OPINIONS/EDITORIALS Guest Columnist
Julianne Malveaux
Melvin Van Peebles, Creative Genius
One of the first Broadway plays I ever saw was Melvin Van Peebles' "Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death." A. Robert Phillips, who led the Black Talent Program at Boston College, arranged for a group of us undergraduates to attend the play, have dinner and enjoy New York City. I was riveted by the powerful play, a series of vignettes performed by a talented ensemble who combined laughter, irony, pathos and more to present
a slice of Black life. Two things stayed with me after all these years. One is a scene where a woman is on a ledge or balcony, and people are urging her not to jump. Her reply, "I ain't leaping; I'm just leanin'. This is the coolest place in town." The play closed with something of a curse on white America. "Put a curse on you. May all your kids be junkies, too." And now, thanks to opioids, many of them are. We lost a giant when we lost Van Peebles on Sept. 21, a giant and a multitalented man who acted, directed, wrote, starred, produced,
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composed and played music and more. He was a man who loved Black people and was determined to present us through Black eyes, not white ones. He also had an unusual sense of humor and was so deliberately provocative in his film "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" that the New York Times described the movie as "an outrage." But I remember seeing the film, rooting for Sweet Sweetback, on the run after he killed white police officers who were beating a Black man and standing, like the other audience members did, to applaud when the
film was over. Some credit Van Peebles with the Blaxploitation genre, but he was so much more than that. Sweetback, to me, was about portraying a different power dynamic than one we were used to in 1971. In Sweetback, you saw a community sticking together, cheering their anti-hero who used everything he had, including his body and his sexual prowess, to elude the oppressor. In 1971, few Black folks were willing or able to give so-called law enforcement officers any pushback, especially on-screen (the Black Panther Party had been
pushing back since its inception). Sweetback was, if nothing else, a paradigm shift. Before Sweetback, we saw docile, humble, polite Black men, like Sidney Poitier in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" or "Lilies of the Valley." We saw exotic Black men like Harry Belafonte. And if we go back to Paul Robeson, we saw masterful, but nonthreatening, Black men. We never saw a man quite like Sweet Sweetback. Thanks to Van Peebles, though, we began to see a series of them.
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David W. Marshall
Law and Order Also Means the Police Policing Themselves
I wish Cariol Horne was on the scene when Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on George Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes. If so, George Floyd may be alive today. There is a very high possibility that had Horne been there in 2020, an effort would have been made on her part to stop Chauvin. While Derek Chauvin was charged
with second-degree murder and manslaughter, three other officers were charged with aiding and abetting. There are times it is necessary for the police to police themselves. Former Buffalo, New York, Police Officer Cariol Horne, who is Black, was in a very similar situation in 2006. She intervened to break up a confrontation between Greg Kwiatkowski, a fellow White officer, and a Black suspect named Neal Mack involving a chokehold. "Neal Mack looked like he was
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about to die," she stated in 2020. "So had I not stepped in, he possibly could have. He was handcuffed and being choked." While Mack contends the officer saved his life, Horne was terminated when it was determined that her use of force was unjustified. She was fired from the Buffalo Police Department two months before being eligible to receive her full pension. Waterloo, Iowa is a city of 67,000 residents and has a long history of tensions between the police and the
city's Black community. The Black community makes up 17% of the city population. On June 1, 2020, Joel Fitzgerald became the first Black police chief in Waterloo. Soon after being sworn in as chief, the reform-minded Fitzgerald supported numerous changes. The changes, which are meant to transform the department, includes the banning of chokeholds, outlawing racial profiling, requiring officers to intervene if they see excessive force, and investigating all complaints of misconduct.
Along with the efforts to improve policing came the expected backlash. Current and former officers are not only opposing the reforms, but fighting the removal of the police insignia which resembles a Ku Klux Klan dragon. Waterloo is no different than most other police departments. The clash between an entrenched blue culture versus the changes needed to hold officers accountable is a main reason
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Hazel Trice Edney
For a Public Health Expert, Stroke and Seizure Become Real
Since she was a little girl, Thometta Cozart has looked up to her father as hard-working, humble and soft-spoken; yet a fun-loving man who is often the life of the party. “He’s always been the center of our family for events, parties and celebrations,” she recalls. “And he gives to his detriment,” she said, describing his generosity and
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self-sacrificing nature. Named partially after him, Thomas, and her mother, Loretta, Thometta is their only child. She recalls him working long hours on construction sites to install electric poles and lines. In her mind, he was a pillar of strength. But in May 2019, he suffered a hemorrhagic (bleeding) stroke. In a sense, they drew closer with the uncertain prognosis. Would he face long term paralysis? Would
his speech be slurred? How much would this debilitating stroke affect the future of a man who has served as a surrogate father to so many? Because of her job as multicultural outreach and health equity director of the Epilepsy Foundation, Thometta Cozart knew how to prepare for potentially the worst outcomes. With proper nutrition, intense physical therapy, cardiac care and medication, her father had a fighting chance to recover and live a good life.
A realist who often leans on her faith, she also knew that the kind of stroke that her father had suffered the ischemic stroke caused by blood clots- increased the chances that he might experience seizures in the future. Seventeen months later, on Oct. 10, 2020, her fears were realized. Thomas Cozart, with no history of seizures or epilepsy, had a seizure while at home watching TV with a friend who noticed that his eyes had
rolled to the back of his head, he had begun to convulse and was in a state of confusion. His friend called an ambulance, and was able to recall the seizure first aid resources Thometta had offered her family. Once again, her education and experience kicked in. Because she knew that strokes are a major contributor to how African Americans develop epilepsy, as her father’s chief
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