MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. 50TH ANNIVERSARY: 1929-1968
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INSIDE: LEBRON JAMES ON KING’S LEGACY I Workplace diversity: 50 years after MLK I Historically Black Colleges: Carrying on a proud tradition
2 ❚ BLACK HISTORY MONTH ❚ USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
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INSIDE Editor’s note: Life in King’s shadow
As racism resurges, many look to pulpit
Chisholm blazed trails in multiple directions
The dream is well known. Less so, his later crusade for economic justice. 4
“The church is still the voice of the black community, but we need to reclaim our place.” 24
The first black woman elected to Congress was also the first black and first female candidate for a major party’s presidential nomination. 81
Recalling the past and looking ahead Essays from the president of the NAACP and a USA TODAY editor on the legacy of MLK. 6
Martin Luther King Jr.: A man behind a dream From boyhood to his last days, he pursued equality and justice and spoke of the importance of love. 9
Horrific headlines sum up a nightmare King’s assassination was an international story. In Memphis, it was also local news. See the front page from April 5, 1968. 10
King’s churches bear their legacies proudly At Dexter Avenue Baptist in Birmingham, Ala., and Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta, the sermons carry themes of hope and love in troubled times. 28
Black women will be silenced no longer Women’s central role in the civil rights struggle was downplayed at the time and then often ignored by history. 30
Coretta Scott King: Full partner in fight Journalist whose interviews produced Mrs. King’s memoir speaks about her powerful personality and legacy, 34
After assassination, a loss of momentum Anger erupted into rioting, prompting a backlash and mostly burying the cause of economic justice, King’s last focus. 12
1968 sanitation strike demanded dignity
Moments in the life of an American icon Timeline follows Martin Luther King Jr. from birth (as Michael King) in 1929 to burial in 1968. 58
The final campaign: Economic justice The Poor People’s Campaign brought thousands of people to the National Mall and a camp called Resurrection City. 62
As Richmond goes, so might the South?
Sports provides unrivaled platform African-American athletes have been driving social change for decades. 39
Mississippi museum offers unflinching look
“He literally took a bullet for us,” basketball superstar says. 42
MLK Day was in works for quarter-century When Ronald Reagan signed a bill establishing the holiday in 1983, it was the culmination of an effort that began days after King’s death. 44
The dispute that brought King on his fateful trip to Memphis was about far more than just wages and working conditions. 16
10 essential ways to commemorate King
Black Lives Matter: Students of history
‘MLK50’ events across the country
Within the movement, you find elements of both the King-era strategy and Black Power activism. 20
See what’s planned in Memphis, Atlanta, Montgomery, Washington and other cities in 2018. 50
Books to read, movies and shows to watch, sites to visit and more. 49
President and Publisher
Maribel Perez Wadsworth Associate Publisher President, USA TODAY Network
Media diversity goals are decades behind
Amid a national debate over tributes to Confederate leaders, many eyes are on the former capital of the Confederacy. 67
LeBron James on King: In his own words
John Zidich
1960s commission looking into civil unrest had pointed criticism for the press. Efforts to change have had mixed success. 82
Black caucus keeps up the fight in Congress Even if they can’t pass legislation in a GOP-led government, lawmakers see role as critical. 84
Curtis Mayfield: The voice of victory Songs like We’re a Winner and Keep on Pushing provided inspiration for a generation’s activists. 88
Its legacy is so strong that many say we should never speak of it, while others say a true conversation is long overdue. 76
Pan-African vision came via Jamaica Marcus Garvey, who arrived in America in 1916, spread the message of black self-sufficiency worldwide. 78
The pageant, started as a response to white-dictated beauty standards, turns 50 this year. 102
HBCUs are evolving as they endure Historically black schools have weathered financial and enrollment challenges to continue empowering students. 107
Film fills in history of black colleges
King’s alma mater lives out his legacy At Morehouse College, students think about modern issues in terms of how MLK might have considered them. 113
Smithsonian site becomes a mecca
Why America can’t get over slavery
Miss Black America makes beautiful point
Documentary had to piece together the story, since no single source told the comprehensive story of HBCUs. 109
Experience the state’s new civil rights museum in the words of those who lived through the era. 70
The National Museum of African American History and Culture provides a place for contemporary conversation. 74
Patty Michalski
Theater ensemble put spotlight on itself The Negro Ensemble Company provided opportunity that didn’t exist elsewhere, and produced a galaxy of stars. 92
Craft beer nowadays isn’t just pale ales More African Americans and other people of color are starting breweries. 96
Teen knows the code for inclusion in tech For its latest effort to reach out to women, Google paired with Snapchat, a fave of black teens. 101
Blue eyes/brown eyes taught painful lessons
Executive Editor
Donna Leinwand Leger Managing Editor
Owen Ullmann Managing Editor/ Special editions Issue editor Nichelle Smith Production editor Lori Santos Issue photo editor Robin A. Smith Issue designers David Anesta, Lindsay Hack Design manager Jennifer Herrmann Operations editor Cynthia Robinson ISSN#0734-7456 A USA TODAY Publication, Gannett Co. Inc. USA TODAY, its logo and associated graphics are registered trademarks. All rights reserved. Editorial and publication headquarters are at 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA 22108.
School exercise designed to teach about discrimination made Iowa teacher a lightning rod. 115 MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
‘African American’ changes as USA does More and more black Americans are immigrants rather than the descendants of Africans brought here as slaves. 117
The last word Americans took to the streets on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2018 to say no to racism and yes to the dream. 118
50TH ANNIVERSARY: 1929-1968
About the cover Design: David Anesta Photo: The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington. By Nikki Kahn, The Washington Post, via Getty Images
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EDITOR’S NOTE
We live in the shadow of King, and of the mountaintop he saw Nichelle Smith
USA TODAY
I was born in 1968, three weeks before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. My generation grew up in his shadow, with a viewpoint on race and class framed by condensed versions of his “I Have a Dream” speech. ❚ But as my generation is learning, King’s vision was so much larger than that. ❚ In King’s 1968, blacks seemed to be within sight of the promised land he spoke about in his final speech to striking sanitation workers in Memphis on April 3. Thanks to legislation inspired by the civil rights movement he led, blacks were beginning to have better access to education, jobs and homes than ever before. But the disheartening Kerner Commission report, issued a month earlier, had demonstrated that stark, intractable disparities remained between the experiences of blacks and whites. King’s death on April 4 generated an agony that played out in uprisings in 125 cities that spring, in the ghettos where the famed dream of equality and inclusion he outlined at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 seemed as distant as the moon. The soundbites of King we hear belie the complexity of King’s philosophy and obscure its expansion at the end of his life, when he was beginning to get to the heart of the matter that plagued blacks in both small Southern towns and huge Northern cities. Neither the world nor his vision was ever merely black and white. The King we hear in that final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” knew that the struggle for civil rights for blacks could not be separate from the struggle for human rights. And if he was going to talk about human rights, the argument for him naturally led to a discussion of economic rights — wealth redistribution, as King historian Clayborne Carson notes in this issue. And no discussion of wealth redistribution could occur without a review of all of the forces that combined to result in poverty, powerlessness and maintenance of a racial hierarchy that writer Isabel Wilkerson has likened to a caste system. At the end of his life, King was talking revolution, but not a revolution of blood. It was a revolution of the mind based in symbiotic, multicultural unity in opposition to his three evils of society: war, poverty and racism. Though he didn’t get there physically, King certainly reached the mountaintop before the rest of us. He was operating from inside the dream of equality he described for us in 1963. And in operating from that place of pure love, he had no fear. In this issue, we remember King through the eyes of those who knew him, the actions of those who were inspired by him and the legacy he left for generations of people who, like me, grew up in his shadow. Read what ministers like Bishop T.D. Jakes have to say about where the church needs to take the fight for
Alicia James, 12, Lajayda Carter, 10, and DaNaria Jones, 12, hold posters during the Martin Luther King Jr. Day activities in Tyler, Texas, on Jan. 15 CHELSEA PURGAHN,
civil and human rights today. Learn about the role of the forgotten female activists — including Coretta Scott King — who gave the movement its momentum. Learn what King has meant to educator Jane Elliott and the late Shirley Chisholm, NAACP president Derrick Johnson and basketball superstar LeBron James, among others. Last, go with us to discover places to reflect on the world and work that he left us.
TYLER MORNING TELEGRAPH, VIA AP
Nichelle Smith Issue editor nysmith@usatoday.com ❚ Explore Black History, news, features and events in the ongoing story at civilrights.usatoday.com ❚ Explore 1968. Learn more about the King assassination and other important moments at 1968.usatoday.com
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WE STILL CAN’T WAIT FOR CHANGE
REFLECTING ON WHAT WAS LOST
Eradicating racism isn’t a task we can just leave to others
We can only guess how our world might have looked
Derrick Johnson
Owen Ullmann
President, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Managing editor, Special Editions, USA TODAY
was Martin Luther King Jr.’s Why We Can’t Wait. Writ-
It was a Thursday night, and I was overseeing the production of the next day’s student newspaper, The Daily
ten in 1963 after his experiences in Birmingham, Ala., King detailed a then-radical approach to the attainment of universal equality in America — equality that,
Targum, at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., when I heard the terrible news. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis.
nearly 200 years after the American Rev- families are more than four times olution and 100 years after Lincoln’s wealthier than black families. Black Emancipation Proclamation, remained a and Latino families still own homes at lower rates than whites do. And perdistant dream for African Americans. The anger and frustration carried in haps most alarmingly, black men are King’s words mirrors my own today. six times more likely to be incarcerated There remains a great chasm between in their lifetime than white men are. An our nation’s promise of racial equality analysis from the Pew Research Center and our nation’s racial reality. It is a notes that each of these disparities is far greater today than shared righteous anger — like that of Thurgood Mar- When we carry the even King experienced in the 1960s. shall, who led the King’s words from NAACP’s legal strategy in burden together, over 50 years ago still Brown v. Board of Educawe become a hold true today: We do tion, the groundbreaking not have the luxury to 1954 case that ostensibly powerful train wait. desegregated our nation’s The 2,200 branches public schools. However, moving at rapid of the NAACP see King’s despite the Supreme speed toward birthday not solely as Court’s order to eliminate homage to a fallen segregation “with all de- freedom and dreamer, but as a conliberate speed,” public equality. tinuing commitment to schools in our communiembrace and regard his ties remain highly segrelegacy as a blueprint for radical change gated and universally underfunded. Born of the same frustration known to in our society. If we are going to bring forth the necboth King and Marshall, my anger, like theirs, is moderated by love and com- essary economic and social change that pelled by an urgent awareness that com- Martin Luther King Jr. fought and died munities like Baltimore, Chicago, Comp- for, we cannot wait for the populace to ton and St. Louis exist much as King de- awaken and participate in the electoral scribed Black America in his time, as a process. We must personally commit to place and a people trapped on a “lonely work relentlessly for the elimination of racism. island of economic insecurity.” When we carry the burden together, Yes, there has been progress, but on several fronts, regressions and increas- we become a powerful train moving at ing disparities rule the day. Today, white rapid speed toward freedom and equalAmericans systematically, and some- ity. As King noted, it doesn’t matter if times inexplicably, fare better than their you walk, crawl or run; we all must do black counterparts. On average, white what we need to do to get there.
Although it was 50 years ago, I re- protest as the best way to galvanize pubmember clearly the chilling night of lic support for civil rights, in the tradition April 4, 1968. It was my mother’s birth- of Mahatma Gandhi. I also admired his day, and King was a hero to me at a time fight for economic justice for the poor of when there seemed to be so few U.S. all races and ethnicities, and his vocal leaders I could look up to. I sadly or- opposition to the war in Vietnam. I often wonder how the course of dered a remake of Friday’s front page to American history might have changed capture the tragic event. The following Monday, April 8, the had King not been cut down before the age of 40, or had Bobby Targum dedicated its isKennedy not been assassue to perceived racism Now we find sinated a few months latthat existed at Rutgers. er. Would we be observing The issue sparked so ourselves more Black Lives Matter and much discussion that bitterly divided white supremacist proclasses were canceled on tests today had King April 9 so all of us — stu- over race, lived? Would he have dents, faculty and adfound a way to bring the ministrators — could re- economic class nation together in racial flect on King’s life, death and political harmony? and legacy, and the state discourse than at King had a rare ability of race relations. to touch people of all genI felt great despair at any time since erations, colors and classthe time, fearing that the es. I can’t think of anyone cause of civil rights for King was alive. else in my lifetime who African Americans would suffer a major setback after so had that gift. Barack Obama certainly much progress in the 1960s, including has King’s oratorical gift, but he never federal civil rights legislation, a dis- could find a way to unite the nation demantling of legal segregation in society spite a moment of soaring expectations and a growing interracial coalition at the time of his presidential inauguration in 2009. committed to equal rights for all. Now we find ourselves more bitterly For me, King had been the linchpin for that progress. I had admired him divided over race, economic class and since the early 1960s. I attended the political discourse than at any time since March on Washington in 1963 and was King was alive. I still believe that King had found a mesmerized, along with 200,000 other participants, by King’s iconic “I Have a path toward national reconciliation that no other U.S. leader has trod since. WithDream” speech. I became increasingly impressed out him showing the way, we as a nation with his commitment to nonviolent are much poorer.
One of the most powerful books I read as a young man
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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION ❚ BLACK HISTORY MONTH ❚ 9 Matt Alderton Special to USA TODAY
Although his name is ubiquitous and his message universal, what most Americans know about Martin Luther King Jr. as a person could probably fit on a cocktail napkin. Those celebrating his legacy as part of Black History Month should therefore begin by learning more about his life. A good place to start is with his name. He was born Jan. 15, 1929, as Michael King Jr. On an inspiring trip to Germany, his father decided to change his own name and that of his 5-year-old son to honor Martin Luther, who incited the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s. King’s message of love and equality began germinating shortly thereafter. “When he was 6 years old, one of his best friends was a boy who was white. They loved playing together. But when they started going to school, his friend told him: My father said I can’t play with you anymore,” says Brad Meltzer, author of the children’s book I Am Martin Luther King Jr. “His parents explained: It’s because you’re black and he’s white. Young Martin was so mad that day. He wanted to hate his friend and his father. But his parents told him to do the opposite — that he should love his friend, even though his friend hurt him.” King continued choosing love during his education at segregated public schools in Atlanta, where he skipped grades nine and 12. He began attending Morehouse College at 15 and graduated in 1948 with a degree in sociology. Although his father and grandfather were Baptist ministers, he intended to become a lawyer or doctor; he decided to enter the “family business” only when Morehouse president Benjamin Mays convinced him that Christianity could be a catalyst for social change. King subsequently attended Boston University, where he earned a Ph.D. in theology. While in Boston, he met his future wife, Coretta Scott, They married in 1952 and had four children. At just 26 years old, King cemented his future as a civil rights leader when he moved to Montgomery, Ala. There, in 1955, the local chapter of the NAACP chose him to lead a boycott of the city’s segregated buses after Rosa Parks famously refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger. When the Supreme Court later ordered Montgomery to desegregate its buses, King became a na-
From boyhood to his last days, King pursued the dream
King in 1960. HOWARD SOCHUREK, THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES
“It is one of the great moments in American history. But what must be remembered is that the march didn’t mean that King’s work was done. His battles continued, marching from Selma to Montgomery. And as I tell my own children, the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech wasn’t the ending of the story. His battle still continues today.” Brad Meltzer author of the children’s book I Am Martin Luther King Jr.
tional figure and co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to advance the cause of racial equality through nonviolent protest — a principle he learned as a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and later codified in his Letter From Birmingham Jail, written in 1963 after he was arrested while protesting segregation in Birmingham, Ala. In all, King, was arrested 29 times. “His Letter from Birmingham Jail was written in the margins of a newspaper and even on toilet paper,” Meltzer says. “Today, it has been read by millions of people.” Of course, King’s most famous words weren’t penned in jail. Rather, they were delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., where he declared “I have a dream” in front of more than 200,000 people demonstrating for civil rights as part of the historic March on Washington in August 1963. His stirring words helped secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. “It is one of the great moments in American history,” Meltzer says. “But what must be remembered is that the march didn’t mean that King’s work was done. His battles continued, marching from Selma to Montgomery. And as I tell my own children, the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech wasn’t the ending of the story. His battle still continues today.” Indeed, King’s legacy lives on — even though he did not. On April 4, 1968, King was fatally shot by an assassin while he stood on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. “Dr. King was killed while he was in Memphis in solidarity with sanitation workers demonstrating in protest of inequitable wages and working conditions,” says the Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. “He had ‘shown up.’ This is one part of King’s great witness — he physically stood with others. He literally embodied his work for justice.”
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Summing up a nightmare in 6 words The lead headline in the April 5, 1968, edition of Memphis’ Commercial Appeal newspaper describes a crime that sent waves of shock, and then outrage, across the country. The killing of the Nobel Peace Prize winner was a national and international story. In Memphis, it was also local news.
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Buildings smolder on April 6, 1968, in Chicago, one of scores of cities where rioting erupted after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis. AP
Following the assassination, a story of momentum lost Mark Curnutte
The military was called in to help quell unrest in Washington, D.C., which was among the hardest-hit cities. The riots devastated inner-city neighborhoods, some of which took decades to begin to recover. AP
Cincinnati Enquirer
The immediate response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years ago was one of fire and fury. ❚ King’s murder on April 4, 1968, on a motel balcony in Memphis silenced the civil rights movement’s most persuasive, gifted and foresighted leader and put a match to powderkegs across the country. ❚ Riots exploded in 125 cities that were already seething with frustration and anger over poor housing conditions, substandard public schools, unchecked police brutality and unemployment rates that for young black men were as much as seven times those of other Americans. Continued on page 13
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Nationally, 43 people died, 3,500 were injured and 27,000 arrested in violence during the 10 days following King’s murder, according to Peter B. Levy’s new book about riots in the 1960s, The Great Uprising. Damage estimates topped $65 million — about $442 million today. The Holy Week Uprising, as the riots are collectively known, appeared to give the country the reason it needed to give up on the inner city. No longer would solutions for the hard problems of impoverished urban blacks, as outlined in the Kerner Commission report on the 1967 riots released barely a month earlier, be a national priority. Instead, “law and order” became a dog whistle for the campaign of Richard Nixon, whose presidency would promote the militarization of local police instead of significant economic solutions. And the long-term and large-scale effects of King’s death were the intractable hardening of negative racial attitudes and widening economic disparity he warned of in the last three years of his life. “His earlier life is remembered. The last three years of his life and what he was working on are forgotten,” says Clayborne Carson, 73, a Stanford University history professor and director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, which edits and publishes King’s papers. By 1968, King had run into backlash both from within the civil rights movement and from the larger society. As younger leaders like Stokely Carmichael adopted a more militant tone, King pushed back against the Black Power movement’s goals of self-sufficiency and self-segregation, saying true racial equality couldn’t be achieved without maintaining a nonviolent philosophy and engaging in alliances with sympathetic whites. After the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King looked to build on his successes by focusing on what he considered society’s three main evils: war, poverty and racial injustice. In addition to denouncing the Vietnam War, he broadened his civil rights agenda to include people of all races who had been left behind economically, a move that drew controversy and even anger. “King was asking for a major redistribution of wealth,” Carson says. “Most people looked upon that voting (rights) was sufficient. Much of white America looked at the civil rights gains and said, `We’re not going to give you any more.’ “But King had a different vision, a vision of where we should have been going
Bernard Lafayette, right, was King’s choice to coordinate the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. He has made promoting nonviolence his life’s work. CHARLES KELLY, AP
for the last 50 years. That’s the unfinished business of the 1960s.” King understood the dangers and farreaching consequences of racial segregation, says Beverly Daniel Tatum, 63, president emerita of Spelman College in Atlanta. “Racism in the U.S. is a problem that can’t be solved without the active participation of white people,” says Tatum, a clinical psychologist and author of 1997’s best-selling Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race. The book has been updated with a new prologue for a 20th-anniversary edition. In it, Tatum lists the ground lost since the ’60s in terms of increased mass incarceration of African Americans, the staggering loss of black wealth among them caused by the mortgage crisis of 2008, the resegregation of schools, and the misinformation that shapes racial attitudes of whites who have no significant personal contact with people who are different from them. “Racially in this country, for every two steps forward, it’s one step back,” she says.
King also understood the need to work through legislatures and the courts to enforce civil rights. Resources needed to be used for such efforts, not just for marching in the streets, says Nathaniel Jones, 91, a retired federal appeals court judge in Cincinnati who in 1967 and 1968 was assistant general counsel to President Lyndon Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, otherwise known as the Kerner Commission. After King’s death, Jones says, “his opponents worked like beavers on the local level, on city councils, school boards, in state legislatures. Most pronounced were their efforts against the implementation of federal orders to end school segregation.” “If Dr. King had lived, he would have been able to define his philosophy with precision, and he would have presented a path toward solutions,” Jones says. “The leaders who followed him didn’t have the sophistication that King did and did not have the vision to see what has come to pass in this country — voter repression, assaults on affirmative action, this attempt to `take America back.’ But back to where?”
