Selected in 1985 by the late Mrs. Coretta Scott King to edit and publish the papers of her late husband, Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson has devoted most his professional life to the study of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the movements King inspired. Under his direction, the King Papers Project has produced six volumes of a definitive, comprehensive edition of speeches, sermons, correspondence, publications, and unpublished writings. Dr. Carson has also edited numerous other books based on King's papers. In 2005 the King Papers Project became part of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, with Dr. Carson serving as the institute's founding director.

A member of Stanford's department of history since receiving his doctorate from UCLA in 1975, Carson has also served as visiting professor or visiting fellow at  American University, the University of California, Berkeley, Duke University, Emory University, Harvard University, the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and at Morehouse College in Atlanta, where during 2009 he was Martin Luther King, Jr. Distinguished Professor and Executive Director of that institution's King Collection.

Dr. Carson's extensive writings reflect not only his research about King but also his undergraduate civil rights and antiwar activism, which led him to appreciate the importance of grassroots political activity as well as visionary leadership in the African-American freedom struggle. His first book, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, published in 1981, remains the definitive history of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the most dynamic and innovative civil rights organization. In Struggle won the Organization of American Historians' Frederick Jackson Turner Award. His other publications include Malcolm X: The FBI File (1991). He is co-author of African American Lives: The Struggle for Freedom (2005), a comprehensive survey of African-American history.

In addition to The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Carson's other works based on the papers include The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998), compiled from the King’s autobiographical writings, A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998), and A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2001).

Dr. Carson wrote “Passages of Martin Luther King,” a play that was initially produced by Stanford’s Drama Department in 1993, and subsequently performed at Dartmouth College, Willamette University, the Claremont Colleges, the University of Washington, Tacoma, and other places. On June 21, 2007, the National Theatre of China performed the international premiere of "Passages" at the Beijing Oriental Pioneer Theatre, and full houses viewed the four subsequent performances of the first drama to bring together Chinese actors and African-American gospel singers. During March and April 2011, the Palestinian National Theater "Al Hakawati" presented the first Arabic production of "Passages" in East Jerusalem, with additional performances in the West Bank communities of Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem, Hebron, Tulkarem, and Ramallah.

In addition to his books and scholarly writings publications, Dr. Carson has devoted considerable attention to bringing his research and King's ideas to broader public attention. Dr. Carson was a senior historical advisor for a fourteen-part, award-winning, public television series on the civil rights movement entitled "Eyes on the Prize" and co-edited the Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader (1991). In addition, he served as historical advisor for “Freedom on My Mind,” which was nominated for an Oscar in 1995, as well as for “Chicano!” (1996), "Blacks and Jews” (1997), "Citizen King" (2004), "Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power" (2005), and "Have You Heard from Johannesburg?" (2010) a multipart documentary about the international campaign against apartheid in South Africa. The Liberation Curriculum initiative that Dr. Carson conceived has become a major source of educational materials about King and the ongoing struggles to achieve peace with social justice, and the King Institute's enormously popular website -- kinginstitute.info -- reaches a diverse, global audience.

Dr. Carson also collaborated with the Roma Design Group of San Francisco to create the winning proposal in an international competition to design the King National Memorial in Washington, D. C., and he has served as an advisor to the King National Memorial Foundation.

Among the many honors and awards Dr. Carson has received, the honorary degree he received in 2007 from Morehouse College had special meaning, because it made him part of the community of Morehouse Men that includes Martin Luther King, Jr. and Sr.

Dr. Carson was born in Buffalo, New York. Before her retirement, his wife, Susan Ann Carson, served as consulting editor of the King Institute. The Carsons, who live in Palo Alto, have two grown children. His son, Malcolm, is a graduate of Howard University and University of California’s Boalt Hall School of Law and currently manages the Legal Aid Foundation office in south-central Los Angeles. His daughter, Temera, received her masters degree in social work from San Jose State University and is employed by the County of Santa Clara. She lives with her three children in East Palo Alto, California.

Lecturing: Dr. Carson has lectured throughout the United States and in many other nations including India, China, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, England, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Israel, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In addition his King lectures, Carson's topics have included Gandhi, Malcolm X, SNCC, the Black Panther Party, nonviolent resistance, and black-Jewish relations. He has appeared on many national radio and television shows, including Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, The NewsHour, Fresh Air, Morning Edition, Tavis Smiley, Charlie Rose, Democracy Now, and Marketplace. Dr. Carson has also participated in dramatic readings based on his play "Passages of Martin Luther King." For many years, he has delivered lectures on behalf of the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program. Carson's public lectures are arranged through the American Program Bureau: (Ph. 800-225-4575 or e-mail apb@apbspeakers.com) or through Regina Covington at the King Institute (650-723-2092).

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Montgomery Bus Boycott

King Travels to India

Student Sit-ins in Greensboro

The Martin Luther King, Jr.
Research and Education Institute
at Stanford University

January 6, 2012                                                   
For Immediate Release
Contact: Regina Covington (650) 723-2092

KING INSTITUTE CELEBRATES NEW MEMORIAL ON NATIONAL MALL
 
On Friday afternoon, January 13, 2012, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute will hold its annual celebration of the King Holiday. This year’s event will highlight the Institute’s involvement in the recently dedicated King National Memorial in Washington, D.C. and last year’s Palestinian production of “Passages of Martin Luther King,” a play written by Institute director Clayborne Carson. The King Institute will present its Call to Conscience Award to photojournalist and civil rights activist, Bob Fitch and to several cast members of "Passages of Martin Luther King."  Palestinian actor Ramzi Maqdisi, who played “Martin” in the production, will be among those honored.

The King Celebration will take place from 3 pm - 5 pm at Tresidder Memorial Union, 459 Lagunita Drive, on the Stanford campus. The event is free and open to the public.  A reception will be held from 3 pm - 4 pm, after which Maqdisi and noted actor Aldo Billingslea of Santa Clara University will perform a dramatic reading of King’s "I Have A Dream” speech.  Cast members and Stanford alumnae, Aleta Hayes and Chelsi Butler, will provide vocal accompaniment for the reading. Internationally acclaimed vocalist, Kim Nalley, will perform accompanied by celebrated jazz pianist Tammy Hall.  Stanford student performances include the Chicago Collective with Jessica Anderson, Garry Mitchell, Kadesia Woods and Tyler Brooks and jazz saxophonist Waveney Hudlin.  During the month of January, a display in the Tresidder lounge will feature images by Bob Fitch.
 
The Papers Project was established in 1985, when Coretta Scott King, founder and president of the King Center in Atlanta, asked Clayborne Carson to edit the papers of her late husband. Under Carson’s direction, the principal mission of the King Papers Project is to publish a definitive fourteen-volume edition of King's most significant correspondence, sermons, speeches, published writings, and unpublished manuscripts. In 2005, the King Institute was founded to sustain the Papers Project and its related educational initiatives.

For further details on the performers and updates on King Holiday events at Stanford, please visit our website at http://www.kinginstitute.info

Robert L. Carter, a former federal judge in New York died at 94, 3 January 2012.

In the late 1940s and 1950s as a member of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., led by Thurgood Marshall, Carter had a significant hand in a number of historic legal challenges to racial discrimination. Most significantly, Mr. Carter spent years doing research in law and history to construct the legal theory that was used to challenge the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson during the infamous 1954, Brown v. Board of Education case. Mr. Carter insisted on using the research of the psychologist Kenneth B. Clark that showed black children suffered in their learning and development by being segregated. Mr. Clark’s testimony proved crucial in persuading the court to act, Mr. Carter wrote in a 2004 book, “A Matter of Law: A Memoir of Struggle in the Cause of Equal Rights.”

Born in Caryville, in the Florida panhandle, on March 17, 1917, the youngest of nine children, Carter was raised in New Jersey by a single mother, following the death of his father in his first year. His first taste of activism came when he experienced racial discrimination as a 16-year-old in East Orange, N.J. The high school he attended allowed black students to use its pool only on Fridays, after classes were over. After he read in the newspaper that the State Supreme Court had outlawed such restrictions, he entered the pool with white students and stood up to a teacher’s threat to have him expelled from school. He enrolled at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania at 16, and later, Howard University School of Law in Washington. He then went to Columbia University as a graduate student and wrote his master’s thesis on the First Amendment.

In 1944 he took a job as a lawyer at the Legal Defense and Educational Fund, then the legal arm of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (it later became an independent organization). By 1948, he had become Marshall’s chief deputy and soon became active in school segregation cases. After Marshall chose Jack Greenberg as his successor as director-counsel of the fund in 1961, Carter moved over to the NAACP as its general council. Carter resigned in 1968, protesting the board’s decision to fire a Lewis M. Steel, for publishing an article in The New York Times Magazine critical of the Supreme Court. After a year at the Urban Center at Columbia, he joined the New York law firm of Poletti, Freidin, Prashker, Feldman & Gartner. President Richard M. Nixon nominated him to the federal bench for the Southern District of New York in 1972 at the recommendation of Senator Jacob K. Javits, Republican of New York.

On the bench, Judge Carter became known for his strong hand in cases involving professional basketball. He oversaw the merger of the National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association in the 1970s, the settlement of a class-action antitrust suit against the N.B.A. brought by Oscar Robertson and other players, and a number of high-profile free-agent arbitration disputes involving players like Marvin Webster and Bill Walton.

