Rest In Power, Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, 1947 - 2014

Chokwe Lumumba, a leader of the Republic of New Afrika and recently elected mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, has died.

Mayor Lumumba was a lifetime civil rights activist, and active in post-Katrina struggles in New Orleans, through the People's Hurricane Relief Fund. As a human rights lawyer, he represented many high-profile clients, including both Assata Shakur and Tupac Shakur. Although only mayor for about a year, he had excited progressives around the world, as an unapologetic revolutionary elected to a capital city in the US south. Below is an Al Jazeera news profile of Mayor Lumumba from shortly after his election.

Chokwe Lumumba from Jazeera Clips on Vimeo.

Below are edited excerpts from Mayor Lumumba's campaign website:

Chokwe Lumumba, Esq. was born August 2, 1947 in Detroit, Michigan. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Lumumba later finished 1st in his Law School freshman class before graduating cum laude from Wayne State University Law School.  

Since 1968 Chokwe Lumumba crisscrossed the globe fighting for “Human Rights for Human Beings.” Lumumba is known for his work in support of the survivors of Katrina, by serving on the Board of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund, by organizing other activists to form the Mississippi Disaster Relief Coalition, and by co-organizing the Gulf Coast Survivors Assembly.  

Mayor Lumumba’s work as a community activist has spanned over four decades. He worked with organizations such as Jackson Human Rights Coalition to help pressure the State to retry the person who murdered Medgar Evers. He worked for over 20 years organizing, directing, coaching, and mentoring youth through programs such as the Jackson Panthers Basketball Organization. Lumumba was also a co-founder and member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Mayor Lumumba was a nationally renowned attorney, who represented clients in over 16 jurisdictions, including Canada and the Choctaw Court. He worked in high profile cases such as the representation of the late Tupac Shakur. He helped win the release of the Scott Sisters in 2011 who had served 16 years of double life prison sentences for an $11.00 (eleven-dollar) robbery which they did not commit. He successfully represented Lance Parker who was falsely accused of assault during the 1992 LA uprising which followed the brutal beating of Rodney King. 

Chokwe Lumumba was a devoted husband and father. His wife Nubia A. Lumumba passed away in 2003. Chokwe leaves behind three children - Kambon Mutope, Rukia Kai and Chokwe Antar Lumumba.

We send our love to his family and to the people of Jackson.

Open Letter From Curtis Muhammad on Upcoming Civil Rights Movement Anniversary Commemorations

Below we are reposting an open letter from civil rights movement veteran Curtis Muhammad, a founder of People's Hurricane Relief Fund and the International School for Bottom-Up Organizing, among many other projects and initiatives.

Dear friends and comrades,

We are fast approaching the time for the 50th anniversary of many important events and movements, including: Mississippi Freedom Summer; The murder of the three civil rights workers in Neshoba county Mississippi and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s challenge of the Democratic Party in Atlantic City New Jersey to name a few. The below pated document was written four years ago as we prepared to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). What was at stake then and now is whether or not these events being planned will honor the primary role of the poor southern black communities and individuals who made this history possible. It is my hope and my prayer that those of you who are planning these events will make it your mission and mandate to bring forward the true history of our great movements fifty years ago. I and my comrades encourage you to credit and honor where credit and honor is due: The poor black communities of the south should not be ignored in order to further promote the elite.

Curtis Muhammad
International Organizing Trainer and Veteran of the Civil Rights Movement

Please read below:

Dear friends and comrades,

Some of you know that I have been writing a book on my life experiences for a few years now (since 2003). I spent about six months in 2003 living in a black community in Mexico writing on my book and collecting stories from some 300 black communities along the Pacific Coast (called “Costa Chica”) covering three states. 

Last night I opened the manuscript to begin adding this dialogue we are having about our SNCC experience and the 50th Anniversary to the manuscript. I re-read something I had written in 2003 as a forward to my book. I found it informative and interesting and thought I would share it with you in the context of the discussion about the 50th Anniversary conference.

I copy it here, and have a few further comments below it.

FORWARD

I believe elitist, arrogant people who look down on those with little access to the goods and services of the society have motivated me the most to write this story. Mississippi, where I grew up, was and is the poorest state in the union. It has the highest rate of illiteracy in the country, then and now. The rate of college graduates is and was the lowest in the U.S. Mississippi has the lowest number of black professionals of any state in the country. At the time of my growing up we had three black lawyers and less than twenty black doctors in the whole state. Mississippi’s education system is and was the worst in all of the U.S.A. So when SNCC came to Mississippi, I think most of the Northern students considered those of us who had grown up in Mississippi as poor little dumb uneducated black youth. 

I remember thinking that the students that had come to Mississippi were the smartest, most intelligent folk in the world. They spoke so beautifully in “correct English”. They also seemed to know so many words I had never heard spoken. I, who had been one of the most outspoken young folk in my school and community, was muted by this fantastic display of “genius”. I soon found myself becoming part of the voiceless, not because someone demanded it, but because I did not think I knew enough words to match the “genius” of the other SNCC folk.

The Northern students bought into the European notion that “genius” is based on your ability to grasp the “King’s English” and body of knowledge. I don’t blame them any more because I realize that they too are a product of American white dominated culture. Or as we used to say, they were products of the “white power structure”. At the time, we didn’t understand that the long legacy of struggle and self-sufficiency we came from was an even more worthy body of knowledge that we had inherited.

