February 26, 2015

By Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. 

NNPA Columnist 

There are two related violent phenomena in that are now getting renewed public attention and research around the world, as well as considerable debate and denial. The twin evils are terrorism and racism.

President Barack Obama’s recent White House Summit on “Countering Violent Extremism” reminded many of us in Black America that violent acts of “extremism” have not been isolated just to the Middle East or to the perversion of one religion. At the conclusion of the White House meeting on extremism, President Obama affirmed the national resolve and resilience of the United States in surmounting and overcoming terrific challenges in the past.

The president said, “For more than 238 years, the United States of America has not just endured, but we have thrived and surmounted challenges that might have broken a lesser nation. After a terrible civil war, we repaired our union. We weathered a Great Depression, became the world’s most dynamic economy.”

It is undeniable that the United States has made progress for more than two centuries toward a “more perfect union” with promises of liberty, equality and justice for all. But for millions of Black Americans, however, the contradictions of racial inequality, racially motivation violence, disproportionate mass incarceration, and numerous other forms of institutionalized racism and extremism are all still realities that we face daily. That, too, is undeniable.

After the White House summit, a larger gathering of international governmental leaders, civil society groups, diplomats, religious leaders and others convened at the State Department. Again, President Obama reiterated his call to action for a more coordinated global effort to courter violent extremism.

He stated, “We come together from more than 60 countries from every continent. We speak different languages, born of different races and ethnic groups, belong to different religions. We are here today because we are united against the scourge of violent extremism and terrorism.”

It was a welcomed display of a growing, diverse international coalition of governments and organizations emerging to make public their collective intention to work together to confront violent extremism wherever it exists. Given the changing demographics fueled by the “browning of America,” the extremist violence attacking Black Americans and other people of color should be on a decline. On the contrary, there appears to be a national resurgence of racial violence against people of color inside.

Black America has had to challenge and endure centuries of violent acts of extremism in the forms of domestic terrorism and racism. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) even to this day claims to be a Christian organization. But no one refers to the KKK as Christian extremists or terrorists. Within a week, there will be the 50th anniversary recognition of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Ala., where violent law enforcement “extremists” attacked unarmed civil rights marchers who were nonviolently demanding voting rights for Black Americans in 1965.

It is ironic that a new study concerning the systematic lynching of Black Americans was recently released. The study, produced by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), was titled, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror.” The findings of the EJI report documented that there were at least 3,959 lynchings of Black Americans in 12 Southern states between the Reconstruction Era and World War II: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas.

And those were just the documented cases. There were many others that were never documented or reported in the news media because during that period, racist lynchings were the socially accepted norm and not the exception in the South. That type of extremist terrorism against Black America was commonplace. Yet, there were no international commissions or conferences by major powers to end the practice.

Lynching was the impetus for the creation of the NAACP. As it states on its Website, “The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of Illinois and resting place of President Abraham Lincoln.”

Among the founders were W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell along with a group of White liberals, including Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard. The founding of the NAACP was predated by the DuBois-led Niagara Movement of 1905.

The “Lynching in America” report concluded that “lynching of African Americans was terrorism, a widely supported phenomenon used to enforce racial subordination and segregation. Lynchings were violent and public events that traumatized black people throughout the country and were largely tolerated by state and federal officials.”

Today, the lynching and terrorizing of Black America is also done via the rope of the so-called criminal justice system. Prosecutorial misconduct in the cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. and Eric Garner in New York are contemporary manifestations of lynching. Racially-motivated lethal violence by police officers is another form of extremist terror and violence against Black America that must be stopped – now!

Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. is the President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and can be reached for national advertisement sales and partnership proposals at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ; and for lectures and other professional consultations at: http://drbenjaminfchavisjr.wix.com/drbfc

February 19, 2015

By Marc H. Morial 

NNPA Columnist 

“You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it.” – Malcolm X, Letter from Mecca, April 1964

There is perhaps no American civil rights leader who generated as many divergent opinions as Malcolm X. As we near the 50th anniversary of his assassination of February 21, 1965, our nation will inevitably scrutinize his life, his work and his lasting impact on our country and our continuous struggle to address racial inequality and its heinous consequences.

Depending on one’s perspective or politics, Malcolm X was a hatemonger filled with a blind, race-based rage. Another view paints him as an inspiring figure, pulling himself up from a life of crime to become a leading human rights figure. I would put forth the view that Malcolm X was much more than any one-dimensional interpretation of his life or its seminal moments and that he was a man who literally and figuratively journeyed far in his short 39 years – reinventing himself countless times along the way.

Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 to a Grenadian mother and African American father – also a well-known activist – Malcolm became accustomed to the cruelties of racism at an early age, losing his father in a suspected attack by white supremacists. His early life was a blur of broken homes, petty crime and incarceration. Introduced to the teachings of the Nation of Islam during his time in jail, Malcolm X traded prison for a pursuit of racial justice and equality for Blacks in America.

