Hundreds Celebrate as Nation’s African American Museum Nears Completion by Savannah Harris

Nov. 22, 2015

Hundreds Celebrate as Nation’s African American Museum Nears Completion
By Savannah Harris

Live performances and remarks by officials preceded a video display, projected on the facade of the building still under construction, showcasing the ratification of the 13th Amendment, the end of the Civil War and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Photo: Cheriss May, Howard University News Service

Lonnie Bunch, welcomes guests to the museum's special ceremony. Photo: Cheriss May, Howard University News Service

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Howard University News Service

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Hundreds of people gathered at an inaugural event for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture Monday night here to celebrate the completion of the museum’s exterior in a year that marks three significant moments in American history.

This year marks the 150^th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the ratification of the 13^th Amendment that abolished slavery, as well as the 50^th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act—events that greatly shifted the trajectory of African Americans.

The museum’s founding director, Lonnie Bunch, launched the night of celebration, which included music, a dramatic visual arts display, remembrances and congratulations.

“Tonight we commemorate the meaning of freedom, a term that was never abstract to African Americans,” Bunch said.

African Americans’ triumphs through centuries of harsh discrimination were honored and remembered during the celebration, including the premiere of a seven-minute projection depicting over 150 years of African American progress, from Harriet Tubman to the Black Lives Matter movement.

The visual piece, “Commemorate and Celebrate Freedom” by filmmaker Stanley Nelson, bounced 3-D images of the nation’s black heroes—Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, the Rev. Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X—off the New Orleans-inspired ironwork exterior, tipping a hat to black craftsmen of another time.

The projection will run Tuesday and Wednesday evening from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

“This building is homage to the fact that so much of our history is hidden in plain sight,” Bunch said.

When the building opens officially in the fall of 2016, it will include a wide array of black memorabilia and history, including Harriet Tubman’s hymnal, a lace shaw give to her by Queen Victoria and family photographs of her funeral; a Jim Crow railroad car, Chuck Berry’s red Cadillac convertible, remnants from a slave ship found off the coast of South Africa, works of celebrated black artist and a Tuskegee Airmen training plan, a slave cabin, Emmett Till’s casket and Muhammad Ali’s protective boxing gear.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser linked the history of black Washingtonians to the history of African Americans, citing cultural contributors like composer, pianist and band leader Duke Ellington, singer and composer Marvin Gaye and actress and singer Pearl Bailey, all of whom were born and raised in the nation’s capital.

Washington Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton called the District of Columbia, “a crucible of African American history.”

After a reading of Margaret Walker’s “For My People,” scored by Darin Atwater and performed by the Soulful Symphony, gospel singer Be Be Winans sang “America America” and “Stand” alongside the symphony and a gospel choir.

Winans said seeing the exterior of the museum was a special moment for him. “As I stood in front, I felt like I was standing in the middle of my past and my future,” he said.

Longtime activist and national radio personality Joe Madison said the museum has significance far beyond Washington. “The message is very clear,” he said. “This is not just a museum for African Americans, but for the world, and we are part of the world.”

African Man Who Died Shielding Girl from Terrorist Gunfire in Paris Called 'a Hero'

Nov. 17, 2015

African Man Who Died Shielding Girl from Terrorist Gunfire in Paris Called 'a Hero'
As Obama promises unity with France, witnesses say diverse victims reveal 'we are all in the same boat'

africanhero
L. Boumbas

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global Information Network

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Parisian friends of a Good Samaritan who died shielding a girl from a terrorist’s bullet, was called a hero by his friends for his selfless bravery.

Ludovic Boumbas was dining with friends at the Paris cafe “Le Belle Equipe” on Friday, Nov. 13, after work. Tunisian-born Hodda Saadi, the restaurant manager, was celebrating her birthday with her sister, Halima. Suddenly an assassin burst into the cafe and began to fire.

Boumbas, an IT engineer born in Congo Brazzaville, threw himself in the direction of the bullets to save Hodda. She survived a short time, but later died. Ludovic, known as “Ludo,” was killed instantly as did Halima who was on a one week visit to Paris before returning to Dakar, Senegal, where she lived.

Khaled Saadi, brother of Hodda and Halima, with his brother Abdallah, were working that night at the cafe. Khaled fell to the floor for safety. When he got up, the sight of the dead was shattering.

In an online video, he described the calamity. “They killed everybody. My two sisters, my friends and my sisters’ friends that were there… It lasted a minute in total, but it was very long. I left the restaurant and they were all dead or suffering.”

Abdallah spoke: “We are all inhabitants of this planet… we need to help each other…There were Black people, Arabic people, Jewish people there, all of us were hit. So we are all in the same boat.”

This cross-cultural unity was also reflected in the response by President Barack Obama this week.

