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The letter urged Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate NYPD’s surveillance operations, revealed by an Associated Press investigation, which monitored entire neighborhoods and built databases about everyday life in Muslim communities.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have insisted that police only follow legitimate leads and do not conduct preventative surveillance in ethnic communities. A May 2006 report addressed to Kelly, however, recommended increased spying at mosques and an assessment of the region’s Palestinian community to look for potential terrorists.

Even before the AP published the document, Kelly was under fire from Muslim groups who were angry that a controversial movie about Muslims, “The Third Jihad,” was shown at NYPD training sessions. Kelly appears briefly in the movie.

About 150 protesters gathered near police headquarters Friday to challenge the NYPD’s tactics. “Don’t be afraid, stand for justice!” they chanted before holding evening prayers in nearby Foley Square.

“Just the fact of knowing there is someone out there trying to listen to my conversations that can turn me into some kind of criminal, which I’m not, and exploiting my religion, it hurts,” said Sondos Alsilwi, an 18-year-old history major at City College.

Schneiderman’s office did not immediately have a comment on the letter.

The Obama administration has made fighting homegrown terrorism a focus of its national security strategy but has repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether it endorses the NYPD’s tactics. Tom Perez, the U.S. Justice Department’s top civil rights prosecutor, has refused to even answer questions about the NYPD.

The 2006 intelligence report, entitled “US-Iran Conflict: The Threat to New York City,” made a series of recommendations to Kelly, including: “Expand and focus intelligence collections at Shi’a mosques.” It includes a list of mosques and community organizations stretching from southern New Jersey to Connecticut.

The NYPD’s operating rules prohibit it from basing investigations on religion. The NYPD also says it follows FBI guidelines, which would prohibit many of the steps recommended in the report.

But the NYPD faces little in the way of oversight when it comes to its intelligence programs. Both the City Council and Congress are kept in the dark about this secretive aspect of the department. Many first learned about the spying programs from news reports.

“The masses of people around this city are fed up with the police,” City Councilman Charles Barron told protesters Friday. “Who the hell do they think they are?”

On Thursday, Kelly downplayed the significance of the 2006 document, calling it a “contingency plan” for military conflict between the U.S. and Iran. Such language does not exist anywhere in the document.

Fears of such a conflict were rising again Friday amid concerns in the Middle East that Israel was preparing a military strike on Iran. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that an attack would only hurt the United States.

“A war itself will damage the U.S. 10 times over” in the region, “Khamenei said in a national broadcast Friday.

Iran is a majority Shi’a country, while most Muslims belong to the Sunni sect.

In August, when the AP first reported on the spying operations, Bloomberg said the NYPD doesn’t even consider religion as part of its police work.

“We don’t stop to think about the religion,” he said. “We think about the threats and focus our efforts there.”

Bloomberg spokesman Marc LaVorgna would not say whether the mayor still believes that.

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In order to maintain its existence, we need to expeditiously reinvigorate our economic equality. There is no time to waste. We are at risk. American households and small businesses are threatened to make ends meet. Now, is the time if we want to start reshaping our families, businesses, and economy, said Jackson.

Jackson, who is hosting his 15th annual Wall Street Project in New York City, is focusing on ways to make things better for America’s beleaguered middle class. The event, which ends Friday, focuses on bringing  everyone to the table in a bid for economic fairness. The founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition sat down with NewsOne to discuss why economic equality is needed more than ever in the United States.

NewsOne: The theme of this year’s Wall Street Project sounds similar to what President Barack Obama talked about in his State of the Union Address. What are your concerns regarding this country’s middle class?

Jesse Jackson: There are clear patterns of discrimination against Blacks and Latinos. The big banks targeted Blacks and Latinos with toxic packages of subprime predatory lending. Your house is your first small business. It’s where your investment is and [where] our greatest asset is. The wiping out of millions of homes took away Black and Brown wealth. It drove poverty, it drove unemployment, it drove people to food stamps.

The Black public sector middle class teachers, policeman, firemen, and post office workers, those jobs have been on the decline but there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in the private sector. What is especially painful is government policy bailed out the banks without making them make reinvestments for rebuilding. The result is 53-million Americans are food insecure, 50-million Americans are in poverty, 44 million are on food stamps, 26 million are looking for a job.  We must renew the economy from the bottom up, not top down.

NewsOne: How do you correct the issues that have negatively affected the middle class?

Jackson: The major companies got bailed out by the government so the victims should get bailed out by the government. The lack of oversight was what allowed the banks to run amok. The bankers who drove homeowners into foreclosure and churches into foreclosure never faced a judge. They faced small fines like Countrywide, but the fines did not correspond to what they stole. The fines became the cost of doing business as oppossed to a detterent. You really need a renewed commitment for the direct investment of jobs at the bottom.

You are not going to revive the unemployment of 26 million Americans with tax cuts. There was a direct jobs program from the Rooselvelt administration in the 1930s. The Justice Department has set up a task force to investigate the banks and the mortgage crisis but that’s a little too late. Whenever they report they will report the obvious. It will be too late to impact the people who need the help the most. We’ve known about mortgage fraud for four years.

NewsOne: What did you think about President Obama’s economic proposals in his State of the Union Address?

Jackson: President Obama projects a strong offense, but he faces a rebellious Congress focused on state’s rights. The interest right now is taking resources back to the state and allowing the minority to have tyranny over the minority. It’s an ideological power grab. It’s like in this Congressional rebellion they are willing to sink the ship to destroy the captain. You look at the Super PAC ads and they are attacking each other. They are not attacking poverty or the lack of health care. They are not attacking issues that matter. They are not discussing how to get people back to their houses.

NewsOne: Why is President Obama so vulnerable?

Jackson: This is such a toxic environment. Look at how the governor of Arizona puts her finger in his face. How disrespectful can you be to anyone, not to mention the President of the United States. That is profoundly disrespectful. It’s not unlike the Congress calling him a liar or Gingrich calling him a food stamp president who comes from some tribe in Kenya. They question his citizenship and his credentials. This is the most-toxic environment that we’ve known in a century.

NewsOne: Talk about one thing that needs to happen in the next few years to give the middle class a chance at recovery.

Jackson: The first thing that has to happen is the protection of voting rights and registration. If the right wing has their way and state’s rights control voting rights, they would remove protections that make it difficult for seniors to vote. It would be harder for students to vote on campus. These are attempts to suppress acts of voting. There are 16-million Blacks registered to vote but 10 million are unregistered. The 10-million unregistered voters may be the key to the election.

The election of President Obama or the right wing will determine what happens in the next few years. They want state’s rights again, they want to remove voting rights protection, they want to undermine Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. All the infrastructure Lyndon Johnson put in place is vulnerable to a right-wing controlled Congress and White House. The stakes are very high. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that we have the power to fight back. When this happened in the past we didn’t have the right to vote. We couldn’t get into the stadium. We went to bat without a bat. But now we can swing the bat. We can hit the ball, but you have to come out of the dugout and fight. No one has earned the right to do less than their best.

