SCLC National Magazine - Convention 2013 Issue by SCLC Magazine

www.nationalsclc.org

Aug. / Sept. / Oct. 2013 COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

It’s the 50 Th Anniversary of the March on Washington

GEORGE E. CURRY

“The Super Southern Scribe” In his own words...

SCLC President

C.T. VIVIAN HONORED

as a Recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom

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for our shared commitment to a bright future.

At PNC, we’re about community. That’s why we sponsor community-based events, work with local leaders and support job-readiness organizations. And it’s why we’re building a workplace as varied as the people we serve. We’re committed to helping our communities achieve more than ever, now and for years to come. Find out more at pnc.com/diversity

The Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church

Travel the valiant trail that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks forged—

Freedom Rides Museum National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African American Culture at ASU

walk in their steps at the Dexter Avenue

Alabama Department of Archives & History

King Memorial Baptist Church and

Alabama State Capitol Building

Parsonage, the Rosa Parks Library & Museum, the Civil Rights Memorial & Center and so many other significant

Alabama Shakespeare Festival Harriot II Riverboat Riverwalk Park & Amphitheatre Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts Montgomery Zoo & Mann Wildlife Learning Museum

sights in American history—all in

City of St.Jude

Montgomery. Pretty cool. Capital Cool.

And dozens more hip and historical things to do and see at visitingmontgomery.com

See us—Visitor Center, Historic Union Station | call us—800.240.9452 Follow Us—

Montgomery Capital Cool

Today, children study the Civil Rights Movement in school. But there is an opportunity here to learn what it was really like. You see, I was there on Sept. 15, 1963, when a bomb rocked my church one clear Sunday morning. And I am here today. A visit to these sites can help you truly understand the sorrows and the triumphs of a people who stood up for equality and justice. – Carolyn McKinstry Author of ”While the World Watc hed”

ROAD TRIP No. 31 1

Walking in e footsteps of ose who made hist y. Alabama invites you to commemorate the 50th anniversaries of some of the most pivotal events in the Civil Rights Movement. Walk the paths that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his marchers took in their non-violent quest for equality. ty. Visit the collection of museums from Scottsboro to Selma that comprise the Alabama Civil Rights Trail. Start at thee inspiring Birmingham Civil Rights Institute – recently named by Budget Travel as one of 10 places every kid should see. Next door, step inside the 16th Street Baptistt Church and reflect upon the tragic bombing that took four innocent young lives. Make your road trip a commemoration of those who fought to win racial equality, and rejoice in knowing that their victories made our world a better place.

Download our free Civil Rights Trail app or the Alabama Road Trips app or visit www.alabama.travel to experience how these events in Alabama changed the world.

Congratulations to the SCLC on Your 55th Annual Convention

Wishing Continued Progress & Growth to Our Minority Communities

WPP By Choice, Fully Supports Equal Opportunity for All, Regardless of Race, Creed, Sex, Age, Sexual Orientation, Disability or Ethnic Background

education

The function of is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.

- Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. and former Howard University President James Nabrit Jr. during a Charter Day ceremony on March 2, 1965.

twitter.com/HowardU facebook.com/howarduniversity

-Barack Obama, President of the United States of America 140th Howard University Opening Convocation, Oct. 1, 2007

50Th Anniversary of the March on Washington

COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE Vol. 42 / No. 3

in every issue

inside this issue

10. 11. 12. 16. 18. 24.

National Executive Officers National Board Members From the CEO: Charles Steele, Jr. SCLC’s Past & Future Legacy From the Chairman: Bernard LaFayette, Jr. President’s Corner: C.T. Vivian Honored as a Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, By Alexis Scott By Cathelean Steele, ‘Justice for Girls’, A Call to Action

In Print Since 1970

features 19. 21. 22. 46.

One-on-One with Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian, By Maynard Eaton George E. Curry, ‘The Super Southern Scribe’ Interview with George Curry, By Maynard Eaton America’s 20th Century Slavery, By Douglas A. Blackmon

MAGAZINE MAILING ADDRESS P.O. Box 92544 Atlanta, GA 30314 FOR ADVERTISING INFO info@sclcmagazine.com www.sclcmagazine.com T 800.421.0472 F 800.292.9199

leaders 28.

Don Cash: Alleviating the Pain of Our Children

young activists 32. 36.

FOUNDER & PUBLISHER Steven Blood, Sr., Ph.D.

Young People Leading a Charge, By La’Die Z. Mansfield Bridging the Gap Between Old Activists & Young Activists, By Robert Hoggard

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Monica Fett

women in the movement 38. 42.

Juanita Jones Abernathy Bio Matriarch of the Civil Rights Movement Honored Collage of Comments, Prepared by Maynard Eaton

health & fitness 54.

MANAGING EDITOR Maynard Eaton EXECUTIVE MANAGER Dawn McKillop SCLC NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS 320 Auburn Avenue Atlanta, GA 30303

Get Your Sexy Back, By Lynn Mitchell

www.nationalsclc.org

in review 58.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR / COO Damien Conners

Beyond Trayvon: Dr. Joseph L. Williams Unveils ‘Kolor Struck’ to Transform Race in America By Maynard Eaton

CONTRIBUTOR

Maynard Eaton: SCLC’s Managing Editor, is an 8-time Emmy Award-winning news reporter and is also Executive Editor of ‘S.E. Region News’ and President of Eaton Media Group. 8

Southern Christian Leadership Conference N A T I O N A L M A G A Z I N E

SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER DeMark Liggins NATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR Maynard Eaton SPECIAL PROGRAMS DIRECTOR Cathelean Steele

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

A CONTEMPORARY C ONTEMPOR ARY CL CLASSIC. ASSIC .

I N T R O D U C I N G T H E A L L- N E W 2 0 1 4 C H E V R O L E T I M P A L A .

S o p h i s t i c a t e d a n d s o u l f u l w i t h a m o d e r n e d g e: T h i s i s t h e v i s i o n b e h i n d J o h n L e g e n d ’s l a t e s t a l b u m , L o v e i n t h e F u t u r e , a s w e l l a s t h e r e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f a c o n t e m p o r a r y c l a s s i c, t h e 2 0 1 4 C h e v r o l e t I m p a l a.

/ NATIONAL EXECUTIVE OFFICERS Martin Luther King, Jr. FOUNDING PRESIDENT 1957-1968

Ralph D. Abernathy PRESIDENT EMERITUS 1968-1977

Joseph E. Lowery PRESIDENT EMERITUS 1977-1997

C.T. Vivian PRESIDENT

Bernard LaFayette, Jr. CHAIRMAN

Charles Steele, Jr. CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Donald L. Cash VICE CHAIRMAN

Martin Luther King, III PAST PRESIDENT 1998-2003

Randal L. Gaines, Esq. TREASURER

Gertie Thompson Lowe SECRETARY

Bishop Calvin Woods CHAPLAIN

Diettra Lucas RECORDING SECRETARY

Bennie Roundtree SERGEANT AT ARMS

Sylvia K. Tucker CHAIRWOMAN EMERITUS

Fred L. Shuttlesworth PAST PRESIDENT 2004 R.I.P. 1922-2011

Charles Steele, Jr. PAST PRESIDENT 2005-2008

Howard Creecy, Jr. PAST PRESIDENT 2011 R.I.P. 1954-2011

10 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

NATIONAL BOARD MEMBERS Charles Becknell / Rio Rancho, New Mexico Willie Bolden / College Park, Georgia Joseph Boston / Washington, North Carolina Donald Cash / Landover, Maryland E.T. Caviness / Cleveland, Ohio Richard Cox / Dayton, Ohio Randal L. Gaines, Esq. / LaPlace, Louisiana Rita Jackson Samuels / Atlanta, Georgia J.T. Johnson / Atlanta, Georgia Martin L. King, III / Atlanta, Georgia

The past has made us stronger. The future will make us proud. For more than fifty years, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) has forged a legacy of strength that has ensured the promise of a better future. At AK Steel

Bernard LaFayette, Jr. / Tuskegee, Alabama

we know a little bit about forging a stronger

Diettra Lucas / Upper Marlboro, Maryland

future, which is why we continue to support

Gertie Thompson Lowe / Gadsden, Alabama

the SCLC and their efforts in promoting

Jamida Orange / Atlanta, Georgia

economic opportunity for everyone.

Jeremy Ponds / Atlanta, Georgia Bennie Roundtree / Greenville, No. Carolina Charles Smith / Palmetto, Florida Charles Steele, Jr. / Tuscaloosa, Alabama Sylvia K. Tucker / Disputanta, Virginia C.T. Vivian / Atlanta, Georgia Cynthia Willard-Lewis / New Orleans, Louisiana Calvin Woods / Birmingham, Alabama

HONORARY BOARD MEMBERS Cameron Alexander / Atlanta, Georgia Phillip Cousin / Jacksonville, Florida Walter Fauntroy / Washington, D.C. Elwin Gillum / Little Rock, Arkansas Dick Gregory / Plymouth, Massachusetts Jim Lawson / Los Angeles, California John Lewis / Atlanta, Georgia Joseph Roberts / Atlanta, Georgia Wyatt Tee Walker / New York, New York Andrew Young / Atlanta, Georgia COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 11

/ from the ceo

SCLC’S PAST & FUTURE LEGACY: Champions for Civil Rights

BY CHARLES STEELE, JR. SCLC NATIONAL CEO

The 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington marks an important milestone in American history. Whether you were around in 1963, or learned of Dr. King’s speech from the history books, all of us, regardless of race, know the impact that historic ‘I Have A Dream’ speech had on an entire nation. 12 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

n Tuscaloosa, Alabama, my hometown, I remember the 1963 Movement as if it was yesterday. A young man at that time, I was active in the Movement. My friends and family lived on every word of Dr. King’s. The Tuscaloosa community was especially fortunate to have a member of Dr. King’s staff living and pastoring in our town—Reverend T. Y. Rogers. Reverend Rogers held weekly Monday night rallies at the First African Baptist Church where he pastored. These rallies kept us motivated to remain non-violent while continuing to protest for equality. To remain non-violent was a state of mind that needed to be continuously fed. There was always a real potential for violence during that time, but the constant reminders we received in the Movement—that “violence begets violence”— kept our minds focused on the teachings of Dr. King. Long before 1963, I had started down a path to enlightenment regarding racism. My dream to be able to watch a baseball game in the stadium was the beginning of my own personal journey. You see, my family lived on what is now a part of the University of Alabama Campus. The baseball field was across the street from our community of houses. As boys, we would sneak and watch the games from over the fence because, “coloreds”—as we were called—were not allowed. At the age of eight, my friends and I dreamed to be in the stadium watching the game, not on the fence. Eventually, the University of Alabama allowed blacks entry to the games, but we had to sit in the colored section. 1963 proved to be a hot bed for the Civil Rights Movement in Tuscaloosa and also in Birmingham, Alabama, just fifty miles away. In Tuscaloosa, Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of the entrance to Fosters Auditorium to prevent the enrollment of Vivian Malone and James Hood. Historically, this attempt to prevent African-American students from enrolling in the University of Alabama became known as the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door”. In Birmingham, under the

