RedEye's #Selma50 Roundup

KKK trying to reach new ppl during the 50th celebrations. Residents tell me this was on their door step this morning pic.twitter.com/ZmwfwkqZ0K
— ashley thompson (@ashleythompTV) March 8, 2015

Just this week, I was asked whether I thought the Department of Justice’s Ferguson report shows that, with respect to race, little has changed in this country. I understand the question, for the report’s narrative was woefully familiar. It evoked the kind of abuse and disregard for citizens that spawned the Civil Rights Movement. But I rejected the notion that nothing’s changed. What happened in Ferguson may not be unique, but it’s no longer endemic, or sanctioned by law and custom; and before the Civil Rights Movement, it most surely was. ~President Barack Hussein Obama 

#Selma50  We Must Honor Selma Foot Soldiers by Repairing What They Fought For  https://t.co/S7c4mjbGIg via @aclu pic.twitter.com/KekqxaG8Cz
— The Crisis Magazine (@thecrisismag) March 8, 2015

 Meet the New Jim Crow.

Fifty years ago, African-Americans were kept from the polls by the threat of beatings and lynchings. Today, Jim Crow has traded in his white sheets for spreadsheets. He’s Dr. James Crow, systems analyst. His method is lynching by laptop.

Diane Nash refused to march in #Selma50 because George Bush

#FergusonReport shows tax dollars are being used to arm racist police departments. What could possibly go wrong?

Bloody Sunday for the Selma to Montgomery March was 50 years ago next weekend:         #SpiderMartin pic.twitter.com/54LhIE7MZJ
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) March 1, 2015

 It's not just Ferguson 

The problem is bigger than Ferguson.

The Ferguson Report  validates our outrage.

Read it and weep.

Know Justice.

Know Peace.

Eye tried tell some of y'all Terri Sewell was Artur Davis in Designer Pumps, can you hear me now #Leftinbama? #Vindicated

H/T Left in Alabama

Yes, this is another Eye tried to tell some of y'all Alabama's lone democratic (and I use that term loosely) Congresswoman was Artur Davis in designer pumps post.

Remember when Congress Critter Davis was the lone member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against the Affordable Health Care Act ?

Alabama Congressman Artur Davis, who is attempting to become that state’s first Black governor, was the lone Congressional Black Caucus member who voted against health care reform championed by President Barack Obama, sparking local and national criticism.
“He let us down,” state Rep. Mary Moore, a Birmingham Democrat, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “You tell someone, ‘Vote for me, and I will look out for you,’ then they vote for his or her own agenda.”
She and about a dozen people gathered in front of Davis’ downtown Birmingham office around midnight Saturday.
“We prayed for a miracle. We prayed that God would change his heart because so many people in this country and in his district are hurting,” Moore said.
Davis says he couldn’t vote for the health care reform package because it’s too big.

If Sewell  thinks she's going to be governor some day, toadying up to the white folks (H/T RD), she might want to ask her predecessor how well that turned out for him.  But I digress.

BREAKING: ALABAMA'S 7TH US CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSWOMAN, TERRI SEWELL, BREAKS WITH OTHER CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS MEMBERS, SAYS SHE WILL ATTEND ISRAELI PM BIBI NETANYAHU'S SPEECH. This action by Rep. Terri A. Sewell is an insult to President Barack Obama. (H/T ES)

“I don’t hold Netanyahu responsible,” Butterfield said. “I hold Speaker Boehner responsible, but I would hope that Mr. Netanyahu would not want to get involved. I personally think it is disrespectful.”
That was a word many members used: “It is very disrespectful to this president, and what concerns me more is that I think it’s a pattern that is starting to develop from this speaker that we’re getting more and more disrespectful of the office of the presidency,” said Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.). “I think it’s silly and petty.”

So, Why has Terri Sewell chosen to join the other side? Her recent votes surely indicate that her positions are far different than what her own constituents would expect.

 Friday, February 13, 2015, Congresswoman Terri Sewell (D-Selma) issued a written statement after the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015 was reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. While supportive of the legislation’s intent, Congresswoman Sewell wants to see the legislation strengthened.

Sound familiar?

Last week, as President Barack Obama urged Congress to plow ahead even without support from Republicans, Davis said he was open to supporting a bill if certain major changes were made.
On Tuesday, he ruled that out.
"What's on the table now is a massive overhaul of the health care systems in this country," Davis said. "We can fix the problems without having to do a massive systems overhaul."

I pity the residents of the 7th district .

My worst fear has come to past. Republicans, enabled by the media (again) and the neo liberals (again) bought and paid for the only African American seat in congress (again). I'm sure they are patting themselves on the back and high fiving their "victory" this morning, but this is wrong on so many levels. For one thing it proves it's not about the people, it's about the money, the power and the influence. It's proof the residents of the 7th district didn't get to decide who represents them in congress (again).

