Commentary by Deoliver47, Black Kos Editor
"South bashing" around here is not okay.
A diary caught my notice here one morning recently, as I was idly scrolling through the list. It wasn’t a biggie. Few rec’s or tips, but there was some heated discussion in it. The diarist suggested that "the South should secede from the Union and good riddance". I made a comment there, and moved on.
I have made similar comments in the past. I have cited this report from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies:
The first edition of Black Elected Officials: A National Roster was published 32 years ago, when it was reported that there were 1,469 black elected officials (BEOs) in the United States. This newest edition of Black Elected Officials (which covers officials in office as of January 31, 2000) reports 9,040 BEOs, a more than six-fold increase. Growth over this period is especially impressive at the state level (see Appendix A). In five southern states, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas, the total increase between 1970 and 2000 was over tenfold. In 2000, Mississippi and Alabama together had more black elected officials (1,628) than the entire nation had in 1970. In 1970, the 10 states with the highest number of BEOs collectively had 821, while in 2000 the top 10 states had 5,887.
Folks tend to forget that the South, and southern black votes are an important part of the big tent we are rubbing shoulders in. Yes, we need to expand the number of progressive white southern voters, but that is not going to happen overnight. Let's not forget, politics is not just about presidential elections. Much of it is local, and that's where the much of the change has been taking place.
I thought back to a rec listed diary imploring Kossaks to stop the south bashing, and did a DKos search for that term. I wasn’t surprised by the results. Plenty of Kossaks – of all colors and from all the southern states, or with southern roots have complained, protested, raised their voices about the tendency, but they still seem to be in the minority; among them I noticed quite a few members of our own community. Kudos to you all.
We have discussed here on Black Kos the recent history of blacks in the Democratic Party, and their shift from being Republican supporters of "the Party of Lincoln". We have talked about southern voter registration, Freedom Summer, and The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party led by Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer. As a black woman, born in the North, I have also frequently referred to my southern roots, and enslaved ancestors, but have also pointed out with frequency that slavery existed in the north, and its abolition was resisted; states like my home state of NY, and neighboring PA adopted gradual emancipation schemes which resulted in some people remaining slaves up until the time of the Civil War.
Those who know their history can freely cite the Republican "Southern Strategy", and how Democrats who were Dixiecrats jumped ship to embrace the Republican Party. Many of the demographic surveys posted here to Daily Kos point to "the South" as the home of entrenched reactionary thinking.
I’d like to discuss this from a black perspective today, seeing as how I still have southern family members and some members of my extended family have decided to leave the cold of the North to "return home" to warmer Southern climes; whether because of more affordable retirement housing, or among the younger set, new job opportunities. There they become a part of the communities that never left.
Last year the Greensboro News-Record had two interesting articles, I'd like you to read on this phenomena. The first was more statistical, the second a more ethnographic portrait of this move, focusing on two women.
Census: Blacks are moving to the South
Both North and South Carolina were among the top 10 "influx" states gaining in African American migration from 1995 to 2000, according to Brookings Institution scholar William H. Frey’s analysis of the 2000 U.S. Census. And cities such as Chicago, New York and Los Angeles lost black residents in significant numbers for the first time in the 20th century.
This is a reversal of the 40-year trend of "great migration" out of the South, which created the "urban" American city documented in Nicholas Lemann’s 1991 book "The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America."
According to the last census, the emigration from the North and California had doubled the 1990 census, which had tripled the 1980 numbers. Bottom line? From 1975 to 2000, the Northeast, Midwest and West lost 800,000 black residents to emigration; and of those, about 635,400 moved to the South.
New South: A return to Southern roots
Connie Williams is a granddaughter of South Carolina sharecroppers who chopped cotton and worked in tobacco before heading north in the "Great Migration" of black Southerners in the mid-20th century.
But the recent Greensboro transplant — part of what demographers call a "reverse" influx to the South — was, at heart, a Jersey girl.
Every June growing up, when school let out in the asphalt canyon where the Hudson River smelled of Sabrett bakery in the morning and the My-T-Fine Pudding plant in the afternoon, Williams watched her playmates leave to spend summer vacations with grandparents in the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama.