In 1979, his findings of bias shown against black and Hispanic applicants for police jobs in New York City led to significant changes in police hiring policies and an increase in minority representation on the force.

See Brown v. the Board of Education for more information.

2012 King Holiday Events

Robert Mants, who helped lead the first march from Selma to Montgomery to press for equal voting rights in 1965, died 7 December 2011 while visiting relatives in Atlanta. U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta, who joined Mants in leading marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge described him as “committed and dedicated, a real fighter for civil rights and social justice.”

Born and raised in East Point, Georgia, Mants was the youngest member of the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (The Atlanta Student Movement) at the age of 16, while at the same time volunteering at the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee Headquarters. He attended Morehouse College. 

At the 25th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” Mants told the New York Times: “Two months after Bloody Sunday, an organization I was in got to work in nearby Lowndes County, which was 81 percent black and had fewer than 30 black registered voters and no black elected officials. The result was the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, whose symbol, a black panther, would be adopted by the movement of that name.”

Historian Richard Bailey saluted Mants for his civil rights activism and described him as a man who “did not seek the limelight.” “He was a freedom fighter at heart,” Bailey said. “What he wanted most of all was a better life for the disenfranchised people who did not have the right to vote.”

Bob Mants remained in Lowndes County. He served as a Lowndes County Commissioner for many years, and was chairman of the nonprofit “Lowndes County Friends of the Historic Trail”, advising the National Park Service. Mants is survived by his wife of 45 years Joann Christian Mants and their three children: Kadisha, Kumasi, and Katanga; and seven grandchildren.

Find additional information on the Selma to Montgomery March

December marks anniversaries of both the foundation of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and the successful conclusion of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  Begun in December 1955, the year-long campaign resulted in the desegregation of the city bus system of Montgomery, Alabama, provided one of the most memorable examples of direct action demonstrations in the history of the United States, and vaulted Dr. King into the national spotlight as the leader of the civil rights movement.

Here are some other major highlights of the boycott:

"Don't Ride The Bus" leaflet.
Listen to Dr. King's Address to the First MIA Mass Meeting.
Read the "Integrated Bus Suggestions" distributed by the MIA following the integration of city buses.

Today marks the 56th anniversary of the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott. Initially planned as a one day boycott of Montgomery’s buses, in response to the arrest and conviction of Rosa Parks on December 1, the boycott far exceeded the organizer's expectations and continued for the next year. Dr. King was unanimously elected chairman of the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association and spoke to an over-flowing crowd at Holt Street Baptist Church on the evening of December 5th. Included in our Encyclopedia article is Dr. King’s speech, the minutes recording the formation of the MIA and many more documents related to the Montgomery bus boycott.

Montgomery Bus Boycott
MIA Mass Meeting
MIA Meeting Minutes

Known to his close friends and family as a renaissance man, Mr. Brown dedicated his life to helping others and advocating civil and human rights. Eddie began working in the area of civil and human rights in the 1960s when he was expelled from Southern University in Louisiana for participating in a sit-in protesting racial segregation. After being expelled Mr. Brown moved to Washington D.C. where he enrolled in Howard University and became a leader and organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Although Eddie Brown was devoted to the civil rights struggle and spent considerable time eradicating injustices, his work often went unnoticed. According to his friends and family he worked to serve others and to make a difference.

In addition to his activism on behalf of others, Eddie Brown dedicated years defending and advocating for his younger brother, Jamil Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who is currently serving a life sentence for killing a Fulton County Sherriff’s Deputy in 2000.

Eddie Brown, Jr., was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, and died from complications on 23 November 2011 at his home at the age of 70. He is survived by his wife, Valinda Johnson Brown, his three sons Michael Joshnson, Kevin George and Keith George; his two sisters, Pat and Cheryl; two brothers, Lance and Jamil; and six grandchildren. Mr. Brown will be remembered for his selfless dedication to human rights and the pursuit of justice.

To read more click here

Andrew Manis, author of the Shuttlesworth biography, A Fire You Can’t Put Out, has stated, “That Fred Shuttlesworth did not become a martyr was not for lack of trying. There was not a person in the civil rights movement who put himself in the position of being killed more often than Fred Shuttlesworth."

Widely known for his confrontational and fiery style, Shuttlesworth was often a controversial figure to both his opponents and allies.  Due to his daring fortitude, he suffered multiple physical attacks, and both his church and home were bombed on multiple occasions.  He was arrested and jailed over 30 times in various cities throughout the South as he led civil rights protests.  In 1957 he was beaten with chains and brass knuckles by Klansmen as he tried to enroll his children in an all-white school in Birmingham.  As he was being treated for his injures, he famously said, “The Lord knew I lived in a hard town, so he gave me a hard head.”  

Born Freddie Lee Robinson on March 18, 1922 in Mount Meigs, Alabama. He was licensed and ordained as a preacher in 1948, earned an A.B. (1951) from Selma University and a B.S. (1953) from Alabama State College. In 1952 he accepted his first pastorate at the First Baptist Church in Selma and the following year he was called to Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham.  He remained at Bethel Baptist until 1961 whereupon he accepted the pastorate of Revelation Baptist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Shuttlesworth frequently traveled back to the South in order to remain on the front lines of the battle against segregation. After pastoring Greater New Light Baptist Church for 39 years he retired from full time ministry in 2005. 

One of the founding members of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Fred Shuttlesworth brought a militant voice to the struggle for black equality. He drew Martin Luther King, Jr. and the SCLC to Birmingham in 1963 for a historic confrontation against one of the strongest bastions of segregation, enforced by Eugene "Bull" Connor.

The Rev. Shuttlesworth is survived by his wife, Sephira Shuttlesworth, and his children, Patricia Shuttlesworth Massengill, Ruby Shuttlesworth Bester, Fred L. Shuttlesworth Jr., and Carolyn Shuttlesworth.

CNN Obiturary
Birmingham News Obituary
Fred L. Shuttlesworth
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights

Don’t miss Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett on Broadway in "The Mountaintop," the Olivier Award-winning new play that took London by storm.

Strictly Limited Engagement. 16 Weeks Only!

Taking place on April 3, 1968, The Mountaintop is a gripping reimagining of events the night before the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After delivering one of his most memorable speeches, an exhausted Dr. King (Samuel L. Jackson) retires to his room at the Lorraine Motel while a storm rages outside. When a mysterious stranger (Angela Bassett) arrives with some surprising news, King is forced to confront his destiny and his legacy to his people.

Opens October 13.

For tickets and more information see the show's website: http://www.themountaintopplay.com/index.html

T4SJ 11th Annual Conference

"Teaching for Social Justice: The Power of Community"
Sunday, October 9, 2011
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Mission High School
3750 18th Street, San Francisco, CA

Each year hundreds of educators both locally and nationally gather to network, explore empowering learning environments, and develop a professional learning community. We are excited to celebrate 11 years of building grassroots, peer-led professional development opportunities! This conference is FREE and open to the public.

Join us at this year's Teaching for Social Justice conference for WORKSHIPS, RESOURCE FAIR, and SPEAKERS. FREE CHILDCARE will be provided.

Opening Keynote Speaker: Gloria Ladson-Billings, renowned education professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of The Dreamkeepers and Education Research in the Public Interest: Social Justice, Action and Policy.

Afternoon Keynote Speaker: Patrick Camangian, assistant professor at the University of San Francisco's Urban Education and Social Justice program, and co-director and teacher at East Oakland Step to College, Mandela High School.

Click HERE to register now.

The unveiling of the King National Memorial will have special meaning for me, because I attended the 1963 March on Washington where King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech and contributed to the King Memorial’s initial design. San Francisco’s ROMA Design Group incorporated my ideas about King’s historical significance in a design that won an international competition. On August 28 – the forty-eighth anniversary of the march – I’ll return to the National Mall to see the final result of a collaboration with ROMA that began in the spring of 2000.

The Martin Luther King Memorial. Credit: Charles Dharapak/AP.

Although Coretta Scott King selected me in 1985 to edit and publish the papers of her late husband, I urged ROMA’s principal architects, Bonnie Fisher and Boris Dramov, to reject the notion of a heroic Great Man memorial. My own activism during the 1960s was influenced by the bottom-up grassroots organizing approach of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which saw King as a product of the movement rather than its instigator. Nonetheless, we agreed that a King memorial to be built next to Washington’s Tidal Basin near the Lincoln Memorial should celebrate the Dream speech, which eloquently expressed the larger historical significance of the African-American freedom struggle.

I recommended that the design visualize the vivid metaphorical language of King’s 1963 oration, especially the passage “With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” We imagined visitors entering the memorial through an opening cut through the granite core of a Mountain of Despair. The removed slice – the Stone of Hope – would be thrust forward and turned slightly so that visitors entering through the Mountain would encounter an inscription of King’s words on the slab’s smooth surface.

Rather than a familiar passage from the “dream” refrain, we preferred a passage from his prepared text that insisted that “the architects of our republic” had signed “a promissory note” – “a promise that all men, yes, black men and well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’” King’s call for the nation to “live out the true meaning of its creed” would, we believed, serve as an enduring reminder to Americans that the nation’s democratic ideals had not yet been realized.

The only point of contention was whether the design would include a statute of King. Bonnie and Boris soon persuaded me, however, that many visitors – and perhaps the jurors for the competition – would miss seeing a statue of King. We settled on an image of King that would be sculpted into the rough edge of the Stone of Hope facing toward the Tidal Basin. Visitors standing at the edge of the Basin would be able to turn back and see King’s visage emerging unfinished from the Stone.

