M artin Luther King Jr. Special Edition
January 19, 2000
ÏÏTlje ^Inrtianò (Obseruvr
OCTOBER FREEDOM DAYS
MOMENTS IN CIVIL RIGHTS
HISTORY
B y J anus A dams
On October 14, 1964, an emo­
tionally and physically drained Mar­
tin L uther K ing w as resting in
Atlanta’s St. Joseph Infirmary when
this announcement was made to the
world: “The Nobel Committee o f the
Norwegian National Assembly has
decided to award the Peace Prize for
1964 to Martin Luther King Jr. the
sum o f the prize is 283,000 Swedish
Kroners ($54,600).” Work had first
reached Coretta King when an Asso­
ciated Press reporter telephoned the
King home. She. in turn, phoned the
hospital. “How is the Nobel Peace
Prize winner for 1964 feeling this
morning?” she asked history's young­
est laureate, giving him the news.
One o f the world’s highest hon­
ors, the Nobel Prize was created by
Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist
who discovered dynamite in 1863. In
his lifetime, Nobel’s more than one
hundred patents earned him a for­
tune, the bulk o f which he willed to
the benefit of humanity. Every De­
cember 10 since 1901, the fifth anni­
versary o f his death, prizes have been
awarded in Chemistry, Literature,
Physics, Medicine or Physiology,
and Peace. Each laureate is awarded a
gold medallion engraved with a like­
ness o f Nobel on the front and the
symbol o f the field on the reverse
side. The amount o f the award is
determined by the interest earned on
the principal that year divided by the
number o f fields awarded. Not every
field is awarded each year, but each
p ro fe sso rsh ip
ini
freedom’s honor andl
in trib u te to Johm
Brown, whose antisla- •
very blow was struck:
by the only integrated!
brigade in two centu­
ries of American mili­
tary history. Dr. Dui
B ois had led his:
NAACP cofounders;
on a Barefoot March;
from Storer to the old
fire engine house site
o f the John Brown
Raid on the fiftieth an­
niversary o f emanci­
pation. Generations
had made pilgrimage
to the college. It was
gone, but not forgot­
ten.
W ith
a
groundswell o f sup­
port, not only did the
loyal remember, they
ensured that others
would never forget Storer’s legacy
as a historically black college. On
October 15, 1966, Storer College
was designated a national treasure, a
landmark sustained by the National
Park Service, providing inspiration
for generations to come.
X
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A
On October 17, 1960, four na­
tional department store chains de­
segregated 150 lunch counter in 112
cities in Florida, Kentucky, Mary­
land, Missouri, North Carolina, Okla­
homa, Tennessee, Texas, and the
Virginias. An army of seventy thou-
1 J
Mi. and Mrs. King are decked out in their finest awaiting the
Nobel Peace Prize ceremony event.
field is honored no less than once
every five years.
A college means more than stu­
dents, faculty, mortar, and books. As
a gateway to learning, a college is a
resource for all who come through
its ¿tours and a gift for generations to
come. With its closing comes a trag­
edy for an extended community.
When that community was founded
by former slaves whose sacrifices
raised the school and the race, the
tragedy can rock the foundations of
hope itself. For witness, visit Harp­
ers Ferry, West Virginia. On a hill
overlooking the town known for its
pre-Civil War arsenal and made fa­
mous by John Brown’s antislavery
raid, stands a ghostly spectacle:
Stflfer College
And what a loss Storer was.
Frederick Douglass had lectured
there, donating his fees to establish a
4
sand sit-in demonstrators had served
notice - a message well summed up
by Carl Blair, president o f the Cham­
ber o f Commerce in Montgomery,
Alabama, a city still recovering from
its historic year-long bus boycott.
“The South is in a time o f change, the
terms o f which cannot be dictated by
white Southerners,” he said. “There’s
a revolution o f the Negro youths in
this nation.”
ca I
r i i :t
Bobby Seale» has said that were it
not for the assassination of Malcolm
X, there might never have been a
Black Panther Party. With Malcolm’s
murder came the disenchantment of
millions “I think that I was following
not Elijah Muhammad or the Mus­
lims, but Malcolm X himself,” said
Huey Newton. Newton and Seale
rooted the Black Panther Party for
S elf-D efen se in Black M uslim
teachings. Inspired by Malcolm, they
On October 14. 1964. Martin Luther
King received an announcement
that he was selected to be a
recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize
award. Dr. King is shown with ■ his
family privately celebrating in Oslo
following the Nobel Prize ceremony.
Photo credit: Moneta Sleet. Jr.
w ere d e sc e n d e n ts o f M arcus
Garvey’s 1920s Black Nationalism,
with its adherence to self-discipline,
economic empowerment, and the
call “Up you mighty race, you may
do what you will!”
Building on the powerful impact
o f young people in the southern-
based Civil Rights movement, they
knew their western-based Oakland,
California, movement must orga­
nize the young. On the night o f Oc­
tober 22, 1966, Newton and Seale
outlined a ten-point Black Panther
Party platform:
" What We Want; What We Be­
lieve:”
1. We want freedom. We want
power to determine the destiny o f
our Black Community...
2. We want full employment for
our people...
3. We want an end to the robbery
by the CAPITALIST o f our Black
com m unity...
4. We want decent housing, fit for
shelter o f human beings...
5. We want education for our
people that exposes the true nature
o f this decadent American society.
We want education that teaches us
our true history and our role in
th e...so ciety ...
6. We want all Black men to be
exempt from military service...
7. We want an immediate end to
POLICE BRUTALITY and MUR­
DER o f Black people...
8. We want freedom for all Black
men held in prison...
9. We want all Black people when
brought to trial to be tried in court
by a jury o f their peer group or
people from their Black Communi­
ties, as defined bytheConstitution. ..
10. We want land, bread, educa­
tion, justice and peace...
It is little wonder they were so
admired and so dangerous.
The vision o f a “chicken in every
pot” may have chased away Great
Depression woes, but often as not, by
the time the chicken came home to
dinner, it had spoiled. With the in­
ventions o f one man all that would
change.
U.S. patent number 2,526,874, reg­
istered on October 24, 1959, tells
the story. This “apparatus for heating
or cooling the atmosphere within an
enclosure” was invented hy Frederick
McKinley Jones the man who also
invented the refrigerated truck and
refrigerated railroad boxcar, which
revolutionized the nation’s food-de­
livery system made possible the fro­
zen food industry.But while Jones
liberated the food industry, he was
only slightly more free to profit from
his ingenuity than early black inven­
tors racially barred from registering
patents, and nineteenth-century in­
ventors like the engineer Elijah
McCoy, who died penniless, despite
patents for the lawn sprinkler and
other lucrative inventions. Joint ven­
ture, licensing agreements, and in­
vestment capital were a long way off
for the black inventor. Sadly, that too,
like Elijah, was the real McCoy.
The following is an excerpt from
the hook "Freedom Days ", Permis­
sion fo r reprint was given hy John
Wilev and Sons. Inc
"A
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