Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Someone our Children's Should Know, Learn, and Read About: Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer


Fannie Lou Hamer


Fannie Lou Hamer was an voting rights activist, civil rights leader, and philanthropist. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi’s Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
Hamer did not write any books, but many have been written about her. Most of us are aware of the impassioned testimony Hamer gave at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. But Hamer also gave speeches at the 1968 and 1972 conventions, and even spoke with Malcolm X in Harlem.



Friday, March 27, 2015

Someone Our Children Should Read About: Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.

Monday, March 9, 2015

Who is Edmund Pettus and What is the Selma to Montgomery Marches?

Edmund Pettus served as chairman of the state delegation to the Democratic National Convention for more than two decades. In 1877, Pettus was named Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, during the final year of Reconstruction.]

Fifty years ago, on March 7, 1965, hundreds of people gathered in Selma, Alabama to march to the capital city of Montgomery. They marched to ensure that Blacks could exercise their constitutional right to vote — even in the face of a segregationist system that wanted to make it impossible.
On the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, state troopers and county members violently attacked the marchers, leaving many of them injured and bloodied — and some of them unconscious.
But the marchers didn't stop. Two days later, Dr. Martin Luther King led roughly 2,500 people back to the Pettus Bridge before turning the marchers around — obeying a court order that prevented them from making the full march.
The third march started on March 21, with protection from 1,000 military policemen and 2,000 Army troops. Thousands of people joined along the way to Montgomery, with roughly 25,000 people entering the capital on the final leg of the march. On March 25, the marchers made it to the entrance of the Alabama State Capitol building, with a petition for Gov. George Wallace.
Only a few months later, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law on August 6, 1965. The Voting Rights Act was designed to eliminate legal barriers at the state and local level that prevented Blacks from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment — after nearly a century of unconstitutional discrimination.




Look how far we have come with, we, Black Americans is the only group who freed ourselves with no army, no guns, no military, and no war....just the belief and faith that God is still on the throne and injustice any where is a threat to justice everywhere....we are free and if we keep believing one day all people will be equal under the law.

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Selma! 50 Years Later: "Remember, Recommit, and Restore."

The first Black U.S. President of three of the most important civil rights milestones in America's tortured racial history, President Obama and his family will pay homage, again: 
  • In 2013,  President Obama spoke at the 50th anniversary celebration of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
  • Last year, President Obama addressed the 50th anniversary of the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
  • Today, President  Obama and his family will lead a tribute at the Edmund Pettus Bridge to mark the 50th anniversary of what became known as "Bloody Sunday," when police set upon scores of people marching from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest their inability to vote, clobbering and tear-gassing them until they were bloody.
"We should be commemorating Selma, but today the cause for celebration has been marred by Shelby," Jackson said, referring to the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that resulted in the high court calling on Congress to revise the formula used to decide which communities should require federal approval before changing voting rules. Congress has yet to do so.
Jackson said that the Shelby ruling amounted to "taking away the keys but leaving us with the car."

"We are at a critical moment," said Bernice King, CEO of the King Center and Martin Luther King Jr.'s youngest daughter. "We can keep reacting, or we can finally make some critical changes like they did in the '50s and '60s."

On March 7, 1965 nearly 500 civil rights marchers were beaten back by police officers equipped with tear gas and clubs as they tried to cross the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. On March 21, 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led a five-day march with crowds growing to 25,000 in a federally supported march for equality. The 54 mile march directly impacted the signing of Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Countless American heroes whose names are not in the history books, that are not etched on marble somewhere — ordinary men and women from all corners of this nation, all walks of life, black and white, rich and poor, students, scholars, maids, ministers — all who marched and who sang and organized to change this country for the better. 
Today, Selma still struggles to overcome its legacy.The city's population has declined by about 40 percent to 20,000 in the last 50 years and Dallas County's unemployment rate is nearly double the state average. Public schools in Selma are nearly all black; most whites go to private schools. Blacks lead the annual "Bloody Sunday" commemoration; whites lead an annual re-enactment of the 1865 "Battle of Selma" to attract Civil War re-enactors.




From March 5th through the 9th, all eyes will once again be on Selma as The Bridge Crossing Jubilee commemorates the 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday with a weekend of reflection around the theme  "Remember, Recommit, and Restore."

Thousands are expected to attend the festivities including U.S.Presidents, congressional representatives, national personalities, and entertainers.