TAN – The Afro News

TAN The Stories Of Ordinary Heroes

Sometimes life delivers you a critical mission to accomplish. Then, when everyone else thinks it is done and behind, slipping quietly into history, it beckons that you revisit the place and the people who are its living witnesses, so that the past is brought to light again, for the benefit of future generations. Gordon A. Martin Jr. is a retired Massachusetts trial judge whose book “Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote,” accurately and respectfully chronicles the story of the people who challenged an unfair voting registration process and forever changed America.

The core story takes place in Mississippi in 1961. It revolves around the U.S. Justice Department lawsuit against voting registrar Theron Lynd. At that time 30 per cent of the population in Forrest County, Mississippi was African American, yet only 12 of 7,500 were on the voting rolls. These 12 souls braved community abuses, obstacles including denial of their rights and loss of their jobs.

“One can understand intellectually what denial of the vote to black people was – but the experience of getting to know, hard working people, some veterans, many with advanced degrees often in lesser jobs…. the real toll…can only be imagined,” said Judge Martin.

United States vs. Lynd was the first trial that resulted in the conviction of a southern registrar for contempt of court. The case became a model for other challenges to voter discrimination in the South and was influential in shaping the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Change was not immediate but it began in that decade.

On the Job

“I was like so many young people, just out of school and starting out in life with a new job. I was a young lawyer who got thrown into a particular case, underpaid, entrusted, little experience, no time to think,” said Martin.

As a newly minted lawyer, he traveled to Hattiesburg from Washington to help shape the federal case against Lynd. He met with and prepared the government’s 16 courageous black witnesses who had been refused registration, found white witnesses, and was one of the lawyers during the trial. He wasn’t alone of course. Not only was he working under a section head, supervising his learning experience, but this case had the ear and interest of powers at the top.

“Fifty years ago, the U.S. attorney general, in his first day on the job, walked into the office of his acting assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division, John Doar. Robert F. Kennedy wanted to know what was going on, what lawsuits were pending, how the right to vote for African-Americans would be achieved.” (excerpted)

Doar, a Wisconsin Republican, had a history in the federal administration with the Civil Rights Division, first in the Eisenhower administration and then in action as a key figure in the Kennedy Justice Department.

Together, Kennedy and Doar saw serious patterns of inequity in a map of the South. Colored pins graphically pointed to trouble in Forrest County in south-eastern Mississippi. That trouble began in 1958 when Theron Lynd was elected registrar of Forrest County. All four candidates in that election had made clear their goal to preserve the essentially all-white electorate of the county.

Process towards progress

Three years into his office, 16 African-Americans from widely diverse backgrounds were ready to testify against Lynd and his tactics to ignore, frustrate and deny the ministers, factory workers, shopkeepers, teachers with master’s degrees from such universities as Wisconsin, Columbia, Cornell and NYU to try to register. Later, one of the leaders of the black community, Vernon Dahmer, was murdered by the White Knights of the Klan for his role in voter registration.

One of the tools Lynd had at his disposal to reject bids for registration was the literacy test. The legal team, without records, came up with 16 contrasting white witnesses either registered without being required to take the literacy test or given a simple section of the state constitution to interpret.

During the trial, the witnesses testified for three days. The federal judge allowed a 30-day continuance but did not issue an injunction. This failure opened the door to appeal and the Court of Appeals agreed and entered its own order, barring discrimination. Lynd strengthened by his history of steady abuse of process violated the order within days.

The team brought three more trials, two for contempt, just to deal with that one county. From the realization that a county by county effort was ineffective, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was brought in to abolish the literacy test and authorized federal registrars to step in. It took till the end of the decade before the shameful southern racial voting discrimination was eradicated along with individual and non standard state control of the process.

Each precious witness’s thoughts and life circumstances are fascinatingly conveyed in the book. Martin who never forgot each of those incredible people began going back to piece the past together as of 1989. More mature and with the benefit of hindsight and experience his conversation with The Afro News brought out interesting applications to today.

Current challenges and future forecasts

While Judge Martin is American and can’t speak to Canadian and international laws and specifics of experience, his journey raises some comments on our current state of affairs.

