March 28, 2023
By Hazel Trice Edney

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and other emergency management officials speak with a survivor of the devastating tornadoes that impacted Rolling Fork, Mississippi. (PHOTO:FEMA)

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A couple of mornings of national news focus on the tornado that killed at least 26 people in 80 percent Black Rolling Fork, Mississippi and many news agencies have now  turned to another mass shooting in Nashville. Competing news interests have faded from the people of Rolling Fork, but they are receiving help from politicians, private and public disaster assistance agencies, churches and kind-hearted volunteers.

“Friend – a series of violent tornadoes have devastated Mississippi and neighboring areas: destroying homes, damaging businesses, and tragically taking at least 26 lives,” the NAACP wrote in a mass email appealing for help from its members. “The NAACP is urgently responding to Mississippi’s state of emergency. We’re coordinating relief efforts with the Red Cross, Congressman Bennie G. Thompson, and local branch leaders so that every Mississippian gets the support they need ASAP. Your donation, no matter how large or small, will help our teams on the ground provide shelter, food, water, and other essentials to NAACP members and others who are suffering.

According to Abre’ Conner, NAACP director of Environmental and Climate Justice, author of the email, “In some areas, the destruction evokes horrifying memories of record-breaking storms like 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and 2011’s Tuscaloosa–Birmingham tornado.”

He concludes, “A rapid and robust response is essential. With hundreds of Americans displaced and untold damage done, we’re calling on our nationwide NAACP community to come together and support the families and individuals suffering from this disaster.”

Emergency responders are on the scene, but the rare tornado which was on the ground for more than an hour, destroyed homes, businesses and cars beyond imagination. According to initial reports, Diesel trucks were flipped over and cars were picked up and dropped on top of buildings and debris piled as high as 20 feet tall. Rolling fork, Silver City, Black Hawk and Winona were hit hardest by the EF-4 tornado that tour through the area late Friday night, March 24.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves issued a state of emergency for all the counties affected by the severe weather, describing the state as “devastated.” President Biden has approved escalated response to that declaration. Rolling Fork Mayor, who led the governor on a tour of the destruction, expressed appreciation for those who are sending help and expressed hope amidst the tragedy. 

"On behalf of this entire community, first we want to say thank you. We want to thank you for all you’re doing for the families of this community and making sure the city of Rolling Fork will come back bigger and better than ever before," Walker told the media. "Now, I'm having to meet my families, those who have lost loved ones, and help them make it through this traumatic time," Walker said. "But you know what? I'm a firm believer that when you do right, right will follow you. And I think that I've been prepared to take on this task and I am going to do it in the name of the mayor of Rolling Fork and the man that I am and the man that God has made me to be."

March 21, 2023
By Barrington M. Salmon

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis took the opportunity March 17 to firmly connect the National Newspaper Publishers Association to its past, present, and future during his keynote speech at the NNPA Black Press Week luncheon, “State of the Black Press”.

Black newspapers in America have been the trusted voice for the Black community, speaking truth to power, since the founding of Freedom’s Journal in 1827. Serving as the voice for the oppressed and subjugated, Chavis said Black newspapers have long fought an unrelenting struggle for African-Americans to breathe free.

“Black business development, international and institution building and business in the Black community in the past 196 years was developed and led by Black church leaders and owners, publishers and other entrepreneurs who well knew that they couldn’t depend solely or exclusively on the benevolence, charity and generosity of slave masters or former slave masters to advance the cause of freedom, justice, equal and equity,” said Chavis, a veteran Civil Rights leader and president/CEO of NNPA, also known as the Black Press of America. “With that foundation and understanding of the evolution of the Black Press we’re much better able to explain and understand why the Black Press in 2023 remains the trusted voice of Black America. Truth is something you cannot buy; trust is something you cannot buy or fabricate.”

Chavis acknowledged the multi-faceted challenges the Black Press faces, including battling for advertising dollars from White businesses and corporations, being overlooked and ignored by the political and media establishments and adapting and adjusting to a rapidly changing journalistic environment. But Chavis declared that the Black Press is “strong, resilient, and getting stronger day-by-day by God’s grace and God’s love.”