As a side note, our recent national election points to certain trends. Dopper and plf515 (see his diary: Black, White, Southern nonSouthern, Democratic, Republican?) are better than I am at citing electoral statistics, but you don’t have to be a statistician to notice that Virginia went blue, as did North Carolina and Maryland. Florida is part of the south too. Texas is a state that interests me, (and yes I count Texas as Southern) specifically because of the chance to forge new coalitions there. Plf515 pointed out something very interesting, "of the four states where McCain did best, not one of them is in the south; they are OK, UT, WY and ID. His best state in the South was AL, where he got 60%." Dopper had this to say :
"On Georgia: Obama won 23% of the white vote the same as Kerry. His 7% improvement came from a larger black vote, and an increasing Latino vote. To win Obama (barely) would need about 27-28% of the white vote assuming blacks turn out again at the same rate, and Latinos increase again by 1%. But remember Obama won 26% of the white vote in South Carolina (yes he did better there amazingly enough). Now some of the SC vote may have been left over goodwill from the primary, but it does show it can be done. North Carolina gave Obama 35% of the white vote, but NC has far more liberals and populists than Georgia does. OTOH hand Georgia is becoming more urban (as a percentage of voters) and urbanization tends to make every racial, ethnic, and economic group more Democratic (even in places like Utah) over time. So yes Georgia is a real possibility, but I see it more as a "head fake" in 2012 a place that Obama tries to get the GOP to spend money in because he "could" win it."
Take a look at this map, and the related statistics at Black Demographics.
Granted, there are large concentrations of black people in northern and North Midwestern urban areas.
Wiki cites these figures from the last census:
At the time of the 2000 Census, 54.8% of African Americans lived in the South. In that year, 17.6% of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7% in the Midwest, while only 8.9% lived in the western states. The west does have a sizable black population in certain areas, however. California, the nation's most populous state, has the fifth largest African-American population, only behind New York, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. According to the 2000 Census, approximately 2.05% of African Americans identified as Hispanic or Latino in origin,[5] many of whom may be of Brazilian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Haitian, or other Latin American descent.
It will be interesting to see the results of the census being conducted this year, and how these figures may have changed. Black migration to the Northern urban centers has been studied by sociologists, and demographers for several generations. I have always found it interesting that many black northern families frequently "journey home (to the south) for family funerals and reunions. They have often sent troubled teens and other family "down home" to be looked after, raised or disciplined.
There are concentrations of blacks in the West, in states like California. My experience with black folks I met in California when I spent some time there was interesting. Many "spoke" with Southern cadences. Eldridge Cleaver once pointed out to me, "scratch a black person in Oakland, and you’ll find that they, or their parents hailed from Louisiana, Arkansas or Texas."
We have, as Democrats, a 50 state strategy. How best to implement that strategy and make gains in the years ahead is not my call. I’m simply one voice. I do think that we need to look to the future and examine demographic trends, figure out ways to enhance coalitions between our solidly African-American base in the South, including those white progressive Southerners, with Latino/Hispanics who are also either there in large numbers (Florida and Texas) or who are relocating from other areas as well.
Yes, I know the history of the South and "racism" quite well. Lived in the states of Maryland, and Louisiana under Jim Crow. Visited a segregated VA as a child. Drove fearfully through Prince George’s County Maryland as a kid with my parents when we were headed to visit family in DC (which I must point out is "southern").
I too sang loudly along with Nina Simone her rousing civil rights anthem:
Mississippi Goddam
But I also knew that two favorite tunes in my household were Ray Charles’
Georgia on my Mind
And Glady’s Knight and the Pip’s Midnight Train to Georgia
Tuesday’s Chile draws its title from a "southern inflection" of "Child".
With that in mind, I’d like to talk about the south today, all things southern, and the future of Southern progressivism. Porch sittin' is an old Southern tradition too.
See y'all on the porch.
======================================================================
News and Events by Amazing Grace, Black Kos Editor
African Taliban Terrorizes Nigeria As Hillary Clinton visits Nigeria, the oil-rich country central to Africa’s success, she should be wary of a deadly new threat: the African Taliban. Under Hillary Clinton’s watch, the State Department has called Nigeria "probably the most important country in Africa." Why? Three words: light, sweet, crude. Nigeria is one of America’s largest oil producers, and poised to become even a bigger one. It is also Africa’s most populous country—one in six Africans comes from Nigeria—and one of the continent’s richest and most corrupt democracies.
Yet despite its staggering oil wealth, more than half of Nigeria’s 140 million people live on less than a dollar a day. More than 60 million of them are under 18; Nigeria’s population is also growing faster than almost any other country in the world. The young and disaffected really do call themselves the Taliban because it marks them as part of a larger order, and one standing up to the West.
