Thursday, November 27, 2014

Robert F. Williams - Important African American



From:Encyclopedia.com and Wikipedia and research

Robert Franklin Williams (February 26, 1925 – October 15, 1996) was a civil rights leader and author, best known for serving as president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and early 1960s. At a time when racial tension was high and official abuses were rampant, Williams was a key figure in promoting armed black self-defense in the United States.

Almost ten years before the formation of the Black Panther Party  , National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch president Robert F. Williams’s 1959 press statement advocating “meeting [racist] violence with violence” sent a wave of reaction through white and conservative black circles. As an ex-serviceman disillusioned by legalist and pacifist civil rights tactics, Williams launched a local campaign of armed self-defense in his hometown of Monroe, North Carolina.

Williams helped gain gubernatorial pardons for two African-American boys convicted for molestation in the controversial Kissing Case of 1958. He also succeeded in integrating the public library and the public swimming pool in Monroe. He obtained a charter from the National Rifle Association and set up a rifle club, which became active defending blacks from Ku Klux Klan nightriders.

 He used the NAACP to support Freedom Riders who came to Monroe in the summer of 1961. That year he and his wife were forced to leave the United States to avoid prosecution for kidnapping, on charges trumped up during violence related to white opposition to the Freedom Ride. The kidnapping charges came after a white couple sought shelter in Williams' home when they were confronted by black protesters while driving through Monroe's black community.

he was awakened to the brutal aspects of racism at age ten, when a policeman dragged a black woman down Monroe’s main street. Williams was haunted by the laughter of white onlookers and the victim’s screams. He recalled in his autobiography Negroes With Guns how “the cop was grinning as he pulled her by the heels, her dress up over her hips and her back being scraped by the concrete pavement.” A self-professed Black Nationalist, Williams lived in both Cuba and The People's Republic of China during his exile.
Williams' book Negroes with Guns  (1962) details his experience with violent racism and his disagreement with the pacifist wing of the Civil Rights Movement. The text was widely influential; Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton cited it as a major inspiration. Rosa Parks gave the eulogy at Williams’ funeral in 1996, praising him for “his courage and for his commitment to freedom,” and concluding that “The sacrifices he made, and what he did, should go down in history and never be forgotten.”

Williams was born in Monroe, North Carolina, in 1925 to Emma Carter and John L. Williams, a railroad boiler washer. His grandmother, a former slave, gave Williams the rifle with which his grandfather, a Republican campaigner and publisher of the newspaper The People's Voice, had defended himself in the hard years after Reconstruction in North Carolina. At the age of 11, Williams witnessed the beating and dragging of a black woman by the police officer Jesse Helms, Sr.  (Later chief of police, he was the father of future US Senator Jesse Helms.) He was awakened to the brutal aspects of racism  . Williams was haunted by the laughter of white onlookers and the victim’s screams. He recalled in his autobiography Negroes With Guns how “the cop was grinning as he pulled her by the heels, her dress up over her hips and her back being scraped by the concrete pavement.”

In 1942, at age 17 Williams left high school to receive vocational training as a machinist with the National Youth Administration (NYA). After his education at an NYA camp near Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he continued his studies at Elizabeth City State Teachers College (now Elizabeth City State University), an all-black, teachers college in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. One year later, he arrived in Detroit to gain employment in the city’s thriving war industry. Living with his oldest brother, Edward, he worked at Ford Motor.

He witnessed race riots in Detroit in 1943, prompted by labor competition between European Americans and Blacks. Drafted into the army, Williams was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. After earning high scores on a radio aptitude test, he was transferred to a Signal Corps battalion at Camp Crowder, Missouri, to be trained as a radio operator. To his disappointment, however, he was assigned to a school for telephone linesmen. Before completing his telephone line training, he became ill and was re-assigned as a clerical typist.

