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Opinion Freedom Summer – 50 Years Later “Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now” B ERNIE F OSTER Founder/Publisher B OBBIE D ORE F OSTER Executive Editor J ERRY F OSTER Advertising Manager L ISA L OVING News Editor H ELEN S ILVIS Multimedia Editor D AVID K IDD Graphic Designer M ONICA J. F OSTER Seattle Office Coordinator J ULIE K EEFE S USAN F RIED Photographers The Skanner Newspaper, established in October 1975, is a weekly publica- tion, published each Wednesday by IMM Publications Inc., 415 N. Killingsworth St., T he 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer is being commemorated this week in Mississippi and it provides the perfect backdrop to reflect on the transformation of not only Missis- sippi, then the deadliest state in the nation, but the entire region.. As I have written in the space before, there was a popular joke about Mississippi making the rounds during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Suppos- edly, a Chicago seminary student who was awakened at 3 a.m. by a voice imploring him: “Go to Mis- sissippi! Go to Mississippi!! Go to Mississippi!!!” The seminary stu- dent said, “Lord, you said that you will be with me always, even until the end of the earth. If I go to Mis- sissippi, will you go with me?” The heavenly voice replied, “I’ll go as far as Memphis.” Of course, if the Lord was reluc- tant to go to Mississippi, the chances of a Black surviving were slim and none. At the time, I had just completed my junior year at Druid High School in Tuscaloosa, Ala. In the summer of 1964. Ala- bama had its own violent racial history when it came to race rela- tions, but Mississippi was the one state we knew was worse. Of course, we all awaited the beginning of Freedom Summer, a national mobilization of mostly college students who would descend upon Mississippi in 1964 to help civil rights activists, led by Bob Moses of the Student Nonvi- olent Coordinating Committee, assist Blacks in voter education and voting. More than 1,000 college stu- discovered. One was Herbert Oarsby, a 14-year-old boy who T HE C URRY was wearing a Congress of Racial R EPORT Equality (CORE) T-shirt. The bod- ies of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Eddie Moore, who had been George E. expelled from Alcorn A&M Col- Curry lege for civil rights activities, were also discovered. The remains of five more Black men were found, but never identified. It wasn’t until 1970 that anyone dents, about 90 percent of them White, participated. With so many was imprisoned for the slayings of northern White students descend- Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman, ing on the state, the nation would with six years being the longest be watching. And Blacks like me, time served. In 1964, only 6.7 percent of who grew up under America’s ver- sion of apartheid, knew that Blacks were registered to vote, the virulent White racists in Missis- lowest in the nation. Today, more With so many northern White students descending on the state, the nation would be watching. sippi would not go quietly into the dark. They would go into the dark – where they did their most vicious work – but they wouldn’t be quiet about it. And sure enough, at the outset of Freedom Summer, three civil rights workers – James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman – were arrested in Nashoba County by Sheriff Cecil Price, a member of the Ku Klux Klan. That night, they were released. Tipped off about their impending release, Klansmen abducted the three and murdered them. While looking for the three civil rights workers in rivers and swamps, other Black bodies were than a third of Mississippi’s voters are Black and the state has the largest number of Black elected officials in the nation. But that progress came with a price, with people losing their jobs –and even their lives – simply because they wanted to exercise their constitutional right to vote. The casualities extended beyond the three civil rights workers. According to the book, Freedom Summer by Doug McAdam, in the summer of 1964 alone: At least four Blacks from Missis- sippi were murdered because of their civil rights activities; Four people were seriously wounded; 80 summer workers were beaten 1,062 people were arrested’ 37 churches were burned or bombed and The homes or businesses of 30 African Americans were bombed or burned. Visiting college students weren’t the only ones responsible for the success of that summer. When Berea College withdrew as a train- ing site for students headed South, Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, now part of Miami University, stepped forward. Attorneys volunteered from the NAACP Legal Defense and Edu- cational Fund, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the National Lawyers Guild and the ACLU. Medical profes- sionals, participating as individuals as well as the Medical Committee for Human Rights, also joined the caravans headed to Mississippi. The level of national support emboldened Black Mississippians, such as Fannie Lou Hamer, to challenge the seating of the all- White Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Conven- tion in Atlantic City. As Attorney Thomas N. Todd likes to remind us, this was done before the existence of Facebook, Twitter, InstaGram and other social media. It’s good that civil rights vets are celebrating Freedom Summer this week. But the challenge is to reignite that passion and sense of commitment today. Many of the problems of 1964 are still preva- lent today. We need a Freedom Summer, Winter, Fall and Spring. P.O. Box 5455, Portland, OR 97228. Telephone (503) 285-5555. E-mail: info@theskanner.com World Wide Web site: http://www.theskanner.com Fax: (503) 285-2900 The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Associ- ation and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re - spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. © 2014 The Skanner. ALL RIGHTS RE SERVED. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT PERMISSION PROHIBITED. To see The Skanner News on your smart phone go to theskannermobile.com or scan this QR code with your app. • • • • • • • • Local news Opinions Jobs, Bids Sports Entertainment Music reviews Bulletin board RSS feeds The Central Park Jogger Case Settlement H ow much is a person’s inno- cence worth? That’s the most fundamental question framing the news that, after years of bitter dispute, a set- tlement has been reached in the lawsuit stemming from the notori- ous Central Park Jogger case that a quarter-century ago inflamed racial tensions in New York City and across the country, sent five Black and Latino youth to prison for years – and since then has become one of the best-known examples of the injustice that’s corroded much of America’s crim- inal justice system. The five men, who, though 14 to 16 years old at the time, were tried as adults for beating and raping the young White woman, will now receive about a million dollars for each year they served in prison. Four of the men—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, and Raymond Santana, Jr. – spent about seven years in prison. One, Kharey Wise, served about 13 years. More than a decade after their trial, DNA and other evidence uncovered by the Manhattan Dis- trict Attorney’s office proved that none of the five youths had beaten and raped the jogger. The evidence tied the attack to one man, Matias Reyes, who by then was in prison for murdering a woman shortly after he had attacked the jogger, then confessed to the crime. The convictions of the five were Page 2 The Portland and Seattle Skanner June 25, 2014 L AST C HANCE Lee A. Daniels vacated in 2002, but for a decade the administration of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg refused to settle their lawsuit that charged that police and prosecu- tors had deliberately suppressed the DNA and other evidence. City Thanks to technological advances in the use of DNA evi- dence and action taken by some state legislatures and some police and prosecutors, too, the list of the exonerated has grown significant- ly in the decade since the Central Park Jogger Five were cleared. According to data from The Innocence Project, a national liti- gation and public policy organization, there have now been 316 post-conviction DNA exoner- ations in the country. That includes 18 people who were sen- tenced to death before DNA proved their innocence. The aver- One of the best-known examples of the injustice that’s corroded much of America’s criminal justice system officials, however, then main- tained that the police and prosecutors had not committed any wrongdoing and therefore could not be held liable. By contrast, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who took office in January, moved quickly to settle the case, which yet remains one of the most notorious examples of the egregious mis- takes and willful misconduct by police, prosecutors and judges that have sentenced men and women of all backgrounds to long terms in prison – and some to death row. age sentence those convicted served before their DNA-based exoneration was nearly 14 years, 70 percent of those exonerated were people of color, and in 50 percent of the cases, the true crim- inal was identified by the DNA testing. Undoubtedly, the most stunning example of the criminal justice system’s wrongful conviction dynamic is now unfolding in Brooklyn, N.Y. Growing doubts about numerous murders convic- tions obtained there in the 1980s and 1990s in recent years led the New York City borough’s long- time prosecutor, Charles J. Hynes, to establish an special unit to investigate claims of innocence. The result: in recent months six men who had already spent as much as 23 years in prison after being convicted of murder, have been exonerated and set free. Now, Kenneth Thompson, Brooklyn’s newly-elected district attorney (who defeated Hynes last year in a bitterly-fought contest), is, as the New York Times put it in a recent news article, “grappling with a metastasizing wrongful conviction scandal in which dozens of imprisoned men have asked for freedom, their convic- tions linked to mistakes and misconduct by police and prosecu- tors in the violent, drug-plagued 1980s and 1990s. It is a tidal wave that could dwarf other exoneration clusters.” This wrongful conviction scan- dal, mind you, concerns just one borough of one American city. But, like the Central Park Jogger case, the terrible miscarriage of justice that is being uncovered there underscores that for many individuals accused of a crime, the criminal justice system’s operating principle has been, not innocent until proven guilty, but guilty until proven innocent. Read the rest online at www.theskanner.com
