Dec. 11, 2016

By Rosemary Eng

Viola Desmond

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Nine years before Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a standing White person, a Black Nova Scotian woman, Viola Desmond, was dragged to jail by police for sitting in the Whites-only section of a movie theater.

Now 70 years later, the Black beautician who defied the movie theater law in Nova Scotia will be the face on Canada’s $10 banknote starting in 2018, the Bank of Canada, the country’s central bank, announced December 8.

Desmond, a successful businesswoman, was jailed 30 days for her act of defiance, convicted and fined. Her court case was the first-known legal challenge to racial segregation brought forth by a black woman in Canada.

At the Bank of Canada announcement, Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau said Viola Desmond’s story of courage, strength and determination “reminds all of us that big change can start with moments of dignity and bravery.”  Desmond’s case eventually led to the abolition in 1954 of Nova Scotia segregation laws.

Desmond studied at Madam C. J. Walker's School in New York, a school started by entrepreneur and civil rights activist Sarah Breedlove who developed hair care products for African-Americans women. Desmond established Vi’s Studio of Beauty Culture in Halifax, the Desmond School of Beauty Culture and developed her own line of beauty products.

After her arrest, she moved to Montreal. We don’t know if it was because of the notoriety or if she suffered threats, commented Craig Smith, president of the Black Cultural Society of Nova Scotia.

Desmond was unsuccessful in appealing her conviction before her death in 1965.

Her story has not sat well with the Nova Scotian Black community. Desmond’s story was brought to the attention of Mayann Elizabeth Francis, a Nova Scotian who in 2006 became the province’s Black lieutenant governor.  By 2010 Francis assured that Desmond received a posthumous free pardon from the Nova Scotia government.

Desmond will become the first woman to be on the face of a Canadian banknote besides the reigning monarch.

The banknote announcement has sparked new interest in Canadian Black history, said Russell Grosse, executive director of African Nova Scotian Museum.

The struggle of Black Nova Scotians, who make up about 3 percent of the provincial population, is similar to that of African-Americans. Many are marginalized and unemployed.

Smith said the original Black population was settled on rural land, well outside the city limits. They survived by working in agriculture.

Smith, who is also a sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) watch command in Halifax, said today’s young Blacks are involved with drugs and guns, though not at the same level as in the U. S.

They need positive role models, said Grosse. On President Barack Obama’s inauguration day, “it was a big thing here. All across the community, everyone was watching.”

Martin Luther King Day is celebrated in Nova Scotia. Smith calls it the “trickle up effect,” when Black Canadians are encouraged by the accomplishments of African- Americans.

Blacks in Canada

Of a total of some 2000 slaves who entered Canada in 1783-4, more than half went to the Atlantic Provinces, with Nova Scotia receiving the largest number.

The treatment of slaves in Canada was just as brutal as in the United States. They were punished for disobeying their masters, whipped, tortured or sometimes killed. Eventually laws changed to make killing slaves as serious a crime as killing a freedman.

A big jump in the Canadian Black population started with increased immigration from the Caribbean and Africa.

By 1981 the Black population in Canada jumped substantially to 239,500 and then more than doubled to 662,200 by the 2001 census.

To view a film clip on Viola Desmond. https://www.historicacanada.ca/content/heritage-minutes/viola-desmond

To view the Black Cultural Center for Nova Scotia’s presentation on the history of Blacks in Canada. http://www.bccnsweb.com/web/our-history/slavery/

Dec. 11, 2016

Reality Check

US Economic Foundation Built on the Enslavement of Africa People
By A. Peter Bailey

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - I have spent some 14 hours in the recently opened National Museum of African American Culture and History (NMAAHC) and still have only seen one-half of its historical content. My plan is to spend a few more hours checking things out before writing a column focusing on it.

However, it is not too early for saluting the museum for doing something that I have never seen done in an American public institution. That is to state in two different narratives the real truth about the economic foundation of the continent of North American (aka USA). The first narrative states without qualification, “The Atlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration of people in world history. Profits from the sale of enslaved human beings and their labor laid the foundation for Western Europe, the Caribbean and the Americas..”

Personally, I would have said “enslaved Africans,” but the point is clear.

