Photo from maryfrancesberry.com

Berry led the University of Colorado

Mary Frances Berry, lawyer and civil rights activist, was the first Black woman to head a major university in the United States. Berry was chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder from January 1976 to May 1977. She was appointed to the Civil Rights Commission by President Carter in 1980 and served until 2004.

Born Feb. 17, 1938, in Nashville, Tenn., Berry earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Howard University and a doctorate and a law degree from the University of Michigan. She was provost of the Division of Behavioral and Science Services at the University of Maryland at College Park from July 1974 until she took the CU position. Berry was also a professor of history and law at Howard University and was assistant secretary of education in the Department of Health and Welfare from 1977 to 1980.

About Blogger Bob Jackson
Bob Jackson starts blogging on SpectrumTalk about great African Americans during Black History Month. Jackson, a Chicago native, is a retired staff writer and columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, where he worked for 22 years, starting in 1982. He wrote the column CITYSCAPE, and specializes in writing about ethnic minority affairs.

Jackson also worked as a general assignment reporter for the Chicago American and Chicago Today for 11 years. He covered the 1963 March on Washington; the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Poor People's Campaign; The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's, Chicago campaign; and riots in Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Can you fathom 7,000,000 people being murdered? Can you imagine the fear and the virulent hatred that cause people to suffer endlessly? Do you see the fear and the hardship of girls that are afraid to go out? Can you imagine your family being tortured and mutilated before your eyes? What will it take for the world to hear their cries and realize that these people are our own citizens and country people? What proof do we need to realize that we are slaying ourselves?

What has to stop is the possession of arms that are used to profit robbers of the people's spirits. We have to find a way to make amends to cut off the money that is used to buy gold and plunder the resources of the people. We have to rebuild the quality of life of these people because this threatens our lives. We must begin to live with one another as kin and realize that we are here together in this world.

More lives were lost in the Congo in the last twelve years than Jews in the Holocaust.

Can you imagine having every town, hamlet, village, household and family torn up by senseless violence? We are talking about the "Capitol of Violence on Earth."

Will someone, "take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing them, end them?"

This is not a drama but a way of life of the people of the Congo. When I was a student in Rockford College in Illinois I met a man named Ben M'Poko who was destined to be a leader of his people in the Congo. He was planning on being in the parliament. What amazed me is the polish, poise and determination of Ben. I cannot imagine what has happened to him and whether there is anything left to govern.

Can we sit idly watching a mindless game on TV of people who together could float the entire infra structure of the Congo and not be burdened by the outrage?

Please, let us hear what you have to say and do to end this mindless exploitation of humanity? Charles Blow and Bob Herbert have both written about the epidemic and tragedy again and again. Let us rise and march on.

War Crimes

It's been suggested more than once that the only reason I'm so passionate about having the Bush Administration charged with war crimes is because I'm a liberal, and therefore, harbor some sort of deep-seated hatred for George Bush. But that's not true. The fact is, I neither hate George Bush, nor any other conservative. I'm a progressive, not an ideologue, so I have no ideological motive to see any adversity brought into Bush's life, or anyone Else's. My passion stems from the fact that because I am progressive, I have a progressive's lust for justice.

As I've mentioned in previous articles, progressives have but one guiding philosophy, one that entails the primacy of humanity, justice for ALL, and the search for truth - wherever that truth may lead, and regardless to whose ox is gored as a result. It's just happens that in this case, the ox that must be gored is in our own backyard.

But in today's political environment, I can certainly understand how people might feel the way they do, especially conservatives. It is far from lost on me that many of those who claim to be progressives are actually quite partisan - they're ideologues. They view politics from the perspective of a sports fan - it's our team against theirs, and the more pain their team sustains, the better we like it.

But I want to assure you that's not the case here. I'm looking at this situation purely from the perspective of what is just, and what is just in this case, is for Bush, Cheney, and their cohorts be held strictly accountable for their criminal conduct in Iraq. And I sincerely hope that once I've laid out my case that even the most cynical of you will understand my point of view - even if you disagree with it.

Let us go back to what we were feeling during Nine-Eleven for a moment. Think about how much horror and pain we went through as we witnessed three thousand of our citizens being brutally murdered. It was such a traumatic experience that now, close to a decade later, we're still traumatized by it. It seems like it only happened yesterday.

But we've never once stopped to consider that if that one day could be so traumatizing to the American psyche, what it must be like for the Iraqis, who have been forced to watch hundreds of thousands of their people killed, and have had to face the horror of a Nine-Eleven every day of their lives for the past seven years. The horror that has been brought upon the Iraqi people goes far beyond what I can express here in words, and the injustice of their situation is brutally unconscionable - and the Iraqi people did absolutely nothing to us.

