Morning Joe: Haley Barbour under fire

Former RNC Chair, now Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s relationship with the Council of Conservative Citizens – aka the KKK in suits, shines through again. Robinson misses Barbour’s cozy relationship with the Council of Conservative Citizens in Mississippi today.

 

1st collector for Morning Joe: Haley Barbour under fire
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Another Civil Rights Era Conviction

Wish some of these prosecutors were as efficient at convicting the politicians, bankers, and Wall Street types who bought our country to economic disaster…

And we had a few Judges who weren’t corrupt, who would lock them up for 10 or 20 years for their crimes.

Yet another conviction for a 50 year old crime -

 

Jimmie Lee Jackson

 

Ala. ex-trooper pleads in civil rights-era slaying

A white former state trooper pleaded guilty Monday to a lesser charge in the 1965 shooting death of a black man at a civil rights protest, a killing that inspired historic voting rights marches.

James Bonard Fowler, 77, entered the plea of misdemeanor second-degree manslaughter two weeks before he was scheduled to go to trial on a murder charge for the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson. Jackson’s shooting in the city of Marion set off protests at nearby Selma that led to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Fowler was sentenced to six months in jail in Geneva County, his home county.

Fowler was accused of shooting Jackson in a cafe as a protest march turned into a melee in Marion on the night of Feb. 18, 1965. Fowler claimed Jackson was trying to grab the trooper’s gun and that he fired in self-defense.

District Attorney Michael Jackson, who in 2005 became the first black prosecutor elected in Marion County, reopened the case and took it before a county grand jury, which indicted Fowler on a murder charge in May 2007. Jackson, who died at a Selma hospital days after the shooting, is now honored in civil rights museums in Alabama as a martyr of the movement.

Fowler, who apologized to Jackson’s family after entering the plea Monday, said he didn’t mean to kill anyone that night in 1965.

“I was coming over here to save lives. I didn’t mean to take lives. I wish I could redo it,” he said.

Defense attorney George Beck said Fowler agreed to plead guilty to the reduced charge because he was concerned he couldn’t get a fair trial in Perry County and his health is poor.

“He wants to put it behind him,” he said. “It puts to rest a long chapter of civil rights history here in Perry County.”

The USDA’s Long Racist History

This article doesn’t talk about but the whole racist attack on former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy by Republicans was based on race which was thrown out of court in 1997 after Rethugs s[pent $20 million prosecuting him on bogus charges.

The Real Story of Racism at the USDA

It’s an astonishing development given the history of race relations at the USDA, an agency whose own Commission on Small Farms admitted in 1998 that “the history of discrimination at the U.S. Department of Agriculture … is well-documented” — not against white farmers, but African-American, Native American and other minorities who were pushed off their land by decades of racially-biased laws and practices.

It’s also a black eye for President Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who signaled a desire to atone for the USDA’s checkered past, including pushing for funding of a historic $1.15 billion settlement that would help thousands of African American farmers but now faces bitter resistance from Senate Republicans.

Forced Off the Land

Any discussion about race and the USDA has to start with the crisis of black land loss. Although the U.S. government never followed through on its promise to freed slaves of “40 acres and a mule,” African-Americans were able to establish a foothold in Southern agriculture. Black land ownership peaked in 1910, when 218,000 African-American farmers had an ownership stake in 15 million acres of land.

By 1992, those numbers had dwindled to 2.3 million acres held by 18,000 black farmers. And that wasn’t just because farming was declining as a way of life: Blacks were being pushed off the land in vastly disproportionate numbers. In 1920, one of out seven U.S. farms were black-run; by 1992, African-Americans operated one out of 100 farms.

The USDA isn’t to blame for all of that decline, but the agency created by President Lincoln in 1862 as the “people’s department” did little to stem the tide — and in many cases, made the situation worse.

After decades of criticism and an upsurge in activism by African-American farmers, the USDA hosted a series of “listening sessions” in the 1990s, which added to a growing body of evidence of systematic discrimination:

Black farmers tell stories of USDA officials — especially local loan authorities in all-white county committees in the South — spitting on them, throwing their loan applications in the trash and illegally denying them loans. This happened for decades, through at least the 1990s. When the USDA’s local offices did approve loans to Black farmers, they were often supervised (farmers couldn’t spend the borrowed money without receiving item-by-item authorization from the USDA) or late (and in farming, timing is everything). Meanwhile, white farmers were receiving unsupervised, on-time loans. Many say egregious discrimination by local loan officials persists today.