In the months following World War II, Williams experienced the effects of low morale that spread among Camp Crowder’s segregated black troops. Defiant of the harsh treatment by white officers, Williams was confined in the camp stockade for insubordination. As Robert Carl Cohen pointed out in Black Crusader, “Williams was proud of being in the stockade because he felt he was there for resisting an unjust system-not for committing a crime.” In 1946, after a six-month stay at Fort Lewis Washington, Williams received an honorable discharge without a good conduct medal.   After attending Elizabeth City State Teachers College in 1942 , he also attended West Virginia State College, 1949; North Carolina State College, 1951; Johnson C Smith University, 1953.

In 1947, Williams married Mabel Robinson, a fellow civil rights activist. They had two children together, Robert F. (deceased), John Chalmers Williams.

 Not long after his return to Monroe in October of 1955, Williams, joined the predominately white local Unitarian Fellowship and the Human Relations Group--a coalition of Unitarians, Catholics, and Protestants. Williams’s increasing civil rights activity prompted him to join the Monroe NAACP as well. One year later, the organization’s dwindling membership fell to six. Rather than dissolve the branch and risk the appearance of submitting to local racist pressure, members held an election and voted Williams in as president and Dr. Albert Perry as vice president.

To build up the strength of the branch, Williams recruited members among black domestics, laborers in pool halls, and from the ranks of the unemployed. As opposed to the NAACP’s traditional membership of middle and upper-class professionals and intellectuals, Williams provided Monroe’s branch with a distinct working-class composition. Members ranged from white pacifists to African American war veterans who, as Williams described in Negroes With Guns, “were very militant and did not scare easy.”   Williams, elected president, and Dr. Albert E. Perry, physician and vice-president, began to turn it around. They worked on goals to change the segregated town.

First they worked to integrate the public library. After that success, in 1957 Williams also led efforts to integrate the public swimming pools. He had followers form picket lines around the pool. The NAACP members organized peaceful demonstrations, but some drew gunfire. No one was arrested or punished, although law enforcement officers were present.
Monroe had a large Ku Klux Klan chapter at the end of the 1950s, estimated by the press to have 7500 members, when the city had 12,000 residents.  Their influence was pervasive.

      Negroes With Guns: Robert F. Williams on Self-Defense


Alarmed at the violence that civil rights activities aroused, Williams had applied to the National Rifle Association for a charter for a local rifle club. He called the Monroe Chapter of the NRA the Black Armed Guard, made up of about 50-60 men, some veterans like Williams. They were determined to defend the local black community from racist attacks. Newtown was the black residential area.
In the summer of 1957 there were rumors that the KKK was going to attack the house of Dr. Albert Perry, a practicing physician and vice-president of the Monroe NAACP. Williams and his men of the Armed Guard went to Perry's house to defend it, fortifying it with sandbags. When numerous KKK members appeared and shot from their cars, Williams and his followers returned the fire, driving them away.
"After this clash the same city officials who said the Klan had a constitutional right to organize met in an emergency session and passed a city ordinance banning the Klan from Monroe without a special permit from the police chief."

In Negroes with Guns, Williams writes:
   "Racist consider themselves superior beings and are not willing to exchange their superior lives for our inferior ones. They are most vicious and violent when they can practice violence with impunity." He also wrote, "It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the history of our Western states proves, that where the law is unable, or unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must act in self-defense against lawless violence." 

Followers attested to Williams' advocating the use of advanced powerful weaponry rather than more traditional firearms. Williams insisted his position was defensive, as opposed to a declaration of war. He relied on large numbers of black military veterans from the local area, as well as financial support from across the country. In Harlem, particularly, fundraisers were frequently held and proceeds devoted to purchasing arms for Williams and his followers. He called it "armed self-reliance" in the face of white terrorism. Threats against Williams' life and his family became more frequent.