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

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Fifty years ago, the March on Washington, Wednesday, August 28, 1963 guidance of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Wyatt Tee Walker and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth coordinated a movement of black youth that engrossed the national media and brought the Birmingham Movement into homes all across America. The March on Washington was unquestionably a culminating moment in 1963. Ultimately, I believe it established a blueprint for how we must proceed toward equality in America. Dr. King galvanized thousands with his words. His dream became the dream of a nation. And when I travel around the world, I am often asked the following question: “Have African Americans achieved ‘the dream’?” I cannot answer their question with a “yes”. With all of the extraordinary achievements and advances made in the African American community, I am deeply concerned and perplexed that, fifty years after the March on Washington, we look to be losing the very rights we fought so hard to obtain. It is time now to “re-redeem” the soul of America. We as blacks must wake up to the real possibility that we have not yet achieved ‘the dream’. Like anything else, we have to fight to preserve the gains of the past. We have recently been reminded that, if we become too complacent, our long-fought gains will slip away. In Shelby County, Alabama, an attempt is being made to take away our ability to elect black officials by doing away with

14 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

Section 4 of the Voters Rights Act of 1965. In Florida, a young black boy is walking home from a store where he just purchased skittles and ice tea, and is murdered, because he was black and wore a hoodie. In incidences across America, black boys are thinking it’s okay to act like the Klan, and kill other black boys. Wake up, black America! We are losing ground. We have fought too hard and too long to go back now. During this 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington and the deliverance of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, let us as a society wake up and realize that the election of a black President has not completed our circle of equality. Better jobs for some has not meant better jobs for all. Better education for some has not equated to better education for all. My father told me there is a difference in winning a game—and becoming a champion. Champions never throw in their hats. We should be like champions. We always need to be striving to win, because someone will always be looking to obtain what we’ve gained. As it is in games, it is in life. We must fight to maintain the gains of the past—or we will surely lose the championships waiting for us in our future. sclc

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

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/ from the chairman BY BERNARD LAFAYETTE, JR. SCLC NATIONAL CHAIRMAN March on Washington, Lincoln Memorial, Aug. 28, 1963: Dr. King delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech

“

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation when they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.

n August 28—a Wednesday in 1963, something quite amazing occurred. After hard fought battles in Birmingham and through out the South, a synergized moment of the movement found its climatic high point in Washington, D.C. when Dr. Martin King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. This coveted moment in American history changed the course of race and economic relations for the world. African American civil rights organizations, including the Negro American Labor Council, NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the National Urban League united into joint leadership, with Dr. Martin Luther King., Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) prominent among them, in one of the largest political rallies ever to march on Washington D.C. on behalf of their civil and economic rights. And the nation listened. The 1963 March on Washington burgeoned in the shadows of the original March on Washington of 1941 led by A. Philip Randolph. The 1963 march, organized by Bayard Rustin (a founding member of SCLC), was also led by A. Philip Randolph. The SCLC helped usher into modern history some of the world’s most revolutionary leaders. Among them remains one whose dream is deeply and inseparably woven into the rich fabric of the American identity, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Some say it was Mahalia Jackson who called out from the crowd for King to “Tell them about the dream.” Whether it was Mahalia or a moment of inspiration motivated by the moment, he did. He told us about his dream and his dream remains with us today as a litmus test for social, political, and economic progress in America. The march, made 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, was organized to encourage jobs and freedom, is widely credited with helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The recent verdict in the trial regarding the death of the young Trayvon Martin has again stirred the nation to mass activism. The Trayvon Martin case over the past year has generated fresh conversations around race, economics and justice. As we stand in Washington, D.C. this August, commemorating the 1963 march and recognizing the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, I wonder what the legacy of this generation will be. I am indeed hopeful. I have seen young people mobilize and unify to stand for common causes. I have witnessed young people console one another and stand firm as intercessory justice advocates one for another. This moment is latent with the rich potential of this generation to again challenge the moral disposition of this nation while catalyzing change from which generations to come will benefit. sclc

Bernard LaFayette, Jr.

16 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

/ the president’s corner BY ALEXIS SCOTT

C.T. Vivian is Honored as a Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom

for his Contribution to America

CORDY TINDELL (C.T.) VIVIAN SCLC NATIONAL PRESIDENT 18 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

or C.T. Vivian, being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom isn’t about recognition for what he has done so far, but about the good that he can still do. The 89-year-old Atlanta resident, who currently serves as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was recently given the nation’s highest honor for a civilian. But rather than reflect on a life of accomplishment and honor, the civil rights legend chose to look forward to the greater positive impact the award could bring about. “I was thankful. I was just thankful, because here’s the thing, I know how much good you can do with that,” Vivian told the Daily World. “Programs and ideas that I’ve wanted to do in order to push things ahead and make things better [could be done]. But it’s so difficult, number one, to get attention and difficult to raise money.” Among the good works Vivian wants to focus on are the nation’s high school dropout rate, particularly for African-American students; creating a C.T. and Octavia Vivian library to share the archives of he and his wife; and working for social justice. Vivian spoke specifically about the importance of education in light of what he called a “racist culture.” “We’re living in a global world where education becomes even more valuable now than ever,” he said. “And here we are, this is what W.E.B. DuBois called the coalition of people trying to function within a racist culture where a child can be murdered and they don’t even pick up the white guy that murdered him for over a month, about a month and a half really. I’ve had a program for that.” Vivian was honored with the award along with 15 others, including television superstar Oprah Winfrey. The White House and President Barack Obama made the announcement at 3:00 p.m. on Thurs., Aug. 8, and Vivian says his phone has not stopped ringing since. “Of course Oprah Winfrey’s name is going to be above ours, but that makes the point that when you are receiving an honor with people like that it makes it easier to get things done,” he said, “more people know about what you’re doing and what you’re thinking and who you are and what your past has been, so they can trust you and move forward on the things that you’re trying to do. This is what was on my mind.” A longtime member of the SCLC and a lieutenant of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Vivian was a leader in the push for nonviolence and civil rights in the U.S. He was a member of the Freedom Riders and helped organize numerous sit-ins, most notably the Nashville Movement, and pushed for justice and racial equality alongside King and leaders from the Congress of Racial Equality, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and other luminary organizations. In a press release, the White House honored Vivian with a caption that read: “C.T. Vivian is a distinguished minister, author, and organizer. A leader in the Civil Rights Movement and friend to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he participated in Freedom Rides and sit-ins across our country. Dr. Vivian also helped found numerous civil rights organizations, including Vision, the National Anti-Klan Network, and the Center for Democratic Renewal. In 2012, he returned to serve as interim President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.” Vivian also founded other civil rights organizations including the Black Action Strategies and Information Center (BASIC). He is an author, minister and as SCLC’s current president remains active in civil rights activities around the nation. sclc

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

One-on-One with Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient:

SCLC President Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian EDITOR’S NOTE: C.T. Vivian is the third Southern Christian Leadership Conference principal to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He joins Andrew Young and Joseph Lowery as the only three recipients representing the nation’s most revered civil rights organization—SCLC.

INTERVIEW BY MAYNARD EATON SCLC National Communications Director

MAYNORD EATON: Dr. Vivian you have crafted a storied civil and human rights career, but what does Medal of Freedom Award mean to you? C.T. VIVIAN: It means that I will be able to do more because it causes people to see you in a different light, and to come forth and listen to you about programs that are necessary to be done to enhance the American life—not just for Black people but for people period. Of course our basic concern has dealt with who we are as a people. That’s what W.E.B. Dubois called us, “a small nation of people.” That small nation of people is a key to so much that has to be done in American life. The amazing thing about Martin King is that what Martin did was to change everything in 15 years. There is not an institution in this nation that was not changed.

cord between many of us—if you give, you receive. I don’t need to explain it, it happens. I like to think that the Father is forever working toward creating love, truth and justice, and we are his helpers. And, Martin is the greatest prophetic person of our time, in the world’s most powerful nation, and it allowed us to do things we could never have done without his strategy; without him leading and making that strategy work. He got his from that spiritual cord in the universe. He was a minister highly trained in those relationships. Things like this award cause you to go back to the basics… EATON: And, you are now a piece; a part of that spiritual cord within the universal church?

“

Just as the inherent nature of sugar is sweetness... So is the eternal nature of the living entity, of every individual soul, is to render loving service to God.” 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111—Swami Bhaktipada

EATON: But you were there as well with Dr. King as a friend and colleague, and a disciple of Dr. Martin Luther King, but doesn’t this nation’s highest honor also salute your stellar and applaud your achievements? VIVIAN: It does, but you see there wouldn’t have been very much to applaud—and certainly not at this level— if it hadn’t been for the leadership of Martin King. EATON: You seem to be saying that you owe this award and recognition to Dr. King? VIVIAN: Let’s put it another way. There is a spiritual

VIVIAN: That makes me operate, that gives me a chance, and it allows me to do good and to continue to do good effectively. The most important word in the universe; it speaks to the most important part of the living experience, and that is the word love! This [medal] is given to us because we were loving, and we give it back because it allows us to do that loving and caring and changing much more. EATON: Is this Presidential Medal of Freedom the highlight of your illustrious career? VIVIAN: Well yes, but not until we find out how well we can use it to help somebody. This one is important because it is more likely to allow you to do more good. sclc

COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 19

GEORGE E. CURRY “The Super Southern Scribe” Picture: George Curry & Charles Steele

In his own words with Maynard Eaton eGorge E. Curry, a son of the segregated South, has crafted such an accomplished and acclaimed journalism career that it has catapulted him from Tuscaloosa, Alabama to national prominence as editor-inchief and a syndicated columnist for the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service. Before joining the NNPA, he was a reporter for Sports Illustrated, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a Washington correspondent and New York Bureau Chief for the Chicago Tribune and editor-in-chief of Emerge: Black America’s Newsmagazine. He wrote and served as chief correspondent for the Frontline PBS documentary, “Assault on Affirmative Action” and was featured in a 2013 French documentary on the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation titled, “Abraham Lincoln, the Roads to Freedom.” He is arguably the best Black journalist in the nation. Curry is also a sought after speaker, political commentator and TV talk show panelist who appears every Friday on Keeping it Real with Rev. Al Sharpton and regularly with Cliff Kelley on WVON in Chicago, Bernie Hayes on WGNU in St. Louis, Gary Byrd on WBLS in New York, and Chris B. Bennett on KRIZ in Seattle. Curry is the author of three books: Jake Gaither: America’s Most Famous Black Coach, The Affirmative Action Debate and The Best of Emerge Magazine. He is at work on a book about Emmett Till. The National Association of Black Journalists named Curry its 2003 “Journalist of the Year.” The University of Missouri presented him with its Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, the same honor it had bestowed on Walter Cronkite, John H. Johnson, Joseph Pulitzer and Sir Winston Churchill. Curry was in Atlanta recently to address the National Conference of Black Mayors’ convention and sat down with this SCLC Magazine editor to discuss his reporting and his opinions on the Black American experience and the Civil Rights Movement. COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 21

