60 years later- A Human Tragedy-The Life of Emmett Till

 Sixty Years Later....
Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an Black teenager who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14, after reportedly flirting with a 21 year old white woman.

The facts of what took place in the store are still disputed but according to several versions, including allegations from some of the kids standing outside the store when Till walked in,^[22] Till may have wolf-whistled at Bryant.^[23] A newspaper account following his disappearance stated that Till sometimes whistled to alleviate his stuttering.^[24] His speech was sometimes unclear; his mother said he had particular difficulty with pronouncing "b" sounds, and may have whistled to overcome problems asking for bubble gum.^[25] According to other stories, Till may have grabbed Bryant's hand and asked her for a date, or said "Bye, baby" as he left the store,^[12] or "You needn't be afraid of me, baby, I've been with white women before."^[26]

Bryant testified during the murder trial that Till had made sexual advances and asked her for a date.^[27] In her testimony, Bryant alleged that Till grabbed her hand while she was stocking candy and said, "How about a date, baby?"^[27] She said that after she freed herself from his grasp, the young man followed her to the cash register,^[27] grabbed her waist and said, "What's the matter baby, can't you take it?"^[27] Bryant then allegedly freed herself, and Till told her, "You needn't be afraid of me, baby,"^[27] used "one 'unprintable' word"^[27] and said "I've been with white women before."^[27] Bryant also alleged that one of Till's companions came into the store, grabbed him by the arm and ordered him to leave.^[27]


The 21 year old white woman

Till's cousin, Simeon Wright, writing about the incident decades later, challenged Carolyn Bryant's account.^[28] Entering the store "less than a minute" after Till was left inside alone with Bryant,^[28] Wright saw no inappropriate behavior and heard "no lecherous conversation."^[28] Wright said Till "paid for his items and we left the store together."^[28] The FBI also noted in their 2006 investigation of the incident that a second anonymous source, who was confirmed to have been in the store at the same time as Till and his cousin, backed this claim as well.^[21]


The 14 year old Black Youth


The killers

 

The results

Happy Birthday To The King of Pop!

The King of Pop!

Gone to Soon!

St. Bernard Parish was deemed 100% uninhabitable

On August 29, 2005,  Hurricane Katrina struck the New Orleans area, leaving massive, almost indescribable, destruction in her wake. Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water; nearby St. Bernard Parish was deemed 100% uninhabitable.

Ten years later, an estimated 6,000 families who owned homes before Hurricane Katrina still do not have the funds or resources necessary to rebuild.
Quotes:

“This president has been spectacular in his partnership with me and the rest of the people of New Orleans in rebuilding this great American city,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in an interview this week. “From the day he stepped into office, this president has been all in.”
The education secretary, Arne Duncan, called Hurricane Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans,” a provocative remark that many say proved accurate.

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio program "Marketplace." "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," she said, "so this is working very well for them."

He surrendered peacefully.

A Rebellion to Remember: The Legacy of Nat Turner

Turner’s rebellion was the largest slave revolt in U.S. history and led to a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the movement, assembly, and education of slaves.

Nat Turner is widely regarded as one of the most complex figures in American history and American literature. October marks the anniversary both of his birth and of his arrest as the leader of one of the United States' most famous slave rebellions.

Nat Turner was born October 2, 1800 on a plantation in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner was deeply committed to his Christian faith and believed he received messages from God through visions and signs in nature. When he was in his early 20s, these signs led him to return to his master after an escape attempt. Similarly, a solar eclipse and an unusual atmospheric event are believed to have inspired his insurrection, which began on August 21, 1831.
Nat Turner's rebellion was one of the bloodiest and most effective in American history. It ignited a culture of fear in Virginia that eventually spread to the rest of the South, and is said to have expedited the coming of the Civil War. In the immediate aftermath of the rebellion, however, many Southern states, including North Carolina, tightened restrictions on African Americans. Over the course of two days, dozens of whites were killed as Turner's band of insurrectionists, which eventually numbered over fifty, moved systematically from plantation to plantation in Southampton County. Most of the rebels were executed along with countless other African Americans who were suspected, often without cause, of participating in the conspiracy. Nat Turner, though, eluded capture for over two months. He hid in the Dismal Swamp area and was discovered accidentally by a hunter on October 30. He surrendered peacefully. After confessing without regret to his role in the bloodshed, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. On November 11, he was hanged in Jerusalem.

"No matter how dark the days," she says, "we can sing songs of hope, songs of love."

Tucker was appalled by the lyrics they cited, words she cannot bring herself to say out loud -- words, she points out, that cannot be printed in a family newspaper. To her, the issue was simple: These lyrics are unacceptable.
Tucker makes frequent admiring references to the work of Frances Cress Welsing, a D.C. psychiatrist known for anti-Jewish views. Welsing maintains that, to the extent Jews are involved in the production of gangsta rap music, they are consciously or subconsciously acting out what happened to them during the Holocaust.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has asked Tucker to dissociate herself from Welsing's theories. "She seems to have a clear view and direction in terms of what she sees as right and wrong. And yet when it comes to the issue of seeing Jews as responsible for gangsta rap, it's like a blind spot," he says. "She's not able to divorce herself from this conspiratorial, antisemitic view . . . which in the end says, Blame the Jews.' "
Tucker strongly denies any bias. Pressed to clarify, she says: "There are forces that were present in Nazi Germany where some groups were interested only in the Aryan race and would use stereotypes with which to diminish a people. The Jewish communities have been our greatest allies. What happened to them is what is happening to us.