"France is our oldest ally. The French people have stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States time and again. And we want to be very clear that we stand together with them in the fight against terrorism and extremism," Obama said. "The American people draw strength from the French people’s commitment to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. We are reminded in this time of tragedy that the bonds of liberté and égalité and fraternité are not only values that the French people care so deeply about, but they are values that we share. And those values are going to endure far beyond any act of terrorism or the hateful vision of those who perpetrated the crimes this evening.We’re going to do whatever it takes to work with the French people and with nations around the world to bring these terrorists to justice, and to go after any terrorist networks that go after our people."

According to reports, overwhelmed medics had to abandon the most seriously injured so they could attend to those who had a chance. Most recent reports are that 129 people were killed and 352 were injured, 99 of which were critical injuries.

Pictures of Ludo and many other victims are posted on the Twitter site #rechercheParis. The diversity of multicultural, multiethnic Paris is clearly apparent in the many young faces.

Black Groups Expected Court's Immigration Decision by Frederick H. Lowe

Nov. 15, 2015

Black Groups Expected Court's Immigration Decision
They also don’t like what Obama has done

By Frederick H. Lowe

Black Alliance For Just Immigration protests.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the NorthStarNewsToday.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Two groups said they expected a negative court ruling with respect to President Obama’s immigration reform plan. However, they added they weren’t happy with the president’s efforts to improve the lives of this country’s black immigrants.

The two groups, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and the Black Immigration Network, both based in New York, made their comments in a joint statement following a U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling Monday that overturned President Barack Obama’s executive order shielding more than 4 million immigrants from deportation. In a 2-1 decision, the court ruled President Obama exceeded his authority. The decision sided with 26 states opposed to President Obama’s plan.

The Obama Administration said it would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court decides to review the ruling, a decision would be issued after President Obama leaves office in January 2017.

The 5th Circuit Court’s decision mostly stops the Deferred Action for Parents, designed to help foreign-born parents of U.S. citizens or permanent residents. The program, scheduled to begin in May, would grant three-year work permits to more than 4 million adults who have lived in the United States illegally for at least five years.

Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, hailed the decision. He has maintained that 11 million undocumented immigrants should immediately be removed from the country. His opponent Dr. Ben Carson, however, has questioned how Trump would round up undocumented immigrants. Trump has not offered any specifics.

For the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and the Black Immigration Network, the decision was expected because the 5th Circuit is a conservative court.

“It is definitely no surprise that the Fifth Circuit court, which has previously been hostile to immigrants, issued a ruling in favor of 26 hostile states, against an administration that is also hostile towards millions of immigrants,”said Opai Tometi, executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter.

In addition, the groups have both asserted that black immigrant families have not benefited from Obama’s immigration policies.

“Though black immigrants are only about 10% of the foreign-born population in the U.S., they are detained and deported at five times the rate of their presence in the undocumented immigrant community,” Tometi said.

Tometi added: “Black immigrant families — even those eligible for relief under Obama’s quick fixes — may have yet to reap the benefits of the administration’s relief measures as black immigrants often remain overlooked and excluded from the immigration discourse. We continue to call on the Obama administration to work with Congress to end hostility toward immigrants by providing true relief to families, and eliminating immigrant detention, local ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) collaboration programs like the Priority Enforcement Program and mass deportations,” Tometi said.

A record 3.8 million black immigrants now live in the United States, more than four times the number who lived here in 1980, according to Pew Research Center, which analyzed U.S. Census Department data. Most Americans, however, think of immigrants as being Hispanic, which may or may not be case for black immigrants.

In 1980, there were 3.1 million black immigrants in the U.S. In 1990, the number climbed to 4.9 million and in 2000, the number reached 6.7 million, reported Pew on Thursday. These latest figures are from 2013.

Black immigrants now account for 8.7% of the nation’s black population, but the Census Bureau projects that by 2060, 16.5% of U.S. blacks will be immigrants.

Black immigrants come from all parts of the world, but more than half are from the Caribbean, with Jamaica being the largest source of immigrants, followed by Haiti.

Black immigration is also fueled by countries in sub-Saharan Africa, led by Nigeria and Ethiopia.

Moral Monday Leader Encourage Voters to the Polls for Equality

Nov. 15, 2015

Moral Monday Leader Encourage Voters to the Polls for Equality
Barber says Democrats don't always do what they should with power either

barbernaacp

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “This is no time for foolishness,” said the Rev. William J. Barber II in an energizing message at the Richmond, Va. Branch NAACP’s Freedom Fund Awards Gala Nov. 7.

Dr. Barber urged the audience of about 300 people to fight against inequities in Virginia as they have since 2013 with regular and massive Moral Monday demonstrations in North Carolina — by protesting the General Assembly’s refusal to expand Medicaid health care to hundred of thousands of uninsured Virginians and by “mobilizing and marching our voters to the polls.”