feature/cover MAYNARD EATON: Your award-winning journalism career has seemingly taken you virtually everywhere in your reporting on the Black experience, but where were you during the 1963 March on Washington and what are your thoughts on the 50th anniversary? GEORGE CURRY: I was in the 10th grade in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but the most troubling thing to me is that the focus does not seem to be on jobs. The original march was about jobs and freedom; now the jobs in large part has gotten lost. Secondly, if all of the Black leaders could get together 50 years ago—and they were of different political persuasions— there should be no reason why they cannot get together now. I don’t see that happening and that is very disturbing. EATON: You started out in Alabama, and Alabama is really where the civil rights crusade was launched. Now this Alabama boy is a globe-trotting journalist, just back from Morocco, who is based in Washington, D.C. CURRY: I will always be a son of Alabama, that’s not going to change. I grew up under a mother who did domestic work and with three younger sisters. I’m 66 years old. I had to ride in the back of the bus, had to drink from separate water fountains, attend separate schools and face racism every day of my life as a kid. So this was not something I read in “Eyes on the Prize,” this is not a theory, this was something I lived. My mother did domestic work all day, cleaned up those little white kids’ snotty noses, cooked their food and when she came home, she had to ride in the back of the car. That irked me, that is seared in my memory. As a kid, it affects you in one or two ways—you can either be consumed by it and become discouraged or it can motivate you. It motivated me and made me more determined. EATON: How did you get interested in journalism? CURRY: I wanted to be a journalist since I was in the eighth grade that was because the stories I was seeing on TV and reading in the newspaper, The only time you saw Blacks in the media was if they were athletes, entertainers or suspected of being criminals. I knew there were a lot more stories to be told. EATON: You have written and reported about the issue of race and the Black struggle throughout your career, correct? CURRY: Yes, for 43 years. I started in 1970 and was with Sports Illustrated for two years. I played quarterback in high school and college. I didn’t plan to stay a sports writer all my life but who is going to turn down Sports Illustrated. Then, I was at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for eleven years, the Chicago Tribune 10 years as a Washington correspondent and the New York Bureau Chief. In 1993, I became editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine for seven years. After it closed, I completed my second book for a year and then became editor-inchief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA). I left and came back last year. 22 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

EATON: Has race and the Civil Rights Movement been the overriding issues you have covered and reported about during those career stops? CURRY: I’ve done a lot of things in my career, from covering presidential campaigns to covering espionage trials. But because the media does such a poor job covering race, I’ve always felt a special obligation to make contributions in that area. In one respect, it improves news coverage and in another, I can help make sure our people are accurately and fairly portrayed. When you look at how this country looks at race, everything is seen through a racial prism. We just look at things differently and race seems to color everything that we do. This country was founded by importing a people from their land and compelling them to provide free labor to Whites, by taking the land of another group already living here—Native Americans—and annexing land of Brown people in Mexico. It’s no wonder that we have a color problem. It’s ingrained in our history. EATON: And, it continues to drive us, to consume us? CURRY: Yes, it does, even though it is more disguised and more subtle today. What happened is the South learned to be like the North in many ways whereas before they were quite open with their racism. Even with its problems, I think the South has made more progress addressing racism than the North. EATON; Many conservatives argue that the election of President Obama proves racial attitudes have changed. Does your reporting reflect that things are better? CURRY: No, of course not. First, the majority of Whites did not vote for Barack Obama to be president. So, if you eliminate the votes of people of color—which is what some people are trying to do today—Obama would not have been elected president. You see reports that he won the votes of women and that’s true. But if you remove the vote of Black women, he would not have carried that group. The same is true of the youth vote. Yes, Obama was elected president by winning a significant portion of the White vote. But we should not be duped into thinking there was this radical change that allowed him to be elected. Yes, things are getting better, but we still have a long way to go. EATON: Has the Black Press been lax perhaps in providing that kind of insight or making the case for civil rights?

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

George Curry and U.S. President Barack Obama

CURRY: I don’t think we have been lax. I think the problem is that more than half the Black population was not born when they had the original March on Washington. To them, the Civil Rights Movement is like the Civil War—it’s ancient history. We assumed the next generation would benefit, but we have failed to teach them about our past. I blame our generation for that because we have not passed that on. That’s why when I led journalism workshops for high school kids, I started the program with segments of [the documentary] “Eyes On The Prize.” If they never learn anything about journalism, they would learn about their history. EATON: You are old enough to remember the March on Washington. When they reconvene for the 50th Anniversary, what will you be thinking? What will it mean to you?

CURRY: I hardly ever agree with [Black conservative political commentator] Armstrong Williams on anything. We used to fight on BET all the time. But Armstrong did say one thing that I agree with. He said that “As long as we have been marching, we ought to be where we are going by now.” We shouldn’t have to be out there 50 years later marching for the same thing.That’s not to say marching is not an effective tool—it is. But we have to do much more than walk. You hear so many young people saying they wish they could have taken part in the Civil Rights Movement—well they are going to get their chance because we are going to have to fight for everything all over again. The U.S. Supreme Court has decided it is going impose stricter limits on affirmative action in—even mild forms of it—at the University of Texas, and voted in favor of Shelby County, Ala. And let’s not forget, they did not give it to us the first time. That means we have to go back and fight those battles again. sclc

In the heart of the Museum District 713.639.7300 | www.mfah.org

IS PROUD TO SUPPORT THE

55TH SC SCLC C CO CONVENTION O AND ITS S IMPORTANT ORT EFFORTS FORTS TO CELEBRATE, ENGAGE AND EMPOWER. “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.

COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 23

/ by Cathelean C. Steele

Justice for Girls A Call to Action

aking the time to teach our young girls the importance of loving themselves, becoming leaders, and seeking truth is the responsibility of all. Never let it be said that you had the opportunity to make a difference in a girl’s life—and you did nothing. At a recent event sponsored by “Justice for Girls”, a young lady stood up from the audience and testified that she was once a victim of sex trafficking. To my dismay, she stated that she later became a trafficker of two young girls that were killed while they were working for her. For me, this was a “you did what?” moment. After having time to think about her situation, however, I realize I have no right to judge. I need to get about the business of training young girls how to avoid the pitfalls of traffickers. This young lady is no longer in the business of sex trafficking young girls. Instead, she is telling her story to all that will hear. Possibly, her story will touch upon someone’s heart and mind, such that they become proactive against this criminal behavior. Sadly to report, child sex trafficking has infected our communities, and is eating away at the very fabric of our girls’ and families’ lives. In our country, too many of us are doing a great job of avoiding and ignoring the problems we face as a nation, and as Americans. According to our national statistics, sex trafficking is becoming an “in-your-face” kind of problem. It goes beyond economic classifications, race, or gender. As this issue continues to grow in magnitude, only a handful of people nationwide are making headway in bringing awareness to our communities.

CATHELEAN C. STEELE Programs Director, “Justice for Girls”

24 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

Here are just a few of the statistics on child sex trafficking in America: 1

As many as 2.8 million children run away each in the United States. Within 48 hours of hitting the streets, one-third of these children are recruited into underground prostitution and pornography. (THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN)

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

TWO MEN. ONE DREAM.

Equality for all. A simple dream, but one denied to countless Americans not so long ago. Denied until individuals with equal parts vision and bravery sought change. Regions is proud to honor Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and ushered in an era where equality for all could become a reality.

LABORERS’ INTERNATIONAL UNION OF NORTH AMERICA

The Laborers’ International Union of North America is proud to support the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in its mission to protect the civil rights of all Americans.

TERRY O’SULLIVAN General President

ARMAND E. SABITONI General Secretary-Treasurer

One Morgan Place Yellow Springs, OH 45387

I cannot stand on the campus of Antioch College without a deep sense of appreciation for all that this great institution of learning has given to the cultural, the social and political life of our nation and the world. All men of good will are indebted to this great institution for its noble heritage and its rich tradition. – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1965 Commencement Address at Antioch College, alma mater to his wife, Coretta Scott King (Class of 1951), and her sister, Edythe Scott Bagley (Class of 1947)

937-319-6172

• www.antiochcollege.org

26 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

“There is power in the people—we need your help to save our children, by prevention. PLEASE donate generously to “Justice for Girls” by going to www.nationalsclc.org, click “Justice for Girls” and scroll down to donate. I thank you in advance.” —Cathelean C. Steele, Program Director 2

The average age of entry for children victimized by the sex industry is 12 years. (U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE)

300,000 children in the United States are at risk every year for commercial sexual exploitation. (U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE)

An average serial child molester may have as many as 400 victims in his lifetime.(CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE PREVENTION STUDY)

Sex traffickers target children because they are less likely to fight back, are gullible, and vulnerable. There is a high demand on the black market for children. Traffickers target minors at malls, on streets, chat-lines, and through friends. They also use girls to recruit other girls at schools and afterschool programs. (POLARIS PROJECT 2010)

In an effort to seek innovative ideas to educate our youth on the dangers of sex trafficking, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) will be presenting the musical “Rimshot” at the 55th Annual Convention on Friday, August 23rd at the Grand Hyatt in DC. The musical’s aim is to bring awareness to sex trafficking. We are now inviting SCLC chapters nationwide to host the musical in their communities, as an educational opportunity for youth across America. Thanks to our volunteers and partners, “Justice for Girls” will begin training sessions in September for our education/awareness and self- esteem program. This vanguard educational program will be held each Saturday, starting in October 2013 and completing at the end of May 2014. Participants will range from ages five through seventeen. The program consists of a well-planned curriculum with expert presenters, and clinical psychologists. We are set to impact the lives of both girls and their parents—and the future of American families. “Justice for Girls” is a copyrighted program of the National Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Any local SCLC chapter or other nonprofit organization wishing to establish a “Justice for Girls” initiative in their area must contact: catheleansteele@nationalsclc.org. sclc

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

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leaders

Don Cash:

aces of Our Children (FOOC) Founder Don Cash is on a mission he had no clue he’d be on. Moved and motivated into action by the death of a dear friend to the Sickle Cell Disease (SCD), he became educated, and then determined to fill the void in the public awareness, research and funding of SCD advocacy work— particularly for children. “Children will have you do things you never thought you’d ever do,” admits the nonprofit leader. “The pain that some of our children suffer, from Sickle Cell Disease, is just excruciating. Watching them go through frequent blood transfusions—the reality of having to take morphine, in order to relieve the severe pain they experience, just to breathe in and out—I don’t know if I, personally, could withstand it.” For over 40 years, a well-known and respected activist/organizer in both labor union and civil rights organizations, Don Cash has been getting things done. He is currently a National Board Member of the NAACP (Region 7), Vice

“

You really don’t know what the Good Lord is going to have you do. I don’t think about it. I just do it.” —Don Cash

Chairman of the National SCLC Board of Directors, and the President of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Minority Coalition. The man of faith explains, “I pray, ‘What do you want me to do today, Lord? What do you want me to do next week? For some odd reason, it always works out. When I’m in my car, talking to the man upstairs, sometimes I get those strange looks from my fellow drivers on the road, like I’m a crazy guy, but guess what, I get an answer. I really do put my trust and faith in God.” Cash also gives credit to the organizing training he’s received from working with labor unions: “I am an organizer. Being an organizer gives you almost everything you need to know. Organizing allows you to prioritize. If you can organize and prioritize, you can do just about anything in life. Organizing taught me not only how to organize workers, but how to organize yourself.” 28 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

SCD STATS

Alleviating the Pain of Our Children Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is an inherited disorder in which red blood cells (RBCs) are abnormally shaped. This abnormality can result in painful episodes, serious infections, chronic anemia, and damage to body organs. These complications can, however, vary from person to person depending on the type of sickle cell disease each has. Some people are relatively healthy and others are hospitalized frequently. But thanks to advancements in early diagnosis and treatment, most kids born with this disorder grow up to live relatively healthy and productive lives. It is estimated that: •

SCD affects 90,000 to 100,000 Americans.

