Saturday 16 March 2019

KELLEY WILLIAMS-BOLAR 2011








In 2011 African American mother Kelly Williams-Bolar was sentenced to prison for enrolling her two daughters in a white school district even though she lived at her father's house which was in the same school district. Her father who was in his 60s at the time was also charged and sentenced to jail where he suffered a stroke and transitioned to the ancestral realm. This elderly African American man was jailed because he was accused of aiding his daughter in sending her two children to a school in a white school district where it was felt they did not belong. The elderly Edward Williams lived in the school district and his taxes helped to maintain that school. Fast forward to 2019 where 7 years after Edward Williams was jailed and lost his life, a group of rich white people have been accused of cheating, lying and bribing officials to get their children into schools. It will be interesting to see how many of them, if any, will be jailed like Kelly Williams-Bolar and her elderly father, Edward Williams.


 




 


Murphy Browne © Wednesday, February 9, 2011


 


KELLEY WILLIAMS-BOLAR


 


The families, Board members and staff in the school district of Copley-Fairlawn in Akron, Ohio can sleep better at nights knowing that the threat of two female African American students attending a school in their overwhelmingly white school district has been removed. The Copley-Fairlawn school district removed that threat with a vengeance and the whole law and order weight of the American justice system. On January 18, 2011 an African American woman Kelly Williams-Bolar who sent her two daughters to a school in the mostly white school district was sentenced to 10 days in jail, two years of probation and ordered to perform 80 hours of community service.


 


Essentially her crime was sending her two African American children to a school in an overwhelmingly white district while having a home in public housing. Willams-Bolar’s 64 year old father Edward Williams was charged with "one count of grand theft for aiding and abetting his daughter in her alleged deception to obtain educational services from Copley-Fairlawn schools." He maintains that his daughter and grand-daughters lived at his home during the two years the girls attended school in the Copley-Fairlawn school district. In an interview with WJW-TV he was quoted: "She had 12 police reports that her house had been broken in, so what am I supposed to do? Just leave them there? I mean, I can protect them better if they was with me."


 


Now that the African American single mother is a convicted felon her employment as a teacher’s assistant at a secondary school is at risk and she has no hope of working as a teacher because of her recently acquired criminal record. It could have been much worse but the very kind and considerate judge who handed down a sentence of five years in prison for each of the two felony counts to be served concurrently, in consideration of the African American mother’s lack of a police record, suspended the sentence and placed her on probation for two years. However, this good white woman, Common Pleas Judge Patricia Cosgrove who sat in judgment of the African American woman felt that some jail time was appropriate in the case and she sentenced the defendant to 10 days in the Summit County Jail. The judge even empathized: “I understand trying to do the best for your children, but the ends don’t justify the means” and sympathized: "Because of the felony conviction, you will not be allowed to get your teaching degree under Ohio law as it stands today, the court's taking into consideration that is also a punishment that you will have to serve."


 


Apparently this long and winding road to becoming a convicted felon is paved with good intentions; the good intentions of an African American woman determined to ensure the safety of her two young daughters and “avoid a latch-key situation.” In a supposed post-racial society this mother whose home in a government subsidized housing project had been burglarized several times decided to move with her children into her father’s home in an overwhelmingly white and considerably safer suburban neighbourhood and was punished with a jail sentence and criminal record. One newspaper reported that her father had suffered a stroke at the time and she was his sole caretaker. Her daughters were 8 and 12 years old at the time and she was employed as a teacher’s assistant studying to become a teacher. Living in her father’s home she enrolled her daughters in a school in the local school district which is overwhelmingly white so of course the two little African American girls attracted the attention of all and sundry.


 


At some point between August 2006 and November 2009 when she was arrested on multiple felony charges this woman must have spent some time in her home in the subsidized Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority project but she and her father maintain that his home was also her residence. It is not hard to understand that not feeling safe in a home that had been burglarized a few times but not wanting to entirely lose the home, she would have returned with some trepidation but maintained residency in the safer neighbourhood (her father’s residence.) It is also not difficult to understand that since this mother was working full time and attending university at night she would not have left her daughters alone in an apartment in an unsafe neighbourhood but at their grandfather’s home, proving that it was a legitimate residence for them to attend school in the district.


