For Immediate Release
New eBook Announcement
Contact: Susan Klopfer
505-728-7924
www.susanklopfer.com
New eBook Announcement: Gallup To Mississippi
“Attaining true justice often takes longer than expected. In this case, getting there requires a heart-stopping side trip through Washington D.C.’s political killing fields.” Susan Klopfer, author
DRIVING ALONE FROM Gallup, New Mexico to Drew, Mississippi takes all but 20 hours, according to most Internet mapping systems. In Gallup To Mississippi, getting there allows time for a once-journalist grandmother, Sara Crain, to ponder accepted facts surrounding the highly publicized murders of two civil rights icons, and the lesser-reported murders of two lawyers who once worked under the movement’s radar.
Crain’s questions also focus on the unresolved murders of two bravely fierce grandmothers, Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett, recognized by U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy for speaking out on civil and voting rights before it was fashionable (or allowable) in their small town of Charleston, Mississippi.
Gallup To Mississippi – a nonfiction / Novel / literature eBook is set for September 1 release by civil rights author Susan Klopfer, who describes her protagonist as “a curious, former small-town newspaper reporter and grandmother who initiates a haunting drive eastward on I-40, with stopovers on sections of old Route 66 and further deviations to Lubbock, Texas and Washington D.C.”
The distance between Gallup and Drew is 1,117 miles – so what would prompt this 63-year-old Reiki-Master/office manager to make such a trip? What dangers lie ahead, and why would the route include Lubbock, Texas and Washington, D.C.? Will new facts discovered change history? “Readers should be surprised as this story’s swerves along the route to justice,” Klopfer states.
Gallup To Mississippi is a powerful and timely read, featuring political and legal intrigue, and a John Grisham / Truman Capote type of story that will leave readers never thinking about the modern civil rights movement or the justice system in quite the same way again, Klopfer said.
* * *
Susan Klopfer of Gallup, New Mexico is the author of eight books and eBooks, including Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited; The Emmett Till Book, and Who Killed Emmett Till(nominated for a Global eBooks Award). She worked as an acquisitions and development editor for Prentice Hall Computer Books and as an award-winning news reporter for the Branson Daily News.
Klopfer began her journalism career in Ely, Nevada and worked for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Her computer book, Abort! Retry! Fail! was named an alternate selection for The Book of the Month Club.
Author Susan Klopfer
Original title Gallup Mississippi
Country United State
Language English
Genre(s) Nonfiction / Literature / Novel
Publisher Susan Klopfer
ISBN-10: 0982604947
ISBN-13: 978-0-9826049-4-6
Publication Date September 1, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Occupied: a new organizer's Bible could help the movement
The Occupy Movement, if it is to last, has serious issues regarding oranization. I would hope members pay heed to the following email that I have received from Hunter Bear, an experienced and well-known civil rights movement organizer. Hunter is most recently the author of Jackson, Mississippi (a true organizer's Bible).
Peace,
Susan Klopfer
Author, Who Killed Emmett Till, The Emmett Till Book, Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited.
--- --- --- --- --- --- ---
Susan:
If you know of people or groups who might benefit from this, please send it around. In the last several weeks, there've been a number of explicit indications of interest in effective and enduring community organizing. For years, I've had a long website page which discusses the art -- and it is an art -- of bona fide organizing. What follows is one part of that page -- its basic essence. And I give the Link to the full "course." I posted this in a number of quarters where interest is apparent, even high, and I'm now shooting it off in your direction with the hope that you can further its reach to any actively or potentially interested persons you may know. It is likely that, at some point, I'll expand this into a trenchant print entity of some sort. Until then, however, this extensive page does offer a good deal of down-to-earth, brass-tacks guidance. In other sections of our website, I have specific discussions of our various activist campaigns over several turbulent decades.
In Solidarity,
Hunter or John
______________________________
The time for effective community organizing is obviously NOW. This substantial excerpt from our very full page should be helpful. The full course is, http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
(H.)
HERE ARE MY RELATED PIECES ON ORGANIZING.
FIRST, AMONG OTHER INTEGRAL AND RELATED DIMENSIONS, ARE:
1] Invitations to the Organizer from the grassroots -- spontaneous and
wrangled. Some can come to one's own sponsoring organization; some can
come directly to you if you are reasonably well known; or you can arrange
an invitation.
2] Issues: Some are readily apparent, some not always apparent -- e.g.,
economic relationships; some are immediately realistic with work and some
are futuristic; some are frankly unrealistic in the foreseeable future.
3] Planning philosophies: Top Down, vs Basic Grassroots Up [my preference]. Set forth general overall goals, long-range specific, short range specific. Heavy grassroots involvement here is always critical.
4] Credibility of project: Should be made up and led primarily by the
people for whose benefit it is launched: e.g., "those of the fewest
alternatives." Careful delineation and evaluation of active and potential
leaders is obviously critical. And often things start out with a steering
committee of leaders and then, after the organization has grown and more
people are actively involved, elections of regular officers.
5] Some people may want to move too fast and others too slowly. The
Organizer helps develop the group's tempo and assists grassroots leaders
and people in meeting those expectations.
6] Direct action: Always know First Amendment and related rights.
Picketing, sit-ins, boycotts, mass marches are extremely useful. And
there is always a need for careful organization and tactical nonviolence.
Direct action should be accompanied by judicious media coverage.
7] Media use: Has to be used carefully: national wire services; local
television, often with national hookups; local radio; local and regional
press; specialized press; news releases -- who, what, when, where, why and how; press conferences; leaflets with ALL pertinent information; newsletters; community newspapers; community cable TV; Internet. There is always a need for constantly updated media/contact lists.
8] Lawyers and litigation: Defensive and aggressive legal actions --
"criminal" and civil; local volunteers; paid lawyers; national
organizational attorneys -- e.g., ACLU, Lawyers Guild, Native American
Rights Fund. Some non-in-court matters can be handled very effectively by good law students.
9] Possible allies and political action: National organizations; and
government agencies [be careful]; political -- informal approaches and
quiet contacts; formal approaches and lobbying and direct requests;
electoral [voting]. DON'T GET CO-OPTED.
10] Power structure analysis: Check out Moody's industrials and
Standard and Poor's; and check out lawyers and their big business
connections in Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, and see FindLaw.
Also see firms in U.S. Lawyer's Directory. City Directory will frequently
give the official occupation of people. See corporate profit and not for
profit charters at the state secretary of state's office and check out
annual registration of organizations from state attorney general or sometimes secretary of state. Data on charitable organizations can be found at state attorney general's office and county tax assessor. There are also various national and regional Who's Who and IRS and U.S. Government Organization Manual and Congressional Directory. DON'T NEGLECT HELPFUL NON-OFFICIAL GOSSIP.
11] Coalitions [tend to be long term] and alliances [often shorter term]
are sometimes beneficial and sometimes not. Consider all of this
carefully and try to avoid precipitous marriages.
12] Although no Organizer -- whether from the "outside" or the "inside" --
will ever have full consensus from the community, he or she must avoid the
temptation to be a "Lone Ranger." That role can be temporarily justified
only in cases of extreme grassroots fear or heavy factionalism.
[Hunter Bear]
____________________________________________________________________________
JUST WHAT MAKES A DAMN GOOD COMMUNITY ORGANIZER? BASED ON MY 50 YEARS OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZING HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR] 12/30/03
[Published in the Spring 2004 issue of Independent Politics News And
Published In Oregon Socialist, Winter/Spring 2004 -- and much more.]
I'm an Organizer, a damn good one. I get and keep people together for
social justice action. I've been an Organizer for virtually half a
century -- all over much of what's called the United States. [I've also
been, among other things, a fur trapper, forest fire fighter, soldier,
prospector, metal [development] miner, minority hiring and training
consultant, college/university professor, writer.]
But my vocation is Organizer. I've done it full time for many years indeed.
And then, in conjunction with other jobs, I've always continued to
organize, somewhere and somehow.
What follows here is my essentially outline conception of the
characteristics and qualities of a good and effective Organizer who is
genuinely on the grassroots job. That can be a union local; a temporary
single-issue effort; permanent single-issue; permanent multi-issue;
coalition. It can sometimes be a specialized service center -- which itself
some way grows out of a community organization. A Movement is a transcendent widespread feeling, visionary, fueled by many local organizational efforts -- and it, in turn, inspires many local efforts.
Assembling my scattered notes on the matter a few days ago, I spent some
very early morning hours today [I rise about 3:30 am] sketching this out on
one of my traditional yellow tablets.
____________________________________________________________________________
_______
1] The Organizer should be at least bright -- alert and sparky. And
hopefully, be intelligent in a depthy and lofty sense -- which characterizes
most organizers who really stick with it over the long pull.
2] The Organizer should be relatively "pure" in the moral sense. But not
too pure -- because no one, anywhere, wants a sanctimonious conscience
hovering about. Set a good personal example. Do your recreational thing
away from the project. Wherever you are, avoid all drugs and go easy on
alcohol [if you are even into that sensitivity-dulling stuff.] Remember the
old labor adage: "You can't fight booze and the boss at the same time."
Always a special target, the organizer has to be aware of the consistent
danger of frame-ups.
3] The Organizer has to be a person who is thoroughly ethical and
honorable. Among other things, this means fiscal honesty [as soon as
possible and whenever feasible, a local committee made up of grassroots
people should handle the financial end of things]. And it also means
avoiding any hint of co-optation by the Adversary. The Organizer should
always have at least a representative group of the grassroots people present when meeting with the Other Side -- unless local people clearly approve a unilateral approach.
4] Formal academic training in the higher ed sense can certainly be useful
to any Organizer [or, as far as that goes, for anyone] -- but it isn't
absolutely critical. The Organizer, among other attributes, should be fully
literate [including computer literate], with finely tuned sensitivities,
with one hell of a lot of good sense. And almost anyone can do much
self-teaching.
Race and social class factors are not usually critical for a good
Organizer. [I'm a Native American who has worked comfortably with Indians of many tribes, Chicanos, Southern and Northern Blacks, Puerto Ricans, low-income Anglos. I've also never pretended to have proletarian origins.]
In a word, be sensitive -- but be yourself.
5] The Organizer absolutely has to be a person who can communicate clearly and well. Often, this can mean teaching -- without necessarily appearing to do so [many people really don't like a teacher.]
And communication, of course, involves one - to - one on a face - to - face
basis, e-mail, phone calls, news announcements and press conferences, mass meetings -- and much more indeed. It can also involve an Organizer helping people with their own unique individual/family problems. And that can help not only the person but will strengthen the overall effort.
6] The good Organizer will have some sort of altruistic ideology: couched
as an integrated, cogent set of beliefs embodying goals and tactics. After
that, there are several choices:
A] The Organizer can be passive; and the grassroots people can be
the ones who make the goals and the tactics. Not so hot.
B] The Organizer can impose a specific ideology -- including
goals and tactics. Not so hot, either.
C] The Organizer can convey a general ideological perspective
which the grassroots people can take or not take. They are not going to
want to feel pushed or hammered into things, but they'll usually take it --
especially if it's sensibly and sensitively "sold". They certainly may want
some time -- and should have it -- to think it all over. And, soon enough,
together the organizer and the people can develop solid goals and effective tactics. Remember, the organizer brings gifts and élan -- and the grassroots provides at least most of the reality.
7] The Organizer must have a genuinely powerful and enduring commitment. This has to involve a deep belief -- a very real belief -- in the People and the Cause. The Organizer has to be able to recognize potential
leaders -- and to involve all of the people. Virtually everyone has
something of substantial significance to contribute. The organizer gives
ideas -- but it's ultimately up to the people whom the organizer should
never manipulate. Bona fide organizing [not service center stuff] is about
the hardest work there is. A good Organizer is literally wedded to the
campaign all the way through.
8] The Organizer has to have a healthy but controllable ego -- with a
strong sense of destiny.
9] And any really healthy grassroots organizing campaign has to have a
Vision -- one that is two dimensional: Over The Mountain Yonder, and the
Day - To - Day needs. As I have indicated, a movement which, among other
things, is characterized by an idea whose time has come, is a broad-based
cause growing out of local community organizational efforts -- in turn
inspiring and stimulating new community-based thrusts. To become a bona fide movement, there absolutely has to be the two-dimensional ethos and active life. But the purely local effort has to have the same two dimensional
ingredients, whether it's part of a movement or by itself.
