Tag: black

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Nike Announces Investments in Local Organizations

CREDIT: BRIDGES

Nike announced several large contributions it will be making to local organizations. The grants focus on programs that bolster education, economic empowerment, and social justice as part of its Black Community Commitment.
BRIDGES

BRIDGES’ Downtown headquarters.

A partnership with the National Urban League has seen Nike pledge grants to organizations in seven cities, to the tune of $2.75 million. Four institutions in Memphis were selected as recipients.

RISE Foundation ($75,000): The grant will go towards the RISE Foundation’s Save Up program, which is a matched  savings account that helps low-wage workers manage their income, improve credit, purchase assets, or attend post-secondary education. A portion of funding will also boost the Goal Card program, which focuses on helping public school students understand financial and life goals.

Memphis Urban League ($50,000): Funding from Nike will aim to increase capacity for the Memphis Urban League’s Save Our Sons program, which provides workforce and life skills training to juvenile detainees in the Juvenile Detention Center, the District Attorney’s office, or others that are participating in nonprofit re-entry programs.

BRIDGES ($75,000): Nike’s grant is geared mainly toward students in 8th-12th grades, and will help BRIDGES provide a platform for them to tackle social justice issues through community organizing, and promote diversity and equal rights.

Stax Music Academy ($50,000): Financial support will go towards expanding the academy’s capacity, allowing it to prepare more students for post-graduate success, whether that means pursuing a career in or outside the music industry. Every artist will learn the complexities and best ways to earn a living if they do decide to pursue music, in any capacity.

“We are thrilled to have the work of our Bridge Builders CHANGE program recognized with a Nike Black Community Commitment grant,” BRIDGES said in a statement. “This funding will support a diverse coalition of young leaders working hands-on to address racial inequality in schools, institutions and across our community. BRIDGES is grateful to Nike for investing in the future of youth-led social change and honored to stand beside our fellow Memphis grantees: Memphis Urban League, Stax Music Academy, and RISE.”

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News

New Desegration Order Causes Controversy in Shelby County Schools

AP — Officials in Shelby County, Tenn., complain they’ll have to spend millions to satisfy a federal judge’s “arbitrary” desegregation order. It’ll mean busing minority students up to an hour away and replacing hundreds of white teachers with black ones, they say.

In Huntsville, Ala., under a similar court order, students can transfer from a school where they’re in the racial majority, but not the other way around.

“So which ruling do I violate?” asks a perplexed Bobby Webb, superintendent of schools in Shelby County, where Memphis is located. “The judge’s ruling now, or the earlier rulings that we can’t discriminate against people on the basis of the color of their skin?”

Front-page court battles over integration are mostly a thing of the past. But according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, there are at least 253 school districts still under federal court supervision in racial inequality cases and those are just the ones in which Justice intervened.

Many of the more infamous names Boston, Little Rock, Charlotte, N.C. are gone from the list, having satisfied judges with their desegregation efforts and being granted what’s called “unitary status.” In the last two years alone, at least 75 districts have won such status …

Read entire article.

— Allen G. Breed

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)

Some African Americans have raised the question about Barack Obama, “Is he black enough?” But the young senator also may have a problem in that he is not white enough for a lot of Americans who I think are not ready to accept a man of color as president. This is sad. If Obama got the Democratic presidential nomination, I would gladly vote for him rather than any of those no-good Republicans.

I may be wrong, and I hope I am, but white racism has been driven underground. Few white people today will voice even a legitimate criticism of an African American lest they lose their job or get crucified by the press and be branded a racist. But just because people keep silent or even maintain a facade of tolerance doesn’t mean that prejudice has been extinguished. We would be far better off if white people felt free to express their true opinions. Then, at least, we would know where everybody stands.

There is no genuine debate in America on the subject of race. Like the state of Israel, the subject is forbidden if it involves criticism or dissent from the politically correct views. This is not good. Hidden prejudice is difficult to combat.

