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VOLUME 93 - NUMBER 25 DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 2014 TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913 PRICE: 30
50 years ago, 'Freedom Summer’ changed U.S.
By Allen G. Breed and Sharon
Cohen
HOLLY SPRINGS, Miss.
(AP) - Roy DeBerry learned at
an early age what could happen
to a black boy who violated Mis
sissippi’s Jim Crow-era social
code.
His teacher at the one-room
church school outside town had
arranged for porters to toss cop
ies of the Chicago Defender,
Jet and other black publications
from passing trains, because
mailing them was too risky. One
day, the young pupils learned the
gruesome tale of Emmett Till,
the Chicago boy beaten beyond
recognition, shot and dumped in
a river in 1955 - for whistling at
a white woman.
“There was real terror in Mis
sissippi,” says DeBerry, just 8
I at the time. “We knew that this
1 state was capable of killing and
I lynching a 14-year-old boy - and
was also capable of not convict-
I ing the people that did it.”
As a teen himself, DeBerry
knew he was gambling with his
I own life when he joined civil
rights activists who came to Mis
sissippi in the summer of 1964 to
challenge its way of life.
During what became known
as “Freedom Summer,” hun
dreds of volunteers- mostly
Northern white college students
and others, including Aviva Fu-
torian, a young history teacher -
descended on the state to focus
national attention on the indigni
ties and horrors of segregation.
They came to register blacks to
vote, and establish “Freedom
Schools” and community centers
I to help prepare those long dis
enfranchised for participation in
what they hoped would be a new
political order.
Opposition was widespread
i and brutal. Churches were
bombed, volunteers were ha
rassed, arrested, beaten - even
murdered.
Fifty years later, Freedom
Summer stands out as a water
shed moment in the long, often
bloody drive for civil rights.
Mass resistance to integration
started to crumble. Congress
took a monumental step toward
equal rights. And scores of
young, idealistic volunteers em
barked on long careers of activ
ism that continue to shape Amer-
! ican politics and policy today.
And in this vortex of history,
lifelong friendships formed be
tween people from vastly differ
ent worlds.
So it was that a 16-year-old
black factory worker’s son from
Mississippi and the 26-year-old
daughter of a Jewish furniture
mogul from Chicago’s afflu
ent suburbs bonded over bolo
gna and tomato sandwiches and
chatter at Modena’s Cafe during
a summer that would define their
lives.
Sitting side by side recently
on a sofa in Futorian’s condo
minium overlooking Chicago’s
fashionable Lincoln Park, the
two friends flipped through al
bums of photos from 1964.
They reminisced about Freedom
School lessons under a tree in
oppressive heat, practice ses
sions for a sit-in at a segregated
theater, taboos that prevented
a white woman and black man
from sitting next to each other in
a car. As they talked, they some
times finished each other’s sto
ries as old friends often do.
“Everybody told us our lives
| would be in danger,” said Futo-
rian, now a 76-year-old attorney.
“I probably didn’t have as much
trepidation as I should have. Be
cause it’s hard to imagine your
own death.”
Freedom Summer followed
many winters of discontent in
the fight for civil rights. Years o
(Continued On Page 2)
Durham based award winning poet Dasan Ahanu led the The Bull City Slam Team to a first place finish at the The 22nd Annual Southern
Fried Southeastern Regional Poetry Slam June 14-15From left To right are: Eric “Lyrically Blessed” Thompson, Brandon “Ishine” Ev
ans, Wendy Jones, Dasan Ahanu, Lejuane “El’Ja” Bowens, Micah Romans (squatting). See story on page 2
Ruby Dee’s legacy of
activism, acting mourned
By Mark Kennedy
NEW YORK (AP) - For Ruby Dee, acting and activism were not
contradictory things. They were inseparable and they were inter
twined.
The African-American actress who earned lead roles in movies
and on Broadway also spent her entire life fighting against injus
tice, even emceeing the 1963 March on Washington and protesting
apartheid in South Africa.
“We are image makers. Why can’t we image makers become
peacemakers, too?” she asked after she and her husband Ossie Da
vis accepted the Screen Actors Guild Award for Lifetime Achieve
ment in 2000.
That legacy of entertaining and pushing for change - in addition
to her epic love affair with Davis - made Dee, who died at age 91 in
her New Rochelle, New York, home on June 11, a beloved figure in
America and beyond. Broadway theaters dimmed their lights in her
honor June 13.
As a sign of how influential Dee has been to generations of
performers, she was thanked twice from the podium at this year’s
Tony Awards - by six-time winner Audra McDonald and new Tony
winner director Kenny Leon.
“She will be missed but never forgotten as she lives on in many
ofus,” Leon said in a statement June 12, noting that Dee’s passing
came just weeks after the death of Maya Angelou. “Maya and Ruby
leave us only days apart - those two women with four letter names
instructed us on how to live.”
Dee’s long career earned her an Emmy, a Grammy, two Screen
Actors Guild awards, the NAACP Image Award, Kennedy Center
Honors, the National Medal of Art, and the National Civil Rights
Museum’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She got an Oscar nomina
tion at age 83 for best supporting actress for her role in the 2007
film “American Gangster.”