[Something with vision only can easily wind up a small, in-grown sect;
and something that's only day - to -day can become a tired service program. And when an organization has lost its way, factionalism is a sure thing along with the withdrawal of the local people.]
A good Organizer's role in all of this vision-building is extremely
critical -- especially at the outset. But it's also critical all the way
through in conjunction with the growing awareness of the grassroots people. The two-dimensional vision -- Over The Mountain and Day - To -Day -- is the shiny idea that makes people part of a crusade and sometimes a truly great one. It all gives meaning to life. And sometimes, if necessary, one will die for it. Each of these two dimensions stimulates and feeds the other. A good and truly effective Organizer absolutely has to show this
interconnection.
10] An Organizer definitely has to be a person with a tough hide -- not
deterred by cruel name-calling, physical beatings, or forced out of the game by injuring bullets or other bloody efforts. The organizer has to be a person of physical courage. And an Organizer also has to have the courage
to take unpopular stands within the developing grassroots effort.
11] And an Organizer cannot live materially in the pretentious sense.
Solidarity -- and also sacrifice!
Semper Fi -
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR] Micmac/St Francis Abenaki/St Regis Mohawk
In the mountains of Eastern Idaho
www.hunterbear.org
COMMUNITY ORGANIZING PRINCIPLES -- OR, GETTING PRACTICAL [REVISED DECEMBER 25 2003] BASED ON MY 50 YEARS OF ORGANIZING EXPERIENCE. HUNTER GRAY/JOHN R
SALTER, JR
[PUBLISHED IN OREGON SOCIALIST WINTER/SPRING 2004
WITH NEW MATERIAL 8/25/04 -- AND IN OTHER PUBLICATIONS AS WELL.]
Missing -- way too often -- in radical and general social justice circles
and related settings is a willingness to get down into the grassroots and
engage systematically in some of the most challenging work there is:
organizing the grassroots into genuinely effective and enduring outfits.
That's Genesis in the Save the World Business. It's often far too easy to
engage in essentially empty "jaw-smithing." Fortunately, there are always
those -- Organizers and grassroots people -- who are willing to do the
really tedious and tough organizing work over the long pull. Those who are
reasonably experienced have their own particular approaches.
Here are my own basic ones:
These 17 essential organizing principles were created formally by me in
early September 1963, after what had already been a number of years of
successful social justice organizing -- and then modified and supplemented
a bit over many decades of grassroots organizing campaigns. Now I've
transcribed them yet again -- with some changes -- on December 25 2003.
They are part of a considerably larger work that I also wrote in September
1963 -- "Organizing the Community for Action." This was initially about six
tightly packed single-spaced legal size pages. I made several dozen
mimeographed copies and sent them around -- and they were well received. I continued to expand and polish up all of this and used "Organizing" and my following 17 component principles many, many dozens of times in organizing campaigns, including -- among other dimensions -- struggles, organizing staff and grassroots training capacities, conferences, and university classes. By this time, my little manual itself had grown to nine tightly packed and single-spaced legal size pages. Copies of all versions of "Organizing the Community for Action" are in my collected [Salter/Gray] papers at State Historical Society of Wisconsin and Mississippi Department of Archives and History. The basically full ones began in March, 1965 and August, 1966. In addition, I have copies of all of these editions of mine right here in Idaho.
I'm presently rewriting parts of "Organizing the Community for Action" --
streamlining and updating -- and we are right now discussing the 17
principles themselves here in the Pocatello region as we get set for some
anti-racist action.
The following applies primarily to organizing staff and broad-based
grassroots community organizations. But they can also apply
substantially -- with only a very few changes -- to other types of outfits:
e.g., local union organizations.
Anyway -
1] The Organizers should insure that the community organization is
significant in size and composed primarily, if not completely, of those
people "with the fewest alternatives".
2] The Organizers should insure that active and potential community
leadership is developed in such a fashion that the organization is led
primarily, if not completely, by those people with the fewest alternatives.
3] The Organizers should insure that the organization functions
democratically, and not in an authoritarian fashion and that, among other
things, formal rules of democratic procedure are established and followed
and that widespread grassroots participation and decision-making in the
affairs of the community organization is a continuing fact; and that there
is ever developing local leadership. The executive and public meetings
should be well attended and organizers must insure that an atmosphere exists in which the individual at the grassroots feels -- as is genuinely the case --that he/she is an individual; that his/her active participation in
the organization is needed and welcomed; that right from the very beginning, he/she can make their voice and presence felt within the organization; and that, as the group's endeavors advance, winning victories, his/her power and ability to affect those forces out in the problematic/crisis environment and beyond, which have been affecting his/her life, will be steadily and proportionately increased.
4] The Organizers should insure that the youth are involved in the affairs
of the community organization -- either within it and with leadership
participation, or in a parallel and cooperative youth group of their own.
5] The Organizers should insure that the community organization, right from the beginning, is characterized by maximum autonomy.
6] Although the initial formation of the community organization may be
around one paramount and pressing local issue, the Organizers -- not through rigid superimposition but through diplomatic and effective teaching -- should insure that, in the interests of the community organization's longevity and effectiveness, the leaders and membership of the group become aware of all issues directly and indirectly affecting them. The Organizers should insure, therefore, that the community organization functions on a multi-issue basis whenever possible.
7] The Organizers should insure that, prior to reaching a decision on a
particular course of action, the community organization is aware of all
relevant tactical approaches and the various ramifications of each.
8] The Organizers should insure that the leaders of the community
organization can effectively handle the matter of publicity.
9] The Organizers should insure that the community organization can
effectively handle the raising and administration of funds -- including,
when applicable, the preparation of funding proposals, the negotiation of
such, and the effective administration of the money received.
10] The Organizers should insure that the community organization becomes
connected with various relevant public and private agencies and is able to
negotiate and secure the necessary services from those agencies without
surrendering its autonomy or compromising its basic principles.
11] The Organizers should insure that the community organization is able
to function politically in a realistic and sophisticated fashion without
surrendering its autonomy or compromising its basic principles.
12] The organizers should insure that the community organization can
utilize the services of professionals without becoming dominated by such.
13] The Organizers should insure that the community organization is able
to enter into functional alliances with other groups without surrendering
its autonomy or compromising its basic principles.
14] The Organizers should insure that the community organization is aware
of the use of effective and rational protest demonstrations and, further,
that it is fully cognizant of the merits of tactical nonviolence.
15] The Organizers should insure that the community organization is aware
of the effective use of legal action approaches and is aware of public and
private legal resources.
16] The Organizers should build a sense of the oft-visionary and just
world of a full measure of bread-and butter and a full measure of
freedom -- and how all of this relates to the shorter term steps.
17] The Organizers, who at the outset may well play a very key role in the
function and affairs of the community organization, must, on a step-by-step
and essentially pragmatic basis, shift increasing responsibility to the
leaders and membership of the group, to eventually:
A] First, insure that the community organization can function effectively
with only occasional involvement by Organizers.
B] And then, that the community organization can function effectively
with no involvement by Organizers to the point that, in addition to
conducting its regular affairs, the group can "organize on its
own" --bringing in new constituents and/or assisting other grassroots people in adjoining areas in setting up and conducting their own community organizations.
I'm an Organizer -- a working social justice agitator. I've been one since
the mid-1950s and I'll always be one. In many respects, it's one of the
toughest trails anyone could ever blaze.
An effective Organizer seeks to get grassroots people together -- and does;
develops on-going and genuinely democratic local leadership; deals
effectively with grievances and individual/family concerns; works with the
people to achieve basic organizational goals and develop new ones; and
builds a sense of the New World To Come Over The Mountains Yonder -- and how all of that relates to the shorter term steps.
An effective Organizer has to be a person of integrity, courage, commitment.
And a person of solidarity and sacrifice.
The satisfactions are enormous.
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'
www.hunterbear.org
(much social justice material)
See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI --
with a new and substantial Introduction by me:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
Personal Background Narrative (with many links):
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm
Peace,
Susan Klopfer
Author, Who Killed Emmett Till, The Emmett Till Book, Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited.
--- --- --- --- --- --- ---
Susan:
If you know of people or groups who might benefit from this, please send it around. In the last several weeks, there've been a number of explicit indications of interest in effective and enduring community organizing. For years, I've had a long website page which discusses the art -- and it is an art -- of bona fide organizing. What follows is one part of that page -- its basic essence. And I give the Link to the full "course." I posted this in a number of quarters where interest is apparent, even high, and I'm now shooting it off in your direction with the hope that you can further its reach to any actively or potentially interested persons you may know. It is likely that, at some point, I'll expand this into a trenchant print entity of some sort. Until then, however, this extensive page does offer a good deal of down-to-earth, brass-tacks guidance. In other sections of our website, I have specific discussions of our various activist campaigns over several turbulent decades.
In Solidarity,
Hunter or John
______________________________
The time for effective community organizing is obviously NOW. This substantial excerpt from our very full page should be helpful. The full course is, http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
(H.)
HERE ARE MY RELATED PIECES ON ORGANIZING.
FIRST, AMONG OTHER INTEGRAL AND RELATED DIMENSIONS, ARE:
1] Invitations to the Organizer from the grassroots -- spontaneous and
wrangled. Some can come to one's own sponsoring organization; some can
come directly to you if you are reasonably well known; or you can arrange
an invitation.
2] Issues: Some are readily apparent, some not always apparent -- e.g.,
economic relationships; some are immediately realistic with work and some
are futuristic; some are frankly unrealistic in the foreseeable future.
3] Planning philosophies: Top Down, vs Basic Grassroots Up [my preference]. Set forth general overall goals, long-range specific, short range specific. Heavy grassroots involvement here is always critical.
4] Credibility of project: Should be made up and led primarily by the
people for whose benefit it is launched: e.g., "those of the fewest
alternatives." Careful delineation and evaluation of active and potential
leaders is obviously critical. And often things start out with a steering
committee of leaders and then, after the organization has grown and more
people are actively involved, elections of regular officers.
5] Some people may want to move too fast and others too slowly. The
Organizer helps develop the group's tempo and assists grassroots leaders
and people in meeting those expectations.
6] Direct action: Always know First Amendment and related rights.
Picketing, sit-ins, boycotts, mass marches are extremely useful. And
there is always a need for careful organization and tactical nonviolence.
Direct action should be accompanied by judicious media coverage.
7] Media use: Has to be used carefully: national wire services; local
television, often with national hookups; local radio; local and regional
press; specialized press; news releases -- who, what, when, where, why and how; press conferences; leaflets with ALL pertinent information; newsletters; community newspapers; community cable TV; Internet. There is always a need for constantly updated media/contact lists.
8] Lawyers and litigation: Defensive and aggressive legal actions --
"criminal" and civil; local volunteers; paid lawyers; national
organizational attorneys -- e.g., ACLU, Lawyers Guild, Native American
Rights Fund. Some non-in-court matters can be handled very effectively by good law students.
9] Possible allies and political action: National organizations; and
government agencies [be careful]; political -- informal approaches and
quiet contacts; formal approaches and lobbying and direct requests;
electoral [voting]. DON'T GET CO-OPTED.
10] Power structure analysis: Check out Moody's industrials and
Standard and Poor's; and check out lawyers and their big business
connections in Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, and see FindLaw.
Also see firms in U.S. Lawyer's Directory. City Directory will frequently
give the official occupation of people. See corporate profit and not for
profit charters at the state secretary of state's office and check out
annual registration of organizations from state attorney general or sometimes secretary of state. Data on charitable organizations can be found at state attorney general's office and county tax assessor. There are also various national and regional Who's Who and IRS and U.S. Government Organization Manual and Congressional Directory. DON'T NEGLECT HELPFUL NON-OFFICIAL GOSSIP.
11] Coalitions [tend to be long term] and alliances [often shorter term]
are sometimes beneficial and sometimes not. Consider all of this
carefully and try to avoid precipitous marriages.
12] Although no Organizer -- whether from the "outside" or the "inside" --
will ever have full consensus from the community, he or she must avoid the
temptation to be a "Lone Ranger." That role can be temporarily justified
only in cases of extreme grassroots fear or heavy factionalism.
