Shaw University Elects New Board Chair, Officers
RALEIGH, NC (May 16, 2012) – Shaw University, the first historically black university in the South, today announced the election of new officers to its Board of Trustees. Dr. Joseph N. Bell, Jr. was elected as board chairman and will succeed Dr. Willie E. Gary, who was re-elected as a board member. In addition, Dr. Lorenzo Williams was elected vice-chairman and Dr. H. Donell Lewis was elected secretary. Each officer will serve a two-year term effective July 1, 2012.
Dr. Bell, a Shaw alumnus, currently serves as the vice-chair of the Board and holds several Board positions, including vice chair of the Executive Committee; chair of the Fiscal Affairs Committee; chair of the Trusteeship Committee; member of the Investment Committee and member of the Property Acquisition and Business Development Committee. He has also served as chair of two Transition Committees during changes in administrations.
After earning his Bachelor of Arts degree from Shaw University in 1970, Dr. Bell established himself in the banking industry, having served as Executive Vice President of Carver State Bank in Savannah, GA. His wife, Carolyn Hodges Bell, a 1971 Shaw graduate, was recently elected Alderman-at-Large for the Savannah City Council. In addition, Dr. Bell served as Executive Director of the Chatham Association of Educators, an affiliate of the Georgia Association of Educators and the National Education Association, for almost 25 years.
STATE NEWS BRIEFS
REPUBLICAN-LED GENERAL ASSEMBLY BACK IN SHORT SESSION
[RALEIGH]
The NC Legislative short session has begun, and GOP leaders promise to get
their business done quickly. Part of the reason is because it’s an election
year, and both Republican majorities in the state House and Senate are anxious
to start campaigning to maintain control. GOP leaders are expected to attempt
to override Gov. Perdue’s prior vetoes of voter ID, and their gutting of the NC
Racial Justice Act. They will also adjust the state’s $19.9 billion budget, and
are expected to ignore Gov. Perdue’s $20.9 billion state budget proposal, with
the biggest battle over education spending. Observers are also looking to see
what lawmakers do about compensation for the victims of the state’s forced
sterilization program. Gov. Perdue has budgeted over $10 million for it.
DEMOCRATS FUMING AFTER CHAIRMAN PARKER RESIGNS, THEN GETS
RE-ELECTED
[GREENSBORO]
If North Carolina Democrats are walking around in a daze of late, you can’t
blame them. Many are still trying to figure how state Party Chairman David
Parker submitted his resignation Saturday to the state party’s Ruling
Committee, only to have the majority of the committee vote not to accept it,
thus allowing Parker to remain chairman. Parker had been under fire for
covering up an alleged sexual harassment accusation at party headquarters that
saw Executive Director Jay Parmley resign his post. Everyone from Gov. Perdue
to the White House is not pleased. They wanted Parker out. Now it is expected
that the Republicans will make plenty of election year hay out of the
controversy.
POLL HAS DALTON ONLY SIX POINTS BEHIND MCCRORY IN
GOVERNOR’S RACE
[CHARLOTTE]
With all of the drama surrounding NC Democrats lately came some good news.
Walton Dalton, the Democratic nominee for governor, is polling only six points
behind heavy favorite Republican Pat McCrory, according to Public Policy
Polling. In a survey of just 666 voters done days after last week’s May
primary, the current lieutenant governor lags behind the former mayor of
Charlotte, 46 to 40 percent. About 13 percent of those polled are undecided.
This means the race can easily tighten up going into the November general
election. And it also means, depending on how North Carolina goes for President
Obama, Lt. Gov. Dalton could edge McCrory, just like Gov. Beverly Perdue did in
2008.
-30-
TRIANGLE NEWS BRIEFS
WAKE BEGINS THREE-MONTH DEFIBRILLATOR CAMPAIGN
For the next three months, the Wake County
Commission Board and Emergency Medical Services will be urging business and
building owners to take part in having automated external defibrillators
installed in more public buildings to save more people who suffer cardiac
arrests. That’s the goal of the Wake EMS 100 Day Heart Safe Automated External
Defibrillators Campaign. Local businesses will be given special incentives to
purchase the devices. Studies have shown that having a unit immediately
available, and training people on how to use it, saves more lives.
OAK CITY BAPTIST CHURCH SPONSORS STROKE PREVENTION
FITNESS DAY MAY 26TH
Oak
City Baptist Church, along with the Triangle Stroke Education Outreach Initiative,
is sponsoring “A Day of Fitness and Fun,” Saturday, May 26th
starting at 9 a.m.. There will be a Senior Fun Run, free eye/glaucoma tests,
CPR training. Entertainment by gospel comedian Elder Ascender Hankins. For more
information call 919-264-8120, or email minwomen@hotmail.com.
