To Be Equal: Celebrating 20 Years Of Upholding A Tradition As “The Voice Of Black America” by Marc H. Morial

To Be Equal

July 2, 2023

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “Show me a person who is full of prejudice, and I will show you a sick, unhappy, fearful individual who is not going anywhere and who is not growing. People don’t shut other people out; they fence themselves in.” – Whitney M. Young, Jr.

It was 20 years ago this week that I humbly assumed the responsibilities of leadership of the National Urban League -- one of which is the honor to author this very column, To Be Equal, established by the esteemed Whitney M. Young, Jr.

The column shares its name and takes its inspiration from Young’s first full-length book, published on New Year’s Day, 1964, in the wake of what Young called “the year of the Negro Revolution,” a year that saw thousands of children, marching through Birmingham, Alabama, attacked by police dogs and blasted with firehoses; the Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in in Jackson, Mississippi; Gov. George W. Wallace’s Stand in the Schoolhouse Door at the University of Alabama, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice, and the deadly bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church.

The first To Be Equal column to be published in New York’s Amsterdam News was headlined, “How Much Are Negroes Worth?” Young recounted his conversation with “a middle-aged white housewife” who declared she harbored no prejudice against Black Americans but could not comprehend the push to desegregate schools. “Her arguments against school integration, it turned out, were directed against sending her children to slum schools,” Young wrote. “But supposedly there is nothing wrong with sending Negro children to slum schools.”

The last To Be Equal column published under Young’s byline ran three weeks after his tragic March 11. 1971 drowning in Nigeria and consisted of excerpts of his various speeches. The last column he authored, also published after his death and headlined “Old Story, New Beginning,” concerned his efforts as part of a special commission tasked with updating the recommendations of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission.

“The Kerner report’s sound recommendations have been ignored, and concerned citizens are going to have to put some muscle into their principles if this nation is to survive,” Young wrote. “The Kerner Commission recommended, among other things, greater concern by private citizens, and it’s good to note that at a time when many private groups are simply throwing up their hands and refusing to become involved, at least one national organization has devised an imaginative new program.

That national organization was the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the imaginative new program was the National Committee for Commitment to Brotherhood, formed to support the work of the National Urban League, NAACP, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The first To Be Equal to be published after Young’s death was authored by Harold R. Sims, who served as the National Urban League’s acting executive director until the appointment of Vernon E. Jordan. Appropriately, it was a tribute to Young headlined “Nation Mourns A Great Leader.”

“Whitney Young was a man who transcended the boundaries of race, nationality, and ideology,” Sims wrote. “He was a man who formed a human bridge between the rich and the poor, the white and the black, the conservative and the liberal. Labels simply don’t apply to such a universal man.”

Each of Young’s successors has continued to publish To Be Equal, and it has been my honor to uphold the tradition as he intended it to be, “the voice of Black America.”

Freedom and Equal Justice Under the Law Requires Constant Struggle by Rev. Jesse Jackson

July 2, 2023

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - On Juneteenth 2023, the nation enjoyed the new national holiday celebrating the freedom of the slaves at the end of the Civil War. This week marks the 10-year anniversary of Shelby v. Holder and the impending decision of the Supreme Court on affirmative action in college admissions. The juxtaposition is a stark reminder that the struggle for equal justice for all is ongoing. Each step forward is met with furious reaction; each reconstruction with concerted efforts to roll back the progress. And today, we are once more in the midst of that reaction.

June 19, 1865, was the day that US Major General Gordon Granger declared that the Emancipation Proclamation, that went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863, had freed all the slaves in Texas — an estimated 250,000. The proclamation, a wartime measure, was limited: it applied only to those states still in rebellion. Lincoln always gave precedence to the survival of the union over the question of slavery. With the proclamation, slaves in states that were not in rebellion — like Delaware and Kentucky — remained in bondage. And the news was slow to travel to distant slave states like Texas, even after the surrender of the Confederate armies under Gen. Robert E. Lee. The proclamation took hold only as US troops extended their victory. It took the passage of the 13th Amendment to end slavery throughout the United States.