[Hunter Bear]
____________________________________________________________________________
JUST WHAT MAKES A DAMN GOOD COMMUNITY ORGANIZER? BASED ON MY 50 YEARS OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZING HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR] 12/30/03
[Published in the Spring 2004 issue of Independent Politics News And
Published In Oregon Socialist, Winter/Spring 2004 -- and much more.]
I'm an Organizer, a damn good one. I get and keep people together for
social justice action. I've been an Organizer for virtually half a
century -- all over much of what's called the United States. [I've also
been, among other things, a fur trapper, forest fire fighter, soldier,
prospector, metal [development] miner, minority hiring and training
consultant, college/university professor, writer.]
But my vocation is Organizer. I've done it full time for many years indeed.
And then, in conjunction with other jobs, I've always continued to
organize, somewhere and somehow.
What follows here is my essentially outline conception of the
characteristics and qualities of a good and effective Organizer who is
genuinely on the grassroots job. That can be a union local; a temporary
single-issue effort; permanent single-issue; permanent multi-issue;
coalition. It can sometimes be a specialized service center -- which itself
some way grows out of a community organization. A Movement is a transcendent widespread feeling, visionary, fueled by many local organizational efforts -- and it, in turn, inspires many local efforts.
Assembling my scattered notes on the matter a few days ago, I spent some
very early morning hours today [I rise about 3:30 am] sketching this out on
one of my traditional yellow tablets.
____________________________________________________________________________
_______
1] The Organizer should be at least bright -- alert and sparky. And
hopefully, be intelligent in a depthy and lofty sense -- which characterizes
most organizers who really stick with it over the long pull.
2] The Organizer should be relatively "pure" in the moral sense. But not
too pure -- because no one, anywhere, wants a sanctimonious conscience
hovering about. Set a good personal example. Do your recreational thing
away from the project. Wherever you are, avoid all drugs and go easy on
alcohol [if you are even into that sensitivity-dulling stuff.] Remember the
old labor adage: "You can't fight booze and the boss at the same time."
Always a special target, the organizer has to be aware of the consistent
danger of frame-ups.
3] The Organizer has to be a person who is thoroughly ethical and
honorable. Among other things, this means fiscal honesty [as soon as
possible and whenever feasible, a local committee made up of grassroots
people should handle the financial end of things]. And it also means
avoiding any hint of co-optation by the Adversary. The Organizer should
always have at least a representative group of the grassroots people present when meeting with the Other Side -- unless local people clearly approve a unilateral approach.
4] Formal academic training in the higher ed sense can certainly be useful
to any Organizer [or, as far as that goes, for anyone] -- but it isn't
absolutely critical. The Organizer, among other attributes, should be fully
literate [including computer literate], with finely tuned sensitivities,
with one hell of a lot of good sense. And almost anyone can do much
self-teaching.
Race and social class factors are not usually critical for a good
Organizer. [I'm a Native American who has worked comfortably with Indians of many tribes, Chicanos, Southern and Northern Blacks, Puerto Ricans, low-income Anglos. I've also never pretended to have proletarian origins.]
In a word, be sensitive -- but be yourself.
5] The Organizer absolutely has to be a person who can communicate clearly and well. Often, this can mean teaching -- without necessarily appearing to do so [many people really don't like a teacher.]
And communication, of course, involves one - to - one on a face - to - face
basis, e-mail, phone calls, news announcements and press conferences, mass meetings -- and much more indeed. It can also involve an Organizer helping people with their own unique individual/family problems. And that can help not only the person but will strengthen the overall effort.
6] The good Organizer will have some sort of altruistic ideology: couched
as an integrated, cogent set of beliefs embodying goals and tactics. After
that, there are several choices:
A] The Organizer can be passive; and the grassroots people can be
the ones who make the goals and the tactics. Not so hot.
B] The Organizer can impose a specific ideology -- including
goals and tactics. Not so hot, either.
C] The Organizer can convey a general ideological perspective
which the grassroots people can take or not take. They are not going to
want to feel pushed or hammered into things, but they'll usually take it --
especially if it's sensibly and sensitively "sold". They certainly may want
some time -- and should have it -- to think it all over. And, soon enough,
together the organizer and the people can develop solid goals and effective tactics. Remember, the organizer brings gifts and élan -- and the grassroots provides at least most of the reality.
7] The Organizer must have a genuinely powerful and enduring commitment. This has to involve a deep belief -- a very real belief -- in the People and the Cause. The Organizer has to be able to recognize potential
leaders -- and to involve all of the people. Virtually everyone has
something of substantial significance to contribute. The organizer gives
ideas -- but it's ultimately up to the people whom the organizer should
never manipulate. Bona fide organizing [not service center stuff] is about
the hardest work there is. A good Organizer is literally wedded to the
campaign all the way through.
8] The Organizer has to have a healthy but controllable ego -- with a
strong sense of destiny.
9] And any really healthy grassroots organizing campaign has to have a
Vision -- one that is two dimensional: Over The Mountain Yonder, and the
Day - To - Day needs. As I have indicated, a movement which, among other
things, is characterized by an idea whose time has come, is a broad-based
cause growing out of local community organizational efforts -- in turn
inspiring and stimulating new community-based thrusts. To become a bona fide movement, there absolutely has to be the two-dimensional ethos and active life. But the purely local effort has to have the same two dimensional
ingredients, whether it's part of a movement or by itself.
[Something with vision only can easily wind up a small, in-grown sect;
and something that's only day - to -day can become a tired service program. And when an organization has lost its way, factionalism is a sure thing along with the withdrawal of the local people.]
A good Organizer's role in all of this vision-building is extremely
critical -- especially at the outset. But it's also critical all the way
through in conjunction with the growing awareness of the grassroots people. The two-dimensional vision -- Over The Mountain and Day - To -Day -- is the shiny idea that makes people part of a crusade and sometimes a truly great one. It all gives meaning to life. And sometimes, if necessary, one will die for it. Each of these two dimensions stimulates and feeds the other. A good and truly effective Organizer absolutely has to show this
interconnection.
10] An Organizer definitely has to be a person with a tough hide -- not
deterred by cruel name-calling, physical beatings, or forced out of the game by injuring bullets or other bloody efforts. The organizer has to be a person of physical courage. And an Organizer also has to have the courage
to take unpopular stands within the developing grassroots effort.
11] And an Organizer cannot live materially in the pretentious sense.
Solidarity -- and also sacrifice!
Semper Fi -
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR] Micmac/St Francis Abenaki/St Regis Mohawk
In the mountains of Eastern Idaho
www.hunterbear.org
COMMUNITY ORGANIZING PRINCIPLES -- OR, GETTING PRACTICAL [REVISED DECEMBER 25 2003] BASED ON MY 50 YEARS OF ORGANIZING EXPERIENCE. HUNTER GRAY/JOHN R
SALTER, JR
[PUBLISHED IN OREGON SOCIALIST WINTER/SPRING 2004
WITH NEW MATERIAL 8/25/04 -- AND IN OTHER PUBLICATIONS AS WELL.]
Missing -- way too often -- in radical and general social justice circles
and related settings is a willingness to get down into the grassroots and
engage systematically in some of the most challenging work there is:
organizing the grassroots into genuinely effective and enduring outfits.
That's Genesis in the Save the World Business. It's often far too easy to
engage in essentially empty "jaw-smithing." Fortunately, there are always
those -- Organizers and grassroots people -- who are willing to do the
really tedious and tough organizing work over the long pull. Those who are
reasonably experienced have their own particular approaches.
Here are my own basic ones:
These 17 essential organizing principles were created formally by me in
early September 1963, after what had already been a number of years of
successful social justice organizing -- and then modified and supplemented
a bit over many decades of grassroots organizing campaigns. Now I've
transcribed them yet again -- with some changes -- on December 25 2003.
They are part of a considerably larger work that I also wrote in September
1963 -- "Organizing the Community for Action." This was initially about six
tightly packed single-spaced legal size pages. I made several dozen
mimeographed copies and sent them around -- and they were well received. I continued to expand and polish up all of this and used "Organizing" and my following 17 component principles many, many dozens of times in organizing campaigns, including -- among other dimensions -- struggles, organizing staff and grassroots training capacities, conferences, and university classes. By this time, my little manual itself had grown to nine tightly packed and single-spaced legal size pages. Copies of all versions of "Organizing the Community for Action" are in my collected [Salter/Gray] papers at State Historical Society of Wisconsin and Mississippi Department of Archives and History. The basically full ones began in March, 1965 and August, 1966. In addition, I have copies of all of these editions of mine right here in Idaho.
I'm presently rewriting parts of "Organizing the Community for Action" --
streamlining and updating -- and we are right now discussing the 17
principles themselves here in the Pocatello region as we get set for some
anti-racist action.
The following applies primarily to organizing staff and broad-based
grassroots community organizations. But they can also apply
substantially -- with only a very few changes -- to other types of outfits:
e.g., local union organizations.
Anyway -
1] The Organizers should insure that the community organization is
significant in size and composed primarily, if not completely, of those
people "with the fewest alternatives".
2] The Organizers should insure that active and potential community
leadership is developed in such a fashion that the organization is led
primarily, if not completely, by those people with the fewest alternatives.
3] The Organizers should insure that the organization functions
democratically, and not in an authoritarian fashion and that, among other
things, formal rules of democratic procedure are established and followed
and that widespread grassroots participation and decision-making in the
affairs of the community organization is a continuing fact; and that there
is ever developing local leadership. The executive and public meetings
should be well attended and organizers must insure that an atmosphere exists in which the individual at the grassroots feels -- as is genuinely the case --that he/she is an individual; that his/her active participation in
the organization is needed and welcomed; that right from the very beginning, he/she can make their voice and presence felt within the organization; and that, as the group's endeavors advance, winning victories, his/her power and ability to affect those forces out in the problematic/crisis environment and beyond, which have been affecting his/her life, will be steadily and proportionately increased.
4] The Organizers should insure that the youth are involved in the affairs
of the community organization -- either within it and with leadership
participation, or in a parallel and cooperative youth group of their own.
5] The Organizers should insure that the community organization, right from the beginning, is characterized by maximum autonomy.
6] Although the initial formation of the community organization may be
around one paramount and pressing local issue, the Organizers -- not through rigid superimposition but through diplomatic and effective teaching -- should insure that, in the interests of the community organization's longevity and effectiveness, the leaders and membership of the group become aware of all issues directly and indirectly affecting them. The Organizers should insure, therefore, that the community organization functions on a multi-issue basis whenever possible.
7] The Organizers should insure that, prior to reaching a decision on a
particular course of action, the community organization is aware of all
relevant tactical approaches and the various ramifications of each.
8] The Organizers should insure that the leaders of the community
organization can effectively handle the matter of publicity.
9] The Organizers should insure that the community organization can
effectively handle the raising and administration of funds -- including,
when applicable, the preparation of funding proposals, the negotiation of
such, and the effective administration of the money received.
10] The Organizers should insure that the community organization becomes
connected with various relevant public and private agencies and is able to
negotiate and secure the necessary services from those agencies without
surrendering its autonomy or compromising its basic principles.
11] The Organizers should insure that the community organization is able
to function politically in a realistic and sophisticated fashion without
surrendering its autonomy or compromising its basic principles.
12] The organizers should insure that the community organization can
utilize the services of professionals without becoming dominated by such.
13] The Organizers should insure that the community organization is able
to enter into functional alliances with other groups without surrendering
its autonomy or compromising its basic principles.
14] The Organizers should insure that the community organization is aware
of the use of effective and rational protest demonstrations and, further,
that it is fully cognizant of the merits of tactical nonviolence.
15] The Organizers should insure that the community organization is aware
of the effective use of legal action approaches and is aware of public and
private legal resources.
16] The Organizers should build a sense of the oft-visionary and just
world of a full measure of bread-and butter and a full measure of
freedom -- and how all of this relates to the shorter term steps.
17] The Organizers, who at the outset may well play a very key role in the
function and affairs of the community organization, must, on a step-by-step
and essentially pragmatic basis, shift increasing responsibility to the
leaders and membership of the group, to eventually:
A] First, insure that the community organization can function effectively
with only occasional involvement by Organizers.