ORANGE -CHATHAM DA WANTS SBI PROBE OF UNC BLACK STUDIES
PROGRAM
On the heels of published reports
alleging academic fraud in the UNC-Chapel Hill African and Afro-American
Studies Program, the district attorney for Orange and Chatham counties has
asked the State Bureau of Investigation to look into the matter for possible
criminal offenses. DA Jim Woodall met with the SBI earlier this week to detail
his concerns, based on a university probe of the troubled program. Reportedly,
Professor Julius Nyang’oro did not teach a series of summer school courses for
which he was paid. Allegedly, the classes were never held. The UNC probe also
uncovered that there were unauthorized grade changes for students who did not
complete course work.
-30-
MEDIA
CASH IN THE APPLE
By Cash Michaels
THE
WILMINGTON TEN - Earlier today, I took part in an historic press conference at
the North Carolina State Capital.
The
announcement was made that a legal petition for pardons of innocence on behalf of the
Wilmington Ten had been submitted to the Governor’s Clemency Office.
For
those of you who remember who the Wilmington Ten were, you know that this was
historic.
This
year is the fortieth anniversary of when eight black male student activists,
along with a white female social worker, and their leader, the Rev. Benjamin F.
Chavis, Jr., were falsely put on trial, and convicted of conspiracy to commit
violence during the racial upheaval in Wilmington in 1971.
In
fact, all ten were brave, committed and nonviolent young social activists - from ages 17 to
35 - who bravely stood up against the New Hanover County Board of Education in
1971, and demanded an equal quality of public education for African-American
students after the school system closed Williston High, the all-black high
school.
Remember,
this was all happening just three years after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. The South was still dealing with
desegregation issues, and it wasn’t easy.
Here’s
how Dr. Ben Chavis described the tenor of the times in an NNPA column he wrote
in 2011:
_________________
During
the Nixon Administration in the early 1970's, African Americans in the South,
as well as in other regions of the nation, were being challenged with the
systematic racial disparities involved in the details of how federal
court-ordered school desegregation was being enforced.
Because
we dared to speak out and to engage in non-violent street protests to the long,
unprecedented history of racial violence and injustice in that port city, the
African American community became the targets of a violent, paramilitary,
anti-Black terror campaign led by the Ku Klux Klan and the Rights of White
People (ROWP) organization.
Because
of our involvement in the struggle in Wilmington in 1971, we were unjustly
charged, arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to a combined maximum total
of 282 years in prison in North Carolina in 1972. We all were completely
innocent of theoje alleged charges of arson and conspiracy to assault. In 1978,
Amnesty International declared that we were "Political Prisoners." We
stayed in prison during most of the 1970's while our case was on appeal.
____________________
As the coordinator for the Wilmington Ten Pardon of
Innocence Project, a project sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association
- the major black trade association of 200 African-American member newspapers
across the nation (of which the Carolinian and Wilmington Journal newspapers are members of) - it has been my
responsibility to pull the project together, and work with the best team
possible - project co-chairs Mary Alice Thatch, publisher of The Wilmington
Journal; and attorney Irving Joyner, law professor at North Carolina Central
University School of Law.
The
hard work and commitment of these two giants inspire me to put in the extra effort to make
sure that this would be an endeavor that we can all be proud of.
But the
highlight of this project for me personally has been meeting, interviewing, and spending time
with the seven surviving members of the Wilmington Ten, and the family of the
three deceased members.
The
Wilmington Ten’s stories, told to me firsthand, of struggle, faith and
fortitude after being targeted for crimes they didn’t commit, are compelling.
There
is no question that the false prosecution and imprisonment of the Wilmington
Ten radically impacted their lives individually, as well as those of their
families and loved ones.
Each
defendant was young, some barely in their twenties, when they were convicted in
1972 of crimes that they didn’t commit. Some were still in high school, and living
with their parents.
At least one, Ms Shepard, was raising three young
children.
All
of the defendants had dreams of a bright, hope-filled future of either practicing
the law, playing professional sports, or even performing as a musician.
Their only collective “crime,” they
each individually say, was their willingness to openly, but peacefully,
challenge injustice. Because of their individual courage, and commitment to
equality, the Wilmington Ten suffered false prosecution, years of imprisonment
and great personal hardships for themselves and their families. The collective
impact for all of them has extended decades beyond their release from prison,
and well after a federal appellate court overturned their convictions.
Today, forty years hence their
false prosecutions, three of the Wilmington Ten - Jerry Jacobs, William Joseph
Wright and Anne Shepard-Turner - have died, their dreams unfulfilled, according
to their bereaved families.
One member, Reginald Epps, has
worked so hard to protect his privacy and rebuild his life, vowing to leave the
pain of his false imprisonment behind.
Another member, Rev. Benjamin
Chavis, the leader of the Wilmington Ten, has evolved into one of the most
accomplished civil rights leaders of our time, but he’s paid a dear personal
price to do so.
So has Wayne Moore, who has had to
move from Wilmington after his release from prison, leaving family and friends
behind, because he was denied the opportunity to work and live in his hometown
due to his association.
