How do we preserve the legacy of Commissioner Robert "Bob" Harrison March 8, 1943-October 25, 2017?

Robert "Bob" Harrison 

EYE would give anything not to be writing this post.  Maybe the reason it has taken me so long to pay tribute to Commissioner Robert "Bob" Harrison is I don't want to accept the fact he is gone on to glory and that I will miss him all the days of my life.  I started trying to write this post to Bob Harrison shortly after his funeral, I start typing and I stop typing.  Will today be the day I finally click publish?  Time will tell the truth.

Bob Harrison was a human being; therefore, he wasn't perfect but he was larger than life.  He was fearless and ferocious.  He was compassionate and committed.  He was effective as the people's commissioner and for that, he was sometimes rebuked and scorned, but that never stopped him from standing up for truth, justice, and the American way. 

A frequent criticism/complaint made by detractors was his commitment to "social programs" to help the people in his district.  Unlike other elected officials Bob Harrison used his discretionary money and resources to develop programs to uplift the least of these.

Commissioner Bob Harrison gave nearly $70,000 to a nonprofit group, Northwest Community Service Organization, that he helped create and ran out of his office. "I have divested myself of Northwest," Harrison said this month.
Northwest, which provides support programs for schools, now runs out of a separate building, Harrison said, and he has stepped down from the governing board. But he said he still uses his county tax dollars to pay two employees at Northwest.

How do we continue his legacy?   Can Bob Harrison be replaced, or is he one of those once in a lifetime irreplaceable leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcome X, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Dr. James I. Dawson, Dr. John Cashin, and Dr. Sonnie Wellington Hereford II?

The Republican Governor has decided Huntsville Police Department Captain  JesHenryMalone will represent District 6 on the Madison County Commission for the remainder of Bob's term.  Our challenge is to ensure that Bob's work goes on.  He had the vision, ingenuity, and determination to make life better for his constituents. He genuinely cared about the city of Huntsville and the quality of life for all it's citizens especially those of color who are often the last, the least and the left behind.

EYE wish the new Commissioner well but in the end, it will be the voters who determine if JessHenry Malone has the attributes, commitment, dedication and the fortitude to carry on Bob's vision on behalf of the people of District 6. It is important for the newly appointed Commissioner to remember Bob Harrison was not one to go along to get along.  He was the voice of/for/by the people and he deplored Handkerchief Heads.  If he wants to be elected to represent the district he needs to get to know the people and vice versa because right now all we know is he is a member of law enforcement. 

"I shake the trees; They make the jelly."

President Obama is coming to Sweet Home AmeriBAMA....Yawn

"It’s easy to get complacent about battles won long ago. But rights not safeguarded can be eroded or lost.... http://t.co/HqMzEHOGxP
— Anti-Racism Media (@AntiRacismTv) January 22, 2015

Why am I not excited President Obama plans to visit Selma, AmeriBama to celebrate the 5Oth Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act?

The White House says the March 7 trip also will highlight the upcoming 50th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act.
Obama last visited Selma for the 2007 anniversary, when he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination against Hillary Rodham Clinton. Both candidates and former President Clinton marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge where white police officers beat civil rights protesters in 1965.

Maybe it's because 50 years later Shelby County v. Holder gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

You have to give Alabama credit for its cheek. Last year, the state's Shelby County persuaded the US Supreme Court to find unconstitutional part of the Voting Rights Act that required certain states with histories of discriminatory election laws to get permission from the federal government before changing their voting practices. On Wednesday, Alabama will argue before the court that the same provision it helped decimate compelled lawmakers to racially gerrymander the entire state.

Maybe it's because 50 years later some (not to be confused with all)  police are killing black people and some are getting away with it. 

Justice Department lawyers will recommend that no civil rights charges be brought against the police officer who fatally shot an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Mo., after an F.B.I. investigation found no evidence to support charges, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

Maybe it's because 50 years later we are still fighting for the right to vote.

 The specific means of suppression have changed, but the objectives haven't: People in power are still trying to keep specific groups of Americans from voting.

 Maybe it's because 50 years later tax payer funded, government issued Weapons of Mass Destruction are being used on black citizens for protesting.

