MARTIN L. KING A PEACEFUL WARRIOR

A dreamer , freedom fighter, yet a peaceful warrior.
Philosopher, preacher, , envisionist, motivator.



The voice of one man can change the course of his generation...
and leave a legacy. King the peaceful warrior.

He shared a dream that affected us all
In the face of adversity he by example stood so brave and tall.


KING envisioned the sweltering heat of injustice and oppression would be transformed into a Oasis of Freedom.


He had the faith in this nation rising and living up to its creed.
Holding this truth to be self evident that all men are created equal!



In the spirit of rememberence to a great man that passed our way and touch so many hearts and souls!

MLK FAMOUS QUOTES:
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All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
Martin Luther King Jr.


Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King Jr.


I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
Martin Luther King Jr.


I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
Martin Luther King Jr.



In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King Jr.


It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
Martin Luther King Jr.


Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.
Martin Luther King Jr.


Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King Jr.


Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Martin Luther King Jr.


Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King Jr.



Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
Martin Luther King Jr.


Segregation is the adultery of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.
Martin Luther King Jr.


Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.
Martin Luther King Jr.



We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King Jr.


When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
Martin Luther King Jr.


The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
Martin Luther King Jr., "Strength to Love"


All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

Martin Luther King Jr., 'Strength to Love,' 1963


The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.
Martin Luther King Jr., 'Strength to Love,' 1963


Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.

Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Martin Luther King Jr., December 11, 1964



Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963



The church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 1963



Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.

It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:

- 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'

Martin Luther King Jr., Speech at Civil Rights March on Washington, August 28, 1963

=================



I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

Martin Luther King Jr., Speech in Detroit, June 23, 1963


...And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.
Martin Luther King Jr., Speech in Memphis, April 3, 1968, the day before King was assassinated


Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963



Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963




The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963




hotep*

Tea Party Wants Slavery Removed From Student Textbooks

Whitewashing of Black History in Text Books - Update

===============











More of the truth is feared of being ripped out of society and replaced with untruth or not mentioned at all.



IT'S bad enough that (slavery) is pretty much all that is taught in the history books to start with.


There is so much more that needs to be revealed to the African community at large. This very country was built and founded on African principles, philosophy, religion and science.

The secret is out! mathematics, Astronomy to say the least.


Why not erase any and all mention of slavery and genocide from United States textbooks all together?


Textbooks scrubbed free of slaves' blood and government-sanctioned murder, ensuring that history books are palatable for generations of bright-eyed school children for generations to come.



After a news conference on Wednesday, about two dozen members of the Tea Party of Tennessee presented lawmakers with a list of "priorities and "demands" for the 2011 legislative session.



According to the Party, it would "besmirch the image of the Founding Fathers" to be honest about this nation's history.



In material distributed to the legislators, they demanded that state laws governing textbook criteria ensure that "no portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership."


Party spokesman and Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds said the group wants to address "an awful lot of made-up criticism" about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.



As it stands, African Americans rarely get mentioned in any historical context at all if not that of the slave or loyal sidekick. Only the most passive of us managed to escape unscathed into the history books and now this bastion of bigotry from "the Volunteer State" wants to exclude even that so we don't "besmirch" our founding fathers' legacy?

=====================


Our children need to know their history. They deserve to understand what we've overcome, so that they know what they can become.


=====================


They are attempting to hypnotize our children into a mindless state of group think in hopes of erasing what continuously exists, even if in different forms.



If they can re-create history in a way that minimizes slavery, then it will be easier for all the subsequent inequalities to be deemed an exaggeration.


Americans will perceive the judicial, educational, occupational and health care disparities facing minorities not as remnants of slavery and Jim Crow, but a testament to the laziness and apathy of African Americans.




If that shift occurs, it will be easier to implement their radical call for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, bringing this country back to square one as it pertains to race relations.



So to the Tea Party of Tennessee: Maybe you all should strive to genuinely erase prejudice and injustice in this country instead of perpetuating division, violence and historical myths.