Willie Earl Vereen, Connie Tindall,
James McKoy and Marvin Patrick, all now elderly men, struggling with their health, all feel
robbed of the promise they once had to be productive citizens forty years ago.
They have lost faith in government, and angrily challenge North Carolina to
render to them long overdue justice - both tangibly and symbolically - to
remove the clouds they say still follow their names, and reputations.
In all, the lives of the Wilmington
Ten have been marked by struggle, hardship and indignities they otherwise would
not have experienced if the state of North Carolina, forty years ago, had not
sought to punish them for their political activism, and willingness to demand
social change.
While past cannot be changed,
amends can be made today for what was unjustly done to ten innocent North
Carolinians, and American citizens.
Being intimately involved in this
NNPA project has made me very proud to be a member of the Black Press. Some may
ask, “How is it that the Black Press can be involved in making news, when
that’s not what the press is supposed to be doing at all?”
My answer, it doesn’t stop
newspapers and television stations from sponsoring fundraisers and telethons
for hurricane relief - helping innocent victims regain their lives after a disaster!
That’s
what we’re doing here, helping ten innocent people to officially reclaim their
rightful innocence after the injustice that was perpetrated against them by the
state of North Carolina.
In
effect, the Black Press, through the NNPA and The Wilmington Journal, is leading the way in telling the story of the
Wilmington Ten to a new generation.
It
is a story that should be told, just like the Greensboro Four - four NC A&T
students in 1960 who boldly integrated the Woolworth lunch counter, sparking
the sit-in movement.
Just
like Rosa Parks, a brave woman of the South who in 1956 decided she would
standup, by sitting down in the front of the bus in segregated Montgomery, Alabama.
And
just like the Little Rock Nine - nine black students in Little Rock, Arkansas who, amid hatred and violence in the late 1950;s, bravely walked into an all-white high school,
determined to get their education.
Yes,
the story of the Wilmington Ten MUST be told.
But
thanks to the efforts of the Black Press, it must also ...be finished!
And
it will!
I hope that you will support our pardon effort on behalf of the Wilmington Ten. You can go to The Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project on Facebook to learn more, and show your support. We are constructing a dedicated website to further educate this new generation about the Wilmington Ten, and we'll announce that as soon as it's ready.
Make sure you tune in
every Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. for my talk radio show, ''Make It Happen''
on Power 750 WAUG-AM, or online at www.myWAUG.com. And read more about my thoughts and opinions
exclusively at my new blog, ‘The Cash Roc” (http://thecashroc.blogspot.com/2011/01/cash-roc-begins.html).
I promise it will be interesting.
Cash in the Apple -
honored as the Best Column Writing of 2006 by the National Newspaper Publishers
Association. Columnist Cash Michaels was also honored by the NNPA for Best
Feature Story Journalist of 2009, and was the recipient of the Raleigh-Apex
NAACP’s President’s Award for Media Excellence in Sept. 2011.
Until next week, keep a smile
on your face, GOD in your heart, and The Carolinian in your life. Bye, bye.
-30-
SEEKING PARDON OF INNOCENCE TODAY - Seated from left to right, Marvin Patrick, Mrs. Margaret Jacobs (mother of Jerry Jacobs), and Connie Tindall. Standing from left to right, Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., Wayne Moore, Willie Earl Vereen and James McKoy. [Cash Michaels video clip]
FALSELY CONVICTED FORTY YEARS AGO - Members of the Wilmington Ten in the 1970's included (seated) Rev. Ben Chavis, William "Joe" Wright, Connie Tindall. Then standing left to right is Wayne Moore, Anne Shepard, James "Bun" McKoy and Willie Earl Vereen.
EXCLUSIVE
GOV. PERDUE ASKED TO
PARDON WILMINGTON TEN
By Cash Michaels
Editor
Seven survivors and the families of
three deceased members of the Wilmington Ten - ten 1970’s civil rights
activists convicted forty years ago of conspiracy charges to commit violence, charges
a federal appeals court; the US Justice Dept; and fifty-five members of
Congress later determined were not true - formally petitioned the governor of
North Carolina Thursday to grant each of the original group a pardon of
innocence.
The
pardon petition called the Wilmington Ten case, “…a politically inspired
prosecution.”
The
May 17th petition filing was immediately announced to the world
during a press conference conducted Thursday by members and family of deceased
members of the Wilmington Ten; their attorney, Irving Joyner; National
Newspaper Publishers Association Board
members; and numerous supporters outside the North Carolina State Capital
Building.
A
nationwide petition drive to support the pardon effort was also announced.
Support
for the effort has already begun to come in from local and national leaders.
“There
are still too many black activists who are still being mistreated in this
country, who carry badges of shame, if you will, for spending time in prison,
who at the end of the day their only crime was standing up for the people,”
Benjamin Jealous, president/CEO of the NAACP said when asked several weeks ago.
