PROJECT UPLIFT 2016: BLACK COMMUNITY WISHLIST FOR JOBS & SELF-SUFFICIENCY

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#ProjectUplift2016

PROJECT UPLIFT 2016: THE BLACK AMERICAN COMMUNITY WISHLIST:

21st Century BLACK American Communities need to offer BLACK Citizens more than just CHURCHES, CHICKEN JOINTS, CLUBS, & LIQUOR Stores.

BLACK Citizens are paying TAXES yet Our Communities often LACK Basic Programs.......Places.......and Resources necessary for everyday Survival.

We Need JOBS......EDUCATION......& SMALL BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES!

Welcome to PROJECT UPLIFT 2016!!

Since the BLACK Community remains the most Disadvantaged Community in America, here are 13 Programs & Places I would I like to see in every 21st Century BLACK American Community prior to the 2014 & 2016 General Elections.

FYI:
I have Currently Observed most of these SAME 13 Programs in WHITE Communities. Including many Low Income WHITE Communities!

These 13 Programs will UPLIFT BLACK American Communities by Encouraging a Mentality & Spirit of SELF-SUFFICIENCY, and by creating EMPLOYMENT Opportunities for BLACK Citizens:

13 PROJECT UPLIFT 2016 PROGRAMS:

*1) ACADEMIC After School Programs with a Focus on reaching HOMELESS Students & Underachieving; At-Risk Students..

There will be Quality Tutoring in these areas:
LITERACY..........MATH.........SCIENCE.........ART........WRITING.......... SOFTWARE CODING.......and FINANCIAL LITERACY.

(SOFTWARE CODING is a very lucrative Career which does not require a College Degree.)

I would also like to see these ACADEMIC After School Programs offer BOYS-ONLY MENTORING Programs with Classes on getting into College.

And................

Offer GIRLS-ONLY MENTORING Programs with Classes on getting into College.


* 2) Community Health Centers with a Focus on PREVENTIVE CARE instead of ABORTION Clinics posing as Community Health Centers.

* 3) Real PARKS and Real Walking Nature Trails for SAFE Exercise Options.

* 4) "OBAMACARE One-Stop Shop Education & Enrollment Centers" with Licensed Health Care Insurance Agents on-site.

In fact these "OBAMACARE One-Stop Shop Education & Enrollment Centers" could also offer Training Classes for Eligible Citizens to become Licensed Health Care Insurance Agents,

and...........Offer Training Classes for Eligible Citizens to become Certified Nursing Assistants.

* 5) Non-Partisan VOTING Centers with a Focus on VOTER REGISTRATION & VOTER EDUCATION.

* 6) SMALL BUSINESS Resource Centers with Classes on GRANT Writing & Cloud Funding,

and...........Affordable SMALL BUSINESS Hubs for New local START-UPS.

* 7) A Farmer's Market with Classes on Urban Farming & Healthy Cooking to Prevent DIABETES & High Blood Pressure.

* At least One NATURAL HAIR CARE Salon with a Focus on Growing & Retaining Healthy, Naturally Long BLACK Hair.

These Salons must also SELL NATURAL HAIR CARE Products.

And........Local Salons in BLACK Communities which offer COSMETOLOGY Training with a Focus on NATURAL HAIR CARE such as the AVEDA Institute.

The AVEDA Institute is #2 after PAUL MITCHELL.

* 9) LEGAL AID Program Centers with a Classes on Eviction.......Illegal Foreclosures.......Harassment from HOAs......Employment Discrimination......Hospital Double-Billing.

I would also like to see these LEGAL AID Program Centers offer Opportunities & Scholarships for Eligible Students who want to Attend LAW SCHOOL.

* 10) EMPLOYMENT Centers with a Focus on helping Unemployed Citizens to become Re-employed and receive JOB Training SKILLS.

* 11) Real LIBRARIES with Up-to-date Technology Labs for Citizens who lack Computers or the Internet in their Residences.

* 12) POLICE Precincts with a Focus on local POLICE forming Partnerships with BLACK American Citizens instead of Fighting against BLACK Citizens.

Eliminate "Stop & Frisk"!

Eliminate "Stand Your Ground!"

Eliminate "Walking while BLACK!"

Eliminate "Driving While BLACK!"

* 13) AFFORDABLE HOUSING…….Affordable Housing = CONSTRUCTION JOBS for Unemployed People!

Affordable Housing also = Community Revitalization!!


Source: Blog Talk Radio

A "Market For Ni$$as"! Very Disturbing! (Video)

I don't plan to spend all of my Energy defending Maxine Waters & Charlie Rangel.
They have served a combined 60 years in Congress & can both Gracefully Retire as Millionaires.
What about You??
While we're Fighting over Petty Stuff, there is a Growing "Market For Ni$$as" that's destroying Generations X & Y!
Why don't we speak out about this Important Crisis??
Peace

Check out the "Market For Ni$$as" video below.




Sources: Talaam Acey, Youtube

Roland Martin Defines Real "Black Power" (Video)

Sources: Youtube

Bill Cosby Performs "Chocolate Cake For Breakfast" (Video)

Sources: Photobucket, Youtube

Bill Cosby Tweets "He's Not Dead!" Promotes New Phone App!