On the importance of the vote to all sectors of society

“We cannot be complacent about the access achieved then. The ballot must be intelligible to all, particularly our newest citizens. Voter ID laws must be scrutinized carefully. Felon disenfranchisement laws that are an impediment to meaningful re-entry to society should be eliminated. And each generation of new voters must recognize the efforts made by many of their forebears to be able to vote, and understand that their vote does count and may just make a difference.”

Martin is still concerned with people securing their vote and of developing a sense of belonging and community development for all sectors of the American population.

“I’m disappointed that franchise is not valued more. Kennedy worked to eliminate the great social wrong. Now what percentage of the electorate votes? What can have them value it more?”

And, just as any who sacrificed and worked to bring about change, the next immediate generations are born into it and just accept it as a birthright and normal. Martin suggests that the education and engagement starts as early as possible, certainly by high school.

“Young black people need to know their history, not just white people.”

On change

“Change that occurred in American society was phenomenal. Such change would not have been possible if black people were not allowed to vote. Some of the results began with Jesse Jackson’s activity and bid for leadership and led to Barack Obama.”

On what society is doing with the freedom they have

“Youth driven revolution in Egypt came from people being seriously disturbed by the conditions they found themselves in, not organizations, but young people. Youth support made a clear difference for Obama”

Regrettably, notes Martin, the drop off in youth vote two years later (after Obama) shows young people are not as involved. “Partly it’s the rallying cry of the campaign giving way to the harsh realities of the decisions that must be made”

The continued role of youth

People can clearly make a difference and Martin has been witness to that. “Our youth is capable of doing a lot. Political participation is open to all. Desire, motivation and understanding are needed.

In closing our conversation, Martin was quite impassioned about his experience with the exceptional people he encountered in the course of the case that formed the book. His has great encouragement for all to get involved to make a difference, noting it is not only the great names we all recognize like Martin Luther King Jr. and others. “Promotion of this book in the south allowed me to revisit the original people who stood up at great risk to vote, to be called properly by name and to brave physical harm. It has allowed all to know their story and to touch history”

“Reform,” concluded Martin, “is a word that is often misused. It is change people really mean, change per se with a direction.” A step into history might be just what is needed to go forward with a plan.

Chapters in the life of Judge Gordon Martin Jr.

Chapters in the life of Judge Gordon Martin Jr.

If anything about a career such as Judge Martin’s illustrates it’s that we need to reframe retirement as resource rich. Our retired people are resources at large and we should all take advantage of the depth of knowledge gained only by time and applied experience. Some of his milestones include:

• First Assistant United States Attorney and later Special Assistant to Senator Edward M. Kennedy and a Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, one of the three oldest state anti-discrimination agencies.

• Visiting Professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law in 2000, teaching Civil Rights and Legal Ethics. He is an adjunct professor at New England Law Boston, where he is teaching Civil Rights this semester.

• Co-authored a civil rights casebook and written more than thirty chapters, articles and op-ed pieces.

• One of the Civil Rights Division lawyers of the 1960s honored with the 2009 Humanitarian Award of the Choral Arts Society of Washington at its Annual Tribute to Dr. King.

• Even as a retired trial judge he is an adjunct professor at New England School of Law. His work has been published in the Boston Globe, Commonweal, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, various law reviews, and other periodicals.

• Martin is a graduate of Roxbury Latin, Harvard College and New York University School of Law and lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife Stephanie.

In addition to his career activity and contributions, Judge Martin and his wife Stephanie, his partner in life and his career, now enjoy the four citizens of the world they raised and the reward of grandchildren.

 

The Stories Of Ordinary Heroes In Landmark Civil Rights Case

ABOUT THE BOOK“Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote,” is a comprehensive account of a groundbreaking case where a lawyer and a community were united to bring down one of the most recalcitrant bastions of resistance to civil rights.

The author, Judge Gordon Martin Jr. interviewed the still-living witnesses, their children, and friends. Having been an onsite witness himself Martin intertwines their modern day reflections with his own expert and vivid commentary about the case itself. To any reader’s delight, the result is a clearly passionate mix of reportage, oral history, and memoir about a trial that fundamentally reshaped liberty and the South.

