Six thousand words in the books today. My best work to date in terms of style, pacing, and content. “Freaknik Lawyer,” coming soon.
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Tuskegee Snaps Lane’s Ten Game Win Streak
Tuskegee University batting against Lane College at Paterson Field in Montgomery, Alabama, Photo Credit ©2019, Harold Michael Harvey
MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA Lane College rolled through Montgomery, Alabama last weekend to take on the Tuskegee Golden Tigers baseball team. After a slow start early in the season, Lane picked up steam and came into this four-game weekend series on a seven-game win streak.
“Our bats have come alive,” Patrick Barbour, Lane College first-year Head Baseball Coach said.
“Suddenly, we are hitting the ball. These kids think they can win,” Barbour said.
Indeed, Lane’s bats were hot. The Lane batters tallied 53 hits in the series. The Dragons banged out 16 hits on Saturday en route to a 10 to 3 victory. They came back in the second game of the doubleheader and pulled out a tight 6–3 win. The team collected 12 hits.
After Lane picked up 15 hits in the first of two on Sunday, winning 14–4, Tuskegee’s Head Coach, Reginald Hollins was facing a sweep. The Dragons were on a ten game winning streak.
“I did not want to get the sweep,” Hollins said after his squad held on to win a 9–8 game in the second game of Sunday’s doubleheader. In this game, Lane batters had ten hits.
“I knew coming into this series Lane was hot, and their bats were on fire.,” Hollins said.
Tuskegee avoided the sweep on the strength of the offensive and defensive play of second baseman Dominic Johnson.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, Tuskegee led 6–5. Johnson came to the plate with the bases loaded. He hit a double to right clearing the bases giving Tuskegee a 9–5 lead.
In the top of the sixth, Lane scored a run on a passed ball by Nytorious Cooler, who pitched two strong innings in relief of Hunter Hudson.
With two runners on base Elias Zachar hit a triple and was thrown out at the plate as Dominic Johnson relayed a throw from R. Martin in right field to home plate to capture Zachar in a controversial play. Zachar attempted to jump over Tuskegee ‘s catcher Jared Steele.
Steele held on and made the tag for the third out, preserving Tuskegee’s 9–8 lead. In addition to driving in what turned out to be the winning runs, Johnson’s throw to the plate kept the team’s one-run lead intact going into the top of the seventh and final inning.
Hudson shutout out Lane the first three innings. He gave up five runs in the fourth.
Cooler came in and despite giving up three runs in the sixth preserved Tuskegee’s one-run lead.
In the top of the seventh inning, Coach Hollins reached into his deep bullpen and sent Emperor Williams out to the mound. The freshman from Jonesboro, Georgia, took command of the game, striking out two and getting the last out on a foul out to the shortstop down the left field line.
Out of the four games, Tuskegee played two competitive games, although they lost 6–3 on the back end of Saturday’s doubleheader.
“I wish I can get my guys to play with the heart that the Lane kids have. You can never count Lane out. They keep coming.” Hollins said noting that his team always are very competitive in the conference tournament.
“I know we can play well all seasons as we play in the tournament. I am trying to find the right combination by the time we get to the tournament.”
Last year, Tuskegee almost played themselves out of the losers bracket to reach the championship game but lost a heart breaker to Kentucky State University on a controversial ball hit down the right-field line.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine, Medium, and Black College Nines. Contact him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com
Atlanta Re-opens the 1970s Missing and Murder Children Cases
Over 40 years ago, the city of Atlanta, Georgia closed the books on the “missing and murdered” children cases. From about 1977 through 1981, 28 Black children and young adults disappeared from Atlanta streets in an impoverished section of the city.
These youngsters, both male, and female were never again seen alive. Fear gripped Blacks in the city “too busy to hate.” The law enforcement authorities and the mainstream media was slow to recognize there was a mass murderer afoot in Atlanta.
In the early days, save for reports in the Black-owned Atlanta Daily World newspaper, there was hardly any coverage given to this story. Without media coverage, the police were slow in recognizing there might be a connection to the missing children reports that were mounting at the pace of a disco drum-beat.
When the child murders started, Maynard Jackson had just become the first Black person elected mayor in a major southern city. The white power structure that had run things in Atlanta since 1847 did not adjust well to the loss of their political power base at city hall.
Tension mounted when Jackson sought to replace the Chief of Police with Reggie Eaves, a law school classmate from Boston, Massachuset. The old chief vowed not to move out of his office. Gun-toting officers on both sides stared each other down. Jackson eased tensions by creating the position of Public Safety Commissioner. He hired Eaves for this position and placed the Chief of Police under the command of the Public Safety Commissioner, within no time, the Chief retired.
Jackson outsmarted the old bosses at every turn. Then reports of missing and murder children began to pop up until the city and police could no longer pretend that something was not amiss.
This week, Atlanta Mayor Keshia Lance-Bottom, a teenager when the missing and murder children case arose, called for a new investigation of these cases with the use of the twenty-first-century forensic technology that was not available in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
Lance-Bottom says she is moved to call for a new investigation because her mind is not settled with the outcome of the research and the conviction of Wayne Williams.
Williams was arrested, tried and convicted of two missing and murder children cases. Within hours of his conviction, the Fulton County District Attorney posited that they had gotten their man who single-handedly kidnapped and murdered all 28 people. Thus he closed the remaining cases without trying Williams for those murders. No trial, no proof, and no explanation of how Williams, a non-athletic music promoter and freelance journalist committed the remaining 26 murders.
The district attorney, wiped his hands one after another several time; and then, stored the case files in the Fulton County dungeon, cases closed, out of sight, out of mind.
The whole city blew a collective sigh of relief. The punny boogie man, although he testified, “I ain’t killed nobody,” was locked away for the rest of his life.
I was a law student when Williams was arrested and stood trial. Since Williams conviction, I have had an eerie feeling that somebody was anxious for the missing and murder children cases to go away. And if my gut is correct, why?
In March 2012, I interviewed the humanist, Dick Gregory, while he waited for the start of a vigil for Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. During this interview, Gregory intimated that George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin as an act to gain “admittance into some paramilitary or semi-police fraternal order.”
I pressed Gregory on this claim. He alluded to the Atlanta missing and murdered children cases.
Gregory advocated a theory advanced by James Baldwin in his 1985 essay: The Evidence of Things Not Seen. Baldwin posits that a racist based organization was behind the Atlanta missing and murdered children crisis. This book was black-balled as Baldwin fail to receive the national acclaim for his research for the first time since his debut as a writer.
Baldwin contended that as late as the summer of 1981 the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was investigating a Klansman named George Sanders. An informant told police Sanders stated the “…killer had wiped out a thousand future generations of Niggers.” (See AP, August 2005).