For a model, I supplied the photograph by Bob Fitch on the cover of my edition of The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. that depicted King not as a charismatic orator but instead as a thoughtful leader standing in front of his office desk. With Gandhi’s portrait on the wall behind him, King holds a pen in his right hand. We imagined him taking a break from drafting his reference to the “Promissory Note,” symbolically looking across time at the memorial to Thomas Jefferson, one of the nation’s founding “architects” and principal author of the Declaration of Independence. The two men would serve as historical frames for a profound perpetual dialogue about the meaning of American democracy.

Our design won the design competition, which attracted almost nine hundred entries from 33 countries. We soon learned, however, that the ultimate fate of our design would be decided by the King Memorial Project Foundation and the various commissions in charge of what can be built on the Washington Mall. During the next few years, we watch our design move very slowly toward realization, as Foundation officials guided it through the approval process and struggled to raise the $120 million needed to build it.

Then, early in 2006, Foundation officials asked me to suggest the King quotations to appear on the memorial. I welcomed this assignment, which would utilize what I had learned editing King’s papers, but I was dismayed that the Foundation wanted quotes on only four themes, “Justice, Democracy, Love, and Hope.” I wondered why not other themes, such as nonviolence, religion, peace, and poverty. The Foundation’s instructions eliminated King’s forceful statements against poverty and the war in Vietnam.

About this time I also learned that the Memorial Foundation had hired a Chinese master sculptor, Lei Yixin, to depict King on the Stone of Hope. Although some critics insisted that an African-American sculptor should have been chosen, I was mainly concerned about whether Lei’s sculpture would be convincing and consistent with the memorial’s overall themes. I also wondered what King would think of the decision to lower labor costs by outsourcing much of the stone work for the memorial to a nation without independent labor unions.

When I see the completed memorial, I’ll be disappointed that some of my favorite quotes were not chosen and that the image of King that I imagined has been replaced with large-scale imposing image of a confrontational, perhaps even authoritarian, figure. Nonetheless, rather than regretting these departures from ROMA’s original design, I look forward to appreciating the opportunity I’ve had to preserve King’s legacy for future generations.

Published Encyclopedia Britannica Blog: http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/08/designing-king-memorial/

Adapted from "Designing the King National Memorial" @A History of a Just & Peaceful Future

When Matthew J. Perry began his career as a civil rights lawyer, he was treated as a second-class citizen in segregated courtrooms. Two days before his body was found, Perry went to work in a federal courthouse in Columbia named in his honor. "He is the only militant civil rights figure I know of who seems to be loved and respected by both racial groups while still engaged in the struggle," wrote Robert Carter, a U.S. District Judge in New York in the book "Matthew J. Perry: The Man, His Times, And His Legacy."

Perry was born in Columbia, South Carolina on 3 August 1921. His father, who worked at a tailor, died when Matthew was 12 years old. Perry was raised by his mother and grandfather who would forever be the most influential people in Perry's life. While serving in World War Two, Perry experienced the depth and cruelty of racism when he was made to eat outside of a restaurant which gladly served enemy prisoners of war inside. This experience forged Perry's dedication to the civil rights struggle. After the war, Perry enrolled at South Carolina State's law school and became the first graduate to pass the bar. Perry first made a name for himself as a civil rights lawyer when he represented Harvey Grant, the first black student to attend Clemson University. "Matthew personified the black lawyer of the 1950s and 1960s — courageous, articulate and persuasive," said former state Chief Justice Ernest Finney. Perry retired in 1955 but continued to hear cases up until his passing.

Rev. Howard Creecy Jr., prominent Atlanta minister and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,  died suddenly Thursday, 28 June 2011.
Creecy, 57, took the helm at the SCLC on Jan. 30 of this year. Acknowledging that the SCLC had suffered internal divisions in recent years, he made it his mission to refocus the group in the 21st century.
Creecy, a third-generation preacher, was senior pastor at St. Peter’s Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta for 26 years. He joined his father at Olivet Church in 2002, where he continued preaching until his death. Growing up, Creecy recalled eating dinner with the titans of the civil rights movement, including Revs. Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and Joseph Lowery, around his father’s dinner table. He was a graduate of Morehouse College and earned a doctor of divinity degree from Abotra Bible Institute and Seminary. In addition to his duties at Olivet, Creecy was director of the Office of Chaplain Services for Atlanta Fulton County Government, the organization’s highest ranking ecclesiastical position: the first African-American in the county’s history to serve in that capacity.
"Throughout the years, Rev. Creecy inspired and touched everyone he came in contact with. He was a pastor, mentor, friend and confidante to many, including me," Mayor Kasim Reed said.
Creecy is survived by his wife, Yolanda Grier Creecy, and two children.

 The story behind Clay Carson's play, Passages of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the cast members that brought the play to life in Palestine this year, was featured at length in the St. Petersburg Times. To view the story click on the hyperlink. To view the Official site for Passages, click here.

A long time leader with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, Gus Tyler spent his life fighting for the rights of workers combining his socialist politics with the belief that democracy was vital in unions and unions were vital to democracies.

Born Augustus Tilove to Eastern European Jewish immigrants in October 1911 in Brooklyn, he changed his last name to honor the leader of a 14th-century English peasant uprising, Wat Tyler. It was through his mother, who started working in the sweatshops of New York's Lower East Side when she was 10, however, that Tyler was introduced to the socialist outlook that would shape the articles and speeches he would write. As he recalled in an interview with New York Newsday in 1988, it was his mother's belief that "socialism was what God ordained," that which convinced him "it was just the natural thing. People are people and they shouldn't be rich and they shouldn't be poor. I just thought this was the way you live."

Tyler began his activism early and at 16 he was editing the Young People's Socialist League's newspaper. By the time he was a student at New York University he had read Edward Gibbon's six volume The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire because he wanted to know "how empires have been toppled in the past." After graduating from NYU in 1933, Tyler became an assistant labor editor at The Forward, a socialist leaning Jewish daily newspaper in New York.

Less than a year after joining The Forward, Tyler left to join the garment workers union where he spent more than forty years heading up its political and educational wings. In 1945 he became the union's assistant president, a post he held under four different ILGWU presidents, including its longtime leader David Dubinsky, before retiring in 1989. Over the course of those four decades Tyler continued to push for rights of the underrepresented including government-sponsored health care and better political representation of cities through the reapportioning of voting districts.

Tyler passed away on 3 June in Sarasota, Florida at the age of 99.

The King family released a statement today announcing the death of Coretta Scott King’s eldest sister Edythe Scott Bagley. In the statement, Martin Luther King, III described his aunt as a “vibrant, brilliant woman,” who was “always a source of strength and wisdom for our mother during the difficult challenges of the Civil Rights Movement.”

Bagley was born in Marion, Alabama, and was the oldest child of Bernice and Obie Scott. After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, Bagley became the first full-time black student to attend Antioch College in Ohio. She later transferred to Ohio State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree. Bagley went on to earn master’s degrees from Columbia University and Boston University, and held a number of teaching positions at some of the nation’s finest black institutions, including Elizabeth City State Teachers College, Albany State College, and Norfolk State College.

After her brother-in-law Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in 1968, Mrs. Bagley helped Mrs. King establish the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia. She remained an active member of the center’s advisory board until her death. As an active member of the Women’s League for Peace and Freedom, the American Association of University Women, and the NAACP, Mrs. Bagley was committed to eliminating poverty, racism, and war.

Just prior to her death, Mrs. Bagley had finished a biography of her sister Coretta, which is scheduled to be published next year by the University of Alabama Press.

Arthur M. Bagley, her husband of more than 56 years, died in February. She is survived about a host of family, friends, and admirers.  

Two months before the March on Washington, King stood before a throng of 150,000 people at Cobo Hall in Detroit to expound upon making “the American Dream a reality”. King repeatedly exclaimed, “I have a dream this afternoon”. He articulated the words of the prophets Amos and Isaiah, declaring that “justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream,” for “every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low”. As he had done numerous times in the previous two years, King concluded his message imagining the day “when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing with the Negroes in the spiritual of old: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”.

Speech at the Great March on Detroit

Edgar Zivanai Tekere, a controversial and outspoken political leader of Zimbabwe, died on Tuesday in Mutare after a long battle against prostate cancer.  He is survived by his wife, Pamela and daughter Maidei.  He was 74.

Tekere began his political career in 1963 as a founding member of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and served a ten year prison sentence after the organization was banned in 1964.  After his release, Tekere remained a prominent figure in the fight for independence and took part in the Lancaster House conversations helping solidify national independence in 1979.  He held the position of Minister of Manpower for one year in 1980, but was demoted when he was accused of murdering a white farmer.  Later in his career he represented the Zimbabwe Unity Movement party in an unsuccessful bid for the Presidency in 1990.

Often a harsh critic of governmental corruption Tekere often spoke out against the administration of current President Robert Mugabe.  In a memoir published in 2007 Tekere blamed President Mugabe for building a nation whose people “live mostly in fear of their own government, of a state machinery, born out of the forces of liberation, but now, regrettably, more associated with ruthlessness and naked force.”

