LITTLE ROCK NINE SEPTEMBER 24-1957

LITTLE ROCK NINE SEPTEMBER 24-1957
Murphy Browne © September 23, 2010


WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM


To President Dwight David Eisenhower
The immediate need for federal troops is urgent. The mob is much larger in numbers at 8am than at any time yesterday. People are converging on the scene from all directions. The mob is armed and engaging in fisticuffs and other acts of violence. Situation is out of control and police cannot disperse the mob. I am pleading to you as President of the United States in the interest of humanity, law and order and because of democracy world wide to provide necessary federal troops within several hours. Action by you will restore peace and order and compliance with your proclamation.

From a Western Union telegram from Woodrow Wilson Mann Mayor of Little Rock Arkansas sent at 9:16 AM on September 24, 1957 to the President of the United States


On September 24, 1957, nine African American students made history when they integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. These 9 teenagers Minnijean Brown (1941), Elizabeth Eckford (1941), Ernest Green (1941), Gloria Ray (1942), Thelma Mothershed (1940), Melba Pattillo (1941), Terrence Roberts (1941), Jefferson Thomas (1942–2010) and Carlotta Walls (1942) would become known as the Little Rock Nine. Their integration of Central High School followed a month of drama, heartache and trauma.

  The events that led up to September 24, 1957 began in Topeka, Kansas in 1951 when an African American father, Oliver Brown challenged the Topeka, Kansas School Board in court on behalf of his 8 year old daughter Linda Brown. Oliver Brown’s 8 year old third-grader Linda had to walk one mile through a dangerous railroad switchyard to get to her segregated elementary school when a white elementary school was a few blocks away from her home. Brown, tried to enroll his daughter in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused to enroll the child. Brown appealed to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for help and a class action lawsuit against the Topeka, Kansas Board of Education was launched when 13 other African American parents on behalf of their 20 children joined Brown and the NAACP requested an injunction to forbid the segregation of Topeka's public schools.


The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court of the USA with 200 plaintiffs from five states; Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington. Three years later the U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483, on May 17, 1954. The decision declared all laws establishing segregated schools to be unconstitutional and called for the desegregation of all schools throughout the nation. The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision did not require desegregation of public schools by a specific time but after the decision the NAACP attempted to register African American students in previously all-white schools in cities throughout the South.


Daisy Bates, president of the NAACP was planning to sue the Little Rock School Board to force them to integrate their schools. On May 24, 1955 the Little Rock School Board agreed to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling with a plan of gradual integration. The Board planned to begin integration during the fall of the 1957-58 school year which would begin in September 1957. By September 1957, the NAACP had registered nine African American students, selected on the criteria of excellent grades and attendance, to attend the all-white Little Rock Central High School. There were 517 African American students who lived in the Central High School district and were eligible to attend the school in the fall. In the summer of 1957 a group of white women in Little Rock, Arkansas had organized the Mother’s League of Central High School to ensure that no African American students would be allowed to attend Little Rock’s Central High School. On August 27, 1957, Mary Thomason, secretary of the Mothers League of Little Rock Central High School filed a lawsuit to prevent African American students from entering Central High School. When the legal manoeuvre was unsuccessful the good ladies of the Mothers League of Little Rock Central High School along with their neighbours, relatives and friends resorted to violence to prevent the integration of Central High School.


The action began on the morning of September 4, 1957 when Elizabeth Eckford arrived at the school on her own. Eckford’s family did not own a telephone and she had not been informed that the other 8 students planned to arrive as a group accompanied by the president of the Arkansas NAACP, Daisy Bates. Eckford was a 15 year old student on September 4, 1957 when a photograph of her surrounded by a snarling white mob made history. The National Guard troops, at gunpoint, under orders of Governor Orval Faubus, had just prevented the 15 year old from entering the school grounds, when a white mob descended on the obviously terrified child. Right on Eckford’s heels is the unforgettable image of a white girl, her face distorted with hate, mouth wide open, spitting racist venom. The infamous photograph has been recognized as one of the most important photographs of the 20th Century by the Associated Press and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Another photograph from that horrific period which has the dubious honour of being part of a list of “the most important photographs of the 20th Century” is one of Alex Wilson, an African American reporter covering the story of the attempt to integrate Little Rock Central High School, being brutalized by a white mob.
Wilmer Counts, the photographerwhose work documented the Little Rock trauma for posterity is white, blended in with the crowd and photographed not only the terror to which the 15 year old Eckford was subjected on September 4th but also the brutal and cowardly assault of African American journalist Alex Wilson on September 23, 1957. Unlike Counts whose white skin protected him from being terrorized and brutalized by the mob, Wilson and other African American journalists were identifiable and vulnerable. When the mob descended shouting, “Run n---er run,” Wilson refused to follow the other African American journalists who fled. He calmly let the howling white mob know “I fought for my country in the war and I'm not running from you." He suffered for his brave stand. Nattily dressed topped by his trade mark fedora he continued walking in dignity even after he was borne to the ground several times by members of that vicious cowardly white mob http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT9VRXwahz8&feature=related