The informant later testified in court that Sanders told him, “The KKK was creating an uprising among the blacks; that they were killing the children, and they are going to do one each month until things blow up.”
Things were about to blow up when a daycare center that catered to Black children exploded. Atlanta’s black community, frustrated with no answers, no end to the disappearance and murders insight, became angry.
Tensions boiled over.
Mayor Jackson reported that the daycare center had not been the target of a bomb, but the boiler had exploded. He asked the city to remain calm. Then produced a television commercial with him surrounded with what he said was a million dollars, which he would give to anyone who came forth with information that led to the capture and prosecution of the person responsible for abducting the city’s Black children.
Within weeks following the airing of this commercial, Wayne Williams was targeted for arrest. To this very day, no one has come forth to claim the million dollar reward.
Luie Geter was one of the children snatched off the streets of Atlanta and murdered. He is one of the 26 whom the district attorney blamed on Williams but never charged him or tried him.
Ironically, the informant testified that Sanders “threatened to strangle one of the children, Luie Geter, because Geter ran into Sanders’ car with a go-cart” (See Houston Chronicle, October 9, 1991).
There is no evidence that Lance-Bottom is seeking to track down a link to a hate group. However, her call for a fresh look at the evidence, especially, in the 26 cases closed without charging or prosecuting anyone, is welcome. Additionally, it will bring closure to the mothers of the missing and murdered children. They deserve to know whether we witnessed justice or a miscarriage of justice in the mass kidnapping and murder of Atlanta’s Black children.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine, Medium, and Black College Nines. Contact him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com
Mueller Clears Trump of Collusion-But Not Obstruction
Special Counsel Robert Mueller after a 22-month long investigation clears President Donald J. Trump of collusion with the Russians to influence the 2016 Presidential election.
Mueller’s delivered his confidential report to Attorney General William Barr as required by law over the weekend. Then, Barr issued a four-page letter to leaders of the Senate and the House.
Barr’s letter summarizes the critical findings of the Mueller report.
Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election
First, the Russian attempted to interfere with the 2016 Presidential election through (a), a disinformation campaign via social media designed to sow discord in the United States; and (b), the Russians employed a successful hacking operation. Mueller found the Russians hacked into the computers of Secretary Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
According to Barr, Mueller did not find any coordination between the Russians and either the Trump campaign or any individuals working with the Trump campaign.
Inafootnote, Barrwrote, “The Special counsel defined ‘coordination’ as an ‘agreement-tacit or express-between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference.’”
No collusion.
Obstruction of Justice
On the obstruction of justice charge, Mueller took the path of least resistance. In the well-established method, the special counsel lays out the pros and cons for obstruction of justice and then make a recommendation for or against prosecution. Mueller, according to Barr’s letter opted to provide the evidence on both sides of the issue but declined to make a recommendation for or against prosecution.
In absence of a recommendation from the special counsel, Barr as the Attorney General has the responsibility to determine whether to press charges or not to press them.
Barr in consultation with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided not to charge the President for obstruction of justice for many of his public antics and pronouncements involving the Mueller investigation.
The chief fact Barr uses to come to this conclusion is the absence of any proof in Mueller’s report that Trump was engaged in “an underlying crime to Russian election interference.”
Barr reached the same conclusion that has been put forth by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Although this is the determination of the Attorney General, full disclosure of the report may lead another trier of fact, i. e., the United States Congress to come to a different conclusion. Barr acknowledges as much in closing his letter by laying out the parameters for the release of portions of Mueller’s report. He acknowledges that “the report contains material that is or could be subject to Federal Rules of Criminal Procedures.
While Mueller’s report did not find the Trump Campaign or members associated with the campaign committed collusion with the Russians to tilt the election towards Trump, neither does this report exonerate Trump.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine, Medium, and Black College Nines. He can be contacted at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com
Now They Have Come for the Muslims
Now the white supremacists have come for the Muslims. They first came for Black Christians during a Wednesday night prayer meeting in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, next they came for a group of Gays partying in a night club in Orlando, Florida, then a group of Jews in a Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and now, Muslims in a Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Every group on the planet has been gunned down by the white supremacists except normal white people who do not harbor the racial superiority ethos espoused by the Ayran nation.
Now is the time for normal whites in American, Europe, and Eurasia to mobilize for the eradication of this cancerous boil that is killing non-white people at an alarming rate.
It is clear, that white supremacists have declared war on people of color around the globe. These violent acts should no longer be considered acts of terrorism, but a direct act of war. The manifesto of the Christchurch gunner proves this point.
In the 1960s, the Federal Bureau of Investigations embarked upon a campaign to destroy The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. We were living in a white world in the 60s and the fragile white egos could not abide a group of young Black men openly carrying guns before “open carry” was a rallying cry for white supremacists. In order to eliminate this group, the FBI framed some Black leaders like Geronimo Pratt, whom they could not kill; and murdered others in their sleep, like Fred Hampton, whom they could not frame.
I’m not suggesting the FBI break any laws in eliminating the white supremacist horde, but I do believe the FBI should in due haste use all available legal means to suppress this very dangerous group.
Now is the time for good men and women to speak out, to act, and to act up, if necessary, to address this minority that is ultimately making the planet less safe for all diverse groups who call earth home.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine, Medium, and Black College Nines. He can be contacted at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com
In the Shadow of a King
H
Charles Steele, Jr. was 22 years old on the day that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on the third-floor balcony of a colored motel in Memphis, Tennessee. By that time, King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference had won two important victories.
First, congressional passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This measure opened areas of public accommodations to the nation’s Negro citizens. Despite King’s work in this area, on his April 1968 visit to Memphis, he chose to patronize the Black-owned Lorraine Motel.
Secondly, the next year, King did something that President Lyndon Baines Johnson had told him a year earlier it would be impossible to do. He had maneuvered Congress into placing the 1965 Voting Rights Act on Johnson’s desk. This Bill codified federal oversight into state and local elections in the American South, among other things, requiring Justice Department approval to any changes made to election laws — primarily in the “deep south”- where the vote had been denied to Negroes since the death of Reconstruction.
Both legislative achievements grew out of civil disobedience, bloodshed and the loss of life. Such is the ethos of SCLC: struggles, deaths, and monumental achievements. Those who signed on to work for the civil rights goals of this organization understood and embraced this methodology. Although, time and the skillful use of this stratagem brought about many different tools, there are members and affiliates of SCLC who want to continue to wage the war against “poverty, war and militarism” via the affliction and death inherent in this tool.
By age 22, Steele had gained valuable civil rights experience. In 1954, he was eight years old when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People successfully overturned Plessy versus Ferguson. This epic case outlawed the segregated caste system that economically and socially separated white citizens from Black citizens in America.