Thomas Jefferson said words to the effect that lies or errors are not to be feared as long as people are free to debate them. Prejudice of any kind is, after all, an error in thinking. These days it is equated with hate, but that, too, is an error. A person can be prejudiced but not hate what he’s prejudiced against. People can hate without being prejudiced. The point is that errors in thinking can be corrected if people are free to discuss them. Hate, which is an emotion, is another problem altogether. Haters generally hate everybody, often including themselves.

Senator Obama was lionized at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He has become a celebrity and draws nice crowds at his personal appearances. But he remains far behind Hillary Clinton in the polls despite the fact that he is twice as intelligent and thoughtful, and, no doubt about it, he would make a far better president.

True, he is jug-eared and sounds often too professorial, and many Americans today are looking for stars rather than leaders. But I believe the hidden wall is simply prejudice against the idea of an African American as president.

Right up through and long after the War Between the States, the belief that African Americans were inferior was universal. The North was as prejudiced as the South. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French observer, noted of America that “the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the states which have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known.” Even Abe Lincoln expressed his belief that African Americans were inferior and could never live as equals among whites.

Such deeply ingrained beliefs are difficult to get rid of, especially if, as we have done, we have created a situation where everyone feels compelled to hide them.

As I said, I sincerely hope that I am wrong about this. Obama would clearly be superior to Hillary Clinton or to any of the Republicans, with the exception of Ron Paul. Nevertheless, I fear the senator is too white for some blacks and too black for some whites.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Mishap Match-ups

Memphis ought to get a patent on black-white partnerships that go bad.

When such marriages are made in the name of minority participation, some people more idealistic than I am see harmony, justice, and the way forward. I see politicians morphing into consultants, influence about to be monetized, promising careers derailed, and indictments waiting to happen.

Wanda Halbert and Bruce Thompson are the latest in a long list of ebony-and-ivory combos. Going back only 20 years, other mishap match-ups include “Speedy” Murrell and Charles McVean; Harold Ford Sr. and C.H. Butcher Jr.; Willie Herenton and MLGW bond underwriters; Tim Willis and NBA Now; John Ford and TennCare contractors; and Edmund Ford, Rickey Peete, and Joe Cooper.

In 2004, Thompson, a white Shelby County commissioner, and Halbert, a black Memphis school board member, teamed up to help a Jackson, Tennessee, contractor who was bidding on a school construction project. The script was familiar: Contractor needs minority participation to get votes. Commissioner plays consultant. Board member gets “campaign contribution.” FBI smells payoff. Halbert gets called before federal grand jury. And Thompson gets bad publicity and hires defense attorney Leslie Ballin.

Halbert and Thompson were both protégés of former school board powerhouse Sara Lewis. Halbert was an energetic and ambitious young school board member. Thompson was a fresh political face from the business world, representing East Memphis. Lewis ran Shelby County’s Head Start operation from 1998 to 2000, and Thompson was on the board. What looked like a promising mix of young and old and black and white has become, instead, the latest public scandal.

Memphians have seen this movie before.

In 1987, businessman McVean was pushing state legislation and a local referendum to legalize horseracing. He befriended liquor-store owner and political wheeler-dealer J.P. “Speedy” Murrell to gin up black voter support. The legislation and referendum passed, but McVean got indicted, and although his case ended with a hung jury, horseracing in Memphis was dead.

In 1990, then-Congressman Harold Ford was tried in federal court on corruption charges tied to Butcher, an East Tennessee banker. Butcher and his partners owned land on Mud Island. According to the government, Ford helped get the bridge to Mud Island built as a favor to Butcher and his friends. Ford’s first trial ended in a mistrial, and his second trial ended with his acquittal.

In 2002, Herenton got tired of seeing MLGW send most of its lucrative bond underwriting business to New York. He made a clumsy pitch for keeping more of it in Memphis and Little Rock, where black lawyers could get more of the action. According to Herenton, his complaint sparked a grand jury investigation targeting him.

Also in 2002, ex-con and self-styled consultant Willis was hired as the minority partner to help sell the NBA to Memphis. The campaign succeeded, but Willis made history for something else. In 2003 he began working with federal agents looking at corruption in Shelby County Juvenile Court, where Willis had some contracts. The FBI broadened its investigation to Nashville, and Willis became the star undercover operative for E-Cycle Management. Among those he helped snare were “consultants” John Ford, Roscoe Dixon, and Kathryn Bowers. All three black lawmakers were fooled by the FBI’s fake black-white management team and the promise of big money.