Needless to say, that profound reform was met with furious reaction. The plantation class in the southern states began a campaign of systematic violence to squelch Black freedom. The Ku Klux Klan, among others, spread the terror of lynching across the South. In the end, the federal government gave in. A political deal removed federal troops from the defeated Confederate states. A reactionary Supreme Court ratified “separate but equal” as constitutional. Segregation — legal apartheid — settled in across the South. Juneteenth marks not the triumph of equal justice, but a large step forward and the beginning of a new era of struggle.

One hundred years later, the civil rights movement rose up to demand equal justice. Blacks demanded the right to vote, and equal access to public accommodations. Finally, a Supreme Court ruled that segregation was a violation of the Constitution. With the leadership of Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King, the Congress passed legislation guaranteeing equal rights and the right to vote. Schools were ordered to integrate; public institutions were required to take affirmative action to ensure equal access and equal rights.

Then 10 years ago, the Supreme Court in the Shelby case, in a decision made by a slim majority of conservative justices, gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. This was one piece of a fierce reaction to the progress made. The Republican Party, beginning with Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy, grounded its revival on the politics of white resentment, abandoning its previous commitments to civil rights and voting rights. Today, Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nominee — compete to lead the reaction — what DeSantis now calls the “war on woke,” which has featured systematic efforts to suppress the vote, ban books, distort the teaching of history in public schools, and bring an end to affirmative action.

Once more a conservative majority on the Supreme Court is poised to rule on the next stage of the reaction — the responsibility of colleges to take affirmative action to ensure diversity in their student bodies. Having diverse student bodies — with students of different races, genders, religions, regions — is a self-evident benefit to education — and to the country. The claim is that this somehow destroys a “merit based” admissions process, but colleges all construct their student bodies, giving preference to alumni, to the wealthy, to the athletic, to those with special talents. It is preposterous to suggest that ensuring racial diversity is the one thing that discriminates against others.

What the freed slaves learned under segregation, what Blacks learned in the civil rights movement, what must be remembered today is that freedom and equal justice under the law requires constant struggle. The forces of privilege are always powerful. The reaction can always play on racial fears. We celebrate Juneteenth and Dr. King’s birthday as markers in that struggle, but not as the final victory. Another reaction is underway. To overcome it will require more education, more organizing, more struggle. We know from our history that progress is possible — but only if citizens of conscience are prepared to demand it.

American Exceptionalism Excludes Women By Julianne Malveaux

June 26, 2023

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Our United States of America loves to brag about our advanements. We are the biggest, the baest the most progressive and the most democratic. We believe that peple, no matter who they are, deserve a voice. We hae invaded other people’s countries to make that point. We beat ourselves against our chests to talk about our democracy, our exceptionalism. The data don’t bear us out.

The World Economic Forum says it will take 131 years. Internationally, to close the gender gap with economics, politics, STEM engagement and more. It ranks the so called exceptional united states as 46^th in gender parity, behind Norway and Iceland (1 and 2), the United Kingdom (15), France, Columbia, Switzerland, the Phillipines, and South Africa. These countries do better than ours becaue they have policies that support families, instead of penalizing them for simply existing. Our country took a step in the riht direction afrr COVID when we chose to provide unemployment benefits, child services, and mofr for challenged families. Now, we hae leaders wo would punish those who want to uphold families.

The gender pay gap bleeds over to the life gap. Women who don’t earn earnough can’t contribut eough to the candidaes of their choice. No matter what they think or feel, they cant support at the level of the predatory capitalist mn who have attempted to craft a world tha tallows them to rule. At the root of the gendr pay gap, there is an opporession that sidelines women’s voices. And some of the strange fruit of the root is the way many women buy into our own oppression.