Today, he aptly notes that “Every significant civil rights advancement made in America, except the Brown versus Board of Education case, has been brought about through the work of SCLC.”
He is extremely proud of this fact.
In 1954, the US Supreme Court declared, “that public education should be desegregated with all deliberate speed.” Steele was ready for the desegregated school, but his parents, a mortician and an elementary school teacher, sent him off to school in the segregated Black school system in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It was separate from the school attended by white kids from Tuscaloosa and unequal in terms of educational facilities and learning resources.
During this time, Steele had a dream. The University of Alabama campus abutted “The Bottom,” the segregated Black neighborhood where he lived. The Black kids were not allowed onto the campus, so during baseball season, they would sit on the outfield fence that separated the races and watch white college students play baseball. Steele dreamed of sitting inside the stadium to watch a baseball game. Over time, the University of Alabama relaxed its policy and allowed Blacks to attend their baseball games in designated segregated seating. Steele knew in his heart that there was something inherently unfair in being relegated to second class citizenship.
Then in 1963, he was hit with the SCLC bug. In his book, Easier to Obtain than to Maintain: The Globalization of Civil Rights (Cascade Publishing House, 2016, Atlanta, p. xxix), Steele tells the story this way:
“I remember the 1963 Civil Rights Movement in my hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, as if it was yesterday. A young man at the time, I was active in the ‘Movement.’ My friends and family lived on every word of Dr. Martin Luther King. The Tuscaloosa community was especially fortunate to have Reverend T. Y. Rogers, a member of Dr. King’s staff living and pastoring in our town. Reverend Rogers held weekly rallies, usually on Monday nights at the First African Baptist Church where he pastored.”
Rogers had a big influence on the type of civil rights leader Steele would ultimately become. 1n 1963, the Tuscaloosa News captured the fiery rhetoric of Rogers. You can see similarities in the retorts of Steele today. During a Monday night Mass Meeting Rogers averred:
“We will continue to demand that justice is served. The United States Constitution and the rights of every American citizen must be protected. We will not stop, we will not back down. We will march, we will have sit-ins, and we will boycott every business in this town [Tuscaloosa] that refuses to respect the dignity and rights of all citizens regardless of color. We will not stop until Jim Crow laws and segregation are removed from this town and everywhere else in this country.”
Coming under the tutelage of Rogers, Steele learned King’s approach to civil rights agitation. Thus, it came as no surprise that as a young adult, Steele would lead the local Tuscaloosa SCLC Chapter and that he would eventually become State President of the Alabama Chapter of SCLC.
As a young civil rights activist, Steele once barricaded himself in the Tuscaloosa Board of Education office for about a week. He refused to come out until concessions were made on providing equal educational opportunities for Black children in his hometown. After days without food and water, Steele emerged famished and victorious.
The hometown rallied around their native son, electing him as one of the first Black members of the city council and later sending him to the State Senate in Montgomery. As a city councilman and state legislator, he learned how to build relationships, which enabled him to negotiate deals without the necessity of facing the police violence which characterized marches during the leadership of King.
While Steele engrossed himself in negotiating a deal to bring a Mercedes Benz manufacturing plant to a Tuscaloosa suburb, to bring high paying jobs for the Tuscaloosa Black community, the national civil rights movement stalled. With the 1992 election of President William Jefferson Clinton, Black people felt they had elected the first Black President. Clinton, a southerner from Arkansas knew the language of good race relations. Black leaders felt comfortable with him and let down their guard. Civil rights activism was at an all-time low. Towards the end of Clinton’s second term, Dr. Joseph Lowery retired as the President and CEO of SCLC.
For the first 41 years, SCLC was led by three men — King, Ralph David Abernathy, and Lowery -all of whom were included in the original seven conveners of the organization. Fred Shuttlesworth would later serve after the organization declined in the early years of the 21st century. The remaining conveners Ella Baker, C. K. Steele, and Bayard Rustin never served as President. King, Abernathy, and Lowery were steady at the helm of the premier civil rights organization in the 20th century. They had a firm grasp on the founding principles of SCLC.
Lowery retired in 1998. He was succeeded by Martin Luther King, III., son of a major organizer of SCLC.
King, III had not grown into the leader he is today, and the board of old civil rights stalwarts had a hard time following his leadership. Perhaps they expected him to be his father, which of course, no one could ever be. No Black leader in this country has ever had Dr. King’s training in religion, philosophy, and politics. No Black leader, not even President Barrack Obama, can avoid being in the shadow of King. The young King moved the National SCLC headquarters from the Masonic building on “Sweet” Auburn Avenue to Edgewood Avenue in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic District.
Suffice it to say, SCLC on the backdrop of the Clinton Presidency and coupled with an improvement in the condition of middle-class Blacks, entered a quiet period in its history. As did all civil rights organizations. They all began a search for relevancy in the new millennium.
When King, III resigned in 2004 to pursue other opportunities, the SCLC board turned to the steady hand of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, whom Dr. King had called the most “courageous man he knew.” Shuttleworth, never a man able to tolerate foolishness well quickly grew tired of the palace intrigue on the board and went back home to Birmingham.
The board looked for someone outside of the founding inner circle. Charles Steele, Jr. was their leader. At the time he was growing in stature and power as a senator in the Alabama Legislature. The organization was broke. The rent on the building was due, the lights and telephones were cut-off and the staff was living on promises that one day soon, they would receive a paycheck.
Steele heard the call. It tugged at him. Since the early 1960s when he listened to Rev. T. Y. Rogers during Monday night Mass Meetings, SCLC had held a special place in his heart. On November 12, 2004, Steele left his seat in the Alabama Senate and drove over to Atlanta, Georgia. The first night in Atlanta, Steele called his wife Kathleen and told her he had checked into a five-star hotel and would send for her in a few days. Instead, he fell asleep in his car the first night he was in town. The next day he visited with Rev. Timothy Flemming at Mount Carmel Baptist Church.
He told Flemming about his dream: “As a result of the changing face of America, going forward, we must revolutionize the way we think about our approach to conflict reconciliation, economic development, and increasing our worldwide exposure.”
Flemming was so impressed with the new direction that Steele wanted to take SCLC, that he, in the Biblical sense, “sowed a seed of $25,000” into SCLC to keep it afloat.
Steele paid the rent, turned on the lights and telephones, then he got busy with plans to build a permanent home for SCLC.
“Before I became President and CEO of SCLC, only one civil rights organization (NAACP) in this country had ever built a headquarters from the ground up. If we were going to make civil rights a permanent institution in America, we needed our own building, we needed a place where we can hold workshops on nonviolence,” Steele said.
