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News and Highlights

A leak: The truth of a sick nation

The prospect of obtaining tangible freedom is seemingly implausible. Merely thinking about the concept, idea and existence of such is met with steep skepticism and hesitation. Freedom, the ability (power) to act, speak and think as one desires without restraint or hinderance; the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved. A verity foreign to the Negro, unfounded in the collective African diasporic experience, selective to the American experiment, and fairytale-esque in actualization and application. For freedom to be tangible, actualized for the marginalized and othered, there must be truth telling.

“For freedom to be tangible, actualized for the marginalized and othered, there must be truth telling.”

Truth be told, the highest court in the land has ceased to be the place of equitable justice and space of affirmed humanity through fair interpretation of the law. Already evidenced through its rollback of voting rights, indifference toward affirmative action, and resistance to equitable protection from an ongoing endemic.

This is no random occurrence or sudden happening, but an intentional generational plot to confront shifting demographics and demand for communal co-existence determined to recreate the country that once existed. A country emulated through the MET Gala’s Gilded Age inspired theme all while an unprecedented revelation of empire’s intent to revoke progress in the name of hypocritical morality and authoritarian theft occurred.

Politico’s leak of an initial draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito affirmed the truth known by Black and brown women about this nation’s power brokers — white men — when it comes to their bodies and decisions; a truth arguably known by all women.

Since the inception of this country the bodies of women, specifically Black women, have been seen through a lens of capitalistic commodification and engrained manipulation. One that has long deemed the bodies of Black and brown people as experimental and Black women’s bodies as living cadavers.

Engineered practices of abuse by white men resulting in irreversible acts of bodily harm done by the likes of J. Marion Sims. Praised as the father of modern gynecology, Sims practiced on enslaved Black women. Lucy, Anarcha, Betsey and unknown others suffered the pain of his experiments. Anarcha alone endured 30 surgeries without anesthesia. It was later revealed that “after he practiced his methods on Black women, Sims moved to New York City to open a women’s hospital in the 1850s. He started treating white women, but with anesthesia.”

The damning role, impact and effects of white autocracy and patriarchy have marred this country. Further, men’s inability to cease from infringing upon the inherent authority of women to choose what happens to their bodies will not cease the act or practice of abortions. As Traci Blackmon stated: “The fact is no Supreme Court decision, no state law, no theological shame game will ever stop abortions from happening. What it may do is stop safe abortions. It will drive many women back into dark alleys and kitchen tables. It will cause women for whom places like Planned Parenthood are their only safe and affordable choice to seek desperate measures to control their own bodies. And those who can afford to condemn others and continue to make their own decisions about their bodies … or have them made for them … will continue to access abortions in private clinics and offices and pretend they never went inside.”

“Within Alito’s draft we bear witness to the maligned trope regarding the role abortion plays within the African American community.”

Within Alito’s draft we bear witness to the maligned trope regarding the role abortion plays within the African American community. A narrative championed by white conservatives and evangelicals, and damningly adopted by Black theological conservatives absent of interrogation and implied messaging. All the while dismissing the autonomy of women, economic realities, lack of prenatal care, dynamics regarding health and life, and frankly matters far more complicated to the knowledge of men or anything I could place in this article.

Politico reports: “Alito’s draft opinion ventures even further into this racially sensitive territory by observing in a footnote that some early proponents of abortion rights also had unsavory views in favor of eugenics. ‘Some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population,” Alito writes. “It is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect. A highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are Black.’”

The regurgitation of such by a Supreme Court justice should alarm the staunchest of religious Pharisees while also jolting broader society into direct action. The ramifications of such a ruling should alarm us all, for certainly it won’t cease with Roe v. Wade. The prospect of justice will shift.

From Politico: “The overturning of Roe would almost immediately lead to stricter limits on abortion access in large swaths of the South and Midwest, with about half of the states set to immediately impose broad abortion bans. Any state could still legally allow the procedure.”

“The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each state from regulating or prohibiting abortion,” Alito’s draft concludes. “Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”

“The uplift of the age-old argument of ‘states’ rights’ creates an avenue to enter a period of prohibition never seen.”

Revealed is a strategy toward regression. At stake is the livelihood and welfare of the country. At stake are the rights of Black and brown communities. At stake is the affirmed existence and rights of LGBTQ neighbors. At stake is every ruling that has tried to construct an equitable country built upon the tangible accessibility to justice. Yet, the uplift of the age-old argument of “states’ rights” creates an avenue to enter a period of prohibition never seen. An era more damning than anything Strom Thurmond and Jerry Falwell could construct. We are witnessing the truth of imperial violence and white hegemonic fear manifested through systemic, generational, patriarchal and state-sanctioned death. Clear indications of a nation becoming a death-dealing hell.

The truth is we exist in a nation that is sick. A country that is being who it’s always been. The evidence reveals we are about to enter a new era of state’s rights and generational repeals. Arguably, “we ain’t seen nothing yet.” However, discontent and distance won’t change the reality. Deep resistance, confrontation and a true strategy is our only solution; it’s all we have.

