Vernon Jordan, a civil rights movement activist and leader, former National Urban League president and adviser to former President Bill Clinton, died yesterday evening according to CNN. He was 85. His cause of death has not yet been released.
Born on August 15, 1935, Jordan grew up in the segregated South and graduated from DePauw University in Indiana in 1957, the only Black student in his class.
He then studied law at Howard University and began his career fighting segregation, starting with a lawsuit against University of Georgia‘s integration policy in 1961 on the behalf of two Black students, Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter. Jordan accompanied the two students to the UGA admissions office that year through an angry mob of White students.
He worked as a field director for the NAACP and as a director of the Southern Regional Council for the Voter Education Project before he became president of the National Urban League. In 1980, he survived an assassination attempt on his life.
“Today, the world lost an influential figure in the fight for civil rights and American politics, Vernon Jordan. An icon to the world and a lifelong friend to the NAACP, his contribution to moving our society toward justice is unparalleled,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement Tuesday. “In 2001, Jordan received the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for a lifetime of social justice activism. His exemplary life will shine as a guiding light for all that seek truth and justice for all people.”
This is Fannie Lou Hamer. A Mississippi plantation worker turned activist in the 1960s, who, from her own personal desire to claim her constitutional right to vote, was fired from her job, threatened by white supremacists and beaten while in police custody.
Hamer never stopped – she worked with other activists in her church and volunteers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and traveled county to county to register other Black people to vote.
Hamer formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and demanded to represent her state at the 1964 Democratic Convention.
Hamer fought for voting rights, education rights, economic rights (she formed the Freedom Farm Collective to fight for redistribution of wealth from usurious sharecropping) and even ran for Senate.
She was not rich or traditionally educated or well-connected — Fannie was a person who saw injustice, got active and got involved. Among other microcosms of actionable wisdom, she is famous for the quotes, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired” and “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free” – the latter of which I proudly wear on my Fannie Lou Hamer T-shirt.
Hamer passed in 1977 after years of dealing with serious health issues, but her legacy as an outspoken and effective activist, organizer and champion for equal rights will never be forgotten.
In fact, it was announced a few days ago that rapper and activist Common is producing a biographical movie on Hamer based on her 1967 autobiography To Praise Our Bridges and the book God’s Long Summerby Charles Marsh, which chronicles of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
This is Ida B. Wells. Best known for being a late 19th/early 20th-century journalist, anti-lynching crusader and women’s rights advocate. In 2020, Wells received a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for journalism, and her face honored the centennial of the U.S. Suffragist Movement in a mosaic art installation in Washington D.C.’s Union Station.
Wells is a helluva historical figure who still far too few people know about. Her whole life is fascinating, so I’ll try to keep it short and focussed on her work. If you don’t have time for it now, right below is a great quote summing up Wells’ importance in the fight for equality and justice from the New York Times review of the 1999 biography on Wells:
“Linda O. McMurry‘s important new biography, To Keep the Waters Troubled, tells the story of an extraordinary American who would have been at the very summit of our national pantheon except for two things: her sex and her race. But then again, being born into a society that promised individual freedom and personal power — just not to blacks, not to women and above all not to black women — was the source of Ida B. Wells’s remarkable story.”
Wells was one of the first African-American female journalists to run her own newspaper, was an outspoken feminist, suffragist, an international figure and speaker, and early leader in the Civil Rights Movement who helped found the NAACP with W.E.B. DuBois and others, and helped women get and consolidate their power around voting in Illinois when they won the right.
But what fascinates me the most is her near one-woman crusade against lynching, and how she used her investigative, reporting, and oratory skills not only to document lynchings in the 1890s, but also to disprove the lie that Black men were raping white women or committing crimes that justified their mob hangings.
Wells offered real proof that lynching was being used in the South as a way to control or punish Black people who competed with whites. Even after the offices of her newspaper, Free Speech and Headlight, were burned down and she had to relocate from Memphis to Chicago to escape death threats, Wells persisted with her work.
Although there was major resistance in the U.S., Wells garnered support from the British, who after reading her work and hearing her speeches (they also witnessed her being dragged unfairly in the American press), offered monetary support and formed the British Anti-Lynching Committee, which included prominent members such as the Duke of Argyll, the Archbishop of Canterbury, members of Parliament, and the editors of The Manchester Guardian, who put international pressure on the U.S. to address these horrific crimes against Black Americans.