The War in Washington – Glenn Becks MLK Day Facade

Hasn’t been this much racim walking the streets of DC since the KKK March of Aug 18, 1925. Think Beck ought to move his date up 10 days to coincide with something similar to his views -

The first Tea Baggers - Aug 18, 1925 KKK March on Washington

Beck ‘Hijacks’ MLK Anniversary for Tea Party Rally

With his critically maligned new thriller—accused by some of being a playbook for armed insurrection—perched happily at the top of the New York Times bestseller list, Glenn Beck is on to new provocations. His plans for a massive “take our country back” Tea Party rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, have caused great umbrage among King loyalists, stunned that the Parks Dept. would give the Fox host a permit for that day.

It’s not the first instance of Beck Kingsploitation, Devona Walker reports on Alternet, but usually he’s just used King’s words to promote and protect himself. “Now, he is actually hijacking King’s legacy for purposes that run counter to everything King stood for. This—even more than calling President Obama a racist—seems to be the most vindictive and spiteful move yet.” Liberal radio host Bill Press, too, pulled out all the stops, saying, “If you ask me, that’s like granting al-Qaeda permission to hold a rally on September 11—at Ground Zero. What the hell were those bureaucrats at the Park Service thinking?”

Anti-Discrimination Laws in NY In the 40′s

Interesting article on the history of anti-discrimination laws in NY, which preceded much of the rest of the country by 20 years. So much for Mr. Paul’s “pricerples” -

Before the US Civil Rights Laws: Anti-Discrimination Action in New York State

Rand Paul’s criticism of the federal civil rights legislation of the 1960s can be better evaluated by looking at the workings of similar legislation that appeared on the state level two decades before.

In 1945, New York became the first state since Reconstruction to pass anti-discrimination legislation. At the time, there was plenty of biased behavior in the state based on race, religion, and nationality. Naturally, members of New York’s diverse ethnic population—plus many liberals of all backgrounds—found these discriminatory practices deeply offensive. As a result, the new legislation banned discrimination in employment on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin and established a New York State Commission Against Discrimination to enforce this ban. In subsequent years, the law was expanded to cover discrimination in public accommodations, with gender discrimination added to the list of violations.

This law has a personal dimension for me. In 1946, my father, Jacob (“Jack”) Wittner, went to work as a field representative for the New York State Commission Against Discrimination. For nearly two decades, he took complaints of discrimination from aggrieved individuals, investigated these complaints, and wrote up determinations for the commissioners, who issued such determinations more or less as he wrote them. In the mid-1960s, he became director of investigations for the New York City Commission on Human Rights, and in later years worked for the federal government at enforcing its equal employment opportunity guidelines.

Michael Steele Buckdances Around Rand Paul Issue

The HNIC is having a bit of a rough time here, trying to come up with a defense (ANY defense) of Rand Paul’s position of Civil Rights…

He flatly refuses to condemn Paul’s viewpoint.

Now, this isn’t totally unexpected, as the RNC HNIC, Mikkie has to support his “team” no matter how repulsive and repellent they may be. What is sad is that he admits a number of other Republicans hold similar views…

Rand Paul expresses a Libertarian viewpoint which is why the vast majority of Minorities associate libertarianism with racism. Indeed, many white supremacists around the country have adopted libertarianism as a political viewpoint because it justifies their racism.

You Can Run…But You Can’t Hide, Rand Paul!

So you want to be a US Senator? Welcome to the real world, Mr. Paul. And no – you don’t get a pass on thinly veiled racism…

Except on Faux News.

The Kind of Racism Mr. Paul Finds Perfectly Legal

Rand Paul Cancels On ‘Meet The Press,’ Only 3rd Guest To Do So In 62 Years

Following a week of unsparingly critical press coverage, Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul is now seeking to limit his national exposure.

A spokesperson for the Tea Party-endorsed candidate informed NBC News late Friday afternoon that an exhausted Paul was canceling his interview on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Betsy Fischer, the executive producer for the program, told the Huffington Post.