Before his death, King had appointed Bernard Lafayette, a former student activist in Nashville, as coordinator of the Poor People’s Campaign that King had initiated in late 1967. The two men spoke in Memphis, where King had gone to support striking sanitation workers, the morning of King’s death. They planned to meet in Washington, D.C., within a day or two to discuss the campaign. King never made the trip. He was leaving the Lorraine Motel in Memphis to go to dinner when, at 6:01 p.m., a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King, 39, was pronounced dead upon arrival at a Memphis hospital. “The last thing he said to me is that we needed to figure out a way to institutionalize and internationalize nonviolence,” says Lafayette, an early organizer of the Selma Voting Rights Movement in Alabama who later had major roles with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Lafayette took King’s charge to heart and has spent his life promoting King’s principles of nonviolence in 30 states and in 60 countries. Much of his domestic work has been in prisons. “There was no one else like him. He was prophetic,” Lafayette, now 77, says of King. “The musical intonation of his voice moved people. They felt the spirit of what he was saying. He was a good listener, too, very patient. He didn’t dismiss anyone, even those who’d once opposed him. He was inclusive, not exclusive.” Black Lives Matter and other contemporary African-American groups have begun a fuller examination of King’s controversial last years. In January 2015, Black Lives Matter organizations in many states presented programs on the “militant King.” They counter the “I Have a Dream” King of 1963, the King whose dream of a world of equality exists somewhere in the future, as if in a distant mist. King provided a blueprint for his final crusade in 1967 in the pages of his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? In it, he called for legal protections for those living in public housing and receiving public assistance. He wrote that “arbitrary lines of government should not balkanize America into white and black schools and communities.” He promoted government subsidies for businesses to employ people of limited education and expansion of workplace training also paid for by the government. “We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. … We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.”
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“I Am a Man” was the rallying cry in 1968 for Memphis sanitation workers, whose strike was about more than simply wages and working conditions. RICHARD L. COPLEY
’68 strikers demanded dignity Tonyaa Weathersbee
The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal
When Elmore Nickleberry collected garbage in Memphis in the 1960s, he had to tolerate two kinds of vermin. ❚ One came in the maggot-infested sludge that flowed onto his back and shoulders from old, leaky containers he carried over his head. The other resided in the sanitation agency’s hierarchy, where his white bosses believed that his health and dignity weren’t worth the money to buy new tubs. ❚ “Lots of times, I had to use the same tub, and stuff used to come down on you,” Nickleberry said. “I couldn’t ride the bus home, because I stunk so bad. … I had to take a shower as soon as I got home.” Elmore Nickleberry, seen in 2008, remained with the Memphis sanitation department for decades. MILBERT O. BROWN, CHICAGO TRIBUNE/MCT, VIA GETTY IMAGES
Continued on page 18
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It was an experience common to his co-workers. “When we went home, we couldn’t even go in the house,” said the Rev. Leslie Moore, another former Memphis sanitation worker. “We’d pull our shirts off, our shoes off, and maggots would fall out.” For Nickleberry, 87, and Moore, 70, two of the workers who took part in the 1968 strike that drew Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis and, ultimately, to his death, enduring such indignities required uncommon strength. Fighting and changing the system required them to summon their strength as men. Hence the slogan “I Am a Man,” which came to epitomize the spirit of the sanitation workers’ struggle. What they didn’t foresee is that their strike would lead not only to dignity for them, but to change for others struggling under the same system. “The police didn’t have a union until after we got one,” Nickleberry said. “The police didn’t have no union. The firemen didn’t have no union. We helped out a lot of people. … Because of our strike, they got good jobs. “ Besides paving the way for public worker unions in Memphis, the sanitation strikers also inspired today’s Fight for 15 movement, which is pushing for a $15 minimum wage for fast-food workers. This past spring, the movement held a Day of Action in 30 cities. Recently, Nickleberry, Moore and three other veterans of the sanitation strike reflected on the dismal wages and terrible working conditions that led them to take to the streets in 1968 — and to take their place in history. “It was rough back in 1968, and it was really rough back in 1962,” said H.B. Crockett. “If I can remember right, I believe I was making a dollar and three cents an hour. “I took that and fed my family with it. When we went on strike, the public helped us, but at one point we had to go on food stamps.” A turning point — or a breaking point — came after the men were offered a fivecent raise and two of their colleagues, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death by a malfunctioning garbage truck in February 1968. “We decided that we went through so much, we decided to get together and not take no more,” Moore said. “We didn’t care what they were going to do to us, because we wanted things to get better. I know I did.” So, they went on strike. They let 10,000 tons of garbage pile up. And they marched. At their first march, on Feb. 23, the
Veterans of the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike gather in December 2017 to break ground for a memorial plaza that pays tribute to their action. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis to support the strike when he was assassinated. ADRIAN SAINZ, AP
Elmore Nickleberry, right, in the 1950s with his brother Earl, left, and their father, Earl. COURTESY NICKLEBERRY FAMILY
sanitation workers were attacked by police swinging batons and spraying mace. Their March 28 demonstration, led by King and members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, turned violent. Some supporters began to smash windows, and police responded with mace, tear gas and gunfire. Hundreds were arrested, and a 16-yearold boy, Larry Payne, was fatally shot. “I remember that violent march, during that time. They started throwing stuff, and the police started whupping us,” Nickleberry said. “I got hit hard.” Six days later, King was shot dead by a sniper, James Earl Ray. Despair followed. “(King’s assassination showed) that they didn’t care anything about blacks,” Ozell Ueal said. “It was tough.” Baxter Leach said King’s sacrifice ultimately benefited everyone. “He came for white and black, because if it wasn’t for Martin Luther King, some of these white folks wouldn’t have the jobs they have now, and some of the black folks wouldn’t have the jobs they
have now,” Leach said. The sanitation workers’ fight didn’t end when the strike was settled. Under the settlement, the workers’ union chose to receive federal Social Security retirement benefits rather than a city pension. (The workers feared that the city would try to reduce or eliminate the pension in the future.) But as other city employees joined unions, Memphis ultimately increased its pension benefits. That created a gap between what sanitation retirees got compared with other city workers. To correct that imbalance, the city last year agreed to pay each of the 26 surviving strikers $70,000 in grants. As Memphis and the nation gear up to mark the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination, the strikers say they want to be remembered not only for their labor action, but also for showing people how to fight for their dignity – and win. “I had six kids to take care of. But I made it,” Leach said. “I stood up to be a man. Not no boy.”
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Chanel Trice holds up a sign during a Black Lives Matter protest that shut down the Interstate 40 bridge over the Mississippi River in Memphis on July 10, 2016. The sign references Philando Castile, a Minnesota man shot dead during a traffic stop. BRAD VEST, THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL
BRAD VEST, THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL
“I would say they don’t understand or don’t want to understand what we’re saying and haven’t been listening. Because we’re addressing antiblackness doesn’t mean we’re anti anything else.”
Black Lives Matter: Students of history Linda A. Moore
The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal
Born from the frustrations of powerlessness and tired of going unheard, the Black Lives Matter movement has grown from a mere Twitter hashtag in 2013 to a political movement that refuses to be ignored. ❚ The event that launched Black Lives Matter was the not-guilty verdict in the murder trial of George Zimmerman, a Florida neighborhood watch coordinator who had shot an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, to death and then claimed self-defense. The movement’s
Erica Perry attorney and BLM organizer in Memphis.
Continued on page 22
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22 ❚ BLACK HISTORY MONTH ❚ USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION Continued from page 20
objective: equal treatment for African Americans by the criminal justice system. Comparisons are inevitable between BLM, largely led by millennials, and the mid-20th-century civil rights movement, in which college students became Freedom Riders and were arrested at whites-only lunch counters, school-age children braved police dogs and fire hoses, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee devised strategies alongside Martin Luther King Jr. After King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, the Black Power movement gained momentum as it resisted the nonviolent agenda espoused by King for one that advocated black pride, black identity and black independence. There are markers of both movements within BLM, says Hasan Kwame Jeffries, an associate professor of history at Ohio State University who focuses on the late 20th century, civil rights and the Black Power movement. “I think in many ways it is more Malcolm (X) than Martin in the sense of what we see with Black Power is a more directly explicit critique of American systems and structures, which is something that’s less pronounced in the 1950s, 1960s civil rights era,” Jeffries says. Jeffries was a contributor to the National Civil Rights Museum’s $28 million renovation, which debuted in 2014 and included a more extensive look at the Black Power movement that followed the civil rights era. “Black Power is a return to a much more strident critique of America as a whole. The Black Lives Matter movement is an extension of that, and an evolution,” Jeffries says. BLM uses many of the same tactics as past activists, and applies lessons learned from them, says Erica Perry, an attorney and BLM organizer in Memphis. But BLM’s founding by three black women, its unstructured leadership model and its inclusion of all gender identities makes it unique, Perry says. “One of the things that I think might be a bit more of an evolution is our centering of LGBT folks and then also in many ways our anti-capitalist analysis,” she says. No one gets left out at a BLM meeting, said Khalid Kamau, a BLM activist who is now a city councilman in South Fulton, Ga. (The city will soon change its name to Renaissance.) “I am one of first BLM organizers elected to public office,” he says. Kamau’s belief that to change policies you must change the people who are in power takes BLM in a different direction.
Black Lives Matter activists put their hands up or behind their heads in a symbolic display of compliance during the July 10, 2016, protest on the I-40 bridge in Memphis. BRAD VEST, THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL
“This is nothing that SNCC didn’t go through,” Kamau says. SNCC leader John Lewis has now served for 30 years in the U.S. House of Representatives while Stokley Carmichael, who popularized the term “Black Power,” would go on to leadership in that movement and inspire leaders of the Black Panther Party. He died in 1998. As part of BLM in Atlanta, Kamau met with Lewis and other 1960s student leaders. Kamau helped push for the referendum that made South Fulton a municipality and now wears his BLM pin in his official city council portrait. “This is where I give credit to BLM. We study our history. We are not just angry kids on the street,” Kamau says. But many outside the movement have sought to portray it as just that. Under the banner of BLM, activists have protested police violence against African Americans, blocked highways, filled streets and held “die-ins.” In Memphis, they shut down the Interstate 40 bridge that crosses the Mississippi River. It was during that protest in July 2016 that Frank Gottie went from a former
YALONDA M. JAMES, THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL
“All great movements were called hate groups. (Those who call BLM a hate group) just let me know they see my work. They see my work and they fear my work.” Frank Gottie Black Lives Matter activist
gang member to a BLM activist. “That was my first time seeing Memphis coming together,” Gottie says. “And people were so afraid of us destroying our city. We didn’t destroy one thing.” Regardless, BLM’s detractors have promulgated #AllLivesMatter and, in support of police, Blue Lives Matter. In October, white nationalists recently marched in Tennessee under the banner “White Lives Matter.” Some even call BLM a hate group — claiming that the very words “black lives matter” imply that others do not. “I would say they don’t understand or don’t want to understand what we’re saying and haven’t been listening,” Perry says. “Because we’re addressing antiblackness doesn’t mean we’re anti anything else.” BLM’s activists are too inclusive for their movement to embrace hate, Gottie says. But, he adds, being called a hate group means they’re effective. “All great movements were called hate groups,” he says. “They just let me know they see my work. They see my work and they fear my work.”
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As racism resurges, many look to pulpit Methodist Episcopal Church for the state of Alabama. “Nobody wants to be the sacrificial (lamb),
In the 1960s and for decades prior, African-American pastors faced the threat and, often, the reality of violence to lead civil rights campaigns. “In Selma, they called it Bloody Sunday because marchers left Brown Chapel AME and were beaten and bloodied for standing up at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on a Sunday morning,” Seawright says, referring to a voting rights march that was attacked by police on March 7, 1965. The Rev. C.T. Vivian, one of King’s top lieutenants, described the activists’ strategy as “nonviolent direct action,” in which they would stage events in places where there was a good chance of dangerous confrontations. “I almost got killed in St. Augustine,” Vivian said in a 2015 Washington Post interview. During a “wade-in” protest at that Florida city’s whites-only beach in summer 1964, a white mob was waiting
nobody wants to die, but if we are going to make progress, we must be willing to shed blood.”
Continued on page 26
Hamil R. Harris
Special to USA TODAY
In the 1960s, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led an army of pastors and activists who were attacked, beaten and bloodied as they pushed for equality and social justice across the South. ❚ Today, with racist rhetoric surging and many of King’s pastoral lieutenants gone, some see a need for new church leaders to revive the spirit of what was done then. ❚ “The church is still the voice of the black community, but we need to reclaim our place,” says Bishop Harry Seawright, prelate of the African
The Rev. C.T. Vivian, left, confronts Selma, Ala., public safety director Wilson Baker in 1965. STEVE SCHAPIRO CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
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in the water; Vivian was attacked by a man who held his head under the water. Then gunfire hit a cottage where he and others were supposed to stay. “I read in the papers that they found 16 holes in the cabin,” Vivian said. Although King is often portrayed as the unquestioned, universally supported leader of the civil rights movement, other church leaders of the time often saw him as radical and out of step, especially after his 1967 speech criticizing the Vietnam War. One of his main critics was the Rev. J.H. Jackson, a Chicago pastor who was president of the conservative National Baptist Convention. “King was seen as a revolutionary” and wasn’t allowed to preach in many churches in 1968 because of his position on the war, says Rev. Grainger Browning, pastor of Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Fort Washington, Md. Churches of that era were not as involved in social ministry to the extent they are today, Browning says. But 50 years after King’s death, the role of the black church and its dynamic pastors and lieutenants may be more critical than ever, given incidents ranging from the 2015 murders of nine people by a white supremacist at a black church in Charleston, S.C., to the death of a Heather Heyer, 32, in Charlottesville, Va., last August when a car plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters opposed to a rally by white nationalists. The power of the pulpit could be key in a general climate where incivility and open racism seem more prevalent. “I believe the church then was more cause-driven. It had a stronger focus on reformation, as the oppression was constant and obvious,” says Bishop T.D. Jakes, pastor of The Potter’s House, a megachurch in Dallas. He was 11 when King was assassinated and has vivid childhood memories of “separate but equal” accommodations in his hometown of Charleston, W.Va., including his father having to go to the back door of certain restaurants if he wanted to buy food from them. “The threat that keeps minority oppression continuing today is much more systemic as opposed to tactical — e.g., “colored” bathrooms and segregated schools, parks and restaurants, etc. Today we have entire communities subsisting with failing schools, black-on-black crime, poverty, drugs and drive-by shootings coupled with horrific conflicts between law enforcement officers and our black women and youth. … Systemic injustice is harder to prove but often has more lethal effects,” Jakes says. “In the 1960s, people were more (in-
The Rev. C.T. Vivian during the 1960s effort to desegregate interstate buses. LEE LOCKWOOD, TIME LIFE PICTURES, VIA GETTY IMAGES
2012 AP PHOTO BY DAVID GOLDMAN
“I almost got killed in St. Augustine (Florida). ... I read in the papers that they found 16 (bullet) holes in the cabin” where he’d planned to stay. The Rev. C.T. Vivian
volved in) civil rights because there was segregation in the schools. Today I don’t think people are as involved,” says Geneva Mays, 81, who as a marshal for the Congress of Racial Equality sat three steps down from King as he spoke during the 1963 March on Washington.
She says she was happy when Americans elected Barack Obama president, the first African American to hold the office, “but nothing has really happened in terms where we stand today. There is still racism, and it seems like it is more now. We haven’t progressed that much.” A week after the Charlottesville incident, activist Al Sharpton, along with Martin Luther King III, Jesse Jackson and Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson, led a rally at the Justice Department in Washington. After the event, they were asked about the next steps in a new civil rights battle. “One of the issues in this country is that we have a challenged economy,” King III said. “Black folks, we are always disproportionally affected but there are a whole lot of white folks (affected) who are engaged in hostility. When people have jobs and opportunities, they are less likely to engage in foolishness. We have to create jobs and opportunities, and then we have to work to stamp out racism and all of the (other) ‘isms.’ ” Organization will be as important now as it was for King and other activists in the ’60s, Sharpton said. “The key thing is that we are going to organize voting rights campaigns and mobilize voters in the area and deal with
state legislation around jobs, criminal justice reform. We need to organize from the ground up like the (conservative) tea party did,” Sharpton said in August. Clerical alliances crossed racial and denominational lines in the 1960s, with white ministers joining black ministers to present a united front against injustice. The Rev. Theodore Hesburgh — president of the University of Notre Dame, member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the primary architect of the Civil Rights Act — joined hands with King at a 1964 rally in Chicago for a now-iconic photo. Unitarian Universalist minister James Reeb even gave his life for civil rights: He was beaten to death in Selma just after Bloody Sunday in 1965. Jakes and others see a need for church leaders to return to a level of commitment that includes risk. “We must work on social justice for all people as a national project and not just a cause that is championed by blacks alone,” Jakes says. “The civil rights movement in the ’60s was effective because it rallied diverse peoples around the ideals that created unity rather than working in silos. “Building consensus and coalitions across racial and political gulfs is the only way real progress can be achieved.”
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Churches bear their legacies proudly Hamil R. Harris Special to USA TODAY
Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue is a crossroads of yesterday and tomorrow for the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church. Since April 4, 1968, generations have come to the old red brick church to learn more about one of its former ministers, Martin Luther King Jr., a man who mixed gifted oratory, nonviolence and the word of God to melt hearts and shame people to change. The National Park Service has preserved the church, the crypts of King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, and his birth home. Across the street from the old church stands a modern building, home to a 5,000-member congregation now led by the 48-year-old Warnock, who is very clear about his assignment. On Dec. 3, he stood in the pulpit with several other ministers, all dressed in black robes for “Communion Sunday.” Warnock’s sermon focused on economic disparities in the age of Trump. “This is a season where there is laughter and weeping,” Warnock said, his voice rising. “Hope and fear are diametrically opposed. … The question is: Will you give in to fear, or will you will be guided by hope?” Warnock, who became senior pastor of Ebenezer in 2005, is only the fifth minister to lead the congregation in the church’s 131-year history. “I am aware of what the Ebenezer pulpit represents,” Warnock said. “Ebenezer is a national pulpit and church to all. When something happens, people come to Ebenezer to sort through the national tragedy.” In terms of ministry, Warnock said, “Our working formula is preaching what is socially relevant, engaging in music that is vibrant and meaningful and being involved in activism that takes us to the public square beyond the four walls where the needs of people are addressed.” Ebenezer was founded in 1886, nine years after Reconstruction ended. Thir-
The Rev. Raphael G. Warnock leads Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Sr. was senior pastor and MLK Jr. also preached. At left, a portrait of King in the church. PHOTOS BY DAVID GOLDMAN AP
“Ebenezer is a national pulpit and church to all. When something happens, people come to Ebenezer to sort through the national tragedy.” The Rev. Raphael G. Warnock pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church
The Rev. Cromwell Handy focuses on the future at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, above, in Montgomery, Ala., where King was pastor from 1954 to 1960. PHOTOS BY MICKEY WELSH, THE MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER
teen people united under the leadership of the Rev. John A. Parker, who served as Ebenezer’s first pastor until 1894. It was Rev. Adam Daniel Williams who got the red brick church built and completed in 1922, but he wasn’t simply a construction overseer; he led battles for adequate public accommodations for blacks despite Jim Crow segregation laws. In 1927, the Rev. Michael King — later to change his name to Martin Luther King Sr. — became Williams’ assistant pastor. King assumed the leadership of the church in 1931 after Williams’ death.
In 1960 his oldest son, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., returned to Atlanta from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., ground zero of the nascent civil rights movement, to join his father as co-pastor. That gave Ebenezer international stature and, as King’s views on social justice expanded, notoriety as well. “Prophets rarely are appreciated during their lives,” Warnock said. “Dr. King at the end of his life was unpopular, but what we need right now is the prophetic voice that will speak truth to power and
let the chips fall where they may. We need intelligence and integrity.” The Dexter Avenue church is 160 miles west of Ebenezer and Atlanta but was just as close to King’s heart. The congregation was organized in 1877, and King became pastor in 1954. King served the congregation until his departure for Ebenezer. He organized the Montgomery bus boycott from his office in the church basement. Today the church is known as Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. The Rev. Cromwell Handy is pastor of a 150-member congregation determined to move forward despite being isolated racially, culturally and physically amid office buildings in Alabama’s capital. Handy, a retired special agent for the Treasury Department who became pastor in 2012, is also president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the very group formed in 1955 to coordinate the bus boycott that ultimately led to the end of segregated busing both in the city and across the country. Handy is tired of just reflecting and recalling the past. “If Dr. King were here, he would want us to move forward in unity, love and peace.” The 60-year-old pastor admits that’s a challenge in a current climate that seems thick with intolerance. “We have been here before,” Handy said. “This is the highest level of white privilege that I have seen in a long time.” “The bottom line is that it’s not about bad folks or evil being done. It’s the issue of silence of the good people,” Handy said. “But what gives me hope is that on our currency it reads ‘In God We Trust,’ we are one nation under God and indivisible. At some point we have to realize that we are one people … all tied together.”
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Women’s silence is at an end Alia E. Dastagir
USA TODAY
Many heroes of the civil rights movement are women you’ve probably never heard of. ❚ History remembers the male leaders in the fight for human rights, but without women, so many victories wouldn’t have been possible. ❚ On that historic August day in 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. told us his dream, we didn’t get to hear what the women of the movement dreamed of, because no woman spoke at length during the official program of the March on Washington.