Bill Cosby: I'm Not Dead And I Have An App To Prove It


Hey hey hey, here's a news flash for you kids: Bill Cosby is not dead.

The 73-year-old comedian took to his official Twitter feed on Monday to prove he is alive – and to promote his new iPhone application.

“Again, I'm rebuttaling [sic] rumors about my demise,” Cosby wrote to the million-plus followers of his Twitter feed on Monday afternoon. “But, I'm confirming I have an app - http://bit.ly/BillCosbyApp :)”

A few hours earlier, the “Bill Cosby dead” meme flared up, with searches for that phrase peaking around noon, and “Bill Cosby died” topping Twitter’s trending topics, too.

Cosby, one rightfully-skeptical report noted, “seems to be a favorite among those who start celebrity death rumors on the Web -- the same rumor circulated back in March.”

“As you well know, a dead person cannot rebuttal,” Cosby tweeted to refute that rumor. “Therefore, I am rebuttaling to tell you that when I heard the news I immediately began rebuttaling and went into denial."

With Cosby’s app plug, though, I have a sinking feeling this latest celebrity death hoax is going to do nothing but give viral marketers some new ideas.






Sources: The Wrap, Twitter, iTunes, Apple, NY Post, Long Island Press, Google Trends, Youtube

"I'm Still Here" Dorinda Clark Cole (Videos)

Sources: Youtube

New Black Panthers Newberry Rally Exposes Severe Racism In N.C. & S.C.

Praise God!

Thanks to the New Black Panthers Party now the entire nation knows that severe Racism in the form of Lynching is still alive in states likes North & South Carolina.

Even though for the most part South Carolina is more open to correcting Civil Rights disparities than North Carolina, Anthony Hill's recent dragging death proves South Carolina too needs more work in the area of Race Relations.

Just because North Carolina doesn't publicize its Hate crimes in the Media, doesn't mean it isn't happening because North Carolina is still one of the Racist states in America too.

Mission Accomplished!

Newberry, SC Law Enforcement officials have intentionally refused to charge the suspect (White) who shot Anthony Hill (Black, former U.S. Soldier) than dragged his body 10 miles down a road, with a Hate Crime because they don't want Feds "snooping" into their business.

Instead of standing with the New Black Panthers Party, local NAACP leaders are keeping their distance.

This is why I NO longer support the spineless NAACP organization.



At New Black Panthers Party Rally Hundreds Protest Handling Of Black Man's Slaying


Pumping fists in the air and hoisting signs that read, “Black Power” and “Justice for Anthony Hill,” a hundred or so demonstrators marched Saturday from a Newberry neighborhood park to the Newberry County Courthouse, rallying for a new day in race relations in this small town in central South Carolina.

Some came because, they say, local police pull black motorists over without cause, question black youths whenever they’re unsupervised and do not pursue crimes against blacks as vigorously as those against whites.

Others came because they believe the school system treats black students differently from white ones.

Still others came because of concerns over substandard conditions in the city’s public housing.

But all agreed the area’s racial tensions can no longer be ignored after a white man, Gregory Collins, was arrested in early June in the shooting death of his coworker Anthony Hill. Hill’s corpse had been dragged behind a truck for 11 miles, police said.

“Anybody who says prejudice is gone, I’m sorry but they’re wrong,” said Marquesia Abney of Newberry who demonstrated Saturday. “People need to wake up. I hear a lot of people around here say, ‘(This crime) has nothing to do with me.’ But if you live in this community, if you have kids, it does affect you. The message has to get out that people can’t do things like this.”

“It’s time people wake up,” added Abney’s friend Mike Raiford of Newberry. “Wake up and realize we get treated very poorly in this community.”

A group of local and national reporters worked the event while law enforcement officers from the city, county and state surrounded the peaceful event, some on foot, others in ATVs, on motorcycles or in vehicles.

The crowd, which included several demonstrators who came in from other states including Georgia and Texas, eventually swelled to several hundred at the courthouse to join in chants and prayers.

Police have Collins in custody, having arrested him a few hours after the incident.

That’s not enough, said Malik Zulu Shabazz, president of the New Black Panther Party, the primary speaker at Saturday’s event. He claimed during Saturday’s rally that Collins did not act alone and implied he should be put to death for the crime.

Instead, Shabazz said, law enforcement is sitting on its hands in an obvious hate crime.

“This case is an outrage. Gregory Collins has not even been indicted. That’s right. Over 40 days after (the) dragging and murder,” Shabazz yelled to the crowd through a megaphone on the court house steps. “When a man is dragged behind a pickup truck, that is a modern day lynching.”

But is it a hate crime, fueled by racial hatred?

Those interviewed in the crowd disagreed.

Some said the brutal nature of the crime is a undeniable echo of the South’s racially intolerant past when black men were lynched for failing to obey white men’s rules.

Others suspect that this was a crime of passion, the details of which have yet to be released to the public. Rumors swirl that Collins and Hill were at odds over a woman.

Others shrugged their shoulders in uncertainty over the true nature of the crime.

Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster acknowledged Saturday that unsubstantiated rumors are making the rounds in town about a woman.