Jamar A. Boyd II serves the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference as senior manager of organizational impact. He earned a bachelor of science degree in sport management and business from Georgia Southern University and a master of divinity degree from The Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University. He is the former justice reform organizer at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. He also serves as the graduate fellow for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology.

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When A Prophet Is Among You

It happens so often that while a prophet is among us, we do not appreciate or value who he/she is or what he/she is saying.

In the Hebrew scriptures, the prophets complain about the treatment received from the people and the resistance given in response to the prophetic task of speaking truth to power. Sometimes this truth has been spoken to the people of the church and sometimes to the government, but in both instances, the prophets’ voices are often ignored, and the prophets harshly criticized.

Their words pierce the soul because they cut through the mundaneness of human existence. Their words bore into the spirits of people who say they know and love God and into the spirits of people who – despite what they do and/or do not do – know better.

It is no secret that while Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, he was hated by many – including plenty of Black people and fellow Black clergy. Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux conspired with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the 60s to destroy Dr. King. (https://face2faceafrica.com/article/how-this-popular-black-evangelist-colluded-with-fbi-to-destroy-mlk-in-the-1960s). In an era where the worst thing to be called was “communist,” Michaux made that charge against Dr. King, along with other damaging and slanderous accusations.

We also know that Rev. J.H. Jackson vehemently opposed Dr. King. (https://www.phillytrib.com/special_sections/mlk/kings-strategy-drew-opposition-from-some-in-the-church/article_32ff9bdc-a576-5208-ba9c-b7617979f119.html) Jackson totally disapproved of the nonviolent, direct-action activities that characterized the 60s fight for racial justice. Because, in spite of the commitment to nonviolence, the King-inspired events often resulted in violence, Jackson opposed Dr. King, sharing his belief that “law and order” on the part of Black people was the way to freedom. His criticisms of Dr. King were well-known.

So, it is no surprise that Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. (SDPC) Co-Founding Trustee, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., shares a consistent prophetic voice to the cause of justice and freedom for people of African descent, has had naysayers among the rank of clergy and Black religious people as well. He is a prophet, speaking truth to power not because of the people, but in spite of them. He has been on the prophetic battlefield his entire ministry and has always drawn criticism, but the criticism increased during the presidential campaign of then Senator Barack Obama. (https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/2008/05/02/the-wright-stuff-black-clergy/48006848007/

Some Black clergy were so fretful by the attacks on him during the Obama campaign that they abandoned Rev. Wright, though he had been supportive of and helpful to many of them in their ministries. (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-apr-30-na-pastors30-story.html

Despite the criticisms, prophets move forward. They inhale the pain and honor the commitment to their call – which is to upset the status quo of the Empire and lead people to hear the truth and be encouraged to practice the truth so that they can be free of the mindset that has told them – and all of us – that our commitment is to the state and not to God.

Dr. Wright moved forward as did Dr. King – and both moved as did the ancient prophets who walked this earth centuries before them.

Dr. Wright was honored at Howard University Rankin Chapel this week. He suffered a stroke some years ago and is confined to a wheelchair and, because the stroke affected his vocal cords, his voice is not as strong as it once was. At the Sunday event, he spoke in a whisper.

But he spoke.

SDPC Co-Chair and Co-Founder, Rev. Dr. Frederick Douglas Haynes III, a protégé of Dr. Wright, preached what was billed as Dr. Wright’s retirement from Rankin Chapel, where he has preached annually for the last 40 years. The first sermon he preached there, he said in that whisper, was “The Audacity to Hope,” a sermon referenced by former President Obama and inspired a similar title for one of Obama’s early books.

In that same whisper, he led the audience to sing “I Thank You, Jesus.” Only then did Haynes rise to preach. 

It was a moment, a prophet adding a stanza to a message he had been delivering for years. Despite everything, “thank you” was the message being offered to the God who had called him and sustained him.

When a prophet is among us, we ought to recognize the truth they share for our us and our times. Their words are not meant to make us settle back and smile but, rather, to be encouraged by truth to fight the evil that threatens all of us. The late Dr. Vincent Harding wrote a book, The Inconvenient Hero, the title being taken from “A Dead Man’s Dream” by poet Carl Himes. Himes wrote:

Dead men make such convenient heroes.For they cannot rise to challenge the images That we might fashion from their lives.It is easier to build monuments Than to build a better world.

A prophet like Dr. King is (and Dr. Wright will be) praised after they are gone. It is fitting and satisfying that Wright, a prophet without equal, was honored while he is yet alive to hear that in spite of those who opposed and criticized him, there were and are many more who love and respect him – and who know that his commitment and faithfulness to his prophetic call has helped make this sick world more aware of justice, even if it is unwilling to practice it.

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 Dr. Iva Carruthers Represents Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. at the Signing of Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Bill into Law 

 President Joe Biden signing Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Law with the great-grandchildren of Ida B. Wells looking on. (4th from left, Daniel Duster; 2nd from right, Michelle Duster 

 Rev. Dr. Iva Carruthers, general secretary of Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc., a Chicago-based, faith-based social justice initiative and United Nations NGO, was present today, March 29, 2022, at the signing of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Bill by President Joe Biden. 