Yet, just think of the pure hell they've had to go through just to try to protect their children in a Nine-eleven-like environment everyday for seven years; never knowing when something - anything - might explode tearing to shreds the little bodies of the children that mean more than anything else in the world to them.

Imagine what it would be like to have some country come over here and kill hundreds of thousands of Americans (millions in order to have the impact we've had on Iraq). Then later, having that country say, "You know, now that we've thought about it, we shouldn't have done this. It was a mistake. But what the hell - what's done is done, so we need to look forward."

And even as they speak of "moving forward," you're thinking of the past - of happier times. You think of mother's smile, your father's laugh, the dreams of your beautiful young sister, and how goofy your silly little brother could be. But now, they're all now gone. You're the only one left, so far.

Would you be willing to accept a simple apology? I don't think so. Well, that's what the United states is trying to give the people of Iraq to replace justice - at least, President Obama. Dick Cheney's only regret seems to be that he didn't torture enough of them.

For the U.S. to think it can just casually walk away from committing that kind of atrocity to hundreds of thousands of families, then simply say, "We're sorry for what happened, but now's the time to look forward - forward, but without any accountability - speaks volumes about American arrogance, who we are as a people, and why people want to kill us.

President Obama spoke of "change." But what could he possibly thinking, if this represents change? What kind of change could he possibly be speaking of where politics is more important than the horror we've committed? Doesn't he realize that if we don't bring the people responsible for the atrocities in Iraq to justice, America will never be safe again? And beyond that, the U.S. will never be able to look the world in the eye and claim to be a nation that believes in justice, and the rule of law ever again.

And it's not only what we've done that's so horrible, the cynical, greedy, and corrupt motives behind our actions was almost as bad as the act itself - and that corruption of the American soul still walks among us. We haven't learned a thing. Dick Cheney claims that terrorist want to kill us because they're jealous of our freedom. That's complete bullshit. They want to kill us because we won't mind our own business, and we keep trying to steal their oil.

America has got to learn two things: First, if you keep slapping your neighbor and picking his flowers, eventually he's going to hit you back. We may think that we're "exceptional," but that doesn't give of the innate right to abuse others with impunity. And secondly, if you break into your neighbor's home and wipe out his family, then you get caught with a pocketful of his valuables, trying to plead self-defense won't fly. Any court in the world will convict you of being a murderer and a thief.

We've never executed one criminal in the history of America whose crimes even approached the seriousness of the crimes committed by Bush and Cheney - and many, against our own troops. The crimes committed by Dick Cheney makes Tookie Williams look like a choirboy. Yet, now we want to simply walk away and expect the world to believe that America stands for justice? I don't think so.

As long as we continue to think the rest of the world is beneath us, and the lives of others aren't as valuable as our own, we'll never be just, we'll never be safe, and we'll continue to move farther away from what it means to be Americans:

A MESSAGE TO BUSHLAND

It's scary how easily the American people can be manipulated to the point that they find the death of entire families a hoot; how we can sit in front of the tv set with chilli dogs and fries and cheer on the death of others like we're watching the Super Bowl. And it's a tribute to psychosis how America can unleash mass destruction in "an attempt to prevent mass destruction," in the name of God.

Can't you see that many of "those Towel-Heads" are children just like your own? You didn't really think the U.S. could unleash destruction like we saw and not kill children did you? Rumsfeld said, "Well, shit happens." But shit doesn't just happen--you allowed it to happen. You made it happen. You cheered it on! Consider that as the children bleed and you're admiring the beauty of "Shock and Awe."

Think about your own children as "collateral damage." Think about them screaming in horror while you're helplessly watching their limbs being blown off. Think about them desperately reaching out to you for comfort as life slowly drains from their tiny bodies. Think about foreign boots kicking down your front door, then strangers walking through your home systematically killing every man, woman and child. Picture the last sight that you ever see on this Earth is of your sweet little six year old daughter, with her brains spilling from her tiny little head. Think about that picture, America--then ask yourself, who's really the terrorist?

Where has America gone? Who's left to stand up for justice and humanity? You say, God Bless America? You'd have to be a fool to think God is gonna bless America after what we've done--for choosing Standard Oil over Justice, and Exxon over God himself. In God we trust? How dare you blame this atrocity on God! It is in Bush you trust:

You trust Bush that God has entrusted you to blow off Iraqi arms and wrap them around you to enable them to embrace your benevolence. And you trust Bush that you must lovingly pluck out Iraqi eyes to enable them to see the wisdom of viewing the world through your own. And you trust Bush that in the name of all that is good you must slaughter their children in a desperate attempt to provide them with a better future. You also trust Bush that you must rape their land and steal their wealth in order to allow them to choose the government of their choosing-- (so long as they choose the government that Bush chooses for them to choose). And you trust Bush that you do all this in the name of American charity.

