August 24, 2005
Lynch Reasons
Table 2-5. The Reasons Given for Black Lynchings
· Acting suspiciously
· Gambling
· Quarreling
· Adultery
· Grave robbing
· Race hatred; Race troubles
· Aiding murderer
· Improper with white woman
· Rape
· Arguing with white man
· Incest
· Rape-murders
· Arson Inciting to riot
· Resisting mob
· Assassination
· Inciting trouble
· Robbery
· Attempted murder
· Indolence
· Running a bordello
· Banditry
· Inflammatory language
· Sedition
· Being disreputable
· Informing
· Slander
· Being obnoxious
· Injuring livestock
· Spreading disease
· Boasting about riot
· Insulting white man
· Stealing
· Burglary
· Insulting white woman
· Suing white man
· Child abuse
· Insurrection
· Swindling
· Conjuring
· Kidnapping
· Terrorism
· Courting white woman
· Killing livestock
· Testifying against white man
· Criminal assault
· Living with white woman
· Throwing stones
· Cutting levee
· Looting
· Train wrecking
· Defending rapist
· Making threats
· Trying to colonize blacks
· Demanding respect
· Miscegenation
· Trying to vote
· Disorderly conduct
· Mistaken identity
· Unpopularity
· Eloping with white woman
· Molestation
· Unruly remarks
· Entered white woman's room
· Murder
· Using obscene language
· Enticement
· Non-sexual assault
· Vagrancy
· Extortion
· Peeping Tom
· Violated quarantine
· Fraud
· Pillage
· Voodooism
· Plotting to kill
· Voting for wrong party
· Frightening white woman
· Poisoning well
Posted by mbowen at 06:08 PM | Comments (0)
August 09, 2005
Unamerican
A car company can move its factories to Mexico and claim it's a free market.
A toy company can out source to a Chinese subcontractor and claim it's a
free market.
A major bank can incorporate in Bermuda to avoid taxes and claim it's a
free market.
We can buy HP Printers made in Mexico .
We can buy shirts made in Bangladesh.
We can purchase almost anything we want from 20 different countries BUT,
heaven help the elderly who dare to buy their prescription drugs from a
Canadian pharmacy. That's called un-American! And you think the
pharmaceutical companies don't have a powerful lobby? Think again!
Posted by mbowen at 07:05 PM | Comments (0)
August 02, 2005
Bro' Man Be Gon
Letter Details Harvard Board Resignation
August 02, 2005 8:21 AM EDT
BOSTON - In his newly released resignation letter, a member of Harvard's
top governing board said he was angered both by the university president's
comments about women and by his being given a 3 percent salary raise.
Harvard Corporation member Conrad K. Harper said in the letter released
Monday that his concerns "came to a head" when the Harvard Corporation
decided last month to boost President Lawrence H. Summers' salary to about
$580,000.
"I could not and cannot support a raise in your salary," Harper wrote to
Summers, announcing that he was stepping down. "I believe that Harvard's
best interests require your resignation."
At a conference in January, Summers said that differences in men's and
women's abilities may partly explain why fewer women are in line for top
science jobs. He later apologized, and committed Harvard to spend $50
million on gender equity programs recommended by two task forces he
appointed.
"I saw a pattern," Harper told Summers in his resignation letter, dated
July 14. "Your statements demeaned those who are underrepresented at the
top levels of major research universities."
Harper's departure became public last week but he declined to disclose the
reason or provide a copy of his resignation letter. However, he said
Harvard was free to release the letter if it chose.
Harper, who is black, was the only minority on the board. He was elected
to the board five years ago and was on the search committee that selected
Summers in 2001. A 1965 graduate of Harvard Law School, Harper is a
partner at the New York law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
In response to Harper's letter, Summers thanked him for his service on the
board and stressed his commitment to diversity at Harvard.
"Expanding opportunities for outstanding individuals from groups that are
traditionally underrepresented is of fundamental importance to the
University," Summers wrote in a letter dated Monday.
"You have contributed significantly to the work of the University,"
Summers wrote, "and your advice and counsel will be missed."
Posted by mbowen at 11:39 PM | Comments (0)
July 09, 2005
Black German Holocaust Victims
So much of our history is lost to us because we often don't write the history books, don't film the documentaries, or don't pass the accounts down from generation to generation. One documentary now touring the film festival circuit, telling us to "Always Remember" is "Black Survivors of the Holocaust" (1997). Outside the U.S., the film is entitled "Hitler's Forgotten Victims" (Afro-Wisdom Productions). It codifies another dimension to the "Never Forget " Holocaust story-our dimension.
Did you know that in the 1920s, there were 24,000 Blacks living in Germany? Neither did I. Here's how it happened, and how many of them were eventually caught unawares by the events of the Holocaust.
Like most West European nations, Germany established colonies in Africa in the late 1800s in what later became Togo, Cameroon, SPAN Namibia, and Tanzania. German genetic experiments began there, most notably involving prisoners taken from the 1904 Heroro Massacre that left 60,000 Africans dead, following a 4-year revolt against German colonization. After the shellacking Germany received in World War I, it was stripped of its African colonies in 1918.
As a spoil of war, the French were allowed to occupy Germany in the Rhineland-a bitter piece of real estate that has gone back and forth between the two nations for centuries. The French willfully deployed their own colonized African soldiers as the occupying force. Germans viewed this as the final insult of World War I, and, soon thereafter, 92% of them voted in the Nazi party.
Hundreds of the African Rhineland-based soldiers intermarried with German women and raised their children as Black Germans. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote about his plans for these "Rhineland Bastards". When he came to power, one of his first directives was aimed at these mixed-race children. Underscoring Hitler's obsession with racial purity, by 1937, every identified mixed-race child in the Rhineland had been forcibly sterilized, in order to prevent further "race polluting", as Hitler termed it.
Hans Hauck, a Black Holocaust survivor and a victim of Hitler's mandatory sterilization program, explained in the film "Hitler's Forgotten Victims" that, when he was forced to undergo sterilization as a teenager, he was given no anaesthetic. Once he received his sterilization certificate, he was "free to go", so long as he agreed to have no sexual relations whatsoever with Germans.
Although most Black Germans attempted to escape their fatherland, heading for France where people like Josephine Baker were steadily aiding and supporting the French Underground, many still encountered problems elsewhere. Nations shut their doors to Germans, including the Black ones. Some Black Germans were able to eke out a living during Hitler's reign of terror by performing in Vaudeville shows, but many Blacks, steadfast in their belief that they were German first, Black second, opted to remain in Germany. