Today was the day 55 years ago that Rosa Parks triggered a civil rights movement.
A few months after Claudette Colvin's March 2 arrest for refusing to give up her seat to a white bus patron occurred in Montgomery, AL. Rosa Parks found herself being arrested for the same offense.
It triggered the successful 381 day long Montgomery Bus Boycott, led to the emergence of a dynamic young minister by the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.as a national leader and jumpstarted the national African-American civil rights movement.
And we owe it all to a quiet dignified lady who'd had enough of being oppressed.
We hear often that one person can make a difference. One person with courage and conviction can act as the backbone and rallying point of moral courage for others who want to do the right thing and stand up for social justice, but are too timid or wavering in their commitment to do so.
Rosa Parks was the woman of that hour. Although she's no longer with us, we are indebted to the 'Mother of the Civil Rights Movement'.
We as liberals need to be fighting tooth and nail to ensure that what those folks sacrificed, fought, got beat down and even died for doesn't get rolled back by wallowing in white privilege conservafools.
And those of us who are trans African-Americans need to be looking to the examples of our parents and grandparents fight in the 50's and 60's and taking lessons from it to apply to our own civil rights battle in this decade and beyond.
Today is the 47th anniversary of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church terrorist bombing in Birmingham, AL. Four teen girls, Addie Mae Collins (aged 14), Denise McNair (aged 11), Carole Robertson (aged 14), and Cynthia Wesley (aged 14), were killed in the attack, and 22 additional people were injured, one of whom was Addie Mae Collins' younger sister, Sarah.
It took a while, but 'Dynamite Bob' Chambliss and his hooded terrorist henchmen were eventually tried and convicted for the crime. Chambliss was convicted in November 1977 and died in prison October 29, 1985. Herman Cash died before being arrested for the crime while Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry were arrested in 2000.
Blanton was subsequently convicted for the terrorist act as well.
When I was living in Da Ville, any sporting event between the Universities of Louisville and Kentucky not only drew sellout crowds, but passionate fans on both sides of the Red and Blue line. Those passions intensify when the competition between the Cats and Cards happens on the gridiron or the hardwood.
It's the 2010 edition of the Governor's Cup Game, and since it's in Jefferson County at the newly expanded Papa John's Cardinal Stadium, it's the season opener for both schools.
It's also generating a little more interest than usual because the game not only marks the coaching debuts for UK's Joker Phillips and U of L's Charlie Strong, it's one of the rare times that FBS schools with African-American head football coaches face each other.
One of the interesting collegiate football tidbits is this season, the three FBS programs in the state of Kentucky all have African American head coaches. The other is Willie Taggart at Western Kentucky.
During the almost eight years I lived there, Kentucky and Louisville fans tried to recruit me into their fanbases with the zeal of missionaries, but I stayed neutral because I liked both teams.
Seriously, Kentucky readers, I liked both teams.
The game is not only for bragging rights in the state and recruiting advantage, but possession of the Governor's Cup.
Should be a fun game at The Pizzeria today in front of 55,000 red and blue clad fans.
Since Beckapalooza is happening today, rhis video is more timely than ever in showing the contrasts between Beck's vanilla flavored rally and the multicultural one that happened in 1963.
After the initial flurry of media hype, activity, and initial court rulings being handed down last Friday, things seem to have settled down as both sides hunker down and prepare for the legal battle ahead.
But I've been dealing with the unsettling feeling over the last few days that I'm watching history replay itself.
Some of the things I've been concerned about over the last week is the revelations that Nikki appeared on the Jerry Springer Show in 1995, has admitted to not being forthcoming during her deposition in the custody case, and having details about a criminal conviction come out.
That's not the kind of stuff you want to hear as a member of a marginalized group when your ability to overturn an odious law rests on one particular individual.
The reason I'm apprehensive about these developments lies in me recalling the events in the African-American civil rights movement leading up to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
I'm firing up the DeLorean time machine and taking a trip back through history and time to March 2, 1955.
A young Montgomery, AL high school student named Claudette Colvin is still thinking about a paper she'd written earlier in the day while taking her bus trip home after her school day ended.
The subject of the school paper? It was about the prohibition for Black people to try on white clothes in local department stores.
She's sitting in the Black section of a rapidly filling bus when she and two other people are ordered by driver Robert W. Cleere to give up their seats to a white woman because there were none left in the white section of it.
The 15 year old Colvin refused to do so, and was arrested and forcibly dragged off the bus by two Montgomery police officers while yelling "It's my constitutional right!"
At the time then NAACP Montgomery chapter president Edgar D. Nixon was looking for a person they could use as a test case to break the back of the bus segregation law. After Colvin's father posted bail, community leaders vowed to help them with the case and began raising money on her behalf.
Colvin was also active in the NAACP's Youth Division and was advised by none other than Rosa Parks.
Then came the 'upon further review' moments. During their investigation on whether Colvin would be a suitable person for a test case, some concerns were expressed about Colvin's lower class background and living in the poorest neighborhood in Montgomery. The Montgomery police also accused Colvin of 'spewing curse words' during the arrest which she denied, saying that the obscenities were leveled at her.
Despite that, many local Black leaders wanted to push ahead with Colvin as the plaintiff in a case challenging the law they hoped they could litigate all the way to the Supreme Court.
