May 19, 2019

Where is Harriet?
 By E. Faye Williams

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – I know it sounds like such a long time ago that Barack Obama was our dearly beloved President, but when he was President, we rejoiced in the fact that Harriet Tubman was finally going to be properly recognized at the national level for all the work she did under dangerous circumstances to perfect our union. Those who knew of her great work were overjoyed that her likeness was going to grace the $20 bill. We were so sure that planning for that to happen was already underway. Hearing nothing about that effort since President Obama left office, we are concerned. Is anyone planning to make it happen? I’ve been hearing things are at a standstill. Maybe you should ask your elected representatives to find out the status of the project. The person who can answer that is Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, but good luck in reaching his office! That’s why I’m suggesting asking your Member of Congress to raise the question for us.

Harriet was a freedom fighter and did all that she could to bring people out of slavery. She did all that she could to save our country from its evil ways toward Black and Native people. She was known as the Conductor of the Underground Railroad through her celebrated Civil War service as a soldier, spy and as a nurse. She risked her life to save others even when some were too afraid to help themselves. She had the kind of courage we so badly need today. She was a selfless leader and liberator. She cared so much for our people that even when she went through dangerous terrain to free herself, she continued to return to bring others out of slavery.

Harriet was the kind of strategist we need today, and Lord knows we need one who can get us through the current administration that seems to hate everybody and all that is good. Many of us who call ourselves leaders are weary from having to continue to fight the same battles for justice and equality.

Maulana Karenga described Harriet in a way that puts our people to shame who are always too tired, too busy and too uncaring to do liberation work. He described her as an “all-seasons soldier, abolitionist, freedom fighter, strategist, teacher, nurse, advocate of human, civil and women’s rights…. At the heart, center and core of the life, work and struggle of Harriet Tubman is her focus on freedom. It is from the outset an inclusive and indivisible freedom: the collective practice of self-determination in and for community. Thus, its’s not enough for her to free herself, for that to her was only an escape from the immediate bondage of the devilish enslaver and the radically evil system they built and maintained. And it wasn’t enough to have crossed a line that in most minds meant leaving the land of bondage and entering the land of ‘freedom’ and forgetting those left behind.” 

We must not allow this administration to prevent Harriet from receiving the honor she deserves. Rep. Elijah Cummings, Rep. John Katko and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen offered a bit of hope when they raised concern that the administration is stalling this historic effort and have urged them to follow through and expedite the redesign of the $20 bill. Meanwhile, they’ve introduced a bill to pass the Harriet Tubman Tribute Act of 2019. That’s fine, but we must take action to put her likeness on the $20 bill to reflect the contributions of all women, especially women of color, in perfecting our union. Call your Member of Congress today on 202/225-3121 to ask for the status of the $20 bill that is to carry Harriet Tubman’s likeness, replacing Andrew Jackson.

(E. Faye Williams is National President of the National Congress of Black Women and host of “Wake Up and Stay Woke” on WPFW-FM 89.3.) 

May 14, 2018

65 years after Brown v. Board of Education, We Risk Going Backward
By Jesse Jackson

NEWS ANALYSIS

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - This week marks the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the unanimous

Supreme Court decision that outlawed apartheid in America, declaring segregated

schools “inherently unequal” and unconstitutional. Today, the common sense of the Brown decision is under attack. For nearly three decades, our schools have been resegregating, reversing the progress made under Brown, reflecting the deep racial and economic segregation of our communities.

Worse, several of Donald Trump’s nominees to the federal courts refuse even to endorse Brown as unassailable law. As the United States grows more diverse, we run the risk of becoming more separate and more unequal.

The decision in Brown was and is compelling. Racially segregated schools were and are inherently separate and unequal. They also were and are unequal in resources. In affluent, largely white suburbs, public schools are new and modern, with advanced facilities and courses and good teachers. In low income, minority neighborhoods, schools tend to be old and dilapidated, with less experienced teachers, fewer resources and fewer advanced courses.

Research shows that integration works. Segregation injures the chances for achievement, college success, long-term employment and income of students of color.Integration raises those chances with no detriment to white students. Indeed, the experience of going to a diverse school better prepares students of all races for the world they will enter.

With neighborhoods largely segregated a legacy of racially restrictive laws and covenants, of bank and real estate red lining and more integration of public schools inevitably required busing. Busing, of course, is routine across America, a service to parents.

But opponents of integration used “forced busing” to rouse fears and hatred. The question was never about busing, it was about where the bus delivered the students.

When the federal courts, packed by judges appointed by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, retreated from desegregation orders, the schools began to resegregate. Now, as Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-VA), chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor concludes: “After four decades without federal support for desegregation, we are right back where we started,” with schools that are increasingly separate and unequal.

A recent report, “Harming our Common Future, America’s Segregated Schools 65 Years After Brown,” by the UCLA Civil Rights Project and the Pennsylvania State University Center for Education and Civil Rights, detailed the bleak reality. As the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss summarizes, “Over the past three decades, black students have been increasingly segregated in intensely segregated schools (defined as 90 to 100 percent nonwhite).”

By 2016, 40 percent of all black students were in segregated schools.The worst states? The “blue” states of New York, California, Illinois and Maryland, with New York the most segregated for blacks and California the most segregated for Latinos.

This isn’t just an urban problem: our suburbs are increasingly divided by race, with African-American suburban students attending schools that are three-fourths nonwhite,and white students in the same suburbs going to schools that are, on average, two-thirds White.

Charter schools — increasingly a profit - making venture rather than an educational one—are even more segregated than traditional public schools. Schools are segregated because our neighborhoods are segregated. Without residential integration and without metropolitan - wide integration policies, segregation will intensify, even as the country grows more diverse. Yet requirements that communities pursue residential integration remain unenforced and programs to subsidize scattered affordable housing are weak at best.

Now 65 years later, we face a stark choice: the promise of Brown or a country torn apart by racial tensions. Sadly, as Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, reports, Donald Trump’s nominees to the federal bench increasingly refuse to endorse Brown v. Board as unassailable law. The Republican Senate is about to confirm three of these judges to lifetime appointments. Like the Voting Rights Act, gutted by five right-wing justices in the Shelby case, Brown v. Board of Education itself may be at risk.

Sixty-five years later, with our country more diverse than ever, we must once again decide if we will be one nation, with liberty and justice for all. That cannot be left to right-wing judges or timorous politicians. It is time once more for citizens of conscience to call this nation back to its better angels.