Newsletter from the National Black MBA Association:
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Showing posts with label DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY
Newsletter from the National Black MBA Association:
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Saturday, March 16, 2013
A CRISIS IN CORE VALUES AND LEADERSHIP
FROM EMAIL:
CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN'S "CHILD WATCH" COLUMN
CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN'S "CHILD WATCH" COLUMN
Missing: Leadership and Core
Values
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 “It will not be
sufficient for Morehouse College, for any college, for that matter, to produce
clever graduates, men fluent in speech and able to argue their way through; but
rather honest men, men who can be trusted in public and private—who are
sensitive to the wrongs, the sufferings, and the injustices of society and who
are willing to accept responsibility for correcting the ills.”--Dr. Benjamin E. Mays President, Morehouse College
"Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, Morehouse College’s president
from 1940-1967, said this about the kind of men and leaders he expected
Morehouse to produce. As a student at neighboring Spelman College, I heard and
saw Dr. Mays often and had the privilege of singing in Morehouse’s Sunday
morning chapel choir and hearing this great man’s wisdom. Of the six college
presidents in the Atlanta University academic complex Dr. Mays was the one
students looked up to most. He inspired and taught us by example and stood by us
when we challenged Atlanta’s Jim Crow laws in the sit-in movement to open up
public accommodations to all citizens. Dr. Mays taught us that “not failure, but
low aim is sin” and warned that “the tragedy of life is often not in our
failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in
our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our
living below our capacities.” As students we hungrily internalized his unerring
belief that we were God's instruments for helping transform the world, and like
many others who heard him frequently, I often repeated his words. One of the
many Morehouse students Dr. Mays helped shape was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
whom he lovingly eulogized on that campus after his 1968 assassination.
Who are our Dr. Mayses today – our moral compasses
in crucial sectors of American life? What a contrast Dr. Mays’ example is to
that of a college president in the headlines recently, Dr. James Wagner of Emory
University, who was criticized for praising the 1787 compromise declaring that
every slave would be counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of state
representation in Congress as an example of “noble achievement” that allowed
Northern and Southern White congressmen to “continue working toward the highest
aspiration they both shared—the aspiration to form a more perfect union.”
We have struggled for over two centuries to overcome
the crippling birth defects and glaring hypocrisies between the eloquent words
that “all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights” in our
Declaration of Independence belied by slavery, Native American genocide, and
exclusion of women and non-propertied White men in our founders’ deeds. That
tragic hypocrisy resulted in a bloody Civil War that took more than 530,000
American lives and a post-Reconstruction era with Jim Crow laws, decades of
struggle, and many lost lives, countless marches, lawsuits, and legislative
efforts to achieve major civil rights legislation. And we must still be vigilant
and fight to protect the hard earned social and racial progress over the last
half century from being undermined by voter suppression, the Cradle to Prison
Pipeline, mass incarceration, and pervasive economic and educational
inequalities. What kind of message did Dr. Wagner’s words send to Emory’s Black
students, who were quickly joined by some White students, faculty members, and
others in denouncing his endorsement of the decision that codified
less-than-fully-human status as “5/5ths outrageous”?
And what message did it send to students and
citizens of every color when Dr. Mary Jane Saunders, the president of Florida
Atlantic University, sold the naming rights to its stadium for six million
dollars to the private prison company GEO Group? At a protest rally on campus,
an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union cited GEO Group’s
“well-publicized record of abuse and neglect,” and quoted from an order of U.S.
Judge Carlton Reeves describing one of their correctional facilities for minors
and older teenage prisoners in Mississippi as “a cesspool of unconstitutional
and inhuman acts and conditions” and “a picture of such horror as should be
unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.”
I do not believe this is the ideal of universities
producing leaders “who are sensitive to the wrongs, the sufferings, and the
injustices of society and who are willing to accept responsibility for
correcting the ills” that Dr. Mays sought and taught. Who are the successor
leaders today to Dr. Mays? Where are today’s moral leaders in other critical
sectors who challenge and set the example for the rest of us? Where are today’s
Abraham Joshua Heschels or Reinhold Niebuhrs or Eleanor Roosevelts or Dorothy
Days? Where are Senators like Phil Hart and Wayne Morse who helped set a tone of
political discourse too missing today in our legislative bodies? Where will the
next leaders we can look up to as courageous and sacrificial champions of
justice like Dr. King, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, Medgar Evers, Andrew
Goodman, Mickey Schwerner, and James Chaney come from?
At the same time that we have a crisis in visible
servant leadership examples we have a crisis in core values. Are we content to
be a society where virtually anything is available for profit or for sale,
including the sale over the counter at Wal-Mart and other stores of deadly
assault weapons capable of gruesome and senseless mass destruction like that
which ravaged twenty small Newtown children and their teachers? Are we content
to have deadly assault weapons treated as normal consumer products like toasters
or vacuum cleaners? How have we come to normalize violence and unbridled
commercialization unmoored from common and moral sense and public safety.