B] And then, that the community organization can function effectively
with no involvement by Organizers to the point that, in addition to
conducting its regular affairs, the group can "organize on its
own" --bringing in new constituents and/or assisting other grassroots people in adjoining areas in setting up and conducting their own community organizations.
I'm an Organizer -- a working social justice agitator. I've been one since
the mid-1950s and I'll always be one. In many respects, it's one of the
toughest trails anyone could ever blaze.
An effective Organizer seeks to get grassroots people together -- and does;
develops on-going and genuinely democratic local leadership; deals
effectively with grievances and individual/family concerns; works with the
people to achieve basic organizational goals and develop new ones; and
builds a sense of the New World To Come Over The Mountains Yonder -- and how all of that relates to the shorter term steps.
An effective Organizer has to be a person of integrity, courage, commitment.
And a person of solidarity and sacrifice.
The satisfactions are enormous.
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'
www.hunterbear.org
(much social justice material)
See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI --
with a new and substantial Introduction by me:
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
Personal Background Narrative (with many links):
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm
Friday, January 06, 2012
What? You haven't read Howard Zinn? Take a look for yourself and see why he is a favorite author
"Social movements may have many 'defeats'-failing to achieve objectives in the short run-but in the course of the struggle the strength of the old order begins to erode, the minds of people begin to change; the protesters are momentarily defeated but not crushed, and have been lifted, heartened, by their ability to fight back."
- Howard Zinn
- Howard Zinn
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Monday, October 03, 2011
A civil rights author is giving away free eBooks to honor people who have been fired from their jobs or who are angry and depressed at work -- and fear layoff.
Susan Klopfer has written a set of prayers using real life concerns stated by people who are affected at work by the current recession.
"This is a Book of Common Prayers for the person who is suffering at work or who has been fired," Klopfer said.
The free eBook features prayers ranging on topics from people who fear a bad evaluation, to those who have found a new job and lost that one, too, Klopfer says.
"We were having related problems with a family member over this issue, and I felt a need to do something that might bring some cheer to others. When you get fired, you are often blamed for the cause, even if the work environment is sexist, ageist, racist or horrible for some other reason.
"But then you have to go home and explain why your family will suffer until you find a new job."
Klopfer said one of the most difficult issues for many people today who have lost their job, is that "too many" employers discriminate against the person who is not employed.
"It is a double whammy, and we need to address this in any way possible," Klopfer said.
Meanwhile, A Book of Common Prayer For Anyone Who is About to Get (or Just G) Fired can be read online at http://prayersforthefired.blogspot.com/
.
"For now, the book is available only on this blog. In the near future it will be published in true eBook form," Klopfer added.
"But it will still be free."
Susan Klopfer has written a set of prayers using real life concerns stated by people who are affected at work by the current recession.
"This is a Book of Common Prayers for the person who is suffering at work or who has been fired," Klopfer said.
The free eBook features prayers ranging on topics from people who fear a bad evaluation, to those who have found a new job and lost that one, too, Klopfer says.
"We were having related problems with a family member over this issue, and I felt a need to do something that might bring some cheer to others. When you get fired, you are often blamed for the cause, even if the work environment is sexist, ageist, racist or horrible for some other reason.
"But then you have to go home and explain why your family will suffer until you find a new job."
Klopfer said one of the most difficult issues for many people today who have lost their job, is that "too many" employers discriminate against the person who is not employed.
"It is a double whammy, and we need to address this in any way possible," Klopfer said.
Meanwhile, A Book of Common Prayer For Anyone Who is About to Get (or Just G) Fired can be read online at http://prayersforthefired.blogspot.com/
.
"For now, the book is available only on this blog. In the near future it will be published in true eBook form," Klopfer added.
"But it will still be free."
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
When Mississippi Does it Right -- Aaron Henry: A Civil Rights Leader of the 20th Century
Kudos to the Mississippi Historical Society for the beautiful piece written on civil rights leader, Aaron Henry (by Constance Curry, who with Aaron Henry wrote The Fire Ever Burning. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000.)
Writes Curry -- Aaron Henry was born in 1922 in Coahoma County, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers. From a young age, he worked in the cotton fields alongside his family on the Flowers Plantation outside of Clarksdale. He remembered those years vividly when he recalled,
“As far back as I can remember, I have detested everything about growing cotton.” Regardless of his early hardships, education was a priority for ...
Continued --
Monday, August 08, 2011
The Help's Viola Davis Says She Based Her Character 'Very Loosely' on Fannie Lou Hamer; Not!
Hollywood movies try to turn real events during the civil rights movment into 'feel-good' films.
In The Help, a much publicized film that focuses on the modern civil rights movement, Viola Davis, a Juilliard-trained actor best known for her Oscar-nominated role opposite Meryl Streep in "Doubt" (and for her stage work, for which she has won two Tony Awards), plays Aibileen, a maid in early-'60s Jacksonville, Miss.
Fannie Lou Hamer, revered civil rights activist from Mississippi. (Image may be subject to copyright.)
The maid quietly endures her employer's racist remarks and casual cruelty — only to go home and write down her thoughts in a journal.
Davis, who apparently knows little about modern civil rights history, is saying she based the character, "very, very loosely," on civil-rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. "She was born the same year as Aibileen, in Mississippi."
Slow down, Hollywood. This statement is simply insulting.
Being born in the same year is all that Davis has going for her, when making this comparison to one of the world's most admired civil rights heroes and social activists Mississippi ever produced.
Fannie Lou Hamer was no one's quiet maid who spent the evening writing down her thoughts in a journal. She had thoughts, all right, and shared them with anyone she chose, including the President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson.
To understand and appreciate Hamer, one has to know from whence she came –
Born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi, she was the granddaughter of a slave and the youngest of 20 children. Her parents were sharecroppers in this region of the Mississippi Delta, participants in a system of farming that allowed workers to live on a plantation in return for working the land. When the crop is harvested, they split the profits in half with the plantation owner, giving the system another name -- halving. Sometimes the owner paid for the seed and fertilizer, but usually the sharecropper paid those expenses out of his half. It is a hard way to make a living and sharecroppers generally were born poor, lived and died poor.
In my book, Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, I wrote this about Hamer:
A wise civil rights leader, singer and storyteller, Hamer often told how her family stayed alive during the hardest years.
In winter months, Hamer and her siblings followed their mother from plantation to plantation asking landowners for leftover cotton, the "scrappin' cotton. When the family gathered enough cotton for a bale, these bits of scrap were sold to buy food. On those treks "[Mother] always tied our feet up with rags because the ground would be froze real hard," Hamer in 1967 wrote in her short autobiography, To Praise Our Bridges.
Music was tied to survival during these treks and Hamer became well known years later for comforting others with her gospel singing - especially during some of the most difficult moments in the Movement when people were beaten and jailed.
When young civil rights workers later moved into Sunflower County many quickly discovered that Hamer had a "unique ability to define the problems that affected African Americans in the Delta in their own vernacular," wrote J. Moye in Let the People Decide.
Hamer was "a leader waiting for a movement [who] believed deeply in the promise of the Bible and in the promise of the United States of America."
In the early 1960s, as the modern civil rights movement progressed, there were predictions of wholesale starvation in the Delta as government commodities were being withheld from sharecroppers during winter or non-working months. Mothers about to give birth were particularly concerned about the consequences.
It was Hamer who pointed out the labor and sweat of blacks that had "made them white folks creamy rich," concluding, "There's so much hate. Only God has kept the Negro sane."
On June 11, 1963, a message came into the Greenwood Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) office that a group of eight freedom workers - Hamer, along with June Johnson, Annelle Ponder, Euvester Simpson, Rosemary Freeman, Lawrence Guyot, James Wes, and Ruth Day - had been arrested and beaten by Winona jailers in Montgomery County for integrating the white waiting room of the bus station in Winona upon returning from a training session in South Carolina on June 9, 1963.
SNCC leader Bob Moses led a group of volunteers that night to Winona. Though she could hardly talk, Annelle Ponder whispered, "Freedom," when she saw her friends, wrote Cat Holland who observed that June Johnson's face was "so smashed and bloody I didn't recognize her."
Then Holland recognized Hamer, who "took her hand and ran it over her lumpy, bruised flesh," while telling her what happened. Holland wrote of her conversation with a police officer:
"Why y'all beat 'em like this?" I asked the policeman, who stood by leering.
"We kin give you some of the same thing," he said.
"Don't say nothing, Ida," Miss Hamer said. "You go back an' tell the others."
Hamer, Others Protest in Chicago
Mississippi's conservative "blue dog Democrats" in 1964 threatened to support Republican Barry Goldwater. The state party's leaders predictably kept out all black participation in primaries or conventions.
So the black-led Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) decided to become active in the state's official Democratic Party and to steer the party to support Johnson for President.
While the regular Democrats were sending a "hand-picked delegation to Chicago with only two token Negro delegates, although Negroes constituted 40 percent of 240,000 of the registered voters in Mississippi," MFDP members decided they, alone, should represent the state at the upcoming party convention, and Hamer was part of this group.
Aaron Henry, a Delta leader from Clarksdale and friend of Hamer's, appealed for $30,000 to support the Loyal Democrats of Mississippi, a bi-racial coalition made up of the MFDP, NAACP of Mississippi, the state Teacher's Association, the Mississippi AFL-CIO and the Young Democrats.
The coalition's purpose would be to appear before the Credential Committee of the Democratic National convention on August 26 to prove discrimination by the regular Democratic Party of Mississippi.
The secretary of state, however, refused permission to register MFDP because "there was already a Democratic political party in the state," even though Mississippi Democrats failed to support the national party's presidential candidate in the previous 1960 elections.
Whites did not take the MFDP very seriously and it was sometimes the target of editorial "humor." The state's spy agency, the Sovereignty Commission, meanwhile, had collected nearly 1000 files on the political organization including newsletters, membership lists, meeting announcements and notes, as well as commentaries from the Commission's investigators.
Then on August 12, an injunction was issued ordering all MFDP officials not to leave the state and go to Atlantic City for the convention. Also prohibited was engagement by the leader in any further MFDP activity. MFDP filed suit in federal court asking that more than a dozen of Mississippi's segregation laws be invalidated, taking advantage of the new Civil Rights Act legislation and causing a cloud of last-minute confusion as the group made haste for New Jersey.
Once they arrived, national Democratic Party leaders fell through in support of this unique group from Mississippi and were not prepared to greet MFDP's 64 delegates with open arms.
President Lyndon Johnson did not want bitter debates initiated, even if the regular Mississippi Democrats were supporting Goldwater instead of him.
Johnson and party liberals had campaigned on the basis of their civil rights "successes" and even though the Southern state party structures completely excluded African Americans, Democrats did not want this practice disrupted, fearing they would lose the support of Southern states.
But Fannie Lou Hamer added heat to the convention when she spoke before the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention, telling the horrifying story of her attempts to register to vote in Sunflower County, including the beating she received in Winona.
Lyndon Johnson, concerned over the attention paid to MFDP and the fight for credentials, gave notice that he wanted to deliver a special televised speech on an unrelated topic, as Hamer was speaking.
News networks recognized the public's interest in Hamer and played her entire speech on the evening news, giving even more airtime than she would have received:
Hamer's unforgettable August 22, 1964 testimony would go down in civil rights history:
"In June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop, was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailways bus. When we got to Winona ... four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened, and one of the ladies said, "It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of Police ordered us out."
"...I was carried to the county jail, and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss [Euvester] Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear the sounds of kicks and screams. I could hear somebody say, "Can you say, yes, sir, nigger? Can you say yes, sir?"
" ... They beat her, I don't know how long, and after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people. And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he ... said, "You are from Ruleville all right," and he used a curse word, and he said, "We are going to make you wish you was dead."
" ... The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman for me, to lay down on a bunk bed on my face, and I laid on my face. The first Negro began to beat ... until he was exhausted, and I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side because I suffered from polio when I was six years old. After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.
"The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat me to set on my feet to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush ... I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered."
Historians would later write that Johnson told Hubert Humphrey to "crush the rebellion" and get the MFDP off the front pages, or Humphrey could give up on the idea of ever becoming vice-president. Humphrey instructed fellow Minnesotan and future Vice President Walter Mondale to "suppress the MFDP by any means necessary" and this was accomplished through secret meetings, and false statements, and by using information on the MFDP's strategy gathered from FBI informants.