 “It didn’t look like America. It looked like Soweto,” Mr. Lyon said, referring to the South African township that was a hotbed of protests against apartheid. “It looked like soldiers. And soldiers’ job isn’t to protect. Their job is to kill people and to be ready to die.”

Maybe it's because 50 years later black people are still begging for the right to breathe.

 “I can’t breathe,” protesters chanted, in mostly peaceful demonstrations that brought longstanding strains over race to the heart of America’s most populous city. Earlier in the day, prosecutors announced the jury’s decision not to charge Daniel Pantaleo, one of the New York police officers who had confronted Garner for selling loose cigarettes on Staten Island in July.

Maybe it's because 50 years later, the more things change in America, the more they don't change in AmeriBama.

Taylor's decision, which he says was made in part out of concern for Dekalb County's taxpayer money being spent on "filthy language," comes as theaters across the country are hosting free-screenings to hundreds of thousands of students hoping to view the same film. Despite the national embrace and Selma's official PG-13 rating, however, Taylor said he simply could not permit students to experience a movie with the "F-word in it."

So come on down to the land of cotten, take some pretty pictures then board Air Force 1 and head on back to the White House Mr. President Obama sir.

 Don't worry about us.

Out of sight out of mind.

Look away.

Look away.

Look away. 

Dixieland.

RedEye tiptoeing away from the computer to go pray....

"For the sake of giving our community a new school"

"We were fighting for the right to breathe back then."   I'm not sure who made this statement, or where I read it, but I believe the late civil rights icon Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth used these words to describe the conditions during the civil rights movement as it related to the treatment, or should I say mistreatment, of African Americans. If I am wrong someone please correct me. Over 50 years later we are still fighting for the right to breathe, the difference is now we are fighting for the right to breathe clean air.

Like so many other things, pollution and environmental destruction disproportionately affect both people of color and the economically disadvantaged. This phenomenon is often referred to as environmental injustice and ties together the concepts of racial/economic privilege with unequal burden of the effects of environmental abuse.
Environmental racism is "the process whereby environmental decisions, actions, and policies result in racial discrimination or the creation of racial advantages."

None dare call it environmental racism, but that is exactly what is happening with the relocation of the new Mae Jemison High, other public schools, and parks in close proximity to an active rock quarry.  What started out as a fight to save the name of J.O.Johnson High School  turned into a fight for the rights of students, administrators, teachers, and support personnel in north Huntsville to breathe relatively clean air.

Why would anyone want to build school(s) and a recreational park near an active rock quarry?  That is the question.

Would those with the power to make these decisions want their loved ones attending/working in a school built less than a mile from an active rock quarry?  I think not.

The city of Huntsville is standing by the school districts assertion the air is "safe to breathe" at the location of the new, illegally named Mae Jemison High School, but to the best of my knowledge they are basing this on one test conducted on one day, in the early morning hours when there was no activity at the rock quarry.

If, I repeat, If, the DOJ approved the building of the new north Huntsville high school based on this one test, I not only have a problem with the BOE and the City of Huntsville, I have a problem with our  government.

In July 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (PDF) (13 pp, 23K, About PDF) Title VI of the Civil Rights Act states that "No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
In February 1994, President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898, "Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations." In a separate memorandum, President Clinton identified Title VI as one of several federal laws already in existence that can help "to prevent minority communities and low-income communities from being subject to disproportionately high and adverse environmental effects."

 The only reason a new school is being built in north Huntsville is because is because south Huntsville wanted a new school. What south Huntsville wants, south Huntsville gets. Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge south Huntsville getting a new school and keeping their name, I just don't believe it should be at the expense of the lives of north Huntsville residents.    

Happy Merry Everything to Everyone!

Celebrating and Living Kwanzaa: Sowing and Harvesting Seeds of Good

RedEye (get it?) would like to take this opportunity to wish you a happy, healthy, safe, holiday season. Postings will be light as RedEye takes time off to eat, drink and be merry with friends and family. Here are some must reads for you to read until  the RedEye returns.

Today Marks Two Months That Legal Schnauzer Rodger Shuler Has Been Unlawfully Jailed in Shelby County. 