 

Mary Ann Shadd Cary North America’s first Black female newspaper publisher was honored

Mary Ann Shadd Cary

: North America’s first Black female newspaper publisher was honored recently at the Ontario Black History Society’s (OBHS) Black History Month launch. A plaque was unveiled in honor of Mary Ann Shadd Cary, a women’s right advocate, lawyer, teacher and publisher of The Provincial Freeman, and Dr. Carrie Best, Publisher of Nova Scotia’s first Black-owned newspaper The Clarion. Read the full story

Ghana First President Dr Kwame Nkrumah and wife with Chieftains

Comment/Ghana/Africa  /By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong

Dr. Sekou Nkrumah, a member of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and third son of Ghana’s first President Kwame Nkrumah, has further added to the agony of the NDC by telling Africa Watch magazine that the so-called NDC founder Jerry Rawlings, who ruled Ghana as both a military dictator and elected president for almost 20 years, is “Ghana’s best leader compared to ex-president John Kufour and present President John Evans Atta Mills.”

Read the full story

Black history In CANADA

Anthony Reznek is a publisher at Edmond Montgomery Publications in Toronto. In collaboration with several well-known authors he has published ‘Black History: Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas,” a four colour, 376-page hardcover book. The textbook will be used to give students a panoramic view of Black Canadian experiences along with an overview of Black History from early civilizations to the 21st century – from Africa to the Diaspora in the Caribbean and the Americas. The authors (Sadlier, Birkett, Grant, James, Van Beinum) “were interested in creating a resource with information that had not been available to them in a textbook when they were in high school” Reznek told School Libraries in Canada, the online journal of the Canadian Association for School Libraries. “They wanted to educate students in particular, and the broader community, in general, about Black History and its deep connections to the histories of Africa and the countries of this hemisphere”, he added.

The book has several features including: Description and brief analysis of specific landmark accomplishments in the visual arts, literature, music and architecture, sketches of Black leaders in politics, economics, philosophy, technology, social reform and the arts and a Teacher’s Resource that includes assessment and evaluations tools and strategies.

Textbook of African/Canadian

(L-R) Senator Martin, Paul Mulangu, and Patricia Whittaker with Mukutano.Photo By Edward Sem.

March 27, 2010 was a big day for the Centre of Integration for African Immigrants (CIAI). On behalf of the Minister for Western Economic Diversification, Senator Yonah Martin presented CIAI with a cheque for $275,000 towards the development of a multipurpose activity centre at 811 Carnarvon Street (just next to New Westminster Skytrain station). As a key supporter of CIAI, Senator Martin has been instrumental in championing the work carried out at the Centre. Awarded under the Recreational Infrastructure Canada Program (RinC), the funds are earmarked for capital construction and renovations as part of the federal government’s Economic Action Plan. CIAI was formed in 2001 to bridge the gap between visible minority immigrant and refugee communities and mainstream society by providing job readiness training, social opportunities, and other services to facilitate integration. CIAI also showcases the contributions of people of African heritage to Canadian nation building during Black History Month and throughout the year. The grant marks an important step towards the achievement of the dream of a fully equipped resource centre. On behalf of the communities they serve, CIAI Executive Director, Paul Mulangu, and Program Manager, Patricia Whittaker expressed excitement about being part of the Action Plan and thanked Western Economic Diversification for opening the door to allow CIAI to continue its important work in the future.

By JF The Afro News New Westminster

(left to right) Speaker Noel Kinsella, Senator Mobina Jaffer, and Senator Donald Oliver

By:the Honourable Mobina S.B. Jaffer, Q.C. Senator for British Columbia

My professional career has taken me to many different parts of the world, and has exposed me to the many challenges, and at the same time, the great beauty this world has to offer. I have also had the privilege to meet many people who are doing their part to make this world an inclusive environment, where populations are not scared by the differences in each other, but instead are curious about them…and in the end, enriched through shared experiences.

Along the way, I have also had the pleasure to work with individuals who are greatly committed to the issues we face together. Perhaps a common bond between those who advocate for a cause is their desire to create opportunity in our society.

During their careers, Speaker Noel Kinsella, and Senator Donald Oliver have served all Canadians with distinction. And through our working together, I have come to know just how important creating opportunity is to both Senators.