As long as the American ecoomy is introducing great results, the inequity in threse resuls is hidden. GDP growth is robust, unempoymen trates are low, at the maco level all is good. down hre on the grund, not so much. Down hee on the ground too many are wondering what will happen next. Down here on the ground, low unemployment rates, coupled with low wages, mean that a robust labor market is not a robust pay check.

Thus, the myth of American exceipionalism is a story of illusion and delusion. Where is the exceptionalism for women, when a world body ranks us as 46^th, not in the top 3? When our wealth gap is greater than that in developing counries? When it is not just our economics but also our politics that sielines women? When we are content to accept a century before we can effect change?

Our nation truly cannot tout exceptoinalism if it dos not trickle down to women. We cant talk abot how grat we are unless our greateness is gender neutrtal. American exceitpioanlism is a lie if it does not lift all of us up. Exceptional for women? For women of color, especially Blak women? Exceptional for other Black people? Exceptional means special, outrageious, amazing. There is nothing about therse unied states that is exception, excpt our rhetoric.

Can we, somehow, get over ourselves? Can we shrug off the constraints of amerian excooptionalism to spak candidly about our flaws? Can we embrace our flws and manage them? Can we decide that American exceiponalsm does not serve women, Black folks, other marginalize peiole and then some.

There is an African saying that “women hold up half the sky”. Without they ways we hold it up, the sky would come crashing down on us. We hold up the sky but we are marginalized and it will take more than a century for us holding up half the sky, to get the equaity we deserve. As long as women are marginalized, our nation misss out on it purpose. And it’s not just womn, general, it’s Black women, Latinx women, Indienous women. It’s those who are marginalized by class.

American exceptionalism is a bold faced lie, a horrible illusion, when those who hold up the sky are sysmatically ignored.

Dr. Julianne Malveaux is an economist, author and Dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at Cal State LA. Juliannemalveaux.com

Why Were Military Bases Named After Failed Confederates? By David W. Marshall

June 19, 2023

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - At first glance, the numbers don’t make sense. At one point there was approximately 700 Confederate monuments spread throughout 31 states and the District of Columbia. Yet, there were only 11 states which formed the Confederate States of America.

Historians have noted that most of the Confederate memorials were not built with the intention of honoring fallen soldiers, but to continue advancing the ideas behind White supremacy. James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, says the increase in statues and monuments was clearly meant to send a message.

“These statues were meant to create legitimate garb for White supremacy, Grossman said. “Why would you put a statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson in 1948 in Baltimore?” The Civil War was a culture war which ended in 1865 on the battlefield, but the war has never ended in the hearts and minds of those sympathetic to the Confederate cause.

In other words, the spirit behind the war still rages on. While slavery and Reconstruction, as distinct eras of our long and turbulent history ended over a century ago, the abolishment of slavery never ended racial hatred. Nor did the end of Reconstruction stop the unwillingness to grant people of color full rights as American citizens and as human beings.

The belief in White supremacy and the never-ending desire to defend it is not limited to the boundaries of former Confederate states. Nor is it constrained by time. There are five major institutions in the United States: the family, education, government, economic and religion. The connection from our past history to our current events shows that each institution has found their unique way of preserving, defending, and advancing the Confederate cause of White supremacy. This would also include our U.S. Army.

Organizations such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy were influential in having roughly 1,500 symbols of Confederacy placed in public spaces. These organizations totally ignored the act of treason when forces from the Confederate States of America attacked the United States military garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, thereby starting the American Civil War.

Having major U.S. military installations in the South named after Confederate officers who supported the Fort Sumter attack is not only an insult to people of color, but to all true Americans. Nine southern Army bases were named after treasonous Confederate officers who fought against the Unites States Army to preserve slavery and White supremacy. The bases include: Fort Polk, Louisiana; Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia; Fort Lee, Virginia; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Gordon, Georgia; Fort Rucker, Alabama; Fort Pickett, Virginia; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and Fort Benning, Georgia.

