#NAACP National Convention

[don-lichterman]

Atlantic City hosts 113th NAACP National Convention

Atlantic City hosts 113th NAACP National Convention

Atlantic City hosts 113th NAACP National Convention

[ausetkmt]

CHRONOLOGY OF AMERICAN RACE RIOTS AND RACIAL VIOLENCE p.3

1911

National Urban League founded. 1914 Marcus Garvey establishes the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). November William Monroe Trotter confronts Woodrow Wilson in the White House over the president’s support for segregation in federal offices. 1915 Debut of the D.W. Griffith film, The Birth of a Nation. Failure of African American lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department for compensation for labor rendered under slavery. CHRONOLOGY OF AMERICAN RACE RIOTS AND RACIAL VIOLENCE lvii November William J. Simmons refounds the Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain in Georgia. 1916 Madison Grant publishes The Passing of the Great Race, detailing his drastic prescription—including eugenics—to save the white race from being overwhelmed by ‘‘darker races.’’ May Jesse Washington, a seventeen-year-old illiterate black farm hand, is lynched in Waco, Texas. 1917 May–July East St. Louis, Illinois, riots. August Houston, Texas, mutiny of black soldiers at Camp Logan. 1918 After protesting the lynching of her husband, Mary Turner, then eight months pregnant, is herself brutally lynched in Valdosta, Georgia. April Congressman Leonidas C. Dyer of Missouri introduces an anti-lynching bill into Congress (the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill is defeated in 1922). July Chester and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, riots. 1919 NAACP publishes Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States: 1889–1918 by Martha Gruening and Helen Boardman. May Charleston, South Carolina, riot. Summer Known as ‘‘Red Summer’’ because of the great number of people killed in various race riots around the country. July Longview, Texas, riot. Publication of Claude McKay’s sonnet, ‘‘If We Must Die.’’ Chicago, Illinois, riot. Washington, D.C., riot. August Knoxville, Tennessee, riot. September Omaha, Nebraska, riot. September– October Elaine, Arkansas, riot. 1920 Founding of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, a major interracial reform organization in the South. 1921 April Tulsa, Oklahoma, riot. 1922 Anti-Lynching Crusaders are formed to educate Americans about lynching and work for its elimination.

Chicago Commission on Race Relations issues its influential report on the 1919 Chicago riots. lviii CHRONOLOGY OF AMERICAN RACE RIOTS AND RACIAL VIOLENCE 1923 January Rosewood, Florida, riot. February U.S. Supreme Court decision in Moore v. Dempsey leads to eventual release of twelve African Americans in Arkansas who were convicted in perfunctory mobdominated trials of killing five whites during the Elaine, Arkansas, riots of 1919. 1929 Publication of Walter White’s Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch. 1930 Nation of Islam (Black Muslims) is founded in Detroit, Michigan, by W.D. Fard.

Formation of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, the first organization of white women opposed to lynching. October Sainte Genevieve, Missouri, riot. 1931 Scottsboro Case occurs in Alabama; the case comprises a series of trials arising outof allegations that nine African American youths raped two white girls in Scottsboro, Alabama. 1932 Supreme Court renders a decision in Powell v. Alabama, a case related to the Scottsboro, Alabama, incident of 1931. 1934 Elijah Muhammad assumes leadership of the Nation of Islam. 1935 March Harlem, New York, riot. 1936 First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt addresses the annual conventions of both the NAACP and National Urban League. 1939 Billie Holiday’s first performance of the anti-lynching song Strange Fruit occurs at Cafe´ Society, New York’s only integrated nightclub. 1941 Supreme Court decision in Mitchell v. United States spurs integration of first-class railway carriages. 1942 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is founded as the Committee of Racial Equality. February Double V Campaign is launched to popularize the idea that blacks should fight for freedom abroad to win freedom at home. 1943 May Mobile, Alabama, riot. June Beaumont, Texas, riot. June ‘‘Zoot Suit’’ riots in Los Angeles, California. July Detroit, Michigan, riot. August New York City (Harlem) riot. 1944 Publication of Karl Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy.

[lboogie1906]

Jefferson August Beaver (May 20, 1908 - September 8, 1991) banker, businessman, local politician, and civil rights activist, was born in Warren, Arkansas Rev. Robert Jefferson Beaver, a minister with the AME Church and Ethel Jordan. The family resided in Monticello, Arkansas before moving to San Francisco in 1911, and he spent the rest of his life in the Bay Area. He received a BA from UC Berkeley and pursued post-graduate studies at Springfield College. He spent one year at Golden Gate University Law School. He married Fanny May Ansley (1938) and the couple had three children. A fourth child died of tuberculosis in infancy.

He was known for his civil rights activism in San Francisco’s Black community, particularly in the campaigns for public housing and fair employment opportunities. He held the presidency of the NAACP San Francisco branch and the Bay Area Urban League in the mid-1950s. He was appointed to the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission in 1956 and became its president. He was a member of the San Francisco Council for Civic Unity which campaigned for a fair housing ordinance in the 1940s and 1950s.