Edgar Tekere Obiturary

Born in rural Okfuskee County, Oklahoma on 3 May 1932, Clara Luper's interaction with segregation in schools--a condition she would help defeat in her native state--began early. After graduating from a segregated high school in nearby Grayson, Oklahoma, Luper graduated from Langston University, a segregated college in central Oklahoma, in 1944 with a B.A. in mathematics with a minor in history. Seven years later she completed a Master’s degree in secondary education and history at the University of Oklahoma where she encountered separate bathrooms and a segregated cafeteria.

With the Supreme Court's decision to desegregate public education through Brown v. Board of Education, Luper found herself among the first individuals involved in the integration of the Oklahoma City schools when, as a teacher, she transferred from the all black Dungee High School to Northwest Classen High School, an all white school. On her first day she was greeted by racial slurs from students and teachers trying to taunt her, individuals to whom Luper refused to bow. She retired from teaching while at John Marshall High School in 1989.

What Luper is most remembered for in Oklahoma, however, is her role in sit-in campaigns that brought about the integration of the Katz Drug Store chain. On 19 August 1958, Luper and members of the local NAACP Youth Council were arrested after refusing to leave the Katz Drug Store in Oklahoma City when the lunch counter refused to serve them. Two days later Katz announced their intention to integrate all thirty-eight of their locations in Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri.

That success touched off an expanded sit-in movement directed at the restaurants throughout downtown Oklahoma City. Starting in August 1960, Luper was at the forefront of the movement through regular radio broadcasts as hundreds of protestors demonstrated for almost four years. On 2 June 1964 the Oklahoma City Council stepped in to resolve problems with those restaurants still resisting integration. In the six years dating back to her initial sit-in at Katz, Luper was arrested 26 times in helping integrate downtown Oklahoma City.

Summing up Clara Luper's impact on the history of the state, Oklahoma Speaker of the House Kris Steele commented, "Through her actions, she helped lead Oklahoma and the nation forward by showing courage and courtesy simultaneously, often in the face of unpleasant opposition."

After she passed away at her home in Oklahoma City on Wednesday, the city's mayor, Mick Cornett, ordered all flags on city property flown at half staff in her honor.

Born Nontsikelelo Thethiwe to a poor farming family in the Transkei, a former British protectorate in South Africa, Thethiwe changed her name to Albertina after enrolling in a Christian missionary school. After graduation, she moved to Johannesburg to study nursing. While training at the Non-European General Hospital, Sisulu met her husband Walter, a political activist with the African National Congress (ANC). They married in 1944. Fellow ANC member Nelson Mandela was best man at the ceremony.

At the Sisulu’s wedding reception an ANC supporter said: “Albertina, you have married a married man: Walter married politics before he met you.” Immediately the Sisulu home in Soweta was a hub for ANC activity.

On 9 August 1956, Sisulu lead a march of 20,000 women against the South African pass system. August 9 is celebrated as Women’s Day in South Africa. Throughout her life, Mrs. Sisulu was arrested numerous times. Of her time in jail, she said: “I did not mind going to jail myself, and I had to learn to cope without Walter. But when my children went to jail, I felt that the Boers were breaking me at the knees.” When her husband Walter was sentenced to life in prison in 1964, she was left to continue his political legacy.

Despite numerous stints in jail and being banned from South Africa for 10 years, Mrs. Sisulu continued her political activities. In 1983, she co-founded the United Democratic Front, an anti-apartheid coalition. She met with U.S. presidents George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter to discuss sanctions against the South African apartheid government.

After serving 26 years in prison, Walter Sisulu was released from Robben Island in 1989. Five years after her husband’s release from prison, Mrs. Sisulu was elected to Parliament. She retired after four years and remained active in social causes.

Mrs. Sisulu lived to see her children assume leadership positions in the once apartheid-driven South Africa. Her daughter Lindiwe Sisulu is the nation’s defense minister. Her son Max is speaker of the National Assembly, while her daughter Beryl Sisulu is South Africa’s ambassador to Norway.

Pratt was raised in Morgan City, Louisiana and served two combat tours in the Vietnam War. Following his service, Pratt used the GI Bill to attend UCLA where he joined the Black Panther Party. Following the murder of organization leaders John Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, Pratt was made Minister of Defense. In 1971, Pratt's wife Saundra was killed while eight months pregnant. The murder was blamed on a Party schism between supporters of Huey Newton and supporters of Eldridge Cleaver.
In 1970 Pratt was convicted for the murder of Caroline Olsen and spent 27 years in prison before the conviction was overturned in 1997. Pratt's conviction became a rallying cry for rights groups who believed he had been framed for his involvement in the Black Panther Party. After his release, Pratt told CNN that he held no bitterness about the many years he spent behind bars. Of the 27 years he spent in prison, Pratt said eight was in solitary confinement. He said his spirituality and love of music helped him through that period. "My mantra was the blues. It would go through my head when I was going through my meditations," Pratt said.
Following his release from prison, Pratt continued to work on behalf of men and women believed to be wrongfully incarcerated, including participation in rallies in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

For more information on Pratt, click here.

Artist, politican, and scholar Abdias do Nascimento died in Rio de Janeiro from complications of diabetes. He was 97.

The grandson of slaves, Abdias do Nascimento was born in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo in 1914. While he earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Rio de Janeiro, Nascimento began his involvement in the country's civil rights movement, the Brazilian Black Forest, as a teenager. From that point on, Nascimento would establish himself as a voice of dissent against governmental insistence and popular belief that Brazil was a racial democracy. "He was a legend," wrote Princeton professor of sociology, Edward E. Telles. "He wasn't afraid to tell people that racial democracy was a myth. And he said it for 60 years."

In combating the racism embedded in Brazilian society, Nascimento founded the Black Experimental Theater in 1944 to celebrate the country's African-influenced culture. The theater countered tradition by training black actors for roles usually filled by white actors in blackface, and sponsored civil rights events including the inaugural 1950 Congress of Brazilian Blacks.

Nascimento entered the realm of politics with his involvement in the foundation of the Afro-Brazilian Democratic Committee in 1945, which fought for the release of political prisoners. When the military overthrew the Brazilian government in 1964, Nascimento left for the United States and Nigeria; he did not return to Brazil until the early 1980s. During his self-imposed exile, he taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo where he established the chair of African cultures within the Puerto Rican studies program and spent time lecturing at both Yale and Wesleyan. At the same time, Nascimento began producing art work that put human and natural images together with shapes suggestive of the Afro-Brazilian culture and religion.

In the late 1970s, although still in exile, Nascimento re-entered Brazilian politics through his involvement with the newly founded Democratic Labor Party of Brazil. Insisting that the party's platform deal with issues of racial discrimination, he served as a congressman and senator after the fall of the country's military dictatorship. Following his return, Nascimento was influential in the founding of the Afro-Brazilian Studies and Research Institute in Rio de Janeiro known as Ipeafro. His widow, Elisa Larkin Nascimento, is the current director of the Institute.

"There was no more important Brazilian than Nascimento since the abolition of slavery in 1888," said Wayne State University professor of Africana Studies, Ollie A. Johnson. "For Americans to understand him and his contribution, you'd have to say he was a little bit of Marcus Garvey, a little of W.E.B. DuBois, a little bit of Langston Hughes and a little bit of Adam Clayton Powell."

Gil Scott-Heron, 62, was a poet and musician who helped lay the foundation for modern day rap and hip hop culture by fusing minimalistic percussion, political expression and spoken-word poetry. His most famous song, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” expresses Scott-Heron's ability to captivate and articulate the angst of the 1970s black protest culture. Scott-Heron died May 27 at a New York City hospital after becoming sick upon returning from a European trip. The cause of death is not immediately known.

Born in Chicago on 1 April 1949, Mr. Scott-Heron grew up in Tennessee and New York. He attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and wrote his first novel, "The Vulture," at age 19. Though initially his interest was in literature and English, Gil turned to music in search of a wider audience. During the 1970s Scott-Heron was considered a prodigy although his reputation never exceeded cult popularity. Between 1970 and 1982, Gil recorded 13 albums, and was linked with music executive Clive Davis.

In later years Gil Scott-Heron's career and popularity declined due to drug use and convictions. He served a sentence at Rikers Island in New York for parole violation. Though his reputation was irreparably tarnished, his contributions to black culture cannot be over-looked.

Gil Scott-Heron is survived by his son, Rumal; and two daughters, Gia Scott-Heron and Che Newton.

To listen to his work click here

Op-Ed:Bernard LaFayette, Jr. The Siege of the Freedom Riders

Twenty-two Freedom Riders left Birmingham on Saturday morning 20 May 1961, Bernard LaFayette, Jr. among them. The morning began with the Riders stranded on the bus platform with no driver and a gathering mob outside.  The scheduled Greyhound driver for the Birmingham to Montgomery route decided at the last minute that he would not drive the bus. 
After a series of frantic phone calls between Department of Justice aid, John Seigenthaler, and the top Greyhound officials in Atlanta and Birmingham, a driver was found and the Freedom Riders boarded the bus.  According to an agreement worked out by Seigenthaler and Alabama Governor Patterson a few days prior, the local police departments of Birmingham and Montgomery would be responsible for the Riders inside city limits while the Alabama State police would provide protection on the open highway. 
The bus left Birmingham without incident at 6:00 am on Saturday morning, however, when it arrived in Montgomery at 10:20 am the promised police protection was no where to be found.  Moments after they exited the bus the small group of travelers were overwhelmed by an angry mob armed with lead pipes and baseball bats.  It was during this attack that Jim Zwerg, William Barbee, John Lewis and John Seigenthaler were beaten unconscious.