"As Americans celebrate Christmas, I hope they will take a moment to realize their constitutional protections are rotting out from underneath them," Shuler said. "The prior restraint doctrine that grows from the first amendment and is supposed to protect my reporting in this case dates to 1780, and that predates the Lewis and Clark expedition. If our judiciary is so corrupt that it can't get simple constitutional law like this correct, then we are about to become more like Communist China that any of us care to admit."

Only in AmeriBama

Farewell to the "Most Hated White Man in the South"

  “Don’t ever go back to Birmingham. You’ll never be welcomed. You are a disgrace. You are the most hated white man in the south.”

You get the Twelve Months of Crazy you vote for.

No, 2013 really has made a name for itself in only one way. It was a year of general political incompetence, frothing buffoonery and self-made disasters. It was the year a chastened Republican Party did a lot of soul-searching as to why the voters no longer liked them, and followed it up by doing all of those same things twice over. We continued our tradition of not being able to accomplish even the most basic of legislative tasks; we were introduced to new battle lines declaring that however many children needed to be shot down in their classrooms, it was the price we were willing to pay for maintaining the collective white male gun erection; we saw the slow sinking of every last political savior into swamps of their own making.

What's that you say?  Better health care for blacks depends on the states?  I'm shocked!  Shocked I tell you!  Not.

 Of the 41.3 million uninsured Americans and legal U.S. residents, 16 percent are Black. African-Americans tend to be uninsured at a higher rate than other Americans, statistics show. While 16 percent of all non elderly U.S. citizens and other lawful residents are uninsured, 20 percent of eligible African-Americans lack health insurance.
Many of those uninsured live in Florida (677,000), Georgia (631,000), Texas (617,000), North Carolina (380,000) and New York (354,000).
But four of those five leading states – all except New York – do not plan to expand Medicaid, which advocates said is troubling as many African-Americans lack insurance because of meager incomes.

It's the Media that's making us stupid.

From Thomas Friedman, to Richard Cohen to Peggy Noonan and more. Here is Alex Pareene's worst of the worst.

The Poverty Rate in Alabama remains unchanged, seventh highest in U.S. but that's OK, at least Alabama is #1 in college football.  Snark

Ooops!  Black Male Dance Groups Stirs Controversy in Semmes Alabama Christmas Parade.

Dressed in red and white Santa sweaters and snug white shorts, the four young men performed a routine that entailed a combination of sharp thrusts, swaying and elaborate hip movements. Each member also sported pristine make-up.

Read on!  Read often!  Knowledge is power!

"NRA to African Americans: You'll need guns to protect yourself from the government"

This is a  a photo I snapped on March 4, 2007 of the late civil rights activist Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth being pushed in his wheelchair across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the annual reenactment of the voting rights march in Selma, Alabama by the future President of the United States of America Senator Barack Hussein Obama. Also pictured are former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and civil rights activist Al Sharpton.

When I first read this headline;   NRA to African Americans:  You'll need guns to protect yourself from the government, I scoffed, but as time, rhetoric, and events progressed I thought, if any group has reason to protect itself out of fear of the government it's African Americans.  Para quoting the late Fred Shuttlesworth, it looks like black folks have to fight for the right to breath again.

In an attempt to kill Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, attorneys from Shelby County, Alabama told the U.S. Supreme Court it was not 1965 anymore, and they were right (pun intended), it's 2013, and things didn't get better in Sweet Home Alabama with the election of the first African American President....they got worse. The Simple Minded Savior describes present day Alabama to a T.

 I was born and raised in this God forsaken state and it IS still stuck in the 50's and 60's. It's not a stereotype and why anyone would want to visit here is beyond me. Oh yeah, they can come visit and see what main attraction? The CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM...Some parts of the interstate still have a confederate flag flying high and proud so what's he talking about? And the fact that one of the State Legislators called Black people "ABORIGINES" on tape and it was part of a trial transcript makes no never mind. Yeah, you're right, Alabama has not one racial problem, it's a beacon of hope, a melting pot of sorts for the nation. This State, Alabama, should be held out as the example of how loving a state should be. *sarcasm* If Jesus came back right now and came to an Alabama suburb, he would be labeled a dead beat liberal hippie and crucified a second time.

