Author: Carma Henry

Our nation is at war with itself. If you are young, gifted and Black, chances are you will not get to be old enough to brag about it. Rory Norman, a one-year-old, was killed last week. His family apparently was targeted in an ambush at their home.

Dr. King’s youngest child, Bernice King, has followed in her father’s footsteps, becoming an ordained minister and continues his legacy. She believes that her dad’s dream for his children to be judged by the content of their character has, in many ways, become a reality. She says, “new generations of people have benefited greatly because of the dream but we still have more work to do.”

The 19th Amendment was adopted Aug. 18, 1920, after the required number of states ratified the constitutional measure. Though many Black women led suffrage campaigns, the 19th Amendment put white women on an empowerment tract to electoral engagement. Interestingly, the suffrage movement, festooned in the symbolic color white, is often portrayed through a narrow window uncomplicated by the strictures of race and power that framed the Amendment then and now.

Dr. King’s belief in universal programs as the key to our nation’s shared prosperity has long been central to the African American tradition. For centuries, Black men and women have struggled to guarantee human rights and economic security–not just for themselves, but for everyone. Their perseverance in this universal cause has resulted in the greatest strides towards progress that this country has ever made.

Now, 34 years after the tragic murder of her parents – Dallas Examiner Publisher and Civil Rights leader Fred Finch, Jr., and Mildred Finch – Belt’s foray into the news business is nothing short of a triumph.
A former longtime government employee, Belt is set to receive the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) 2020 Publisher Lifetime Achievement Award during the trade organization’s Annual Mid-Winter Training Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on Friday, January 24, 2020.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. changed the shape of the country, with nonviolent direct action. This movement that he created worked to overturn systemic segregation and racism across the southern United States. It started with resistance from Rosa Parks in Montgomery refusing to give her seat to a white patron, and she was arrested. This sparked a Black boycott, which lasted 381 days, and Dr. King was elected its leader.

Checking our racialized language, the common understanding of the term “white lie” is that it’s a minor, harmless little fib. I’m instead using it to mean lies told by white supremacists or those told by those who seek to retain the profoundly unequal economy of our profiteering plundering class-starting with Trump.

Some people suggest that we replace Trump with Joe Biden. After all, they argue, he was Obama’s vice president. But the problem with that reasoning is that Joe Biden is Joe Biden, not Barack Obama. Biden created so many problems for the African American community during his political career that should disqualify him from serious consideration by Black voters.

The funk of Trumpenstein

The irony is that the enactment of the historic 1968 Fair Housing Act followed less than a week after Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis. Hence, as we honor Dr. King, we are also called to continue progressive efforts to better include all of the Americans whom historically have been locked out or left out when it comes to housing: people of color, women, families, people with different physically challenged and all who still suffer the insidious nature of housing discrimination.