September 10, 2015 

 

By Thandisizwe Chimurenga 

Contributing Writer

 

 

 

Ezell Ford was shot and killed by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Officers Sharlton Warmpler and Antonio Villegas on Aug. 11, 2014. A 10-month investigation culminated in the Los Angeles Police Commission, the body that oversees the LAPD, ruling that Warmpler was “unjustified to open fire on Ford … wrong to draw his weapon, and had used unacceptable tactics” when the two officers observed Ford walking down 65th Street near Broadway in South Los Angeles, as reported by the L.A. Times.  The officers state they attempted to subdue Ford which, according to Warmpler, led to a struggle in which Ford attempted to grab his  gun. The Commission ruled that Villegas, who assumed his partner’s life was in imminent danger, was wrong to initially draw his weapon, but was correct to fire the weapon in such a circumstance.

 

The L.A. Sentinel spoke with Tritobia Ford, mother of Ezell Ford, about the space she was in, one year after the murder of her son by the Los Angeles Police Department. The following is what she had to say:

 

“I had kind of gotten a little bit excited when I heard the police commission’s decision, and I thought that we were headed towards the right direction, that we would be getting justice, but it seems to me [now] that nobody is respecting the decision that they made,” she said.

 

 “Police Chief Beck, it doesn’t seem to be a weighing factor [for him] for the discipline or anything like that, he still seems to stand firm that the officers did nothing wrong. His commission, who was over I thought, the police as well as him, ruled the shooting out of policy, so it was very disappointing that nothing seems to be being done.

 

“I was hopeful that by now the district attorney would have made some kind of decision as to what she plans to do. As well, I was hopeful that there would be some type of federal investigation, that maybe they would step in, because I don’t see where the police can investigate themselves.  It just seems like a big conflict of interest.  I don’t see where anything positive can come out of it.  It just doesn’t make sense to me.

 

“So, where I am, with the whole thing? I’m not entrusting in anybody. I’m just still praying and believing that, like I said from the beginning, that God won’t allow Ezell to be just taken like he was, for nothing.  There’s going to be something that’s going to happen, and I’m just trying to wait patiently and just believe in my heart and do what I know to be the right things and try not to let myself get so caught up in my feelings that I make regrettable mistakes.

 

 “[I’m] trying to keep my feelings in check, trying to lead by example for my children and show them that it doesn’t do me a bit of good to be out here whooping and hollering and cussin’ with these forces, that I just have to pray and wait and trust in God and believe that He will lead me to the right solution and a good outcome for everybody involved. The best possible outcome for everybody involved.

 

“I’ve entrusted in a lot of people, and I’ve been led astray, led wrong. People make all these promises and everything, and they just can’t live up to them. They try, I guess, but I don’t know.  So that’s where I am.  I’m trying not to be bitter and allow myself to just wallow in grief or misery. Just trying to remain positive and hopeful, steadfast and praying and like I said, trying to lead by example.  I don’t want to be this bitter person that is mean and so hateful, but at the same time, my son is gone and there is nothing that can ever bring him back.

 

“There is nothing that can ever bring him back.

 

“I’m just praying for God to give me acceptance and to help me and strengthen me thru His love and His grace, to give me the strength to just live.

 

“District Attorney Lacy has not filed charges as of yet; will there be a further push for these officers to be disciplined, fired, indicted?

 

“The community has been pushing, and she has yet to come forward. We’ve been pushing, and we haven’t gotten very far.  It’s like, how much can we do? I’ve met with her, and she promised me that her office was going to do a thorough investigation, and weigh all of the evidence, and she would see ... whatever … I don’t know.

 

“It’s very hard heartening and it’s hard to move towards healing when nothing is happening.  I feel that, at least if they discipline the officers or do something it would help with the healing.  As it seems, it looks like they’re getting away with murder. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.  Ezell got judged, sentenced and executed, just walking down the street. He didn’t even have a fair shot. He didn’t get chance n court. He wasn’t doing anything. Why is he dead?  It’s very hurtful. It’s very hurtful and it’s very hard.

 

“ It’s very painful.

 

[The police] want to keep throwing up this gang [stuff], my son wasn’t gang-banging, and I don’t feel that that’s justification. If that’s the case, that gives the police [the justification] just to go around murdering anybody that’s gang-banging regardless? It just isn’t fair.

 

“And I’m not against all police, I know that there are some good police but, unfortunately, when the good ones don’t come forward and speak about what’s going on with the bad ones, it makes them just as corrupt and bad.  I know that there are officers that … you know how people talk, there’s talk, they know what’s going on, and for them not to come forward and speak, it doesn’t make them good, if they’re going to be silent.

 

And I do understand that some officers that have been good officers that have spoken against things that haven’t been right, it ends up ruining their career or their lives, but sometimes, you just have to take that stance.”

 

 

 

PHOTO:  NU-EzellFordMother.jpg

 

 

 

Tritobia Ford, mother of Ezell Ford, speaks at a rally in front of the mural in honor of her son at 65th Street and Broadway in South Los Angeles.  (Photo by Marcus Ford)

 

September 10, 2015

 

By Associated Press 

GREENVILLE, S.C. –  Helen Burns Jackson, the mother of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, has died. She was 92.

