REPRESENTATION
by Cash Michaels
Her name was Margaret Rose Murray.
If you knew this beloved educator, businesswoman, broadcaster and social justice advocate back in the eighties and nineties like I, and so many others in Raleigh’s African-African community did, you would agree that there was no one kinder, more thoughtful or more committed than “Ms. Murray.” In fact, all of us proudly crowned her the “mother of our community.”
Known as “Sister Deen” when she ministered to female inmates at the NC Women’s Correctional Center every week, Ms. Murray also promoted building small black businesses, led fundraising for important causes, and regularly spoke at Raleigh City Council meetings about critical community issues.
In 2009, Ms. Murray was inducted into the Raleigh Hall of Fame for her outstanding citizenship.
Upon her death, The News & Observer called this extraordinary community leader “a giant of social justice.”
Ms. Murray lived a long and extremely productive life, passing at the age of 91 in 2023, after five decades of a proven legacy of love, hard work and commitment.
I invoke Ms. Murray here because last week, the 6-3 conservative majority of Trump’s US Supreme Court struck down one of two Louisiana majority-minority districts, thus crippling the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Hardcore right-winger Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion that he voted to strike down the predominately black congressional voting district because there has been “vast social change” especially in the South, meaning that he felt that protecting black voting rights was no longer necessary.
I immediately thought of Ms. Murray, and others from her generation who sacrificed, bled and died to bring about the modicum of American citizenship and representation African-Americans covet today.
During the height of the ’60’s civil rights movement, Ms. Murray and her husband, a fine man all of us knew as former Nation of Islam (NOI) Minister Kenneth Murray Muhammad, followed the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, were close friends with Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Min. Louis Farrakhan, and oft times hosted Ali and Malcolm at their West Raleigh home when they were in the state. It was the Murrays who originally brought the NOI to North Carolina, settled in the Raleigh-Durham area, and opened the first Muslim mosque in North Carolina. In 1964, they also opened a private school in the community so black children could not only learn their basic subjects, but also about the history of their people - something that was NOT being taught in public schools.
Years later, the Murrays left the NOI, but remained faithful to the Muslim faith, becoming a vital part of the Raleigh community.
It wasn’t long before Ms. Murray was given a public affairs program on the old WLLE-AM black radio station every Saturday morning at 10 a.m. to share community news, do public official interviews, and also teach listeners about black history.
In 1989, when Crabtree Valley Mall schemed to stop Raleigh city buses from dropping black kids from Southeast Raleigh off at its property, Ms. Murray had young protest leaders on her program calling for a boycott until mall officials were forced to change their illegal policy.
Her radio program was a weekly must-listen-to destination.
So what’s all of this have to do with that crummy US Supreme Court ruling from last week, you ask?
Well, about 40 years ago, when I worked at WLLE with Ms. Murray, and long before social media or streaming was available, I read an article about an upcoming controversial news special produced by CBS News titled “The Vanishing Family: Crisis in Black America,” hosted by Bill Moyers. All of the preview press I read about it suggested it was something worth our community seeing, and talking about.
Folks back then were very sensitive about how black people were portrayed in the news media, and I hoped the show would generate some call-in discussion for our talk programming.
Problem was the CBS network affiliate in Raleigh at the time, WRAL-TV, had no plans to air it. Instead, the TV station was going to preempt the documentary in favor sports programming, and just never show it.
I was not pleased, and shared my displeasure with Ms. Murray. Our feeling was that good or bad, our community deserved to see this important program along with the rest of the nation.
Ms. Murray agreed that just calling or writing the TV station to complain wasn’t good enough. We had to go down there, and make it clear to WRAL that they had to air it. So that’s what we did.
Ms. Murray and I sat down with WRAL’s program director at the time in his office, and pled our case on behalf of the community.
His response? “I’m sorry, but we’re a commercial television station. We just don’t put programming on for one segment of our total viewership. But thanks for coming, and watching WRAL.”
“Yes you do,” I immediately retorted. “You do programming for farmers everyday. Well, I’m not a farmer. Neither is Ms. Murray!”
Ms. Murray instinctively took my cue from there, letting that man know in the most diplomatic, yet firmest way possible, that the black community of Raleigh had the right to be properly informed just like everybody else when a major news network produces something of interest specifically about us.
As a leader, she had a quiet, dignified yet pronounced strength no one could ignore. As the old saying went, “I pitied the fool!”
I’ll never forget what happened next when Ms. Murray finished.
That WRAL executive got up out of his chair, excused himself for a moment, and left his office. A few minutes later he came back, saying that he reconsidered. The CBS News special about black families will be recorded, and played back on Sunday afternoon around 5 p.m., right before the 6 p.m. local news.
And that’s exactly what happened. Ms. Murray and I went back to WLLE, promoted the CBS special on our air, and the community not only got to see it, but called into the station to discuss it on-air afterwards.
No one elected us, yet Ms. Murray and I knew in our hearts that we had to represent our community to get arguably the most powerful television station in the state to deliver fair treatment and consideration for our community - a community WRAL’s broadcast license requires them to serve even to this day.
Who else was going to do it for us?
Now I’m not saying WRAL preempted the CBS program because of racism. I have no proof of that. But clearly, at the time, they just didn’t think it was important enough to schedule a significant program about black issues, until two people from their viewership stood up and said, “ Hey, think again!”