Daisy Bates, right, head of the NAACP in Arkansas, advised the students who became known as the Little Rock Nine, including Minnijean Brown, second from left, and Thelma Mothershed, center. 1958 BETTMANN ARCHIVE PHOTO
Dorothy Height, right, said she’d “never seen a more immovable force” than the refusal of men in the civil rights movement to listen to women. 1963 AP
Daisy Bates, a leader in the movement to end segregation in Arkansas and guide for the nine students who integrated Little Rock’s Central High in 1958, gave a brief pledge before the “Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom.” The tribute was an addition to the program meant to assuage black women who felt their voices were being marginalized and their contributions overlooked. The civil rights movement would not have happened without those women activists. They were grassroots organizers, educators, strategists and writers. They built organizational infrastructure, developed legal arguments and mentored young activists. They fought ardently against the forces of racism, but they also battled another form of oppression: sexism. “There were hundreds of unnamed women who participated in the movement,” said Barbara Reynolds, a journalist and minister whose recordings of King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, are the basis of the activist’s posthumous memContinued on page 32
Ella Baker, a key figure in several major civil rights organizations, has been called the most influential woman in the movement. 1968 PHOTO BY JACK HARRIS, AP
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oir, My Life, My Love, My Legacy. “It was not just a few leaders — it was women ... who really put their mark on history.” Many of these women were architects in their own right, yet they found themselves outside King’s inner circle. “Dr. King was a chauvinist,” Reynolds said. Men like him “could not assert their manhood in the general society, because they would be killed if they stood up for anything,” so they asserted their masculinity in other ways within their own community. The women of the civil rights and black liberation movements understood that their fight for human rights needed to address the dual forces of racism and sexism, and that the cause needed to be inclusive. As Dayo F. Gore, Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard wrote in Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle, many women worked to “create new structures and political movements free from racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia to nourish their visions of liberation.” “The women around (King) ... had something more to say,” said Ericka Huggins, a former leader in the Black Panther Party, which she said also struggled with sexism. “They had something more to say about how the institutional, structural sexism, and misogyny in some ways, was in place.” The courage of black female activists in confronting multiple forms of oppression influenced other protest movements, including second-wave feminism, the fight for gay rights and the protests against the Vietnam War. Coretta Scott King, a leader in her own right, used her talent as a singer to raise awareness and money for her husband’s movement and to advocate for human rights broadly. She was an earlier critic of the Vietnam War than her husband, and she pushed him to speak out against it. King was the face of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, one of the most prominent African-American civil rights organizations of his time. But it was the political savvy of lifelong activist Ella Baker, viewed by some as the most influential woman in the civil rights movement, that birthed the organization and set its agenda, writes Barbara Ransby in Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement. Baker also had pivotal roles in the NAACP and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. “Baker operated in a political world that was, in many ways, not fully ready for her,” Ransby writes. “She inserted herself into leadership situations where others thought she simply did not be-
Pauli Murray, who had worked with Martin Luther King Jr., coined the term “Jane Crow” for the sex discrimination black women faced. 1970 AP
Rosa Parks, shown in her booking photo after her 1955 arrest in Montgomery, Ala., has been portrayed as an accidental hero when in fact she was a lifelong activist for racial justice. AP
long. Her unique presence pioneered the way for fuller participation by other women in political organizations, and it reshaped the positions within the movement that they would occupy. At each stage she nudged the movement in a leftward, inclusive, and democratic direction, learning and modifying her own position as she went.” Not always mentioned is Pauli Murray, the gender-nonconforming activist and legal scholar who coined the term “Jane Crow” for the sex discrimination black women faced. Murray worked with King but was critical of the lack of female leadership in his movement. Her book States’ Laws on Race and Color has been referred to as the “bible” of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The Oscar-nominated film Selma focused on King’s legacy in the Selma-toMontgomery voting rights marches of 1965, but it was Diane Nash, barely a
presence in the film, who was one of that effort’s major organizers. Nash, a cofounder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, also helped orchestrate the campaign to integrate lunch counters in Nashville in 1960. Even when history does remember women, it tends to treat them as fables rather than human beings. Take Rosa Parks, who has been stripped of dimension and immortalized as an accidental hero when in fact she had long crusaded for justice. “Everyone seems to think she was a frail little woman who was tired — that woman whose feet hurt,” Reynolds said. But Parks was a lifelong activist for racial justice. What she was tired of, Reynolds said, was “being put on the back of the bus.” Dorothy Height, a major leader of her day who served as president of the National Council of Negro Women, stood on the platform with King during the March on Washington but said many women were furious about their mistreatment during it. “I’ve never seen a more immovable force,” Height wrote in Sisters in the Struggle African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement. “We could not get women’s participation taken seriously.” To highlight solidarity with male leaders and bring attention to the distinct oppression women faced, Height, along with several other other black female leaders, held a parallel march of women down Independence Avenue, while the men marched on Pennsylvania Avenue. Height also helped organize a gathering of black women, “After the March, What?,” where, she wrote in Sisters, “women talked freely about their concern about women’s participation.” When women were ignored, “they fought back and angled to have their voices heard,” she said. Today, there’s a new generation of black female activists fighting for social justice. Three of them — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi — founded and lead Black Lives Matter. Donna Brazile, a political strategist and former interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, said the nation should be ready for more. “Black women are taking an active role in beginning what I call the next phase of the black political movement, which is to prepare for a century in which the minority citizens of today will become the majority citizens of tomorrow,” she said. “Black women are going to lead that way, but we’re not going to be alone. We’re going to bring as many people with us. Because in moving the country forward, we can leave no one behind.”
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Coretta Scott King: Full partner in the fight Lottie L. Joiner
Special to USA TODAY
Barbara Reynolds met Coretta Scott King in 1972, just four years after King’s husband was slain. ❚ Martin Luther King Jr. had been the face of the civil rights movement for more than a decade, moving a nation of foot soldiers to challenge systemic racism, discrimination
and
segregation. And Mrs. King marched, protested and boycotted right alongside him. ❚ Interviews that Mrs. King recorded with journalistturned-friend Reynolds were the source material for the memoir My Life, My Love, My Legacy. In the book, we learn more about Mrs. King’s youth in the Jim Crow South and her unique contributions to the civil rights movement. Reynolds said Mrs. King was “willing to die to help people gain freedom.” Continued on page 36 Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King lead a march to the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery on March 19, 1965. Mrs. King’s memoir, based on interviews recorded before her death in 2006, was published last year. AP
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36 ❚ BLACK HISTORY MONTH ❚ USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION Continued from page 34
Coretta Scott King marches at United Nations Plaza with members of Women Strike for Peace, a nuclear disaramament group, in November 1963. To her left is Dagmar Wilson, founder of the group.
Coretta Scott was born in 1927 in rural Alabama and witnessed racist terrorism at an early age. Her family home and two of her father’s businesses were burned down by whites. While she was a high school student, she picked cotton for $2 a week. Reynolds said she would often repeat a quote credited to educator Horace Mann: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” She aspired to be a concert singer and received a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She met her future husband, then a doctoral student at Boston University, through a mutual friend. After a lunch date, Martin Luther King Jr. told his mother that he had found his wife. The Kings had four children: Yolanda, Dexter, Bernice and Martin III. Coretta Scott King continued her husband’s work after his death. She established the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta and spearheaded the effort to have his birthday declared a federal holiday, now celebrated the third Monday of January. My Life, My Love, My Legacy, published more than a decade after Mrs. King’s death in 2006, tells a story of courage, perseverance and determination. Reynolds spoke to USA TODAY about its subject.
BETTMANN ARCHIVE
Coretta Scott King kisses her husband outside court in Montgomery, Ala., in 1956. He faced charges in that city’s bus boycott.
Q: How would you describe Coretta Scott King? A: I would describe her, first of all, as courageous. Then I would describe her as gracious. … She was a young woman who married a preacher, and they were supposed to just have a nice, calm life, but Rosa Parks stood up, and Dr. King stood up, and she became a part of the movement. I have to stress that she was never an appendage. She is referred to as the co-partner in this movement from the start to the finish. If she hadn’t stood up, Dr. King would not have been who he was. Q: You also said she was gracious. She was a very influential leader, but she did it with grace. I don’t care what people did to her. She’d find something good to say about them. She carried herself in a way of elegance, and some people (thought) she was stuck up, you know, but she explained it to me. She said, “Barbara, when I was growing up, black women were so disrespected. So we learned to carry ourselves with dignity, like we had oil wells in our backyard.” Q: What challenges did she face after her husband’s death? A: Women weren’t supposed to stand up and take charge. The black preachers,
GENE HERRICK, AP
many of them who supported her husband, didn’t want to support her. The sexism that you saw with Hillary (Clinton), I mean, it was wild and inflaming in those days. Preachers who were saying that women couldn’t preach and (were) supposed to stay home. … Eventually, she wooed them, and eventually, they did support her … but it took years. Q: Talk about her contributions to the civil rights movement. A: Her role, initially, was a singer (whose) concerts sometimes funded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I think during the early period, when SCLC was started, as I understand, she gave the first speech, because
she was able to just stand in when Dr. King was away. She could see … where the movement was going, because she compiled all his speeches. She kept his important papers. She transcribed a lot. When he was giving a speech, he would always come to her and just sort of go over it with her. In the movement, especially the Montgomery bus boycott, a lot of it was planned right there at her kitchen table. Q: Why did Mrs. King get involved in the push for LGBTQ rights? A: As she developed, she moved from civil rights to human rights. ... In 1960, she was a member of a 50-woman delegation that went to Switzerland to lobby
the United Nations for a ban on atomic testing. She was very involved in crusading against the Vietnam War. She would go out and give speeches against the war before (her husband) did. Coretta got very involved in the women’s movement. In 1988, she served as head of the U.S. delegation of Women for a Meaningful Summit (a peace movement) in Athens. She was one of the first people to deal with apartheid, because the center was really behind the (anti-apartheid) movement early on, and also HIV. She had an idea that’s so simple, it escapes most of us. If you were a human being, she felt that you had rights to be respected, just that simple. Q: What did you learn writing the book? A: She understood change. Here’s a woman who could not vote, a woman who saw one of her relatives lynched, but could understand through direct action and through faith and struggle you can change things. ... I learned that. I was with her for over 30 years in all kinds of situations and could see how she dealt with things. She always wanted reconciliation — how we could all get back to the table and have a win-win situation. … I miss what she brought to the table. I think that’s (the kind of) leadership that we need today. We need leaders that look more at the human struggle and not just politics.
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Gold medalist Tommie Smith, center, and bronze winner John Carlos raise their fists as the U.S. national anthem is played after the 200 meters at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Smith and Carlos were kicked out of the Olympics for their protest. AP
Sports stars have long used platform for change Christine Brennan USA TODAY
From one generation to the next, the names leave the field of play and land in the history books: Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Althea Gibson, Muhammad Ali, Curt Flood, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Arthur Ashe, Colin Kaepernick. They were athletes first, stars whose prowess on the track, diamond, court or field, or in the ring, led to something much greater: transcending sports to become cultural icons and historic figures. Sports often takes us to important national conversations, and, more often than not over the past 80 years, those conversations have either focused on or been led by African-American athletes, unwittingly or not. Like Martin Luther King Jr., first by their presence, then by their words, actions and protests, these athletes and others like them found a national — and at times worldwide — platform for their causes and concerns. Their incomparable athletic gifts carried them to a greater mission, whether they planned it that way or not. Owens was an Ohio State sprinter who happened to come along when the world needed him most, winning four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games to defy Adolf Hitler and his demented dream of Germany’s Aryan domination of the world. Robinson integrated major-league baseball in 1947 with his formidable and historic presence. Just as Owens didn’t Continued on page 40
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With four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Jesse Owens — shown on the medal stand after winning the broad jump — blew up Adolf Hitler’s plan to use the Games as a showcase for the white supremacist Nazi ideology. AP Althea Gibson accepts a kiss from her finals opponent, Darlene Hard, after winning the 1957 Wimbledon women’s singles title. Gibson was the first black player to win a Grand Slam title. She won 10 Slam titles in all: five in singles, five in doubles. AP
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need to say a word, so was the case with Robinson. His play, and the way his Brooklyn Dodger teammates received him, did all the talking that was needed. Gibson, too. She was the first person of color to win a Grand Slam tennis title (the French Open in 1956), then switched sports and became the first black player to compete on the LPGA Tour in 1964. In the 1960s, everything changed. It was a turbulent time in the nation, and sports not only came along for the ride, they led the way. Ali called his given name, Cassius Clay, his “slave name,” converted to Islam and changed it. He refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War, was arrested, found guilty of draft evasion and stripped of his boxing titles. The Supreme Court later overturned his conviction, and whatever animosity existed for Ali by a long-ago generation melted away as he grew grander through age and illness, a compelling voice for change through the ages. In the year King was assassinated, the black-glove protest by Smith and Carlos on the 200-meters medal stand at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City led to the International Olympic Committee demanding that the two be suspended from the U.S. team and banned
Jackie Robinson in May 1952, five years after he broke baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. AP
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem in 2016. KELLEY L COX, USA TODAY
from the Olympic Village. The U.S. Olympic Committee initially refused, but when the entire U.S. track team was threatened with suspension, Smith and Carlos were kicked out. Like Ali, they are now iconic and heroic figures, capturing the essence of their time. “It was all of one fiber: their dream and the American dream,” said Harry Edwards, the noted sociologist and activist who was the architect of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, which led to Smith’s and Carlos’ black power salute. While athletes continued to speak out about Vietnam, equal rights and sports
labor issues — Flood’s challenge to baseball’s rules binding players to teams even after their contracts were up; tennis great Ashe’s push for AIDS awareness and protests against apartheid; and basketball superstar Abdul-Jabbar’s Muslim and political activism — the ’60s gave way to the ’70s and ’80s, and then the ’90s and the 21st century, bringing Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. Here were two more African-American icons, but they chose not to speak out about societal issues, concerning themselves instead with their own bottom line. Social activism, however, was not dead. In the 2016 NFL preseason, quar-
terback Kaepernick protested social injustice by first sitting, then taking a knee, during the national anthem. More than a year later, he was out of the league and the story was waning when Donald Trump turned a dying ember into a forest fire by saying team owners faced with a protesting player should “get that son of a bitch off the field,” triggering protests by hundreds of players in the weeks that followed. Kaepernick remained unemployed but pledged to give $1 million to charities, and had all but met that goal by the end of 2017, having given to causes ranging from fighting against police brutality to advocating for youth initiatives and community and health reform. “He has moved on from protest to promotion of progress, from resistance to resolution,” Edwards said of Kaepernick. “He pledged that his taking a knee is over, that he is concerned now with actions that help resolve problems, not just actions that simply communicate that there is a problem. He is a great model for those players who really want to contribute to solutions and not just send a message.” The same could be said about the generations who came before, their messages searching for solutions through sports activism, time and time again.
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‘King James’ inspired by the real King
LeBron James takes the court in an “I Have a Dream” shirt during introductions before a game in Cleveland on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. DAVID RICHARD, USA TODAY SPORTS
USA TODAY NETWORK
Since NBA star LeBron James found his voice, he hasn’t been afraid to use it. James, 33, said he is inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. and has put that inspiration into action by speaking out on social justice and establishing educational programs for children to improve their lives through his charitable foundation. James, born 161⁄2 years after King was killed, spoke about the civil rights leader in recent interviews — in a one-on-one setting in Toronto and with a group of reporters in Cleveland. “He was a guy who had a belief and had a passion about how he saw the world,” James said of King. “You had someone willing to give up his own personal well-being for the betterment of
“He was raising awareness because he believed in order for people to grow, we all need to come together no matter the skin color, no matter who you are or where you’re from.” LeBron James
the people. He saw things that people can’t fathom and thought outside the box even though he knew it could cause him harm and would cause him harm — and could cause harm to his family. But what he did was bigger than himself. That’s what MLK showed me and showed the world. “This wasn’t about him. He wasn’t marching up and down these streets and in those cities and saying he was causing chaos because it’s about him. He was raising awareness because he believed in order for people to grow, we all need to
come together no matter the skin color, no matter who you are or where you’re from. For a man to have that vision at that time where everything for an African American was frowned upon, it’s incredible. It’s truly incredible.” James’ Cleveland Cavaliers played the Golden State Warriors on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. That day he had more to say about King’s legacy. “You always hear people saying ‘risking their life,’ ” James said. “He actually gave up his life for the betterment of all of us to be able to live in a free world and for
us to be able to have a voice, for us to go out and be free no matter your skin color, no matter who you are, no matter the height and size and the weight or whatever the case may be, wherever you are, he had a vision. “And he took a bullet for all of us. Literally. In the rawest form that you could say that. He literally took a bullet for us. “And for us to stand here even though we’re trying to be divided right now by somebody, today is a great day for people to realize how America was built and how we all have to stand united in order to be at one. Especially as Americans because we believe, we all know and we all believe, this is the greatest country in the world.” Contributing: USA TODAY Sports writers Jeff Zillgitt in Toronto and Michael Singer in Cleveland.
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25 years of persistence led to King holiday Nicole Crawford-Tichawonna Special to USA TODAY
Katie Hall went to Congress in 1982 to finish the term of Adam Benjamin Jr. a Northwest Indiana congressman who had died suddenly of a heart attack. Hall, a Democrat, was the first African American to represent Indiana in Congress. It gave her the opportunity to add her name to the effort to create a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. On Nov. 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed into law HR3706, the King holiday legislation written and introduced by Hall. Beginning in 1986, Martin Luther King Day would be observed on the third Monday in January. (King’s birthday was Jan. 15.) “My mother was grateful for being the instrument God used to honor Dr. King with a national holiday,” said attorney Junifer Hall, founder and CEO of the Katie Hall Educational Foundation in Gary, Ind. “As a very poor farm girl growing up in segregated Mississippi in the 1940s and ’50s, my mother never dreamed that she would have the chance to serve as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.” Since that bill signing 35 years ago, the King holiday has evolved. In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed a law designating it a National Day of Service. By 2000, all 50 states had recognized it as well. South Carolina and New Hampshire were the last holdouts. “When King was assassinated in April 1968, he had become a polarizing figure to the political establishment — and even within activist circles — due to his criticism of U.S. imperialism and specifically the Vietnam War,” said Karlos Hill, associate professor of African and African-American studies at the University of Oklahoma. “King’s ‘fall from grace’ is the primary context for understanding why there was (more than a decade of) resistance to naming a federal holiday in his honor.” Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers introduced the first bill for a King holiday in 1968, four days after the civil rights leader was assassinated. The effort languished for years. “Conyers would persist year after year, Congress after Congress, in introducing the same bill again and again, gathering cosponsors along the way, until his persistence finally paid off . . . when (Reagan) signed the King Holiday bill into law,” wrote congressional scholar Donald Wolfensberger in his essay The
President Ronald Reagan signs legislation establishing the King holiday in 1983. Among those in attendance, from left: Vice President George H.W. Bush, Coretta Scott King and Rep. Katie Hall, the bill’s author. RONALD REAGAN PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
The Shafers — from left, dad Douglas and brothers Jeff, Davis and Phil — have made service on MLK Day a family tradition. COURTESY SHAFER FAMILY
“I realized how radical he was in pushing our country forward. At the time, people were very critical of him.” Jeff Shafer
Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday: The Long Struggle in Congress. Support for a King holiday gained traction in 1979 when King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, president of the King Center in Atlanta, testified during several congressional hearings. She urged
Coretta Scott King embraces singer and King holiday advocate Stevie Wonder after President Ronald Reagan signed legislation establishing the holiday in November 1983. RON EDMONDS, AP
Conyers to reintroduce his legislation for a vote in the House of Representatives. President Jimmy Carter urged Congress to support the measure. In 1980 Stevie Wonder got behind the holiday push, artistically and financially. That summer he released Happy Birth-
day to build support for a holiday. Wonder’s support “helped to create a sustained dialogue about the merits of honoring Dr. King’s legacy,” Hill said. The pop star’s support made the King holiday “a cause célèbre.” The Martin Luther King National Day of Service was the brainchild of Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and former Sen. Harris Wofford D-Pa., who were close friends of King, said Samantha Jo Warfield, spokeswoman for the Corporation for National & Community Service. That organization oversees the day of service with the AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and City Year volunteer programs. “Each year, hundreds of thousands of Americans volunteer on King Day weekend at thousands of service projects,” Warfield said. “One of the greatest aspects of service is that anyone, and everyone, can get involved.” Jeff Shafer joined City Year after graduating from Columbia College Chicago in 2009, joining the staff in 2012 and helping to start a City Year program in his hometown of Kansas City, Mo., in 2016. He had found his niche and his passion in admiration for King. “I realized how radical he was in pushing our country forward,” said Shafer, who read King’s writings and studied his nonviolence philosophy. “At the time, people were very critical of him.” In 2013, Shafer wanted his family to share the joy that the King day of service had brought him. His older brother, Phil Shafer, is a professional muralist known as Sike Style. “I knew that my older brother had this talent that we could take to the next level,” Shafer said, adding that his father, Douglas Shafer, “has fought for social justice his whole life.” So Douglas and Phil braved the cold Chicago weather that year to create a King Day mural project. The project’s theme: “Your future is what you make it.” Fat white lettering adorned the 30-by-6-foot mural of primary colors. The mural’s background is in shades of blue, complemented by blue-and-white pentagonal shapes, white stars and red daisies. After that first experience, Phil wrote on his website: “This year I started a new tradition.” For MLK Day 2018, Douglas Shafer and his sons planned their sixth mural project as a family. Younger brother Davis Shafer added a new twist. His company, Vresence Media, donated a virtual 3-D tour of a high school service project that features the mural’s creation. It can be viewed at tinyurl.com/ydejy9gv.
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10 essential ways to commemorate King Matt Alderton
Special to USA TODAY
There’s much more to Martin Luther King Jr. than his dream and the famous speech he gave about it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Celebrate Black History Month by learning something new about one of America’s most influential figures. Explore the man behind the myth with these places, films, books and songs. Attend a performance of ‘The Mountaintop’ Written by playwright Katori Hall, The Mountaintop is a fictional account of King’s final night. Set at Memphis’ Lorraine Motel on the eve of King’s assassination, it depicts an imaginary interaction between King and a hotel maid, whose rapport with the reverend reveals his human vulnerabilities. The play is currently touring the country courtesy of L.A. Theatre Works.
See the movie ‘Selma.’ A seminal event in both King’s life and the civil rights movement, the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., protested discrimination against black voters. In her 2014 film, director Ava DuVernay tells the story of the epic march and the fearless man who led it. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for best picture and won for original song.
Read ‘The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.’ After King’s death, his estate commissioned Clayborne Carson to assemble, edit and publish his papers, including previously unpublished letters and diaries. The result, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., is an absorbing account of King’s life and philosophy — in his own words.