John Ford was already making more than $800,000 as a consultant for TennCare contractors Doral Dental and United American HealthCare. What could he deliver for those Midwestern companies? Votes, customers, and state contracts, of course.

In 2006, city councilmen Edmund Ford and Rickey Peete got into the game. Their white benefactor was lobbyist Joe Cooper, who represented billboard owner William Thomas on a zoning matter before the council. Cooper got nailed in another case, started cooperating with the feds, and Peete and Ford got indicted.

Minority participation was supposed to share the wealth in a town that was rigged to the benefit of white businesses. Instead it has become a rationale for biracial greed, cynicism, and corruption.

John Branston is a Flyer senior editor.

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News The Fly-By

Finding Untold Stories

When Stephen Thrasher and his mother visited the StoryCorps recording studio in the summer of 2006, they received a CD of their session. A few months later, Thrasher’s mother passed away.

“It’s an important thing for people to do for their own family history,” said Thrasher, a StoryCorps staff member. “I’m really grateful I have it.”

The StoryCorps Griot project, sponsored by the Smithsonian and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, arrived in Memphis November 1st as part of a 10-city tour. A griot is an African storyteller, and StoryCorps staffers will spend six weeks in Memphis recording conversations to capture the experiences of Memphis’ black community.

John Franklin, a project manager with the Smithsonian, is helping establish the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

“This is a national museum to help all Americans understand the role that African Americans have played,” Franklin said. “This will not just be a museum with African-American voices, because the voices of the entire community have to be represented to tell the story.”

The GriotBooth, housed inside a trailer and currently parked at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, is a cozy recording studio. Visitors are encouraged to come in pairs, and at the end of each hour-long session, they are given a CD of their interview.

“People really open up when they come here,” said Sarah Geis, one of the booth’s staffers. “It’s amazing when people who have known each other for years suddenly find out something new about each other.”

GriotBooth staffers expect to gather nearly 1,800 recordings in their yearlong tour around the country. The project is the largest of its kind since 2,000 former slaves were interviewed for the Federal Writer’s Project during the Great Depression.

The recordings will be archived at the Museum of African-American History, but some may be aired on National Public Radio or local station WKNO. A copy of all local interviews will also be given to the Memphis Public Library and Information Center.

The GriotBooth already has had a number of visitors, including the Rev. James Freeman of Humboldt, Tennessee. Freeman founded Memphis’ Geeter Park Baptist Church in the early 1970s.

While Freeman was inside, Jo Ann Kern and a group of Freeman’s close friends waited for the 92-year-old pastor to tell his story.

Kern admitted that, for many, segregation is painful to revisit. “We’ve done a good job suppressing it instead of expressing it,” she said. “But we need to [express it] before we’re gone.”

Several minutes later, Freeman was greeted with smiles and handshakes as he emerged from the trailer. When asked if the interview was worth the 100-mile journey from Gibson County, he grinned.

“It was more than worth it.”

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News

“Memphis is Also America”

The Nation posted an article online today from its April 22, 1968 issue. The essay, by Pat Watters, takes a hard look at Memphis — its white leadership, its newspapers, its racism — in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination earlier that month.

It’s quite illuminating. An excerpt: His movement, his life were Southern; but Memphis, where he died, symbolized more than the South. Its racial crisis of 1968 and its murderous failure were those of all America.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. went there during the fifth week of a garbage workers’ strike that had built into a civil rights movement and a dangerous crisis. The Memphis Negro community had not developed much of a civil rights movement during the early 1960s. So the movement that did come in 1968 capsuled into a few swift weeks the decade’s history of white America’s failure to respond to the nonviolence of Dr. King, and black America’s recoil into despair and a violence of desperation …

Read it all at The Nation‘s website.

