7 minute read
From Scripture to Outrage!
Emotions in the courtroom reached a fever pitch and overflowed when Barbara Massey, sister of victim Katherine Massey, was speaking.
From Scripture to Outrage!
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Emotional Testimony Followed by Life Sentence for Racist Killer in Tops Massacre. Shooter Still Faces Federal Charges That Carry a Possible Death Penalty.
Payton Gendron, the White supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket was sentenced to life in prison without parole Wednesday after relatives of his victims confronted him with the pain and rage caused by his racist attack.
Gendron, who is also facing federal hate crimes charges, could still face the death penalty.
The testimony on Wednesday was heart wrenching; the pain still raw as family members struggled through their tears while they remembered their lost loved ones who were murdered in the racist fueled massacre. They spoke of vengeance and redemption
Kimberly Salter, the widow of Aaron Salter, the heroic security guard who was killed trying to save others, was the first to speak. She read several powerful scriptures from the Bible, the pain of losing her husband still etched in her face; resting her case on her faith in God. "You will reap what you sow," she told Gendron.
Speaking on behalf of victim Margus Morrison, Michelle Spight said, “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”
The spokesperson for the Whitfield family called Gendron "a cowardly racist" and said that everyone who helped him in any way needed to be held accountable as well and not protected as they have been.
"We are extremely aware that you are not a lone wolf but part of a network of domestic terrorists...but we are unbreakable." She had to regain her composure when she spoke of "our dear grandmother who taught us the power of love and even in our darkest hour we will ensure that her legacy will be that love."
Emotions in the courtroom reached a fever pitch and overflowed when Barbara Massey, sister of victim Katherine Massey, excoriated Gendron, calling him calling him a “punk-ass” and saying she’d like to strangle him with her own hands.
"You killed my sister!" she screamed. "My sister Katherine Massey was a great person…you come to our city and decide to kill Black people – man you don’t know a damn thing about Black people…we’re human. We'd never go to no neighborhood and take people out…" she screamed.
At one point during her statement, a man who’d been standing beside her charged toward Gendron causing marshals to rush Gendron out of the courtroom and halting the proceedings for a brief time before resuming.
Gendron read an apology to the victims at the end of their testimonies, but few if any bought into it as it was seen largely as just an attempt to avoid the death penalty.
Africa The Home of Human Civilization
Africa provides a comprehensive time line of human development going back at least 7 million years. Africa, which developed the world's oldest human civilization, gave humanity the use of fire a million and half to two million years ago. It is the home of the first tools, astronomy, jewelry, fishing, mathematics, crops, art, use of pigments, cutting and other pointed instruments and animal domestication. In short Africa gave the world human civilization.
•Complete Time Line of human evolution found only in Africa. Chad 7 million years ago Ethiopia 5 million years ago South Africa 3.5 - 4 million years ago
•Oldest Stone Tools: dated back to 2.5 million years ago in Ethiopia and other parts of the Rift Valley
•Oldest Fossils of Modern Man (Homo sapiens, Sapiens) 195,000 years ago in Ethiopia
•Oldest Example of Fishing - 110,000 years ago, N. E. Africa & South Africa
•Oldest Use of Pigments, 150,000 years ago, Rift Valley & South Africa
•Oldest Barbed Points & Hook, 70-90,000 years ago, N.E. & South Africa
•Oldest Jewelry Beads, 90,000 years ago, Central & South Africa
•Stargazing, 43,000 years ago, Nile Valley
•Iron Ore Mining, 40,000 years ago Ngwenya Mine on the north-western border of Swaziland
•Oldest Example of Math Calculations, 27,000 years ago, Ishango Bone, Zaire
•Animal Domestication, 15,000 years ago, Ethiopia
source: http://www.africancontributions.net/index2.html
Community Mourns Minister Florence
Longtime Rochester pastor, community organizer and civil rights icon Minister Franklin Florence made his Transition on February 1. He was 89. Funeral services were held last Saturday at Rochester Riverside Convention Center. A commemorative service was held for him Friday evening at Central Church of Christ.
The founding president of FIGHT (Freedom, Independence, God, Honor, Today), he was the face of Black power in Rochester in the 1960s. He stared down Kodak at the height of its power to obtain jobs for Black Rochesterians, and changed the call for civil rights from a request to a demand.
In a statement, Mayor Malik Evans called Rev. Florence “a giant among giants in Rochester’s proud legacy of social justice and civil rights.”
His son, Minister Clifford Florence, expressed thanks and gratitude for the outpouring of love and support for his father, and vowed to carry on
“The struggle continues but continue it must because to get anything done … we have to continue to fight on and press on and work even harder,” he was quoted as saying.
A recently completed mural at East High School pays tribute to the efforts of Minister Franklin and others.
The mural is a replica of a 1963 photograph of Florence, Malcolm X (with whom he developed a close relationship) and Constance Mitchell, another local civil rights icon.
Malcolm X visited Rochester several times in the years before his assassination in 1965. Ephraim Gebre is the artist behind the mural.
Minister Florence first gained local prominence as an advocate during a series of police brutality cases involving the Rochester Police Department. The most notorious involved
28-year-old Rufus Fairwell, who suffered two fractured vertebrae in a scuffle with police. They thought he was breaking into a Plymouth Avenue gas station when he was in fact an employee there, locking it up for the evening.
Black History Month African American Read-In
Join us to promote African American History Month with an African-American Read-In to promote literacy and the literature of African American Authors on SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2023 from 2 pm - 4 pm at the Frank E. Merriweather, Jr. Library, 1324 Jefferson Avenue. All are welcome. Bring something to read that was written by an African American author. Maximum reading time is 3 minutes.
Hosted by Kenneth and Sharon Holley of Zawadi Books, Tradition Keepers: Black Storytellers of WNY and the Frank E. Merriweather, Jr. Branch Library.The African American Read-In is a national event sponsored by the Black Causus of the National Council of Teachers of English.
From the Father of Black History, Dr. Carter G. Woodson: “History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never have any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning.”
•An American Story (children) by Kwame Alexander
•How To Be A Young Antiracist (YA book) by Ibram X. Kendi and Nic Stone
•Reflections by Rosa Parks
•Stacey’s Remarkable Books (children) by Stacey Abrams
•Stand Up: 10 Mighty Women Who Make A Change (children) by Britney Cooper
•Straight Shooter: A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes by Stephen A. Smith
•Uphill: A Memoir by Jamel’s Hill
•When The Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal by Celes Tisdale