While his initial approach may not have always been championed by or aligned with other civil rights leaders of the time, Malcolm X’s later life transition and his embrace of multiculturalism is an important story to be acknowledged and retold. But often, supporters and critics alike attempt to isolate the “by any means necessary” civil rights leader to one part of his journey. For example, and ironically, many gun advocates invoke Malcolm X’s own words as they seek to reinforce their arguments and support for their professed right to almost unfettered access to firearms.

In his famous “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech, Malcolm X said, “I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing that I’ve ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it’s time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun.”

However, Malcolm X’s call to bear arms was no call to forego background checks. It was no call to sell guns anonymously on the Internet. It was no call to supply ordinary citizens with military-style weaponry. It was, and remains, a clear-cut indictment of race-based, systemic inequality and violence. He added, “If the white man doesn’t want the black man buying rifles and shotguns, then let the government do its job.” The ballot was always the immediate option.

Ten days after that speech, Malcolm X left the United States on April 13, 1964 for a life-altering trip through the Middle East and Africa, including a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the holiest city in Islam. It was during his experience of the pilgrimage that his next transformation would occur. In letters from his trip, he described scenes of unimagined interracial harmony among “tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans.” As he began to see that unity and brotherhood were not impossible realities between “the white and the non-white,” his fight for equality never changed. It only became more inclusive.

In a letter to then Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) President James Farmer, Malcolm, now El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, wrote, “I am still traveling, trying to broaden my mind, for I’ve seen too much of the damage narrow-mindedness can make of things, and when I return home to America, I will devote what energies I have to repairing the damage.”

Unfortunately, Malcolm X’s newfound approach to the pursuit of racial equality was cut short less than a year later under a fatal hail of bullets in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom. But rather than end his journey to mend our wounded nation, we can each walk a few steps in his remaining miles to ensure equality and justice for all.

Marc H. Morial, former mayor of New Orleans, is president and CEO of the National Urban League.

February 12, 2015

By Julianne Malveaux 

NNPA Columnist 

The racial differential in the poverty rate is staggering. Last time I checked, about 12 percent people in the United States, one in eight people are poor. Depending on race and ethnicity, however, poverty is differently experienced. Fewer than one in 10 Whites are poor; more than one in four African Americans and Latinos are poor.

Differences in occupation, income, employment and education are considered the main reasons for poverty, with current and past discrimination playing a role in educational, employment and occupational attainment. We see the discrimination when we consider that African American women with a doctoral degree have median earnings of about $1,000 a week, compared to about $1,200 a week for Black men and White women, and $1,600 a week for White men. White men earn 60 percent more than African American women, and a third more than Black men and White women.

It would not take much to recite the differences, by race, or education, unemployment, earnings and occupation. The recurrent question in reviewing the data is: What are we going to do? It makes no sense to just recite the data and then wring our hands as if nothing can be done. The three steps in social change are organization (especially protest), which leads to legislation (with pressure) and litigation (when legislation is not implemented).

Often laws preventing discrimination have been passed but not adhered to, forcing litigation to get offenders to do the right thing. Of course, it takes more than a minute. It takes people who are committed for the long run. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” Dr. Martin Luther King said in 1964.

Carter Godwin Woodson understood the long arc when he founded the Journal of Negro History and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915. The organization and the journal have changed their names to reflect the nomenclature of these times, and they are now called The Journal of African American History and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Both the organization and the journal have now existed for 100 years which is perhaps why ASALH chose “A Century of Black Lives, History and Culture” as its 2015 theme. (ASALH choose a Black History Month theme each year). This year, their focus on the long arc of African American life in our nation and asserts that “this transformation is the result of effort, not chance.”

Carter G. Woodson made many choices that led to his education and to the creativity and brilliance that motivated him to uplift Black History through Negro History Week, now Black History Month. Woodson was the son of former slaves, and a family that was large and poor. He worked as a miner in West Virginia, and attended school just a few months a year. At 20, he started high school and by 28 he had earned his bachelor’s degree. He was only the second African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard(W.E.B DuBois was the first in 1895). He was a member of the Howard University faculty and was later a dean.

He wrote, “If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.”

In other words, poverty can be the reality of living, but it doesn’t have to be a state of mind. Many are trapped in poverty because that may be all they know, and because protest, legislation, and litigation have not provided a passage out of poverty. No one provided a passage out of poverty for Woodson. He worked as a miner to earn a living, and he transcended his status as a miner to make a life of embracing his people and our history. He wrote about the ways that our thinking could oppress us as much as living conditions can. He is a role model and example for African Americans today because, motivated by a desire to be educated, he fought his way out of poverty. There is a difference between thinking you can live like Carter G. Woodson, and thinking that you can’t. (CHECK OUT www.ASALH.org for more information on Carter G. Woodson and his organization.)

Julianne Malveaux is a Washington, D.C.-based economist and writer.  She is President Emerita of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C.