Attention for Celebrity Overshadows Death of Civil Right Heroine

Once in our community, it was not the singers or entertainers who upon an untimely death received the most attention, but rather the heroes and community leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X. I guess I may be dating myself, for I remember when martin Luther King died and suspect that most living African Americans do not.

Over this past week we lost a great and wonderful woman, who contributed and gave her life for our community, and it was not Whitney Houston, it was Patricia Stephens Due.

I’m am certain that many may have never heard of Patricia Stephens Due, and as such, may reflect the behavior of attending to things that are not as important as we realize in a tangible sense. Or even worse, reflects what Marcus Garvey meant when he stated “The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity.”

Patricia Stephens Due died last Tuesday as a consequence of thyroid cancer in Smyrna, Georgia at the age of 72. Born on Dec. 9, 1939, in Quincy, Fla. as Patricia Gloria Stephens, as high school students, she and her older sister started a petition to have the principal removed. She was one of the rare occurrences during the early days of the fight for justice and equality during the initial period of the struggle for civil rights – young Black women out in front organizing protest.
She started early in her life. At 13, Patricia Stephens challenged Jim Crow laws and the culture of segregation in the south by trying to use the "whites only" window at a Dairy Queen. As a college student, she led demonstrations to integrate lunch counters, theaters, and swimming pools and was repeatedly arrested. She became world renown after she and 10 other students were arrested for sitting at the “whites only” lunch counter at a Woolworth’s store in Tallahassee, Fla., on Feb. 20, 1960. It was 19 days after four black students in Greensboro, N.C., had made civil rights history by doing the same thing. She along with seven others refused to pay $300 fines for violating laws and served the full 49-day sentence.

She marched with and met John D. Due Jr., a civil rights lawyer, whom she eventually married in 1963. For their honeymoon, they rode the Freedom Train to Washington to hear the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. give his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Now I am not suggesting that we should not celebrate the life of Whitney Houston. What I am saying is that her life was great and may have not manifested if it were not for women like Mrs. Stephens Due. Without her, Whitney may have not won a Grammy or been allowed to kiss a white man on the big screen. How quickly we forget about what allow us to be in the position were in.

Mrs. Due paid a price for this devotion. She wore large, dark glasses day and night because her eyes were damaged when a hissing tear gas canister hit her in the face. She took a decade to graduate from Florida A&M University because of suspensions for her activism.

She ammased an F.B.I. file of more than 400 pages and was kicked and threatened with dogs, including a German shepherd whose police handlers gave it a racial slur for a name.

In 1959, she formed a local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality. In 2003, Mrs. Due and her daughter wrote about the ambivalence and hesitancy of black people’s regarding the civil rights struggle in the movement’s early days in “Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.”

It is sad to loose a talent like a Whitney Houston, but what is even sadder and pathetic, is the incessant adoration and infatuation we have with idols and celebrity when compared to people who actually did something to benefit toe world of African Americans than singing like Patricia Stephens Due: unfortunately a person the average individual of African descent in America has never heard of or taken the time to find out about. I guess this is what the Great Indian philosopher teacher Chanakya meant when he wrote: "There is no disease (so destructive) as lust; no enemy like infatuation."

Take your place

Preface: slapzz- no Euclid wasnt- key word you know. I was taught pythagoras was responsible for a therom that was in use 900 years before his birth - see pyramids

Where was he born? Egypt, where did he die? egypt. Egypt aint in Greece, its Africa, so south white africans aint africans - represent folk. Hellinestic is what they say, but these the same folk that refuted the moors, who taught europeans for more than 300 years the world was round - they selected to belive it was flat.

Point of order: 1] “Full scale brain cell warfare I ejaculate”….SBM see today’s song by me.

2] Good look to all at the funeral. Bernie Mack, love u folk, but you wasn’t no Isaac Hayes. So to Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, Maurice White (EWF), Bootsy Collins, Chuck D, Jesse Jackson, Doug E. Fresh, Chick Chorea, Kirk Whalum (home boy), Robert Johnson, Tom Cruise, Al Sharpton, Richard Roundtree and the rest at his funeral – good look. Veronica I love you, yo pops was my pops too. After all he told me I would be the next music great out of Memphis, and he aint write or read music....You heard it here first, soon to come, The Issac hayes International Airport. And thanks SJP for the Brilliant Blogger award - im flattered.

A man stopped by my shop yesterday. He asked if he could spit some of his spoken word to us, and that he would accept what ever he had to offer if we had it. I offered him a glass of vino, and a seat. My folk, one of my loyal customers was out there with me with his daughter. Chi and his daughter play on most days together. We talked, told us he was from NYC, been in ATL for 3 days. Had no job. And we talked. Told him he was great. He accepted fellowship and cried, and cried. I said men cry, you spirit breathes tears when greatness is around the corner, so have faith.