Egypt tombs suggest free men built pyramids, not slaves Tombs discovered near Egypt's great pyramids reinforce the theory they were built by free workers rather than slaves. The location of the tombs, where workers who built the pyramids of Khufu (Cheops) and Khafre (Chephren) are buried, suggests they were not slaves. The tombs, made from bricks of dried mud, date back 4,500 years. They are the first to be discovered since the first such workers' tombs were found in 1990. "These tombs were built beside the king's pyramid, which indicates these people were not by any means slaves," Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement. "If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king's."
A Time Beyond Dreams: South Africa After Mandela Nelson Mandela Square can be found in the Johannesburg suburb of Sandton, an asphalted enclave of vast shopping centers and tinted office blocks. A generation ago, during the era of apartheid, the New York Times correspondent Joseph Lelyveld likened the place's aesthetic to "Dallas-on-the-veld." It's only gotten wealthier, glassier and more garish since then, as South Africa has undergone a thoroughgoing metamorphosis. White rule has given way to black governance, repression has been replaced by tremulous coexistence, economic sanctions have fallen and Sandton has become, arguably, the nation's true nerve center. Corporations, banks and even the national stock exchange have moved there, taking flight from Johannesburg's decaying downtown. Though an air of danger looms over much of the city--South Africa's murder rate is six times that of the United States, and burglaries and carjackings are rampant--rich people, and especially rich white people, have found a relative haven in Sandton, hunkering down inside fortified luxury homes. Nelson Mandela Square is a centerpiece of the suburb, and by extension, this new South Africa. It is both a monument to a founding father, and, not secondarily, a well-guarded mall filled with expensive boutiques.
Dennis Brutus led the fight to have South Africa barred from the Olympics When Dennis Brutus heard the news, he was breaking stones on Robben Island, the notorious prison colony where Nelson Mandela occupied the cell next to his. The news was that the International Olympic Committee had suspended South Africa from the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. That signified a victory for Mr. Brutus, who led the fight to use sports as a weapon against the racist policies of South Africa. Ultimately, South Africa was barred from almost all international athletic competitions. Mr. Brutus paid a high price for his sports activism. Besides imprisonment, he was exiled and shot in the back. A poet, teacher and journalist, he was barred from earning a living except by menial labour. There were many others from many countries who fought apartheid in sports, but Mr. Brutus helped ignite the fight.
Race Riots Grip Italian Town, and Mafia Is Suspected ROME — More than a thousand African workers were put aboard buses and trains in the southern Italian region of Calabria over the weekend and shipped out to immigrant detention centers, following some of the country’s worst riots in years. The clashes began Thursday night in Rosarno, a working-class city amid citrus groves in Calabria, the toe of Italy’s boot, after a legal immigrant from Togo was lightly wounded in a pellet-gun attack in a nearby city. It is not clear who pulled the trigger — the authorities said they were investigating whether organized crime had provoked the riots — but the consequences were severe.
Giving new life to her native language, Ojibwe Dorene Wiese hopes to revive language and is president of the American Indian Association of Illinois. When Dorene Wiese was a young girl she would listen to the stories her family members told as they gathered around her kitchen table.
Relatives often reminisced about harvesting rice, or more precisely manomin, from the marshes of northern Minnesota. They told stories of getting into canoes and using hand paddles to knock the grains into their baskets. It was an annual event, filled with ceremony that brought their Ojibwe community together as they worked to parch, separate and clean the rice, before bagging it for storage. Wiese (pronounced WEE-see), who's now 60 and is the president of the American Indian Association of Illinois, said that although the stories were robust -- as a child she easily lost herself in them -- she realized years later that because her family no longer spoke the Ojibwe language, their stories may have lost meaning and color by being told in English.
Racism: We're Talking About It Now Mary C. Curtis' excellent post about Sen. Harry Reid and matters of race asks the question about whether Americans can have an honest conversation about race. I offer this thought: Maybe the nation is already engrossed in one.
First of all, the Obama administration is the epicenter of that conversation. The administration has exposed racism as one of the creepy things that crawl in the basement of politics, along with an array of bigotries. This is the same damp place where white and minority politicians get schooled on how to get minority votes on Sunday morning without really giving anything back to the community. It's the place where minority politicians learn to diminish themselves because being themselves alienates whites. This basement is a scary place where people may not wear white hoods, but you feel like they do.