  Sitting Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia thinks voting rights are a gift the government gave black people.  A gift black folks didn't earn and don't deserve. 

Today was the day that the Republican challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was argued before the Supreme Court. Arguments were fiery, but this particular quote from Justice Scalia was one worthy of Jim Crow. If ever there was a reason to preserve Section 5, Scalia articulated it. Via TPM:

Roberts and Kennedy led the questioning challenging the Voting Right Act. Justice Sonia Sotomayor led the questioning defending it.
Justice Antonin Scalia attributed the continued congressional reauthorization to a perpetual “racial entitlement” and suggested that it will be renewed into “perpetuity” because members of Congress would never let it lapse for fear for political repercussions.
“I don’t think there is anything to gain by any senator by voting against this Act,” Scalia said. “This is not the kind of question you can leave to Congress. They’re going to lose votes if they vote against the Voting Rights Act. Even the name is wonderful.”

Justice Scalia's words undermine the very core of our democracy.   And if that's not scary I don't know what is.

The Power of the Press is Awesome and Awful

Bill Hudson's image of Parker High School student Walter Gadsden being attacked by dogs was published in The New York Times on May 4, 1963.

What's that you say?  The Birmingham news media knew of plots to kill Civil Rights leaders and didn't report it?  I'm shocked!  Shocked I tell you!  Not.

Our understanding of the “good” has expanded beyond the lone-dreamer theory to embrace other activists, like King’s partner in Birmingham, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. Yet the evil segregationist archetype is fixed in the popular mind as the villainous housewife of “The Help” or the cretinous mob of “Django Unchained” — nobody we’d ever know, or certainly ever be.

But the disquieting reality is that the conflict was between not good and evil, but good and normal. The brute racism that today seems like mass social insanity was a “way of life” practiced by ordinary “good” people.

According to the Southern community’s consensus of “normal,” those fighting for rights now considered mainstream were “extremists,” and public servants could rationalize plans to murder men like Shuttlesworth, confident that they were on the right side of history.

Consider new evidence about a plan by Connor to have Shuttlesworth assassinated. Under Connor’s orders, Detective Tom Cook found a black man vulnerable to the law, supplied him with a gun and planted him by the steps of a church where Shuttlesworth was speaking one night. The plot was foiled when a passing police car frightened the hit man away.

What distinguishes this from other officially sanctioned schemes to kill Shuttlesworth is proof that it was known by the state’s largest news organization, The Birmingham News, owned by the Newhouse family, which also sponsored extensive surveillance of local citizens.

Read all about it in this article by Diane McWhorter the author of Carry Me Home. 

McWhorter grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and recounts being about the same age as the girls killed in the September 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, though she "was growing up on the wrong side of the revolution". While four black girls were murdered in that day's bombing, McWhorter recalls that the only repercussion of the killings on her white high school was the cancellation of a play rehearsal. Carry Me Home describes how bigotry was prevalent among whites and her interviews and reviews of documents from the civil rights era showed "the long tradition of enmeshment between law enforcers and Klansmen", ranging from local and state police to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.^[2]
She describes how local political leaders and newspaper editors supporting segregation exercised consistently poor judgment, with police chief Bull Connor consistently rescuing the cause of civil rights demonstrators, responding to peaceful protests from local teenagers with high-pressure fire hose and police dogs. Wyatt Tee Walker of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference recounted how "Birmingham would have been lost if Bull had let us go down to the city hall and pray".'^[2]
McWhorter notes the May 3, 1963, photo by Associated Press photographer Bill Hudson of Walter Gadsden, an African-American bystander who had been grabbed by a sunglasses-wearing police officer, while a German Shepherd lunged at his chest.^[3] The photo appeared above the fold, covering three columns in the next day's issue of The New York Times, as well as in other newspapers nationwide.^[4] McWhorter wrote that Hudson's photo that day drove "international opinion to the side of the civil rights revolution".^[5]

Let's just give up on the Constitution, except for the 2nd amendment of course, and let the media run the country and decide who is guilty or innocent.

