Jan. 7, 2017

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “It is not an overstatement to say that the destiny of the entire human race depends on what is going on in America today. This is a staggering reality to the rest of the world; they must feel like passengers in a supersonic jetliner who are forced to watch helplessly while a passel of drunks, hypes, freaks, and madmen fight for the controls and the pilot's seat.” – Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice, 1968”

As we embark upon the new year of 2018, we step into the 50th anniversary of a year that shook the world, in particular the world of civil rights in the United States.

Perhaps the most momentous of these events are the assassinations of Martín Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Both of these tragic deaths hold personal significance for my family. My parents, civil rights activists, were personally acquainted with the Rev. King. My mother, Sybil Morial, and King were students together at Boston University while she pursued her Masters Degree in education and he his PhD in theology. In her memoir, Witness to Change, she writes of the moment on April 4 when she learned of his death:

I could hardly grasp the words: Martin Luther King has been shot to death in Memphis. Dutch was in the study. I called to him, and he came and stood by me. “Martin has been killed.” I could hardly say the words; I could hardly believe it. Not Martin. Dutch and I watched the gruesome footage in silence.

She recalled the words of his final speech, “I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

He knew it, but we didn’t. And we didn’t understand his death. I was inconsolable ... I said to Dutch, “Now that Martin is gone, what will become of the movement?” “It will go on. It must.”

My late father-in-law, Ross Miller, was a trauma surgeon and Kennedy campaigner who was present at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5. When the shots rang out, he bravely stepped forward and tried to save the lives of Kennedy and others who where wounded.

These deaths are but two of the civil rights milestones of that historic year half a century ago.

On February 8, the Orangeburg Massacre took place in South Carolina. Highway Patrol officers opened fire on a crowd of 200 student gathered on the campus of South Carolina State University to demonstrate against the continued segregation at the bowling alley. Three young men were killed and 27 other protesters were injured.

On April 11, amid continuing unrest triggered by King’s murder, President Lyndon Johnson signed one of the most significant laws of the era - the Civil Rights Act Of 1968, more commonly known as the Fair Housing Act.  The Act prohibited not only racial and religious discrimination in the sale or rental of a home, but also racially-motivated threats, intimidation or retaliation in relation to housing.

In a move often cited as inspiration by current-day activists, on October 2 Black Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos African-American athletes raised their arms in a black power salute after winning the gold and bronze medals in the men's 200 meters.

November 22 saw the first interracial kiss ever to air on television in the United States, between the characters Captain James Kirk and Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, on the program Star Trek.

In the coming year, we will observe many of these anniversaries in-depth. We begin the year reflection on a half-century of civil eight progress, and the progress that lies ahead.

Jan. 2, 2018

Emancipation Day Was Jan. 1: We Must Never Forget the Sacrifice and the Triumph
By Jesse Jackson Sr.

NEWS ANALYSIS

Emancipation Proclamation. Credit: Library of Congress

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - One hundred forty-five years ago on Jan. 1, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, helping to transform this country from a union of states into a nation, from a country stained by slavery into one moving at great cost closer to “liberty and justice for all.”

On Jan. 1, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, the Republican president, issued the proclamation on his own authority as commander-in-chief “in time of actual armed rebellion” against the United States. The emancipation was grounded on his wartime powers, as a “fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion.”

The emancipation did not end slavery in the United States. It applied only to the states still in rebellion, exempting the slave owning border states such as Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky that still had slaves. Lincoln was desperate to keep the border states from joining the South. Some abolitionists ridiculed him for this. “Where he has no power, Mr. Lincoln will set the negroes free, where he retains power we will consider them as slaves,” declared the London Times.

But the doubters did not understand the significance of the proclamation and its words. The president announced, “all persons held as slaves” in the states “in rebellion against the United States” are “forever free.” He called on the newly freed people to abstain from all violence and declared that they were eligible to be “received into the armed service of the United States.” The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass hailed it immediately as “an act of immense historic consequence.”

The proclamation, as James McPherson put it in “Battle Cry of Freedom,” “marked the transformation of a war to preserve the Union into a revolution to overthrow the old order.” This was extremely controversial, even in the North. There were violent protests in both the North and the South against the use of black troops. Black regiments were segregated, paid less than Whites and commanded by White officers.

Yet after years of battle, most Northerners would embrace anything that would help weaken the rebellion and hasten a victorious end to the war. Despite resistance, 179,000 black soldiers and nearly 10,000 black sailors bolstered Union forces through the end of the war. Victory, all now understood, would mean the abolition of slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation was hailed in England, ending all talk of recognizing (and aiding) the South.