Steele rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He lobbied corporate America to partner with SCLC to build a state-of-the-art headquarters on Auburn Avenue, two doors down the street from where Dr. King had had his office. The public utility kicked in $20 million for the construction of the building.
Under the leadership of Steele, SCLC marched when it was necessary as in the 2006 case of the “Jena Six” and at other times he brokered peace between a group of Black Jews and the Israeli government.
“I envision SCLC becoming an organization with a very strong global presence. To support this vision, I am focused on building a worldwide network that is interconnected with others in a very real and significant way,” Steele said of his vision for SCLC in the 21st century.
In 2009, the construction of the headquarters building was completed. When SCLC moved into the building, it was free and clear of any debt. The organization was able to make payroll and meet its expenses. Steele had done what he was brought on board to do, so he resigned to pursue a career in international consulting.
Soon after Steele departed, there was in-fighting on the board. Some members of the board indebted the headquarters building, and checks were written on the organization’s bank account without accountability. There were lawsuits and countersuits. Little civil rights work was being done.
“Leadership on the board level was not that good,” said Dr. Bernard Lafayette. “I was not the chair of the board at that time, I was just a board member. We went through several presidents, which is problematical. When I became chairman of the board, I looked for a leader who could raise money, manage staff and had the ability to identify the critical issues that had to be addressed,” Lafayette continue.
SCLC again turned to a proven and trusted leader. In 2012, Steele was asked to come back to get the ship back on course.
“Dr. Steele was a natural choice. He is not a newcomer. He is clear on his values, which are consistent with the values of SCLC. He does not bite his tongue. He is a family man and the fact that he gives him sympathy towards people in prison and those living in poverty. Anything that he would say is in the best of the people,” Lafayette said.
Steele came back and cleared up the debt on the building, “so SCLC will always have a home,” he said at the time. The board rewarded him by naming the international headquarters, The Charles Steele, Jr. Building.
“I have to say that Dr. Steele is the number one reason that SCLC is still in business today. Look around you, SNCC is gone and CORE is gone, but because of Steele SCLC is still here,” Lafayette said.
Now a group of disgruntled civil rights warriors in search of the glory days of SCLC have started a petition to force Steele and Lafayette to resign. Marching and protesting are what these warriors did in the second half of the 20th century and marching is what they want to do in the first quarter of the 21st century. They applaud Steele for joining a voter’s suppression lawsuit in Georgia but decry him for not yelling racism loud enough in the streets.
As Steele lingers in the shadow of King, he has the added burden of giving SCLC relevancy into the next century, while the warriors of old clamor for his demise.
“It’s like Jesus and the fig tree,” Steele posited, “God gave us a gift in SCLC, but the people had stopped being fruitful. When I saw the shape that SCLC was in, I said to myself, God is about to curse SCLC if she doesn’t start bearing fruit again. These critics were here before I came to SCLC the first time. They were here when I came back, but they were not bearing fruit. Now they claim we are doing a poor job, hello somebody,” Steele said, as only he can say “hello somebody.”
“My job is bringing the street to the suite and the suite to the street,” he said.
Steele believes he can negotiate monumental achievements without shedding blood and without the assassinations of the 1960s. It is an extension of the behind-the-scenes negotiations that King orchestrated in winning passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. It is the nitty-gritty work that champions civil rights. It is not as romanticized as marching down the street with several hundred thousand protesters waving placards and shouting slogans.
Several years ago, in his home Rev. C. T. Vivian, King’s Director of Affiliate Chapters, revealed the following to this writer.
“Following the passage of the Voting Rights Act, I told Martin (Dr. King) that he had brought about all the change that could be done in this generation. I left the organization to develop a social service program in Chicago and was not around the last two years of his life. Many of us had left before Martin started the “Poor People’s Campaign. We thought it was time to use other methods to solidify the benefits of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voters Rights Act of 1965,” Vivian said.
This seems to have been the consensus coming from King’s inner circle. It’s hard to imagine that at 90 years of age King would still be a proponent of street marches as the central means to bring about social change.
In any event, Steele remains steadfast on the case. He toils in the shadow of King. This is precisely why his labor of love is misunderstood.
“I’ve saved this organization twice,” Steele said, adding, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine, Medium, and Black College Nines. He can be contacted at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com
Harold Michael Harvey,author of Paper Puzzle and Justice in the Round,is an award winning journalist and political pundit.He has a B.S. and a JD degree.More from H. Michael HarveyCan Judge Kavanaugh Survive Another FBI Investigation?H. Michael HarveySep 29, 201851More from H. Michael HarveyKamala Harris Is Who She Says She IsH. Michael HarveyFeb 339
Atlanta Metro RBI’s Barnstorming Humanitarian Tour Across Puerto Rico: In the Spirit of Robinson, Clemente, and King
What better way to learn how to serve others than to walk in the footsteps of those who have done it?
In January, a group of 13–15-year-old baseball players from Atlanta set out on a humanitarian mission to hurricane ravished Puerto Rico. They learned what it was like to barnstorm across Puerto Rico like Satchel Paige and other Negro League players who would travel to the Caribbean to play baseball during the offseason on the mainland. And they learned what it means to give back to others in the spirit of Jackie Robinson, Roberto Clemente and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The spirit of Clemente looms large over the Island.
He had a big heart for the less fortunate.
“I love people and I love the minority people, I love people that are not big shots, the common people, the people who have suffered. I love the workers, the poor people because they have a different approach to life than rich people who have everything and get bored…,” RobertoClemente once said.
This explains why Clemente spent his off-season away from professional baseball helping people in the Caribbean Islands who did not have as much as baseball had given him. Clemente was born in the Carolina community in Puerto Rico, an impoverished area outside of San Juan.
He dreamed of one day building a sports complex in Carolina to teach baseball skills to Puerto Rican youngsters. His dream was cut short on December 31, 1972, when the plane he was in dropped out the sky into the Atlantic Ocean during a rainstorm. The wreckage was never recovered.
Clemente was on a humanitarian mission. He was taking relief supplies to Nicaragua after an earthquake hit the country on December 23, 1972. His ill-fated flight was his third relief trip to Nicaragua. When most Americans were preparing for a New Year’s Eve celebration, Clemente was preparing for a relief mission.
Clemente could have sent the aid and not gone on the trip with the supplies, but he feared that the Somoza family who had ruled Nicaragua since being installed into power by the Americans in 1912 would take the supplies from the poor and give them to the rich. He was so popular in Latin America that the military junta did not dare mistreat the poor in Clemente’s presence.
Today, Major League Baseball operates 21 RBI Academy’s (Reviving Baseball in the Inner City) on the island that is 100 miles long and 35 miles wide. Flying into San Juan you can literally see baseball diamonds etched into the landscape all over the island like they had been formed at the beginning of time by God Almighty.