He served on the California Committee for Fair Employment Practices and held the position of Special Deputy Commissioner of Corporations for the State of California. He was a member of the US Department of Commerce trade missions to the Soviet Union in 1959 and Nigeria in 1961 to report on business opportunities in each country. He was a California delegate to the DNC in Chicago in 1956 which nominated Adlai Stevenson for President, and the Convention in Los Angeles in 1960 which nominated John F. Kennedy for the Presidency.

He incorporated civil rights activism into his work as a banker by co-founding Transbay Federal Savings and Loan in 1949 and Golden Gate National Bank in 1961. He was editor of the San Francisco Reporter, the city’s African American newspaper. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha and Sigma Pi Phi Fraternities. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #alphaphialpha

[dwellordream]

“During the 1960s, events sometimes happened so quickly that they almost seemed to outpace the speed of sound. In the fall of 1961 coeducational colleges still had what were called parietal rules regulating the few short periods of the week when men could be in women's dorms and vice versa. Boys wore ties and button-down shirts and spotted “whiffle” haircuts (so short that if you rubbed your hand over the bristles you could generate static electricity); girls wore skirts, starched blouses, knee socks, and ponytails. No one would think of calling a university president a derogatory name or breaking into official files.

By 1969, in contrast, rules had become synonymous with fascism. Male and female students lived with each other in the same dormitory room; a new sexual revolution had swept the country, accompanied by widespread experimentation with drugs. At the legendary rock festival at Woodstock in 1969, thousands of people gathered in open fields to hear their favorite musicians, celebrating not only a triumphant counterculture but brazenly flaunting conventional, middle-class behavior. Boys and girls wore jeans patched with fragments of the American flag, smoking marijuana was commonplace, and hair reached the lower backs of men and women alike. Policemen were routinely called “pigs” by some of the best and brightest college students, and one university president, whose office was occupied by demonstrators, received a manifesto telling him: “up against the wall, mother-fucker.” It was quite a decade.

…As early as the 1940s, when the Carnegie Foundation issued its clarion call, authored by the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, to end racial discrimination, sociologists and lawyers had commented that women were examples of an “American Dilemma.” Like black people, they were members of a society committed to liberty and personal freedom, yet treated as separate and different because of a shared physical characteristic. The contradiction was profound, striking at the heart of the integrity of the American Creed. Only when all citizens were freed from such categorical discrimination could the American dream be considered workable.

Pauli Murray, a black lawyer who had pioneered the effort to get blacks admitted to Southern law schools in the 1930s, zeroed in on the connection between race and sex in her work for the Kennedy Commission on the Status of Women. Like black civil rights activists, she declared, women should prosecute their case for freedom by going to court and demanding that they be given equal protection under the laws, a right conferred by the 14th Amendment when in 1867 it sought to ensure the legal standing of the newly freed slaves by defining their citizenship rights. At the time Congress had inserted the word “male” in front of “citizen,” temporarily caving in to those who still wanted to exclude women from fundamental rights, such as voting. But the 19th Amendment had altered that pattern when it recognized women’s right to vote, and now, Murray argued, women should insist on carrying their case forward on the basis of the civil rights they enjoyed with all citizens under the clause of the 14th Amendment that declared, “No State shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

…With the formation of the National Organization for Women in the fall of 1966, America’s women’s rights activists had an organization comparable to the NAACP, ready to fight through the media, the courts, and the Congress for the same rights for women that the NAACP sought for blacks. NOW focused on an “equal partnership of the sexes” in job opportunities, education, household responsibilities, and government. Betty Friedan and her allies pressured President Johnson to include women in his affirmative action policies, which were designed to hasten recruitment of minorities to decent jobs, and to appoint feminists to administrative and judicial officers. NOW endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment and made reform of abortion laws a national priority.

Equally important was the connection made by some young women between the treatment they received within the civil rights movement itself and the treatment blacks received from the larger society. Most of the young people in the early civil rights movement were black, but a significant minority were white, many of them women, including Sondra Cason (later Casey Hayden) from the Faith and Life community in Austin, Texas, and Mary King, daughter of a Protestant minister. Many of the younger activists joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which created an atmosphere in which independent thinking and social criticism could flourish.

….At a time when a new sexual revolution was just getting underway, the old rules and regulations about whom you slept with and after how long no longer seemed so clear. This was compounded by the realization that the biggest social taboo of all--interracial sex--was one of the most suspect and oppressive of all those rules and regulations. If the goal of the movement was a truly beloved community, why not extend that to sexual interaction? And how better to show that you meant what you said about integration than to sleep with someone of the other race? Especially in the heat of what seemed like combat conditions, reaching out for love, or even just release, appeared to be a logical and perhaps politically inspired thing to do.

In reality, however, too many women (and some men) became sexual objects. Having intercourse could become a rite of passage imposed against one’s will as well as a natural expression of bonding and affection. White and black women in particular became suspicious of each other, black women sometimes torn between anger at “their” men for falling victim to the stereotype of preferring white women as sexual partners, and anger at white women for seducing and taking away black men. The formula could be reversed, depending on which sex and which race you talked about. But the overall result was a new level of awareness that gender, as well as race, was an issue in this movement, and that until the question of treating women of equals became an explicit commitment of the movement, at least some of its ideals would always fall short of realization.