Source

Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 2006.

Seigenthaler was aide to Robert F. Kennedy during the 1960 Presidential campaign and Administrative Assistant to the Attorney General, Department of Justice (1961).  At the request of Kennedy, he joined the Freedom Riders in Birmingham and escorted them to New Orleans on May 15, 1961.  A few days later, unable to convince Diane Nash to call off the continued pursuit of interstate travel through Alabama, Seigenthaler flew back to Birmingham to join the SNCC riders.  In this interview he tells of his experience negiotiating with state and city officials for the safe passage of all interstate travelers.

Excerpt of Siegenthaler Interview

The Freedom Rides, led by CORE, were scheduled to end with a freedom rally in New Orleans, La. on May 17,  celebrating the seventh anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court.  Wanting to continue testing desegregation in interstate travel, a group of ten members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee left Nashville, Tenn. for Birmingham, Ala.  Once they arrived they were promptly arrested by police and held in protective custody. 

Freedom ride Itinerary
Nashville Freedom Riders

Dr. King Calls for A Stepped Up Assault on Foes of Integration

Born and raised in Michigan, Mrs. Vivian received her degree in social work from Eastern Michigan University. After moving to the South both Mrs. Vivian and her husband, C.T. Vivian, worked tirelessly in the field of civil rights.  She helped desegregate the public schools of Dekalb county and was involved in voter registration as one of the first black deputy voter registrars in the county.  Later, she helped organize and collect the papers of the SCLC, preserving it's history and legacy.  Mrs. Vivian also shared a close friendship with Coretta Scott King, which allowed her to publish a biography on the life of Mrs. King.

A Tower of the Civil Rights Movement

Black people and white people, willing to die for what was right. Fifty years later, Oprah reunites American heroes—the Freedom Riders.

For more visit http://www.oprah.com/showinfo/Oprah-Honors-American-Heroes-The-Freedom-Riders-Reunite

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides of 1961. Following the Supreme Court ruling in Boynton v. Virginia (1960), declaring segregation in interstate travel facilities unconstitutional, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) began recruiting volunteers to participate in the Freedom Rides. The group of thirteen freedom riders, seven black and six white, would board a Greyhouse bus on 4 May in Washington, D.C. headed toward New Orleans, where they hoped to arrive on 17 May to celebrate the seventh anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

Matthew Jones, Freedom Singer, Dies

Matthew Jones, a member of SNCC Freedom Singers, died on 30 March after a lengthy illness. As a student at Tennessee State University, Jones joined the Nashville student movement in 1960. He later went on to do civil rights work in Danville, Virginia, where he founded a singing group called the Danville Freedom Singers.

The original Freedom Singers, founded in 1962 under the leadership of Cordell Reagan, travelled around the country raising funds for the movement, but disbanded in 1963. In 1964, SNCC executive secretary Jim Forman sent Jones to Atlanta to reorganize the group. Although he loved to sing, Jones always maintained: "We were organizers first, singers second."

Jones penned a number of protest songs, among them were "Odinga, Odinga" and "The Ballad of Medgar Evers."

Almena Lomax, civil rights activist, journalist, and founder of the Los Angeles Tribune, died 25 March in Pasadena at 95.

Born Allie Almena Davis in Galveston, Texas on 23 July 1915 her parents’ efforts to escape the Jim Crow culture of the American South took her to first Chicago then Los Angeles.  After graduating from Jordan High School she spent a year-and-a-half studying journalism at Los Angeles City College.  In 1938 Lomax began working at the California Eagle before leaving two years later to focus on her increasingly popular twice-weekly news radio program on local radio station KGFJ.

In 1941, after borrowing $100 from her future father-in-law, hotel owner Lucius W. Lomax Sr., she started the Los Angeles Tribune.  Over the next two decades the Tribune established itself as a newspaper offering opinion pieces, political commentary, and stories focusing on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the movie industry of Hollywood, and incidents of police racism in L.A.  At its peak the paper had a circulation of 25,000.  In 1946 she was awarded first prize in the Wendell L. Willkie Awards for Negro Journalism for her column challenging the stereotype of black men’s sexual prowess.  “She was a terrific writer,” recalled civil rights lawyer Leo Branton, Jr., “the only one of all the black newspapers at the time who really was fearless about exposing things as they were.  She didn’t soft-pedal anything.”

As evidence of her influence as founder and editor of the Tribune, Lomax was selected in 1952 to serve as a delegate to the Democratic convention.  In 1958 Lomax was instrumental in California gubernatorial candidate Edmond G. Brown’s victory as she helped deliver the state’s liberal vote to the Democrat.

After divorcing her husband, she closed the doors of the Tribune in 1960 and moved with her children to Tuskegee, Alabama.  In response to those who questioned her decision to move to the South at the height of the civil rights movement she said simply, "Negroes who lead, or can lead, who have any motivation at all toward bettering the world for mankind, need to go often into the teeth of Jim Crow and know it for its brutal, dehumanizing reality."

Upon returning to California, Lomax relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area where she became the first black person to work the San Francisco Chronicle’s city desk before moving to their rival, the Examiner.  As a reporter she covered the social and political changes in San Francisco during the 1960s and early 1970s, the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hurst, and the search for black revolutionary Angela Davis.

David M. French, a former Howard University professor of pediatric surgery who tended to the medical needs of civil rights marchers during the 1960s and later spearheaded an effort to strengthen public health systems in 20 African countries, died March 31 of renal failure at the University of Virginia hospital in Charlottesville. He was 86.

Dr. French played an integral role in coordinating first-aid efforts at major civil rights protests, including the 1965 march for voting rights from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama. After protesters were beaten by Governor Wallace’s state troopers, Dr. French single handedly made sure protection and medical provisions were supplied to the protestors by the Federal Government. In addition to his service during multiple civil rights marches, Dr. French was a founding member and national chairman of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, a civil rights organization that aimed to stop the segregation of health-care facilities.

David Marshall French was born May 30, 1924, in Toledo and grew up in Columbus, Ohio. He attended what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland for two years before he was drafted by the Army during World War II. He is survived by his eight children.

Hazel Robinson Gregory, former secretary-clerk of the Montgomery Improvement Association and one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assistants during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-1956, died last week in Montgomery.  She was 90.

Born to Nelson and Sadie Robinson in Montgomery County, Alabama on 8 July 1920, Gregory attended the Calhoun School, a private boarding school in Calhoun, Alabama, before finishing her higher education at Alabama State Laboratory High in Montgomery.  She married Frank Gregory, Sr. in 1940 with whom she had five children.

Gregory is most remembered for her role with the MIA during Montgomery’s famed bus boycott. Former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, remembered that during the boycott Gregory was “right smack in the middle of its vitality, its astuteness and dedication to the goals of liberty and human dignity” as she ran the office and acted as a friend and counselor to the participants.  She was especially helpful for the youth participants like Doris Dozier Crenshaw who said she and other youth activists “looked to Mrs. Gregory for instruction and support.”

Although she ultimately left the MIA after the boycott’s successful conclusion and King’s departure for Atlanta, Gregory remained active in the civil rights struggle spreading across the American South.  When the Freedom Riders were attacked at the Montgomery bus depot in 1961 it was Gregory who led the hearses of local undertakers to the violent scene to transport the injured activists to St. Jude Hospital.

Since leaving the MIA, Gregory spent ten years working for the Alabama State Prison Department and twelve years with the Montgomery Board of Education where she served as the assistant to the Director of the Department of Finance before retiring in 1988 to care for family members, something not surprising to those who remember her.  “Mrs. Gregory was always there for her people—especially her family,” recalls Crenshaw.  “She was always there for everybody—from Dr. King to the maids.”

Dr. Manning Marable, one of America’s most influential and widely read scholars of the black experience, died today from complications related to pneumonia. Professor of history and political science, and founding director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies
at Columbia University in New York, Marable was also director of the Center for Contemporary Black History.  Under his guidance, the center has devoted its endeavors to: the Malcolm X Project, a web-based, multimedia version of The Autobiography of Malcolm X; the Africana Criminal Justice Project, funded by the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation), and focused on strategies to empower ex-prisoners and communities devastated by mass incarceration; and the Hip Hop Initiative, in collaboration with Russell Simmons, using arts education for youth leadership development. The Center also publishes the quarterly academic publication Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, edited by Dr. Marable and distributed by Taylor and Francis.
Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1950, Manning graduated from Earlham College in 1971. He earned an M.A. in American History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD in American History from the University of Maryland. He taught at several universities, including Cornell, Fisk, and Colgate, before accepting the position at Columbia University in 1993.
Marable has authored and edited close to twenty books and scholarly anthologies, including: The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life ; Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal: An African-American Anthology; Black Liberation in Conservative America; Beyond Black and White; Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990; W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat. His long-awaited biography of Malcolm X : Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, is scheduled for release on Monday April 4.
Dr. Marable was a committed collaborator and friend of the King Institute; he will be greatly missed.