I think most of us from Mississippi found our comfort zone singing freedom songs and telling stories about our work, but often we were very quiet and frequently absent from SNCC strategy sessions. I remember going on a trip with more educated SNCC staffers to Washington DC, New York, Hamilton College and Yale University. We spoke at large gatherings at all of these places. After each time I spoke, one of the SNCC staff would sit me down and talk to me about the way I needed to talk. He suggested that I was trying to be some kind of intellectual instead of being myself. Another organizer was his favorite spokesperson and he pointed out that what that person was doing was talking about Mississippi and the work we were doing while I was trying to explain why we were doing the work; that I was trying to explain the movement to people who knew more about it than I did. I remember getting so angry that I refused to talk anymore. I remember being very traumatized by this. I wondered, did this person talk to Julian Bond, Marion Barry, James Bevel, Diane Nash, Paul Brooks, Dionne Diamond, Chuck McDew, Tim Jenkins, Reggie Robinson, Ruby Doris or any of the others like this? I finally figured out that what he wanted was to put on display a stereotype of what young Mississippians looked, acted, and talked like. 

This feeling of voicelessness and inferiority would later compel me to drop out of Tougaloo College in Mississippi and go to school at Roosevelt University and Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago seeking the “genius” I thought was only to be found outside the South.

The books that have been written about SNCC mention my name in about four or five different stories: 
1.The Bob Moses letter from the Magnolia jail where others and I are “talking mostly about girls”
2. The student walkout at Higgins High in McComb, Mississippi 
3. Hollis and I are mentioned as being the first Mississippi students to join SNCC’s staff after all but Bob left following all the violence in McComb. 
4. There’s sometimes a one liner about Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
5. There is a girlfriend story in Greenville, Mississippi with Charlie Cobb. 
And that’s about it: nothing serious about the organizing work I was doing. I can’t be sure but I would guess the index of most SNCC books have similar numbers and kinds of statements about SNCC folk in Mississippi. Guyot may be an exception because of his Chairmanship of the MFDP and his ability to add prefixes and suffixes to simple words to make them sound big. Can you imagine what will happen to our stories if we don’t find our “voice” and tell them?

So by now you’ve guessed why I am writing this story. I am writing to give hope and confidence to my children and children’s children; to encourage others who have shared in this struggle for freedom, but heretofore not heard from because they have been convinced that they didn’t have words good enough to speak. I write to give confidence to those who believe they are not writers, not educated, not intellectuals, not scholars, not professionals, or whatever “box” that has been placed around them by the “white power structure”. I say here and now, I am a writer because I choose to be a writer. I will write my story on these pages because I believe my story is important to the freedom and justice movement. 

My story is about my struggle to contribute to the liberation of my people and I will not allow the society any longer to hold me in bondage with the thought that I am unqualified to tell my story in a book, written by my hand. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Thank you

I have reprinted this for you to read not because I think my own experience is so important, but because the voicelessness I felt as a youth in SNCC still afflicts our people and our telling of history. SNCC folk had different roles and experiences, all of which were necessary to the Movement. My particular experience was on the ground organizing in my own home state, and most of the people we were organizing felt the same lack of voice. Their experience, their thoughts and ideas, even their very humanity, were not and are not respected by the society at large. And yet, SNCC organizers went about the task of organizing with great respect and humility, guided by elders within the community who knew the legacy of the struggle of these descendants of slaves. We collectively found, cultivated and developed new leaders and spokespeople from amongst them, people like Fannie Lou Hamer and Victoria Gray, among many others.

It was the heroism and martyrdom of these grassroots people that is at the core of what’s valuable about SNCC history, not so much the heroism and martyrdom of the organizers. It was the “bottom”, the poorly clothed, the illiterate sharecroppers standing up in their thousands, refusing to be intimidated, and demanding to be heard and respected that truly changed history.

There was a SNCC organizing model. It was a model of organizers who lived extremely simply and relied on the people of the community for food, housing and protection, and who took nothing from the community for themselves. It was a model of recognizing, respecting and lifting up the genius of the people, contained in a legacy of struggle flowing forwards in an unbroken river from the days of slave rebellions and the Underground Railroad, from Black Reconstruction to resistance to Jim Crow. It was a model of patience, of unglamorous days after days spent knocking on doors and sitting on porches.

I do not regard the SNCC 50th as primarily an opportunity to be nostalgic. I regard it as an opportunity to share that organizing model with those who recognize that the battle in which we were engaged 50 years ago is far, far from won, that our people still suffer the chains of racism, that they still contain within them the genius of how to create a just, new world.

History can be told in many ways, and there are many “histories” of SNCC. For example, there is the view that Freedom Summer, made up of Northern students and led by students brought in from Howard and elsewhere (not by the Mississippi SNCC staff, which was not regarded as competent for that task) changed history. And there is the view that the sharecroppers of Mississippi, with the assistance of SNCC organizers, rose up and changed history. Which view will be dominant in the planned conference? 

If this Anniversary conference reduces us to a sweet group of dedicated folk who paved the way for the ultimate victory represented by a black man in the White House, it will leave our people, once again, voiceless.

Which is why I am raising my voice in this conversation.

So, You Want to Collaborate in My Community? By Sharon Hanshaw

Reprinted from our friends at Bridge The Gulf:

When I started Coastal Women for Change, it wasn't my vision to run a nonprofit. If it had been, I would have done my research and learned how to manage one. I was thrown into this work after a devastation. I was a cosmetologist before Hurricane Katrina. I started speaking up for my community and reaching out to my neighbors when I saw how my community of East Biloxi was being left out of the recovery process (like so many predominantly Black and poor communities and neighborhoods across the Gulf Coast).

I would not change my direction or my position. I feel God has a plan for each of us. Our legacy must begin with the change we do for our community, and the whole Gulf Coast region.

Nearly eight years later, it's a struggle to keep our community work going. People are being laid off big time around here. Still, staff are being hired at other nonprofit organizations, but not in many grassroots groups with connections to the community. Funders give grants to nonprofits in Biloxi to collaborate on community work, and the collaboration sounds good on paper. But when you reach out, it stops there. People say "collaboration," but act like, "This is money for us. Let's not collaborate with them."