Then maybe your legacy won't need to be whitewashed to absolve your descendants of guilt as you're pathetically trying to do now.



Our history is important to us and the world needs to know the truth about slavery and before slavery occurred!


hotep!

THE 4 NUBIAN PRINCIPLES AND DESCENDANTS OF NUBIA

According to a conversation, Professor Brown who teaches anatomy at Medgar Evers College in NYC; She states that ancient Nubian's, as other African cultures, operated through an uplifting and positive law.


========
The 4 (four) Nubian Principles
========


1- PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

2 - LAW OF FREEDOM

3- LAW OF OWNERSHIP

4- NOTHING CAN CHANGE, WHO TIME HAS COME,
IT'S OUR TIME!
=================



The History of Nubian civilization extends back to about 17,000 years (See Van Sertima: Egypt Revisited)

This history included a strong connection with a great Black Civilization that existed in the Sahara and consisted of a number of Black Nations, including some of the ancestors of people who live in the South Pacific/Melasia, who had been sailing to Asia earlier than 100,000 years B.C.



The Nubians created the world's first civilization and that civilization was much older than Egypt. In fact, in 2000, archeologists discovered many facinating artefacts, including glasswork of great beauty and excellent craftsmanship.


These were found in Sudan and according to Time Magazine, some artefacts were dated to about 8000 years B.C. Astronomy was also well organized in Nubia during the period and an astronomical observatory dating back to about 7000 B.C. was found in Sudan as well. It is also in Sudan that a large number of ancient cities exist.


The Nubians also built a large number of small pyramids later on in their history but they used a very sophisticated system of tombs to bury their kings. Many were similar in style to the early Egyptian Mastabas.


Those of later centuries were small pyramids with chapels built on top and the tombs and beneath the ground.


===============
WHO ARE THE DESCENDANTS OF THE ANCIENT NUBIANS TODAY
===============


The birth of Nubianism or the return of the Nubian consciousness, study of Nubian history, reverence for Nubian culture and the recognition of the Nubian blood and lineage started in Nubia, right there in the South of Egypt, where to be Nubian is to belong to the world's longest lasting civilization and the belonging to a people with the longest lasting kingship on earth.

It may be surprising to note that the Nubian monarchy continues to exist today and Nubians continue to have their king, although the land of Nubia is occupied by invaders (and their culture, religions and laws) who originally migrated from the northern Semitic lands, and who have mixed in with some Sudanese to create a new type of people similar to South.


Today, the Nubas of the Nuba Mountains are direct descendants of the ancient Nubians.


The Nuer People of Sudan, the Dinkas and a number of "Nilotic" peoples as well as many people in East Africa of Bantu linguistic origins are also of Nubian origins.


In fact, although it is said that the Bantu ( Ba-Ntu ) migrated from Nigeria to populate the rest of Southern Africa about five thousand years ago, there is a significant of what appears to be close linguistic similarities between some Nilotic and ancient Egyptian and Cushite languages with the Bantu Languages, both of which originated in the Sahara.

==========

These similarities include the "Ba" prefix to name nationalities, such as "Ba-luba" "Ba-kongo," or the "N' to denote persons and groups, such as "Ntu" (probably nation or people) or Ndabaningi (a person's name) or "N-g-r" (God in ancient Egyptian) or the word "N-t-y-r" (Nature, God, sacred in ancient Egyptian).

==========


Hence, these tall and medium height peoples of Africa who are spread from Ethiopia and Somalia to West Africa and south to Zululand are all connected.

They were once spread as far as Turkey and Southern Europe in Preshitoric times and as far as Fiji and ancient Mexico. One of the most important migrations of Africans to the Americas occurred about 600 B.C., when groups of people from West Africa who worshipped Shngo the Thunder Element and who used the axe, migrated to Mexico about 600's B.C. and introduced their religions.

According to Sitchin......

Blacks with Egyptian connections migrated to Mexico about 3113 B.C. and on that date, introduced the first calendar to Mexico. Others have pointed out that the Olmecs were a combination of West Africans and Nubians (see "A History of the African-Olmecs pub by 1st Books Library.