Gene C. Young, Civil Rights Activist Passed Away in March 2011.
The third of ten children, Young began participating in the African-American Freedom Struggle in Jackson, Mississippi at the age of twelve. He was arrested twice in 1963, and received national attention in 1964 when he desegregated the barbershop of a Kansas City hotel. In the summer of 1966, Young participated in the Meredith March Against Fear with Hollywood stars, Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster, Charlton Hesston, and other leaders in the fields of entertainment and human rights. Just after graduating high school, in June of 1968, Young was arrested in the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C.
Young continued his activism as a student at Jackson State University, where he was instrumental in organizing and coordinating demonstrations to protest the campus murders of Philip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green. After graduating with honors from Jackson State University in 1972, Young earned both an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut, Storrs. Young was arrested in April of 1974 along with 200 other students at a library sit-in, which protested the teaching of theories of genetic inferiority.
Following graduation Young taught at a number of colleges, and ultimately returned to fill both academic and administrative positions at Jackson State University.  Young was awarded with numerous honors, including a gold medal by the Mississippi Association of Broadcasters in the category of special programs, for his reading of excerpts from the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," on WJSU-FM, in 1996.

Civil rights activist and long time black politician John L. Cashin, Jr. died from kidney failure Monday, 21 March at his home in Washington, D.C.  He was 82.

Born in Huntsville, Alabama on 16 April 1928, Cashin’s introduction to civil rights and politics came at an early age.  Born into a family long involved in the fight for social justice, both his father, a dentist, and mother, a junior high school principal, were active in civil rights work.  His grandfather, Herschel V. Cashin, was a member of the Alabama Legislature during Reconstruction.  Before running for mayor of Huntsville in 1964, Cashin earned a B.S. degree from Tennessee State University, a D.D.S. from the historically black Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and served with the Army Dental Corp in France in the 1950s.

Called “one of the most ferocious civil rights lions in Alabama back in the day,” by the Huntsville Times, Cashin was the founder and sole chairman of the National Democratic Party of Alabama which helped change the face of local political offices throughout the state during its brief existence from 1968 to 1976.  Created to oppose the anti-integrationist stance of the state’s Democratic Party, the splinter group succeeded in getting elected 17 candidates to local offices throughout central and western Alabama known as the state’s Black Belt.  Six blacks won election that year in Greene County, Alabama, marking the first time since 1816 that the county’s government was not controlled by whites.  Cashin challenged the embodiment of the Alabama Democratic Party’s segregationist stance when he ran against George C. Wallace for governor in 1970.  Finishing a distance second behind Wallace with 14.68 percent of the vote, his campaign marked the first black candidacy for the state’s governorship since Reconstruction.

Partly due to his involvement in the civil rights struggle Cashin was pursued by local and federal authorities.  Among others, he was monitored by the FBI and the IRS chased him for years claiming he owned hundreds of thousands of dollars.  These and other run-ins with law enforcement, as well as the civil rights struggle of the Cashin family, dating back to Cashin’s grandfather Herschel, are recounted in his daughter Sheryll’s 2008 memoirs The Agitator’s Daughter.

Leonard I. Weinglass died of pancreatic cancer at Montefiore Medical Center on Wednesday 23 March. He had been living in Manhattan and worked for over a half a century as a progressive defense lawyer, representing government oppositionists and notorious criminal defendants in a multitude of contentious cases such as:  the Chicago Seven, the Pentagon papers, and the Hearst Kidnapping. Tom Hayden, founder of the Students for a Democratic Society, spoke of the passing of his friend and added, “I would say he was the best courtroom lawyer I’ve known in my lifetime, and I’ve known a lot of them.”

Leonard Irving Weinglass was born in Belleville, New Jersey on 27 August 1933. He was a member of his high school football and debate teams. He graduated from George Washington University and Yale Law school and was a lawyer for the Air Force before beginning his practice in Newark. Leonard was married once, late in life, and divorced. He is survived by two sisters, Elaine Nicastro, of Lebanon, Jew Jersey, and Natalie Franzblau, of Nutley New Jersey, and brother, Steven Weinglass, of Los Angeles.

In addition to the notorious Chicago Seven, Hearst and Pentagon cases, over the past 40 years Weinglass represented many other prominent clients, including Angela Davis, activist and educator who was acquitted of murder, conspiracy and kidnapping charges in the 1970 killing of a California judge; and Amy Carter, the daughter of President Carter, who along with others, including Abbie Hoffman, was arrested during a 1986 protest against the activities of the CIA at University of Massachusetts. She was acquitted of trespassing and disorderly conduct charges.

More recently, Mr. Weinglass was involved in the death-row appeals of Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose conviction in the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer has been shrouded in allegations of racism, police corruption and judicial bias; and the Cuban 5, who were convicted in 2001 of espionage against the United States but who say they were monitoring Miami-based terrorist groups that target Cuba.

Leornard I. Weinglass will be remembered as a bulwark of the 1960s zeitgeist and defender of civil rights.

Stanford’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute will collaborate with the Palestinian National Theater, Al Hakawati, to produce the first play about Martin Luther King, Jr., to be performed in Arabic. “Passages of Martin Luther King,” written by Stanford scholar Clayborne Carson, will open on March 22 for four performances in East Jerusalem before moving to various West Bank venues through April 5.

The Palestinian version of Carson’s play will be directed by Kamal El Basha and features eight Palestinian actors portraying King, his parents, his wife, Coretta, and other historical figures, such as Malcolm X and President John F. Kennedy. Six American singers, including four with Stanford ties, will also participate in the production, performing church and freedom songs associated with King’s life. Stanford alum and Drama Department lecturer Aleta Hayes (’91) will serve as the play’s choreographer. September Penn, the wife of a former Knight journalism fellow at Stanford, Ivan Penn, is musical director for a choir that includes P. Michael Williams, Steven Wilson, and former Stanford undergraduates Ré Phillips (’10) and Chelsi Butler (’09).  Phillips, Butler, and Penn also participated in the National Theatre of China’s 2007 international premiere of Passages in Beijing in 2007. The play was first performed in 1993 by Stanford’s Drama Department.

Before leaving for Jerusalem, Carson expressed hope that “Passages” will “bring King’s universal message of nonviolence to Palestinian activists who are currently engaged in their own nonviolent struggle.” As during his visit last year, Carson has scheduled discussions with Palestinian proponents of nonviolence. “Given recent events in North African and the Middle East, I can hardly imagine a more appropriate time for this collaboration between the King Institute and the Palestinian National Theater.”

The American Consulate General in Jerusalem is helping to arrange Carson’s talks and co-sponsoring the Palestinian production of his play as part of its effort to promote dialogue and mutual understanding between Palestinians and Americans. Speaking about the program, U.S. Consulate General Public Affairs Officer Frank Finver said, “The U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem is proud to have sponsored this unique and ambitious cultural exchange program with Al Hakawati Theater, and we are honored to host Dr. Carson again.  His visit is timely, given the rapid pace of change in the region, and we hope that through performances of his play and discussions with Palestinian audiences, we will all deepen our understanding of the benefits of nonviolence and the possibilities of achieving change through peaceful means."

Opening night of "Passages of Martin Luther King" is March 22 at 7:00 p.m. at Al Hakawati Theater.  In addition to the performances at Al Hakawati Theater in East Jerusalem, “Passages” is scheduled to be staged in Jenin on March 27, Nablus on March 28-29, Bethlehem on March 30-31, Ramallah on April 3, Hebron on April 5.


Contact information
King Institute at Stanford University: Regina Covington (650) 723-2092

Program Booklet

Mr. Clarence B. Jones, scholar in residence at the King Institute, will discuss his new book,
Behind the Dream: Inside the Speech that Transformed America,
at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAd) on Saturday, March 26, from 2 - 4 pm.

The Authors in Conversation program is free with museum admission.
MoAd is located at 685 Mission Street (at Third) in San Francisco.

For more information go to: http://www.moadsf.org/calendar/484

Reverend Peter John Gomes died on Monday, 28 February 2011 at age 68. His death was first reported by The Harvard Crimson and later confirmed by a Massachusetts General Hospital spokeswoman. Rev. Gomes passed away due to complications following a stroke.

An only child, Rev. Gomes was born to parents, Peter Lobo and Orissa White Gomes, on 22 May 1942 in the Cape Verde Islands off Africa's west coast.  His mother a graduate from the New England Conservatory of Music, raised him in Plymouth, Mass.  He attended Plymouth High school, graduating in 1961. Four years later he recieved in B.A. in History from Bates College in Lewiston, Me.  Continuing his education and fulfilling the expectations that he enter the Christian ministry, he obtained his bachelor of divinity degree from Harvard in 1968 and was ordained a Baptist Minister.

After spending two years teaching Western civilization in Alabama at the Tuskegee Institute he returned to Harvard to become the assistant minister of Memorial Church.  In 1974, he became the Plummer professor of Christain morals and Pusey minister of Memorial Church, positions he held until his death.  In 1979, Time magazine honored him as one of the nation's best preachers.  At Ronald Reagan's second inauguration he was selected to give the benediction.  Four years later, he gave the National Cathedral sermon at George Bush's inauguration.

His early work as an author focused on early american religion, specifically the Pilgrims.  In more recent years both his written work and sermons have been focused on refuting literal and fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible.  He urged Christians to follow the spirit and not the letter of biblical passages and to treat the Bible not as one book but as a "library".  This change in focus came after he appeared before students, faculty and administrators, who were protesting a conservative campus magazine, announcing that he was, "a Christian who happens as well to be gay."  This pronouncement put his career and reputation a new trajectory, giving him new focus.  In an interview with the Washington Post a few months later he said, "I now have an unambiguous vocation — a mission — to address the religious causes and roots of homophobia. I will devote the rest of my life to addressing the ‘religious case’ against gays.”  