“But we have not received any credible information,” he said.

As for whether it’s a hate crime, Foster said it’s up to the U.S. Justice Department to make that decision. South Carolina has no hate crime statute.

As for other claims made by Shabazz including that Collins did not act alone, the sheriff said, “He’s obviously got information that we don’t have.”

Residents lined the route, watching as demonstrators marched by, chanting “I’m black. I’m beautiful” and “Long live Anthony Hill.”

“I don’t see the point of it,” said Ken Gunter, a white Newberry resident who watched the march from the sidelines. “I don’t see the hate crime.”

Gunter speculates it was a spur of the moment crime over private matters that had nothing to do with race.

Fellow watcher Paul Willis of Newberry agreed.

“I’ve talked to both blacks and whites and we don’t see what this has to do with race,” he said.







N.C. NAACP President Responds To Wake Co. School Board Meeting Ban


The President of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP spoke out after he and three others were arrested during a Wake County School Board meeting last month.

Rev. William Barber and the others were charged with trespassing for disrupting the June 15 meeting. Following the arrests, officials sent a letter warning them to stay off school property or face legal action.

In response, Barber issued a statement Friday which said, "let them send us a thousand letters. What they need to do is send a letter of apology for wrecking the nationally acclaimed diversity policy and slowing the struggle to improve excellent educational opportunities for poor and minority children."

School officials said they can attend meetings if they provide written notice ahead of time and ask for permission

Meanwhile, Barber plans to hold a news conference before Tuesday's Wake County School Board meeting to make several demands from the board of education.

They include stopping segregation and promoting diversity, providing equity in funding, hiring and retaining high quality teachers, creating smaller class sizes, focusing on math, science, history and reading, promoting parent and community involvement and eliminating inequities in suspensions, graduation rates and performance.

The news conference is scheduled for Tuesday at 10 a.m. at the State Capitol building.




Large Crowd Expected For New Black Panther Rally


The New Black Panthers Party is planning to rally in Newberry Saturday in response to the murder of a man who was later dragged behind a truck for several miles..

Officials are expecting a large turnout and they're concerned about crowd control.

The group says they expect thousands of people to show up at the march.

The New Black Panthers say the murder and dragging of 30-year-old Anthony Hill, a black man, is an obvious hate crime. They've been demanding justice since the incident occurred in early June.

A suspect, 19-year-old Gregory Collins, was put behind bars without bond just hours after the murder.

Authorities continue their investigation, but say it's unclear as to whether it was a hate crime.






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Sources: FBI, Fox News, Midlandsconnect.com, Newsweek, The State, WXTL, Youtube, Google Maps

TD Jakes "How To Fight The Devil" (Video)

Sources: TD Jakes Ministries, Youtube

TD Jakes "Who You Rolling With?" (Video)

Sources: TD Jakes Ministries, Youtube

New Black Panthers Party Want Feds To Probe Newberry Hate Crime

Newberry, SC Law Enforcement officials have intentionally refused to charge the suspect (White) who shot Anthony Hill (Black, former U.S. Soldier) than dragged his body 10 miles down a road, with a Hate Crime because they don't want Feds "snooping" into their business.

Instead of standing with the New Black Panthers Party, local NAACP leaders are keeping their distance.

This is why I NO longer support the spineless NAACP organization.







New Black Panthers Party Falsely Labeled As Hate Group, Plans Rally In Newberry, SC


Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster is reassuring residents he has extra deputies in the county, as a weekend of protests begin by a group that has been labeled as a hate group.

The New Black Panther party had a vigil planned Friday for a 30-year-old Anthony Hill. He's the man who deputies say was shot, then dragged 10 miles behind a pickup truck in June.

Gregory Collins, 19, is charged with murder in connection with the death.

Deputies also found more than 20 assault weapons inside of Collins' home. Hill was a former soldier, and member of the volunteer fire department. The two men worked at a plant together, and Foster says they were together earlier in the day.

Foster said the death of Hill is being investigated as a possible hate crime, but that ruling can only come from the FBI, who is also looking into the case.

A week following the arrest, the New Black Panther party arrived in Newberry holding rallies, marches and starting a fund to help Hill's children. But what many in the community may not know is that they have been identified as a hate group by multiple organizations.

Documented video has shown members of their group using racial epithets for whites in speeches, and at rallies, calling for violence toward whites. Group members have also made numerous anti-Semitic statements on camera.

"They are certainly what we would call a black nationalist organization, they believe in notions of black independence black autonomy, some would classify that as being racially separatist or a hate organization," USC political science professor Todd Shaw says.

The New Black Panthers has been defined as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2000. The Anti-Defamation League has also condemned the group's actions.

"The rhetoric itself is strong it's obnoxious at times to others," Shaw says. "To draw the attention to the issue, to draw the cameras, to draw the public notice, that's the point, they also do it of course because they believe what they're saying, but they know that in some ways they see themselves as provocateurs."

While the New Black Panthers self-associate with the original Black Panthers from the 1960s, a leader of the group from that time, Bobby Steale says they are not the same.

"A xenophobic kind of rhetoric that turns into a kind of sort of racist rhetoric rather than anything that's constructive," says Steale, who is the chairman of the group. "Making absurd categorical racial remarks, that's not what it's about."