Sixty-seven years ago, Till was lynched in Money, Mississippi, by angry white men after allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two men were charged and put on trial for his murder, but both were acquitted. They later confessed to Look Magazine that they had committed the crime, protected from persecution and prosecution because of double-jeopardy laws. 

Over the past century, some 200 anti-lynching bills have been presented to Congress, but none made into law. The bill being signed today is historic, making lynching a federal hate crime. 

“It is so past the time for this to happen,” declared Dr. Carruthers. “I am sure Mamie Till Mobley, Emmett’s mother, who made sure the world saw what racial hatred did to her son and who worked to advance a law against lynching, is smiling. The ancestors are rejoicing.”

It was Ida B. Wells Barnett’s work to get anti-lynching legislation passed that gained national attention in 1898. The first recorded lynching was in 1835, but research indicates that lynching has its roots in the Revolutionary War and was named after the brother of the man who founded Lynchburg, VA. The “face” of lynching, however, changed in 1886 when the number of Black lynch victims exceeded white victims, thus formally racializing this despicable practice. Wells worked unsuccessfully to get anti-lynching legislation passed and never stopped in her work to create public awareness of the practice due to the fact that those doing the murders were seldom held accountable. 

“I know that a law cannot change the hearts of people; this law will not stop lynching, but it will certainly give a foundation for waging a legal fight against it. It is an important milestone in the fight for “equal protection under the law” for Black people in this country,” Dr. Carruthers further stated. 

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Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. Mourns the passing of Chicago Broadcasting Icons.

“The passing of Merri Dee and Pervis Spann, two African American broadcasting legends, has left a deep void in the city and in the world,” says Rev. Dr. Iva Carruthers, the General Secretary of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference (SDPC), a faith-based social justice initiative and United Nations NGO located in Chicago, IL.

“Merri Dee and Pervis Spann were not just media personalities,” Carruthers added. “They were a part of the Black community. They knew us. They loved us, and they worked for and with us. We don’t know how many Black children were inspired by the work they did. This is a great loss for us all.”

Carruthers recalled that Dee spent 43 years of her career at WGN-Channel 9, and Spann, known as the “voice of Black Chicago,” worked at WVON-AM 1690 for some 60 years.

Dee was one of Chicago’s first African American female broadcasters. She was tough and fair and versatile; in addition to broadcasting, she once served as director of community relations, as a commissioner on the Illinois Human Rights Commission, and as a fundraiser and advocate for children. By the time she retired in 2008 as the manager of WGN’s Children’s Charities, she had raised more than $30 million. A victim of gun violence in 1971, she helped draft a Victim’s Bill of Rights in 1992 in the state of Illinois.

Spann, throughout his career, likewise attended to the Black community. In addition to being a disc jockey and owner, he was co-founder of Midway Broadcasting Corporation, WVON’s parent company, and was instru- mental in providing a platform for Black musical artists to gain national exposure. He was known as the person who called Aretha Franklin the “Queen of Soul” and BB King the “King of Blues.” A lover of blues, he called himself “the Bluesman.”

Both Dee and Spann pushed against obstacles that Blacks faced as they pushed into the media, but they never stopped working and they never stopped advocating for the Black community, especially Black children and youth. Both inspired many Black youth to pursue careers in journalism and communications.

“We can’t even begin to calibrate the power these two individuals shared with Chicago,” said Carruthers. “In our work for social justice, we recognize that wisdom-bearers and justice-seekers come in all disciplines.

Merri Dee and Pervis Spann are proof of that.”

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America is addicted to white supremacy

March 7, 2022

Susan K. Smith

Photo – 123rf.com

This country is addicted to its belief in and adherence to white supremacy. It is an addiction that displays as do all addictions: The desire for the power of white supremacy is part of the political circulatory system of this country, and because of that, the country cannot just declare that we are over it. America needs to be detoxed of its poisonous, destructive tumor.

There have been spates of time in our history where there has been a kind of remission. After the horrifically toxic years following Reconstruction, Black Americans, and women for that matter, were allowed into the political system.

But Black political and economic progress almost always has been followed by white backlash. It’s the addiction, made evident.

Once a person is addicted to a substance, his or her body needs it and their body is forever challenged and threatened by that need re-emerging. The blessing or evidence of healing is revelatory when the addicted person’s physiology and spirituality has risen above raw desire.

America’s addiction to white supremacy is no different. When it comes to white supremacy, American simply does not want to let it go. And so we have not.

This addiction to white supremacy exists in spite of the historical Jesus and his teachings. Some white supremacists have declaredthat Jesus’ mission really was to minister to and save the most wealthy, not those who suffer from political, economic and social oppression.

Historian Anthea Butler says: 

White Christianity is a Christianity that is based on the following: Jesus is white. Jesus privileges white culture and white supremacy, and the political aspirations of whiteness over and against everything else. White Christianity assumes that everybody should be subsumed under whiteness in terms of culture and society.