“In the case of the Wilmington Ten, we will push [for pardons] and support our
state conference in their push to ensure that finally, their names are
cleared.”
Rev.
William Barber, president of the NC NAACP, has also expressed his support for
the pardon effort as well.
The
Wilmington Ten pardons, if granted by NC Gov. Beverly Perdue, would officially
declare the innocence of the seven surviving members - Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis,
Jr., Wayne Moore, Marvin Eugene Patrick, Connie Levinesky Tindall, James
Matthew McKoy, Willie Earl Vereen, Reginald Epps - and the three deceased
members - Anne Shepard-Turner, William “Joe” Wright, and Jerry Gerald Jacobs.
The
pardon petition, authored by attorney Joyner - the original coordinator of the
Wilmington Ten legal defense for the United Church of Christ Commission for
Racial Justice - and
James Ferguson, the lead defense attorney in the case forty years ago, bears
the authorizing signatures of the seven survivors and representative family
members of the deceased.
It urges Gov. Perdue to issue the
pardons, “…in order to declare each Wilmington Ten member innocent of the
offense for which they were wrongfully prosecuted and convicted in the New
Hanover County Superior Court in September 1972.”
The
charges - associated with the firebombing of Mike’s Grocery in Wilmington on
Feb. 6, 1971 - included conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to assault emergency
personnel, conspiracy to burn property with incendiary devices and the actual
burning of property, according to the pardon petition.
For
the past forty years, and even when they were collectively convicted and
sentenced to 282 years in prison, the Wilmington Ten have always maintained
that they were innocent of all charges.
Their
ages, at the time of their convictions, ranged from 19 to 35.
Today,
many of the surviving members are in their late 50’s, early sixties, and in
dwindling health.
In
exclusive interviews, some revealed that after their arrests, police offered to
set them free if they turned state’s evidence against the others, especially
Wilmington Ten leader Rev. Ben Chavis.
None
ever took the offer.
In
a February, 2011 op-ed piece for NNPA member newspapers, Dr. Chavis, now an
NNPA columnist, wrote about the events that led up to the arrest of the ten
activists:
_________________
During
the Nixon Administration in the early 1970's, African Americans in the South,
as well as in other regions of the nation, were being challenged with the
systematic racial disparities involved in the details of how federal
court-ordered school desegregation was being enforced.
Black
students, parents, and community leaders made a decision in Wilmington in
February 1971 that they would stand up and fight to protect and secure the
"quality" education of African American students by attempting to
preserve the high academic integrity and institutional legacy of African
American public schools such as Williston Senior High School (which the New
Hanover County Public School Board closed, to the outrage of the
African-American community there).
The United Church of Christ, as
a progressive mainline Protestant denomination of 1.7 million members, and its
Commission for Racial Justice, led by The Reverend Dr. Charles E. Cobb, decided
to stand with the student-led coalition in Wilmington to demand fairness and
equal justice. As a young civil rights activist, I was dispatched by the
Commission for Racial Justice to give organizational assistance to our brothers
and sisters in Wilmington.
Because
we dared to speak out and to engage in non-violent street protests to the long,
unprecedented history of racial violence and injustice in that port city, the
African American community became the targets of a violent, paramilitary,
anti-Black terror campaign led by the Ku Klux Klan and the Rights of White
People (ROWP) organization. Our movement's headquarters in Wilmington - Gregory
Congregational United Church of Christ - and the surrounding African American
community, was placed in a state of siege by armed White vigilantes, who
opposed racial justice and equality.
[Wilmington
Police refused to do anything to stop the White supremacist attacks in the
black community. On Feb. 6, 1971, a local store called Mike’s Grocery was
firebombed amid the violence. It took a year, but authorities finally targeted
Rev. Chavis, eight young black student leaders, and a 35-year-old white female
social worker, Anne Shepard, for arrest and prosecution, even though there was
no evidence that any of them committed any crimes]
Because
of our involvement in the struggle in Wilmington in 1971, we were unjustly
charged, arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to a combined maximum total
of 282 years in prison in North Carolina in 1972. We all were completely
innocent of the alleged charges of arson and conspiracy to assault. In 1978,
Amnesty International declared that we were "Political Prisoners." We
stayed in prison during most of the 1970's while our case was on appeal.
[The three so-called state’s
“witnesses” North Carolina prosecutors used against the defendants, all began
to recant their testimony against the Wilmington Ten]
On December 4, 1980, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
overturned the unjust convictions of the Wilmington Ten because of
"prosecutorial misconduct" in the unconstitutional and unfair
frame-up. Yet, to date there has not been an official "pardon of
innocence" issued by the state of or by the federal government.
________________
In the Wilmington Ten petition for
a pardon of innocence, attorney Joyner writes, “As a result of the State
Prosecutor’s knowing use of perjured testimony, the State of North Carolina
fraudulently procured the convictions of ten innocent North Carolina citizens.”