Shaw says it is important to ask what the organization believes in.

"Groups that have views of that extreme will use shocking violence, will use shocking racial rhetoric, obnoxious or not it's important to ask what's the broad set of questions that are raised by their presence," Shaw says.

South Carolina NAACP Chairman Lonnie Randolph tells News19, "I don't support their views but as long as they operate within the law, I am fine."

He also says he has been in Newberry when the New Black Panthers were there but did not meet with them.

The New Black Panthers say they are just looking for justice for Anthony Hill. That's part of their seven demands, along with federal hate crime charges in this case.

News19 has also learned that one of the New Black Panther party members who has made trip to the Midlands was arrested this week in Atlanta.

Hashim Nzinga is the National Chief of Staff for the New Black Panther Party. He's made appearances in Columbia with the group during news conferences about the death of Anthony Hill.

Atlanta Police confirm to News19 that Nzinga was arrested Tuesday on bank fraud charges. He has posted bond.

Investigators did not provide other details on his arrest.




Large Crowd Expected For New Black Panther Rally


The New Black Panthers Party is planning to rally in Newberry Saturday in response to the murder of a man who was later dragged behind a truck for several miles..

Officials are expecting a large turnout and they're concerned about crowd control.

The group says they expect thousands of people to show up at the march.

The New Black Panthers say the murder and dragging of 30-year-old Anthony Hill, a black man, is an obvious hate crime. They've been demanding justice since the incident occurred in early June.

A suspect, 19-year-old Gregory Collins, was put behind bars without bond just hours after the murder.

Authorities continue their investigation, but say it's unclear as to whether it was a hate crime.








Newberry, S.C. Uneasy As New Black Panthers Party Saturday Rally Nears


Dana Brooks understands why the New Black Panther Party is organizing a rally and march Saturday through her hometown.

But she has no plans to be a part of it

“It feels like they’re stirring up more problems than they’re solving,” said Brooks, 18, and a recent graduate of Mid-Carolina High School. “I know they’re trying to call attention to a very serious situation. But I don’t feel like I should be in a situation where there could be problems.”

Fear and uncertainty are thick in Newberry as local residents prepare for Saturday’s rally. No one knows how many people to expect or what the mood will be. Downtown business owners were reluctant to speak this week about the planned rally but most said their businesses already will be closed by the time the Panthers assemble at the courthouse around 5 p.m.

The event is in response to the June 2 killing of Anthony Hill.

Hill, a black man, was shot to death and his corpse was dragged nearly 11 miles along country roads behind a truck. Gregory Collins, 19, who is white, is in jail without bail on murder charges in the case.

Authorities are investigating the killing as they decide whether to charge Collins with a hate crime. U.S. Attorney William Nettles said he has not decided whether the killing was a hate crime and the investigation would dictate when he made that decision.

Within a week of the crime, the New Black Panther Party had seized on the case and began holding meetings in town to demand the killing be labeled a hate crime. Last week, a few people who said they were members of the party accompanied Hill’s widow to a town hall meeting during which Nettles and other state and local law enforcement discussed the case.

Many people in Newberry, however, have said they are willing to let local law enforcement continue their investigation. And they do not welcome the Panthers to town.

Willie Davis, 60, said the Panthers know U.S. history with racism and hate crimes. But it’s too early to call Hill’s murder a hate crime, he said.

“People have to be careful about jumping to conclusions,” said Davis, who will not attend the rally or march.

The New Black Panthers Party is based in Washington, D.C., and are led by Malik Zulu Shabazz, an attorney. The group is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based nonprofit that monitors hate groups and hate crimes in the United States. It is not affiliated with the Black Panther Party that made its name as a militant group in the 1960s, said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.

Potok said his organization did not have any reports of New Black Panther affiliates in South Carolina.

However, Tiffany Gibson, a Newberry resident, said she is helping organize the rally on behalf of the Newberry Black Unity Coalition and that the group is an affiliate of the New Black Panther Party.

Gibson, a graphic designer, said racism abounds in Newberry and the dragging death case brought it to a head. She formed the coalition as a way to take action.

“If we’re going to complain and no one else is going to take action, we must do it ourselves,” she said.

The Panthers have been in the national news this month after video surfaced of two members standing outside a Philadelphia polling station in 2008. The video was related to a controversy within the U.S. Department of Justice over whether or not to prosecute the men for voter intimidation.

“Anytime you have people come in from outside with a message of hate, that always causes fear,” said Maj. Todd Johnson of the Newberry County Sheriff’s Department.

State, local and federal law enforcement officials will be in full force, Johnson said. And authorities plan to have Emergency Medical Services on standby because the rally and march are scheduled to last five hours in the blazing heat, he said.

“We’re going to make sure they have a First Amendment right to free speech,” Johnson said. “But we’re also going to make sure their First Amendment right doesn’t infringe on anybody else.”

The Black Panthers event will begin at Wise Park in the heart of an in-town black neighborhood. The group then plans to march 1.5 miles to the county courthouse.

Jack Edwards, who lives across the street from the park, said he was nervous when the Panthers held a rally there in June. And he worried about the potential for violence Saturday, from the Panthers or someone who might oppose them.