This January the ATLANTA METRO RBI program undertook a humanitarian mission in the spirit of Clemente and coupled it with a barnstorming trip for Black American teenagers to compete against Puerto Rican players.
How do you teach middle school age Black Americans, who were born in the strongest economy in the world, the human spirit as expressed by Clemente?
First, if you are John Hollins, a successful account executive for an Atlanta television station, you believe that teaching Black teenagers to have the humanitarian spirit of Roberto Clemente, the hope of Jackie Robinson and the promise of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a worthwhile goal.
Next, you use baseball as the tool to get your message over to them and to bring cheer to Americans devastated by a natural disaster.
Hollins conceived the idea after he viewed news account of the havoc wrought by Hurricane Marie when she swept through Puerto Rico in 2017. Hollins, not one to simply toss paper towels in the aftermath of a destructive storm, partnered with Major League Baseball, The Atlanta Braves Baseball Club, and Mizuno to help the RBI program recover from the storm. The island was too unstable in 2017 and 2018 for him to make a trip, so Hollins went to work coordinating the future relief effort.
To bring the point home to his players, Hollins planned the humanitarian trip to begin 18 days after the 47 year anniversary of Clemente’s plane crash, on the first day of the King Week Celebration, which this year included what would have been Dr. King’s 90th birthday, and 13 days before the 100th birthday of Jackie Robinson. It was a powerful weekend, loaded with symbolism.
A week before the January 18, 2019 date that his team arrived on the island, Mizuno shipped $42,000 worth of baseball equipment for the RBI programs in Aguadilla and Carolina, Puerto Rico to replace equipment that had been damaged by Marie.
When Hollins left the mainland with 16 teenagers, two coaches, a trainer and two journalists in tow, a quarter of the federal government was closed. The nation’s air traffic controllers and TSA agents were asked to work without pay. Many of these youngsters had never flown. There was some concern for the safety of the youngsters on the trip, which made this voyage reminiscent of Clemente’s New Year Eve run.
The plane pushed away from the gate, taxied down the runway and left Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Several of the players let out a scream, which soon gave way to playful fun, laughter and then sleeps. Upon landing at Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, to underscore their relief, the entire team applauded the pilot for safely landing the plane.
The ATLANTA METRO RBI had landed in the midafternoon. The players were eager to meet their Puerto Rican counterparts and compete. First up on Saturday morning, a bus ride from San Juan to Aguadilla, where the kids were able to see some of the countryside and evidence of Hurricane Marie that still lingered on the island. There were beautiful box houses on cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, smaller houses, two years later still showing the impact of Marie and roadside stands that sold everything from bananas to cars to rum and much more.
Eddie Rodriguez, League Director of Puerto Rico Aguadilla RBI, and his team welcomed the Atlanta team as they got off the bus. Each Aguadilla player gave each Atlanta player a Puerto Rican flag, a handshake, and a hug as their appreciation for the baseball equipment brought from Atlanta and to show brotherhood to their peers from the mainland.
Carlos Mendez, the Mayor of Aguadilla and the city’s First Lady were on hand to welcome the Atlantans. Mayor Mendez, mindful that this year marks the 400th anniversary of the enslavement of African people in the Americas, greeted each member of the Atlanta delegation with the salutation, “Welcome home.”
It was an acknowledgment that the Caribbean Islands were the first stopping points where Africans were introduced to the enslaved life they would live and the services they would render in the colonies. If an African could not be broken of his desire to escape and find his or her way back to Africa, they remained on the island, rebellious and determined to be free.
Ghana, the first African nation-state to gain its independence from colonial rule in 1957 in a ceremony attended by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has dubbed 2019 as “The Year of Return.” Mayor Mendez’s “welcome home” greeting brought this band of African Americans full circle. They had left the mainland to render aid to their brothers in the Caribbean Sea and were greeted as the “Prodigal Son” was greeted by his father when he returned. In Aguadilla, they roasted the fattest pig and paired it with beans and rice for a festive feast after the game. The game, almost an afterthought all weekend, was won by Aguadilla RBI 10–8.
Jackie Robinson’s enduring spirit
Jackie Robinson believed that his accomplishments were meaningless if other Black Americans did not have the same opportunities that he had been given by virtue of his contribution ushering in the modern era of major league baseball.
“I’m grateful for all the breaks and honors and opportunities I’ve had, but I always believe I won’t have it made until the humblest black kid in the most remote backwoods of America has it made,” Jackie Robinson once said.
Two weeks after the trip to Puerto Rico this writer was interviewed on a radio talk show that emanates out of Montgomery, Alabama, where much of 20th-century civil rights history was made. The discussion turned to Robinson’s 100th birthday. A female host on the program, who is too young to know about the hard-fought battles of Montgomery, down-played the legacy of Robinson by exclaiming, “He was treated like a dog and did not fight back.” She had to be reminded that her life would not be so grand today had Robinson not taken the bad treatment. In fact, her cavalier attitude about Robinson’s contribution to society would not exist as she would be too focused on surviving the same taunts and acts of degradation that Robinson experienced, alas, Ralph Northam.
Trips like the one taken to Puerto Rico by the Atlanta Metro RBI help to educate young people without a segregation past about the pioneers who labored at great difficulty to enable today’s Black kids to play computer games in the morning and dress for a game of baseball in the afternoon, all the while chasing a future in professional baseball.
Despite the horribly low numbers of Black Americans in major league baseball today — around eight percent of all players in the league — Blacks stood no chance of gaining a position on a major league roster prior to 1946, the year Jackie Robinson signed a contract to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Before Robinson, you would have to look back to 1905 for the last time major league baseball owners entertained the idea of allowing Blacks in the league. That year, the Boston Beaneaters sought to end the “Gentlemen Agreement” that kept Blacks out of the white major league. They wanted to sign William Clarence Matthews, who played shortstop four years each at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Beaneaters later became the Boston Braves before the franchise moved to Milwaukee (1953) and later to Atlanta (1965). The Braves were the first dynasty in professional baseball, having won six of the first eight National Association pennants. In 1906, the year after Matthews hung up his spikes and opted for law school, the Beaneaters changed their name to Braves.
Jarrod Simmons, Senior Coordinator, Community Affairs for the Atlanta Braves Baseball Club, assisted Atlanta Metro RBI in the coordination for the trip.
“The Braves want to help any way we can. It wasn’t a hard thing to think through, kids from Atlanta taking baseball equipment to Puerto Rico after the hurricane. How can you not get involved in a good project like this,” Simmons queried in the spirit of Roberto Clemente?
Robinson played two years in the majors with Clemente, the 1955 and 1956 seasons. At age 37 (the entire breadth of Clemente’s life) Robinson was deemed too old to contribute to the Dodgers’ success and was traded to the New York Giants.