These collaborations are not supporting people like we need. It's about how the funders see grassroots organizations. It's about what skills are valued – community organizing is taken for granted. Organizations that have the expertise to write grants are the ones that secure the funding. These people come into the community to work. I live in the community. It's assumed grassroots organizations will do the outreach to the community without support or funding. A university gets money, and we're supposed to do all the outreach for free. That's not true collaboration.

Instead of giving more money, support, and skills to organizations that already have these resources, funding decisions and collaborations should be about sharing money, support, and skills with grassroots and community-based groups. And it takes more than a two-hour workshop on grant writing to get those technical skills. It takes relationships and partnerships based on trust and mutual respect, that develop over time.

Here are just two examples of Coastal Women for Change's work that is not supported through collaboration or big funders. We do a backpack giveaway every fall. We serve 1000 people in our community, giving away book bags and school supplies. The giveaway is also a way to assess how great the need is. We collect the names of everyone, and ask people, "What do you need to be sustainable?" We survey, call and follow-up. We build off of the giveaway – It is a way to support our community and engage people further in making changes locally.

This year for the giveaway, I reached out to other nonprofits to say, "Can we do this together? Can you help me with the fundraising effort? You can be on this committee, help me write this letter, contribute volunteers, donate some paper for the event, for example." But I just got no response. It's a dead-end. Emails don't get responded to.

Another part of CWC's day-to-day work is just doing what we can to help people in our community survive. For example, I recently wrote a reference letter to recommend a woman for a job – she was having trouble finding employment because she had been incarcerated. She told me, "I got out jail and am trying to get a job, but no one will hire me." She found employment, with the help of my letter. Those kind of those things – helping the people – are often overlooked by funders and nonprofit collaborations.

The people who live in Ward 2 in East Biloxi should know all these nonprofits and the people who work there by name. They know who I am – I live here, I walk the street here. My people are gone, displaced after Katrina, but I am visiting with new people here. I'm trying to help the ex-offenders, homeless people. People match my face with the organization, because I come to the door. 
 
I don't see the grassroots people and the faith-based people who are walking the streets getting the respect needed so the people they're seeing get served. Those people are not at the table, and need to be at the table.

I recently heard Willie Baptist, author of Pedagogy of the Poor, speak about letting poor people be their own advocates. It really spoke to me and the kind of work we strive to do at Coastal Women for Change. We are trying to sustain the people that exist here, that are making under a living wage. How do you be sustainable in a world designed to keep you down? And how are nonprofit programs supposed to help if they replicate the same problems? We're at the meetings, we're the heads of the nonprofits, but where are the people we are talking about? They should be at these meeting. I recommend you read Pedagogy of the Poor.

If one of these nonprofits with technical skills, staff, and resources, asked "Sharon, what do you need?," here's what I would say: Lend me staff for a few hours a week. I could use a couple hours a week from one of your secretaries to help with my paperwork. 

Also, sit and look at what's been done, at our reports and photos. The proof is in the pictures of our work, the newspaper clippings. We had a childcare program, it ran out of funding.

Finally, reassess yourself. Revisit yourself. Ask yourself: Am I really for the people? Without the pay, would I still do it? What are my feelings towards fellow human beings? Are they my sisters and brothers? Is it genuine? How am I collaborating? Do I reach out to somebody who is doing the same thing, working in the same community?
 
I'm not going to build houses when I know my colleagues are building housing. I am going to focus on the youth and the seniors in the houses, or on a community garden – find the piece I can do, connect the dots. It takes all of us collectively to make a whole, and preserve our future.

You have to walk the talk, not just talk the talk.

Like Rosa Parks being recognized by Congress nearly 60 years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, how long do we have to wait to recognize something that should have been automatic? We are not respected in a way that suggests we have overcome. It's a challenge, teaching our kids, "you have to fight, you have to fight, you have to fight." But they that see our local municipalities don't even respect us, and think, "how are we going to make a difference?" They see racism all the time in school.

If our nonprofit organizations and funders cannot manage respectful and authentic collaboration, what kind of communities and movements are we building?

The change must begin with action, not talk. Show the community you care through action.

Sharon Hanshaw is Executive Director of Coastal Women for Change, in Biloxi, Mississippi. A native of Biloxi, Sharon worked as a cosmetologist for 21 years. She got involved in community organizing and activism after Hurricane Katrina, working to make sure that community members are decision makers in the recovery process. Coastal Women for Change (CWC) focuses on women's empowerment and community development through programs for the elderly and children.

Casualties of Hate – Remembering Birmingham Sunday, by Jaribu Hill

Sunday, September 15, 1963, was the Lord’s Day. It was a time for worship and thanksgiving—a time to rise early—put on Sunday’s best and head to the sanctuary.

When organized hate mongers bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, Cynthia Wesley, Carol Robertson, Denise McNair and Addie Mae Collins were getting ready for Sunday school and practicing for the church play. They were giggling and teasing each other about “usual” girl-child things. They planned to be best friends through adolescence, graduation, college and beyond. The deadly act of cowards who walked free with impunity for decades after committing the heartless deed, devastated an already embattled community and sent a message to all those who dared to stand against a status quo that sanctioned the killing of innocent children. As songwriter Richard Farina wrote:

On Birmingham Sunday, a noise shook the ground
And people all over the earth turned around.
For no one recalled a more cowardly sound.
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.

The murderers of Cynthia, Carole, Denise and Addie Mae, were protected by a vicious state’s rights system that covered up these and other racially motivated deaths at the hands of known persons.

