Wednesday, April 21, 2010

In Memoriam: Dr. Dorothy Irene Height (1912-2010)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dorothy Irene Height, a pioneering voice of the civil rights movement whose activism stretched from the New Deal to the election of President Barack Obama, died Tuesday. She was 98.



Height, who marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, was known for her determination and grace -- as well as her wry humor. She remained active and outspoken well into her 90s and often received rousing ovations at events around Washington, where she was easily recognizable in the bright, colorful hats she almost always wore.


Height died at Howard University Hospital, where she had been in serious condition for weeks.


In a statement, Obama called her ''the godmother of the civil rights movement'' and a hero to Americans.


''Dr. Height devoted her life to those struggling for equality ... and served as the only woman at the highest level of the civil rights movement -- witnessing every march and milestone along the way,'' Obama said.


Vice President Joe Biden said Height was one of the first people to visit him when he first took his seat in the Senate in 1973.


''She remained a friend and would never hesitate to tell me or anybody else when she thought we weren't fighting hard enough,'' he said.


Height's was the second death of a major civil rights figure in less than a week. Benjamin L. Hooks, the former longtime head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, died Thursday in Memphis at 85.


Former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, a close friend who has spoken for Height's family and called Height her mentor, said funeral arrangements were pending.


Height received two of the nation's highest honors: the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.


In awarding the congressional medal, then-President George W. Bush noted that Height had met with every U.S. president since Eisenhower, and ''she's told every president what she thinks since Dwight David Eisenhower.''


In a statement Tuesday, Bush hailed ''her grace and her determination. Our nation will never forget Dr. Heights efforts to make America a more compassionate, welcoming and just society.''


Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, in a joint statement, said, ''Our nation is poorer for her loss but infinitely richer for the life she led, the progress she achieved and the people she touched.''


Height was born in Richmond, Va., before women could vote and when blacks had few rights. Her family moved to the Pittsburgh area when she was 4. Distinguishing herself in the classroom, she was accepted to Barnard College but then turned away because the school already had reached its quota of two black women. She went on to earn bachelor's and master's degrees from New York University.


As a teenager, Height marched in New York's Times Square shouting, ''Stop the lynching.'' After earning her degrees, she became a leader of the Harlem YWCA and the United Christian Youth Movement of North America, where she pushed to prevent lynching, desegregate the armed forces and reform the criminal justice system.


She traveled to Holland and England as a U.S. delegate to youth and church conferences, and in 1938 was one of 10 young people chosen by Eleanor Roosevelt to spend a weekend at the first lady's Hyde Park, N.Y., home preparing for a World Youth Conference at Vassar College.


One of Height's sayings was, ''If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time.'' She liked to quote 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said the three effective ways to fight for justice are to ''agitate, agitate, agitate.''


In the 1950s and 1960s, she was the leading woman helping King and other activists orchestrate the civil rights movement, often reminding the men heading not to underestimate their female counterparts.


Height was on the platform at the Lincoln Memorial, sitting only a few feet from King, when he gave his famous ''I have a dream'' speech at the March on Washington in 1963.


''He spoke longer than he was supposed to speak,'' Height recalled in a 1997 Associated Press interview. But after he was done, it was clear King's speech would echo for generations, she said, ''because it gripped everybody.''


She lamented that the feeling of unity created by the 1963 march had faded, that the civil rights movement of the 1990s was on the defensive and many black families still were not economically secure.


''We have come a long way, but too many people are not better off,'' she said. ''This is my life's work. It is not a job.''


When Obama won the presidential election in November 2008, Height told Washington TV station WTTG that she was overwhelmed with emotion.


''People ask me, did I ever dream it would happen, and I said, `If you didn't have the dream, you couldn't have worked on it,'' she said.


Height dedicated most of her adult life to the National Council of Negro Women, where she first worked under her mentor, Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded the group. Height took over in 1957 and led it until 1997, fighting for women's rights on issues such as equal pay and education. She developed programs such as ''pig banks'' to help poor rural families raise their own livestock, and ''Wednesdays in Mississippi,'' in which black and white women from the north traveled to Mississippi to meet with their Southern counterparts in an effort to ease racial tensions and bridge differences.


