National
NEW ORLEANS — The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced Wednesday that it is rolling out a plan to waive debts for many victims of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters who may have mistakenly received millions of dollars in aid.
The debts, which average about $4,622 per recipient, represent slightly less than 5 percent of the roughly $8 billion that FEMA distributed to victims of Katrina and other 2005 storms. Some of the overpayments were caused by FEMA employees' own mistakes, ranging from clerical errors to failing to interview applicants, according to congressional testimony.
FEMA is expected to mail out roughly 90,000 letters next week to inform disaster victims that they may be eligible for debt waivers. The recipients will have 60 days to respond and request a waiver.
Last year, the agency sent out debt notices in an effort to recover more than $385 million it says was improperly paid to victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005.
People are eligible for waivers if their household adjusted gross income on their most recent federal tax return was less than $90,000 and a FEMA error was solely responsible for the improper payment. The improper payment can't involve any fraud or misrepresentation by the recipient.
The waiver only applies to disasters declared between Aug. 28, 2005 — the day before Katrina's landfall — and the end of 2010. Households earning more than $90,000 could be eligible for partial waivers.
Another requirement is that collecting a debt would have to be "against equity and good conscience," meaning that it would be "unfair under the circumstances of the case to collect the debt," FEMA says.
In their responses to the waiver letter, disaster victims must explain why collecting the debt would cause them "serious financial hardship," FEMA says. Recipients also must specify how they spent the money and why they can't return the funds to FEMA.
In December, Congress approved legislation that allows FEMA to waive many of the debts. Before President Barack Obama signed it into law, FEMA had said it was required to make an effort to recover improper payments, even if the recipient wasn't at fault.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat who was one of the provision's sponsors, praised FEMA for "moving swiftly and aggressively" to implement a waiver plan.
"This announcement will bring great relief to many honest disaster survivors who never intended to misuse funds or take anything to which they were not entitled," Landrieu said in a statement. "To have forced people who experienced great tragedy to pay large sums of money back to the government because of someone else's mistake would have been incredibly unfair."
FEMA's collection efforts aren't limited to the 2005 storms. The agency has mailed out more than 6,000 debt letters to survivors of other recent disasters, including floods.
About 2,500 recipients, including 930 victims of the 2005 hurricanes, had appealed their debt notices as of December. FEMA says about 30 percent of those appeals successfully erased at least some of the debt.
Davida Finger, a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans who has helped several people appeal their debts, said it's "absolutely unclear" how FEMA will decide whether an improper payment resulted from a mistake by the agency or the recipient.
"There seems to be a lot of subjectivity and discretion in making these decisions," she said.
One of Finger's clients is David Bellinger, a 63-year-old blind man who rented an apartment in Atlanta after Katrina wrecked his New Orleans home. FEMA has asked Bellinger to pay back more than $3,200 in federal aid he received to help pay his rent. The agency claimed he received a duplication of benefits. Bellinger says the agency is mistaken, but FEMA rejected his appeal in December.
"The people who can least afford to pay this money back are being hardest-hit by this," Finger said.
Landrieu said the waiver provision had encountered some opposition before a compromise measure was approved by Congress.
"This was not easily done," she said. "There was some pushback about doing any forgiveness whatsoever."
Sen. Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat who wrote the provision, said FEMA has significantly improved its process for distributing disaster aid since Katrina.
"My sense is if there were a disaster today, you would not see nearly as many mistakes with FEMA," he said.
FEMA initiated the debt-collection process in 2006, but a federal judge in New Orleans ordered the agency to suspend the effort in 2007 after a class-action lawsuit challenged FEMA's push to recover alleged overpayments. FEMA later paid more than $2.6 million to settle the claims and reinstituted the process last year.
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court has declared California's same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional, paving the way for a likely U.S. Supreme Court showdown on the voter-approved law.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 2-1 Tuesday that a lower court judge interpreted the U.S. Constitution correctly in 2010 when he declared the ban, known as Proposition 8, to be a violation of the civil rights of gays and lesbians.
The measure, which passed with 52 percent of the vote in 2008, outlawed same-sex unions just five months after they became legal in the state.
Lawyers for Proposition 8 sponsors and for two couples who sued to overturn the ban have said they would appeal to the Supreme Court if they did not receive a favorable ruling from the 9th Circuit.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The U.S. Justice Department was wrong to block South Carolina from requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote, the state's top prosecutor argued in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Enforcement of the new law "will not disenfranchise any potential South Carolina voter," Attorney General Alan Wilson argues in the suit against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. "The changes have neither the purpose nor will they have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority."
The Justice Department in December rejected South Carolina's law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, saying tens of thousands of the state's minorities might not be able to cast ballots under the new law because they don't have the right photo ID. It was the first such law to be refused by the federal agency in nearly 20 years.