It was a back-in-the-day crime that resonates today. It resonates today as we demand justice for twenty-first century victims of the same hatred that killed the Four Little Girls. We must remember these young martyrs by vowing never to rest until all those responsible for the death of James C. Anderson, who was killed in Jackson, Mississippi on June 26, 2011 by a vehicle driven by modern day night riders, looking for a Black life to claim, are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We can accept nothing less! We must insist that a Black life has the same value as that of a white life. We must lift the veil of denial and become part of the solution that will once and for all put an end to such acts of racial hatred.

As we remember the Four Little Girls, we also must demand answers that will solve the mystery shrouding the death of Frederick Jermaine Carter, whose body was found hanging from a tree on December 3, 2010 in Leflore County, Mississippi. We can no longer remain in the safety zone.

We, who are the beneficiaries of the opportunities denied so many, must come out of our comfort zones and use our inquiring minds and influence to question how such events can occur today, despite the distance we have come. For the sake of our children and all the “Four Little Girls” and Boys to come, we must challenge structures and institutions that continue to exclude the majority to enrich the minority.

Remembering this day and celebrating the lives of Cynthia, Carole, Denise and Addie Mae, should propel us into action. It should make us work harder to dismantle all of the 21st Century separate-but-equal schemes that deny millions of children their constitutional right to equal access to a quality education. It should make us work harder to level the playing field for those who despite this country’s wealth, are caught in a web of grinding and unrelenting poverty.

To survive the onslaught of contemporary forms of injustice, we must demand ACCOUNTABILITY from all those elected to improve the quality of our lives. No longer can we accept their silence and inaction. Now is the time to demand more. Now is the time.

On this day, when our hearts are so heavy, we must renew our resolve to fight the good fight until the job is done! Remember the martyrs and fight for the living! Shame on us, if we don’t.

Jaribu Hill, Executive Director of The Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights is a civil rights attorney. The Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights was founded in 1996 in Oxford, MS to provide education, advocacy and organizing support for low-wage workers and other victims of civil and human rights violations in the workplace. Ms. Hill is the former Director of the Southern Regional Office of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Long History of Targeting Black Elected Officials

In the aftermath of our coverage of Waterproof Louisiana, we've gotten many comments from around the US. One longtime New Orleans activist wrote that Waterproof reminds her of a 30-year old case from rural Mississippi. She sent us the following excerpt from an article about the struggle. From 1980-81, activists from New Orleans' Equal Rights Congress, People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, and others organized around this case:

Tchula's First Black Mayor
(Excerpt from The Militant newspaper):

... In 1977, Eddie Carthan was elected mayor of Tchula, the first Black ever to be elected mayor of a biracial town in the Delta. He was forced out of office in 1981, just one month shy of completing his first term, after being convicted on trumped-up charges of assaulting a police officer. He was given a three-year prison sentence. After seven months, the governor suspended the rest of his sentence.

When Carthan took office, he recalled, Tchula was still segregated, with whites living on one side of the railroad tracks, and Blacks - who were 85 percent of the population -on the other. In the Black community, roads were unpaved, there were no sidewalks or streetlights, 80 percent of the houses had no indoor plumbing, other social services were poor or missing entirely. There were no Blacks heading up any city department, and many Blacks "did not know where the City Hall was," Carthan recalled.

Carthan sought to bring in improved housing, medical care, as well as water and sewage programs to the Black community. In an effort to punish him and put the Black community back in its place, the local white business and landowning establishment began "investigating" him from the moment he took office. "It was a legal lynching and a political lynching," Carthan said.

Before he was even released from prison on the assault charges, Carthan was again framed up -- this time on charges that he had murdered a city alderman a year earlier, in 1980. He was finally acquitted of the murder charge, after his case became known nationally and internationally....

While in jail facing the murder charges, he was framed up again, this time on charges of giving false information to a local bank. Sentenced in 1982 to three years in federal prison, he was released by judge's order after eight months...

Family, Supporters, Rally to Bring Justice for Billey Joe Johnson Jr.

By Ada McMahon

Reposted from Bridge The Gulf

Last Saturday in Lucedale, Mississippi, supporters and family of Billey Joe Johnson Jr. called for an end to the “Jim Crow ‘justice’” that left this young black man dead in the hands of the local police department.

One December morning in 2008, Johnson was pulled over by police on Fig Farm Road in Lucedale. The promising young high school football star, who his mother described as “just the sweetest child,” would not leave police custody alive. He died from a shotgun blast to the head. The police say he shot himself and a grand jury found that the shotgun “accidentally discharged”. But independent investigations and those familiar with the autopsy report raised serious doubts about how Johnson could have shot himself.



“It just doesn’t make sense. Something must have happened,” said Tiffanie Johnson, Billey Joe Jr.’s older sister. “We just want justice.”

“Law enforcement’s investigation left a lot of holes and many of us believe there was foul play. Because of the amount of discrimination we experience every day, we have little faith in the local justice system,” said Bobby Perryman of the Immaculate Heart Community Development Corporation, one of the local groups that has been supportive of the Johnson family’s calls for justice.

On Saturday February 26th, Billey Joe Johnson Jr.’s family and about forty supporters rallied at the George County Courthouse in Lucedale, then help a candlelight vigil by the side of the road where Johnson was shot. Human and civil rights groups like the ACLU of Mississippi, Amnesty International, NAACP and George County Human Rights Task Force joined the family in calling for the U.S. Department of Justice to bring charges for Johnson’s death.



Jim Crow “Justice”

In addition to justice in Johnson’s case, the ralliers called for an end to the abuse of power that characterizes the police’s relationship with black communities in Mississippi, and across the nation.

“We are tired of the corruption, the cover-ups and the abuse we suffer at the hands of the police,” said Ms. Lucy Wilson, President of the Human Rights Taskforce of George County.