Speaker Kinsella – who has served as Speaker of the Senate since 2006 – has had a distinguished career in humanitarian work, and has been a champion of diversity and human rights. Beginning in 1967, Speaker Kinsella served as Chairperson of the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission, where he served for 22 years. As Chair of the Atlantic Humans Rights Centre, Speaker Kinsella played an integral role in expanding the resources of the Centre, helping to further its mandate to undertake, encourage and facilitate research in the fields of citizenship and human rights.

Presently, Speaker Kinsella is a member of the Advisory Council of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights – which will open its doors to the public in 2012, and makes its home in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The Museum – the only national museum located outside of Ottawa, Ontario – will give visitors a detailed view into the progression of human rights in Canada and elsewhere in the world.

When we think about our great country, there are many things of which Canadians can be proud. One such trait is the diversity of people we live and work amongst. For multiculturalism is Canada’s badge to wear proudly.

Throughout his life and professional career, Senator Oliver has continually promoted the importance of the study of Canadian black history and culture. Through his advocacy to fund a Chair on Canadian Black Studies at Dalhousie University, and also while serving on the Advisory Board for the Indigenous Black and Mik’Maq Program at Dalhousie Law School, Senator Oliver has spoken widely of the enduring contributions of black Canadians to our society.

In a paper delivered to the “Multiple Lenses: Voices from the Diaspora located in Canada” Conference, in Halifax, he noted that:

“For more than 400 years, Blacks have been an integral part of the warp and weave of Canadian society and Canada’s economy. For example, as an interpreter between the French and the Mik’Maq people in the early 1600s, Mathieu de Costa undoubtedly played a role in developing the fur-trade industry along the Atlantic seacoast. But, de Costa was a free man. Those who came after him, enslaved and brutally exploited during the largest shift of population that the world has ever seen, played no less an important role in shaping our country.”

Senator Oliver has also worked tirelessly to ensure that the Province of Nova Scotia play a role in officially recognizing the cultural contribution of its population. His work in this area lead to the creation of the Centre for Black Culture – an organization which opened on September 17, 1983 – which exists to promote the great history and legacy of Black Canadians in Nova Scotia.

Through its facilitation of cultural portrayals in the form of music, plays, concerts, as well as educational activities in the form of workshops, lectures and guided tours, the Centre is a window into over 400 years of black history in Nova Scotia.

However, Senator Oliver’s work on Canadian black history and culture is but one area of his interest in diversity in Canada. Senator Oliver is not only concerned with affording diversity a place in society, he also concerned with creating space for diversity in society.

Senator Oliver’s work on the issue of employment equity is a testament to this drive to create necessary space for diversity.

In 2006-2007, when the Public Service Commission’s annual report revealed that Canada’s public service was not a true reflection of our diversity, Senator Oliver challenged us in this chamber to think about whom our Public service will hire a decade from now. When those testifying before the National Finance Committee shared their concern that certain provisions of the Public Service Employment Act were not being used, Senator Oliver challenged us to think about what he called “make-it-happen” policies that would positively affect the hiring strategies of Canada’s public service.

This past February – which was also Black History Month – Senator Oliver addressed the issue of employment equity in the Federal Public Service to the Employment Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee of the Supreme Court of Canada.

During this speech, Senator Oliver pointed out that the Federal Public Service has an important role to play in setting an example for other employers, by maintaining the standards of diversity in its hiring practices. He noted that:

“The public service should and must set the standard for all employers: it is Canada’s largest employer, with 255,000 employees; it is Canada’s most national employer, with 1600 points of services across the country; and it is Canada’s most international employer with staff in more than 150 countries.”

He also noted that by 2017, members of the visible minority community could account for roughly one-fifth of the total population of Canada – echoing the necessity of the public service to make the changes needed to ensure the changing faces of Canada’s workforce are able to seek opportunities to better themselves, both professional and personally.

Where the view exists that such diversity is perhaps a threat, Senator Oliver reminds us that diversity is an extension of national wealth, and he has continually reminded us of the importance of embracing that diversity through the creation and facilitation of opportunity.

For their continuing efforts to promote cultural heritage, and for their invaluable advocacy of greater opportunities for visible minorities and humans rights, Speaker Kinsella and Senator Oliver can only be known as true champions of diversity and human rights.

"Students at Salt Spring's Central School, 1929, courtesy of Salt Spring Archives."