NewsOne: Although the Black middle class has been disproportionately affected by the financial meltdown, isn’t the entire middle class of all races and ethnicities at risk?

Jackson: The liberation of Blacks is not for Blacks only. When Blacks got the right to vote, white women got the right to sit on juries. What’s good for Blacks is good for all of America. What’s good for the very rich might not be good for anybody but them. Why would anyone be able to make $21 million not showing up for work for a single day? That is vulgar capitalism. That is not good for the nation. When Lyndon Johnson kicked off the war on poverty he did so in Appalachia to deracialize the debate. We have a moral concern to feed all of the hungry, wipe out malnutrition, so that every American be housed and every child have access to education. Ours is a broad-based moral agenda. Our moral vision is not limited to race on one part of town.

NewsOne: You’ve been hosting the Wall Street Project for 15 years. Are you optimistic about any change the event has produced?

Jackson: Fifteen years later we are still in the business of opening closed doors and fighting for economic justice. We see measures of bits of progress. We are facing a stiff wind right now, but if we persist and keep fighting back, we will prevail.

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Christie said, “I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South.”

The Huffington Post reports:

Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D), who supports gay marriage, criticized the comment. “I shudder to think what would have happened if the civil rights gains, heroically established by courageous lawmakers in the 1960s, were instead conveniently left up to popular votes in our 50 states,” he said, according to the Newark Star-Ledger.

Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) said the governor needed a “history lesson.”

Read More At The Huffington Post

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Moore, 21, called in to report an officer who’d groped her breast while responding to a domestic disturbance at the home she shared with her boyfriend.   But rather than receiving justice, Tiawanda was charged with violating the Illinois eavesdropping law, a felony that carries a stiff penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

After recording her conversation with the officer and being charged for it, Moore was later acquitted in August.  One of the jurors called the trial “a waste of time.”

Moore spent two weeks in the Cook County Jail.  She eventually got out and filed suit against the city and the police department.  She is alleging unreasonable seizure, false arrest, and malicious prosecution and claims that the law specifically exempts those who record police officers “under reasonable suspicion that another party to the conversation is committing or is about to commit” a crime.

Prominent Chicago attorney Karen Cecile-Wallace says that Moore was right to record the officer:

The Illinois eavesdropping statute is a double-edged sword. It prohibits persons from being recorded without their knowledge and permission, but Moore was within her right to protect herself from the officer’s blatant unlawful and egregious acts. I commend the jury for reaching the right decision.

I am in agreement with attorney Wallace.  It’s interesting to see legislators creating laws that serve to protect themselves at the expense of the American public.   This woman did nothing wrong, and it’s frightening to live in a world where a woman who records a police officer seeking to cover up a crime, can end up in jail.  Welcome to the end of American democracy; our country is no longer the standard bearer as it pertains to civil liberties.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Professor at Syracuse University and founder of the Your Black World Coalition.  To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

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Carter was part of Thurgood Marshall’s NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as a lawyer and helped win the historic 1954 court decision, Brown Vs. The Board Of Education that ended legal segregation in the American school system.

The New York Times reports:

Mr. Carter’s well-honed argument that the segregation of public schools was unconstitutional on its face became the Supreme Court’s own conclusion in Brown. The decision swept away half a century of legal precedent that the South had used to justify its “separate but equal” doctrine.

Mr. Carter and his underpaid, overworked colleagues at the Legal Defense and Educational Fund argued before the court that the South’s schools rarely offered anything like equal opportunities to African-American children. But that was beside the point in any case, they said. Segregation itself, they argued, was so damaging to black children that it should be abolished, on the ground that it was contrary to the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal rights to all citizens.

Read More At The New York Times

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At this year’s convocation and other campus events, MSU honored the legacy of hundreds of former Morgan State students who played a pivotal role in the sit-in movement seven years before the widespread launch of the tactic.

Back in 1953, Morgan State students were lining up daily at a lunch counter in Read’s Drugstore in Baltimore, demanding desegregation. A manager or waitress would try to lure the daily protesting bunch from their seats by reading Maryland’s trespassing statute. The students didn’t budge.

Picketing, sit-ins, and hundreds of arrests eventually led to some changes in segregated Baltimore. As a result of Morgan State’s relentless student activism, in 1955 owners of Read’s Drugstore opened their lunch counter to Blacks; in 1959 Arundel Ice Cream also began to change their practices.

This year’s festivities, surrounding the commemoration of the brave MSU alumni, were accompanied by a range of students, faculty, visitors, and influential Black leaders from around the country. A list of attendees included John Lewis, the Freedom Rider-turned-congressman; Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings; Lt. Governor Anthony Brown; and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

“It is important that our students know the legacy of their school and whose footsteps they are walking today,” said MSU President David Wilson as he stood at the unveiling ceremony of the recreated lunch counter at Read’s Drugstore. Along the walls near the lunch counter exhibit is a stunning pictorial display that takes viewers on a tour of Civil Rights activism in Baltimore from 1947-1963.

University of Maryland law professor Larry S. Gibson, the person responsible for the timeless exhibit, donated his collection to MSU and it will remain in the main hall of the University Student Center.

While speaking to a crowd at Morgan’s campus Gibson said, “Finally we’re going to get some history straight.”

Plots to suppress the African American vote date back to the Reconstruction Era. Prior to the Voter Rights Act of 1965, these were some of the more commonly used tactics by conservatives who wanted to keep blacks from voting.

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In 1873, a gang of whites in Colfax, Louisiana murdered more than 100 blacks who were assembled to defend Republican officeholders—this was, of course, back when Republicans had some sense. Federal prosecutors indicted three of them, but the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the indictments in U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875)

Source: The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Literacy Tests

Perhaps the first literacy test aimed at keeping blacks away from the ballot box was South Carolina’s notorious “eight-box” ballot, adopted in 1882. The test, as explained in “The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South” by J. Morgan Kousser  and “The Law of Democracy,” by Samual Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan and Richard Pildes went as follows:

Voters had to put ballots for separate offices in separate boxes. A ballot for the governor’s race put in the box for the senate seat would be thrown out. The order of the boxes was continuously shuffled, so that literate people could not assist illiterate voters by arranging their ballots in the proper order. The adoption of the secret ballot constituted another implicit literacy test, since it prohibited anyone from assisting an illiterate voter in casting his vote. In 1890, Southern states began to adopt explicit literacy tests to disenfranchise voters. This had a large differential racial impact, since 40-60% of blacks were illiterate, compared to 8-18% of whites. Poor, illiterate whites opposed the tests, realizing that they too would be disenfranchised.

Source: The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Poll Taxes

If you didn’t have money, you didn’t have a vote:

Georgia initiated the poll tax in 1871, and made it cumulative in 1877 (requiring citizens to pay all back taxes before being permitted to vote). Every former Confederate state followed its lead by 1904. Although these taxes of $1-$2 per year may seem small, it was beyond the reach of many poor black and white sharecroppers, who rarely dealt in cash. The Georgia poll tax probably reduced overall turnout by 16-28%, and black turnout in half (Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics, 67-8). The purpose of the tax was plainly to disenfranchise, not to  collect revenue, since no state brought prosecutions against any individual for failure to pay the tax.