While that debate was raging amongst Montgomery's Black leaders, Colvin became pregnant by a much older man. Fearful they would lose the support of sympathetic white allies, that the white dominated press and segregationist lawyers would use the pregnancy to undermine Colvin's status as the aggrieved party and the moral legitimacy of any subsequent bus boycott, the leaders decided to wait for a plaintiff with 'unimpeachable character' to base their future actions on.
Rosa Parks stated about that decision, "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have had a field day. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance. So the decision was made to wait until we had a plaintiff who was more upstanding before we went ahead and invested any more time, effort, and money."
Nine months later that 'upstanding plaintiff' ironically became Rosa Parks, and the rest is history.
Colvin was tried for violating the segregation laws and sentenced to probation. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. told her he was "proud" of her; most people referred to her as "the girl in the bus thing."
But, and there is a but here, "She was not considered a good spokeswoman for the cause. She was a teenager. She was outspoken," author Phillip Hoose said.
"The NAACP was looking for an icon, and they thought I'd be militant," Colvin recalled in a New York Daily News interview decades later. "Then they got Angela Davis."
Colvin's courageous act wasn't in vain. On May 11, 1956 she and three other African-American women, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald and Mary Louise Smith testified in a federal lawsuit that became the Browder v. Gayle case.
The three-judge panel ruled on June 19, 1956 that Montgomery segregation codes "deny and deprive plaintiffs and other Negro citizens similarly situated of the equal protection of the laws and due process of law secured by the Fourteenth Amendment." The court essentially decided that the precedent of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case could be applied to Browder.
While attorneys decided not to include her in the case that eventually wound its way to the Supreme Court, her testimony in Browder v. Gayle resulted in the Court declaring bus desegregation unconstitutional in November 1956. The Supremes refused to hear an appeal of that decision one month later.
Now let's bring this discussion back to the 21st century.
Does the Araguz case have the potential to overturn Littleton? Maybe.
In any potentially precedent setting case, would we rather have a trans plaintiff with 'unimpeachable character', a relatively pristine record, post-surgical, documentation in order, and an attractive, media savvy one that people would see as a sympathetic figure in the case?
In a perfect world, yes. But the reality is we don't live in that perfect world, and we have to dance sometimes with the plaintiffs we get.
As trans people, we face a hostile world with people who don't always treat us with dignity and respect. Any one of us at any time could find ourselves in a situation that could potentially make us plaintiffs in a legal case.
That legal case depending on the circumstances, could also affect the lives of trans people in our state, around the country and potentially the world.
And sometimes a person you may not think is the perfect plaintiff may be the one that gives you the ruling that improves the lives for everyone in your marginalized group.
While there are some character issues the prosecution will try to exploit, the bottom line is that Nikki is the wronged party here.
One thing that does instill some confidence is that Nikki has on her side an attorney in Phyllis Frye well versed in the law and how it affects transpeople in this upcoming legal battle.
On the opposing side is a prosecuting attorney with a questionable history that's trying to rerun the Littleton v. Prange playbook.
But until that final ruling comes down, I'm still going to be along with many people in the trans community nervous about what transpires in that Wharton, TX courtroom.
I was checking out the Luna Show on YouTube since he interviews many of the personalities in the ballroom community. I was happy to note for his 100th episode he featured Tracy Norman, AKA Tracy Africa.
I've mentioned her in more than a few TransGriot posts concerning the ballroom community and its connections to the New York modeling scene. I've also talked about her as an example of the beauty of African descended transpeople as well.
In the 70's and 80's Tracy was a print and runway model getting paid with several major contracts and considered a 'Baby Beverly Johnson', one of the premier Black models of the time.
That was until a hater spilled her 'T' during a sixth ESSENCE photo shoot and put a major crimp in her then successful career as a model.
She became a ballroom icon with the House of Africa and was elected to the Ballroom Hall of Fame in 2001.
Here's the fascinating YouTube video of the Luna interview with one of our icons, Tracy Africa.
While I was in the process of moving last week I heard the sad news about one of my fave beauty icons, legendary singer, actress and civil rights warrior Lena Horne.
She passed away on May 9 in her hometown of New York at age 92 from congestive heart failure.
She started as a 16 year old chorus girl at Harlem's legendary Cotton Club during the Depression and parlayed that into a career spanning 60 years in movies, television, Grammy-winning records, a one-woman Broadway show and untold numbers of nightclub appearances.
In the 1940's she was a trailblazer in having a seven year MGM contract during an era in which that kind of deal was unheard of for African-Americans. But the racism she battled throughout most of her career would result in many of the scenes she shot for films during that era to be cut in prints destined to be shown in the Jim Crow South.
Horne found herself being painfully passed over by non-singing Ava Gardner for the role of Julie in the 1951 movie "Show Boat.' Julie in that movie, FYI, was a mixed-race performer who was passing herself off as white.
During World War II if you walked into African-American sections of military bases, Black GI's had pictures of the glamorous Horne posted all over the place. She reciprocated the love that brothers of that era had for her by traveling to bases along the west coast and in the South to entertain African-American troops.