•

SCD occurs among about 1 out of every 500 Black or African-American births.

•

SCD occurs among about 1 out of every 36,000 Hispanic-American births.

*Source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention, www.cdc.gov

That means planning. “I plan all the time,” explains Cash. “I know what I’ve got to do for the NAACP. I know what I’ve got to do for the SCLC. I know what I’ve got to do for the UFCWU Minority Coalition, and then I know what I’ve got to do for the staff and volunteers. That’s how we get it done.” And for Don, getting it done these days is especially focused around raising money for the SCD children and their families. “In the 1970’s we heard a lot about Sickle Cell Disease,” he shares, “because President Nixon was the first President to allocate funds for SCD education. However, in 1980, President Reagan cut those funds. Basically, we flat lined. So, now it’s called the ‘forgotten disease’ because there’s been relatively little discussion about it.” Faces of Our Children, a 501(c)(3) organization, addresses the lack of discussion in the recent past by bringing Americans

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leaders up to speed on the facts, through their materials and community outreach. According to FOOC, there are 100 million people in the world that have SCD or the trait, which is more than the number of people with AIDS. It originated in the Mediterranean region, so it’s not just Africans and African Americans that are affected. Indians, Greeks, Spaniards and other ethnic groups also have the trait. However, one in eight African Americans and one in 14 Latinos either have the disease, or the trait. “What’s most amazing to me,” Cash points out, “is that the disease can be eliminated if people selectively choose their mate. Our vision is to educate people, so they will know the pain that children suffer, and the impact Don Cash at ribbon-cutting ceremony for th Danville, Virginia Community Outreach Center the disease has on the family overall. “I believe the labor unions and the civil rights community It gives people the chance to go and get tested, so they can are a natural for creating the kind of activism and the kind know if a potential partner has the trait.” of uniting together for SCD that can make the difference in The funding Cash and other FOOC workers raise for alleviating the pain of our children.” the nonprofit goes toward providing vital support for the Having personally witnessed the masses of people that children and families affected by SCD. FOOC helps families came together on the Mall in Washington, D.C. fifty years pay for their children’s medicines and other financial support ago, Don Cash recounts how he is inspired to this day by necessary for the family to attend to their children’s medical the unification of “salt and pepper” he saw gathered, to end care. Donations allow the nonprofit to provide free comsegregation and racism: munity testing and blood drives. Summer camps are provided “I was in high school at the time. But I felt something to SCD children, through FOOC scholarships. Families deep inside of me—and I knew something powerful was apply for the FOOC financial support/scholarships on a going down. I wasn’t an activist then. But as I got into first-come, first-serve basis. FOOC also raises money to labor union and civil rights work, I had that incredible keep their informational materials current and circulated as picture in my mind of Dr. King and his wife, with those widely as possible, to keep the SCD issue in front of thousands of people coming together for a cause. I can never Americans’ attention. forget that picture. There’s nothing that inspires me more, “The problem is of such magnitude,” Cash acknowlthan knowing I want to give back.” edges, “that we really appreciate people taking notice of Cash even gives back the praise others have brought his the work that we are doing. The more people know about way—and returns it to those who are contributing the most to this, the better—and the more we can prevent other children his success with FOOC—his wife and the UFCW Union. and families from suffering.” “How can you thank someone enough who keeps everything A unified focal point on SCD awareness is something running in your absence, day-in and day-out, like my wife Cash sees his labor union and civil rights networking webs Vivian? How can I thank my close associates of the UFCW ideal for creating. And, in a similar sense, he equates his Minority Coalition enough, when they’ve contributed so much, “activism” for children suffering from SCD to his activism to have FOOC going forward with all of the needs we are in the labor union/civil rights communities for Americans committed to taking care of? There are simply are no words.” suffering from economic and civil rights inequities. If you want to find Don Cash, it’s a likely bet you’ll “There’s something about suffering children—the kind find him hanging around the FOOC, and his growing network of impact they have on you—that can have you be passionate, for “Sickle Cell Disease” justice. How long? He would to the point of activism,” Cash reflects. “That type of probably say, “for as long as the Good Lord wants me to.” activism was present in the labor unions and in the civil Faces of Our Children is a 501(C)(3) organization that rights community, toward economic injustices and racism raises money to fight and defeat SCD. FOOC is in partnerin the 60’s and 70’s. Just like we have to do in the civil ship with Howard University Center For Sickle Cell Disease. rights community about voter suppression, we have to For more information visit: www.facesofourchildren.org. educate our members, challenge them, and make people Don Cash lives in the DC/Maryland suburbs. FOOC offices care. Just like in the labor unions, to represent workers, we are located in Washington, D.C. and Danville, VA. sclc have to create ‘machines’ to get our message out widely.

30 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

SEIU is a Proud Sponsor of SCLC’s SCLC’s 55th Annual Convention

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Southern Christian Leadership Conference

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young activists

Young People Leading the Charge Years after Dr. Martin Luther Kings’ assassination, the creation of SCLC and the start of the Poor People’s Campaign, the world is recognizing that a rejuvenation of King’s call to action is desperately needed today.

BY LA’DIE Z. MANSFIELD, Intern UAW Global Organizing Institute

Many of us have called for change and our voices have been lifted up around the globe by the recent Occupy Movement, the burgeoning student movement, coalescing around issues of student debt, tuition hikes, and more recently a call of action around workers’ rights. We are the future workers and consumers advocating across the globe to restore and protect the rights of the working class. In a conversation with Dr. Concerned Students for a Better Nissan stand in support of the Nissan workers of Canton, MS Charles Steele Jr., (CEO of at the Mississippi State Capitol. SCLC) concerning bridging the gap around our civil rights leaders and new generation n an ever-expanding corporate globalized economy, leaders, he expressed the importance of supporting young the United States has experienced massive economic downpeople in their effort to bring about economic change turn amongst families and working-class people. The diviamongst the working class. He explained that in all of his sion between the haves and the have nots is widening, travel around the world, the rights of the working class making the old realms of “working-class stability” or people are under attack globally. “middle class” no longer significant in meaning. The new “Young people have historically changed the world around leaders of today’s struggle understand that this affects of this such issues and lead movements that changed time.” said Dr. turn represents our future unless something is done. Steele. “We did it in the Civil Rights Movement.” We as young organizers are imbued with spirit much like In addition, labor organizations such as UAW, AFL-CIO, those of Dr. King, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Teamsters, and community/labor hybrid groups such as Jobs and many like them whose will for change led them into a with Justice have made a conscious effort to raise awareness people’s movement that has benefitted every generation since. of the need for unions. New campaigns have been launched In order to understand our economic crisis, we must first to revive the current labor movement into a once-again thriving recognize the cause. The evidence points to rapid advances force in assuring our workers’ rights, livable wages and benefits, in technology, the advent of globalization, and a rise in conand respect for workers. solidated worldwide corporations. However, there is one factor This summer a group of young organizers and college which has been often overlooked until recently: the decline students had the opportunity to be a part of the UAW Global of labor unions. According to data released by the Center for Organizing Institute (GOI) internship program. This program American Progress Action Fund, “decline in the unionization is geared to young people, mostly college students and recent rate tracks almost perfectly with the decline in the share of graduates organizing around workers’ rights. Currently UAWincome going to the middle class.” GOI has interns organizing throughout the Southeast—in For future generations, this trend is certainly not uplifting. Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee and Washington, College students are acutely aware of the problems we are D.C. We are all working toward a common goal: to raise up facing: rising costs of tuition, student loans, more educational workers in the south, and restore dignity that has been lacking requirements, fewer job prospects with fewer benefits, and throughout the history of the American South. smaller salaries.

32 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

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young activists One of our assignments as GOI focuses around the workers at Nissan Manufacturing Plant in Canton, Mississippi. For several years, Nissan workers have asked for a fair election to vote for a union. Despite negotiating with unions at the rest of their factories throughout the world, Nissan has made many efforts to discourage their workers here in the South from even the idea of unionizing. When corporations are given the opportunity to open shop with incentives like major tax breaks and without obligations to provide employee security, livable wages, benefits, pension, nor safety protection, they are seldom likely to address basic worker needs or rights. Fortunately, these workers are not alone. GOI interns are working to mobilize students and communities throughout the South to show the struggle of Canton is the struggle of all. In partnership with GOI’s Nissan campaign, college students have formed Student Justice Alliances across the nation and visited the Canton Nissan plant to express our support for the workers. Through dialogue with the workers, many of our eyes were opened and the common cause of struggle was

Georgia Student Justice Alliance stands with the family of Teresa Weaver Pickard, an employee of Sewon- Kia Auto Plant supplier in Lagrange, GA, who died from work- related heat exhaustion .

made acutely apparent. The workers represented not only themselves but young and future workers to come. Young organizers realize the power of workers’ voices and collective bargaining between employers and employees. Brandon Brown, UAW GOI team lead and recent Political Science graduate from Morehouse College, stresses the need for policies that focus around workers’ rights to collective bargaining. Mr. Brown explained his decision to further his career with a Master’s in Public Policy and expressed the need for collective bargaining. “Collective bargaining across the board is something that everyone should be afforded. When looking at the constitution we’re actually given the voice to voice our opinion and to have our own say in what we do,” said Mr. Brown. Not merely that, but it’s commensurate to higher wages and thus a more robust working class. The State of Working America, 12th Edition lays out a detailed analysis of the impact of unionization on wages and benefits and on wage inequality. It outlines key findings that include:

34 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

Mississippi Student Justice Alliance advocates on behalf of the Nissan workers.

