PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY EDITION
Volume 121 No. 7
SEPTEMBER 22, 2012 - SEPTEMBER 28, 2012
Old School Hang Suite, Volume V
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Is RGIII Already Better Than Vick and Cam?
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CBC: Gatekeepers of Freedom By Michelle B. Phipps-Evans Special to the AFRO They officially banded together in 1971, 13 AfricanAmericans who had been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. As members of Congress, they had a responsibility to defend the rights of all of their constituents. As Blacks, they felt it was their duty to make sure the legislative process was inclusive of people who looked like them, as well. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) immediately earned a reputation as advocates for the “voiceless,” both nationally and internationally. Formed a mere six years after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law, the members have always had as one of their major priorities preservation of the hard-earned right to vote.
This year, voting rights are again at the top of the CBC’s agenda. With the presidential election less than two months away and voting rights being threatened by measures in several states, CBC members are going into this year’s 2012 CBC annual legislative conference, which runs from Sept. 19-23, focused on the importance of fighting impediments to voting. On Sept. 18, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), joined Rep. Rick Larsen, (D-Wash.) and a dozen Democratic members of Congress in introducing a bill to combat voter suppression efforts across the country. The America Votes Act of 2012, H.R. 6419, will allow voters to sign an affidavit attesting to their identity if they do not have the identification documents required at their polling place. “Efforts to deny any voter the right to cast a Continued on A3
Assault on 84-year-old Woman Solved Through New DNA Process By AFRO Staff Wikimedia Commons
Founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Standing L-R: Parren Mitchell, Charles Rangel, Bill Clay, Ron Dellums, George W. Collins, Louis Stokes, Ralph Metcalfe, John Conyers, and Walter Fauntroy. Seated L-R: Robert N.C. Nix, Sr., Charles Diggs, Shirley Chisholm, and Augustus F. Hawkins.
Civil Rights Icon John Lewis Celebrates Emancipation Proclamation’s 150th Anniversary By Teria Rogers Special to the AFRO
John Lewis speaks at the 150th anniversary of the the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Photo by Rob Roberts
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Long before he came to Capitol Hill, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) was active in the fight for freedom. On Sept. 17, he paid homage to the nation’s progress in treating all of its citizens’ equally in a program that celebrated the 150th anniversary of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. He spoke, appropriately, at the foot of the memorial to President Abraham Lincoln, the man who issued the order on Sept. 22, 1862, freeing enslaved Americans, and effective Jan. 1, 1863. “Slavery was an affront to human dignity,” Lewis told the crowd. “It was an evil, ungodly, dehumanizing system. It did not matter that it lasted over 300 years, it was bound to fail. It could never last because it violated one eternal truth. We’re one people, one family,
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Emanuel Cleaver, the CBC’s current chair
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.)
She was battered, but happy to be alive. At 84, she had been unable to fend off the man who had made his way into her Suitland apartment, assaulted her, taken $50 of her money and fled. The woman, whose name was not released because she is a crime victim, was alone in her home in the 4400 block of Arnold Road on Feb. 1 when the attack occurred. She lay there for 24 hours after the attack because she had been unable to move. When police arrived, she told them she had not seen her attacker’s face and felt that she had little information to offer to help them solve the case. She was wrong. As robbery division detectives combed the apartment, they found something that the elderly woman had indeed provided for them—blood that the perpetrator had left on the balcony on his way out, Continued on A4
Local, National Leaders Rally Voters at Alexandria’s Alfred Street Baptist Church By Talib I. Karim Special to the AFRO
stated NAACP Chairman Roslyn M. Brock, an Associate minister of Alfred Street Church. According to Brock, the
On Sept. 15, a bright Saturday morning in Alexandria, Va., a crowd estimated at five dozen or more parishioners and supporters of Alfred Street Baptist Church attended a rally organized by the church, the NAACP, and the Northern Virginia Coalition Black Civic Participation. Hear theonAFRO on The Daily The event kickedatoff the NAACP’s “16 on the 16th” voter Drum, Wednesday 7 p.m. mobilization challenge, in which Alfred Street Church members and others nationally pledged to register 16 voters each before the upcoming November general election. Coined in memory of the 1963 bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, the movement is designed to inspire African-Americans to vote by creating connections to those who have sacrificed for that right. Exactly 49 years ago from the date of the rally, Sept. 15, 1963, four African-American girls–Addie Mae Collins (14), Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14)–were killed when the Ku Klux Klan set off explosives at a service at the 16th Street Baptist Church. “These four beautiful, innocent martyrs became a catalyst in the ongoing struggle for civil and human rights in America,”
Voters, volunteers rally outside Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va., to hear call from the NAACP to register 16 voters before November general elections.
Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington Descendant Finds His Ancestral Calling By Avis Thomas-Lester AFRO Executive Editor From the time he was a very young child, the portrait made Kenneth B. Morris Jr. uncomfortable. The piercing
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Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass Family Foundation
Photo by Cg Taylor
eyes of the handsome African American man with the shock of gray hair that hung over the staircase of his greatgrandmother’s Capitol Hill townhouse seemed to follow him. “It was as if I could hear this voice booming down on me saying, ‘You will do great things, young man!’ ” Morris said. He was 5 before he knew that the man in the painting, Frederick Douglass, was his great-great-great-grandfather and he was grown before he realized the significance of the legacy he had inherited from the great abolitionist and orator. If being a male descendant of one
death of these youngsters, along with President Kennedy’s assassination, crystallized a national consciousness resulting in the 1964 Voting Rights Act. Political observers assert that President Obama’s election is a direct result of the Voting Rights Act. This point was made by Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), in his comments following Brock at the rally. Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson also addressed rally-goers, saying “[T]he price of freedom has never been free.” Dyson, reflecting on the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, said they were “ushered into the precinct of the divine by an act of extraordinary violence. We cannot allow their memory to be erased because we now are so comfortable in our condition and in our situation that we don’t understand what they sacrificed. We’re arguing over… the accumulation of disposable wealth, and our rights are being eroded even as we make those arguments.” Dyson also assailed voter ID laws enacted under the pretext of preventing voter fraud. He observed that efforts are underway to change these “anti-voter fraud” laws, but until then, Dyson chided the audience, “Act like you’re going to a Jay-Z concert…act like you’re going to make a sacrifice in something in which you are Continued on A4
illustrious black educator and statesman. “I never found it intimidating because, when I was younger, I was so far removed from it,” said Morris, 50, of Corona,
Frederick
Booker T. Douglass Family Washington Foundation of the most respected men in American history had been be daunting, Morris would have faced twice the challenge. He is also the great-great-grandson of Booker T. Washington, the
Kenneth B. Morris, Stephen James Jr. Collins Photography
Copyright © 2012 by the Afro-American Company
Calif., a public speaker who teaches a course in “liberation theology” at the University of La Verne near Los Angeles. He spent much of his adult life as an entrepreneur, specializing in travel and entertainment marketing. “I was able to go about my life and not even think about it, really.” But then he read a magazine story that lit the fire that had lain dormant in him for 45 years. It set him on a course that would link him to his famous forefathers’ work and make him a part of their legacies. Finding his passion Morris came to know his
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