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December 10 - 16, 2020
VOL. 69, No. 50
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COVID-19 vaccine concerns equal skepticism for many by Najee El-Amin
Special to The New Tri-State Defender
Terri Lee Freeman, president of the National Civil Rights Museum, announces the 2018 Freedom Award honorees at a press conference on Aug. 22, 2018. (Photo: Lee Eric Smith/TSD Archives)
‘It’s time to go back home,’ NCRM’s Terri Freeman says by Dr. Sybil C. Mitchell
Special to The New Tri-State Defender
Forget what you’ve heard. Ignore speculation about a disgruntled board of directors or a director’s failure to garner a renewed contract. The National Civil Rights Museum (NCRM) is losing its chief executive officer Terri Lee Freeman because, she said, “It’s time to go back home.” Freeman offered a candid look Monday inside her recently announced resignation from the museum. Her exemplary performance at the helm was crowned by “MLK50,” the golden anniversary commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination at the Lorraine Motel, which is part of the museum. “I’m headed back home to Maryland. What was not really known is that I have been commuting for six years. As I reflect on
2020, and the kind of year it has been for me, I know that it’s time to go back home.” Sure, 2020 has been a horrendous year for the nation and the world because of the COVID-19 virus, which has killed nearly 300,000 people in the United States, including 705 in Memphis/Shelby and more than 5,000 in Tennessee, as of Tuesday (Dec. 8.) The sweep of coronavirus across the globe has left families everywhere bereaved of their loved ones. For the Freeman family, the toll has been
SEE NCRM ON PAGE 2 Throughout her tenure, Freeman was forthright in positioning the museum to be a point for exploration of relevant – and often difficult to discuss – issues unfolding locally and beyond. Nor was she shy about taking a personal stance. (Photo: Gary S. Whitlow/GSW Enterprises)
LEGACY: George Hunt painted to let others see what he saw by Dr. Sybil C. Mitchell
Special to The New Tri-State Defender
George Hunt poured out the pathos and the passion of Memphis blues on canvas and so it is altogether fitting and proper for residents in his beloved city to respond so deeply to his death last Friday (Dec. 4). According to family members, Hunt had suffered with poor health over the past two years and died at Baptist Memorial Hospital. He was 87. Hunt was the official artist for Memphis in May’s Beale Street Music Festival for 27 years, creating original art for the festival. A motorcade salute to him rolled down Beale Street on Tuesday (Dec. 8) afternoon. Hunt was born in rural Louisiana, near Lake Charles. His grandmother noted that when he was a young child, she recognized that her grandson had the ability to “see things.”
Hunt’s “America Cares/Little Rock Nine” image was featured on a U.S. postage stamp issued in 2005 as part of the diversity series, “To Form a More Perfect Nation.”
Set up downtown on the mall on Main Street (Feb. 2016), George Hunt paused to talk briefly with inquiring photographers, allowing one to capture that moment. (Photo: Shirley Jackson) The guttural, indigenous blues music of Louisianans living way back in the country inundated his life and
experiences growing up. With his later childhood spent in Texas and Hot Springs, Arkansas,
Hunt attended the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff on a football scholarship after high school. He studied art in undergraduate school, continuing post-graduate studies at the University of Memphis and New
SEE HUNT ON PAGE 3
As the U.S. government prepares to launch a major COVID-19 vaccine distribution, it faces two seemly daunting issues — how to speedily get the approved vaccines to the most at risk populations and how to get skeptical Americans, especially African Americans, to get vaccinated. African Americans are nearly three times more likely to die from COVID-19 compared to white Americans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. There is concern, however, that minorities will be unwilling to be vaccinated because of trust issues having to do with this country’s history of such medical efforts not being conducive to their wellbeing. The Tuskegee experiment that began in 1932 often is cited as an example. The U.S. Public Health Service purposely gave Black men syphilis without their knowledge, so doctors could study it to better protect white patients. Legislators and medical professionals are studying ways to gain the trust of minorities, along with the general public, to get vaccinated. State Rep. Antonio Parkinson Antonio (D-Memphis) Parkinson is aware of the concern over the vaccine in the African-American community. “There’s a lot of mistrust out there … and understandably so,” said Parkinson, who is chairman of the Shelby County legislative delegation and former chair of the Tennessee House of Representatives Democratic Caucus. “There was a time when black people were used as experiments for testing vaccines,” he said. Parkinson also understands how the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines increases many people’s skepticism. “When you look at how fast this vaccine was created, there’s a lot of people who feel like there wasn’t enough testing and they don’t know what the outcomes will be in the future as it relates to those who have received the vaccine,” he said. The New Tri-State Defender recently conducted a survey on its social media pages (@tsdmemphis on
SEE VACCINE ON PAGE 2