Evelyn C. White The Afro News Salt Spring Island

With the blockbuster success of his book Roots (1976) and the subsequent television miniseries, author Alex Haley tapped into a deep longing among the descendants of enslaved blacks to claim ties with our African forebears. It was my understanding of this history that prompted me to burst into tears when I recently accessed my e-mail and found an image of a beaming man in Lesotho holding a copy of my book, Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: A Photo Narrative of Black Heritage on Salt Spring Island (EGAG).

The book was opened to a page featuring a photo of the man’s daughter Tankiso, age 5, shortly after she’d arrived on Salt Spring last May to begin a new life with her adoptive family. I’m not privy to the circumstances that led to the separation of birth parent and child. But it was clear from the father’s radiant smile that his bond with his daughter now in Canada would endure.

For me, the arrival of the photo from Lesotho marked the culmination of a three-year journey I’d spent documenting the historical and contemporary presence of blacks on Salt Spring. Having toiled a decade on a biography of Alice Walker (best known for her novel The Color Purple), I had not intended to begin another major writing project when I moved to Salt Spring from the San Francisco Bay area. But one day, in 2006, I was standing in my living room when a cosmic voice exhorted me to write a book about the black heritage on Salt Spring.

Over the years, I’ve learned to honour the spiritual guidance that I believe is available to all who heed its call. And so, working with local photographer Joanne Bealy, I began the task of producing the first book to focus exclusively on Salt Spring’s 150-year black heritage and to examine its unique racial history through a 21st century lens. See www.dancingcrowpress.com

The ancestral home of the Coast Salish people, Salt Spring welcomed its first black settlers in 1859. Literate and highly accomplished, the free blacks had fled Northern California after the enactment of a series of racially repressive laws that threatened their hard-won freedom. Interestingly, the disaffected blacks in California were seeking refuge at the same time that B.C. provincial governor James Douglas (himself the son of a black woman born in Barbados) was in need of skilled labourers to support the boom town frenzy after gold was discovered along the Fraser River. A core group of the blacks that had first landed in Victoria later migrated to Salt Spring.

The early blacks on Salt Spring included the community’s first teacher, John Craven Jones. A college graduate trained in Greek and Latin, Jones taught the youth on Salt Spring (without pay) for several years. As one who was educated (K-9) by a coterie of dedicated black teachers, my research on Jones was especially uplifting. And who could look at a 1929 class photo from Salt Spring and not marvel at the ethnic diversity of the students?

The force behind Salt Spring’s first public recreation site, Jim Anderson was another early black pioneer. An archival photo finds him in the company of a black youth in a canoe. Here’s a reflection I was thrilled to include in EGAG: “Most people find it tiresome to have to sweep their back porch but Jim Anderson made a hobby of keeping his beach clean and he was down there every morning [with a broom]. This was [Anderson’s] little park and he delighted in having people … come down for picnics.”

The boy in the photo was a member of the Whims family, also among the black pioneers. Born on Salt Spring, octogenarian Bobby Wood is related, on his maternal side, to the Whims clan. A dapper gentleman with a quiet demeanor, Wood enjoys fishing and the Calgary Stampede.

Long attractive to retirees, Salt Spring is also awash with children. The youthful ranks include many children of African descent such as Calla Ann Amma Adubofour-Poko whose father is Ghanaian. Like Tankiso, Ethiopia-born Selamu and Dexter Patterson were adopted by white families on Salt Spring. “The story of the early African American settlers is deeply moving for us,” said Shauna Klem, who is pictured in EGAG with her sons. “ Everyone has embraced the boys so enthusiastically.”

Given Salt Spring’s status as one of the top artist colonies in North America, it was especially rewarding for me, as an author, to profile black artists on the island. Born in Kenya, Sav Boro is an acclaimed muralist and painter of wildlife and landscapes. The daughter of a Moroccan musician father and a teacher mother of French, Egyptian and Tunisian heritage, Yasmine Amal is a skilled potter who sells her wares at Salt Spring’s renowned Saturday Market.

As the world turns to B.C. because of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, I’m elated to have “answered the call” to create a book that celebrates the compelling black history of Canada. Photographer Joanne Bealy and I will sign and discuss Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 5 at the Rhizome Café, 317 East Broadway in Vancouver. We’ll also do a presentation at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 24 at the central Vancouver Public Library, 350 West Georgia Street. Both events are free and open to the public.