And Replace It With One of Muhammad Ali

There was a rally in Lexington last night at which Mayor Jim Gray was applauded for his decision to remove from downtown the statues of two Traitors in Defense of Slavery.  Meanwhile:

From the Herald:

The Kentucky chapter of the NAACP will renew its effort to remove a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis from the state Capitol Rotunda in the aftermath of deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., the group’s leader said Monday.

“It’s important for all to realize how offensive these statues can be, especially to the African-American community,” said Raoul Cunningham, who also heads the Louisville chapter of the NAACP. “We are working on a meeting in a few weeks of like-minded individuals to plot a course to take the Davis statue out of the seat of state government and put it somewhere more suitable, like the Kentucky History Museum.”

He said the state chapter has between 8,000 to 10,000 members and that he will encourage local chapters around the state to seek the removal of Confederate statues and symbols from prominent positions in their communities.

“Charlottesville has focused attention again on this situation,” said Cunningham, referring to a white supremacist rally in that city Saturday that left three dead and 35 injured.

The state NAACP was unsuccessful two years ago in trying to get the Davis statue out of the Capitol Rotunda. The state Historic Properties Advisory Commission voted 7-2 to keep it there.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article167101122.html#storylink=cpy

Protests for Civil Rights Older Than You Think

White Supremacy never dies, and never quits fighting to restore the 1850s.  The Resistance can't stop, either.

From the NAACP:

We celebrate the centennial of the NAACP’s Silent Protest Parade, held on July 28, 1917.




At the break of summer 1917, racial tension simmered across the nation. In East St. Louis, white residents launched a bloody attack on the rapidly expanding black community. Dozens of black residents were killed and thousands more were left homeless after their neighborhood was burned to ashes. The NAACP wasted no time in composing a retort and soon issued a call for a Silent Protest Parade. “You must be in line,”  the Association commanded. 


On July 28, nearly 10,000 black men, women, and children wordlessly paraded down New York’s Fifth Avenue. Silently marching to the beat of a drum, the throngs of protesters clutched picket signs declaring their purpose and demanding justice. 

“Make America safe for democracy.”

“We march because we deem it a crime to be silent in the face of such barbaric acts.”

“We march because we want our children to live in a better land.”

Their tactic was silence, but their message resounded: anti-black violence is unjust and un-American.  It was the first protest of its kind in New York, and the second instance of African Americans publicly demonstrating for civil rights. 


The NAACP has issued marching orders many times in the years since: in 1965, we marched in Selma in pursuit of our right to vote; in 2012, we held a second Silent March in New York to denounce stop-and-frisk policing; in 2015, we marched 1,002 miles from Selma to Washington, D.C. on our Journey for Justice.   


At our 108th Annual Convention in Baltimore this week, we marked the Silent Parade’s centennial with an interactive art installation. Art Force 5 invited convention attendees to collaborate on a mosaic memorial that will debut today in New York City.





  
Activists created the NAACP in 1909 to fight racialized violence. Then, we called it “lynching.” Today, we call it “police brutality.” But the effect is the same, and so is the ferocity of our retort. 

For more than a century, the NAACP has protested, litigated, and legislated to defend our dignity and our lives. Today, we keep marching. We are at school board meetings, county courthouses, and in the halls of government fighting for our rights because we still cannot afford to stand idle in the face of an administration that is so keen on rolling back our rights. 

We’re marching. And we need you beside us.

The Resistance: Sit-Ins

It's polite now, but not for long.

Wonkette:

Protesters from the NAACP were arrested Tuesday evening after holding a day-long sit-in at the Alabama offices of Sen. Jeff Sessions, demanding he withdraw his name from nomination as Donald Trump’s attorney general. The protesters seemed to be under the impression that Sen. Sessions has “hostile” attitudes toward civil rights and voting rights, even though Sessions is quite certain he’s as fair-minded as they come. Six of the protesters were arrested for trespassing, according to AL.com, including the group’s national President and CEO Cornell William Brooks, Alabama State Conference President Bernard Simelton, and Lizetta McConnell, head of the NAACP’s Mobile branch.

Appeals Court Exposes NC Legislators for the Racist Motherfuckers They Are

I imagine Notorious RBG, Kagan and Sotomayor reading this opinion over cocktails, shouting out their favorite parts and just licking their chops at the prospect of North Carolina daring to appeal to the Supremes.

