Author: Carma Henry

Carma Lynn Henry Westside Gazette Newspaper 545 N.W. 7th Terrace, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33311 Office: (954) 525-1489 Fax: (954) 525-1861

     Protest. Petition. Call your senators. Nothing changes, right? No matter how large our demonstrations get, no matter how many millions of people write and petition politicians, no matter how many people get arrested in front of the White House or at our state capitols, it seems that our (supposedly) elected officials keep turning a blind eye and deaf ear to our cries for change.

It’s time to listen to the students. Across the country, teenagers have walked out of classes, stood in holy silence, and delivered stirring speeches calling out their elders for failing to prevent their schools from becoming shooting ranges for raging men.

In the 1950s, Topeka, Kansas, where Linda Brown lived, like a lot of America had dual de facto school systems. One for Black children and one for white children. Black children might be living only a few blocks away from a school but could not attend that school if it was a “white” school.  Instead Black children would be shuttled miles away from their neighborhood school to a “Black” school.

     Political analyst and author Donna Brazile delivered a stirring address about the “State of the Black Press in 2018” at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., capping off the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s (NNPA) annual Black Press Week.