She was outspoken about the treatment of Black soldiers in the then segregated US military, and quit a January 1945 USO tour when the officers in charge allowed German prisoners at a base in Little Rock, AR to witness her performance but barred African American troops from doing so.
Horne was raised by a suffragist grandmother who was an NAACP member in a free-thinking household. She refused to accept the restrictive conventions and damaging stereotypes of mid-20th-century Hollywood and brushed away attempts to cast her as a Latina.
She was a proud civil rights warrior who took part in civil rights demonstrations. Her civil rights activism and friendship with Paul Robeson and others marked her in McCarthyite eyes as a Communist sympathizer and she was blacklisted for it.
She overcame her own personal stormy weather to become an iconic American performer, a shining example of African-American womanhood, and a beloved shero and icon to millions.
I posted the wonderful news a month ago about Gary, IN native Katie Washington, who became the first African-American valedictorian in Notre Dame history.
Today is graduation day at Notre Dame, and she will be giving her highly anticipated valedictory speech this morning. As soon as it's up and posted, I'll add the text or video of it to this post.
In the interim, you can check out this video about a remarkable young woman.
And now, Katie's valedictory address!
Good morning, Mr. Williams, Mr. Gioia, Fr. Jenkins, distinguished faculty and guests, family, friends and loved ones. Thank you all for being here with us to celebrate our commencement. To my fellow classmates, congratulations, again, for making it to this momentous occasion. Our accomplishments during the last four years give us ample reason to celebrate.
But at some point during the next few months, the excitement surrounding our commencement will wane, and many of us will be forced to confront challenging realities. What happens after the applause stops? The spotlight fades, the crowd clears, and there are moments of complete silence. While applause is accompanied by feelings of safety and security, this silence can bring vulnerability and uneasiness. Through my experiences at Notre Dame, I’ve found that these silent, uneasy moments usually spring up right after I get comfortable with self-praise and appreciating my own accomplishments.
Earlier this year, the Notre Dame Voices of Faith Gospel Choir spent our Spring Break touring the East Coast. Although our thirty-four choir members came from many different cultural and religious backgrounds, our unique style of worship originates from African-American Christian traditions. I was a student director this year, and as the week started, I was ready and excited to give my all to an organization that has been part of my college experience since freshman year. During our first concerts, as we sang and worshipped with loud and exuberant praises to God, we met all kinds of people who were willing to sing, clap and worship with us.
Then, during a concert at a church in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, the applause stopped.
There were at least 150 people at the concert, but somehow, no sound or movement seemed to come from the pews. Apparently, the congregation had never experienced a musical ministry quite like ours. We continued with our concert, in spite of the silence, but I wasn’t sure that our rehearsals had prepared us for that moment.
Now, I can reflect upon a conversation that I had with a tearful parishioner after the concert. Had Voices given up when the applause stopped, we might have been gone when the woman arrived late, after sitting for hours at her sick mother’s bedside. She told me that, while we were singing, it seemed like we were talking directly to God. She was so grateful that we were there to pray with her through song.
Over the last four years, I hope that all of us have taken the opportunity to step outside of our own comfort zones to build relationships with people from different places and backgrounds. Through service, time spent abroad, and our experiences with each other right here on campus, we’ve had the chance to find unity in the diversity of gifts with which God has blessed us. We’ve been given many opportunities to let self-acceptance blossom, and to develop mutual respect and understanding for all members of the Notre Dame family. In doing so, we’ve learned to build relationships in light of our differences and in spite of our fear.
After today and beyond the applause, we can continue to escape normative ideals and find the freedom to understand the unique and special qualities that make all of us human. We can put solidarity into action, for love of all our neighbors, near and far.
Last December, after a year and half working in Dr. David Severson’s laboratory, I saw my study of mosquito population genetics in Haiti in its published form, for the first time. Through the collaborative efforts of the members of Dr. Severson’s lab and the Notre Dame Haiti program, we were able to demonstrate that human activities are likely responsible for the distribution of infectious mosquitoes throughout Haiti. Each year, mosquitoes transmit diseases that kill more than 1 million people, mostly in impoverished countries. I was pleased to know that I had made an important contribution to the global health community. But on January 12, after only a few weeks of celebration, an earthquake hit Haiti, and the applause stopped.
At first, it was exciting to know that my work could help solve problems that many people don’t even know about. However, the earthquake reminded me that I had done so from the safety, security and comfort of a lab here, at Notre Dame. The cities that I wrote about in my paper have been reduced to rubble, and many of the lives that I hoped to protect were claimed by immediate and overwhelming tragedy.
Now, I can reflect on conversations with my research advisor and other outstanding scientists at Notre Dame. Over and over again, they have reminded me that our work is not about being celebrated and rewarded. Instead, it gives us an opportunity to add value to a world that has given us much more than our fair share. To do science at a place like Notre Dame, a University where our sense of faith informs everything we do, is to commit to innovation and discovery because of our personal moral convictions. In the College of Science and throughout the entire University, our faculty has committed themselves to the mission statement. And our learning has become service to justice. We learn, we think, and we work in our different disciplines to address tough problems because we all know that it’s the right thing to do.
After today and beyond the applause, we will experience the freedom to challenge the conventional. We can engage in strokes of genius, enlightened moments, and great ideas that will improve planet Earth and heal her inhabitants. Together, we can pool our knowledge to define the undefined, and combine our efforts to prepare for the unexpected.