Sources: Voting Rights: The Poll Tax, Marion Butts Collection, Dallas Public Library and The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Ridiculous Registration Practices

Even if blacks could read or had money, racist registration practices were created to make their efforts to vote miserable:

Southern states made registration difficult, by requiring frequent re-registration, long terms of residence in a district, registration at inconvenient times (e.g., planting season), provision of information unavailable to many blacks (e.g. street addresses, when black neighborhoods lacked street names and numbers), and so forth. When blacks managed to qualify for the vote even under these measures, registrars would use their discretion to deny them the vote anyway. Alabama’s constitution of 1901 was explicitly designed to disenfranchise blacks by such restrictive and fraudulent means. Despite this, Jackson Giles, a black janitor, qualified for the vote under Alabama’s constitution. He brought suit against Alabama on behalf of himself and 75,000 similarly qualified blacks who had been arbitrarily denied the right to register. The Supreme Court rejected his claim in Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 (1903).

Source: The Geography Of Race In The U.S.

Today’s tactics are a drastically different, more sophisticated but no less obvious.

Voter ID

Some states, like Wisconsin for example, are trying to pass laws that are requiring people to present birth certificates to certify their eligibility to vote when they never had to before. Take, for example, how this will hurt one senior citizen as reported by the Center for American Progress Action Fund:

For 63 years, Brokaw, Wisconsin native Ruthelle Frank went to the polls to vote. Though paralyzed on her left side since birth, the 84-year-old “fiery woman” voted in every election since 1948 and even got elected herself as a member of the Brokaw Village Board. But because of the state’s new voter ID law, 2012 will be the first year Frank can’t vote. Born after a difficult birth at her home in 1927, Frank never received an official birth certificate. Her mother recorded it in her family Bible and Frank has a certification of baptism from a few months later, along with a Social Security card, a Medicare statement, and a checkbook. But without the official document, she can’t secure the state ID card that the new law requires to vote next year.

“It’s really crazy,” she added. “I’ve got all this proof. You mean to tell me that I’m not a U.S. citizen?” But state officials have informed Frank that, because the state Register of Deeds does have a record of her birth, they can issue her a new birth certificate — for a fee. And because of a spelling error, that fee may be as high as $200:

Though Frank never had a birth certificate, the state Register of Deeds in Madison has a record of her birth. It can generate a birth certificate for her — for a fee. Normally, the cost is $20.

Redistricting

Every ten years, county commissions, state House and Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives are redrawn based on population changes reported in the U.S. Census, the Detroit Free Press reports. The problem with this is that GOP leaders see population growth in black and Latino communities that vote heavily for Democrats and want to spit these Democratic voting bases. Take the state of Michigan for example, as reported by the Detroit Free Press:

Several groups representing African-American and Latino voters have filed a lawsuit challenging the new maps that define the 110 districts for the state House of Representatives.

The state Legislative Black Caucus, the NAACP, UAW and the Latino Americans for Social and Economic Development, along with several individuals filed suit in U.S. District Court in Detroit today. They’re asking for a temporary restraining order, halting the new districts from taking effect while a new map is drawn and approved.

“This is a coordinated assault on our voting rights,” said Wendell Anthony, president of the NAACP Detroit branch.

The groups have two main complaints: the new map will force eight Detroit incumbent legislators to run against each other; and a district that now encompasses most of the primarily Latino population in southwest Detroit has been split into two districts.

The game is the same, but the tactics have changed. Click on the links to learn how not to be swindled by the GOP disenfranchisement machine.

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The SPLC’s study, “Teaching the Movement: The State of Civil Rights Education 2011,” covers curricula and requirements for the civil rights movement.

Education Problem In America Compared to Civil Rights

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The Grio Reports:

“Most states do not think civil rights history education is important” Maureen Costello, SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance director told theGrio. “I want people to take away from the report the idea that teaching history in general is really important and teaching about civil rights encourages you to be a better citizen.”

Teaching Tolerance, SPLC’s educational resource initiative, conducted the study by examining all the 50 states’ academic standards and curriculum requirements related to the teaching of civil rights history in schools. Those standards and requirements were compared to what civil rights historians and educators consider core information about civil rights history.

Read More At The Grio

According to Reverend Dennis W. Wiley, gay rights are inextricably linked to Black America’s struggle for civil rights.

He added that if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  was alive he would be one of the LGBT movement’s biggest supporters.

“[I]t would seem to me that those of us who have been the victims of oppression and discrimination would be the last ones to facilitate the oppression and discrimination of others,” he writes.

Read more at BET.com

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And yet, the list is long: Fannie Lou Hammer, Ella Baker, Dorothy Height, Septima Clark, Marian Wright Edelman…

So as the masses gather in Washington D.C. to pay homage to Dr. Martin luther King Jr. at the unveiling of his new memorial, some are taking the time to remember the many African-American women who risked their lives, and worked tirelessly in the battle for racial equality.

I am not necessarily calling for the establishment of a new memorial in honor of black women on the National Mall, but I am suggesting that in this “age of Michelle Obama” that we start to acknowledge and celebrate the incredible sacrifices and service of the black women who did so much of the important work that helped propel the civil rights movement forward.

Read more at the Grio.

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The Poll found that most Americans– 90% of whites and 85% of Blacks– say civil rights for Black people have improved in the USA during their lifetime, although far more whites believe African-Americans have progressed.

While nearly eight in 10 whites say Black people have an equal chance in their community to get any kind of job for which they are qualified, six in 10 African Americans say job discrimination persists, USA Today reports:

“Whatever the civil rights movement did or did not accomplish, there remain very different perspectives, on average, between blacks and whites on how they view the country,” says Vincent Hutchings, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who studies racial politics. On such non-policy issues as acceptance of interracial marriage or the prospect of a black presidential candidate, “there is something verging on a sea change.”

Read more at USAToday.com

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Despite the DOJ’s dissent, Civil Rights activists are ardently pushing them to proceed with the case, while citing the Emmett Till Unresolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007. Nonetheless, the DOJ contests that the Malcolm X assassination does not meet the parameters of that act.

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Taylor is touring the nation’s capital a month after her home state of Alabama apologized to her for never bringing to justice the men who were accused of kidnapping and assaulting her in the 1940s.

She took her first trip to Washington to attend a forum at the National Press Club about late civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who championed Taylor’s cause as a field caseworker with the NAACP.

In 1944, Taylor, who is black, was a 24-year-old wife and mother living in Abbeville, Ala. Seven white men kidnapped and sexually assaulted her and then left her on the side of a road. Two grand juries, made up of white men, refused to indict anyone.

The Associated Press does not typically identify victims of sexual assault but is using her name because she has publicly identified herself.