Decades later, Mary E. King argued that "The patriarchal metaphors of William’s appeals for violence in response to violence in the name of protecting women curiously echoed the paternalistic rubric that was hypocritically used to justify white violence." However, Timothy Tyson observed that both pacifism and armed militancy were heavily gendered in the civil rights era: "Contestations of a notion of manhood that excluded black men did not start or stop with black nationalists…foot soldiers in Martin Luther King’s nonviolent armies frequently carried placards reading, 'I am a MAN'” King also wrote of Williams that he worked within the law to achieve justice; he appealed to federal authorities to combat the racism of Monroe.

Williams first entered the national civil rights struggle working with the NAACP as a community organizer in Monroe. When in 1958 he defended two young black boys, ages nine and seven, who were jailed after a white girl kissed one of them, he became famous around the world. His publicity campaign, inviting a barrage of embarrassing headlines in the global press, was instrumental in shaming the officials involved into eventually releasing the boys. The governor of North Carolina pardoned the boys but the state never apologized for its treatment of them. The controversy was known as the "Kissing Case".

On 12 May 1958, the Raleigh Eagle (North Carolina) reported that Nationwide Insurance Company was canceling Williams' collision and comprehensive coverage, effective that day. They first canceled all of his automobile insurance, but decided to reinstate his liability and medical payments coverage, enough for Williams to retain his car license. The company said that Williams' affiliation with the NAACP was not a factor; they noted "that rocks had been thrown at his car and home several times by people driving by his home at night. These incidents just forced us to get off the comprehensive and collision portions of his policy." The newspaper article reported that Williams had said that six months before, a 50-car Ku Klux Klan caravan had swapped gunfire with a group of blacks outside the home of Dr. A. E. Perry, vice president of the local NAACP chapter. The article quotes police chief A. A. Maurey as denying part of that story.

He said, "I know there was no shooting."  He said that he had had several police  cars accompanying the KKK caravan to watch for possible law violations.
The article quoted Williams: "These things have happened," Williams insisted. "Police try to make it appear that I have been exaggerating and trying to stir up trouble. If police tell me I am in no danger and that they can't confirm these events, why then has my insurance been cancelled?"

In 1959, Williams debated the merits of nonviolence with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr at the NAACP convention. The national NAACP office suspended his local chapter presidency for six months because of his outspoken disagreements on this issue with the national leadership.

         Robert F. Williams 1959 press conference


When CORE dispatched "Freedom Riders" to Monroe to campaign in 1961 for integrated interstate bus travel, the local NAACP chapter served as their base. They were housed in Newtown, the black section of Monroe. Pickets marched daily at the courthouse, put under a variety of restraints by the Monroe police, such as having to stand 15 feet apart. Many had been beaten by violent crowds.
Around this time, a white couple from a nearby town drove into the black section of Monroe when other streets were closed by mobs because of protests at the
county courthouse. They were stopped in the street by an angry crowd. For their safety, they were taken to Williams' home.  Williams initially told them that they were free to go, but he soon realized that the crowd would not grant safe passage. He kept the white couple in a house nearby until they were able to safely leave the neighborhood. North Carolina law enforcement admonished Williams and accused him of having kidnapped the couple. He and his family fled the state with local law enforcement in pursuit.

The FBI's wanted poster alerted people to an armed kidnapper.
His eventual interstate flight triggered prosecution by the FBI. On August 28, 1961, the FBI issued a warrant in Charlotte, North Carolina, charging Williams with unlawful interstate flight to avoid prosecution for kidnapping. The FBI document lists Williams as a "freelance writer and janitor." It said that
(Williams)"...has previously been diagnosed as a schizophrenic and has advocated and threatened violence... considered armed and extremely dangerous." After a Wanted poster, signed by the director J. Edgar Hoover, was distributed announcing he was wanted, Williams decided to leave the country.

Williams went to Cuba in 1961 by way of Canada and then Mexico. He regularly broadcast addresses to Southern blacks on "Radio Free Dixie." He established the station with assistance from Cuban President Fidel Castro and operated from 1962 to 1965.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Williams used Radio Free Dixie to urge black soldiers in the U.S. armed forces, who were then preparing for a possible invasion of Cuba, to engage in insurrection against the United States.
"While you are armed, remember this is your only chance to be free. ... This is your only chance to stop your people from being treated worse than dogs. We'll take care of the front, Joe, but from the back, he'll never know what hit him. You dig?"

