Check out these links on Malcolm X's timely speech:
AUDIO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRNciryImqg
TRANSCRIPT OF SPEECH
http://www.cis.aueb.gr/Besides Security/TALKS/TALKS-10-X (The Ballot or the Bullet).pdf
Malcolm X explains Black Nationalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO6Co8v2XjY
Definition and History of Black Nationalism
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_black_nationalism/
Black Power & Urban Politics by Albert Cleage (1968)
http://www.hippy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=116
SANKOFA Reading Group is an auxiliary of Women For Progress of Mississippi, Inc.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
The 1965 Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
The 1965 Enactment
By 1965 concerted efforts to break the grip of state disfranchisement had been under way for some time, but had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism. Finally, the unprovoked attack on March 7, 1965, by state troopers on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, en route to the state capitol in Montgomery, persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings began soon thereafter on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act.
Congress determined that the existing federal anti-discrimination laws were not sufficient to overcome the resistance by state officials to enforcement of the 15th Amendment. The legislative hearings showed that the Department of Justice's efforts to eliminate discriminatory election practices by litigation on a case-by-case basis had been unsuccessful in opening up the registration process; as soon as one discriminatory practice or procedure was proven to be unconstitutional and enjoined, a new one would be substituted in its place and litigation would have to commence anew.
President Johnson signed the resulting legislation into law on August 6, 1965. Section 2 of the Act, which closely followed the language of the 15th amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the literacy tests on a nationwide basis. Among its other provisions, the Act contained special enforcement provisions targeted at those areas of the country where Congress believed the potential for discrimination to be the greatest. Under Section 5, jurisdictions covered by these special provisions could not implement any change affecting voting until the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the change did not have a discriminatory purpose and would not have a discriminatory effect. In addition, the Attorney General could designate a county covered by these special provisions for the appointment of a federal examiner to review the qualifications of persons who wanted to register to vote. Further, in those counties where a federal examiner was serving, the Attorney General could request that federal observers monitor activities within the county's polling place.
The Voting Rights Act had not included a provision prohibiting poll taxes, but had directed the Attorney General to challenge its use. In Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), the Supreme Court held Virginia's poll tax to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. Between 1965 and 1969 the Supreme Court also issued several key decisions upholding the constitutionality of Section 5 and affirming the broad range of voting practices that required Section 5 review. As the Supreme Court put it in its 1966 decision upholding the constitutionality of the Act:
Congress had found that case-by-case litigation was inadequate to combat wide-spread and persistent discrimination in voting, because of the inordinate amount of time and energy required to overcome the obstructionist tactics invariably encountered in these lawsuits. After enduring nearly a century of systematic resistance to the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress might well decide to shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims.
South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 327-28 (1966).
The 1970 and 1975 Amendments
Congress extended Section 5 for five years in 1970 and for seven years in 1975. With these extensions Congress validated the Supreme Court's broad interpretation of the scope of Section 5. During the hearings on these extensions Congress heard extensive testimony concerning the ways in which voting electorates were manipulated through gerrymandering, annexations, adoption of at-large elections, and other structural changes to prevent newly-registered black voters from effectively using the ballot. Congress also heard extensive testimony about voting discrimination that had been suffered by Hispanic, Asian and Native American citizens, and the 1975 amendments added protections from voting discrimination for language minority citizens.
In 1973, the Supreme Court held certain legislative multi-member districts unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment on the ground that they systematically diluted the voting strength of minority citizens in Bexar County, Texas. This decision in White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755 (1973), strongly shaped litigation through the 1970s against at-large systems and gerrymandered redistricting plans. In Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980), however, the Supreme Court required that any constitutional claim of minority vote dilution must include proof of a racially discriminatory purpose, a requirement that was widely seen as making such claims far more difficult to prove.
The 1982 Amendments
Congress renewed in 1982 the special provisions of the Act, triggered by coverage under Section 4 for twenty-five years. Congress also adopted a new standard, which went into effect in 1985, providing how jurisdictions could terminate (or "bail out" from) coverage under the provisions of Section 4. Furthermore, after extensive hearings, Congress amended Section 2 to provide that a plaintiff could establish a violation of the Section without having to prove discriminatory purpose.
Source: http://www.justice.gov/crt/voting/intro/intro_b.php
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Toward a Vision of Beloved Community
Click on link below to check out article by Rev. Shirley Strong on the meaning of the beloved community:
http://www.chaplaincyinstitute.org/rev-shirley-strong/toward-a-vision-beloved-community
http://www.chaplaincyinstitute.org/rev-shirley-strong/toward-a-vision-beloved-community
Where Do We Go From Here?
Isaiah 58:1-12 - The Message
1 "Shout! A full-throated shout! Hold nothing back - a trumpet-blast shout! Tell my people what's wrong with their lives, face my family Jacob with their sins!2 They're busy, busy, busy at worship, and love studying all about me. To all appearances they're a nation of right-living people - law-abiding, God-honoring. They ask me, 'What's the right thing to do?' and love having me on their side.3 But they also complain, 'Why do we fast and you don't look our way? Why do we humble ourselves and you don't even notice?' "Well, here's why: "The bottom line on your 'fast days' is profit. You drive your employees much too hard. 4 You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight. You fast, but you swing a mean fist. The kind of fasting you do won't get your prayers off the ground.5 Do you think this is the kind of fast day I'm after: a day to show off humility? To put on a pious long face and parade around solemnly in black? Do you call that fasting, a fast day that I, God, would like?6 "This is the kind of fast day I'm after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts.7 What I'm interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families.8 Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage.9 Then when you pray, God will answer. You'll call out for help and I'll say, 'Here I am.' A Full Life in the Emptiest of Places "If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people's sins,10 If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.11 I will always show you where to go. I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places - firm muscles, strong bones. You'll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry.12 You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Excerpt from introduction by Vincent Harding
Introduction by Vincent Harding
The last book written by King—his final reflections after a decade of civil rights struggles
The last book written by King—his final reflections after a decade of civil rights struggles
Read the introduction by Vincent Harding.
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten years, he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, asserting that humankind-for the first time-has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.
New Book: Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the annual report at the 11th Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on August 16, 1967, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. King projected in this speech the issues which led to Poor People's March on Washington.Check out links on the speech and Martin Luther King, Jr. biography.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4id6TXqzYA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diLhFvXXPto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foXJIPYTqsc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHFWide96CQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VorFJ6PzWzI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXiEN-9UplQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYs_sWrqPaY
TRANSCRIPT of Speech
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/628.html
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/where_do_we_go_from_here/
Martin Luther King, Jr. BIOGRAPHY
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_martin_luther_king_jr_biography/
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