Daily Kos' Newest Feature Writer!
Our own deoliver47 has been been elevated to (kewl kidz) front page status. On behalf of all the team here at Black Kos congratulations.
Outside the virtual world, Denise is an adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies at SUNY New Paltz.
She has been a political activist and community organizer, was in the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Movement, AIDS activism and was a member of both the Young Lords Party and the Black Panther Party in the late 60's and early 70's. She worked in community media and public broadcasting for many years and was a co-founder and Program Director of Pacifica’s first minority-controlled radio station, WPFW-FM in Washington DC. She was the coordinator of CPB’s Minority and Women’s Training Grant Program and was the Executive Director of The Black Filmmaker Foundation.
She has published ethnographic research as part of several HIV/AIDS intervention projects and is working on a book on the Women of the Young Lords Party with co-author Iris Morales.
I thought it would be fun to look back at her first story here at Black Kos Tuesday's Chile from OCT 6th 2009..... dopper0189
ps don't worry she'll still be writing for Tuesday's Chile
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Commentary
Deoliver47, Black Kos Editor
"I too am sick and tired of being sick and tired".
So much of what the Democratic Party is these days has to do with black people. Sometimes, I think folks forget that fact. Having grown up in a household with Republican grandparents, who strongly and financially supported and embraced "the Party of Lincoln" and who could never feel comfortable with the "Party of Dixiecrats", I watched a tectonic shift in party loyalty during my lifetime, in my community.
My hero (or sheroe) as a young high school and college student was the woman whose birthday it is today. She challenged the Dixiecrats, and made Democrats who allowed them in their ranks pretty uncomfortable.
I will never forget having met her in 1964, and having had the honor to escort her around on her first visit to New York City.
SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) has this bio:
Fannie Lou Hamer, known as the lady who was "sick and tired of being sick and tired," was born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the granddaughter of slaves. Her family were sharecroppers - a position not that different from slavery. Hamer had 19 brothers and sisters. She was the youngest of the children. In 1962, when Hamer was 44 years old, SNCC volunteers came to town and held a voter registration meeting. She was surprised to learn that African-Americans actually had a constitutional right to vote. When the SNCC members asked for volunteers to go to the courthouse to register to vote, Hamer was the first to raise her hand. This was a dangerous decision. She later reflected, "The only thing they could do to me was to kill me, and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember."
When Hamer and others went to the courthouse, they were jailed and beaten by the police. Hamer's courageous act got her thrown off the plantation where she was a sharecropper. She also began to receive constant death threats and was even shot at. Still, Hamer would not be discouraged. She became a SNCC Field Secretary and traveled around the country speaking and registering people to vote.
Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). In 1964, the MDFP challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Hamer spoke in front of the Credentials Committee in a televised proceeding that reached millions of viewers. She told the committee how African-Americans in many states across the country were prevented from voting through illegal tests, taxes and intimidation. As a result of her speech, two delegates of the MFDP were given speaking rights at the convention and the other members were seated as honorable guests. Hamer was an inspirational figure to many involved in the struggle for civil rights. She died on March 14, 1977, at the age of 59.
I will never forget watching her powerful testimony at that Democratic Convention. Here is the audio:
For those of you who have no you tube access here is the complete text:
Fanny Lou Hamer. “Testimony,” July 22, 1964. Occasion: Speech given at the Democratic National Convention in 1964.
Mr. Chairman, and the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fanny Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator Stennis.
It was the 31st of August in 1962 that 18 of us traveled 26 miles to the country courthouse in Indianola to try to register to try to become first-class citizens.
We was met in Indianola by Mississippi men, Highway Patrolmens and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time. After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to Indianola where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the wrong color.
After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for 18 years. I was met there by my children, who told me that the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down to try to register.
After they told me, my husband came, and said that the plantation owner was raising cain because I had tired to register, and before he quit talking the plantation owner came, and said, “Fanny Lou, do you know--did Pap tell you what I said?”