I started Fall Break of this year in anticipation of all that I hoped to learn during my CSC seminar on Youth Violence. My friend Jeremy and I spent weeks helping Kim, the director of the Indianapolis Peace Institute, to plan our weeklong immersion. I was excited to work with ten other students, and to learn about innovative approaches to address youth and violence. At first, the experience was transformative. I was proud of the work Jeremy and I had done.
Then, on the day our group visited a juvenile re-entry program, the applause stopped.
I realized that I had grown up in the same neighborhood as one of the young men in the program. He had been sent to a juvenile detention center after participating in a series of illegal activities. He’d joined the re-entry program in hopes of building healthier relationships and pursuing goals that would help him to avoid further involvement with the judicial system.
In any other situation, his story of redemption might have left me feeling hopeful for other youths. Instead, my heart ached. All of my reading on urban poverty, structural violence, and peace building seemed meaningless in light of the real obstacles that he faced. At one point during our childhood, I called him my little brother. Meeting again in adulthood, it felt like our lives were worlds apart.
Now, I can reflect upon conversations that I had with him after the seminar was over. If he and the workers at the juvenile re-entry program had given up when the applause stopped, he could have been just another offender, lost in the judicial system. Instead, he is now in college and working to help other young men overcome the challenges that he, himself, faced. I can also reflect upon talks with my fellow seminar participants – my friends. We were 11 Notre Dame students, from different backgrounds with different majors and personal interests. Yet, the young man we met, from my neighborhood, touched each of our lives in a way that we couldn’t have imagined.
After today and beyond the applause, we can continue working to understand our own privilege. We can use real empathy to recognize violence and injustice. We can build relationships with people who are confined to the margins of society. And maybe one day, each and all persons will be able to participate in every dimension of life as they wish.
Throughout my time here at Notre Dame, I’ve grown a bit wary of moments of accolades and applause, because of the unnerving silences that often follow. But our commencement is a momentous occasion worth celebrating. The applause and praise from our friends, family, mentors confirms the value of our hard work, dedication and sacrifice. We have done many things of which we can be proud.
So after all of the applause is over today, I hope that we embrace the silence as much as we’ve embraced our senior week and commencement weekend celebrations. Instead of being afraid, we can cherish the examples set by our often unapplauded heroes: our parents and siblings, professors who have pushed us to do more than we’ve ever dreamed, and you, the members of the Class of 2010 who have set the standard for excellence in and out of the classrooms at the University o Notre Dame.
Since I just rolled through her home state, thought I'd tell you loyal TransGriot readers about another person whose interesting story I discovered courtesy of the JET digital archives, legendary female illusionist Sir Lady Java.
The Los Angeles based Sir Lady Java was born and grew up in New Orleans (where else) and is billed as 'The Prettiest Man On Earth' thanks to possessing 38-24-38 curves in her heyday. She told JET in an article published in the August 10, 1978 issue that she'd never had any surgical enhancement and is non operative.
Java's act consists of singing, impersonations, and exotic dancing. As she said in the article about her performing for her idol, the late Lena Horne, "Lena is one of the three ladies I pattern my act after. I try to look like Lena, walk like Mae West and dress like Josephine Baker."
She first pops up in the November 16, 1967 issue of JET when a picture was taken of her picketing comedian Redd Foxx's nightclub. The Los Angeles Police Department shut down her show there because of a law that was on the books at the time banning female impersonation.
The August 10, 1978 JET issue mentions Java meeting her idol while performing at a star studded Los Angeles birthday party Lena was throwing for her friend Gertrude Gipson.
There's also a mention of her in a February 16, 1978 article about a Los Angeles party thrown for JET chief photographer Isaac Sutton that she attended.
Sir Lady Java is still around and even has a Facebook page. I'd love to hear more about her fascinating life as 'The Prettiest Man On Earth'.
It also points out what I've been saying since I started this blog. African descended transpeople are intertwined with the everyday life of the African-American community, and in many cases we have some interesting stories to tell.
The sellout Negroes in the National Black Republican Association have been feverishly trying to pimp a lie that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican.
Where do they come up with such delusional feces? But I guess it comes naturally when you hang out in a party that bends and twists historical reality to fit their political philosophy.
Well, time for Moni to have fun debunking this conservalie.
The facts are that the political script was flipped from our current 21st century political paradigm. From Emancipation through most of the 20th century, African-Americans voted for, were active in and supported Republicans because of their progressive civil rights attitudes. The Democrats, thanks to the Dixiecrats and pre-Civil War slavery defenders had racial attitudes similar to 21st century Tea Party members and the modern conservadominated GOP.
The tipping point for African-American support was the 1960 election. Dwight Eisenhower set the high water mark in terms of African American support for a Republican candidate when he garnered 39% of our votes in the 1956 election cycle. To compare and contrast that with the 2008 election cycle, Sen. John McCain only picked up 4% of the African-American vote.
Now let's move on to Dr. King specifically. In 1960 Dr. King was arrested for trespassing during a sit-in and held in Georgia's notorious Reidsville prison.