According to a press release, George County is 89% white, and still very segregated. A few large white families and their networks own most of the businesses and play influential roles in city and county government.

Tiffanie Johnson, the sister of Billey Joe Johnson Jr. Photo by Ada McMahon.

Nsombi Lambright, the Executive Director of the ACLU of Mississippi, said that police forces and justice systems have been getting away with the murder of African Americans since slavery: 


“We have to keep demanding answers. And not only for Billey Jr. and his family, but for all the other unsolved murders that have happened since the 1960s in Mississippi. This is not new for Mississippi. We have a very troubled background of unsolved murders from slavery to present.

“Until we start standing together and saying that we’re not going to take it anymore, we’re not going to back down, the guns are not going to scare us, the taser guns are not going to scare us, then it’s going to continue to happen… And I don’t want to lose another son. I don’t want to lose another child like this…”

Support from New Orleans

Few people from Lucedale or George County joined the rally and vigil. Lambright explained, “citizens of Lucedale right now are scared to come out… If the police can get away with this, why should they feel comfortable and safe coming out?” 



The Lucedale police were on hand to “escort” cars from the Courthouse to the vigil by the side of the road where Johnson was stopped by police.

Norris Henderson, the Executive Director of Voice of the Ex-Offender in New Orleans, was among a caravan that drove from New Orleans to support the family. He told Johnson’s parents, Billey Joe Johnson Sr. and Annette Johnson, not to be disheartened by the number of the supporters: 


“This is what it’s going to start with – a small group. I know we’re looking for a lot of people, but somebody has to be the vanguard. In New Orleans a small group of us did the same thing to bring justice for the Glover family, [helping] them bring those police to justice.

The Madison family [from the Danzinger Bridge incident]–– it started with a handful of people. And it was a smaller number than this. So be encouraged by this. And we’re committed that the next time… we’ll try to bring, as opposed to four, five, or six cars, maybe four five or six buses.”

The caravan from New Orleans was organized by the Greater New Orleans Organizers’ Roundtable, a group of community organizers that meets monthly to coordinate efforts.

Rebecca Glover, who joined the caravan, offered support to the Johnson family as someone who’s family was also touched by a “nightmare” police murder and cover-up. Her nephew, Henry Glover, was shot by police in the days following Hurricane Katrina, and then burned in his car in a cover-up that involved at least five members of the New Orleans Police Department.



“Hang in there and keep on fighting for justice,” Mrs. Glover said. “Most of all, stay focused on this. Don’t let them shove it under the rug, cause they will.” 


Billey Joe Johnson Sr. called for everyone to pull together around his son, to prevent the next child from being killed.
Billey Joe Johnson Sr. and Annette Johnson, the parents of Billey Joe Johnson Jr, gathered with family and supporters at the site where their son was shot. Photo by Ada McMahon.

Mississippi Activists Plan Rally Against Police Brutality

The announcement below is adapted from information from our friends at Justice For Billey Joe Johnson, Jr., and Color Of Change:

This weekend, activists in George County, Mississippi, will be hosting two days of action to demand justice for Billey Joe Johnson, Jr. and all other victims of police brutality in George County. Solidarity delegations will be traveling from New Orleans (leaving on Saturday) and other nearby cities to support this struggle.

Schedule of Events:

Friday, February 25
Triumph Baptist Church
4:00pm: Know Your Rights Training
6:00pm: Memorial for Billey Joe

Saturday, February 26
1:00pm: Rally at Courthouse
4:30pm: Vigil at the dirt pit where it is believed Billey Joe was killed

For more details or to get involved, call Immaculate Heart CDC (601.945.2986) or Ms. Lucy Wilson (601.508.4142). For info on rides from New Orleans, contact Robert Goodman of Safe Streets Strong Communities at akilimtu@gmail.com.

Background:
On December 8th, 2008, 17-year-old Billey Joe Johnson, Jr., a star athlete with his pick of college football scholarships, died from a gunshot wound to the head. Police claim he killed himself with a shotgun after being stopped for a simple traffic violation in Lucedale, Mississippi. Several things seem to cast doubt on the official story, including an independent investigation that concluded it would have been impossible for the shot that killed Johnson to have been self-inflicted.

Many on the ground smell a murder and a cover-up. We don't have all the answers, but it's clear that in the racially divided town of Lucedale, all the ingredients exist for a miscarriage of justice.

From the beginning, the District Attorney has treated the investigation of Billey Joe's death as a suicide or the result of an accidental self-inflicted injury. Based on his public statements and interactions with Billey Joe's family, it appears that the District Attorney hasn't looked into whether Billey Joe was killed by an officer or someone else. Again, we don't have all the answers, but here's what we do know:

* Billey Joe was at his former girlfriend's house minutes before the killing. He never entered the house, but police were called to respond to an attempted burglary there. This fact was not a part of the original story given by the police.

* Billey Joe's family says that his ex-girlfriend had been staying at her father's house because her mother threw her out for dating Billey Joe (she is White and Billey Joe was Black). They said Billey Joe knew to only go to the house when the girl's father was not present, that the two of them were on good terms even after he had broken up with her, and that the breakup was largely because of pressure from her father. The family also claims that there is a relationship between the officer present at the scene of Billey Joe's death and the girl's father.

* A witness heard two shots, not one, at the scene where Billey Joe died, according to an independent investigation launched by the Mississippi NAACP. The pathologist in that investigation has indicated that it would be impossible for a bullet from a self-inflicted shot to enter in the manner that it did. He also said that given the length of Billey Joe's arms and the length of the shotgun, it would have been impossible for him to hold the weapon and fire it at himself.

* Billey Joe was a star athlete with scholarship offers from more than half a dozen schools. No one--including family, friends, and coaches--could think of a reason that Billey Joe would want to end his life.