He invoked the legacy of John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish who were the founding editors of Freedom’s Journal as the first African-American-owned and operated newspaper published in the United States. Chavis announced several initiatives which includes NNPA officials traveling around the country in 2023 in a series of “Black church, Black press, and Black family revivals,” he said.

“I’m not preaching but it’s revival time. It’s revival time,” he said. “We’re going to promote nationwide voter registration and massive Get Out the Vote efforts. The antidote to voter suppression is massive voter turnout. In spite of the oppression.”

NNPA will also launch a National James Baldwin and Fannie Lou Hamer Drop the Pen Tour, Chavis announced.

“This is with a focus on Gen Z and Millennials. You’ve heard of ‘drop the mic?’ This is ‘drop the pen,’ Chavis said. “We’re raising up a new generation of journalist/freedom fighters and journalist/entrepreneurs …”

Chavis said, during his keynote address at the National Press Club in downtown Washington, DC, that the future of NNPA and the Black Press is rooted as much in the future as it is in its past.

As the Black Press faces its technology future, Chavis said he treasures Howard University’s School of Communications, and “all our HBCUs.” Although the rise of digital media has upended the traditional business model of media outlets and newspapers, Black-owned publications have had to deal with the same challenges, he said.

“In growing digital age, the Black Press of America in 2023 is advancing, making steady progress to engage the necessary technological innovations to ensure the future visibility and sustainability of the Black Press for the next 100 years,” Chavis said. “I know some are concerned about Artificial Intelligence. They think you can go and put something on the phone, and it gives you and answer. But we need to question who programmed the algorithms of the Artificial Intelligence. Really, it’s not AI, it’s intelligence that has been tampered with by programmers.”

There are new pressures from competition from mainstream media and other spaces but even with all that, the importance of the Black Press is as vital to African-Americans as any time in the past, particularly with the White backlash against Black progress and pervasive racial animus that is fueled by the former president, his MAGA supporters and leaders of the Republican Party.

Claiming its place in the digital world means NNPA embracing and acting on smart, innovative, forward-thinking plans and strategies, Chavis asserted.

“We have to get into programming, coding, develop the ways and means to transmit truth that stands on the truth because it’s not a Black truth, or a white truth, it’s just truth. That’s where the Black Press comes in. Any progress we have made in America benefits all of us,” Chavis explained.

He announced the launch of NNPA World News, an app that aggregates stories about Black people in the United States, Africa, the Caribbean, Brazil and the rest of Latin, South and Central America and Asia. Chavis instructed the lunch crowd to whip out their phones, go to the App store and download what he described as a revolutionary and game-changing tool in the dissemination of Black news. Meanwhile, he thanked the Global News Initiative and Carol Davis, CEO of CDAG Construction, for assisting NNPA bridge the digital divide.

Chavis, who was one of the key organizers of the Million Man March in 1996, questioned whether the standard tools used to gauge customer engagement and interest are meaningful and valid within the African-American context and hinted at the need to develop a new paradigm.

“Thus today, when measurements or metrics are used to evaluate the impact of engagement and the value of media penetration in particular media markets or communities, advertising agencies in particular, unfortunately do not know really know how to evaluate or estimate what it is that impacts Black America and other communities of color,” Chavis said. “It’s not just a numbers game, not just who has more click-baits or media impressions. It is a question first, of trust. Can we trust what’s being reported? Can we trust the source of information that’s being distributed?

Whether NNPA and the Black Press use traditional journalism or newer digital artforms to spread the news, one thing is clear Chavis said: the Black Press has earned the trust of the Black community and Black news publications and journalists will always be on the forefront of the struggle for human rights, dignity.

“Trust, especially for African Americans, is genuine and authentic. You cannot fake it. Trust, for us, is deeply rooted in the social fabric of our families and the communities in which we serve and represent,” said Chavis, who was a member of the Wilmington Ten and served almost 10 years in prison after being arrested and falsely convicted of conspiracy and arson. “In this contemporary era of what is referred to today as fake news and so-called alternate truth, there is no room in our consciousness for fakeness, half-truths and sleepiness over so-called ideological wokeness, as defined today by the misguided, hateful rhetoric of the politically ambitious, as represented by the governor of Florida.”

