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.
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.
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.
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.”
PROPHETIC CLARITY, CAPITALIST DITHERING, AND UKRAINE
March 3, 2022
©Wendell Griffen, 2022
Photo / 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)
America’s Conscience: Moral Bankruptcy and Communal Decay
America’s Conscience: Moral Bankruptcy and Communal Decay
By Jamar Boyd
For if the disinherited get such a new center as patriotism, for instance — liberty within the framework of a sense of country or nation, then the aim of not being killed is swallowed up by a larger and more transcendent goal. Above all else the disinherited must not have any stake in the social order; they must be made to feel that they are alien, that it is a great boon to be allowed to remain alive, not be exterminated. This was the psychology of the Nazis; it grew out of their theory of the state and the place given the Hebrew people in their ideology. Such is also the attitude of the Ku Klux Klan towards Negroes. — Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
The poignant and timeless words of Howard Thurman seamlessly speak to the present dilemma of the disinherited within America who sit in the tension, terror and tragedy of a nation that consistently fails the “folk.”
“Folk,” those who are at the margins, exist in the gaps, are discarded in the valleys and left to survive on their own methods absent of communal or governmental intervention. Those bearing ailments, disabilities, possessing financial lack and material insufficiency, yet clinging to an internal disposition of survival while all the world around them decays. Those who sense there is no righteous indignation for their sustainability and progression.
This is the dilemma presently intensified within a United States Senate unable, and unwilling, to pass voter rights protections amid democratic decay as morale continues to decrease. Such is the state of America’s conscience marred in moral bankruptcy and communal decay.
This nation’s foundation, one claimed to be built upon communal concepts of justice and liberty for all, has long needed deconstructing and reconstitution. Institutional apathy, capitalistic abuse and white hegemonic fear exuded in displacement tactics have caused us to arrive at this present hour. An hour that is witnessing the American project hang in the balance as the folk are seen as disposable commodities and viewed as replaceable — irredeemable — cattle on the farm of American disenfranchisement and plains of fertile white fragility.
This is the same fragility that would lead the Senate to pass a bill granting the Congressional Gold Medal to Emmett Till and Mamie Till yet possessing no gumption to deem the acts of Jan. 6, 2021, as domestic terrorism.
This is the same fragility that sees no issue changing the filibuster rules under a Republican president to secure Supreme Court judges yet exasperates claims of “process” when the people are centered.
This is the same fragility that claimed sorrow and grief at the passing of Congressmen Elijah Cummings and John R. Lewis yet lacks the gall to ensure folks, Black folks, are seen as equal.
This is the same fragility evidenced in the words of Mitch McConnell from the Senate floor declaring, “If my colleague tries to break the Senate to silence those millions of Americans, we will make their voices heard in this chamber in ways that are more inconvenient for the majority and this White House than what anybody has seen in living memory.”
McConnell’s statement is a clear commitment to block the rights of some for the sake of retaining power. This is not an American anomaly, instead it’s the honest state of American consciousness.
There was living, and evidenced, angst and anger with the Trump administration coupled with undeniable agony toward our democratic affairs and nation’s republic. Manifested through a summer, in 2020, where Black bodies hung and lay in the streets as strange fruit only for thoughts and prayers to be uttered. All while a pandemic ravaged the homes, communities and lives of the disinherited whose existence is viewed no different than Henrietta Lacks. Black and brown bodies were deemed absent of patriotism and only worthy of death.
“This is the same fragility that sees no issue changing the filibuster rules under a Republican president to secure Supreme Court judges yet exasperates claims of ‘process’ when the people are centered.”
There was living, and evidenced, angst and anger with the Trump administration coupled with undeniable agony toward our democratic affairs and nation’s republic. Manifested through a summer, in 2020, where Black bodies hung and lay in the streets as strange fruit only for thoughts and prayers to be uttered. All while a pandemic ravaged the homes, communities and lives of the disinherited whose existence is viewed no different than Henrietta Lacks. Black and brown bodies were deemed absent of patriotism and only worthy of death.
Consequently, we arrive at this point of apathy as the minority struggles to find hope and help amid a government that has failed collectively. Jeremiah Wright Jr. in his 2003 sermon “Confusing God and Government,” highlighted such: “And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed.
Denial, deception and delusion enable a state of ill existence to become, and remain, normative. These practices must be replaced with a communal and reconstituted democracy built by and for the people, where the folks are not discarded. Where the aim of not being killed is swallowed up by a larger and more transcendent goal.
However, if this nation is to change for the good of the folk, a larger and more transcendent goal must be imagined, sketched and actualized. This goal must not center on American exceptionalism, imperialism, militarism, supremacy or xenophobia but be directly confronted by the truthfulness of its failures.
We must be honest about this nation’s failures, commitment to abandon the vulnerable and unwillingness to reconstitute for the sake of all, forcing the folks to erect a more divine goal. We need a goal larger than amplifying American wins and losses, addressing white hegemonic fear amid massive demographic shifts, and skating the surface of inter-generational terror.
If America’s consciousness is to contain a morality of righteous indignation and communal ingenuity, the attitude of Congress and the nation toward and commitment to the disenfranchised must change — or the country we’ve known will be no more. Without such, the disinherited remain external to this nation’s construct and priorities and alien to the prospect of life.
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
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.
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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America is addicted to white supremacy
March 7, 2022
Susan K. Smith
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.
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.