During this stay, Mabel and Robert Williams published the newspaper, The Crusader. Williams wrote his book, Negroes With Guns, while in Cuba. It had a significant influence on Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panthers. Despite his absence from the United States, in 1964 Williams was elected president of the US-based Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM).  In 1965 Williams traveled to Hanoi, then the capital of North Vietnam. In a public speech, he advocated armed violence against the United States invasion during the Vietnam War, congratulated China on obtaining its own nuclear weapons (which Williams referred to as "The Freedom Bomb"), and showed his solidarity to the North Vietnamese against the United States military onslaught of the country.

Some Communist Party USA members opposed Williams' positions, suggesting they would divide the working class in the U.S. along racial lines. In a May 18, 1964, letter from Havana to his U.S. lawyer, civil rights attorney Conrad Lynn, Williams wrote:
...the U.S.C.P. has openly come out against my position on the Negro struggle. In fact, the party has sent special representatives here to sabotage my work on behalf of U.S. Negro liberation. They are pestering the Cubans to remove me from the radio, ban THE CRUSADER and to take a number of other steps in what they call `cutting Williams down to size.'...

The whole thing is due to the fact that I absolutely refuse to take direction from Gus Hall's idiots...I hope to depart from here, if possible, soon. I am writing you to stand by in case I am turned over to the FBI...
Sincerely, Rob.

In 1965, Williams and his wife left Cuba to settle in China, where he was well received. They lived comfortably there and he associated with higher functionaries of the Chinese government. In January 1968, Conrad Lynn wrote to encourage Williams to return to the US. Williams responded:
The only thing that prevents my acceptance and willingness to make an immediate return is the present lack of adequate financial assurance for a fight against my being railroaded to jail and an effective organization to arouse the people.

I don't think it will be wise to announce my nomination and immediate return unless the kind of money is positively available...
Lynn wrote Williams in a letter on January 24, 1968: "You are wise in not making a decision to come back until the financial situation is assured." Because no financial backing could be found, no 1968 "Williams for President" campaign was ever launched by Williams' supporters in the United States. By November 1969, Williams apparently had become disillusioned with the U.S. left. As his lawyer, Conrad Lynn, noted in a November 7, 1969, letter to Haywood Burns of the Legal Defense Foundation:

Williams now clearly takes the position that he has been deserted by the left. How and whether he fits black militant organizations into that category I don't know. Radio Free Europe offered him pay to broadcast for them. So far he has refused. But he has not foreclosed making a deal with the government or the far right. He takes the position that he is entitled to make any maneuver to keep from going to jail for kidnapping...

Williams was suspected by the Justice Department of wanting to fill the vacuum of influence left after the assassinations of his friends Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hoover received reports that blacks looked to Williams as a figure similar to John Brown, the militant abolitionist who attacked a US facility at Harper's Ferry. Attempts to contact the U.S. government in order to return were rebuffed consistently.

His wife Mabel Williams returned first, entering the United States in September 1969.  He returned via London, England to Detroit, Michigan in 1969 and was immediately arrested for extradition to North Carolina for trial on the kidnapping charge. Shortly after he returned, the approaching period of détente augured a warming of relations with the People's Republic of China.
Williams was tried in Monroe, North Carolina in December 1975. The historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall chaired his defense committee and a broad range of leftists arrived in town. Attorney William Kunstler represented Williams in court. The state of North Carolina dropped all charges against him almost immediately.

Williams was given a grant by the Ford Foundation to work at the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies. He wrote While God Lay Sleeping: The Autobiography of Robert F. Williams.
He died from Hodgkin's disease in 1996. At his funeral, Rosa Parks, who started the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, recounted the high regard for Robert F. Williams by those who marched peacefully with King in Alabama.

