March 08, 2007Alabama Goddamn...I have only three things to say tonight. The bunker renovation is almost done. Spring has sprung, which means the spring bird migration is underway and the golf course fairways are starting to turn green. And this, courtesy of Spider Martin, in honor of Black History month - and dedicated to Alabamians scattered everywhere on the planet who know what we mean when we say...
March 04, 2007Convict Lease System Makes a Comeback as Clintons, Obama March in Selma
September 15, 2006Civil Rights Pioneer Says 'Lucy Baxley Will Win'Autherine Lucy-Foster Honored by Glynn Wilson HOMEWOOD, Ala., Sept. 14 - For a Civil Rights pioneer, Autherine Lucy-Foster is shy about making public appearances and reluctant to grant interviews. But when she was honored by the Jefferson County Democratic Party with a standing ovation Thursday night at the first of its kind "Blue Dot Ball" in Homewood at the new SoHo Center, she seemed to come alive in the limelight.
As an "intuitive person," she said, she has a strong feeling that another strong woman with Lucy in her name will beat the odds and become the next governor of Alabama. "Lucy Baxley is going to win," she said - to a second standing ovation. Now a retired educator living in Lipscomb, Alabama, near Bessemer, when she was 26 in the 1950s she was admitted to the University of Alabama when she first enrolled, but then denied the right to attend classes when administrators found out she was black. So she hooked up with the NAACP, attorneys Arthur Shores, Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley, and Judge Helen Shores Lee, and sued, setting a precedent under the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 that helped break the back of legalized segregation in public education. "There are people more deserving, but I could not say no when Judge Helen Shores Lee asked that I do this," Foster said in her humble way. The state Senate honored Ms. Foster Thursday night with lifetime achievement resolution presented by Sen. E.B. McClain, D-Midfield. "Autherine Lucy Foster's contribution was extremely important," McClain said. "Because of her, African-Americans now can very easily enroll in the University of Alabama. She contributed so much in hostile times to make things better for future generations." When she first arrived in Tuscaloosa wanting to earn a master's degree in library science in 1956, she was shunned and advised to leave town for her own safety when mobs of racists descended on the Capstone. Yet she earned a place in history as the first black student to enroll at the University of Alabama. She had earned a bachelor's in English from Miles College in Fairfield, and went on to marry the Rev. Hugh Foster and moved to Texas, where she taught for 17 years while raising four children. But Ms. Foster did get to live her dream of graduating from the University of Alabama many years later. In 1991, she enrolled along with her daughter, Grazia Kungu. They walked down the isle together in commencement exercises in the spring of 1992. "I always dreamed of walking through the line to accept my diploma," Foster said. She got her chance, and vowed to vote for Democrats for the rest of her life.
March 05, 2006Unseen and Almost ForgottenNewly Discovered Civil Rights Photos Reveal Racist History by Glynn Wilson When the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and later Martin Luther King Jr. stirred up the civil rights pot in Birmingham, Alabama, in the early and mid-1960s, The Birmingham News was reluctant to expose the blatant racism in its hometown.
The paper did not go all out to cover the violence or to document the news of fire hoses and attack dogs being used against black protesters in a town that later became known as "Bomingham," according to one of the photographers who shot pictures for the News in those days. Only when the New York Times and CBS News came to Alabama and shined the bright spotlight of national publicity on the events did the local press begin to cover the news, according to Spider Martin, whose photographs, which appeared in other newspapers and magazines all over the world through the news wires of the time, are slated to be part of the new African-American wing of the Smithsonian Institute to be built on The Mall in Washington, D.C. According to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, in an August, 1965 interview, the images shot by Martin and others were critical to the success of the civil rights struggle. "Spider, we could have marched, we could have protested forever, but if it weren't for guys like you, it would have been for nothing," King reportedly told Martin, according to a book written about those days by author Hubert Grissom. "The whole world saw your pictures," King said. "That's why the Voting Right's bill was passed." When an old box of black and white negatives from those days recently surfaced, discovered by a photography intern in a closet at the Birmingham News building, the paper ran a story about it along with some of the photos that were never seen by readers in the '60s. But the photographer who found the photos and the reporter who authored the story never talked to Spider Martin to get his side of the story, because before he could capitalize on his important collection of images, Mr. Martin took his own life on April 8, 2003. In the months prior to his death, I had been working as a free-lance reporter for the New York Times, in some cases with Martin shooting the pictures. I had known Martin since 1986 and had finally convinced him to sit down for a series of interviews about his life and times. We had planned to do a book together, but it was not to be. So when I saw the version of events presented by the Birmingham News and the Associated Press story that moved as result of the find, I remembered what Spider had said about how badly he was treated when he willingly took the assignments to cover civil rights events, including the Selma-to Montgomery marches, especially on what came to be known as Bloody Sunday. The management at the Birmingham News in those days, including the staff of photographers, to put it kindly were less than enthusiastic about covering the protests of African-Americans in the South. Ed Jones, now retired and 81-years-old, told the News reporter: "The editors thought if you didn't publish it, much of this would go away. Associated Press kept on wanting pictures, and The News would be slow on letting them have them, so they flooded the town with photographers. The AP started sending pictures all over, and it mushroomed." But what he failed to say is