Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Today we celebrate the history, and success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott which began December 5, 1955 with a call for a one-day boycott of buses by the Women's Political Council.
I remember teaching this history in a Women’s Studies class, and my students had no idea what a mimeograph machine was. At a time when far too many people think that “organizing” is posting to TwitX, TikTok, Instagram or Facebook — it’s important to examine how this victory was won, and to credit those people who made it happen.
I found a slew of Rosa Parks social media posts today, and of course those crediting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther Kings Jr. but barely any mentions of the women who made it happen. ‘
This is an excellent video on the history you rarely hear about.
Jo Ann Robinson: A Heroine of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Born on April 17, 1912, in Culloden, Georgia, Robinson distinguished herself early as the valedictorian of her high school class, went on to become the first person in her family to graduate from college, and then fulfilled her dream of becoming a teacher.
She taught in the Macon, Georgia, public schools for fives years while earning a master's degree from Atlanta University. She also pursued English studies at Columbia University in New York City. She moved to Montgomery in 1949 to teach at Alabama State College.
In Montgomery, she became active in the Women's Political Council (WPC), a local civic organization for African American professional women that was dedicated to fostering women's involvement in civic affairs, increasing voter registration in the city's black community, and aiding women who were victims of rape of assault.
If you can get a copy, strongly suggest you read Robinson’s memoir:
How it ended:
On June 5, 1956, a three-judge U.S. District Court ruled 2-1 that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. The majority cited Brown v. Board of Education as a legal precedent for desegregation and concluded, “In fact, we think that Plessy v. Ferguson has been impliedly, though not explicitly, overruled,…there is now no rational basis upon which the separate but equal doctrine can be validly applied to public carrier transportation...”
The city of Montgomery appealed the U.S. District Court decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and continued to practice segregation on city busing. For nearly a year, buses were virtually empty in Montgomery. Boycott supporters walked to work--as many as eight miles a day--or they used a sophisticated system of carpools with volunteer drivers and dispatchers. Some took station-wagon "rolling taxis" donated by local churches.
Montgomery City Lines lost between 30,000 and 40,000 bus fares each day during the boycott. The bus company that operated the city busing had suffered financially from the seven month long boycott and the city became desperate to end the boycott. Local police began to harass King and other MIA leaders. Car pool drivers were arrested and taken to court for petty traffic violations. Despite all the harassment, the boycott remained over 90% successful. African Americans took pride in the inconveniences caused by limited transportation. One elderly African American woman replied that, “My soul has been tired for a long time. Now my feet are tired, and my soul is resting.” The promise of equality declared in Brown v. Board of Education for Montgomery African Americans helped motivate them to continue the boycott.
The company reluctantly desegregated its buses only after November 13, 1956, when the Supreme Court ruled Alabama's bus segregation laws unconstitutional.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Efforts at reforming the justice system have been mixed. The disparity between Black and white rates of incarceration dropped by 40% between 2000 and 2020, according to a September 2022 report by the Council on Criminal Justice. Associated Press: America’s Black attorneys general discuss race, politics and the justice system
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The American legal system is facing a crisis of trust in communities around the country, with people of all races and across the political spectrum.
For many, recent protests against police brutality called attention to longstanding discrepancies in the administration of justice. For others, criticism of perceived conflicts of interest in the judiciary, as well as aspersions cast by former President Donald Trump and others on the independence of judges and law enforcement, have further damaged faith in the rule of law among broad swaths of the public.
Yet many Black attorneys understood the disparate impact the legal system can have on different communities long before the 2020 protests following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police. Many pursued legal careers and entered that same system to improve it, with some rising to one of its most influential roles, the top enforcement official: attorney general.
There is a record number of Black attorneys general, seven in total, serving today. Two Black attorneys, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, have served as U.S. attorney general. And the vice president, Kamala Harris, was the first Black woman elected attorney general.
In that same moment of increased representation, the U.S. is gripped by intense debates regarding justice, race and democracy. Black prosecutors have emerged as central figures litigating those issues, highlighting the achievements and limits of Black communal efforts to reform the justice system.
Andrea Campbell, Massachusetts AG
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I just assumed that everyone loved Kravitz. His catalog spans a quarter of a century and multiple genres, including classic rock, pop, hard rock, ballads and collabs with hip-hop GOATS. Women think he’s fine. Men admire him for winning four Grammys and a Huxtable. I imagine that he is beloved by scarf manufacturers for singlehandedly propping up the boa industry. Because of the song “Cause I Love You,” I’m sure Kravitz understands why Mr. Williams remains atop the “Lenny” rankings.
But, according to Esquire, Black America’s second-ranked Lenny feels slighted.
In a cover profile that coincides with the release of Kravitz’s 12th studio album, Jay-Z, Denzel Washington and other Black icons wax poetic about the impact and legacy of the writer, producer and multi-instrumentalist. But, despite selling more albums than DaBaby, Lil Baby and Bhad Bhabie combined, Lenny Kravitz has never been invited to a single BET or Soul Train Award show.
Buried in the 6,897 words written by a white woman interspersed by photographs shot by a white man showing a Kravitz wearing clothes designed by white people, the celebrated musician lamented his lack of support from the Black community. Specifically, he can’t understand why his success “is not celebrated by the folks who run [Black] publications or organizations,”….
As someone who has also never received an invitation to the Stellar Awards or a write-up in the Source Magazine, I understand Kravitz’s complaint. Sure, I don’t sing gospel music and I’ve never made a rap song but I also don’t know what the hell Kravitz would do at the Source Awards. The Soul Train Awards doesn’t even have a rock category and the last time Kravitz had a song on the top 40 Hip Hop /R&B charts, the BET Awards didn’t exist. Eminem appeared in multiple BET Hip Hop Awards cyphers because he is a hip-hop artist but haters like y’all insist on bringing facts and logic into this emotional argument. Iggy Azalea was nominated best new female hip-hop artist because … OK, I can’t explain that one, but still …
Having worked in Black media for most of my career, I can assure you that there is not a single Black-centric outlet that would reject Kravitz if he wanted to appear at one of these celebrations. Most Black publications would kill for an exclusive interview with someone like Kravitz. Most of the platforms he references have published stories on the Black origins of rock and roll. I know because I have written some of them.