Wilson never recovered from the brutal assault to which he was subjected in Little Rock, Arkansas on September 23, 1957. This man who as editor in chief of the African American newspaper Tri-State Defender from Memphis, Tennessee had traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas to cover the story of the 9 students, who put their lives on the line to integrate Central HighSchool, paid with his life. He suffered neurological damage as a result of the abuse and transitioned when he was 50 years old on October 11, 1960.


Terrence Roberts another member of the Little Rock spoke about his experiences in school where there were no cameras to capture images of the vicious attacks he and his classmates suffered at the hands of white students and the racism from teachers.
"They did everything you could possibly think of that one human being might do to another.”
Roberts was hit on the side of the head with a combination lock in the gymnasium locker room, so hard it drove him to his knees. He was left stunned and bleeding from the head wound that resulted from the vicious attack.


In a recent article published in the Christian Science Monitor Melba Patillo-Beals wrote:
"I am one of the Little Rock Nine, one of the teenagers who integrated all-white Central High School in 1957. We sparked such a national firestorm that President Eisenhower summoned the Army to guard us as we entered the school amid a mob threatening to lynch us. We were nine black kids joining 1,900 white students – and they weren't mounting any welcome wagon for us. As a high school sophomore I suddenly had a bounty on my head: The local white citizens' council offered $10,000 for me dead; $5,000 alive. As a result, I was rushed to the airport by my family and ushered onto a plane bound for California."


Each member of the Little Rock Nine persevered in spite of the daily abuse to which they were subjected and triumphed by graduating from high school, advancing to post secondary education and fulfilling careers. Sadly, on September 5, 2010, the youngest male member of the Little Rock Nine, Jefferson Thomas who suffered from pancreatic cancer transitioned to join the ancestors just two weeks shy of his 68th birthday. On September 6, 2010, the White House released a statement by President Obama, in which he said, “Our nation owes Mr. Thomas a debt of gratitude for the stand he took half a century ago, and the leadership he showed in the decades since. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.”


Murphy Browne © September 23, 2010

OKEECHOBEE HURRICANE SEPTEMBER 17-1928

Murphy Browne © September 17, 2017


OKEECHOBEE HURRICANE SEPTEMBER 17-1928


The hurricane left the Caribbean islands where it had created havoc and untold damage and early on September 17, 1928 the storm roared into the USA and made landfall near West Palm Beach, Florida with winds of 145 mph (233 km/h). In the city, more than 1,711 homes were destroyed. The impact was severest around Lake Okeechobee; 40 miles west of the coast, rain filled Lake Okeechobee to the brim and the dykes crumbled. Water rushed onto the swampy farmland, and homes and people were swept away. Approximately 2,500 people were killed and damage to property was estimated at $25 million. The storm surge caused water to pour out of the southern edge of the lake, flooding hundreds of square miles as high as 20 feet (6.1 m) above ground. Numerous houses and buildings were swept away in the cities of Belle Glade, Canal Point, Chosen, Pahokee, and South Bay.


In Florida, although the hurricane's destruction affected everything in its path, the death toll was by far highest and the aftermath the worst in the economically poor areas in the low-lying ground right around Lake Okeechobee, such as Belle Glade, Chosen, Pahokee, South Bay, and Bean City. Approximately 75% of those killed were African American farm workers.


The surviving African American farm workers did most of the post-hurricane cleanup work. The coffins provided were used for the White victims who received proper burials at Woodlawn Cemetery in West Palm Beach. The White victims who died during the storm received a timely memorial on October 1, 1828. A funeral service was hosted by several local clergymen at Woodlawn Cemetery for the White victims of the disaster. Approximately 3,000 people attended. A memorial was placed at Woodlawn Cemetery in memory of the White victims of the storm, but no such marker was placed at the African American pauper's cemetery.