Last month, Alabama lawmakers offered Taylor, now 91, an apology for how her case was handled. Officials from her native Henry County and the mayor of Abbeville apologized to her in March.

Taylor didn’t see the Obamas during her White House tour Thursday but called the executive mansion “beautiful.” The Vermeil Room with its portraits of past first ladies was one of her favorites.

The nation’s capital is a contrast to Taylor’s hometown, a small southeast Alabama community.

“It’s a lot more to see than Abbeville,” she said, with a laugh. “Everything is different.”

Taylor traveled back to Abbeville last week to receive the state resolution of apology on Mother’s Day at Rock Hill Holiness Church. She had been walking from the church after service when she was kidnapped 67 years ago.

“That was a good day to present it to me,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t know they was going to do it.”

Taylor said she keeps the resolution at home in a trunk with other special items. “I try to keep it where I won’t never lose it,” she said.

Mary Owens, Taylor’s granddaughter, accompanied her on the trip. She called Taylor a “hidden hero” and a “woman of integrity.”

“She has overcome,” Owens said.

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“To go through what those people are going through would be a complete nightmare,” said construction worker Bernie Simmons of Brooklyn, NY.

According to Stuart Applebaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, African-Americans who are in unions are 12 percent more likely to have health insurance benefits and a pension plan than non-Black unionized workers.

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“Collective bargaining has lifted up people of color and women the most,” said Applebaum in a speech today at the 2011 National Action Network convention. “Unions continue to be a core element of improving economic equality in this country and we can’t let them take our rights away and we won’t.”

According to the Center for Economic Policy and Research, union members earn almost 30 percent more than non-union members, and women in unions earn 28 percent more than non-union women.

In New York City, the Bloomberg administration’s attempt to privatize many facets of city government isn’t going unnoticed, according to the Executive Director of District Council 37, Lillian Roberts.

“We have to fight because if we don’t it can happen here. Don’t close your eyes. It’s going on right beneath us,” said Roberts.

Keep us bookmarked for continuous coverage of Sharpton’s 2011 NAN Convention!

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“And we wonder why our boys are struggling,” Duncan said. “We need more Latino and African American male teachers. We need to show these kids that they can also educate people just like them when they grow up.” Duncan used the convention to promote the federal TEACH campaign that persuades male minorities to enter education.
 The program was launched in the Fall 2010.

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Keep us bookmarked for continuous coverage of Sharpton’s 2011 NAN Convention!

Duncan recounted a story from the days after he was appointed to President Obama’s cabinet in 2008, when he sat down with Sharpton and professed that the civil rights issue of the 21st century was no longer race.

“The issue is education,” Duncan told Sharpton. “We have to do whatever it takes to educate our children and we’re currently failing,” said Duncan.

.

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Keep us bookmarked for continuous coverage of Sharpton’s 2011 NAN Convention!

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“This is a working convention,” Sharpton said. “This is why it’s called the National Action Network; not the National Pontificating Network or National Procrastination Network. We have real problems, real pain, and we really need to deal with that in our community. We have no time for showboating.”

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The National Action Network, founded in 1991, is one of the leading civil rights organizations in the country, dedicated to the principles of non-violent direct action and civil disobedience.

“We have been fighting for a long time and will continue to do so,” Sharpton continued. “We will talk about the issues affecting our country and create a plan of action to bring these issues to the table right now.”

With the 2012 election season begun, the convention commenced with the panel “Politics 2011-2012: What are the Issues?” moderated by Sharpton and featuring panelists such as New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, former congressman and NYU professor Harold E. Ford Jr., and others.

Keep us bookmarked for continuous coverage of Sharpton’s 2011 NAN Convention!

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The panel focused on issues such as collective bargaining, immigration, and poverty rates. But the center of the attention was dedicated to  unemployment.

With Black unemployment currently at 15 percent and rising, the long lines at job fairs were what affected Lee A. Saunders, treasurer of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

“It’s pretty simple – the issues are jobs and the economy, jobs and the economy, and let me re-emphasize, jobs and the economy,” Saunders said.

Other panelists like MirRam Group founder Roberto Ramirez spoke about the lack of empathy for working people.

“We need to address the wealth disparities in this country,” said Ramirez. “If we can address the deficit and bailing out Wall Street, we can help our poor people in this country. We need to be just as prepared to help Blacks and Latinos whose houses are being foreclosed as those who don’t have a problem paying their mortgage. It is unbelievable that the only job extension in this country can be unemployment extension.”

While jobs were a central issue of the conference, the issue of immigration brought strong emotion from both Ramirez and George Gresham, president of 1199 SEIU.

Said Ramirez: “We are currently under an administration which has deported more individuals than our previous administration. Which is shocking. We can’t even pass something as simple as the Dream Act. Why? Because they’ve put a million requirements to be able to qualify to stay in this country.

“I’m surprised being left-handed isn’t one,” said Ramirez to laughter and clapping.

The rest of the day’s schedule includes panels focusing on guns and violence, plenary presentations by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and a speech by President Obama.

At the end of the first panel, Sharpton announced that he will be going on a city-to-city tour with details to emerge at the end of the convention.

Keep us bookmarked for continuous coverage of Sharpton’s 2011 NAN Convention!

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Her son Michael Lomax, who is the president of the United Negro College Fund says that she died after a short illness.

She and her family moved from Los Angeles to the Deep South in the ’60s to be a part of the civil rights movement.

“She was a terrific writer…the only one of all the black newspapers at the time who really was fearless about exposing things as they were. She didn’t soft-pedal anything,” said veteran civil rights lawyer Leo Branton Jr.

Source

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An editorial in this week’s New York Amsterdam News, the legendary Black newspaper of New York, highlights the rise of Rev. Al Sharpton’s storied civil rights organization The National Action Network, which will celebrate its 20th year of operation April 6-9 at their national convention in New York City.

Related: NewsOne Columnist Rev. Al Sharpton named one of the “Top 15 Civil Rights Leaders of the 21st Century”

The editorial, written by the publisher and editor-in-chief of the paper Elinor Tatum, talks about the birth of the National Action Network in 1991. Tatum called the organization “the heart” of the continuing civil rights movement. She views Sharpton’s group as the premier civil rights organization of her generation in the same way that the NAACP and the National Urban League were to her parents.

“Happy birthday, National Action Network. For many of us, we literally might not be here without you.” Elinor Tatum

Founded by Sharpton in 1991, the organization was one of the first civil rights groups of the 21st century. From the onset, the organization’s mission has been to to address the social and economic injustice experienced by Blacks in the United States. The main focus of Sharpton’s organization has been to tackle three key areas affecting minorities in America  — the criminal justice system, social justice issues, and reducing verbal indecency within the African-American community.

The National Action Network is headquartered in Harlem, New York, but currently has over forty active chapters nationwide.