 


Even the 64 year old grandfather has not escaped the long and heavy law and order arm of the American justice system. This African American grandfather who “colluded” in ensuring his grandchildren’s safety was found guilty in a joint trial with his daughter and is awaiting his sentencing. Probably the very family oriented system decided that they should not send mother and grandfather to jail at the same time thus leaving the children to the tender mercies of the state’s “child protection” services. So it is possible that the grandfather will be sentenced to jail now that his daughter has served her time.


The mother has maintained that sending her children to the Copley-Fairlawn schools was not based on a belief of her children receiving a better education in suburbia; however the records show that in wealthy, overwhelmingly white suburbs, children study in brand new schools which lack nothing, in personnel, equipment or support needed for a high quality education while poor, mostly racialized children study in de-facto segregated, poorly equipped and overcrowded inner city schools. The 2009-2010 report card issued for the school the elder daughter attended in the Copley-Fairlawn school district has it designated as “Excellent with Distinction.” The 2009-2010 report card issued for the school the younger daughter attended has it designated as “Excellent.” Other terms used to describe the schools in the Copley-Fairlawn school district are “high performing” and “highly ranked” while schools in the lower income areas are often described as “dropout factories” and “failure mills.” The school district spent about $6,000 to pursue the African American mother and grandfather eventually bringing them to a criminal trial, a sum that included hiring a private investigator to monitor and videotape the movements of the mother and her children.


 


This case was the first residency challenge to reach a criminal courtroom although at the trial school district officials testified that some 30 to 40 similar residency issues had arisen with other families during the two years (2006-2008) the two Williams-Bolar daughters attended school in the district. No one else faced criminal prosecution or civil court action, the school officials said. Not surprisingly the prosecutor's office refused to consider reducing the charges to misdemeanors during numerous pretrial meetings to resolve the case outside of court which would have at least prevented the threat to the mother's job and to her hopes of becoming a school teacher.


 


Since the trial and jail sentence there has been much support for the family including at least two sets of petitions. There have also been several articles written in support of the family including one entitled Parenting While Black: Ohio Woman Jailed for "Stealing an Education" where the writer commented: ''If Ms. Williams and her children had been white would the school have gone to this trouble to expose them as supposed 'criminals?' and this comment on one blog: "It's interesting that the judge wanted to send her to jail for her crime, but there are Wall Street execs who got less time for stealing millions."


 


A coalition of activist groups delivered 165,000 signatures collected from around the country Governor John Kasich on Monday, February 7, 2011 urging him to pardon Kelley Williams-Bolar. The groups seeking Governor John Kasich's pardon for 40-year-old Kelley Williams-Bolar are ColorOfChange.org, Change.org and Moms-Rising.org. Iris Roley, a member of ColorofChange.org and chairwoman of the Cincinnati NAACP, said the groups believe the case highlights inequities in Ohio's education system.


 


However, the persecution of this African American family continues. A new attorney has been appointed to represent the father of Kelley Williams-Bolar in connection with two felony charges that were severed from the joint trial of Williams-Bolar and her 64 year old father last month (January 2011.)


 


Edward L. Williams was accompanied by a court-appointed lawyer, Joe E. Perry, during an appearance on Wednesday morning (February 9, 2011) before Summit County Common Pleas Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove. Williams was required to fill out a sworn affidavit of indigency and answer a series of questions in open court before Cosgrove appointed Perry as his lawyer. Cosgrove set April 19 as the trial date for Edward L. Williams.