In contrast, the bodies of African Americans who perished during the hurricane’s fury were burned in funeral pyres or their bodies were thrown into mass graves such as the ones in West Palm Beach and Port Mayaca. In Port Mayaca, about 1,600 African American bodies were buried in a mass grave, 674 at the African American Pauper's Cemetery in West Palm Beach, with no markers, at least 22 in Miami Locks (now known as Lake Harbor), 28 in Ortona, and 22 in Sebring. There were also unconfirmed reports of bodies buried in Loxahatchee. At Tamarind and 25th Streets, West Palm Beach, Florida, the almost 700 bodies of African American victims dumped in a 75-foot-long, 20-foot-wide trench at the African American Paupers’ Cemetery are the only ones that have so far (in 2003) been recognized with a ceremony at the insistence of the African American community. After the 1928 hurricane, the bodies buried at that location were mostly forgotten by the public. The city of West Palm Beach sold the land in which the African American victims were buried and it continued to change ownership into the 1980s. Established in 1913, the property of the pauper's cemetery currently includes approximately 1.03 acres (0.42 ha) of land. Although the site where these unfortunate African Americans were buried is located at the southwest corner of 25th Street and Tamarind Avenue, 25th Street was paved above the northern portion of the mass grave in the 1960s. The site went unmarked for decades until during the paving of the area many of the bodies were  unearthed.


In the 1960s, 25th Street was rerouted, putting part of the mass grave under the street. Beginning in 1991, a movement to convince the city of West Palm Beach to repurchase the property began, which succeeded in December 2000. The historical marker added to the memorial site in 2003, the 75th anniversary of the storm was due to the activism of African American community activist Robert Hazard, a resident of West Palm Beach (originally from New England) who established the “Storm of '28 Memorial Park Coalition Inc.” to fight for recognition of the African American victims of the storm. In 2000, the West Palm Beach burial site was reacquired by the city of West Palm Beach and plans for construction of a memorial began. On September 12, 2002, the site was added to the US National Register of Historic Places and a state historical marker was added in 2003 during the 75th anniversary of the hurricane.


The effects of the hurricane on African American farm workers were dramatized in African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 seminal novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” which is recognized as her best known work and was a selection on TIME magazine's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923.


Eighty nine years after the hurricane that devastated the Lake Okeechobee area Hurricane Irma must have been a grim reminder for the African American community many of whom continue to live precariously, in poverty. With the recent examples of the mistreatment of African Americans in Louisiana after the levees broke on August 29, 2005 (prompting the famous Kanye West quote “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people”) African Americans in Florida probably lived in fear of a repeat of September 1928; after all look who is in the White House! It remains to be seen what happens to African Americans in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma in September 2017.

Murphy Browne © September 17, 2017

STEVE BANTU BIKO ASSASSINATED SEPTEMBER 12-1977

STEVE BANTU BIKO

 

Murphy Browne © September 12, 2012

 

"Basically the South African white community is a homogeneous community. It is a community of people who sit to enjoy a privileged position that they do not deserve, are aware of this, and therefore spend their time trying to justify why they are doing so. Where differences in political opinion exist, they are in the process of trying to justify their position of privilege and their usurpation of power. We are concerned with that curious bunch of non-conformists who explain their participation in negative terms: that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names – liberals, leftists etc. These are the people who argue that they are not responsible for white racism and the country’s “inhumanity to the black man.” The role of the white liberal in the black man’s history in South Africa is a curious one. True to their image, the white liberals always knew what was good for the blacks and told them so. The wonder of it all is that the black people have believed in them for so long."

From Steve Biko I write what I like A Selection of his writings edited by Aelred Stubbs C.R published 1979

 

On September 12, 1977 Stephen Bantu Biko was murdered by the White supremacist minority regime which occupied Azania (South Africa) at the time. Biko who is considered the father of the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania was born on December 18, 1946 in King William's Town, in the Eastern Cape Province. He was the third of four children born to Mzimgayi and Nokusola Biko. On August 18, 1977 he was detained under section 6 of the Terrorism Act of 1967 and taken to Port Elizabeth where he was kept naked and shackled, brutally beaten and tortured to death. He had been detained for 101 days the previous year (1976) from August to December under section 6 of the Terrorism Act and released without being charged. The Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967 was a law of the white supremacist apartheid regime. Section 6 of the Act allowed the detention of anyone “suspected” of engaging in terrorist acts to be detained for a 60 day period (which could be renewed) without trial on the authority of a senior police officer. Terrorism was broadly defined as anything that might "endanger the maintenance of law and order." Since there was no requirement to release information on who was being held people detained under this Act tended to disappear. It is estimated that approximately 80 people died while being detained under the Act. In Biko’s case he was interrogated for twenty-two hours (including torture and beatings resulting in a coma) by officers of the Port Elizabeth security police. He suffered a major head injury while in police custody and was chained to a window grille for a day. Biko was kept in leg irons and handcuffs, severely beaten and tortured from the day he was arrested (August 18, 1977) until the day he succumbed to the injuries (September 12, 1977.)