At the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, a wreath marks the hotel balcony location where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968. MARK HUMPHREY, AP
Tour the National Civil Rights Museum
Read Coretta Scott King’s ‘My Life, My Love, My Legacy’
The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis occupies the former Lorraine Motel, where King was felled by an assassin in 1968. The museum’s highlight is “King’s Last Hours,” an exhibit commemorating King’s final night in Room 306, which is preserved behind glass. The site where King died is as powerful a place as there is to consider his life and legacy.
No one knew King better than his wife, Coretta Scott King, who died in 2006. This book, published last year, is based on recorded interviews with journalist Barbara Reynolds. It tells stories from her life before and after King’s death, including anecdotes about her marriage, the civil rights movement, and her work to carry on her husband’s legacy. (See story on page 34.)
Visit the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site
Read ‘Martin’s Big Words’
Walk in King’s footsteps — literally — at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, which spans 23 acres in Atlanta. The site includes King’s birth home; his tomb; Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King was co-pastor with his father; and the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, established by King’s family to continue his work.
Listen to U2’s ‘Pride (In the Name of Love)’
Watch the TV miniseries ‘King’ NBC’s Emmy-winning King still feels relevant 40 years after it aired. Originally broadcast on three consecutive nights in 1978, it stars Paul Winfield as King, whose biography and ideas are vividly portrayed. Although there are some historical errors and omissions, overall it’s an informative and compelling tribute.
David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. and Tom Wilkinson as President Lyndon Johnson in 2014’s Selma. ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA, PARAMOUNT PICTURES
You know the song. What you might not realize, however, is that the lead single from U2’s 1984 album The Unforgettable Fire is about King. Just listen to the lyrics: “Early morning, April Four/Shot rings out in the Memphis sky.” Despite its historical error — King died in the evening — the song earned a special honor from the King Center in 2004.
King is an inspiration to Americans young and old. Doreen Rappaport’s picture-book biography, Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is ideally for sharing his message with children. Featuring illustrations by Bryan Collier, it combines famous King quotes with original writing to tell his life story to young readers (and their parents, too).
Listen to the ‘I Dream’ concept album King wanted to unite people, and nothing unites like music. In that spirit, composer Douglas Tappin wrote I Dream, a rhythm-and-blues opera based on the last 36 hours of King’s life. Featuring a fusion of musical styles, it’s being staged this spring by Opera Carolina in Charlotte. Listeners nationwide can partake by downloading I Dream (The Concept Recording) from iTunes or Google Play Music.
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Cities to honor King anniversary with ceremonies, marches and concerts Larry Bleiberg
Special to USA TODAY
In the half-century since Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, communities across the country have established historic sites, museums and memorials honoring him and the civil rights movement. Many are holding special events to mark the 50th anniversary of King’s death. Here are some highlights. Memphis
At a 2013 observance of the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, Cleophus Smith autographs a replica of the placards that he and other striking Memphis sanitation workers — including Alvin Turner, center, and Baxter Leach, right — carried in 1968. ABOVE: MARK HUMPHREY AP; RIGHT: ALEX JAMISON
Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, where King spent his last night, is preserved at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. The museum includes the former motel site. MEMPHIS CONVENTION
The city where King was gunned down has extensive plans for the April 4 anniversary, much of them centered on the former Lorraine Motel, which preserves King’s room and the balcony where he was shot as part of the National Civil Rights Museum. mlk50.civilrightsmuseum.org On the day of the anniversary, the museum’s courtyard will feature King speeches, entertainers and international dignitaries, all leading up to a moment of silence at 6:01 p.m. CT, the time when the assassin’s bullet struck. It will be followed by a ticketed evening of storytelling from civil rights icons and contemporary activists, moderated by former Today show news anchor Tamron Hall. Leading up to the anniversary, the city will host a two-day MLK50 Symposium with scholars, historians and commentators. Former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder and PulitzerPrize winning historian Taylor Branch (America in the King Years) will address keynote luncheons. When he was slain, King was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers. Their union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, will mark the anniversary with a musical tribute on April 2 at the Mason Temple, where King delivered his last address, the prophetic “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” speech. The union will also hold a march and rally on April 4, beginning at 9 a.m. Learn more at iam2018.org. In honor of the strike, the city plans to open the “I Am a Man Plaza,” which takes its name from the protest signs the workers carried. The $1.7 million public space is located near Clayborn Temple, where the strikers gathered to march.
& VISITORS BUREAU
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I Have Been to the Mountaintop, made of steel, was dedicated in 1977. BRAD VEST, THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL
‘Mountaintop’ sculpture moving to new location at MLK Reflection Site Memphis plans to move a “Mountaintop” as part of its observance of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The sculpture I Have Been to the Mountaintop, by Richard Hunt, will move from its current downtown location to become the centerpiece of a new mini-park, the MLK Reflection Site,honoring King’s memory. The massive sculpture, made of welded CorTen, or weathering steel, was dedicated on April 4, 1977. Its curves and abstract forms are said to represent a mountain with a man ascending its peak. Its name is the title of the final speech King gave. The reflection site is one of a handful of projects Memphis is carrying out to honor King’s memory. “On April 4, 2018, the eyes of the world will be on the city of Memphis, and the city of Memphis will respond in due measure,” said Ursula Madden, communications director for Mayor Jim Strickland. Other city-sponsored MLK50 projects will include a ceremony honoring sanitation workers with legacy awards and a production at Cannon Center for the Performing Arts; a fancy dinner for the workers; and a march from City Hall to Clayborn Temple. “It’s about healing,” Madden said. “Fifty years ago, we know we were not on the right side of history.” Wayne Risher, USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee
The “City of Hope” exhibition at the National Museum of African American History and Culture includes rare images from the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968, such as these demonstrators headed from New Jersey to D.C. ROBERT HOUSTON
Washington, D.C. King’s legacy lives in the nation’s capital, where he delivered the “I Have a Dream Speech” in 1963. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, dedicated in 2011 on the National Mall, plans a candlelight vigil on the evening of the anniversary. The date falls during the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, and the cherry trees that surround the memorial should be in bloom at the time. nps.gov/mlkm. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History features an exhibit on King’s final civil rights crusade, the “Poor People’s Campaign,” an effort aimed at reducing poverty. It was organized by King but held a month after his death. The display incorporates items from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. americanhistory.si.edu. In addition, an exhibit at the Newseum, “1968: Civil Rights at 50” features publications and reporting on King’s death and legacy. newseum.org.
With the Poor People’s Campaign, King was spotlighting economic justice — housing, wages, employment — for all races and creeds. Above, a group of participants from Bridgeton, N.J. LEAH L. JONES
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The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater presents r-Evolution, Dream, inspired by the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. PAUL KOLNIK
Atlanta No city is more associated with King than Atlanta, where he was born, where he preached and where he is buried. The city will honor its native son with a multifaith service on the anniversary of his April 9 funeral, followed by a march restaging the procession from King’s pulpit, the Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church Heritage Sanctuary to Morehouse College, his undergraduate alma mater. Organizers say they anticipate the event may attract up to 100,000. In honor of the anniversary, the King Center has refurbished the reflecting pool surrounding the crypts where King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, are buried. This summer, the center, which was formed shortly after King’s death to promote nonviolent social change, will celebrate its half-centennial with an international expo and festival June 23-24. mlk50forward.org.
The Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site plans a lecture series and an exhibit on the assassination and funeral, which will include the farm wagon caisson that carried King’s casket. In honor of the anniversary, it also recently renovated and reopened the second floor of King’s birth home, which is open for ticketed tours. nps.gov/malu. Elsewhere in Georgia, the Baptist church in Dublin where 14-year-old King made his first public speech will hold an oratory contest on black education on April 15. visitdublinga.org. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater embarks on a North American tour, performing r-Evolution, Dream, a work inspired by King’s speeches. It will be performed in Atlanta at the Fabulous Fox Theatre on Feb. 16 in an evening dedicated to King, billed as “MLK 50 – Celebrating the Legacy.” alvinailey.org. Continued on page 56
National historical park President Trump signed a law in January to expand the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Site in Atlanta into a national historical park — the first such park in Georgia. The historical site already includes King’s birthplace, the church where he was baptized and his burial place. In addition to upgrading the designation to a national historical park, the new legislation expands the boundaries to include the Prince Hall Masonic Temple. The temple served as the headquarters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights group King co-founded.
The National Park Service offers tours of the Atlanta home where King was born and lived the first 12 years of his life. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
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The Landmark for Peace Memorial in Indianapolis commemorates Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., both assassinated in 1968. KENNEDY KING MEMORIAL INITIATIVE
Indianapolis
Montgomery, Ala.
Chicago
Detroit
In the hours after King was shot, rioting began to break out around the country. That evening, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was in Indianapolis and gave an impromptu speech from the back of a flatbed truck, announcing King’s death and urging peace and forgiveness. Two months later Kennedy himself was assassinated in California. Both leaders are recognized in the city’s Landmark for Peace Memorial. A film about the speech, A Ripple of Hope, will be screened at the Indiana Historical Society on April 3. The next day, dignitaries including Georgia congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis will join Kennedy’s daughter Kerry Kennedy at a public event. Later in the day, there will be an official commemoration featuring songs, remarks and remembrances by civic leaders, religious leaders and artists. kennedykingindy.org.
King first rose to national prominence in Alabama’s capital, where he played a key role in organizing the boycott of the city’s bus system following the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. King’s former home, now the Dexter Parsonage Museum, will hold a daylong prayer vigil on April 4, inviting guests to kneel in memory of King. dexterkingmemorial.org/tours/ parsonage-museum. Watch in April for the opening of The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, which traces the effects of slavery throughout American history, and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which remembers African-American victims of lynching and torture. Both are projects of the Equal Justice Initiative. For updates, go to museumandmemorial.eji.org.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of King’s death, the Chicago History Museum opened its newest exhibition on Jan. 15. “Remembering Dr. King: 1929-1968,” examines King’s work in Chicago and around the nation, as well as his impact in 2018. In the spring, a political movement kicks off with the mission of advancing King’s dream of economic and racial justice. The I AM 2018 campaign, led by 8 million members of the Church of God in Christ and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, aims to carry on the legacy of King and the 1968 Memphis sanitation strikers. Beginning with an aggressive voter education and civic engagement program to tackle issues plaguing low-income communities and mobilizing turnout for the 2018 elections, it will also include online organizing and sports, entertainment, labor, civil rights and corporate partners signing on for the first mobilization and commemoration April 2-4 in Memphis.
The Charles H. Wright Museum will host a lecture and book signing at 6 p.m. April 4 by William F. Pepper, author of The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Pepper was a lawyer for James Earl Ray, who was convicted in King’s assassination. He maintains that Ray did not shoot King.
New York The Dance Theatre of Harlem at New York City Center’s “Vision Gala” on April 4 will honor King’s memory. dancetheaterofharlem.org. Contributing: Kelly-Jane Cotter, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press
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1954 ❚ Sept. 1: King begins his pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
1955 ❚ June 5: King earns his doctorate from Boston University.
Moments from an icon’s life
❚ Dec. 5: King is named president of the Montgomery Improvement Association.
1956 Jan. 30: King’s
1929
home is bombed
❚ Jan. 15: Michael King is born in Atlanta. His father changes the boy’s name, as well as his own, to Martin Luther King several years later.
while he is speaking at a meeting. His wife and daughter are unharmed. King speaks in Chicago on Jan. 7, 1966, during a push for better housing and education. AP
1948
❚ Jan. 10: King is named chairman of what becomes the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
❚ Feb. 25: King is ordained and becomes assistant pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, his father’s church.
❚ Feb. 18: King appears on the cover of Time magazine.
❚ June 8: King graduates from Morehouse College with bachelor’s degree in sociology. Martin Luther King Jr. around age 5. His father and namesake was a civil rights leader in Atlanta.
1944 ❚ Sept. 20: King enrolls at Morehouse College in Atlanta after passing the entrance exam at age 15.
1946 ❚ Aug. 6: The Atlanta Constitution publishes a letter to the editor from King supporting minorities’ rights.
❚ May 17: King delivers his first national address, “Give Us the Ballot,” at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, D.C.
❚ Sept. 14: King enters Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pa.
1958
1951 ❚ May 8: King graduates from Crozer with a bachelor of divinity degree. He delivers the valedictory address. ❚ Sept. 13: King begins graduate studies in systematic theology at Boston University’s School of Theology.
1957
The Kings on their wedding day, June 18, 1953. The couple met in Boston, where he was studying at Boston University and she was a student at the New England Conservatory of Music.
1952 ❚ January: King meets Coretta Scott in Boston.
1953 ❚ June 18: King and Coretta Scott are married near Marion, Ala. King’s father officiates at the service.
❚ June 23: King and other civil rights leaders meet with President Dwight Eisenhower in Washington. ❚ Sept. 20: At a book signing in Harlem, King is stabbed with a letter opener by a mentally ill woman. Doctors remove the 7-inch blade from his chest.
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1960
1964
❚ Feb. 1: King moves from Montgomery to Atlanta to focus on the civil rights struggle.
❚ Jan. 3: Time magazine names King “Man of the Year” for 1963.
❚ Oct. 19: King is arrested at a sit-in demonstration at an Atlanta department store. He is sentenced to four months of hard labor — for violating a suspended sentence from a 1956 traffic violation. He is released on $2,000 bond.
❚ June 11: King and 17 others are jailed for trespassing after demanding service at a whites-only restaurant in St. Augustine, Fla.
1961 ❚ Dec. 16: King and hundreds of others are arrested during a desegregation campaign in Albany, Ga.
1962 ❚ July 27: King is arrested at prayer vigil in Albany and spends two weeks in jail. He leaves Aug. 10. ❚ Sept. 28: A member of the American Nazi Party hits King in the face twice at an SCLC conference in Birmingham.
Dec. 10: King wins Nobel Peace Prize.
1965 ❚ March 17-25: After voting rights marchers are attacked and beaten by police in Selma, Ala., King peacefully leads civil rights marchers from Selma to Montgomery.
King speaks in Memphis on March 18, 1968, recruiting volunteers for his Poor People's Campaign.
❚ Aug. 11: Rioting in the Watts section of Los Angeles leads King to address economic inequality.
VERNON MATTHEWS THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL
❚ Aug. 12: King gives his first speech against the Vietnam War.
1968
1966 King delivers his most famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. AP
1963 ❚ April 16: After being arrested for ignoring an Alabama state court injunction against demonstrations, King writes his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, a defense of nonviolent resistance to racism. ❚ Aug. 28: King delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial as more than 200,000 demonstrators take part in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. ❚ Sept. 15: Four girls are killed when a bomb explodes at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. ❚ Sept. 18: King delivers eulogy for three of the slain girls.
❚ March 23: King leads 6,000 protesters in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis. The march ends with violence and looting.
❚ Jan. 26: King and his wife move into a Chicago slum apartment to demand better housing and education in northern U.S. cities.
1967 ❚ April 4: In speech at a New York City church, King demands U.S. make greater effort to end Vietnam War. ❚ Dec. 4: King unveils plans for a Poor People’s Campaign, a mass civil disobedience protest, for the spring in Washington, D.C. It was intended as an expansion of his civil rights activities into the area of economic rights.
King and his aides, from left, Hosea Williams, Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 3, 1968. The next day, King would be shot and killed on the balcony of the motel. THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL
Coretta Scott King holds her daughter, Bernice, at King’s funeral on April 9, 1968. MONETA SLEET JR., AP
❚ April 3: King returns to Memphis, intending to lead a peaceful march. At an evening rally, he delivers his final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”
April 4: King is shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. ❚ April 9: King is buried in Atlanta.
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Participants in the Poor People's Campaign march toward the U.S. Capitol on June 24, 1968. The activists’ camp on the National Mall was dubbed Resurrection City. AP
It was a hard road to Resurrection City Carl Chancellor Special to USA TODAY
In what would turn out to be his final Sunday sermon, Martin Luther King Jr. preached about poverty and his pivot from the “reform” of civil rights to the “revolution” of human rights. On that last day of March 1968, King shared a story with those gathered in Washington’s National Cathedral about a rich man, referred to as Dives, who turned his back on a poor sickly man named Lazarus, who later died outside his gates. He used the parable told by Jesus to challenge America to “bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.” A year earlier, at a staff retreat of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King had resolved to expand the civil rights struggle. Having recognized the nexus between racism and poverty, he outlined plans for a non-
USA TODAY
“There was a great deal of robust debate. But it came down to this being (King’s) last will and wish, and they carried it out.” Marian Wright Edelman director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Office in Mississippi in 1968
violent campaign of civil disobedience focused on economic inequality and poverty. Moved more than once to tears by deplorable living conditions of Americans barely surviving in urban ghettos, in Appalachian coal towns, at migrant work camps in the West, and on hardscrabble backwoods Southern farms, King sought to mobilize poor people of all races to demand full employment, a guaranteed living wage, affordable housing, and better schools. “We are coming to Washington in a Poor People’s Campaign,” King said in that last Sunday sermon. “Yes, we are going to bring the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. … We are coming to demand government address itself to the problem of poverty.” They would come in the late spring and summer of 1968, but King wouldn’t be with them. His assassination April 4 in Memphis, where he had gone to sup-
port a strike by city sanitation workers, put the entire Poor People’s Campaign in serious doubt. Even prior to his death, a number of former civil rights allies were distancing themselves from King and what they saw as a more contentious agenda, including his then-controversial stance against the Vietnam War and his demand for the “radical redistribution of economic and political power.” “There was a great deal of robust debate,” remembers Marian Wright Edelman, at the time the young director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Office in Mississippi. She said some at the SCLC retreat were adamant about sticking exclusively to civil rights, while others wanted to protest the war and still others thought jobs and education should be the focus. “But it came down to this (poor people’s march) being his last Continued on page 64
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will and wish, and they carried it out.” Months earlier, Wright Edelman had been instrumental in bringing Sen. Robert F. Kennedy to Mississippi, who after seeing firsthand the hunger and malnutrition “got on fire and passionate about doing something about it.” She said Kennedy, too, stressed the need to bring the issue to Congress and the White House. The goal of the Poor People’s Campaign, she said, was to put “poverty on the national agenda.” With the Rev. Ralph Abernathy newly at the helm of the SCLC and the campaign, activists secured permits to camp on the National Mall — a 15-acre strip eventually populated by about 3,000 people living in tents and rudimentary plywood shelters. The encampment was christened Resurrection City. “Residents” began moving in on May 21 and over the next six weeks would arrive from all corners of the nation by car, bus, rail and, in the case of a group from Marks, Miss. — at the time the poorest town in the nation’s poorest county and the kickoff point of the campaign — by mule train. Documenting the trip was a 31-year old novice photographer, Roland Freeman. “We pulled out on May 13 with more than 100 people in somewhere between 15 and 20 covered wagons, made up to look like Conestogas,” recalls Freeman, now 82. He said the wagons, painted with various SCLC campaign slogans, “were in all kinds of conditions, and I could tell that some of them hadn’t been used for years.” In his photo book The Mule Train: A Journey of Hope Remembered, Freeman admitted to feeling intimidated by the assignment but soon found his resolve in the “courage, strength, and wisdom” he saw in the people in those wagons — entire families, children, mothers, young activists, and old women and men. Over the course of the next four weeks, the wagon caravan, which would vary in number because of breakdowns and uncooperative mules, plodded along through Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia — a trek of some 500 miles. “When you pulled out in the morning, you never knew how far you would get,” Freeman said, adding that the obstacles weren’t always animals and equipment. “We got stopped regularly by state, county and town police.” Upon reaching Atlanta the caravan — people, wagons, and mules — was loaded onto a train headed to just outside Washington. On June 19 the mule train rolled into the capital. “God must have planned to drop the
Women and children from Mississippi occupy one of the shelters in Resurrection City on May 22, 1968, a day after the first residents arrived. CHARLES TASNADI, AP
Ralph Abernathy, left, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Resurrection City managerJesse Jackson speak to the press. CHARLES TASNADI, AP
sky on us because it rained, rained, and rained some more. Everywhere there was mud,” Freeman said of the wagons’ arrival in Washington. Faith Berry, a freelance writer hired by The New York Times to cover life in Resurrection City, wrote at the time: “In mid-May the rains had come, and for the first 19 days of the campaign it rained for 11. … The rains kept coming.” The miserable wet conditions in the camp were made worse by open hostility from several members of Congress; continual surveillance and meddling by law enforcement, including the FBI; dis-
agreements among the campaign leadership, exacerbated by the fact that the majority of the Native-American, Chicano, Puerto Rican and white contingent stayed in a nearby private school; and then Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5 while campaigning for president in California. “It was a complicated and moving time,” Wright Edelman observed. One of the most moving movements came as Kennedy’s funeral cortege passed through Resurrection City heading to Arlington National Cemetery. “People gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to sing The
Heavy rain in the first weeks of the campaign turned Resurrection City into a flooded bog. Activists also endured close scrutiny by the FBI, and law enforcement, hostility from lawmakers and internal disagreements. AP
Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Despite the difficulties, Wright Edelman described the experience of Resurrection City as “a diverse, wonderful mosaic of hopefulness.” She noted that groups prepared position papers every day and went before Congress and to federal agencies to tell their stories and present their demands. And while the campaign fell well short of King’s vision, there were modest accomplishments. “There was a huge expansion of federal assistance to address hunger,” noted Wright Edelman, who would go on to found the Children’s Defense Fund. This included more money for the school free lunch program, expansion of the food stamp and WIC programs, and the release of surplus food commodities to the poorest communities by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. However, as Freeman points out, “What we began with the mule train 50 years ago is still unfinished.” If anything, poverty in America has gotten worse. According to the Census Bureau, in 1968, 25 million people — nearly 13% of the U.S. population at the time — lived below the poverty level. Today that number is close to 47 million, nearly 15% of the population. In the parable King recounted in his last sermon, the rich man, Dives, went to hell — but not because he was rich. Rather, “because he didn’t see the poor.” Carl Chancellor is a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and editorial director at the Center for American Progress.