White Christianity assumes that it does not have to look at poverty. We see this in the form of the so-called prosperity gospel, and that any blessing you get from God is because God favors you. If anybody else is out of favor, let’s say some poor kid in Northwest Philadelphia who doesn’t have enough to eat, well, that’s just too bad because they’re not blessed of God.

If you grew up in a home where the gospel was taught, this remaking of Jesus as the champion of white supremacy is puzzling, confusing and troubling. But in all truth, the only way to understand what is going on, and the role of Christianity in all of it, is to understand the ethos of white Christianity — a belief system that exists North, South, East and West.

“If you grew up in a home where the gospel was taught, this remaking of Jesus as the champion of white supremacy is puzzling, confusing and troubling.”

What, then, do Christians who believe in the biblical Jesus, the Jesus of the gospel, do to effectively combat a nation that is addicted to white supremacy and that justifies its actions on their re-make of Jesus and Jesus’ purposes? How does one fight a group of people who have effectively de-defied the biblical Jesus and God, the parent of Jesus?

It is troubling, again, for those of us who internalized our Sunday school lessons, who resonated with the stories of Jesus loving all people, mingling with and touching and healing those who had been determined to be “the least of these.” The gospel message gave hope to the masses, which is necessary for the strength to survive oppression. With so many white Christians having rejected the biblical Jesus and replacing that figure with their own icon, how does the biblical Jesus survive — or in this time, does he?

Robert P. Jones, author of White Too Long, writes that America always has had a fascist undergirding, revealed during moments of white backlash toward Black progress. Are the believers in the biblical Jesus too silent? Too afraid?

It seems believers in the biblical Jesus ought to lose their fear and stand up, speak out and confront the distortion of Christianity we see playing out. We need to gird up and, like Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, face those who would bully believers in the gospel.

The Ukraine is in a war, surely, but this country is in a war as well with a nation that is addicted to its substance of choice — white supremacy. This country does not want to be healed of it; the goal is to inhale more fumes of power to maintain its high. America, just like any addict, may know that it is on a dangerous course and might die but has no power or desire to stop the ravaging of its soul.

It is time for believers in the biblical Jesus, the Jesus of the gospel, to stand up and be heard and seen.

Reprinted with permission by author.


Susan K. Smith is an ordained minister, activist and author. A graduate of Yale Divinity School, she is the director of clergy resource development for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. Her latest book is With Liberty and Justice for Some: The Bible, the Constitution, and Racism in America.

Susan K. Smith
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PROPHETIC CLARITY, CAPITALIST DITHERING, AND UKRAINE

March 3, 2022

©Wendell Griffen, 2022

has-text-align-rightPhoto / Bloomberg.com – Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images Europe

What should your neighbors do if a bully broke into your home in broad daylight, began killing members of your family, and publicly announced that the killing would continue until you surrendered or abandoned your home?

Should the neighbors send thoughts and prayers?

Should they wear the favorite colors of your family?

Should they stop doing business with the bully?

Should they seize property and bank accounts owned by the bully? If neighbors welcomed you and your family into their homes, would that alter the reality that they refused to help you and your family fight the bully? 

How would those responses make your neighborhood safer? 

How are they consistent with the moral duty to value the lives and peace of neighbors as highly as we value our own lives and peace? 

These questions have troubled me since Russian military forces invaded Ukraine on orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Thoughts, prayers, economic sanctions, and other acts of sympathy for Ukraine have been expressed and invoked with much fanfare by political leaders. Humanitarian aid has been promised and is being provided for Ukrainians who fled their homeland since the invasion began.

Those things will not stop the invasion. They will not prevent Putin from invading other nations. They will not discourage other would-be bullies.

Ukrainians do not need a global sympathy exercise. Threats from capitalist politicians that their nations will quit doing business with Putin’s Russia do not help Ukrainians fight Russian invaders. Thoughts and prayers do not prevent Ukrainian men, women, and children from being terrorized. Sports boycotts of Russian teams and athletes will not protect Ukrainian women and girls from being sexually assaulted and raped. 

Ukrainians know this is true. So does Vladimir Putin. 

Putin, like all sociopaths, is not deterred by expressions of condemnation and sympathy. He invaded Ukraine despite numerous appeals from political leaders in the European Union and NATO and warnings that invading Ukraine would result in severe economic responses.

Putin invaded Ukraine despite those appeals and warnings because no national leader promised to help Ukraine defend itself against his planned invasion. No nation sent military personnel to help Ukraine defend itself. The invasion has gone on for a week. Ukrainian President Victor Zelensky has been begging the world for military help as his people are being bombed, shot, and terrorized. His pleas have resulted in the moral and military equivalent of a global sympathy card.

President Zelensky and President Putin know the difference between a sympathy card and the help Ukraine needs. They also know that world leaders have the weapons, warriors, and other resources needed by Ukraine. 

What perturbs Zelensky and delights Putin is the knowledge that world leaders lack the will to bring their arsenals, warriors, and other war-fighting resources to bear against Putin.