“This misconduct was aided and
abetted by the actions of the Trial Judge which improperly prevented relevant
facts from being presented to the jury,” atty. Joyner continued. “These
wrongful convictions resulted in each Wilmington Ten member spending
significant periods of time incarcerated in the North Carolina Dept. of
Corrections where they lost critical developmental years.”
Joyner adds, “The time which they
spent in prison can’t be replaced, and those experiences and history remain as
a blot on their life’s stories.”
In exclusive interviews, many of
the Wilmington Ten say they could not get jobs after they were released from
prison. Some were shunned by their churches. Some had to leave Wilmington, they
say.
All were virtually denied the
dreams they held dear as high school students, dreams that included becoming a
doctor, a lawyer, musicians, and in one case, a professional football player.
“His whole world just came tumbling
down,” says Mrs. Margaret Jacobs, mother of deceased Wilmington Ten member
Jerry Jacobs. Jacobs had dreams of being a professional tennis player and a
doctor before being arrested by police in the Wilmington Ten case at age 19.
As a result, after Jacobs left
prison, he was forced to leave Wilmington for New York, where he began shooting
up drugs, contracted the AIDS disease, and died in 1989.
“Yes it did,” Mrs. Jacobs now
laments when asked if the Wilmington Ten changed her son’s life. “Yes it did.
He probably would have been living today.”
As in the Jerry Jacobs case, the
burden of the Wilmington Ten’s arrests, convictions and incarcerations was also
shared by all of their families, who always believed in their innocence.
“Only the granting of Pardons of
Innocence can remove this deeply engrained tarnish which continues to hang over
this state,” attorney Joyner writes.
The pardon petition effort, the
first ever for the Wilmington Ten in the forty years since their case became a
national and international cause célèbre, was
spearheaded by the Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project Committee, the manifestation of the national initiative the National
Newspaper Publishers’ Association kicked
off during its 2011 Black Press Week “Power of the Black Press Luncheon.”
The
project committee is co-chaired by Mary Alice Thatch, publisher of NNPA member The
Wilmington Journal - a black newspaper
that was firebombed by a white supremacist in 1972; and attorney Irving Joyner,
a law professor at North Carolina Central University School of Law in Durham,
NC, and chair of the NC NAACP Legal Redress Committee.
"We
are going to tell the story of the Wilmington 10," then NNPA Chairman
Danny J. Bakewell, Sr., publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel said during the 2011 Black Press luncheon in
Washington, D.C. "And, we think it is incumbent for us to fight for a
pardon for those 10 people.”
“Justice to this day,” Bakewell added, “ has not been
served."
In an exclusive interview, attorney
Joyner says the filing of the Wilmington Ten petition for pardons of innocence,
is an historic moment.
“It is historic in many respects,
he says. “First, this case represents one of the first documented disclosures
of prosecutorial misconduct in North Carolina where nine innocent
African-Americans and a lone White woman were persecuted by state agents
because they stood up and protested against racial injustices in a local school
district.”
“Second, the Wilmington Ten became another outstanding
example in North Carolina of young people daring to protest and defy
entrenched racism within the North Carolina education and criminal justice
systems.”
Atty. Joyner continued, “Third, the State of North Carolina,
through the New Hanover County District Attorney's Office and the North
Carolina Attorney General's Office, used every weapon at its disposal to
"cover-up" the vicious persecution of these ten young people and,
after this massive misconduct was publicly exposed, refused to do
anything to rectify the harm that had been done to these ten victims and the
Wilmington community.”
“It is now time for the Governor of
North Carolina to make amends for the State and correct the record by issuing
Pardons of Innocence for each member of the Wilmington Ten, attorney Joyner
says.
NC Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat who was elected in 2008 as the first
female governor in North Carolina history, has announced that she is not
running for re-election, and will be stepping down when her term ends in
December.
If she grants the Wilmington Ten’s
pardon of innocence petition, it is not expected until after the November
presidential election.
Editor’s Note - a website for
the Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project will be launched shortly,
detailing the history of the case and other features. Meanwhile, readers can
show their support at the Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project Facebook
page.
Cash Michaels is the coordinator of the Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project for the NNPA
-30-
Black Women Make
Major Employment Gains
By Freddie Allen
NNPA Washington
Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NNPA) –
Black women are making the most significant gains in employment but still lag
behind Whites, according to the Labor Department.
The most recent
jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the unemployment rate
for Black women, 20 and older, dropped from 12.3 percent in March to 10.8
percent in April, a decline of 1.5 percent. More significantly, the jobless
rate for Black women has fallen 3 percentage points over the past five months,
the largest decline for any demographic over that period.
The unemployment
rate for White women, 20 and older has remained flat at 6.8 percent from last
December to April, but that stagnant rate is still four percentage points
better than the current rate for Black women. The jobless rate for Black men
fell to 13.6 percent to 15.7 percent over the same period, but some economists
warn that those figures could be misleading.