…The final ingredient for the rebirth of feminism took place within the rapidly expanding student movement in America. It would be historically inaccurate to speak of that movement as a unified crusade with a changing shape and definition. It took as many forms as there were issues, its ideological variants sufficient in number to fill a textbook. There were some who believed that a new culture, a “counterculture,” offered the only way to change America, and others who embraced political revolution, even if it had to include violence. Some wore overalls, T-shirts, and love beads and sought to transform the materialism of the middle class by creating a totally alternative life-style; others opted for factory jobs, short hair, and rimless glasses, committed to subverting the system from within.

Nevertheless, some generalizations are valid. Virtually all the participants in the student movement were white. Most came from middle or upper-class backgrounds. Children of privilege, they shared something in common with the critical and reflective posture of the Fetter Family, the group of Protestant students in Boston seeking reform of the church. But they had gone far beyond the moderate optimism of that group, and even the more pointed skepticism of the Students for a Democratic Society’s (SDS) 1962 Point Huron statement, with its desire to humanize capitalism and technocracy. By the mid-1960s, when the student movement started to grow with explosive force, more and more young people began to question the very basis for their society. The Vietnam War radicalized youthful protestors, male and female alike, seeming to symbolize--with its use of napalm to burn down forests and search and destroy missions to annihilate the enemy--the dehumanizing aspects of capitalism and Western-style democracy.

…At one SDS convention, and observer noted, “Women made peanut butter, waited on table, cleaned up, [and] got laid. That was their role.” Todd Gitlin, president of SDS in the mid-1960s, noted that the whole movement was characterized by “arrogance, elitism, competitiveness,... ruthlessness, guilt--replication of patterns of domination… [that] we have been taught since the cradle.” Women might staff inner-city welfare projects and immerse themselves, far more than men, in the life of the particular community being organized, but when it came to respect and recognition, they ceased being visible. Women occupied only 6 percent of SDS’s executive committee seats in 1964.

Nor was SDS alone in its attitudes. Throughout the entire anti-war movement, a similar condescension and disregard prevailed, symbolized by the antiwar slogan, “Girls say yes to guys [not boys] who say no.” Always happy to accept the part of the sexual revolution that allegedly made women more ready to share their affection, male radicals displayed no comparable willingness to share their own authority as part of a larger revolution. Women’s equality was not part of the new politics any more than it had been of the old.”

- William Chafe, “The Rebirth of Feminism.” in The Road to Equality: American Women Since 1962

[kheelcenter]

Labor Organizer Spotlight, Mabel Fuller! ⭐

This week's #LaborOrganizerSpotlight is Mabel Durham Fuller! 

 Mabel Durham Fuller was born on April 1, 1905 in Kingston, New York, where she attended the local public schools of Kingston and Yonkers. She was an operator in an undergarment factory before the shop was unionized, and after it was organized, Fuller became the shop chairlady. She was a member of the Undergarment and Negligee Workers Union, Local 62 and elected to the Executive Board in 1937. As a member of the Board, Fuller served on the Finance Committee and Sick Benefit Committee. She was also elected as a delegate to attend several ILGWU National Conventions. Fuller attended the Hudson Shore Labor School, as well as the U.S. Army Administration school from 1944-1945, and was the first woman to attend the Harvard Trade Union Institute where she was a fellow from 1945-1946. Fuller became the first African American staff member of the Education Department in 1946. In the Education Department, Fuller helped to plan and direct programs that aimed at improving the image of the union not only to the members, but also to the public. 

 Fuller was an American National Red Cross instructor, chair of the Women's Service Brigade during World War II, delegate to the Negro Labor Committee, member of the Committee for Civil Rights, the Urban League, the NAACP, and the Liberal Party. 

 More about Mabel Durham Fuller can be found in Coll. 6036/034.

Mabel Fuller, assistant educational director of ILGWU Local 62, giving a speech.

#ILGWU #InternationalLadiesGarmentWorkersUnion #NAACP #MabelFuller #Harvard #LaborOrganizer  #UnionStrong #Unions #May #Cornell #LaborArchives #LaborHistory #ArchivesOfInstagram #AllLaborHasDignity #KheelCenter #ILRSchool #LaborRights #Strikes #LaborOrganizerSpotlight @CornellILR @CornellTextileIndustry @CornellFashionCollection

[quotesfrommyreading]

The auditory version of the blank sheet is, of course, silence. Protesting wordlessly was a technique employed by Black Americans in July 1917, when an estimated 10,000 citizens, organized by religious groups and the NAACP, marched down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to protest racial violence and discrimination. As the New York Times reported, “Those in the parade represented every negro organization and church in the city. They marched, however, not as organizations, but as a people of one race, united by ties of blood and color, and working for a common cause.”

In September 1968, tens of thousands of students staged a silent march calling for greater democracy in Mexico. Contradicting the Mexican government’s accusations that they were resorting to violence, the students protested by simply carrying flags. (Around this same time, civil rights activists in the United States wielded flags with similar goals in mind.) “You’re taking the symbols of the regime and exposing the illegitimacy of the regime at the same time,” says David Meyer, a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine.

Other protests have employed more obvious symbols of repression, including handcuffs, blindfolds and gags. The last of these became widespread as a political prop following the trial of the Chicago Seven (originally eight), antiwar protesters who were charged with inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. During the 1969 trial, the judge ordered defendant Bobby Seale to be gagged and chained to his chair.