“We booked him on Wednesday. Everything was set and then his press person emailed this afternoon that he was very sorry but he wants to cancel the interview. We tried appealing to the press person to not much avail,” Fischer said…

If Paul were to follow through on his decision to not appear on “Meet the Press” it would be, as Fischer describes it, “a big deal.” There have been only two other guests in the program’s 62-year history to have canceled last minute: Louis Farrakhan and Prince Bandar bin Khaled al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

More Issues For Tea Bagger Ky Senate Candidate Rand Paul

Seems that this isn’t the first time 1) Paul’s views have caused a bit of consternation, 2) people in the Paul’s campaign has had some “racial issues”, but 3)…

Rand Paul's New "Hoodie" - Same as the Old "Hoodie"...

It’s the first time there has been a calculated backpedal – which is one of those things Politicians tend to do when they get their cajones in a wringer… LIE.

Number 1 -

Rand Paul Made Same Racial Comments in 2002

Rand Paul’s appearance last evening on Rachel Maddow wasn’t the first time he made comments about racial discrimination.

In a May 30, 2002 letter to the editor of the Bowling Green Daily News about the Federal Fair Housing Act, Rand Paul made his beliefs about legalized discrimination quite clear.

Here are some excerpts from his letter headlined “Distinction blurred between private, public property”:

A recent Daily News editorial supported the Federal Fair Housing Act. At first glance, who could object to preventing discrimination in housing? Most citizens would agree that it is wrong to deny taxpayer-financed, “public” housing to anyone based on the color of their skin or the number of children in the household.

But the Daily News ignores, as does the Fair Housing Act, the distinction between private and public property. Should it be prohibited for public, taxpayer-financed institutions such as schools to reject someone based on an individual’s beliefs or attributes? Most certainly. Should it be prohibited for private entities such as a church, bed and breakfast or retirement neighborhood that doesn’t want noisy children? Absolutely not.

Decisions concerning private property and associations should in a free society be unhindered. As a consequence, some associations will discriminate.

-SNIP-

A free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination – even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin.

Number 2 – As to that “racial thing” – it seems Rand Paul’s Spokesman had to step down in January over some comments made on his MySpace -

FLASHBACK: Paul Campaign Spokesman Resigned Over Racism On Myspace Page

Controversy is swirling over Rand Paul’s doctrinaire libertarian take on the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. But this is not the first time the Kentucky Republican’s campaign has hit a bump in racially sensitive territory.

In December, Chris Hightower, the spokesman for Paul’s senate campaign, was forced to resignafter a liberal Kentucky blog discovered that his MySpace page had a comment posted around Martin Luther King Day that read: “HAPPY N***ER DAY!!!” above what appears to be a historical photo of the lynching of a black man…

Hightower, who was also the frontman of a local Megadeth-style metal band called Commander, wrote a MySpace post referring to “Afro-Americans” titled “Blacks don’t like my Napalm Death hoodie”:

So, I was in Rivergate Mall today in line to get some pizza and I noticed a group of Afro-Americans were looking at me with hate and whispering stuff. I was wondering WTF and procceeded to sit facing them and give them the “what the fuck are you looking at look”. Anyway after a few snarls they quit looking at me. I was like do these fuckers think I am someone else or what? Anyway I finished my food and went to find some new shoes. About 10 minutes later, another group of Afro-Americans are giving me the same looks, it then dawns on me, there has to be something on this hoodie that is pissing off the Afro-Americans. And sure enough when I get outside the mall I look and bingo. KKK …. LOL!”

And now Number 3 – The lie calculated to calm the storm -

REVERSAL: Paul Now Backs Ban On Discrimination By Businesses

The Rand Paul camp has issued a new statement (via Greg Sargent) saying that Paul does in fact support the power of the federal government “to insure that private businesses don’t discriminate based on race.”

That appears to be a full reversal from Paul’scomment on Rachel Maddow Wednesday night that, referring to the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that bars private institutions from race-based discrimination, “had I been around, I would have tried to modify that.”