Johnson, Humphrey, and Mondale finally offered MFDP to seat two at-large delegates to be selected by Johnson (to ensure Humphrey that Hamer would not be selected). MFDP delegates refused the compromise. Humphrey reportedly pleaded with Hamer (whom he reportedly found "distasteful" because she was poor and uneducated) to accept the compromise so he could become vice president and push civil rights.
Mississippian Rev. Ed King, also a delegate, years later told how Hamer expressed no sympathy for Humphrey's dilemma:
"Senator Humphrey. I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs for trying to register to vote. I had to leave the plantation where I worked in Sunflower County. Now if you lose this job of vice president because you do what is right, because you help the MFDP, everything will be all right. God will take care of you. But if you take it this way, why, you will never be able to do any good for civil rights, for poor people, for peace, or any of those things you talk about."
In December 1964, MFDP tried to halt seating of Mississippi's white Congressmen who gained their seats in racially rigged elections by filing a notice of contest. MFDP claimed that Annie Devine, Victoria Gray and Fannie Lou Hamer, three MFDP Congressional candidates who ran in the freedom vote after being kept off the official ballot, were entitled to seats in their respective districts.
Congress would not budge. Civil rights groups including SNCC, CORE, SCLC and Americans for Democratic Action endorsed the challenge but ADA would not support the seating of the three women.
The national media also rejected seating of the three candidates; hence the Freedom Democratic Party backed down from supporting the three, but continued the seating challenge.
In January, 600 black Mississippians attending the opening ceremony of the 1965 session to lobby against seating of the Mississippi delegation, and more than one third of House members agreed, voting to bar the official Mississippian delegation.
Hamer had helped make their case.
Hamer Made Impact, Julian Bond Said
Long after the conflicts faded from national news coverage, Fannie Lou Hamer was acting on her dream of an ideal community and in 1970, formed the Freedom Farm Cooperative to help displaced farm workers become self-reliant.
At its zenith, the cooperative owned 680 acres of land devoted to cotton production, 200 units of low-income housing, day care center, and a small manufacturing plant.
When Hamer died in 1977, penniless, and ill from the beatings she had received, Georgia state legislator and SNCC representative Julian Bond spoke at her funeral, noting that Fannie Lou Hamer was "the articulator for the Southern movement to continue to fight long after SNCC's summer soldiers abandoned Ruleville and the rural South, shell shocked by too much of what was daily life for her."
Hamer's impact upon African Americans, the labor and women's movements, was impressive, Bond said.
"She and her co-workers taught a powerful lesson to those now facing the rapid dismantling of the formal structure of African American progress, the rise of widespread racist terrorism, and the intensification of economic exploitation."
Fannie Lou Hamer was not a person to journal her thoughts.
And Davis's character isn't close to this incredible woman from Mississippi.
Not close at all.
* * * * *
For many people, this is the only film they will ever see that has anything to do with the modern civil rights movement in Mississippi. They will leave with no idea of the utter violence and heroism that defines this period. I am concerned, for instance, when I hear the name of Fannie Lou Hamer being bantied about, as a model for the maid character. It is a shame, that when African Americans are offered an opportunity to work, it is for a film that doesn't represent the true pain and nobility of this movement that was so critical to our country.
We need some real history taught by films and books before moving into feel good movies about Mississippi's ghosts. Especially when in today's papers, we still read about white teens in Jackson killing an innocent black man -- for fun.
In The Help, a much publicized film that focuses on the modern civil rights movement, Viola Davis, a Juilliard-trained actor best known for her Oscar-nominated role opposite Meryl Streep in "Doubt" (and for her stage work, for which she has won two Tony Awards), plays Aibileen, a maid in early-'60s Jacksonville, Miss.
Fannie Lou Hamer, revered civil rights activist from Mississippi. (Image may be subject to copyright.)
The maid quietly endures her employer's racist remarks and casual cruelty — only to go home and write down her thoughts in a journal.
Davis, who apparently knows little about modern civil rights history, is saying she based the character, "very, very loosely," on civil-rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. "She was born the same year as Aibileen, in Mississippi."
Slow down, Hollywood. This statement is simply insulting.
Being born in the same year is all that Davis has going for her, when making this comparison to one of the world's most admired civil rights heroes and social activists Mississippi ever produced.
Fannie Lou Hamer was no one's quiet maid who spent the evening writing down her thoughts in a journal. She had thoughts, all right, and shared them with anyone she chose, including the President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson.
To understand and appreciate Hamer, one has to know from whence she came –
Born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi, she was the granddaughter of a slave and the youngest of 20 children. Her parents were sharecroppers in this region of the Mississippi Delta, participants in a system of farming that allowed workers to live on a plantation in return for working the land. When the crop is harvested, they split the profits in half with the plantation owner, giving the system another name -- halving. Sometimes the owner paid for the seed and fertilizer, but usually the sharecropper paid those expenses out of his half. It is a hard way to make a living and sharecroppers generally were born poor, lived and died poor.
In my book, Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, I wrote this about Hamer:
A wise civil rights leader, singer and storyteller, Hamer often told how her family stayed alive during the hardest years.
In winter months, Hamer and her siblings followed their mother from plantation to plantation asking landowners for leftover cotton, the "scrappin' cotton. When the family gathered enough cotton for a bale, these bits of scrap were sold to buy food. On those treks "[Mother] always tied our feet up with rags because the ground would be froze real hard," Hamer in 1967 wrote in her short autobiography, To Praise Our Bridges.
Music was tied to survival during these treks and Hamer became well known years later for comforting others with her gospel singing - especially during some of the most difficult moments in the Movement when people were beaten and jailed.
When young civil rights workers later moved into Sunflower County many quickly discovered that Hamer had a "unique ability to define the problems that affected African Americans in the Delta in their own vernacular," wrote J. Moye in Let the People Decide.
Hamer was "a leader waiting for a movement [who] believed deeply in the promise of the Bible and in the promise of the United States of America."
In the early 1960s, as the modern civil rights movement progressed, there were predictions of wholesale starvation in the Delta as government commodities were being withheld from sharecroppers during winter or non-working months. Mothers about to give birth were particularly concerned about the consequences.
It was Hamer who pointed out the labor and sweat of blacks that had "made them white folks creamy rich," concluding, "There's so much hate. Only God has kept the Negro sane."
On June 11, 1963, a message came into the Greenwood Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) office that a group of eight freedom workers - Hamer, along with June Johnson, Annelle Ponder, Euvester Simpson, Rosemary Freeman, Lawrence Guyot, James Wes, and Ruth Day - had been arrested and beaten by Winona jailers in Montgomery County for integrating the white waiting room of the bus station in Winona upon returning from a training session in South Carolina on June 9, 1963.
SNCC leader Bob Moses led a group of volunteers that night to Winona. Though she could hardly talk, Annelle Ponder whispered, "Freedom," when she saw her friends, wrote Cat Holland who observed that June Johnson's face was "so smashed and bloody I didn't recognize her."
Then Holland recognized Hamer, who "took her hand and ran it over her lumpy, bruised flesh," while telling her what happened. Holland wrote of her conversation with a police officer:
"Why y'all beat 'em like this?" I asked the policeman, who stood by leering.
"We kin give you some of the same thing," he said.
"Don't say nothing, Ida," Miss Hamer said. "You go back an' tell the others."
Hamer, Others Protest in Chicago
Mississippi's conservative "blue dog Democrats" in 1964 threatened to support Republican Barry Goldwater. The state party's leaders predictably kept out all black participation in primaries or conventions.
So the black-led Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) decided to become active in the state's official Democratic Party and to steer the party to support Johnson for President.
While the regular Democrats were sending a "hand-picked delegation to Chicago with only two token Negro delegates, although Negroes constituted 40 percent of 240,000 of the registered voters in Mississippi," MFDP members decided they, alone, should represent the state at the upcoming party convention, and Hamer was part of this group.
Aaron Henry, a Delta leader from Clarksdale and friend of Hamer's, appealed for $30,000 to support the Loyal Democrats of Mississippi, a bi-racial coalition made up of the MFDP, NAACP of Mississippi, the state Teacher's Association, the Mississippi AFL-CIO and the Young Democrats.
The coalition's purpose would be to appear before the Credential Committee of the Democratic National convention on August 26 to prove discrimination by the regular Democratic Party of Mississippi.
The secretary of state, however, refused permission to register MFDP because "there was already a Democratic political party in the state," even though Mississippi Democrats failed to support the national party's presidential candidate in the previous 1960 elections.
Whites did not take the MFDP very seriously and it was sometimes the target of editorial "humor." The state's spy agency, the Sovereignty Commission, meanwhile, had collected nearly 1000 files on the political organization including newsletters, membership lists, meeting announcements and notes, as well as commentaries from the Commission's investigators.
Then on August 12, an injunction was issued ordering all MFDP officials not to leave the state and go to Atlantic City for the convention. Also prohibited was engagement by the leader in any further MFDP activity. MFDP filed suit in federal court asking that more than a dozen of Mississippi's segregation laws be invalidated, taking advantage of the new Civil Rights Act legislation and causing a cloud of last-minute confusion as the group made haste for New Jersey.
Once they arrived, national Democratic Party leaders fell through in support of this unique group from Mississippi and were not prepared to greet MFDP's 64 delegates with open arms.
President Lyndon Johnson did not want bitter debates initiated, even if the regular Mississippi Democrats were supporting Goldwater instead of him.
Johnson and party liberals had campaigned on the basis of their civil rights "successes" and even though the Southern state party structures completely excluded African Americans, Democrats did not want this practice disrupted, fearing they would lose the support of Southern states.
But Fannie Lou Hamer added heat to the convention when she spoke before the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention, telling the horrifying story of her attempts to register to vote in Sunflower County, including the beating she received in Winona.
Lyndon Johnson, concerned over the attention paid to MFDP and the fight for credentials, gave notice that he wanted to deliver a special televised speech on an unrelated topic, as Hamer was speaking.
News networks recognized the public's interest in Hamer and played her entire speech on the evening news, giving even more airtime than she would have received:
Hamer's unforgettable August 22, 1964 testimony would go down in civil rights history:
"In June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop, was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailways bus. When we got to Winona ... four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened, and one of the ladies said, "It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of Police ordered us out."
"...I was carried to the county jail, and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss [Euvester] Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear the sounds of kicks and screams. I could hear somebody say, "Can you say, yes, sir, nigger? Can you say yes, sir?"
" ... They beat her, I don't know how long, and after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people. And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he ... said, "You are from Ruleville all right," and he used a curse word, and he said, "We are going to make you wish you was dead."
" ... The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman for me, to lay down on a bunk bed on my face, and I laid on my face. The first Negro began to beat ... until he was exhausted, and I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side because I suffered from polio when I was six years old. After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.
"The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat me to set on my feet to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush ... I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered."
Historians would later write that Johnson told Hubert Humphrey to "crush the rebellion" and get the MFDP off the front pages, or Humphrey could give up on the idea of ever becoming vice-president. Humphrey instructed fellow Minnesotan and future Vice President Walter Mondale to "suppress the MFDP by any means necessary" and this was accomplished through secret meetings, and false statements, and by using information on the MFDP's strategy gathered from FBI informants.
Johnson, Humphrey, and Mondale finally offered MFDP to seat two at-large delegates to be selected by Johnson (to ensure Humphrey that Hamer would not be selected). MFDP delegates refused the compromise. Humphrey reportedly pleaded with Hamer (whom he reportedly found "distasteful" because she was poor and uneducated) to accept the compromise so he could become vice president and push civil rights.
Mississippian Rev. Ed King, also a delegate, years later told how Hamer expressed no sympathy for Humphrey's dilemma:
"Senator Humphrey. I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs for trying to register to vote. I had to leave the plantation where I worked in Sunflower County. Now if you lose this job of vice president because you do what is right, because you help the MFDP, everything will be all right. God will take care of you. But if you take it this way, why, you will never be able to do any good for civil rights, for poor people, for peace, or any of those things you talk about."
