange transportation to school and take care of my siblings. I didn’t think about how tough it was. I really didn’t realize it until I was in my 20s.”

His father’s example of thinking through and solving problems had become a part of him. “I was thrown into the position of being responsible for everyone under me and to tell the truth, I handled it pretty well. I saw my mother get up and get things done and my father used to get up and get it done as well.”

Willie Hines, 56, sector head for Amphibious Integration in the Amphibious Warfare Branch, for the Chief of Naval Operations

“The other day, I cried from Benning Road to Eastern Market thinking about my father,” said Hines, a resident of Prince George’s County, Md. “It’s because Father’s Day is coming.”

Hines said he grew up in rural southern Louisiana in a town which had 8,000 people. He grew up in a shotgun house that had no running water or indoor plumbing.

“We didn’t have running water until I was 10 years old. It was definitely a motivator for me.” Hines said. “The first important lesson happened when I was 8 years old. I went with my father to the store. My father was 37 but he addressed a 26-year-old White boy in the store as sir and the White boy called my father by his first name. That took me immediately to a dark place.”

Hines said the young man tried to engage him in conversation and reached out to shake his hand, but he refused to respond or reciprocate.

“When we left, my father was angry. When we pulled off, he said, ‘I say yes sir so that your ass can eat, so that your brothers and sisters can eat and so your mother can eat,” he said. “He was upset with me. But when we got home, he explained to me what it was like for him living in southern Louisiana, overcoming challenges, fighting with White boys, being let go from jobs. He told me he wasn’t less than a man. He said he hoped I would understand. I took away from him what my journey would be like as a Black man, a father, someone’s husband and that I would have dignity in whatever I did.”

Another lesson learned over the entirety of his namesake’s life was his work ethic. And it’s clear that he’s not made of the stock his father was, Hines said.

Hines said he remembers his father coming home from one job for 15 mins, eating then laying on the floor before going off to another job.

“Man, he had so many jobs…He worked at Empire and would go for a week at a time in Plaquemine. He caught fish and cleaned fish and fileted them. He was a gas station attendant. Worked for city government in the Water and Gas department and worked for Dow Chemical as a contractor supporter. I remember I went to work with him when I was 15 to make some money and I fell out in that hot sun. We were out in the sun shoveling s--t. I fell the hell out in that sun, he put me in the shade and went back and continued working.”

Hines said his late father only had a 5^th-grade education but raised four boys in a tough, arbitrary world rife with racism, White privilege and entitlement.

“I grew up most of my life hating White people, but he taught me to be like water, to become fluid and taking the shape of whatever space/form that you’re put it in,” Hines said. “When you’re young you don’t know what’s on the other side of the mountain…I’m glad I had the chance to talk to Dad, share, and thank him for the things he did and taught me.”

Warren Shadd, CEO of Shadd Pianos & Keyboard, USA, the first African-American piano manufacturer in the world, musician and child prodigy

“Man, there are just so many lessons. It may take a minute or two,” Warren Shadd mused. He said his father, James M. Shadd, used to tell him, “While you’re out here bullsh---ing, certain little boys are studying day and night to be your boss. He was such an aggressive businessman.”

The elder Shadd was the exclusive piano tuner to the historic Howard Theater – the first African-American allowed to join the union – and as a child, Warren Shadd said he’d tag along.

“I saw Sarah Vaughn, Duke Ellington, Nancy Wilson, Jimmy Smith, Joe Williams, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, James Brown and other legendary performers,” Shadd recalled. “I was enamored with the pointed toe shoes and slick hair joints, the pageantry, strobe lights. There were great lessons I learned from my father from ages 4-11 such as understanding how to do stage performances, choreography. He also had me do things on piano, fix things such as changing bridal straps and changing hammers on piano actions, especially on old uprights. Those things subsequently are how I know how to build and rebuild pianos.”