But as he cried, we talked. My folk and me boosted his belief in self; I even gave him one of my books. He said we were rare. I said I aint steak and he laughed. But he made me think. I have often wondered where the break down in stable community responsibility went a stray. Likewise, I have wondered why the urge for men to be men, and women to be women has evaporated to.

I know that I may be part of the problem and I can accept blame for this on a personal and individual level, the query is how we get more folks to do the same? It is easy to point fingers, but only those that point the fingers at themselves have the right and authority to express to others what they see as neglectful and irresponsible. The consternation occurs because most blame all on others and never look at themselves. For the future, tomorrow, or the next turn is uncertain, as it is for us all, but some neglect taking charge of what they should decide to do next. Like the child afraid to leave the crib, and ends up 30 years of age with an Escalade but living with his Mom. Or the girlfriend once past, who say they are over with their past relationship but always ask for something, or the man who spends with others but not within his own neighborhood for excuses yet untold. Which makes folk wonder, where do we go from here, or is our future as a collective union completely dilapidated?

And this revisited by me during the week of the celebration of the birth of Marcus Garvey. I remember when I stole a book of quotes by him from the AUC library when I was in college. That same day stole Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s Black Rebellion: Five Slave Revolts & a book called Elements of Photo electro-chemistry. The two quotes that stuck out from that book to me then as a sophomore at Morehouse were:

"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."

and

"I do not speak carelessly or recklessly but with a definite object of helping the people, especially those of my race, to know, to understand, and to realize themselves."

It seems that the obvious lessons of history are now going untold, for it may be more eaiser to look at a movie, or music video and get more pleasure than the attempt in self instruction. Even worse, sometimes I hold my head down for it seems like many of us forget that once upon a time in America that we were sold off as slaves and had no choice. And even worse, that we now u have a choice, but select to enslave ourselves with the feculent: Clubs over libraries, Malls over our neighbors front porch and strip clubs over the classroom. Yes we all attend to our selfish and personal desires as opposed the well being and good of all. We keep to ourselves as opposed to share, we ask and take as opposed to give and offer with the knowing that the goodness we provide to others will be returned ten fold to ourselves. Yes I take pride in knowing that if you are hungry, I will feed you, or that if you are cold, I will give you clothes if u need them.

Now I aint talking about everybody, nor am I hating as I have been told many times before, but yes, I am a hatter. I hate to see suffering endured that is unnecessary, and hate to see people avoid the extension of lending a helping hand. It as if we have forgot our past, or as if we forgot what it means to express freedom, or as if it is easier to want what we see others have, without the desire to work for the same. Yep, I hate that. But I try my best to take control, to take charge and take my place in my world that I have earned and value and do so without hesitation. Just why is it many are afraid, or would prefer to charge animosity towards others, when they fail to see the real world and accept it? When they don’t acknowledge the energy they put out? When they become the weak and the lame? I say to you mane, take your place and live free – take your place and live free. Take your place and stop blaming others for your mistakes. Take your place. I will take mine and lay down for you to walk on my back to get to yours. vote

BET that

Jones, truth be told, there is a lot of merit in the adage “we are our own worse enemy.” Lets look at us and avarice and limited if any control in forms of economic production – that is when we do. All of the radio stations in the US that represent the culture of hip-hop in some form or fashion are owned by people outside of the culture. They mainly wear pin-stripped suits and have straight hair with some form of abberant color.

Taking that a step farther, the same can be stated for the music and movie industries, in particular those with any for of mass cable presence. When we do have similar economic presences and power, what do we do, when emasculate ourselves in love of the dollar. BET to me has a tremendous opportunity, and opportunity to put in places the laudable exaltations of folks like Marcus Garvey, Martin King and Malcolm X. They have amassed a major proportion of the viewer ship of all interested in looking at African American lifestyles. Yet at the same time, they are not holding up to the same standards we often accuse major white media for doing – degrading and stereotyping African Americans, especially males.

The way I see it, they do just as much damage to perpetuating the fat ass shaking in the background and brothers talking about crime images of our women and men as Clear Channel does. Is it realy that hard, as a human being, as a man, as a man representing the gate and best interest in our community to say “no we won’t do that!” It must be since BET and others are assisting in the commodization of African American Men. Seems, if you are not a thug, drug dealer, pimp, or criminal, you can’t be accepted as a real Black man. Damn, bet that.