Wells’ crusade against lynching started in 1889, when her friend Thomas Moss opened the Peoples Grocery in the “Curve,” a Black neighborhood just outside Memphis city limits. It did well and competed with a white-owned grocery store across the street.
In 1892, while Wells was out of town, a white mob invaded her friends’ store. During the altercation, three white men were shot and injured. Moss and two other black men were arrested and jailed pending trial. A white lynch mob stormed the jail and killed the three men.
After the lynching of her friends, Wells wrote an editorial and became an ersatz civil rights leader and firebrand, urging Blacks to leave Memphis altogether. More than 6,000 black people did leave Memphis; others organized boycotts of white-owned businesses. After being threatened with violence, Wells bought a pistol. She later wrote, “They had made me an exile and threatened my life for hinting at the truth.”
Wells began her investigation by looking at the charges given for her friends’ murders, which officially started her anti-lynching campaign. She spoke at various Black women’s clubs, and raised more than $500 to investigate lynchings and publish her findings. Wells found that Blacks were lynched primarily for social control reasons such as failing to pay debts, not appearing to give way to whites, competing with whites economically, or being drunk in public.
She found little basis for the frequent claim that Black men were lynched because they had sexually abused or attacked white women. This alibi seemed to have partly accounted for white America’s collective acceptance or silence on lynching, as well as its acceptance by many in the educated African-American community.
Wells published her findings in a pamphlet called Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. She followed it with an editorial that said, unlike the myth that white women were sexually at risk of attacks by Black men, most liaisons between Black men and white women were consensual.
Her editorial enraged white men in Memphis. On May 27, 1892, while she was away in Philadelphia, a white mob destroyed the offices of the Free Speech and Headlight.
To quote again from the 1999 New York Times Review:
“Wells exposed as false the most common justification for these lynchings: that they were necessitated by sexual ”outrages” committed by Black men against white women. Perhaps only a woman could have spoken out effectively against these charges, but doing so exposed Wells to attacks against her sexual character. Her willingness to talk openly about rape and interracial sex kept her from succeeding the aging Frederick Douglass as ”leader of the Afro-American race,” the most respected Negro in the United States among whites. This role went instead to a man and a nonmilitant, Booker T. Washington.”
In continued efforts to raise awareness and opposition to lynching, Wells spoke to groups in New York City, where her audiences included many leading African-American women.
On October 5, 1892, a testimonial dinner held at Lyric Hall, organized by political activists and clubwomen, Victoria Earle Matthews and Maritcha Remond Lyons, raised significant funds for Wells’ anti-lynching campaign. The Women’s Loyal Union of New York and Brooklyn was formed to organize Black women as an interest group who could act politically.
Wells toured Europe in her campaign for justice, but the first tour in 1893 didn’t go so well. Wells went to Great Britain at the invitation of Catherine Impey, a British Quaker. An opponent of imperialism and proponent of racial equality, Impey wanted to ensure that the British public learned about the problem of lynching in the U.S.
Wells accompanied her speeches with a photograph of a white mob and grinning white children posing near a hanged Black man; her talks created a sensation, but some in the audiences remained doubtful of her accounts. Wells intended to raise money and expose the U.S. lynching violence, but received so little funds that she had difficulty covering her travel expenses.
Before her second visit to Britain in 1894, the enterprising Wells worked to get some backing. Wells called on William Penn Nixon, editor of Daily Inter-Ocean, a Republican newspaper in Chicago, the only major white paper that persistently denounced lynching.
After Wells told Nixon about her planned tour, he asked her to write for the newspaper while in England, making her the first African-American woman to be a paid correspondent for a mainstream white newspaper. This time, Wells was highly effective in speaking to European audiences, who were shocked to learn about the rate of violence against Black people in the U.S.
Wells called for the formation of groups to formally protest the lynchings and helped catalyze anti-lynching groups in Europe, which tried to press the U.S. government to guarantee the safety of Black people in the South.
When she spoke at home to Black crowds, Wells was a one-woman precursor to the 1950s Deacons of Defense or the 1960s Black Panthers or even Malcolm X: she recommended that Black people arm themselves to defend against lynching:
“The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honour in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.”
Wells subsequently published The Red Record(1895), a 100-page pamphlet describing lynching in the U.S. since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. It also covered Black people’s struggles in the South since the Civil War. The Red Record explored the alarmingly high rates of lynching in the United States (which was at a peak from 1880 to 1930).
Wells gave 14 pages of statistics related to lynching cases committed from 1892 to 1895; she also included pages of graphic accounts detailing specific lynchings. She notes that her data was taken from articles by white correspondents, white press bureaus, and white newspapers.