“Those are some thick bushes over there,” he said. “You never know where snipers might be.”

He would rather the Panthers not come, but if they do, he hopes police will be out in full force Saturday to keep the peace.

“We haven’t had no trouble that we need somebody else to speak for us,” he said.

In downtown Newberry, where antiques shops and cafes line Main Street, there was a nervous undercurrent among business owners. Many of them refused to comment on the event.

“I hope we don’t have to expect too much,” said Shane Wicker, an employee at the As Time Goes By antique store. “I hope nothing will be too wild.”

Theresa Wilson, 24, who works at the C.T. Summer hardware store, said she had heard all sorts of rumors about who would be coming to town as part of the rally. But she wished the Black Panthers would leave Newberry alone.

“I want Anthony Hill’s family to have peace of mind, and they’ll never have peace if they keep stirring this stuff up,” she said.






The New Black Panther Party Is The New ACORN


As Voter-Intimidation exercises go, it wasn’t much. In 2008, a lone white voter reported he had encountered two black men dressed all in black, one carrying a nightstick, at his Philadelphia polling place in a predominantly black neighborhood.

The armed man was escorted away by police, and no one reported the incident to the local district attorney. But the incident was caught on camera, making it great fodder for cable news because political campaigns were actively scouting for voter-intimidation cases they could use against opponents. Still, it seemed like the sort of incident that happens at dozens of polling places every Election Day, then quietly recedes.

Twenty-one months later, though, right-wing Bloggers can't get enough of the story, and it's starting to make it into the mainstream press. Even Sarah Palin has joined the act, tweeting: "Watch FOX's Megyn Kelly on Black Panther voter intimidation case; she knows the case; she's speaking truth; her revelations leave Left steaming."

So how did the incident become a replay of the ACORN scandal? There's some resemblance between the two: an organization with unacceptable practices and a vague connection to the Obama administration (through voter registration drives in the ACORN case and Justice Department litigation in the Panther case) becomes a tool for critics of the White House to attack it as corrupt and illegitimate.

But as in the ACORN case, the scandal is minimal (much of the ACORN hit has been discredited)—and the allegations against Obama flimsy.

Let's start with the cast of characters. The two reportedly imposing men at the Philadelphia polling station were members of a fringe group that calls itself the New Black Panther Party—much to the chagrin of the "old" Black Panther Party, which strenuously rejects the NBPP. Its leaders go by peculiar pseudo-African names (like chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz), and it is designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League.

Its ideology tends to skew toward the black supremacist and anti-Semitic.



The group typically gets attention every few years when it successfully manages to bait the national media with some nutty stand. In 2006, for example, the New Black Panther Party announced it was going to Durham, N.C., to investigate the Duke lacrosse case.

Fox News, in particular, loves it: after the Duke charges were dropped in 2007, Bill O'Reilly had Shabazz on the program, where he called syndicated conservative columnist Michelle Malkin a "whore."

Several months after the 2008 Election Day incident (and 13 days before President Obama was sworn in) the Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against the NBPP under the Voting Rights Act, alleging voter intimidation. In May 2009, Justice—now led by Attorney General Eric Holder, Obama's appointee—successfully obtained an injunction against King Samir Shabazz, the man who carried the nightstick, then dropped the suit, Fox News reported.

A spokeswoman at Justice says a career attorney made the call, which was then affirmed by an appointee, because "the facts and the law did not support pursuing claims against the other defendants in the case. A federal judge determined that the relief requested by the Department was appropriate."

That's where things get messy.

Starting last summer, some conservative media outlets—notably The Washington Times—began digging into the case, suggesting that because a top Obama appointee had signed off on the decision to drop charges, a move allegedly opposed by career lawyers, it provided proof that Holder's Justice Department was a bastion of political favoritism (and, by implication, racism, given that both Holder and Obama are black).

Although that story didn't go mainstream, it did cause the Commission on Civil Rights, an independent body, to take up the case. As Dave Weigel reported, there was more to that decision than met the eye: after eight years of George W. Bush appointments, the commission tilted definitively right. In addition, the star witness in the case against the NBPP, Bartle Bull, wasn't exactly impartial.

The white former Robert F. Kennedy aide, who called the incident "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I have encountered in my political campaigns in many states, even going back to the work I did in Mississippi in the 1960s," had been an outspoken critic of Obama for some time.

The commission has met several times to examine the case, but things really blew open on July 6, when Bush Justice official J. Christian Adams, who is white, suggested that Justice's voting division avoided bringing cases where defendants were black and plaintiffs were white.

Adams's testimony is questionable; there are doubts about whether he was actually present for the incidents he described, and he's refused to offer details on key questions. Critics see other credibility problems for Adams: he was, for instance, hired when Bush's Justice Department was systematically weakening the civil-rights division by forcing out career lawyers and replacing them with attorneys who had strong conservative credentials but little in the way of civil-rights experience.