Said Paul spokesman Jesse Benton (who, by the way, was also a spokesman for Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign):

“Civil Rights legislation that has been affirmed by our courts gives the Federal government the right to insure that private businesses don’t discriminate based on race. Dr. Paul supports those powers.”

That goes further than the statement from Rand Paul himself earlier today that endorsed the Civil Rights Act because of its “intent” but fell short of supporting the power of the government to ban racial discrimination by private businesses.

Tea Bagger Republican Senate Candidate From Kentucky, Rand Paul Supports Segregation

This was a veritable train wreck. Rand Paul is the son of Congressman Ron Paul whose racist associations with the C of CC and white nationalist groups are well documented. Rand Paul takes the Libertarian view that the Government cannot regulate discrimination by private businesses – which as Rachel points out during this interview means that businesses, primarily in the South by the time of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would be able to legally exclude Minorities as customers or workers on the basis of being private enterprise…

Ergo the Bus Boycott of Montgomery, and the Wallgreen lunch counter protests would have been illegal…

On the part of the Civil Rights workers.

What this is, is a thinly veiled regurgitation of David Duke’s “new new new” KKK in suits philosophy – sometimes expressed in their terminology as a “Right of Association”.

Congressman John Lewis Speech At Kent State

Congressman John Lewis is the senior statesman in the House of Representatives (as well as Majority Whip). Here he gives a bit of the history he lived in a speech at Kent State University on the anniversary of the Kent State Shootings. Well worth a listen to understand John Lewis…

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Fundamentalist Preacher… Anti-Gay Bigot… Civil Rights Lawyer?

Proof the racism in this country – will even drive white folks crazy…

‘Most-hated,’ anti-gay preacher once fought for civil rights

He is the leader of “America’s most hated family,” a gaunt, craggy-faced preacher who displays “God Hates Fags” signs at the funerals of American troops, gay men and AIDS victims.

For at least 12 years, the Rev. Fred Phelps has led his Topeka, Kansas, church on a cross-country crusade against gays and lesbians. That crusade ignited a legal battle that has reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

But there is another Phelps that few know. He was a “brilliant” civil rights attorney in the 1960s who would take on racial discrimination cases that no other lawyers would touch, say longtime African-American civic leaders in Topeka.

He fought for the rights of blacks, they say, with the same passion he now reserves for the condemnation of gays.

“I don’t know him anymore,” says Joe Douglas Jr., an African-American activist in Topeka who became the city’s first minority fire department chief.

“I see him out there, and I hear the venom that comes out of his mouth. If you had asked me in the ’60s if he would do this, I would have said never.”

The Rev. Ben Scott, president of the NAACP’s Topeka branch, says he never heard Phelps talk about homosexuals during his work as a civil rights attorney.

“I didn’t even know he was a preacher,” Scott says.

Phelps declined to talk with CNN about his civil rights work or his ministry. But his daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, says there is no contradiction between her father’s civil rights work and his ministry. That’s because there’s a distinct difference between gay people and black people, she says.

“You’re born black. It’s something you can’t change even if you’re Michael Jackson,” she says. “God never said it was an abomination to be black.”…

Another Icon Has Left Us – Dorothy Height

The Old Guard is passing into the sunset.

Civil rights leader Dorothy Height dies at 98

Dorothy Height, a longtime leader of the U.S. civil rights movement and the chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women, died on Tuesday in Washington. She was 98.

Trained as a social worker, Height began her career as an advocate for civil rights and gender equality during the 1930s, working to prevent lynching, desegregate the U.S. armed forces, reform the criminal justice system and work for free access to public accommodations in the United States.

Height died at Howard University Hospital of natural causes, a hospital spokesman said.

“Ms. Height was arguably the most influential woman at the top levels of civil rights leadership, but she never drew the major media attention that conferred celebrity and instant recognition on some of the other civil rights leaders of her time,” the Washington Post said in an obituary in its online edition.

Ms. Height was president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, relinquishing the title in 1997. The 4 million-member advocacy group consists of 34 national and 250 community-based organizations. It was founded in 1935 by educator Mary McLeod Bethune, who was one of Ms. Height’s mentors.