Decades before football player Colin Kaepernick created a stir by kneeling during the national anthem, Black athletes silently used their status to fight oppression. At the awards ceremony for the 200-meter dash at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos each raised a clenched gloved fist in a call for global human rights.

The operating theory behind silent protests is that when the cause is clear and righteous, there’s no reason to yell about it—a principle demonstrated by more recent examples of silent protests, too. In 2009, a peaceful rally in Iran against unfair elections ended in gunfire and explosions. To vent their fury, hundreds of thousands of Iranians met at Tehran’s symbolic central roadway, Islamic Revolution Street, and marched quietly to Freedom Square, hoping to avoid a police crackdown. In 2011, protesters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, stood quietly in solidarity with activists detained without trial by the country’s regime. Multiple times in Hong Kong, lawyers have marched in silence to protest Beijing’s incursions into the city’s constitution and legal affairs.

  —  The History Behind China's White Paper Protests

[mbmspeaks]

History lessons for my daughter part 1

When I started on this project I asked my mom and dad for some historical figures for me to write poems about. Here's the list my mom texted me:

" Constance Baker Motley, Lani Guinier, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Ella Baker, Mary Church Terrell, Fannie Lou Hamer, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Lorraine Hansberry, Harry Belafonte, Thurgood Marshall, Sydney Poitier, David Dinkins...."

I asked my nine year old daughter who she knew. I had done a few and decided to do poems and scenes to tell her about the rest of them she didn't know who are:

" Lani Guinier, Toni Morrison, Ella Baker, Mary Church Terrell, Fannie Lou Hamer, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Lorraine Hansberry, Thurgood Marshall, Sydney Poitier, David Dinkins... "

Me: Write me a poem about Thurgood Marshall

ChatGPT:

Thurgood Marshall, a name that rings with pride For justice, he fought with unwavering stride A voice for the voiceless, a light in the dark His passion for equity left its indelible mark

With courage and poise, he stood in the face of hate Challenging segregation with every case he'd litigate For years, he toiled with his pen and his heart Crafting an argument that would tear hate apart

He paved the way for generations to come From the humblest beginnings, his fight had begun An emblem of strength, of justice, and grace His legacy endures, never to be erased

So we honor Thurgood Marshall, a true civil rights great Whose sacrifice and service no one can underrate May we follow his example, and stand for what is right And continue his mission, to shine justice's light.

#ThurgoodMarshall #civilrights #justice #equality #poetry #blackhistorymonthRegenerate response

Me: Write me a Sonnet about Fannie Lou Hamer

ChatGPT:

In the Mississippi heat, a voice was raised With courage in her heart and truth on her tongue She spoke of justice, dignity unfazed And for her people, she fought hard and long

Fannie Lou Hamer, sharecropper's daughter A woman of great strength and fortitude She fought against injustice and slaughter And to the nation, her message was shrewd

With words that spoke of freedom and of rights She moved the hearts and minds of many men Her voice rose up and reached majestic heights And changed the course of history's pen

Fannie Lou Hamer, your legacy is strong Your words still ring out and your spirit lives on.

#FannieLouHamer #CivilRightsActivist #MississippiFreedomDemocraticParty #Sonnet #Poetry

me: Write a short bio of of the two civil rights leaders we just wrote poems about

ChatGPT:

Sure, here are brief bios for Thurgood Marshall and Fannie Lou Hamer:

Thurgood Marshall was an American lawyer and civil rights activist who played a significant role in the fight for racial justice in the 20th century. He was the first Black justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967. Prior to his appointment, Marshall worked as a lawyer for the NAACP, where he successfully argued landmark cases such as Brown v. Board of Education, which ended the legal segregation of public schools in the United States.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a civil rights activist and community organizer who played a key role in the fight for voting rights in Mississippi in the 1960s. Born into a sharecropping family, Hamer faced poverty and discrimination throughout her life, but remained committed to the struggle for racial justice. She was a founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which fought to unseat the state's all-white delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Hamer's powerful testimony at the convention brought national attention to the struggle for voting rights and the violence and oppression faced by Black people in the South.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 2.12