This week's resolution by the NAACP blasting "racism" in the Tea Party has further fanned the flame. At its 101st annual convention in St. Louis, the nation's oldest civil-rights organization condemned the party's "continued tolerance for bigotry." Tea Party leaders heatedly rejected the criticism, and Palin dismissed it as "a diversionary tactic." To some commentators on the right, the NAACP action is rank hypocrisy, given that the group hasn't condemned the racism they see festering over at Justice.

With some help from Fox News's Kelly, the New Black Panthers story is now gaining steam. While there's little doubt that the NBPP is a fringe group, critics of the decision to drop the suit have a tough case to make. The problem is that although it may look like voter intimidation, there aren't actually any voters who filed an official complaint claiming to have been intimidated.

As Adam Serwer writes, a polling station in a predominantly black neighborhood isn't the best place to go if you're trying to scare white voters off: "I imagine that the New Black Panthers thought they were protecting black voters from some phantom white-supremacist conspiracy (their public statements say as much)." And Weigel, who's followed the case, has suggested there's not much to it either—plus, "there's no evidence the NBPP's clownish Philadelphia stunt suppressed any votes, or that they'll try such a stunt again."

Of course, even if the case against the NBPP is thin as onion paper, it's still a problem if the Justice Department is systematically screening its cases by race. So is there evidence of that beyond Adams's testimony? The department denies the charge. Spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler says in part: "The Department makes enforcement decisions based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved."

Cord Jefferson of the The Root, a black-issues Web site, says the case is spurious, but that Justice must explain itself further. But Abigail Thernstrom, a white conservative member of the Commission on Civil Rights, complains that it's all light and no heat:

Get a grip, folks. The New Black Panther Party is a lunatic fringe group that is clearly into racial theater of minor importance ... This case is a one-off. There are plenty of grounds on which to sharply criticize the attorney general—his handling of terrorism questions, just for starters—but this particular overblown attack threatens to undermine the credibility of his conservative critics.

Thernstrom may be right, but she misses the point. Like the ACORN case, it's not about a real investigation; it's about staging an effective piece of political theater that hurts the Obama administration.


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Sources: Fox News, Midlandsconnect.com, Newsweek, The State, WXTL, Youtube, Google Maps

Malcolm X: "Who Are You?" (Video)

Sources: Youtube

James Brown: "I'm Black & I'm Proud!" (Video)

Sources: Soul Train, Youtube

Alvin Greene's 1st Speech Moved To Hold Large Crowds

Alvin Greene's First Speech Moved To Accommodate Large Crowds


U.S. Democratic Senate (SC) nominee Alvin Greene is set to give his first major campaign speech this weekend.

Sunday, the surprise U.S. senate nominee is speaking to the local chaper of the NAACP. The event is open to the public.

The event was originally scheduled to be held at a local church, but an anticipated large crowd prompted organizers to move the venue to accommodate more people.

The speech will now be held at the Manning Junior High School gym at 4:30 p.m.

Greene is set to challenge Republican Jim DeMint and Green Party Candidate Tom Clements this November.




Alvin Greene Making First Public Speech Before Local NAACP


A month after his surprise win to become South Carolina's Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Alvin Greene said Monday he was finally making his first public speaking appearance.

Greene told The Associated Press he has been invited by a local branch of the state conference of the NAACP to speak at the group's monthly meeting Sunday in his hometown of Manning.

"Jobs, education and justice, the campaign for the general election," Greene said, when asked what he planned to discuss. "That's what I'm focusing on right now."

Greene has given a series of awkward, often terse media interviews since June 8, when he won an unexpected victory over former state lawmaker Vic Rawl. Greene will face GOP U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint in the fall.

An unemployed military veteran who lives at home with his ailing father, Greene has called himself "a true American hero" and suggested last week the creation of action figures of his own likeness as a way to create jobs in South Carolina.

Greene had no website until two weeks ago and did not do any campaign fundraising before the primary. On Monday, Greene said he plans to do more campaigning but did not have any other events scheduled.

Greene said the event will be held at Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church.

Officials with the NAACP did not immediately return a message Monday. The day after Greene's primary night win, the president of the state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said he had not met Greene or heard of him before the election.

Greene won another victory Friday, when South Carolina's state police said they would not charge Greene over how he paid his $10,440 U.S. Senate filing fee, despite reporting just over $1,000 in monthly income on court paperwork and being appointed a public defender to represent him on an obscenity charge.

When agents reviewed Greene's bank accounts, they found recent deposits of military pay and state and federal tax refunds that matched Greene's story that the 32-year-old candidate, who has been collecting unemployment benefits since he left the military in August, was able to afford the fee because he saved his money and lived frugally.

Police also wanted to look into whether Greene had misrepresented his financial situation in court by accepting the court-appointed attorney to defend him on a felony charge of showing obscene Internet photos to a University of South Carolina student.

Greene said he didn't ask for a court-appointed attorney or intend to mislead anyone about his financial situation. Police say Greene cooperated with their investigation, and the candidate feels vindicated by the results.

Democratic Party leaders were stunned by Greene's 18-point primary victory and called for him to withdraw from the race after AP reported his arrest. But Greene, who has not entered a plea or been indicted, has declined to comment on the charge and says he's staying in the race.

In addition to DeMint, Greene also faces anti-nuclear activist Tom Clements, a Green Party candidate.