The department said the law, enacted last year, failed to meet the requirements of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory practices that prevent blacks from voting. The Voting Rights Act also requires the Justice Department to approve changes to South Carolina's election laws because of the state's past failure to protect the voting rights of blacks.
In the lawsuit, Wilson asks that a panel of three federal judges consider the case and declare that the rejected portions of the law are not discriminatory. Wilson also notes that South Carolina's law is similar to one in Indiana that has already been upheld as constitutional. He says the photo ID requirements "are not a bar to voting but a temporary inconvenience no greater than the inconvenience inherent in voting itself."
Citing data from the National Conference of State Legislatures, Wilson says at least 31 states require voters to show some sort of ID at the polls, and 15 states have enacted photo ID requirements. Since 1988, South Carolina law has required voters to show either a voter registration card or some sort of government-issued ID to be allowed to vote on a regular ballot.
Immediately after the Justice Department's December decision, Wilson had vowed that he would fight the issue in court, saying at the time, "nothing in this act stops people from voting."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice did not immediately comment on the lawsuit. The American Civil Liberties Union said it disagreed with the lawsuit and planned to oppose it in court.
Passed by a Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Nikki Haley, South Carolina's law also required the state to determine how many voters lack state-issued IDs so that the Election Commission can inform them of law changes. The Department of Motor Vehicles will issue free state photo identification cards to those voters.
The federal review of South Carolina's law has sparked a dustup between state agencies over the number of residents who lack state-issued IDs. The State Election Commission has said nearly 240,000 people didn't have an appropriate ID, but the DMV director said that list included more than 37,000 records that appeared to belong to dead people, plus more than 91,000 whose state license records had been dropped because they had IDs in another state.
The last time the Justice Department rejected a voter ID law was in 1994 when Louisiana passed a measure requiring a picture ID. After changes were made, it was approved by the agency. Justice officials are reviewing Texas' new law. Kansas, Tennessee and Wisconsin also passed laws this year, but they are not under the agency's review.
Prepping for another run for the White House, President Barack Obama recently launched an African Americans for Obama campaign to target Black voters
"I don't think there's a better time than African-American History month to consider the tremendous progress we've made through the sacrifices of so many, or a better time to recommit to the challenges we face right now," said Obama in a video to his supporters.
It is expected that the Democrats would work to shore up their Black base right before the president's bid for re-election. The dampened enthusiasm among Black voters who are facing 15.8 percent unemployment and rapidly declining wealth levels is also expected. The Black unemployment number is more than double that of white Americans, which stands at 7.5 percent. Throughout the Obama presidency, White unemployment has improved, while Black unemployment has gotten markedly worse.
Ironically, the "African Americans for Obama" website says that the president has been fighting "to restore economic security that has been eroding for American families for a decade."
President Obama won 96 percent of the Black vote in 2008. His approval rating today stands at 91 percent. The black community continues to be the strongest and most loyal base of the Obama Administration.
Political commentator, Yvette Carnell, has something to say about the issue:
"I have no problem with Obama targeting African-American voters. None. He needs us and he knows it," said Carnell. "What I do have a problem with, however, is how most of the targeting begins during campaign season and ends on election day. We're more than just a voting bloc. We're real citizens with real needs, needs which I hope the President begins to acknowledge and address."
Columbia University Professor Christopher Emdin doesn't agree with Carnell's assessment.
"I do not believe the 'frustration and dampened enthusiasm' cited within Af-American communities is as pervasive as we are led to believe. With that being said, these facts do not negate the fact that these communities are dealing with serious issues related to education and poverty," said Dr. Emdin. "I do not believe that Obama's campaigning in Af-American communities is reflective of some ulterior agenda to "use them when he needs them. It very well may be an effort to make a shift to explicitly focus on the needs of this community."
The pending re-election of Barack Obama has put Black voters in a quandary. While many would agree that conditions have worsened for the Black community under Obama, the Republican Party provides no reasonable alternatives. In many cases, Black people have become the political orphans of America:
You can either live with the parents who abuse you or live with the child molester down the street. While one fate is clearly worse than the other, there is no end to the pain in sight.
It is actually logical for the Obama Administration to keep Black voters on the back-burner. When a group gives you 91 percent approval and asks for nothing in return, there is almost no political incentive to do anything for them. This calculation likely played a role in the statement that the "rising tide will lift all boats" made three years ago, when the president was asked about inequality in wealth and unemployment. The "lift all boats" policy was a clear and miserable failure, for most economic experts can tell you that racial inequality is not going to fix itself without targeted economic policy.