That’s the power and true value of representation, when citizens who feel they aren’t being treated fairly by institutions that have an obligation to serve them, are chosen or claim the responsibility to stand up, and speak out.
That’s what Ms. Murray and I did.
Today, because Justice Alito, Roberts, Thomas and the other conservatives on the nation’s highest court ludicrously believe that the days of racism in this country are over, Republicans automatically feel there should no longer be, as Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) clearly required, legal protections ensuring that black voters in Southern states where there’s been a long history of racial bias, have the ability to choose and elect their own representation to address their issues.
Or as Democratic attorney Marc Elias put it a recent fundraising letter, “The Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act opens the door for Republicans to rig, cheat and scheme their way to victory!”
Republicans in state legislatures now can freely redraw voting districts ignoring those black communities, scattering their voters all over the place on their maps, and diluting their voting power so that their voices and representation can never be heard.
“Given an opportunity left to themselves without any guardrails, white Republican elected officials would wipe out every opportunity for black people to be elected,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D - Miss.) told CNN.
And do so behind the flimsy excuse that “race should play no role in the political process,” or to remedy current social inequities.
“It means states like ours can finally take a hard look at districts that were designed to be untouchable,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC).
Conservatives on the Supreme Court are ignorantly saying unless African-Americans are still subjected to laws that they accurately guess how many jellybeans are in a jar in order to vote (the infamous poll tax), or forced to navigate “whites only” restrictions on public accommodations, or deal with burning crosses on their lawns, they are no longer facing racial injustice worthy of legal protections, not realizing that racism is more insidious today than ever.
Mind you, we have a president who’s damned determined to stop anything that even smells like black progress; state legislatures, like here in North Carolina, that have been found guilty by federal courts of targeting African-Americans for voter disenfranchisement; persistent racial housing and job discrimination; schools that are re-segregating across the nation; and police departments still targeting black people for unwarranted abuse and brutality.
Apparently the right-wing-led Supreme Court has never read a current newspaper if they think that African-Americans today live in this country bias-free. Just declaring it’s over because you’re either profoundly ignorant of how racism exists today, or because you wish it would just go away, denies African-Americans of the full citizenship rights the Constitution promises all.
“[Justice] Ruth Bader Ginsburg [once] said… getting rid of the protections of the Voting Rights law, in this moment, it's like getting rid of your umbrella in the midst of a rainstorm because you're not getting wet,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) told CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew that laws could never change hearts, but they at least protected people until those hearts could be changed. Now, American citizens who look like me, my family and community, can’t even count on those laws anymore to protect us, because unless we can legally prove that voting districts are being drawn to deliberately undermine our voting rights, and eliminate our right to fair representation in a Congress our hard earned tax dollars pay for too, we’re out of luck.
“This notion that the only way to prove discrimination is about proving intent means that…it’s very difficult to prove discrimination at all, because modern-day discrimination doesn’t work that way,” Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told theGrio.
Let’s be honest, none of those Republican legislatures across the country currently racing against the clock to redraw voting maps to eliminate majority-minority voting districts in time for the fall elections, are ever going to admit that race, in the guise of partisan gerrymandering, has always been a prime factor in the process.
Now, they can get away with it legally because it will be harder to prove.
At least 15 current black congressional seats across the country could be wiped off the map, including the First Congressional District here in North Carolina - which was redrawn last October to reduce black voters from 40 percent to 32 percent in order to lean more Republican. All to help Trump expand Republican control in his last two years in office, and for the GOP to have a firmer grip on power years beyond his term.
At least North Carolina Republicans readily admit that it was more important to them to grab the First District for Trump, than for it to remain a district where African-Americans could continue to build political and economic power for their families and communities.
All because the Supreme Court believes that the days of racism are long gone.
“Representation does matter,” Sen. Warnock told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “When I go to the Senate, every week, I bring my story and my experience as a Black kid who grew up in public housing in Savannah,(Ga.), and so does that white kid who grew up in Appalachia. She brings her experience too. And so when we create an increasing monolith, which is what I think is going to happen as a result of this decision, we hurt the democracy itself, and we make it harder to get at policies that embrace all of our children and give every child a chance.”
If Ms. Murray were here today, GOD bless her soul, she would wholeheartedly agree with the many civic and political leaders who see this as a four-alarm fire, and are urging the community to come out this November for the midterm elections, and vote in the strongest numbers possible.
In the words of NC NAACP President Deborah Dicks Maxwell, “This fight is not over. When the courts fail the people, the people must respond.”
“Our power remains at the ballot box,” Pres. Maxwell added. “We will organize, mobilize, and turn out voters to protect our communities and elect leaders who believe in fair representation and justice. Our democracies [are] under attack, and we will not be silent.”
Bishop William Barber, president of the advocacy group, Repairers of the Breach, adds, “The protection and expansion of voting rights is a key moral issue in this moment of authoritarianism. Our future leaders need to treat it as such.”
And the esteemed NC civil rights Attorney Irving Joyner concludes, “No one is going to save us if we don’t seek to save ourselves.”
Somehow, I can just feel Ms. Murray, the legendary mother of our community, smiling wide on us now, as we gear up, to stand up!
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