Shadd comes from a family of musicians. His father was a pianist and drummer and had a big band; his aunt was acclaimed Jazz songstress Shirley Horne; his grandmother Marie was a pianist in a ragtime band; and his grandfather Gilbert designed and built a collapsible drum set. He is a first African-American piano manufacturer, the only Black person to build pianos in the world. He followed his father’s footsteps to become a second-generation piano tuner and technician, and he is a child prodigy and a third-generation musician.

His musical career was deeply influenced by his father who was a Jazz pianist and drummer in the Drum and Bugle Corps. Growing up, he said his aunt, Shirley Horne, and a gaggle of other musicians were always at the house.

Shadd said he is still in awe of his father’s prodigious work ethic.

“There were lots of lessons learned, such as seeing the discipline of my father,” he said. “He would go to his government work ‘til 5, come home, shower and shave and then he would go play with his band. He did this for 33 years. He would get only one or two hours sleep and then he’d be at it again. Given this, I couldn’t be a slacker.”

Gary Johnson, 61, worked in the intelligence community and served in the federal government, including in the White House as a staffer for the National Security Agency

“My father, Samuel Johnson, was the best man at my wedding. He told me so many things. But the thing that stood out was that all you really need in life is one good friend, and to be careful of all the others around you,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s Dad, a high school dropout, held several jobs, including working as a maintenance engineer at Metropolitan Police Department headquarters. The family car was a taxicab, he said.

“Another piece of advice he told me is that you do what you have to do in life and don’t cut corners. I have two boys and I quit my job to be a stay-at-home dad when they were 4 and 7 years old. I also started my own business, Black Men in America. I’m always trying to model appropriate behavior and teach young people.”

“I created ‘Daddy Academy’ because I had to teach these guys how to be men.”

As for family, his father taught him another crucial lesson: “The other thing was to not listen to your friends when you’re married and never embarrass your wife in public…Let me put it to you this way: In July I will have been married for 34 years - so I listened.”

 

June 11, 2019

Looking for Short Term Work? - 2020 Census May Want You
By Mark Hedin

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Ethnic Media Services

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Census Bureau has said it expects to hire about a half-million people nationwide to help in its all-important counting of everybody living in the United States, something the government has done every 10 years since 1790.

That half-million hiring target is a sizable decrease from the last census, in 2010, when the bureau was more dependent on shoe leather than silicon to get the work done. Instead of the 635,000 people hired in 2010 to knock on doors to fill out questionnaires with people who hadn’t gotten theirs to the mailbox, in 2020, for the first time, the government is counting on people filling out their forms online.

The half-million Census Bureau jobs are open to any U.S. citizen who can pass a background check, is at least 18 and possesses a Social Security number. In California, census officials project they will fill or already have filled about 12,800 positions.

“It’s a relatively fluid number, just a projection,” said Celeste Jimenez, assistant regional census manager based in Los Angeles. That’s because for “enumerators,” the biggest category of census workers, the number of people hired will depend on how many people didn’t complete their census questionnaires promptly next year, leading the Census Bureau to hire people who know their communities and languages and can go out into the field and come back with completed questionnaires from the non-responders.

This year, the Census Bureau is focused on setting up and staffing offices across the country and checking and updating the list of addresses used to send people reminders and instructions on filling out the 2020 Census questionnaire online when it is released in mid-March.

In California, where there will be 30 census offices up and down the state, the administrative jobs ꟷ mostly already filled or due to fill soon (https://census.gov/about/regions/los-angeles/jobs/california.html)  ꟷ are expected to last all the way through till the census gathering is completed next summer, at a pay scale ranging from $18 to $51 per hour, depending on the assignment and the location.

The next wave of hiring, for “listers” who will do the address verification work this year, is under way. Those jobs pay from $16.50 to $33 per hour and are expected to last only for a couple of months, including paid training.

To apply for these positions, go to https://2020census.gov/en/jobs.html. Yolanda Lazcano, recruiting coordinator for the “Los Angeles Region” ꟷ which covers the entire West Coast from California to Alaska, plus Hawaii, Idaho and Nevada ꟷ is hoping to recruit 11,000 applicants for approximately 3,500 lister positions in California.