One of the main plaintiffs in the case is Rev. William Barber's North Carolina NAACP.  This enormous victory coming the morning after his paint-stripping speech at the DNC is the definition of righteousness.

TPM:

A three-judge panel of the U.S Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has found North Carolina's controversial GOP-backed voting restrictions were intended to discriminate against African American voters.

The Friday ruling is a huge win for voting rights activists in a closely watched case in a potential 2016 swing state. The appeals court reversed the ruling of a district court siding with the state.

SNIP

It permanently blocked provisions in a 2013 North Carolina law that required certain photo IDs to vote, limited early voting, eliminated same day registration, ended out-of-precinct voting and prohibited pre-registration of young voters.

In the opinion, the panel of judges said that the law restricted voting in ways that "disproportionately affected African Americans" and that its provisions targeted "African Americans with almost surgical precision." It said the state's defense of the law was "meager."

"Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the state’s true motivation," the opinion said.

It noted that the legislation was passed as African American voter turnout had expanded to almost the rates of whites, and that the legislature enacted the legislation after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, which had required North Carolina to seek federal approval for changes to its voting policies. The appeals court -- citing a lower court's findings -- pointed out that state lawmakers sought data breaking down voting practices by race. The judges said that the law's provisions singled out the practices disproportionately popular among African Americans, such as preregisteration and provisional voting.

SNIP

The appeals court declined the request of the challengers to put North Carolina back under "preclearance" -- the requirement for federal approval of voting laws in certain states that was partially dismantled by the Supreme Court in 2013 -- as is allowed by Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act when discriminatory intent is found. The appeals court said the remedy was "rarely used" and "not necessary" in this case.

The fuck it's not necessary.  Put that state back in Voting Rights Act jail and throw away the key.  That's the only way to keep them from doing it again and the only way to put other states on notice not to Even. Fucking. Try. It.

It took the challengers two years to stop this massive, blatant disenfranchisement, during which time hundreds of thousands of voters were died their civil rights. 

If and when we ever get a Voting Rights Act with teeth, it needs to include jail time for the perpetrators. 

Also, somebody tell Nate Silver to put North Carolina back in the Likely Dem category.

Fifty Years - How Little Has Changed

Phil Ochs nailed it the same year:



From the NAACP:

Medgar Evers was a native of Decatur, Mississippi, attending school there until being inducted into the U.S. Army in 1943. Despite fighting for his country as part of the Battle of Normandy, Evers soon found that his skin color gave him no freedom when he and five friends were forced away at gunpoint from voting in a local election.

Evers applied to the then-segregated University of Mississippi Law School in February 1954. When his application was rejected, Evers became the focus of an NAACP campaign to desegregate the school, a case aided by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education 347 US 483 that segregation was unconstitutional. In December of that year, Evers became the NAACP's first field officer in Mississippi.

After moving to Jackson, he was involved in a boycott campaign against white merchants and was instrumental in eventually desegregating the University of Mississippi when that institution was finally forced to enroll James Meredith in 1962.

In the weeks leading up to his death, Evers found himself the target of a number of threats. His public investigations into the murder of Emmett Till and his vocal support of Clyde Kennard left him vulnerable to attack. On May 28, 1963, a molotov cocktail was thrown into the carport of his home, and five days before his death, he was nearly run down by a car after he emerged from the Jackson NAACP office. Civil rights demonstrations accelerated in Jackson during the first week of June 1963. A local television station granted Evers time for a short speech, his first in Mississippi, where he outlined the goals of the Jackson movement. 

Following the speech, threats on Evers' life increased.

On June 12, 1963, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from an integration meeting where he had conferred with NAACP lawyers. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that stated, "Jim Crow Must Go", Evers was struck in the back with a bullet that ricocheted into his home. He staggered 30 feet before collapsing, dying at the local hospital 50 minutes later. Evers was murdered just hours after President John F. Kennedy's speech on national television in support of civil rights.

Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery and received full military honors in front of a crowd of more than 3,000 people, the largest funeral at Arlington since John Foster Dulles. The past chairman of the American Veterans Committee, Mickey Levine, said at the services, "No soldier in this field has fought more courageously, more heroically than Medgar Evers."