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Politics Politics Feature

LaSimba Gray to Congressional Black Caucus: “Stay Out” of 9th District Race

CREDIT: jb

According to
Roll Call, a Washington, D.C. publication for political insiders, the
Rev. LaSimba Gray is asking members of the Congressional Black Caucus to “stay
out” of the 2008 Democratic primary race pitting incumbent 9th
District congressman Steve Cohen against repeat challenger Nikki Tinker.

Noting an appearance in Memphis last weekend on Cohen’s behalf by U.S. Rep.
Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, who is black, Gray said, according to the
newspaper, “”Steve
Cohen has been quoting many of them heavily and bringing them into the district
and we are simply asking them to stay out of this race.”

Gray strove unsuccessfully during the 2006 congressional race to winnow down a
large field of African-American candidates to a consensus black
candidate to oppose Cohen, who, as the minister noted, is both white and Jewish.

Roll Call quoted Gray as contending that the second-place finish in last
year’s primary of Tinker, a corporate attorney, meant that “she has won … the
primary of African-American candidates.” Gray said further, “The road has been
cleared for Nikki and we are busy meeting with candidates who ran last time to
show them the reality — the fact that with all of them in the race they can’t
win.”

Gray’s concept of a black-versus-white showdown was frowned on by Cleaver
spokesman Danny Rotert, who remarked that Cohen seemed to stand high in the
estimate of his constituents and observed, “If somebody here [Kansas City] said
Congressman Cleaver can’t represent his district because it’s a [majority] white
district, that would not go very far. So it’s too bad that that’s the rhetoric
that’s being used in Memphis.”

As of the last Federal Election Commission filing, Roll Call noted,
Tinker had $172,000 in cash on hand compared to Cohen’s $374,000. As the
periodical also observed, the feminist organization Emily’s List, which supported Tinker
strongly in 2006, has so far been non-committal about 2008.

A number of Tinker’s former Memphis supporters have also indicated they will not
be backing her in next year’s race. One such, lawyer Laura Hine, said she had
committed to Tinker in 2006 before Cohen made his candidacy known. Affirming her
support for Cohen in next year’s race, Hine said recently, “The fact is, he’s
been a very effective congressman, speaking to all the issues I care about.”

One such issue, according to Hine, was pending federal Hate Crimes legislation,
which Cohen has backed and Tinker has been silent about. Rev. Gray recently made
an effort to organize opposition to Cohen’s stand among black ministers, on the
ground that the bill would muzzle their opposition to homosexuality.

Other
local African-American ministers, like the Rev. Ralph White and the Rev. O.C.
Collins Jr., have refuted that allegation, citing specific sections of the bill,
and made a point of supporting Cohen. The Memphis chapter of the NAACP also
recently affirmed its support of the bill and Cohen’s activities on its behalf.

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News

October Is Breast-Cancer Awareness Month — and It Strikes Blacks Earlier

The American Cancer Society estimated more than 19,000 black women would be diagnosed with breast cancer this year — the second-most common cancer among black women, surpassed only by lung cancer.

And while the incidence of breast cancer is about 12 percent lower in black women than in white women, with black women, it often strikes at an earlier age, and the mortality rate is higher.

Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, many women schedule their annual mammograms during the month to make it easier to remember. Others make mammogram appointments on or near their birthdays.

According to the American Cancer Society’s “Cancer Facts & Figures for African-Americans 2007-2008” booklet, “Factors that contribute to the higher death rates among African-American women include differences in access to and utilization of early detection and treatment, risk factors that are differentially distributed by race or socio-economic status, or biological differences associated with race.”

As Netwellness.org reports, “Statistics show that overall, when African-American women are diagnosed, they have larger tumors and their breast cancer has spread further (i.e., to the lymph nodes and to other parts of the body).”

The five-year breast-cancer survival rate for black women is 69 percent, compared with 84 percent for white women. And while there has been an increase in the number of women getting mammograms, black women still tend to have fewer mammograms and are more likely to be diagnosed after the cancer has spread.

If that’s not enough to get you into a doctor’s office, consider this: Black women are also disproportionately prone to a rare, particularly virulent form of breast cancer that tends to strike women under the age of 35.