And I said, “yes, sir.”
He said, “I mean that,” he said, “If you don’t go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave,” said, “Then if you go down and withdraw,” he said, “You will--you might have to go because we are not ready for that in Mississippi.”
And I addressed him and told him and said, “I didn’t try to register for you. I tried to register for myself.”
I had to leave that same night.
On the 10th of September 1962, 16 bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. That same night two girls were shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also Mr. Joe McDonald’s house was shot in.
And in June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop, was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is in Montgomery County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people—to use the restaurant—two of the people wanted to use the washroom.
The four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened, and one of the ladies said, “It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of Police ordered us out.”
I got back on the bus and one of the persons had used the washroom got back on the bus, too.
As soon as I was seated on the bus, I saw when they began to get the four people in a highway patrolman’s car, I stepped off of the bus to see what was happening and somebody screamed from the car that the four workers was in and said, “Get that one there,” and when I went to get in the car, when the man told me I was under arrest, he kicked me.
I was carried to the county jail, and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Ivesta Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear the sound of kicks and horrible screams, and I could hear somebody say, “Can you say, yes, sir, nigger? Can you say yes, sir?”
And they would say other horrible names.
She would say, “Yes, I can say yes, sir.”
“So say it.”
She says, “I don’t know you well enough.”
They beat her, I don’t know how long, and after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people.
And it wasn’t too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from, and I told him Ruleville, he said, “We are going to check this.”
And they left my cell and it wasn’t too long before they came back. He said, “You are from Ruleville all right,” and he used a curse work, and he said, “We are going to make you wish you was dead.”
I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack.
The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman for me, to lay down on a bunk bed on my face, and I laid on my face.
The first Negro began to beat, and I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted, and I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side because I suffered from polio when I was six years old.
After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.
The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat me to sit upon my feet to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me my head and told me to hush.
One white man — since my dress had worked up high, walked over and I pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back, back up.
I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered.
All of this is on account of us wanting to register, to become first-class citizens, and if the freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America, is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?
Thank you.
Text from Voices
I love this documentary done by young students about her life, work and influence:
Let no Democrat forget what we owe to Mrs. Hamer, and to all those who put their lives on the line for the fundamental right to vote here in America. For some of you this is "history". For me, it is as recent as yesterday. I lived it. My friends and family lived it. Some of us died for it. The struggle for change continues. Some of those who got in our way back then and tried to deny us are still with us today. They have raised their children to resist us.
But we will continue to struggle. For we are still sick and tired, of being sick and tired. Tired of racism, tired of injustice, tired of poverty, tired of seeing a huge portion of our community in the jails and prisons of America robbed of freedom and the right to vote. Tired of war, tired of bad food or little food, tired of a shorter life expectancy, tired of pollution, tired of being underpaid and overworked, if we work at all. Perhaps we need to remind our fellow Democrats that we are the rock upon which this party is now built. Let us not forget, that the majority of white voters choice in this last election was John McCain.
As Timothy Noah wrote in his post election analysis:
But in a more complex and indirect way, the stubborn refusal of a majority of whites to vote Democratic is all about race. Take a look at this chart. The alignment of whites with the Republican Party hasn't made it impossible for Democrats to win presidential elections, but it has made it fairly difficult. For the past 40 years, whites have made up 74 percent to somewhere north of 90 percent of all voters. Jimmy Carter got elected president by narrowing to four percentage points the gap between whites voting Republican and whites voting Democratic. Bill Clinton did it by narrowing the gap to a remarkable 2 percent. I don't think it's a coincidence that both men drew some appeal simply from being white Southerners. The South is where the GOP holds its tightest grip on the white vote.
It's no puzzler why Johnson was the last Democrat to win a majority of the white vote. He signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law, observing as he signed the former that "we have lost the South for a generation." (Actually, it's been two generations, and nobody would be surprised to see three.) What Johnson didn't allow himself to think was, "We have lost the white vote for a generation." (Again, it's been more like two.) Were LBJ transported to the year 2008, he would be deeply moved to discover that the United States had elected a black man president. But he would find it very depressing to learn that none of his Democratic successors ever won a white majority. Surely, he'd think, it's harder for Democrats to elect a black man president than to win forgiveness from the white majority for abolishing Jim Crow.
