LEADERS WARN THAT
BLACK VOTERS
MUST BE READY TO VOTE
MIDTERMS
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
If
black voters want real change, they just can’t vote for it, say North Carolina
black leaders.
They
have to work for it.
They must understand that when they vote someone into
office, they are hiring that candidate to work for them, which means they must
keep that candidate accountable long after the election.
“The
upcoming elections are critical, especially for our young people,” says
Congressman G. K. Butterfield (D-NC-1).
“What
more must we do to be saved?” asked Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, president of
NCNAACP.
Even
though black females Democrats in Alabama are credited with helping to elect a
white Democratic US Senator there for the first time in years recently, and
Democrats, by and large, are feeling hopeful about taking back at least the US
House, and possibly even the NC House, black voters showing up for the 2018
midterms is still an open question.
By
most indicators, even with the Trump Administration continuing to outrage many,
black voters, this year, just aren’t feeling it.
“4.4
million 2012 Obama voters stayed home in 2016 – more than a third of them
black,” was the March 12th headline story in The Washington Post. Based on a report originally published by The New York Times, while “…12 percent of white voters who had backed Obama in
2012 voted for Trump four years later… eleven percent of black Obama 2012
voters stayed home.”
The
analysis is clear – if black voters showed up in decent percentages in 2016,
Donald Trump most likely wouldn’t be president today. In fact, after his
election, then President-elect Trump actually thanked black voters,
Saying, “…They didn’t come out to vote for Hillary. They didn’t
come out. And that was a big — so thank you to the African American community.”
In
North Carolina in 2016, the writing on the wall for a depressed black
Democratic turnout came early in the form of lower than normal presidential
year early voting black turnout. The fear is, the same may happen again this
fall, especially since African-Americans historically don’t show up for midterm
elections.
For
many black voters, there is an expressed sense of betrayal by the Democratic
Party. They feel that being the party’s most loyal base of supporters has done
little to change their fortunes, whether it be better employment, affordable
housing, or fairer law enforcement in their communities.
"Now
people can wake up," Kelton Larson, 26, of Ohio told National Public Radio
recently. "Black people have been voting for over 50 years, and nothing
has ever changed. Our communities still look the same. We're still at the
bottom of the economic poll."
Here
in North Carolina, black leaders are all too familiar with the African-American
community’s perennial frustration with the political party is has supported
overwhelming for decades. Even with more black elected officials than ever
before, the failure of real, grassroots change, or “politics as usual,” is
something many black voters, particularly millennials, have decided not to put
up with anymore.
But
black Democratic leaders counter, that with Republicans in charge in the NC
General Assembly, in Congress, and certainly in the White House, sitting on the
sidelines during the 2018 midterm elections will not accomplish anything but embolden
those who are making policies that ultimately hurt the African-American
community.
“Of
course, there is no future, or no value in not advocating for your own
interests,’ says Larry Hall, NC Secretary of Veteran Affairs. “You either have
to participate and work to change the process, or participate and try to be
effective in the current process. But sitting on the sidelines, and letting
everyone else’s issues be addressed does nothing for you. So that’s a failed
strategy, and certainly one that no one has proven works by not participating.”
Voters
don’t understand that it takes more than just showing up on Election Day, Sec.
Hall agrees. Learning about the issues and the candidates’ positions on those
issues, asking tough questions, and then, after the election, holding the
candidate accountable by staying in touch, and making your voice heard.
Many
voters don’t do that, and thus become frustrated, he agrees.
“It
takes effort,” Sec. Hall said.
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EARL CALDWELL
BLACK REPORTER WAS
THERE
WHEN MLK WAS KILLED
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
On
April 4th, 1968 – fifty years ago this week – a shot rang out aimed
at the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn.
Civil
rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed, and Earl Caldwell, an
African-American, was the only reporter there to witness the shooting.
Caldwell
was a national correspondent for The New
York Times fifty years ago, one of the first blacks on staff. He would
later write for the NY Amsterdam News, New York City’s lead black newspaper.
His name is renowned in the annals of American journalism because in 1970,
Caldwell refused to be an informant for the FBI on the Black Panther Party. The
case was ultimately decided by the US Supreme Court, and as a result, all
reporters today enjoy certain constitution protections.
In
a 2014 interview with the Black Press, Caldwell, 83, a writer-in-residence at
Hampton University in Hampton, Va., recalled that fateful day when “The
Dreamer” was killed on the balcony right above him.
It
was Caldwell’s first assignment in the “Deep South.” His white NY Times editor,
Claude Sitton, who would later come to North Carolina to become editor of The News and Observer in Raleigh, wanted
Caldwell to go to Memphis to negatively “nail” King, and advised him to get
down there early to “get the lay of the land.”