Biko defined Black Consciousness as: “An attitude of mind and a way of life. The call for Black Consciousness is the most positive call to come from any group in the black world for a long time. It is more than just a reactionary rejection of whites by blacks.‎ The philosophy of Black Consciousness therefore expresses group pride and the determination of the black to rise and attain the envisaged self. Its essence is the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression - the blackness of their skin - and to operate as a group in order to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude.‎” Biko established the Black Consciousness Movement in December 1968 with the founding of the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO.) In July 1969 Biko was elected president of SASO. During his presidential address to the 1st National Formation School of SASO (December 1-4, 1969) Biko explained some of the reasoning behind the opposition of “liberal” white students to the founding of SASO: “The idea of everything being done for the blacks is old one and all liberals take pride in it; but once the black students want to do things for themselves suddenly they are regarded as being ‘militant.’”

 

As a medical student at the University of Natal, Non-European section, Durban, Biko had been active in the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) which although it tolerated African students was under the leadership of White students. In the 1978 published biography “Biko” Donald Woods a white journalist wrote: “Apartheid, designed to suppress a unified Black response, had created precisely such a response. In denying validity to any claim by Blacks to even the slightest share in a common multiracial society, the racists had driven the most articulate young Blacks into claiming not merely a share but the dominant share in such a society – on their own terms. The young Steve Biko and his colleagues had seized the shoulder of the sleeping giant of Black awareness in South Africa to shake him from his slumber. And more than that: to raise him to his feet, to stretch him to his full height, and to place him for the first time into the attitudes of total challenge toward all those who had sought to keep him prone. Black Consciousness was born, a new totality of black response to white power, and with it a new era in the racial struggle in South Africa.”

In August 1970 one month after he was elected Chairman of SASO Publications Biko began writing a series of articles published under the pseudonym “Frank Talk” in the SASO newsletter under the heading “I Write What I Like.” In March 1973 Biko was “banned” which meant he could not travel, speak in public or have any written work published. Obviously Biko’s writings greatly troubled the white establishment. He wrote about integration which was illegal under an apartheid regime and even more troubling it was not the integration favoured by white liberals. Biko wrote: “The myth of integration as propounded under the banner of liberal ideology must be cracked and killed because it makes people believe that something is being done when in actual fact the artificial integrated circles are a soporific on the blacks and provide a vague satisfaction for the guilty-stricken whites.” He wrote of the hypocrisy of the “liberal” whites’ attempt to salve their consciences: “First the black-white circles are almost always a creation of white liberals. As a testimony to their claim of complete identification with the blacks, they call a few ‘intelligent and aticulate’ blacks to ‘come around for tea at home.’ The more such tea-parties one calls the more liberal he is and the freer he shall feel from the guilt that harnesses and binds his conscience. Hence when he moves around his white circles – whites-only hotels, beaches, restaurants and cinemas –with a lighter load, feeling that he is not like the rest.” He offers a scathing indictment of the White liberals’ idea of integration in these words: “Nothing could be more irrelevant and misleading. Those who believe in it are living in a fool’s paradise.” As a critical thinker and community worker Biko was a threat to the white supremacist regime that eventually murdered him.

The five white men (Harold Snyman, Daniel Siebert, Rubin Marx, Johan Beneke and Gideon Nieuwoudt) responsible for the brutal killing of Biko applied for amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of South Africa. Biko’s family contested their application. On Thursday July 25, 1996 South Africa's most powerful court rejected the family’s attempt to prevent the killers being pardoned if they confess. A 1998 study by South Africa's Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and the Khulumani Support Group which surveyed victims of abuse during the Apartheid era found that most felt that the TRC had failed to achieve reconciliation between the black and white communities. Most believed that justice was a prerequisite for reconciliation rather than an alternative to it and that the TRC had been weighted in favour of the perpetrators of abuse.

 

Today Biko is an international hero whose words are quoted in books and elsewhere: “Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native's brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.‎” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZHDPTE4TXk) There are several musical tributes to his life and work including http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3U3OAtCCts “Biko” by Beenie Man.

 

Murphy Browne © September 12, 2012

OSSIAN AND GLADYS SWEET SEPTEMBER 1925

Murphy Browne © September 2013

“Chattel slavery is America’s Original Sin, and its sorrowful legacy survives in continuing policies such as racial profiling, red-lined neighborhoods, police brutality, the color of death row, and so-called achievement tests that unlock but also lock doors. The story of Ossian Sweet offers a unique insight into this history. It permits us to understand the personal as political, the historical in the contemporary. It is a reminder that the past challenges us in the present.”