Key Moments:

- The National Action Network is widely credited with drawing national attention to such critical issues as racial profiling, police brutality, and the US Naval bombing exercises on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Notably, the organization was prominently involved with the police brutality cases of Amadou Diallo (New York), Abner Louima (New York) and Patrick Dorismond (New York). Sharpton also took the lead in protesting the Jena 6 case in Jena, Louisiana which garnered national attention. This past year, Sharpton held a march in Washington D.C. called “Reclaim The Dream” which thousands attended.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON AMSTERDAMNEWS.COM

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Convicted of arson and conspiracy, the “Wilmington Ten” were exonerated in 1980 after Amnesty International took up their case and proved that the group was prosecuted for their political beliefs, rather then their connection to the crime.

The Black Newspaper Publishers are collectively pushing for a full pardon.

‘We are going to tell the story of the Wilmington 10,” said the National Newspapers Publishers Association Chair, Danny J. Bakewell, Sr, ”And, we think it is incumbent for us to fight for a pardon for those 10 people… justice to this day has not been served.”

Source

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Alabama — Last summer, African-American man Worcy Crawford passed away at the age of 92. If you are unfamiliar with the name, you aren’t the only one.

With his passing, a civil rights story of epic proportions went untold.

When people think of buses and the civil rights era, they think of Rosa Parks. But many forget that there was a man who was busing around all the Blacks during the time of segregation. This man didn’t only bus Blacks, he owned the buses.

Read more at the NYTimes

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By portraying collective bargaining as a human rights issue, union officials hope the rallies can help fuel a backlash against Republicans in Wisconsin and other states trying to curb collective bargaining rights for public employees.

“This is a fight for workers, this is a fight for the middle class, this is a fight to try to stave off the shift in power and wealth that is starting to become gross,” said Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters.

The planned rallies on the 43rd anniversary of King’s death are part of a coordinated strategy by labor leaders to ride the momentum of pro-union demonstrations and national polls showing most Americans support collective bargaining rights as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and other GOP leaders in states fight to reduce or strip those benefits.

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Walker has argued that collective bargaining is a budget issue. He says the bill the state Legislature passed Thursday stripping most collective bargaining benefits will give local governments flexibility in making budget cuts needed to close the state’s $3.6 billion deficit. He is expected to sign it soon.

“That’s something people forget about Dr. King,” said Liz Shuler, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation. “We all know about his work in the civil rights movement, but he was also a workers’ rights advocate.”

It’s also another signal that labor leaders are trying to broaden the coalition of groups speaking out against efforts to limit collective bargaining rights for public employee unions. Unions are coordinating the rallies with the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and other civil rights, religious and progressive groups.

“Dr. King lost his life struggling to help sanitation workers – public sector employees – achieve their goals for a dignified existence as workers,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference. “We think that’s an extraordinary backdrop in which to frame the debate over what’s taking place in the country today.”

When King traveled to Memphis in 1968, he was lending support to more than 1,100 black sanitation workers who were on strike seeking better working conditions, higher wages and benefits, and union recognition.

Daniel Walkowitz, a labor historian at New York University, said the gesture was typical of King’s later years, in which the targets of his activism were less often the legal barriers to civil rights for blacks. More often, King was focused on lack of employment and educational opportunities for African-Americans.

“Tying the rallies to King is an interesting strategy because it does draw upon King’s understanding that the problems of labor were problems of civil rights,” Walkowitz said.

Walker argues that the sweeping step against collective bargaining is necessary to balance the budget not only over the next two years but into the future. He said he wouldn’t compromise on the issue or on anything that saves the state money.

But union leaders see it as a fight for middle class rights. Wisconsin unions had agreed to cuts in pension and health benefits as long as they could keep collective bargaining rights. Labor leaders say Walker’s refusal to compromise shows he wants to leave unions toothless and cripple their political clout.

While unions are on the verge of losing power in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states, union leaders believe they are winning the war of public  opinion and pulling in broader support.

“The movement is bigger than just the labor movement,” United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard said. “What we’re seeing is an awakening about the importance of collective bargaining.”

Labor leaders already have pledged to pour more than $30 million into a push to stop legislation in dozens of states that seeks to limit bargaining rights of public worker unions or otherwise curb union power. Union officials are also helping mobilize demonstrations in state capitols and spending money on recall campaigns against GOP officials who support efforts to curb union rights.

Roland Martin talks with filmmaker Keith Beauchamp about his new series launching on the Investigation Discovery channel entitled “The Injustice Files.” The series will focus on cold cases from the civil rights era,

“The Injustice Files” airs Friday at 9 p.m. EST on Investigation Discovery.

It’s always interesting talking to American youth, especially African-Americans, who are quick to suggest that the “old ways of doing things” — like marches, rallies, protests and boycotts — have no effect on changing public policy today.

Maybe someone should tell that to the people in Egypt, who brought the 30-year regime of Hosni Mubarak to its knees and forced him to resign over the course of 18 days.

While Mubarak tried desperately to hold onto his powers, the millions of Egyptians, led by the nation’s disgruntled young, made it clear that waiting for him to not seek re-election in September wasn’t enough; they wanted him gone. Today.

Their ability to remain unified reminded me of “the fierce urgency of now,” often proclaimed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When the people want freedom, asking them to wait is a waste of time. What did Dr. King title his letters from a Birmingham, Ala., jail? “Why We Can’t Wait.”

As the developments in Egypt were covered each day, it was eerily similar to that of the Civil Rights Movement. The spark in North Africa began with a Tunisian farmer setting himself on fire to protest police trying to extort money from him. In 1955, the fire burning inside African-Americans was lit by the brutal murder of Emmett Till.

In Egypt, the nation’s youth used Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to get their message out and to show the world that they were unwilling to continue to live in a state of oppression. During the Civil Rights Movement, long before Time, Newsweek and The New York Times showed up, the Chicago Defender, Memphis Tri-State Defender and a host of other black newspapers were the outlet used by leaders to get their message to the masses — as chronicled by Gene Roberts and Hank Kilbanoff in “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation.”

One of the galvanizing forces in Egypt was 30-year-old Wael Ghonim, a Google marketing executive. His arrest, and subsequent release, rallied the people even more.

We can’t forget the arrests of a 26-year-old preacher in Montgomery, Ala., and other cities that put the attention on the oppressive nature of Jim Crow all across the South, galvanizing his supporters. That man was Martin Luther King Jr.

His insistence of following a nonviolent path to changing America was seen and felt all across Egypt. Knowing full well that they would not have the sympathy of the world if they chose to take up arms against their oppressors, the Egyptian protestors maintained their commitment to civil disobedience. And just like when Bull Connor and angry mobs showed their violent ways against fellow Americans, the world seethed with anger as pro-Mubarak supporters killed protestors and the secret police were unleashed with fury. The people in Egypt were just as brave and fearless as the people in Selma, Ala., and Little Rock, Ark.

During the Egyptian crisis, even the reaction from today’s American political leaders was similar to the lack of forthrightness during the Civil Right Movement. Instead of being unequivocal in standing for full freedom for all Egyptians, political leaders hedged their bets, trying to protect their interests and not those of the people demanding a change.