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Sources: Midlandsconnect.com, The Grio, The State, Google Maps

Marion Jones' Teammates Win Appeal To Have Medals Restored

US Relay Runners Win Olympic Medals Appeal


American sprinters who were stripped of their 2000 Olympics relay medals because teammate Marion Jones was doping won an appeal Friday to have them restored.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled in favor of the women, who had appealed the International Olympic Committee’s decision to disqualify them from the Sydney Games.

The court said the IOC and International Association of Athletics Federations rules in 2000 did not allow entire teams to be disqualified because of doping by one athlete.

The IOC said the ruling was “disappointing and especially unfortunate for the athletes of the other teams who competed according to the rules.”

In Sydney, Jearl Miles-Clark, Monique Hennagan, LaTasha Colander Clark and Andrea Anderson were part of the squad that won gold in the 4x400 relay. Chryste Gaines, Torri Edwards, Nanceen Perry and Passion Richardson were on the 4x100 bronze medal squad.

All but Perry joined the appeal.

“The panel found that at the time of the Sydney Olympic Games there was no express IOC or IAAF rule in force that clearly allowed the IOC to annul the relay team results if one team member was found to have committed a doping offense,” CAS said.

Now that the case is over, Richardson can relax, her medal safe and secure in a wooden frame at the home of her parents in Florida.

“It’s been a long three years, a long hard fight,” Richardson told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “I wanted to believe they would do what was right, but there were some times where I wasn’t as certain. Today, they did what was right.”

Richardson spoke to Gaines and Miles-Clark and said that “everyone is extremely excited.”

“Finally, the fight is over,” Richardson said.

In 2007, Jones admitted she was doping in Sydney and also lost her individual golds in the 100 and 200 meters and bronze in the long jump. She spent about six months in a Texas prison in 2008 for lying about using performance-enhancing drugs and her role in a check-fraud scam.

She has since made a comeback in basketball with the Tulsa Shock of the WNBA.

“I’ve totally moved on,” Jones told The AP on Friday in San Antonio, where the Shock were preparing to play the Silver Stars. “I’m moving forward.”

Jones said she had not heard about the CAS decision and had not spoken to her former Olympic teammates recently. She declined further comment.

“She made some very poor choices. That’s something she has to live with,” said Richardson, who no longer has any ill will toward her former teammate. “We did what we were supposed to do and did it with fairness. You have to learn to forgive and forget.”

The CAS panel of three lawyers acknowledged the ruling might be unfair to relay teams that competed “with no doped athletes” but added the decision “exclusively depends on the rules enacted or not enacted by the IOC and the IAAF at the time of the Sydney Olympic Games.”

The CAS inflicted a further defeat on the IOC by ordering the Olympic body to pay 10,000 Swiss francs ($9,500) toward the athletes’ legal costs.

Mark Levinstein, the Washington, DC-based lead attorney for the athletes, said there is still a lawsuit pending against the USOC.

“All they had to do was say, ‘The rules are the rules, leave them alone,’ and this didn’t happen,” Levinstein said in a phone interview. “To have your own national Olympic committee turn its back on you, it was sad.”

The USOC issued a statement saying it respects the decision of the CAS.

“Although we continue to believe that the U.S. medals in the 4x100 and 4x400 meter women’s relays were unfairly won due to Ms. Jones’ doping, we have always recognized that the athletes who made up the U.S. teams might have a legal basis on which to defend these medals,” said Patrick Sandusky, chief communications officer for the USOC.

“We are sorry that Ms. Jones’ actions continue to have a negative effect on the world of sport and express our sympathy for all of the athletes who competed cleanly at the Olympic Games in Sydney and were damaged by Ms. Jones’ poor decisions.”

United States Track and Field president Stephanie Hightower and CEO Doug Logan said in a joint statement, “Although USATF was not a party to this case, we are sympathetic to any clean athlete who was robbed of something because of Marion Jones’ cheating: competitors, teammates, fans and anyone who strives for fair competition.”

The IOC has now lost two CAS rulings within five weeks involving Olympic medals stripped.

“What better confirmation of independence can you have than the baby you have created says no to you?” IOC president Jacques Rogge told The AP in New York. “We’re disappointed that we lose the case, of course. But it strengthens us to say to the athletes, ‘You can trust the Court of Arbitration. They are independent. They are free. They can rule against the IOC.”’

Belarus hammer throwers Vadim Devyatovskiy and Ivan Tsikhan won their appeals last month against disqualification from the 2008 Beijing Games and regained their silver and bronze medals, respectively. Both had elevated levels of testosterone, but the CAS panel said tests were invalid because international laboratory standards in Beijing were not respected.

“The IOC will continue to enforce its zero tolerance policy in the fight against doping for the sake of the athletes’ health and to ensure fair competition,” the IOC said in a statement.

The CAS panel said it accepted the IOC’s claim that Jones was possibly not the only U.S. runner doping in Sydney, and it was mindful that Gaines later served a doping ban for cheating in 2002-03 with the same designer steroid— known as “the clear”—that Jones used.

However, CAS warned that judging an athlete based on suspicion could “deliver a fatal blow to any serious fight against doping and the CAS’s reputation.”