 


Murphy Browne © Wednesday, February 9, 2011


 




 


 









Wednesday 6 March 2019

AFRICAN AMERICAN INVENTOR GARRETT MORGAN MARCH 4-1877







One hundred and forty-two years ago, on March 4-1877, African American inventor Garrett Augustus Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky. He was the 7th of 11 children of Sydney and Elizabeth (Reed) Morgan a couple who had been enslaved until the American Emancipation proclamation in 1865. Morgan began his working life when he left his home in Kentucky as a teenager and moved to Ohio.



Murphy Browne © 2012



AFRICAN AMERICAN INVENTOR GARRETT MORGAN MARCH 4-1877



At approximately 3:00 a.m. on July 25th 1916, African American inventor Garrett Augustus Morgan made history when he used one of his inventions (gas mask) to save the lives of City of Cleveland workers trapped underground and exposed to toxic fumes. The disaster occurred because the Cleveland Water Works Department failed to observe safe working conditions for their employees. At the time an existing tunnel which had been built in 1856 in Lake Erie to deal with the city’s contaminated water supply needed to be expanded. In 1856 Cleveland’s city leaders had authorized the construction of the water tunnel to extend 300 feet into the lake where water would be pumped through the tunnel to a reservoir to supply safe drinking water. In 1914 a decision was made to extend the 1856 tunnel an additional 20,000 feet into the lake.





On the evening of July 24th, 1916, night shift workers entered the work elevator which would carry them to 10-foot-wide pipe 120 feet below the surface of the lake. There had been problems with the air quality in the shaft on July 23 and work had been suspended because of the presence of highly explosive methane gas. Workers of the day shift on July 24th had stopped digging after only five hours because of the unsafe conditions. By the time the night shift went to work on July 24 it was believed that the gas had dissipated and that it was safe for them to continue working. At 9:40 p.m. on July 24 there was an explosion and smoke billowed out of the tunnel. A rescue party was organized but they were overcome by gas fumes and within minutes they were unconscious. The next group of would be rescuers wrapped their heads in wet towels but were useless and had to leave because they almost overcome by gas. After these unsuccessful rescue attempts the authorities contacted Garrett Morgan at approximately 3:00 a.m. on July 25th and requested that he take his invention (gas mask) to the scene of the explosion to rescue the workers and the would-be rescuers. Morgan contacted his brother Frank Morgan and they gathered the equipment they needed.







Morgan and his brother Frank were taken to the scene of the explosion on the tug “George A. Wallace.” They were accompanied by fire fighters and the city’s Mayor Harry L. Davis. When they arrived at the scene of the disaster Morgan and his brother went down the dark contaminated tunnel (more than 200 feet) wearing their safety masks and made several trips rescuing more than 20 people and retrieving the bodies of those who had perished in the explosion. In spite of his heroic efforts which saved the lives of many, he was identified by name in only one newspaper article. “G. A. Morgan was in charge of a party from the National Safety Device Co., 5204 Harlem Avenue, S.E.” The other newspapers named two White men as the heroes of the rescue effort. The two White men, Thomas J. Clancy and Thomas Castleberry were recognized as “heroes” and received medals and $500 in reward by the Carnegie Commission. Mayor Harry L. Davis, who had traveled with Morgan and his brother on the tug “George A. Wallace” to the site of the explosion on July 25th and had witnessed the Morgans’ brave rescue of several men, refused to recommend Morgan for the Carnegie Commission’s medal and award.







In October, 1917, Morgan wrote a letter to Mayor Davis demanding an explanation. The letter reads in part; “I am interested in knowing why it was that you and your Director of Law, Mr. Fitzgerald, would not permit me to testify at the investigation of the disaster; when you knew and was an eyewitness to the fact that I positively lead the first successful rescue party that entered the tunnel and came out alive, bringing with me dead and alive bodies, among them Supt. Van Dusen. Why was it you remained silent and allowed awards [to be given] to men who either followed me into the tunnel, or if they went in at all, went in after my return in your presence with dead and alive bodies, when I returned you congratulated me and told me you would see that I was treated fairly and would be commended for my bravery. You also knew that the police, firemen and lifesavers had worked nearly all night without success and that they looked upon my effort as a last hope of saving persons imprisoned in the tunnel. The treatment accorded me in the particulars set out above is much as to make me and the members of my race to feel that you did not give a colored man a square deal.” In spite of all the eyewitnesses to the part that the Morgan brothers played during the Waterworks disaster, their role was negated because of racism and White supremacy. Although Morgan was treated unfairly by the city, he did receive recognition and awards from other organizations including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.)





Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky on March 4- 1877 the 7th of 11 children of Sydney and Elizabeth (Reed) Morgan a couple who had been enslaved until the American Emancipation proclamation in 1865. Morgan began his working life when he left his home in Kentucky as a teenager and moved to Ohio. Although he only had a sixth-grade education, he was determined to improve his life through education. He taught himself to repair sewing machines and worked with a number of companies before opening his own business specializing in sewing machine sales and repair in 1907. He used some of the money he made to hire a tutor to improve his education. In 1913, Morgan had applied for a patent of a “gas safety hood.” When the patent was granted in 1914, he established the National Safety Device Company. By 1915, Morgan had been awarded a government contract to supply safety hoods to U.S. naval vessels.





Morgan’s invention which was used during the rescue operations at the Water Works disaster scene on July 25th, 1916 was also used by American military during the First World War and is the prototype of the gas masks used by firefighters today. Morgan also invented the first stoplight to use a caution signal between red and green lights. In 1923, he sold his patent to the General Electric Company for $40,000. A few months later, several traffic lights based on Morgan’s invention were installed along Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland. None of the newspaper articles written about this amazing invention being used to save lives even mentioned Morgan. In 1923, a refined model of his gas mask won a gold medal at the International Exposition of Sanitation and Safety and another gold medal from the International Association of Fire Chiefs.





Morgan transitioned to the ancestral realm on July 27-1963, just a few days after the forty-seventh anniversary of the Waterworks Disaster. He is buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland; Ohio and his papers are part of the collection of the Western Reserve Historical Society. The passage of time has seen the recognition of the heroism and contributions of this great African American inventor including the Garrett Morgan Cleveland School of Science Academy. The secondary school which is in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District “offers a curriculum of challenging courses with a strong emphasis in math and science” and students can earn an Associate’s Degree in Applied Technology.



Murphy Browne © 2012







LENA BAKER - MARCH 5-1945





Murphy Browne © March 5-2019



LENA BAKER - MARCH 5-1945



On March 5-1945 Lena Baker became the first and only woman to be killed by the state of Georgia in the electric chair.  In 2005 she received a posthumous pardon from Georgia 60 years after she was killed in the electric chair.  Baker who maintained her innocence to the end said: “What I done, I did in self-defence or I would have been killed myself. Where I was, I could not overcome it. I am ready to meet my God.”



Baker had been repeatedly raped by the white man (23 years older than she was) who was killed with his own gun during a struggle as he tried to rape her again. She had been hiding from this man who had kept watch at her house overnight and grabbed her when she went home the following morning to take care of her three children who had been left in their grandmother’s care overnight.



It is a dreadful story illustrating the manner in which the lives of African Americans were constrained by white people. After dragging Baker over to a barn on his property where he raped her again, the white man went to a prayer meeting with his adult son, locking her in the barn.



When he returned from his prayer meeting and attempted to rape her at gunpoint there was a struggle during which he was killed. Baker was sentenced to death by a white all male jury after a four-hour trial. Although Baker was the victim in more ways than one, her family was forced to uproot their lives and flee their hometown. Her community was refused the right to bury her properly and mourn her passing. They were terrorized by the white community.





In 2001 Baker’s great nephew Roosevelt Curry began the campaign to clear her name. On August 30-2005 a full and unconditional pardon was granted to Lena Baker by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, 60 years after she was executed. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles acknowledged that they had made "a grievous error" in the Lena Baker case 60 years before.