Is this the best we have to pass on to our children
and grandchildren and the next generation of leaders the nation and world need
today and tomorrow? Do corporate profits from dangerous products or harmful
practices trump children’s security and safety in our nation? Is compromise that
allows gross or some significant human injustice the best we can expect
from American democracy? Isn’t it time to engage in a fuller discussion about
the breakdown of core values in America and the values we do agree on
and need and want to instill in the next generation? What does it mean to be an
American? What does it mean to be a human being? Robert Kennedy said this to
students at the University of Kansas in 1968 about the need to rethink how we
measure success in America:
“Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered
community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material
things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that—counts
air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of
carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break
them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural
wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead,
and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s
rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in
order to sell toys to our children.”
Senator Kennedy continued: “Yet the gross national
product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their
education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our
poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate
or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our
courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our
devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which
makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we
are proud that we are Americans.”
I hope and pray we will not raise a new generation
of children with high intellectual quotients and low caring and compassion
quotients; with sharp competitive edges but dull cooperative instincts; with
highly developed computer skills but poorly developed consciences; with a
gigantic commitment to the big “I” but little sense of responsibility to the
bigger “we”; with mounds of disconnected information without a moral context to
determine its worth; with more and more knowledge and less and less imagination
and appreciation for the magic of life that cannot be quantified or
computerized; and with more and more worldliness and less and less wonder and
awe for the sacred and everyday miracles of life. I hope as parents, educators,
and faith, community, public and private sector leaders that we will raise
children who care and work for justice and freedom for all."
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Saturday, March 9, 2013
GUN VIOLENCE IS AN ALL AMERICAN CRISIS
REPOST
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
"Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote these words in his
April 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in the same passage with his
well-known warning that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
A few months later, Dr. King wrote that the same culture of violence that killed
Medgar Evers in Mississippi in June 1963 and four little Black girls in
Birmingham in September 1963 had finally killed President Kennedy in November
1963 reminding us that it’s not possible to confine injustice, hatred, or
violence to one group or community. What is tolerated in one place will
eventually infect and affect everyone.
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote these words in his
April 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in the same passage with his
well-known warning that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
A few months later, Dr. King wrote that the same culture of violence that killed
Medgar Evers in Mississippi in June 1963 and four little Black girls in
Birmingham in September 1963 had finally killed President Kennedy in November
1963 reminding us that it’s not possible to confine injustice, hatred, or
violence to one group or community. What is tolerated in one place will
eventually infect and affect everyone.
When many people think about gun deaths in America,
the first stereotype that comes to mind is urban gun homicide—a crisis that
disproportionately affects the Black community. As a result, too many people
assume that despite recurring cases of often labeled “isolated” or
“unpredictable” mass gun violence primarily committed by White male shooters,
“ordinary” gun violence is mostly a Black problem that is or should be the Black
community’s responsibility alone to solve. This is simply not true, although the
Black community must mount a much stronger and more persistent voice against gun
violence. The fact is that most Americans killed by guns are White, and most
Americans who kill themselves or others with guns are White and our
nation’s gun death epidemic is not simply a White or Black crisis but an
American crisis.
Between 1963 and 2010, 73 percent of gun deaths in
America were among Whites—over one million deaths. Large numbers of White
parents have borne the terrible burden of losing their child to guns: Whites
comprised 62 percent of child and teen gun deaths between 1963 and
2010—exceeding 100,000 deaths. In 2010, 65 percent of gun deaths among Americans
of all ages were among non-Hispanic Whites, as were 34 percent of gun deaths
among children and teens. Gun deaths were the second leading cause of death for
non-Hispanic White children and teens that year, second only to motor vehicle
accidents, and the fourth leading cause of death among non-Hispanic Whites ages
1 to 64 after cancers, heart disease, and non-gun accidents. Eighty-three
percent of White gun deaths were suicides, 14 percent were homicides, and two
percent were accidents. Among White children and teens, 63 percent of gun deaths
were suicides, 26 percent were homicides, and nine percent were accidents.
The state with the highest overall number
of gun deaths among non-Hispanic Whites in 2010 was Texas, with 1,620, followed
by Florida, California, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, Tennessee,
Arizona, and Michigan. The ten states with the highest rates of gun
deaths among non-Hispanic Whites were Nevada, New Mexico, Alaska, Wyoming,
Arizona, Mississippi, Montana, Alabama, Louisiana, and West Virginia.