You also trust Bush that God will bless America--but this Ain't America. America is the land of the free, and home of the brave, the land of just souls who freed their slaves. No, this is not America, this is Bushland-the land of small pox infected blankets; the land of public lynchings and church-place bombings; the land of imprisoned Japanese-Americans, and corporate murderers.

Yeah, God Bless Bushland!
The land of the free and home of the slave; the land of My Lai, and Calley's mass grave.
And you trust that God will bless Bushland?

Well trust this -You are blind, my friend.

Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot .com

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet, and musician, born in Los Angeles (Watts). He’s a columnist for The Los Angeles Sentinel, The Black Star News, and a contributing writer to Your Black World, the Huffington Post, ePluribus Media, and several other online sites and publications. He's also the author of "A Message From the Hood."

Photo from Alain L. Locke: Biography of a Philosopher

Alain L. Locke, author, educator and philosopher, was the first Black Rhodes Scholar in 1907. He studied at Oxford (1907-10) and the University of Berlin (1910-11).

Locke, born Sept. 13, 1886, in Philadelphia, was considered one of America’s foremost scholars. He received his Ph.D in philosophy from Harvard in 1918.

Locke was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard and later led a successful move to establish a chapter at Howard, where he taught philosophy from 1912 to 1953.

He wrote several books on black culture. His works include The Negro in America (1933); The Negro and His Music (1936); Negro Art—Past and Present (1936); and When People Meet (1941). Locke died June 9, 1954 in New York.

SpectrumTalk Blogger Bob Jackson

Bob Jackson starts blogging on SpectrumTalk about great African Americans during Black History Month. Jackson, a Chicago native, is a retired staff writer and columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, where he worked for 22 years, starting in 1982. He wrote the column CITYSCAPE, and specializes in writing about ethnic minority affairs.

Jackson also worked as a general assignment reporter for the Chicago American and Chicago Today for 11 years. He covered the 1963 March on Washington; the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Poor People's Campaign; The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's, Chicago campaign; and riots in Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles.

"Fade To White" OP Ed by ISHMAEL REED New York Times
Published: February 4, 2010
Oakland, Calif.

JUDGING from the mail I’ve received, the conversations I’ve had and all that I’ve read, the responses to “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” fall largely along racial lines.

Among black men and women, there is widespread revulsion and anger over the Oscar-nominated film about an illiterate, obese black teenager who has two children by her father. The author Jill Nelson wrote: “I don’t eat at the table of self-hatred, inferiority or victimization. I haven’t bought into notions of rampant black pathology or embraced the overwrought, dishonest and black-people-hating pseudo-analysis too often passing as post-racial cold hard truths.” One black radio broadcaster said that he felt under psychological assault for two hours. So did I.

The blacks who are enraged by “Precious” have probably figured out that this film wasn’t meant for them. It was the enthusiastic response from white audiences and critics that culminated in the film being nominated for six Oscars by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an outfit whose 43 governors are all white and whose membership in terms of diversity is about 40 years behind Mississippi. In fact, the director, Lee Daniels, said that the honor would bring even more “middle-class white Americans” to his film.

Is the enthusiasm of such white audiences and awards committees based on their being comfortable with the stereotypes shown? Barbara Bush, the former first lady, not only hosted a screening of “Precious” but also wrote about it in Newsweek, saying: “There are kids like Precious everywhere. Each day we walk by them: young boys and girls whose home lives are dark secrets.” Oprah Winfrey, whose endorsement assisted the movie’s distribution and its acceptance among her white fanbase, said, “None of us who sees the movie can now walk through the world and allow the Preciouses of the world to be invisible.”

Are Mrs. Bush and Ms. Winfrey suggesting, on the basis of a fictional film, that "sexual child abuse" is widespread among black families? Statistics tell us that it’s certainly no more prevalent among blacks than whites. The National Center for Victims of Crime notes: “Sexual child abuse' does not discriminate. It happens in families that are financially privileged, as well as those of low socio-economic status. It happens to those of all racial and ethnic descent, and to those of all religious traditions.”

Given the news media’s tendency to use scandals involving black men, both fictional and real, to create “teaching tools” about the treatment of women, it was inevitable that a black male character associated with "sexual child abuse" would be used to begin some national discussion about the state of black families.