To celebrate Height's 90th birthday in March 2002, friends and supporters raised $5 million to enable her organization to pay off the mortgage on its Washington headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, just a few blocks from the White House. Herman said Height ''believed very strongly that we as black women deserved to be on this corridor of power.''



Friday, April 2, 2010

'Mean spirited, vicious racism' comes to surface during debates about president and U.S. politics

When will bitter protests, hateful speech and political upheaval end?
Since President Barack Obama signed the landmark health reform bill, the split between Americans, extreme right wing opponents and supporters of the legislation and ideologues, has widened, but many say this division is rooted in racial hatred, rather than health reform.


Racist and hateful acts have been carried out by supporters and those whose ideology reflects the Tea Party Movement, considered to be anti-tax, anti-government and anti-Barack Obama.


"We're in now a second phase of Reconstruction because Black governors now are being turned out. A Black president, they hope, will be a one-term president should he last four years and Black mayors, Black elected officials are being taken out of office. And when the cry comes up, they should be hounded out of town and out of office and hassle them, then the country is in for an explosion and all it needs is a spark and the people will arise and blood will be in the streets of the United States of America," warned the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan during a live, web-streamed interview with Cliff Kelley on WVON on March 24.


One Tea Party protester called Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) n----r multiple times and someone spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-KS) as the two men made their way through demonstrators to vote March 21 on a major health reform bill.


Several congressional offices were vandalized by brick throwers, and at least 10 members of the Democratic Party and their families have received death threats.


What people are witnessing, Min. Farrakhan said, is the beginning of the end of a civil society, because America is in the throes of Divine Judgment, according to the Bible and Quran. "From wars and rumors of wars, nations rising against nations, kingdoms against kingdoms, famine, pestilence, and earthquakes in diverse places, all of these judgments of God are coming down on America, not for her foreign policy and its wicked effect on the world, but because of her treatment of Black people in her midst," Min. Farrakhan said.


Much of the hateful rhetoric against President Obama has been revved up by Republican lawmakers, and much is being driven by conservative radio and TV talk show hosts, like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the like.


On March 27, Mr. Beck and some 8,000 fans, gathered in Orlando, Fla., for his American Revival, a daylong event aimed at taking back, or regaining America. Media Matters reported that Mr. Beck, who has been accused of "spewing such incendiary language," urged followers to stock food and water for a coming showdown. "If we don't face the truth right now, we'll be dead in five years—this country can't survive," he said, Media Matters reported. Mr. Beck also promised to put forth a federal budget that would cut spending by 50 percent. "Clearly stung by a wave of accusations that right-wing radio and Fox News are ginning up death threats and potential violence against members of Congress and progressives, Beck also expanded on a new theme that resistance to what he claims is growing socialism in America must be non-violent—again invoking Gandhi as well as Martin Luther King," said the watchdog group.


The day after Pres. Obama signed the bill, according to reports, Mr. Limbaugh told his audience, "We need to defeat these bastards. We need to wipe them out. We need to chase them out of town. … They must my friends, be hounded out of office ..."


It is their influence on that rabid, racist side of the equation that ferments and forments potential violence in the country, Min. Farrakhan said.


According to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service, since the first Black president took office, the rate of threats against Mr. Obama have increased 400 percent from the 3,000 a year under former President George W. Bush.


Like the Republican politicians, right wing religious extremists have fueled the flames over months.


Last September, protesters in Arizona confronted Baptist pastor Steven Anderson, who delivered a sermon called, "Why I Hate Barack Obama," and then called on his parish to pray for the president's death. The day after, ABC reported, one of his parishioners brought a loaded semiautomatic rifle and handgun to a rally where President Obama addressed a veteran's group. Last June, Wiley Drake, a pastor in Buena Park, Calif., said he was praying an imprecatory prayer against President Obama, meaning he was praying for the president's death.

The important challenge now, said Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, a professor at Columbia University, is to come together to think about ways to heal a nation that is deeply fractured by race, class, gender, and sexuality.


"People are using the health care debate as a kind of secret agent talk that they can use to actually smuggle in conversation about a deep disdain, deep disregard, for some of the most vulnerable citizens ... it's a sad moment," Dr. Lamont Hill said.