A second narrative emphasized “Slavery’s success built the economic foundation of American in two generations. Cotton produced by enslaved people transformed the fledgling nation into a world power and leader in global trade…”

Again, I would have said “enslaved Africans,” but again this is a harsh truth about this country’s economic wealth that is not taught in American history courses throughout the country. My position is re-enforced by comments made by Professor Craig Steven Wilder in his must-read book, “Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities,” which provides comprehensive details on how many of this country’s major colleges and universities were launch and financed by wealth obtained from enslaving African people.

In a chapter entitled, “Cotton Comes to Harvard,” Professor Wilder explains the connection in two different passages. The first noted:

“The northern elite was cleansing the stain of human slavery from the story of its prosperity. Some of the best-educated people in the nation were revising history to romanticize and sanitize their relationship to bondage. They erased their pasts as masters or reimagined their slaves as a lower order of adopted family—trusted, faithful, and beloved servants whom they had treated with dignity and human sympathy. They recast their enslavement of African into a tale of decorative servitude.”

The second noted:

The great families distanced themselves rhetorically from the planters of the West Indies and the South—despite numerous shared surnames—by claiming histories as merchants, investors, and insurers, and then elevating underwriting, finance, and trade to high arts. Slave traders became Atlantic merchants, and the biggest firms received the greatest praise. It was an age of euphemism, populated with fragile lies, half-truths, and deflections.

If most white northerners found it difficult to tolerate antislavery zealots pointing fingers at the South, they also dreaded the abolitionists’ critique of the social order of New England and the Mid-Atlantic. The shipping, finance, and manufacturing economies of New England and the Mid-Atlantic remained firmly tied to human slavery long after the retreat of slaveholding in the northern states.”

I would have called them “powerful” families rather than great ones. But Professor Wilder’s comment and the narratives from the museum shows clearly how the history of the United States has been falsified and deceitful. We owe NMAAHC and Professor Wilder for the proper documentation of that history.

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..

Blackonomics

Stop Drinking the Fool Aid
By James Clingman

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “Negroes … sometimes choose their own leaders but unfortunately they are too often the wrong kind.  Negroes do not readily follow persons with constructive programs.  Almost any sort of exciting appeal or trivial matter presented to them may receive immediate attention … and liberal support.” - Carter G. Woodson

The term “Drinking the Kool-Aid” has been taken to a new level among many of our people.  In many circles we have gotten so intellectually lazy that we will believe just about anything from anyone, that is, as long as we don’t have to do anything except trumpet a utopian message, and if we never have to sacrifice for the collective benefit of one another.   The Kool-Aid cliché, as far as I am concerned, has now become “Fool-Aid,” and Black folks are gulping it down by the barrel.

There are so-called Black leaders who, despite their unseemly tactics, their portrayals of themselves as “honest” brokers, and their shadowy deal-making and sellout prowess, seem to be exempt from exposure by our people.  While Black folks have always had to deal with these scoundrels, we have been reluctant to call them out – to expose them for what they really are.

On the other hand, we have leaders among us who are totally dedicated to the collective economic advancement of African Americans.  These are the ones who are usually sacrificed by Black people -- thrown out because they are a threat to the establishment or because they are “too Black.”  That frightens some people and, sadly, we play into that fear by participating in the demise of the very people who would help pull us out of our economic problems.

We willingly drink the Fool-Aid of those who are only interested in themselves, only to end up in the same place or even further behind than we were before we took the first sip.  That must change.  But it won’t change simply because it ought to change; it will only change when we change our behavior and our penchant for choosing the “wrong kind” of leader.

I have seen folks stroll through our communities and be held up as paragons of Black liberation, all while filling their pockets with the filthy lucre from their sell-out deals with the powers that be.    They have their hands in every deal, every program, every transaction, and every scenario that involves Black people, making certain that they will be the first in line to be paid.  They rob the community and blame that same community for not moving forward.  How can we move forward with crooks like these among us?

Many people, Black, White, and otherwise have drunk the Fool-Aid of folks like Jim Jones in Guyana, David Koresh in Waco, Texas, Marshall Applewhite in San Diego (Hale Bopp Comet), Warren Jeffs in Eldorado, Texas (Yearning for Zion Ranch), and many other cult figures.  We have been mesmerized and captivated by individual preachers, politicians, and leaders who have absolutely no interest in anything other than their own selfish interests and advancement—usually economic.

