ADW Atlanta Daily World
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Hometown Salutes Ingrid Saunders Jones Page 5
Shirley Sherrod Remains Activist Page 7
Volume 86 • Issue 3
The March on Washington: ‘It was like a Civil Rights Woodstock’ By Dion Rabouin ADW Digital Editor
Is the Raz B Coma Story a hoax? Page 8
ADW’s M. Alexis Scott Remembers 1963 Page 9
August 22 - 28, 2013
Meet the Bookkeeper who Stopped the School Shooter By NewsOne
Ronald McNair Academy office worker Antoinette Tuff stopped accused gunman Michael Brandon Hill from shooting children in the DeKalb elementary school on Tuesday.
Photo By Willie E. Tucker/WET Media Inc. M.L. King Jr. National Historic Site Park Supt. Judy Forte presents a photograph to U.S. Rep. John Lewis in which he is depicted, along with other leaders of the 1963 March on Washington, at the White House with President John F. Kennedy. Bernice A. King, daughter of MLK and Coretta Scott King and CEO of The King Center looks on with Lewis and another park ranger. The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a gathering of labor leaders, civil rights activists and a mass of people estimated at over 250,000, was one of the preeminent events in American history. In addition to contributing directly to the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the march is best remembered for Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, widely considered the greatest piece of oratory ever delivered. While most Americans know about the march, there remains a void in collective American consciousness about how it came to be and what really happened on the day of Aug. 28, 1963, that changed history. With the march’s 50th anniversary on the horizon, the Atlanta Daily World spoke to some of the men and women who were the architects of the movement, that afternoon and beyond. The Making of the March Bernard Lafayette, director of American Friends Service Committee, former director of SNCC’s Alabama Voter Registration Project, and associate of Martin Luther King Jr.: “The March on Washington in 1963 was part of a total strategy in the movement to bring about social change. It was not simply another march or demonstration. It grew out of the Birmingham movement. It came about because of things that were already in motion, and we were lifting it above Birmingham and making it a national movement. “One key component in the strategy for nonviolence is that in order to win or succeed in making major change, there are certain components that are necessary. One is that no revolution has ever been successful without winning the
sympathy, if not the active support, of the majority. The March on Washington was the part of the strategy to demonstrate that the majority of people in America were ready for change.” Bernard Lafayette is the executive board chairman of SCLC and a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Xernona Clayton, wife of Jet Magazine editor Ed Clayton, Martin Luther King Jr.’s speechwriter and PR manager, and close friend and travel companion of Coretta Scott King: “A lot of people don’t realize that Martin Luther King did not call this march. This was a call from A. Philip Randolph, who called all the civil rights organizations and told them he had this idea and asked them to join. Some people didn’t, but Martin Luther King felt that he could and should. He knew there would be reluctance from some people, but that was a massive call to try to get everybody to go to Washington.” Xernona Clayton is the creator and founder of the Trumpet Awards, an organization honoring African-American achievement, and creator of the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame Ralph Worrell, organizer District 65 Retail Wholesale Department Store Union and assistant to Cleveland Robinson, chairman and March on Washington organizer: “One thing they discussed a lot during that period was jobs were leaving the United States and going overseas. So the main thing was to highlight that and bring jobs back to America and show the importance of the jobs needed here. That was the main focus: it was jobs, jobs, jobs, because they recognized that if you have jobs, you could eliminate a lot of continued on page 3
At the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in DeKalb County near Atlanta Tuesday, 800 or so students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade were evacuated after a 20-year-old man with an assault rifle and other weapons was able to slip into the school. No one was injured, and they all may have school bookkeeper Antoinette Tuff to thank. The suspect, identified as Michael Brandon Hill, held one or two staff members in the front office captive for a time, the police chief said, making one of them call a local TV station. As officers swarmed the campus outside, he shot at them at least a half-dozen times with an assault rifle from inside the school, and they returned fire, said DeKalb County Police Chief Cedric L. Alexander. Hill then surrendered. Hill is charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, terroristic threats and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Alexander said police were unsure of Hill’s motive and that Hill had no clear ties to the school. Authorities believe Hill must have walked in behind someone authorized to be there, Alexander said. He never got past the front office, where Tuff says she was one of the hostages. In an interview on ABC’s “World News with Diane Sawyer,” Tuff said she worked to convince the gunman to put down his weapons and ammunition. “He told me he was sorry for what he was doing. He was willing to die,” Tuff told ABC. Speaking Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Tuff said the suspect told her he hadn’t taken his medication. She told him her life story, about how her marriage fell apart after 33 years and the “roller coaster” of opening her own business. “I told him, ‘OK, we all have situations in our lives,’” she said. “It was going to be OK. If I could recover, he could, too.” Then Tuff said she asked the suspect to put his weapons down, empty his pockets and backpack on the floor. “I told the police he was giving himself up. I just talked him through it,” she said. She told WSB-TV in Atlanta that she tried to keep Hill talking to prevent him from walking into the hallway or through the school building. “He had a look on him that he was willing to kill – matter of fact, he said it. He said that he didn’t have any reason to live and that he knew he was going to die today,” Tuff said, adding that Hill told her he was sure he’d be killed because he’d shot at police officers. “I knew that if he got out that door he was gonna kill everybody,” she said. But he didn’t.