Florida Courier - August 23, 2013

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The March on Washington still resonates in America

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AUGUST 23 - AUGUST 29, 2013

VOLUME 21 NO. 34

THE MARCH – 50 YEARS LATER Black America faces the same issues – unemployment, poverty, voting rights – as it did 50 years ago.

After the commemoration, what’s the plan for the 21st century?

BY HAZEL TRICE EDNEY TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

FILE PHOTO

This week, thousands will return to the site of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

When more than 250,000 people convened on the Washington Mall on Aug. 28, 1963, six million people were unemployed, 22 million Americans lived in poverty, voting rights for

Blacks were barely existent and the racial profiling of African-Americans, still dealing with vestiges of Jim Crow, was rampant.

Fifty years later, 12 million people are unemployed, 60 million Americans live in poverty, voting rights gained as a result of

the march are now under attack, and the Trayvon Martin case has once again highlighted the stereotyping and profiling of African-Americans who are often considered threatening because of the color of their skin.

A new agenda Therefore, as thousands reconvene on Aug. 24 for the march’s 50th anniversary commemoration called the "National Action to Realize the Dream," one of the expectations is to outline an agenda for

a 21st century-civil rights movement.

Despite clear gains, statistics conclude that the famous “content of their character” instead of the “color of their skin” hope expressed in Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech remains elusive at best. This is the reason that the string of anniversary activities is focused on what some are calling “unfinished business.”

“The exact quote from A. Philip Randolph was that America could not work if See THE MARCH, Page A2

Dream Defenders end sit-in

THE UNDEFEATED MIAMI DOLPHINS

Finally recognized

Group to focus on state politics

BY MARGIE MENZEL THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – After sitting in at the Florida Capitol for 31 days – since just after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin – the group called the Dream Defenders ended its protest Thursday with the help of civil rights icon Julian Bond.

Leaders said they’ll carry their campaign against the “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law and what they consider other forms of racial bias to the polls, trying to defeat the elected officials who opposed their demands.

Scott targeted OLIVIER DOULIERY/ABACA PRESS/MCT

President Barack Obama holds up a jersey given to him by the Miami Dolphins’ former coach Don Shula, right, after welcoming members of the 1972 National Football League Super Bowl championship team during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday.

That includes Gov. Rick Scott, who is up for re-election next year. The Dream Defenders announced a voter registration drive, with a goal of 61,550 new voters – Scott’s margin of victory in 2010.

“Our work and our power have See DEFENDERS, Page A2

Carroll’s ex-aide cuts a deal COMPILED FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

There won’t be a trial for one of ex-Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll’s former aides who was accused of illegally sharing a taped conversation with a reporter.

Carletha Cole has agreed to enter a pretrial intervention program in which the charges will be dropped if she completes 50 hours of community service and avoids legal troubles for a year, said Willie Meggs, state attorney for the Second Judicial Circuit.

“It’s probably the right disposition of the case from the very start,” Meggs said.

Carroll’s office and leaking the recording to Florida TimesUnion reporter Matt Dixon in September 2011. Before releasing the tape, Cole had been fired for publicly speaking out about office infighting.

In Florida, it is against the law to record someone without consent. In the recording, Carroll’s chief of staff could be heard saying that his counterpart in Gov. Rick Scott’s office was afraid of Carroll, and that Scott needed to lead.

The case gained further attention when Cole’s attorney made allegations that Carroll and a female aide had an improper relationship, which the then-lieutenant governor strongly denied.

SNAPSHOTS FLORIDA | A3

NATION | A6

Sequestration slashes funding for Head Start Lawsuit: State has improperly ‘warehoused’ mentally ill FILE PHOTO

During happier days, columnist Lucius Gantt of ‘The Gantt Report,’ center, is flanked by Carletha Cole and her then-boss, former Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll.

2012, Carroll said the Cole’s charges were false and affected her family.

“My husband doesn’t want to hear that. He knows the Claimed improper type of woman I am, and my relationship kids know the type of woman I Cole was accused of illegal- ‘Single for a long time’ am,” Carroll said then. “For 29 In a TV interview in July years? I’m the one that’s marly recording a conversation in

ried for 29 years. The accuser is the one that’s single for a long time, so...Usually Black women that look like me don’t engage in relationships like that.”

Carroll resigned March 12 because of her past consulting work for a major player in the Internet café industry.

Sherrod’s battle for racial cooperation continues

FAMU band performs again next month POLITICS | B3

Pivotal 2014 congressional races shaping up Allie Braswell won’t seek state Cabinet seat

FINEST | B5

Meet Shawty Red

FOCUS

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AUGUST 23 – AUGUST 29, 2013

Holder and Obama are ‘playing’ Black America regarding criminal justice After 55 months as U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder made what could have been a groundbreaking speech – if only he’d made it 50-some months ago and followed it up with four and half years of the persistent, wideranging action needed to begin undoing and unraveling the prison state.

Let’s stand Holder’s and this administration’s expressions of concern over mass incarceration alongside its actual record of exercising power. When we do, Holder looks a lot like a lying hypocrite, and the administration looks like it’s playing Black America for a nation of chumps.

Not serious Holder merely says that he’ll instruct federal prosecutors not to file drug charges that, under federal law, invoke the mandatory minimum sentences in smallscale cases where the feds see no violence or gang affiliation.

Federal prosecutors don’t have to follow these instructions – which can be quietly revoked at any time by Holder or any future attorney general. None of it affects drug prosecutions under state law.

Changing a few rules and calling for a Department of Justice study would be a good start when

BRUCE A. DIXON BLACK AGENDA REPORT

you have and intend to use your next seven-plus years in office to follow it up and make it stick.

But more than half the Obama administration’s time is up – including 24 months when they held majorities in both the House and Senate.

Holder’s and Obama’s pattern Once or twice a year – generally but not always in front of Black audiences – they pretend to have newly discovered that police forces and prosecutors around the country routinely profile and stalk Black males. They publicly admit that Black and Brown people are arrested more often, charged more aggressively, sentenced more harshly and serve longer sentences than Whites.

Holder uncovered the fact that the U.S. locks up too many people for too long, and that mass incarceration ravages and punishes entire communities.

What Holder and the Obama administration will NOT discov-

er is a way to reduce the budget of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which grew 4 percent in this year of budgetary austerity. They won’t find a way to NOT open that new federal Supermax prison in Illinois, or a way to close an existing torture facility like the one in Florence, Colo.

They aren’t looking for ways to use federal law enforcement and corrections funding to encourage states to provide educational opportunities and decent medical care to the 2 million-plus in state and local prisons and jails.

After the 2010 passage of the Fair Sentencing Act, and court decisions which say its provisions ought to be retroactive back to the 1980s, President Obama could have simply commuted the sentences of those who have already served excess prison time under the old and outlawed 100to-1 crack vs. powder cocaine penalties.

Obama’s done nothing What has the Obama Justice Department actually done? It has refused to actually reduce the sentences of prisoners already serving time.

In July 2011, after resisting pressure from the families of prisoners serving unjust time, Holder announced sentence re-

ductions would be implemented, but only retroactive to August 2010. That hasn’t happened either. Instead, the Obama Justice Department argued that the old, unfair crack vs. powder sentences just continue to apply.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with the Justice Department and declared that sentence reductions should go back at least to 2003 and perhaps to 1987. The Justice Department is still opposing this, and appears set to take it up to the U.S. Supreme Court – the same gang that overthrew the Voting Rights Act.

Connected with locals Black Agenda Report reported on a Reuters story that a pipeline exists between the National Security Agency’s surveillance and local police departments around the country through the Drug Enforcement Agency, the federal police agency explicitly created to prosecute the war on drugs.

(The DEA is part of Holder’s Justice Department.)

DEA manuals, the copyrighted Reuters story says, instruct their operatives to tell local cops they must conduct “parallel investigations” to effectively launder the illegal evidence against suspects, and that they should conceal its existence from judges and prosecutors. This would be called conspiracy and perjury if anyone else but DEA and local cops did it.

Since the drug war principally targets non-Whites and nonWhite communities, it’s absolutely certain that disproportionate numbers of Black and Brown people have been effectively framed with this illegally acquired and laundered evidence.

DEFENDERS

JACK ORTON/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL

Student movement The protest ignited when Zimmerman was acquitted of murder in the shooting death of the unarmed teen Martin. Although Zimmerman’s attorneys did not invoke the “Stand Your Ground” law, which grants immunity to people who use deadly force if they have reason to believe their lives are in jeopardy, the circumstances of Martin’s death touched a nerve among many Black, Hispanic and mixed-race people.

Members of the Dream Defenders are mostly high school

and college students – “Black and Brown youth,” they call themselves. They’ve spent the last month in Scott’s office waiting area, telling stories of losing loved ones to gun violence or experiencing racism in school or on the street. They worked laptops, smartphones and video cameras from the third-floor House Democratic office, getting the word out online. They slept on the floor outside the governor’s double doors.

‘Eviction notice’

1963 March on Washington. His exact quote in context was, “We have no future in a society in which six million Black and White people are unemployed and millions more live in poverty. Nor is the goal of our civil rights revolution merely the passage of civil rights legislation. Yes, we want all public accommodations open to all citizens, but those accommodations will mean little to those who cannot afford to use them.”

That sentiment nearly mirrors the message coming from modern-day civil rights activists who have spent months tuning up their speeches for Saturday.

“Struggle is a neverending process. We are still fighting for freedom. This is a continuation of the freedom struggle.”

‘Make change happen’

this nation – again, not just for this day…We know that in 1963 there were 22 million people living in poverty, roughly and today there are nearly 60 million – unacceptable in a nation with so much wealth and so many resources and so much ingenuity. And the only way that we can change this is creating the right climate.”

According to a press release, Sharpton and King, III will be joined by Congressman John Lewis, who spoke at the 1963 march; Democratic Party leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer; and the families of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin, among others on the list of who’s who in civil rights, church, labor, wom-

from A1 six million Americans are unemployed. Okay, well, we’ve got 12 million Americans unemployed – and that’s the official number,” says economist Bill Spriggs of the AFL-CIO. “If six million people are unemployed and 250,000 people show up when the public policy statement and the position of (President John F. Kennedy) was, ‘I am going to stimulate the economy to do whatever it takes to get the unemployment rate down to 4 percent,’ and you currently have a president who hasn’t said anything close to that, then how many people are supposed to be in the street?”