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A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, erected in 1890, looms over Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va., once the capital of the Confederacy. STEVE HELBER, AP
Richmond may set tone on monuments’ future Monique Calello
The (Staunton, Va.) News Leader
RICHMOND — When George Braxton hears people speak of the Confederacy in terms of Southern pride and heritage, he recalls that his family tree begins on a Southern plantation with the name of a white man who bought and owned his family. ❚ “I struggle to understand how someone would want to tie their culture and heritage with human trafficking and Richmond residents George Braxton and Kelly Harris-Braxton say the tributes to the Confederacy should come down. “It’s disgraceful,” Braxton says. MONIQUE CALELLO, THE NEWS LEADER
systematic rape and all the things associated with slavery, which was the Continued on page 68
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cornerstone of the Confederate economy,” Braxton says. Braxton and his wife, Kelly HarrisBraxton, are proud lifelong Richmonders. Kelly is the executive director of Virginia First Cities, an advocacy group, and Braxton is chief diversity officer in an agency within the Defense Department. They want the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue to come down. “It’s disgraceful,” Braxton says. “It’s an outward, vicious, open and notorious sign of white supremacy.” Their son Miles attended Thomas Jefferson High School, a few blocks from the monuments to Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate president Jefferson Davis and others. The Braxtons say kids shouldn’t have to grow up with icons that commemorate slavery, white supremacy and treason a stone’s throw away. Braxton knows what that feels like. For him, it began in high school football when the Lee Davis Confederates and Douglas Freeman Rebels ran onto the field waving the Confederate battle flag. Now Braxton sees that flag every morning on his way to work off Interstate 95. He says the upside of it being dark when he’s driving home is that he can’t see it. “To me, as a Richmonder, as an African American, they’re a slap in the face,” he says about the statues. “It’s a way of saying that no matter what you do financially, professionally, in your life socially, civically, you may be eye to eye with me, but we have something that’s higher than you. This is something that stands above the city and looks down.” Harris-Braxton sees the statues as gathering places for separatists, white supremacists and Nazis. “They are building a movement around the statues,” she says. “These statues are creating a new life of their own. In the history of when they were placed during Jim Crow, it was an effort to say, ‘Watch out, we’re watching you, we’re better than you, you stay in your place.'”
White supremacists carrying patio torches march as part of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., on Aug. 11, 2017. MYKAL MCELDOWNEY, THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR
The rally was sparked by the city's decision to remove a statue of Confederate general Lee and the controversy surrounding the movement to remove tributes to the Confederacy elsewhere. That movement picked up urgency after a white supremacist, Dylann Roof, murdered nine people during a prayer service in an African-American church in Charleston, S.C., on June 17, 2015. Roof had posed for a photograph waving the Confederate battle flag. Harris-Braxton sees such pro-Confederacy displays as a backlash to the fact that an African American held the presidency for eight years. Barack Obama’s historic tenure inevitably unearthed deeply embedded racism and emboldened far-right groups to surface throughout the country, she says. The events in Charleston and Charlottesville renewed national debate about the place of tributes to the longgone Confederacy. In many cities in the South, Confederate monuments, flags, plaques and memorials are being removed. Streets, parks, schools and cemeteries named after Confederate figures are being changed. Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, is ground zero. What it does with its statues could set the tone for everyone else.
A conversation long overdue Bigots rally around Lee “The South will rise again!” “White lives matter!” “You will not replace us!” “Jews will not replace us!” These were the chants from white nationalists and white supremacists marching in a torchlight procession at University of Virginia in Charlottesville on Aug. 11, 2017. The following day the Unite the Right Rally would turn deadly when a car plowed into counterprotesters, killing one and injuring 19 others. By the time the marches were over, 33 people had been injured and three lives lost.
Shemicia Bowen, who heads Ladies Who Lead Richmond Black Restaurant Week, believes the only good thing that came out of the violence in Charlottesville was that it sparked a national and global conversation long overdue. “Charlottesville was a tipping point,” she says. “Images from across the country came down overnight. Done deal.” Instead of the symbols that racists use to promote their agenda, Bowen would like to focus on the positive images of Richmond — a place she says is far bigger than the Confederate statues on two
city should do so. After one final public meeting in the spring, the commission will issue a recommendation to the mayor. It is up to the state to determine the fate of the monuments, and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has said he would do everything in his power at the state level to remove them. “Our ongoing conversation about these monuments is important. But what is more important to our future is dismantling the present-day vestiges of Jim Crow that these monuments were erected to preserve,” Stoney says. “We do that by building higher-quality schools and affordable housing, fighting poverty and providing equal opportunities for all Richmonders to succeed. We do that by valuing the living who represent our bright future, not the bronze and granite symbols of a dark past.”
‘The disease of Monument Avenue’
STEVE HELBER, AP
“As they currently stand, the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue are a default endorsement of a shameful period in our national and city history that do not reflect the values of inclusiveness, equality and diversity we celebrate in today’s Richmond.” Levar Stoney Richmond mayor
blocks of Monument Avenue. “Richmond is hesitant,” Bowen says. “It wants to hold onto its past while reaching for its future, and we’re caught somewhere in between in how to preserve that and really on how to move forward.” Before the violence in Charlottesville, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney had formed the Monument Avenue Commission to discuss adding context to the statues. After the Unite the Right rally, he shifted his position and announced the city should take them down. “As they currently stand, the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue are a default endorsement of a shameful period in our national and city history that do not reflect the values of inclusiveness, equality and diversity we celebrate in today’s Richmond,” Stoney said. The commission organized public meetings on whether to take the statues down. According to the mayor's office, 25% of 1,300 people attending said the
“The problem of Monument Avenue is not simply what it means — prime real estate that pays public homage to an array of Confederate leaders — but also how it means,” says Maureen Elgersman Lee, chair of the department of political science and history at Hampton University and former director of Richmond’s Black History Museum. “The statues are enormous and elevated, requiring viewers to look up to them, both physically and symbolically. Robert E. Lee is constructed as a gallant, noble rider and Jefferson Davis is cast as a Greco-Roman beacon of truth and virtue. These statues stand impervious to the elements, impervious to the emotions of their multiple, competing audiences and impervious to the Lost Cause that they represent.” Elgersman Lee says the statues seem to rewrite the end of the Civil War, framing it “not as an historical moment of surrender and defeat, but as one of victory and triumph.” “This is the disease of Monument Avenue, especially for blacks,” she says. But Elgersman Lee sees cause for optimism in Richmond. The controversy over the Confederate monuments might, be the kind of “seismic shift” that can happen when a society discards outdated ways of thinking. “Are we in the midst of that seismic shift? Only hindsight will tell us.” George Braxton also feels hopeful. Son Miles, now a student at UVA, wrote a song in response to what happened in Charlottesville. “To see these young people in Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesting, to me, it’s heartening. I’m excited to see what real changes they’re going to make moving forward."
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Mississippi museum’s opening is a time to reflect Sarah Fowler The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger
JACKSON, Miss. — Flonzie Brown Wright of Canton, Miss., was 12 years old when two of her cousins were murdered by a “truck full of white men.” ❚ The boys, ages 15 and 17, were visiting Thomastown, Miss., for the summer. They were walking down a gravel road toward a store when the truck full of men pulled up and asked if they wanted a ride. “Those men took my two cousins out in the woods, beat them and chained them to their truck and drug them until the were just decapitated,” Wright says. “We found the first cousin, the 17-year-old, already dead, but his head was just severed from his body. The second cousin was still alive but was just torn up, his intestines were just torn up because they had been drug on a gravel road. “I just remember my mother and daddy going in the back room, and I just remember hearing my mother scream — I mean, a scream like you’ve never heard before — in trying to identity these two young men.” Death threats. Lynchings. Burning crosses. Later, eventually, a reckoning. The civil rights era, usually identified as 1954 to 1968, changed the landscape of the nation. Countless Mississippians of all colors were on the front lines of the movement, giving themselves to the cause of equal rights. More than 600 people were lynched in Mississippi before and during the civil rights movement, more than in any other state — and those are just the documented cases. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, which opened Dec. 9 along with a companion Mississippi Museum of History, seeks to tell their stories alongside those of the survivors. Activists and dignitaries including President Trump and Myrlie Evers-WilContinued on page 71
Words and images honor civil rights activists in “This Little Light of Mine,” a gallery in the heart of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, which opened in December. ROGELIO V. SOLIS, AP
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Rims Barber
liams, widow of slain NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers, were on hand to get a first look at the thousands of artifacts in the state-funded, $90 million facilities. Several of those who fought not only for equality but for their very lives, and the lives of those who would come after them, reflect on that period and what the museum means for them, their legacy and future generations. Here are a few of their stories.
A Presbyterian minister from Iowa, Rims Barber moved to Mississippi during the Freedom Summer voter registration effort in 1964. He worked in Canton in 1965 and 1966 as an organizer before eventually getting into legal work and helping a Jackson lawyer “represent the unrepresented.” “Gutsy, local Mississippians made things happen that changed this state forever, we hope, and made possible even broader changes,” Barber says. Barber served on a committee to help ensure historical accuracy in the museum and toured it twice before the official opening. “I think they’ve caught the right spirit of stuff. The modern civil rights Rims Barber came to Mississippi as a movement began with all the guys who came home from World War II rights activist in 1964 and has lived and didn’t see white people in Nazi uniforms but were still segregated there since. ROGELIO V. SOLIS, AP when they came back here and decided to stand up for themselves, having served in the military. Those people are getting good recognition in the museum. “The painful stuff, like the lynchings and Emmett Till, is gut-wrenching, but it’s very accurate and impressive that the state is showing that kind of thing, that we’re admitting that that stuff happened and not playing games with it. I think that’s important for the state to make that kind of a statement. “I hope that once we get young kids going through on a regular basis, the new generations will come along and find their place to go and figure out what’s next because I’m too old to figure that out anymore.”
Ellie Dahmer Flonzie Brown Wright holds symbols of Mississippi’s history: cotton like slaves once picked and a Jim Crow-era placard. JUSTIN SELLERS, THE CLARION-LEDGER
Flonzie Brown Wright Before Martin Luther King Jr. came to Canton for a voting rights march in June 1966, he called Flonzie Brown Wright. King asked whether Wright could handle the task of providing food and places to sleep for 3,000 people. Without hesitating, Wright said yes. Wright jumped into the movement when Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963. She started in her hometown of Canton. Of 10,000 black people who were eligible to be registered to vote in Madison County, “only about 100 were,” she says. While he was in Canton, King ate off plates that belonged to Wright’s mother. Those plates will be on display in the new museum, she says. By the time she was instrumental in getting African Americans to register to vote in Canton, Wright already had a long history with racism. In her words, she didn’t know just how deeply racism had tainted her life and the life of her family members until years later. When her young cousins were killed, “I did not even equate that with the ugliness of racism, I really didn’t. I just knew my cousins had been killed by some white men. I was too young to process that, and we didn’t talk about that.” Now, more than 50 years later, Wright says “our history will officially be catalogued” with the museum opening. “The struggles, the victories, will be officially placed in a place where people from around the world can come and see, and I’m a part of that. ... It will be a wonderful representation, it will tell the story through pictures, through videos, through tours. It will acknowledge that we were in a battle. It will acknowledge the inequalities of Mississippi toward blacks. It acknowledges that and it puts it in a place that it can be viewed.”
Charles Evers is prosaic about the new site: “It’s just another museum.” ELIJAH BAYLIS, THE CLARION-LEDGER
Charles Evers Charles Evers’ brother, Medgar Evers, was shot and killed in his front yard, in front of his wife and children, by a white supremacist at the height of the movement in 1963. (The killer was finally convicted in 1994.) Charles Evers spoke out against systematic racism at the time, but in recent years, he says, he has focused more on stopping black-on-black crime. His thoughts on the new museum are somewhat subdued. “It’s just another museum, that’s how I feel. You’ve got other museums, so why not have a civil rights museum?” he says. “It’s fine. Any improvement to a city is a good thing, and it is an improvement. I’m so proud to know where we are today, I don’t like to keep remembering the past. I was part of all the past. I’m focused on moving forward.”
The Ku Klux Klan attacked the Dahmer family in their home in Hattiesburg in 1966. Their home and store were burned to the ground. Vernon Dahmer, president of the local NAACP, died trying to defend his family; his truck was riddled with bullets. His widow, Ellie Dahmer, says she was moved to tears when she saw parts of her husband’s truck in the museum. Her family’s sacrifice was too much to bear. “I thought it was real good and it gave an accurate account of what went on in that time, I think. I think he would be well pleased with it, but it’s hard to visualize what a dead man would do. And it’s especially hard for me to have lived through this time, and it brings it back to me,” she says. “I did pretty good until I saw the bullet holes in part of the pickup truck. They took the tail gate, steering wheel and dashboard. Tears went flowing when I saw that. It really brought it back to me then, what people will really do to you. “My family made a tremendous sacrifice in order for black Americans to be able to vote, which was given to us by the Constitution. For us to have to give up this much, a special person’s life, in order to get this done, it should never have happened in America.”
Ellie Dahmer, widow of murdered NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer, says touring the museum was painful. “Tears went flowing” when she saw her husband’s truck, shot up by the KKK. ROGELIO V. SOLIS, AP
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Museum becoming cultural mecca Deborah Barfield Berry USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Ernest Green wouldn’t have missed the chance to join other members of the “Little Rock Nine” at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture to share their stories about integrating allwhite Central High School 60 years ago. “I thought that if the opportunity occurred to be involved in some sort of change for my life and for my community, I wanted to be part of it,” Green, 76, said of his decision in 1957 to challenge the Jim Crow system that kept schools segregated. In a nod to their impact on history, the museum hosted six of the Little Rock Nine as part of its first anniversary celebration. It was just one of dozens of programs over the museum’s inaugural year that speak to its evolving role as a destination for the display of African-American history and a gathering place for contemporary conversation. Since its grand opening Sept. 24, 2016, nearly 3 million people have visited the newest Smithsonian museum on the National Mall to take in exhibits on black history from the easily recognizable (the March on Washington) to the often obscured (fthe transatlantic slave trade). But they’ve also lined up for lectures on hot political topics such as religious intolerance, mass incarceration and gay rights, plus screenings of award-winning films such as Fences and Moonlight. Many of the programs, like the Little Rock panel, fill up fast. “We’ve been overwhelmed by the way the public has embraced the museum,” said founding director Lonnie Bunch. “It’s become almost a pilgrimage site.” The museum has collected more than 40,000 artifacts to house in 400,000 square feet of building space, plus offsite warehouses. About 3,000 objects are on display, including the dress Carlotta Walls Lanier, one of the Little Rock Nine, wore on her first day at Central High, where black students had to be escorted to class by soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division enforcing a Supreme Court decision banning school segregation. Several floors of galleries, on subjects from slavery to civil rights to community and culture, await visitors, most just as they were on opening day. Harriet Tubman’s shawl is still in its place, as is Chuck Berry’s red Cadillac. The alcove housing the casket of Emmett Till — a teenager lynched in Mississippi in 1955
The “Contemplative Court” offers visitors to the National Museum of African American History and Culture a space to reflect. PHOTOS BY JASPER COLT, USA TODAY
Marjorie Hammock of Columbia, S.C., reflects on an exhibit of photographs. “It’s just so moving,” she said. “The whole (museum) is, but this is strong stuff.”
— is still a sacred space. But there have been a few changes. One of the newest features allows visitors to strap on a virtual-reality headpiece and become Rosa Parks sitting on a bus. Plans are underway for new exhibits, including one on the Poor People’s
Campaign of 1968, an effort organized by Martin Luther King Jr. to win economic justice for poor people of all races.. One afternoon last fall, dozens of people, including Marjorie Hammock, a retired social worker from Columbia, S.C., ventured through the More than a Pic-
ture exhibit gazing at vintage photos, portraits and other pictures showing everyday life in black communities. Some featured high-profile celebrities, including Queen Latifah. Others showed people not as well-known like Sarah Ann Blunt Crozly, a former slave in Louisiana whose story would otherwise be lost. “This is wonderful,” said Hammock, 81, who cried when she saw a photo of Sojourner Truth, who escaped slavery to become a leading 19th-century abolitionist and women’s rights activist. “It’s just so moving. The whole place is, but this is strong stuff.” There have been growing pains at the new museum, including long waits to visit the narrow underground history galleries and complaints about the advance online ticket system. Day passes are required to enter the museum, although they are free. New batches released online at the museum’s site are snapped up within hours, leaving would-be visitors to check the site early on the day they plan to visit or show up at the museum’s door at 1 p.m. weekdays to see if walk-up passes are available. Others have complained that, despite the vastness of the collection, the museum has left out some important contributions. But Bunch stands behind his staff ’s curation. “We knew we couldn’t tell every story. I’d need four buildings,” said Bunch, adding that the museum will continue to evolve. “It’s really important that the museum is as much about today and tomorrow as it is about yesterday,” Bunch said. “It helps to contextualize current issues. You want to be a place that brings knowledge and reason to debates and discussions.” Events of the past few years — policeinvolved deaths; the 2015 murder of nine worshipers by a white supremacist at a black church in Charleston, S.C.; protests in Charlottesville, Va., over the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, to name a few — give museum officials cues for weaving the news of the day into the programming and displays. Green, the Little Rock Nine member, said the political battles of today are similar to ones waged decades ago over criminal justice, income gaps, health disparities and lack of access to education. The museum plays a role in illuminating that, he said. “It’s a museum really for the country, not just for black folks,” Green said. “It’s giving the country a history lesson.”
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76 ❚ BLACK HISTORY MONTH ❚ USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
COMMENTARY
Scars from savage whippings crisscross the back of a former slave who escaped during the Civil War to become a soldier in the Union army. NATIONAL ARCHIVES VIA AP
Why America can’t get over slavery Rochelle Riley Detroit Free Press columnist
Slavery. ❚ It is America’s open wound. ❚ It is the painful injury that a third of America lives with and the rest of the country attempts to ignore because, for them, it is an ancient scar and, well, hasn’t it healed by now? Its very name evokes emotions so strong that many Americans demand that we no longer speak of it, while others — those who live with its enduring impact — cry it aloud in hopes that America will finally have the conversation about it that it has refused to have for nearly 400 years. Slavery’s long legal existence created the American caste system that endures today, one that maintains a false white superiority and black inferiority built on an unfair education system, unfair employment system and social institutions that support this notion while appropriating black language, music and fashion. No amount of complaint or discrimination has led to a real discussion of slavery and its aftermath — and of what is owed to a people who helped build America. The cost, some say, would be too great. “There are two reasons that we don’t talk about slavery: The first is it’s a subject that makes us have to face the ugliness of our history against the beauty of American history,” says Michael SimanContinued on page 76
USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION ❚ BLACK HISTORY MONTH ❚ 77 Continued from page 75
ga, adjunct professor of African-American studies at Georgia State University. “It forces us to then commit to structural changes that the country has not yet gotten ready to address, changes having to do with discriminatory practices — an unequal education system, unequal employment, unequal housing and how we teach our history without including all Americans.” Talking about slavery “would require us to embrace a completely different American narrative,” he said, “and we’re not ready to let go of the old one.” The unheld conversation is woven into the fabric of 1968, arguably one of the most important years in history as far as race and slavery are concerned. That is the year the British Parliament passed the Race Relations Act making it illegal to refuse housing, employment or public services to a person on the grounds of color, race, ethnic or national origins — and created a Community Relations Commission to promote “harmonious community relations.” America did neither, instead passing, over time, a series of civil rights laws that do not mention race in their titles and that black Americans still must fight to get the government to enforce. Our rules, our policies, our attempts at equality have all been just a series of poor attempts to hide the origin of this country’s poor race relations when the world knows that origin was slavery. Why don’t we talk about it? Because talking about it makes it real, makes impossible to ignore. There are still people in America who believe that slavery was a gift to African Americans and that two and half centuries of horror were a small price to pay to escape Africa — a continent they feel was so much worse that slaves’ descendants should be honored by the capture. Because there is no education about slavery in America’s public schools, there has been no discussion about what the massive residential theft did to Africa or what centuries of maltreatment did to generations of African Americans. America is defined by continuing injustice rooted in slavery. The lack of education and conversation about it constitute a deficit that shackles our country. It makes America fertile ground for myth and revisionism that attempt to teach schoolchildren that slaves were just immigrant workers, sharecroppers who tended land in exchange for a place to live. The unmentioned rape and torture and maiming and poor nourishment and killings — and even the legally maintained ban on slaves learning to read — were all just minor inconveniences.
