Civil Rights: The Changing of the Generations

At the recently concluded National Action Network convention in New York City, hosted by Rev. Al Sharpton, two things were evident in the context of present civil rights leadership. First: Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson are increasingly moving into the elders status. Second: The heads of both the NAACP (Ben Jealous) and the National Urban League (Marc Morial) are younger, more vibrant. But those two don’t yet have meaningful measurable track records.

What really hit home is that many of the civil rights legends from the MLK days, and even before, are at the end of days. Benjamin Hooks, longtime leader of the NAACP, a preacher, a lawyer and the first black to serve on the Federal Communication Commission – died last week at the age of 85. When I saw him a couple of years ago in Memphis at the commemoration of the 40^th anniversary of MLK’s death, he was very frail. Dorothy Height, the chair and president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women, is very ill. She is 98 years old. And, according to Sharpton, Rev. Joseph Lowery sounds very weak though in a conversation he tried to assure Sharpton that he was OK. Lowery was an MLK contemporary and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with him. Lowery eventually became president of the SCLC. And last year he delivered the benediction at President Obama’s inauguration, beseeching the Lord “to help us work for that day when black won’t be asked to get back; when brown can stick around; when yellow will be mellow; when the red man can get ahead, man; when white will embrace what is right…”

Maybe because they don’t see such rather expensive gatherings as priorities or maybe because they have other outlets for mobilizing around social justice issues, there were not lots of young people present at the convention. Interestingly enough, it was 50 years ago that young people founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which gave us, among others, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Julian Bond, who recently stepped down as chair of the NAACP.

ADDENDUM: Dorothy Height died Tuesday morning, April 20, at the age of 98.

Presidents and the Supremes

They don’t always get what they want, but I’m hoping that President Obama sticks to his values as he nominates a new justice to the United States Supreme Court. That appointee would replace Justice John Paul Stevens, who has announced that he is retiring in June.

Here are a few examples of surprises to presidents and to senators who voted for these people who are guaranteed jobs for life:

· Justice Stevens, once thought of as a moderate Republican, eventually became the leader of the liberal wing of the Court during his 35 years on the bench.

· Justice Hugo Black, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, evolved into a key defender of the New Deal, the social revolution led by President Franklin Roosevelt, who appointed him, and a proponent of civil liberties and civil rights. Writing about Justice Black, Paul L. Murphy said in The Reader’s Companion to American History: “When Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1937, critics objected because of his KKK past; but on the Court he proved to be an active constitutional populist….In the final analysis, Black was a people’s justice. His opinions were clear and moving, and his commitments were to a constitutional order that would extend ‘liberty and justice for all.’”

· Black’s tenure eventually overlapped with that of a President Eisenhower appointee, Chief Justice Earl Warren, named to the Court in 1953. The Warren Court gave us the end of legal segregation and many reforms in voting rights and in the criminal justice systems in the 1960s. That prompted Eisenhower to declare that the appointment of Warren, a fellow Republican and former friend, was “the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made.” But Warren later explained his shift from conservative law-and-order man to liberal this way: “On the Court I saw [things] in a different light.”

· When President Richard Nixon named Warren Burger as Chief Justice in 1969, he wanted to put the brakes on some of the activism of the Earl Warren years. But Burger did not exactly turn back the hands of time. One scholar wrote in 1981 that “the Court is today more of a center for the resolution of social issuses than it has ever been before.”

· When President Kennedy named Byron White to the Court in 1962, and described him as “the ideal New Frontier judge,” he probably didn’t think that White would become the conservative that he ultimately was.

· Conservatives were persuaded by President George H.W. Bush’s team that David Souter was one of them when he was named to the Court. But he became more liberal during his 18 years on the Court. It was his retirement in 2009 that paved the way for President Obama to appoint a Hispanic woman, Sonia Sotomayor, to the Court.

Of course there are some justices who live up to their billing – judges like Clarence Thomas, who has been exactly what President George H. W. Bush wanted: a black man who was young enough to be around for decades and to transform the Court into a more conservative body. Justice Thurgood Marshall, the man whose seat he took but whose shoes he hasn’t tried to fill, said upon his retirement: "My dad told me way back that you can't use race. For example, there's no difference between a white snake and a black snake. They'll both bite."

I’m sure President Obama will keep that in mind as he prepares to make his second nomination while trying to persuade 67 senators to vote his way. In the Senate there are many Republicans who have said they will vote "no" no matter who he nominates. There are nervous-Nelly Democrats afraid that a "controversial" nominee will affect their re-election bids. And, of course, there are various Democratic party loyalists, insiders and fundraisers demanding that the President appoint a black person, a woman, a very openly "progressive" person.

Who said that being President was all Easter egg-rolling festivities on the lawn?

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

I write this before the final round of the Masters. Who knows what Tiger will do, though he is -- after all the sexual scandal and corporate ostracism -- in the running.

Back in 1997 I wrote a column about how blackfolks, especially those into the sport of golf, were so proud of Tiger Woods at Augusta National. People who didn't care about or know anything about golf were excited. That included me.

But swept up in the historic nature of what was happening in a game and at a place that had deliberately excluded blacks who were not servants, I paid attention. And I reached out to some veteran golfers among blackfolks I knew. One was Nezelle Bradshaw, a woman who had been in the game on black circuits since 1949 or 1950 and who could tell me stories of some of the storied black players like Teddy Rhodes and Charlie Sifford.