“There are two
things driving down the unemployment rate,” said Steven Pitts, labor policy
specialist at the University of California-Berkeley’s Labor Center. “The
improvement in job prospects and simultaneously some Black men dropping out of
the labor force.”
When people quit
looking for work, they are no longer counted as unemployed. Consequently, the
labor force shrinks, causing the unemployment rate to go down. The unemployment
rate for Blacks fell from 14 percent in March to 13 percent in April.
“The unemployment
rate might look like an improvement, but it’s really just people giving up,”
explained Algernon Austin, director of the Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy
program at the Economic Policy Institute.
In a 2011 study,
the National Women’s Law Center found that Black women lost 233,000 jobs
between December 2007 and June 2009, then lost another 258,000, 491,000 between
June 2009 and June 2011. Black men only lost 477,000 over that period.
According to the
study, not only are Black women a majority of the African-American workforce
(53.4 percent), they head a majority of the Black families with children.
More Black women
are the heads of households now, “So they have to work, “ explained Maudine
Cooper, president of the Greater Washington Urban League. “They’ll often accept
less money than a man would be making in the same job.”
A 2012 study on the
pay gap conducted by the American Association of University Women found that
women working full-time earned just 77 cents to every dollar earned by a man.
Black women working full-time make just 70 cents for every dollar White men
make and 91 cents for every dollar Black men bring home. White women, on the
other hand, received 82 cents for every dollar a White man earns. White men are
often used as a benchmark, because at this time they are the largest
demographic group in the labor force.
Research by Wider
Opportunities for Women found that 62 percent of Black households and 66
percent of Hispanic households live on the edge of poverty. Even when working
full-time, 80 percent of Black single mothers and 85 percent of Hispanic single
mothers don’t make enough to make ends meet and they’re much more likely to
lack economic security than White single mothers or single fathers of any
racial or ethnic background.
For Cooper, a
college education still remains the Black community’s strongest ally in closing
the economic gap.
More than 44
percent of Black women graduate from college, compared to 33.1 percent of Black
men, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Cooper said it’s
about sacrificing short-term gratification for what really matters.
“I have friends
that are going to school and working,” Cooper said. “You have to do what it
takes. At some point it’s over and you’ve worked hard, you’ve sweated, you’re
exhausted and you’ve gotten through it and that’s the attitude everyone should
have.”
That means that
Black men have a lot catching up to do in an increasingly competitive job
market.
A 2010 study by
Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce 2018 reported
that 63 percent of the jobs newly created or vacated by retiring workers will
require at least some college education.
Given that Black
women lead a majority of Black households and graduate from college at higher
rates than Black men, their success is essential as the Black community
recovers from worst economic times since the Great Depression.
At a 2011 session
at Stanford University titled “Black Women and the Backlash Effect —
Understanding the Intersection of Race and Gender,” visiting scholar and expert
in workplace diversity Katherine Phillips said that Black women are excelling
in education and entrepreneurship.
“Two-thirds of
African-American college undergrads are female,” said Phillips. “And, between
2002 and 2008, the number of businesses owned by Black women rose by 19 percent
– twice as fast as all other firms and generating $29 billion in sales
nationwide.”
Phillips, also a
professor of organizational behavior at the Kellogg School of Management at
Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., noted that Black women in the
workplace are often viewed as “as independent, competent, and demanding of
respect — all classic leadership traits.”
During her research
Phillips found that Black women have more latitude in the roles they play at
home and at work. One study found that Black women who worked outside the home
were viewed positively while the same behavior by White women evoked negative
reactions.
“The evidence here
suggests that White women are supposed to stay in this little narrow box more
so than Black women are,” said Phillips.
Although Black
women are often forced to confront the dual plague of sexism and racism on the
job, Phillips said that owning that identity may also have certain advantages.
She explained,
“There may be a malleability that comes with being an African American woman
that allows you to identify both as Black and as a woman that you might be able
to use as a mechanism to make it through the world.”
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Voter Registration and
the 2012 Election
By Lee A. Daniels
Special
to the NNPA from The Defenders Online
It’s as dependable as
the rise and ebb of the tides.
If a national election
is near, then it’s time to cast doubt on the commitment of blacks and Latinos
to turn out to vote. Despite their steady level of participation over the last
two decades, and clear ratcheting-up of voting in the last six years, forecasts
of a fall-off – or at least concern that it will occur – remain a staple of
conventional political coverage.
It was so in the run-up
to the mid-term elections of 2006; and 2008; and 2010 even as the percentage of
blacks and Latinos voting approached or surpassed record levels and they
accounted for a greater than ever proportion of the overall national vote.
Now, it’s begun again.
Last week the Washington Post published an article declaring that the number of
black and Latino registered voters has declined sharply since 2008. It
attributed the fall-off – for blacks, a decline of 7 percent to some 16 million
voters; for Latinos, a decline of 5 percent, to about 11 million voters – to
three factors.
One was the usual
shrinkage in the voting rolls during non-presidential years. The number of
white registered voters slipped by 5 percent as well, to 104 million.
