The GOP’s Civil Rights Amnesia

Featured at Roll Call

When the face of your opposition on any issue is John Lewis, you need to choose your words carefully: “Publicity stunt” probably should not be the go-to phrase.

Congressman Lewis, a Democrat representing Georgia, brings with him a moral gravity because of his courageous place in the country’s progress toward equality.

But it is very clear in the response of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan to the sit-in on the floor of the House over an impasse in gun control legislation that the Republican from Wisconsin is not a student of history – that of his esteemed and respected colleague, his country or his own party.

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Jun272016 TAGS: , , , , ,

Ruby Dee, a graceful yet fierce theatrical and political trailblazer

Featured at The Washington Post

She always looked so beautiful – a beauty that came from within, from knowing that even when silent you are fighting the good fight. Whether speaking at the March on Washington in 1963 or sharing a movie scene with Denzel Washington or a stage with James Earl Jones, Ruby Dee – small in stature but not influence – commanded attention. Just last weekend, Tony award-winner Audra McDonald called Dee’s name as she thanked “all the shoulders of the strong and brave and courageous women that I’m standing on.” She was not the only one who felt that way. On Thursday word came that Dee, 91, had died.

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Jun132014 TAGS: , ,

Yes, Greensboro Four pioneer Franklin McCain, you did plenty

Featured at The Washington Post

CHARLOTTE — Franklin McCain never thought he was doing enough.

An icon of the civil rights movement, McCain was one of the Greensboro Four, college students who changed the world by sitting down at a whites-only lunch counter at F.W. Woolworth. Their simple request for service denied inspired many others in Greensboro, N.C., and across the country, where the “sit-in” spread.

But when I interviewed him 50 years after that Feb. 1, 1960, event, and asked the man who continued his activism throughout his life to grade himself, McCain thought for a bit before he said, “C-plus.” He continued: “I look at the all the situations I’ve been in and all the efforts I’ve been a part of, and I ask the questions, ‘Could I have done more? Could I have done it in less time? Could I have impacted more people?’ Each time I ask those questions, the answer is ‘yes, yes, yes.’ ”

McCain also gave advice to those who felt a little self satisfied: “Look around you. Do you see things that are not just? Do something about it.”

Franklin McCain died Thursday in Greensboro, his family has announced. While the world lost a civil rights champion, I lost someone who inspired me – not from a history book – but close up.

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Jan102014 TAGS: , , , ,

Celebrating Civil Rights Progress in Charlotte

Featured at WCCB Rising


 

 

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — 50 years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, the Civil Rights Movement continues to resonate in Charlotte. Contributions of local legends like Franklin McCain, one of the original Greensboro Four who sat at Woolworth’s lunch counter in 1960, are still being celebrated along with King. Mary C. Curtis talks about how this history remains rich throughout the years and what it means for Charlotte today.

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Aug282013 TAGS: , , ,

‘In the presence of justice’: remembering Julius Chambers

Featured at The Washington Post

CHARLOTTE — Though his name may not be as well-known as other civil-rights champions, the soft-spoken Julius Chambers fought passionately and tirelessly and got results. At his funeral service in Charlotte on Thursday, mourners remembered him, what his legacy meant, and how they could best carry on his work.

As speakers, friends and those he touched traced his amazing journey, they also cautioned that the fight for equality is a constant struggle. As legislators in the state he especially loved and served rush to enact rules rolling back progress in voting and education funding, his life is a history lesson North Carolina and the country could use right about now.

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Aug092013 TAGS: , , ,

Franklin McCain, 53 years after Greensboro sit-ins, sees parallels in current North Carolina rights battles

Featured at theGrio.com

t’s been more than 53 years since Feb. 1, 1960, the day when Franklin McCain, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil and Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan) bought a few things from the F.W. Woolworth in Greensboro, N.C., sat down at the lunch counter, asked to be served and were refused because of their race. The actions of the four North Carolina A&T State University served as an inspiration, part of the sit-ins and civil rights efforts that changed the country.

The significance of that day has been honored and celebrated — with the International Civil Rights Center & Museum opening in the shell of that long-closed Greensboro Woolworth exactly 50 years later and a small section of the lunch counter on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. But in 2013, are the results of that historic youth-led challenge being rolled back in North Carolina, the state where it began?

Franklin McCain said he believes they are.

“Unconscionable,” he called the wave of conservative legislation pushed through this year by Republican super-majorities in the state House and Senate, with mostly support from GOP Gov. Pat McCrory. “I would love to sit here and be telling you today that we’ve conquered a whole lot of things,” he said in a recent conversation with theGrio in his Charlotte home. “It irritates me that things that we thought we solved 40, 50 years ago have raised their ugly heads again.”

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Jul302013 TAGS: , , , ,

What chance did Trayvon Martin, the ‘suspect,’ have in court?

Featured at The Washington Post

To George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin was never just a teenager who could possibly have belonged in the Sanford, Fla., gated community. He was always the “suspect.”

I’m not putting words into the mouth of the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed Martin and was found not guilty on Saturday. That’s exactly what Zimmerman called Martin in his post-shooting statement to police, though the 17-year-old wasn’t a suspect in any crime. Martin was walking from the store to his father’s house. Zimmerman was armed with a gun and Martin with candy, and then Martin was dead, unable to tell his side of the story.

That’s when the narrative took over, the subtle but very real judgment that makes people clutch their purse closer or cross the street when young black men stroll by, that makes New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with his city’s police department stop-and-frisk policies being challenged as discriminatory in court, feel comfortable saying, as he did recently, “I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.”

It’s why comments after the Zimmerman verdict mention Chicago teens killing one another and O.J. Simpson. What happened in Sanford, Fla., wasn’t about any of that. But it was, in a way, about all of that, feelings so ingrained we might not even know they are there.

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Jul152013 TAGS: , , , , ,

In her 100th year, is it time to take Rosa Parks off that pedestal?

Featured at The Washington Post

Just the memory of Rosa Parks can still get the job done. In this case, 100 years after her birth, the late civil rights icon is bringing together the president and the Democratic and Republican leaders of both the House and the Senate. In the partisan atmosphere of Washington, D.C., that’s close to a miracle. The lineup of speakers was scheduled for Wednesday’s dedication of a statue in Parks’ honor in National Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol.

As an image is being revealed, it’s past time to correct the false one in America’s imagination: That Rosa Parks was a meek, humble seamstress, who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus that day in 1955 – because she was tired – and spontaneously sparked a more than yearlong boycott and a movement. The Rosa Parks sold to the public was what was accepted for a woman, particularly a black woman, but it hid her full measure. She was the respectable symbol that was needed at the time, even though the flesh-and-blood activist was far more interesting.

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Feb272013 TAGS: , ,

Black family life – the reality, and the reality show

Featured at The Washington Post

It’s disheartening when reality TV dives into the muck of a rapper’s dysfunctional crew when there’s more human drama in the Mamie Reardens of the world.

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Jan082013 TAGS: , , , ,

Jesse Helms is still stirring up controversy

Featured at The Washington Post

Jesse Helms is at it again. When the longtime North Carolina senator died on July 4, 2008, eulogies couldn’t decide if he was a statesman who stood up for his beliefs or a pugnacious politician whose divisive principles changed little as the world moved on. Now that a conservative U.S. congresswoman from the state wants to honor Helms by stamping his name on a federal building, that legacy lives on.

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Dec062012 TAGS: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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