"The irony is that health care reform is being challenged on the grounds that it's anti-ethical to American values ... and in the midst of doing that they are holding up signs about killing people. You have Sarah Palin putting gun cross-hairs on maps."


Dr. David Horne, executive director of the California African American Political and Economic Institute, believes the climate is growing more explosive daily because:


This is the first time in 80 years, that the Democratic Party has been able to get health reform legislation off the ground, despite the $250 million pharmaceutical and insurance companies, and their lobbyists spent to try to kill the effort.


The Republican Party has been throwing rocks and trying to hide their hands, but because they have committed to undermining President Obama to make him fail, they have stirred up thugism and extremism, which they cannot rein in.


Some people who do not read, are ignorant, and will not get any facts, actually believe that what opponents say about the president is correct.


"What has happened right now is the mean spirited, vicious racism that is the bedrock of this country has been given the opportunity to come out and show itself and they're not even trying to disguise it or stop it. The Republican Party should come out publicly and say it doesn't condone this activity, but it won't come out and do that. They want it to continue," Dr. Horne told The Final Call.


Although politicians have behaved badly toward each other, cursed each other out, and even had boxing matches while in session, their negative treatment of President Obama is a first, Dr. Horne said and the reason the Republicans have no problem with showing crude and uncivil behavior is because a Black man is the brunt of their insults.


Dr. Wilmer Leon, III., political analyst and XM Satellite radio show host, told The Final Call Tea Party protesters insulted every Black person in America when they insulted Rep. Cleaver and Rep. Lewis, a veteran of the civil rights movement. But the offenders were given a pass, by Reps. Lewis and Cleaver, and especially mainstream media, he continued.


"Can you imagine if at the Million Man March, we had been walking around strapped; if we had been walking around with signs with gun sights on them with Bill Clinton's picture? They would have run Min. Farrakhan off the planet. They would have gone to every African American of note and pushed a microphone in their face and said, ‘Do you support this sentiment? Isn't this racist?,' " Dr. Leon argued.


"The press would have even called track and field great Jesse Owens from the grave to get him to denounce it," Dr. Leon added.


Dr. Leon argued the problem isn't with free speech, but with statements going unchallenged. Plus, people must connect the dots between their so-called free speech and the vandalism and the death threats, he added.


"They don't want to talk about domestic terrorism and that's what this is. What? White folks can't be terrorists all of a sudden?" Dr. Leon asked.


For example, he said, for two weeks, he could not get away from the face of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who allegedly killed 13 people and wounded 30 in a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas last November. People labeled Maj. Hasan a Muslim terrorist and the media kept the story running for two weeks, yet, made every attempt within 24 hours to report that Joseph Stack, a software engineer who flew a plane into an IRS building in Texas, was not connected in any way to an act of terrorism.


Dr. Leon wondered why Tea Party members, who are upset over healthcare and consider themselves protectors of the Constitution, were conspicuously absent when former President George W. Bush and his vice president Dick Cheney were lying about the connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, 9-11, and when the Bush administration rushed the Patriot Act and wireless wiretapping through Congress.


"There is a direct link between White nationalism and Black public policy. Folks don't want to talk about White nationalism, but that's what this is ... People don't understand that because Whites are the dominant group in our democracy, they don't have to say that race is their motivation. They couch it in terms of national interest," Dr. Leon said.

In Memoriam: Eugene Allen (1919-2010)

Eugene Allen, White House Butler For 8 Presidents, Dies At 90







By Wil Haygood


Washington Post Staff Writer


Friday, April 2, 2010


Eugene Allen, who endured a harsh and segregated upbringing in his native Virginia and went on to work for eight presidents as a White House butler, died March 31 of renal failure at Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park. He was 90.


Mr. Allen and his wife, Helene, were profiled in a Washington Post story in 2008 that explored the history of blacks in the White House. The couple were excited about the possibility of Barack Obama's historic election and their opportunity to vote for him. Helene, however, died on the eve of the election, and Mr. Allen went to vote alone. The couple had been married for 65 years.


Afterward, Mr. Allen, who had been living quietly in a simple house off Georgia Avenue NW in the District, experienced a fame that he had only witnessed beforehand. He received a VIP invitation to Obama's swearing-in, where a Marine guard escorted him to his seat. Eyes watering, he watched the first black man take the oath of office of the presidency.