Right now, in the Black community, there are at least two types of people: those who are suffering and those who are not. The suffering group consists of the poor, unemployed, and those who live under the thumb of the criminal justice system. The rest of us have jobs, food to eat and are not impacted directly by mass incarceration. If you're in the second group, it's difficult to find fault with the Obama Administration, for a Black president grants the symbolic comfort that comes along with the "Mama I Made It" syndrome that justifies the trade-offs many of us make for the sake of economic and social progress in a White supremacist society. Being the first Black president is the granddaddy of all "proud mama" moments, so there are millions willing to forgive nearly any short-coming of the Obama White House to maintain access to the throne.
For those who care about the poor, there is almost no redemption when the president barely mentions poverty in his speeches. For the unemployed, it's hard to imagine how your life will get better by supporting an administration that helped white folks find jobs while letting the Black numbers reach levels approaching those of the Great Depression. For those suffering with the effects of mass incarceration, it's hard to get excited about a president who has not directly confronted the debilitating effects of the drug war, which has destroyed millions of families and an entire generation of children. All of these issues indicate a state of emergency in the Black community; but thus far, we've only given White Americans the right to express dissatisfaction with their condition.
The implicit African American slogan for the Democratic Party is "You should just stop complaining, because the Republicans are even worse than we are." The threat of political punishment is clearly enough to secure the Black vote without doing a thing. But at the same time, the Black political orphans of America do have a choice. WEB Dubois, when faced with few quality political options 50 years ago, simply said that he refused to vote at all. Rather than behaving like a teenage girl who shares her body with the first man who buys her a cheeseburger, Dubois advocated for the idea that we save our votes for politicians who have truly worked to earn them.
After a mass holdout from conscientious Black voters, perhaps the Democrats will then strive to honestly earn the Black vote instead of simply telling us that they are not as horrible as the Republicans. It should not be taboo to request that Black voters have enough self-respect to demand that all politicians give priority to the issues that lead to our suffering. There are no victims, just volunteers, and we don't have to be political orphans forever.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University.
The labels used to describe Americans of African descent mark the movement of a people from the slave house to the White House. Today, many are resisting this progression by holding on to a name from the past: "black."
For this group – some descended from U.S. slaves, some immigrants with a separate history – "African-American" is not the sign of progress hailed when the term was popularized in the late 1980s. Instead, it's a misleading connection to a distant culture.
The debate has waxed and waned since African-American went mainstream, and gained new significance after the son of a black Kenyan and a white American moved into the White House. President Barack Obama's identity has been contested from all sides, renewing questions that have followed millions of darker Americans:
What are you? Where are you from? And how do you fit into this country?
"I prefer to be called black," said Shawn Smith, an accountant from Houston. "How I really feel is, I'm American."
"I don't like African-American. It denotes something else to me than who I am," said Smith, whose parents are from Mississippi and North Carolina. "I can't recall any of them telling me anything about Africa. They told me a whole lot about where they grew up in Macomb County and Shelby, N.C."
Gibre George, an entrepreneur from Miami, started a Facebook page called "Don't Call Me African-American" on a whim. It now has about 300 "likes."
"We respect our African heritage, but that term is not really us," George said. "We're several generations down the line. If anyone were to ship us back to Africa, we'd be like fish out of water."
"It just doesn't sit well with a younger generation of black people," continued George, who is 38. "Africa was a long time ago. Are we always going to be tethered to Africa? Spiritually I'm American. When the war starts, I'm fighting for America."
Joan Morgan, a writer born in Jamaica who moved to New York City as a girl, remembers the first time she publicly corrected someone about the term: at a book signing, when she was introduced as African-American and her family members in the front rows were appalled and hurt.
"That act of calling me African-American completely erased their history and the sacrifice and contributions it took to make me an author," said Morgan, a longtime U.S. citizen who calls herself Black-Caribbean American. (Some insist Black should be capitalized.)
She said people struggle with the fact that black people have multiple ethnicities because it challenges America's original black-white classifications. In her view, forcing everyone into a name meant for descendants of American slaves distorts the nature of the contributions of immigrants like her black countrymen Marcus Garvey and Claude McKay.
Morgan acknowledges that her homeland of Jamaica is populated by the descendants of African slaves. "But I am not African, and Africans are not African-American," she said.
In Latin, a forerunner of the English language, the color black is "niger." In 1619, the first African captives in America were described as "negars," which became the epithet still used by some today.
The Spanish word "negro" means black. That was the label applied by white Americans for centuries.
The word black also was given many pejorative connotations – a black mood, a blackened reputation, a black heart. "Colored" seemed better, until the civil rights movement insisted on Negro, with a capital N.
Then, in the 1960s, "black" came back – as an expression of pride, a strategy to defy oppression.