The union wage premium—the percentage-higher wage earned by those covered by a collective bargaining contract— is 13.6% overall (17.3% for men and 9.1% for women). Unionized workers are 28.2% more likely to be covered by employer-provided health insurance and 53.9% more likely to have employer-provided pensions. Kendra Williams, Georgia State University student, explained that for most of her family, college friends, and associates, unions usually mean better working conditions. She speaks on the significance of having young people lead the charge for better economic stability for the working class. “Bringing college students into labor is the right move because we’re the ones leaving college going into the work place whether it be as employers or employee,” she says. “We can’t build a future working at a place with no real guarantees.” Without respect for workers, it is quickly a race to the bottom for the 99%. In the city of LaGrange, Georgia, Teresa Weaver Pickard recently passed away after complaining of heat exhaustion while working at the Sewon Auto Manufacturing Plant. Amidst worker reports of Sewon neglecting and intimidating the plant workers and employees collapsing from the heat, OSHA stepped in to investigate, but the situation has not been resolved. In response to Teresa’s tragedy, GOI interns and Georgia Student Justice Alliance worked with the LaGrange community to organize students from surrounding colleges, labor and civil rights organizations. A rally and vigil was held honoring Ms. Pickard’s memory and showing support for the workers and their concerns. We called on other student intern groups and campus groups to uplift the fallen worker and the concerns of those employees still working at the plant. It will take young people to carry out actions and develop unique ways to educate, motivate and organize around these struggles. Young people are the future workers of the world; the drivers of the economy. They are leading the way to addressing basic rights and fighting the effects of an economy that puts profit over people. Tyson Jackson, a student and community organizer in Mississippi puts it simply: “Workers’ rights are civil rights, which are all human rights... Lines of division are more so perspective than anything else.” sclc

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

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COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 35

young activists

Bridging the Gap Between Old Activists & Young Activists

BY ROBERT HOGGARD Founding President, American Baptist College, SCLC Chapter

oo often the civil rights movement has been a museum of finished social success. More often than not, the masses peruse drum majors of justice for knowledge in their metal libraries. More of our people are wandering through our civil rights museums rather than marching the unjust streets of our nation. For young activists, the civil rights movement needs to be a base for future social success. Far too many occurrences, the masses treat the civil rights era as if it were a plateau for ended social success. It needs to act as a beginning of a communal struggle for social change rather than the endall be all for social change. There must be more forms on education of social change. During my time at American Baptist College, I was in a class about endeavoring in activism online and that class, among many other classes at the college; gave me a passion for “social justice leadership in the world” (excerpt from mission statement of American Baptist College) These courses have taught me how pertinent social change is to our world and what it would mean for young people to carry on the torch of social justice. What if more higher education structures, high schools, and middle schools offered more courses and classes about social change? How much would that bridge the gap? Young activists must learn from our base and the older activists must continue to teach us the success of their base. Nicole Tinson, a young activist and senior at Dillard University said, “We need to have a deepening understanding of one another.” In essence, when our deep passions meet with the deep passions of our predecessors then we will see communal success. Although, injustices are not as prevalent and our responses to them may be a little different. If the creativity of today met with the expertise of yesterday; we would bridge the gap between the young and old activists. Spanky Edwards, young activist and senior at Morehouse College, said, “I remember times when I was building rallies and responses around the Troy Davis conflict. I had to do most of the work myself and 20% of the responses to my work was ‘get that out of my face’.” It is clear that young activists have trouble winning the support of the people, but with much teaching, change will be inevitable and can shape the societal success of the future.

36 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

We must see the base of the civil rights movement as it really is. The base is about John Lewis, Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian, Dr. Bernard Lafayette, and others brutally suffering for the beautiful good of humanity. What young activists will rise to suffer for the good of humanity? Which activists will be arrested, beaten, taunted, and receiving death threats for the piercing perfection of their work? With a doubt, what separated the most effective activists from their peers were those who made the biggest sacrifices for social change by suffering. As Douglas Brinkley said in the forward of Across that Bridge by John Lewis, “Freedom demands sacrifice and fortitude.” As we continue to see uncompromising situations of injustice it is important that young activists unite to strategize, learn and implement justice for all. Young activists must make bold sacrifices that are monumental. If we want to bridge the gap between older and younger activists, the younger generation must “be the change that we want to see in the world” (Mahatma Gandhi); and the older generation must teach the change that we want to see in the world. If we bridge this gap, social change would reach heights that exceed Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. Robert Hoggard is from Middletown, Connecticut. He is a senior at American Baptist College. After he completed his freshman year, he preached and participated in missionary work in Saint Thomas, Anguilla, Saint Kitts, Antigua, Barbuda, Dominica and Trinidad. He is a Staff Writer for HBCU Buzz Inc. (the leading source for news on HBCU’s), and a blogger on ‘Huffington Post’. He believes learning, love and liberation is imperative as it relates to progress in the Black community and the world. He has authored publications on: poverty, gun violence, racism, voter suppression, the oppression in the Gambia government, debt among colleges, racism at the 2012 Republican National Convention, death of HBCU’s and criminalization of young black men. He has participated in a march for homeless people in Nashville, Tennessee. Through the Chi Boule Social Action scholarship, this fall he will be the Founding President of the American Baptist College chapter of the SCLC. sclc

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall Through December 8

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Tell It with Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial September 15–January 20 Made possible through the generous support of GRoW, an initiative of the Annenberg Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Trellis Fund.

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I to r: Kerry James Marshall, Our Town (detail), 1995, acrylic and collage on canvas, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, Photography by Vancouver Art Gallery; Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Shaw Memorial (detail), 1900, patinated plaster, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire

COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 37

women in the movement

juanita jones abernathy

bio

native of Uniontown, Alabama, Juanita Odessa Jones Abernathy, is the youngest of eight children born to the late Mr. And Mrs. Alex Jones. Abernathy received both her elementary and high school education at Selma University, Selma, Alabama; a Baptist School. Abernathy earned her B.S. Degree in Business Education from Tennessee State University in Nashville She came into this world fortified with the kind of passion and spirit that would equip and propel her to spend an entire lifetime going against the wind. A vigilant crusader and activist for civil and human rights, Juanita J. Abernathy worked throughout the Civil Rights Movement along side with her husband, Dr. Ralph David Abernathy, Sr., Dr. King and others from the very beginning in 1955. She has traveled extensively throughout and around the world many times. In 1968, along with religious leaders of every faith, she traveled around the world in search of world peace. In 1971 one month following “Bloody Sunday”; she was the guest of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Organization, Belfast, Ireland, carrying the message of peace in the midst of daily bombings. One of her most memorable experiences during the Northern Ireland trip by invitation of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, during her lecture on Non-Violence, in the midst of daily bombings, and dodging bullets she became the target of the infamous “rubber bullet”, fortunately the bullet missed. In 1972 she was the guest of the Swedish Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in Stockholm, Sweden. Juanita J. Abernathy has been guest speaker for Peace and freedom Front Row, L-R: 1965, Selma to Montgomery March on Washington, Ralph D. Abernathy; Juanita Jones Abernathy; Noble Peace Prize recipient, Ralph Bunche; Martin Luther in many countries in Europe and South America and has worked with people from around the King, Jr.; and Coretta Scott King

38 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

WE NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER

of a dream The men and women of Constellation Brands celebrate the accomplishments of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and everyone working toward fulfilling the dream of making our nation a better place for all.

He spoke to more than the people who were in attendance on that memorable August day in 1963. He spoke to the world. And the dream that was so eloquently communicated made it possible for UniWorld Group to believe in our own. Thank you for speaking up so our voice could be heard.

COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 39

women in the movement globe as part of her dedication and commitment to the continuous struggle for equality in all areas. As President of the Ralph David Abernathy Foundation, Juanita Abernathy continues to work tirelessly in advancing the cause of peace, human rights, and equality that was started in Montgomery, Alabama when as a young wife and mother; she worked side-by-side with her husband, in changing the consciousness of the entire globe. She has lived an extraordinary life, at the heart and forefront of the Civil Rights Movement, beginning in 1955 as a leader and guiding force through an extraordinary period in this nation’s history. Her pivotal role during the Montgomery Movement made her a prime target for continuous harassment and threats on her life including the bombing of her home while she was pregnant and with her infant child inside. She remains fearless and relentless and has traveled around the world in her pursuits of justice and equality. During the movement, Abernathy helped to lead and organized communications surrounding the bus boycott which ultimately keep the people off of the buses. Her home was headquarter central for strategy meeting and planning sessions for the Montgomery Bus Boycott where they organized drivers, carpooling, generated flyers, etcetera— that helped to make the boycott successful After moving to Atlanta, Juanita continued her cause by integrated the Atlanta Symphony by being the first African American season ticket holder. She also led the initiative to integrate the Atlanta Public School System as the first Blacks sending her children and the king children to attend an all white middle class elementary school She continued to lead and be a role model for African American woman in the 70’s by being the only woman from the civil rights movement creating opportunities for African American woman in Mary Kay cosmetic and rose to the ranks of national sales director for nearly 20 years, receiving more than 5 pink Cadillacs, During the transition from segregation to integration, including Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King; Juanita Jones Abernathy is the last living original matriarch of the civil rights movement. As a businesswoman, Mrs. Abernathy’s experiences range from teaching business curriculum to high school students to

Front Row, L-R: 1965, Selma to Montgomery March on Washington; Coretta Scott King, Fred Shuttlesworth and Juanita Abernathy

breaking barriers in corporate management. She rose to become Senior Sales Director in Mary Kay Cosmetics and successfully maintained a top position in the corporation for nearly two decades. Juanita Abernathy also worked side by side with her husband as a pastor’s wife, serving as First Lady of First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama and serving as First Lady for thirty years in the West Hunter Street Baptist Church in Atlanta. She continues her servant leadership at the local level as a Child Care Advocate for the court system and serving on the Board of Directors of the Morehouse School of Religion; Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA); Fulton County Development Authority; Atlanta Fulton County League of Women Voters and the Ralph David Abernathy Residence Towers. Abernathy has four children and four grandchildren. sclc

International Union, UAW Civil and Human Rights Department g Congratulates

Southern Christian Leadership Conference on 55 years of Progress in Promoting Peace, Unity, Love, Brotherhood and Respect Bob King President International Union, UAW

40 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

Miguel Foster Director Civil & Human Rights Dept.

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

We Join SCLC in Honoring the Memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. May His Dream Become a Reality for All People.

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COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 41

women in the movement

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Matriarch of the Civil Rights Movement Honored

My family, under my father’s leadership, continued the Civil Rights Movement after the assassination. That was critical to finishing the unfinished tasks and business of the Civil Rights Movement—the Poor People’s Campaign and many other movements transitioned us from a segregated society into Black Power. That was under my father’s leadership. “It was also the time when Native Americans, Hispanics, African Americans and poor whites all came together at the Poor People’s Campaign to talk about a mandate for the poor, which is now the agenda that is on the nation’s forefront. The middle class has now become the working poor so we’re back to the same issues we had back in the ‘60’s. “This [Atlanta] is the hub. Montgomery was ground zero, but the hub, where all of the Movement emanated from—the late night strategy sessions, the training of students from the Mississippi Voters Project —all of that came from here. So Atlanta is the hub of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s not the birthplace, it’s not home, but it’s the hub.” “We appreciate what Atlanta has meant to the whole world in representing the unity, of what black people can do when we come together. The story of Ralph David Abernathy rests, rules and abides in what two black men could do when they came together under the spirit of love. With no jealousy and no envy, they changed the course of history and the world.”

Atlanta City Council members Michael Julian Bond (left) and Kwanza Hall (right) congratulate Juanita Abernathy.

Former SCLC First Lady Juanita Abernathy as Centerpiece in a Collage of Comments Comments prepared by Maynard Eaton SCLC National Communications Director

On April 15, 2013, at City Hall, the Atlanta City Council honored Juanita Jones Abernathy for her work with a proclamation for her role in the Civil Rights Movement.

—Ralph D. Abernathy, III Son of Juanita & Ralph D. Abernathy, Jr.

When you think about the Abernathy family, in terms of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as what you see today in terms of community, civic and public service, I don’t know if there is a family you can point to that has done more across this great span of time. She has been a tireless vocal advocate for the people and that’s something you always have to have in a community that is going to have balance, and that’s really going to have heart.” —Caesar Mitchell Atlanta City Council President

42 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

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COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 43

women in the movement Photo credit clyde_bradley@msn.com

We honor the March And the Dream.