The Red Record had far-reaching influence in the debate about lynching. Her accounts grabbed the attention of Northerners who knew little about lynching or accepted the common explanation that black men deserved this fate.
(Ida B. Wells in Chicago in 1909 with her children: Charles, Herman, Ida and Alfreda Archivio GBB/Redux)
During this time, Wells also had to deal with dust-ups with white women suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and Frances Willard. Anthony was critical of Wells for getting “distracted” by her young son who she had to bring with her on occasion to speaking engagements.
Willard went out of her way to try to discredit Wells in the press after Wells called Willard out for being silent lynching and for making racist statements where she said Black people drank too much and threatened the safety of women. Wells clapped back at Willard in The Red Record with an entire chapter dedicated to discussing “Miss Willard’s Attitude.”
In 1896, Wells founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and the National Afro-American Council. In Chicago, Wells also worked to improve conditions for its rapidly growing African-American population due to the Great Migration to northern industrial cities.
Wells worked on urban reform in Chicago during the last thirty years of her life. Wells began writing her autobiography, Crusade for Justice, in 1928 but never finished it; she died of uremia (kidney failure) in Chicago on March 25, 1931, at the age of 68.
In her hometown of Holly Springs, Mississippi, the Ida B.Wells-Barnett Museum acts as a cultural center of African American history. Awards have been established in Wells’s name by the National Association of Black Journalists, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and the New York County Lawyers Assn., among others.
President of the NAACP Arkansas chapter during the civil rights movement and co-publisher of The Arkansas State Press, a newspaper dedicated to advocacy journalism for African-Americans.
Bates is best known for organizing and shepherding the Little Rock Nine as they desegregated Central High in 1957 in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Ed.U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Bates regularly drove the students to and from school, hosted them in her home after school and worked tirelessly to ensure they were protected from violent crowds.
One of her most successful protection strategies was to get local ministers to escort the students to school, daring the white Christians protesting and hurling threats to attack men of the cloth. Bates’ plan worked, but she started to receive threats herself.
Rocks were thrown into her home, crosses were burned on her property, and bullet shells were sent to her in the mail. White advertisers boycotted her newspaper and eventually she had to shut it down.
Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine (Credit: Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo)
Bates received support from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who assured her, “World opinion is with you. The moral conscience of millions of white Americans is with you.” Bates was also elected to the executive committee of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
In 1960, Bates moved to New York City and wrote her memoir The Long Shadow of Little Rock, then later moved to Washington D.C., and worked for the Democratic National Committee.
Bates was also the only woman who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington during the official program, pledging that women would fight just as hard and long as the men until all Black people were free and had the vote.
Bates later served in the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson and worked on anti-poverty programs. In 1968 she moved to the rural black community of Mitchellville, Arkansas and worked there to improve the lives of her neighbors by establishing a self-help program which was responsible for new sewer systems, paved streets, a water system, and community center.
Stacey Abrams has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work to promote voting rights via Fair Fight in Georgia and the United States overall.
“Abrams’ work follows in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s footsteps in the fight for equality before the law and for civil rights,” said Lars Haltbrekken, a member of Norway’s parliament.
“Abrams’ efforts to complete King’s work are crucial if the United States of America shall succeed in its effort to create fraternity between all its peoples and a peaceful and just society,” Haltbrekken said.
Other candidates this year include the Black Lives Matter movement, the World Health Organization, U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee and climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.
According to Reuters the Nobel Committee in Norway, which decides who wins the award, does not comment on nominations but nominators can choose to reveal their picks.
Petter Eide, a member of Norway’s parliament, nominated Black Lives Matter for a Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of the movement’s continuous work towards manifesting racial justice in the U.S. and across the globe.
“To carry forward a movement of racial justice and to spread that to other countries is very, very important. Black Lives Matter is the strongest force today doing this, not only in the U.S. but also in Europe and in Asia,” Eide told USA TODAY.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 in recognition for his work and mission of non-violent protest during the Civil Rights Movement.
Albert Luthuli and Nelson Mandela won in 1960 and 1993, respectively, for their campaigns against racial discrimination and apartheid in South Africa.
Additionally, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has won Sweden’s Olof Palme human rights prize for 2020, for promoting “peaceful civil disobedience against police brutality and racial violence” according to the prize’s organizers.
Patrice Cullors, one of the original founders of Black Lives Matter, will accept the $100,000 on behalf of BLM during an online ceremony today.