Otherwise, they would have done so before now. Ukrainians would be joined by warriors from other eastern Europe nations and warriors from the European Union and NATO to repel the Russian invasion on the terms that bullies understand and fear, namely, armed defeat by a committed military force.  That military resistance to Russian aggression – coupled with economic and diplomatic isolation – would show Putin, the Russian population, and other would-be bullies such as China, Israel, Iran, and India that the term “global neighborhood” means more than stock exchanges and commercial ventures for profit-taking.

Good neighbors do more than bring meals and sympathy cards when death-dealing bullies attack others.  Good neighbors help one another fight off bullies.

Perversely, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed the moral and ethical incompetence of capitalism to the world (not that the proof has been unavailable or inconspicuous before now). Having a neighborhood where bullies are not free to victimize people is always a “vital strategic interest.” 

However, the capitalist nations that make up the G7 have a notion of neighborhood that is no bigger than their collective wealth and comfort. They do not include Ukraine, Palestine, South Africa, and other places where state sponsored violence is happening to people because those places are not part of their notion of “neighborhood.”

Hence, people send “thoughts and prayers” as Vladimir Putin’s Russian soldiers murder people in Ukraine with impunity.

Hence, people send “thoughts and prayers” as Israel murders Palestinians and steal Palestinian land and water with impunity.

Hence, people send “thoughts and prayers” as the wealth, health, and other inequities that defined the apartheid regime of South Africa continue with impunity.

Hence, people send “thoughts and prayers” as police officers kill and terrorize people and communities of color with impunity.

People who send “thoughts and prayers” when bullies attack their neighbors are not courageous. They are not loyal. They are not helpful. “Thoughts and prayers” do not stop bullies. Bullies know that is true. People attacked by bullies know that is true.

“Thoughts and prayers” from dithering capitalists are expressions of sympathy, not support for oppressed people. As such, “thoughts and prayers” merely mark the people who send them rather than use their power to help oppressed people fight bullies as cowards and hypocrites.

History will show that capitalist nations with plenty of troops, tanks, and attack helicopters did not send them to help Ukraine. Hence, Putin’s invasion will succeed.  

The world will never forget that rich nations refused to help Ukraine defend itself. Also, bullies will not forget.

Reprinted with permission by author.


Hon. Rev. Wendell Griffen  Trustee, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc.  Senior Pastor, New Millennial Church, Little Rock, AR he/him/his  Author, The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope (Judson Press, 2017)

Wendell Griffen
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After decades of lobbying, supporters say they have the votes in the House to pass a reparations bill

H.R. 40 would create a commission on reparations for Black Americans modeled on the process Japanese Americans went through to receive reparations for being imprisoned in internment camps during World War II.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), right, speaks during a hearing about reparations for the descendants of enslaved people before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in 2019. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

By Emmanuel Felton , The Washington Post


More than three decades after it was first introduced, a House bill that would create a commission to study reparations for Black Americans has the votes to pass, its key champions say.

That broad support, they contend, shows that the idea of reparations has gone from the fringes to the mainstream of American politics.

“This has been a 30-plus year journey,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas). “We had to take a different approach. We had to go one by one to members explaining this does not generate a check.”

The commission would hold hearings with testimony from those who support and oppose the idea. Jackson Lee said the country would end up better from the process. “Reparations is about repair and when you repair the damage that has been done, you do so much to move a society forward. This commission can be a healing process — telling the truth can heal America,” she said.

While supporters are confident they have the votes to gain approval in the Democratic-controlled House, they are less optimistic about the bill’s fate in the Senate. Instead, they intend to push President Biden to sign an executive order that would create the commission. The bill, H.R. 40, call for a months-long study of reparations so supporters say they need Biden to act now so his administration could implement the commission’s recommendations before the end of his term.

The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the legislation or whether Biden would consider an executive order.

During the 2020 Democratic primary election, The Washington Post asked candidates if they thought the federal government should pay reparations to the descendants of enslaved people. Nearly all of the leading contenders, including Biden, said that they supported an in-depth study of the issue. Their answers represented a significant shift compared to President Barack Obama’s rejection of the idea during his 2008 campaign. Revisiting the issue in an interview last year, Obama said that reparations are “justified” but the “politics of white resistance and resentment” made the issue a “non-starter” during his presidency.

Supporters say that the conversations that started after George Floyd’s murder changed the political calculus of reparations. Floyd’s death in May 2020 sparked worldwide protests and a national reckoning on race and the criminal justice system. For many, watching the viral video of Floyd crying for his mother while struggling to breathe pinned beneath the knee of a White Minneapolis police officer was proof of what Black Americans have said for years — that their lives aren’t valued.

“I started fighting for reparations at a time when it didn’t pass the laugh test, when I spent most of my time just trying to get people in power just to utter the word reparations,” said Nkechi Taifa, director of the Reparation Education Project. “That changed with George Floyd. He was like the Emmett Till of the 21st century. It was something about his murder that captured the attention of the world just like Emmett Till’s murder did 70 years ago, and it started a new movement that has led to this mainstream conversation about reparations. But people need to know that this conversation didn’t just pop up overnight on the Internet, people have been fighting for reparations for a long time.”

