Tag: Civil Rights Movement

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while supporting Black sanitation workers fighting for collective bargaining rights. His support was part of his “Poor People’s Campaign,” a second phase of the civil rights movement.

Would you feel like a full citizen if most of your civil and human rights were denied you? If the privileges afforded to community members were withheld from you, would you feel like a welcome member of the community?

Once again, the world is rising up against oppression. In the U.S., our time will come. Remember the kind of commitment we saw in Malcolm X, who was murdered 46 years ago this month. On the morning of Feb. 21, Malcolm received a phone call saying, “Today is the day.” He showed up anyway, knowing that that day could be his very last day on this Earth. Malcolm did not let fear control his commitment to the cause of freedom and justice. That is the real stuff we all are made of. Deep inside every one of us is a Revolution waiting to happen.

Individuals in North Africa, Europe and West Asia are rewriting the history of their countries as “people power” takes center stage. This “people power” has always existed within us; history is written by those who recognize the power of the human dream of freedom and who set about making that dream a reality, against all odds.

King’s commitment to non-violence had a purpose larger than non-violence itself. Non-violence was, for King and the movement, a means to a larger end – a tactic meant to topple racism and economic exploitation and lead the world away from cataclysmic warfare.

Milton Allimadi, in his investigative news journal, the Black Star News, offers an unusual forum for reporting on Africa, which is so little known to most Americans, including even African Americans, because there’s so little coverage of Africa in the dominant American press, and what little there is superficial or misleading.

With Arizona’s harsh new immigration law threatening to unleash a wave of racial profiling, Bay Area African-American clergy and community leaders traveled to Phoenix late last month on a four-day solidarity mission.

A united front of Black and Latino Arizonans mobilized against a state law that they see as a threat to their civil rights. Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law on Friday, making Arizona the first state in the nation to make it a crime for a person to be undocumented.

President Obama delivered the eulogy Thursday for our beloved Dr. Dorothy Height. Dr. Height never did receive the mainstream recognition that she more than deserved, so I am proud that my president lifted her legacy for all America and the world to see and honor.

Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” (published by The New Press, 2010) looks at the invisible people and the invisible birdcage that keeps the masses of Black people locked in and alienated from society – the targets of the War on Drugs.

The veil of authority and legitimacy shielding most urban police forces against popular suspicion and distrust simply doesn’t exist in New Orleans. Hardly anyone likes or trusts the po-po. The actual point of this piece is to reflect a little on the war currently raging between the people of New Orleans and the NOPD.

In the spirit of Dr. King and guided by Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee, the SF Bay View and Block Report Radio are preparing to send a media-medical team to Haiti to serve the people most in need. A fundraiser will be held Sunday, Jan. 24, 6:30 p.m., at the Black Dot Café, 1195 Pine St. in West Oakland. Spread the word! Be there! Bring medical supplies.

"The Other America" by Martin Luther King Jr. "is a chilling, troubled speech made with the background of urban riots, pleas for Black Power and the Vietnam War." - Ishmael Reed

In this conversation between two young Black men who are passionate about the potential role of radio in the Black community, Minister of Information JR begins: "Rob Redding is one of few Black program directors at a mainstream talk radio station: KMLB in Monroe, Louisiana. He is also syndicated on XM Radio and on Green 960 AM in the Bay Area."

When the full story is finally told and, though not likely freely admitted by many, deep within the spiritual thinking of numerous African Americans, an emotional candle will be lit in memory of Lovelle Mixon.

We need to confront our racial past - and our racial present. In things racial, we have always been and continue to be essentially a nation of cowards. This Department of Justice, as long as I am here, must - and will - lead the nation to the "new birth of freedom."

The place was the historic Black Dot Café in West Oakland; the event, a "Town Bizness" town hall meeting hosted by the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC) with the presence of Chairman Fred Hampton Jr.

Huey P. Newton's name and, more importantly, his history of resistance and struggle is little more than a mystery for many younger people in their 20s. Huey P. Newton was a rebel - and more, a Black Revolutionary.

Every single eligible citizen who is 18 years old on Election Day has the constitutional right to vote. A right that cannot be restricted because of tricks, wealth, property ownership, fiscal judgment, gender, national origin or race. That's the law, but ...