"Every time black had been mentioned since slavery, it was bad," says Mary Frances Berry, a University of Pennsylvania history professor and former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Reclaiming the word "was a grass-roots move, and it was oppositional. It was like, 'In your face.'"
Afro-American was briefly in vogue in the 1970s, and lingers today in the names of some newspapers and university departments. But it was soon overshadowed by African-American, which first sprouted among the black intelligentsia.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson is widely credited with taking African-American mainstream in 1988, before his second presidential run.
Berry remembers being at a 1988 gathering of civil rights groups organized by Jackson in Chicago when Ramona Edelin, then president of the National Urban Coalition, urged those assembled to declare that black people should be called African-American.
Edelin says today that there was no intent to exclude people born in other countries, or to eliminate the use of black: "It was an attempt to start a cultural offensive, because we were clearly at that time always on the defensive."
"We said, this is kind of a compromise term," she continued. "There are those among us who don't want to be referred to as African. And there also those among us who don't want to be referred to as American. This was a way of bridging divisions among us or in our ideologies so we can move forward as a group."
Jackson, who at the time may have been the most-quoted black man in America, followed through with the plan.
"Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some land base, some historical, cultural base," Jackson told reporters at the time. "African-Americans have hit that level of cultural maturity."
The effect was immediate. "Back in those days we didn't talk about things going viral, but that's what you would say today. It was quite remarkable," said the columnist Clarence Page, then a reporter. "It was kind of like when Black Power first came in the '60s, there was all kinds of buzz among black folks and white folks about whether or not I like this."
Page liked it – he still uses it interchangeably with black – and sees an advantage to changing names.
"If we couldn't control anything else, at least we could control what people call us," Page said. "That's the most fundamental right any human being has, over what other people call you. (African-American) had a lot of psychic value from that point of view."
It also has historical value, said Irv Randolph, managing editor of the Philadelphia Tribune, a black newspaper that uses both terms: "It's a historical fact that we are people of African descent."
"African-American embraces where we came from and where we are now," he said. "We are Americans, no doubt about that. But to deny where we came from doesn't make any sense to me."
Jackson agrees about such denial. "It shows a willful ignorance of our roots, our heritage and our lineage," he said Tuesday. "A fruit without a root is dying."
He observed that the history of how captives were brought here from Africa is unchangeable, and that Senegal is almost as close to New York as Los Angeles.
"If a chicken is born in the oven," Jackson said, "that doesn't make it a biscuit."
Today, 24 years after Jackson popularized African-American, it's unclear what term is preferred by the community. A series of Gallup polls from 1991 to 2007 showed no strong consensus for either black or African-American. In a January 2011 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 42 percent of respondents said they preferred black, 35 percent said African-American, 13 percent said it doesn't make any difference, and 7 percent chose "some other term."
Meanwhile, a record number of black people in America – almost 1 in 10 – were born abroad, according to census figures.
Tomi Obaro is one of them. Her Nigerian-born parents brought her to America from England as a girl, and she became a citizen last year. Although she is literally African-American, the University of Chicago senior says the label implies she is descended from slaves. It also feels vague and liberal to her.
"It just sort of screams this political correctness," Obaro said. She and her black friends rarely use it to refer to themselves, only when they're speaking in "proper company."
"Or it's a word that people who aren't black use to describe black people," she said.
Or it's a political tool. In a Senate race against Obama in 2004, Alan Keyes implied that Obama could not claim to share Keyes' "African-American heritage" because Keyes' ancestors were slaves. During the Democratic presidential primary, some Hillary Clinton supporters made the same charge.
Last year, Herman Cain, then a Republican presidential candidate, sought to contrast his roots in the Jim Crow south with Obama's history, and he shunned the label African-American in favor of "American black conservative." Rush Limbaugh mocked Obama as a "halfrican-American."
Then there are some white Americans who were born in Africa.
Paulo Seriodo is a U.S. citizen born in Mozambique to parents from Portugal. In 2009 he filed a lawsuit against his medical school, which he said suspended him after a dispute with black classmates over whether Seriodo could call himself African-American.
"It doesn't matter if I'm from Africa, and they are not!" Seriodo wrote at the time. "They are not allowing me to be African-American!"
And so the saga of names continues.
"I think it's still evolving," said Edelin, the activist who helped popularize African-American. "I'm content, for now, with African and American."
"But," she added, "that's not to say that it won't change again."
Event to Highlight Winners of National Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Competitions
WASHINGTON, DC -- President Barack Obama will host the second White House Science Fair on Tuesday, Feb. 7, which celebrates student winners of a broad range of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions from across the country.
The President will also announce key steps that the Administration and its partners are taking to help more students excel in math and science, and earn degrees in these subjects.
At the fair, the President will view exhibits of student work, ranging from breakthrough research to new inventions, followed by remarks to an audience of students, science educators and business leaders on the importance of STEM education to the country's economic future.