That remains to be seen on Saturday – after the Florida Courier’s press time late Wednesday night.

Key issue The majority of the 12 currently million unemployed people are African-Americans, whose 12.5 percent unemployment rate appears to be dropping, but still consistently remains twice that of Whites.

Labor leader A. Philip Randolph was a key organizer of the

Others silent The rest of our useless Black political class is quiet, too. The NAACP, the Urban League, the National Action Network and all the usual corporate-funded suspects have not said a mumbling word on the Department of Justice’s three-year fight to keep crack defendants in jail serving longer sentences.

Maybe they’re all too busy getting ready for the 50th anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs, Justice and Freedom. The president is speaking there. What he says and how he looks saying it seems a lot more important than what he and his attorney general actually do.

Bruce Dixon is managing editor of BlackAgendaReport. com. Contact him at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com.

Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

Scott pleased

Longtime civil rights activist Julian Bond, shown in this file photo, told Dream Defenders that their protest was a success.

THE MARCH

The president observed that Trayvon could have been his son or even himself 35 years ago. The attorney general shared with us that as a Black father he must carefully instruct his young sons as to how to comport themselves in the presence of aggressive cops.

But Holder and Obama are not philosophers, pastors or teachers. They are the two most powerful Black men in the U.S. They’ve been in actual power 55 months now, with a little over 40 to go.

Their actions reveal their expressions of concern and feeling our pain are no more than politically expedient drive-by gestures to keep Black America in line.

sion – a proposed session that was overwhelmingly rejected earlier this week.

And they spent an hour with Scott, who refused to call the special session but allowed them to protest at the Capitol around the clock.

from A1 grown too big for these walls,” said Phillip Agnew, leader of the Dream Defenders.

The group marched to the Capitol on July 16 and demanded a special session on “Stand Your Ground,” which they didn’t get. But they got a national hearing, and Bond – founder of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and a longtime Georgia lawmaker – declared their nonviolent action a success in the tradition of the 1960s civil rights movement.

“It’s fitting that the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington is coming up in a few days,” he said. “That movement made this movement possible, and that movement – your movement – gave our movement its legacy.”

‘We understand’

“Like what Dr. King, Roy Wilkins, A. Phillip Randolph and Dr. [Dorothy] Height did in 1963 led to the ‘64 Civil Rights Act and the ‘65 Voting Rights Act, what we do in this August we intend to help shape and change legislation and the body politic and the spirit of this country going forward…And we intend to address the powers in the kingdom and make change happen,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton in a June press conference announcing the march.

“This is almost like a campaign,” Martin Luther King, III explained. “It is truly a continuation of being in the struggle of organizing communities around

Agnew said the group would leave the Capitol to serve Scott with an eviction notice. He also said they were leaving on their own terms. He pointed to House Speaker Will Weatherford’s promise that the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee would hold a hearing on “Stand Your Ground” during a committee week this fall.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Fort Wal-

The Rev. Bernice King, Daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

ton Beach Republican and chairman of the subcommittee, said its members would have an opportunity to vote their consciences. But Gaetz has also said “not one comma” of the “Stand Your Ground” law should be changed.

Gaetz also has noted that Floridians support “Stand Your Ground” by a 2-to-1 margin.

In listing his group’s accomplishments, Agnew said it had forced a poll of lawmakers about whether to have the special sesen, immigration advocates and lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered rights movements.

Second set of events The Rev. Bernice King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has announced a “Let Freedom Ring Global Commemoration Celebration Call to Action” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 28. That event will include tributes and entertainment from leaders, culminating with a “Let Freedom Ring” bell ringing at 3 p.m., she said.

Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter will join President Obama at the Lincoln Memorial commemoration. The three will appear and deliver remarks. It is unclear whether Obama will respond to the specific issues that will be discussed at Saturday’s march.

In a press conference announcing the event, Rev. King said states are being asked to participate in the bell-ringing, “recommitting ourselves” to continue the work of freedom.

Other activities include a Global Freedom Festival, open to the public from Aug. 24-27 on the National Mall, and an Interfaith Prayer Service at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial prior to the Let Freedom Ring Commemoration.

In a statement, Scott thanked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Capitol Police “for providing a safe environment for people to exercise their First Amendment rights. We live in a great state, in a great nation, where everyone is free to express their views.”

According to FDLE, 33 protesters stayed overnight Wednesday, and as of Thursday, the state had spent $428,566.69 on security.

The sit-in also drew a steady stream of visitors, including entertainer and civil-rights veteran Harry Belafonte, Florida Juvenile Justice Secretary Wansley Walters and rapper Talib Kweli. Another visitor was longtime activist Rev. Jesse Jackson, who touched off his own media storm by claiming that Florida practiced apartheid and comparing Scott to segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace.

Agnew said the group would return to the Capitol on Sept. 23, when legislative committees start meeting in advance of the 2014 regular session.

“Struggle is a never-ending process,” King said, quoting her mother Coretta Scott King. “We are still fighting for freedom. This is a continuation of the freedom struggle.”

She and her brother see Saturday’s march and Wednesday’s ceremonies as only a beginning.

“It is our responsibility to challenge this nation,” said King, III. “And again, that’s why we will come together in large numbers on Aug. 24.

“But we will be going around to communities all over this nation over the next 24 months, mobilizing at every level, bringing business leaders, community leaders, religious leaders and elected officials together to determine how we’re going to define a strategic plan that brings about that freedom, justice and equality for our communities and ultimately for our nation.”

Coalition members include the A. Philip Randolph Institute, The King Center, NAACP, National Action Network, National Coalition of Black Civic Participation, National Council of Negro Women, National Urban League, Southern Leadership Conference, and the National Park Service.

Log on to www.mlkdream50. com and www.nationalactionnetwork.net for more information.

AUGUST 23 – AUGUST 29, 2013

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FLORIDA

Lawsuit: State has improperly ‘warehoused’ mentally ill Proposed class action suit filed by Disability Rights Florida

BY JIM SAUNDERS THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – A disability-rights organization has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Florida has improperly “warehoused” people with mental illnesses in psychiatric institutions.

The suit, filed last week in Tallahassee by the non-profit Disability Rights Florida, is a proposed class action on behalf of potentially hundreds of people and contends that the state is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. It says that many people in institutions could live in their communities if adequate services were provided.

“The state’s mental health treatment facilities are not the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of its residents,’’

the lawsuit said. “Hundreds of individuals are confined in these facilities, not because of need, but because the state does not provide the necessary services in appropriate quality, quantity, and/or location to allow them to live in the less restrictive and integrated setting.”

Claims being evaluated Disability Rights Florida listed two plaintiffs in the case. One, identified by the initials T.W., is a 32-year-old man who was committed in December 2009 to Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee. The other, identified as P.M., is a 60-year-old woman who was committed in October 2010 and lives at Northeast Florida State Hospital in Macclenny.

The suit names the Florida Department of Children and Families and the state Agency for Health Care Administration as defendants. Whitney Ray, a DCF spokesman, said in an email Monday that the agency hasn’t

A plaintiff in the Disability Rights Florida’s lawsuit is a 60-year-old woman who lives at Northeast Florida State Hospital in Macclenny. been formally served with the lawsuit but is “evaluating the claims.”

Disability Rights Florida seeks a declaration that Florida is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. Also, it seeks an injunction that, in part, would prevent the state from “administering mental health services in a setting that unnecessarily isolates and segregates individuals with disabilities from the community.”

Seeking placements The suit says that, as of June, 61 people were seeking community placements from Florida State Hospital, 107 were seeking community placements from Northeast Florida State Hospital and 71 were seeking community placements from South Florida State Hospital, which is run by a private contractor.

But the proposed class is broader, as it includes institutionalized people who are capable of living in communities and

also people who might be capable in the future.

The case was filed as the state also battles two lawsuits alleging that it has violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by placing some children with complex medical needs in nursing homes.

The Agency for Health Care Administration has adamantly disputed the allegations in those cases, which include one filed last month by the U.S. Department of Justice.

State legislators to seek 12-member juries in felony cases NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

Future felony life cases, such as George Zimmerman’s recent self-defense trial in Seminole County, would require 12-member juries under a bill (SB 94) filed last week by Sen. Gwen Margolis, D-Miami.

In Florida, trials that include capital charges, such as first-degree murder, require juries of 12. The bill proposes 12-member juries for all capital and life felony cases, with six jurors allowed in all other criminal cases.

Also, the jury would have to reflect Gwen the demographics of the county in Margolis which the trial is being held, according to the bill.

Prompted by Zimmerman trial Critics of Florida’s self-defense laws have questioned why the jury for the trial of Zimmerman had six members, all of whom were women. Zimmerman was acquitted July 13 in the FebRandolph ruary 2012 death of Miami Gardens Bracy teen Trayvon Martin.

Rep. Randolph Bracy, D-Orlando, who held a town hall meeting in Ocoee last week that included a discussion on jury sizes, also has proposed filing a similar bill in the House.

“I would think with the stakes that high, they at least deserve a jury of 12,” Bracy said. “They take more time.

They have more people, more opinions. It’s more deliberate. It increases the chances of getting it right.”

Appeals court rejects $10 million verdict in UCF player’s death An appeals court last week rejected a jury award of $10 million to the family of a University of Central Florida football player who collapsed and died in 2008 after a series of conditioning drills.

The 5th District Court of Appeal, while describing the circumstances of Ereck Plancher’s death as “disturbing,” said the UCF Athletics Association, Inc., could not be required to pay the amount because of state sovereign-immunity laws.

Those laws shield governmental agencies and affiliated organizations from having to pay more than $200,000 in damages. The UCF Athletics Association is a direct-support organization that operates the football program.

Ereck Plancher

Disagreed with Orlando judge

The ruling reversed an Orange County circuit judge, who found, in part, that the athletics association had not been controlled by the university in making decisions.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court disagreed and said the award should be reduced to $200,000.

“UCFAA (the athletics association) is wholly controlled by and intertwined with UCF, in that UCF created it, funded it and can dissolve it, in addition to oversee its day-to-day operations as much or as little as it sees fit,’’ the ruling said. “UCFAA certainly does not possess the power or ability to shut UCF out of its decision-making completely.”

