Black Veterans: A Complicated Past and Unsung Present

I was listening to Tom Joyner this morning, and his Little Known Black History Fact was about a regiment of Black soldiers known as the Harlem Hellfighters. They were the 369th Infantry Regiment, and they became legendary during World War I (WWI).

I’m assuming that Tom chose that history fact in honor of Veterans’ Day, a holiday about which I’ve always been torn. And while I recognize that there have been soldiers of all races and ethnicities, I’m going to use my prerogative to focus on the Black experience for a moment.

Black soldiers have fought in every war this country has fought, even before there was a “United States”. On the one hand, I recognize the need to honor those Black soldiers who have fought for the ideals of America, even when America was not just falling painfully short of those ideals, but actually being blatantly hypocritical towards those ideals (i.e. saving democracy in the world while denying the vote within its own borders). In fact, to begin with, the reason the Harlem Hellfighters were in Europe during WWI was because of racism back in South Carolina, and the reason they ended up assigned to the French army was because the U.S. would not give them combat roles. With backdrops like this, Black soldiers such as the Harlem Hellfighters and many others for centuries have done much to demonstrate Black courage and dignity.

But on the other hand, Black soldiers have too often participated in wars of aggression, greed and imperialism--wars which were often aimed at other people of color. From the Buffalo Soldiers and their battles with the Native Americans to the Philippines, from Vietnam to Panama and Grenada, Black soldiers have had to fight against folks that look like them for reasons that they must have known were, at best, questionable. In some cases, the irony of their predicament have caused Black soldiers to show compassion for their foes, while in other cases it did not seem to make a difference.

So clearly the experience of enlisted Black soldiers is part of why I’m torn about Veterans Day. But I’m also torn because of the experiences of Black veterans who weren’t actually enlisted in the U.S. Armed Forces. These are veterans of a different kind of war—the FBI’s war against Black America. In this war, the General was not Eisenhower or Macarthur; it was J. Edgar Hoover, and his primary targets were the Black Panthers. At the heart of this war was a Black Panther 10 Point Program which included a demand for universal health care.

Clearly such demands were a threat to democracy.

As a result of this war, many Panthers were locked away in jail for crimes they did not commit. Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt is one example who was able to eventually prove his innocence and get released from jail after 27 years—longer than the amount of time that Nelson Mandela was in prison. However, many were not quite as “fortunate” as Geronimo and are still languishing behind bars. This includes freedom fighters such as Sundiata Acoli, Mutulu Shakur and Jalil Muntaqim. By the way, Brother Jalil is going before the parole board in just a few days, so I encourage everyone reading this to learn about his history and send a support letter ASAP.

Other veterans of the FBI war were forced to flee the country and live in exile. Assata Shakur and Nehanda Abiodun are two of the better know exiles, but we should not get lulled into thinking that they are somehow safe from U.S. authorities that still have bounties on their heads.

Of course, not all the soldiers in the FBI’s war against Black America were able to survive. Many, like Fred Hampton in Chicago, were murdered. Jeffrey Haas was an attorney in Chicago at the time, and has authored a book called The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther. For those of you in Atlanta who would like to learn more about Fred Hampton, Haas will be giving a lecture at Georgia State University, tomorrow (Thursday, Novermber 11th) from 5:30 to 7:30pm in the General Classroom Building, room 400 (corner of Peachtree Center Ave. and Decatur St.). I strongly encourage folks to attend.

No, it is not a simple thing, this Veterans Day. I don’t have all the answers, but i do know that it takes deeper thought than the knee-jerk reaction of wrapping ourselves in the red, white and blue the way the government and mainstream media wants us to. If that makes me unpatriotic, so be it.

I’ll be in good company.

On that "note", i'm outta here.