In 1956, baseball owners had a reserve clause in all professional contracts which essentially bound a player to the ball club for the entirety of their career. The players were prohibited from seeking employment with other teams. Yet they could be traded on a whim like cows or horses or Negroes in earlier times when America was engaged in healthy Trans-Atlantic slave trade. It ran from the west coast of Africa to the Caribbean Islands to the colonies which ultimately became the United States. History often notes the impact Robinson made with his entrance into baseball, but seldom notes the fact that he refused to be traded to the Giants because a trade under the reserve clause made him feel like a slave, so he retired in the rebellious spirit of his brothers left in the islands of seas centuries ago.
Robinson hoped one-day all Blacks would be free of reserve clauses, restrictive Jim Crow laws, and separate unequal facilities.
Clemente was born Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker but went by his mother’s name, Clemente. In 1954, seven years after the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Robinson to a major league contract, they signed Clemente as one of their first Latin American players. There may have been other Latin American players in the league, but Clemente was unmistakable, Black. He was a 20-year-old unprotected bonus baby ($400).
He was assigned to the Montreal Royals as Robinson had been. But he seldom received any playing time and was assigned to take batting practice with the pitchers. The Pittsburgh Pirates discovered his talented arm despite efforts by the Dodgers to hide him from other teams until they were ready to introduce a Latin player into their line-up. Five years after signing with the Pirates, Clemente led them to a World Series win over the New York Yankees (1960). His stalwart play would have won him the Series MVP but for the first game seven walk-off home run in World Series history by Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski. Then, 11 years later he led them back to the World Series and a win over the Frank Robinson led Baltimore Orioles and their trio of 20-game winners.
His professional baseball career ended abruptly in 1972 with his tragic death, two months after Jackie Robinson had given up the holy ghost, finally, teammates again.
“When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached.
In recent years, the emphasis of major league baseball has been focused on the development of Latin American talent. This was a dream of Clemente. In the off-season, he would host clinics for Puerto Rican boys and teach baseball. As the numbers of Latin American players have grown in the league, the number of Black Americans in the league has declined. To address this decline, Major League Baseball implemented a program to revive baseball in urban America which was adopted from an initiative begun in 1989 in South Central Los Angeles by John Young, a former major leaguer.
John Hollins began volunteering in the Atlanta RBI program in the early 2000s. He took his passion for baseball and social concerns to the baseball diamond where he teaches discipline on the field and relates it to discipline off the field, in the home, and in school.
Hollins was raised in a Black middle-class family in Atlanta, Georgia, the home of Dr. King and a city that chose to be “too busy to hate” during the battle for civil rights waged by King.
His parents are products of two of the nation’s stalwart historical Black Colleges and Universities. His mom, a graduate of Benedict College, which was founded in 1870 by Northern Baptist in Columbia, South Carolina for the education of its Black citizens. His dad in between service in the army had stopped at Tuskegee Institute, in Alabama where he played football and South Carolina State in Orangeburg, South Carolina, where he played baseball on their national championship team in the mid-1960s. His mom worked 30 years as a social worker for Planned Parenthood. His father, the enforcer in the family worked as a certified police officer for much of his employment years with Georgia State University, where Hollins would attend school and play baseball.
Like many red-blooded American boys, Hollins dreamed of playing professional baseball. A crafty right-handed hurler, he experienced some success at Georgia State University. When he did not make the jump to the big leagues, he kept his hands in the game of baseball. First teaching the game to his son Wes Hollins, now a successful Atlanta attorney and a coach on the RBI team. Then in the first decade of this century, he got involved in the RBI program.
“When I saw the devastation in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Marie, I wanted to go immediately and help, but the infrastructure was not strong enough to bring kids,” Hollins said in the spirit of Clemente.
“Then I thought, Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend Celebration should be a weekend of serving others. What better time to serve our US home island of Puerto Rico? Since baseball is a religion to some on the island, it was a perfect tie-in to what we are hoping to achieve with the ATL METRO RBI program,” he said.
“Our goal is to develop future leaders through positive mentoring, training and promoting excellence. What better way to do that than teaching them to live a purposeful life by serving others? Now the boys get to play the game they love and help those who love the game,” Hollins added.
Prior to the trip, 14-year-old left-handed pitcher Tionne Witherspoon said that as a result of planning for the humanitarian trip he thought it would be good to give back to his community when he gets back from Puerto Rico.
“I would like to help the homeless in Dekalb County,” said Witherspoon, in the spirit of Clemente. After Witherspoon pitched a perfect seventh inning to close out the last game in Roberto Clemente Stadium, a game won by Carolina RBI 10–3, he sat in the dugout and thought about how he would approach his service after he returned to the states.
“I’m not sure how I am going to approach helping the homeless, but I have seen a lot of poor areas here and I am more committed to serving others when I get back home,” he averred in the spirit of King.
Clint Sammons at Mizuno made the effort possible by donating the baseball equipment.
“After the devastation that Puerto Rico has endured, and knowing how beloved baseball is on the island, it was really a no-brainer for us. We are thrilled to be a small part of this great humanitarian mission and it fits perfectly into our corporate philosophy that we will contribute to society by making people around the world happy through the power of sports,” Sammons said in the spirit of Clemente, Robinson, and King.
On February 16, 1962, Dr. King spoke in Puerto Rico ahead of the March on Washington that would be held in August the following year. While on the Island he dined with Clemente at Clemente’s restaurant EL Carretero in Carolina. Six years later, just ahead of the opening day of the 1968 baseball season, King was gunned down by an assassin. Clemente organized the Pirates’ Black American players to resist playing until after King’s funeral service. His resistance caused William Eckert, Commissioner of Baseball, to suspend the opening of the 1968 season until after King had been memorialized. This tribute to King was not led by any of the Black American players in the league, it was led by Caribbean born Clemente.
Following the game in Carolina, both teams retired to a large room in the stadium where they fellowshipped over broiled chicken, beans and rice. As the players broke bread together, there was a large section next to them which was roped off. In this section, Carolinians were engaged in a religious service where communion was served.
After the communion service, a drummer began to drum in the beat of drummers on the west coast of Africa. Congregants began to sway in the rhythm of the Bantu, the Igbo, and the Gabiamians; and they sang in African dialect a song, 400 years old, defying the authority of the enslaver over their lives. One would have thought that this service was taking place in the Gambia or the Old Gold Coast. The North American kids were spell-bound.
They were reconnected to their roots in ways unimaginable when they departed Atlanta on their humanitarian mission. Each time the mainland Americans gave of themselves, the Puerto Ricans gave back to them.