From “One Man's Castle: Clarence Darrow In Defense Of The American Dream” by Phyllis Vine published 2004


On September 8, 1925 African American doctor Ossian Sweet moved into a house at 2905 Garland Avenue, Detroit, Michigan. Sweet had bought the house, which was located in a White neighbourhood, in July but delayed moving until September. Sweet thought it prudent to inform the police of his intent to move into his new home and ask for their protection. He left his baby daughter with his mother-in-law while his two younger brothers and some friends helped him and his wife Gladys move into their new home. The night of September 8 as the Sweet household moved into their new home a mob of approximately 150 White people gathered in front of the house and threw rocks at the house. The following night another cowardly mob of approximately 800 gathered in front of the Sweet family home. Phyllis Vine a White historian who authored the book “One Man's Castle: Clarence Darrow In Defense Of The American Dream” described the scene of September 9, 1925: “Peering over the windowsill of his second-floor bedroom window on the night of Sept. 9, 1925, Dr. Ossian Sweet witnessed a hair-raising sight. A seething mob was gathering in the street outside the spacious home he had recently bought in the middle-class Waterworks Park neighborhood on Detroit's east side, yet the police seemed unconcerned. Some officers diverted traffic around the milling crowd. Others fraternized with the angry rioters even as they hurled rocks at Sweet's house, pelting its siding, smashing windows and spraying the doctor with shards of glass. Realizing that he could expect no help from the authorities, Sweet doused the lights while his wife and companions took cover.” Sweet had prepared for such an event by arming himself and his friends because he knew what a bloodthirsty White mob was capable of doing to unarmed Africans. In 1901 as a 7 year old in Bartow, Florida, Sweet had witnessed the horrific lynching of 17 year old Fred Rochelle an African American who was burned to death. Describing what the 7 year old Sweet witnessed in Bartow, Florida, Vine writes: “They arranged a combustible heap, piling scraps of wood and kindling around the barrel, which they doused with coal oil so it would ignite and burst into flames quickly when brushed by fire. Rochelle was dragged to the spot and tied securely. The mob poured drinks for spectators while he cried for mercy. Eventually Mr. Taggart was ready, and they took their places so he could strike a match. For the next eight minutes Rochelle shrieked. Flames climbed up his legs, formed a curtain around his torso, draped his face. After the flames died back, souvenir hunters pocketed pieces of his charred remains – a digit, a part of his femur, a piece of his foot.” Imagine the impact on a 7 year old African American child witnessing such an atrocity as “he hid quiet as a rock, under the freckled canopy of a cypress tree.” The impact was such that: “Twenty-five years later he would recall the details of the sickly smell of cooked flesh for a jury in a packed courtroom.”

The Sweet family was not the first African American family to buy a home in a White neighbourhood. Those African American families had been attacked and run out of their homes. Three months earlier an African American doctor and his family were forced to flee their home when a White mob assisted by the police threatened their lives. In the 2007 published “Encyclopedia of American Race Riots, Volume 2” Walter Rucker and James Nathaniel Upton write: “On June 23, 1925, Dr. Alexander Turner, along with his wife and mother-in-law, were moving into their home on Spokane Street when they were met by Tireman Avenue Improvement Association – hundreds of neighbors who gathered in front of them with rocks, potatoes and garbage to throw at Turner’s westside home. At gunpoint, two men forced Turner to sign his deed over to them, and with the help of the police, had the Turner family escorted from the premises.”

The occupants of the Sweet family home, surrounded by a vicious mob seemingly bent on lynching opened fire to defend themselves from almost certain death. The police seeing that the African Americans were defending themselves against the murderous White mob then decided to invade the Sweet family home. Sweet, his wife, his brothers and friends were all arrested. At police headquarters they were informed that two members of the mob had been shot, one fatally. The 11 adults who were in the home at the time were all charged with first degree murder and held without bail. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) became involved in the case to support the Sweet family and friends who had been arrested. In October a delegation of four NAACP members led by James Weldon Johnson (co-writer of the Black National Anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing”) approached Clarence Darrow (one of the most famous criminal defense lawyers at the time) to defend the accused.

Reading about the trial of the 11 African Americans who were forced to defend themselves against a murderous White mob one has to ask how much has changed for African Americans caught up in the justice system. In his opening statement for the defense co-counsel for the accused Arthur Garfield Hays said: “We shall show not only what happened in the house, but we shall attempt a far more difficult task-that of reproducing in the cool atmosphere of a courtroom, a state of mind-the state of mind of these defendants, worried, distrustful, tortured and apparently trapped-a state of mind induced by what has happened to others of their race, not only in the South where their ancestors were once slaves, but even in the North in the States which once fought for their freedom.”