Free Book Giveaway! Lifelines: The Black Book of Proverbs

If you're anything like me, you probably need a little bit of wisdom and inspiration to get you through each day. Well lately, i've been able to get my daily dose of both from Lifelines: The Black Book of Proverbs. A recent press release about the book had this to say:

Authors Askhari and Yvonne share a passion for proverbs. Short, snappy sayings surround their lives. During their upbringings, they both learned, “proverbs are the daughters of experience” (Sierra Leone). Thus, LIFELINES draws inspiration from the authors’ experience and proverb gathering during their wide travels and particularly in their home communities on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Readers experiencing new births, weddings, career changes, death, and other rites of passage will find truth in the saying, “When the occasion arises, there is a proverb to suit it” (Rwanda). Indeed, LIFELINES offers wisdom for every stage of our lives.

And Pearl Cleage, author of What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, says

This little book contains the wisdom of the ages and is guaranteed to produce a smile of appreciation at the sheer good sense of the proverbs you will find inside. From advice you wish your mother had given you to things you probably suspected but had never put into words, Lifelines is a book to be read, to be absorbed, and to be treasured.

The book even features a Foreword by the Archbishop Desmond Tutu! I wonder if i can pull that off for my book...

Anyway, i may not be able to give away free cars to an entire studio audience like Oprah, but i can at least give away a free book! So here's the deal:

Leave a comment at the bottom of this post sharing the funniest or best proverb you have ever heard. Or, share a proverb that influences your life. If possible, identify the country of origin, but if all you know is you got it from grandma, then say that. If you're getting this by e-mail, then you can e-mail me your proverb.

Use a valid e-mail address so I can reach you if you’re the winner. I’ll pick a winner at random from the entries that follow my rules. The deadline to enter is Friday, November 20, 2009, and i'll announce the winner on this site on December 4, 2009. This will make a perfect holiday present!

By the way, if you're on facebook, you can become a fan of Daily Lifelines.

I'm Cliff, and on that "note", i'm outta here!

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Black-Brown Coalitions: No Longer Optional

As the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close, I am constantly reminded of WEB DuBois’ prophetic declaration at the beginning of the 20th century: that the major issue of the century would be the problem of the color line. While some folks may debate whether or not that will be true for the current century, what is NOT debatable is that overcoming the problem of the color line is going to require coalitions among all of those affected by it, particularly between Black and Latino communities.

With this in mind, the Southern Regional Council (SRC), one of the country's oldest civil rights organizations, recently released a report that examnies Black and Latino coalitions. The report features case studies from four successful coalitions in the South, and it includes lessons learned that could be useful for other organizations seeking to build such coalitions. The video below summarizes some of the report's key findings.



The above video, other videos and much more information about the SRC can be found at their blog, www.southernchanges.blogspot.com. The SRC is seeking to disseminate the report widely. If you work with an organization that would like to receive hard copies of the report and/or pull together a group of organizations that would like to participate in a workshop, please contact the Southern Regional Council at info@southerncouncil.org or charles.johnson@hklaw.com.

i'm Cliff, and on that "note", i'm outta here!

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Don't Get Hoodwinked: Mary Norwood and the Atlanta Elections

Due to an increasingly hectic schedule and a variety of life challenges, it’s been quite a while since I’ve done a blog post, and during my hiatus I’ve missed out on a lot of post-worthy topics. I passed on Henry Louis “Skip” Gates getting a dose of the modern day racism that he has so often minimized. Consequently, I also passed on President Obama’s courage to call the event what it was, and then his audacity for backtracking from his comments. Here locally, I passed on the notorious “Cracker Barrel Beating”, for which I hope Troy Dale West gets locked under the jail. And up to this point, I’ve passed on the local Atlanta elections, which have received some national attention, in part, because of the possibility of Atlanta electing its first white mayor in more than 35 years. But after listening to a local radio morning show today, I couldn’t help but be reminded that, as Dr. King once said, "there comes a time where silence is betrayal". That time has come for me in relationship to this Mary Norwood foolishness.

A caller into the Frank and Wanda Show this morning commented that his reasons for supporting Mary Norwood for Mayor were 1) it’s time for change at City Hall, and 2) she’s “been in the trenches” for communities in the city. It’s not the first time that I’ve heard these points over the past year, and surprisingly enough I’ve often heard it from community activists who I respect and who ought to know better. Every time that I hear it, I get flashbacks of Denzel Washington portraying Malcolm X, telling us "you’ve been hoodwinked!" Bamboozled. Run amuck. Led astray.