 

Robert F Williams-Powerful Overview Of The On Coming Destruction of Amerika (Let it Burn)


       LET IT BURN - The Coming Destruction of the USA?


Robert Franklin Williams, advocate of armed self-defense in the Civil Rights Movement, hunted by the FBI since fleeing Monroe, North Carolina in 1961, after years in exile in Cuba and China, is interviewed by Robert Carl Cohen in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 1968. BLACK CRUSADER - 2008 Illustrated Edition, (498 Pages, B&W Photos, is now available from www.radfilms.com

       Self-Defense, Self-Respect, & Self-Determination by Mabel Williams and Robert F. Williams




Tuesday, November 25, 2014

12-Year-Old Tamir Rice Killed



A 12-year-old boy has died after being shot by police in the US city of Cleveland, after carrying what turned out to be a replica gun in a playground.

Police say an officer fired two shots at Tamir Rice after he failed to obey an order to raise his hands.

He did not make any verbal threats nor point the gun towards the officers..
A lawyer representing his family said it would be carrying out its own investigation into what happened.

An account written by Case grad student and Cleveland City Council intern Shelly Gracon has been circulating over the past 24 hours or so. Here, she describes speaking with two girls who knew Tamir. One witnessed the shooting.

i want to do honor to 12 year old tamir rice (and write this out while it is fresh), so i am going to share with you what i just experienced. i was able to speak with two young girls. one witnessed the shooting, the other was out of town (she told me she felt bad cause he had asked her to go to the rec center with him earlier that day). both knew him very well and had only good things to say - well, i guess he could be a pain sometimes, i was told - we laughed. he was a gifted artist. he was very sensitive and creative. he had the BB gun because often times he was made fun of and bullied because he had learning disabilities. he never had it out. he never was a threat. his friend did say that BB guns look too real, and she thinks no one should have guns.

he and his friends went over to the RTA station across the street and a white man who was there called the police cause he must have seen the gun. they came running back to cudell rec. and were just sitting together when the police arrived. the police pulled their guns on the boy, his friends backed away, and he said it was just a BB gun w/ no bullets and went to lift his shirt to show it to them and they shot him twice in the stomach. in front of not only his friends, but also other children, and i believe his sister as well. his sister was screaming and the police slammed her down on the ground - they actually hurt her they were so aggressive. his brother also came onto the scene and was upset and the police slammed him on the ground as well.

meanwhile, this child is shot. his mother finds out and is heard screaming through the neighborhood. all this is happening in the middle of the day. yesterday. at a rec center. he was very involved there, and knew everyone. he was described as shy and very talented at art. his friend told me about a drawing he made for her. she said she told him that god is always in his heart, and that he is special. these two girls really were such beautiful souls.

he told his friend that was there when he was shot earlier in the week that he thought something bad was going to happen to him. this boy was a gifted empath. he was NOT A THREAT TO ANYONE.

so, take that to the news.

"It's gone viral now, which I wasn't really prepared for," Shelly tells Scene. "Because I truly believe what I heard from them, I want to get the truth out — which is what people are relating to and sharing — but in the same regard, they're still children.

"I'm trying really hard to protect them," she says, "because they're so young." She spoke with the girls at Cudell Rec Center yesterday, teddy bear and candle in hand, amid an impromptu vigil.

In talking with the girls — "very very close if not best friends with this boy," Shelly says — she began to gather an impression of Tamir that hasn't surfaced widely in local media reports.

"I more so want people to understand who this boy was as a person," Shelly says. "He wasn't a thug. He wasn't what people are making him out to be at all. He was someone who had a lot of friends who hung out at that rec center all the time.

"He was bullied at school, body-slammed a lot at school — really, really picked on," Shelly adds. The girls told her that he had the airsoft gun to make himself feel safer. They relayed to her that he "never had any intent to harm anyone with it."

The shooting came just 11 days after a public safety forum at the recreation center. Members of the Edgewater and Baltic neighborhoods gathered Nov. 11 to discuss safety issues in the community and how residents could better engage the neighborhood. Shelly helped organize the forum in her role as a city intern with Ward 15.