Remaining true to his word, Gomes dedicated much of his later writing and oration to questions regarding intolerance and religious fundamentalism.  This, however, did not limit his scholarly work as he continued to widen his interests to include the study of early American religions, Elizabethan Puritanism, church music and the African-American experience.

Donald Lee Cox, member of the Black Panther Party, is dead at 74.
 
Born in Appleton, Missouri, in 1936, Cox moved to San Francisco in the late 1960s where he became field marshal for the Oakland-based Black Panther Party. As field marshal, Cox traveled the country establishing new branches and was a member of Panther central committee, which also included leaders Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver.
 
At the New York apartment of Leonard Bernstein in 1970, Cox represented the Panther’s at a fundraiser for the legal defense of twenty-one Panther members accused of plotting to kill police officers. According to the New York Times, the fundraiser was notable because of “its clash of cultures.” One attendee recalled: “There they were, the Black Panthers from the ghetto and the black and white liberals from the middle, upper-middle and upper classes studying one another cautiously over the expensive furnishings, the elaborate flower arrangements, the cocktails and the silver trays of canapés.”
 
Following the fundraiser, Cox was indicted for the murder of Eugene Anderson, a Panther turned informant, in Baltimore. Cox claimed his innocence and fled to Algeria and then France. He remained in exile for the remainder of his life.

The Palestinian version of Carson’s play is being directed by Kamal El Basha and features eight Palestinian actors portraying King, his parents, his wife, Coretta, and other historical, such as Malcolm X and President John F. Kennedy. Six African-American singers, including four with Stanford ties, will arrive on March 13, 2011, to participate in the production, performing church and freedom songs associated with King’s life.

Stanford alum and Drama Department lecturer Aleta Hayes (’91) will serve as the play’s choreographer, working closely with the singers, who depict the choir of King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church as well as Freedom Fighters. The choir of King’s Atlanta church includes P. Michael Williams, Steven Wilson, former Stanford undergraduates Ré Phillips (’10) and Chelsi Butler (’09), as well as musical director September Penn, who was joined by her husband, Ivan Penn, a former Knight journalism fellow at Stanford.  

Phillips, Butler, and Penn also participated in the National Theatre of China’s 2007 international premiere of “Passages” staged in Beijing in 2007. The play, which is based on Carson’s extensive research as editor of King’s papers, was first performed in 1993 by Stanford’s Drama Department.

Noted filmmaker Connie Field will accompany the American performers and record the unique cultural exchange using a Palestinian crew. Field’s previous films include “Freedom on My Mind,” a documentary on the Mississippi civil rights struggle that was nominated for an Academy Award, and a recent series tracing the rise of the international anti-apartheid movement, “Have You Heard from Johannesburg?”  

Before leaving for Jerusalem, Dr. Carson expressed hope that “Passages” will “bring King’s universal message of nonviolence to Palestinian activists who are currently engaged in their own nonviolent struggle.” This is Carson’s third trip to the region. As during his visit last year, Carson has scheduled discussions with Palestinian proponents of nonviolence. “Given recent events in North Africa and throughout the Middle East, I can hardly imagine a more appropriate time for this collaboration between the King Institute and the Palestinian National Theater,” he noted.

The American Consulate General in Jerusalem is helping to arrange Carson’s talks and co-sponsoring the Palestinian production of his play as part of its effort to promote dialogue and mutual understanding between Palestinians and Americans. Speaking about the program, U.S. Consulate General Public Affairs Officer Frank Finver said, “The U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem is proud to have sponsored this unique and ambitious cultural exchange program with Al Hakawati Theater, and we are honored to host Dr. Carson again.  His visit is timely, given the rapid pace of change in the region, and we hope that through performances of his play and discussions with Palestinian audiences, we will all deepen our understanding of the benefits of nonviolence and the possibilities of achieving change through peaceful means."

Following the initial performances at the Al Hakawai Theater, “Passages” is scheduled to be staged in Jenin on March 27, Nablus on March 28-29, Bethlehem on March 30-31, Ramallah on April 3, and Hebron on April 5.

Contact information

Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University:

Regina Covington (650) 723-2092

U.S. Consulate’s Press Office in Jerusalem:

02-622-6908 or 02-622-6909 (or Hassna Dajani at 054-678-8455)

Al Hakawati Theater, for program information, 02-6280957

Hall of Fame football player, Ollie Matson, died Saturday, 19 February in Los Angeles, Calif. He was 80.

Matson played football for City College in San Francisco, won a silver and a bronze medal in track at the 1952 Olympic Games and was one of the best all-around players in NFL history. While a student at USF in 1951, he was part of the undefeated Dons football team that was snubbed by postseason bowls, including the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl and Gator Bowl, because two of its players - Matson and Burl Toler - were black. Adopting the slogan “Unbeaten, Untied and Uninvited,” the team stood by Matson and Toler when told they could be invited if the two black players would stay home. With a $70,000 dollar deficit, and no revenue from the bowls, USF shut down their football program, rather than support segregation in college football.

Matson was elected to six Pro Bowl teams and six All-Pro first or second teams, and was a co-winner of rookie of the year honors in 1952. In 1972, the first year he was eligible, he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and in 1976, he was inducted into the National Football Foundation’s College Hall of Fame.

A.M.E. Logan, "Mother of the Jackson Civil Rights Movement," died after suffering a fall at her home in Jackson, Mississippi on February 5.  She was 96.

Combining an unending love for her fellow man and an unbending determination the cause of social justice, A.M.E. Logan established herself as one of the heroes of the civil rights era in Jackson, Mississippi. A long time resident of Jackson, Logan was responsible for reviving the NAACP there in the 1950s and later served as the branch's secretary. At the height of the social unrest of the 1960s, Logan worked closely with fellow NAACP activist and civil rights martyr Medgar Evers throughout Mississippi and opened her home to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Freedom Riders during their visits to the Southern city.

Shirley Montague, her daughter, characterized her mother as "just a fearless person," something best seen by her willingness to become personally involved in the civil rights struggle. In 1962, Logan put herself at risk when she and her husband were among the group to file the first school desegregation lawsuit in Mississippi when they sought integrated education for their youngest son.

While Logan's legacy stems from her work during one of Mississippi's most racially charged periods, she exhibited a love and caring for people her whole life. An accomplished Avon saleswoman who also took it upon herself to ensure needy people were fed at local shelters Montague recalled that "There was nothing she wouldn't do for you, and it didn't matter if you were black or white."

Respected throughout Jackson, the city council has begun the process of renaming the street where she has lived since 1944 in her honor. It is already one of the stops in the city's historic civil rights movement tour. At her funeral service February 12, the mayor of Jackson, Harvey Johnson, Jr. eulogized Logan by urging the city to "use her life and her dedication to making things better for humankind as an example for what we should be."

"She worked tirelessly on behalf of countless people whose lives were improved because of her vital contributions to the cause of social justice and community service," stated Myrlie Evers-Williams, former NAACP Chairman and widow of Medgar Evers. "She leaves an indelible mark on Mississippi's history, and an enduring legacy for youth activists to emulate."

Gandhi and his philosophy were of special interest to the progressive African American community. Referring to the African American freedom struggle, Gandhi had called the practice of segregation “a negation of civilisation” (“Letter from Gandhi”). Howard Thurman met with Gandhi in 1935, Benjamin Mays in 1936, and William Stuart Nelson in 1946. King’s colleagues Bayard Rustin, James Lawson, and Mordecai Johnson had also visited India.

Gandhi’s philosophy directly influenced King, who first employed strategies of nonviolent direct action in the 1955 to 1956 Montgomery bus boycott. In 1959, King traveled to India with his wife, Coretta Scott King, and Lawrence D. Reddick on a visit co-sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee and Gandhi Smarak Nidhi (Gandhi Memorial Fund). King met with the Gandhi family, as well as with Indian activists and officials, including Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, during the five-week trip. In his 1959 Palm Sunday sermon, King preached on the significance of Gandhi’s 1928 salt march and his fast to end discrimination against India’s untouchables. King ultimately believed that the Gandhian approach of nonviolent resistance would ‘‘bring about a solution to the race problem in America’’ (Papers 4:355).

For more information on Mohandas K. Gandhi, see the Encyclopedia entry.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

 Freedom Riders Documentary Film by Stanley Nelson

7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Annenberg Auditorium, Cummings Art Building

435 Lausen Mall (Map)

In association with the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, the King Institute is proud to present award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson’s documentary Freedom Riders, a powerful, harrowing and inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives--and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment--for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders' belief in non-violent activism was tested as mob violence and bitter racism greeted them along the way.

“I got up one morning in May and I said to my folks at home, I won't be back today because I'm a Freedom Rider. It was like a wave or a wind that you didn't know where it was coming from or where it was going, but you knew you were supposed to be there."-Pauline Knight-Ofuso, Freedom Rider.

In cooperation with the Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service on Monday, January 17, the King Institute will be accepting donations of non-perishable food items for Second Harvest Food Bank or coats for One Warm Coat.  

For more information on the film, click HERE.

Friday, January 14, 2011

King Institute celebrating the King Papers Project at Stanford: Open House. 

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute

Cypress Hall D

466 Via Ortega (Map)

The annual Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute Open House will celebrate the King Papers Project at Stanford University. Institute Director Dr. Clayborne Carson will review the Institute’s activities and accomplishments in 2010. Also featured will be a book signing by Clarence B. Jones, King Institute Scholar in Residence and one of Dr. King’s advisors. Jones' new book is Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation.