On June 23, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the White Citizens' Council and Ku Klux Klan, was arrested for Evers' murder. During the course of his first 1964 trial, De La Beckwith was visited by former Mississippi governor Ross Barnett and one time Army Major General Edwin A. Walker.

All-white juries twice that year deadlocked on De La Beckwith's guilt, allowing him to escape justice.

SNIP

In 1994, thirty years after the two previous trials had failed to reach a verdict, Beckwith was again brought to trial based on new evidence concerning statements he made to others. During the trial, the body of Evers was exhumed from his grave for autopsy, and found to be in a surprisingly excellent state of preservation as a result of embalming. Beckwith was convicted on February 5, 1994, after living as a free man for three decades after the murder. Beckwith appealed unsuccessfully, and died in prison in January of 2001.

"Someone must hold the line"

Ta-Nehisi Coates gets to the heart of the bogus "controversy" over the NAACP.

Today, NAACP delegates passed a resolution to condemn extremist elements within the Tea Party, calling on Tea Party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches.

The reaction to this announcement has been swift and, in the main, negative. Next door, Dave Weigel, whose knowledge of the Tea Party is formidable, dismisses the resolution as "silliness" and "a stunt," and Chris Bodenner bemoans the fact that he ended Monday praising the Tea Party over the NAACP. If I'm reading this right, Michael Tomasky believes Obama should attack the NAACP because their resolution "heightens division." I think Michael McGough captures the spirit of "sensible" criticism:

I see a fairness problem with the NAACP's resolution calling upon Tea Party leaders to "repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches." (The quote is from an NAACP press release which does not provide the text of the resolution.) Calling on an organization to denounce abhorrent behavior by some of its devotees may seem reasonable. But it implies that the extremists/bigots/bombers are a sufficiently significant component of the organization that such a gesture is necessary.

The NAACP's announcement initially struck me in much the same the way. But some hours of considering this have proven to me that my initial skepticism says more about the broad American narrative of race and racism, then it does about the justness of the NAACP's charge.

I think it's worth, first, considering the record of American racism, and then the record of the Tea Party and its allies. Racism tends to attract attention when it's flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping--positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry, they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace, they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible, bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead change the subject and strawman. Thus segregation wasn't necessary to keep the niggers in line, it was necessary to protect the honor of white women.

SNIP

Given this record, I am at a loss to understand the criticism directed at the NAACP. This is a Civil Right organization who's taken as part of its mission opposing any attempt to inject racism into American politics. When the Tea Party's media advocates, when the politicians the movement embraces, when the speakers at its conventions do precisely that, and the NAACP responds by "calling on Tea Party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches," I have trouble finding the actual problem.

Given my own initial skepticism, I'm left with the notion that many of us that like to consider ourselves sober-minded and fair, have forgotten the history of this country we love. No matter. I cannot speak for others, but I was immediately jogged back to reality by the Tea Party's response:

You're dealing with people who are professional race-baiters, who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It's time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history...

This is not some deluded crazy, who has infiltrated the Tea Party with an offensive sign. This is the national spokesman for the Tea Party Express claiming that one of the authors of the 20th century American revolution is actually a "vile racist" organization. This is who they are--America's far right-wing, speaking with all the emboldened ignorance that is fast becoming their stock in trade. I have had, and continue to have, my criticism of the NAACP. But the notion that they are somehow being unfair to the Tea Party, that President Obama should denounce the NAACP, says a lot about our desire to forget and their insistence that we do no such thing.

I have long been one to question the NAACP's relevance. Moments like these remind me that I have been very wrong. It is not my style to spend my days attempting to enlighten or embarrass the Tea Party. But someone has to do it. Someone has to say, "It's not OK." That is not work for "sensible" people. But it's work that has to be done. Someone must hold the line.

It's too easy for white liberals who work with and for black professionals, who socialize with black friends, who actually back in the day marched into tear gas for the cause, who wore out shoe leather canvassing for Barack Obama, to dismiss Tea Party racism as the last gasp of a dying fringe.

If you don't think the NAACP's resolution was a timely and profound call for a return to genuine American values, then you haven't been paying attention.