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Monday, July 20, 2020

Congressman John Robert Lewis " rooted deep in Alabama soil"

John Lewis, upper left and his nine brothers and sisters circa 1969. 
Front row L-R Rosa, Ethel, Ora
Back row L-R, John, Henry, William, Samuel, Freddie, Edward and Adolph
Lewis is the most famous one, but Rosa Tyner, the youngest, said all of her older brothers and sisters were exceptional. Ora worked in nursing. Edward, the oldest boy, was deaf, but refused to get on disability and he took care of Willie Mae after Eddie died in 1977.
“My mother, we called her Mul, was very humble. She didn’t say much and I never really heard her cuss. Dad was a humble, good person,” Tyner said. “All of the children were raised right. I’m not saying that we were saints. But if we did something wrong, we got it straight.”
Credit: courtesy of the Lewis family
 “So you are John Lewis? The boy from Troy,” Martin Luther King Jr. said upon meeting the teenager who would become one of the civil rights movement’s most famous, vocal, and long-lived members.
The third of ten children born to sharecropper Eddie Lewis and his wife, Willie Mae, John Lewis was out in the blistering Alabama fields at age 4, picking cotton, gathering peanuts, pulling corn. The family survived on the leavings after their white landlord deducted his rent in cash or crops. They lived in “Carter’s Quarters,” a tract that had been home to Willie Mae Carter’s family since slavery days. Ironically, it was just a few miles from where John Lewis’s great opponent, Gov. George Wallace, was raised.
My father couldn’t afford a newspaper subscription. I’d walk half a mile to get my grandfather’s paper after he got done reading it. I kept up with what was going on, reading that paper and listening to that radio. . . . We ordered everything from the Sears & Roebuck catalog. We called it ‘the Wish Book.’ . . . I was bused 18 miles to the Pike County Training School. Black schools were ‘training schools’; whites went to high schools. We had old broken-down buses, ragged books, a rundown building. White students had new buses, nice painted buildings with the grounds kept up. . . . In Troy, they had a soda fountain where you could get Coca-Cola. We called it a combination. A black person could not take a seat. We had to stand at the end of the counter. ‘May I have a combination?’ You put your money down and went outside to the street corner to drink it. . . . As a young child I saw a difference. I resented it. Even the country road where I grew up—because black people owned the land, the road was left unpaved for many, many years. When it rained, the bus got stuck in the mud. That was life in Alabama.—U.S. Rep. John Lewis
Listen to John Lewis describe how Rev. Martin Luther King Jr inspired him in his own words.

While researching John Lewis EYE discovered black politics are more complex than they look.
Sometimes, going back into history is what helps define the present in black politics and helps point the way forward. The fight for Atlanta’s fifth congressional district once upon a time, in 1986, pitted two civil rights icons, Julian Bond and John Lewis, against each other. It is the sort of history that tells us everything about much of black politics today: Bond, the intellectual race man beloved by blacks, loses to John Lewis, the man who sold himself particularly well to whites.
Rest in peace, power, and love with the #Ancestors Congressman John Lewis. EYE will keep getting into #GoodTrouble in #SweetHomeAlabama in honor of your courage and sacrifice. 

Friday, July 17, 2020

“People do not choose rebellion, it is forced upon them. Revolution is always an act of self- defense.” - Rest In Power Rev. C. T. Vivian

As you will see from the video below the right to vote is steeped in blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice for African Americans.   This video was recorded pre-cell phones in Selma, Alabama in 1965.  In this video, he was assaulted by Alabama Law Enforcement Officers for trying to register to vote at the Dallas County Courthouse in Selma, Alabama. 

This is the history that confederate memorials, monuments, and names on buildings reflect.  

This is why the Confederate monument located on the grounds of the Madison County Alabama courthouse is offensive and needs to be removed and replaced immediately.
  Rev. C. T. Vivian of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, SCLC, is telling the Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark (a staunch segregationist) that by not letting them into the courthouse, he's breaking an injunction




We owe you much Rev. Vivian, the world is a better place because of you, rest in peace, power and love with the #Legends.


Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Republican Governor Kay Appointed but the Democratic Voters in Madsion County Commission District 6 Annointed

Image may contain: 1 person, closeup

EYE would like to offer my congratulations to  #VioletEdwards the new and first African American female to be elected to the Good Ole Boys Club, EYE mean the Madison County Commission to represent District 6 by the voters in District 6 and for the voters in District 6.  Hopefully, she won't be the last.

But here's the rub:
The turnout in Madison was light as expected, at 14.58%. Out of 290,580 voters, 42,359 went to the polls in the election. There were 39,098 Republican votes and 3,261 Democrat votes cast.
EYE know good and darn well there are more than 3,261 registered voters in District 6, it's the largest district in Madison County.   To be fair there is a COVID19 crisis in Huntsville/Madison County and more voters could have voted absentee, curbside, or via mail if the Republicans hadn't intervened, but EYE have to ask, why are Democrats so darn apathetic? 

As you can see, rain, snow, sleet, shine, or COVID19 Republicans get out and vote.  What's up with Democrats, especially African American Democrats whose right to vote is steeped in blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice?

This is why the District can't have nice things.


Saturday, July 4, 2020

America hates us for our Freedom


Photo: Auburn Gay and Lesbian Alliance
America hates us.For years, the Black students at Auburn University have protested Kappa Alpha Order’s “Old South Parade,” a tradition that happens on college campuses where members of one of the oldest American fraternities celebrate the Confederacy. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee did it when he was a member. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster did it when he was a member in college. So did Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.), Roy Blount (R- Ala.), Former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and former Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, among many others.