The total of 31,328 people of all ages who died from
guns in 2010 included 20,427 Whites, 7,291 Blacks, 2,943 Latinos, 378
Asian-Americans, and 289 American Indians and Alaska Natives.
Where do all of these deaths leave us? Fifty years
later, it leaves us right back with Dr. King: there is no point making gun
violence just one group’s problem because we are all caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality without a place to hide from pervasive guns and gun
violence. Gun violence is a White problem because most gun death
victims in America are White. Gun violence is a Black problem because
Blacks are disproportionately more likely to be gun death victims. Gun violence
is a Latino and an Asian-American and an American Indian and Native
Alaskan problem because shamefully children and people of all races are dying
from guns.
Gun violence is an urban problem that
devastates cities like Chicago, and Detroit, and Tucson, Arizona, and
Washington, D.C. Gun violence is a suburban, small town, and rural
problem that devastates places like Newtown, Connecticut, and Conyers, Georgia,
and Littleton and Aurora, Colorado, and Pearl, Mississippi. Gun violence
is a problem in states with strong gun laws because guns still travel
in from states next door. Gun violence is a problem for parents who
would never dream of owning a gun and for parents whose guns are stored
responsibly and safely because their children share the same playdates and parks
and schools and universities and movie theaters and streets as children and
adults who do have access to guns and whose family members and friends do not
store them safely.
Gun deaths
are a tragedy for families whose loved ones are murdered. Gun deaths
are a tragedy for families whose loved ones commit suicide. We should
take our blinders off because when the 2010 gun death rate for non-Hispanic
Whites in the United States was nearly eight times higher than the average gun
death rate in 25 other high income countries—and the overall gun death rate for
all Americans was seven and a half times higher than the average gun death rate
in those countries—and when children are killed or injured by guns every 30
minutes, gun violence is an all-American crisis. Other countries have
already made the decision to say no more. It is time for all Americans to stand
up, speak up, work together and do the same for our children and all of us."
Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's
Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to
ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair
Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and
successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and
communities. For more information go HERE.
Mrs. Edelman's Child Watch Column also
appears each week on The Huffington Post.
Monday, February 4, 2013
NATIONAL AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH
From the Whitehouse page:
By The President of The United States of America
A Proclamation
In America, we share a dream that lies at the heart of our founding: that no
matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter how modest your
beginnings or the circumstances of your birth, you can make it if you try. Yet,
for many and for much of our Nation's history, that dream has gone unfulfilled.
For African Americans, it was a dream denied until 150 years ago, when a great
emancipator called for the end of slavery. It was a dream deferred less than 50
years ago, when a preacher spoke of justice and brotherhood from Lincoln's
memorial. This dream of equality and fairness has never come easily -- but it
has always been sustained by the belief that in America, change is possible.
Today, because of that hope, coupled with the hard and painstaking labor of
Americans sung and unsung, we live in a moment when the dream of equal
opportunity is within reach for people of every color and creed. National
African American History Month is a time to tell those stories of freedom won
and honor the individuals who wrote them. We look back to the men and women who
helped raise the pillars of democracy, even when the halls they built were not
theirs to occupy. We trace generations of African Americans, free and slave,
who risked everything to realize their God-given rights. We listen to the
echoes of speeches and struggle that made our Nation stronger, and we hear again
the thousands who sat in, stood up, and called out for equal treatment under the
law. And we see yesterday's visionaries in tomorrow's leaders, reminding us
that while we have yet to reach the mountaintop, we cannot stop climbing.
Today, Dr. King, President Lincoln, and other shapers of our American story
proudly watch over our National Mall. But as we memorialize their extraordinary
acts in statues and stone, let us not lose sight of the enduring truth that they
were citizens first. They spoke and marched and toiled and bled
shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary people who burned with the same hope for a
brighter day. That legacy is shared; that spirit is American. And just as it
guided us forward 150 years ago and 50 years ago, it guides us forward today.
So let us honor those who came before by striving toward their example, and let
us follow in their footsteps toward the better future that is ours to claim.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America,
by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the
United States, do hereby proclaim February 2013 as National African American
History Month. I call upon public officials, educators, librarians, and all the
people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs,
ceremonies, and activities.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of
January, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence
of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh."
Related:
African American History Month
Related:
African American History Month
Thursday, January 24, 2013
REGINA BRETT ON EQUALITY FOR ALL, AND THE ROAD AHEAD
Love this article
Obama's inauguration underscores equality for all: Regina Brett
By
on January 22, 2013 at 6:00 PM
"America the beautiful.
Yes, it was.
From James Taylor singing, "Oh, beautiful, for spacious skies," to Beyonce belting out the National Anthem."