He called the 20 ministers in attendance to the foot of the stage at Second Baptist Church of South Richmond and challenged them to plan “the first civil disobedience” to push Virginia to expand Medicaid.

“In such a time in this country where the Constitution says there is equal protection under the law, too many people are sniffing Koch — what’s being put out by the conservative Koch brothers — and are drunk on the poison of the Tea Party,” Dr. Barber said.

The 52-year-old pastor and president of the North Carolina NAACP also serves on the board of the national NAACP. He has worked tirelessly, though unsuccessfully, against rollbacks in voting rights in North Carolina that affect African-Americans and communities of color.

He said the NAACP has a mission to educate people about the inequities and injustices perpetrated in communities across the South, including inequitable funding for education, a lack of health care for all, unfairness in the criminal justice system and policies such as refusing to raise the minimum wage that are anti-labor and anti-poor people.

He said while African-Americans are disproportionately affected in many cases, large numbers of white people also are harmed by the decades-long strategies designed to pit black people and white people against one another.

“It’s more than the Republican Party,” he continued. “It’s extremists. The Democrats don’t do what they should when they have the power. And the Republicans do what they shouldn’t when they get the power.

“When race trumps common sense, it’s no time for foolishness.”

Fed's Hiring Practices Void of Diversity, Says Rep. Maxine Waters By James Wright

Nov. 15, 2015

Fed's Hiring Practices Void of Diversity, Says Rep. Maxine Waters

By James Wright

watersofficial

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - U.S. Representative Maxine Waters recently took the federal government’s financial services agencies to task for not promoting racial and ethnic diversity in their employment ranks.

On Nov. 5, Waters, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, along with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Hispanic and Asian- Pacific Islanders caucuses, commented on “The Dodd-Frank Act Five Years Later: Diversity in the Financial Service Agencies” report. The document criticized seven financial services agencies for not implementing the equal employment opportunity portions of Dodd-Frank, the 2010 law that mandated Wall Street and other financial firms improve their practices regarding consumer protection.

“I am disappointed to find that, more than five years after the enactment of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act and the Dodd- Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that included provisions intended to promote workforce and supplier diversity and inclusion, the federal financial services agencies have largely failed to improve on these critical matters,” Rep Waters said at a press conference on the report. “As communities of color continue to face an insurmountable wealth gap and as African- American unemployment remains stagnant at 9.2 percent, our nation cannot afford to have a federal government that is out of touch with the needs of racial and ethnic minorities and women and their daily financial challenges.”

The report was compiled by the Democratic staff members of Waters’ committee and focused on the hiring practices, especially of senior management, from 2011-2013 of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Reserve Board (FRB), Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).

The report concludes that minorities and women remain underrepresented in the workforce of the agencies in a manner that is out of proportion to their percentages of the American population, minorities and women are significantly underrepresented at the level of senior management, and Black employees generally receive lower performance management ratings than White employees.

For example, the report showed that the agency with the highest percentages of Whites in senior management is the SEC, with 88 percent, and it drops off significantly with Hispanics constituting only five percent at that level, followed by Blacks with four percent and three percent Asian. The study also shows that the agencies with the highest level of Black percentage in senior managers are the FDIC and OCC, with 12 percent each. “As this country’s population is increasingly becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, it is well past time for these agencies to move beyond paying lip service to diversity efforts and instead fully embrace diversity and inclusion policies and practices as vital to achieving their missions by adopting sensible recommendations included in the report,”
Waters said.

She was joined at the press conference by Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and CBC members Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Al Green (D-Texas), Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) and Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio). Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Norma Torres (D-Calif.) represented the Asian-Pacific Islander and Hispanic caucuses, respectively.

The members of the three caucuses, known as the Tri-Caucus on Capitol Hill with 19 percent of all House members in their ranks, said they want the agencies to fully comply with federal laws regarding diversity, and to insure allegations of discrimination lodged by agency employees are fairly investigated. They are also calling for an update on the progress of diversity hiring in four years.

“The gross underrepresentation of minorities, women, and African Americans in their workplaces and senior management positions is alarming,” Butterfield said. “The CBC encourages each of the agencies audited as part of this committee report to address our concerns expeditiously to ensure diversity representation and equal opportunity for all eligible employees and qualified applications.” In response to the dreary numbers of hiring practices for minorities and women in federal agencies, a spokesperson from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission told the AFRO, by email, on Nov. 10, “While the number of minorities and women in supervisory and managerial positions at the SEC is increasing, we are actively working on initiatives to enhance diversity.” The representative said that one of the Office of Women and Minorities, under the SEC, is working to formalize internal policies and procedures to guide the agency’s diversity efforts and programmatic activities. Other federal agencies similarly told the AFRO that they too are in pursuing to make their practices and proced men and minorities.