Fearing for his son's life, Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. (who was a Republican at the time) appealed to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kennedy to secure his release.
When Dr. King was freed, despite the fact that JFK was a lukewarm supporter of civil rights, Daddy King renounced his GOP ties and pledged to deliver 10 million votes to Kennedy. That began the now four decades long support and movement of African-American voters to liberals and the Democratic Party.
President Johnson's later signings of the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts, the 1965 Voting Rights Acts and other pro-civil rights bills and initiatives continued the momentum of that seismic political shift in addition to the Dixiecrats, racists and conservatives fleeing to the GOP in the wake of the LBJ electoral landslide in 1964.
Now to answer the HDMLKV question-How did the Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Vote?
In the 1960 presidential campaign MLK voted for Kennedy, and for Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson four years later. He also publicly repudiated 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and campaigned for LBJ, but saw himself as non-partisan. He criticized LBJ for the Vietnam war just as harshly as he'd done Goldwater in the 1964 campaign.
Hmmm. Voted for Democrats, criticized the GOP candidate and the democratic president. So what do do his colleagues have to say?
"To suggest that Martin could identify with a party that affirms preemptive, predatory war, and whose religious partners hint that God affirms war and favors the rich at the expense of the poor, is to revile Martin," said former SCLC president Rev. Joseph Lowery.
Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who marched with King in the 1960s, called the ads an "insult to the legacy and the memory of Martin Luther King Jr." and "an affront to all that he stood for."
MLK biographer and historian Taylor Branch had this to say about the 2008 NBRA billboard that jumped this discussion off in 2008 and about Dr. King.
“He absolutely deplored the Republican Party of Goldwater and Reagan,”
King "never endorsed anybody." He went out of his way to avoid appearing partisan. "The closest King ever came to supporting a candidate openly was (Democratic President Lyndon Baines) Johnson in '64, right after he'd gotten the civil rights bill passed that outlawed segregation. But even then he didn't quite endorsed him," Branch said.
Although King barnstormed for Johnson, he would never allow himself to utter the entirety of a popular chant of the day: "All the way with LBJ."
"He would say 'all the way', but he wouldn't say 'LBJ.'"
Branch also noted that Dr. King, Jr. was indeed friendly with Richard Nixon, who had been a member of the NAACP as vice president in the 1950s.
"He always said that he had a non-partisan, like a prophet's role, not a politician's role, and that he was for justice and it wasn't really black and white and it wasn't Democratic or Republican," said Branch. "He exasperated a lot of the people around him for that reason."
So stop lying Negro conservafools. MLK is NOT a Republican.
TransGriot Note: The video and transcript of President Obama's remarks made at yesterday's memorial service for Dr. Dorothy Height.
Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C. 10:40 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Please be seated. Let me begin by saying a word to Dr. Dorothy Height’s sister, Ms. Aldridge. To some, she was a mentor. To all, she was a friend. But to you, she was family, and my family offers yours our sympathy for your loss.
We are gathered here today to celebrate the life, and mourn the passing, of Dr. Dorothy Height. It is fitting that we do so here, in our National Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Here, in a place of great honor. Here, in the House of God. Surrounded by the love of family and of friends. The love in this sanctuary is a testament to a life lived righteously; a life that lifted other lives; a life that changed this country for the better over the course of nearly one century here on Earth.
Michelle and I didn’t know Dr. Height as well, or as long, as many of you. We were reminded during a previous moment in the service, when you have a nephew who’s 88 -- (laughter) -- you’ve lived a full life. (Applause.)
But we did come to know her in the early days of my campaign. And we came to love her, as so many loved her. We came to love her stories. And we loved her smile. And we loved those hats -- (laughter) -- that she wore like a crown -- regal. In the White House, she was a regular. She came by not once, not twice -- 21 times she stopped by the White House. (Laughter and applause.) Took part in our discussions around health care reform in her final months.
Last February, I was scheduled to see her and other civil rights leaders to discuss the pressing problems of unemployment -- Reverend Sharpton, Ben Jealous of the NAACP, Marc Morial of the National Urban League. Then we discovered that Washington was about to be blanketed by the worst blizzard in record -- two feet of snow.
So I suggested to one of my aides, we should call Dr. Height and say we're happy to reschedule the meeting. Certainly if the others come, she should not feel obliged. True to form, Dr. Height insisted on coming, despite the blizzard, never mind that she was in a wheelchair. She was not about to let just a bunch of men -- (laughter) -- in this meeting. (Applause.) It was only when the car literally could not get to her driveway that she reluctantly decided to stay home. But she still sent a message -- (laughter) -- about what needed to be done.
And I tell that story partly because it brings a smile to my face, but also because it captures the quiet, dogged, dignified persistence that all of us who loved Dr. Height came to know so well -- an attribute that we understand she learned early on.
Born in the capital of the old Confederacy, brought north by her parents as part of that great migration, Dr. Height was raised in another age, in a different America, beyond the experience of many. It’s hard to imagine, I think, life in the first decades of that last century when the elderly woman that we knew was only a girl. Jim Crow ruled the South. The Klan was on the rise -- a powerful political force. Lynching was all too often the penalty for the offense of black skin. Slaves had been freed within living memory, but too often, their children, their grandchildren remained captive, because they were denied justice and denied equality, denied opportunity, denied a chance to pursue their dreams.
