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SNCC at 50
In July 1962, I went with two students from Jackson, Mississippi’s sit-in movement to a little town in Sunflower County called Ruleville. We’d only been in town for a couple of days when, while walking down a dirt road, a car stopped in front of us. A white man holding a pistol ordered us into…
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Party Lines Blur in the Florida Senate Race
The national struggle for the soul of the Republican Party has now moved to Florida’s Senate race. And the battleground reveals with great clarity the mounting conflict between party loyalty, ideology and ambition. This April, Florida’s Republican governor, Charlie Crist, found himself unexpectedly trailing former Republican House Speaker Marco Rubio for his party’s nomination as…
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Freedom Schools Live to Teach Reading
Some 1,400 black college students left Knoxville, Tenn., last week to serve as ”freedom school” teachers. The goal: to ignite excitement about reading among inner city and rural elementary, middle school and high school students. Since 1995 more than 10,000 black students trained by the Children’s Defense Fund have participated in one of the least-known…
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Shirley Sherrod, Hypocrisy and Political Expediency
Let me say—putting all my cards on the table so to speak—that the Sherrods are my friends. Charles Sherrod, the husband of the now controversial, fired USDA official Shirley Sherrod, was one of the founders and leaders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). We worked together. So what are we looking at? Well, the…
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The Voting Rights Act, 45 Years Later
“A few years ago, people could not vote simply because of the color of their skin,” recalls Georgia Congressman John Lewis, former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). “You had to count the number of jelly beans in a jar or the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. Black teachers and…
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Florida's Elections and the Shifting Terrain of Black Politics
Florida’s Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, now the “independent” U.S. Senate candidate, trails the official Republican candidate, Marco Rubio, by six points, and political forecasters in the state now predict a Rubio victory. Kendrick Meek, the state’s first black Democratic candidate, is given no chance at all. Every poll since Labor Day has him with no…
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Standing on My Sisters' Shoulders
Women are almost invisible in civil rights storytelling, and hardly present in the civil rights canon. What they did and who they were in the Southern freedom movement of the 1960s remains barely understood. Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, a new book by 52 women who worked for the…
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The Media Missed the Point in the Tucson Shootings
The media (and political) furor over whether or not the rhetoric of right-wing extremists fostered the attempted assassination of Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords almost completely missed the point. And what’s the point? Well, let me quote this observation by 1960s black militant H. Rap Brown: “Violence is as American as apple pie.” I won’t…
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Hunting for Muslim Radicals
On Thursday, Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, will hold hearings on the Muslim community and terrorism. “The main goal is to show the extent of radicalization within the Muslim-American community, how dangerous that is, how serious that is,” he said on Fox television Sunday. “It’s a real…
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The Shakedown at the King Monument
The builders of the new Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial at the National Mall had to pay $761,160 for the right to use King’s words and images, according to financial documents obtained by the Associated Press. The money went to Intellectual Properties Management Inc. — a foundation controlled by King’s youngest son, Dexter. Another…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