This push for a federal commission comes a cities and localities across the country undertake their own efforts to account for their racist pasts.

In September 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed AB 3121, which created a task force to study and recommend reparations for Black Californians. In March, the panel will take a final vote on the question of who should be eligible for those reparations. With the vote, the group hopes to set a historic precedent for reparations eligibility for other states and the federal government. Thus far, the California effort represents the largest Black reparations project in the nation’s history, but supporters say they expect similar efforts soon in other Democratic-strongholds like New York, New Jersey and Maryland.

The federal legislation was first introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) in 1989. The “40” in H.R. 40 is a reference to an order signed in the waning days of the Civil War aimed at helping newly-freed Black people survive and make a fresh start after 200 years in bondage. The government would take land that had been confiscated from Confederates and redistribute it, with each Black family receiving 40 acres. However, after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, the order was rescinded and the land was returned to White Confederate landowners.

Conyers proposed the legislation in the wake of President Reagan signing The Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned by the U.S. government during World War II.

Conyers went on to introduce the bill 20 times, once during every Legislative session from 1989 to 2017. After Conyers resigned from Congress in 2017 in the wake of sexual harassment allegations, Rep. Jackson Lee became the bill’s primary champion. After 30 years on the Hill, the bill made it out of committee for the first time last April. It was approved by the House Judiciary Committee in a 25-17 party-line vote. Earlier this month, nearly every major civil rights organization and a host of celebrities, including Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover, signed a letter urging congressional leaders to bring H.R. 40 to the floor for a vote.

Jackson Lee said she and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who introduced the bill in the Senate, have secured 260 sponsors and “yes” votes for the measure across both chambers of Congress, though none from any Republicans.

“This groundswell of support sends a clear message to President Biden,” said Kennis Henry of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations. “We are ready for the opportunity to have this racial reckoning. And if not now, when?,” said Henry.

“We have seen other groups get reparations from the Japanese to the families of 9/11 victims. In those cases and others, our government said we must do something,” Henry said. “So why is this country unwilling to discuss reparations for people of African descent? The only difference between those who have gotten reparations and those who have not gotten compensation is the color of my skin.”

The commission, which would receive $12 million in funding, would be composed of 13 members. The President and the Speaker of the House would each appoint three members, while the President pro tempore of the Senate would appoint a single member. The other six seats would be filled with representatives from civil rights organizations that have championed the cause of reparations. Jade Magnus Ogunnaike, a senior campaign director at Color of Change, hopes the work of commission could help undo what she calls the misinformation of the anti-Critical Race Theory movement.

“At the heart of what the critical race theory fight is about is the refusal to educate young people and by proxy their families about the harm America has done to Black people,” she said. “And so you have people asking: ‘Why should a Black person today receive reparations, none of you experienced slavery?’ And this is why I think H.R. 40 is so, so important because it’s going to explain and show the ways that slavery, the Jim Crow era and Reconstruction materially impacted Black communities and their legacies.”

Reparations could be a step toward closing the racial wealth gap that was created in part by Black families historically not having land and property to pass on to their descendants due to slavery and later, racist government policies, supporters say.

“There are so many White families who may not be wealthy, but they have a home that they inherited from their grandparents who bought the home with federal funds when they returned from World War II,” Ogunnaike said. “So few Black people have that ability, and that’s a direct harm at the hands of the federal government. It’s time for them to repair it. Black organizers, the Black movement has done an incredible job of making this a centerpiece of conversation, now we need to figure out the how of how we move people to action.”

2021 Washington Post-ABC News pollfound that 65 percent of Americans opposed paying cash reparations to the descendants of enslaved Black people. While a small plurality of Democrats — 46 percent — favored the idea, 92 percent of Republicans opposed it. Two-thirds of Black people supported the idea, but only 18 percent of White Americans did. However, while a majority still oppose reparations, the ranks of those who support the idea is up markedly from past surveys. A 1999 ABC News poll found just 19 percent of Americans approved of reparations for Black Americans. Supporters of H.R. 40. said they expect support for reparations to increase with a federal commission and its public findings.

“The idea of H.R. 40 is to respond to those who say my family didn’t have enslaved people, it’s not my fault,” Jackson Lee said. “What I say to them is be very assured, we will not be knocking on individual White people’s doors demanding money for African Americans. But for slavery, for the hanging of thousands of Black people, for Jim Crow laws, for the horrible segregation laws of the 20th century, for the segregation of the United States military, for redlining, your government has a responsibility because it was all government-sanctioned. Your government has a debt.”

Said Ron Daniels, president of the National African American Reparations Commission, “I firmly believe if White Americans knew better, they’d do better.”