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION AND THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON
Newsletter from
| Changing America: The Emancipation Proclamation,
1863 and the March on Washington, 1963
Opens
December 14, 2012
NMAAHC Gallery at American History, second floor east
On August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington,
Martin Luther King Jr. began his speech by declaring, "Five score years ago, a
great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation
Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to
millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering
injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity ...
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check."
In 2013 the country will commemorate two events that
changed the course of the nation — the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the
1963 March on Washington. Standing as milestone moments in the grand sweep of
American history, these achievements were the culmination of decades of
struggles by individuals — both famous and unknown — who believed in the
American promise that this nation was dedicated to the proposition that "all men
are created equal." Separated by 100 years, they are linked together in a larger
story of freedom and the American experience.
To commemorate these two pivotal achievements, the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC)
in collaboration with the National Museum of American History (NMAH) will
present an exhibition, featuring historic photographs, paintings, new film
footage and objects, that explores the historical context of these two crucial
events, their accomplishments and limitations, and their impact on the
generations that followed.
The exhibition
will be on view from Dec. 14, 2012 through Sept. 15, 2013 in NMAAHC’s temporary
gallery on level two at American History, 14th St NW and Constitution
Ave NW. Metro: Smithsonian or Federal Triangle.
For more information, visit www.nmaahc.si.edu.
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March on Washington
participants. Aug. 28, 1963. Friday, September 14, 2012
16TH STREET BAPTIST CHURCH BOMBING IN BIRMINGHAM
This is a newsletter that was emailed today from the National Museum of African American History and Culture:
Lonnie
Bunch, museum director, historian, lecturer, and author, is proud to present
A Page from Our American Story, a
regular on-line series for Museum supporters. It will showcase individuals and
events in the African American experience, placing these stories in the context
of a larger story — our American story.
A
Page From Our American Story
On September 15, 1963, an explosion shattered the quiet of a Sunday morning,
blowing apart the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
Four young girls who were getting ready for Sunday School were killed almost
instantly.
Denise McNair, 11, Addie Mae Collins, 14, Carole Robertson, 14, and Cynthia
Wesley, 14 died as a result of a bomb placed under the church by members of the
Ku Klux Klan. Twenty-two others, including Collins' younger sister Sarah, were
injured.
“I remember Denise asking Addie to tie her belt,” Sarah Collins Cox said in
an interview. “And then it happened.”
Most Americans had little idea, or had paid little attention to the fact that
Birmingham had been the scene of more than 50 bombings between 1947 and 1963.
This bombing, however, would not go unnoticed. The murderous event
awakened the nation and effectively galvanized the civil rights
movement.
In the months leading up to the bombing, Birmingham had become the focal
point of the civil rights front. The city was all too familiar with racial
violence. Both African Americans and moderate whites had been long terrorized by
the Klan.
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Years earlier, Birmingham minister Fred L. Shuttlesworth founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) to directly confront racism and segregation in the city. In the spring of 1963, Shuttlesworth's group joined forces with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the largest and best known organization fighting for equal rights at the time. Together, the men formulated a plan that called for months-long protests to end segregation in Birmingham
In May of that year, after weeks of marches, sit-ins, boycotts, bus strikes,
and prayer vigils, an agreement was reached. It had the input of local
government leaders, white business owners, African American leaders and civil
rights groups. The city would actively begin working toward integration. The
agreement did not sit well with segregationists, among the most violent of which
was the notorious KKK.
Riots erupted during the summer months, and nightly newscasts revealed to the
rest of America the lengths to which Southern racists like Governor George
Wallace and Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Conner
would go in their fight to keep the South segregated.
Conner ran Birmingham's police and fire departments, and his ruthless tactics
against the demonstrators shocked the country. With each evening's news,
Americans watched as Conner's police used attack dogs, billy clubs, and tear gas
on the peaceful protestors. He turned fire hoses on the crowd with water
pressure so high it would “peel away skin,” according to press
reports.
Still, it was the 16th Street Baptist Church and the deaths of
four innocent children that finally snapped the nation and the federal
government into action. All over the country, citizens became angry and ready
for change. In June 1963, President John Kennedy introduced a civil rights bill,
now known as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to widespread support.
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing is cited by many historians
as the turning point in the civil rights movement. An editorial in the Milwaukee
Sentinel said the bombing should “serve to goad the conscience” of the country.
“The deaths...in a sense are on the hands of each of us.”
We should always keep in mind that the four girls who died, while
immortalized in history, were children with children's dreams. Carol Robertson
was a straight A student who loved to dance. Cynthia Wesley excelled in math.
Addie Mae Collins was quiet, athletic, and had a flare for art. Denise McNair
wrote plays for the kids in her neighborhood.
History is not scripted. In the case of the 16th Street Baptist
Church bombing it was shaped out of racist hatred that ended four innocent
lives, but changed America forever.
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