"There's another side to this story that is not being heard," she says. "I feel like this community is not being heard."

Hence the viral post, and hence her ongoing work in the ward. "I want out of this to come conversation within the community — about what happened and how we can move forward and heal and stop this from happening again." She cited counseling for the children who were at the playground Nov. 22 as one specific and much-needed route forward.

    12-Year-Old Tamir Rice Carrying FAKE-BB Gun Shot Dead By Cleveland Police- Why Always BLACK Killed?


       Cleveland Police SHOOT & KILL 12-Year Old Tamir Rice For Carrying a Toy BB Gun At Playground!!


 

Friday, November 21, 2014

The Kissing Case




I grew up in New Bern ,NC the eastern part of the state. When I was 12 years old The Kissing Case occurred in Monroe, NC I knew nothing about it but as I got older I knew something had happened in Monroe and be careful in that area.        ( But things happened every where in NC it was not a good world I lived in.)

The Kissing Case is an incident that sparked protests and legal challenges related to the Civil Rights Movement. In 1958 in Monroe, North Carolina, two black boys, seven-year-old David "Fuzzy" Simpson and nine-year-old James Hanover Thompson, were arrested after being kissed by a white girl on their cheeks in a neighborhood game. They were charged and convicted of molestation and sentenced to a reformatory until the age of 21.

THE KISSING CASE
On the date, October 28, 1958, two Black boys, 7-year-old James Hanover Thompson, and 9-year-old David “Fuzzy” Simpson, were among a group of children in Monroe, North Carolina, none more than 10, none younger than 6, were playing as young children do without much pattern or apparent direction. Most of the children were white.

One of the girls, Sissy Sutton, kissed Hanover on the cheek. When her mother overheard relaying the day’s events to her sister, she became livid. She called the other white parents, armed herself, gathered some friends, and went out looking for the boys. She intended to kill them. 

Mrs. Sutton went to Hanover’s home with her posse, not only to kill the boys but to lynch the mothers. They arrived almost at the same time as six carloads of police — nearly the entire police force of Monroe. Fortunately, no one was at home. 

Later that afternoon, a squad car spotted the two boys pulling a little red wagon filled with pop bottles. The police jumped from the car, guns drawn, snatched the boys, handcuffed them, and threw them into the car. One of cops slapped Hanover, the first of many beatings he would endure. 

When they got to the jail, the boys were beaten unmercifully. They were held without counsel and their mothers were not allowed to see them.

For several nights the mothers were so frightened that they didn’t sleep in their own house. Gunmen in passing cars fired dozens of shots into the Thompson home. They killed Hanover’s dog. Both women were fired from their jobs as housekeepers. Mrs. Thompson was evicted from her home. The Klan held daily demonstrations outside of the jail.

On November 4, 1958, six days after taking the boys into custody, local authorities finally held a hearing. The boys had still not seen their parents, friends, or legal counsel. At the hearing, the judge found the boys guilty of three charges of assault (kissing) and molestation. He ordered that the boys be incarcerated in an adult facility for black prisoners, and told the boys that if they behaved, they might be released at age 21. 

Civil rights leader Robert F. Williams, head of the local chapter of the NAACP raised protests about the arrests and sentencing. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt tried to talk with the governor. At first the local and state governments refused to back down in the case. Williams called Conrad Lynn, a noted black civil rights lawyer, who came down from New York to aid in the boys' defense. Governor Luther H. Hodges and state attorney general Malcolm Seawell rejected Lynn's writ (on behalf of Williams) to review the detention of the boys.

Joyce Egginton, a reporter for the London News-Chronicle traveled to Monroe, she sneaked into the prison where the boys were held, under the pretense of being a social worker. She also sneaked in a camera. On December 15, 1958, a front page picture of Hanover and Fuzzy in the reformatory, along with an article, appeared all over Europe. 