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Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference Assails Decision of Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name Mike Huckabee Keynote Speaker

Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference Assails Decision of Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name Mike Huckabee Keynote Speaker

Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference Assails Decision of Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name Mike Huckabee Keynote Speaker The General Secretary and the Board of Trustees of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc, an organization that resources over 2,000 African American congregations across the country, today assailed the decision of the Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as the keynote speaker for the King birthday observance. (Read full article) Huckabee is slated to give his remarks at an invitation-only event at the Governor’s Mansion on January 17. “This decision shows a flagrant disregard for Dr. King’s values and total disrespect of the work that Dr. King did in the name of civil and human rights for African Americans in this country and the world,” said the Rev. Dr. Iva E. Carruthers, the General Secretary. “Only those whose interests it serves to misappropriate Dr. King’s message and engage in revisionist history at this time in U.S. history, would favor this type of event with Mike Huckabee as the speaker. It is a further insult to the demand for justice that one that calls itself the “King Commission” would endorse and allow this,” she continued. “The event is being paid for by taxpayers, which makes the affront even more egregious,” said the Honorable Rev. Wendell Griffen, of Little Rock, AK and SDPC trustee who recently wrote that the policies being passed and carried out represent a “re-assassination” of Dr. King.

“Sooner or later, those who feed a death wish find a way to destroy themselves. Over the course of the past three generations, we have watched and heard the death rattle of the society that rejected Martin Luther King Jr. during his lifetime, killed him, and has re-assassinated him since the day he died.,” Griffen wrote. “Now that the State of Arkansas has proudly announced its intention to “re-assassinate King” by having an un-reconstructed Southern Baptist preacher and right-wing politician named Mike Huckabee deliver a “keynote address” on the King holiday at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion at the invitation of the state agency that bears King’s name, we should be clear what its conduct means,” he said. “A society that behaves this way has gone beyond a death rattle. It is already morally and ethically dead,” Griffen concluded. Mike Huckabee has a history of speaking and working against the gains made by African Americans and others in this country. The former governor has

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Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. Trustees Join Hunger Strike for Voting Rights

Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. Trustees

Join Hunger Strike for Voting Rights  

Members of the Board of Trustees of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. (SDPC) have joined with other faith leaders on a hunger strike to advocate for the passage of voting rights legislation on a Federal level to mitigate new, oppressive legislation in several states. 

The hunger strike was organized and launched by the Rev. Stephen Green, chair of Faith for Black Lives. 

SDPC trustees, Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III, pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas; Rev. Traci Blackmon, associate general minister, Justice and Local Church Ministries of the United Church of Christ; and the Rev. Willie Francois III, pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Pleasantville, New Jersey, have joined the protest which began January 6, 2022, the one-year anniversary of the 2021 Insurrection, and which is to end January 17, 2022, the day the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is to be celebrated across the country. Read full article

 

Rev. Francois said, in a local news article, “We put our bodies on the line for this nation. It’s a way of waging a nonviolent love revolution,” he said.

Read full article  

Dr. Haynes, one of the co-chairs of the SDPC Board of Trustees, stated, “We have those in leadership  – in Texas government – who have in their ideological DNA the same mindset of those slave masters who denied the humanity of Black people. The same mindset of those individuals who upheld Jim and Jane Crow segregation. …Gov. (Greg) Abbot and his Republican cronies have decided to dress up Jim and Jane Crow in a tuxedo of what they call voter integrity, but it’s still Jim and Jane Crow. … You are simply trying to create a problem for voters you don’t want to vote.” Read full article  

Rev. Blackmon shared that she has been very introspective about the hunger strike and what it signifies for her. “I’ve joined the hunger strike because I believe escalation is necessary as the voice of my kindred and my descendants is threatened. For me, fasting is a natural escalation and is spiritual warfare. It is once again midnight in the nation, and I actually believe what I preach: something can only be cast out by fasting and prayer.” 

Rev. Dr. Iva Carruthers, general secretary of SDPC, said that the actions of the trustees do not surprise her, “We have a group of trustees who are so deeply committed to the cause of justice that they are willing to experience physical discomfort for the good of all people. They are standing on the wall and in the breach. It is what our trustees do.” 

Carruthers remarked that the country is in a precarious place right now, as the future of voting rights for all people – most importantly Black people – hangs in the balance. 

“We have all worked too hard, for too long to just sit by,” she commented. “I applaud the trustees for their courage and conviction.”

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The Gifted Seer and The American Heart

The Gifted Seer and The American Heart

By Joseph Evans, Ph.D.

“…[B]orn with a veil and gifted with second-sight in this American world – a world…which only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, – an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn under.” 
W.E.B. DU BOIS “OF OUR SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS”

Howard Thurman remains among the celebrated and elite preachers of twentieth-century renown (1899-1981). Thurman, a prophetic thinker and a self-described mystic, was gifted with second sight; a phenomenon that W.E.B. Dubois once described on the pages of “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” in The Souls of Black Folk.

Thurman the gifted seer prophetically forewarned us about fascism’s content located in the American heart.” Joseph Evans, Ph.D. 

Thurman was born within the veil of American oppression which may have been the source of his gift of second sight. The gift for Thurman is like an Old Testament Seer. “I am the seer,” Samuel replied. “Go up ahead of me to the high place, for today you are to eat with me, and in the morning, I will send you on your way and will tell you all that is in your heart” (1 Samuel 9:19). Thurman the gifted seer prophetically forewarned us about fascism’s content located in the American heart: 

These [Fascist] organizations exploit the active and latent prejudices that the average American has against the non-white races on the one hand and against the Jewish people on the other. They make it possible for a creative rationalization to provide a cloak for group hatreds which can be objectified as true Christianity or true Americanism. 