More worrisome, however,
was the view of some observers that loss of jobs and loss of homes to foreclosure
during the last two years had forced many blacks and Latinos to move – thereby
ceding their voter registration and making it uncertain that they’ll register
elsewhere.
In addition, the
enactment or strengthening of voter identification laws in more than a dozen
states since the 2010 mid-terms has raised the possibility that some
significant proportion of traditionally Democratic Party voters may be blocked
from the polls.
Those are valid
concerns, to be sure. But the Obama campaign and other independent observers
pointed out a serious flaw in the Post article’s discussion. It was comparing
voter registrations from an historic, politically-super-charged presidential
election year with those of a mid-term election year now two years in the past.
Clo Ewing, an Obama
campaign official, wrote that in fact “since that time, more than 1.4 million
African Americans and more than 1.2 million Latinos have registered to vote….
There are more Americans of both backgrounds registered to vote today than
there were when President Obama was elected.”
Michael P. McDonald, a
professor at George Mason University and an expert on voting, said that a flaw
in the way the Census Bureau currently tabulates voting and registration rates
has contributed to the confusion. He said there’s no doubt that the
registrations of both Latinos and African-Americans provide the Obama campaign
with a comfortable advantage in registering more of each this year.
He added “That these
minority populations are also growing in size relative to the non-Hispanic
White population should give more worry to the Romney campaign than to the
Obama campaign.”
Nonetheless, there is
significant cause for concern.
In every political
election every vote always counts; and that will be especially true in the Obama-Romney
contest. For, it’s already apparent that the incessant, overtly-racist and
racially-coded attacks launched from low and high places in the conservative
sector against the President and the First Family since before he took office
will continue right through November’s Election Day.
It’s also clear, as a
May 3 New York Times article underscored, that the opposition to Obama among
some segment of white voters will continue to be grounded in racist attitudes.
As Jamelle Bouie pointed
out in a perceptive article in The American Prospect, these whites’ opposition
to Obama is, in turn, driven by their dismay at black Americans exercising what
Bouie calls “political agency.”
This, in my view, means
more than just political power. It means political effectiveness – an acute
understanding of the political game.
Certainly, that
description fits both Obama’s strategy for gaining the Presidency and the black
electorate’s, first, patient, skillful assessment of Obama during the early
part of the Democratic presidential primary four years ago, and, then, its
massive turnout for him at the polls in November 2008.
It soon became apparent
that that display of political competence on the part of Obama and the black
electorate infuriated a diminishing, but still substantial minority of white
Americans. One can hear the voice of the Steubenville, Ohio bank employee the
Times reporter interviewed who practically spits out the reason she thinks
Obama won the election. “He was like, ‘Here I am, I’m black and I’m proud,’” she
said. “To me, he didn’t have a platform. Black people voted him in, that’s why
he won. It was black ignorance.”
As I noted recently in
characterizing a display of anti-black bigotry in a very different context,
these attitudes spring from the sense that a “whites-only” rule has been
violated – that blacks, or a black person is trespassing on a place or position
that should still be reserved for whites.
This group’s racial
intransigence is important because in a paper published this month, Harvard
economics scholar Seth Stephens-Davidowitz estimates that anti-black bigotry
“cost” Obama 3 to 5 percentage points in the national popular vote in 2008.
That is, but for those voting against him out of racist motives, Obama would
have gained between 56.7 and 58.7 percent of the popular vote, not the 53.7
percent he actually did get.
Stephens-Davidowitz
calculates that the massive, 95-percent black vote Obama got added only about 1
percentage point to his popular vote totals.
In other words, “any
votes Obama gained due to his race in the general election were not nearly
enough to outweigh the cost of racial animus, meaning race was a large net
negative for Obama. Evidence from other research, as well as some analysis in
this paper, suggest that few white voters swung in Obama’s favor in the genera
election due to his race. …. [Thus, the paper offers] new evidence that racial
attitudes remain a potent factor against African Americans, nationwide, in
modern American politics”
That means it’s
critically important that every effort must be made to register every eligible
black and Latino voter and ensure that they vote – because, come November,
President Obama will likely need every vote he cab get.
Lee A. Daniels is
Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and
Editor In Chief of TheDefendersOnline.com.
In this photo released by The White House, President Barack Obama participates in an interview Wednesday May 9 with Robin Roberts of ABC’s Good Morning America in the Cabinet Room of the White House. — THE WHITE HOUSE, PETE SOUZA
Will Gay
Marriage Divide Black Electorate?
By Larry
Miller
Special to the NNPA from the Philadelphia Tribune
Right on the heels of North Carolina becoming the 31st state in the Union to pass a ban on homosexual marriage, President Barack Obama announced his support of matrimony between same sex couples.