The distances between the two cultures are thousands of miles apart, however, both the Carthaginians and Pharaoh Nikau sent people to West Africa to trade between 600 B.C. and 450 B.C. respectively. The West Africans and Nubians most likely collaborated with each other and had cultural contact.


==============
NUBIANS IN SUDAN AND SOUTHERN EGYPT RISE
==============

Nubian consciousness is one that is extremely strong regardless of the present state of the Nubians. In fact, the Nubians suffered a sever blow when they were removed from their sacred lands in Southern Egypt for the building of the Aswan Dam some decades ago. Many ancient Nubian sites, ruins and valuable lands are now covered with water, in what many Blacks see as a swift wiping out of the evidence of Nubia's greatness.

Still, the Nubians continue to maintain their pride and their culture. They continue to maintain their history and to make sure that their contributions to world civilizations is not stolen. During a conversation with Nubians, Professor Gates (who made a documentary on African history about two years ago) found out first hand that Nubians in Nubia continue to maintain the great pride in self that was part of the spiritual consciousness that made Nubian civilization great and long-lasting.


===========

THE RISE OF NUBIANISM IN AMERICA

===========

One fact must be realized by Blacks in the Americas. That fact is that Blacks West Africa who are not of the Pygmy tribes (where there are few if any) are of the same origins as Africans in Sudan.

In fact, among many Yorubas and others, there is the belief that Nubians migrated from Egypt during the Exodus and settled in Mali, then moved southward into Nigeria and the region.

There are other sources that point to the coming of groups from Egypt and sudan about 1100 to 1500 B.C. from the Nubia region of Sudan and Southern Egypt.

The identification with Nubian Civilization and culture by African Americans is only natural, since many African-Americans, if not most are related and directly connected to Africans who came in from West Africa, the Congo-Angola region, Sudan/Ethiopia region and an area from Central Africa to Mozambique.


The Spaniards and Portugese got captives from West Africa but they also got many from Southern and Eastern Africa as well. The British and French got captives from West and Central Africa.

So, considering the ancient linguistic connections with Sudan and the fact that many of our ancestors actually came from this region, then the Black glorification with Nubian civilization is only proper.

It is even more accurate that English connection with Greek civilization, which had begun by the ancient Khemites who inhabited the Greek Islands and Crete before the "Aryan" migrations from Central Asia into Greece, Southern and Western Europe.

Hotep!

The Educational Importance to Fundraise for Sankofa Academy

Ollie McClean has Incorporated within her school.....

"CULTURE AS A WEAPON
EDUCATION AS A TOOL FOR LIBERATION
THEREFORE, GIVING ALTERNATIVES
IMPLANTING THE AFROCENTRIC SEED OF PRIDE!"

Quote - C. Barron
======================




Spirit of Sankofa*.......
===================

Ms. Ollie McClean is the founder of Sankofa Preparatory School Int'l.
I have much respect for this woman of Afrocentric Culture.
She envisioned a school, that would teach, the importance of African cultural awareness, taught to "Children of African Descent".


There is a genuine need for our children to learn about self.
Her philosophy is.....as she was taught by her mother....

We are originally Ethiopians....we built the pyramids, created languages and religion, there is no way you can't do simple math.

Every school day she reinerates daily to the students of Sankofa...
You are born "Geniuses", it is born in you!


========
Snapshot:
========

Ms. McClean also feels our Black youth today feel they have no hope. They too, also have been brainwashed through negative messages through media and music. An example of this, is a rapper who is in jail, that puts out a song called "I AM NOT HUMAN". Demonizing us to a point they don't deserve to feel, learn and to achieve.

The fear is how long before our youth would pick this negative message and really believe this?

There is also a fear in our society, that if Blacks were taught their history, that they would no longer want to be American?

We have a great need to learn and love ourselves. We can't deceive ourselves any longer ,by believing we will attain the American dream, as it's portrayed by the familiar path of today.