The President hosted the first-ever White House Science Fair in late 2010, fulfilling a commitment he made at the launch of his "Educate to Innovate" campaign to inspire students to excel in math and science.
As the President noted then, "If you win the NCAA championship, you come to the White House. Well, if you're a young person and you produce the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too."
In addition, over the past year, the President met with the three young women who won the Google Science Fair, met a student robotics team on his bus tour through North Carolina and Virginia, and made a surprise appearance at the New York City Science Fair.
Thank you [Marvin] Doc Cheatham of the National Action Network (NAN) for being an ardent court observer of the HBCU litigation in downtown Baltimore, U.S. District Court of Maryland.
Cheatham was invited by me to speak with the Monumental City Bar Association's (MCBA) general body on Jan. 26 to give members details on the case and to explain the import of supporting and participating in this most crucial litigation of our time. Our mere presence in the courtroom as conscientious observers was all that he had asked in exchange for the information shared.
On Jan. 31, I accepted Cheatham's request, walked down to the federal court and spent the entire day observing, and I was glad I did. The case was truly a clash of the titans. It was so intriguing that I couldn't leave until the day was almost done. I urge anyone who believes in justice to do the same.
The HBCU litigation is serious. It is the Brown v. Board of Education of our day and is being watched all over the country by everyone except, perhaps, by those it should matter to the most -- us. The plaintiffs, Coalition for Equity and Excellence in Maryland Higher Education (Coalition) consists of Maryland's four HBCUs: Morgan State University, Coppin State University, Bowie State University, and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
They are represented and lead by none other than the esteemed nationally renowned civil rights attorney, John C. Brittain, Micheal D. Jones, et al. The defendant, State of Maryland (State), is being represented and lead by Craig A. Thompson, Kenneth L. Thompson, et al. The identified cast are well respected attorneys on a local and national scale, joined at center court for a battle royale -- and they happen to be African Americans pitted against one another in a fight for equality that would make Armageddon seem like a schoolyard tussle.
I do not believe a single spectator in the entire courtroom was disappointed by the performances on both sides of the trial table. Not to mention Craig A. Thompson and Kenneth L. Thompson are erstwhile members of MCBA, although I firmly believe they are on the wrong side of this issue.
Be that as it may, perhaps the most obvious and strange irony of the day was remembering when Craig A. Thompson hosted the radio show "The Front Page" on Morgan State University Radio WEAA, 88.9 FM. I used to listen to the show and it was actually pretty good. Interestingly, he's now fighting to maintain vestiges of segregation at the very institution that was at least partially responsible for his professional development.
This is not to single out and slight my good friend Craig. I have a great deal of respect for him, his body of work, and stellar accomplishments --but it is a fact that is undeniably newsworthy and worth mentioning.
Arguably, it either shows him to be the consummate professional who believes that everyone is entitled to competent legal representation, no matter how unpopular the cause, --including the State of Maryland, or that he has come back to dine off of the hand that once nourished him. However, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I just happen to be Morgan State University alum.
The fact is many of us have benefitted from HBCUs whether we attended them or not. They offer opportunities that are not readily available in other venues. To me, the Coalition's case is about extending those same opportunities to all manner of people. It is about forcing the State to expand its HBCUs mission(s), programs, and funding, as required by law, and to honor its 2000 Partnership Agreement with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights. It is about ensuring that HBCUs become more competitive in their quest to increase enrollment and educate more students around the world. In other words, HBCUs want the capacity to do the things well-funded traditionally white Maryland institutions have been doing with our State and federal tax dollars for years --educate more people. Now, who can legitimately argue with that?
The Coalition sued the State of Maryland for violating the 14th Amendment of the Constitution as interpreted by U.S. v. Fordice (1992). They argue that Maryland has "fail[ed] to eradicate policies and practices regarding institutional mission, programmatic duplication and inequality, and operational and capital funding that are traceable to the prior system of de jure segregation."
The HBCU litigation is about diversity and inclusion. In these modern times of multi-cultural and diverse student backgrounds, Maryland's HBCUs seek to encourage all races, nationalities, and social statuses to consider HBCUs for a quality education –not solely African Americans and the disadvantaged. Although HBCUs are proud of their heritage and remain committed to their historic mission, unless the State: (1) expands its HBCUs' limited mission that segregates African Americans and the disadvantaged from others, (2) provides for lawful operational and capital funding to attract a more diverse student body, and (3) stop permitting the unlawful duplication and inequality of unique HBCU flagship programs by traditionally white institutions in close geographical proximity, HBCUs will become less attractive, and less able to compete in the ever changing global market. As a result, the educational experience offered by Maryland's HBCUs will become less enticing and their very existence less relevant.