On that Masters Sunday in 1997 as the final round was underway, she said of Tiger: "He is just head and shoulders above all the other people. He has confidence. He has skills. And he has ice water flowing through his veins." After he won, she told me: "This man has done something incredible."

Some polls say that men are more forgiving of Tiger than women. Not the case with the women I know, including some like Mrs. Bradshaw, who turns 92 next month. "He's a good athlete, an excellent golfer -- and what he did is what most men have done in their lifetime....It's no big deal because most men do it. It's not right, but we have to be realistic in this world."

My 82-year-old mama, considered Mother Shipp at the Macedonia Baptist Church in Conyers, Ga., said: "I think he's doing what he's supposed to do: winning the game. I hope he gets his life straightened out with his family."

OK. So I talked to my younger sister, Norma, who has a doctorate in theology and has played golf. "I'm still happy about his accomplishments, but I'm disappointed in his personal behavior. He needs to get his personal life together because he has a lot of people looking up to him." So I put this question to her: If he were her man, would she take him back? "HELL NO! No money in the world would make me want to stay with someone who betrayed me that way with that many indiscretions."

A male cab driver I spoke with earlier today said the worst thing for Tiger would be for him to actually win the Masters because that would contribute to his sense of invincibility not just in golf but in life.

The television ratings are up. The Professional Golf Association -- and the golfers on the tour -- are making money because Tiger is back, burning bright as the British poet William Blake wrote in the 1800s.

The Census and Me, Part 2

I received a call from a U.S. Census Bureau representative a few minutes ago after one of my neighbors told her that I'd neither received a form nor had someone knock on my door the way it was done in 1790.

SO: I answered the questions, even the one that asked if I am "African-American, Black or Negro."

I've been counted.

The Resurrection of Haiti

Consider this image of Haiti – specifically of a section of its capital, Port-au-Prince – published in The New York Times on March 27:

“The lights of the casino above this wrecked city beckoned as gamblers in freshly pressed clothes streamed to the roulette table and slot machines. In a restaurant nearby, diners quaffed Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Champagne and ate New Zealand lamb chops at prices rivaling those in Manhattan.

“A few yards away, hundreds of families displaced by the earthquake languished under tents and tarps, bathing themselves from buckets and relieving themselves in the street as barefoot children frolicked on pavement strewn with garbage.

“This is the Pétionville district of Port-au-Prince, a hillside bastion of Haiti’s well-heeled where a mangled sense of normalcy has taken hold after the earthquake in January. Business is bustling at the lavish boutiques, restaurants and nightclubs that have reopened in the breezy hills above the capital, while thousands of homeless and hungry people camp in the streets around them, sometimes literally on their doorstep.”

Hmmm. Haiti’s leaders see the January 12 earthquake as “a rendezvous with history that Haiti cannot miss.” In a lengthy proposal presented March 31 to representatives of 130 potential donor nations, they outlined a 10-year rebuilding plan, while acknowledging that, long before that 35-second earthquake, Haiti was in trouble. “We understand the importance of reviewing our political, economic and social governance. We pledge to act in this regard,” the Action Plan for National Recovery and Development of Haiti, presented by President Rene Preval, said. “The earthquake must not obscure the desired goal: building a democratic Haiti that is inclusive and respectful of human rights.”

Unlike what seems to be the case as described in that New York Times piece -- or in what I observed in my first visit to Haiti some months ago.

It has been clear since January 12 that the world wants to help Haiti; but Haiti must assure that it is capable of accepting that help and moving forward as a sovereign democratic nation, not a beggar nation with its hands out and its corrupt officials leading the charge. The action plan says that Haiti “is committed to keeping up its efforts in the fight against corruption and to establish mechanisms capable of [ensuring] the greatest amount of transparency in the management of public funds.”

Preval and the team of government officials and international civilian experts have estimated the damage done to Haiti as a result of the earthquake at $8 billion.

From the action plan: “ Very soon after the earthquake, it was obvious that such a toll could not be the outcome of just the force of the tremor. It is due to an excessively dense population, a lack of adequate building standards, the disastrous state of the environment, disorganized land use and an unbalanced division of economic activity. The capital city (Port-au-Prince) accounts for more than 65 percent of the country’s economic activity and 85 percent of Haiti’s tax revenue.” Part of the long-term plan is to redistribute population to other parts of the island nation. That requires success in achieving one set of its goals: “…We must create jobs, re-house disaster victims, open schools and higher education institutions in preparation for the new school year, provide access to health care, prepare for the hurricane season, bridge the gap in state tax revenues, restart the administration and boost the economic channels.”

It took a 35-second earthquake to force the Haitian government to move in the direction it should have been for years of politicians more interested in deposing each other, an elitist class that has done little for the poor who inhabit areas like Cite Soleil and all that “where’s mine?” attitude that has inhibited legitimate trade.

Now a 55-page plan of action and impressive words from Preval, whose term ends in February 2011, are what we have. That and prayer.

LESTER HOLT HAS THE WEEKEND OFF

I sometimes think of this NBC news man as the hardest working brother in broadcast. He anchors on weekends both in the morning and in the evening. He fills in for Brian Williams on weeknights. He covers disasters. He covers Olympics. He does features such as on his mother's Jamaican roots. He plays lots of instruments and loves jazz and sometimes jams with guests on The Today Show. He loves flying. He loves gadgets. He seems to be rather lousy as a cook during those segments on Today, but he also seems to have a gourmand's appreciation of food.

My 82-year-old mother is in love with him. He actually sent her an autographed photo, which, of course, she shared with her church and beauty parlor circles.

Have a good break, Lester!