During the recent trial of George Zimmerman who killed unarmed 17 year old African American Trayvon Martin the prosecution and the defence tried to ignore the fact that “the historical is in the contemporary” and Trayvon Martin even though he had never witnessed a lynching knew in his bones that Zimmerman was that lynch mob from his people’s history. Darrow said to the jury of 12 White men during the trial of Sweet and the other defendants in 1925: “If I thought any of you had any opinion about the guilt of my clients, I wouldn't worry, because that might be changed. What I'm worried about is prejudice. They are harder to change. They come with your mother's milk and stick like the color of the skin. I know that if these defendants had been a white group defending themselves from a colored mob, they never would have been arrested or tried. My clients are charged with murder, but they are really charged with being black.” In 2012 Zimmerman followed and eventually killed the teenage Martin because he tried and found him guilty of being African American. In July 2013 during the Zimmerman trial the murdered Martin was the one on trial in the minds of the 5 White women and 1 Hispanic woman on the jury. In the minds of those women Martin was found guilty of all the prejudices that are still held about African American men because of the colour of their skin and that is why Zimmerman was found not guilty.

During the recent 50 year anniversary of the historic march on Washington and the famous “I have a dream” speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. it was mostly ignored that even in 2013 African Americans are still judged on the colour of their skin and not the content of their character. That is why police in New York continue to “stop and frisk” and police across North America (including Canada) practice racial profiling. It is indeed a reminder that the past challenges us in the present.
In 1926 Detroit, Michigan the defendants in the Sweet family case were found not guilty after two trials the first of which ended in a mistrial. The entire traumatic episode took a dreadful toll on the entire family. Two years after the trial Sweet lost his 2 year old daughter and his 27 year old wife to tuberculosis which his wife had contracted during the time she spent in jail. Sweet eventually committed suicide on March 20, 1960. Ironically the house at 2905 Garland Avenue was listed on the State of Michigan Historic Places site on November 21, 1975, on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and a State of Michigan Historical Marker was erected there on July 22, 2004.
Murphy Browne © September 2013

ELIZABETH ECKFORD SEPTEMBER 4-1957

Murphy Browne © September 2007


Elizabeth Eckford was a 15 year old student on September 4, 1957 when a photograph of her surrounded by a snarling white mob made history. Eckford was one of a group of nine African American students in Little Rock, Arkansas who attempted to integrate Little Rock Central High School in the wake of the “Brown versus Board of Education” US Supreme Court ruling in May 1954. The National Guard troops, at gunpoint, under orders of Governor Orval Faubus, had just prevented the 15 year old from entering the school grounds, when a white mob descended on the obviously terrified child. Right on Eckford’s heels is the unforgettable image of a white girl, her face distorted with hate, mouth wide open, spitting racist venom. The infamous photograph has been recognized as one of the most important photographs of the 20th Century by the Associated Press and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Another photograph from that horrific period which has the dubious honour of being part of a list of “ the most important photographs of the 20th Century” is one of Alex Wilson, an African American reporter covering the story of the attempt to integrate Little Rock Central High School, being brutalized by a white mob.



I was a small child the first time I saw those photographs (browsing through old Ebony and Jet magazines) and they had a chilling effect. Over the years I would see the photographs in books and frequently wondered if the white people captured in the act of terrorizing a lone 15 year old felt any shame or regret as those images were reproduced internationally. I especially wanted to know the name of the white girl, seen in each photograph of Elizabeth Eckford’s traumatizing experience. I wondered where she was living, if she had children how would she explain those photographs in the wake of the “victories” of the Civil Rights movement? Was she one of those people who provide “entertainment” on talk shows by expressing their hate for people who are not White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP)? My questions were answered a few years ago when I attended the “Word on the Street” book and magazine festival while visiting the booth of one of our community bookstores, A Different Booklist. There on the cover of this book was one of the photographs that had been seared into my memory when I was a small child and it was on sale. The book had been published in 1999 and contained the photographs taken by Ira Wilmer Counts who was sent to cover the desegregation of his alma mater, Central High School in Little Rock by the Arkansas Democrat newspaper.

At last I had the name of Elizabeth Eckford’s tormentor, Hazel Bryan Massery. I was not surprised to read that Eckford who had been contacted by Massery in 1997 had forgiven the woman. We are the most forgiving people when it comes to forgiving people who torment, brutalize, oppress and terrify us because of our race. Could this be the reason why our people continue being racially harassed, profiled, terrorized, tormented, brutalized and oppressed? The image of the two middle aged women, one white one African American, smiling and hugging each other, has not in my mind erased the image of the hate filled white face dogging Eckford’s footsteps in the 1957 photographs. To her credit Massery is the only white person who has apologized to Eckford. Admittedly her face is the most hate filled image of the mob stalking the slender 15 year old child in those 1957 images but there were hundreds of adults in that mob (Massery was also a teenager in 1957) including a woman who spit in Eckford’s face.