As agreed by the members assembled at our meeting on Jan. 26, MCBA stands firmly against segregation and other forms of discrimination. We vehemently support with fervor the Coalition's quest to force the State of Maryland to comply with the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution, and to honor its contractual agreement to eradicate de jure segregation in education.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The recording was forgotten, and so, too, was the odd twist of history that brought together Malcolm X and a bespectacled Ivy Leaguer fated to become one of America's top diplomats.
The audiotape of Malcolm X's 1961 address in Providence might never have surfaced at all if 22-year-old Brown University student Malcolm Burnley hadn't stumbled across a reference to it in an old student newspaper. He found the recording of the little-remembered visit gathering dust in the university archives.
"No one had listened to this in 50 years," Burnley told The Associated Press. "There aren't many recordings of him before 1962. And this is a unique speech – it's not like others he had given before."
In the May 11, 1961 speech delivered to a mostly white audience of students and some residents, Malcolm X combines blistering humor and reason to argue that blacks should not look to integrate into white society but instead must forge their own identities and culture.
At the time, Malcolm X, 35, was a loyal supporter of the black separatist movement Nation of Islam, now based in Chicago. He would be assassinated four years later after leaving the group and crafting his own more global, spiritual ideology.
The legacy of slavery and racism, he told the crowd of 800, "has made the 20 million black people in this country a dead people. Dead economically, dead mentally, dead spiritually. Dead morally and otherwise. Integration will not bring a man back from the grave."
The rediscovery of the speech could be the whole story. But Burnley found the young students in the crowd that night proved to be just as fascinating.
Malcolm X was prompted to come to Brown by an article about the growing Black Muslim movement published in the Brown Daily Herald. The article by Katharine Pierce, a young student at Pembroke College, then the women's college at Brown, was first written for a religious studies class. It caught the eye of the student paper's editor, Richard Holbrooke.
Holbrooke would become a leading American diplomat, serving as U.S. Ambassador to Germany soon after that nation's reunification, ambassador to the United Nations and President Obama's special adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan before his death in 2010 at age 69.
But in 1961 Holbrooke was 20, and eager to use the student newspaper to examine race relations – an unusual interest on an Ivy League campus with only a handful of black students.
Pierce's article ran in the newspaper's magazine and made her the first woman whose name was featured on the newspaper's masthead.
Somehow, the article made its way to Malcolm X. His staff and Holbrooke worked out details of the visit weeks in advance. Campus officials were wary: Malcolm X had been banned from the University of California-Berkeley and Queens College in New York.
Tickets – 50 cents – for the Brown speech sold quickly. About 800 people filled the venue, the 19th-century, Romanesque Sayles Hall, meant to hold about 500.
Pierce introduced Malcolm X and recalls him vividly.
"He came surrounded by a security detail," she recalls. "You got the sense – this is an important person. He was handsome, absolutely charismatic. I was just bewildered that my class paper could have led to something like this."
In his speech, Malcolm X outlined Black Muslims' beliefs and argued that black Americans cannot wait for white Americans to offer them equality.
"No, we are not anti-white," he said. "But we don't have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already... He has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people."
Richard Nurse, one of three black students in his Brown University class in 1961, came to the speech with his mind made up against Malcolm X.
"I very strongly believed in integration," Nurse said in a telephone interview from his New Jersey home. "These were ideas I had accepted, adopted. Here I was at this Ivy League university. But he confounded me a little bit. I had never heard a black man in public speak as forcefully as Malcolm X did that night. It was cataclysmic."
Nurse, now 72 and retired from teaching at Rutgers University, said the speech didn't cause him to change his views. But he said he understood Malcolm X's message better years later when, in the U.S. Army, he was barred from all-white USO clubs and movie theaters in the South.
"Now things have changed to the point where that kind of notion (separatism) is no longer even considered," he said.
Pierce said the speech exposed her and other students in the audience to a different side of America. She gives Holbrooke credit for bringing Malcolm X to campus.
Holbrooke joined the foreign service after graduation and was posted to Vietnam in 1962. He visited Pierce in Hong Kong, where she worked as a teacher. She went on to work on international refugee projects and at Yale University and now creates computer training programs.
NEW YORK — Fans of "Soul Train" boogied down Broadway wearing afro wigs and bell bottoms on Saturday while others recounted their favorite episodes at a Harlem meeting hall in tribute to the show's late creator, Don Cornelius.
About 100 dancers descended on Times Square in a "flash mob" organized through the Internet. As startled tourists looked on, they recreated one of the show's "Soul Train lines" in which people would take turns dancing toward a TV camera while showing off their most outrageous moves.
"Don Cornelius was a big influence in my life, and I just wanted to pay tribute," said disc jockey Jon Quick, as he held up a speaker blasting disco grooves. "He was playing the music that nobody else wanted to play. He was an amazing man."