Back in Aguadilla, Eddie Rodriquez, Director of their RBI program said that what he hoped to achieve during the humanitarian visit by the kids from Atlanta was to reconnect the bond that Clemente had with Dr. King.
“Several years ago,” Rodriquez said, “Clemente’s youngest son was having a problem understanding who his father was. I told him the story of how his father had refused to play on the opening day when Dr. King was killed. I think learning this story gave him a greater appreciation for the type of man his father was,” Rodriquez said.
“My hope is that these kids this weekend will make lifelong friends, that they will create a bond so strong that they will stand up for their friend like Roberto Clemente did when King was killed,” he said in the spirit of Clemente, Robinson, and King.
It is easy to imagine that a couple of these kids will meet-up in a major league ballpark on the mainland, maybe in the same clubhouse, maybe in opposite clubhouses; or some, as social activists, coordinating relief efforts for an unknown future storm lurking out in the Atlantic.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine, Medium, and Black College Nines. He can be contacted at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com
Kentucky State’s Joe Crisp Tosses No-Hitter – Defeats Clark-Atlanta University 3–0
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They have been playing baseball since 1888 at Clark-Atlanta University. In fact, the first matchup between two Black college teams pitted Clark College against Atlanta University. The two schools consolidated 100 years later to become Clark-Atlanta University. Perhaps, few games have been as exciting as the Kentucky State University match against Clark-Atlanta University on February 16, 2019.
Joe Crisp, at five feet and nine inches on a 155-pound frame, tossed his first collegiate no-hitter, striking out nine and winning the game 3–0. The 20-year-old married computer science major was in control of the game from the first pitch until the last.
“I am very proud of my guys,” Head Baseball Coach Rob Henry said following his team’s victory. The Thoroughbreds are undefeated with four wins and one tie.
Crisp, matched in a pitcher’s duel with CAU’s John Nettles, said he was prepared to pitch as many innings as it took to secure the win for KSU. In last season’s Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) Tournament, Crisp pitched 18 innings in three days. In that tournament, KSU lost the championship game to Albany State University. They are expected to compete for the title again this year.
“He will pitch every day if I let him,” Coach Henry said.
“I had my fastball and slider working for me today,” Crisp said, adding, “I only threw two curves, but my slider had so much bite on it that it looked like a curveball.”
Across the diamond, for seven innings, John Nettles was equally superb for CAU. Nettles with an assortment of breaking pitches struck out 11 batters. A defensive error in the top of the eight (this was scheduled as a seven-inning game) on a grounder hit to third base opened the door for KSU to break the ice.
Nettles from Marrow, Georgia is a preseason selection as a Second Team All-SIAC pitcher. Also, he made second-team All HBCU pitcher in a poll conducted by Black College Nines.
Jay Poullard, a senior from Louisville’s Ballard High, was the hitting star for KSU. He collected three hits off Nettles.
Next weekend, Clark-Atlanta University will renew the oldest HBCU baseball rivalry when they host Morehouse College. The two schools have been playing baseball since 1892.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine, Medium, and Black College Nines. He can be contacted at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.comS
Blackface Caricatures Bigger Than Ralph Northam
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I was born at the midway point of the 20th century, around 10 in the morning in the middle of October. The day before my birth a white medical physician had driven out to the family farm. He placed my mom in the backseat of his car, lest any of the good white folk in town started a rumor that he was driving around rural Georgia with a Black woman seated next to him during the height of southern segregation. So, you will know, I was born under the curse of Plessy.
The doctor drove her to the hospital in the next county to deliver me. I was one of the first Black babies to be birthed in this hospital. Most babies in this community were born at home with the aid of a midwife. My father paid the doctor and hospital expenses up front waiting on the day that I would get impatient in the bliss of all “that there is before birth” and nudge mom that it was time for me to see the light of day.
My father did not have an automobile. He did not feel that he could safely and comfortably drive my mom and me to the hospital in the mule-drawn wagon that doubled as farm equipment and our public conveyance for trips into town. So, the doctor came out to the farm and transported my mom to the hospital. His choices were few. He either drove us to the hospital in his car for my entrance into the world or he would lose his fee, which was paid in money and not in chickens, hams or peach preserves. All of which were customary forms of payment in the country for medical services in the middle of the last century.
Learning about this story of my birth, I have often wondered about the social mores in existence in the days leading up to my first breath. It seemed incongruous that a medical doctor could have the heart to drive a young Black woman in labor to the hospital yet be mindful of what white people in the community would think if she was seen seated on the front bench seat of his car with him.
To complicate this dichotomy, I would grow up, become an attorney and sue this doctor on behalf of a young Black woman. The lawsuit resulted when the doctor elected to watch the Georgia Bulldogs complete their march down the football field towards victory on a Saturday afternoon in the 1980s rather than drive over to the hospital to see about his patient, a welfare mother of three children, who had presented in the emergency room in labor and with a fetus in distress. Had his patient been a white woman would the doctor have put down his high ball glass without delay and rushed to the hospital? We will never know. What we know is he testified that he did not on this occasion.
The Bulldogs won that game, but this baby was “stillborn,” under the blessings of Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.
Before BlackLivesMatter was a political slogan in the African American lexicon, as potent as “Black Power” was in an earlier time, I had fought to make BlackLivesMatter, not a slogan, but a call to justice and was able to hold the nurses and the hospital accountable for their negligence, this doctor, however, escaped all responsibility. Practically everyone in the courtroom, save experts that I flew in from California; an obstetrician from Los Angeles, and a forensic economist from San Francisco, had either been birthed by the doctor or their children were delivered by him. He was well known in the community, which made him verdict proof.
We later learned from the jury forewoman that we would have won against all the parties, but the majority white jury balked at giving millions of dollars in compensation to a “welfare mother” who lived in their community. The rule of law and the juror’s oath be damned, race trumped everything at that courthouse in rural Georgia. This equation is played out in courthouses, corporate boardrooms, schools, legislative bodies, and private clubs across America.
Why are blackface and Klan costumes important to white people?
As Gill Scott-Heron muses in The Ghetto Code: “Damn if I know.”
In a world built on the myth of white superiority, only white people can understand the need to wear costumes depicting stereotypes of Black people in blackface and displaying the violent caricatures of those who sought to keep Black lives in a perpetual state of fake inferiority.
Ralph Northam probably knows these dual archetypes of southern American folklore far too well. Black people shudder to ponder the number of their good white friends who harbor in their hearts so-called humor designed to denigrate blacks, to lessen their humanity and their place in the world we all inhabit.
It comes then as no surprise, that a medical doctor in Virginia or any other state in the union, would find a need to don the garb of a Klansman or a Negro caricature as part of how he wanted to be remembered by medical school classmates. It points up the cultural insecurities white people have living in society alongside Blacks, who were enslaved or discriminated against by white culture for the past 400 years.