While many feared for what America would look like when Jim Crow was crushed, too many fear what will happen in Egypt in a post-Mubarak world. It is abundantly clear that those demanding freedom will not accept anything less. They want free and fair elections; they want the government to care more about the poor and disenfranchised, not just the well-to-do.

Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, Dorothy Height, A. Philip Randolph, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Shuttlesworth and countless others didn’t settle for some freedom; they demanded full access to democracy.

And I have no doubt that the people of Egypt will not stop protesting and rallying and mobilizing and organizing until their dreams of democracy become a reality.

Roland S. Martin is an award-winning CNN analyst and the author of the book “The First: President Barack Obama’s Road to the White House as originally reported by Roland S. Martin.” Please visit his website at www.RolandSMartin.com. To find out more about Roland S. Martin and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM

Every idiot likes to speculate on what the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. would be thinking or doing if he were alive today so I figured, why should I be any different?

So here’s what I think: Dr. King would be married to a white woman and living in Africa if he were alive to day.

This probably leaves you with two questions immediately: why a white woman and why Africa?

Well, you may not know this, but Dr. King actually contemplated marrying the white girl that he was seeing back while he finished up his doctorate at Boston University.

He was as engaged in the concept of Civil Rights as he was when he eventually became famous, but weighing the pros versus the cons of presenting the world with a dynamic mixed-race couple at the forefront of Civil Rights and becoming and iconic black family man, he ultimately and maybe even wisely chose to marry Coretta Scott.

Also of note is the fact that the overwhelming bulk if not every last one of the women that Dr. King was alleged to have had affairs with were white.

The guy just had a taste for white chicks.

Sorry.

Plus when you consider that a lot of Black, militant and angry OGs—Frederick Douglass, Ishmael Reed and Quincy Jones immediately come to mind—either finally marry white or consistently marry white, it wouldn’t have surprised too many people if, after Coretta passed in 2006, the Dr. pulled a “Hef” and got a young, hot one.

Now, why Africa?

Dr. King was so bitter and disillusioned with America near the end of his life that he was probably only a day or two away from flag burning.

Everybody remembers him questioning near the end whether or not it was indeed wise to “integrate into a burning house”, but almost nobody picks up on one of the most amazing things he ever said in the last public speech he ever made on the last night of his life.

Think about it: “we as a people shall get to the promised land.”

He wasn’t talking about Cleveland, my Damies (shout out to Pootie Tang)!

All the great Black minds from Marcus Garvey to Bob Marley argued in favor of repatriation to Africa with two men in particular, men that King definitely respected and one that he actually ran with, having done so; W.E.B. Du Bois, and King’s ace boon… you know, Stokely Carmichael.

Doc would be an 82 year-old naturalized citizen of Ghana right now somewhere with an ex-playmate on his arm, watching sports, mad that the Falcons lost, but rooting for Lovie Smith and Mike Tomlin to make it to the Super Bowl.

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Barbour, the chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association, says he is mulling a bid to be his party’s nominee in 2012 where he would likely face President Barack Obama vying for a second term in the White House.

The governor apologized last month for saying in a magazine interview that the civil rights era was not “that bad,” a comment that put the Republican politician on the defensive.

“I urge you to move this museum forward as an appropriate way to do justice to the Civil Rights Movement and to stand as a monument of remembrance and reconciliation,” Barbour said in the speech late on Tuesday.

“The civil rights struggle is an important part of our history, and millions of people are interested in learning more about it. People from around the world would flock to see the museum and learn about the movement,” he said.

Read more at Reuters.com

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No one disputes that the death of Morris, a well-liked businessman who served both black and white customers, is connected to the Ku Klux Klan. The case is on a list of unsolved civil rights murders the F.B.I. released in February 2007, the day Mr. Nelson first heard of the story.

But for a lengthy article appearing Wednesday in The Concordia Sentinel, Mr. Nelson, 55, put together what he believes is a key piece of the puzzle. He names the last living person he says was there that night.

In the article, both a son and a former brother-in-law of Arthur Leonard Spencer, 71, a truck driver from rural Rayville, La., say he admitted to being involved in the fire. Mr. Spencer’s ex-wife, Mr. Nelson reported, said she had heard the same story from another man who was also there.

Read more at NYT.com

For years, the auburn-haired white man has educated students about activists in their own state who led peaceful demonstrations, and the wrath of segregationists who channeled violence to repress social change.

A civil rights/human rights curriculum becomes mandatory in all public schools for the 2011-2012 school year, five years after Gov. Haley Barbour signed the requirement into law.

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The book covers his life as the first African-American to graduate from Stanford Medical School and becoming the first black department head at Harvard’s teaching hospitals.

White, who now lives in Westin, Mass., calls the health care disparities the last frontier of racial prejudice.

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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.

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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.”

Read entire article at WAPT.com

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights received nearly 7,000 complaints this fiscal year, an 11 percent increase and the largest jump in at least 10 years, according to data provided by the department. The increase comes as the office proceeds with 54 compliance reviews in districts and institutions of higher education nationwide, including cases involving disparate discipline rates and treatment of students with disabilities.

Information on the reports was provided to The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act request. They highlight issues that, in some cases, have long been documented, like the disparate discipline rate between black and white male students, and in other cases are reflective of the new challenges facing schools, such as changing demographics and rising numbers of students with diabetes and food allergies, now considered disabilities.

At the Christina School District in Delaware, 71 percent of black male students were suspended in a recent school year, compared to 22 percent of their white male counterparts, Ali said.

The district has repeatedly been under the national spotlight for its strict enforcement of a zero tolerance policy, going so far as to expel a third-grader whose grandmother sent her to school with a birthday cake and a knife to cut it. Zero tolerance policies, which enact harsh punishments on everything from swearing to weapons or drug possession, have been widely instituted.

Critics say they are ineffective and a one-size fits all solution, and are partly to blame for the growing disparity between white and black discipline rates and a school-to-prison pipeline for those punished.

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Roland Martin appears in The Situation Room with CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux and Ed Rollins to discusses Glenn Beck’s efforts to “take back the civil rights movement” at a rally in Washington.

WATCH: Who Owns The Civil Rights Movement?

Dear Dr. King,

There will be a march this Saturday to commemorate the 47^th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Actually, there will be two marches, with leaders of each claiming to be walking in your footsteps.

The march being led by Al Sharpton is the only one with any legitimacy. Sharpton was mentored by Jesse Jackson similar to the way you mentored Jesse. Sharpton is being joined by Marc Morial, the president and CEO of the National Urban League; Benjamin Jealous, the head of the NAACP, and your oldest son, Martin Luther King III. You would be proud of all of them. You’d be especially proud because they are refusing to let Glenn Beck, an ultra-conservative talk show host, hijack your memory.

If you thought Paul Harvey was terrible in your day, this guy is far worse. Beck is a shameless liar who refuses to back down even after being caught in a blatant lie. He will be joined by former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who in the memorable words of former NFL great Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, couldn’t spell cat if you spotted her the “c” and the “a.” They are headliners for a separate march at the Lincoln Memorial. In typical fashion, Beck pretends that selecting the August 28 date for his rally was pure happenstance. Of course, that’s pure nonsense.