Cornelius, 75, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Wednesday. He had suffered from health problems, a difficult divorce, and had pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor spousal battery charge in 2009.
But on Saturday fans praised Cornelius' vision in creating, hosting and selling "Soul Train" to television stations that were originally skeptical about programming aimed at blacks. The show aired from 1971 to 2006.
"Don Cornelius brought soul to the whole world," said Ramona Hamm, 37, who came to Times Square with her 9-year-old daughter, Kayla Charles. The dancers bounced down Broadway for about 45 minutes until police told the party to disperse.
In Harlem, activist Al Sharpton led a tribute to Cornelius as part of the weekly community meeting at the headquarters of his National Action Network. In 1974, a 19-year-old Sharpton appeared on "Soul Train" to present an award to musician James Brown.
Singer Roberta Flack said Cornelius was an inspiration to other black performers and entrepreneurs.
"He didn't have a great big light telling him, 'Go over here, don't go over there, watch where you step, there's a hole right there,'" Flack said. "He stepped."
Former "Soul Train" dancer Tyrone Proctor recalled how he hid in the trunk of a friend's car to get through the gates of the studio where "Soul Train" was filmed in 1972. Cornelius liked his dance moves and let him stay, dubbing Proctor "The Bone" because he was so skinny.
"He turned us into stars," Proctor said. Moves that "Soul Train" dancers developed spread nationwide and are now staples of music videos and pop concerts.
"Blocking, popping, ticking, waacking, punking – when Madonna does what she does at the Super Bowl, you'll see some of these things done there," Proctor said. "Don Cornelius created all of this. It came out of his mind."
Fans recalled tuning in to see "Soul Train's" cartoon train chugging across their television screens. When Flack recalled Cornelius' stiff-necked delivery, the Harlem crowd of about 300 people laughed knowingly.
William "A.J. Dynamite" Aponte, a keyboard player, said he was ecstatic as a kid when his idol, Elton John, appeared on the show. He says the appearance showed that people of all races could find common ground in music.
"He sang 'Benny and the Jets,' and I thought it was so great because Elton John is not black, he's white and he's British," Aponte said. "It influenced me to want to do music."
Proctor said Cornelius was also generous. When Proctor won a car on "American Bandstand," "Soul Train's" competition, Cornelius paid the $334.25 in taxes so the struggling dancer could receive his award.
"He wrote the check out and that was it, no questions asked. He just said, 'Go get the car,'" Proctor said.
Proctor and other speakers said they were shocked when they heard that Cornelius had committed suicide. Author Terrie Williams named other black performers who had killed themselves and said Cornelius' death should be a warning for victims of depression to seek help.
"One of the things that Don's death brought us to is that we've got to look in the mirror before we end up in this kind of situation," Sharpton told the crowd.
WASHINGTON — In the most impressive surge for the job market since the middle of last decade, the United States added 243,000 jobs in January, far more than economists expected. The unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent, the lowest in three years.
For African-Americans, the rate dropped 14 percent, from 15.8 percent in December to 13.6 percent in January. Unemployment for Black men dropped to 12.7 percent from 15.7 percent. The unemployment rate for Black women saw a drop from 13.9 to 12.6.
Hiring accelerated across the economy and up and down the pay scale. The high-salary professional services industry added 70,000 jobs, the most in 10 months. Manufacturing added 50,000, the most in a year.
The report Friday from the Labor Department sent money pouring into the stock market and out of more conservative investments in bonds. Dow Jones industrial average futures, virtually flat before the report was released at 8:30 a.m. EST, jumped 100 points.
The stock market is already off to its fastest start in 15 years as more investors start to believe the economic recovery is finally for real and will only get stronger. The Dow has gained 4 percent in 2012.
It was the most jobs added since and April and May 2010, when 277,000 and 458,000 jobs were created. But those months were skewed by massive hiring for the census. Before that, the last month with more job creation was March 2006.
The unemployment rate was down two ticks from last month and the lowest since an 8.3 percent reading in February 2009. It was also the fifth consecutive month that the rate has fallen, the first time that has happened since late 1994.
The report seemed certain to shake up the presidential campaign, which is expected to turn on the economy. Unemployment was 7.8 percent when President Barack Obama took office in and 10 percent, its peak for the economic downturn, nine months later.
Employers have added an average of 201,000 jobs a month in the past three months. That's 50,000 more jobs per month than the economy averaged in each month last year.
The Labor Department's January jobs report was filled with other encouraging data and revisions. The economy added 200,000 more jobs in 2011 than first thought.
The unemployment rate is nearly a percentage point lower than over the summer, when many feared a recession was imminent.