So, while the “Drinking the Kool-Aid” cliché has become sort of comical and caricature-oriented in its connotation, “Drinking the Fool-Aid” gives a much more enlightened description of the dangers that lurk in actualizing the phrase.

I contend that Black folks are far too intelligent to be reduced to a bunch of voluntary “Fool-Aid” drinkers, lapping up every word spoken by anyone, without doing our homework and making sure that what they say is true and illustrated by their subsequent actions.  In other words, don’t believe everything you hear or read on the internet.  Don’t be a sycophant for a shyster or a puppet for a prevaricator.  Hold their feet to the fire after they speak, and use your own discernment to ascertain the wealth of their words—or the lack thereof.

As Woodson intimated, Black folks have authentic leaders who have “constructive programs” but who are seldom followed.  Unfortunately, we have more folks drinking the Fool-Aid of hucksters than we have those who refuse it or at least read the label before they are willing to take a drink. But to borrow a verse from Matthew 7:13 "…For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.”

Think for yourself, and be willing to accept the consequences thereof.  Fool-Aid may taste good, but it will make you very sick.

Dec. 11, 2016

We May Never Know
By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When I ran for the US Congress in Louisiana's former 8th District, the late Congressman Mickey Leland spoke of the "audacity" of my endeavor.  At that time, Louisiana had at least one majority Black district, but no members of Congress who were Black.

I didn't run in a majority Black district, but it was majority Democratic and I ran against a hard-right Republican.  Known as “Gillis Long’s District,” Black people always voted in reliable numbers.  I worked hard, breezed through the primary, and ran 20 points ahead of my opponent in the last poll before the General Election.  Since Black people have a history of being loyal to the Democratic Party, one would've thought I had a lock on the Democratic vote.  After all, I represented Democratic values and, considering the alternative, the color of my skin should've made no difference.

Because of traditional voter suppression, we requested election monitoring.  We knew any election without it would be unfair.  After all, this was Louisiana, well-known for political shenanigans.  In an unprecedented response, then US Attorney General Meese’s office announced that Louisiana wouldn't be monitored.  We correctly took that as a sign of trouble—but we persevered.

As suspected, there was a “mysterious” computer breakdown and the resulting heartbreaking message that, instead of victory for me, the race was lost by about ½ of one-percent!  No one I know believed I lost—but that is what the history books will show.

So, on November 8, 2016, I knew what Hillary Clinton and her supporters went through.  There’s no honest way she could have or should have lost.  As my 5 year old nephew said at the time of my 'loss,' “You did win; they cheated you!!”  In the face of her loss, it may not comfort Hillary or her supporters to know she won the national popular vote, but in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania and, definitely, in Michigan, we have enough reason to believe she also won the electoral vote.  Losses in those states aren't without the smell of something 'fishy' going on.

Michigan officials admit that a majority of Detroit’s voting machines broke-down on Election Day!  I remember a similar announcement when I ran for Congress.  These breakdowns were in the heart of the Black voting area.  Since most Blacks voted for Secretary Clinton, and there’s no dispute that 94% of Black women voted for her, those lost votes were hers!

Most have moved on with their lives, but with circumstances like those in Michigan, it's difficult for us to believe a “fair election" occurred.  Although some use these outcomes as justification to support an "our vote doesn't really matter" attitude, but when we reflect upon the sacrifices of our ancestors to gain this right, we are compelled to vote.  In the future, we MUST work to vote in even greater numbers and volunteer to work in the voting process.  We MUST, especially call-out crooked dealers at every level.  As the late Senator Ted Kennedy said, “The cause endures; the work goes on; and the dream will never die.”

Take a lesson from our brothers and sisters at Standing Rock.  They persevered through the cold, water hoses, vicious dogs and all forms of discouragement—but they ultimately gained a victory for the moment, brought about by their unity. They remain in place knowing the Trump Administration could snatch that victory away.

My neighbor, Amy, reminds us of the words of Margaret Mead who said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." We may never know who really won, but let us keep our hand on the plow—always looking forward. Freedom requires eternal vigilance.

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