He said,  “In other words, if it’s not the truth, it’s a lie. Truth is what will set you free …”

In a time when those in rightwing, Republican, and libertarian political spaces are embracing fascist, racist and authoritarian leaders, the NNPA and the Black Press stand as beacons of truth, unapologetic critics and chroniclers of an unvarnished reality unmoved by attempts to “revise American history for the false notion of social comfort and political expediency or political advantage.”

“… You cannot ban the truth. Dr. King would constantly remind us at the height of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and the 1960s that truth crushed to earth would certainly always rise again,” Chavis intoned. “And you cannot ban the trust that the Black Press has earned from our commitments. The value of the Black Press in 2023 is that we continue to maintain the sacred, deeply rooted trust of the community in which we work and serve. That’s the reason why we proudly again assert that the Black Press of America in 2023 – via the NNPA – is the trusted voice of Black America.”

Feb. 14, 2023
By Julianne Malveaux

NEWS ANALYSIS

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - African American history was celebrated at this year's Super Bowl. It was the first time that two Black quarterbacks faced off against each other. John Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles and Patrick Mahomes played a good game, and the Chiefs won narrowly. The NFL is more than 100 years old. What took so long for it to reach this milestone?

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell trumpeted the historic moment when he gave a press conference on “The State of the League." When asked why it took so long, he replied, "there are probably a variety of reasons, probably none of them good." The NFL has a history of virulent racism. According to Dave Zirin, an MSNBC columnist, "only eight Black men have ever quarterbacked in a Superbowl." And Colin Kaepernick, the courageous African American who took a knee to protest racism, has not yet found a place in the NFL.

The Black National Anthem, rousingly delivered by Sheryl Lee Ralph, was featured live at the Superbowl for the first time. The anthem was written 123 years ago by James Weldon Johnson, an NAACP official, and teacher. It was a family affair, with his brother John Rosamond Johnson composing the music to accompany the song. The Superbowl was, in some ways, a celebration of African American History.  But Black folks can’t celebrate our history with others offering resistance and backlash.

The conservative Congresswoman Lauren Boebert twitted, "America only has ONE NATIONAL ANTHEM. Why is the NFL trying to divide us by playing multiple? Do football, not wokeness” Boebert and her sidekick Marjorie Taylor Green shamelessly and thoughtlessly carry the right-wing agenda, operating publicly without a shred of dignity. At the State of the Union Address last week, Taylor Green, clad in all white, including a white fur collar, should have worn a matching hat (or hood) to make herself clear.

Boebart’s Twitter racism generated nearly 92,000 likes, more than 10,000 retweets, and much attention. Her backlash to Black excellence is similar to the conservative backlash to truth and Black history. According to Sarah Schwartz of Education Week, 44 states have “introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching "critical race theory" or limit how teachers can discuss racism. Eighteen states, of this writing, have passed this pernicious legislation.

More than 1600 books have been banned in 138 school districts in 33 states so far, as the momentum for ignorance is increasing. Among the banned books – Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved; and Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaiden's Tale. This book-banning, history-ignoring climate has some teachers frightened and intimidated. In some school districts, teachers who mention race can be fined or incarcerated. One teacher covered her books with plain book covers so students couldn't see titles that might be perceived as "offensive ."Many of the banned books have themes that deal with sex and sexuality. All the books apparently tell a truth that conservatives can't handle.

Legislators are passing laws that are vague and silly. In South Carolina, a proposed law would prevent teachers from discussing anything that creates "discomfort, guilty, or anguish on the basis of political belief ."Florida has passed similar laws, and its governor has been a lead proponent in limiting teacher speech around race matters. Sarah Huckabee, the new governor of Arkansas, said she didn't want students being taught to "hate their country." But many African Americans, despite the oppression our people have experienced, love our country

It is no surprise that Florida's governor has attacked an Advanced Placement (AP) Black Studies class and says it cannot be taught in Florida public schools. He has created a national controversy and prevaricated his interactions with the College Board, the organization that developed the class. His lies are not unusual. It reflects the lies he'd like teachers to tell when he waters down American history.

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