Impressively, the job gains last month were spread across the economy. Even the beleaguered construction sector added 21,000 jobs, its second month of strong gains. That figure has probably been helped by unseasonably warm weather this winter.
The month of February is a great time for everyone to celebrate Black History, but for Southwest Airlines, it's a yearlong celebration. Events range from local activities like actively supporting the Greater Baltimore Urban League (GBUL) and their youth programs to honoring World War II heroes nationwide as the official airline of the Tuskegee Airmen; Southwest Airlines honors African American Heritage and is proud to be part of this community.
To continue the yearlong commitment to the African American community, Southwest Airlines will feature a community-based African American organization in a monthly video to highlight the impactful work they've done. The featured organizations are part of the long-standing relationships Southwest has developed during the last 40 years. To see the videos and photos of these organizations, visit www.southwest.com/blackhistory.
"Southwest Airlines' long heritage of serving the African American community stems from the Company's commitment to diversity at all levels—whether ideas, knowledge, or actions," said Ellen Torbert, Southwest Airlines' Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion. "With more than 80 African American community based organizations as partners, an active Corporate Community Affairs team, and a diverse workforce, we can take pride in a Company built out of the heart of our communities."
Southwest Airlines is dedicated to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride and Company Spirit. For more than 40 years, Southwest's commitment to the communities it serves goes beyond the runway; from Employees providing countless hours of community service to giving the Customers the freedom to fly. To read more about Southwest commitment, visit www.southwest.com/cares.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has one hell of a nerve. In an image that has gone viral, she put her finger in President Obama's face, apparently lecturing him about something or other, making her the pure picture of arrogant disrespect. Apparently, she has learned from the best of the marketers. Before her finger-wagging diatribe, her book Scorpions for Breakfast was ranked 285,568 on the Amazon list. By the time she finished promoting and defending her disrespect, with appearances on Fox News and other networks, the book rose from its lowly perch to be ranked at 21 by Thursday and at 15 by Sunday. And, you know, I almost bit by buying the book myself, figuring that I ought to read about something I'm going to talk about. But Kindle lets you "sample" and the sample was not impressive. And Amazon lets you browse parts of the book. Also unimpressive. At the end of the day, I refuse to enrich a woman who lacks such basic disrespect that she has to finger wag and still does not have the good sense to apologize. Shame on her and shame on Arizona!
She is not the first, though, and she won't be the last to disrespect President Obama and the First Family. Indeed, from the time President Obama was nominated the disrespect has been replete, and it has had a racial component that only an ostrich would deny. Brewer played the race card, with body language that screamed "boy." Then she said President Obama was "disrespectful" when he walked away from her mid-conversation. She is lucky that President Obama has such amazing self-restraint. I can imagine quite a few folks, failing to relish the experience of a leader so undisciplined as to resort to finger wagging, who might have responded very differently than President Obama did. Later, Governor Brewer said she felt "threatened" by President Obama. Give me a break! This is classic Birth of A Nation, with the fragile white woman so threatened by brutish black man that she runs off a cliff. If anyone should have felt threatened by the conversation, it was President Obama, which is perhaps why he walked away. Look at the picture. Who looks contained, and who looks out of control? Brewer's invocation of racial stereotypes sent her pathetic book rising to the charts, just like Limbaugh's racial attacks on President Obama keep his ratings up.
The insults to the Obamas have been too numerous to detail, but I was appalled when Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) dared discuss the First Lady's posterior, and even more appalled when legions of people did not rise and call him on it. Similarly, South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson shouted "You Lie" when the President was speaking and went on to raise money in the wake of his disrespect. Kansas House Speaker Mike O'Neal, a Republican, circulated an email describing our First Lady Mrs. Yo-Mama, then clumsily apologized that he didn't read the whole email. While most decent people consider children hands off – that was the case for Amy Carter and Chelsea Clinton – the Obama girls also have been the subjects of sickly racist jokes. The Obamas have been stoic in the face of crazy racism, but Brewer says our President is thin-skinned. He didn't write a book replete with whining complaints about the response to her racist SB 1070 that not only attempted to close borders, but also charged law enforcement officials with stopping people who "look" like illegal residents of our country. If you can't take the heat, Mrs. Brewer, then stay out of the legislation. And keep your finger out of people's faces.
Write, call, email Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. Jan Brewer needs to know that while some people are grabbing up her book, others see through her as a disrespectful citizen who would stoop to finger-pointing theatre to take her mediocre book from the bottom of Amazon pile to the top. I can't say it enough –shame on you Jan Brewer. You are very blessed and highly favored to have chosen to wag your finger at a man of restraint. Don't try it anywhere else, because the next person might meet you toe to toe instead of choosing to walk away.
Julianne Malveaux is President of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina
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