Dr.
King had been in Memphis the week before in a march to support the striking
sanitation workers, but the march turned violent.
King
canceled a scheduled voter registration appearance in Wilmington, NC, to go
back to Memphis the first week in April 1968, to support the workers in their
cause.
“When
Martin Luther King was assassinated, I was the only reporter there,” Caldwell
recalls, “And that’s because there were only a few of us [black reporters
working in major media].”
During
the turbulent sixties, major news organizations had a hard time covering the
civil rights movement, and the riots in major cities, because they didn’t have
many, if any, experienced black reporters on staff.
Earl
Caldwell was one of a few, and to this day, his version of the assassination of
Dr. King continues to raise eyebrows.
“You
can take the official story, and what they say in that story…James Earl Ray
shooting from the [flop house] bathroom window, fired, killed King, and then
ran away…there’s not one single piece of the government’s official story that
has any corroboration.”
“Not
one single piece,” Caldwell maintains. “But because I was there…I know that you
don’t see everything…but I do know that sliver [of the truth] that came past
me, and that’s the basis for what I say.”
“
I was there,” Caldwell maintains, in Room 214 at the Lorraine Motel, “Looking
dead at the crime scene.”
“I DID see this figure in the
bushes! I quoted this one fellow; his name was Solomon Jones in my newspaper.”
Jones was the chauffeur hired to drive Dr. King around in Memphis.
“He saw what I saw, but he actually said he saw a little
more. He went to the federal penitentiary. He said that he was being framed
because he refused to change the story of what he told me in the NY Times of what he saw that night at
the Lorraine Motel.”
Caldwell
continued, “ There was a housekeeper…same thing! But there was no official
investigation! I can say that, because my room was right under Dr. King’s…just
a few doors to the left. Nobody ever came to my door (asking) “Where were you
standing? Did you see anything the night before? Earlier that day?
“There
was nothing!”
Caldwell
believes, to this day, that “Most importantly, there was a massive cover-up.”
The
next night someone came in, and they cut that thicket directly across from the
motel, down to an inch from the ground. There are all of these things!”
Earl
Caldwell later quit The New York Times, and
says he’s been working on a book about “…what happened in Memphis” ever since.
Convicted
King assassin James Earl Ray died in prison, but not before Dr. King’s family
advocated for him, saying that they were convinced he was setup, and did not
pull the trigger.
The
FBI said it spent “more man hours” on investigating the King assassination
than any other case, but Earl
Caldwell maintains, even today, that “…there was no investigation.”
Indeed,
under pressure from the King family, it was President Bill Clinton who ordered
then Attorney gen. Janet Reno to reopen the King murder case.
But
history still holds James Earl Ray responsible for the assassination of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.
-30-
STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 04-05-18
NC SHERIFF SAYS
CHARGES COUNTY COMMISSIONERS ARE “ANTI-LAW ENFORCEMENT”
[ASHEVILLE]
The Buncombe County sheriff is accusing three Democratic members of the
Buncombe County Board of Commissioners of being “anti-law enforcement,” after
they proposed funding for use-of-force training, a human rights commission and
an independent panel to review body camera footage. Sheriff Van Duncan, a
Democrat, accuses the commissioners of exploiting body cam footage of a white
Asheville police officer beating a black man after accusing him of jaywalking
for “an anti-law enforcement agenda.” That police officer has since been
removed for the force, and charged with felony assault.
PROTESTERS DEMAND
JUSTICE IN GOLDSBORO FOR 28 UNSOLVED MURDERS
[GOLDSBORO]
Protestors took to the streets Tuesday afternoon, demanding that local law
enforcement solve 28 murders there over the past ten years, and also do more to
quell violence in the community. Many of those protestors were family members
of homicide victims whose deaths have gone unsolved. Many held up pictures of
their murdered loved ones. Many were children who lost fathers to gun violence,
widows who lost husbands, parents who lost sons. All were angry that thus far,
there haven’t been any arrests in the outstanding cases.
GOV. COOPER, GOP
LEGISLATIVE LEADERS RACK UP BIG LEGAL BILLS
[RALEIGH]
Since Gov. Roy Cooper won office last November, and Republican legislative
leaders decided to aggressively limit his powers, the lawsuits have been flying
from both sides, keeping private attorneys gainfully employed to the tune of
$1.5 million so far, reports WRAL-TV. The GOP insists that the General Assembly
has the constitutional power to make board appointments, and manage them
accordingly. Cooper counters that as governor, he also has constitutional power
of appointment, and won’t be giving those up without a fight. Meanwhile,
taxpayers are getting the legal bills for this brohaha.
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