Counts, the photographer whose work documented the Little Rock trauma for posterity is white, blended in with the crowd and photographed not only the terror to which the 15 year old Eckford was subjected on September 4th but also the brutal and cowardly assault of African American journalist Alex Wilson on September 23rd.



Unlike Counts whose white skin protected him from being terrorized and brutalized by the mob, Wilson and other African American journalists were identifiable and vulnerable. When the mob descended shouting, “Run n---er run,” Wilson refused to follow the other African American journalists who fled. He calmly let the howling white mob know “I fought for my country in the war and I'm not running from you." He suffered for his brave stand. Nattily dressed topped by his trade mark fedora he continued walking in dignity even after he was borne to the ground several times by members of that vicious cowardly white mob. It is heartbreaking to watch the images of this slim 6 foot 3 inch dignified African man subjected to the brutal indignity of being slapped, punched, kicked, choked, hit on the head with bricks wielded by cowards backed by a screaming mob of white men and women. It has been recorded and reported, each time Wilson was knocked down, he picked up his fedora replaced it on his head and kept walking in dignity. The frenzied white mob could not make this African man lose his dignity and run like a terrified creature. The baying pack of Wilson’s attackers left him bruised, bloodied but not vanquished when the cry went up that a group of African American students had succeeded in entering Little Rock’s Central High School.



Wilson never recovered from the brutal assault to which he was subjected in Little Rock, Arkansas on September 23rd, 1957. This man who as editor in chief of the African American newspaper Tri-State Defender from Memphis, Tennessee had traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas to cover the story of the nine brave students who put their lives on the line to hold white supremacist America accountable, paid with his life. He suffered neurological damage as a result of the abuse and died when he was 50 years old on Oct. 11, 1960.



Elizabeth Eckford was not the only African American student in Little Rock who suffered mental and physical abuse. Each member of the Little Rock Nine have told their stories and some have even written books about their experience as the first to try to desegregate Little Rock Central High School. Terrence Roberts another member of the Little Rock who was also 15 years old in 1957 spoke about his experiences in school where there were no cameras to capture images of the vicious attacks he and his classmates suffered at the hands of white students and the racism from teachers. "They did everything you could possibly think of that one human being might do to another.” He talked about being hit on the side of the head with a combination lock in the gymnasium locker room, so hard it drove him to his knees. He was left stunned and bleeding from the head wound that resulted from the vicious attack. Each member of the Little Rock Nine persevered in spite of the daily abuse to which they were subjected and triumphed by graduating from high school, advancing to post secondary education and fulfilling careers.



Ontario’s public school system was integrated without the drama of Little Rock. However the trauma was not absent. The last segregated school in Ontario closed in 1965. Speaking with African Canadians who attended integrated schools in Toronto in the 1960s and even 70s there are many stories of traumatic incidents suffered at the hands of white teachers and classmates. Imagine a six year old African Canadian child, a descendant of Africans who had lived in this country for six generations, being used by her white teacher as the teaching aid for the reading of “Little Black Sambo.” For her entire grade one year in a Toronto public school, she was tormented by the teacher sitting her in front of the class and making derogatory remarks about the texture of her hair, the shape of her nose, her lips and the colour of her skin.


Elizabeth Eckford whose image fired my interest in the story of the Little Rock Nine even before I understood the significance of their action, suffered more trauma as an adult. On the morning of January 1, 2003, her son Erin, 26, was shot and killed by police in Little Rock. He was a student at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She has not allowed this tragedy to destroy her.

On Tuesday, August 30th, 2005 when the sculpture to honour the Little Rock Nine was unveiled at the Arkansas State Capitol she was there with the other eight members. A commemorative postage stamp was also released on the same day by the United States Postal Service in honour of the nine extraordinarily brave young people who risked life and limb to desegregate Little Rock Central High School. This year, 50 years after the nine students (Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Dr. Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls Lanier, Minnijean Brown Trickey, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed-Wair, and Melba Pattillo Beals) made history they will return to speak on the steps of the high school on the morning of September 25, remembering the day 50 years ago when they integrated Little Rock Central High School. A new center will be dedicated to educating visitors about the role of the Little Rock Nine in the civil rights movement.