In December 1964, MFDP tried to halt seating of Mississippi's white Congressmen who gained their seats in racially rigged elections by filing a notice of contest. MFDP claimed that Annie Devine, Victoria Gray and Fannie Lou Hamer, three MFDP Congressional candidates who ran in the freedom vote after being kept off the official ballot, were entitled to seats in their respective districts.
Congress would not budge. Civil rights groups including SNCC, CORE, SCLC and Americans for Democratic Action endorsed the challenge but ADA would not support the seating of the three women.
The national media also rejected seating of the three candidates; hence the Freedom Democratic Party backed down from supporting the three, but continued the seating challenge.
In January, 600 black Mississippians attending the opening ceremony of the 1965 session to lobby against seating of the Mississippi delegation, and more than one third of House members agreed, voting to bar the official Mississippian delegation.
Hamer had helped make their case.
Hamer Made Impact, Julian Bond Said
Long after the conflicts faded from national news coverage, Fannie Lou Hamer was acting on her dream of an ideal community and in 1970, formed the Freedom Farm Cooperative to help displaced farm workers become self-reliant.
At its zenith, the cooperative owned 680 acres of land devoted to cotton production, 200 units of low-income housing, day care center, and a small manufacturing plant.
When Hamer died in 1977, penniless, and ill from the beatings she had received, Georgia state legislator and SNCC representative Julian Bond spoke at her funeral, noting that Fannie Lou Hamer was "the articulator for the Southern movement to continue to fight long after SNCC's summer soldiers abandoned Ruleville and the rural South, shell shocked by too much of what was daily life for her."
Hamer's impact upon African Americans, the labor and women's movements, was impressive, Bond said.
"She and her co-workers taught a powerful lesson to those now facing the rapid dismantling of the formal structure of African American progress, the rise of widespread racist terrorism, and the intensification of economic exploitation."
Fannie Lou Hamer was not a person to journal her thoughts.
And Davis's character isn't close to this incredible woman from Mississippi.
Not close at all.
* * * * *
For many people, this is the only film they will ever see that has anything to do with the modern civil rights movement in Mississippi. They will leave with no idea of the utter violence and heroism that defines this period. I am concerned, for instance, when I hear the name of Fannie Lou Hamer being bantied about, as a model for the maid character. It is a shame, that when African Americans are offered an opportunity to work, it is for a film that doesn't represent the true pain and nobility of this movement that was so critical to our country.
We need some real history taught by films and books before moving into feel good movies about Mississippi's ghosts. Especially when in today's papers, we still read about white teens in Jackson killing an innocent black man -- for fun.
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
Will John Grisham Please Write EVEN MORE About Emmett Till, Cleve McDowell, James Eastland and Other Mississippi Madness?
Josh Lucas plays The Firm's Mitch McDeere.
I don't know if I can stand the wait! This Sunday is the two-hour premiere of John Grisham's new television series on NBC.
Sometime back, I wrote the following blog post -- begging Grisham to write a book about Emmett Till, a book that would be made into a movie. He hasn't done this yet, but at least we now have The Firm every Sunday on television to look forward to.
Here's what I have learned, so far, about this new series (Jan. 8, 9/8 central):
Based on the blockbuster feature film and best-selling novel by world-renowned author John Grisham ("The Pelican Brief," "The Client"), "The Firm" continues the story of attorney Mitchell McDeere and his family 10 years after the events of the film and novel. As a young associate, McDeere brought down the prestigious Memphis law firm of Bendini, Lambert & Locke, which operated as a front for the Chicago mob -- and his life was never the same. After a difficult decade, which included a stay in the Federal Witness Protection program, Mitch and his family now emerge from isolation to reclaim their lives and their future -- only to find that past dangers are still lurking and new threats are everywhere. "The Firm" is produced by Entertainment One in association with Sony Pictures Television and Paramount Pictures. The executive producers are Grisham, Lukas Reiter ("Law & Order," "Boston Legal"), John Morayniss ("Haven," "Hung"), Michael Rosenberg ("Hung," "Skins") and Noreen Halpern ("Rookie Blue," "Hung").
Here's my original blog post:
This is a plea to my favorite author, John Grisham. Write a book about Emmett Till – the 14-year-old Chicago, Ill. pupil brutally murdered 56 years ago while visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta. You could bring us up to date on the FBI, cold cases and what went on in Sunflower County when the prosecutor would not accept help from the FBI to make the case.
It would make a wonderfully intriguing Mississippi murder mystery, since no one has ever really determined exactly what happened in those early morning hours of Aug. 28, 1955 and who all was involved.
While an updated Till's story alone would make a great, new Grisham novel, what keeps me going is the murder of a Mississippi lawyer, Cleve McDowell, shot to death in his home some 42 years later – a man who was born in the same year as Till and who became a civil rights lawyer because of Emmett Till’s murder.
On the morning of March 17, 1997 the naked, lifeless body of Cleve McDowell was discovered by his youngest sister, propped up against an upstairs bathroom wall.
Throughout his Mississippi Delta home, dozens of powerful handguns and rifles –"always one within his reach" his secretary told me – had been strategically placed by McDowell for self-protection.
So why didn't McDowell use one of his guns to save his own life?
What happened to bullets taken from McDowell's body during the state's autopsy? What happened to McDowell's guns?
Why do county officials still maintain a gag order on all investigation records of this murder? How is this even possible when the man is dead?
McDowell served as a public defender in Sunflower County for three decades. He was part of a group of black leaders organizing to pressure district attorneys and revive interest in many never-prosecuted cases in which Blacks were killed for doing civil rights work, as well as the murder of Emmett Till.
For over forty years, McDowell studied hate crimes and murders taking place during the modern civil rights movement. Where is all of the information he collected about the murders of Emmett Till, Medgar Evers and so many others?
Had this Mississippi lawyer and his friend been working to solved Dr. Martin Luther King’s murder? McDowell once worked for King. He was an SCLC man and worshiped this civil rights leader.
Did his partner really commit suicide, over in Montgomery Alabama? What about the signs of torture, McDowell discovered and reported about his friend, to others?
Why did McDowell tell his closest friends that he would be next?
Why is McDowell’s name being erased from Mississippi history? Why do some Mississippi officials and reporters get so uptight when I mention his name? And why aren’t they writing about McDowell?
So many questions wait to be answered. Would John Grisham see the story emerge? I have faith that he would.
Doing research in Mississippi on people like Till or McDowell, is a challenge. I’ve had my own fights when trying to pull up records in the Magnolia state, and I will share a few...
Back in November of 2005, writing about Who killed JFK, I kept running into intriguing facts and questions involving a Vicksburg, Miss. private detective who once worked for the state’s double secret spy organization, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state agency formed soon after the murder of Emmett Till, partly to stave off questions from the Feds.
This detective had gone on to work for the rather famous detective agency in New Orleans that later would be linked to Kennedy’s assassination. He returned home to Vicksburg, told his son that he had learned something about the assassination that scared the hell out of him, and then… the detective “accidentally” shot himself in the groin with his rifle and died.
Sullivan's death was reported as a hunting accident, since it happened while he was cleaning his rifle after a duck hunt, the report states. Sullivan's daughter once told me she and her brother absolutely believe their father was murdered because he knew too much. “He knew enough about guns to not have an accident like that,” the daughter said.
Now THAT would be a great book for Grisham's fans. It would put this story to rest for Sullivan’s family. While JFK conspiracy theorists keep the debate alive, few mention Mississippi's links to the president’s murder. I know Grisham could make it come alive in his own unique way.
My intrigue with the Mississippi connection to JFK's assassination began while discovering information that linked a true Delta icon, U.S. Sen. James O. Eastland, to several others often associated with the tragic Dallas event, including this Vicksburg detective.
Seven years before John F. Kennedy's murder, the magnolia state's infamous senator (a Delta planter whose paths crossed with McDowell’s more than once) met for the first time with Guy Banister, a controversial CIA operative and retired FBI agent in charge of the agency’s Chicago bureau. Banister was later linked to Lee Harvey Oswald and Eastland through involvement with Eastland's Senate Internal Security Subcommittee or SISS (sometimes called "SISSY”).
Okay, this is a little weak, but some conspiracy theorists have no trouble at all, making this connection.
Here is what I know:
The New Orleans Times-Picayune on March 23, 1956 reported that Robert Morrison, a former chief counsel for Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and Banister traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi in the heart of the Delta, to confer personally with Senator Eastland for more than three hours.
Describing the conference as "completely satisfactory," Morrison told the New Orleans reporter "Mr. Banister has complete liaison with the committee's staff which was the main object of our trip."
Don’t you think this alone would fire up John Grisham? I sure do.
Known as a notorious political extremist who was later described as the impetus for James Garrison’s 1967-1970 Kennedy assassination probe, Banister earlier became a brief focus of Mississippi's secret spy agency, the Sovereignty Commission, when it was suggested Banister should be hired to set up an "even tighter" domestic spying system throughout the state. This report was hidden away in the state's Sovereignty Commission records.
If Mr. Grisham wants to discover more about these records, I have put up the link online at http://mississippisovereigntycommission.com and yes – I own this domain and I know, for fact, it pisses off the state library, which houses the commission’s records (at least the records that were not stolen by former state officials or the FBI).
A second Eastland operative, private investigator John D. Sullivan, the detective from Vicksburg who was mysteriously killed after JFK’s assassination, made this suggestion (to hire Banister) to the Sovereignty Commission just months after the JFK assassination, also reported in released Sovereignty Commission records.
Sullivan once worked for Banister (both inside the FBI, as an agent, and then privately, in New Orleans) and also as a private self-employed investigator for the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. Sullivan got around -- he also worked for the private white Citizens Councils, of which he was an active member; and for Eastland’s SISS, as had Banister and Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Citizens Councils (and Grisham writes about them) came together after Brown V. Topeka Board of Education. Everyone in Mississippi was madder than hell about the Court’s decision to open up schools to black children, and so the Councils formed to “let others know what a good job Mississippi is doing with its segregation” and of course, to fend off any attempts to integrate.
The Councils, in effect, were the uptown Klan, as one famous Mississippi journalist, Hodding Carter, Jr., would write. For a few years, Councils got their money from the Sovereignty Commission, which received and channeled money to them through a famous New York financier (per Sovereignty Commission records). Oh, it gets so sticky in Mississippi.
When Sullivan reportedly shot himself soon after the Kennedy assassination, Sovereignty Commission investigators went to his widow and tried to acquire his library and files, but most of his confidential files were either reportedly burned by his widow or they had been lent out, and she “could not remember” who had them, Sovereignty Commission files once again disclose.
Some twenty-nine years later, in testimony before the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board during a Dallas hearing on November 18, 1994, the late Senator Eastland was directly implicated in the president’s assassination by one of the author/theorists invited to testify.
"Lee Harvey Oswald was quite possibly an agent of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and he was doing the bidding of [Sen. Thomas J. Dodd and Eastland and Morrison,” author John McLaughlin swore. Of course, McLaughlin has been vilified repeatedly since he made that statement. This guy would be a great character in a Grisham novel.
But back to Mississippi and the fight over McDowell and Eastland secret records.
Documentation that could support or even discredit such assertions as McLaughlin’s might have been found in the Eastland archives at the University of Mississippi, but for many years, no objective scholar was allowed to search these archives since the day they arrived on campus. I was told that the well-known Mississippi newspaper investigative reporter, Jerry Mitchell, was allowed to go through the Eastland papers at will, threatening to report some nasty stuff if he was not allowed to do this at his pleasure.
Once I tried to blow past the law school’s dean who was in charge of the records. However, it did not work. I do not have Mitchell’s chutzpah or, more important, his power base.
But that day my son, a just-out-of-law-school graduate who had left New York, and I tried to present the Ole Miss law school dean (used to be called the Eastland School of Law) with a FOIA to gain a peek at some of McDowell’s records, hoping we could slide into senator’s stuff, too. We walked into the dean's office, requesting that we see some records on McDowell, who was kicked out of the law school back in the early 60s.
McDowell was a friend of James Meredith (the Black student at Ole Miss who nearly caused a second Civil War because of his admission to that infamous university). When Meredith left school (the day after their close friend Medgar Evers was assassinated), McDowell (the first Black admitted to the law school) was left alone.