Schools like Sankofa desperately need our support. schools that incorporate as part of their curriculum for our children....learning of all the African countries in Africa. etc....

Sankofa needs the community to step forth and see the importance of this non funding school. There should be more like this in the Black communities. Taking the example of this great sister, who didn't have much money to fund a project like this.

She sought out retired family members who worked with the Bd. of Ed. and others to help this school. She also explains how Sankofa was started in a vacant church then later held classes in an occupied church edifice.


Jitu Weusi

Activist and educator Jitu Weusi has worked to uplift and develop the cultural and social awareness of the African American community of Central Brooklyn...

Has supported the Sankofa School as well as Charles Barron. Inez Barron educator and the wife of C. Barron, stated, that principles need a business manage, so they can focus more on the curriculum of educating.



SPIRIT OF SANKOFA*
=================



Activists and artists fundraise for Sankofa Academy
==============================

Statistics on the state of Black education often remind us of despair. Sankofa International Academy reminds us that there is hope. Sankofa's roadmap reminds us that it is our collective responsibility, as an entire community, to ensure that no child is left behind educationally, socially or culturally. Together, we have a role in creating the kind of world we want for generations to come.

Rome Neal and friends demonstrated why it is time to shift the conversation from talking about our pain to talking about our plan. On the evening of March 14, Rome teamed up with Franz Mettelus, owner of Rustic Tavern at 471 DeKaIb Avenue in Brooklyn; John Smith; and Jitu Weusi and held a fundraiser to showcase their plan of action in addressing the primary financial concerns of Sankofa.






=======================
City Councilwoman Leticia James reminded everyone that independent education plays a very important role in the educational discourse, especially when it comes to meeting the needs of the African child. She stressed that the reason for supporting Sankofa's students is so that they can continue to become geniuses in their own rights, achieving the status of scientist, astronaut or even president.
=======================


The sea of artists who brought their collective talent to support this exceptional school was comprised of jazz vocalist Patsy Grant, Lou Vega on guitar, Eric Frazer on congas, Gene Torres on bass, and Al Husband and Larry Williams on drums. They all kept the guests entertained with their riveting melodies.

The supporters were from all walks of life and included Councilman Charles Barron; the Rev. Herbert Oliver of the Montgomery Bus Boycott; Dr. James Mcintosh, CEMOTAP; attorney Colin Moore and his wife; Michael Hooper, Roots Revisited; Min.Clemson Brown, historian; Brenda Brunson-Bey, Tribal Truth Collection; and Malchijah Hats.

Ollie McClean, founder and director of Sankofa, summed up the event in her remarks by stating that the essence of education is the practice of freedom and that many politicaUy motivated educational plans have failed because the authors designed them according to their own personal views of reality, never once taking into account the children of African ancestry, to whom their program is ostensibly directed. However, Sankofa offers a course of study rich in cultural history and academics, thus addressing the "whole" child.

For more information, contact Sankofa International Academy, Post Office Box 330-505, Brooklyn, NY or call the school at (347) 365-9989.



New York Amsterdam News,
Mar 25-Mar 31, 2010

HOTEP*

Mambukal Mudpack Festival

June 6, 2010


Held at the height of monsoon season, the Mambukal Mudpack Festival in Murcia, Negros Occidental, celebrates the harmony of man and nature and encourages environmentalism among young people.

To get in the spirit, participants cover themselves with the rich soil known as Mambukal clay.

=====================

Source: National Geographic
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/mambukal-mudpack-festival/

Descendants of 1st Black US Doctor mark NYC grave

NEW YORK (AP) -- White descendants of the nation's first professionally trained African-American doctor gathered in a cemetery on Sunday to dedicate a tombstone at the unmarked grave where he was buried in 1865.

"Right now I feel so connected in a new way, to actually be here," said Antoinette Martignoni, the 91-year-old great-granddaughter of James McCune Smith. "I take a deep breath, and I thank God, I really do. I am so glad to have lived this long."