The president’s
public support of same sex marriage could either be a boon or a curse for his
re-election campaign; it’s too soon to tell, despite the fact that he’s just
received a million dollars in campaign contributions. But one thing is certain;
the president’s public stance in favor of homosexual marriage has drawn a
dividing line among voters. Will it have an affect among African-American voters,
some members of the Black clergy think it will.
“I think it will to
some extent,” said Bishop Ernest C. Morris Sr., Jurisdictional Prelate for
Koinonia Jurisdiction. “A large percentage of Black Christians believe that
marriage should be between one man and one woman. What he may be banking on is
the African-American community’s love for the first Black president but he
should consider that large numbers of Black churches won’t agree with this.
There are too many passages in Scripture that denounce homosexuality and I
can’t see how to fully justify it from the Word of God. Don’t misunderstand me;
this is not about hatred of homosexuals because we are all sinners in need of a
savior and God is so gracious. It is the continuous practice of this that the Bible
is against. I also think that as the nation’s first Black president, he’s seen
not just as the political leader of our country but as more than that. Many
people see him as a moral and spiritual leader as well.”
On Wednesday May 9
President Barack Obama took what some political experts are saying was a risky
move — especially during an election year — and voiced his support of same sex
marriage. Like the issue of legalized abortion, same sex marriage is one of
those hot button issues that draw a clear division between those who support it
and those who oppose it. Republican presidential front runner Mitt Romney said
he opposes same sex marriages.
“Well when these
issues were raised in my state of Massachusetts, I indicated my view, which is
I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor
civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name,” Romney said
in a published report.
A bill that would
have allowed civil unions for same-sex couples in Colorado died in the
legislature this week. The president’s public endorsement of homosexual
marriage followed a vote in North Carolina where constituents came out in favor
of a ban against same sex marriage. North Carolina is now America’s 31st state
to enact legislation against it.
In a prepared
statement, the president said he was asked a direct question and gave a direct
answer regarding same sex marriage.
“I believe that
same-sex couples should be allowed to marry,” the president said. “I’ve always
believed that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally. I
was reluctant to use the term marriage because of the very powerful traditions
it evokes. And I thought civil union laws that conferred legal rights upon gay
and lesbian couples were a solution. But over the course of several years I’ve
talked to friends and family about this. I’ve thought about members of my staff
in long-term, committed, same-sex relationships that are raising kids together.
What I’ve come to realize is that for loving, same-sex couples, and the denial
of marriage equality means that, in their eyes and the eyes of their children,
they are still considered less than full citizens. So I decided it was time to
affirm my personal belief that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.”
The president also
said that he respected the beliefs of others and the right of religious
institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines but he said that he
believed that in the eyes of the law all Americans should ne treated equally
and no federal law should invalidate same sex marriages in a state that enacted
it.
Reverend Clarence
James, a Black minister based in Chicago said he definitely believes the
president’s move is going to hurt him among African-American voters, many of
whom oppose same sex marriage.
“Many of us oppose
this in every form and may decide to vote against the president because of
this,” James said. “From a medical and psychological point of view
homosexuality is a mental illness; for male homosexuals anal sex is medically
dangerous. The president is coming at this as a civil rights issue but there is
no correlation even though the homosexual community is trying to make it one.
The Civil Rights Movement was about freedom and equal rights, this is a moral
issue. For the president and other elected officials it’s easier to go along
with popular opinion rather than to do what’s right.”
But some members of
the African-American clergy have a different point of view regarding this
issue. They believe the African-American community should find ways to address
same sex relationships and that there can be reconciliation between sex and
spirituality.
“If every gay
person in our church just left or those who have an orientation or preference
or an inclination, or a fantasy, if everyone left, we wouldn’t have — we
wouldn’t have a church,” said Bishop Carlton Pearson who heads Chicago’s New
Dimensions Ministries in a published report. “Homophobia is hardly unique to
the African-American community. It’s a social malady that’s due largely to
the influence of fear based-theologies, particularly fundamentalist
Christianity, Islam and Judaism, all of which grow out of the Abrahamic
tradition. The African-American church has traditionally used a kind of ‘don’t
ask don’t tell’ approach toward homosexuality.”
Dr. Janice Hollis
who heads Progressive Believer’s said the African-American community should
look at the president’s record not just on this issue but on others and
determine if the quality of their lives has improved.
“I think it’s an
insult for the president to intellectualize on morality as if the Church
doesn’t already have a mandate from God on this,” she said. “This is a
political move and even though he may not see it, he’s only a fleeting moment
in history; God has always been there. I think the president is promoting a way
of life that deters people away from the Word of God.”
Reverend Bill
Owens, a minister with the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) and who is based in
Memphis, Tennessee, said there’s no doubt that the president’s endorsement of
same sex marriage is going to hurt him among Black voters.
“Absolutely it will
and especially among the Black churches where the conviction against same sex
marriage is so strong,” Owens said. “I think many Black Christians feel
somewhat betrayed by the president on this — this is something that Black
churches have always stood firmly against.”
-30-
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