Murphy Browne © September 2007

LOUISE SIMONE BENNETT COVERLY SEPTEMBER 7-1919

“Louise Bennett by the authenticity of her dialect verse, has given sensitive and penetrating artistic expression to our National Character. Her sympathetic, humorous and humanitarian observation of Jamaicans and our way of life, has been given literary expression in a medium which is ‘popular’ in the original and authentic meaning of that much abused word. Her work has constituted an invaluable contribution to the discovery and development of an indigenous culture and her verses are valid social documents reflecting the way we think and feel and live.”

Excerpt from the foreword of the 1961 published “Laugh with Louise: Pot-pourri of Jamaican Folklore, Stories, Songs Verses” written by Robert Godwin Beresford Verity former deputy director, Institute of Jamaica.

Louise Simone Bennett was born on September 7, 1919 on North Street in Kingston, Jamaica. The only child of Augustus Cornelius Bennett who transitioned in 1926 when she was only 7 years old and Kerene Robinson. At 14 years old she wrote her first poem in the Jamaican Patois which she would later elevate to a beloved National language. On Christmas day 1936 she made her first public appearance, at a concert, reciting a poem in Jamaican Patois. The then 17 year old Louise Simone Bennett received a prize of two guineas from the MC Eric Winston Coverley, who would later (in 1954) become her husband. That 1936 Christmas performance at the annual Coke Methodist Church concert was the beginning of a brilliant career. Louise Simone Bennett-Coverly would eventually become the internationally famous “Miss Lou.” Before “Miss Lou” the Jamaican Patois was regarded by many Jamaicans as an embarrassment. Speaking the language of the Jamaican people was felt to be socially unacceptable and the Jamaican middle and upper classes aspired to speaking British English. This was regarded as the epitome of cultured speech. It was felt that only the poor and illiterate spoke patois. Miss Lou would later write poetry to excoriate this mindset including “Noh Lickle Twang” and “Dry Foot Bwoy” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW9GeQF-1bU Miss Lou would later explain how the Jamaican language owes much to the African language Twi (from Ghana.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W58MtDzanqA

In 1943 Louise Simone Bennett enrolled at Friends College in Highgate, St Mary where she studied Jamaican folklore. Her poetry written in Jamaican patois was first published in the Sunday Gleaner in 1945. In 1945 Bennett also became the first African Jamaican student to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art after being awarded a scholarship from the British Council. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Bennett worked with repertory companies in Coventry, Huddersfield and Amersham, UK. During her time in Britain she hosted two radio programs for the BBC – Caribbean Carnival (1945–1946) and West Indian Night (1950). Returning to Jamaica, Bennett worked for the Jamaica Social Welfare Commission from 1955 to 1959 and taught folklore and drama at the University of the West Indies. From 1965 to 1982 she produced “Miss Lou's Views” a series of radio monologues and in 1970 began hosting the children's television program “Ring Ding.”

Bennett wrote several books and poetry in Jamaican Patois, helping to have it recognized as a "nation language." Her work influenced many Caribbean writers including Trinidadian writer/storyteller Paul Keens-Douglas, Jamaican dub poets Mutabaruka and Linton Kwesi Johnson. She also released numerous recordings of traditional Jamaican folk music and recordings from her radio and television shows. African American singer Harry Belafonte was influenced by Miss Lou in the singing of his wildly popular “Banana Boat Song.” Belafonte who released “Banana Boat Song” in 1956 had found Miss Lou “a wealth of information, a wonderful performer, very, very clever and keen.” He said that “she brought a life to so many people and she had a large influence on many things I had come to learn and to understand about the culture of the Caribbean.” On August 3, 2006 during an interview with BBC Caribbean Belafonte said: “Louise Bennett was very, very central to my deep interest in not only the folklore and history of Jamaica but the literary and academic players in her own verse and the way she spoke with scholars and did analysis on Jamaican life and history. Even without those limitations she had an overall view of the Caribbean, because she sang many songs which came from Trinidad, not just those which came from Jamaican lore although Jamaican folklore was central to her interest.”

Miss Lou lived the last decade of her life in Scarborough, Ontario. She transitioned to join the ancestors on July 27, 2006. A memorial service was held in Toronto on August 3, 2006 at Revivaltime Tabernacle, in North York, Ontario after which her body was flown to Jamaica to lie in state at the National Arena on August 7 and 8. A funeral was held in Kingston at the Coke Methodist Church on August 9, 2006 followed by her interment in the cultural icons section of the National Heroes Park.

Bennett-Coverley received many honours in recognition of her invaluable work. Miss Lou’s Room at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre opened in July 2007. Her contribution to African Caribbean culture is immeasurable! The Honourable Dr. Louise Simone Bennett-Coverley OM, OJ, MBE would have celebrated her 98th birthday on September 7, 2017.