We have to Occupy Just to Make It Today

H/T DownWithTyranny

Misplaced Allegiance-- Why Teabaggers Are Republicans... And Why The Rest Of Us Aren't

Earlier today, in researching a post about corporate shill Artur Davis, I recalled how, when growing up, I first grappled with the idea that poor and middle class people-- and it was Southerners I was thinking about at the time-- could make common cause with conservative politicians and right-wing parties. Conservative parties are-- over and above everything else-- reactions against any semblance of equality for poor and middle class people. That's the raison d'etre for conservatism to begin with. In the case of Southerners-- who were at the time massively abandoning the Democratic party and moving to a the "new" GOP of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, the tendency was to chalk it up to naked racism. But naked racism was just part of it. Just like naked racism is just part of the misplaced allegiance of the teabaggers to the Republican Party today.

Ten things that are plucking my last nerve.

1. The assertion, generally by Republicans, that a requirement to bring photo ID to the polls has something to do with curbing “voter fraud.” One candidate even said in debate the other night that voter fraud was on the rise in Virginia. When asked to provide an example he, of course, could not. Look, you don’t steal an election where the votes are cast, you steal it where the votes are counted. Anybody who gave this issue about ten seconds of thought would realize you can’t fix an election by voting fake voters. It’s too cumbersome, requires too many people to be in on the scheme. It’s a silly idea. We’ve had three presidential elections in this country that might have been stolen — 1880, 1960 and 2000. If they were, they were all stolen after the polls closed. So, when Republicans get serious about voting machines with computer software that can’t be easily hacked and paper trails to allow an accurate recount, I’ll believe they care about “voter fraud.” Until then, they’re just trying to suppress the vote.

4. The way some people who cheered on the Tea Party rallies last year, mock the Occupy Wall Street rallies this year. And, I suppose, vice versa. Before the Tea Party got co-opted by the Republican Party, it expressed a lot of the same populist outrage that Occupy Wall Street does. In my view, this is a country long in need of a little healthy populist outrage. The nightmare of the powers-that-be is that the Occupy Wall Street folks and the Tea Partiers might realize that they’re mad at some of the same people. That graphic going around the Internet isn’t a total joke; there is an intersection of interest between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street around the too chummy relationship between government and business.

This is what democracy looks like.

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around
Ain't gonna let nobody, turn me around
Turn us around, turn us around
Ain't gonna let nobody, turn me around
Keep on a walking, keep on a talking
Gonna build a brand new world


YES, WE CAN!
YES, WE ARE!
YES, WE WILL!

RedEye's Random Rants

Agabond must be reading this blog because they hit the nail on it's head with this post, which explains the difference between white racism and so called black racism. Black racism is not a mirror image of white racism. It is not equal and opposite. Instead it is different in scale and kind:

FED UP, this quote is for Y-O-U and yours.

Blacks do commit hate crimes and so on, but to think black racism is equal and opposite to white racism is to miss the nature of both white racism and black racism. White racism is institutional and cultural and a hundred times more powerful. Black racism is personal and, to a large degree, is a weakened form of white racism.

Some readers think I am just flipping the script, that I am a black Stormfront or something. A black Stormfront would talk about “whitey” and “white devils” and imagine blacks violently wiping out whites and so on. The strange thing is, nearly everyone who talks about that kind of stuff on this blog is white. So much so that when a black commenter talks like that I suspect him (it is always a him)

I hear you Mack Lyons.

A number of blogs have suffered from individuals who stumble in said discussions and dictate their own opinions, drawn from experiences that may be alien or inapplicable to the situations alluded to in the discussions. They expect everyone else to stop and listen, thereby becoming the center of attention by presenting themselves as a sage bearer of advice. Such advice usually comes from a perspective that's had zero experience with the discussion subjects or anything remotely similar.

But I refuse to moderate or ban people from this blog because I don't agree with their point of view, or, how they present their point of view. This blog was started because someone accused me of doing the very thing you described above. Everyone has the right to express their opinion in their own way. Readers have the right to react in their own way. Most of the time FED UP is on speech ignore, which is my right. The Trolls are everywhere but I can't suppress free speech. I just can't.

Welcome to my blogroll TheSkepticOne! You are my kind of Blogger!

But this is America, where equality and justice are still determined by the color of your skin. Studies continue to show that when the victim is white, 9 times out of 10, the Black defendant is given the death penalty...regardless of where the trial takes place in this country.

