Tag Archives: Martin Luther King

~ Culture & History, ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Selma~ After Half a Century of Fighting for Justice — we press on ~ In memory History and a man who earned his Presidential medal of freedom



After Half a Century of Fighting for Justice.

Thanks to alan grayson … we are reminded who is fighting for the People and needs our Support

Contribute to:  John Lewis and Alan Grayson

There is a general impression, on the part of many, that the Sixties was a decade-long haze of drugs and free love.  I can’t really say, since I was born in 1958.  I know one person, however, who certainly did not experience it that way.   That person is Congressman John Lewis.
John Lewis was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders, who challenged racial segregation on the buses in the South.  He also was the Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
In 1961 and 1962, Lewis was arrested.  Twenty-four times.
In Anniston, Alabama, Klan members deflated the tires of a bus that Lewis and the other Freedom Riders had boarded.  Then they firebombed it.
In Birmingham, Lewis was beaten.  In Rock Hill, South Carolina, two white men punched Lewis in the face, and kicked him in the ribs.
In Montgomery, a mob met the bus, took Lewis off the bus, knocked him over the head with a wooden crate, and left him unconscious on the bus station floor.
On one day in 1965, a day known as “Bloody Sunday,” Alabama state troopers in Selma hit civil rights demonstrators with tear gas, charged into them, and beat them with clubs.  They broke John Lewis’s skull.
I’ve seen the scars on his head.
Somehow, all of that . . . pain . . . forged an outstanding Congressman.   A champion on universal healthcare.  A forceful proponent of gay rights.  An apostle of peace.
This month, for only the second time in his 26 years in Congress, John Lewis faces a primary challenge.  I don’t know who is running against him, and I don’t really care.  Whoever he is, he has not earned the job the way that John Lewis has, and he can’t do the job the way that John Lewis does it.
I’m just glad that there are people like John Lewis in Congress.

I’m asking you to help re-elect this great man, and this great leader.  You’ll feel good to help him, just as I feel good to know him.  Click here.
Courage,

Alan Grayson

~ Culture & History

Civil Rights Groups Expect Swell of Support ~Black History Month


          The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gestures during his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. Some at the National Urban League conference have called for another such march in the wake of the Trayvon Martin verdict and the Supreme Court's decision on the Voting Rights Act.
Leaders at the National Urban League convention say recent Voting

Rights Act decision and Trayvon Martin case have galvanized many

By Elizabeth Flock

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gestures during his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. Some at the National Urban League conference have called for another such march in the wake of the Trayvon Martin verdict and the Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act.

PHILADELPHIA – The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington was intended to be a look back on the historic march of 1963 and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech during the height of the civil rights movement.

But the recent Supreme Court decision that struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act coupled with the “not guilty” verdict in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin has lent new urgency and more participants to the anniversary event, according to groups involved.

[PHOTOS: Joe Biden Leads Re-enactment of Voting Rights March]

In Philadelphia, where the National Urban League is holding its annual conference on Thursday and Friday, president Marc Morial says that both the conference and march have changed in focus and in tenor because of “what’s happened in the last 30 days.”

“The Voting Rights Act decision [and] the Trayvon Martin tragedy [have] created a different mood among the people who are here. It’s a different kind of focus in their hearts and minds,” he says. “It’s a different enthusiasm.”

Some of that emotion, he says, has shown itself in the form of renewed distrust in the criminal justice system. Several panels at the conference also expressed frustration with the Supreme Court. And in a speech at the conference Thursday morning, Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, was greeted by frustrated cheers when she told the crowd she’d better see them at the 50th anniversary march next month.

[READ: Holder Says Texas Must Get Pre-Approval Before Changing Voting Laws]

But Morial hopes those frustrations can be channeled into calls for action at the march: for a congressional fix to the Voting Rights Act, a hard look at the criminal justice system after the Trayvon Martin case and a plan for dealing with the lack of employment in minority communities.

The National Urban League is just one of some two dozen civil and human rights groups involved in the event. Five participating groups took part in the original 1963 march, but many more are new, including Rev. Al Sharpton‘s National Action Network, which has 40 chapters across the country, the National Council of Churches, which includes 100,000 local congregations, and the National Park Service.

“There were 250,000 people in 1963,” says Morial. “It remains to be seen this time… [But] these recent events have been encouragement for more people to attend.”

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

The March on Washington is a people’s movement … ~~NAACP ~ ~


slideshow-2

The Supreme Court decision in Shelby County vs. Holder this summer shook
the very foundation of the Voting Rights Act. The very same Voting
Rights Act that brought tens of thousands of activists to march on
Washington in August, 1963.