1096 – Pope Urban II confirms the foundation of the abbey of La Roë under Robert of Arbrissel as a community of canons regular. 1404 – The Italian professor Galeazzo di Santa Sophie performed the first post-mortem autopsy for the purposes of teaching and demonstration at the Heiligen–Geist Spital in Vienna. 1429 – English forces under Sir John Fastolf defend a supply convoy carrying rations to the army besieging Orléans in the Battle of the Herrings. 1502 – Isabella I issues an edict outlawing Islam in the Crown of Castile, forcing virtually all her Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity. 1502 – Vasco da Gama sets sail with 15 ships and 800 men from Lisbon, Portugal on his second voyage to India. 1541 – Santiago, Chile is founded by Pedro de Valdivia. 1593 – Japanese invasion of Korea: Approximately 3,000 Joseon defenders led by general Kwon Yul successfully repel more than 30,000 Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju. 1689 – The Convention Parliament declares that the flight to France in 1688 by James II, the last Roman Catholic British monarch, constitutes an abdication. 1733 – Georgia Day: Englishman James Oglethorpe founds Georgia, the 13th colony of the Thirteen Colonies, by settling at Savannah. 1771 – Gustav III becomes the King of Sweden. 1817 – An Argentine/Chilean patriotic army, after crossing the Andes, defeats Spanish troops at the Battle of Chacabuco. 1818 – Bernardo O'Higgins formally approves the Chilean Declaration of Independence near Concepción, Chile. 1825 – The Creek cede the last of their lands in Georgia to the United States government by the Treaty of Indian Springs, and migrate west. 1832 – Ecuador annexes the Galápagos Islands. 1889 – Antonín Dvořák's Jakobín is premiered at National Theater in Prague. 1894 – Anarchist Émile Henry hurls a bomb into the Cafe Terminus in Paris, killing one person and wounding 20. 1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded. 1909 – New Zealand's worst maritime disaster of the 20th century happens when the SS Penguin, an inter-island ferry, sinks and explodes at the entrance to Wellington Harbour. 1912 – The Xuantong Emperor, the last Emperor of China, abdicates. 1919 – The Second Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents is held by the Makhnovshchina at Huliaipole. 1921 – Bolsheviks launch a revolt in Georgia as a preliminary to the Red Army invasion of Georgia. 1935 – USS Macon, one of the two largest helium-filled airships ever created, crashes into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California and sinks. 1945 – A devastating tornado outbreak in Mississippi and Alabama kills 45 people and injures 427 others. 1946 – World War II: Operation Deadlight ends after scuttling 121 of 154 captured U-boats. 1946 – African American United States Army veteran Isaac Woodard is severely beaten by a South Carolina police officer to the point where he loses his vision in both eyes. The incident later galvanizes the civil rights movement and partially inspires Orson Welles' film Touch of Evil. 1947 – The largest observed iron meteorite until that time creates an impact crater in Sikhote-Alin, in the Soviet Union. 1947 – Christian Dior unveils a "New Look", helping Paris regain its position as the capital of the fashion world.

[soundwatch]

Rustin

Awards buzz first thrust George C. Wolfe’s biopic about U.S. civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, the openly homosexual (largely use this word and "gay" as the then common "labels") African American architect of the landmark 1963 March On Washington, onto my radar. What’s not to like, right? and onto my (Netflix) watchlist it went.

Plopping up after another biopic, the beautifully mounted but ultimately hollow Maestro, Rustin might have benefitted from a favorable comparison – both films examine the lives of queer men who in one way or another strived for social change in postwar America – not that Maestro even mentions Leonard Bernstein’s philanthropy and support of progressive causes like the Black Panthers, even if Tom Wolfe coined the term “radical chic” to question the sincerity of celebrity political activism, after attending a Bernstein benefit for the Panthers .

Thanks to Netflix’s algorithms and playback mode, the final strains of music from “Candide” accompanying Maestro’s end credits briskly segued into Branford Marsalis’ jazzy Rustin score. The film begins with onscreen text informing us that discrimination based upon race was declared unconstitional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1953. This is followed by wordless horrific images of the humiliation African Americans (here primarily young women) had to endure from whites (largely male with the occasional hateful looking woman) when exercising their constitutional right to attend school. After the film’s title appears briefly, we hear offscreen “things have to change and they need to change now.” It’s 1960 and we witness various civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King (Aml Ameen) and Bayard Rustin (Colman Domingo), planning a non-violent demonstration at the Democratic Convention that summer. Threats of Gandhi-inspired civil disobedience in the 1940s successfully pressured the Roosevelt Administration into ending discrimination in the military and defense industries, so why not use this method again? Yet not all African American leaders are down: NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) head Roy Wilkins (Chris Rock in an unusual serious role) thinks the movement should tread even more lightly to achieve its goals. Longtime Democratic New York City Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (Jeffrey Wright), on the other hand, seems primarily angry about a movement he doesn’t control and worried about how a protest might affect his standing within the party. Clayton Powell leans on King to drop the idea and Rustin, too, while he’s at it, otherwise there will be rumors about just how tight King and his charismatic and effective advisor really are. The protest is called off; King reluctantly dumps his friend.

(The Obamas’ company Higher Ground executive produced the film; did Barack Obama think about his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, with whom he severed ties during his first campaign after Wright spouted antisemitic statements and conspiracy theories? While, unlike the smear campaign against Rustin, Obama’s rupture with Wright was understandable, it might have caused considerable soul searching. Wright later somewhat toned down his rhetoric.)

Rustin finds himself in the political wilderness, living in New York, taking a unfulfilling job with a lefty nuclear disarmament NGO – an all-white joint with, as it turns out, a homophobic boss who claims he just wants to keep Rustin on the straight and narrow. Rustin enjoys the company of a younger white man - smart, sweet, devoted (at times to a fault) Tom Kahn (Gus Halper) and has a support system of accepting friends.

Soon, it’s 1963, and President Kennedy holds a televised speech promising further civil rights legislation. This is received with skepticism (civil rights were apparently not Kennedy’s top priority) which turns into outrage when that evening, images of particularly brutal police retaliation against demonstrators, including hosing down children, appear on TV. “Things have to change,” and this time, Rustin is determined to make that happen. He reaches out to labor activist (head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) A. Philip Randolph (Glynn Thurman) and floats the idea of a massive non-violent march, for “jobs and freedom,” on Washington. Randolph is game. Rustin and King reconcile. And so, with Randolph nominally the chief organizer and Rustin running the show in the background, they set out to recruit the other “Big Six” civil rights organizations (in addition to the Brotherhood the NAACP, SNCC - Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, CORE - Congress On Racial Equality, King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the National Urban League) while Rustin sets up a tight logistics operation.