And believe it or not, a sitting United States Supreme Court Justice says it's okay to put an innocent man to death in America because the Constitution doesn't address the matter.

Birmingham Home Girl is a day late and a dollar short.

In the hopes of cleaning up history’s view of her and I guess selling more books.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the Bush administration was dismissive toward her concerns over security in a post-war Iraq, according to excerpts from her autobiography that Rice tweeted about Sunday.

How the republicans plan to steal the 2012 Presidential election with Artur Davis providing the get away car and Herman Cain driving it away. Cheating is not winning.

"Once again, a major political party in the United States is running on a platform of making it more difficult for people to vote, specifically for the poor, the elderly, minority voters, and college students. Once again, the kind of "voter fraud" that these laws supposedly stop, a "national crisis" has never been documented. These laws exist for one reason: to tilt the electorate in favor of the Republican party. Period."

The rule of law or the rule of the jungle? I report. You decide.

Months of acts of aggression culminating in an extrajudicial execution sends a message to other countries, and even non-state actors, who find the US or any of its NATO allies to be a foe is that one must kill or be killed. This is the rule of the jungle, not of international law.

What a difference a Judge makes in Sweet Home Alabama. One Judge uses the 1901 Alabama Constitution to declare contract provision in Alabama immigration law unconstitutional in pending lawsuits. And another Judge uses the 1901 Alabama Constitution to keep a current law intact unconstitutionally discriminates against black and poor schoolchildren in Alabama.

"Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round"

"Free at Last, Free at Last."

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth will be laid to rest today

In memory and honor the late Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth I am turning the floor over to two great posts written by two great Alabama Bloggers.

Mack Lyons pens an excellent account of Birmingham, Alabama Fred Shuttlesworth who fought like the Devil to change. Here is an excerpt;

While reading an AL.com story about concerned citizens meeting to discuss and plan Birmingham's future, I ran across this nugget that's a bit of a theme among some dissatisfied with the Magic City's current shape:

They should talk about B'ham's past (pre 1963). A lot more pleasant.
Be nice if they could revert back to that time. I just don't see it happening, which is why I left.

I've never known any black person from Birmingham to talk pleasant about the city as a whole pre-1960s, unless it involved their own neighborhoods. That kinda narrows down the pool of people most likely to say the above, trolls excluded.

The Simple-Minded Savior talks about the present state of Alabama.

I was born and raised in this God forsaken state and it IS still stuck in the 50's and 60's. It's not a stereotype and why anyone would want to visit here is beyond me. Oh yeah, they can come visit and see what main attraction? The CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM...Some parts of the interstate still have a confederate flag flying high and proud so what's he talking about? And the fact that one of the State Legislators called Black people "ABORIGINES" on tape and it was part of a trial transcript makes no never mind. Yeah, you're right, Alabama has not one racial problem, it's a beacon of hope, a melting pot of sorts for the nation. This State, Alabama, should be held out as the example of how loving a state should be. *sarcasm* If Jesus came back right now and came to an Alabama suburb, he would be labeled a dead beat liberal hippie and crucified a second time.

Let these diaries serve as an incentive to march on until victory is won in grateful appreciation for the sacrifices of

Reverend Shuttlesworth

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Four Little Black Girls

Viola Luizzo

Jimmie Lee Jackson.

Their living will not be in vain.


Funeral Services for Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth will bestreaming live beginning today at 10 a.m.

Rest in Peace thy good and faithful Servant. Your faithfulness endures for all generations Psalm 119:90

Words to live by after a week of loss

I don't believe it is a coincidence three great Americans made their transition this week. In addition to Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and Steve Jobs, esteemed professor and civil rights advocate Derrick Bell died on October 6, 2011.