As a civil rights activist, Ms. Height participated in protests in Harlem during the 1930s. In the 1940s, she lobbied first lady Eleanor Roosevelt on behalf of civil rights causes. And in the 1950s, she prodded President Dwight D. Eisenhower to move more aggressively on school desegregation issues.In 1994, President Bill Clinton presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. In 2004, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

The WashPo Bio -

Dorothy I. Height, founding matriarch of civil rights movement, dies at 98

Benjamin Hooks Has Passed

Civil rights leader Benjamin Hooks dies

Benjamin L. Hooks, a civil rights leader who led the NAACP from 1977 to 1992, has died, said the vice president for communication at the NAACP.

The cause of death was not immediately known, the NAACP’s Leila McDowell said Thursday.

Hooks was “a vocal campaigner for civil rights in the United States,” said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1925, Hooks grew up in the segregated South.

Hooks served in the U.S. Army during World War II, where he “found himself in the humiliating position of guarding Italian prisoners of war who were allowed to eat in restaurants that were off limits to him. The experience helped to deepen his resolve to do something about bigotry in the South,” according to a biography published by the University of Memphis, where he was a professor in the political science department.

He also was a lawyer and an ordained Baptist minister who joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and led the NAACP for 15 years.

The organization “was suffering from declining membership and prestige when Hooks assumed his role as executive director,” the University of Memphis biography said. The NAACP added several hundred thousand new members under his leadership, it said.

During his tenure, the civil rights organization worked with Major League Baseball on a program that expanded employment opportunities for African-Americans in baseball, including in positions as managers, coaches and in franchise executive offices, the NAACP said.

He also worked with colleagues to set up a program in which more than 200 corporations agreed to participate in economic development projects in black communities, the NAACP said.

President George W. Bush awarded Hooks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in November 2007.

“As a civil rights activist, public servant and minister of the gospel, Dr. Hooks has extended the hand of fellowship throughout his years,” Bush said. “It was not an always thing — easy thing to do. But it was always the right thing to do.

“For 15 years, Dr. Hooks was a calm yet forceful voice for fairness, opportunity and personal responsibility. He never tired or faltered in demanding that our nation live up to its founding ideals of liberty and equality.”

Julian Bond, the chairman emeritus of the NAACP, praised Hooks at the time.

“Benjamin Hooks has had a stellar career — civil rights advocate and leader, minister, businessman, public servant — there are few who are his equal,” Bond said, according to the NAACP.

Ending Segregation (Again) in Mississippi

Remember the battles over School Busing?

Mississippi School District Ordered to End Racial Segregation

A federal judge gave a school district in Mississippi 30 days to halt the ‘clustering’ of white students into certain schools and classes, saying it amounted to segregation.

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered a Mississippi school district to halt local policies that had allowed some of the district’s schools and classes to become racially segregated.

US District Judge Tom Lee gave the Walthall County School District 30 days to amend its student transfer policy and ordered an immediate halt to the alleged “clustering” of white students into certain classes in Tylertown, Miss., elementary schools.

“The district shall cease using race in the assignment of students to classrooms in a manner that results in the racial segregation of students,” Judge Lee said in his eight-page order.

“The district shall randomly assign students to classrooms at the Tylertown Elementary Schools through the use of a student management software program,” the judge said.

Desegregation Order Dates Back 40 Years

The action stems from a federal desegregation order issued in August 1970 – nearly 40 years ago. The case was closed for lack of activity in 2001.

Gingrich – “Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s”

Health Care and Civil Rights?

Make no bones about it, the enactment of a Health Care Reform Bill is momentous. The “new” Republican Party, formed out of the ashes of Nixon’s resignation fundamentally is opposed to Civil Rights, and has been using race as a wedge issue since Raygun. They have spent the last 40 years trying to obscure that fact -  while continuing with policies which are fundamentally anti-minority.They have targeted white resentment, fought against every single remedy – such as Affirmative Action, and sought to return to the days of Jim Crow through stealth legislation.

One of their leaders, and father of the “Contract With America” strategy which propelled Republicans into a majority admits such in a rare slip of the tounge here in an article by the Washington Post -

But former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said Obama and the Democrats will regret their decision to push for comprehensive reform. Calling the bill “the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times,” Gingrich said: “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

In the following clip, Rachael Maddow not only takes that on – but puts context around what the Health Care Reform Bill actually means…

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