In today’s “Power Shot,” TEDx speaker,Power Lab performance coach, and GBN’s “This Way Forward” contributor Dena Crowder breaks down how white supremacy is the ideology behind the biggest threat to democracy in the United States.
Crowder clearly and concisely explains how Black people have been and continue to be essential to preserving and re-defining democracy, why Black voices must be listened to, and gives deeper context for why #BlackLivesMatter. Check it out:
The literary and free expression organization PEN America announced today that Darnella Frazier, the quick-thinking and courageous young woman who filmed the murder of George Floyd, will receive the 2020 PEN/Benenson Courage Award. PEN America will bestow the award on the 17-year-old Frazier at its virtual gala celebration on December 8.
“With nothing more than a cell phone and sheer guts, Darnella changed the course of history in this country, sparking a bold movement demanding an end to systemic anti-Black racism and violence at the hands of police,” said PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, author of Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All.
“With remarkable steadiness, Darnella carried out the expressive act of bearing witness, and allowing hundreds of millions around the world to see what she saw. Without Darnella’s presence of mind and readiness to risk her own safety and wellbeing, we may never have known the truth about George Floyd’s murder. We are proud to recognize her exceptional courage with this award.”
Frazier documented the death of the 46-year-old Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, one of whom—Derek Chauvin—pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck, well after Floyd lost consciousness. Frazier’s video quickly spread across social media and led to a wave of community outrage, a major investigation, and Chauvin’s arrest, as well as the dismissal of the three other officers.
Floyd’s killing, along with the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Dion Johnson, and others, drove a wave of activism across the country crying out for racial and economic justice.
Frazier will receive the award at the 2020 PEN America Gala, this year being held virtually on December 8 and, for the first time, combining the annual Los Angeles and New York Galas, streamed to supporters around the world. The all-virtual gala will include special guests, performances, readings, and the presentation of multiple PEN America honors.
The SolidARiTy movement includes over 20 artists who are creating thought-provoking pieces as a fundraiser and art auction that will benefit Claris Health and the Social Justice Learning Institute, both Los Angeles-based 501c3 nonprofits serving the most vulnerable and at-risk people in the area.
The pieces will be available for viewing all that week at Resin Gallery in Hermosa Beach via scheduled appointment for safe social distance measures. Contact Resin Gallery at 831.601.8137 or email info@southbayartistcollective.org.
SolidARiTy was organized by South Bay residents Janne Kouri and Chad Drew, with support from South Bay Artist Collective member Wendy Stillman and founder Rafael McMaster.
There are more than 25 unique pieces being created and auctioned, from artists including world renowned photographers Bo Bridges and Brent Broza, encaustic artist Sabrina Armitage, and popular contemporary artists including, Drica Lobo, Wendy Stillman, Daniel Maltzman, JaniceSchultz, Candyce Fabre, Vienna Pitts, Rafael McMaste, Isis Dua, Ms. Yellow, MCHS Student CharlieKwon, and more.
[Me Too Founder Tarana Burke photo by Bennett Raglin/Getty Images]
The Me Too Movement against sexual violence and sexual harassment gained widespread attention three years ago. In 2020, the movements against racial violence, police brutality and the ongoing struggle with the coronavirus pandemic have also emerged as dominating issues of our times.
According to the Huffington Post, Tarana Burke, founder of the Me Too Movement and a longtime activist, knows people are outraged ― and overwhelmed. So Burke and the Me Too organization, in collaboration with creative data marketing agency FCB/SIX, are launching a new digital platform called “Me Too Act Too” that allows activists, experienced and new, to educate themselves and get involved.
“I think one of the mistakes that we make on the movement side is that there’s so much judgment around what it means to be an activist or what it means to be active. And if you’re not doing it a certain way, then you’re not really contributing. And that’s not true,” Burke told HuffPost.
Me Too Act Too is a crowd-sourced digital platform that gives “survivors, advocates and allies tools to work toward a world free of sexual violence,” according to the organization. The website is meant to be an accessible tool for people who may not see themselves as career activists or who do not have the ability to devote a large amount of time to this work.
She found little basis for the frequent claim that Black men were lynched because they had sexually abused or attacked white women. This alibi seemed to have partly accounted for white America’s collective acceptance or silence on lynching, as well as its acceptance by many in the educated African-American community.
This is Daisy Bates.
Bates was also the only woman who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington during the official program, pledging that women would fight just as hard and long as the men until all Black people were free and had the vote.