According to a study published in June 2006 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, black women under the age of 50 have a 77 percent higher mortality rate from breast cancer than other women of the same age group.

The study, led by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, said that younger, pre-menopausal black women are more prone to an especially aggressive type of cancer.

In addition to the UNC study, researchers at Emory University and the University of Chicago are trying to determine the root cause of the cancer and why it strikes young black women decades before menopause, when most breast cancer develops.

And don’t forget to check the medical history of your father’s family. In June, JAMA published the results of a study that revealed that a pattern of hereditary breast cancer may be hard to detect because a family is so small or has so few female members that it doesn’t appear to be prevalent. However, the cancer gene can be passed on from the father’s side of the family, as well as the mother’s, because every person inherits half of her genes from her mother and half from her father.

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Opinion

One Vote at a Time

There is always a grain if not a rock of truth in everything Mayor Willie Herenton says, no matter how unpopular. He’s right about this: If you are going to stay in Memphis for a while — and not everyone is — then you will have to look at things differently.

Last week, I became a big fan of the Memphis NAACP. They lost but they looked good doing it, and they showed class. No organization or individual had more reasons to be partisan in last week’s election. The NAACP was co-plaintiff in the 1991 lawsuit that abolished mayoral runoffs. Not one but two favorite sons were in the race for mayor: Herenton, a trailblazer since he was a school principal in the 1970s, and Herman Morris, NAACP chairman from 1992 to 2000. Both are black. Carol Chumney isn’t.

But the NAACP’s election-day efforts were all about turnout, not any particular candidate. They lost only in the sense that turnout in the 54 precincts they targeted was not as good as they hoped it would be. In fact, it was dismal — 38 percent overall and in the teens in some target precincts.

Spartan simplicity is not always the rule at local nonprofits, but it is at the NAACP. Their little office on Vance is right across from the Cleaborn Homes housing project. On a day of excess, partisanship, and pack journalism, what better place for a reporter to view the election than a place with no cameras, no candidate signs or leaflets allowed, no bar, and no buffet? And no big screen. The only television was a 12-inch model with an antenna. Lean too close to read the numbers, and it stuck you in the eye. Move it, and you messed up the picture.

Beneath portraits of local NAACP heroes Maxine Smith, Vasco Smith, Benjamin Hooks, and Jesse Turner, volunteers worked on three clunky Compaq computers that were probably rejected by E-Cycle Management. Others worked the phones, reading from a printed script (“We’re calling on behalf of the Memphis branch NAACP to encourage you to vote today for the candidate of your choice”) and offering a ride to the polls. Forget public-service announcements and editorials; in the trenches, turnout means one vote at a time.

By mid-afternoon, the numbers coming in were not good. Wearing a yellow T-shirt that said “Lift Every Voice and Vote,” NAACP executive secretary Johnnie Turner looked worried. With five hours to go until the polls closed, nearly every precinct was hundreds of votes short of its turnout goal.

“Last year, we made almost all of our goals, but the way this is looking, people are not turning out,” said Turner, who has run the Voter Empowerment Project since 2000.

She was writing down numbers and doing the arithmetic, which was considerable. The goal was a 5 percent increase in each precinct. The 1999 election was chosen as the benchmark because the 2003 election was a Herenton blowout with a 23.7 percent turnout. That bar was too low. Or so Turner thought. Now, Asbury, Alcy, Glenview, Gaston — site after site — wasn’t coming close to the 1999 turnout, much less the hoped-for increase.

“We’ll have to regroup,” Turner said. “This election has been strange. I started to say divisive, but maybe it’s kind of polarized. Anytime the community sees discord, they take the attitude ‘I don’t want to be part of this mess.'”

When I went out to eat, I got to watch my first live shooting in a while. At Cleaborn Homes, a young man in a white T-shirt was running between the buildings. Another man with a pistol was chasing him and firing several shots from about 30 feet away, all of which missed. A minute later, the guy who’d been shot at walked past my car with the nonchalance of someone who had just missed getting sprayed with a water hose.