The caller this morning was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Let’s put aside for a moment the recent revelations that Norwood is a Republican. In spite of her misleading television ad that she’s voted for Democrats like Barack Obama, it seems pretty clear to me that if you’ve voted in the Republican Primary twelve times in recent elections, that pretty much makes you a Republican.

But I’m not crazy about either party, so let’s move on.

The claim that Norwood somehow represents change is about as legitimate as John McCain representing change in last year’s presidential election. Mary Norwood has been on the council for eight years. Whatever’s wrong with City Hall, guess what—she’s got something to do with it. As Rachel Maddow would say, "Pot, meet Kettle". You cannot in one breath tell me that you’ve got the leadership and vision to lead this city, and in the next breath cry about how you were misled for eight years and how helpless and powerless you were to do anything about the city’s problems. It’s one thing for Nero to fiddle while Rome burns; it’s another for him to then come asking for a promotion.

As for this claim that Norwood has been in the trenches, I’ll admit this much; she does attend community and neighborhood meetings. But does that make you a community advocate? It seems to me that a community advocate would attend the meetings and then use information from those meetings to create policy. A community advocate would listen to community views on the closing of fire stations, recreation centers and swimming pools (particularly when those closing disproportionately affect Black communities) and DO something! A community advocate would attend the meetings and then request to chair certain City Council Committees, like Community Development or maybe Public Safety, so that they could steer policy solutions. Yet, in eight years, Mary Norwood has never made any such request and has shown absolutely no leadership in the City Council on these issues.

If all you’re doing is attending meetings and not following up in these ways, then that’s not “being in the trenches”. In fact, attending the meetings just becomes public relations and campaigning. Today, more than 40 years after the Voting Rights Act, Black folks ought to be more discerning than that.

Let me be clear. My position on Norwood is not just because she is White. Without hesitation, I’ll support Michael Moore if he ever decides to run for anything (and i'm still trying to find time to see his film "Capitalism: A Love Story"). More importantly, there are a good number of White folks in this country who are truly “in the trenches”—who fight everyday, in relative obscurity, for systemic change and true racial/economic justice—and I gladly call such folks "comrade". But again, let me be crystal clear; Mary Norwood is NOT that kind of White person.

But with that said, I’m not going to go as far as to say that this has nothing to do with race, because it does. For at least 15 years now, Atlanta’s political and business leaders have been implementing housing policies that have clearly reshaped the city’s demographics. For years community activists have warned that these policies were intended to shift political control back to Whites, but Black elected officials, and appointees such as those at the dreaded Atlanta Housing Authority, have played along. Lisa Borders has carried the water for developers such as Cousins Properties for years, and now she’s in a situation where she may not even make a run-off. The chickens DO come home to roost.

It’s one thing if a righteous White candidate comes along and happens to be the best candidate. But it’s quite thing if such a candidate has questionable party affiliations, has failed to show leadership, and appears to be the result of a long term strategy that has used thousands and thousands of Black residents as pawns—pawns who’s unemployment and housing instability are simply viewed as collateral damage. Atlanta must decide which of these scenarios we are faced with, but as for me and my house…

i'm Cliff, and on that "note", i'm outta here!

Election time: Will Atlanta do the right thing?

I can still hear the lyrics and feel the same wave of emotions I felt twenty years ago:

1989! A number, another summer. Get down—sound of the funky drummer!

The song? Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”. By itself, it was powerful, but placed in the context of Spike Lee’s classic “Do the Right Thing”, it became an anthem. “Do the Right Thing” focused on one long, hot summer day and how racial tensions can bubble beneath the surface before eventually exploding.


The movie led to conversations about race all around the country, including on major talk shows like Oprah Winfrey’s. In fact, I remember one show where Spike was debating journalist Juan Williams, who was very critical of Spike and the movie for raising racial animosity without providing answers, as if that was somehow a burden Spike was supposed to bear by himself. I remember thinking at the time that there’s no better way for someone to establish himself as a “responsible” Black person than to take a stand against a perceived racial activist.