The progress that followed -- progress that so many of you helped to achieve, progress that ultimately made it possible for Michelle and me to be here as President and First Lady -- that progress came slowly. (Applause.)
Progress came from the collective effort of multiple generations of Americans. From preachers and lawyers, and thinkers and doers, men and women like Dr. Height, who took it upon themselves -- often at great risk -- to change this country for the better. From men like W.E.B Du Bois and A. Philip Randolph; women like Mary McLeod Bethune and Betty Friedan -- they’re Americans whose names we know. They are leaders whose legacies we teach. They are giants who fill our history books. Well, Dr. Dorothy Height deserves a place in this pantheon. She, too, deserves a place in our history books. (Applause.) She, too, deserves a place of honor in America’s memory.
Look at her body of work. Desegregating the YWCA. Laying the groundwork for integration on Wednesdays in Mississippi. Lending pigs to poor farmers as a sustainable source of income. Strategizing with civil rights leaders, holding her own, the only woman in the room, Queen Esther to this Moses Generation -- even as she led the National Council of Negro Women with vision and energy -- (applause) -- with vision and energy, vision and class.
But we remember her not solely for all she did during the civil rights movement. We remember her for all she did over a lifetime, behind the scenes, to broaden the movement’s reach. To shine a light on stable families and tight-knit communities. To make us see the drive for civil rights and women’s rights not as a separate struggle, but as part of a larger movement to secure the rights of all humanity, regardless of gender, regardless of race, regardless of ethnicity.
It’s an unambiguous record of righteous work, worthy of remembrance, worthy of recognition. And yet, one of the ironies is, is that year after year, decade in, decade out, Dr. Height went about her work quietly, without fanfare, without self-promotion. She never cared about who got the credit. She didn’t need to see her picture in the papers. She understood that the movement gathered strength from the bottom up, those unheralded men and women who don't always make it into the history books but who steadily insisted on their dignity, on their manhood and womanhood. (Applause.) She wasn’t interested in credit. What she cared about was the cause. The cause of justice. The cause of equality. The cause of opportunity. Freedom’s cause.
And that willingness to subsume herself, that humility and that grace, is why we honor Dr. Dorothy Height. As it is written in the Gospel of Matthew: “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” I don’t think the author of the Gospel would mind me rephrasing: “whoever humbles herself will be exalted.” (Applause.)
One of my favorite moments with Dr. Height -- this was just a few months ago -- we had decided to put up the Emancipation Proclamation in the Oval Office, and we invited some elders to share reflections of the movement. And she came and it was a inter-generational event, so we had young children there, as well as elders, and the elders were asked to share stories. And she talked about attending a dinner in the 1940s at the home of Dr. Benjamin Mays, then president of Morehouse College. And seated at the table that evening was a 15-year-old student, “a gifted child,” as she described him, filled with a sense of purpose, who was trying to decide whether to enter medicine, or law, or the ministry.
And many years later, after that gifted child had become a gifted preacher -- I’m sure he had been told to be on his best behavior -- after he led a bus boycott in Montgomery, and inspired a nation with his dreams, he delivered a sermon on what he called “the drum major instinct” -- a sermon that said we all have the desire to be first, we all want to be at the front of the line.
The great test of a life, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, is to harness that instinct; to redirect it towards advancing the greater good; toward changing a community and a country for the better; toward doing the Lord’s work.
I sometimes think Dr. King must have had Dorothy Height in mind when he gave that speech. For Dorothy Height met the test. Dorothy Height embodied that instinct. Dorothy Height was a drum major for justice. A drum major for equality. A drum major for freedom. A drum major for service. And the lesson she would want us to leave with today -- a lesson she lived out each and every day -- is that we can all be first in service. We can all be drum majors for a righteous cause. So let us live out that lesson. Let us honor her life by changing this country for the better as long as we are blessed to live. May God bless Dr. Dorothy Height and the union that she made more perfect. (Applause.)
When you flip on the television to watch your favorite sporting event, it's not unusual to see and hear Black women such as Doris Burke doing the play by play, the analysis of Kara Lawson, Carolyn Peck and Cheryl Miller before, during and after the game breaking down what's transpiring on the field or the court or studio anchors such as Cindy Brunson reading the sports scores and breaking sports news of the day.
Sistah sportscasters have come a long way since Jayne Kennedy made history and news when she was tapped in 1978 to replace Phyllis George on 'The NFL Today', the CBS lead in show for its NFL broadcasts. Kennedy left the show in 1983, about the time a fledgling sports network was starting to expand to a national presence by becoming part of the basic cable packages of a nation wiring for cable.
ESPN is considered a leader in sports television 30 years later, and has also led the way has in opening doors and diversifying the what was once male dominated domain of sports broadcasting.
ESPN has excelled in hiring quality women sportscasters. One of the women ESPN hired in 1990, Robin Roberts, is considered the gold standard when it comes to the level of excellence that the current group of sportscasting sistahs aspire to reach and surpass.
Robin earned three Emmy Awards during her ESPN tenure and after working both for ESPN and doing GMA assignments, moved on to eventually became part of the Good Morning America team. She was recently promoted to anchor for GMA with the elevation of Diane sawyer to the ABC Evening News anchor desk.