Former SCLC staff members and friends pictured with Juanita Abernathy at Atlanta City Hall

SCLC changed America for the good. We were unafraid. We didn’t go through the court system to get changes made, because we knew that going through the courts would take decades and decades. And, we didn’t have that long to wait. We did it through direct action, which is the only way to do it and get it done right. It took a lot. It took a lot of pressure, but we were able to stand up to it, because we were tough enough. We started off in Montgomery, and from Montgomery, we brought it here. Martin and Ralph decided that from here we were going to take on national, and that we did. It was fun because when you are young, you really don’t have a lot of inhibitions. We were brave then. “Too few people know about the women in the Civil Rights Movement, and what we did. Had it not been for the women there would not have been a Movement. We were the foot soldiers, we were the participants. It was a chauvinistic period, so the men made the plans. There were just a few women on staff. The wives gave our strategies and ideas on the sidelines. We just couldn’t sit in the meetings and do it. Had it not been for the women, we wouldn’t have had anybody out there marching, because a lot of the men were at home or at their jobs. We made our mark. We would not be where we are had it not been for us.” “Everybody is writing their own story. Mine is already written. I started off in 1955. There is nothing that happened in Atlanta where integration is concerned—we didn’t do. Except for ‘Brown vs. the Board of Education’ in 1954, every other law and rule that was changed, SCLC had a part in it, and the Abernathys and the Kings too.” —Juanita J. Abernathy SCLC First Lady, 1968-77 44 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

It’s a specific legacy of having carried the baton after Dr. King was slain, but the Abernathy’s took it to another level. Can you imagine how difficult it must have been to try to keep the Movement going under those circumstances? Rev. Abernathy had many, many death threats against him—and Mrs. Abernathy. The way she has positioned herself over the years as being a steady voice, to not only talk about the history of the Movement, but for leaders like myself to go to and receive counsel from, has been invaluable.” “Mrs. Abernathy is obviously the matriarch of the Civil Rights Movement, being a personal mentor to scores of leaders where her influence—though quiet— has been potent.” —Michael Julian Bond Atlanta City Councilman

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L to R: SCLC veteran foot soldier J.T. Johnson and former Georgia State Rep. John White attending Juanita Abernathy Atlanta City Council salute to her stellar civil rights career.

Former Georgia State Rep. Ralph David Abernathy III (right) and a family friend

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COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 45

feature A cry for help: Having exhausted all other options, a desperate young woman named Carrie Kinsey wrote this letter directly to President Theodore Roosevelt asking him to help her brother, who had been taken to a forced labor camp nearby. “Let me have him,” she writes. “He have not don nothing for them to hase him in chanes.”

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n July 31, 1903, a letter addressed to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt arrived at the White House. It had been mailed from the town of Bainbridge, Georgia, the prosperous seat of a cotton county perched on the Florida state line. The sender was a barely literate African-American woman named Carrie Kinsey. With little punctuation and few capital letters, she penned the bare facts of the abduction of her 14year-old brother, James Robinson, who a year earlier had been sold into involuntary servitude. Kinsey had already asked for help from the powerful White people in her world. She knew where her brother had been taken-a vast plantation not far away called Kinderlou. There, hundreds of Black men and boys were held in chains and forced to labor in the fields or in one of several factories owned by the McRee family, one of the wealthiest and most powerful in Georgia. No White official in this corner of the state would take an interest in the abduction and enslavement of a Black teenager. Confronted with a world of indifferent White people, Mrs. Kinsey did the only remaining thing she could think of. Newspapers across the country had recently reported on a speech by Roosevelt promising a “square deal” for Black Americans. Mrs. Kinsey decided that her only remaining hope was to beg the president of the United States to help her brother. “Mr. Prassident,” she wrote. “They wont let me have him.... He hase not don nothing for them to have him in chanes so I rite to you for your help.” 46 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

Considered more than a century later, her letter courses with desperation and submerged outrage. Yet when received at the White House, it was slipped into a small rectangular folder and forwarded to the Department of Justice. There, it was tagged with a reference #12007, and filed away. Teddy Roosevelt never saw it. No action was taken. Her words lie still at the National Archives just outside Washington, D.C. As dumbfounding as the story told by the Carrie Kinsey letter is, far more remarkable is what surrounds that letter at the National Archives. In the same box that holds her griefstricken missive are at least half a dozen other pieces of correspondence recounting other stories of kidnapping, perversion of the courts, or human trafficking-as horrifying as, or worse than, Carrie Kinsey’s tale. It is the same in the next box on the shelf. And the one before. And the ones on either side of those. And the next and the next. And on and on. Thousands and thousands of plaintive letters and grimly bureaucratic responses-altogether at least 30,000 pages of original material-chronicle cases of forced labor and involuntary servitude in the South decades after the end of the Civil War. “I have a little girl that has been kidnapped from me ... and I cant get her out,” wrote Reverend L.R. Farmer, pastor of a Black Baptist church in Morganton, NC. “I want ask you is it law for people to whip (col) people and keep them and not allow them to leave without a pass.” A farmer near Pine Apple, Ala., named J.R. Adams, writing of terrible abuses by the dominant landowning family in the county, was one of the astonishingly few White southerners who also complained to the Department of Justice. “They

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have held negroes ... for years,” Adams wrote. “It is a very rare thing that a negro escapes.” A similar body of material rests in the files of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the one institution that undertook any sustained effort to address at least the most terrible cases. Dwarfing everything at those repositories are the still largely unexamined collections of local records in courthouses across the South. In dank basements, abandoned buildings, and local archives, seemingly endless numbers of files contain hundreds of thousands of handwritten entries documenting in monotonous granularity the details of an immense, metastasizing horror that stretched well into the twentieth century. By the first years after 1900, tens of thousands of AfricanAmerican men and boys, along with a smaller number of women, had been sold by southern state governments. An exponentially larger number, of whom surviving records are painfully incomplete, had been forced into labor through county and local courts, backwoods justices of the peace, and outright kidnapping and trafficking. The total number of those re-enslaved in the seventy-five years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War II can’t be precisely determined, but based on the records that do survive, we can safely say it happened to hundreds of thousands. How many more AfricanAmericans circumscribed their lives in dramatic ways, or abandoned all to flee the South entirely, to avoid that fate or mob violence? It is impossible to know. Millions. Generations. This is not an easy story for Americans to receive, much less accept. The idea that not just civil rights but basic freedom itself was denied to an enormous population of AfricanAmericans until the middle of the twentieth century fits nowhere in the triumphalist, steady-progress, greatest-generations accounts we prefer for our national narrative. That the thrilling events depicted in Steven Spielberg’s recent film Lincoln-the heroic, frenzied campaign by Abraham Lincoln leading to passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery-were in fact later trumped not just by discrimination and segregation but by the resurrection of a full-blown derivative of slavery itself. This story of re-enslavement is irrefutably true, however. Indeed, even as Spielberg’s film conveys the euphoria felt by African-Americans and all opposed to slavery upon passage of the amendment in 1865, it also unintentionally foreshadows the demise of that brighter future. On the night of the amendment’s passage in the film, the African American housekeeper and, as presented in the film, secret lover of the abolitionist Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, played by the actress S. Epatha Merkerson, reads the amendment aloud. First, the sweeping banishment of slavery. And then, an often overlooked but powerful prepositional phrase: “except as a punishment for crime.”

t began with Reconstruction. Faced with empty government coffers, a paralyzing intellectual inability to contemplate equitable labor arrangements with former chattel, profound resentment against the emancipated freedmen, and a desperate economic need to force Black workers back into the fields, White landowners and government officials began using the South’s criminal courts to compel African Americans back into slavery.

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

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1905, after a trip through the counties near Kinsey’s home, W. E. B. DuBois, who was then teaching at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, wrote about one such convict farm: “It is a depressing place-bare, unshaded, with no charm of past association, only a memory of forced human toil-now, then, and before the war.” He described Black farmworkers who never saw wages because charges for rent and food always exceeded any compensation. “A dismal place it still remains, with rows of ugly huts filled with surly ignorant tenants... And now and then it blazes forth in veiled but hot anger.” In the first years after the Civil War, even as former slaves optimistically swarmed into new schools and lined up at courthouses at every whisper of a hope of economic independence, the Southern states began enacting an array of interlocking laws that would make all African-Americans criminals, regardless of their conduct, and thereby making it legal to force them into chain gangs, labor camps, and other forms of involuntarily servitude. By the end of 1865, every Southern state except Arkansas and Tennessee had passed laws outlawing vagrancy and defining it so vaguely that virtually any freed slave not under the protection of a White man could be arrested for the crime. An 1865 Mississippi statute required Black workers to enter into labor contracts with White farmers by January 1 of every year or risk arrest. Four other states legislated that African Americans could not legally be hired for work without a discharge paper from their previous employer-effectively preventing them from leaving the plantation of the White man they worked for. After the return of nearly complete White political control in 1877, the passage of those laws accelerated. Some, particularly

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those that explicitly said they applied only to African-Americans, were struck down in court appeals or through federal interventions, but new statutes embracing the same strictures on Black life quickly replaced them. Most of the new laws were written as if they applied to everyone, but in reality they were overwhelmingly enforced only against African-Americans. In the 1880s, Alabama, North Carolina, and Florida passed laws making it a crime for a Black man to change employers without permission. It was a crime for a Black man to speak loudly in the company of a White woman, a crime to have a gun in his pocket, and a crime to sell the proceeds of his farm to anyone other than the man he rented land from. It was a crime to walk beside a railroad line, a crime to fail to yield a sidewalk to White people, a crime to sit among Whites on a train, and it was most certainly a crime to engage in sexual relations with or, God forbid, to show true love and affection for a White girl. And that’s how it happened. Within a few years of the passage of these laws, tens of thousands of Black men and boys, and a smaller number of Black women, were being arrested and sold into forced labor camps by state officials, local judges, and sheriffs. During this time, some actual criminals were sold into slavery, and a small percentage of them were White. But the vast majority were Black men accused of trivial or trumpedup crimes. Compelling evidence indicates that huge numbers had in fact committed no offense whatsoever. As the system grew, countless White farmers and businessmen jostled to “lease” as many Black “criminals” as they could. Soon, huge numbers of other African-Americans were simply being kidnapped and sold into slavery. The forced labor camps they found themselves in were islands of squalor and brutality. Thousands died of disease, malnourishment, and abuse. Mortality rates in some years exceeded 40 percent. At the same time, this new slavery trade generated millions of dollars for state and local governmentsfor many years it was the single largest source of income for the state of Alabama. As these laws and practices expanded across the South, they became the primary means to terrorize African-Americans, and to coerce them into going along with other exploitative labor arrangements, like sharecropping, that are more familiar to twenty-first-century Americans.

his was the terrifying trap into which Carrie Kinsey’s young brother had been drawn. After a trip through the counties near Kinsey’s home, W. E. B. DuBois, who was then teaching at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, described in 1905 one such convict farm. “It is a depressing place-bare, unshaded, with no charm of past association, only a memory of forced THE NATIONAL CENTER human toil-now, then, and before the war,” he wrote. He described THE NAT I ONAL CENT ER Black farmworkers who never saw wages because charges for FOR STATE COURTS FOR STATE COURTS rent and food always exceeded any compensation. “A dismal place it still remains, with rows of ugly huts filled with surly T r u s tLeadership. ed Leade r sh i p . Trusted P r o v eSolu!ons. n So l u t Be"er i o n s . Courts. B e t t e r Cou ignorant rts. Proven tenants,” DuBois wrote. “And now and then it blazes www . n c s c . o r g www.ncsc.org forth in veiled but hot anger.” DuBois could easily have been describing Kinderlou, An Eq u a l Op po r t un i t y Emp l o y e r An Equal Opportunity Employer where Kinsey’s brother was taken. Encompassing 22,000 acres, it was an enterprise that dwarfed any antebellum definition of