This use of movies and books to cast collective shame upon an entire community doesn’t happen with works about white dysfunctional families. It wasn’t done, for instance, with “Requiem for a Dream,” starring the great Ellen Burstyn, about a white family dealing with drug addiction, or with “The Kiss,” a memoir about "sexual child abuse" — in that case, a relationship between a white father and his adult daughter.

Such stereotyping has led to calamities being visited on minority communities. I’ve suggested that the Newseum in Washington create a Hall of Shame, which would include the front pages of newspapers whose inflammatory coverage led to explosions of racial hatred. I’m thinking, among many others, of 1921’s Tulsa riot, which started with a rumor that a black man had assaulted a white woman, and resulted in the murder of 300 blacks.

Black films looking to attract white audiences flatter them with another kind of stereotype: the merciful slave master. In guilt-free bits of merchandise like “Precious,” white characters are always portrayed as caring. There to help. Never shown as contributing to the oppression of African-Americans. Problems that members of the black underclass encounter are a result of their culture, their lack of personal responsibility.

It’s no surprise either that white critics — eight out of the nine comments used on the publicity Web site for “Precious” were from white men and women — maintain that the movie is worthwhile because, through the efforts of a teacher, this girl begins her first awkward efforts at writing.

Redemption through learning the ways of white culture is an old Hollywood theme. D. W. Griffith produced a series of movies in which Chinese, Indians and blacks were lifted from savagery through assimilation. A more recent example of climbing out of the ghetto through assimilation is “Dangerous Minds,” where black and Latino students are rescued by a curriculum that doesn’t include a single black or Latino writer.

By the movie’s end, Precious may be pushing toward literacy. But she is jobless, saddled with two children, one of whom has Down syndrome, and she’s learned that she has AIDS.

Some redemption.

Ishmael Reed is the author of the forthcoming “Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media.”

If you haven’t tried quinoa yet, this toothsome African peanut soup will surely lure you in. It has a slew of nutritious vegetables in a creamy, peppery broth with lovely bits of crunchy quinoa. The soup makes the rotation in my comfort food repertoire several times during the cold-weather season because it is both healthy and decadent.

Although quinoa is native to the South American Andes region, it is now cultivated around the world – from Colorado to the Himalayas to Ethiopia and other areas of East Africa. This dish has a definite African influence – the use of nuts to thicken the stew, and staple ingredients such as sweet potatoes and okra. . . . Read more, view more photos & recipe at Fork Fingers Chopsticks.

About Andrea
Andrea Juarez is an award-winning writer. She writes on a variety of topics, however, her food blog ForkFingersChopsticks.com is the nexus of her love for food, research and culture. There you’ll find recipes for cooking an ingredient several ways. She makes cooking both fun and interesting.

Photo credit: The Black Inventor On-Line Museum

Jan Ernest Matzelinger made the first shoe-lasting machine that shaped and fastened leather over the sole. The work, previously done by hand, led to mass production of shoes and greatly reduced their price.

Born in 1852, Matzelinger worked as a child in government machine shops in Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana (now Surina). In 1873, he moved to Philadelphia and worked as a cobbler. He completed his shoe-lasting machine in 1882, and presented it in 1883. He didn’t have enough money to produce the machine, so in 1885, he sold the patent to a company in Lynn, Mass., that became United Shoe Machinery Co.

The continued success of his business brought about a 50 percent reduction in the price of shoes across the nation, doubled wages, and improved working conditions for millions of people dependent on the shoe industry for their livelihood.

Matzelinger died in 1889 at age 37. He shared only partly in the profit from his invention. He never received any money. Instead, he was issued stock in the company which did not become valuable until after his death.

Bob Jackson starts blogging on SpectrumTalk about great African Americans during Black History Month. Jackson, a Chicago native, is a retired staff writer and columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, where he worked for 22 years, starting in 1982. He wrote the column CITYSCAPE, and specializes in writing about ethnic minority affairs.

Jackson also worked as a general assignment reporter for the Chicago American and Chicago Today for 11 years. He covered the 1963 March on Washington; the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Poor People's Campaign; The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's, Chicago campaign; and riots in Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles.

A Century Past the lives of four students irrevocably altered the course of history as the fertile seeds of dissent lay in fertile ground across the South in fifteen cities. McNeil A Joseph was then seventeen years old. He convinced three other members of his class to go and sit at the counter of the Woolworths Store and order coffee. Through his efforts the chapter of desegregation came to a screeching halt. One day Dr. King would utter, “We are always running after the people who are setting the pace for change.”

On Feb. 1, 1960, four black college students began a sit-in protest at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where they'd been refused service.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20100201.html

Negro Sit Downs Stir Further Fear of Unrest in the South
Claude Sitton