News organizations in England, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain, all carried the story. The United States Information Agency received more than 12,000 letters expressing outrage at the events.
An international committee was formed in Europe to defend Thompson and Simpson. Huge demonstrations were held in Paris, Rome and Vienna and in Rotterdam against the United States. The U.S. Embassy in Brussels was stoned. It was an international embarrassment for the U.S. government.

In February, North Carolina officials asked the boys’ mothers to sign a waiver with the assurance that their children would be released. The mothers refused to sign the waiver, which would have required the boys to admit to being guilty of the charges.

Two days later, after the boys had spent three months in detention, the governor pardoned Thompson and Simpson without conditions or explanation. The state and city never apologized to the boys or their families for their treatment.

          Click the link below to hear a radio interview of the victims of the Kissing Case:

Monday, November 17, 2014

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Dr Myles Munroe "POWERFUL" Words of Ministry at World Conference 2014





       

In memory of the great Dr. Myles Munroe, recently went on to his demise in an airplane crash earlier this week, along with his wife, daughter, and a few others.  The world will long acknowledge and remember you for your wonderful words of wisdom and confidence taught from your Divine Intervention that motivated the lives and realities of many others in t his world.  May his memory be lauded and esteemed as his body is laid to rest.  To God be the Glory!


A Wedding Song That Is Thrilling


Post by Jennifer Keys.and M. White



Can you believe this is Rosa Cheatham singing at the reception of her own wedding.  Third time no less.  What about Charlene and me.  I never knew she could sing like that.  I have always heard her play for her church over the years.  She finished her BA in music at NCCU a year or so ago, and we are all so proud of her.  I know I am.  Listen to that GRAND and FABULOUS FINISH!  She also sang another song at the nuptials, but I can only find a short recording of it.  I think the Johnsons were up here to the wedding, and somehow I MISSED it.  I deeply regret it.  But I was at the Bridal shower!

Friday, November 14, 2014

Anti-Technology...thought provoking!

PART 2!! Over-The-Top Piano Player "I Need Thee"











This is just so comical.This is just so comical.

FOLKS JUST WON'T LEAVE THIS ALONE . . . .










Problems in Ferguson Extend Beyond Grand Jury Decision







Cheryl Dorsey 
Speaker, Police Expert & Community Advocate
·          
          


The problems in Ferguson, Missouri, will continue long after the grand jury's decision is announced. The tensions in the community will undoubtedly be exacerbated if the U.S. Justice Department declines to pursue civil rights violations against Officer Darren Wilson. The real problem in Ferguson is the fact that the residents are stuck with a police department that seemingly lacks ethnic diversity, appears racially insensitive and is unwilling to admit changes within are necessary. The problems of the Ferguson Police Department are cultural and systemic.
As a retired, 20-year veteran police sergeant, I reject the notion that a professional, tactically trained, gun-toting police officer would fear an unarmed teenager. Police officers receive an inordinate amount of training, first in the academy and then continued in-service training. Police officers should expect, by virtue of their occupation, that interacting with the community can at times be contentious. Police officers are expected to rely on their training and common sense if confronted with an argumentative and uncooperative citizen. Police officers are not expected to take it personally when a citizen fails to follow an order given. So for Officer Wilson to initiate a traffic stop and then immediately escalate the situation to a deadly-force incident is, in my opinion, outrageous.
According to grand jury testimony leaks, Officer Wilson shot and killed Mike Brown because he (Wilson) was in fear. Wilson feared unarmed Mike Brown, 18-year-old Mike Brown, wounded and bleeding Mike Brown. Allegedly, this was Officer Wilson's "state of mind" at the time he fired his weapon. OK, that may be true of the first two shots, but what about shots three through six? Police officers involved in a use-of-force incident, and especially a deadly-force incident, must explain the need for every round fired. What about Mike's state of mind? Well, we will never know, because Mike is not here to tell us.
As a black woman, I believe that unless and until there are real changes on that police department in terms of personnel, training and civilian oversight, there could be a repeat of the senseless killing of Mike Brown.
As a mother, I am bothered by disparaging comments made by Project 21's Joe Hicks referring to Mike Brown as "a small-time local thug," as if "a small-time local thug" somehow deserves to be gunned down in the middle of the street. I am bothered that anyone who does not side with the police department's version of events is labeled a "race-hustler" who is "undeserving" of justice. These statements were just a few of the comments attributed to Project 21, described as a black leadership network. I am disappointed by an unrepentant and unapologetic police department that will never admit to wrongdoing. I am saddened that this black life (Mike Brown's) does not seem to matter.