Smith, born in New York City in 1813, wanted to be a doctor but was denied entry to medical schools in the United States. He earned a degree from the University of Glasgow in Scotland, then returned to New York to practice. Besides being a doctor, he was celebrated in his lifetime as a writer and an anti-slavery leader.

Although scholars have written books about Smith, who set up a medical practice in lower Manhattan and became the resident physician at an orphanage, his descendants knew nothing about him until recently.

The story of why Smith was nearly overlooked by history and buried in an unmarked grave is in part due to the centuries-old practice of light-skinned blacks passing as white to escape racial prejudice. Smith's mother had been a slave; his father was white. Three of his children lived to adulthood, and they all apparently passed as white, scholars say.

Greta Blau, Smith's great-great-great-granddaughter, made the connection after she took a course at Hunter College on the history of blacks in New York. She did some research and realized that James McCune Smith the trailblazing black doctor was the same James McCune Smith whose name was inscribed in a family Bible belonging to Martignoni, her grandmother.

Her first response was, "But he was black. I'm white."

Blau, of New Haven, Conn., concluded that after Smith's death, his surviving children must have passed as white, and their children and grandchildren never knew they had a black forbear, let alone such an illustrious one.

Blau contacted all the Smith descendants she could find and invited them to join her Sunday for a ceremony dedicating a handsome tombstone at Smith's grave at Brooklyn's Cypress Hills Cemetery.

Eleven of Smith's descendants went to lay flowers at the cemetery, the final resting place of other notables including baseball player Jackie Robinson and actress Mae West.

Blau's aunt Elizabeth Strazar said she had grown up believing her ethnic heritage was English, Irish, Scottish and French.

"Now I can say I'm English, Irish, African-American and French, which I feel very proud of," she said.

Joanne Edey-Rhodes, the professor whose course led Blau to discover her ancestor, said Blau had written about Smith in her paper for the course.

"She was writing about this person and didn't realize that that was her very own ancestor," Edey-Rhodes said.

Edey-Rhodes, who's black, said that to be black in America in Smith's time "was a horrible condition."

"Black people were a despised group, and to many we still are a despised group in the world," she said. "I think that it is so important that at this time in history, that a family that is classified as white can say, 'I have this African-American ancestor,' and be able to do it without any shame, without having to hide it."

The tombstone dedication was followed by a panel discussion at St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Harlem. Smith was an active member of the church, which was at another location in his lifetime.

The Rev. Craig Townsend, an Episcopal priest and scholar, said Smith's faith in God bolstered his belief that human beings are equal. Townsend passed out copies of an 1850 letter Smith had written to a friend after the death of his 5-year-old daughter.

"After a year of ailment, at times painful and distressing, always obscure, and which she bore with childlike patience, it pleased God to take her home to the Company of Cherubs who continually do Praise Him," Smith wrote.

"This is beautiful," Townsend said.

Dr. Vanessa Northington Gamble, a medical doctor and historian at George Washington University who has championed equal medical treatment for blacks, noted that Smith wrote articles in medical journals and the popular press debunking notions of black inferiority that were mainstream in his time.

"As early as 1859, Dr. McCune Smith said that race was not biological but was a social category," Gamble said. "I feel that I am standing on the shoulders of Dr. James McCune Smith."



Source - AP

Let's Teach Sherrod's Speech in Schools

The Power Of Redemption


Shirley Sherrod's speech, and her story, has lessons for us all.



Peggy Noonan

She was smeared by right-wing media, condemned by the NAACP, and canned by the Obama administration. It wasn't pretty, what was done this week to Shirley Sherrod.

Here's a way to get some good. This September, when school begins, we should make the speech required viewing in the nation's high schools. It packs quite a lesson within quite a story.
====



Sherrods' Story
====================

"My father was a farmer, and growing up on the farm my dream was to get as far away from the farm and Baker County as I could get." She worked "picking cotton, picking cucumbers, shaking peanuts. . . . Doing all that work on the farm, it will make you get an education." She wanted to escape. "The older folks know what I'm talking about."