Rustin doesn’t always successfully avoid sentimental biopic clichés, but the film crackles with comic energy when it shows how the dedicated team, under Rustin, both drill sergeant and seducer, manages the nuts and bolts of organizing the march. How many narrative films walk audiences through political grunt work? - from first brainstorming sessions, fundraising for busses to bring demonstrators from around the country to and from Washington to securing food supplies (peanut butter and jelly trumps cheese sandwiches) and Rustin’s contrasting security meetings with the African American brotherhood within NYPD (open to non-violent, de-escalation tactics) and the all-white D.C. police force delegation (latently racist, overstepping boundaries, possibly in cahoots with the F.B.I.). One especially satisfying moment: Rustin, again under pressure and somewhat out of commission, gazes appreciatively at his team as they have become so self-motivated and professional that the well-oiled machine can practically run without him.

Before the big day rolls around, the NAACP still is hesitant unless compromises are made. One: no White House, the protest stays at the Mall (one of the funniest exchanges during the prep sequence shows Rustin asking how many people are needed to surround the White House – a volunteer thinks this is a joke set up before he conveys she better get right on this). And two: the event is shortened from two days to one – considering the messy logistics of tent accommodation and longer leaves of absence from work, maybe Wilkins was being sensible here?

Just when the NAACP is finally on board, Clayton Powell throws a another spanner into the works: again he blackmails the group with Rustin’s long severed Communist Party ties and a 10-year-old rap sheet for lewd conduct with two (adult) men. Wright plays Clayton Powell as a full-fledged villain, jealous of King’s power base in the South and defending tooth and nail his own in New York and D.C. His torpedoing of the 1960 protest is of public record, but didn’t find any mention of his backstabbing in 1963. On the contrary, while Clayton Powell’s long career ended amidst corruption scandals and he was always considered rather self-serving, he is credited for moving civil rights legislation forward and serving his Harlem constituency. This is one instance of the film playing somewhat fast and loose with facts – or fudging them into confusion.

Fortunately, this time, Clayton Powell’s blackmail attempt is thwarted and everyone rallies around Rustin as the guiding force of the march. The big day, August 28, 1963, comes. At first, local police estimates a crowd of 75 before the masses flood the Mall. Martin Luther King holds his legendary “I Have A Dream” speech before 250,000-300,000 people. It was the largest peaceful protest to date. Afterwards, the White House invites reps of the “Big 10” organizations (somewhat confusingly, the film earlier stated that the “Big Six” had mushroomed due to the participation of more unions, but historical records generally speak about the “Big Six”). Rustin contentedly stays in the background, helping to clean up the Mall.

After a final montage which somewhat awkwardly blends archive and staged footage, the standard biopic wrap-up titles add that comprehensive civil rights legislation was passed and signed into law in 1964 (by Kennedy’s successor Lyndon Johnson, a Texas Dixiecrat – conservative Southern Democrat – who nevertheless became more committed to civil rights than his slain predecessor was). That same year, King was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Rustin continued his advocacy work and in 1977 met his longtime companion with whom he remained together until Rustin’s death in 1987. In 2013, 50 years after the march, President Obama post-humously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rustin.

The titles don’t mention King’s increasingly vocal opposition to the Vietnam War and stronger demands for economic equality. And while King became somewhat more radical in the months before his asassination, Rustin was criticized for allegedly “selling out.” This meant cosying up to the Democratic party und big unions like the AFL-CIO, eschewing Black Power politics and later affirmative action (Rustin thought any form of “identity politics” was counterproductive as it could alienate necessary white allies) and adopting an anti-communist/anti-Soviet stance through his conditional support of the war (rollback of communism - yes, punitive military action against Vietnamese civilians - no). Contrary to his anti-communism, Rustin remained a lifelong socialist through his advocacy of social justice by wealth redistribution. And he was a gay rights activist until the end.

This aspect of Rustin’s life is brought to life through Colman Domingo’s compelling performance. He portrays Rustin as a self-confident, sexually attractive man who defies the homophobia of his era without ever becoming a victim. Rustin’s two key relationships, on the other hand, are not fleshed out. Tom stands by his man with little complaint when Rustin’s flirtations with other men become intense (Rustin admonishes Tom not to act like “Mrs. Rustin”). Tom is a more doormat-like version of Scott Smith (played by James Franco), the similarly long-suffering boyfriend of gay activist and later politician Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant’s Milk – the screenplays for both films were written or co-written by Dustin Lance Black. As indicated in the film, when Rustin tells Tom he can’t allow himself to fall in love, but Tom will always be his family, the real-life Rustin and Tom Kahn remained friends and even co-authored an article about evolving protest into party politics. Rustin’s second significant relationship in the film was with the fictional Elias Taylor (Johnny Ramey), a NAACP lieutenant and married clergyman, groomed to take over his father-in-law’s congregation. After Elias helps to shoot down Rustin’s suggested march (the soon-to-be KKK murder victim Medger Evans is the only NAACP member who gets and supports it), he approaches Rustin in the men’s room. Elias flirts rather unabashedly; the two convene to a gay bar for drinks and begin an illicit affair. Elias is a mealy-mouthed cipher whose primary attraction for Rustin might be the challenge of converting him to the “cause.” The affair goes on long enough to piss off Tom but is cut short when Elias’ wife Claudia calls Rustin late at night to order him to call it off. The affair foregrounds Rustin’s free-spirited (in his mind) or promiscuous (other people’s judgement) lifestyle and serves the plot as it is Elias who suggests that Rustin reconcile with King for the sake of the movement.