Today, Juan Williams is a commentator for Fox News. But I digress.

Somehow, what was arguably the most important film of the decade managed to not even receive a nomination for Best Picture. Movie experts will probably give a variety of reasons, but for me, and millions of others, the answer is fairly simple. The movie just made too many people uncomfortable. It would take seventeen years before a movie could make the country uncomfortable in this manner and still win the recognition it deserved. I truly hope the producers, director and cast of “Crash” sent Spike Lee a thank you card after their 2006 Best Picture award.

Now, as the movie celebrates its twentieth birthday during which it will be featured at an Atlanta film festival, the sad reality is that the issues of race and racism still make people uncomfortable. Look at ya. Some of y’all are uncomfortable right now just reading this.

Like it or not, Eric Holder told the flat out truth in saying that when it comes to discussing race, this country remains “a nation of cowards”. And if this is a nation of cowards, then please pardon me for suggesting that the capital of the nation is not Washington DC, but Atlanta, GA.

That’s right. I said it.

The whole “city too busy to hate” thing may have helped to get the Olympics, but the smoke and mirrors could not change some basic realities, beginning with the fact that hundreds if not thousands of public housing residents were displaced in order to prepare for those same Olympics. How many of us honestly believe that the same reckless and draconian policies would have been pursued had the vast majority of the residents been White instead of Black?

Speaking of housing, is the resistance to placing “affordable housing” in the north of the city simply about economics?

How many of us actually believe that the shootings of innocent residents such as Kathryn Johnston and Tremaine Miller had nothing to do with race? Speaking of which, when exactly was the last time an innocent, unarmed White person was shot by the Atlanta police?

Do we really think race had nothing to do with why Fire Station #7 (serving West End, and one of the busiest in the city) was the first victim in the Mayor’s budget battle with the city council? And now that the Mayor has her tax increase, how long will it take for the station to be re-opened? I’m happy that the northwest residents around Station #23 have their station back, but are the lives and property of residents served by #7 not quite as valuable?

Black Mecca? As recently as 2005, Atlanta had the 5th highest poverty rate among large cities, and in recent years the poverty figure for Blacks within Atlanta has been as high as 40%.

Are there class issues involved in all of this? Of course there are? There has always been a strange relationship between Atlanta’s Black haves and the have-nots, going at least as far back as the Atlanta Riot of 1906, during which it was perceived that Atlanta’s Black elite sold out the Black masses. And if you think it ended there, just trying asking a Black sanitation worker who was around during the 1977 sanitation workers strike; they didn’t get much help from middle class Black Atlanta.

Nevertheless, in spite of the class issues and the role of Black leadership, it would be mistake to assume that race was therefore not a factor. After all, if a Black slave driver whipped a Black field slave, does that change the fact that slavery was based on the enslavement of Blacks/Africans? If one Roman gladiator kills another Roman gladiator, does that change the fact that both gladiators are tools of the same master?

But let’s take it out of the city context for a moment, and let’s look at state politics. I have been in meetings where folks, who are otherwise very intelligent, scratch their collective heads as they try to understand why it is that Atlanta is treated like a leper by the rest of state government.

Are you serious? Am I the only one who sees the elephant in the room?

I don’t mind disagreeing with someone on this issue, but what I absolutely cannot tolerate is acting like the issue doesn’t exist.

But the good news is it’s election season in the city! Over the next few months, as candidates attend debates and various community events, we can use this as an opportunity to seek their views on race in the city. Yes, we can ask them about the big picture issues like jobs, transportation, and the city’s budget, but we can also ask about how these issues are affected by race and how they, in turn, can impact the ongoing racial disparities. We can ask about the city’s access to stimulus funds in general, but we can also ask how those funds will specifically make it to the city’s neediest residents. And we can ask about issues that seem to only affect the city’s Black and Latino communities, issues like police brutality.

Yes, we can raise all of these issues and then reward the candidates who have the courage to answer them honestly.

We can prove, for the first time in a long time, that we can, in fact, do the right thing.

Get it. Got it. Gone!



You can also view this article on my Examiner page by clicking here:
Election time: Will Atlanta do the right thing?

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