An engraving depicts the beginning of the slave trade in America — the arrival of 20 kidnapped Africans in Jamestown, Va., in 1619. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY VIA AP
Every attempt to discuss some recompense for those years of horror is met, mostly, with outrage by white Americans who say, “It wasn’t me.” Yes, it was. It was America. It was us. And by rights, that means it was all of us who continue to pretend that it didn’t happen and do not face that something must be done to repair it, or America’s problems with race will never go away. Slavery endures in a legal system that allows black voter suppression and housing restrictions and education policies that continue to make life harder for blacks than whites in America. Slavery endures in an injustice system that continues to jail more black men than white people for the same crimes. And slavery will endure a little more than a year from now when we commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans’ arrival in Jamestown, Va. Those slaves’ arrival in 1619, according
to historical accounts, was described in a letter by John Rolfe, whom schoolchildren are taught was the husband of Pocahontas but who is rarely mentioned for his eyewitness account of the birth of the transatlantic slave trade. He wrote in a letter to Sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer of the Virginia Company of London, of the arrival of “20. and odd Negroes.” These kidnapped people were purchased to be used as involuntary laborers, sold after making a voyage they didn’t plan that lasted usually six to 13 weeks, chained in the bowels of ships they’d never seen. Virginia’s first Africans, according to various historical accounts and a 2006 Washington Post analysis, spoke the Bantu languages Kimbundu and Kikongo and were believed to be from the kingdoms of Ndongo and Kongo, regions of modern-day Angola and coastal regions of Congo. They joined 15 black men and 17 black women already “in the service” of Jamestown planters. One of the greatest — and most often cited — deterrents to having a discussion
about slavery is that slavery wasn’t just America’s problem. It was recognized as early as 6800 B.C., according to various research projects, when enemies of war were enslaved in Mesopotamia, or 1000, when slavery was routine in England’s rural, agricultural economy, or 1444, when Portuguese traders brought slaves from West Africa to Europe. But citing slavery’s historical existence does not change America’s participation in it. Massachusetts became the first British colony to legalize slavery in 1641. One hundred and 35 years later, when the country’s forefathers declared independence, they did it knowing they were not declaring it for all Americans — and most did not care. There was even widespread belief that the historic election of 2008 signaled an end to America’s race relations problem, and some believed it would open the door to a national discussion of slavery — and possible reparations for it. Henry Louis Gates, the noted Harvard historian, wrote in a 2010 New York Times opinion article that “thanks to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.” But such a task was not high on Obama’s gargantuan list of missions, and America would not deal with the nation’s greatest shame during his tenure. That has been the sad fact of slavery. Conversations begin and end with who was responsible — and as long as the blame game continues, no real conversations happen. Meanwhile, slavery remains, as Jamelle Bouie and Rebecca Onion put it in a September 2015 Slate analysis, “a massive institution that shaped and defined the political economy of colonial America, and later, the United States” … an “institution (that) left a profound legacy for the descendants of enslaved Africans, who even after emancipation were subject to almost a century of violence, disenfranchisement, and pervasive oppression, with social, economic, and cultural effects that persist to the present.” Slavery remains the subject of a conversation that only one side wants to have and the other side continues to put off, decade after decade after decade. Rochelle Riley is a columnist at the Detroit Free Press and author of “The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery” (Wayne State University Press, February 2018).
78 ❚ BLACK HISTORY MONTH ❚ USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
From Jamaica came an African vision “He infused the idea of black
Jordan Friedman Special to USA TODAY
Molefi Kete Asante, professor and chair of the Africology and African American studies department at Temple University, describes Marcus Garvey as probably “the most significant African political genius that has ever lived.” “He infused the idea of black self-sufficiency in all of the societies and communities in the black world —the idea of ‘you can organize and create institutions that fight for your own liberation,’ ” Asante says. He says Garvey is also responsible for symbols such as the red, green and black Pan-African flag. Experts say Garvey’s philosophies of black nationalism and Pan-Africanism – movements that called for people of African descent to unify and establish an independent nation in Africa – helped pave the way for the civil rights movement. Garvey’s quest for black self-reliance, they say, would be felt for generations. Garvey, who was born in Jamaica in 1887, believed that white society would never treat black people equally. He founded the anti-colonial Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League in Jamaica in 1914. The organization is commonly known by the abbreviation UNIA. The association created a societal model of black nationalism and PanAfricanism through political, economic and social means, says Robert Hill, a research professor of history at UCLA and a Garvey expert. The UNIA also established the Universal African Legion, a paramilitary group, as well as the Black Cross Nurses, a group modeled after the Red Cross that provided health care to black communities. Garvey also established the Black Star Line steamship company, which transported passengers and goods to Africa. The organizations moved to New York City’s Harlem neighborhood when Garvey immigrated to America in 1916. Garvey was also a journalist and publisher who shared his ideas by creating the Negro World newspaper in 1918. The publication served as the voice for the UNIA, with circulation reaching all the way to Africa. After the move to Harlem, Garvey’s movement swelled. By the early 1920s, the UNIA had more than 700 branches in 38 states. At the peak of the movement, Hill says, Garvey had a following in the hundreds of thousands.
self-sufficiency in all of the societies and communities in the black world — the idea of, you can organize and create institutions that fight for your own liberation.” Molefi Kete Asante professor and chair of the Africology and African American Studies department at Temple University
Marcus Garvey’s ideas on Pan-Africanism and black nationalism were precursors to the U.S. civil rights movement. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Uniformed members of Garvey’s movement march in Harlem during a 1924 convention. His followers numbered in the hundreds of thousands. GEORGE RINHART, CORBIS, VIA GETTY IMAGES
Asante says Garvey took inspiration from such figures as Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute, who sought to improve education for African Americans; the leaders of the Haitian Revolution, including Toussaint L’Ouverture and Henri Christophe; and the maroons, escaped slaves who established free communities in Jamaica. Still, Garvey was a target of criticism, including from black leaders in the USA, says Rupert Lewis, professor emeritus in political thought at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. Lewis says some believed that Garvey’s ideas for resettlement were utopian and financially impractical. After World War I, the FBI closely followed Garvey. On its website, the FBI acknowledges seeking to “deport him as an undesirable alien.” In 1922, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in connection with a stock sold to keep his Black Star Line from bankruptcy. After serving three years of his sentence, Garvey was released and deported to Jamaica. Garvey’s movement waned in the USA after his deportation, but his influence remains, historians say. “If you go on the streets of Jamaica, there are lots of images of Garvey on the walls,” Lewis says, adding that Garvey, who died in 1940, is commonly mentioned in the country’s music. Hill of UCLA says the Rastafari movement, a religion dating back to the 1930s and practiced throughout the Caribbean, reflects Garvey’s influence. Even Martin Luther King Jr. described Garvey as the “first man of color in the history of the United States to lead and develop a mass movement.” “You could claim that Garvey is the father of African independence,” Hill says. “I’d be willing to make that claim, and he’s regarded as such by many, many people in Africa.”
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Chisholm blazed trails in multiple directions Mabinty Quarshie USA TODAY
Nearly 50 years after she became the first African-American woman elected to Congress, Shirley Chisholm should be remembered as an agent of change. Dedicated to uplifting marginalized and underrepresented people, she transformed the Democratic Party to include a more diverse coalition of members. She fought for the inclusion of women in public office and the well-being of women no matter where they stood. And she ran as a progressive candidate long before it was popular. In 1972, she was the first African American and the first woman to be a major party candidate for U.S. president. “Shirley was part of a revolution in the Democratic Party that moved it away from the domination by white men,” says Ellen Fitzpatrick, professor of history at the University of New Hampshire and author of The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency. Born in Brooklyn, Chisholm became involved in local politics during her college days. She graduated from Brooklyn College in 1946 and worked herself up from teaching to directing daycare centers. She got her master’s degree in early childhood education from Columbia University in 1951. After getting involved in New York’s political clubhouses, Chisholm learned from experience that these clubs exploited the work of women. Tired of men reaping all the benefits, Chisholm ran for office when the opportunity arrived in 1964. She became the second black woman in the New York state Legislature. “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair,” Chisholm was known for saying. “One of her legacies was in showing the importance of grassroots organizing, voter registration, having the energy and enthusiasm of people of color,” Fitzpatrick says, “and not simply expecting they’re going to vote for you because you’re better than the evil alternative.” Chisholm famously described herself by the title of her biography: Unbought and Unbossed. She said her only obligation was to her constituents, not the political elite or their donors, so she didn’t care about playing by the rules. “There’s a certain liberty that comes with being unbossed and unbought,” says Rep. Yvette Clark, D-N.Y., who represents areas of New York City that Chisholm once did and introduced a resolution in January that would place a statue
Chisholm was the first black woman elected to Congress, and the first to run for a major party’s presidential nomination. CAPE FEAR MUSEUM VIA AP
Rep. Shirley Chisholm speaks to a crowd in Marianna, Fla., in March 1972 during her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. BILL HUDSON, AP
Members of Congress unveil a portrait of Chisholm, painted by Kadir Nelson, in a House caucus room. SCOTT J. FERRELL, CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY/GETTY IMAGES
of Chisholm in the U.S. Capitol. “The ability to put the interests of the people who we represent first and foremost without fear of retribution from other political entities or interests is quite liberating.” But beyond that freedom there were other trials. Chisholm understood that racism and sexism were intertwined weapons that were used to limit her ambition and career. “She had no qualms about saying that her greatest challenge was dealing with people on the basis that she was a woman rather than as being a black person,” says E. Faye Williams, president of the National Congress of Black Women, an organization that Chisholm co-founded. Chisholm was especially disappointed by the lack of support she received from Gloria Steinem and other promi-
nent members of the women’s movement as well as from black male political leadership. Despite this, Chisholm amassed a broad coalition of groups who advocated for her, a technique that former Barack Obama would later duplicate in his historic 2008 presidential election. “She is the first, at the time, really trying to create a coalition of young people when she’s running for the presidency, a coalition of people of color, people of indigenous descent, African-Americans,” says Zinga A. Fraser, director of the Shirley Chisholm Project on Brooklyn Women’s Activism. “She understood that one group alone could not elect a president.” While African-American women were critical to Chisholm’s grassroots campaigns, they also remain loyal members of the modern Democratic Party. After
Democrat Doug Jones won a special election to fill a Senate seat in Alabama last year, national party chairman Tom Perez said, “Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party, and we can’t take that for granted. Period.” CNN exit polls showed that 98% of black women voters supported Jones. During Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, Clinton won between 84% and 93% of black women’s votes in the states where race/gender exit poll findings were released, according to Presidential Gender Watch, a nonprofit project of the Center for American Women and Politics and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation. For all their ballot-box clout, AfricanAmerican women remain underrepresented in office. According to a study released by Higher Heights and the Center for American Women and Politics, in 2016 only four black women were candidates for statewide elected office. And the U.S. has never had a black woman elected governor. The need to create space for black women is not lost on California Sen. Kamala Harris, who in 2016 became the second African-American woman elected to the Senate. (Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill., served from 1993 to 1999.) “My mother gave me advice,” Harris says. “She would say often, ‘Kamala you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.’ And I have tried to live that advice in terms of mentoring and hopefully lifting folks up and making sure that we recreate a path for others to follow. “Shirley Chisholm created that path for me and for so many others.”
82 ❚ BLACK HISTORY MONTH ❚ USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
The aftermath of rioting in Chicago in 1968. A presidential panel looking into civil unrest took particular aim at white-dominated news media. PAUL SEQUEIRA, GETTY IMAGES
Diversity in media still decades behind Paul Delaney
Special to USA TODAY
Five decades ago, President Lyndon Johndon appointed a committee to investigate the racial conflicts that seemed to be spiraling out of control across the country. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders — better known as the Kerner Commission after its chairman, Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner — issued a blistering report in February 1968 that condemned rampant and entrenched racism from sea to shining sea. It warned in one memorable and oft-repeated passage, “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.” “What white Americans have never fully understood, but what the Negro can never forget, is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it,” the report said — lumping the entirety of black America Continued on page 83
President Lyndon Johnson with the commission’s leaders, Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner, left, and New York City Mayor John Lindsay, in July 1967. AP
USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION ❚ BLACK HISTORY MONTH ❚ 83 Continued from page 82
into one stereotypical locale, which was how white America viewed it. Ironically, Johnson rejected the report he’d commissioned. Former Oklahoma senator Fred Harris, the only living member of the commission, attributed the president’s snub to a leaker who told him the findings “would ruin him.” “That was all wrong, but the president believed it,” Harris said in a radio interview last July. “And so he canceled the formal meeting we’d set up to deliver the report, and he rejected it.” As if an exclamation point were necessary, five weeks after its release, at least 125 cities were aflame following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. While most Americans were transfixed by the “two societies” reference, which was aimed at the whole of the country, journalists fixated on whom the commission partly blamed for the situation: their profession. The report socked it to the press, noting that the overwhelmingly white media had failed to adequately cover the problems of race. Further, the commission declared that “the journalistic profession has been shockingly backward in seeking out, hiring and promoting Negroes.” It added that “the press has too long basked in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men’s eyes and white perspective. That is no longer good enough. The painful process of readjustment that is required of the American news media must begin now.” Prior to the 1960s, American newsrooms were almost 100% white and predominantly male. When I graduated from Ohio State University in 1958, I wrote to 50 daily newspapers. Only two responded, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the West Virginia’s Charleston Gazette, with courteous rejections saying they were not ready to hire Negroes. Among Kerner’s recommendations for the news media: ❚ Expand coverage of the Negro community and of race problems through permanent assignment of reporters familiar with urban and racial affairs. ❚ Publish newspapers and produce programs that recognize the existence and activities of Negroes as a group within the community and as a part of the larger community. ❚ Integrate Negroes and Negro activities into all aspects of coverage and content. ❚ Recruit more Negroes into journalism and broadcasting and promote those who are qualified to positions of significant responsibility. Reacting to the harsh criticism, many media companies went on hiring sprees
This image of the Kansas City bureau of the Associated Press in 1940 captures the makeup of much of the news media up to the 1960s: nearly all white and male. AP
“The journalistic profession has been shockingly backward in seeking out, hiring and promoting Negroes.” Kerner Commission report
that bumped up the numbers of nonwhites in their newsrooms. They were aided by newly formed organizations for black journalists, Hispanic journalists, Native American journalists and Asian American journalists along with groups representing women, gays and others. Some companies set up in-house operations to improve their numbers. The American Society of Newspaper Editors (now the American Society of News Editors) pledged in 1978 to push for a newsroom workforce that reflected the racial makeup of their communities by the year 2000; when that goal was not reached, ASNE leaders set a new deadline, 2025. Its officials now concede that even that deadline will be missed. The group’s 2017 survey found that minorities are 16.6% of newsroom employees. It put the best spin on the numbers that it could, saying the total was “only a half percentage point decrease from last year’s figure and is still several percentage points higher than the percentages recorded for much of the past two decades.” That didn’t impress some journalists.
AAJA Voices, official organ of the Asian American Journalists Association, expressed disappointment in a report titled “Missed Deadline: The Delayed Promise of Newsroom Diversity.” The report showed that newsroom leaders — “those with control over staffing and news decisions — are still disproportionately white.” The group examined the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post and National Public Radio. AAJA noted that The Wall Street Journal, CNN and Fox News “declined to or did not confirm the races of their executives.” The New York Times established committees to promote diversity. I served on several of them. As at other media companies, all types of solutions were offered — training programs for minority reporters, summer internships for college students, copy editing trainees, prospective editors and managers, and a high school project. But nothing seemed to work longterm. My own conclusion coincided with that of the March 1993 cover of News Inc magazine that boldly proclaimed, “White Men Don’t Budge” and explored “Why diversity programs just aren’t working.” My own contribution in that issue began, “I fear for the future of this latest tool we call diversity.” My humble opinion was that whites cannot get over their whiteness and being in charge, and believe that nonwhites just cannot cut it competing with them. My editor at the Times, Max Frankel, reacting to the snail’s-pace progress,
tried something extremely bold in the mid-1980s. He instituted one-for-one hiring, whereby each white hire had to be followed/balanced by a minority hire. His white editors very quickly sabotaged that effort by simply refusing to fill positions. Thoroughly frustrated, Max threw in the towel. Racial problems remain as intractable today as they were then, although many editors have struggled earnestly to integrate their newsrooms over the decades. Most have proudly proclaimed their commitment to diversity. They tried hard, but they essentially, effectively failed. “Racism is basic and rudimentary in America,” wrote black columnist William Reed, a fierce advocate of financial reparations to African Americans to make up for centuries of racism. He added that Donald Trump’s pledge to “Make America Great Again” really means “let’s make whites great again.” The Congressional Black Caucus waded into the issue in 1972. After hearings, it issued a report that said 23 black journalists testified that they were “grossly excluded, distorted, mishandled and exploited by the white-controlled media.” That attitude prevails today among many black journalists, veterans and newly successful journeymen, frustrated by the lack of sustained, substantive progress. A young black reporter, a rising star, said she has been the only black reporter in her last three newsrooms: “I expect it now, so I just ignore being the only one. It’s creepy.” Reginald Stuart, a former recruiter for Gannett, USA TODAY’s parent, is among a number of journalists who feel “the nation should revisit Kerner in the context of defining how this ambitious train appears to be derailing by laziness and lack of historical knowledge.” Fred Harris, the Kerner Commission veteran, also supports a new look. Another concurring view: “Successive generations of news leaders have tried and failed to reach goals of parity in making mainstream newsrooms reflect the country’s demographics,” Howard University journalism professors Carolyn M. Byerly and Yanick Lamb Rice wrote last year in a report on Kerner at 50. They added: “Studies show that neither have those media been able to adequately cover race matters in a nation experiencing an ongoing ‘browning of America’ and the emergence of a new era of race-related civil unrest and violence.” Paul Delaney, former journalism chairman at the University of Alabama, spent most of his career as a reporter and editor for The New York Times. He is working on a memoir.
84 ❚ BLACK HISTORY MONTH ❚ USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
From left, Reps. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, James Clyburn of South Carolina and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi are the only blacks and the only Democrats in their states’ House delegations. They regularly get together for dinner and discussion about issues important to the South. CHRISTOPHER POWERS, USA TODAY
Black caucus keeps up the fight Deborah Barfield Berry
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Three years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., 13 black members of Congress formed a group to tackle issues affecting their districts and constituents. Today, the Congressional Black Caucus has a record 48 members. Many say they’re fighting some of the same battles that the group’s founders fought nearly five decades ago. “There has been some progress. I don’t think that any of us would have thought … that in 2008 this country could elect an African-American president,” says Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama. “But I think that we have
to be ever vigilant fighting for jobs and justice. Those issues are still very much at the forefront today.” “I do believe that Martin Luther King’s life, and his legacy, was not in vain.” Sewell and other members say the caucus has come a long way as a powerful voting bloc since King’s death in 1968. Its members have taken public stands in recent years, including boycotting Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, leading a sit-in in the House chamber and pushing for the removal of Confederate flags and statues from the Capitol. Rep. Cedric Richmond, chairman of the caucus, says the group is determined to be a force against policies that, among other things, roll back voting rights and
reduce access to health care and capital for people of color. “While it is nearly impossible to fill Dr. King’s shoes, the CBC has tried to continue his legacy, and the policies we advocate for are proof of that. The tactics we use are proof of that, too,” says Richmond, a Louisiana Democrat. “We legislate, debate, and convene. We also boycott, sit in, and kneel. We are because Dr. King was — quite literally. If Dr. King would not have fought and won so many civil- and voting-rights battles, we would not be a historic 48 members strong.” In the years since the caucus was formed in 1971, it has fought to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, make King’s birthday a national holiday and address
racial profiling, among other efforts. But members of the mostly Democratic caucus say this Congress and this administration pose a particular challenge, attacking hard-fought gains in voting rights and civil rights. Trump recently dismantled a commission he created to investigate his repeated allegations of voter fraud, despite experts’ arguments that there isn’t widespread fraud. Trump also urged more states to adopt strict voter ID laws. “Since Donald Trump has been in office, he has said that states should have tighter voter identification laws, which is a dog whistle to those who want to conContinued on page 86
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“The stronger our numbers become, the bigger our bloc becomes, and I think the more powerful our voices become.” Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala.
Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Terri Sewell, D-Ala., at a 2015 event marking the 1965 Voting Rights Act. AARON NAH, GANNETT
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tinue to deny African-Americans, Latinos and Muslims the right to vote,” says Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. Sewell says she’s “disheartened” that by early January no Republican had signed on to her bill intended to improve access to the polls. “The fact that we’re not at a place where voting rights is a consensusbuilding issue is a problem,” she says. Even as Democrats in a Republicancontrolled Congress, some caucus members have wielded influence as leaders. South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn is the No. 3 Democrat in the House. Thompson is the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. Several members have been out front on key issues, including Sewell on voting rights and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., on criminal justice reform.
Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., head of the Congressional Black Caucus, speaks about Confederate symbols on federal property. DEBORAH BARFIELD BERRY, USA TODAY
Caucus members have also pushed to improve access to internet service, address police brutality and advocate for historically black colleges and universities. It has been a contentious few years. Some caucus members boycotted Trump’s swearing-in last January. Caucus leaders met with Trump at the White House in March; they gave him a 130-page policy report titled “We Have A Lot To Lose: Solutions to Advance Black Families in the 21st Century.” “We’re going to keep advocating,” Richmond said after the 45-minute meeting. “Where we agree, we’ll agree. Where we disagree, we will fight with the passion that this caucus has had since 1971 when we had our first meeting with President Nixon.” A few months later, the caucus rejected a second invitation to meet with Trump, saying its concerns “fell on deaf ears” in the first meeting. The caucus has also criticized Trump’s cabinet choices, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a former Alabama senator who they accused of, among other things, not supporting voting rights. The caucus also criticized Trump after he said “both sides” were to blame for violence during a white nationalist protest in Charlottesville, Va., in August that led to a death, and that there were “very fine people on both sides” at the protests, where white supremacists marched under Confederate and Nazi flags. Caucus members have been at odds with Trump and GOP leaders over immigration legislation, efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and the recent overhaul of the tax system. In 2016, Democrats led by Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., staged a sit-in in the House of Representatives to demand a vote on gun control legislation. Caucus members concede that they haven’t been able to push through major legislation in this Congress, but stress that it’s important to raise concerns. “The stronger our numbers become, the bigger our bloc becomes, and I think the more powerful our voices become,” Sewell says.