Go North, she thought. She'd seen black people who'd moved up North return on vacation: "You know how they came back talking, and came back looking." The audience laughed. "I learned later some of those cars they drove home were rented." The audience laughed louder.

She was 17 when her father was killed, in 1965. After that, one night, a cross was burned on their lawn. Her mother had a gun, and black men from throughout the county came and surrounded the white men who surrounded the house. Shirley was terrified and hid in a back room, praying. That night something changed. "I made the decision that I would stay and work."

She wouldn't leave the South but change it. Here she addressed the youthful members of her audience: "Young people, I want you to know when you are true to what God wants you to do, the path just opens up, and things just come to you. God is good, I can tell you that."

But when she made her decision, "I was making that commitment to black people only."
She didn't care about whites.

Almost a quarter-century ago, she was working for a farmers aid group when she was asked to help a couple named Roger and Eloise Spooner. They were losing their farm, and they were white.

Mr. Spooner made a poor impression. He "took a long time talking." She thought he was trying to establish a superior intelligence. "What he didn't know while he was talking all that time . . . was I was trying to decide just how much help I was gonna give him. I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland." So she did enough to meet her responsibilities, but no more. She took him to "a white lawyer," figuring "that his own kind will take care of him."

The lawyer took the farmer's money and, she said, did little else. She assumed things had been taken care of. But in May 1987, Mr. Spooner received a foreclosure notice and he called her, frantic. His house was to be sold a week later on the courthouse steps, and no motion had been filed to stop it.


They all met. The lawyer suggested the farmer retire. "I said, 'I can't believe you said that.'"

Indignant, she set herself to save the Spooners' farm. "That's when it was revealed to me that it's about poor versus those who have," not white versus black. "It opened my eyes." She worked the phones, reached out to those who could help, talked to more lawyers, called officials.

And she saved that farm.

"Working with him," said Ms. Sherrod, "made me see . . . that it's really about those who have versus those who don't." It's helping the frightened and powerless. "And they could be black, they could be white, they could be Hispanic."




She said that 45 years ago she couldn't say what she will say tonight: "I've come a long way. I knew that I couldn't live with hate, you know. As my mother has said to so many, 'If we had tried to live with hate in my heart, we probably be dead now.'" She said it was "sad" that the room was not "full of whites and blacks." She quoted Toni Morrison: We have to get to a point where "race exists but it doesn't matter."

There is beauty in the speech, and bravery too. It was brave because her subject wasn't the nation's failures and your failures but her failures. The beauty is that it deals with the great subject of our lives: how to be better, how to make the world better. It's not a perfect speech—she's tendentious in her support for health care and takes cheap shots at Republicans. And it's not the poor versus the rich, it's the powerful helping the powerless. But it's good.

You know what happened this week. Someone cut the 45-minute speech down to less than two minutes, to the part in which she talked about not wanting to help white people. Andrew Breitbart ran it on one of his websites and made Ms. Sherrod look like a race-game-playing government bully.



And then the Spooners stepped in, and this time they saved her. Is Ms. Sherrod a racist, they were asked. "No way in the world," said Roger Spooner. "She stuck with us." Eloise: "She helped us, so we're helping her."


We are not skeptical enough, of what the news media can cook up in its little devil's den. That anyone can be the victim of a high-tech lynching, and because of this, we have to be careful, slow down, look deeper.

We live in a time when what you say is taped, and those tapes can be cut, and the cuts can be ruinous, and if you think it only happens to the rich and famous, think again. It's coming to a theater near you.


And for students? What can they learn? How about: Individuals can change, just like nations. They can get better, if they want to be.

What's more important than that? What do students need to hear more?

It really can be a teachable moment. It can.


Source: WALL STREET JOURNAL

=============

I COULDN'T AGREE MORE WITH THIS REPORT....THIS IS A STEP TO SHARE VIEWS AMONG OUR YOUNG PEOPLE!


Even non-students can learn a thing or two, including "we're too quick to judge" and we're "not skeptical enough of what news media can cook up in its little devil's den," writes Noonan. As for our country's teenagers, they'd be lucky to soak up this all-important life lesson: "Individuals can change, just like nations. They can get better, if they want to be."