To make matter worse, Meredith’s security guards were released from duty when Meredith split. After numerous chases and threats by students welding guns, McDowell finally ordered a gun for his personal protection. Campus security reported this, and McDowell was booted out. He later proved that a number of students actually carried guns on campus, especially during the Meredith clash, and were not kicked out of school. But this did not matter, and McDowell lost his case.
Back then, the former law school dean wrote a glowing letter of support (used to get McDowell into another law school). I learned about this letter from another author and I wanted to see it, but the current dean refused access. He said it did not exist.
So Barry and I are sitting in the office, watching Dean So-and-So read the Freedom of Information Act request to himself. He looks at my son’s paper for one second and then wads it up and pitches it into his garbage pail.
“That’s why I told the last person who gave me one of these,” the dean says.
Barry looked stunned. It was a wonderful experience for him, I believe, but Barry quickly decided to leave Mississippi to study for the New Mexico bar. I really did not blame him, but as his mom, I was amused and believed it could be chalked up as a good lesson for later on.
What would John Grisham do?
Back to Eastland's records.
Once records were handed over to the University of Mississippi, they were “managed” for years by a former Eastland associate and devotee who followed the papers from Washington, D.C. to Oxford, I discovered.
There was so much I wanted to learn about Eastland, a planter from the cotton hamlet of Doddsville, in the heart of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. The old Senator was a talented racist who often blocked money from coming into the Delta to feed and employ the poorest of Mississippians. Yet he was quite good at collecting hundreds of thousands dollars of federal farming subsidies for himself. Shades of Michele Bachmann.
Eastland died in 1986 at 82 and even though he was once of the most powerful U.S. senators ever to work Washington, D.C. (at one time chaired multiple powerful committees) there has been very little written about Eastland; his family and friends seem to be protecting what information is allowed to the public.
Ole Miss sure did a bang up job of helping his family protect this man who best known for his strong support of states' rights and for his opposition to the civil rights movement.
Like most Southern Democrats, Eastland denounced Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, and even advised that no one had to obey this Supreme Court decision.
"On May 17, 1954, the Constitution of the United States was destroyed because of the Supreme Court's decision. You are not obliged to obey the decisions of any court which are plainly fraudulent sociological considerations,” he told voters in Senatobia, Mississippi.
When it came to races mingling or as they say in Mississippi, mixing, the older Senator did not mince words, testifying to the Senate 10 days after the Brown decision came down:
The Southern institution of racial segregation or racial separation was the correct, self-evident truth, which arose from the chaos and confusion of the Reconstruction period. Separation promotes racial harmony. It permits each race to follow its own pursuits, and its own civilization. Segregation is not discrimination... Mr. President, it is the law of nature, it is the law of God, that every race has both the right and the duty to perpetuate itself. All free men have the right to associate exclusively with members of their own race, free from governmental interference, if they so desire.
When three brave young civil rights workers Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were kidnapped and killed in Mississippi on June 21, 1964, Eastland reportedly told President Lyndon Johnson that the incident was a hoax and there was no Ku Klux Klan in the state, conjecturing that they young men had gone to Chicago.
Later released records of President Lyndon Johnson show this conversation:
Johnson: Jim, we've got three kids missing down there. What can I do about it?
Eastland: Well, I don't know. I don't believe there's ... I don't believe there's three missing.
Johnson: We've got their parents down here.
Eastland: I believe it's a publicity stunt...
President Johnson once said that, "Jim Eastland could be standing right in the middle of the worst Mississippi flood ever known, and he'd say the niggers caused it, helped out by the Communists.”
I remain fascinated by Sovereignty Commission records showing that Eastland asked for a list of students who would be coming into Mississippi for Freedom Summer. It also intrigues me that Paul Goodman was the son of the Pacifica Radio executive who was earlier hounded by Eastland in special Senate hearings.
Would Grisham be so intrigued?
Well, after our unsuccessful Freedom of Information Act or FOIA bid to the University of Mississippi's law school, an ethical historian finally was hired by Ole Miss to organize the archives based in the law school. The records, by the way, were moved over to the school’s library, thus getting rid of the law school's problem.
So we could finally see some records?
Not a chance.
One Ole Miss historian explained the current plan was to release first all of Eastland's press releases. (Old press releases are something I really want to dig through. I am kidding.) However, she was honest and admitted that many important files were “probably missing” – that the files looked pretty much “cleaned out."
There was something gained from our efforts, though. It did come back to me that “some people at Ole Miss were really angry” over the FOIA request. This was good news. Plus, I helped my son get over his angst before he left Mississippi by driving around together on campus blasting our CD version of Bob Dylan singing Dixie. If you have not heard the man sing it, do. He spent a Freedom Summer in the tiny cotton town of Drew, my friend Margaret Block told me, the same town where McDowell was killed years later. Very close to where young Till had been tortured in a planter’s shed only a few miles away from McDowell's home. Dylan got it, all right, and sings Dixie with a slight snarl.
I once spoke with historian Carol Polsgrove from Indiana University who wanted to see Eastland’s records. Polsgrove said she was interested in the white resistance to the civil rights movement, that it has not received the kind of attention from historians that the movement itself has—understandably, since there is nothing very heroic about this behavior.
She said she had thought about writing a biography of Eastland, terming him the political linchpin of the resistance, and going so far as to call the law school, asking to see his papers. Secretaries told her they were stowed in boxes in a basement—uncataloged and inaccessible. A library staffer whispered that Senator Eastland was not quite “politically correct”.
No kidding?
Polsgrove and I agreed we would really love to go through ALL of Eastland’s papers, someday. I felt a bond of sisterhood, at the time.
So, don’t you wonder what kind of a tax deduction his family got for donating these inaccessible and incomplete papers to this most southern university on Earth? Where students still dally in blackface, upon occasion?
Would John Grisham demand to see all of the Eastland papers? I would like to think so.
Damn, I wish my favorite author would go pay a visit to Oxford, Mississippi, maybe get some of Eastland’s good stuff and then pay a visit to Sunflower County to let his readers know just what happened to Cleve McDowell and to his lawyer-friend over in Alabama.
This would be truly an excellent reading adventure, a new John Grisham novel I could really get into. Something to download on my iPad for a good read on a rainy summer day.
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Susan Klopfer writes on civil rights history and current issues. She is the author of several civil rights books that related to the Mississippi Delta, including her newest book, "Who Killed Emmett Till," available in e-book, audio book and print.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
New book looks at Greensboro’s role in The Civil Rights movement
New book looks at Greensboro’s role in The Civil Rights movement
by Chantelle Grady
Carolina Peacemaker
Originally posted 7/29/2011
by Chantelle Grady
Carolina Peacemaker
Originally posted 7/29/2011
At the International Civil Rights Center and Museum on July 23, Greensboro’s role in the nation’s Civil Rights movement was the topic of a panel discussion which featured a new book by author Eugene Pfaff.
Pfaff’s new book is “Keep On Walkin’, Keep On Talkin’: An Oral History of the Greensboro Movement.” It was used as a springboard for dialogue on the city’s involvement in the quest for equality. His fellow panelists were author and former News & Record columnist, Jim Schlosser and author and Bennett college English professor, Dr. Linda Brown. Brown also served as panel moderator.
The three shared their observations on how Greensboro has changed since the Civil Rights era. They all agreed a lot has been accomplished, but the city still faces major challenges in regards to equal rights. “The thing that strikes me now,” Schlosser said, “is how absurd segregation was.” He believes it actually held the city’s economic growth back. He also said he still hears racist comments from various people.
Dr. Brown stated that many people participated in the plight for success in Greensboro, not just the ones whose names made headlines. “There’s work that happens in movements…invisible work,” she said about those whose efforts will rarely- if ever- get due credit. She also spoke about Bennett College’s tradition of fighting for social justice, which dates back many years prior to the Greensboro Sit-Ins. Brown’s aunt, Dr. Willa Player, was Bennett’s president during the Sit-Ins and did not deter her students’ participation. Rather, Dr. Player encouraged them to take a stand for what was right.
Author Eugene Pfaff said that while conducting interviews for his book, he was told: “This is a nice-nasty town.” Audience members could be heard saying ‘uh-huh,’ and nodded their heads at the comment. Pfaff took this to mean that, “There was a veneer of civility,” that disguised prejudice. “I believe it is now much better, due to the empowerment of the African American community,” he added. Jim Schlosser qualified that statement when he said, “Greensboro has always been very image conscious.” He went on to say that, “Greensboro, to this day, still worries about its image and rightfully so.”
Linda Brown stressed that, in the African American community, it was understood that folk had to fight for everything they got. She also said that there is still a level of resistance to full equality, although it doesn’t always come in the form of hate groups. There are those in certain positions who don’t want to cede any amount of power. “You can’t have equality, and hold on to all the power at the same time,” Brown said.
Compared to the 1960s or earlier, most of the panel believes that African Americans have something they did not have then. “I believe that one thing that is working in the favor of African Americans today, is legislation,” Pfaff said. He continued by saying that those hard-won battles still need to be defended. Schlosser said, “There’s just no way we can go backwards. I don’t think anyone wants to.” Schlosser said that African Americans have a seat at the table of power.
The panelists voiced that more needs to be done and that there will always be a group that will have to rise up against inequality or as Schlosser put it: “I don’t think there will be a day where we declare victory and say that equality is here.”
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
CIVIL LIBERTIES Metropolitan Books / By James Peck
Posted today on AlterNet --
Print Version
"Are Your Humanitarian Heartstrings Being Tugged in the Name of Empire?"
Print Version
"Author James Peck's new book 'Ideal Illusions' challenges our basic assumptions about the universal crusade for human rights..."
Kindle Version
"These stories of human rights tragedies exploit our best aspirations in the name of the American imperial project, and the US has been funding this approach since the dawn of the Cold War. The media effect of filling a newspaper with human rights atrocities from the developing world functions to distract the audience from strategic and mineral designs the US and its allies have going in those countries, and to dilute the news coverage when their true aims come to light. The takeaway is that empire is the domain of storytellers as much as it is of Air Force generals."
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
New Alabama Civil Rights eBook: Tales From The Troubled South
(photo of cover to come)
Tales from the Troubled South: Civil Rights in Alabama
Ebook By Catherine Jaime
$2.99 Rating: Not yet rated.
Published: Feb. 17, 2011
Category: Non-Fiction » History » American
Words: 6489 (approximate)
Language: English
Ebook Short Description
This book introduces you to the highlights of the Civil Rights Movement across the state of Alabama: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, the "Scottsboro Boys", the Selma to Montgomery March, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and many more important events all took place within the borders of Alabama.
Extended Description
This book looks at the highlights of the Civil Rights Movement across the state of Alabama: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, the "Scottsboro Boys", the Selma to Montgomery March, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and many more important events all took place within the borders of Alabama. The book also introduces you to some of the people who participated in the marches, the boycotts, and more: Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, Martin Luther King, Jr, Rosa Parks, and others.
The book is not an encyclopedic look at the topic, but is meant to be an introduction to those in and out of Alabama to some of these important Civil Rights moments.
Whether you live in Alabama, or just want to know a little more about the Civil Rights Movement, this book will be sure to educate you.
Tags
alabama, black history, martin luther king jr, civil rights, shuttlesworth, bombingham
Available HERE in all major eBook reading formats (HTML,epub, mobi, pdf,palm, java script, kindle, view from screen, etc.)
Available through Smashwords eBook Publishing
Tales from the Troubled South: Civil Rights in Alabama
Ebook By Catherine Jaime
$2.99 Rating: Not yet rated.
Published: Feb. 17, 2011
Category: Non-Fiction » History » American
Words: 6489 (approximate)
Language: English
Ebook Short Description
This book introduces you to the highlights of the Civil Rights Movement across the state of Alabama: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, the "Scottsboro Boys", the Selma to Montgomery March, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and many more important events all took place within the borders of Alabama.
Extended Description
This book looks at the highlights of the Civil Rights Movement across the state of Alabama: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, the "Scottsboro Boys", the Selma to Montgomery March, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and many more important events all took place within the borders of Alabama. The book also introduces you to some of the people who participated in the marches, the boycotts, and more: Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, Martin Luther King, Jr, Rosa Parks, and others.
