Martin Luther King )r. Special Edition
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January 19, 2000
(The |J o r tla n b ( 0 b s m ie r
JULY FREEDOM DAYS
MOMENTS IN CIVIL RIGHTS HISTORY
J a m s A d au s -
It was July 6, 1944, wartime on
the homefront, and Jackie Robinson
was up at bat. In three years he would
make a pact with the devil of racism;
he would resist striking back at his
tormenters as a strategy in desegre
gating the Brooklyn Dodgers and
major league baseball. But on this
day in 1944, as he would for the rest
of his life. Jack Roosevelt Robinson
made history as a freedom tighter.
Of the 435 members of the House
of Representatives in 1971, only
twelve were women, one ot whom
was black - New York’s Shirley
Chisholm. In the Senate, there was
only one white woman. With women
a population majority, something
hadjto change. On July 13, 1971,
threk hundred women gathered in
Washington, D.C., to found the Na
tional Women’s Political Caucus
(NWPC). Among those represent
ing African American women were
Congresswoman Chisholm, activist
(and widow of Medgar Evers) Myrlie
Evers, Mississippi crusader Fannie
Lou Hamer, National Council ot
Negro Women president Dorothy
Height, and National Welfare Rights
Organization vice president Beulah
Sanders.
Taking the conference at its word
on women candidates. Congress-
woman Shirley Chisholm announced
her candidacy for president the fol
lowing January. The first Black
woman elected to Congress, now
she was the first black woman to run
for president. Campaigning on a for
eign policy platform that demanded
an end to the Vietnam War and an
end to the European-American pact
thwarting the liberation of peoples
of color, she earned surprising
grassroots support. Significantly, on
July 13, 1972 - one year to the date
from the founding of the NWPC -
when the roll of delegates was called
at the Democratic National Con
vention in Miami Beach, Florida,
Chisholm actually won 151 delegate
votes!
On July 16, 1970, the Folklore
Institute o f Indiana University
hosted the Conference on African
Folklore. It was important sign of
the times. Beyond "relating" to Af
rica, people now wanted to "know”
Africa.
With knowledge of historical
African folklore would come rev
elations from African American
culture. To people who had been
indoctrinated to believe that they
(alone among all the people of the
world) ‘had no culture”; to people
who had not only lost touch with
home but lost sight of it as well; to
people who no longer even knew
where home was - East Africa or
West, mid-northern Igbo or south
ern Zulu - what a transformation
this discovery was about to unleash.
In nommo, the word, was proof ot
vast cultural retentions traceable in
the imprint of the distinctively Afri
can (and African diasporan) talking
animal tales. Decoding the connec
tive tissue of content and metaphor.
Brer Rabbit and Ananci traced their
roots of ancestry to the moralistic
animal fables of Aesop, one of the
world’s greatest and most enduring
philosopher/teachers. The knowl
edge became ours that Aesop - al
ternately spelled Esop, Ethiop (as
in Ethiopia), and Aethiop - means
“African.” And there was more.
Black South Carolinian rice baskets
were found in West Africa. Shotgun
house architecture had a new pedi
gree.
On July 26,1968, Americans met
four new families: the Lords, Phila
delphia Main Line and terribly rich;
the Siegals, Jewish; and the Grays,
the first African American ever on a
daytime drama. In short, these were
the families with One Life to Live.
Very early into the cliffhangers,
it was disclosed that the Grays had a
difficult past. Sadie Gray had lost
her daughter. It was a terribly trag
edy. Stay tuned. Then C arla
Benari, an “exotic” and “glamor
ous” actress “in the throes of a
nervous breakdown,’ turned up at
Llanview Hospital, where poor
dear Sadie worked. As related by
C arla’s alter ego and real-life ac-
tress/em bodim ent, Ellen Holly,
in her autobiography, One Life, it
was rumored that C arla’s “mental
fragility was caused by the burden
o f carried secrets.” Her finances
were shaky, she lived in a run
Health Service and local agen
cies denied over four hundred
unsuspecting black men trea t
ment readily available when the
study began that would have
cured the disease and stemmed
its spread. C ondem nation had
raged over Nazi experim ents on
human subjects during World
War II; the 1964 Helsinki Dec
laration noted that the U.S. was
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down apartm ent “ custom arily
rented out to chorus gypsies from
touring road companies,” and ex
actly what was bothering her and
why she came to Llanview re
mained a mystery. But C arla’s
glamour and “emotional needi
ness” soon made her irresistible
to two doctors. Stay tuned for
weeks on end. Marrying one doc
tor wasn’t good enough for Carla
Benari. (Noooo) She had to tall in
love with the other doctor, too, a
black man - (Yesssss) - and kiss
him on national television (the
hussy)? And as she confessed her
love for him ...sw itchboards at
ABC affiliates across the country
lit up. Cut to commercial. The
main New York switchboard was
jammed, as Holly would learn,
“flooded with calls from irate
w h ite
m en
defen d in g
C arla’s...Caucasian virtue.” And
then, before sponsors had time to
cancel, Sadie came on camera.
“Clara!” she said. “ Mama!” Carla
gasped. No wonder the girl was a
mess. Carla Benari was Sadie
Gray’s lost daughter, back from
the “dead” of passing for white.
This is what it took to get blacks on
daytimeTV.
Two more years would go by
before Flip Wilson premiered his
prime time variety show on Sep
tember 17, 1970 - a first since
Nat King Cole’s show in the 1950s.
On July 27, 1972, news of
the now -infam ous “T uskegee
Study o f Untreated Syphilis in
Negro M ales” began to spread
w o rld w id e. For fo rty y ears,
1932 to 1972, the U.S. Public
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Salutes Martin Luther KingJr.
Unintentionally,
through a lack of
understanding,
we don't value
the gifts that
give us life... the
trees, the air, the
water.
They speak to
us, they sustain
us, but we don't
hear and
continue the
violence against
ourselves.
We must protect
our legacy.
“There is such a thing as freedom o f
exhaustion. Some people are so worn down by
the yoke o f oppression that they give up...The
oppressed must never allow the conscience o f
the oppressor to slumber... To accept injustice
or segregation passively is to say to the
oppressor that his actions are morally right. ”
By Martin Luther King
Library C areers
behind other nations in p ro tec
tions against human experim en
tation; provisions on inform ed
consent were even endorsed by
A m erican agencies. Still noth
ing rescued the Tuskegee men.
This is an excerpt from the
hook "Freedom D ays". P erm is
sion fo r reprint was g iven by
John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
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Salutes
Dr. M artin Luther
King, Jr.
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Dream.
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