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Curtis Mayfield became the voice of victory Afi-Odelia Scruggs Special to USA TODAY
In March 1968, Washington Post reporter Ivan Brandon got a tip: Howard University students were about to occupy the school’s Administration Building. If he got there fast, he could report the story from inside its corridors. ❚ Roughly 1,200 students filled the building, and about 2,500 rallied outside. The protesters had four demands: more courses on African-American history and culture; disciplinary charges dropped against a group who had disrupted the school’s Charter Day; the establishment of a judicial process; and the resignation of university president James Nabrit. ❚ When the negotiations dragged
and
students’
morale
flagged, protesters turned on a song, Keep on Pushing. Continued on page 90
Curtis Mayfield around 1970, when he left The Impressions to focus full time on his solo career. Mayfield is a double inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
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I’ve got to keep on pushing (mmmhmm), I can’t stop now. Move up a little higher, Some way, somehow. After winning on two of the four demands, the protesters declared victory. “When the negotiations were finally over and the kids were cleaning up the building, they were blasting We’re a Winner,” Brandon says. We’re a winner, and never let anybody say, Boy, you can’t make it, ’cause a feeble mind is in your way. Both songs were written by Curtis Mayfield, who began as a gospel singer as a youngster in Chicago and grew to become one of the country’s most successful R&B producers, composers and performers. Mayfield launched his professional career in 1958, as a 16-year-old background singer for The Roosters. The fivemember group would become The Impressions, known for silky loves songs and fronted by vocalist Jerry Butler. When Butler left the group after its first big hit, For Your Precious Love, the group continued as a trio. In 1961, they had their own big hit, Gypsy Woman. From then on, Mayfield was the group’s chief songwriter. He left The Impressions for a solo career in 1970. Mayfield died in 1999. He had been paralyzed from the neck down for about a decade after lighting equipment fell on him at a concert in Brooklyn, but he continued to compose and sing. His successes are legendary. The Impressions’ version of Amen was featured in the Lilies of the Field, the movie that won Sidney Poitier an Oscar in 1964. In 1970, he wrote the soundtrack for Super Fly, another cultural milestone. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame both as a member of The Impressions and as a solo artist. Shortly before his death, he learned he’d be inducted into BMI’s Songwriter Hall of Fame. It was We’re a Winner, with its unapologetic celebration of African-American achievement and culture, that cemented Mayfield’s status as the musical spokesman for the younger wing of the civil rights movement. The song wasn’t a one-off. Mayfield had been weaving messages of black empowerment into his songs for years. But We’re a Winner differed from the subtle messages of earlier hits like the love song I’m So Proud of You or the quasi-gospel tone of People Get Ready. In We’re a Winner, Mayfield openly celebrates black pride and accomplishment with lines like “We’re living proof to all alert, That we’re two from the good black earth.”
The Impressions’ original lineup: Clockwise from top left: Jerry Butler, Sam Gooden, Arthur Brooks, Curtis Mayfield and Richard Brooks. GILLES PETARD, REDFERNS
“He felt like he was contributing. He would see and hear people singing his songs while protesting. He was keenly aware of that.” Todd Mayfield
Mayfield in 1996, three years before his death. His son Todd says Mayfield wasn’t “overtly political” but was nevertheless keyed in to the tenor of his times. JOE TABACCA, AP
The song was released in late 1967. By the time of the Howard University protests, it was No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart and No. 14 on the pop chart. Nevertheless, its lyrics got the song banned on several radio stations, including pop powerhouse WLS in Mayfield’s hometown of Chicago. “I think the reaction to the song was shock; Curtis had been such a voice for harmony and reconciliation,” says Craig Werner, an Afro-American studies pro-
fessor at the University of WisconsinMadison and the author of Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Curtis Mayfield and the Rise and Fall of American Soul. “I think that a lot of ... white listeners were taken aback by what they felt was an aggressive tone. “ The original lyrics were even more blunt. In the 2008 documentary Movin’ On Up, Impressions member Sam Gooden said Mayfield had written lyrics like “The black boy done dried his eyes” and “There’ll be no more Uncle Tom, at least that blessed day has come.” But he softened the lyrics at the urging of musical arranger Johnny Pate. Mayfield’s son Todd says his father wasn’t “overtly political.” “He didn’t participate in marches and things like that… I never knew him to vote,” says Todd Mayfield, whose biography of father, A Traveling Soul was published in 2016. But, he adds, his father was awake to events around him. “He felt like he was contributing. He would see and hear people singing his songs while protesting. He was keenly aware of that. “ By the time Curtis Mayfield wrote We’re A Winner, he’d heard chants of “Black Power” drown out choruses of We Shall Overcome. He saw the failure of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1966 fair housing campaign in Chicago. He listened as musical peers like Aretha Franklin and James Brown became more outspoken, Werner says, and “breathed it in.” Those influences showed up both lyrically and musically. Mayfield didn’t have a formal music education, so he worked closely with Pate when it came to arrangements. The luscious strings found in most of The Impressions’ songs never left. Toward the end of the ’60s, though, Mayfield’s songs lost some of the softness found in the earlier hits and took on a rhythmic, funkier edge, Werner says. “That’s the big message of ’68. Compared to James Brown, (Mayfield) may have sounded a little soft, “ Werner says. “But if you compare those songs to Keep on Pushing, or Woman’s Got Soul, you have a heavier emphasis on the rhythm.” Werner is convinced that if Mayfield were still alive he would be a bridge between communities that are profoundly divided. He definitely would have responded to the political and social winds now buffeting the country. “He understood the realities of police brutality, especially growing up in Chicago,” Werner says. “ He’d be a strong supporter of BLM and Colin Kaepernick. But he’d also be reaching out and doing his best to connect with folks who didn’t get it to begin with.”
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The Negro Ensemble Company’s founders. From left, Douglas Turner Ward, Gerald Krone and Robert Hooks. TANIA SAVAYAN, THE JOURNAL NEWS
Ensemble put itself in spotlight Karen Roberts
The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News
In the 1960s, New York’s theater world was still highly segregated. ❚ Only a handful of black actors, such as Paul Robeson and Harry Belafonte, and a few African-American playwrights, such as Lorraine Hansberry and Langston Hughes, had been able to see some mainstream success. Most were products of the short-lived American Negro Theater in Harlem, which marked the 75th anniversary of its creation in 2015. ❚ So a few groundbreakers decided to start their own company to employ black artists and tell authentic stories. ❚ In 1965, playwright Douglas Turner Ward, producer/actor Robert Hooks and theater manager Gerald Krone conceived The Negro Ensemble Company. The company officially opened in 1967. Continued on page 94
The 1984 film A Soldier’s Story was based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play staged at New York’s renowned Negro Ensemble Company. The film starred Harold Rollins Jr., left, and Denzel Washington. Washington was reprising his breakout stage role as Pvt. Peterson for the film. © COLUMBIA PICTURES / COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION
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The company brought seminal productions to the stage, including The River Niger in 1972 and A Soldier’s Play in 1981. In those early days, the company performed at the St. Mark’s Playhouse in Greenwich Village. There were few other outlets for black theater talent, so artists of many stripes and skill levels crossed paths there. The Negro Ensemble Company celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2017, re-issuing some of its most famed plays, including Day of Absence, and A Soldier’s Play. “It’s astounding to look back at 50 years and realize what was accomplished,” Ward says. “The thing I take credit for is most of them (the actors) had not been discovered by commercial theater. I recognized their talent. I auditioned them and, if I had a play, I cast them.” The Negro Ensemble Company’s list of alumni is a who’s who of Black America in the arts: Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, S. Epatha Merkerson, Adolph Caesar, LaTanya RichardsonJackson, Garrett Morris, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Billy Dee Williams and Lou Gossett Jr., to name just a few. The company helped launch the careers of stars like Phylicia Rashad and Oscar winner Denzel Washington, who made a name for himself in A Soldier’s Play. The play was later adapted for film as A Soldier’s Story. “I was ready to cast the role from the the people I had auditioned, but Denzel called and asked if I had cast the role,” Ward says. “I said, ‘If you can get here by 12 o’clock, I will still consider you,’ and he said, ‘I’ll be there,’ and the rest is history.” Playwright Charles Fuller won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1982 for A Soldier’s Play. “The NEC was a place where you could test yourself, how effective what you wrote was to an audience and the actors who brought your work to life,” Fuller says. Today hundreds of artifacts from the company’s five decades are housed at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Manhattan, a fitting place for the historic troupe. Included are photos of actors including Washington and Danny Glover on an opening night and others of actors on stage; there are playbills from notable theater performances. “Schomburg is a great place for researchers to find out more about how these companies defined American theater in the 20th century and about the legacy these organizations have left behind,” says A.J. Muhammad, a librarian with the Schomburg Center.
At the Schomburg Center’s NEC archives, Douglas Turner Ward, seated, shares stories with, from left, his son Doug Ward, director and NEC alumna Seret Scott and Erich McMillan-McCall, the head of Project1Voice. TANIA SAVAYAN, THE JOURNAL NEWS
“There is no way we could survive except by being excellent. ... Even our critics were shocked by how good we were.” Douglas Turner Ward co-founder, Negro Ensemble Company
Project1Voice founder Erich McMillan-McCall partners with groups like NEC to advance his group’s mission: ensuring that the black experience is represented in American theater. The nonprofit stages a reading series that revives and reintroduces forgotten and underappreciated plays. “NEC has given the world over 200 new plays, has garnered over 40 major theater awards including Tony, Obie and Drama Desk awards,” McMillan-McCall says. “More than 4,000 artists from all aspects of the industry have passed through its doors, including many of the best known talents in theater, television and film.” At the Schomburg Center recently,
Negro Ensemble Company alumna Seret Scott examined a theater program for a play in which which she starred. “These memories make me recall a time when the work we were doing was not only new but so necessary. Black theater about us, for us and with us was new and unique,” says Scott, who worked in the company 1980-86. “The Negro Ensemble has always been the place where everything started, not just creatively, but people knew you in a family way,” Scott says. Scott, a Washington, D.C., native, studied at New York University and built a successful career as a theater director. She credits her start to those years at the company. “We had to throw it against a wall and see what would stick because there was nothing else, no imprint for us to follow,” she says. “They made it possible for people to be paid for that work, and they were doing brilliant work.” Ward trained professionally as an actor to improve his play-writing craft. He created an atmosphere where both actors and writers were respected. “There is no way we could survive ex-
cept by being excellent,” he says. “Being good right from the beginning. Even our critics were shocked by how good we were. Suddenly, they had never heard of this company, but as soon as they saw this ensemble, they were shocked.” Santiago-Hudson, of Selma and the Showtime series Billions, is another notable actor discovered and nurtured by the group. “I count Douglas Turner Ward as a mentor and one of the most influential figures in my career as both actor and director,” he says. “Doug gave me my first off-Broadway job as Theo in Ceremonies in Dark Old Men. That play and performance established my place in the New York City theater scene. For that I am forever grateful.” The company marked its golden anniversary with a three-city tour. Teaming with Project1Voice, founders Ward, Hooks and Krone appeared in New York City, Los Angeles and Atlanta for events that focused on their work and the company’s talented alumni. “What I want everyone to know is how good we were,” Ward says. “What you see here is a lot of excellence.”
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Craft beer diversity: Industry isn’t just pale ales Mike Snider USA TODAY
Craft beer’s tastemakers have historically been white and male, for the most part. ❚ But that’s starting to change within this growing niche of the $107.6 billion U.S. beer industry. As the number of independent breweries has grown to more than 5,300 — double the number operating in 2012 — more African Americans have gotten involved in the craft beer business. ❚ “While the numbers aren’t huge, I think there are more people of color starting to own breweries, work at breweries and be part of breweries,” says Kevin Blodger, co-owner and head brewer at Baltimore’s Union Craft Brewing, which opened in 2011. He points to blackContinued on page 98
Kevin Blodger, co-founder and head brewer at Union Craft Brewing in Baltimore, says more minorities will get involved in the craft beer industry as they get familiar with its products. JENNA DUTTON FOR UNION CRAFT BREWING
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98 ❚ BLACK HISTORY MONTH ❚ USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION center, “we do see a good minority population come through,” Ridley says. Maybe they haven’t tried craft beer before. “What I have found is people are very interested in trying new things, even if they are not into craft beer now,” he says, but “once they have been introduced to a concept and they see the quality of the beer, then I think people make logical choices to try something new.” Like many in the craft beer ecosystem, Ridley brewed his own beer at home. His wife also makes wine. After a 29-year career at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, from which he retired as deputy director, Ridley says he “wanted to do something totally different.” Running his Brass Tap franchise, one of more than 40 restaurants nationwide, lets him continue to educate consumers about craft beer. “I do feel like there is a growing desire for people to be involved in the industry,” Ridley says.
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owned breweries that have opened recently in Louisiana, North Carolina and Texas. Blodger is a member of a diversity committee set up by last year by the Brewers Association, a trade group, to help breweries be more inclusive in attracting minority employees and consumers. Over a decade of sustained growth, the craft beer industry has largely ignored minorities — not necessarily on purpose, Blodger says. “It seemed to me, in the past, that diversity to them meant white women,” he says. “It seems they are starting to welcome people of color with open arms. I’m not saying there was any kind of racism. Craft beer by nature, there’s not much advertising budget. It’s a word-of-mouth thing. And if you look at the people that were originally involved in craft beer, it was white men. And we tend to associate with people that look like us. As more black, Hispanic and Asian people get involved in craft beer, they are going to bring more of their friends in.” Appealing to minorities could help sustain craft beer’s double-digit annual sales growth, which for several years has outpaced the comparatively flat overall U.S. beer market. Sales growth in craft beer slowed to 10% in 2016. The sector’s $23.5 billion in sales amounted to a 21.9% share of the total market, the association says. More blacks are imbibing craft beer. In 2016, African Americans made up 12% of weekly craft beer drinkers, up from 10% the year before, according to the Yankelovich Monitor survey. Although there’s no definitive data to support increased involvement by blacks in craft beer — something the Brewers Association is attempting to document — others in the industry also say they are seeing change. “I just wish it was moving a little bit faster,” says Mike Smothers, who for four years has been a territory sales representative for Port City Brewing of Alexandria, Va. “For as fast as the industry is growing, I don’t think it’s diversifying at the same rate.” Even as more people of color go to work making craft beer — and take to drinking it — there’s an escalating conversation about “why is craft brewing such a monoculture culturally?” says Garrett Oliver, who became an apprentice brewer in 1989 at the Manhattan Brewing Co., and has been brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery since 1994. He sees similar situations in other fields. “You see exactly the same things ... in serious restaurant kitchens, even among the wait staff, you see it in the
How to break in
Sharon and Mark Ripley own The Brass Tap franchise at the National Harbor development in Maryland. They have 60 craft beers on tap. MIKE SNIDER, USA TODAY
MATT FURMAN FOR BROOKLYN BREWERY
“African Americans have been culturally excluded from a huge range of things and craft brewing just happens to be one of them.” Garrett Oliver Brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery
wine world,” Oliver says. “African Americans have been culturally excluded from a huge range of things, and craft brewing just happens to be one of them.” Increased diversity in the industry would pay off, and the association should help small breweries with outreach efforts, he says. Breweries and brewpubs alike would be smart to recognize minorities as an often-untapped customer base, he says. “What I do see is that no matter where you go, and that includes in the African-American community in New York, when you present the beer in an inclusive way and really show people why this is worth their time and interest, everybody is just as into it as everybody else,” Oliver says. That rings true to Mark Ridley, who along with his wife, Sharon, owns The Brass Tap franchise at the National Harbor development in Maryland, just south of Washington, D.C. He had some concerns about whether the restaurant, which has 60 craft beer taps, would “be a hit” in predominantly black Prince George’s County, Md. Even though the pub, which opened in June 2017, attracts mostly out-of-town white customers from the nearby convention
For those who think they might be interested in working in the industry, Oliver notes that many small breweries take on volunteers or interns. “Then you build a familiarity with the brewers and when something comes available you will tend to be the first person they think of.” “A lot of people these days at least think they want to become brewers, so there is heavy competition for these jobs,” he says. So should you have your sights on a particular beer workplace, make sure you put your best effort forward. “If you write to a brewer, write to the person by name,” he said. “If you send it to the front office, it’s going to end up in the trash. These are actual people who want to know that you want to work with them specifically and say something about why.” Learn as much as you can about beer through books or reading online, Blodger says. Check local colleges and universities for educational opportunities; more schools are developing beer industry programs, he says. “It’s not a very glamorous job, it’s not a real high-paying job, but it’s a satisfying job to walk out into the tap room and see people drinking your beer,” Blodger says. As the numbers of blacks in the business swells, those already ensconced in the industry will continue to pull doubleduty, as Smothers describes it, performing not only his job as a craft beer sales representative, but also an evangelist for independently produced beer. “Not to say I don’t enjoy doing it, but it is something I have to be aware of,” Smothers says. “It’s kind of up to me to be that ambassador for craft beer in my community.”
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Teen knows the code for inclusion in tech Jefferson Graham USA TODAY
When Zoe Lynch had the chance to design her own animated Snapchat filter, she manipulated an image of a brain into a peace sign, telling Snapchat and Google her dream of having the 7.4 billion people on the Earth more unified. “That’s a lot of brain power,” she said. Lynch, of South Orange, N.J., was just 14 when her filter won a coding contest put on by the two tech companies last year. Even more impressive, she was completely new to coding when she ran across the contest. She learned to use Google’s Blockly coding tools to build the filter, which features the image of a young black woman under the title “Unstoppable.” Since 2014, Google has been reaching out to young women with its Made with Code initiative, an attempt to promote diversity in the male-dominated tech industry by getting more women interested in coding. For 2017, Google decided to reach out to teens where they live — on the popular Snapchat app. In the Made with Code #MyFutureMe Challenge, Google and Snapchat asked teen girls to create an augmented reality animated filter that could be superimposed on images or on their surroundings when viewed through the app, like the dancing hot dog filter that became a Snapchat craze last summer. Lynch won the contest. It’s a different sort of move by Snapchat’s parent, Snap Inc., which, unlike many of its competitors, does not disclose the gender and ethnic makeup of its workers — information that companies like Google and Facebook say is important for ensuring that their workforces look like and can relate to their diverse user base. Snapchat is very popular with black teens, for instance: An Associated Press poll found that nearly 9 in 10 black teenagers use Snapchat, compared with just over 7 in 10 whites. While Snap has said publicly that having “a team of diverse backgrounds and voices working together” is its best shot at creating innovative products, its progress toward that goal appears to have stumbled. A string of high-level female executives have left the company, according to tech news site The Information. And users blasted the company after it issued filters — the popular overlays to photos and videos — that allowed users to don virtual “black-face” or “yellow-face” by pretending to be Bob
Zoe Lynch won a Google/Snapchat coding contest last year despite being new to coding. PHOTOS BY JEFFERSON GRAHAM, USA TODAY
“We want more girls and women in tech, and have them see the possibilities they can create with technology.” Lauren Baum Made with Code
Lynch’s winning creation, an augmented reality animated filter. Snapchat is especially popular among black teens: Nearly 9 in 10 say they use it, compared with 7 in 10 whites, according to an Associated Press poll.
Lynch, of South Orange, N.J., aspires to be an engineer, which is just the kind of career path Google is looking to inspire with its Made with Code initiative. “Engineers do cool things and impact the world in a good way,” Lynch says.
Marley or an anime figure. Snapchat, which has about 175 million daily users, said it wanted to join with Google to help teen girls see that many of the features they use frequently, such as filters, are made with code, said Jarvis Sam, head of global diversity initiatives for Snap. The contest attracted more than 22,000 applicants, who were asked to create an image with Blockly. Lauren Baum, the project lead on Made with Code, says Google’s reasons for being involved with Snap is simple: “We want more girls and women in tech, and have them see the possibilities they can create with technology.” Despite a louder push to make tech’s ranks more diverse, the technical staff and leadership of the largest tech companies are still largely white and male. Lynch — and others like her — could be instrumental in diversifying those ranks. She now hopes to be an engineer when she grows up, “because engineers do cool things and impact the world in a good way.”
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The evening gown competition at a Miss Black America pageant in the early 1970s. ABOVE, LEO VALS, HULTON ARCHIVE, VIA GETTY IMAGES; BELOW, COURTESY OF BRITTANY LEWIS
Pageant’s point: You are beautiful Molly Vorwerck
Special to USA TODAY
Fifty years ago, J. Morris Anderson asked his daughters, ages 5 and 7, what they wanted to be when they grew up. ❚ “Miss America!” they said, without missing a beat. ❚ Anderson, a black Philadelphia entrepreneur with ties to the NAACP and activist communities, knew that this would be impossible given the racist standards then in effect for the Miss America pageant. Until 1940, women of color were barred from participating in the pageant by a rule that said contestants must be of “the white race.” Continued on page 104
“I wanted to give them something to look forward to that wasn’t fantasy or a lie.” J. Morris Anderson Founder, Miss Black America
Miss Black America 2017-18 Brittany Lewis with J. Morris Anderson.
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104 ❚ BLACK HISTORY MONTH ❚ USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION serving as Miss Delaware in the Miss America 2014 pageant, she came across Miss Black America through her Atlantic City research. She decided to take part in the program to learn more about the pageant’s protest roots. “One of the things I really liked about the pageant was that I could very freely talk about my black experience,” Lewis says. “Miss Black America is grounded in history, so it really was a perfect fit for me.” In 1970, Cheryl Browne became the first black woman to participate in the Miss America pageant; she represented Iowa; since then, 15 black women have been named either Miss America or Miss USA, including actress Vanessa L. Williams (the first-ever black Miss America in 1983), newscaster Debbye Turner, and reality TV personality Kenya Moore.