Rustin was not the most accomplished film of 2023 (one wonders how a more seasoned filmmaker like Ava DuVernay would have filmed the story; theater director George C. Wolfe has one other film, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom under his belt). But it was arguably one of the most thought-provoking. Its images of political activism as a group effort and compelling, complex portrayal of an openly gay African American man in the 1960s whisk audiences back to pre-internet times when protest was organized with considerable effort but arguably had more impact than today’s online-driven activism. Nostalgic, cinematic comfort food or inspiration to counter myriad current injustices? In any case, if Bayard Rustin hadn’t actually existed, he would’ve needed to be invented.

********************************

Recommended: Brother Outsider: the Life of Bayard Rustin (2003), documentary by Nancy Kates and Bennett Singer. Here we see Rustin also speak at the Mall in August 1963, which for some reason the fiction film omits.

Update 1: Colman Domingo was nominated for the Best Actor - Drama Golden Globe (Cillian Murphy took home the award for his portrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan's eponymous biopic), BAFTA and Oscar. He is the first Afro-Latin actor and, along with Jodie Foster (Best Supporting Actress nominee for Nyad), the first out LBGTQIA* person to be nominated for playing an out LBGTQIA* role.

Update 2: American documentary filmmaker James Blue, a pioneer of participatory filmmaking with grassroots communities, directed this film about the March on Washington:

[caleebw]

Dr. Christopher A Bullock March for Education from CALEEB A WATSON on Vimeo.

Dr. Christopher Alan Bullock

Christopher Alan Bullock is a native of Wichita, Kansas, with ancestral roots in the Manchester Community of Arkadelphia, Arkansas. He has dedicated his life to serving his community and promoting social justice. Dr. Bullock's journey in pastoral ministry began at the historic Eighth Street Baptist Church in Wilmington, Delaware. Also, he served as a Delaware State Commissioner on Public Integrity and Commission on Minority Health, actively working towards fostering integrity and promoting the well-being of marginalized communities. Dr. Bullock served as the Pastor of the Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois. Recognizing his leadership and commitment to civil rights, he was elected President of the Chicago Southside Branch of the NAACP. Additionally, he was appointed as an Illinois State Commissioner on Discrimination and Hate Crimes, advocating for the rights of individuals facing discrimination. Since 2004, Dr. Bullock has been the inaugural Pastor of the Canaan Baptist Church in Delaware. The mission of Canaan is to do Ministry for the Master. Canaan is a vibrant community welcoming people from various backgrounds, including the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. In 2012, Dr. Bullock achieved another significant milestone when he became the first African American elected New Castle County Council President. In this role, he worked diligently to address community needs and promote equality. Dr. Bullock has also held positions such as president of the Delaware Black Caucus and National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. board member. Dr. Bullock's academic achievements include earning a Doctor of Ministry degree from the United Theological Seminary, specializing in Black Church Leadership in the Urban Context. He pursued further studies at Harvard University Divinity School. Additionally, he holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School/Crozer Seminary, with a concentration in Black Church Theology. He obtained a Bachelor of Social Work in criminal justice from the University of Alaska-Anchorage. As an author, Dr. Bullock has written two books: "The Social Mission of the Black Church: A Call to Action" and "A Charge to Keep." These works reflect his passion for social justice and challenge the Black church to return to its activist roots. In 2023, Dr. Bullock received a special honor while on a preaching mission in Liberia, West Africa. The Chief of the local Kpelle Tribe gowned him at the Liberian Baptist Convention and bestowed upon him the name "JUTONU," meaning "One who responds." Dr. Bullock has been married to Rev. Dr. Debbie Ardella Strickling-Bullock since 1987. They are blessed with two sons, Benjamin Ellis Bullock and Daniel Alan Bullock, and three grandchildren: Daniel Christopher Bullock, Isaiah Benjamin Bullock, and Isabella Joenelle Bullock.

[ramrodd]

Tim Scott, The Debt Ceiling and the NAACP: With April Ryan and Tara Setm...

COMMENTARY:

I hope  this is the pre=production for your announcement for the Oval Office as the Party of Lincoln candidate  If the Lincoln Project means what it says about restoring the adult leadership to the GOP. you are that person. You aren't the Republican Obama. You are the Second Coming of Lincoln in a Putney Swope kind of way. My dad was working on your candidacy when I was in ROTC  summer camp  just before the Chicago Police riots at the Democratic National Convention, when when Gore Vidal exposed the inner John Birch Society of he Ivy League Socialism of William F. Buckley and the John BIrch Society.