A true investigation would sort out fact from rumor. But we can't be sure that Johnson's family will get the investigation it deserves. In the case of the Jena 6 we saw a District Attorney and a judge incapable of carrying out justice in a racially charged environment. In the recent case of the murder of Oscar Grant by police (and many like it), we see how unlikely it is for District Attorneys to do their job when the suspect is an officer of the law. But in both these cases, public pressure has made all the difference by shining a spotlight on local authorities.

Mississippi Attorney Jailed For Not Reciting Pledge of Allegiance

On Wednesday, October 6, in Tupelo, Mississippi, Chancery Judge Talmadge Littlejohn jailed attorney Danny Lampley because Lampley declined to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

According to an article from the Associated Press, "When a Mississippi judge entered a courtroom and asked everyone to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, an attorney with a reputation for fighting free speech battles stayed silent as everyone else recited the patriotic oath. The lawyer was jailed."

"Attorney Danny Lampley spent about five hours behind bars Wednesday before Judge Talmadge Littlejohn set him free so that the lawyer could work on another case. Lampley told The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal that he respected the judge but wasn't going to back down. 'I don't have to say it because I'm an American,' Lampley told the newspaper. The Supreme Court ruled nearly 70 years ago that schoolchildren couldn't be forced to say the pledge, a decision widely interpreted to mean no one could be required to recite the pledge.

The ACLU of Mississippi has condemned Judge Littlejohn’s action. “The right to be free from state-coerced oaths is fundamental constitutional protection," said Bear Atwood, Interim Legal Director for the ACLU of Mississippi. “A judge has no more right to order an attorney in his court to recite the pledge than a teacher does in a classroom."

The ACLU has been defending freedom of conscience and the First Amendment since 1920, and the ACLU of Mississippi office was founded in 1969.

Pictured in photo above: Danny Lampley.

Jackson City Council Passes Anti-Profiling Legislation

From our friends at the ACLU of Mississippi:

JACKSON - The ACLU of Mississippi announced today that it applauds the Jackson City Council 6-1 vote to pass an anti-racial profiling ordinance. The ordinance prohibits police officers from stopping or detaining people based on the person’s race, immigration status, perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. It also prohibits police officers from asking people about their immigration status solely to determine if they are in the United States illegally.

“I commend the council members for standing up for the protection of civil rights and civil liberties,” said Nsombi Lambright, ACLU-MS Executive Director. “A person’s race should never be grounds to suspect that someone has committed a crime. This ordinance declares that Mississippi’s capital city will not tolerate racial profiling.”

The ordinance also enforces basic Constitutional protections.

“The Constitution guarantees equal protection and prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures by law enforcement,” said Bear Atwood. “This ordinance underscores those protections and reminds police officers that they have a sworn duty to uphold them.”

African American Mississippi Man Starts Record Sixth Murder Trial

By Bill Quigley, Audrey Stewart and Davida Finger

An African American man, Curtis Flowers, made history this week when he became the first person in U.S. history to ever go on trial for murder six times for the same crime. Mr. Flowers has been in jail in Mississippi since 1996, accused of the murder of four people at a furniture store. Jury selection started this week in tiny Winona Mississippi, population 5,482.

Mr. Flowers has been in jail since 1996 awaiting trial and was previously tried for these murders in 1997, 1999, 2004, 2007 and 2008. All either ended in hung juries or overturned convictions. The five previous trials have already cost the State of Mississippi over $300,000.

Winona, known as the “Crossroads of Mississippi,” is a small town in a small poor rural county 120 miles south of Memphis and about 100 miles north of Jackson Mississippi. Winona is in Montgomery County. The total population of the county is just over 12,000. The county is 45 percent African American. The median home value in Winona is $51,000.

A 1997 conviction of Mr. Flowers was reversed by the Mississippi Supreme Court because the prosecution improperly used theatrics and irrelevant evidence of other crimes to inflame and prejudice the jury. A 1999 conviction was reversed because the prosecution used hearsay evidence and twisted the facts before the jury.

A 2004 conviction was reversed after the prosecutor exercised all fifteen of his peremptory strikes on African Americans. The Mississippi Supreme Court said that trial “presents us with as strong a prima facie case of racial discrimination as we have ever seen…”

The fourth and fifth trials ended in mistrials when the juries were not able to reach a unanimous verdict.

In the 2007 trial, five African American jurors voted to acquit and the seven white jurors voted to convict. In the 2008 trial, a retired African American teacher held out for acquittal. The prosecutor later charged that juror with perjury, only to drop the charge.

On Monday, because the trial is in such a small county, nearly all the prospective jurors had some relationship to the case through family, school or work. Four white prospective jurors were law enforcement officers and admitted they had guarded or transported Mr. Flowers - but they said they could consider the case impartially. Prospective African American jurors spoke about their association with the Flower’s family through work, family, church, and a popular gospel group headed by Curtis’ father Archie Flowers. One juror spoke of his moving experiences with Curtis Flowers after meeting him through his church group’s prison ministry.

On Tuesday, Lajuanda Williams, an African American law student from the Mississippi College of Law, was followed and then stopped by Montgomery County law enforcement as she drove to Mr. Flowers’ trial.

Ms. Williams drove from Jackson Mississippi to Winona to start her first day observing the murder trial. She is spending the summer as an intern in the Mississippi Office for Capital Defense. As she was approaching Winona, a Montgomery County police car followed her for about a mile then turned on his lights and pulled her over.

When she rolled down her window, the officer instructed Ms. Williams to place her hands on the steering wheel and not look at him, look directly ahead. She complied. She knew she had not been speeding and had broken no laws.