Al Sharpton Wants Gilbert Arenas Punished. Seriously. Whenever racism rears its head in sports, the Reverend Al Sharpton has usually had something important to say. In the process, he has proudly earned the contempt of the sports radio blabbocracy. But today, Reverend Al is earning their praise. Al Sharpton embraced by sports radio? Have we entered the twilight zone? Hardly.
They are loving Sharpton because the good Reverend wants Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas severely punished for bringing unloaded guns into his team's locker room. Currently facing criminal charges and league suspension, Arenas is likely facing probation or prison and will be suspended by the NBA. It's a depressing story made worse by the fact that Arenas is perhaps the last player you would ever predict would do something so stupid. The son of a professional movie extra, and the NBA's first blogger, he is an iconoclastic goofball, more likely to bring a water gun to work than the real thing.
One in Four Black, Latino Workers Shut Out of Withered Job Market The new labor statistics released today show more of the same: official unemployment was about level. Some economists insist that we’re still on track for a steady recovery; left-leaning analysts like the Economic Policy Institute say the hole is much deeper than it looks, and depending on your color, age and education level, you may not even be close to crawling out of it. EPI explains:
The nation’s 10% unemployment rate does not fully capture the extent of the jobs crisis, since millions of Americans have given up looking for work or cannot find the amount of work they need. This large group of discouraged and "involuntary part-time" workers is more accurately counted in the underemployment rate, which stood at 17.3% in December, and is much higher for black and Hispanic workers.... While white underemployment has more than doubled over the course of the recession to 14.6%, underemployment is now 24.3% for black workers and 25.1% for Hispanic workers: A staggering one in four of these minority workers cannot find the amount of work they want.
GOPers Tell Tiger and Barack How to Pass Did you notice what Barack Obama and Tiger Woods have in common lately? No, not that: It's that both were told by a Washington insider this week that he needed to say a magic word in order to gain true acceptance from the American people.
Congressman Peter King (R-NY) and pundit Brit Hume (R-Fox) told President Obama and Tiger Woods, respectively, to say "terrorism" and "Jesus" more. If only these successful, menthol-cool, mixed-race men would come to terms with these terms, they could then spin their way into passing: Obama would pass as president for a war-loving public that isn't satisfied by 50,000 more troops sent to a losing war, and Woods would pass as a member of the cult we call the Republican Party and, ipso facto, be reaccepted by the corporations who once found his touch so golden.
======================================================================
THIS WEEK IN HISTORY by Tuesday's Chile Editor, fedupcitizen
[]Jan 10, Dr. George Washington Carver, Born this date a slave, year uncertain, documented as 1860 and 1864. Prolific educator, agronomist and inventor of over 300 products. Numerous citations, monuments, schools and designations have been established in his honor.
[] Jan 10, 1888. A.B. Blackburn was issued a patent for creating a Railway Signal which was designed to be triggered when the train wheels passed over the lever on the track.
[] Jan 10, 1925. Max Roach born. (Maxwell Lemuel Roach) Drummer, Percussionist and Composer. Performed with Charles "Bird" Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollin and Miles Davis among many others.
[] Jan 10, 1961. Charlayne Hunter-Gault & Hamilton E. Holmes ended segregation at the University of Georgia. In 2001 upon the 40th anniversary U.G.A. named a building in the students honor.
[] Jan 10, 1990. Marcelite J. Harris was named Brigadier General in the U.S. Air Force, the first woman appointed in that position in addition to a breakthrough biography of first accomplishments.
[] Jan 11, 1848. George Boyer Vashon became first black lawyer New York.
[] Jan 12, 1890. Dr. Mordecai Wyatt Johnson born, first AA President Howard University for 3 decades.
[] Jan 12, 1920. James Farmer born. Co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Received the Congressional Medal of Freedom from Pres. Clinton 1998.
[] Jan 13, 1850. Charlotte E. Raythe first AA woman certified as a lawyer in the US, admitted to practice in Washington DC, unable to sustain practice because of prejudice became educator in NYC.
[] Jan 13, 1913. Delta Sigma Theta Sorority founded Howard University.
[] Jan 14, 1914. Dudley Randall born. Publisher of Broadside Press, Poet among his many works Ballad Of Birmingham and Booker T. and W.E.B.
[] Jan 14, 1916. John Oliver Killens labor organizer,writer, co-founder Harlem Writers Guild, Pulitzer Prize nominee for And Then We Heard the Thunder.
[] Jan 14, 1925. Albert Cornelius Antoin born. Scientist, Educator & Engineer & NASA Researcher.