The case involving the sprinters was heard over two days in Lausanne, Switzerland, in May, when the relay runners’ legal team argued they should not be punished for cheating by Jones.

The panel agreed unanimously Friday that the IAAF’s rule in 2000 was the decisive point.

The court also confirmed its own precedent set five years ago in a previous doping case involving U.S. relay runners at the Sydney Olympics. That panel determined that teammates of Jerome Young should not lose their 4x400 gold medals after he received a retroactive ban from 1999-2001—meaning he was technically ineligible to compete in Sydney.

Young’s relay partners—Michael Johnson, Antonio Pettigrew, Angelo Taylor, Alvin Harrison and Calvin Harrison—won their appeal to CAS after the IAAF annulled their result.

However, the IOC ended up stripping the entire team of the medals in 2008 following the admission of doping by Pettigrew. The IAAF amended its rules in 2003 so that relay teams could then be disqualified if one member was caught doping.

The ruling Friday dashed the hopes of Jamaica’s team of being upgraded from silver to gold in the 4x400 relay. Russia finished third and Nigeria out of the medals in fourth. In the 4x100, the U.S. edged France out of the medals.


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Sources: Yahoo News, Google Maps

Malcolm X: "Police State", "House vs Field Negro", "Black Nationalism" (Videos)

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."








Sources: Wikipedia, Youtube

Malcolm X's Oxford University Debate (Video)

Sources: Youtube

Black Financial Boycott: Montgomery Bus Company (Video)

"We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles, we don't need any Molotov cocktails, we just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, "God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda--fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Circa 1968






Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I See the Promised Land / I’ve Been to the Mountaintop


Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy in his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It's always good to have your closest friend and associate say something good about you. And Ralph is the best friend that I have in the world.

I'm delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow. Something is happening in Memphis, something is happening in our world.

As you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?"-- I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece, and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality.

But I wouldn't stop there. I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and esthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I'm named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church in Wittenberg.

But I wouldn't stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating president by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

But I wouldn't stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy." Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding--something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya: Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee--the cry is always the same--"We want to be free."

And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we're going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence.

That is where we are today. And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I'm just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period, to see what is unfolding. And I'm happy that he's allowed me to be in Memphis.

I can remember, I can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn't itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God's world.

And that's all this whole thing is about. We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God's children. And that we don't have to live like we are forced to live.

Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.

Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we've got to keep attention on that. That's always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers were on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn't get around to that.

Now we're going to march again, and we've got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be. And force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God's children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That's the issue. And we've got to say to the nation: we know it's coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.

We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. I've seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round." Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on." And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water.

That couldn't stop us. And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we'd just go on singing. "Over my head I see freedom in the air." And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, "Take them off," and they did; and we would just go in the paddy wagon singing, "We Shall Overcome." And every now and then we'd get in the jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn't adjust to; and so we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham.

Now we've got to go on to Memphis just like that. I call upon you to be with us Monday. Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we're going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper." If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.

We need all of you. And you know what's beautiful to me, is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel. It's a marvelous picture. Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and say, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Somehow, the preacher must say with Jesus, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor."

And I want to commend the preachers, under the leadership of these noble men: James Lawson, one who has been in this struggle for many years; he's been to jail for struggling; but he's still going on, fighting for the rights of his people. Rev. Ralph Jackson, Billy Kiles; I could just go right on down the list, but time will not permit. But I want to thank them all. And I want you to thank them, because so often, preachers aren't concerned about anything but themselves. And I'm always happy to see a relevant ministry.

It's alright to talk about "long white robes over yonder," in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It's alright to talk about "streets flowing with milk and honey," but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can't eat three square meals a day. It's alright to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God's preacher must talk about the New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do.

Now the other thing we'll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people, individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together, collectively we are richer than all the nation in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That's power right there, if we know how to pool it.

We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles, we don't need any Molotov cocktails, we just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, "God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda--fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you."

And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy--what is the other bread?--Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right.

But not only that, we've got to strengthen black institutions. I call upon you to take you money out of the banks downtown and deposit you money in Tri-State Bank--we want a "bank-in" movement in Memphis. So go by the savings and loan association. I'm not asking you something that we don't do ourselves at SCLC. Judge Hooks and others will tell you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We're just telling you to follow what we're doing. Put your money there. You have six or seven black insurance companies in Memphis. Take out your insurance there. We want to have an "insurance-in."

Now there are some practical things we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow through here.

Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point, in Memphis. We've got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.

Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus; and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters in life. At points, he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew, and through this, throw him off base. Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn't stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But with him, administered first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, because he had the capacity to project the "I" into the "thou," and to be concerned about his brother. Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn't stop. At times we say they were busy going to church meetings--an ecclesiastical gathering--and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that "One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony." And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem, or down to Jericho, rather to organize a "Jericho Road Improvement Association." That's a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the casual root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effort.

But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that these men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as a setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles, or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the day of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?".

That's the question before you tonight. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?" The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" "If I do no stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question.

Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.

You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?"

And I was looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood--that's the end of you.

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the Whites Plains High School." She said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."

And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great movement there. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.

And they were telling me, now it doesn't matter now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night."

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say that threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.


Sources: MLKonline, Youtube