On that hot summer day, people from every corner of our country united
for a momentous event, rallying around a shared message of civil
liberty, civil rights, and economic freedom and opportunity for all.

Fifty years later, it’s time for us to march again. The NAACP, along
with the National Action Network, Realizing the Dream, and many other
conveners will host a march in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the 50th
anniversary of the March on Washington.

We remain inspired by the titans of our movement — Wilkins, Parks, King
and more — who marched at a pivotal time in the fight for civil rights.
And if our experience this year has shown us anything, it’s that we are
at another pivotal moment in history.

Discriminatory laws cripple the chances of too many people, of all ages
and backgrounds, who want nothing more than a shot at the American
Dream.

Voter disenfranchisement prevents far too many Americans from having
free and unfettered access to the ballot box, and keeps our most
vulnerable citizens from having proper representation in government.

And far, far too many of our children are gunned down in senseless acts
of violence every day. We march in the name of Trayvon Martin and other
victims of racial profiling and gun violence.

We’ve made incredible progress, but we have a long way to go. We must
carry the torch of freedom and equality forward for the next generation.
So we march again on August 24th. We march for those who have been
trampled by injustice, and for all our heroes who marched 50 years ago.
This grassroots movement belongs to you.
The size, the strength, and the power of our movement depends on you.

 

Thank you,
Ben
Benjamin Todd Jealous
President and CEO
NAACP

~ Culture & History, ~ In the Library

In the Library … Lillian Walker , by John C. Hughes


OLYMPIA…Bremerton civil rights heroine Lillian Walker

A book called “Lillian Walker, Washington Civil Rights Pioneer,” written by John C. Hughes, an author and interviewer with The Legacy Project, an oral history program established by the Office of Secretary of State in 2008. The book is published by the Washington State Heritage Center and printed by Gorham Printing.Joyce.

“The YWCA’s goal is to make Mrs. Walker’s inspirational story available to all school and public libraries in the nation as an example of a young person who not only had the courage to stand up for what is right, but also to continue to stay involved in her community to make it better over a 70-year time period,” Jackson said.

Click here http://www.sos.wa.gov/legacyproject/oralhistories/lillianwalker/ to read The Legacy Project’s oral history on Lillian Walker based on sit-down interviews, as well as photos and other materials.

Lillian Walker helped found the Bremerton branch of the NAACP in 1943 and went on to serve as state NAACP secretary. She was conducting sit-ins and filing civil rights lawsuits when Martin Luther King was in junior high school.

Mrs. Walker and her late husband, James, arrived in the Navy Yard city of Bremerton in 1941 together with thousands of other African–American wartime workers who thought they had left racism behind in the South and industrialized cities of Midwest and East. But many Kitsap County businesses, including cafes, taverns, drug stores and barber shops, displayed signs saying, “We Cater to White Trade Only.” In a landmark case, the Walkers took a soda fountain owner to court and won.

Mrs. Walker is a charter member of the YWCA of Kitsap County, former chairman of the Kitsap County Regional Library Board, a 69-year member of Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, and a founder and former president of Church Women United in Bremerton.

To learn more about The Legacy Project, go to its web site at http://www.sos.wa.gov/heritage/LegacyProject/default.aspx.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Martin Luther King


 

 

*****

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“I have a dream…to go to war?!”

Watch the Video | Send To A Friend   

Video is below …

http://act.bravenewfilms.org/go/472?akid=1417.1058794.hi707v&t=1

The Pentagon sank to a new low this week in their attempt to sell the Afghanistan War to the American people. At their Martin Luther King, Jr., Day observance, a Pentagon official actually claimed that if King were alive today, he might support the war.

This is simply not true.  http://act.bravenewfilms.org/go/472?akid=1417.1058794.hi707v&t=4  <<<As shown in our new video, Dr. King could not have been more clear in his 1967 speech denouncing the Vietnam War:

“A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just. …A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

More than 10,000 people died in the Afghanistan War last year alone. This year, the government plans to spend $107 billion on the war. We believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would repeat his admonition to U.S. policymakers on their responsibility:

“I speak as one who loves America…The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., was a national hero who called on us to have the moral courage to stop another war that wasn’t making us safer and that wasn’t worth the cost. Help us fight the Pentagon lies. Spread the truth by sharing this video with your family and friends.

Sincerely,

Derrick Crowe, Robert Greenwald

and the Brave New Foundation team

P.S. If you haven’t done so already, please join Rethink Afghanistan on Facebook and Twitter.

Donate today to help bring an end to this atrocious war that’s not making us any safer.  click on link below

http://bnf.actionkit.com/go/rethink/375?akid=1417.1058794.hi707v&t=9