What is problematical about Northam acting out his racist belief in his medical school yearbook, which he now avers is not him, is that Black people spent enormous political capital a little over a year ago to ensure that a Democrat became governor of Virginia. Let’s be clear, but for Black voters, Northam would not be the governor. He would have lost a close race and the Democrats would hold one less statehouse. Despite Bernie Sanders sounding an alarm about brother Northam, which was ignored by Black voters, Northam won while hiding the white supremacist ethos he harbored in his heart. A heart, perhaps, unlike the heart of any Democratic segregationist governor in Virginia’s past.
At the conclusion of the litigation mentioned above, I disclosed to the white attorney representing the doctor that I had been delivered by this doctor, and he quipped to me: “Even good doctors make mistakes.”
I was perturbed. My face blatantly showed how pissed-off I was at this court jester. After all the world was destined to hear my voice speak out against injustice and inequality in the American legal system. His thoughts did not give way to a life born with a purpose, but to the prospect that yet another threat to white supremacy could have been extinguished quietly without a whimper or outrage. This lawyer found it amusing that had the doctor failed to attend to my mother during her delivery of me, I would not have seen the light of day. One less arrogant uppity Negro to worry about keeping in his place.
Oh, how funny the thought of that probability must have seemed to him.
How irritating and troubling it cut into the marrow of my bones as I sat within inches of his next breath.
He tried to laugh-off his callous comment. In his white world view, he saw nothing wrong with his comment. His meaning was clear. Simply put, had the good doctor made a similar mistake in the middle of the 20th century, he would have saved himself a lot of future trouble. I was not amused and lit into my colleague at the bar like a bloodhound on a cornered jackrabbit. He was apologetic and could not understand my anger. I was somewhat forgiving, but I could not understand his insensitivity nor his humor.
This is the crux of the racial divide as we approach the roaring 2020s. White people did not get the memo back in 1955, Brown stood for more than making white supremacy obsolete under the law. It stands for the natural law principle that all people are endowed by their creator to be free spirits and are entitled to respect and all the freedoms enjoyed by all creatures, “great and small.”
The Quest of the 21st Century
The sooner white people stop being white the sooner the racial divide will dissolve into the nothingness from whence it came. This is the quest of the 21st century: White people must stop being white.
Achieving this quest will solve the problem of race which plagued the 20th century and caused that bard of American letters, W.E. B. DuBois, to posit: “The problem of the 20th century will be the problem of the color line, the relation of the lighter race of men to darker men in Asia, Africa and the islands of the seas.”
The actions of the world of the 20th century did not solve this problem. It was thought that education of the Negro coupled with laws and their enforcement would solve this equation. But they have not yielded the answer. DuBois’ postulation has been carried into this millennium. The answer, like all answers, is simple once the formula has been identified. Antics like those of the MAGA Kids from Kentucky and those of a bright doctor turned politician in the Commonwealth of Washington, Jefferson, and Lee can be summed up by subtracting whiteness from whiteness. As the prosperity preacher Rev. Ike taught us in the 1960s, “Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.”
Zero!
It goes without saying, Northam should sincerely apologize and resign. After a period of rehabilitation, Democrats should give him an opportunity to serve in public office again. That is if he stops the subterfuge about whether it is or is not him in the yearbook photo.
Resign, he must, but Northam is not the problem. The problem lurks in the murky still waters of a white American ethos that values whiteness over any other color.
I have news for my white friends. Losing your whiteness is not the end of the world. Losing your whiteness is liberating. It is a feeling out of this world. Give it a try and you will thank me for it later.
All that is needed to close the racial divide is for white people to stop being white. It can be done before this century is complete if whites but try. White superiority does not want you, but it needs you, my friend. White superiority cannot live without white people willing to give privilege to skin color. All you must do to let white superiority go is let it go. Your skin will still be white but will not have more value or less value than any skin color on the planet.
Meanwhile, we will wait for the next Northam to have the sheet pulled off them. It could be your next-door neighbor, your office mate or the CEO of your employer. It could be you. We just won’t know until the great reveal.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine, Medium, and Black College Nines. He can be contacted at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com
Atlanta Travel Baseball Team Embark on Humanitarian Mission to Puerto Rico
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ATL METRO RBI is poised to give new meaning to the term travel ball, as much of youth league baseball today is played on travel baseball teams. At least the elite players are on teams that travel a few miles, and in some cases several thousand miles, to compete against other elite baseball players. Travel ball is all about baseball and acquiring elite baseball skills to advance to collegiate and professional play.
This year, during the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Holiday celebration (January 18–21), a time when the King family has urged the nation “to make it a day of service,” 16 young men ages 13–15 will travel to Puerto Rico on a humanitarian mission.
On their mission, ATL METRO RBI will participate in two professional style showcases and two nine-inning games, and with the help of Mizuno, a leading outdoor and sporting goods company, these young men will deliver aid in the form of baseball equipment to teams in Aguadilla and Carolina, Puerto Rico. The equipment will replace baseballs, bats, shoes, and gloves destroyed two years ago when Hurricane Maria ravished the island.
“I know that Puerto Rico is hot,” 15-year-old Tionne Witherspoon said when asked about the impending trip to the Caribbean island devasted by Maria. Then the 5” 11”, 269 pounds left-handed pitcher added, “I’m looking forward to traveling to a different place and I get to give back to other kids that don’t have what we have over here.”
This humanitarian mission was conceived a year ago by John Hollins, chairman of ATL METRO RBI.
“I came up with this idea following the 2017 storms that hit in the Caribbean islands, but at that time their infrastructure was not strong enough to bring kids. So, looking ahead, I thought what better time to teach kids about rendering service to others than MLK weekend. Mizuno bought into the idea. We introduced the idea to our kids, and they wanted to help young people their age to recover from the storms,” Hollins said.
ATL METRO RBI has been around since 2001, apart from teaching baseball skills, their guiding principle has been: “To develop future leaders through positive mentoring, training and promoting excellence,” so it was not hard for Hollins to sell the kids on the idea of serving others.
“I can’t say enough about Mizuno baseball division Director Tim Rumer for providing thousands of dollars in baseball equipment for the RBI programs in Aguadilla and Carolina,” Hollins said.
A former collegiate pitcher at Georgia State University, Hollins explained, “The boys get to play the game they love and to help others who love the game. Hopefully, the boys will learn from this that being a significant person is more important than personal success,” he added.
Hollins may have hit a home run with at least one of his players. Young Mr. Witherspoon said he plans to organize efforts “to aid the homeless in metro Atlanta” when he returns from the humanitarian trip to Puerto Rico.
And in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., that’s what it’s all about.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine, Medium, and Black College Nines. He can be contacted at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com