When I came back, Turner had made an executive decision. The original goal had been “overly ambitious.” The new goal would be the 2003 turnout plus 7 percent. In effect, the former teacher was lowering the grading curve.

“Now this is more like it,” Turner said as the polls closed and new numbers came in. “We’re going to make it.” As it turned out, however, the 1999 standard may have been unattainable, but it was not unrealistic. The overall turnout for the election was higher — more than 165,000 voters last week compared to 163,259 in 1999.

At 9 o’clock, when the first returns showed Herenton far ahead and Morris in third place, there was no cheering at the NAACP. And no booing. Soon after that, everyone left, except Turner and a few others.

Nice effort, I said on the way out. “Yes,” she said. “Honest.” And it was.

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Cover Feature News

Herman Morris’ Last Dance

At 7:45 at the Holiday Inn-University of Memphis Thursday night, things are quiet. A few folks are meandering in, riding the escalator up to the mezzanine in twos and threes. Kevin Paige and his band are singing “Crazy” in the ballroom.

The crowd, such as it is, is racially mixed and age-diverse. A big screen at the back of the ballroom flashes photographs of candidate Herman Morris and his family — Herman as a young track star, a young lawyer, a family man, etc.

Downstairs in the lobby, the South Carolina-Kentucky game is on a television in the corner. The game is close and exciting, but the numbers crawling across the bottom of the screen give early indication that the race for mayor is going to be neither.

The early voting and absentee totals — almost half the predicted vote — show incumbent Willie Herenton with 43 percent, Carol Chumney at 34 percent, and Morris a distant third, with 24 percent. Those percentages wouldn’t vary significantly all night.

Kevin Paige begins singing “Killing Me Softly.”

The food lines and bar lines in the ballroom are growing quickly. There seems to be little optimism. There are lots of hugs and wry smiles.

At 8:30, with a little more than 20 percent of precincts reporting, the percentages haven’t changed much: Herenton 43, Chumney 32, Morris 25. It’s over. With perfect ironic and, no doubt unintentional, timing, Paige’s band breaks into “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.” Ooops.

Republican maverick Tom Guleff wanders about with 5-year-old son Logan in tow. Adman Dan Conaway sips a beer and chats up latecomers. Campaign co-chairman and longtime judge and civil rights activist Russell Sugarman quietly works the door. Memphis schoolboard member Jeff Warren leans over a laptop, checking the discouraging numbers.

Sadly, for this campaign, the only number getting bigger is the number of folks in the ballroom. But their man, Morris, appears doomed to finish a distant third.

With 50 percent of precincts counted, the percentages remain markedly consistent: 42, 33, 24. As the numbers flash on the television screen, someone shouts, “Time for a drink!”

Warren shakes his head ruefully and says, “I’m very disappointed. I think Herman is the one man who could have brought this city together.”

There is a growing brushfire of applause in the outer room. The candidate, surrounded by his wife, children, and family, enters the ballroom. The outpouring of affection seems genuine and more than a little poignant.

Morris steps to the microphone, quiets the crowd, and says, “It’s a great day for Memphis.” But nobody in the room believes him.

Morris continues gamely, thanking his campaign committee and supporters and thanking his wife Brenda for 27 years of marriage. It is, in fact, the couple’s wedding anniversary. Morris presents a large bouquet of red roses to his wife and says, “Happy anniversary.”

The rest of Morris’ speech sounds suspiciously like a hurriedly edited “victory” speech. He repeats the “great day in Memphis” line, and thanks the crowd for playing a part in “bringing the city together.” He implores his supporters to work with the apparent victor, Willie Herenton, and even asks for a round of applause for the mayor.

When the crowd responds weakly, he exhorts them: “We can do better than that!” They do, barely.

“And now,” he says, “let’s have one heck of an anniversary party!”

The band strikes up the old Etta James song, “At Last,” and Herman Morris and his wife dance, staring into each other’s eyes, encircled by photographers and television cameras.

It could have been a helluva party.

As the crowd files out, the television in the corner of the lobby is showing happy women doing “The Electric Slide” at Herenton headquarters. But here at the Holiday Inn nobody feels much like dancing.