that on numerous occasions he purposely destroyed film shot of the protests by Martin, leaving the film in the developer for too long while he went to breakfast or lunch. At one point when confronted about it, Martin told me, Jones just blew him off and said: "Hey Martin, it ain't nothing but a bunch of niggers. Don't worry about it." Martin said Tom Self and the rest "were the same way. They didn't care. They just thought they were better than black people." Martin said he approached the Birmingham News in 1985 to get his hands on his old negatives. Even after obtaining permission from then-executive editor Jim Jacobson, chief photographer Tom Self told him: "Oh, I threw that stuff away a long time ago. It wasn't nothing but garbage. It was just a bunch of niggers." When Mr. Self left the room, Martin said, a black woman receptionist who overheard the conversation whispered that she knew where some of his negatives were. She snuck them out to him. They turned out to be the Bloody Sunday photos now on display in the Alabama Archives building in Montgomery and on the National Park Service historic Civil Rights Trail. They have been shown at many of the civil rights institutes around the country, including the grand opening of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in 1992 and the Capitol rotundas in Montgomery and Washington. Before his death, Martin was convinced those historic images would have been destroyed if not for a bit of initiative and luck on that day in 1985. And he would have been amazed to hear that a box of those negatives survived in a closet for an intern to find - considering the racism and lack of interest in history by the local newspaper's management and staff. Links February 07, 2006King Funeral Marks End of an Eraby Glynn Wilson The end of an era passed Tuesday as the dignified widow of our generation's Moses was eulogized and laid to rest in Atlanta, Georgia, the capital of the New South and the American Civil Rights movement. It must have been hard for President George W. Bush to sit on the same stage with Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter and Bill and Hillary Clinton, considering the divergent legacies of the Republican and Democratic parties in honoring King's legacy. But Bush squirmed and smirked through it all in the interest of drawing a few more black votes to the GOP. Former President Clinton stole the show and, along with his wife Hillary, was greeted like a rock star by the largely Democratic Party crowd. Coretta Scott King was not just an icon, Clinton said. "She was a person as well as a symbol, an embodiment of her husband's legacy." In a message all disgruntled Americans should heed, he pointed out that when Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in Memphis, she could have given up the movement and concluded, "I have stumbled on enough stony roads," Clinton said, "and we would have all forgiven her and honored her." Instead, he said, she went to Memphis and marched on behalf of the poor, hardworking garbage workers, "the scene of the worst nightmare of her life." "We all have to remember that," Clinton said, and ask ourselves: "What are WE going to do with the rest of our lives? If you want to treat Coretta as a role model, then model her behavior." He said Americans should not have to fear standing up for what they believe in and protesting when they disagree with their country's policies. Former President Jimmy Carter, who has accused Bush of breaking the law in relation to the Iraq war and ordering the wiretapping and eavesdropping on Americans by the NSA and other government agencies, treated the Bush's coldly, not even meeting eyes with the president on the podium or offering a handshake before or after his eulogy. Carter, who in many ways owes his successful bid for the presidency in 1976 to being embraced by Coretta Scott King and the Civil Rights movement and the support of the African-American community, took a direct jab at Bush by pointing out how the FBI violated the civil liberties of the Kings in the 1960s "when they became the targets of secret government wiretapping and other surveillance." He reminded everyone that the struggle for civil rights is not over. "We only have to remember the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are still not equal opportunities for all Americans," he said. "It is our responsibility to continue their crusade." The Rev. Joseph Lowery, one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, also captivated the audience in his special poetic eulogy. "She summoned the nation's to study war no more," he said, extending the message of Dr. King "against poverty, racism and war." "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," he said, as the crowd got on its feet and began to clap and cheer. "But Coretta knew, and we know, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here." Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, speaking after the president, also injected politics into her remarks, describing how Coretta Scott King spoke out against "the senselessness of war" with a voice that was heard "from the tintop roofs of Soweto to the bomb shelters of Baghdad." From watching and rewatching the service, surely one of the most important inspirational events in recent times, it is worth asking, as Clinton said, what are we going to do with the rest of our lives? As we going to stand by and watch the Republicans and corporations continue to ruin our country and our lives in this new era of corporate fascism? Will we cower in fear when the vice president comes to town? Or will we stand up and be counted and risk jail and torture to save this land? Who will be the next Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King in the new era? Any votes for putting Bill and Hillary back in the White House? Presidents Join Mourners at Coretta King's FuneralFour U.S. presidents, senators and celebrities joined thousands of mourners Tuesday who filled the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King's daughter Bernice is a minister, to say goodbye to Coretta Scott King, the "first lady of the civil rights movement." Why President George W. Bush was allowed on the podium is a mystery, considering the Republican Party's blatant racism and anti-Civil Rights record over the past 40 years. Bush certainly appeared uncomfortable on the stage, especially when Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin took a shot at the U.S. government's policy surrounding the war in Iraq and compared it to another unwinnable war in Vietnam, a war opposed by Martin Luther King Jr. |