I guess I can't blame Sewell for being afraid of losing her job..or worse...

Tea Party radio host Andrea Shea King argued recently that Democratic lawmakers — and specifically members of the Congressional Black Caucus — should be put to death by hanging if they boycotted Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Tuesday speech to Congress
“Obama doesn’t have to run for reelection again, a lot of these guys do,” King said in a clip of her radio show that was published by Right Wing Watch on Monday. “Listen, I would like to think that these guys could pay with their lives, hanging from a noose in front of the U.S. Capitol Building.”

Don't blame me, I supported Sheila Smoot.

RedEye's Monday Morning Meltdown #WhitePrivilege #ChapelHillShooting #PatelAlabama #JackieRobinsonWest #HBCU #Selma #LorettaLynch

📢 White Privilege: "We'll decide what is racist & what is not racist. We are the deciders of everything." pic.twitter.com/pf7y31Mpd4
— Nanticoke Lenape Bae (@MochaLisaccino) February 16, 2015

EYE am back! Did you miss me?  EYE am playing catch up, but here are some issues that caught my EYE to get the ball rolling.

A 57 year old grandfather from India,  Blogger Legal Schnauzer and three Muslim students discover what it's like to be black/brown in America.  Welcome to our world.

What's that you say?  Stripping the Jackie Robinson League of the their title is all about race?  I'm shocked!  Shocked I tell you!  NOT.

Given the racial politics of Chicago and a few of it’s surrounding suburbs, having one mostly white team start a witch hunt against an all black team just smells of racist attitudes.  I rarely use the term racist because often times people act on their ignorance based on prejudices and bigotry, but racist ideals and sensibilities often present themselves in larger ways that affect the metanarrative; it’s hard to label a person racist when so much of the system is slanted and a preferential treatment is automatically given to whites.  Operating in white privilege often means the subconscious, and perhaps unintentional discrimination of denial of persons of color, but in this case it is clearly intentional on not just the denial, but the removal of an earned prize and more importantly, the title.

I can't believe  HBCU's(Historically Black Colleges and Universities) are being criticized by the first African American President of the United States of America.  Strike that.  Yes.  EYE.  Can.   So much for Hope  for  Change we can  Believe  in.

Say it ain't so Joe! Lorretta Lynch is Codoleeza Rice with a law degree and the Senate committee is delaying a vote to confirm her? 

Today's Must Read
Selma in February

No keener an observer than Thurgood Marshall has rightfully made the point that, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln, no other president in American history did more for the equal rights of African Americans than Lyndon - not Jack Kennedy, not Bill Clinton (the first "black" president) not even Barack Obama! In fact, Obama's presidency owes its very existence to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, both of which were signed into law by Johnson. I know it's fashionable these days to portray half-witted presidents from Texas in the most negative light (I'm guilty of that, believe me); it's just that Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush just aren't in the same league - it's not even close. Think of it as comparing apples with decomposing ravens.

EYE Shall Return

The Politics of Character Assassination #MLK #SuicideLetter #FBI

What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

The unnamed author suggests intimate knowledge of his correspondent’s sex life, identifying one possible lover by name and claiming to have specific evidence about others. Another passage hints of an audiotape accompanying the letter, apparently a recording of “immoral conduct” in action. “Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure,” the letter demands. It concludes with a deadline of 34 days “before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”

“There is only one thing left for you to do,” the author warns vaguely in the final paragraph. “You know what it is.” 

Why the FBI's Suicide Note Still Matters

Though it was sent 50 long years ago, the FBI’s so-called suicide letter to Martin Luther King, Jr. is very much of a piece with today’s America, where fear of and anger toward the government casts a shadow over everything from web-surfing to starting a business. Historian Beverly Gage and The New York Times have just published an unredacted version of the anonymous November, 1964 letter almost certainly sent by the FBI to Martin Luther King, Jr. a few weeks before the civil rights leader was set to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

FBI's Letter to Martin Luther King Jr. Reveals Ugly Truths From Hoover's Era

 The FBI under Hoover devoted a great deal of attention to Dr. King, whom Hoover considered a threat to national security, Vox reports. The letter reportedly came to be after Hoover failed to prove King was a Communist, which he could have used to disgrace him. Yale professor of American History Beverly Gage wrote in the New York Times, the letter is “the most notorious and embarrassing example of Hoover’s F.B.I. run amok.”

Fist Dap Upset Resident  for giving me the idea for this post and explaining why some white Alabamians are having a hard time separating fact from fiction in the movie #Selma.  Normally I would delete comments that don't provide links and are off topic.