The book is not an encyclopedic look at the topic, but is meant to be an introduction to those in and out of Alabama to some of these important Civil Rights moments.
Whether you live in Alabama, or just want to know a little more about the Civil Rights Movement, this book will be sure to educate you.
Tags
alabama, black history, martin luther king jr, civil rights, shuttlesworth, bombingham
Available HERE in all major eBook reading formats (HTML,epub, mobi, pdf,palm, java script, kindle, view from screen, etc.)
Available through Smashwords eBook Publishing
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Emmett Till Blog; Murder in the Mississippi Delta; Civil Rights Cold Cases: Emmett Till eBook Price Now 99 Cents
"It's time for more people to know this inportant civil rights story," author Susan Klopfer says. The eBook price drop comes as the 56th anniversary of Till's death arrives in August.
Continued --
"It's time for more people to know this inportant civil rights story," author Susan Klopfer says. The eBook price drop comes as the 56th anniversary of Till's death arrives in August.
Continued --
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Diversity Briefings Newsletter: Lack of Diversity, Discrimination Can Cause Mental...
Diversity Briefings Newsletter: eBook Author Notes Lack of Diversity, Discrimination Can Cause Mental...: "A story in today's Legal Industry News by KCJ News Service states that many minority workers 'feel discriminated against' Employment law d..."
New Civil Rights Book With Diversity Themes Focuses On Respect and Black Women
Fannie Lou Hamer of Ruleville, Mississippi -- known for her gospel singing and bravery during the modern civil rights movement. (This photo may be subject to copyright.)
(From Civil Rights Cold Cases: Keep Digging, David Person, USA Today)
...Maybe it's because from the days of [enslavement] up to and beyond the 1944 rape of RecyTaylor, black women and their families had resigned themselves to the fact that, as Mississippi civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer once said: "A black woman's body was never hers alone." An all-white jury declined to indict the men for rape, and although a later investigation did garner some confessions, still no action was taken.
This story, and the stories of other black women fighting to reclaim their bodies, are painstakingly documented in Danielle McGuire's 2010 book At The Dark End Of The Street.The gang rape of Recy Taylor stands out perhaps because an Army private alledgedly was the ring leader, Abbeville's law enforcement leaders covered up the crime, and then-Alabama Gov. Chauncey Sparks actually investigated it — fearing that the Abbeville rape might become as notorious as the Scottsboro Boys trial, where nine black boys were falsely accused of raping two white girls in Alabama in 1931.
Because of McGuire's book, Taylor's story got a tremendous amount of news media coverage earlier this year, prompting apologies from Abbeville's current mayor and the Alabama Senate and House of Representatives for the coverup of the crime.
Person's Complete Story --
Remembering Fanny Lou Hamer's Story...
My eyes seemed to race quickly to the mention of Fannie Lou Hamer in Person's review of this new book. Like many others of my age, race and educational background, I had never learned of Mrs. Hamer in high school or college history courses. It took a move to the Mississippi Delta, near the home of Ruleville (Hamer's hometown) to learn about this phenomenal civil rights advocate and human being.
How can we respect a woman such as Hamer when we are not even taught about her in our history books? Hence the critical nature of McGuire's new book, At the Dark Edge.
As I learned more and more about this great woman, I wrote extensively about her part in the modern civil rights movement in Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited
. Hamer created a national sensation at the 1964 Democratic national convention in Atlantic City by relating the horrific details of her cruel encounter with Winona law enforcement. Lyndon Johnson scheduled an impromptu press conference at the time Hamer was scheduled to speak because he didn’t want “that illiterate woman” antagonizing southern Democrats. But Hamer’s revelations were so appalling and her delivery so intense that all three major networks carried her remarks in their entirety on the evening news.Yet there is so much more to know about this courageous African American woman.
Born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer was the granddaughter of a slave and the youngest of 20 children. This wise civil rights leader, singer and storyteller, grew up North of Greenville in Sunflower County, in the middle of the Delta, and often told how her family stayed alive during the hardest years.
In winter months Hamer and her siblings followed their mother from plantation to plantation asking landowners for leftover cotton, the "scrappin’ cotton.
When the family gathered enough cotton for a bale, these bits of scrap were sold to buy food. On those treks "[Mother] always tied our feet up with rags because the ground would be froze real hard," Hamer wrote in her short autobiography.
Music was tied to survival during these treks and years later Hamer became well known for comforting others with soul-filled gospel singing – especially during some of the most difficult times in the Movement when protesters were beaten and jailed.
As young civil rights workers moved into Sunflower County many quickly discovered that Hamer had a "unique ability to define the problems that affected African Americans in the Delta in their own vernacular."
Hamer was "a leader waiting for a movement [who] believed deeply in the promise of the Bible and in the promise of the United States of America," wrote J. Todd Moye in Let the People Decide
. In the early 1960s, as the modern civil rights movement progressed, there were predictions of wholesale starvation in the Delta as government commodities were being witheld from sharecroppers during winter or non-working months. Mothers about to give birth were particularly concerned about the consequences.
It was Hamer who pointed out the labor and sweat of blacks that had "made them white folks creamy rich," concluding, "There’s so much hate. Only God has kept the Negro sane."
On June 11, 1963, a message came into the Greenwood Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) office that a group of eight freedom workers –Hamer, along with June Johnson, Annelle Ponder, Euvester Simpson, Rosemary Freeman, Lawrence Guyot, James Wes, and Ruth Day – had been arrested and beaten by Winona jailers in Montgomery County for integrating the white waiting room of the bus station in Winona upon returning from a training session in South Carolina on June 9, 1963.
SNCC leader Bob Moses led a group of volunteers that night to Winona. Though she could hardly talk, Annelle Ponder whispered, "Freedom," when she saw her friends, wrote Cat Holland who observed that June Johnson’s face was "so smashed and bloody I didn’t recognize her."
Then Holland recognized Hamer, who … "took her hand and ran it over her lumpy, bruised flesh," while telling her what happened. Holland recalled her conversation with a police officer:
"Why y’all beat ‘em like this?" I asked the policeman, who stood by leering."
"We kin give you some of the same thing," he said.
"Don’t say nothing, Ida," Miss Hamer said. "You go back an’ tell the others."
When Mississippi’s conservative "blue dog Democrats" in 1964 threatened to support Republican Barry Goldwater, the state party's leaders predictably kept out all black participation in primaries or conventions.
So the black-led Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) decided to become active in the state's official Democratic Party and to steer the party to support Johnson for President.
While the regular Democrats were sending a "hand-picked delegation to Chicago with only two token Negro delegates, although Negroes constituted 40 percent of 240,000 of the registered voters in Mississippi," MFDP members decided they, alone, should represent the state at the upcoming party convention, and Hamer was part of this group.
Aaron Henry, a Delta leader from Clarksdale and friend of Hamer’s, appealed for $30,000 to support the Loyal Democrats of Mississippi, a bi-racial coalition made up of the MFDP, NAACP of Mississippi, the state Teacher’s Association, the Mississippi AFL-CIO and the Young Democrats.
The coalition’s purpose would be to appear before the Credential Committee of the Democratic National convention on August 26 to prove discrimination by the regular Democratic Party of Mississippi.
The secretary of state, however, refused permission to register MFDP because "there was already a Democratic political party in the state," even though Mississippi Democrats failed to support the national party’s presidential candidate in the previous 1960 elections.
The MFDP was not taken very seriously by whites and it was sometimes the target of editorial "humor." The state’s spy agency, the Sovereignty Commission, meanwhile, had collected nearly 1000 files on the political organization including newsletters, membership lists, meeting announcements and notes, as well as commentaries from the Commission’s investigators.
Then on August 12, an injunction was issued ordering all MFDP officials not to leave the state and go to Atlantic City for the convention. Also prohibited was engagement by the leader in any further MFDP activity. MFDP filed suit in federal court asking that more than a dozen of Mississippi’s segregation laws be invalidated, taking advantage of the new Civil Rights Act legislation and causing a cloud of last-minute confusion as the group made haste for New Jersey.
Once they arrived, national Democratic Party leaders fell through in support of this unique group from Mississippi and were not prepared to greet MFDP’s 64 delegates with open arms.
President Lyndon Johnson didn't want bitter debates initiated, even if the regular Mississippi Democrats were supporting Goldwater instead of him.
Johnson and party liberals had campaigned on the basis of their civil rights "successes" and even though the Southern state party structures completely excluded African Americans, Democrats did not want this practice disrupted, fearing they would lose the support of Southern states.
But Fannie Lou Hamer added heat to the convention when she spoke before the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention, telling the horrifying story of her attempts to register to vote in Sunflower County, including the beating she received in Winona.
Lyndon Johnson, concerned over the attention paid to MFDP and the fight for credentials, gave notice that he wanted to deliver a special televised speech on an unrelated topic, as Hamer was speaking.
But news networks recognized the public’s interest in Hamer and played her entire speech on the evening news, giving even more air time than she would have received:
And Hamer’s unforgettable August 22, 1964 testimony would go down in civil rights history.
Earlier in 1962, Mrs. Hamer decided she had had enough of sharecropping. Leaving her house in Ruleville, MS she and 17 others took a bus to the courthouse in Indianola, the county seat, to register to vote. On their return home, police stopped their bus. They were told that their bus was the wrong color. Fannie Lou and the others were arrested and jailed.
After being released from jail, the plantation owner paid the Hamers a visit and told Fannie Lou that if she insisted on voting, she would have to get off his land - even though she had been there for eighteen years. She left the plantation that same day. Ten days later, night riders fired 16 bullets into the home of the family with whom she had gone to stay.
There are so many stories told about this remarkable woman. Editors of Psychology Today could certainly take notes on the dignity and beauty of this lady. (I sincerely invite the editor who chose to publish the recent story about how "research" concluded that black women are not beautiful to read my new eBook, Cash In On Diversity.)
Fannie Lou Hamer died March 14, 1977 of complications of diabetes and the injuries she received in the Winona beating. "She was never the same after that experience," said an old friend, Margaret Block. Hamer 'was known for her gospel singing that gave courage to civil rights advocates when they were under seige. She was also known for the phrase... "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Friends, Family Pay Tribute to Wayne Greenhaw, Noted Civil Rights Author
Alvin Benn, Montgomery Advertiser writes ...
One of Alabama's most prolific writers, Greenhaw completed 22 books and was working on another when he died. Flynt traced Greenhaw's background, from his difficult childhood in which he suffered from polio and his recuperative period that "drove him into an imaginary world of books."Read more --
After a part-time job as a sports reporter for the Tuscaloosa News, Greenhaw found his calling when he hit the journalistic jackpot at the Alabama Journal, where he had a chance to record history on almost a daily basis.
"History could hardly have placed him in a better locale at a more important time with so astounding a cast of characters," said Flynt, who then rattled off the names of newsmakers such as George Wallace, Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Gray and many more. Greenhaw arrived in Montgomery at a time when terrorists were bombing homes and churches, and there were brutal racial murders and compliant city and state officials. Regular Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens Council rallies frequently made news, "and he reported it," Flynt said.
Friday, June 03, 2011
Getting Along With Others Impacts the Bottom Line, Business Author Asserts
Getting along with all kinds of people – working in a highly diversified environment and being aware of diversity management techniques, results in better sales revenue, customer numbers and profitability, eBook author Susan Klopfer states.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRLog (Press Release) – Jun 03, 2011 – The author of a newly published eBook with a quirky title – Cash In On Diversity – asserts the more variations of people involved in an organization or business, the more financial success.
“It’s just this simple. Getting along with all kinds of people – working in a highly diversified environment and being aware of diversity management techniques, actually results in better sales revenue, customer numbers and profitability,” Susan Klopfer said, citing academic research and her own informal information gathering experiences as her sources.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRLog (Press Release) – Jun 03, 2011 – The author of a newly published eBook with a quirky title – Cash In On Diversity – asserts the more variations of people involved in an organization or business, the more financial success.
“It’s just this simple. Getting along with all kinds of people – working in a highly diversified environment and being aware of diversity management techniques, actually results in better sales revenue, customer numbers and profitability,” Susan Klopfer said, citing academic research and her own informal information gathering experiences as her sources.
Diversity eBook nominated for Global Award.
Continued --
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