[] Jan 14, 1940. Julian Bond born, civil rights, politician, activist, 1st Pres of Southern Poverty Law, Communications Director of SNCC.
[] Jan 15, 1818. Elizabeth Keckley born. Abolitionist, author and seamstress earned a large client base. Eventually to become confidante and dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln. While employed at the WH began the Contraband Relief Organization raising funds for slave refugees. Upon Lincoln's assassination she sought to earn money for MT Lincoln by selling her clothes and also publishing her diaries 1868, "Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House." which was met with criticism, condemnation, and questions of authorship.
[] Jan 15, 1929. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. born. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the law House of Representatives Bill Number 3706. The holiday met with resistance from some states and 2000 was the first time all 50 states recognized the holiday. During the 2009 campaign Candidate Sen.Obama called for a national day of service. President Obama continues to encourage volunteering, community participation and service as a worthy tribute to MLK.
[] Jan 15, 1933. Ernest J. Gaines writer, among his works The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Lesson Before Dying. His writing has been translated to 12 languages & 4 made into movies.
[] Jan 16,1870. Willie Simms born, only AA jockey to date to have won all the Triple Crown races.
[] Jan 16,1920. Zeta Phi Beta Sorority founded at Howard University.
[] Jan 16,1950. Debbie Allen born, Dancer, Choreographer & Actor.
[] Jan 16,1979. Aaliyah Haughton Singer & Actress gaining fame when tragically killed airplane crash.
====================================================================
Historical Feature, by Tuesday's Chile Editor fedupcitizen
For Yarrow Mamout there is no recorded date of birth or death. His biography includes slavery, capture as teenager from Guinea, West Africa along with a sister and being carried to the US on a ship called the Elijah to slavery in Maryland.
He was promised eventual freedom by his owners and as a slave he saved money not once but twice for his retirement with poor results. The first entrusted to a merchant who died penniless and the second attempt to a merchant who went bankrupt. This tale was told by General John Mason to David Warden who was writing for a report to be read in Europe. His story was featured in an article in the Washington Post, by James H. Johnston, entitled "The Man in the Knit Cap".
Endeavoring yet again to save for a promised future freedom he encountered a man who knew of his predicament advised him to put his third accrual of savings of $200 into a newly established bank. When his freedom was granted he purchased a home in Georgetown, Washington DC and other properties. Yarrow Mamout had obtained many skills as a bricklayer, ironworker, basketweaver and upon his freedom started a hauling business which probably included many handyman jobs.
Surprisingly Yarrow Mamout came to be the subject of not one but two prolific white painters at different times. Charles Willson Peale of the renowned Peale family who fought in the Revolutionary War and had painted George Washington and other American founders painted Mamout first while in the Capitol to paint President Monroe. He sought Mamout perhaps because he was intrigued by stories of the longevity of his age as well as his Muslim religion. Subsequently and for reasons of his own years later James Alexander Simpson also painted Mamout. The Peale portrait is housed at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection at Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia and the Simpson portrait was housed at the Georgetown Branch of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library as part of the Peabody collection until a 2007 fire....miraculously while little was saved, the portrait was.
He was also known as the fastest man to ever swim the Potomac River and included in the list of famous African American swimmers included in the documentary called Black Splash.
======================================================================
Voices and Soul by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Editor
The time it takes to blink an eye is the time it takes to roll back
the clock to segregated lunch counters and strange fruit hanging from
the poplar tree. Time is truly, that fluid. How can we give up when
there is still so much work to do and so many people in need? How can
we give up on a whole region when that region is populated by those
who have struggled so mightily? We just cannot give up, we just cannot
turn our backs. We cannot stop when the struggle is only...
Midway
I've come this far to freedom and I won't turn back
I'm climbing to the highway from my old dirt track
I'm coming and I'm going
And I'm stretching and I'm growing
And I'll reap what I've been sowing or my skin's not black
I've prayed and slaved and waited and I've sung my song
You've bled me and you've starved me but I've still grown strong
You've lashed me and you've treed me
And you've everything but freed me
But in time you'll know you need me and it won't be long.
I've seen the daylight breaking high above the bough
I've found my destination and I've made my vow;
so whether you abhor me
Or deride me or ignore me
Mighty mountains loom before me and I won't stop now.
-- Naomi Long Madgett
==============================================================
The front porch is now open. Pull up a chair, "set and talk with us a spell". For those of you joining us here for the first time, introduce yourself.