In other words, they provide for a legitimizing of sadistic and demonical impulses of which under normal circumstances they might be ashamed. To appeal to anti-Negro sentiment in many sections, communities and among many groups is a “natural” for the would-be demagogue. It is sure-fire. 

The above words are Thurman’s and are included in Peter Eisenstadt’s “Howard Thurman’s ‘Fascist Masquerade’: The Black thinker who saw this coming 75 years ago.” Eisenstadt, also the author of Against The Hounds Of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman, points toward the seer of Thurman’s second sight and how Thurman employed his gift to peer into the American heart. 

What Thurman saw was a nation leaning toward, and eventually accepting, anti-democratic norms, its embrace of fascism and its sycophantic disciple’s unbridled and unadulterated lust for authoritarianism. Eisenstadt’s article on Thurman is subtitled “At the end of World War II, pioneering religious thinker Howard Thurman saw fascism coming to Christian America.” 

“In Peter Eisenstadt’s “Howard Thurman’s ‘Fascist Masquerade’: The Black thinker who saw this coming 75 years ago.” Eisenstadt, also the author of Against The Hounds Of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman, points toward the seer of Thurman’s second sight and how Thurman employed his gift to peer into the American heart.” Joseph Evans, Ph.D.


In this new year, we approach the first anniversary of the infamous January 6 terrorist attack on the symbols of democracy.” Joseph Evans, Ph.D.

The subtitle underscores what I believe. That is, throughout his career, Thurman performed a spiritual examination of the American Heart:” His examination’s results were accurate. It pointed toward the looming, immoral, and political American dysfunction. Readers, we need only to remember the American terrorist demonstrative act on its symbols of American democratic institutions. 

Nearly a year ago, January 6, 2021, the world witnessed the apocalyptic fulfillment of the prophetic Thurman’s warning. The attack on the United States Capitol, the symbol of America’s commitment to democracy and its norms, the symbol of the citadel and fortress that represents America’s commitment to the rule of law was compromised by treasonous confederates, which previously recited, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands one Nation under God indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” 

There is no Martin Luther King, Jr.’s urgency of now.” Joseph Evans analyzes how the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s preaching brought the “living word” and various rhetorical techniques together in ways that helped people understand, and be given hope by, his messages. The author observes that James Baldwin – himself a gifted writer and provocative thinker – considered King to be an “Polished Preacher.”

This can no longer be believed about American Christianity as it has been defined by whites’ protestant traditions. Why? Because there is no outrage against our existential threat to democracy. There has been minimal public resistance from white mainline citizen Christians for justice, a reckoning, and an examination of the American heart.  

Plainly stated, many so-called Christians as I have described have failed to demand an exacting justice against American fascism and its fascist acolytes who by blind rote pledge allegiance to a former rogue president who, like Nero, fiddled while Rome burned. This country’s and the world’s citizens wait to see if American jurisprudence will prevail, or will it succumb to what is now obviously an uncourageous American political and moral stalemate.

This book weaves Baldwin’s poetic and fiery words, passion for justice, and admiration of King’s oration into a detailed, thought-provoking examination of the rhythm of determination and transformative power in King’s speaking, writing, and faith. Click below to watch Joseph Evans talk about why he wrote “The Polished King” 

It is the stalemate that underscores the straying democracy. 

In the meantime, in horror, the world’s citizens, friends and foes watch the hypnotic looping cable news videos that endlessly continue. Among the world’s citizens, we wait for justice and reckoning. There is no Martin Luther King, Jr.’s urgency of now. Therefore, we wait with and as global citizens; we wait to exhale; we wait to breathe. We wait nervously and many prayerfully for justice and at the same time, we continue to witness America’s growing and unimpeded fascist leanings that are spreading and mutating like our strains of COVID viruses. 

In this new year, we approach the first anniversary of the infamous January 6 terrorist attack on the symbols of democracy. As a response to newness, perhaps, someone will take notice of Thurman’s gift of second sight and have an urge to be gifted similarly. Still, the seer Thurman forewarned the nation and now the world over 75 years ago that this fascist deluge would soon emerge. 

Well, it’s here and we must deal with it straight away and head-on. We must come to terms with the condition of the American heart, like Thurman, and like those before him, and those after him. And we are those after Thurman. We must protest by demanding that action be taken before it’s too late. The assignment is before us: we must spiritually examine the American heart.


Dr. Joseph Evans is the Dean of Morehouse School of Religion. Dr. Evans is the author of “Reconciliation and Reparation Preaching Economic Justice, and The Art of Eloquence: The Sacred Rhetoric of Gardner C. Taylor. (Published in 2021) The Polished King: Living Words of Martin Luther King Jr. is Dr. Evans current title; published by Judson Press January 3, 2022. Dr. Evans contributes ecumenical and social perspectives at ReelUrbanNews.com.

Article reprinted by permission

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