We are still the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Our ranks have swelled to include young white folks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans.
If there is one thing I have learned in a half a century of struggle is to have patience. Things have changed, but if we forget our history, we won't know where we are headed. If we as Democrats ignore this reality of who we are, and fail to forge stronger coalitions, and ignore the concerns of our base, we will live to regret it. Barack Obama's election was just another step on that path to Freedom. Let us all decide to be sick and tired of being sick and tired and walk hand in hand together to build that future that Mrs. Fannie Lou didn't live to see.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The anchor lives up to the name of his new memoir, Transparent, in a chat with The Root about the complexion of broadcast TV and being a black gay role model. The Root: Don Lemon Talks Colorism and Coming Out
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The amount of self-disclosure in Don Lemon's new memoir may seem a bit unusual coming from a public figure, let alone a journalist, but it's all part of the transparency that he feels is crucial, especially for media professionals.
Last September, during an interview with members of Bishop Eddie Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga., Lemon shared that he was molested as a child. Lemon, 45, was 5 years old when a teenage neighbor began sexually abusing him. It continued for years, and Lemon, who wasn't the only victim, was 30 before he told his mother what had happened. Last month, while promoting his book, Transparent, Lemon publicly revealed that he is gay.
Although Lemon is usually the one asking the questions, The Root turned the tables on him in a recent interview about colorism in the media, black homophobia and how gay black men can be positive examples of manhood.
The Root: One topic you discuss in the opening chapter of your book is colorism (bias according to skin color). Do you see colorism in network news?
Don Lemon: Well, I do have eyes, and I do see that a lot of the anchors of color on television are light-skinned -- not all of them -- but a number of them are.
TR: There has been some chatter over the years about your employer, CNN, possibly having its own brown-paper-bag test for anchors' complexions.
Creative Commons/jdlasica
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clinical trials are set for an inexpensive, oral drug to treat trypanosomiasis, a promising alternative to current remedies, which are typically not available in the African countries where the deadly disease is most common. LA Times: Potential treatment for sleeping sickness to be tested
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Researchers are gearing up for a clinical trial of what they hope will be the first inexpensive, oral drug to treat trypanosomiasis, commonly known as sleeping sickness.
Current drugs used for the disease require sophisticated diagnosis and drug infusions that are not typically available in the African regions most affected by trypanosomiasis, and the drugs themselves are frequently lethal.
The new experimental drug, called SCYX-7158, is a compound containing the element boron that was developed by a Palo Alto company. It comes in a pill, appears to be safe in animal studies and can be given by rural caregivers.
Trypanosomiasis, caused by the parasite Trypanosoma brucei, is transmitted by the bite of the tsetse fly. It affects at least 30,000 people each year in central Africa and is lethal without treatment. The disease has two stages. The first, or hemolymphatic, stage includes nonspecific symptoms such as headaches and fevers and generally goes undiagnosed. The second, or neurologic, stage produces sleep cycle disruption, paralysis, progressive mental deterioration, coma and, ultimately, death.
The disease is considered endemic in 36 countries of central Africa, but two-thirds of all cases occur in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Trypanosomiasis, caused by the parasite Trypanosoma brucei, is transmitted by the bite of the tsetse fly. It affects at least 30,000 people each year in central Africa and is lethal without treatment. (DPDx)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[] ACTION ALERT: Tell NC's leaders to ensure compensation for the victims of state eugenics program by Christian Dem in NC
[] Retroactive sentencing reform for crack cocaine convictions - approved by tytalus
[] Criminal InJustice Kos: The Color of Death by Criminal InJustice Kos
[] It's Official: Black People Still Hate Uncle Clarence by Kwik