50 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

the word “plantation”. Owned by state Representative Edward McRee and his brothers, Kinderlou was an unparalleled center of economic and political power in Georgia. By 1900, the siblings had inherited the enterprise from their father, a noted Confederate officer named George McRee. Each lived in a lavish mansion within a square mile of the center of the plantation, basking in the subtropical warmth of the Gulf Coast. Between them, an empire bustled with enslaved laborers. Consuming the bulk of an entire county, Kinderlou included thousands of acres of lushly fertile sandy loam, and thousands more of dense pine and hardwood. On a private spur of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad thrust into the center of the plantation, dozens of boxcars waited at all times for the hundreds of thousands of bushels of tomatoes, watermelons, cantaloupes, corn, tobacco, and cotton. The McRees owned their own cotton gins, compresses to make bales, and warehouses to store enormous quantities of lint. A five-horsepower steam engine ground the plantation’s sugarcane to make syrup. Five 80-foot-long barns were built to cure tobacco, and a factory produced thousands of pallets, wooden crates, and baskets for shipping produce. Deep in the forests, McRee turpentine camps collected rosin for their naval stores distillery. Initially, the McRees hired only free Black labor, but beginning in the 1890s they routinely leased a hundred or more convicts from the state of Georgia to perform the grueling work of clearing land, removing stumps, ditching fields, and constructing roads. Other prisoners hoed, plowed, and weeded the crops. Over the course of fifteen years, thousands of men and women were forced to Kinderlou and held in stockades under the watch of armed guards. After the turn of the century, the brothers began to arrange for even more forced laborers through the sheriffs of nearby counties in Georgia and Florida—fueling what eventually grew into a sprawling traffic in humans. A Black worker in 1904 described to a journalist how he arrived at the farm at age ten as a free laborer. A few years later, he attempted to leave to work at another plantation. Before sundown on the day of his departure, one of the McRees and “some kind of law officer” tracked him down. The new employer apologized to the McRees for hiring the young worker, saying he would never have done so if he had known “this nigger was bound out to you.” “So I was carried back to the Captain’s,” the man said later. “That night he made me strip off my clothing down to my waist, had me tied to a tree in his backyard, ordered his foreman to gave me thirty lashes with a buggy whip across my bare back, and stood by until it was done.” When his labor contract finally expired after a decade, the man was told he could leave Kinderlou, so long as he could pay his accumulated debt at the plantation commissary, $165, the rough equivalent of two years’ labor for a free farmer. Unable to do so, of course, he was compelled to sign a contract promising to work on the farm until the debt was paid, but now as a convict. He and other “prison laborers” slept each night in the same clothes they wore in the fields, on rotting mattresses infested with pests. Many were chained to their beds. Food was crude and minimal. The disobedient were tied to a log lying on

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their backs, while a guard spanked their bare feet with a plank of wood. After a slave was untied, if he could not return to work on his blistered feet, he was strapped to the log again, this time facedown, and lashed with a leather whip. Women prisoners were held across a barrel and whipped on their bare bottoms. In the summer of 1903, the assistant U.S. attorney in Macon, Georgia, began a brief investigation into Kinderlou’s army of Black laborers held against their will. He discovered that the brothers had arrangements with sheriffs and other officers in at least six other Georgia counties. These law enforcement officials would seize Blacks on the grounds that they were “committing crimes,” often specious and sometimes altogether made up, and then sell them to the McRees and other businessmen, without ever going through the regular processes of the criminal courts. When the McRees learned of the investigation, they hastily freed the workers being held involuntarily. At least forty fled immediately. James Robinson, the brother of Carrie Kinsey, may have been one of them, though federal officials never connected her allegations to the Kinderlou investigation. Even if Kinsey’s brother’s case had been investigated, her letter misspelled the name of the plantation. In November 1903, a grand jury indicted the McRee brothers on thirteen specific counts of holding African-American men and women illegally. Many of those enslaved had never been charged or tried in any fashion. Several public officials were indicted for conspiring to buy and sell Blacks arrested on trivial or fabricated charges and then turning them over to the McRees. Sheriff Thomas J. McClellan, resorting to an audacious legal defense employed repeatedly in the handful of slavery cases brought by federal officials in the early twentieth century, argued that since no federal law specifically made slavery a crime, he could not be guilty of violating it. In effect, he claimed slavery was not illegal in the United States. A member of the U.S. Congress submitted a legal brief in support of the sheriff, and prominent state officials sat at the defendants’ table during a hearing on a challenge to their charges. Across Georgia, operators of lumber camps, where thousands of other men were being held under similarly dubious circumstances, watched the proceedings closely. Appearing with his brothers before a Savannah courtroom, Edward McRee assured the judge that while his family had held many African Americans in the four decades since slavery’s abolition, they had never intended to enslave anyone or break the law. “Though we are probably technically guilty we did not know it,” he told the court. “This custom has been [in] existence ever since the war... We never knew that we were doing anything wrong.” The judge, hoping to avoid inflaming the anger of local whites, dispensed symbolic punishments. The McRees were allowed to plead guilty and pay a token fine of $1,000. In the wake of that trial and other failed prosecutions in the first years of the century, the U.S. Department of Justice turned a blind eye to such practices for the next forty years. Only the advent of World War II, a declining need for low-skill laborers, and a new era of federal prosecution would finally bring a true end to American slavery.

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

ore than 100 years after Carrie wrote her letter, I received an unexpected call from a man who identified himself as Bernard Kinsey. He believed he was one of Carrie’s cousins. Her letter had haunted me through years of research for the book I wrote on re-enslavement. What those few lines conveyed-the seizure of a teenage boy and his sale to a powerful businessman, the abject refusal of authorities to assist her, the brutalization of thousands of other Blacks on the same plantation, the heroism of Carrie in seeking the aid of President Roosevelt, and, finally, the futility of her letter-captured the entire epic tragedy of Black life in the rural South in the time between the Civil War and World War II. Even to this day, I find myself turning back to her story, resifting census records and cemetery records, looking for the fate of her brother. Did he escape? Did he die at Kinderlou? The answer still eludes me. Bernard Kinsey represented the counter story. He told me that the Kinsey family fled to Florida not long after the McRee trial of 1903. Bernard’s father opened one grocery store. Then more. Bernard graduated from Florida A&M University in 1967, and a few years later he became one of the first Black employees of Xerox Corp. Twenty years later, he retired as a senior executive, one of more than 10,000 African Americans at the company. He then became a major civic leader in Los Angeles, a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist, and one of the leading collectors of African- American art and artifacts in the U.S. Here was the valiance of African-Americans who persevered against immeasurable odds. Here was the miracle that American society survived its sweeping betrayal of its own values, its collective dishonoring and debasement of Lincoln’s achievement, the euphoric crowds of 1865 and all those who had died in the Civil War. Ultimately, it is only in a full revelation of all three narratives—of Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment, of re-enslavement and the failure of American character, and of the slow ongoing resurrection of our values through the struggle of citizens such as Bernard Kinsey-that we can begin to understand the progress we have made, and the progress we have yet to achieve. A few weeks after the publication of my book, the greatgreat-granddaughter of a White industrialist and enslaver of thousands in Atlanta wrote me to describe her pain at discovering a personal connection to these events-and the importance of not looking away from them. “We did not know of any of this before,” she wrote. “But I believe that the ghosts of slavery and racism and the terrorism inflicted within our own country must not be hidden away but brought out into the open... Without the whole truth, we live only in illusions.” sclc Douglas A. Blackmon is the author of the Pulitzer Prizewinning “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.” He teaches at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and is a contributing editor at the ‘Washington Post’. This article, the first of an 11-part series on race, is sponsored by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and was originally published by the ‘Washington Monthly Magazine’.

Husch Blackwell is proud to support the SCLC and their goals of diversity and equality.

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health & fitness

Get Your SEXY Back

Most people would agree that SEXY is a unique feeling particular only to oneself. Your image or description of SEXY and mine could be totally independent, nevertheless, still remain true. It isn’t confined by a particular size, shape or race or even outfit! SEXY is a state of being and reigns true for each individual person. Unfortunately, our SEXY meters may have declined for a number of reasons over the past few months or years. Weight gain, poor eating habits, and lack of exercise are sure fire ways to lose your SEXY. Fortunately, these are 5 sure fire tips to not only get your SEXY back, but to never lose it again! BY LYNN MITCHELL

1. You must change your relationship with food Problem: We eat when we are happy. We eat when we are nervous. We eat when we are sad and even when we are bored. Simply put, STOP IT! Food should be considered fuel. Our bodies are very efficient and will perform at its highest quality IF we provide it with the right foods. Think about if your car takes regular unleaded and you put Diesel fuel in it? Your car isn’t designed to process and efficiently run on diesel. That is how our bodies are. We have to be careful of what we put in it. We must give our bodies what it needs to run at its best. Solution: Find out what trigger makes you want to eat even when you are not hungry. Take notes or journal about the feelings that you have which lead you to want to “snack” or eat something that you know you do not need. Once you identify these triggers, you will be more able to make healthier choices as it pertains to food and ultimately leading you to keeping your SEXY!

2. There is no such thing as a diet Problem: A SEXY life is consistent with a permanent shift in the mindset of a diet versus a lifestyle change. We hear it all the time, but we don’t really buy into it. I mean after all, we want to lose weight, so if we have to fast, starve, drink 54 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

Model/TV Host Lynn Mitchell gets accessories for her fun night on the town by Envy Boutique Owner, Jillene Coggins (Little 5 Points, Atlanta).

lemonade or eat cabbage, we will! The idea of a “diet” is only as good as it gets us to lose the weight. Even all of the weight loss mega companies out there (you know who they are), they teach you how to eat, in hopes that you would continue even after you meet your targeted goal of weight loss.

Solution: Go to your refrigerator and pantry and make a list

of all of the unhealthy food that are in there. Cookies, pies, ice cream, pop tarts, sweet tea, whatever it is. Then make a list of healthier alternatives to those things. This way, you won’t feel like you are missing out on anything, and you are substituting it for a healthier option. For instance. If you like sweet tea, drink a glass of water and put in a squirt or two of the flavored water sweetener, MIO. They have sweet tea, lemonade, mango and many more. It turns your regular healthy water into the flavor, and you would bet your bottom dollar it was the real thing!

3. Dress appropriately for YOUR body Problem: We are so size conscious that we are willing to wear a size or two smaller than we should wear because we refuse to buy that size . Well there is a very good reason why the size tags are on the inside of our clothes! Nobody knows that size we are unless we tell them. You actually appear larger and more uncomfortable when you wear clothing that is too small.

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

Work together. Grow together.