CHARLES W. CHERRY II/FLORIDA COURIER

Florida A&M’s Marching 100, shown performing during Gov. Rick Scott’s inauguration in 2011, will perform again publicly on Sept. 1.

FAMU band to perform at MEAC/SWAC game Florida A&M University announced last week that its Marching 100 band will return to the field Sept. 1, about 21 months after being suspended over the hazing death of drum major Robert Champion.

The band – famed for its starring roles at national and international events – will perform during the halftime show at the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference/Southwestern

Athletic Conference Challenge in Orlando.

FAMU has put in place a number of reforms, including a requirement that band members keep a 2.0 grade-point-average and a strict timetable for graduation.

Smaller band Sylvester Young, FAMU’s director

of marching and prep bands, said a new band culture is replacing the old – as naysayers will learn.

“We’ll just tell them to watch us, and in time, they’ll see our students – they’ll be graduating, getting jobs and all of those type things,” Young said. “We’re actually changing the culture of the band, which is, I think, the basis of all of the problems that they’ve had.”

The size of the band is much reduced, from more than 400 to 126, and band members can perform for just four fall semesters. Champion was 26 when he died after being beaten in a hazing ritual.

Shands hospital system must pay $26 million in overbilling case NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

In a case spurred by a whistleblower, Shands HealthCare will pay $26 million to the federal and state governments to resolve allegations of overbilling the Medicaid, Medicare and Tricare programs, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday.

Six hospitals in the Shands system were alleged to have submitted inpatient claims that should have been billed as outpatient services or procedures, according to a Department of Justice news release. The incorrect billing was alleged to have happened from 2003 to 2008.

“The Department of Justice is committed to ensuring that Medicare funds are expended appropriately, based on the medical needs of pa-

tients rather than the desire of health care providers to maximize profits,” Assistant Attorney General Stuart F. Delery said in the news release.

“Hospitals participating in Medicare must bill for their services accurately and honestly.”

Billing improvements Terry Myers, the president of a healthcare consulting firm, YPRO Corp., filed a whistleblower case that ultimately led to the settlement. Timothy M. Goldfarb, CEO of Shands HealthCare, said in a prepared statement that the health system has made improvements to its billing processes.

“We hold ourselves accountable for the highest standards of care and service,’’ Goldfarb said. “The case in

Six Shands hospitals allegedly overbilling Medicare and Medicaid will pay $26 million to settle fraud case. question does not involve the failure to provide high-quality patient care, but rather inconsistent billing processes.”

EDITORIAL

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AUGUST 23 – AUGUST 29, 2013

Only Blacks can make King’s dream a reality Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ ” But 50 years later, in the aftermath of the George Zimmerman verdict, Maya Angelou told Time magazine we are still marching for justice.

Like it or not, it is Black Americans who are failing to embrace Dr. King’s Dream and true equality. It is we who fail to build upon the foundation he laid at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. It was Dr. King who sought justice through love and peace, saying: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Reacting to the Zimmerman jury, it was our so-called Black leaders who spat venom rather than promoted peace. There was little call for prayer — it took a back seat to calls for boycotts,

LISA FRITSCH GUEST COLUMNIST

protests and revenge.

Rather than asking for the country to lean on their neighbors for comfort, prayer and healing, the voices told us to separate ourselves from those who don’t look like us — that we don’t understand one another and don’t love one another.

Promoting darkness These Black leaders promoted darkness, rather than shepherd us toward light.

Why do they pit darkness against darkness and hate for hate?

Many of these leaders, alleged men of God, must examine their hearts and decide if their goal is

to profess words of healing and progress or cause anger, hurt and disappointment.

Are these leaders really true friends of the communities for which they supposedly advocate?

The counsel of a true friend does not delight in misery and anger towards vengeance and wrath but should soothe, edify, encourage and calm. God’s Word says, “hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers all wrongs.”

Many Blacks remain insecure about equality and all that it fully means to be equal. This not only applies to opportunity and freedom, but also to being fully accountable for our actions and character (race aside).

Terms of equality Many compensate for their feelings of being shortchanged and victimized by rewriting the terms of equality. This is seen in demands for affirmative action, social welfare entitlements and

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: GREAT WHITE DOPE

the zealous Zimmerman prosecution. Justice is measured in terms of Blacks’ perceived value in society.

We are not just the victims of America’s story of slavery and discrimination. We are also contributors and narrators of her triumphs over darkness. We too often acknowledge only the worst that has happened without trusting in the goodness we were given in this land and the good we have created in it.

Our communities are more than our neighborhood and our church. True community rests in our fellowship with our sisters and brothers who come in all shades and colors and who are created equal in Christ.

No reparations This country cannot offer any reparations for its past transgressions. Only we can heal this country of its racial divide and tensions.

It is up to us to forgive past wrongs

Marches don’t work

Random thoughts of a free Black mind, v. 183 Black women’s hair – Some ‘mature’ Black women are getting away from perms and back to ‘natural’ curly or kinky hair.

I’m all for that. Sisters spend WAY too much time worrying about their hair getting wet or windblown, which seriously limits their physical activities and prevents them from doing something as simple as driving a car with the windows down.

I had a serious relationship with a beautifully bald Black woman whose hair fell out and never grew back due to a medical condition called alopecia. (She was bald and wore wigs when I met her.)

We broke up largely because I couldn’t convince her she was beautiful enough to go out in public with me without a wig. I saw her anxiety about her baldness as insecurity – “I say you are beautiful, but you don’t believe me?” That was harsh, egotistical and wrong.

Her experience affected me. Seeing the control (enslavement?) hair has on many Black women, I let my daughter Chayla,

quick takes from #2: straight, no chaser

Charles W. Cherry II, Esq. PUBLISHER

Contact me at ccherry2@gmail.com.

In 2010, I first read about Henrietta Lacks whose story so amazed me that for the 26th Awards Brunch of the National Congress of Black Women, we honored her posthumously.

Her brother and granddaughter accepted the award and were delighted that we introduced her to so many who had not heard her story. Mere weeks before this award, I was reading Rebecca Skloot’s book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,’’ and I couldn’t put it down.

Without Ms. Lacks’ consent, she was the involuntary donor of cells from a cancerous tumor. These cells were cultured and created an immortal cell line known as HeLa cells. Her family had no idea that her cells remained alive and were studied in numerous scientific laboratories.

The Black Press believes that Americans can best lead the world away from racism and national antagonism when it accords to every person, regardless of race, color or creed, full human and legal rights. Hating no person, fearing no person. The Black Press strives to help every person in the firm belief...that all are hurt as long as anyone is held back.

W W W.FLCOURIER.COM

Subscriptions to the print version are $59 per year. Mail check to P.O. Box 48857 Tampa, FL 33646, or log on to www.flcourier.com; click on ‘Subscribe’.

SUBMISSIONS POLICY SEND ALL SUBMISSIONS TO NEWS@FLCOURIER.COM. Deadline for submitting news and pictures is 5 p.m. the Monday before the Friday publication date. You may submit articles at any time.

However, current events received prior to deadline will be considered before any information that is submitted, without the Publisher’s prior approval, after the deadline. Press releases, letters to the editor, and guest commentaries must be e-mailed to be considered for publication. The Florida Courier reserves the right to edit any submission, and crop any photograph, for style and clarity. Materials will not be returned.

Good advice needed

12, know that “she is not her hair,” to paraphrase the immortal words of singer India.

Arie. Chayla’s hair has only been braided, plaited or twisted; I’d love her without it.

Sisters, let me set you straight (no pun intended). Most brothers could care less about whether your hair (if you have any) is permed or weaved, kinky or straight, short or long – as long as your head/hair looks nice – and we ain’t payin’ for its care.

And asking us if we like your new ‘do is like asking us if that dress makes you look fat. If you like it, we love it…

THE CREDO OF THE BLACK PRESS

Central Florida Communicators Group, LLC, P.O. Box 48857 Tampa, FL 33646, publishes the Florida Courier on Fridays. Phone: 877-3524455, toll-free. For all sales inquiries, call 877352-4455; e-mail sales@flcourier.com.

However, today I am reluctant to do any of those things that I did in the past.

I don’t march now because marches don’t work. I don’t sit in now because sit-ins don’t work. And I don’t sing “We Shall Overcome” because I can get more justice by swinging than I can by singing!

There has been more than one World War that was fought with guns and bullets. Guns and bullets will get you killed in 2013.

The Dream Defenders and other student activists need good advice. The problem is good advice is hard to come by but bad advice surrounds the students each and every day.

I know Dr. King and Gan-

Opinions expressed on this editorial page are those of the writers, and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of the newspaper or the publisher.

Charles W. Cherry, Sr. (1928-2004), Founder Julia T. Cherry, Senior Managing Member, Central Florida Communicators Group, LLC Dr. Glenn W. Cherry, Cassandra CherryKittles, Charles W. Cherry II, Managing Members Dr. Glenn W. Cherry, Chief Executive Officer Charles W. Cherry II, Esq., Publisher Dr. Valerie Rawls-Cherry, Human Resources Jenise Morgan, Senior Editor Lynnette Garcia, Marketing Consultant/Sales Linda Fructuoso, Marketing Consultant/Sales, Circulation Angela VanEmmerik, Creative Director Chicago Jones, Eugene Leach, Louis Muhammad, Lisa Rogers-Cherry, Circulation James Harper, Andreas Butler, Ashley Thomas, Staff Writers Delroy Cole, Kim Gibson, Photojournalists MEMBER National Newspaper Publishers Association Society of Professional Journalists Florida Press Association Associated Press National Newspaper Association

Lisa Fritsch is a member of the Project 21 Black leadership network and the author of Obama, Tea Parties and God. Her website is www.lisafritsch. com. New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

Dream defenders, take fight to college towns When The Gantt Report said the students occupying the Florida governor’s office would not get the special legislative session they sought and would have to leave the Capitol, more than a few people claimed that I was hating on the students.

No, I don’t hate students.

In fact I love students that stand up and speak out about social and political injustice and inequality.

When I was a student in the late 1960s and early 1970s I was quick to join a march, a sit-in or some other kind of protest.

CHRISTOPHER WEYANT, THE HILL

and trespasses and bless America.

Only the Black community has the power to make Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech a reality. As long as we hold on to anger and bitterness, however, we are never free and can never live in peace and gratitude for all we have been given.

Only when we sing about the love for our country and our neighbors, and pray forgiveness for our trespasses as well as those who have trespassed against us, will we truly reach that glorious mountaintop that Dr. King saw in his Dream.

Lucius Gantt THE GANTT REPORT

dhi struggled and protested using non-violent civil disturbance tactics that got them beaten and jailed before they ultimately made some progress and got a few things done.

In 2013 the tactic could still get you beaten and jailed but it won’t get you progress, it won’t get you justice and it won’t get you equality.

It is hard to be non-violent with people that have guns.

It is hard to be non-violent with people that want to be violent with you!

Defeat the scheme So what should students do? I think students should do what works!

If young people want to defend the dream they have to defeat the scheme!

And what is the scheme?

The scheme is to keep the masses broke. Don’t give people jobs, don’t loan people money and never teach them how to create their own jobs and make their own money.

Let’s go further. If students want to change education measures or change prison systems guess where changes must be made.

Schools and prisons must

be changed by legislation, by politicians!

To me, success is the best revenge! If students want to show the world how serious they are all they need to do is be successful.

Control elections No politician in a college town like Gainesville, Tallahassee or Jacksonville, for instance, that voted for any stand your ground bill should be in office after the next election.

Why? Because there are at least 100,000 college students in each of those cities and 100,000 students organized and working together should be able to control any election in either of those towns!

College students, working in their own cities can decide who goes to the state House and who goes to the doghouse.

Symbolism looks good but doesn’t work very well.

If you can’t defeat every insensitive politician in the world or in your state you can certainly defeat the political fools in your college towns!

Buy Gantt’s latest book “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” at EBay.com or any major bookstore and contact him at www.allworl dcon sultant s .net .

Click on this story at www. flcourier.com to write your own response.

A Black woman’s amazing contribution to medicine

Billions of dollars Years later, the family learned that her cells had spawned a line that had been used in scientific research. They also learned that billions of dollars had been generated as a result of that research. Just this spring, the family learned that her genome had been

Justice prevails

Dr. E. Although the pendulum Faye of justice is often long to reWilliams, verse directions, it will. On Esq. Aug. 6, the National InstiTRICE EDNEY WIRE

sequenced and made public.

Ms. Lacks resided with her family in Baltimore County, Maryland. In 1951, at Johns Hopkins Hospital, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and a tumor that appeared unlike anything ever seen by the examining gynecologist. Prior to treatment and without her knowledge, cells from the carcinoma were removed for research. At her second visit, another sample was taken from her body and saved.

It’s from this sample that the HeLa cells came into being.

Although she received treatment, her condition worsened and she died.

It was discovered that HeLa cells did something never before seen in medical science - the cells could be kept alive and growing! Since her death, over 20 tons of her cells have been grown and used for “research into cancer, AIDS, the effects of radiation and toxic substances, gene mapping, and countless other scientific pursuits”.

tutes of Health announced an agreement with the Lacks Family. The Lacks' genome data will only be made available for biomedical research to those who apply and are granted permission.

Two family members will sit on the NIH group responsible for approving applications. Any research group receiving approval must publish an acknowledgment to the family in their research publications.

Unfortunately, the agreement does not include any financial compensation for the family. The Lacks family hasn’t, and won’t, see any profits from the findings generated by HeLa cells.

They have, however, earned a moral and ethical victory for a family long excluded from any acknowledgment in the genetic research their matriarch made possible.

Dr. E. Faye Williams is chair of the National Congress of Black Women, www.nationalcongressbw.org. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

TOj A6

NATION

AUGUST 23 – AUGUST 29, 2013

ERIC BURSE/MCT

Former USDA newsmaker Shirley Sherrod speaks to NABJ members on July 29, 2010 at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in San Diego.

Sherrod’s battle for racial cooperation continues The former Georgia USDA director is still working to improve race relations and foster cooperation and partnership between Blacks and Whites in southwest Georgia.

Almost three years ago, in late March 2010, Shirley Sherrod, who was then the USDA state director of rural development for Georgia, gave a forthright speech about her life story at an NAACP banquet.

She told of how a White sheriff had lynched her cousin in 1943, how her father was killed by a White neighbor who went uncharged despite three witnesses, and how after her father’s death she dedicated herself to staying in Georgia to work for change. Initially, she said, her commitment was limited to the Black community, but in 1985, her mind was changed.

That year, while Sherrod was working for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a nonprofit helping Black farmers hang on to their land, Roger Spooner, a White farmer in danger of foreclosure, approached her for help.

She took Spooner to a White lawyer, assuming that one of his “own kind would take care of him.”

But when she discovered that the lawyer would do nothing for him, she did what she could instead.

Eventually, she helped Spooner to keep his farm.

Part of the story This was a lesson from God, Sherrod said during her NAACP speech, to teach her that it’s not

RYAN COOPER TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

This story is part of a series on Race in America – Past and Present. all about Black and White, but about poverty also.

“Working with him made me see that it’s really about those who have versus those who don’t,” she said.

Andrew Breitbart, the late conservative provocateur, published a video of that speech several months later. His version had been heavily edited to remove the context and ending, making Sherrod sound as if she were baldly discriminating against a White man because of his race.

Although Breitbart’s reputation as a dissembler was well known, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack panicked after the video went viral. Sherrod’s supervisor called her later that day while she was driving home and asked her to pull over and type her resignation on her BlackBerry. Even the NAACP denounced her without watching the tape of its own event.

Still helping farmers The next day, the truth came out. Spooner’s wife defended Sherrod on CNN, launching a full media firestorm. Vilsack called Sherrod to apologize and later offered her a high-level advocacy job in the USDA. Sherrod felt this was a “backhanded apology” and refused the new post. The president himself called as well to smooth things over.

To Sherrod, all that’s old news.

These days, she has returned to the work she was doing before all the publicity. She still lives with her husband, Charles, in Albany, Ga., where they raised their children and where she still spends her days working with poor and minority farmers.

At the USDA, she oversaw development programs for poor rural communities, and before that she worked on the other side of the fence, for several private organizations advocating for poor and minority farmers.

New Communities Now, as she explained in an interview with the Washington Monthly and in her recent autobiography, “The Courage to Hope,’’ she and her husband run two nonprofits.

The first organization is called New Communities, which was started in 1969. Back then, it was common for Blacks who participated in the civil rights movement to lose their land on legally dubious grounds.

White landlords would arbitrarily evict their activist share-

croppers, and White law enforcement would imprison workers on trumped-up charges. The idea behind New Communities was to form a collective farm for those dispossessed people, modeled on the Israeli kibbutzim, so they could work their own property without interference.

They acquired 5,700 acres, becoming one of the largest Blackowned properties in the nation at the time. It was a success that did not come without caveats.

The old mansion is currently being renovated to make room for a conference center and additional meeting space.

“White and Black together in this area, I think it becomes the perfect place for being helpful in getting folks to get beyond race,” she says. In the meantime, they’re doing some actual farming. Just over the last year, they harvested $50,000 worth of pecans from previously planted trees to help defray maintenance costs.

Forced to close

Southwest Georgia Project

Racist terrorists would occasionally strafe the farm’s buildings with gunfire, and local banks still often refused financing to the community. They also faced systematic discrimination from the local and national government, especially the USDA. When drought struck in the early 1980s, the USDA refused New Communities an emergency loan for an irrigation system with no explanation, while giving loans out to White farmers in similar situations. In 1982, when New Communities sold some timber to raise cash, the USDA insisted on taking the profits from the sale before giving another loan.

An arbitrator later wrote, “The payment smacks of nothing more than a feudal baron demanding additional crops from his serfs.”

The following year, when New Communities applied for another loan, the USDA demanded the title to their land as collateral, but then did not disburse the loan.

By 1985, New Communities was forced to close its doors.

The Pigford case In 1997, this and other similar cases of discrimination led to an enormous class-action lawsuit against the USDA, Pigford v. Glickman. It resulted in more than $1 billion in payouts – the largest civil rights settlement to date.

A 2008 bill, passed over George W. Bush’s veto, expanded the criteria of who could apply for the Pigford funds, so in 2009 New Communities finally got restitution. The organization was resurrected after receiving $12.8 million. Sherrod and her husband got $150,000 each for pain and suffering.

With that money, and under Sherrod’s leadership, New Communities was able in June 2011 to buy a new piece of property, called Cypress Pond. A 1,638-acre estate, complete with a colossal white-pillared antebellum mansion, it was originally owned by the largest slaveholder and richest man in Georgia.

Prime meeting place Due to the housing collapse, the price had been marked down from $21 million to $4.5 million.

Sherrod plans to establish an agricultural training program there, as well as a program that will bring local Blacks and Whites together in partnership and promote racial healing.

Sherrod and her husband’s second nonprofit is the Southwest Georgia Project, which helps poor farmers sell their food to local schools. While the organization is currently battling bureaucratic snags, the idea is to help local farmers increase revenue by selling to reliable local buyers while simultaneously providing healthy, fresh food to schoolchildren.

In addition to her work on these two organizations, Sherrod also received a grant in April 2011 from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

With that grant, she is working to help improve race relations and foster cooperation and partnership between Blacks and Whites in the often racially divisive region of southwest Georgia.

She admits that so far it’s been an uphill battle. While things are “probably a little better” than they were in the 1960s, she says, people in southwest Georgia still “kind of know their place, and that’s the way it’s been through the years.”

Some matters worse Institutionally, race relations have improved since the Jim Crow era, but in some ways things have gotten worse.

“People can still go and sit in a restaurant, and eat. They can go and stay in a hotel somewhere.

But when you look at what’s happening in the school system, they’ve almost been re-segregated again,” she said.

Wilcox County High School, for example, does not have a schoolsupported prom, so Black students and White students organize their own proms separately.

Sherrod and her colleagues are working to change that.

The irony of Shirley Sherrod’s burst of fame nearly three years ago is that it had almost nothing to do with her at all. A race baiter thrust her briefly onto the national stage, where she stood accused of doing the exact opposite of what she’d spent her life doing.

She has since returned to the grassroots advocacy work to which she has dedicated her life, and it’s here, it seems, she’d like to stay.

Ryan Cooper is a Web Editor at the Washington Monthly. This article, one in a series on race, is sponsored by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and was originally published by the Washington Monthly Magazine.

Sequestration slashes funding for Head Start

BY ADRIENNE LU STATELINE.ORG/MCT

WASHINGTON — Last year about 1 million of the nation’s poorest children got a leg up on school through Head Start, the federal program that helps prepare children up to age five for school. This fall, about 57,000 children will be denied a place in Head Start and Early Head Start as fallout from sequestration.

New estimates about the automatic budget cuts were released Monday by the federal government.

The cuts have slashed more than $400 million from the federal program’s $8 billion budget.

Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the National Head Start Association, said sequestraYasmina tion repreVinci sented the largest hit to Head Start funding in terms of dollars since the program began in 1965.

“The cut has been very painful throughout the country,” Vinci said. Nationwide, about 1,600 grantees, which include nonprofits and local government agencies, receive federal Head Start funding.

The Obama administration had previously estimated that slots for up to 70,000 children would be eliminated as a result of the sequester. According to the latest figures, slots for 51,000 preschoolers were eliminated along with childcare slots for 6,000 babies. Children will lose 1.3 million days of service at Head Start centers and more than 18,000 employees will be laid off or see their pay reduced.

Many services cut Head Start provides preschool services to 3- to 5-year-olds from low-income households and offers their families education, health, nutrition and social services. Early Head Start supports the families of infants and pregnant women.

The $8 billion Head Start budget is equivalent to how much Americans spent on

SHMUEL THALER/SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL/MCT

Anakaren Cendejas was one of many children in Watsonville, Calif. that the Migrant Head Start program was geared to help. He is shown in a 2011 photo.

Halloween last year.

Head Start directors across the country have struggled to pare costs in ways that would minimize the impact on children.

Rather than reducing the number of children served, for example, administrators have downsized staff, ordered furloughs, trimmed pensions, shortened school years, ended summer programs and held fundraisers, among other steps.

The Palm Beach Board of County Commissioners voted to eliminate bus service for about 2,300 children in Head Start to avoid cutting slots. In Colorado

Springs, the Community Partnership for Childhood Development sold enough chairs representing empty Head Start seats at $500 apiece to re-open a class of 16 students.

In many cases, though, there was no way to avoid shrinking enrollment. In Indiana, at least two Head Start programs used lotteries to decide which preschoolers had to stop attending in March.

“I think it’s going to be devastating for families who were hoping that for a year or two before their children got into kindergarten that they would be able to participate in pre-

school,” said Cheryl Miller, executive director of the Indiana Head Start Association. “These are families that are struggling already. They’re not going to be able to pay the cost of some other type of preschool program in their community.”

“For all of us, as a nation, this should be heartbreaking,” Miller said.

Impact on families The sequestration cuts have also hurt Head Start families, whose incomes must fall below the federal poverty line, or $23,550 for a family of four in 2013, by

further eating away at the safety net for the poor.

Head Start families who rely on Section 8 to help pay for housing or Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, also known as WIC, for example, can be affected in more than one way by sequestration.

Supporters of Head Start say research shows it offers substantial long-term benefits in educational attainment, earnings and crime reduction, for example, while critics argue the benefits of Head Start are insignificant, or that they quickly fade.

The cuts come at a time when President Barack Obama and many states — often with bipartisan support — have declared early childhood learning a priority. Obama is pushing a proposal to provide high-quality preschool to all low- and moderateincome 4-year-olds and many states have increased funding for prekindergarten and other early childhood initiatives.

At least 30 states appropriate state funds to supplement Head Start, according to Phuonglan Nguyen, policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures. It is unclear how many of the states have approved supplemental funding as a direct response to the federal sequestration cuts.

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IFE/FAITH

Forest Whitaker reflects on role in ‘The Butler’ See page B5

August 23 - August 29, 2013

SHARING BLACK LIFE, STATEWIDE

Renowned novelist Albert Murray dies at 97 See page B2

SHARING BLACK LIFE, STATEWIDE www.flcourier.com

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By Gregory Clay McClatchy-Tribune News Service

I

n the 1960s, iconic UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, the master of the national championship and the maxim, offered this inspirational message: “Make each day your masterpiece.”

The date Aug. 28, 1963, was Martin Luther King Jr.’s masterpiece. Speaking from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a massive sea of humanity on the National Mall, that was the day the world knew King had a dream. At least 250,000 people attended the seminal March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, undoubtedly the most noteworthy gathering of concerned citizens, ministers, farmers, bishops, politicians, college presidents, professionals, athletes, rabbis, entertainers and common folk in the history of the United States.

Black and White; rich and poor; the religious and not; old and young.

The cause was civil and economic rights as part of the anti-segregation and pro-vote movement that was sweeping the country. Many Black citizens in many parts of the United States were denied basic public accommodations as well as the right to vote — especially in the South. So those who cared marched on.

Marlon Brando was there.

Sidney Poitier was there.

Charlton Heston was there.

Lena Horne was there.

Joan Baez was there.

Bill Russell was there.

Bob Dylan was there.

Harry Belafonte was there.

William Duvall was there.

Duvall still lives in downtown Washington, only a few walking blocks from the barber shop he manages. He was 33 years old when he and his wife went to the Lincoln Memorial in ’63 on that hot and humid August day. Remember this was a time of drum-tight segregation in the nation’s capital, when many who made the trek were denied hotel accommodations because of race.

“People slept on the ground at the Mall by the thousands,’’ Duvall said, recalling the vivid memory. “We got there at 7:30 or 8 o’clock in the morning.

We left around 4 o’clock.

After Dr. King spoke last, people were crying.”

Duvall still maintains an extensive memorabilia collection from Aug. 28. He’s kept Washington newspapers from that era wrapped in plastic.

He proudly shows off his pin-on button decal with the time-stamped inscription: “August 28, 1963 — I Am a Civil Rights Marcher — Washington, D.C.” His Johnson Publishing Co. magazine focusing on the March is timeless, replete with poignant black-andwhite photos.

Now, why was there a March in the first place?

The genesis was Birmingham, Ala., and television.

In May of 1963, peaceful civil rights demonstrators suddenly became the targets of angry police batons.

High-pressure firefighter water hoses repelled many protesters, rolling some down the streets and sidewalks like human bowling balls. The national media converged on the area with television cameras running on overtime.

One of the most salient scenes was a Black male marcher’s shirt being ripped off by the clenched teeth of a German shepherd police dog.

Those horrific images circulated on national

William J. Scott Jr./MCT

Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., during the March on Washington. Other notables in the photo include Sen. William Proxmire (directly below King on steps); Bayard Rustin, with glasses, on King’s right.

THE MARCH that changed the world Five decades later, the 1963 March on Washington resonates in the American psyche now as it did then news telecasts. A stunned nation was repulsed.

King’s camp and Robert F. Kennedy, then this country’s Attorney General, implored his reluctant older brother, President John F. Kennedy, to act.

And there was something else — an issue not often discussed: communism and the Cold War. “Remember also that China and the Soviet Union were attacking the United States, calling it a racist country. The country’s foreign policy also was being affected,” said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian at Stanford University’s Washington program.

Think about it. The United States couldn’t very well espouse human rights abroad when the civil rights of many of its own citizens were being repressed at home.

So on June 11, 1963, President Kennedy asked the national TV networks for air time. Speaking from the Oval Office, he announced, “… I am, therefore, asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public — hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores and similar establishments.

“This seems to me to be an elementary right. Its denial is an arbitrary indignity that no American in 1963 should have to endure, but many do.”

King and his aides rejoiced at Kennedy’s address. It also was the impetus for action. To buttress support for Kennedy’s civil rights bill, they brainstormed. Then they gave the marching orders. Except there were two concerns: Apathy and violence.

Would people nationwide make the journey to Washington? And if they did, would there be riots, as the Kennedy administration and King’s inner circle feared?

The answers, respectively, were “yes” and “no.”

With city police and fire departments, the National Guard and U.S. Army de-

Photo courtesy of Zaid Al-Timimi

William Duvall holds a commemorative magazine and wears a button from his March on Washington memorablia collection in his Washington, D.C., home. Duvall, 83, attended the landmark civil rights protest in 1963.

library of congress

Crowds gather in front of the Lincoln Memorial, above, and cool their feet in the Reflecting Pool, right, during the March on Washington in Washington, D.C., Aug. 28, 1963. tails at the ready just in case, the marchers traveled to Washington by bus, locomotive, car, airplane, foot and bicycle. And as Duvall explained, “People came by mule trains, too.”

On Aug. 28, opera star Camilla Williams was asked to sing the national anthem because, ironically, the more-famous Marian Anderson was entangled in a traffic jam.

After Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle delivered the invocation, the father/coordinator of the March, A. Philip Randolph, issued opening remarks. Then Rev. Eugene Carson Blake spoke, followed by Rabbi Uri Miller, who led the gathered masses in prayer.

That’s when a cavalcade of 10 main speakers approached the lectern, led by John Lewis, then chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the only surviving speaker to this day. But most of the attendees were awaiting the main event — King.

King’s speech was about more than “I Have a Dream.” He also spoke of conciliation, civility and contemplation, and not painting certain groups with a broad brush.

King enunciated: “We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.

We must not allow our creative protest to degener-

library of congress

ate into physical violence.

Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

“The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all White people, for many of our White brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.”

The massive crowd, many of whom were soaking their tired and aching feet in the Mall’s Reflecting Pool, had waited for King’s fireworks; he hit the high note with unparalleled delivery.

“After King spoke, we thought the discrimination and segregation and prejudice we went through as a people would end. We thought the March would eliminate it immediately,” Duvall said. “It didn’t happen that way. But it gave us so much hope.”

For all the fears King, his aides and Kennedy harbored regarding potential violence, they were allayed by the unmitigated success of the March. “I don’t even think anybody got arrested,” Duvall said. “The people were so upbeat and jovial.”

On Nov. 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. But his civil rights bill ultimately was passed when his successor, a persistent deal-making President Lyndon Johnson, rammed it through Congress as the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. But his memory and spirit live on as Washington pays homage to him in multiple ways.

The King Memorial on the Mall, in short walking distance from the Lincoln Memorial, was dedicated on Oct. 16, 2011. King’s last Sunday sermon was March 31, 1968, at the Washington National Cathedral.

If you stroll down the left side of the main hall of the cathedral, you’ll find a mini-sculpture of a replica pulpit emblazoned into an arch with the inscription: “I Have a Dream.”

Four million people visit the Lincoln Memorial every year, according to a D.C. Mall park ranger.

It is by far the most visited monument or memorial in the nation’s capital.

Walk up 68 steps from the base of the Reflecting Pool to the platform area comprised of Massachusetts granite.

A rectangular inscription on one of those granite blocks reads: “I Have a Dream, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.”

That’s where King stood, 50 years ago, as a non-violent, non-partisan, nondenominational, all inclusive movement gained unstoppable momentum.

Remember this closing maxim from coach Wooden: “It is amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.”

CALENDAR & EVENTS

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AUGUST 23 – AUGUST 29, 2013

TOJ

Novelist and ‘Jazz’ commentator Albert Murray dies at 97 to thermonuclear dynamics to James Brown,” explained Marsalis, who cited “Stomping the Blues” as a profound influence on his music and his life.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK – Albert Murray, the influential novelist and critic who celebrated Black culture, scorned Black separatism and was once praised by Duke Ellington as the “unsquarest man I know,” died Aug. 18 He was 97.

Murray died at home in his sleep, according to Lewis Jones, a family friend and Murray’s guardian.

Few authors so forcefully bridged the worlds of words and music. Like his old friend and intellectual ally Ralph Ellison, Murray believed that blues and jazz were not primitive sounds, but sophisticated art, finding kinships among Ellington and Louis Armstrong and novelists such as Thomas Mann and Ernest Hemingway.

He argued his case in a series of autobiographical novels, a nonfiction narrative (“South to a Very Old Place”), an acclaimed history of music (“Stomping the Blues”) and several books of criticism.

Although slowed by back trouble, Murray continued to write well into his 80s, and also helped Wynton Marsalis and others stage the acclaimed Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts. Millions of television viewers came to know him as a featured commentator in Ken Burns’ documentary series “Jazz.”

Mentor, friend, foe An amiable counterpart to the aloof Ellison, Murray was many

View on blues

Albert Murray men: friend of Ellington and artist Romare Bearden (whose paintings hung in Murray’s Harlem apartment); foe of Marxists, Freudians, academics, Black nationalists and White segregationists; and mentor and inspiration to Ernest J. Gaines, Stanley Crouch, James Alan McPherson and many others.

Marsalis, in the book “Moving to Higher Ground,” remembered visiting Murray in Harlem amid not just Bearden paintings, but decades-worth of “books and recordings of the most meaningful ideas in the history of humanity.”

“He was asking you to pull down this book and that one and go to chapter so-and-so and page so-and-so, and on that page what he was talking about, and it was everything from Plato to John Ford to Frederick Douglass

Murray often wrote, and spoke, in a jazzy, mock-professorial style, not unlike Ellington’s stylized stage introductions. One Murray book was titled “The Blue Devils of Nada: A Contemporary American Approach to Aesthetic Statement.” He declared that Blacks should not be regarded as transplanted Africans, but quintessential Americans, practiced in the art of “I-ma-gi-na-tive ex-alta-tion.”

Interviewed by the Associated Press in 1998, the raspy-voiced Murray defined the blues as “the extension, improvisation and ritualization of the stylization of the beliefs and the feelings and emotions of the lifestyle of a particular culture.”

“People want to say the blues is an ailment,” Murray said, waving his hand. “Any fool can tell you the blues is good-time music. It’s entertainment. It ain’t for no church. ‘Kill the White folks,’ that’s not what the blues is about.

You see the blues with that stuff, it means some Marxist got hold of that.”

Ellington once referred to him “the unsquarest person I know.”

‘Prince among paupers’ Born in 1916, Murray grew up in Magazine Point, Ala., a hamlet

not far from Mobile. Like his fictional alter ego, Scooter, he was a boy who simultaneously knew and did not know who he was.

At age 11, he learned, accidentally, that the couple raising him was not his parents; his mother had given him up for adoption out of shame for conceiving him out of wedlock. His real parents were educated and middle-class, his adopted ones common folk.

Murray, bright, self-confident and a born improviser, came to see himself as the adventurerhero of his own life, a “prince among paupers.”

He left his hometown to study at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where Ellison was an upperclassman, a music major with two-tone shoes who seemed to check out the same library books as Murray did. Murray graduated in 1939, served in the Air Force during World War II and received a master’s degree from New York University after returning to the U.S. While Ellison attained instant fame in the early 1950s with his first novel, “Invisible Man,” Murray’s turn came more than a decade later, when he was well into middle age. Before publication came the prelude: books read, records remembered, paintings appraised, experiences experienced, what Murray called “the also and the also” of constructing an identity that would reconstruct the identity of American culture.

“I was figuring out what kind

The comedian and actor will be at the Florida Theatre Jacksonville on Sept. 27.

Kim Burrell of “Sunday Best’’ is scheduled to perform in Gospel at the Ritz on Aug. 23 at the Ritz Theatre in Jacksonville.

Tampa: Girls Raised in the South will host the Ultimate Guys Chicken Wings Cook-off Scholarship Fund raise at 7 p.m. on Aug. 24 at the University of South Florida College of Education building,

St. Petersburg: Reggae singer Beres Hammond will be at Jannus Life on Aug. 30.

Jacksonville: Tickets are on sale for a show featuring comedian and actor Eddie Griffin at the Times Union Center for the Performing Arts on Sept. 27.

Orlando: J Cole’s What Dreams May Come Tour stops at Hard Rock Live Orlando on Sept. 12. He also will be at the Times Union Center for the Performing Arts in Jacksonville on Sept.

14.

Clearwater: John Legend is scheduled at Ruth Eckerd Hall on Nov. 4. Tamar Braxton will be on the same bill.

Caribe Arts Fest returns to Fort Lauderdale next month SPECIAL TO THE COURIER

Now in its sophomore year, Caribe Arts Fest brings the essence of the Americas and the Caribbean to downtown Fort Lauderdale through art exhibits, independent films, music and educational workshops.

Taking place Oct. 17-20, the festival has collaborated with Nova Southeastern University Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Broward Cultural Division and the City of Fort Lauderdale to showcase the cultural differences in the county.

Early bird admission is $10, available online.

Positioned as a destination event, this four-day celebration will consist of industry professionals facilitating educational workshops; international artists, such as Haitian artist Eduoard Duval Carrie and Dillard High school celebrating their 10 year anniversary of “The Indigo Room - The Revival”; and Caribbean filmmakers, such as Dalton Narine from Trinidad screening his Carnival documentary, “Mas Man.’’ These events will be held at NSU’s Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale.

Musical performances, art exhibit stations, tasty cultural cuisines and a kid’s art zone will be available on Saturday, Oct. 19 at the Esplanade Park, Downtown Fort Lauderdale. In addi-

He finally broke through in the late 1960s, at the peak of the Black Arts Movement, which regarded art as an outlet for protest. Murray ridiculed this and other political art as “social science fiction.”

Like Ellison, he believed conflict was a given, that life was not a formula to be solved but a dance to be danced.

“Even the most exuberant stomp rendition is likely to contain some trace of sadness as a sobering reminder that life is at bottom, for all the very best of good times, a never-ending struggle,” Murray once wrote.

Murray’s belated success had one apparent casualty: his bond with Ellison. The two drifted apart in later years, with friends speculating that Ellison, who never completed another novel after “Invisible Man,” resented Murray’s good fortune, while Murray tired of being labeled Ellison’s protege.

In 2000, the Modern Library released “Trading Twelves,” a collection of letters between Murray and Ellison, who died in 1994.

Murray was married to Mozelle Menefee Murray, whom he met at Tuskegee in 1941. They had a daughter, Michele, who performed with the Alvin Ailey dance troupe. Albert Murray wrote the program notes, about which Ailey joked, “Now I understand better what I’ve been trying to do all these years.”

Tampa: The Hillsborough Community College Institute for Corporate and Continuing Education will present a free event Sept. 7 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Open Café, 3332 N. 34th St.. Speaker: Dr. Jeff Johnson, author of “Creating A Better Me. More information: www.tampatraining.com.

Tampa: The second annual UNCF Walk for Education is Sept. 7 at Al Lopez Park.

Register online at www.uncf. org/tampabaywalk.

St. Petersburg: Tickets are on sale for a concert at the Mahaffey Theater with Maze featuring Frankie Beverly.

The show has been changed to Sunday, Sept. 27.

KIM BURRELL

4204 E. Fowler Ave. More information: 813-731-1720.

Belated success

6 and 7 at Bonkerz Comedy Club.

CHRIS TUCKER

FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR

of a writer I was going to be,” he said. “I didn’t have it together.”

Dalton Narine from Trinidad will be screening his Carnival documentary “Mas Man.’’ tion to the talents of local musicians and drummers, the park event will have the melodious sounds of Afro Cuban funk from internationally acclaimed band, The Spam Allstars and conscious reggae from Jamaican band, Rootz Underground.

This event is endorsed by the Greater Ft Lauderdale Visitors and Convention Bureau, City of Fort Lauderdale, Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Florida Power and Light and the Broward Cultural Division.

Detailed times and schedules are available online at www.CaribeArtsFest.com.

This story is special to the Florida Courier from Blacknews.com.

Jacksonville: Fantasia will be at the Florida Theatre Jacksonville on Aug. 29 at 8 p.m.

Tampa: The Isley Brothers with Kem and Nephew Tommy are coming to the University of South Florida Sun Dome on Oct. 5 at 8 p.m.

Daytona Beach: Michael Winslow is scheduled Sept.

Rootz Underground is scheduled to perform at the festival.

St. Petersburg: Stephen “Ragga’’ Marley will perform Oct. 17 at Jannus Live.

Orlando: Diana Ross is scheduled Tuesday, Sept. 3 at 8 p.m. at Hard Rock Live Orlando.

Tampa: Bruno Mars’ Moonshine Jungle world tour makes a stop at the Tampa Bay Times forum on Aug. 28.

Tampa: Delatorro McNeal, CEO of Platinum Performance

Global, is bringing business experts to the Mainsail Hotel and Conference Center Sept.

5-7 for Full Throttle Experience 2013, a business and leadership conference. More information: www.fullthrottleexperience.com.

St. Petersburg: First Fridays are held in downtown St. Petersburg at 250 Central Ave. between Second and Third Avenues from 5:30 p.m.10:30 p.m. More information: 727-393-3597.

St. Petersburg: Youths ages 7 to 11 can enjoy a night of football, kickball, ping-pong, foosball, video games and dance parties during “Freestyle Fridays” at the Fossil Park and Willis S. Johns Center, 6635 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N. First visit free; $6 each following visit. More information: 727-893-7756.

Daytona Beach: A Southern Soul Blues Concert featuring Mel Waiters, Sir Charles Jones and Bigg Robb is scheduled Oct. 5 at the Mary McLeod Bethune Performing Arts Center.

Orlando: Soulbird will present a SongVersation with India.Arie on Oct. 11 at the House of Blues Orlando and Oct. 17 at the Florida Theatre Jacksonville.

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POLITICS

AUGUST 23 – AUGUST 29, 2013

Pivotal 2014 congressional races shaping up Health care law, immigration could continue to be top issues of debate in elections nationwide

BY DAVID LIGHTMAN MCCLATCHY WASHINGTON BUREAU/ MCT

WASHINGTON — The battle for Congress won’t fully engage until next year, but it sure looks like election season now as political activity explodes this summer at America’s county fairs, town halls and campaign fundraisers.

From Alaska to West Virginia, what’s happening around the country as lawmakers spend a month back home might shape the 2014 political map.

Wyoming, for instance, where quiet workhorse Sen. Michael Enzi was expected to coast to a fourth term, was way off the political radar until Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, decided to challenge him for the Republican nomination.

Nor was Kentucky a particularly hot spot, despite Democrats’ eagerness to deny Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell another term. Today, though, the state is a political caldron, after Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes jumped in the race and suddenly was even with the five-term incumbent in one poll.

No ‘wave election’ The most closely watched contests involve Senate seats. Republicans are expected to need a net gain of six to win control in the next Congress. At this point, West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana are all seen as good bets to go from blue to red.

The GOP would need to win just three more and hold on to seats in Kentucky and Georgia.

The three could come from Alaska, North Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas and possibly Iowa.

Republicans are buoyant.

“The Democratic majority is in serious trouble,” Rob Collins, the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s executive director, wrote in a memo last month.

The House of Representatives, where Republicans have a 234 to 200 majority (there’s one vacancy), appears unlikely to flip to the Democrats, especially in the sixth year of the Obama administration. Sixth years often mean trouble for the presidential incumbent’s party.

“This doesn’t look like a wave election,” said Burdett Loomis, a congressional expert at the University of Kansas. “You need a huge issue, like health care, to make it a wave election, and I don’t see that so far.”

Impact of law Outrage over the 2010 health care law helped Republicans elect 87 freshmen to the House that year and win control of the chamber. If there’s any issue that could spark a new Republican resurgence, it might be that same law.

By the fall of 2014, the law’s key provision — requiring most Americans to obtain insurance coverage or pay a penalty — will have been in effect nearly a year.

If people are confused, think their own health care is suffering or think they’re paying more,

CHARLES BERTRAM/LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER/MCT

Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes announces she will seek the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2014, during a news conference on July 1 in Frankfort, Ky. She is flanked by former Kentucky Governors Julian Carroll, from left, and Martha Layne Collins and her husband, Andrew Grimes, on the right.

Democrats might pay a price.

In close races, “health care implementation will be important,” said Jennifer Duffy, Senate analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

So might immigration. The Senate passed sweeping legislation last month that would toughen border security while creating a 13-year path to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 11 million immigrants who already are here illegally.

The issue is likely to reverberate this month, with both sides of the debate eager to make their views known as lawmakers meet voters in their districts and around their states. But Congress is expected to deal with the issue well before the election, and unlike health care, it doesn’t directly affect the daily lives of most constituents.

That leaves Senate and House races with two potential themes that might emerge: a referendum on President Barack Obama, and a test of who best understands and can remedy local concerns.

Senate races to watch Here’s a look at the most closely watched Senate races: Kentucky McConnell is used to tight races; he’s won with more than 55 percent of the vote only once.

The wild card is how good a candidate Grimes proves to be. She’ll have strong backing from the Democratic Party, which has made McConnell its top Senate target.

“Mitch McConnell is the reason for Washington’s partisan political dysfunction,” said Justin Barasky, a Mitch spokesman for McConnell the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Running against Obama in a state where the president got under 40 percent of the vote last year might help McConnell.

Orlando’s Braswell won’t run for Florida Cabinet post High-profile Democrat challenger bows out following report about bankruptcies

BY JIM TURNER THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – Allie Braswell, who last week was rolled out as the Democrats’ first highprofile challenger for a state Cabinet post, ended his campaign Monday following revelations that he had filed for bankruptcy three times, most recently in 2008.

Braswell, 51, the head of the Central Florida Urban League, apologized to supporters while taking full responsibility for his actions in a release that announced his departure from the

2014 campaign for Florida’s chief financial officer.

“The bright spotlight of a statewide campaign has cast the ups and downs of my life into harsh relief, and I now know that this campaign is not the way I was meant to serve my community,” Braswell said in the release.

“Running statewide is a daunting challenge for any candidate; as a political outsider, I have now learned that I underestimated how my campaign would affect those I care about most.”

Incumbents to run On Aug. 16, a day after Braswell opened his campaign, The Florida Times-Union reported that Braswell had filed for bankruptcy in Orlando in 2008, after having done so twice in South Carolina in the 1990s.

Joshua Karp, a spokesman for

“Will people really believe Grimes is not going to be a surrogate for Obama” or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.? asked Louisville-based Republican consultant Ted Jackson.

Arkansas Pryor is arguably the nation’s most vulnerable incumbent.

Obama got 36.9 percent of the vote in Arkansas last year, and the state has been trending Republican for years. Cotton is considered an especially attractive candidate. The freshman congressman is an Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he gets high marks from conservatives.

Montana Schweitzer’s decision was a stunner, and since then at least four prominent Democrats also have bowed out of the race. In a sparsely populated state, a candidate’s personal touch with voters tends to make a difference.

Alaska Democratic Sen. Mark Begich won his first term in 2008 with 48 percent of the vote in a three-way race and he’s been a Republican target for years. Duffy of The Cook Political Report said, “One of Begich’s advantages is that he’s very Alaska-first.”

The Republican field is still in flux, making the race hard to handicap. Former Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP’s 2008 vice presidential nominee, has been mentioned as a possible contender.

Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu has never had an easy time winning election and is likely to get a close race again.

“It’s a Republican state,” said Nathan Gonzales, the deputy editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. “The president even in his brightest days has not been popular there.”

North Carolina The Tar Heel State is a bigger question mark for Republicans.

Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan will be running for re-election on ground that Obama narrowly won in 2008 and narrowly lost the Florida Democratic Party, said Monday that while Braswell is a self-made man, he was “not ready for the rigors of a statewide campaign, and that was plain.”

Braswell’s sudden departure leaves the Democrats once again without a highly recognizable name for a Cabinet post in 2014.

Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, Agriculture CommisAllie sioner Adam PutBraswell nam and Attorney General Pam Bondi make up an all-GOP Cabinet and plan to run for re-election. Each won by at least 13 percentage points in 2010.

Praise and criticism Last week, Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Allison Tant praised Braswell as “exactly the kind of leader we need in Tallahassee.”

Republican Party of Florida Chairman Lenny Curry used

An early look at Senate races Thirty-five U.S. Senate seats are up for election in 2014, 15 now held by Republicans and 20 by Democrats. A look at the states and which races are up for grabs:

Seats by state and current party in control Seat up for grabs

Democrat

Retiring

Incumbent

Republican

Retiring

Incumbent W.Va.

Mont.

Wyo.

S.D. *N.J. Sen. Lautenberg announced his retirement but died in office; a special election in Oct. will fill the seat for the rest of the term

Ky. Ark. Ga. Alaska

La. NOTE: S.C. has both Senate seats up for election

Current balance of power in Senate Democrats

51 seats needed for control

Republicans

54**

46

**Two Independents vote with Democrats; neither seat is up for election

Seats to be contested in 2014

20

15

2 retiring

6 retiring* Source: U.S. Senate, Rothenberg Political Report

Graphic: Judy Treible

© 2013 MCT

last year. “It’s a real swing state,” Duffy said.

West Virginia and South Dakota Veteran Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, daughter of a former governor, is vying for the seat now held by Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who’s retiring after three decades on Capitol Hill. In South Dakota, former Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican, is seeking the seat of retiring Sen. Tim Johnson, a Democrat.

Obama lost the state last year by nearly 20 percentage points.

As in Montana, Democrats are

having trouble recruiting candidates in both states.

Georgia While a long shot for the Democrats — Obama won 45.4 percent of the vote there last year — Nunn, daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn, a popular Democrat, entered the race last month and is about even with major Republican challengers.

Gonzales saw three factors affecting the race: whether Nunn is an effective candidate, who the Republican candidate will be and whether Democrats can produce a huge turnout.

Braswell’s departure as a chance to take a shot at his Democratic counterpart.

“Allie Braswell had better sense to drop out than Allison Tant did to endorse him,” Curry said in a statement. “To back a candidate in charge of Florida’s finances without vetting that candidate’s handling of his personal finances shows either a high level of incompetence or a new level of desperation for Allison Tant.”

Democrat Thaddeus “Thad” Hamilton also has filed to run for agriculture commissioner. Hamilton drew 2 percent of the vote for that office as a non-partisan candidate four years ago.

According to the Times-Union, Braswell said the first bankruptcy filing in South Carolina was dismissed because of a mistake, leading to the second. Braswell said he “used bankruptcy as way to responsibly pay my debt” and that his financial problems would allow him to empathize with voters.

lar guy,” Braswell told the TimesUnion. “I’ve felt the pain that a lot of people feel.”

Braswell, who spent 13 years in the Marine Corps and whose career after the military included time as a technology executive with Disney, said when he entered the race that he would focus on foreclosures and property-insurance rates. He touted his ability to cut a $14 million budget he oversaw at Disney to $11 million without cutting jobs.