Spike Lee, who directed Dee and her husband in “Do the Right
Thing,” took to Instagram to say he was “crushed.” He said it was
one of his “great blessings in life to work with two of the finest art
ists and activists - Ruby and Ossie.”
Dee made her Broadway debut in the original production of
“South Pacific” and in 1959 starred in the Broadway premiere of“A
Raisin in the Sun,” Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark play about black
frustration amid racial discrimination, opposite Sidney Poitier. Both
reprised that role in the film two years later.
Davis and Dee, who met in 1945 when she auditioned for the
Broadway play “Jeb,” and married on a day off from another play in
1948, shared billing in 11 stage productions and five movies during
long parallel careers.
But they were more than a performing couple. They were also
activists who fought for civil rights, particularly for blacks. “We used
the arts as part of our struggle,” she said in 2006.
Along with film, stage and television, their richly honored careers
extended to a radio show, “The Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Story
Hour,” that featutred a mix of black themes. Davis directed one of
their joint film appearances, “Countdown at Kusini” (1976).
ACTRESS RUBY DEE - (Photo Courtesy
Ruby Dee/Ossie dAvis.com
As young performers, they participated in the growing movement
for social and racial justice in the United States. They were friends
with barrier-breaking baseball star Jackie Robinson and his wife, Ra
chel - Dee played her, opposite Robinson himself, in the 1950 movie,
“The Jackie Robinson Story” - and with the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr. and Malcom X. Both spoke at both the funerals for King and Mal
com X.
Their activism never waned. They celebrated their 50th wedding
anniversary by helping to launch the 30th-anniversary celebration of
the University of Iowa Black Action Theatre and in 1999, were ar
rested protesting the shooting death ofAmadou Diallo, an unarmed
African immigrant, by New York City police.
In 1998, the pair also released a dual autobiography, “With Ossie
and Ruby: In This Life Together.”
Dee and Davis, who died in 2005, were celebrated as national
treasures when they received the National Medal of Arts in 1995 and
got a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in
2000. In 2004, she and Davis received Kennedy Center Honors. An
other honor came in 2007 when the recording of their memoir won a
Grammy for best spoken word album.
Born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Dee moved to Harlem with
her family as an infant. She attended her first protests as a child, join
ing picket lines to rail against discriminatory hiring practices.
She graduated from a highly competitive high school and enrolled
in college but longed to act.
(Continued On Page 2)
Black Workers
Stuck in
Poverty Wages
By Freddie Alien
NNPA Washington
Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NNPA) -
As fast food and retail workers
continue to march for higher
wages, a new study by the Eco
nomic Policy Institute revealed
that blacks are more likely to
earn poverty wages than whites.
EPI released the “Raising
America’s Pay” study in con
junction with the launch of a
new research initiative focused
on “broad-based wage growth as
the central economic challenge
of our time - essential to allevi
ating inequality, expanding the
middle class, reducing poverty,
generating shared prosperity, and
sustaining economic growth.”
During a panel discussion
about the new project, Valerie
Wilson, director of EPI’s pro
gram on race, ethnicity, and the
economy, said that over the last
30 years, wage growth has been
far below productivity growth,
for a lot of workers, regardless
of race, ethnicity or gender.
Although the number of
blacks and whites working pov
erty-level wages has increased
since 2000, nearly 36 percent of
black workers made those wages
compared to less than 23 percent
of whites.
“As we see a shrinking piece
of the pie for workers to divide,
black and Hispanic workers have
been left behind,” said Wilson.
Wilson said that the new proj
ect will examine occupational
segregation in gender and race,
observe the rise of mass incar
ceration and how it affects black
male workers, and the surge in
undocumented workers.
In a 2011, EPI researchers re
ported that black males earned
less than $15 working full-time,
compared to their white male
peers who made more than $20,
even with the same levels of edu
cation.
“One possible explanation for
this wage disparity is that black
men tend to be crowded into
lower-paying occupations - even
when they have similar educa
tional attainment as white men,”
stated the report. “The result is
an oversupply of workers in the
crowded occupations, which has
the effect of lowering wages fur
ther in those jobs.”
In 2013, the Center for Eco
nomic Policy Research, reported
“that increases in education and
work experience will increase
workers’ productivity and trans
late into higher compensation.
But, the share of black workers
in a 'good job’ - one that pays
at least $19 per hour (in infla
tion-adjusted 2011 dollars), has
employer-provided health insur
ance, and an employer- spon
sored retirement plan - has actu
ally declined.”
Wilson said that higher levels
of education have not translated
intowage growth.
“If we look at those work
ers who are the highest earners,
these are also the workers that
tend to be the most highly edu
cated,” said Wilson. “More edu
cation has helped minorities and
women to get higher wages, but
it hasn’t necessarily gotten them
to equal wages, so that’s an addi
tional step that needs to be taken
to close the gap.”
Lawrence Mishel, president
of EPI, agreed, adding that col
lege education is important, but
when it comes to inclusive in
come growth over the next 10
years, addressing education is
not very high on that list.
(Continued On Page 2)