He asked Ms. Williams where she was going. She asked him, “Have I broken any laws?” He responded, that’s not the question I asked you. What I asked is where are you going? Ms. Williams said “There should be some reason why you pulled me over.” The deputy said, I’m going to ask you again. Where are you going? She told him, “I’m going to the courthouse.” He then asked her, what is your business in Winona? She told him, “It is not any of your business why I am here in Winona.” He said, if that’s where you’re going, you need to drive straight to the courthouse and stay out of trouble.

The police car then followed Ms. Williams for about 500 feet and then turned off.

During the entire exchange, Ms. Williams recalled many stories from African Americans in her home state of Mississippi who had been tasered and injured by officers during stops just as this. She fully complied with deputy’s order to look directly ahead. The deputy never gave her any reason for the stop. She was not asked for her license. She was not warned. She was not ticketed. Unfortunately, because she was ordered to look straight ahead, Ms. Williams was not able to identify the deputy.

Ms. Williams then drove to the courthouse to begin the first day of her internship. She was angry but not surprised. “I know the reality of being African American in a place like Winona,” she said. Two white interns, second year law students at the University of San Francisco, were not stopped when they drove into Winona on Wednesday.

In court on Wednesday, defense counsel sought to bring up the incident with law enforcement to the attention of the judge. The prosecutor angrily objected. Defense counsel asked permission to put Ms. Williams on the stand. The Judge said “We’re entering the theater of the absurd here” and that he was not interested in hearing about what happened to Ms. Williams. He said that he could not control everything and the stop, if it occurred, which he did not believe, didn’t have anything to do with the case. He ordered the jury questioning to continue and refused to take any evidence of the stop of Ms. Williams.

Ms. Williams told Alan Bean of Friends of Justice why she thought she was stopped. “I think it came from the trial and the injustice that has been permeating this town for years. You can cut the tension in Winona with a knife.” Why bring it up and risk the anger of the judge and prosecutor? “I could not sleep last night,” she explained, “I kept thinking about my daughter, she’s three years old. I kept thinking I had to do something so that she doesn’t have to go through what I just went through.”

While jury selection continues, the U.S. Department of Justice has been asked to investigate the Mississippi law enforcement harassment of Ms. Williams.

Despite all this, when asked how Curtis Flowers was holding up during the trial, his mother Lola Flowers replied “Well, he’s got the faith.”

For the criminal justice system in Winona Mississippi, as in many other places, William Faulkner said it best. Faulkner, Mississippi native, author, and Nobel Prize winner, wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

For more information and updates on the case of Curtis Flowers, see http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com.

Bill is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Audrey Stewart is a Mississippi native and a public school teacher in New Orleans. Davida Finger and Bill are professors at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach Bill at quigley77@gmail.com.

Justice Denied is Justice Denied: Please Support Curtis Flowers

By Audrey Stewart and Davida Finger, Esq.

Curtis Flowers has been incarcerated in Mississippi for almost 15 years without ever being fairly convicted of any crime. Facing capital charges, his sixth trial for the same alleged crimes began today in Winona, MS. Curtis Flowers sat peacefully as jury selection began in the quadruple murder case against him. Family members of some of the victims held detailed, printed information about the prospective jurors including jurors’ employment, family and residential information, criminal backgrounds, facebook postings, and comments such as “justice court says good.”

Curtis Flowers has been tried on the same related murders charges in: 1997, 1999, 2004, 2007, and 2008. Witnesses eventually came forward only after a $30,000 award was offered by the prosecutor’s office. The Mississippi State Supreme Court overturned the first two decisions against Mr. Flowers due to prosecutorial misconduct and errors. After the second trial, the court opined, “. . . the prosecution went far beyond the realm of admissible evidence in this case in order to improperly enhance the likelihood of Flowers for [sic] capital murder . . . ." (State v. Flowers, Ms. S. Ct. (April 3, 2003), at 49).

Following the third trial, the high court vacated the decision to convict and the death sentence based on the prosecutor’s evident racial bias in using all fifteen jury strikes to eliminate only African Americans from the jury pool; only one African American ultimately sat on the jury that voted to convict. “The continuous striking of African-American jurors, whose views on the death penalty are virtually indistinguishable from those of similarly situated white jurors who went unchallenged by the State, does raise an inference of racial discrimination.” (State v. Flowers, 947 So. 2d 910, 921, 2007).

The fourth trial resulted in a hung jury; five African American jurors voted to acquit while seven White jurors voted to convict. According to the Clarion-Ledger, those first four trials cost the State of Mississippi no small sum: approximately $283,000. (See Jimmy Gates, Jurors Give Up; Fifth Trial Awaits, Clarion Ledger, Dec. 6, 2007).

The fifth trial also resulted in a hung jury. Following that trial, the prosecutor charged the only juror who held out for an acquittal with perjury: a retired, African American teacher. However, following both the judge and prosecutor’s recusals from that case, the Mississippi Attorney General’s office dropped the perjury charges due simply to the lack of evidence. The cost of the fifth trial brought the total state spending on its case against Mr. Flowers to over $300,000. (See Charlie Smith, Flowers Defense Attacks Photo Line-up, Greenwood Commonwealth, June 2, 2010).

Nearly of the prospective jurors had some relationship to the case through family relationship, school or work. Four white prospective jurors were law enforcement officers who testified that they had guarded or transported Flowers but felt prepared to consider the case impartially. One after another, prospective African American jurors spoke about their association with the Flower’s family through work, family, church, and a popular gospel group headed by Archie Flowers (Curtis’s father). One juror spoke of his moving experiences with Curtis Flowers after meeting him through his church group’s prison ministry. Asked how Flowers was holding up at the end of the first day, his mother Lola Flowers replied “Well, he’s got the faith.”

For more information:

Mississippi Supreme Court Decisions, at: http://www.mssc.state.ms.us/appellate_courts/sc/scdecisions.html.