In his withdrawal statement, Braswell pointed to his experiences, including his personal financial struggles, for what made him want to run for the statewide office in 2014.

“At the Urban League, I work every day with people who are struggling to make it,” Braswell said. “As I have experienced struggles in my life, so many people are struggling, and that is what inspired me to run for Florida’s chief financial officer --- to be a champion, standing up for the poor and middle class.”

‘A regular guy’ “Honestly, my story is of a regu-

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FOOD

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AUGUST 23 – AUGUST 29, 2013

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

Family Features

They need to be able to eat it in 20 min­utes or less. They need to be able to open and close all of the containers themselves. And it can’t go bad before they eat it. What are we talking about?

The lunch your kids take to school each day.

What you put in your child’s lunchbox might matter more than you realize.

A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a significant amount of sodium in the foods toddlers commonly eat. It’s feared that similar levels of sodium are also found in a number of the foods older kids eat at school every day. As concerns rise about the early onset of high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease, parents may want to re-examine those lunchbox choices.

Why does sodium matter? A 2012 study of children and adolescents found that higher sodium consumption was associated with increased blood pressure. This effect was even greater in over­weight and obese participants compared to normal weight participants.

In addition, research suggests that children’s taste for salt develops as they are exposed to it. The less sodium children consume, the less they want it. Children’s taste for salt may be reduced if they are exposed to lower sodium diets at a young age. Eating less sodium can help lower blood pressure during childhood, which can help lower the risk of high blood pressure as an adult.

How much sodium is in your child’s lunchbox?

Make-Your-Own Snack Mix Prep time: 5 minutes Cook time: 0 minutes Yields: 4 servings Serving size: 1/2 cup snack mix

1 cup toasted oat cereal 1/4 cup unsalted dry roasted peanuts (or other unsalted nut) 1/4 cup raisins 1/4 cup dried cranberries

Combine all ingredients, and toss well. Serve immediately, or store for later snacking.

Tip: Put snack mix in individual snack-sized bags for a great grab-and-go snack.

Where’s the sodium?

Understanding sodium in foods can be confus­ing, especially when food that otherwise seems healthy may have high levels of sodium. Most of the sodium we eat doesn’t come from the salt shaker, but is found in processed and restaurant foods. This chart shows the Top 10 Sodium Sources for children and adolescents. How many of these have made an appearance in your child’s lunchbox?

Top 10 sodium sources People aged 2-19

What’s a parent to do?

Here are some tips to help tackle high sodium in your child’s lunchbox: • Read food labels and compare the sodium amount in different products, then choose the options with the lowest amounts of sodium. Some varieties of bread can vary from 80 to 230 mg of sodium per slice. That can make a big difference in lunch­ time sandwiches.

• Pack fresh fruits and vegetables with lunch every day, like a small bag of baby carrots, snow peas, or grape tomatoes.

• For a healthy snack, make trail mix using unsalted nuts, dried fruits and whole grain cereal.

• When buying prepared meals, look for those with less than 600mg of sodium per serving.

By packing a lower sodium school lunch for your children, you are not only setting them up for success in the classroom, but also in life. With your help, your children can develop healthy, low sodium eating habits that will last throughout their lives and help improve their heart health. For additional information about children and sodium and more tips for parents to help lower their family’s sodium intake, visit cdc.gov/salt.

Source: CDC

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FINEST & ENTERTAINMENT

Meet some of

FLORIDA'S

finest

submitted for your approval

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Think you’re one of Florida’s Finest?

E-mail your high-resolution (200 dpi) digital photo in casual wear or bathing suit taken in front of a plain background with few distractions, to news@flcourier. com with a short biography of yourself and your contact information. (No nude/ glamour/ fashion photography, please!) In order to be considered, you must be at least 18 years of age. Acceptance of the photographs submitted is in the sole and absolute discretion of Florida Courier editors. We reserve the right to retain your photograph even if it is not published. If you are selected, you will be contacted by e-mail and further instructions will be given.

shawty red

Shawty Red is a Miami native loving life in the fast lane.

She enjoys family, music and fun in the sun. “Live, laugh & love and you’ll never go wrong!” She can be contacted at shawtyred305@ ymail.com or twitter. com/shawtyred79.

South Floridian Jamael is interested in runway, sport and stunt shoots.

Photo courtesy of Brian Padget

jamael Spike Lee catches flak for Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the film EURWEB.COM

Director Spike Lee reached his Kickstarter campaign goal of $1.25 million.

He originally launched his campaign on July 21 to raise money for an upcoming film he describes as a “psychological bloody thriller” about humans who are addicted to blood.

By Monday, the campaign had brought in more than 5,400 donors and raised $1,304,000.

After announcing his Kickstarter campaign, Lee received a lot of criticism from the media. While making his press rounds, Lee stopped

by Bloomberg TV’s “Street Smart” and engaged in a heated debate regarding the campaign.

“I needed to go to Kickstarter to get this film made because this is not necessarily a Hollywood film, Lee said.

“It’s more like an independent film.”

October release He added that he doesn’t see others in the industry, like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg or Clint Eastwood, following in his footsteps and turning to Kickstarter to fund their future films.

“Anybody could do this, but Steven Spielberg,” Lee said.

“Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Scorsese, they don’t have to do that.” Why? “Because they don’t have to do it,” he said.

“They’re great filmmakers and they’re beloved by the studios.”

Lee’s next film, which is scheduled to hit theaters in October, will be his remake of “Oldboy,” the 2003 Korean thriller.

‘A lot about family and healing and love’ Whitaker reflects on ‘The Butler,’ calling role one of his most difficult

EURWEB.COM

EURWEB.COM

Forest Whitaker is starring in one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year, “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.’

“I think the movie is a lot about family and healing and love – certainly the backdrop of the civil rights movement is moving through it,” Whitaker says.

He puts on not only the clothes but the unassuming demeanor of White House butler Cecil Gaines in the blockbuster movie, “Honestly, this is one of the most difficult parts I have ever played.”

“It was very specific, very detailed, you know trying to figure out – one, even how to be in service – how to be a butler, you know.

I trained with someone to like how to understand that,” the Academy Award winning actor explained.

Expect Oscar nods This star-studded movie is sure to give Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey who plays his wife, suffering from loneliness because of Gaines dedication to his job, another Oscar nod for their acting. You may remember Winfrey garnered a chance for the golden statue her first time on the silver screen – nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her phenomenal acting as Sophia in the “Color Purple.”

Winfrey was bestowed an honorary Academy Award in 2011 for the humanitarian work she does. Whitaker picked up his Oscar for Best Actor for his critically acclaimed performance as brutal dictator Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland.” Daniels was nominated for an Academy Award for his brilliant direction of the movie, “Precious.”

In “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” the focus is not just on the man who served eight presidents beginning with President Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 to when he retired during the administration of Ronald Reagan in 1986. The movie also gives a glimpse into the civil rights movement from the presidents – in addition to the civil rights activists who were fighting to overcome injustice.

Inspired by real butler The film was inspired by “A Butler Well Served by This Election,” a 2008 article written by Washington Post national reporter Wil Haygood. He says he got a lot of offers to do a movie about Eugene Allen, the real life

Princeton professor critical of how Black ‘power’ and women portrayed in movie

THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

“Lee Daniels’ The Butler,’’ starring Forest Whitaker was No. 1 at the box office during its debut weekend.

White House butler he wrote about; however he chose to work with Daniels.

“Lee was hell bent on making this about the butler and his family,“ Haygood says.

It was mentally tough at times for Daniels when making the movie – particularly directing a scene where Freedom Riders got accosted by a group of racists, including the Ku Klux Klan wearing hoods – setting fire to the bus they were on.

“I’m inside of the bus with the actors because I like to be close to the actors when I’m working. I yell action – then all these white hoods come from out of the blue and the crosses and the Nazis and the swastikas and everything. They started rocking the bus and shaking the bus and spitting on the bus,” Daniels said.

However, when he yelled cut the actors in the Klan and Nazi costumes didn’t hear him.

“They keep going. They can’t hear me because I’m in the bus,” Daniel says with a lot of emotion while remembering shooting the scene. “Then for a millisecond, just for a millisecond, I said oh my God – I know what these kids went through.”

Screened for Bushes One of his first screenings of the film was in Maine for President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, after they sent Daniels an e-mail requesting one.

“Barbara was crying,” he said after seeing the movie.

Allen died in 2010 at the age of 90 after voicing in 2008 his elation at the election of then Senator Barack Obama the first AfricanAmerican president of the United States.

By now you’ve heard that “Lee Daniels’ The Butler’’ starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey is a solid box office hit.

The film came in at No. 1 during its debut weekend and is getting rave reviews from critics and Black and White moviegoers alike. But there are some who aren’t feeling it and one of them would be Princeton University Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. To say he’s not a fan of the film would be an understatement. While he gave the movie credit for presenting strong performances, he couldn’t help but criticize it for presenting a one-sided political perspective that will help Daniels in getting his next film funded.

Here’s what the professor said: “Just saw ‘The Butler.’ I found the movie entertaining.

I also think Forest Whitaker has delivered an Oscar-winning performance. But the politics of the film are terribly problematic. It relies on a narrative of decline: civil rights movement good, black power bad. In fact, the father and son cannot reconcile until the son trades in his black radical imagination for electoral politics (as if there is no relation between the two: remember the Gary Convention in 1972?).

What annoyed him “The movie ends with a credit to the warriors of the civil rights movement. This was prefaced by the straight line drawn from that movement to Obama. This is nothing but a cinematic version of a black liberal consensus narrative. And it annoyed the h**l out of me.

“The representation of black women in the film is really troubling. The one black female character who dares NOT to define herself in terms of her attachment to a man or children gets read as deviant (with her ‘Angela Davis’ afro). The scene in which Oprah’s character slaps her son in defense of her husband is prefaced by a dinner in which this character belches at the table (a crude representation of the irreverence of black power over against the respectability of the Butler).

Glaude continued, “Before the father throws the son out of the house he refers to her belching. And Oprah … decries her as a rude harlot. Of course, ironically she stands in for a certain kind of black radicalism that threatens and is immediately cast to the margins (I say ironically given the hypermasculine character of much of black power politics).”

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AUGUST 23 – AUGUST 29, 2013

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