Murphy Browne © March 5-2019








KOFI GUYANESE NATIONAL HERO







Today, February 23-2019 Guyanese are celebrating the 49th year of Guyana becoming the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. On February 23-1970 independent country Guyana (formerly British Guiana until May 26-1966) became a Republic. On becoming a Republic, Guyanese celebrated with the Mashramani Festival.





Murphy Browne © 2013



KOFI GUYANESE NATIONAL HERO



On February 23, 1763 a group of enslaved Africans in Berbice, Guyana seized their freedom from the Dutch men and women who for more than a century had kept them enslaved as an unpaid workforce. At the time Guyana was a Dutch colony occupied by men and women from the Netherlands who bought, sold and brutalized enslaved Africans. As a child growing up in Berbice, Guyana I heard stories from my elders about the brutality and barbarism of the Dutch slaveholders who they deemed worse than the British. Not that the British were not brutal and barbaric in their treatment of enslaved Africans but the elders were unanimous in their condemnation of the Dutch as worse. From the pen of the Dutch governor of Berbice Wolfert Simon van Hoogenheim: “On 14 April 1764 Rebel Pikenini captured I listened in the greatest astonishment as his captors explained why his back had been cut up hanging in pieces. They stated that just to amuse themselves they had cut his back up with a saw.” George Pinckard a doctor visiting Demerara in 1796 described his observation of a Dutch woman brutalising an enslaved African man: “We suddenly heard the loud cries of a Negro smarting under the whip. Mrs ____ expressed surprise on observing me shudder at his shrieks and you will believe that I was in utter astonishment to find her treat his sufferings as matter of amusement.”





It is not surprising given the barbarity of the slaveholders that the enslaved Africans in Berbice decided as a group to seize their freedom. The story as told in many history books identifies the Africans as “rebels” instead of freedom fighters and their struggle as a “rebellion” instead of a revolution. It is interesting to note the words used by Henry G. Dalton, a British author who, in 1855, published two volumes of “The History of British Guiana, Comprising General Description of the Colony.” Writing of the Berbice Revolution, which started on February 23, 1763 and lasted until March 1764, Dalton notes: “1763, a terrible insurrection burst out, which convulsed the whole colony, and threatened its very existence.” Some writers have tried to position the freedom fighters of the Berbice Revolution as a group of disorganized Africans who were forever squabbling with each other. However, even Dalton in his telling of the story acknowledges that “the Negroes had organized themselves into a regular government, had established a complete system of military discipline, and had chosen Cuffy, a young slave of courage and judgment, as their governor.” Kofi whose name has been distorted and Anglicized as “Cuffy” for generations was an Akan man from the area of modern-day Ghana. His name identifies him as an Akan male who was born on a Friday. He was chosen as the leader of the revolution and the African governor of Berbice on par with the Dutch governor van Hoogenheim with whom he corresponded during negotiations for the freedom of the enslaved Africans. This correspondence was one of the reasons the Africans were not successful in gaining their complete freedom. While Kofi was negotiating with van Hoogenheim in good faith, the Dutch governor was biding his time until he could gain reinforcements to destroy the Revolution and the Africans.





The Africans were superior in numbers and could have crushed the Dutch and either driven them out of what is now Guyana or exterminated the lot of them. The Dutch did not hesitate to brutally suppress the Revolution and displayed extreme barbarity in destroying the revolutionaries when their reinforcements arrived in the region. At the time of the Revolution on February 23, 1763 there were in the entire colony of Berbice (which at the time was separate from Demerara and Essequibo) 346 White residents and 3,833 enslaved Africans. Imagine if those Africans had done to the Whites what the White population eventually did to the Africans. Africans in Guyana would have been completely free since 1763. At least by the end of April 1763 the colony would have been free of the White enslavers. However, while the Africans were negotiating in good faith, the Europeans were marking time until troops from neighbouring French, Dutch and British colonies arrived. Once reinforcement arrived in the colony and the Europeans regained control of Berbice many of the Africans were brutally killed as a warning. Forty were hanged, 24 broken on the wheel and 24 were burned to death. Some fled to neighbouring Suriname while others were re-enslaved, but Kofi was never captured. Many of the Africans preferred to die fighting, rather than surrender and become re-enslaved.