Friends of Justice (Curtis Flowers link).

Audrey Stewart is a community activist as soon to be teacher. She is originally from the Mississippi Delta and lives in New Orleans.

Davida Finger is an attorney and Assistant Professor of Law at Loyola Law School. She teaches the Community Justice Clinic and the Law & Poverty course. In collaboration with community organizations, Professor Finger has worked extensively on disaster-related cases and policy matters to improve government accountability in rebuilding and on distribution of disaster funds. Prior to joining the clinical faculty at Loyola, she practiced law in Seattle focusing on consumer, land use, and human rights cases.

Fire on the Bayou: Non-Stop River of Oil Heads to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, By Bill Quigley

The Coast Guard estimates 5000 barrels of crude oil a day, 210,000 gallons a day, are pouring out of a damaged British Petroleum (BP) well in the Gulf of Mexico since the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. Eleven people died in the explosion. The oil rig burned and sank. The exploratory well, which is 50 miles away from the coast, continues to powerfully disgorge oil from the bottom of the 5000 feet deep surface of the Gulf.

Oil has now reached the Louisiana coast. The Associated Press (AP) reported there is an oil slick 130 miles long and 70 miles wide in the Gulf of Mexico. Birds covered in thick black oil have already been recovered. Efforts to stop the oil have not proven effective. The AP reports the oil is expected to reach Mississippi on Saturday, Alabama in two days and Florida in three.

Late Friday afternoon, the Mobile Press Register reported a confidential government report prepared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Emergency Ops concluded that if the pipe on the Gulf floor “deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought.” An uncontrolled release of oil “could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf.”

Plans to set parts of the Gulf on fire have been pushed back by bad weather. The unprecedented idea was to burn up the oil spill before it reached land. “This is a great tool,” promised a BP representative.

In response, one long-time Louisiana resident said, “You know you’re in very serious trouble when the solution is for BP and the feds to set the Gulf on fire.”

Worst hit in Louisiana are the coastal areas of Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes – just now limping back from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

On Friday afternoon, federal and state officials held a joint press conference in Louisiana. Curiously, they held their conference with BP representatives. Officials characterized the situation as dangerous and unprecedented. Government representatives said they were pushing BP to increase its efforts to stop the oil because current efforts have not been effective. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano flatly acknowledged that the US is working closely with BP.

BP has caused a lot of trouble lately. The Pulitzer Prize winning news site Pro Publica reported BP “has found itself at the center of several of the nation’s worst oil and gas-related disasters in recent years.” BP recently plead guilty to federal felony charges related to a massive explosion in Texas where investigators found ignored safety rules and a disabled warning system. BP is also accused of responsibility for several recent spills in Alaska.

Why then would federal and state officials hold a joint press conference with BP, given the multinational corporation’s role in the unfolding disaster? Perhaps the reason was hinted at by a comment from the Secretary of the Interior in which he cautioned that the U.S. depends heavily on oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. Even though the White House protested that the oil spill is not President Obama’s Katrina, a public partnership between the perpetrator BP and the government certainly has the potential to become a “Katrina moment.”

Louisiana is trying to deploy 6000 members of the National Guard. Air Force planes have been called in to spray chemicals on the oil. National Guard soldiers in Louisiana are currently “engaged in the planning of the effort to evacuate and provide security and clean up for the coastal communities expected to be impacted by the spill.” They are also planning for the protection of medical facilities, fuel distribution, interstate highways, and power facilities.

Louisiana has already started setting up its shelter program for people with special needs who may have to be evacuated because of concerns about air quality.

Official states of emergency have already been declared along the coasts in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

Along the Louisiana coast, people fear the loss of the fishing industry. In New Orleans people worry about air quality.

Thousands of pelicans, herons, egrets, ibis, frigate birds, and rarities like grebes and albatrosses are at risk from the river of oil. Dolphins are birthing at this time so their offspring are at risk. Shrimp and oyster fishing grounds are being closed.

Air quality for humans is another serious issue. The New Orleans area, home to hundreds of thousands, has already been blanketed by a chemical odor.

The head of the Louisiana State Health Department Jimmy Guidry said the smell is an irritant, affecting people with lung conditions and asthma. He said it is normal for the smell to arrive before air quality checks could detect anything harmful. Officials with the Louisiana Health and Hospitals and Environmental Quality said changes in air quality can cause nausea, vomiting or headaches for people who are sensitive. Air sampling was started by the Environmental Protection Agency Thursday and water sampling started Friday. No reports have been made public so far.

Governor Jindal has asked that the feds declare a commercial fisheries failure for Louisiana. The state supplies about one-third of the seafood harvested in the lower 48 states – about $2.85 billion worth a year. Louisiana has put price gouging laws into effect forbidding the raising of prices on gasoline, petroleum products, hotels, motels, and retailers.

Jindal told the press Thursday that he has asked several times for a detailed plan of how Coast Guard plans to handle the situation, but he has “not seen a quantifiable plan.”

In an ominous note, lawmakers, according to USA Today, say they have been told that not only is light crude headed towards the coast, but so too is heavy asphaltic oil.

“This isn’t a spill. This isn’t a storage tank or a ship with a finite amount of oil that has boundaries. This is much, much worse,” said Kerry St. Pe, the former head of the Louisiana oil spill response team. The Gulf spill is really a river of oil flowing out of the bottom of the Gulf according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

In 1975, the New Orleans group, The Meters, released their album Fire on the Bayou. The album cover featured an apocalyptic orange and yellow painting of a bayou ablaze. In 2010 the idea of a fire on the bayou may well be coming true.

Bill is Legal director of the center for Constitutional Rights and professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans. His email is quigley77@gmail.com.