I want you to run on the Build Back Better captial budge and a promise to install the Trump Hotle Broand on the moon by 2028 if you could  start right now with the campatn theme/ WOKE = Niffer Lover. That's what Abraham Lincoln was all about and Grant tried to implement. Dad was working with the head of the Hampton Institute Professor of Military Science, Major Montgomery, in the transformation of Hampton Institute into Hampton Univerity, Home of the Pirates. You are exactly the sort of graduate the school was created to produce. If you are into Heidegger's Existentialism, a four year ROTC graduate as Putnew Swope. This is where the Beniinig Road Beauty Shop comes in.

I also want you to run on the Stage 3 of Home Rule 50 years of Hip Hop and 50 years of Home Rule and as an official woke white guy who has been using Critical Race Theory since 1971 as a counter-insurgence agenda to end white supremacy of the Fresh Water economics of the Ivy League Socialism of the John Birch Society. The LSA has had a Ivy League Socialism bias since it was created to ensure legacy white prive privilege would make sure a graduate of George Town Day like Brett Kavanaug hit all the bullet points he had to to get  tenure on the Supreme Court,. I endose tenure. I do not endorse the Fresh Water Fascism of the SCOTUS majority's undiluted Ivy League Socialism .

This is fixable, The Slat Water economics of the Binning Road Beauty Shop was the guiding vison of my dad and Major Montgomery, who was the Commanding Officer of my ROTC summer camp platoon in 1968.  he was wonderful, right out of the Buffalo Soldiers. Black Jack Pershing was woke, which is why they called him "Black Jack": John Prshing, the nigger lover. His example, in absolute moral contrast to my cousin, Woody Wilson ( so called be cause he had a perpetual hard-on characteristic of presbyterian slave owners.  My dad and I are from the Black Jack Pershing, League of Nations side of the family, referred to, politely at family reunions, as "worke".

Bring Mitt Romney on and talk about Kac Kemp. Jack Kemp is the GOP's Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Jack Kemp's tenure at HUD is the foundation of Muriel Bowser's Affordable Housing agenda that is the leading edge of Stage 3 of Home Rule: the second coming of Chuck Brown and Bob Marley.

Visualize Whirled Peas

[cavenewstimes]

NAACP Renews Support For Marijuana Legalization With New Call To Protect Cannabis Industry Workers’ Rights

Marijuana Moment Read More  The NAACP has voted to adopt a resolution that renews its support for federal marijuana legalization with a new call to protect workers’ rights in the cannabis industry. At the 114th NAACP National Convention late last month, delegates held a plenary session where they voted on a variety of measures, including one that reaffirmed the organization’s prior cannabis…

[lboogie1906]

John Quincy Adams (May 4, 1848 - September 4, 1922) Educator, newspaper publisher, and politician, he is known as the editor of the Western Appeal/The Appeal of St. Paul, transformed it into a national newspaper with offices in Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, and DC and he changed its name to The Appeal.

He was born free in Louisville to the Reverend Henry and Margaret Priscilla Adams (née Corbin). He was one of four children. He graduated from Oberlin College. He moved to Arkansas where he taught in schools in Little Rock before taking a position assisting his uncle, who was Arkansas’ Superintendent of Public Instruction. He was involved in Republican Party politics and served as an Engrossing Clerk in the state senate and as Deputy Commissioner of Public Works. He served as a result of Ganger and Storekeeper in the US Revenue Service. He and his brother Cyrus Field Adams published the weekly Louisville Bulletin. He was responsible for convening the first Colored National Press Convention and was elected its first president.

He partnered with Fredrick L. McGhee. The two were instrumental in initiating legal challenges to racial discrimination in Minnesota and in passing legislation guaranteeing civil rights. He and McGhee were founders of Minnesota’s Protective and Industrial League, which was affiliated with the Afro-American League and the Afro-American Council.

He was a consistent supporter of Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Model at the conventions of the Afro-American Council. That support damaged his reputation within that group allying itself to the Niagara Movement and the NAACP.

He married Ella Bell Smith (1892) and they had four children. He was one of the last post-reconstruction editors who survived into the twentieth century. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[newsakd]

[ad_1] Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Grammy-nominated rapper and activist Meek Mill headlined a panel conversation at the NAACP National Convention in Boston on Sunday. The speakers during the conversation called, “Hate Has No Home Here,” discussed fighting back against racism and anti-Semitism. Kraft is the founder of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, and he advocated for Mill’s release from prison. Other speakers on Sunday’s panel included NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson, and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates. Gov. Maura Healey also spoke at the convention on Sunday. Recording artist Meek Mill speaks at the NAACP convention. (Jim Michaud/Boston Herald) Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates speaks at the convention. (Jim Michaud/Boston Herald) Gov. Maura Healey speaks at the NAACP convention on Sunday. (Jim Michaud/Boston Herald) [ad_2] Source link

[manleycollins]

This weekend Boston, Massachusetts welcomed more African-Americans and its supporters. I am glad to be an African-American/Black/Colored person. We went through alot as a people and still being done wrong. I attended my first NAACP National Convention ever. I had fun getting to know and seeing my people like me. I even ate collard greens, macaroni and cheese, and turkey at the black people price of $16 plus $4 dollar drink. It was cool. *BLACK POWER* 👊🏾👊🏾👊🏾👊🏾 @NAACP