Rather than covering White supremacy in ways to make it appear legitimate, it should always to be exposed in the manner it is presented along with highlighting its true intent. Fort Benning was named after Henry Benning who, in a speech inviting Virginia to join the Confederacy, said Georgia had chosen to secede because “a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of slavery,” warning that if slavery was abolished, “then we will have Black governors, Black legislatures, Black juries, Black everything.”

His comments were met with laughter, but Benning’s fears were materialized. It is only fitting that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, as the first Black to hold the highest civilian position in the Department of Defense, ordered changing the name of Fort Benning following a U.S. Army commission recommendation. Needless to say, not everyone is happy and the renaming issue is now being exploited to score political points.

Former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as GOP presidential candidates, understand the message behind honoring failed Confederates. Both men condemned the renaming of Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty and have vowed to restore the name as president. While Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are well known Confederate generals, I never heard of Confederate General Braxton Bragg until now. The reason behind his obscurity and insignificance comes from the fact that he was simply not very good. He was known for his incompetence, quarreling with key subordinates and losing major battles. As one historian describes, Bragg “had done as much as any Confederate general to lose the war.” Bragg was known for his ruthless style so much that one of his own soldiers tried to kill him.

Fort Bragg is one of the largest military complexes in the world, and sadly it was named after a Confederate slave-owner who historians called the South’s worst and most hated general. His incompetence didn’t matter nor did his cruelty, lack of leadership and betrayal to his country. As long as he and other Confederate officers proved to be staunch defenders and heroes of White supremacy, they were deemed worthy to be recognized by statues, monuments, schools, roads and even military installations. The culture war continues. Despite the name change to Fort Liberty, people vow to keep calling it Fort Bragg. We should be prepared that people will continue to passionately embrace the Confederate cause while rewarding those in positions of power despite their cruelty, incompetence and national betrayal.

David W. Marshall is founder of the faith based organization, TRB: The Reconciled Body, and author of the book “God Bless Our Divided America”. He can be reached at www.davidwmarshallauthor.com

Juneteenth: Not A Moment Of Liberation, But An Ongoing Journey Of Persistence And Hope by Marc H. Morial

To Be Equal June 17, 2023

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.” - W.E.B. Du Bois

Just a dozen years after Major General Gordon Granger’s Order Number 3 declared “an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves,” the last federal troops withdrew from former Confederate states. Their withdrawal ushered in a near-century of legally-enforced racial segregation, white supremacist terrorism, and second-class citizenship for Black Americans.

Still, the celebration of Granger’s order, the holiday we celebrate on Monday as Juneteenth, endured.

The Great Migrations spread the celebration of Juneteenth from Texas to the rest of the nation. The June 19, 1968, Solidarity Day celebration – organized by Greater Washington Urban League Executive Director Sterling Tucker -- during the Poor People’s March on Washington may have played a role in popularizing Juneteenth.

“My theory is that these delegates for the summer took that idea of the celebration back to their respective communities,“ the late African American folklorist William Wiggins Jr. said. “Because it was used to close the Poor Peoples Campaign, the idea was taken back by different participants in that march, and it took root around the country. It has taken on a life of its own.”

Given this history, Juneteenth represents not a moment of liberation, but an ongoing journey of persistence and hope.

As President Biden said when he signed the bill designating Juneteenth as a federal holiday, “Emancipation of enslaved Black Americans didn’t mark the end of America’s work to deliver on the promise of equality; it only marked the beginning.”

The white supremacists who rejected the promise of equality during the Reconstruction era called their movement “Redemption” and referred to themselves as “Redeemers.” They undermined their political opponents and suppressed Black voters through a campaign of violence and intimidation.

The white supremacists who reject the promise of equality today are banning books, distorting history, and clamping down on the mere suggestion of systemic racism and inequities.