Lenny Kravitz
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One of Haiti’s most controversial figures is back in his troubled homeland after being deported from the United States on Thursday.
Guy Philippe, the former Haitian police commander who led a rebellion in 2004 that overthrew President Jean Bertrand Aristide and then spent nearly a dozen years evading U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents, arrived aboard a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flight along with more than a dozen others deportees. The flight departed from Alexandria, Louisiana, at 5:57 a.m. and arrived in Haiti at 9:49 a.m.
Philippe’s presence was confirmed by the Office of National Migration, which is tasked with receiving deportees returned to Haiti. Upon landing, he was immediately taken into custody by the Haiti’s judicial police.
The ICE flight is the latest deportation trip by the Biden administration, which has been asked by immigration advocates and the United Nations to halt all deportations to Haiti, given the country’s ongoing armed gang and humanitarian crisis.
Tom Cartwright, a refugee advocate who tracks U.S. deportation flights, says despite the demands, Haiti has been averaging about one ICE flight per month since last December, usually with fewer than 50 people onboard. Since President Joe Biden’s Jan. 20, 2021, inauguration, the U.S. has deported more than 27,200 Haitians back to their country, said Cartwright, who added that Thursday’s flight is the 289th ICE deportation flight under this administration.
Guerline Jozef, co-founder of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a San Diego-based immigrant rights group that works with U.S. asylum seekers, said Philippe’s deportation makes no sense in the current context, which includes the Biden administration’s support for an armed force from Kenya to be deployed to Haiti to help the Caribbean nation’s fragile police force combat gangs.
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A top U.S. intelligence official presented a detailed proposal to the leaders of Congo and Rwanda last week for a pact to reduce fighting in eastern Congo — and promised to help enforce the deal.
The leaders largely signed off on the U.S. plan, which included commitments for Rwanda to pull back its forces and offensive military equipment by Jan. 1 and for Congo to ground its drones, according to a readout of the meetings.
The readout shows that the U.S. is playing a much more active role than previously disclosed in trying to calm tensions in the increasingly volatile region, where conflict between Congolese forces and rebels backed by neighboring Rwanda is threatening to escalate into all-out war between the countries.
The Biden administration previously said that Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines flew to the region last week to “secure commitments” from Congolese and Rwandan leaders to deescalate fighting and that they “plan to take specific steps to reduce current tensions.” But the administration did not disclose the extent to which the U.S. was designing and overseeing the plan.
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Voices & Soul
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Editor
Both of my sisters were raped by the time they were sophomores in high school. The younger one was raped twice more by the time she graduated. They don't mind that I mention these facts. They have counseled young girls and women on rape, and we all volunteered at rape and suicide crisis call-in centers when we were in our teens and early twenties.
Initially, my sisters were reluctant in letting me know they’d been attacked, for fear I would find the perps and have a murder charge over my head. But we were raised to let the law handle it. So I let the law run its course.
I’ve been really perturbed about the horrendous news of the Hamas attacks and the age-old terror of rape to terrorize a population, but I’m even more angry at so-called allies who are now equivocating, who are now apologizing for that terror because of some ill-conceived idea about liberation, about the need for retribution over wrongs exacted.
It’s bull. There is no apologizing for Bibi’s heavy handedness, and the deaths he has caused in this rage over the Hamas attacks. He will be dealt with and the law will run its course because ninety percent of Israelis will see to it. And to our so-called allies, equivocating and dissembling, there is no apologizing for rape in any context, at any time and for any reason. You have shown us who you are, we believe it. And you will find out.
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can’t do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be
alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own
body and
who in the hell set things up
like this
and in France they say if the guy penetrates
but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me
and if after stabbing him if after screams if
after begging the bastard and if even after smashing
a hammer to his head if even after that if he
and his buddies fuck me after that
then I consented and there was
no rape because finally you understand finally
they fucked me over because I was wrong I was
wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong
to be who I am
which is exactly like South Africa
penetrating into Namibia penetrating into
Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if
Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the
proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland
and if
after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe
and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to
self-immolation of the villages and if after that
we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they
claim my consent:
Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of
the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what
in the hell is everybody being reasonable about
and according to the Times this week
back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem
and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they
killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba
and before that it was my father on the campus
of my Ivy League school and my father afraid
to walk into the cafeteria because he said he
was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong
gender identity and he was paying my tuition and
before that
it was my father saying I was wrong saying that
I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a
boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and
that I should have had straighter hair and that
I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should
just be one/a boy and before that
it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for
my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me
to let the books loose to let them loose in other
words
I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.
and the problems of South Africa and the problems
of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white
America in general and the problems of the teachers
and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social
workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very
familiar with the problems because the problems
turn out to be
me
I am the history of rape
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of
myself
I am the history of battery assault and limitless
armies against whatever I want to do with my mind
and my body and my soul and
whether it’s about walking out at night
or whether it’s about the love that I feel or
whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or
the sanctity of my national boundaries
or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity
of each and every desire
that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic
and indisputably single and singular heart
I have been raped
be-
cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age
the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the
wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic
the wrong sartorial I
I have been the meaning of rape
I have been the problem everyone seeks to
eliminate by forced
penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/
but let this be unmistakable this poem
is not consent I do not consent
to my mother to my father to the teachers to
the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy
to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon
idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in
cars
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