 

The Rev. Jesse Jackson told The Associated Press his mother died Monday morning in her longtime hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. She had been in failing health for some time, he said.

 

"She was an incredible woman blessed with a long life," Jackson said.

 

Jackson described his mother as a talented musician, active member of her church and big inspiration for much of his community activism. Born in 1923, Helen Burns Jackson "lived under very trying circumstances, but she was so determined to make a contribution," her son said.

 

Jackson said his mother had two scholarships to attend college, but when she became pregnant with him, she chose not to go. She later became a cosmetologist.

 

"She helped a lot of people," Jackson told The Greenville News (http://grnol.co/1UxbwS6 ) a few days before she died. "That's mostly what I remember about Mother is some people would call and say 'I need my hair to be dressed, but I don't have any money.' She would say, 'Come on anyhow.'"

 

Jackson also recalled how his mother would help others who couldn't read or write fill out government paperwork.

 

One year when they were too poor to buy Christmas gifts, he said, they came home from a pageant to find six bags of groceries on the porch. They learned later the groceries came from an illiterate World War I veteran whom Burns Jackson had once helped.

 

Years later, Burns Jackson watched her son rise to fame as an activist, primarily from her South Carolina home. However, she appeared onstage when he addressed the Democratic National Convention in 1988. He lost the nomination that year to Michael Dukakis.

 

Another son, Chuck Jackson, is a singer and songwriter.

 

Burns Jackson also listened to her son's radio broadcasts from Chicago and never missed a TV appearance, Jackson told the newspaper.

 

"She took lots of joy in that," he said. "She always asked, 'Lord, what have I done to deserve this? What have I done to deserve this?'"

September 03, 2015 

By PHILLIP LUCAS 

Associated Press 

 

A newspaper photo of a woman who was beaten unconscious by law enforcement during a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, revealed to a wider audience the struggles and violence black people faced while fighting for the right to vote.

 

Fifty years after the beating, the activist in the photograph, Amelia Boynton Robinson, held hands with the first black president of the United States as she was pushed across the bridge in a wheelchair, trailed by many others including some who were also attacked on March 7, 1965.

 

Boynton Robinson, widely considered one of the mothers of the civil rights movement, died in a Montgomery, Alabama, hospital at age 104, her son Bruce Boynton said. Boynton Robinson was hospitalized in July after a stroke and was surrounded by family and friends when she died early Wednesday morning, her family said in a statement.

 

State troopers teargased and clubbed marchers as they tried crossing the bridge during the march Boynton Robinson helped organize. Although the attack on marchers revealed ugly realities to some about how blacks were treated, Boynton Robinson had been an integral part of the civil rights movement long before the beating and iconic photo.

 

“The truth of it is that was her entire life. That’s what she was completely taken with,” Bruce Boynton said of his mother’s role in shaping the civil rights movement. “She was a loving person, very supportive — but civil rights was her life.”

 

In January, Boynton Robinson attended the State of the Union address as a special guest of Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Alabama, who calls Boynton Robinson a mentor and a friend. Boynton Robinson was the first black woman to run for Congress in the state and the first Alabama woman to run as a Democrat, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama. Sewell is the first black woman to be elected to Congress in Alabama.

 

“Without her courageous campaign for the 7th Congressional District, I know that my election to this seat in 2010 would not have been possible,” Sewell said in a written statement. Sewell said she'll carry love and admiration for Boynton Robinson with her and will continue working to honor her life’s work.

 

“As she reminded us in life, there is still much work to be done for this nation to live up to its ideals of equality and justice for all,” Sewell said.

 

Months after visiting Washing­ton for the State of the Union address, Boynton Robinson returned to Selma and held hands with President Barack Obama during the commemoration event.

 

“She was as strong, as hopeful, and as indomitable of spirit — as quintessentially American — as I’m sure she was that day 50 years ago,” Obama said in a statement. “To honor the legacy of an American hero like Amelia Boynton requires only that we follow her example — that all of us fight to protect everyone’s right to vote.”

 

Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia was also a fixture in the civil rights movement and called Boynton Robinson one of the most dependable and tireless leaders in turbulent era of American history. Lewis noted that she co-founded a local civic group in the 1930s and held voter registration drives through the 1950s.

 

“I am so glad she lived to see Dr. King lead a march from Selma to Montgomery, that she lived to see the Voting Rights Act signed into law, that she lived to see the amazing transformation our work gave rise to in America,” Lewis said.

 

Boynton Robinson, born in Savannah, Georgia, worked as an educator there and with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Selma. Tuskegee University officials have said she graduated from the school in 1927 and donated much of her personal memorabilia from the 1950s and 1960s to the university.

 

She worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, helped organize the Selma to Montgomery march and asked Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Selma to galvanize the local community.

 

The Rev. C.T. Vivian worked closely with King and said he knew Boynton Robinson when she lived in Selma. Through fighting for voting rights, he said, she and others were fighting for the right to be considered fully American at a time when black people were still being denied basic freedoms.

 

“You just don’t know how cruel, how non-thinking, how devilish, how hateful people could be. Just to hear this brings it all out for me,” Vivian said after learning of Boynton Robinson’s death, which came less than two weeks after the death of another leading civil rights activist Julian Bond.

 

“It just hurts,” he said