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Anderson decided to create a pageant in the likeness of his daughters and millions of black women who did not fit that discriminatory definition of beauty. “I wanted to give them something to look forward to that wasn’t fantasy or a lie,” he says. “We wanted to change that particular aspect of our culture, and we were motivated to do it on the same night as the Miss America pageant.” The first Miss Black America pageant took place Aug. 17, 1968, at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlantic City, just a few hours after and blocks away from the Miss America pageant at Boardwalk Hall. The time and place were deliberately chosen to highlight the latter’s exclusionary practices. At the same time, a group of feminist activists rallied outside Boardwalk Hall against the restrictive beauty standards in the pageant and in society at large in what would later be known as the Miss America protest. Brittany Lewis, the reigning Miss Black America and a Ph.D. candidate at George Washington University who is studying the history of Atlantic City, says most black women didn’t feel connected to the protest, even though the events were aligned in their goals. ”Although there were black women involved, like activists Florynce Kennedy and Bonnie Allen, the majority of people who made up that protest were middleclass white women,” Lewis says. That night, Philadelphia college student Saundra Williams was crowned Miss Black America 1969 after performing the Fiji, a traditional African dance, and sharing her opinion that husbands should take on more household responsibility. Most significantly, however, Williams used the platform to discuss the need for a more inclusive pageant. “Miss America does not represent us because there has never been a black girl in the pageant,” Williams told The New York Times on the night she was crowned. “With my title, I can show black women that they too are beautiful.” By diversifying the pageant stage, Miss Black America provided an opportunity for young black women to celebrate their beauty no matter their skin color, body type, or hair texture. Many women have used the pageant to launch successful careers in entertainment, including singer Toni Braxton, WWE wrestler Sharmell Sullivan-Huffman, Good Times actress Bern Nadette Stanis, Price Is Right model Kathleen Bradley and perhaps most famously, Oprah Winfrey. A career in entertainment wasn’t behind Lewis’ decision to participate. After
‘Beauty pageants like Miss Black America are an attempt to create an institution where we build self esteem.” Kesho Scott professor of American studies
Saundra Williams, 19, center, was crowned the winner at the first Miss Black America pageant, held in Atlantic City in 1968. With her are second runner-up Linda Johnson, 21, left, and first runner-up Theresa Claytor, 20. AP
Caressa Cameron, center, is crowned Miss America 2010 by host Mario Lopez and the 2009 winner, Katie Stam. ETHAN MILLER, GETTY IMAGES, FOR PLANET HOLLYWOOD
The advent of new technologies like Instagram and Facebook have given women of color greater representation in the media, but Kesho Scott, a professor of American studies and sociology at Grinnell College in Iowa, considers Miss Black America to be just as important in 2018 as it was in 1968. “For the African-American experience, beauty pageants like Miss Black America are an attempt to create an institution where we build self esteem, where we continue to move that needle to be inclusive of diversity in the black experience,” Scott says. Miss America 2010, Caressa Cameron, expresses similar sentiments. Pageants like Miss Black America play a powerful role in validating black bodies, she says. “When I was participating in Miss America, I was a whopping size 2,” she says. “People told me I was curvy!” Cameron says that in any given year, only five or six Miss America contestants are racially diverse. Until this changes, she says, pageants like Miss Black America will continue to fill a void for those outside white contours of beauty. “This number is low not because women of color aren’t competing [in Miss America],” Cameron says. “This rejection is what drives black women to seek pageants that celebrate them because they’re not being rewarded in the mainstream media.”
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HBCUs evolve as they endure alumnus St. Elmo Brady went on to become the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United NASHVILLE — Martin Luther King Jr. States. Brady received his doctorate from Writer Langston Hughes. Civil rights ac- the University of Illinois in 1916. That history is front and center, tivist and longtime congressman John Mitchell says. Lewis. Oprah Winfrey. “Students that attend and come to Just a few names firom the long and prestigious list of leaders and innovators HBCUs see an opening to the American educated at historically black colleges Dream,” Mitchell says. “I’m not saying that’s not the case in other places, but and universities, or HBCUs. “HBCUs built the black middle class,” that is the mindset in a black college says Marybeth Gasman, director of the campus. That is encouraged by profesCenter for Minority Serving Institutions sors.” After the civil rights movement, at the University of Pennsylvania. “Without them, blacks could not be which began in the halls of HBCUs, many institutions began making it their miswhere they are today.” That legacy continues at about 100 in- sion to serve first-generation and low-institutions nationwide that were started come students — like many of the former slaves and children of to serve black communislaves that the schools ties before desegregation. originally educated, Today, about two-thirds of Mitchell says. all U.S. black engineers, More recently, many physicians and scientists schools have also focused are graduates of HBCUs. enrollment efforts on di“HBCUs were, and are, versity and new American centers of black empowerstudents. That focus ment,” Gasman says. hasn’t diminished the The schools have overall mission of the weathered competition schools, Gasman said. from larger universities, John Lewis: Graduate of “HBCUs are beginning and some have bounced Fisk University. USA TODAY to reach out to non-blacks, back after enrollment declines and financial hardships. Struggles including whites but, more importantly, persist, however. Enrollment hovers at Latinos and Asians, to increase enrollabout 300,000 students nationwide, but ment,” Gasman says. “These students interest has spiked recently at some of are mostly low-income and thus, I think, reaching out to other groups fulfills the the nation’s HBCUs. Fisk University in Nashville, which original mission, but expands it as well.” Indeed, the mission of working with counts W.E.B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells among its alumni, has endured thanks to underserved students, no matter their its legacy of high expectations, says Rea- ethnicity, brings with it its own joys, says Phyllis Freeman, a Fisk associate profesvis Mitchell, a Fisk history professor. During segregation, Mitchell says, sor of biology. “Each life I impact, each HBCUs attracted the best black students life I touch, they go back into their comin the country. Many of those students munities and its vastness,” she says. She says she could teach and do the went on to become physicists, mathsame type of research at another instituematicians and scholars. “For years, (HBCUs) had the pick of tion. But seeing the success of Fisk stuthe very best and brightest,” he says. “At dents who often are the first in their famthe end of segregation they had rich his- ily to attend college can’t be understated, tories, and there was a tradition of stu- she says. “As far as being a change agent, I think dents coming to prepare for future sucI will work here until I take my last cess.” For instance, Mitchell says, Fisk breath,” Freeman says.
Jason Gonzales
The (Nashville) Tennessean
Graduate student Jasmin Tindal works on a project in the chemistry lab at Fisk University, a historically black school in Nashville. LARRY MCCORMACK, THE TENNESSEAN
Fisk students in 1906. The university was founded in 1866 to educate freed slaves. It’s named for Gen. Clinton B. Fisk, an early benefactor. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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Graduates of Morgan State University in Baltimore, one of more than 100 historically black colleges and universities across the USA. 2014 PHOTO BY MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Filmmaker fills in the history of black colleges Karen Roberts
The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News
He may not be a household name, but Stanley Nelson is a giant in documentary filmmaking. The titles of his films are like chapters of American history — a history that most citizens should know about but that surprisingly few do. They include The Murder of Emmett Till, Freedom Riders, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple and the acclaimed The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. His latest, Tell Them We Are Rising, is the story of historically black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs. The 90-minute documentary examines the history and importance of HBCUs in the lives of black Americans — not just for educating generations of African Americans, but also for providing safe communities where they could share ideas and create advancements to better their lives. Nelson, who lives in Harlem, is a MacArthur Fellows grant recipient and has received the George Foster Peabody award for his work, along with four Emmy Awards. In 2013, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama. In an era of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” his documentaries provide insight on pivotal issues that challenge America’s views on race relations, politics and religion, among other topics. Stanley Nelson’s documentary Tell Them We Are Rising is the story of America’s historically black colleges and universities. MARK VERGARI, THE JOURNAL NEWS
Continued on page 111
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Nelson owns Firelight Films with his wife, producer Marcia Smith. The walls of his Hamilton Heights office in Upper Manhattan are covered with pictures of his upcoming project, along with photos and mementos of the famous and notso-famous people who have appreciated his work. His new film covers 150 years of HBCUs and education. Through archival materials, interviews with alumni and current students and even footage shot by students just moving onto campus, viewers are introduced to some of the 105 HBCUs across the country. They include well-known institutions such as Howard University in Washington, D.C., and Spelman College in Atlanta, as well as lesser-known schools such as St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh, N.C., and Virginia Union University in Richmond, Va. “What we learned when making the film is how important the students have been to the African-American struggle,” Nelson says. “The students have really been in the forefront of black struggle in the sit-in movements, in the Black Power movement, in the Black Lives Matter movement today.” It took five years to raise the money to get the film made, then two years for production to begin. Tell Them We Are Rising was an official selection at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and premieres on PBS Independent Lens on Feb. 19 at 8 p.m. ET. “It was a complicated film because we had to build the story,” says Nelson, who acted as producer and director. “I was surprised there’s so little research. There’s no one central text that tells the history of HBCUs, so we had to piece it together.” HBCUs opened after the Civil War to educate newly freed slaves. For a century after the war, racism and segregation at colleges and universities across the U.S. kept African Americans out, leaving HBCUs as the only option for many. “Until the late 1960s, black colleges were where 90% to 95% of black people got an education. So that is where the history lies,” Nelson says. The title refers to the response a Northern general traveling in the South after the war received after encountering a class of black students. “He said, ‘What do you want me to tell them up North about what’s happening here?’ and one of the students rose up and told him, ‘Tell them we are rising.’ So we heard that story and thought it was a great title and in some ways personified what the film was about,” Nelson says. HBCUs offer a unique tradition. Some
Students from St. Augustine’s College (now St. Augustine’s University) study during a sit-in at a whites-only lunch counter in Raleigh, N.C., around 1960. Student protests soon spread to other segregated businesses in Raleigh. BETTMANN ARCHIVE
Taun Henderson sheds a tear as he graduates from Morehouse College, the alma mater of Martin Luther King Jr.
Fraternity members and their dates cut the rug at an Easter dance at Fisk University in Nashville in the 1940s.
2013 PHOTO BY MOREHOUSE COLLEGE
An Atlanta University music student in the ’40s. The school merged with Clark University in 1988 to become Clark Atlanta University. NATIONAL ARCHIVES
attract entire families, with multiple generations choosing the same institutions. With a focus on education and community, the family atmosphere appeals to students and extended alumni who attend events and homecomings. “I think HBCUs have traditionally
been the one safe black intellectual space in the country,” Nelson says. “That’s what they represented, one generation after another.” For his part, Nelson says his career as a filmmaker has allowed him a window into many worlds.
“I love what I do,” he says. “I’m always inspired to make films. I’ve been very lucky. I had a chance to write about all these fascinating and important subjects. I’m allowed to dive in as deep as I can go and then swim to the top and get out, which is very important.”
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
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Alma mater lives MLK’s legacy Ryan W. Miller USA TODAY
Kamren Rollins wants a podium in the middle of the Morehouse College campus in Atlanta. The podium won’t just remind students of the school’s most famous alumnus, Martin Luther King Jr. It will also honor the activism of current students. “It’s like a dual effect,” says Rollins, the student government president at Morehouse. King casts a long shadow at the historically black allmale college, which was founded in 1867 as Augusta Theological Institute in Augusta, Ga., 140 miles east of Atlanta. King graduated in 1948 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and an ideological framework that would help guide his work in civil rights. Paraphrasing a statement from King’s 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail, Rollins says service to others is a moral obligation, particularly amid flashpoints for activism. In November, the issue of sexual misconduct became one such flashpoint at Morehouse. A campus memorial chapel to King was vandalized, with the words “Practice what you preach, Morehouse. #EndRapeCulture” written in red paint. Leaflets accusing specific students of sexual assault were scattered throughout the Atlanta University Center, which includes Morehouse, Clark Atlanta University and allfemale Spelman College, says C. Isaiah Smalls, editor of the student publication The Maroon Tiger. Although King’s memorial was defaced, “I feel like Martin Luther King would have wanted that to happen,” Smalls says, because it prompted others to take the issue more seriously. He started planning an issue of the Tiger focusing on the subject, and Morehouse interim president Harold Martin vowed to ramp up education on sexual misconduct. Living out King’s legacy today takes different forms. Lewis Miles, a sociology major, has worked extensively with the King Collection, an archive that preserves King’s texts, researches the civil rights icon’s history and works to incorporate King’s teachings into the classroom. “I really want to teach, so part of that, in terms of being someone who professes knowledge and gives knowledge, the early process is acquiring it,” he says. He’s spent time dissecting King’s seminal works, like the I Have a Dream speech. One line that stands out in particular for him is the landmark speech’s original title: “Normalcy, Never Again.” For Miles, that crossed-out title highlights the civil rights leader’s intentionality in his writing and humanizes the great thinker. “Sometimes I feel like in everyday life, we think these people are grandiose and are extolled and are sometimes perceived as gods and almost untouchable,” Miles says. “King was amazing, but understand that he was a father, he was a son, he was a grandson, he was a human being.” When King entered Morehouse in 1944, he wasn’t even 16 years old, and he struggled in the classroom, according to David Garrow, author of the King biography Bearing the Cross. But the school provided him access
Martin Luther King Jr., third from left in the front row, listens in class during his time at Morehouse College in the 1940s. Seven decades later, King’s influence permeates the campus. PHOTOS COURTESY OF MOREHOUSE COLLEGE
King entered Morehouse at age 15 and graduated in 1948, above, with a bachelor’s in sociology and an ideological framework for his civil rights activism.
to mentors such as Benjamin Mays, Morehouse’s president at the time. Today, mentorship remains an active part of Morehouse’s identity and students’ activism, Rollins says. He works with the group LYTEhouse, which focuses on mentoring younger students while engaging in community activism. Last winter, the group organized a program during which they slept outside on a road cutting through campus to raise awareness about homelessness in Atlanta. As he endured the cold night outside, the experience gave Rollins the chance to give up privilege and experience “the feeling of not to have,” he said. The next day, participants spearheaded a donation drive of food, toiletries, and warm clothing. “Sometimes we get so stuck in the motions that we don’t even realize that the people before us were doing these exact same things,” he says of King’s time there. If King were to look at Morehouse today, Rollins doesn’t think the civil rights leader would take issue with any of the students’ work, even if the methods aren’t the same. “We have that same light (King had), but the ways obviously that we’re going about it are so much different,” Rollins says.
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MLK inspired ‘blue eyes/brown eyes’ exercise Molly Longman and Angela Ufheil The Des Moines Register
On the morning of April 5, 1968, Jane Elliott was teaching third grade in the small Iowa town of Riceville. It was the day after civil rights champion Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. After receiving a handful of questions from students that morning asking why King had been shot, it was in the teacher’s lounge that Elliott, now 84, discovered many of her colleagues didn’t much care about what had happened to King. Some even said “it was about time” someone shot him, Elliott says. “I went back to my classroom determined no one would leave my room as ignorant about discrimination as when they came in,” she says, That’s when she conceived the “blue eyes/brown eyes” exercise that would become famous. In her own words, Elliott “created a microcosm of society in a third-grade classroom” by placing collars on the students with brown eyes and telling them that they were inferior to their blue-eyed counterparts. She gave students with blue eyes extra time at recess and told those with brown eyes that they couldn’t drink out of the water fountain. The next day, she reversed things, saying that brown-eyed students were superior to those with blue-eyes. On each day, she saw the same things happen: The so-called superior students bullied the other students, and the group with the collars didn’t do as well in their studies. “I watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating little third-graders in a space of 15 minutes,” Elliott said in A Class Divided, a 1985 documentary about her exercise for the PBS program Frontline. That documentary, as well as the many television interviews Elliott did after first creating the exercise, propelled her into the national spotlight. She has since been featured in books and films, and has received the National Mental Health Association’s award for excellence in education. The attention that Elliott and her nowfamous lesson attracted had a cost. Some people in Riceville thought she had been trying to depict the town as racist, rather than simply teach students a lesson about the effects of systemic discrimination. They felt she’d given Riceville a bad name. Some townspeople shunned Elliott.
Jane Elliott, in white, embraces Danielle Archey after speaking about racism in Tempe, Ariz. KARINA BLAND, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
Elliott gained worldwide attention for her 1968 classroom experiment that vividly demonstrated educational and social effects of discrimination based on arbitrary characteristics. ANGELA PETERSON, MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
Her children were bullied, and her parents lost their grocery store. When Elliott’s father died, her mother told her she was no longer welcome in the family. Criticism also came from outside Riceville, too. Some scholars, like Alan Kors of the University of Pennsylvania — a prominent critic of diversity and sensitivity training — called her lesson “Orwellian.” Others called the exercise an unethical experiment on children. But if her lesson was unethical, Elliott says, so, too, is the current social system that favors whites. “The skin color exercise is still acceptable in schools today. We do it on a daily basis, 24/7,” she says. That’s why Elliott says all teachers, psychologists and school administrators should have to go through the lesson. She wants all educators to better understand and support minority students. Elliott herself went on to impart the blue eye/brown eye method at training for large corporations, at prisons, and in colleges across the country, though she says she rarely does the exercise anymore because Americans are increasingly “lawsuit happy.” If teachers want to attempt similar lessons, Elliott says, they need to be pre-
pared for backlash. Her advice? Be indispensable. For her, that meant excelling at teaching students to read. “The administration had to take the flak from the 20% of parents who were furious about this exercise because they knew that 100% of the students that came into my classroom would go out reading at or above grade level,” she said. She thinks the lesson is still worth teaching. “The materials are out there,” she says. “All you have to have are educators who are brave enough to use them.” Through education, Elliott hopes to see change. “I want people to know there’s only one race on the face of the Earth, and that’s the human race. We’re all the three-hundred-and-fifty-fifth cousin of everybody else,” Elliott says. Elliott said she hopes Americans remember King’s message of equality and apply it to their lives in 2018. “Martin Luther King had a dream, and we assassinated him for it,” Elliott says. “But you can’t stop a man with dream. His dream is stronger now than it was when he was alive and we’re not going to be able to stop it.”
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‘African American’ evolves as USA does Tracy Scott Forson USA TODAY NETWORK
There was a time when being black in America meant you were most likely descended from one or more enslaved Africans who had survived the trans-Atlantic slave trade. However, as the number of African and Caribbean blacks emigrating to the USA has increased, so have the chances that someone who identifies as black or African-American is a first- or second-generation immigrant. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of African immigrants in the USA has risen about 2,500% since 1970 — from 80,000 in 1970 to about 2.1 million in 2015. That number increases to 3.8 million black immigrants when those from Caribbean nations are counted, according to 2013 data. The influx of foreign-born blacks has energized the debate about what “African American” means today. Does that category include people like the model Iman and the singer Rihanna — born in Somalia and Barbados, respectively — or can only those whose family trees were violently uprooted and replanted on U.S. soil hundreds of years ago claim that designation? At the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, exhibits are inclusive, representing the wide range of “Americans of African descent affected by the historical American experience,” said Ariana Curtis, the museum’s curator for Latino history and studies. “We understand that the African-American experience in the United States is diverse.” While many black immigrants embrace the African-American label and culture, not all are quick to jump into a melting pot that might dilute their distinct cultures. Eliza Thompson emigrated here as a child and identifies as Ghanaian. She prefers to think of the USA as a salad bowl rather than a melting pot. “The lettuce is still the lettuce,” Thompson says. “Mixed together, the lettuce, carrots and tomatoes all work. In the melting pot, you lose your identity.” There can also be a reluctance to identify as African American because of negative stereotypes of U.S.-born blacks, says Wayne Fairweather, a JamaicanAmerican who emigrated as a teen. In a country run by people of color, Fairweather says, there were no negative depictions of black citizens manufactured by those in power. So, when he was ex-
Dancers with the Visions In Motion troupe prepare to march in the West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn on Sept. 4. ABOVE: YANA PASKOVA, GETTY IMAGES; RIHANNA: PASCAL LE SEGRETAIN, GETTY IMAGES, FOR FENTY BEAUTY; IMAN: TAYLOR HILL, FILMMAGIC
Singer Rihanna, left, was born in Barbados; model Iman, in Somalia.
posed to stereotypes of U.S.-born blacks, he tended to believe them. “When you grow up in another country, you think the streets in America are literally paved in gold,” Fairweather says. “You think that all you have to do is work hard and that African Americans haven’t succeeded because they are lazy.” However, many foreign-born blacks come to recognize the effects of institutional racism, he says. “People joke about Jamaicans having multiple jobs, but after working and working and not getting ahead, you start to realize what racism is and how it affects you,” he says. Joanne Hyppolite, a curator at the Smithsonian museum who was born in Haiti, says: “Black immigrants come here, and they’re introduced to American race relations. You begin to see a shift in perspective in their own understanding of how race works in America.” Hyppolite says that despite minor misunderstandings, there has always
been a kinship between black immigrants and descendants of the enslaved that has helped shape America. “Whether that’s Stokely Carmichael (born in Trinidad), who coined the term ‘Black Power’ during the 1960’s civil rights movement, or Malcolm X, whose mother emigrated from Grenada,” Hyppolite says, “they’re all defined as African American.” That tradition of collaboration continues as the Congressional Black Caucus lobbies to secure citizenship for Haitian evacuees, and the NAACP opposes changes to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. “The bonds of cooperation are still there,” says Kevin J.A. Thomas, associate professor of sociology, demography and African studies at Penn State. “If anything is going to happen, it will make bonds stronger. We are here together. Live together as brothers or perish as fools.”
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LAST WORD
In Times Square in Manhattan, hundreds march against racism and in support of immigrants’ rights on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. SPENCER PLATT, GETTY IMAGES
Now, as then, the glimmer of a dream Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2018 brought thousands out around the country to decry racism following derogatory comments President Trump made about Caribbean and African countries, as well as proposed law changes that would expel some immigrants — including thousands who were brought to the country as children — and deny entry to others. For some, the call and response of rhetoric and nonviolent protest harks back to the world King knew. As new conflicts of race and class arise, we can use as our guide King’s timeless philosophies, which don’t merely present a dream of a better world, but also provide a blueprint for achieving freedom and prosperity for everyone. — Nichelle Smith
Contributing editors: Karen Croke, Tracy Scott Forson, Duane Gang, Lucas Grundmeier, William Ramsey, Jamila Robinson, Mark Russell, Lori Santos.
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