Among the nearly 700 measures that state, local and federal policy makers have introduced over the last two years was a little-discussed provision that would ban Illinois schools from “promoting the concept” that “meritocracy” and “a hard work ethic” are tools of oppression. In effect, the provision would stifle any suggestion that racial gaps in wealth or income, educational attainment, home ownership, civic engagement, or political representation are the result of anything other than merit and hard work.

Distortion of history is a familiar tool of white supremacy, from the “Lost Cause” mythology that Black Americans had been content – even fortunate -- to live under a system of oppression, to the “anti-woke” mythology that the system of oppression doesn’t exist.

Historian Elizabeth Hayes Turner described the earliest celebrations of Juneteenth as “a joyful retort” to “displays of Confederate glorification” and “valorization of the Lost Cause."

Today, Juneteenth is our own “joyful retort” to the modern-day Lost Causers seeking to distort history and deny the presence of systemic and institutional racism.

Big Chance to Cut Climate Pollution from Big Trucks By Ben Jealous

June 17, 2023

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The interstates built in the 1950s and 1960s killed the vitality of the communities where people of color and the poor lived, from Overtown in Miami to the Hill District in Pittsburgh to the South and West Sides of Chicago. The disruption and segregation of those communities happened by design.

The harm continues to this day for the residents who remain in those neighborhoods. Because the highways run through their backyards, those people are at point blank range for the pollution from the millions of vehicles driving the interstates burning fossil fuels.

Transportation accounts for more than a quarter of the climate damaging gases this country makes, more than any other sector. An estimated 72 million Americans live in close proximity to trucking routes and they are disproportionately people of color or living with low incomes.

We have an unprecedented chance to change this longstanding disregard for so many Americans’ health and well-being, and we must grab that chance if we want to reduce vehicle pollution enough to reach our goal of cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030.

While heavy duty vehicles – think delivery trucks, garbage trucks, buses, and tractor trailer trucks – are only 6 percent of the vehicles in the United States, they produce a third of the climate pollution from transportation. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed new rules that would sharply reduce the carbon dioxide that heavy duty vehicles will be allowed to belch in their exhaust and pave the way for more trucks and buses that have no emissions.

The comment period for these new rules ended Friday, so the EPA needs to finalize them quickly. As we saw last year with other common sense air pollution standards for trucks that the EPA adopted, special interests and the politicians they support will oppose any regulations that have a chance to avert climate disaster. The EPA must stand up for communities most damaged by truck and bus pollution.

The stricter rules should add momentum to changes already happening in that part of the economy. Manufacturers like Daimler, Ford, Navistar, and Volvo have pledged to increase the number of zero emission trucks they sell and big volume shippers including Amazon, FedEx, and Walmart have said they will cut their air pollution.

The available models of zero emission trucks are up more than a quarter from three years ago, and their cost is expected to drop 40 percent in the next four years. Seventeen states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have agreed to a plant to boost zero emission truck sales with an initial target of 30 percent by 2030.

Beyond the new federal rules, we have extraordinary incentives that are part of the historic infrastructure and clean energy packages that President Biden and Congress approved over the last two years. We’ve pledged to spend $1 billion by 2031 on zero emission heavy duty trucks and another $5 billion by 2026 on clean school buses. We must have the bigger stick of tougher regulation, but for the first time we have meaningful carrots from these incentives.

We’ve finally as a nation started to acknowledge the scope of the change it will take to preserve our fragile and already damaged planet. But the interest in the status quo is strong among those who gain from it like Big Oil companies reporting record billions in profits. We can’t turn our attention away now, assuming that recognizing the problem will undoubtedly lead to the right actions to address it.

Sixty years ago, neighborhoods in Manhattan, Washington and New Orleans fought back successfully against being divided and paved over by interstates. Finishing the job of ending the pollution from those highways’ traffic will take that same commitment on our part.

Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club, the nation’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization. He is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” published in January.