I am sure you know by now that in 2008 we elected Barack Obama, the son of a Black man from Kenya and a White woman from Kansas, president of the United States. Beck accused our nation’s first Black president of having “a deep-seated hatred for White people or the White culture.” Beck said that about an African-American who was reared by his White grandparents. In Obama’s best-selling books, he speaks fondly of his grandparents and has never exhibited any hate, deep-seated or otherwise, toward Whites or any other racial or ethnic group.

Not content with merely attacking President Obama, Beck even attacked his wife and children. After Obama’s then 11-year-old daughter, Malia, asked when the BP old spill in the Gulf of Mexico would be plugged, Beck mocked her on his national radio program and questioned her intelligence. He did that just two days after declaring a politician’s family should be off limits.

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Not only did Beck not apply that to Obama’s daughter, he didn’t apply it to his wife, Michelle. He said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the first lady with her – excuse the expression – but with her breasts all smooshed up…”

When Beck was reminded that August 28 is a sacred day for those interested in jobs, peace and justice, he claimed that it was “divine providence” that his rally was scheduled to coincide with the 47th anniversary of your “I Have a Dream” speech. He contends, “…Too many have gotten just lazy or they have purposely distorted Martin Luther King’s ideas of judge a man by the content of his character.”

Of course, he and Rush Limbaugh, another conservative talk show host, are the main culprits. Beck is one of many conservatives who have tried to invoke your memory while fighting against everything you represented.

RELATED: Glenn Beck’s Rally Defacing The Legacy Of Martin Luther King

For example, anti-affirmative action foe Ward Connerly, a Black man, professed to be acting in your spirit as he traveled around the nation trying to get states to ban affirmative action. When your children challenged him in public, Connerly had the gall to claim that he – not your offsprings – was being true to your words and deeds.

But we know, as you reminded us, “A lie cannot live.”

At the original March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the leaders of all of the major civil rights organizations were present. Today, however, SNCC is defunct, CORE exists in name only and the infighting is so fierce in SCLC, your old organization, that although your daughter, Bernice, was elected president last October, she refuses to assume office until there is a cease fire among feuding factions.

Of the remaining major civil rights organizations, the heads of all of them will participate in the march Saturday except one – Jesse Jackson. He will be leading a march 525 miles away in Detroit to commemorate the Walk to Freedom March you led there on June 28, 1963, exactly two months before the March on Washington.

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After laying claim to your legacy through hard work and even harder self-promotion, Jesse’s star has faded. Unfortunately, your former protege is still clinging to the lie that he was the last person to cradle you in your dying moments in Memphis. To the contrary, your best friend Ralph Albernathy told me in a tape-recorded interview before he died that Jesse was lying and dared him to make that claim in his presence. Even so, most Blacks were willing to overlook Jesse’s obvious foibles. But that, too, had its limits. For most African-Americans, the last straw was hearing Jesse say during the presidential campaign that he wanted to dismember certain delicate body parts of Barack Obama. 

So while Jesse is in Detroit commentating a march two months after it’s anniversary, Al Sharpton, Marc Morial, Ben Jealous and Martin III will be resisting Glenn Beck’s latest effort to appropriate your good name. In doing so, they will be keeping the dream alive.

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. He can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com You can also follow him at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.

“The Daily Show” has a knack for going on vacation when important things happen, so it’s nice to see Jon Stewart proactively “report” on Glenn Beck’s Aug. 28 civil rights rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In a segment dubbed “I Have A Scheme,” Stewart picked apart Beck’s plan to “restore honor” to the republic on the same day and in the same place as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did exactly 47 years ago.

Beck claims not to have realized the coincidence when planning his “Beckapalooza” and Stewart honestly believed him. “Wow, so Glenn Beck didn’t realize that was an important day in African-American history?” he asked. “I find that… Totally plausible. I find that totally plausible.”

Read more at HuffPo

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Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official ousted during a racial firestorm last month, declined Tuesday to return to the agency, though she said it was tempting.

Sherrod and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that she may work with the agency in a consulting capacity in the future to help it improve its outreach to minorities. She told reporters she did not think she could say yes to a job “at this point, with all that has happened.”

“I look forward to some type of relationship with the department in the future,” she said. “We do need to work on the issues of discrimination and race in this country.”

Vilsack, who apologized to Sherrod for pushing her out, had offered her a new position in the Office of Advocacy and Outreach, which is works on civil rights issues.

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Attorney Denise LaRue, right, and her client Brenda Chaney pose in her law office in Indianapolis. Chaney worked in a Plainfield, Ind., nursing home that issued her an assignment sheet including a daily reminder that one woman in her unit “Prefers No Black CNAs.” Nursing home residents have the right to choose who’s going to take care of them, except when those choices are based on color, 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Chaney’s case in July.

Certified nursing assistant Brenda Chaney was on duty in an Indiana nursing home one day when she discovered a patient lying on the floor, unable to stand.

But Chaney couldn’t help the woman up. She had to search for a white aide because the woman had left instructions that she did not want any black caregivers. And the nursing home insisted it was legally bound to honor the request.

The episode, which led to a recent federal court ruling that Chaney’s civil rights had been violated, has brought to light a little known consequence of the patients’ rights movement that swept the nation’s health care system over the last two decades.

Elderly patients, who won more legal control over their quality of life in nursing homes, sometimes want to dictate the race of those who care for them. And some nursing homes enforce those preferences in their staff policies.

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“When people write laws, they don’t think about these types of things very much,” said Dennis Frick, an attorney with Indiana Legal Services’ Senior Law Project.

At nursing homes, tension over patient rights and race “comes up occasionally in virtually every state in the United States,” said Steve Maag, director of assisted living and continuing care at the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging.

Maag said he has gotten several questions a year from nursing home officials about reassigning workers to suit residents’ racial preferences. Another case in Indiana last year resulted in a damage settlement for a caregiver. A state agency in Montana has also handled a formal bias complaint.

Now, Indiana state health officials expect to notify all nursing homes of the court ruling, and Frick said it could be cited as precedent throughout the nation.

In 1987, Congress enacted the Nursing Home Reform Law to address evidence of widespread abuse of nursing home patients. The states followed suit with “a strong set of regulations that would guarantee that residents were free from abuse and had quality of care, and really had quality of life,” said Robyn Grant, a national senior care advocate who was involved in drafting Indiana’s rules in 1990.

But the emphasis on patient rights led some nursing homes to think they outweighed everything else.

“We were taught that residents’ rights were paramount,” said Janet McSharar, who specializes in long-term care issues and represented the nursing home where Chaney worked in Plainfield, an Indianapolis suburb of 23,000.

Under federal law, nursing home residents are free to choose their own physicians. Indiana’s law is broader, saying patients can choose their “providers of services.” Both laws say nursing homes must reasonably accommodate residents’ “individual needs and preferences.”