Next year, after mailings are sent out with instructions on the legally required process of filling out the census questionnaires, the biggest wave of hiring will begin: for “field staff” or “enumerators” to do the “non-response follow-up” work that in large part consists of knocking on doors at addresses where residents didn’t file completed questionnaires.

These positions also will be filled through the Census Bureau website: https://2020census.gov/en/jobs.html.

The Census Bureau hopes that having people file their questionnaires online will yield billions of dollars in savings on the shoe leather it’s always needed to get those questionnaires completed. It expects at least half of the country’s more than 300 million people to take the online option.

Nonetheless, Lazcano expects that each of California’s 30 census offices will need about 300 enumerators.

In the past, with questionnaires submitted through snail mail, the cost per person of gathering census data had grown to $92 in 2010, from just $16 in 1970, as measured in constant dollars.

The ability to bridge language barriers will be invaluable, and in fact is a requirement for some of the managerial positions the Census Bureau still has open in California, such as this one for a Spanish speaker in Bakersfield (https://census.gov/about/census-careers/opportunities/positions/region-field/cfm/LARO-CFM-CA22.html) or this one for a Chinese-language speaker in the Contra Costa County city of Concord: (https://census.gov/about/census-careers/opportunities/positions/region-field/cfm/LARO-CFM-CA47.html). (The application period for those two positions closes June 14.)

The Census Bureau is touting its jobs as ideal for people just starting their working life who need to establish a record of reliability, for people who can use the frequently evening or weekend hours to supplement jobs they already have, or for retirees who would like to re-enter the workforce in a limited way.

As for the background checks, Lazcano said that hiring will be on a case by case basis, so having a felony conviction, for instance, isn’t necessarily a disqualifier.

Lazcano said bilingual census staff will be needed wherever 5% or more of a community is believed to primarily use another language.

Payday comes every week and people using their cars will be reimbursed. Although the jobs are in most cases temporary, the work occasionally can lead to a career.

(https://census.ca.gov/job-opportunities/). But the state will not be hiring enumerators or listers. That’s the federal Census Bureau’s responsibility.

June 10, 2019

 

Studies Indicate Reparations Must Include Costs of Predatory Lending 

 New University Studies Track High Costs of Discriminatory Housing

By Charlene Crowell

 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In recent years, the spate of homicides linked to questionable uses of deadly weapons and/or force, have prompted many activist organizations to call for racial reparations. From Trayvon Martin’s death in Florida, to Michael Brown’s in Missouri, Eric Garner’s in New York and many other deaths -- a chorus of calls for reparations has mounted, even attracting interest among presidential candidates.

 

While no amount of money could ever compensate for the loss of Black lives to violent deaths, a growing body of research is delving into the underlying causes for high poverty, low academic performance and -- lost wealth. Public policy institutes as well as university-based research from the University of California at Berkeley and Duke University are connecting America’s racial wealth gap to remaining discriminatory policies and predatory lending.

 

This unfortunate combination has plagued Black America over multiple decades. And a large part of that financial exploitation is due to more than 70 years of documented discriminatory housing.

 

The Road Not Taken: Housing and Criminal Justice 50 Years After the Kerner Commission Report, returns to the findings of the now-famous report commissioned by President Lyndon Johnson. In the summer of 1967, over 150 race-related riots occurred. After reviewing the 1968 report’s recommendations and comparing them to how few were ever enacted, the Haas Institute tracks the consequences of recommendations that were either ignored, diluted, or in a few cases pursued. Published by Berkeley’s Haas Institute for Fair and Inclusive Communities, it weaves connections between education, housing, criminal justice – or the lack thereof.

 

“Although in some respects racial equality has improved in the intervening years,” states the report, “in other respects today’s Black citizens remain sharply disadvantaged in the criminal justice system, as well as in neighborhood resources, employment, and education, in ways that seem barely distinguishable from those of 1968.”

