WILS
08/20
* *CHILL
WILSON LIBRARY
N C COLLECTION - UNO-CH
P O BOX 8890
LUME 94 - NUMBER 39
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2015
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TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913 PRICE: 50 CENTS
Durham Civil Rights History
Mural Project Dedication
Saturday October 3, 2015 10am-12pm
120 Morris Street parking lot (next to Durham Arts Council)
Join us for music, dance, contests and historical fun featuring
activities by Village of Wisdom and a performance by the
African American Dance Ensemble
Is event is sponsored by The City of Durham, Durham County, Village of Wisdom,
and The Durham Civil Rights History Mural Project
VOW
Durham Civil Rights
History Mural
Dedication October 3rd
Durham residents are invited to celebrate the comple-
» of the Durham Civil Rights History Mural Project
ng the Durham Civil Rights History Mural Dedica-
Ceremony next Saturday. The ceremony will honor
ham’s civil rights history foot soldiers through music,
ce, contests, and more. The event will feature guest
akers and a performance by the African American
ice Ensemble.
’he ceremony culminates two years of work, which
Ian in 2013 when 30 diverse community members,
es 15-65, came together during a 16-week period to
gage in Durham’s civil rights history through a series
lectures, music performances, research, and design
Ikshops.
The project began with a series of educational lectures
I by Dr. Benjamin Speller and included North Caro
la Representative Mickey Michaux, Jr., Pauli Murray
eject Executive Director Barbara Lau, North Carolina
Itral University Coordinator of University Archives/
structor of Public History Andre’ Vann, veteran Civil
glits activist Vivian McCoy, North Carolina Senator
syd B. McKissick, Jr., and North Carolina Central Uni-
rsity Associate Professor & Internship Coordinator for
■Department of Mass Communication Dr. Charmaine
pKissick-Melton.
This group then gathered what they discovered into a
Baborative mural design, and beginning in late June
14 with the help of the greater Durham community,
rated a 2,400 square foot mural in downtown Durham
der the direction of muralist Brenda Miller Holmes.
The $20,000 funding for the mural project was sup-
|ed by Cultural Master Plan implementation funds
signaled for public art, as provided for that purpose by
rity of Durham and Durham County.
Additional sponsorship for the Durham Civil
Ehls History Mural Dedication Ceremony are: Cak-
i Group, Susan Cervantes, Duke University Office of
■ham and Regional Affairs, Duke University Health
Stem, Duke University Office of the Vice Provost for
Arts, The Green Family, Hayti Heritage Center, The
>lmes Family, The Isaacs Family, Renee Leverty, Me
anies and Farmers Bank, North Carolina Mutual Life
surance Company, Carl Webb, and Wells Fargo.
Jz, Holder, rapper Jones among 2015
DuBois Medal recipients
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - Boxing legend Muhammad Ali,
[Attorney General Eric Holder, and rapper Nasir “Nas” Jones
among the 2015 recipients of Harvard’s W.E.B. DuBois Medal,
inis year’s winners will gather Sept. 30 at Harvard for an awards
Pony and panel discussion. Ali, who is battling Parkinson’s dis-
|will appear via a video link.
medal honors those who have made significant contributions
African and African-American history and culture, intercultural
^standing and human rights.
Jther 2015 recipients include Marian Wright Edelman, founder
‘ president of the Children’s Defense Fund; Mellody Hobson,
iident of Ariel Investments and chairman of the board of Ariel
lament Trust; Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the first black woman to
B in the University of Georgia; and artist Carrie Mae Weems.
BiBois was an acclaimed author, historian and civil rights activ-
NAACP Remembers Fallen Journey
for Justice Marcher
By Jazelle Hunt
NNPA Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NNPA) - At the end of July, a man named Mid
dle Passage boarded a bus from his home in La Jara, Colorado to
travel more than 1,300 miles to Alabama. After 20 hours, the Viet
nam and Korean War Navy veteran arrived in Selma with the goal of
walking the full distance of the NAACP’s Journey for Justice March
to Washington, D.C., despite five open-heart surgeries and being 68
years old.
He did just that. But on September 12, just four days before the
finish, he suffered a fatal heart attack while leading the marchers
through Spotslyvania County, Va.
Clinton: Bush’s ‘free stuff’
comments are
‘deeply insulting’
By Ken Thomas
WASHINGTON (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton says
Jeb Bush’s suggestion that Democrats offer “free stuff’ to
appeal to minority voters is “deeply insulting.”
Bush told a South Carolina audience last week that
Democrats offer division and “free stuff,” or government
help, to black voters while his message is about “hope
and aspiration.”
Clinton took issue with the comments during a Face-
book question-and-answer session on Sept. 26. She said
rhetoric like that is “deeply insulting, whether it comes
from Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney or Donald Trump.”
“I think people are seeing this for what it is: Repub
licans lecturing people of color instead of offering real
solutions to help people get ahead, including facing up
to hard truths about race and justice in America,” Clinton
wrote on Facebook.
Bush’s remarks drew comparisons to Romney’s com
ments following his 2012 loss in the presidential election
to President Barack Obama, when the former Massachu
setts governor told donors that Obama had offered “gifts”
to minority voters.
Bush told FOX News on Sunday that his comments
were taken out of context and he was making a point that
was counter to what Romney had said at the time.
“I think we need to make our case to African-American
voters and all voters that an aspirational message, fixing
a few big complex things, will allow people to rise up.
That’s what people want. They don’t want free stuff. That
was my whole point,” Bush said.