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CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 55

health & fitness Solution: Do some

research online of what your body type if you do not already know and follow it. The most common shape for women is pear shape. What that means is that the widest part of your body is below your waist, around your hips. You must accentuate your top in order to deemphasize your bottom. This means wearing darker colors at the bottom, with a fun colorful or printed top. The second most common shape is the apple shape. Bottoms TV Host/Lynn Mitchell takes a moment are normally flat, legs to strike a pose in a fun two piece outfit thin, breasts are large perfect for a night of dancing and fun with the girls. (Outfit courtesy of Envy and when you gain Boutique, Little Five Points, Atlanta) weight, it normally shows up in your middle section and upper body.

4. Find your magic number BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)

you burn in one day. To find your BMR, it is as simple as going online to any online calculator. You would enter your age, height, and weight and your BMR will be displayed. Dr. Williams continues that if on average you can cut a few hundred calories per day, over an amount of time, your body would have no other option to drop weight. For example, if you could cut 500 calories from your BMR each day, after 7 days, you would have lost 1 lb of fat. (1 lb of fat equals 3,500 calories). The more of a caloric deficit, the faster you will lose weight.

5. Vow to cook 80% of your meals Problem: All of us want food to taste good. If we don’t have enough food to put in a to go box after a restaurant lunch or dinner, we think that we didn’t get enough for our money. “I am going to save the other half for lunch tomorrow.” Have you said that?? Well most restaurants serve on average anywhere from 2.5 to 4 times the appropriate amount of servings that should be in one meal. Solution: Vow to cook 80% of your meals. This is the only

sure fire way to know, without a shadow of a doubt, of what you are eating. There are no hidden salts, sugars, and in essence, hidden pounds when you prepare food yourself. If you do this consistently for two weeks to one month, you will definitely see that number on the scale go down.

Solution: Order off of the appetizer section. If you do go

Problem: We step on the scale either at home or at the

doctor and we cannot believe the number! You are adamant that the scale is wrong or broken! The reality of the situation is that we don’t know what our bodies respond to and therefore makes us gain or lose weight.

Solution: Dr. Joseph Williams, Certified nutritionist, states

that this is the key to overall health and wellness. Dr. Williams states that BMR, Basal Metabolic Rate, is how many calories

out to eat, this is the way to go. Usually these portions are significantly smaller which means they have less calories. If you do order dinner portioned meal, split it with someone, or as soon as it comes to the table, cut the portion in half (or thirds) and ask for a to go box. This way you won’t be tempted to pick off of it and you won’t over eat. If you can take these simple tips of getting your SEXY back, you will forever maintain your SEXY and inspire others to do the same.

Keep it SEXY people!

Lynnette Mitchell has been modeling professionally for over 6 years in the Metropolitan Atlanta area. Originally from Chicago, Lynnette came to Atlanta in 1999 for an opportunity to affect the lives of everyone she came into contact with. Fueling her desire was the inner little girl 10 yrs old who remembers how she dreamed of modeling and doing makeup as a profession. She dreamed of interviewing celebrities and influential people for different companies, and thus far has done just that! In most recent years, Lynnette has excelled in being a model/spokeswoman by landing 2 separate print and video contracts with Essence Magazine, Pantene, Design Essentials, and The Curl Station, just to name a few. For almost 2 years professionally, Lynnette has been growing her artist side as well. Beginning her makeup roots by doing close friends and family, she realized that this was THE avenue for her. Lynnette is in her own element whether its being on set at a photo shoot, or being in a home with a group of ladies who want to know how to do a smokey eye. 56 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

sclc

Model/TV Host Lynn Mitchell and Envy Boutique Owner Jillene Coggins (Envy Boutique, Atlanta) are all smiles after a fun makeover day.

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3:22:57 PM

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 57

in review “... in families and churches and workplaces, there’s a possibility that people are a little bit more honest and at least you ask yourself your own questions about, am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can? Am I judging people as much as I can based on not the color of their skin, but the content of their character? That would, I think, be an appropriate exercise in the wake of this tragedy.” —U.S. President Barack Obama, 07.19.13 White House Speech on race in America

BEYOND TRAYVON: !

Dr. Joseph L. Williams Unveils “Kolor Struck” to Transform Race in America BY MAYNARD EATON SCLC National Communications Director

! !

TLANTA—Heeding the U.S. President’s compelling charge and the nation’s need, enter Dr. Joseph L. Williams, with a new voice, a new vision and the story of a new American Dream. In August, at a dinner gathering held amongst leaders of his transformational “Journey” process, and a select gathering of Salem Bible Church colleagues, the dynamic 35-year-old faith leader unveiled a noble and necessary national project he calls Kolor Struck: The Movie, The Message, The Movement. It is a comprehensive concept on how to change the conversation and consideration of race in America. Known for his unconventional yet highly effective 45day mind, body, and spirit “Journey” process (www.formyjourney.com), Dr. Joseph sees a real and achievable possibility of transforming the issue of race in human relations, particularly ! in the United States Kolor Struck is designed to reveal and initiate actions to bring that possibility into reality. The first action: a mini-documentary by the same name, Kolor Struck. “As the darkness of antiquated race relations plagues the progression and enlightenment of our country,” Dr. Joseph told gathered leaders, “I was moved to do something about the issue.” Seeing the medium of cinematography as a powerful vehicle to move people into understanding and action, and undaunted by the challenges of producing a national movie theatre quality film, Dr. Joseph shared his decision to take on personally writing, producing and distributing the minidocumentary: “While politicians, special interest groups, civil leaders and social critics point their finger of blame towards one another, they often forget the fact that there are three more pointing back at them. The solution to our country’s race problem starts with a close examination of the person each human being sees when they view themselves in the mirror. 58 SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

“It is my desire to show that race is a contrived social construction, implemented to divide and control mankind. It is also my desire to provide practical solutions that move our country from this horrible state of existence.” “There is only one race and it is the human race. Our journey to that place is the story of a new America Dream—it is the story I choose to tell…” So once again in the storied history of Black America the church is leading the way and a young man of God is crafting a sizzling and substantive story about a path- Dr. Joseph Williams way and program for America to move beyond Trayvon. “The Church has been the leading force of change in our local communities, neighborhoods, and country,” Dr. Williams opines. “It is within her womb that the New American Dream waits to be brought forth, realized, embraced, and celebrated by all humankind.” A recipient of the Informer Newspaper’s coveted “America’s Top 40 Pastors Under 40” as well as a presenter at the 2010 National Martin Luther King Jr. Remembrance Day Celebration at Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, Dr. Joseph Williams, holds honors that clearly demonstrate his reputation on the national front. The author of “Not Of This World” (http://imnotofthisworld.com/), Dr. Joseph organized and developed “The Journey” to take any person with any problem at any point of his or her life, from where they are to where they need to be. He is the Co-Pastor of Salem Bible Church, with a membership of over 10,000 in both West and East Atlanta. Kolor Struck: The Movie, The Message, The Movement is scheduled for release by the end of 2013. sclc

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

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50 th Anniversary March on Washington

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Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. One Pre-Paid Way Ada, Oklahoma 74821 (580) 436-1234 Rawlings Sporting Goods 510 Maryville University Drive, Suite 110 St. Louis, Missouri 63141 Rettew Associates, Inc. 3020 Columbia Avenue Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17603 Robert Byrd / Attorney at Law P.O. Box 1939 Biloxi, Mississippi 39530 Rosedale Federal Savings & Loan Association 6708 Belair Road Baltimore, Maryland 21206 San Miguel Electric Cooperative, Inc. P.O. Box 280 Jourdanton, Texas 78026 SDI Technologies, Inc. / Corporate Office 1299 Main Street Rahway, New Jersey 07065 South Mississippi Electric Power Association P.O. Box 15849; Hattiesburg, Mississippi 39404 St. Rita’s Medical Center 730 West Market Street Lima, Ohio 45801 Stivers Temporary Personnel, Inc. 200 West Monroe Street, Suite 1300 Chicago, Illinois 60606 Thompson Machinery Commerce Corporation 1245 Bridgestone Boulevard La Vergne, Tennessee 37086 Unitex Industries, Inc. 7001 West North Avenue, #2NE Oak Park, Illinois 60302 WBGU-TV / Channel 27 Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, Ohio 43403

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 61

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50Th Anniversary of the March on Washington

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in every issue

inside this issue

10. 11. 12. 16. 18. 24.

Vol. 42 / No. 3

Southern Christian Leadership Conference N A T I O N A L M A G A Z I N E

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leaders 28.

Don Cash: Alleviating the Pain of Our Children By Carrie L. Williams

FOUNDER & PUBLISHER Steven Blood, Sr., Ph.D.

young activists 32. 36.

Young People Leading a Charge, By La’Die Z. Mansfield Bridging the Gap Between Old Activists & Young Activists, By Robert Hoggard

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Monica Fett

women in the movement 38. 42.

Juanita Jones Abernathy Bio Matriarch of the Civil Rights Movement Honored Collage of Comments, Prepared by Maynard Eaton

health & fitness 54.

MANAGING EDITOR Maynard Eaton

Get Your Sexy Back, By Lynn Mitchell

EXECUTIVE MANAGER Dawn McKillop SCLC NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS 320 Auburn Avenue Atlanta, GA 30303 www.nationalsclc.org

in review 58.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR / COO Damien Conners

Beyond Trayvon: Dr. Joseph L. Williams Unveils ‘Kolor Struck’ to Transform Race in America By Carrie L. Williams

CONTRIBUTORS Maynard Eaton: SCLC’s Managing Editor, is an 8time Emmy Award-winning news reporter and is also Executive Editor of ‘S.E. Region News’ and President of Eaton Media Group.

Carrie L. Williams: CEO of ‘S.E. Region’ News, a news outlet which focuses on issues of public policy, public engagement, and culture. Having served the civil rights community for the past six years, Ms.Williams looks to strategize her news communications to impact the civil rights community’s visibility and public policy success.

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER DeMark Liggins NATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR Maynard Eaton SPECIAL PROGRAMS DIRECTOR Cathelean Steele

Cover photo by Daniel Moore, DRMfoto.com

SCLC Magazine / CONVENTION 2013

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

One-on-One with Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient:

INTERVIEW BY MAYNARD EATON SCLC National Communications Director

MAYNARD EATON: Dr. Vivian you have crafted a storied civil and human rights career, but what does Medal of Freedom Award mean to you? C.T. VIVIAN: It means that I will be able to do more because it causes people to see you in a different light, and to come forth and listen to you about programs that are necessary to be done to enhance the American life—not just for Black people but for people period. Of course our basic concern has dealt with who we are as a people. That’s what W.E.B. Dubois called us, “a small nation of people.” That small nation of people is a key to so much that has to be done in American life. The amazing thing about Martin King is that what Martin did was to change everything in 15 years. There is not an institution in this nation that was not changed.

“

COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 19

GEORGE E. CURRY “The Super Southern Scribe” Picture: George Curry & Charles Steele Photo by Daniel Moore, DRMFoto.com

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 21

BEYOND TRAYVON: !

Dr. Joseph L. Williams Unveils “Kolor Struck” to Transform Race in America !

! BY MAYNARD EATON & CARRIE L. WILLIAMS

50 th Anniversary March on Washington

GEORGE E. CURRY “The Super Southern Scribe” Picture: George Curry & Charles Steele Photo by Daniel Moore, DRMfoto.com

CONVENTION 2013 / SCLC Magazine 21