My Texas homegirl Pam Oliver was a weekend sports anchor for KHOU-TV before she made the move to ESPN and eventually FOX Sports to become their sideline reporter for their NFL and college football telecasts. EBONY magazine named her as one of their 2004 Outstanding Women in Journalism honorees.
The Dallas native has the distinction of having her own dressing room with her name on the door at the new Cowboys Stadium.
Cindy Brunson has been an ESPN studio anchor since September 1999 and before joining the network covered the Portland Trail Blazers and the University of Oregon and Oregon State men's and women's basketball and the Oregon Ducks football program for a Portland television station.
I also have to give a shoutout to the new school sistah sportscasters who are currently getting attention and air time.
ESPN's Sage Steele has been with the network since March 2007 after stops in Indianapolis, the Tampa-St Petersburg area and Washington DC.
You can catch her when you tune in to ESPN in the mornings, but she used to cover the Baltimore Ravens during her time in DC.
Lisa Salters has been part of ABC Sports and ESPN since March 2000 as one of their sideline reporters for its NBA and football coverage, but her background is in broadcast news.
The cousin of Dallas Cowboys Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett covered as a ABC Los Angeles bureau based reporter from 1995-2000 the Oklahoma City bombing trials, the Matthew Shepard murder, the crash of TWA Flight 800, and both the civil and criminal O.J. Simpson trials.
Reischea Canidate has made the move from New York City television stations to Bristol, CT. She also received an Emmy nomination for her report on the dwindling numbers of African-Americans in professional baseball.
The other interesting aspect of Salters and Canidate is that like Pam Oliver, Kara Lawson and Cheryl Miller they were also college athletes, in addition to having their broadcast journalism chops.
I enjoy watching all these ladies not only for the quality work they do, but their sense of style as well.
The legacy of sistah sportscasters is not only in good hands, these women are serving as role models for the next generation of girls who wish to follow in their footsteps and expand on their legacies.
There's been a lot of hue and cry from the 'white' wing about Dr. Tim Wise's 'Imagine If The Tea Party Were Black' post that's been linked to at blogs across the Blackosphere.
Some of the dismissive comments from the defenders of whiteness call it 'speculative' and tried to shout Wise's conclusions down since it didn't jibe with their vanilla flavored conservaworldview.
But it ain't 'speculation' what the reaction of whiteness and the Feds would be to an armed group of Black people calling for radical change to the system. All you have to do is pick up the history books and go back to the 1966 formation in Oakland of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.
The BPP got the attention of California state legislators when they began exercising their rights under California law to openly carry loaded shotguns as part of their confrontational defense tactics against police brutality.
On May 2, 1967 in protest of the Mulford Act, a proposed law to ban public displays of loaded firearms, 30 armed Panthers traveled to Sacramento and legally sauntered into the Cali state Capitol building with loaded shotguns.
Thanks to their brief merger with SNCC, the rapid expansion of the BPP into major cities across the nation amassing a half million members in the process, and the fact riots against our negative treatment started occurring in many cities in 1965 and you can see how jittery the Black Panther Party made the powers that be.
The Panthers also gained support in the Black community thanks to their successful survival programs offering free breakfasts for children, free clothing distribution, classes on politics and economics, free medical clinics, lessons on self-defense and first aid, transportation to upstate prisons for family members of inmates, an emergency-response ambulance program, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and testing for sickle-cell anemia.
The BPP Ten-Point Program called for changes that made them even more threatening.
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black community. 2. We want full employment for our people. 3. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black community. 4. We want decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings. 5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society. 6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service. 7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people. 8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails. 9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the constitution of the United States. 10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.
The exemption from military service was replaced in 1972 by a demand for completely free health care for all black and oppressed people.
Of course, the reaction to the mushrooming popularity of the Panthers in the African American community had to be stopped. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in September 1968 described the Black Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country' and targeted them for 'neutralization' by the FBI's infamous COINTELPRO program.
Thanks to armed clashes with the police, infiltration, steadily dropping membership numbers and other COINTELPRO shenanigans the power of the BPP was broken by the mid 70's.
So no, don't doubt for a minute that the reaction of the media and conservafools would be quite different if the teabaggers were all Black instead of racist sore loser white people with deficient spelling abilities hatin' on President Obama.
Ten years ago in Alexandria, VA Dawn Wilson became the first African-American transperson to win the IFGE Trinity Award.
Today in that same hotel and locale, longtime Washington, DC activist Earline Budd along with Laura Calvo and Jennifer Barge received their 2010 IFGE Trinity Awards at the IFGE 2010 Capital Conference awards luncheon.
In picking up her award, Earline Budd made a little history. She became the fourth African-American transperson and the first since 2006 to win the US transgender community's second highest service award.
Dr. Marisa Richmond won it in 2002, and yours truly in 2006.
Congratulations 'Number Four'. You definitely deserved it after all the years of work you have put in on behalf of the trans community in Washington DC.
Know that your sisters and brothers outside the beltway deeply appreciate it.
Here's hoping that we see more deserving trans people of color picking up a Trinity and that we get to see a trans brother win one as well.