ABC’s ‘black-ish’ tackles the
‘N-word’; felt, not heard
By Lynn Elber
LOS ANGELES (AP) - When “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris
confiscated his daughter’s phone for a teenage misstep, he was taken
aback by one message string he read.
“ Hold on, why is this kid saying the N-word?’” Barris recalled
asking his 16-year-old. “And she said, 'All my friends say it.’”
Barris realized that it’s “become for them this word that has no
history, no understanding, nothing but that rap has made it a cool
rhyming word, or something to add punctuation to a sentence. It’s
lost all meaning.”
That epiphany lead to the second-season opener of ABC’s “black
ish,” airing 9:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday, which puts the word in the
context of both the multigenerational Johnson family and, more
broadly, within black history.
The episode’s approach is candid and direct, as is the series’ trade
mark, but avoids trading in shock value. The N-word is used perhaps
a dozen times by different characters but is always bleeped out.
The story is also very, very funny, in a way that the smartest and
most engaging television can be in the right hands and with a net
work’s support.
“Black-ish” stars Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross as par
ents whose crowded household includes four children and granddad
Pops (Laurence Fishburne). It is adorable youngest son Jack (Miles
Brown) who prompts the crisis.
His elementary school talent show rendition of Kanye West’s
“Gold Digger,” N-word included, sends the audience into shock
and administrators into action: Jack is to be expelled under a “zero
tolerance” policy that his own mother, Dr. Rainbow Johnson, had
demanded.
His dad, Dre, who has to confess that he had encouraged a car
sing-along to West’s song with Jack, word included, offers a knee-
jerk defense.
“It’s his birthright,” he declares to his wife. “Jewish kids get to go
to Israel, black kids get to say this.”
“That is ridiculous,” Rainbow replies. “Nobody should say it. It is
an ugly, hate-filled word with an even uglier and hate-filled history.”
The debate, which expands to include exchanges with other fam
ily members, outsiders and Dre’s white and black co-workers, goes
back and forth: The word is wrong; it’s wrong for whites, right for
blacks; it’s right sometimes, and if the context is fully understood.
Debate, along with laughs, is what Barris says he intended to pro
voke when he decided to take on the topic.
“I could put up a big argument that it (the word) has polarized
and galvanized this country in a way that nothing else has,” he said.
Jesse Frierson holds up a memorial collage dur
ing remarks at the Lincoln Memorial. (Jazelle Hunt/
NNPA News Service)
“He showed up in Selma before the stage was even set up, be
fore most people even arrived,” NAACP President and CEO Cor
nell Brooks said in an interview with the NNPA News Service. “We
shaved together, ate three meals a day together. You really get to
know people when you spend hundreds of miles walking, talking
about your families, where you come from, what you believe, and
what you’re willing to sacrifice.”
In a press release, Brooks described the call to Passage’s family
as the most difficult responsibility of his term. Passage had arrived
with a lively voice and high spirit and asked to be the flag bearer and
pacesetter, but quickly became much more to those around him.
.“I was his little sister. We walked together and pushed each other.
The first couple days, he was struggling and I held his hand,” said
Sheila J. Bell, of Detroit, Mich. From then on, she served as his back-
up flag bearer if ever he felt tired.
“Walking up the parkway [approaching D.C.], I felt peaceful. We
made it. He made it 922 miles.”
When the marchers arrived in each town, Passage put his best foot
forward, greeting residents and especially law enforcement officers
with a hearty, “Show me some love!” and pulling them into a firm
hug. At night when the marchers settled down in donated spaces, he
put together cots, and shared with his friends the extra attention and
gifts he would receive from enamored hosts.
Staring off into the distance, Bell said, “The other day, after he
passed, I didn’t have anyone to put my cot down, break down my cot.
I left it. I didn’t even know how.”
Passage was kind, but also fired up about justice. Earlier in life,
he had adopted the name Middle Passage to lift up the memory of
enslaved Africans. He was particularly concerned with restoring the
Voting Rights Act. A copy of the Constitution was on his person any
time he was on the road - he told everyone that he was marching to
preserve it.
“As one of the leaders of the march, to have a volunteer - some
body who’s not getting paid to come here - and work just as hard as
somebody who’s getting paid, was a blessing in itself. He became
one of the generals,” said Jonathan McKinney, NAACP Midwest re
gion III field organizer. Survival and discipline were two things Pas
sage impressed upon him, and others.
“Everybody knew it was time to go when Middle lined up with
the flag in the front, and they knew the day was done when Middle
lined up to take a picture in front of whatever landmark. He ended up
becoming the face of the march.”
To a core, handful of people who elected to march the entire
journey, Passage was an elder-figure, brother, or friend. He dubbed
a small faction of that core, about eight men in their 50s and 60s,
the “Wrecking Crew.” They were among his closest buddies on the
journey.
In Spotsylvania County, the day of his death brought rain. Pas
sage rolled up his flag to protect it as the marchers continued through
the downpour. It stopped after a little while, and he unfurled the flag
again. He collapsed a few minutes later. They could not revive him.
To say he was beloved would be an understatement.
“We were all family -1 looked up to him like a big brother,” said
Tee White, an NAACP member out of Fayetteville, N.C. She was
behind him the moment he fell. “As we marched, he was a trooper.
You'd see people slow down on a hill, but he would speed up. I did
cry. I cried because it hurt.”
Genni Augustine from Prince George’s County, Md. met Pas
sage on the first day in Selma, and sat next to him on the bus. Each
morning thereafter, he asked her to look online and track how much
ground they’d covered.
“He was so inviting, it felt like I had known him forever,” she
said. “There’s still so much shock. He was the most important person
here.”