Not afraid of being seen as a controversial figure, even though he described himself as not “confrontational by nature”, he always led by example and on his own terms. While in his 20′s, when working at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, he was told to relinquish his ties with the N.A.A.C.P., instead of holding on to his Justice Department position, he opted to quit.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."~Steve Jobs~

“After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision. By pulling my opening Oct 3rd, You (ESPN) stepped on the Toes of The First Amendment
Freedom of Speech, so therefore Me, My Song, and All My Rowdy Friends are OUT OF HERE. It’s been a great run.” -- Hank Williams Jr

And all we've got to do is to keep marching. Do tomorrow what we did today and do it the next day and then the next day, we won't have to do it at all because the day before yesterday, we filled up the jails. And then today, we filled up the jail yard. Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.~Justice Louis D. Brandeis

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Update~Remembering Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, An American Hero

"The Lord knew I lived in a hard town, so he gave me a hard head."~Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth
Click here to see a photo I snapped of Reverend Shuttlesworth being pushed in his wheelchair across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama by the future President of the United States of America.

The legendary Birmingham, Alabama Civil Rights hero Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth made his transition from labor to reward on Wednesday in his beloved Bombingham.

He was the soul and heart of the Birmingham movement," Georgia Rep. John Lewis said. It was Birmingham, he said, that brought the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"Fred Shuttlesworth had the vision, the determination never to give up, never to give in," Lewis said. "He led an unbelievable children's crusade. It was the children who faced dogs, fire hoses, police billy clubs that moved and shook the nation."

A decade before that infamous standoff between authorities and young protesters in Kelly Ingram Park, Shuttlesworth was already pushing for change in what had come to be called "Bombingham." Dozens of black homes and churches were bombed, the cases rarely investigated by the city's all-white police force. In 1955, the charismatic young pastor of Bethel Baptist Church led a delegation of ministers who petitioned for black police officers.

Reverend Shuttlesworth was known as the racist worst enemy because he was fearless.

In his 1963 book "Why We Can't Wait," King called Shuttlesworth "one of the nation's the most courageous freedom fighters ... a wiry, energetic and indomitable man."

He survived a 1956 bombing, an assault during a 1957 demonstration, chest injuries when Birmingham authorities turned fire hoses on demonstrators in 1963, and countless arrests.

"I went to jail 30 or 40 times, not for fighting or stealing or drugs," Shuttlesworth told grade school students in 1997. "I went to jail for a good thing, trying to make a difference."

Diane McWhorter, the author of “Carry Me Home,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2001 book about the struggle in Birmingham, wrote in an e-mail that Mr. Shuttlesworth was known among some civil rights activists as “the Wild Man from Birmingham.”

“Among the youthful ‘elders’ of the movement,” she added, “he was Martin Luther King’s most effective and insistent foil: blunt where King was soothing, driven where King was leisurely, and most important, confrontational where King was conciliatory — meaning, critically, that he was more upsetting than King in the eyes of the white public.”

Mr. Shuttlesworth was temperamental, even obstinate, and championed action and confrontation over words. He could antagonize segregationists and allies alike, quarreling with his allies behind closed doors.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth in his own words. Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954-1965; Episode 101-36

You must remember that since uh, I had been building up a lot of momentum and I was known all over. So that, we say that if you don't rescind the law, we're going to ride the buses anyway, which was an implied threat. Uh, they didn't do it, the Ku Klux Klan uh, saw to it that I wouldn't be around to ride the buses, so we were going to ride the buses, I believe it was the night after Christmas, but on Christmas Night in '56 the Klan set about uh, 16 sticks of dynamite right at the head of my bed, the corner of the church, the corner of the house and I was in the bed at the point of the blast. And this dynamite went off about 9:15. It blew the wall between my head and the dynamite away, it blew the floor out from under my bed, space of I guess, 15 feet. The springs that I was lying on we never found them.

There I was lying on the mattress. I knew the relevance of Moses' statement when he said, "Underneath the everlasting arm." The roof uh, came down, all that dust, the house was about 60 years old, dynamite dust and blast was, smoke, other things were there. This is a strange thing, I, I knew that the bomb was meant for me, I knew what it was, and instantaneously, at the same time I had a sense of presence that I wouldn't get hurt. I knew that. You can know something you never read. And I, I might say to you at that moment all fear was taken from me. I never feared anything since that time.

Reverend Shuttlesworth is equally important to American history as Steve Jobs. They were two great Americans, one revolutionized Civil Rights and the other revolutionized consumer products. But in the end it can be said they helped others more than they helped themselves.

Well done thy good and faithful servants.

Rest in peace.