Another of the sheroes of the 60's civil rights movement has moved on. Dr. Dorothy Height, the Godmother of the women's movement', passed away at Howard University Hospital at 3:41 AM EDT this morning at age 98.
Dr. Height was born in Richmond, VA on March 24, 1912 and grew up in Rankin, Pennsylvania. While in high school because of her oratorical skills she was given a scholarship to Barnard College in New York.
Unfortunately Barnard College had a policy in place at the time in which it admitted only two African-American students a year, and she arrived on campus after two others had been enrolled. She pursued studies at New York University, earning her Master's degree in psychology and her doctoral studies at Columbia.
While she was most noted for her long tenure as chair and president emeritus of the National Council of Negro Women from 1957-1988, and a past chair of the Leadership Conference On Civil Rights, she began her civil rights work in 1933 as a leader in the United Christian Youth Movement of North America.
Some of the issues she fought for at that time were stopping lynchings and desegregating the armed forces.
In addition to being mentored by women such as Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt, she counseled presidents on civil rights and women's issues from FDR to Obama.
She was one of the original 'Big Six' civil rights leaders, and was in attendance at the recent White House meeting President Obama held with African-American leaders on race and the economy.
She has garnered numerous awards and honors including induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993, the NAACP's Spingarn Medal in 1993, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 by President Clinton and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.
She was also given during Barnard College's 1980 commencement ceremony its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.
She had a front row seat to many of the events that shaped our lives and worked alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., future congressman John Lewis, and A. Philip Randolph. She was one of the people sitting behind Dr. King the day he gave his 1963 'I Have A Dream' speech'.
She was president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. from 1946-1957 and remained active in the organization throughout her life.
Former US Secretary of Labor Alexis W. Herman said about her, "She was a dynamic woman with a resilient spirit, who was a role model for women and men of all faiths, races and perspectives. For her, it wasn't about the many years of her life, but what she did with them."
She is one of my leadership role models, and if I ever become one tenth of what she meant to our community, I'd consider it a great achievement.
Too many times people focus on the worst my people produce. In addition, sisters don't get much love for doing something positive.
Today I get to proudly pop my collar on behalf on my people and a lovely young woman for a historic achievement.
21 year old Gary, IN native Katie Washington is a senior at Notre Dame University and has bee accepted to Harvard and four other schools for post graduate studies.
Thanks to her 4.0 GPA in biology major and Catholic social teaching minor, Katie will become the first African-American in the 168 year history of Notre Dame to be crowned as the school's valedictorian.
University officials said they couldn’t recall ever having a black valedictorian, and don’t keep record of their race.
Katie will give that valedictory address on May 16.
'I am humbled,' Katie said to the Northwest Indiana Times. “I am in a mode of gratitude and thanksgiving right now.”
'Katie works so hard,' Washington’s mother Jean Tomlin told the newspaper. 'I told her when she went to Notre Dame, ‘You are representing your family, your church and the city of Gary. Make us proud.’
Katie done more than make her family and the city of Gary proud. She made the entire Black community proud.
She'll be heading to Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University in the fall and plans to pursue a joint M.D./Ph.D.
You may want to file the name Katie Washington away in your memory banks. She's a young scholar who may be on the track of making more history.
Congratulations, Katie on the historic achievement! You're also proof along with our spacefaring sistah Stephanie Wilson that sistahs can and do excel in math and science.
I've been a big fan of space missions and space exploration ever since I watched the 1968 Apollo 8 mission and the Apollo 11 moon landing. I followed the drama of Apollo 13, the last Apollo mission, the three Skylab missions and the beginning of the Space Shuttle program.
No matter what country launches it, whether it's mine, Russia or now China, I've always been one of these people that feels that humankind needs to begin exploring space ASAP in order for humankind to survive and continue evolving.
Unfortunately I missed this morning's 6:21 AM EDT launch of Discovery and its seven person crew. Madame Space Junkie needs to be paying closer attention to the remaining launch schedule since there are only four more shuttle launches that will happen before the fleet is retired in September.
But back to STS-131 news. This is a 14 day resupply mission to the International Space Station that will have three planned spacewalks.
This mission is also notable for the women's history it is making. This is the third time NASA has launched a shuttle with three women in the crew and the women taking part in STS-131 are Japan's Naoko Yamazaki, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, and Stephanie Wilson.
Mission Specialist Stephanie Wilson has already etched her name in the history books as the second African-American woman to be launched into space. She achieved that feat during the 2006 STS-121 mission. This is her third shuttle flight, having also flown on STS-120 in 2007.
Dr. Mae Jemison was the first, Dr. Joan Higginbotham was the third. US Air Force Colonel Dr. Yvonne Cagle is part of the astronaut corps as well but has yet to be assigned to a shuttle flight crew.
There is a fourth woman currently in space on the ISS, Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson. When she and the other three women on board Discovery meet up after the shuttle docks on Wednesday, it will result in the largest gathering of women in space in history.
In all there have been 54 women out of the 517 people that have reached space, with hopefully more to come.
Will definitely be keeping with what's happening with STS-131 until the mission is completed.
It triggered the successful 381 day long Montgomery Bus Boycott, led to the emergence of a dynamic young minister by the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.as a national leader and jumpstarted the national African-American civil rights movement.