In cooperation with the Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service on Monday, January 17, the King Institute will be accepting donations of non-perishable food items for Second Harvest Food Bank or coats for One Warm Coat.

For more information on the Open House click HERE.

Monday, January 17, 2011 

Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service

This year will mark the 25th anniversary of the Martin Luther King, Jr., federal holiday. This milestone is a perfect opportunity for Americans to honor Dr. King’s legacy through service. The MLK Day of Service empowers individuals, strengthens communities, bridges barriers, creates solutions to social problems, and moves us closer to Dr. King’s vision of a beloved community.

Palo Alto Day of Service
The City of Palo Alto in collaboration with Youth Community Service (YCS) will provide opportunities to donate food and clothing and to participate in a volunteer project on Lytton Plaza.  Join us!  Bring the whole family between noon and 3pm.  There will be music and fun for all – and more importantly, this will be a chance to do something to help others.

Community Mitzvah Day
This intergenerational event, sponsored by Oshman Family Jewish Community Center, will feature over 25 small group, hands-on service projects addressing issues of poverty, hunger, housing and homelessness, aging, the environment and more. Open to all ages with projects for both individuals and families. Over 25 service projects to choose from, including crafts for hospitalized children, cooking & serving meals at shelters, habitat restoration & tree planting, playground repairs, visits with seniors, making cat toys & dog biscuits for homeless animals and much more!

National Day of Service
For opportunites to participate and serve outside of the Bay area please visit www.mlkday.gov.  The MLK Day of Service is a part of United We Serve, the President's national call to service initiative. It calls for Americans from all walks of life to work together to provide solutions to our most pressing national problems.

Freedom Train
The Freedom Train ride, hosted by the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Association of Santa Clara Valley, from San Jose to San Francisco, CA is made each year to commemorate the historic 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery.  Riders board the train in San Jose for a peaceful journey to San Francisco, with stops in Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, San Mateo. Once in San Francisco riders may participate in a march, hosted by the Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Foundation, to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. 

The Freedom Train is 2011 Departure Stations & Times:
San Jose – 9:30am                Sunnyvale – 9:45am
Palo alto – 9:59am                San Mateo 10:22am

Arrives at San Francisco at 10:55am

Please arrive at your station 30 minutes before departure. There will be no special southbound service. However, Freedom Train tickets will be accepted as valid fare media on southbound trains departing San Francisco after 1 p.m.

Tickets are on sale now for $10 each and must be purchased in advance. Ticket sales are through the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Association of Santa Clara Valley.  Purchase your tickets now at Brown Paper Tickets.

SUSTAINING THE DREAM: Through Community and Service
The Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Foundation will continue in their 30 year tradition of hosting a number of events celebrating the King Holiday.  Events include a march from 4th Street to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the MLK Mind, Body and Soul Festival, the San Francisco Literary and Children's Reading Festival, and finally the MLK Birthday Celebration. The event will be MC’d by leading bay area media personalities, and a host of inspirational speakers will provide the audience with a celebration experience designed to encourage and entertain.

Celebration attendees will also receive free admission and special discounts at the Museum of the African Diaspora, Contemporary Jewish Museum and from leading stores and restaurants in the City’s famed Union Square area.

Arguably one of the most well known and successful labor mediators and arbitrators of the 1950s and 1960s, Theodore W. Kheel, died Friday, 12 November 2010.

Theodore Woodrow Kheel, named after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, was born May 9, 1914 in Brooklyn, N.Y. to parents Sam Kheel and Kate Herzenstein.  He attended DeWitt Clinton High School, he then graduated from Cornell University in 1935 and two years later graduated from its law school.  The day after passing the New York Bar Exam he married Ann Sustein. 

In 1938 he joined the legal team of the National Labor Relations Board and for the next 10 years Kheel worked in various government jobs related to Labor.  He went into private practice in 1948 and began settling disputes between private transit companies and the Transit Workers Union.  He was appointed by New York Mayor Richard J. Wagner as arbitor for the citywide transit authority in 1956.  Over the next 30 years Kheel would make decisions on an average of 1,000 cases each year.   Called on by mayors and presidents alike to help prevent or end strikes, Theodore Kheel established a reputation of being "the most influential peacemaker in New York City". Kheel was known for his ability to negiotitate contracts between even the most bitter opponents. Most notably, Kheel helped end the 114 day New York newspaper strike in 1962-1963 and President Lyndon Johnson called on his services a year later to help prevent a nation wide rail strike.

As well as investor, entreprenuer, author, lawyer, and public servant, Theodore Kheel established himself as a philanthropist by heading the Gandhi Society for Human Rights.  Created in 1962, by Harry Wachtel, Clarence Jones, and Kheel, the mission of the Gandhi Society was to provide legal defense for civil rights cases, educational materials propagating nonviolent methods and voter registration activities, and financial assistance for civil rights projects to organizations, such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

In his later years Kheel turned his attention to environmental activism establishing Earth Pledge and Nuture Nature Foundation.

He is survived by his six children, eleven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

When I heard the news of the passing of Ron Walters, I reflected on his distinguished career as an activist scholar. My son Malcolm had the good fortune to have him as a mentor when he was a student at Howard University.

Although I haven’t seen Ron much in recent years, I treasure the times we talked about our common interest in African-American politics and the modern black liberation movement. He had deep roots in the movement, going back to his participation in the pioneering desegregation sit-ins in Wichita during 1958. As a scholar, he kept his focus on making his research useful to black leaders seeking progressive social change. His influence was most evident during the 1970s, when he offered sage (though often ignored) advice to black activists seeking to transform the “black power” slogan into political reality. One of the activists who accept at least some of his advice was Jesse Jackson.

When I was writing journalistic pieces about the Jesse’s 1984 presidential campaign, I interviewed Ron in his role as Jesse’s deputy campaign manager. The interview took place at the Democratic convention on July 20, the morning after we both watched Jesse deliver his extraordinary oration at the Democratic convention. Although Jesse and his supporters knew that the campaign had not succeeded in winning the Democratic nomination, Jesse’s emotional speech was a triumph, arousing the delegates with the vision of the rainbow coalition that become the basis for Jesse’s more successful 1988 campaign.

When we met, Ron was visibly exhausted from the pressures of the campaign and the convention, but I expected that he would be pleased with his role in a campaign that exceeded the expectations of most observers. What I observed instead was a sense of sadness. Ron seemed bothered that Jesse had secure unexpected non-black support by moving away from his initial emphasis on mobilizing the black electorate to pursue black racial interests. Rather than optimistic about the future of black politics on the national stage, Ron expressed skepticism about the possibility that a black politician could ever gain the presidency.

He said:

“I have to admit something to you; I just have to be honest about it. I am not convinced that the best thing for black people would be to have a black president. And the reason for that is I understand that the most important perspective here is not in judging the President, but often the Presidency. And by the Presidency I mean that you can be a very progressive person and wake up one day and find yourself in the Oval Office, and all of a sudden be faced with the proposition that you can’t do a damn thing, unless you deal with ITT, ATT, Department of Defense, on and on. You know what I mean? The large institutions in this country that have an impact on the Presidency and therefore shape the institutions that the President has to deal with to get things done. And the only way you can confront them by the force of your personality . . . You may be able to do combat. But we could wind up with the anomaly of having a black eunuch in the White House, someone who would be there, but, if he or she were progressive, would still be bereft of instruments to govern on our behalf. Or if they were not progressive, which is more likely the case. They’d be a total embarrassment. You have to come to grips in the midnight hour that the FBI, the CIA and all those people would not let a Jesse Jackson be President of the United States. That is just a fundamental thing you have to deal with sometimes when you’re just talking to yourself. White folks are not going to stand for that.”

I have read that Ron was elated by the election of Barack Obama, but I wonder how much his 1984 views affected his understanding the significance of Obama’s election and the possibilities of his presidency. I regret that I will never be able to ask him.

Rev. Lucius Walker Jr., social justice activist and founder of the Pastors for Peace, died on 7 September 2010, of a heart attack.

Lucius Walker founded the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) in 1967, with the mission “to help forward the struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and self-determination.” Walker served as Associate General Secretary of the National Council of Churches from 1973 and 1978, and returned to lead IFCO again in 1979.

In the 1980s, Walker led an IFCO study delegation in Nicaragua to protest U.S. support of Nicaraguan contras. During the visit he was shot and wounded when rebels opened fire, killing two and wounding 27 others. The experience prompted Walker to found Pastors for Peace, the non-profit that operates within IFCO and under which Walker made relief trips to Cuba. A vocal critic of the U.S. embargo of Cuba, Walker transported medical supplies and other aid to the island each year, starting in 1992. Walker led 21 annual “friendshipments” to Cuba through countries such as Canada and Mexico; his most recent caravan took place this summer.

SNCC activist Dr. Gwendolyn Patton described Walker as an “abiding friend of SNCC during our transition/transformation from simplistic social integration and dismantling of Jim Crow laws to a fundamental strategy to achieve cultural, political and economic collective inclusion in a society that purported to be pluralist and democratic.”

Walker was born on 3 August 1930, in Roselle, New Jersey. He received his undergraduate degree from Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina and was awarded a Master of Divinity degree from Andover Newton Theological Seminary in 1958. Additionally, he earned a Master of Science in Social Work degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1963. In 1984, he became the founding pastor of the Salvation Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York, a center of progressive preaching and social activism.