The occupation and settlement of Guiana began in earnest with the founding of the Dutch West India Company which was chartered in 1621and through this company the Dutch were encouraged to settle in numbers first in Essequibo, Guyana. There were Dutch settlers in the region before the founding of the Dutch West India Company. For instance, in 1613 a group of Spaniards surprised the members of a Dutch settlement on the Courentyne in Berbice and destroyed that settlement. To ensure the successful operation of their plantations the Dutch were involved in the kidnapping and transporting of enslaved Africans to their colonies in the New World which included Guiana. The Dutch had been involved in the trading of Africans for a few years before they established the colony in Guiana. In 1598, the Dutch began building forts along the West African coast in competition with the Portuguese. In 1637, they captured ElMina from the Portuguese. Members of other European tribes including the Danes, English, Spanish and Swedes, also became involved in the exploitation of Africa and Africans. It eventually became a free-for-all with the Europeans fighting each other for the opportunity to make their fortunes on the backs of Africans.





The Africans resisted their enslavement in various ways from the time they were captured on the African continent and continuing with struggles on board several slave ships. Once they were transported to the plantations, they continued the struggle for freedom including fleeing the plantations and establishing Maroon communities. The Dutch expeditions to capture the members of these Maroon communities were also exercises in displaying the barbarity of the White colonisers. A visitor to Guiana in 1796 wrote of witnessing the capture and destruction of some of the Maroons in what is now the capital city Georgetown: “Most of the ringleaders were taken and brought to Stabroek, where they were afterwards tried and executed. One in particular Amsterdam was subjected to the most shocking torture, in the hope of compelling him to give information but in vain. He was sentenced to be burnt alive, first having his flesh torn from his limbs with red hot pincers; and in order to render his punishment still more terrible, he was compelled to sit by and see thirteen others broken upon the wheel and hung and then, in being conducted to execution, was made to walk over the thirteen dead bodies of his comrades. Being fastened to an iron stake to be burnt alive. When the destructive pile was set in flames, his body spun round the iron stake with mouth open, until his head fell back, life extinguished.”

In spite of the White slaveholders’ attempts to keep enslaved Africans docile and oppressed through such barbaric acts the Africans continued to resist. Although the Revolution which began on February 23, 1763 in Berbice is the most well-known because of its extent and the longevity it was by no means the sole attempt by Africans in Guiana to seize their freedom. There were actions in Demerara and Essequibo by Africans determined to be free of chattel slavery. Today Guyana is a Republic having gained its political independence from Britain on Thursday, May 26, 1966 under the leadership of then Prime Minister the Honourable Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham. The country which encompasses the former Dutch colonies of Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo later (taken from the Dutch 1814 became one colony in 1831) the British colony of British Guiana became the Co-operative Republic of Guyana on February 23, 1970 on the 207th anniversary of the Berbice Revolution. Guyana which is located on the northeast of the South American continent is the only South American country where English is the official language. Slavery was abolished on August 1, 1834 but after four years of “apprenticeship” the Africans were finally free on August 1, 1838. Guyana is known as the Land of Six Peoples which includes Africans (kidnapped, enslaved and taken to Guyana by the Dutch beginning in the 1600s) Amerindians (the native people of Guyana) Chinese (immigrated as indentured labourers from January 12, 1853 aboard the SS Glentanner) East Indians (immigrated as indentured labourers from May 1, 1838 aboard SS Whitby and SS Hesperus) Europeans (first the Dutch1600s, then the British seized the territory 1800s) Portuguese (immigrated as indentured labourers from May 3, 1835 aboard SS Louisa Baillie.) The nation celebrates February 23 Republic Day with a Mashramani celebration reminiscent of Trinidad’s Carnival and Toronto’s Caribana. It would be helpful if the Berbice Revolution was also recognized on that day.



Murphy Browne © 2013