Mr. Allen was besieged with invitations to appear on national TV shows. There were book offers and dozens of speaking requests, all of which he declined. He also received hundreds of letters, some from as far away as Switzerland, from people amazed at the arc of his life and imploring him to hold on while thanking him for his service to the nation. People in his neighborhood would stop him and explain to their children the outlines of his life.


"He liked to think of himself as just a humble butler," his only child, Charles, said Thursday. Aside from his son, Mr. Allen is survived by five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.


Mr. Allen was born July 14, 1919, in Scottsville, Va. He worked as a waiter at the Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Va., and later at a country club in Washington. In 1952, he heard of a job opening at the White House and was hired as a "pantry man," washing dishes, stocking cabinets and shining silverware for $2,400 a year.


He became maitre d', the most prestigious position among White House butlers, under Ronald Reagan. During Mr. Allen's 34 years at the White House, some of the decisions that presidents made within earshot of him came to have a direct bearing on his life -- and that of black America.


Mr. Allen was in the White House when Dwight D. Eisenhower dealt with the Little Rock desegregation crisis. Eisenhower once asked him about the cancellation of Nat "King" Cole's TV show, which the president enjoyed. Mr. Allen told him that the show had difficulty attracting advertisers, who were worried about white Southern audiences boycotting their products.


When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Mr. Allen was invited to the funeral. He declined for the most generous of reasons: "Somebody had to be at the White House to serve everyone after they came from the funeral," he told The Post. When first lady Jackie Kennedy returned to the White House afterward, she gave him one of the president's ties. Mr. Allen had it framed.


Mr. Allen served entertainers including Sammy Davis Jr., Duke Ellington, Pearl Bailey and Elvis Presley. He flew aboard Air Force One. He sipped root beer at Camp David with Jimmy Carter and visited Eisenhower in Gettysburg after he left the White House. There were always Christmas and birthday cards from the families of the presidents he had served.


He looked up one evening in the White House kitchen to see a lone figure standing in the doorway: It was Martin Luther King Jr., who had insisted on meeting the butlers and maids. Mr. Allen smiled when King complimented him on the cut of his tuxedo.


Mr. Allen served cups and cups of milk and Scotch to help Lyndon B. Johnson settle his stomach when protesters were yelling outside the White House gates during the Vietnam War. He longed to say something to Johnson about his son, who was serving in Vietnam at the time but dared not -- save for acknowledging that his son was alive when Johnson asked about him.


It pained Mr. Allen to hear vulgar words, sometimes racially charged, flowing from Johnson's mouth; and it delighted him when Johnson signed the historic civil rights bills of 1964 and 1965.


Sometimes Mr. Allen's own life seemed to stop beneath the chandeliered light. First lady Nancy Reagan came looking for him one afternoon, and Mr. Allen wondered whether he or a member of his staff had done something wrong. She assured him that he had not but also told him that his services would not be needed at the upcoming state dinner for German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Mr. Allen tensed, wondering why.


"She said, 'You and Helene are coming to the state dinner as guests of President Reagan and myself,' " he recounted in the Post interview. Mr. Allen thought he was the first butler to receive an invitation to a state dinner. He and Helene -- she was a beautiful dresser -- looked resplendent that night. The butlers on duty seemed to pay special attention to the couple as they poured champagne for guests -- champagne that Mr. Allen himself had stacked in the kitchen.


Mr. Allen was mindful that with the flowering of the black power movement, many young people questioned why he would keep working as a butler, with its connotations of subservience. But the job gave him great pride, and he endured the slights with a dignified posture.


"He was such a professional in everything he did," said Wilson Jerman, 81, whom Mr. Allen hired to work at the White House in the early 1960s. "When my wife, Gladys, died in 1966, he told me not to worry about a thing. I didn't think I could get through that period, and he just took me by the hand. I'll never forget it."


Mr. Allen retired in 1986, after having been promoted to maitre d' five years earlier. He possessed a dazzling array of framed photographs with all of the presidents he had served, in addition to gifts and mementos from each of them.


The last item to be framed and placed on Eugene Allen's basement wall was a condolence letter from George W. and Laura Bush. It arrived from the White House just after the death of Helene.