 

In 1968, the Kerner Commission report found that in cities where riots occurred, nearly 40% of non-white residents lived in housing that was substandard, sometimes without full plumbing. Further, because Black families were not allowed to live wherever they could afford, financial exploitation occurred whether families were renting or buying a home.

 

As many banks and insurance companies redlined Black neighborhoods, access to federally-insured mortgages were extremely limited. At the same time, few banks loaned mortgages to Blacks either.This lack of access to credit created a ripe market for investors to sell or rent properties to Black families, usually in need of multiple needed repairs. Even so, the costs of these homes came at highly inflated prices.

 

In nearly all instances, home sales purchased “on contract” came with high down payments and higher interest rates than those in the general market. The result for many of these families was an eventual inability to make both the repairs and the high monthly cost of the contract. One late or missed payment led to evictions that again further drained dollars from consumers due to a lack of home equity. For the absentee owner, however, the property was free to sell again, as another round of predatory lending. As the exploitive costs continued, the only difference in a subsequent sale would be a home in even worse physical condition.

 

The Plunder of Black Wealth in Chicago: New Findings on the Lasting Toll of Predatory Housing Contracts, also published this May, substantiates recent calls for reparations, as it focuses on predatory housing contracts in Illinois’ largest city. Published by Duke University’s Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, this report analyzed over 50,000 documents of contract home sales on the Windy City’s South and West Sides and found disturbing costs of discriminatory housing in one of the nation’s largest cities, as well as one of the largest Black population centers in the nation. Among its key findings:

 

• During the 1950s and 1960s, 75-95% of Black families bought homes on contract;

 

• These families paid an average contract price that was 84% more than the homes were worth;

 

• Consumers purchasing these homes paid an additional $587 each month above the home’s fair market value;

 

• Lost Black Chicago wealth, due to this predatory lending ranged between $3.2-$4 billion.

 

“The curse of contract sales still reverberates through Chicago’s Black neighborhoods (and their urban counterparts nationwide,” states the Duke report, “and helps explain the vast wealth divide between Blacks and Whites.”

 

Now fast forward to the additional $2.2 trillion of lost wealth associated with the spillover costs from the foreclosure crisis of 2007-2012. During these years, 12.5 million homes went into foreclosure. Black consumers were often targeted for high-cost, unsustainable mortgages even when they qualified for cheaper ones. With mortgage characteristics like prepayment penalties and low teaser interest rates that later ballooned to frequent and eventually unaffordable adjustable interest rates, a second and even worse housing financial exploitation occurred.

 

A 2013 policy brief by the Center for Responsible Lending, found that consumers of color – mostly Black and Latinx – lost half of that figure, $1.1 trillion in home equity during the foreclosure crisis. These monies include households who managed to keep their homes but lost value due to nearby foreclosures. Households who lost their homes to foreclosures also suffered from plummeting credit scores that made future credit more costly. And families who managed to hold on to their homes lost equity and became upside down on their mortgages – owing more than the property is worth. Both types of experiences were widespread in neighborhoods of color.

 

In terms of lost household wealth, nationally foreclosures took $23,150. But for families of color, the household loss was nearly double -- $40,297.

 

CRL’s policy brief also states. “We do not include in our estimate the total loss in home equity that has resulted from the crisis (estimated at $7 trillion), the negative impact on local governments (in the form of lost tax revenue and increased costs of managing vacant and abandoned properties) or the non-financial spillover costs, such as increased crime, reduced school performance and neighborhood blight.”

 

As reparation proposals are discussed and debated, the sum of these financial tolls should rightly be a key part. While the Kerner Commission recommendations remain viable even in 2019, it will take an enormous display of public will for them to be embraced and put into action.

 

“The Kerner Report was the ‘road not taken’, but the road is still there,” noted john a. powell, the Hass Institute’s Director.

 

Charlene Crowell is the Communications Deputy Director with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..