The proclamation, a wartime act of necessity, turned the tide on slavery. It led directly to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that outlawed slavery, the 14th Amendment that guarantees equal protection under the law, the 15th Amendment that prohibits states from denying the right to vote on the basis of race or color. The war — America’s bloodiest conflict — continued to take its deadly toll for over two more years after the Emancipation Proclamation. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln described the “terrible war” as “the woe due to those” in both North and South for the “offence” of American slavery.

He called for “malice toward none” and “charity for all,” that we “bind up the nation’s wounds” to create a just and lasting peace. Forty-one days later he was assassinated. Reconstruction soon was reversed into segregation, enforced by Klan terrorism. It would take another century and a civil rights movement to fulfill the promise implicit in Lincoln’s proclamation. Few Americans take the time to read the Emancipation Proclamation, yet it is as central to the foundation of modern America as the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. The night before it was issued, there were vigils and church gatherings of people in anticipation.

This year, dozens of ministers have agreed to hold sessions to read and discuss the Emancipation Proclamation. This country paid a terrible price to remove the scourge of slavery and become one nation. At a time when some would drive us apart, it is worth remembering the sacrifice and the triumph.  

Jan. 7, 2018

The Lull
By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) — Certain characteristics are common to all living organisms.  The shared need for rest pops into mind most quickly.  Whether we label it rest, sleep, hibernation or dormancy, in the lifecycle of an organism, its health and well-being is only satisfied with time set aside for rejuvenation.

My studies and observations inform me that as the complexity of organisms increase, there is a corresponding complexity in their need for rest.  For example, examine the behavior of lower life forms versus the human animal.  Generally, lower life forms simply sleep when their need impacts.  Unless threatened, they will awaken and pursue outcomes that are more instinctive than not.  The simplicity and outcomes of their rest usually require no in-depth discussion.

Although the human animal will succumb to the need for sleep, its restfulness will be determined by a myriad of circumstances that include, but are not limited to: individual anxieties; physical threats; physical discomfort, and more.  Whatever our circumstance, rest is the absence of or a lull in the presence of stressors - the stressors that prevent us from allowing ourselves to experience a renewed state of peace and well-being.

Many who identify as my friends have called this year's holiday period a lull in their observation of the insane behaviors of #45.  Their need to remove immediate thoughts of the past eleven months and potential consequences from their consciousness has directed them impose a personal lull in the processing of current events.  I cannot help believing that this is the ultimate goal of #45 and his minions.  As I have stated numerous times before, I think it is in #45's plan to have us thinking in so many different directions that we can't see the truth of his actions.

As we embark on a new calendar year, I again encourage and admonish my readers to STAY WOKE and focus on #45's REAL intent for our lives and future of our nation.  Rather than tell you what I surmise his intent to be, I will ask several questions to which I want you to give serious and on-going consideration.  In the most honest manner possible, answer them for yourselves.  Discuss them with others and open a dialogue that results in the development of personal clarity:

1.  WHAT DOES OUR NATION GAIN WITH THE DESTRUCTION OF THE INSTITUTIONAL NORMS THAT GIVE DIRECTION TO OUR DAILY LIVES?

2.  WHAT BENEFITS ACCRUE TO OUR NATION WHEN #45 AND HIS LACKEYS DISTORT AND MISSHAPE THE FACTS WE USE TO CONSTRUCT OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE TRUTH?

3.  WHAT POSITIVE OUTCOMES CAN BE EXPECTED FROM DESTROYING PUBLIC FAITH IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM AND THOSE WHO ENFORCE THE LAW?

4.  CAN OUR NATION, DIVIDED RACIALLY, ETHNICALLY, RELIGIOUSLY AND BY OTHER FACTORS, THRIVE WHEN THE DIVISION IS ENGENDERED BY POLITICAL LEADERS?

Steve Bannon told the 2017 CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, that a major goal of #45 was "Deconstruction of the Administrative State."  He added, "...these cabinet appointees, they were selected for...deconstruction."  We see a Secretary of Education who has designs to eliminate public education.  The EPA Director has relaxed rules on dumping toxic waste and air and water quality.  The Attorney General has abandoned Civil and Voting Rights enforcement.  Every White House press conference challenges us to believe or not believe what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears.  #45 constantly condemns intelligence and law enforcement agencies that are not in lock-step with him.  And, #45 has engendered a resurgence of overt racism not seen in the last fifty years.

If nothing else, we must keep these questions in the forefront of our collective consciousness.  We mustn't let our need for rest lull us into inactivity.  Our Struggle continues and we will only succeed through action.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

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

Jan. 2, 2017

U.S. Senator-elect Doug Jones Hires a Black Chief of Staff
By Frederick H. Lowe

Dana Gresham

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com