====================


SANKOFA*



Is there a racial double standard here?

Lately, there has been loads of comments by right wing radicals who..
(1) make racist remarks about blacks while also
(2) claiming that blacks are the real racists.

The results shows...because of their racist views ....
We are left with inaccurate or altered statements from people, not doing their homework.

This seems to be a political practice in the US, to take part of what someone says; and manipulate public views. Therefore, shaping public opinion, by airing or printing only half the truth.
==============================



"We find it ironic that in the 100 years of USDA's history of discrimination not a single white person has been dismissed for discrimination," Mikheila Sherrod, wife of Kenyatta Sherrod, said. "However, a black woman who is doing her job well is falsely accused of discrimination in an altered video and it was decided that she can no longer do a credible and nondiscriminatory job of dispensing USDA rural development programs and must resign."
===============================================




Ms. Sherrod termination was immediately aired with a reason of claim to being a racist when now we later find the video tape was edited.

I believe after reading some of the responses to the news of what the media has aired, people are quick to jump the gun, and believe the report instead of waiting it out or doing some research on their own, before rendering a decision.

Sherrod, who is black and was working at the time for a nonprofit group, said she learned that the plight of poverty goes beyond race.


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The rural development director for the Agriculture Department in Georgia, said she was inclined not to return to the agency. Secretary Tom Vilsack on Wednesday said he was asking her to return to use her expertise to help move the department past its checkered history in race relations, but she told the “Today” show on NBC that she did not want the burden of solving the department’s racial problems to rest entirely on her.




SHERROD: Why am I out?

They asked me to resign. And, in fact, they harassed me as I was driving back to the state office from West Point, Georgia, yesterday. I had at least three calls telling me the White House wanted me to resign.


Shirley Sherrod is asking; How did she get ousted out of the USDA and the NAACP without any explanation?



When I made that commitment I was making that commitment to black people and to black people only," she said in the video released Tuesday. "But you know, God will show you things. ... You realize that the struggle is really about poor people."



She said she would like to have a conversation with Mr. Obama, but does not believe he owes her an apology.

“I’d like to talk to him a little bit about the experiences of people like me, people at the grass-roots level, people who live out there in rural America, people who live in the South,” she said on the show.

“I know he does not have that kind of experience. Let me help him a little bit with how we think, how we live, and the things that are happening.”


Once the truth came out, Ms. Sherrod had gained instant fame and emerged as the heroine of a compelling story about race and redemption.

What's happening here is; she was guilty in the public view, until proven innocent.
It would be great, if the wheels of Justice turned at the same speed on both sides of the spectrum.

To rid our country of racist thoughts and views, especially in the political level.


How and why would you be forced to resign, just because you are relating a story, a 24-year-old incident to make a point? It's beyond me.............

Seems as though it's time for the Nation to DEAL with this can of rotten worms.




"Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans."


How could the NAACP render a statement , without a full investigation of the tape?


Sherrod's family, statement about the NAACP, we are disappointed in their actions and rush to judgment. As fellow civil rights activists and Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members, my mother, my father, Charles Sherrod, and all our family members, have stood in support of the NAACP and fought along side them.



"To see them desert us in our time of need has been difficult — shame on you."



Pretty much everyone else had egg on his face — from the conservative bloggers and pundits who first pushed the inaccurate story.


It remains unclear who edited and released the shorter video.


Sherrod, in a TV interview Tuesday morning, said she lost her job because the Obama administration overreacted to the original story.

"They were not interested in hearing the truth. No one wanted to hear the truth," she said.



"It is in fact a sad day when one cannot speak with honesty of their personal transformation without being condemned."


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Bottom line................

If she was simply relating an anecdotal story from 1986 to make a point about how her racial perceptions have changed, give her back her job.






Stop the Character Assassination Of Our People (Blacks) Without Due Process.



HOTEP SANKOFA*



Positive

Education

Always

Correct's

Error