Other states’ laws are similarly broad. Grant said the Indiana law was intended to cover providers such as pharmacies, not caregivers.

Documents in Chaney’s lawsuit, filed in 2008, say her daily assignment sheet at Plainfield Healthcare Center always included the reminder that one patient in her unit “Prefers No Black CNAs.”

Chaney, a 49-year-old single mother who at the time was helping to put her only son through college, initially went along with the policy despite her misgivings because she needed the money.

“I always felt like it was wrong,” said Chaney, who has worked in nursing homes since she earned certification in 2006. “I just had to go with the flow.”

The nursing home said it was just following a long-standing interpretation of the patients’ rights law. “The rules say this is their home and everyone else is just a visitor there, including staff,” said McSharar.

Nursing homes can be hotbeds of racial friction, said David Smith, a Drexel University professor who has studied racial integration in hospitals and long-term care centers. In urban areas, staffs are often predominantly African-American while most patients are white. Some elderly people revert in dementia to the prejudices they grew up with.

“You’ve got to remember the nursing home residents grew up in the time of Jim Crow, even in the North. They regress back,” Smith said.

Courts have held that patients can refuse to be treated by a caregiver of the opposite sex, citing privacy issues. But the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling in Chaney’s case last month, said applying that accommodation to race goes too far.

“The privacy interest that is offended when one undresses in front of a doctor or nurse of the opposite sex does not apply to race,” the ruling said.

State and national officials say they aren’t sure how often a patient has rejected a caregiver based on race. A similar case involving an Indianapolis nursing home resulted in an $84,000 settlement last year, but officials with the Indiana Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would not comment on whether other complaints had been filed because they are not public record.

In a case in 2000, the Montana Department of Labor and Industry said a nursing home acted inappropriately when it reassigned a black caregiver to avoid confrontations with biased patients.

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In February 2007, Alberto R. Gonzales, the attorney general under President George W. Bush, issued a stern warning to those who murdered blacks with impunity during the civil rights era: “You have not gotten away with anything. We are still on your trail.”

He noted that time was short. The window of opportunity to solve racially motivated crimes more than 40 years old was closing. Families of the victims had waited decades for resolution.

More than three years later, they are still waiting.

Read more at NYTimes

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Roland Martin talks to Bernice King about her desire to unite the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

WATCH: Bernice King Opens Up About The SCLC.

ATLANTA (AP) — After nearly 10 months of silence, the Rev. Bernice King urged the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on Tuesday to end the bitter infighting that has split the group she was elected to lead.

King said at a news conference she still plans to lead the civil rights group but declined to say when she would take the post. She has indicated she would wait out the bickering and legal wrangling.

“I believe that the time is now for us to come together in unity as one SCLC,” King said. “A house divided against itself cannot stand. The SCLC family must be about the business of restoring, rebuilding and redeeming its own internal soul as we continue in our quest to redeem the soul of America.”

RELATED: Bernice King Delays Taking SCLC Post

Shortly after her election in October by a unified SCLC, the leadership of the group co-founded by her father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., split into two factions that have since met and made decisions separately. The SCLC is awaiting a decision from a judge as to which faction controls the group.

As the factions prepare to host dueling conventions in the next week, King says she will lead a prayer vigil for the SCLC on Friday at Ebenezer Baptist Church – where her father preached from 1960 until his death in 1968 and across the street from where her parents are buried.

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“We must never forget that the SCLC is a Christian organization and prayer is a part of our foundation,” she said. “We will pray that SCLC is restored as a moral voice for our nation and world.”

On Tuesday, King – who is also a lawyer – said she had originally intended to take office in April but waited because of the ongoing court battle. Meanwhile, King said she has been meeting with her transition team and preparing for her eventual role as head of SCLC.

King’s has opted to stay out of the fray in the wake of investigations into charges of financial mismanagement by the group’s ousted chairman and treasurer. Those allegations are at the heart of the SCLC split.

She said the strife of the past several months has been difficult to watch. In May, for example, one side chained and padlocked doors to keep the other side out of the group’s downtown Atlanta headquarters. The chains were later cut.

King said she believes the ordeal will make the organization stronger.

According to the SCLC’s website, some leaders are planning a five-day convention scheduled to begin on Aug. 7 at a hotel in Atlanta. The opposing faction is also planning a three-day convention beginning Aug. 13 at a church in Decatur.

RELATED: SCLC HQ Chained Shut In Leadership Fight

Bernice King has not decided whether she will attend either of the conventions.

On Tuesday, it was not clear whether either side would answer her call to prayer.

In a letter dated Aug. 2, the Rev. Sylvia Tucker, who was appointed chairwoman of the SCLC board of directors earlier this year, wrote that it was inappropriate for King to hold a news conference because she hasn’t met with her group’s board, among other reasons.

“The President-Elect has not been involved in the interworkings of the organization over the past eight months and therefore does not appreciate all of the issues involved. For there and other reasons … such a press conference is misguided,” Tucker wrote.

Tucker said she wouldn’t attend the prayer service and said that King told her she would not get involved until after the judge’s ruling.

The Rev. Markel Hutchins, who was named SCLC’s interim president by the side that opposes Tucker’s group, said King has not been responsive to them. He declined to say whether he would attend Friday’s prayer vigil.

“I learned about Elder King’s plans through, and only through, the media,” he said.

The SCLC was co-founded by ministers Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, Joseph Lowery and others in 1957 and was a leading force in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.

From thegrio.com:

I know what you might be thinking. Is a woman seriously going to recommend a documentary film about Hugh Hefner, the Playboy guy? The simple answer is yes. This is not so all my male friends will sing my praises, or because I want to seem progressive.Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist & Rebel is worth seeing because like most good documentaries it teaches you something. In this instance what you’ll learn about Hefner’s support for black writers, artists and performers; as well as his commitment to civil rights will most assuredly surprise you.

Before I get to the good stuff let me be perfectly clear that this not a film for children; nor is it one for people who have difficulty in seeing all sides to a story. It’s true that there’s a level of nudity that some might not be comfortable with. But you ought to know what you’re going to get because it’s about Playboy.

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From Colorlines.com:

Today, a group of seven education and civil rights groups released a six-point plan for equitable and sustainable national education reform in this country. And, big surprise, the report is basically a 17-page repudiation of the Obama administration’s education reform platform.

Groups including the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Urban League, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the Schott Foundation for Public Education called for an end to many of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s signature initiatives, and a commitment instead to policies that incentivize positive results and lay the groundwork for long-term change in the neediest school districts. On every major Duncan policy initiative–aggressive promotion of charter schools, turnaround models for failing schools, national education standards, punitive teacher accountability measures–the coalition had harsh criticisms. And this morning, the Education Department issued a pat response:

We’re listening. The administration is dedicated to equity in education and we’ve been working very closely with the civil rights community to develop the most effective policies to close the achievement gap, turn around low performing schools, and put a good teacher in every classroom.

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