As a retired law-enforcement supervisor, I don't accept that a trained police officer need only say "I was in fear" and everything else that follows is somehow justified. Well, I say: Officer, if you are scared when dealing with a (black) community that you swore to protect and serve, then maybe you should holster your gun, remain in your car and call for backup. I have not heard or seen white police officers articulate "fear" when dealing with the white criminal community. Take Eric Frein: Here's a guy who shot and killed a police officer and seriously wounded another. It was reported that Frein left assault weapons and pipe bombs as though they were bread crumbs for pursing officers, yet he was "taken into custody without incident," captured with only a scratch on his nose, purportedly self-inflicted.
If the requirement for federal civil rights prosecution is an all-or-nothing case, it's time to change the law. Currently, federal prosecutors must prove that race was a motivator, that a defendant deprived the victim of a constitutional right, that the defendant acted willfully, and that the defendant acted under color of law and that the victim died. How does one prove that Officer Wilson was possibly dishonest when he testified before the grand jury that he was in fear for his safety?

Maybe it's time to require police recruit candidates to prove they are not predisposed to being fearful before they are hired and given a gun. Maybe it's time to require a police officer to prove fear if that's the stated reason for firing that gun. Maybe it's time to hold officers who violate policy and the law when they discharge that gun personally liable. Maybe it's time to no longer allow the mere utterance of "fear" by a police officer as a justification for what our sensibilities as a society recognize is unreasonable and excessive.
Officer, if you were in fear, please explain why you did not remain in the safe confines of your police car. Officer, why didn't you call for backup, wait for backup to arrive and then tell backup that you were in fear for your safety? Please, Officer, why did you kill Mike Brown? If it wasn't because of his race, then what?
And finally, sir, would your please return to the police station, turn in your badge and gun and seek employment somewhere else, because, Officer, I am in fear for my safety.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
--President John F. Kennedy

Cheryl Dorsey is a retired LAPD sergeant as well as a speaker and sought-after expert on important police issues making national headlines who has appeared as a guest expert on Dr. Phil. She writes and provides commentary on police culture and surviving police encounters. She is the author of Black & Blue (The Creation of a Manifesto): The True Story of an African-American Woman on the LAPD and the Powerful Secrets She Uncovered, an autobiography that pulls the covers off the LAPD and provides an unfiltered look into the department's internal processes. Visit Cheryl's website, cheryldorsey.net, and listen to her on Soundcloud.

Follow Cheryl Dorsey on Twitter: www.twitter.com/retLAPDsgt
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Note:  This is an article that I can truly believe in.  The sentiments, concerns and considerations of this former police officer would mirror that of my thinking.  It is incredulous that local police officers would not have this point of view.  Their "criminalization" of normal society is unworthy of their position in society.  It is our hope that a revision of national policing policies, training, operations, and objectives will soon be in the making as a result of this phenomenal case.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Friday, November 7, 2014

The Best Solange vs. Jay Z Memes |

The Best Solange vs. Jay Z Memes |



If you recall the TV exposes of the Solange and Jay Z physical encounter in the elevator, these off-takes become hilarious to say the least.  Enjoy and laugh out loud like I did.



You have to click onto the link to enjoy them all.  Sorry I can't seem to bring up the document on this site.
But I'm adding another two or a few for your pleasure.  There are 50 in all.















Wednesday, November 5, 2014