The tall, stylish woman who orchestrated the uplifting event was C. DeLores Tucker. And during the course of the morning, the dignitaries also applauded her own crusade: to clean up "gangsta rap." The emcee, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), recalled that struggle. "We were astonished to hear this filthy, lowdown music, and it was about us," she said. "And we looked to the right and looked to the left, and there was silence -- until one woman said something and did something."
And when singer Anita Baker stepped forward to present a $10,000 check to begin the C. DeLores Tucker defense fund, the room erupted in jubilation.
Leaving one question: Why does this woman need a defense fund?
C. DeLores Tucker, 68, entered the fight for civil rights more than 50 years ago and never left. She is a glamorous, well-to-do master of fund-raising -- for black causes, black mayors, Democrats, anyone whose needs matched her own need to make a difference. She says she's motivated by "a passionate love affair for God and my people," but she's ready to give it up. "I wish other people could do what I'm doing so I could step back and retire," she says.
Instead she finds herself in deeper than ever. Through the National Political Congress of Black Women, an organization she co-founded more than a decade ago, Tucker has waged her latest and perhaps loudest battle -- the one against gangsta rap, the one that has made her the target of two lawsuits.

Opponents say her attack on this music shows she's out of touch with young people and far removed from inner-city concerns. Tucker almost sputters her answer: "Look at this," she says. It's a letter she received from a young Lorton inmate who traced his crimes to gangsta rap: "They made it sound so good and look so real I would drink and smoke drugs like on the video," he wrote. "The guns, money, cars, drugs . . . became reality."And there are suggestions that Tucker has an anti-Semitic tendency to blame the record industry's flaws on Jewish executives. "It's greed-driven, drug-driven and race-driven," she says. "A Jewish child would never get a contract with that garbage. A white child would never get a contract. And it all contributes to a genocidal condition."

You Make the Call..Should this be over?

Ask the New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady if the scandal surrounding his underinflated footballs  has taken anything away from the team's Super Bowl win.
"Absolutely not," Brady told a cheering crowd at Salem State University in Massachusetts, when asked by sportscaster Jim Gray — at a speaking engagement that was scheduled months before Wednesday's damning report came out.
"Because we earned and achieved everything we got this year, and I'm very proud of that and our fans should be too," Brady added.


Little League Baseball has stripped the U.S. championship from Chicago-based Jackie Robinson West and suspended its coach for violating a rule prohibiting the use of players who live outside the geographic area that the team represents, it was announced Wednesday.
Jackie Robinson West must vacate wins from the 2014 Little League Baseball International Tournament -- including its Great Lakes Regional and United States championships.

The Jackie Robinson West Little League team was ruled to have used players from outside its local area by recruiting players from neighboring districts. 

The team's manager, Darold Butler, has been suspended from Little League activity, and Illinois District 4 administrator Michael Kelly has been removed from his position.
The organization found that Jackie Robinson West used a falsified boundary map and that team officials met with neighboring Little League districts in Illinois to claim players and build what amounts to a superteam.
As a result, the United States championship has been awarded to Mountain Ridge Little League from Las Vegas.
"Quite honestly, we had to do this," Little League International president and CEO Stephen D. Keener told ESPN on Wednesday. "We had no choice. We had to maintain the integrity of the Little League program. ... As painful as this is, it's a necessary outcome from what we finally have been able to confirm.
"The real troubling part of this is that we feel horribly for the kids who are involved with this. Certainly, no one should cast any blame, any aspersions on the children who participated on this team. To the best of our knowledge, they had no knowledge that they were doing anything wrong. They were just kids out playing baseball, which is the way it should be. They were celebrated for that by many, many organizations, many people. What we're most concerned about today is that it's going to be hard on these kids. And that's the part that breaks your heart."
President Barack Obama, who had honored Jackie Robinson West with a White House ceremony, said Wednesday that he continues to be proud of the team and that he blames the problems on "dirty dealing" by adults.
"The president is proud of the way they represented their city and the way they represented the country," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at a briefing. "The fact is some dirty dealing by some adults doesn't take anything away from the accomplishments of those young men."

Lift Every Voice & Sing: Black Life Matters!

Should voting be Mandatory?

President Barack Obama on Wednesday suggested the U.S. take a page from Australia’s book and make voting mandatory. Speaking at an event in Cleveland, Ohio, the president said, "If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country,” and it would “counteract money more than anything.”
"Today is a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield."
- President Lyndon Baines Johnson, August 6, 1965, at the signing of the Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States.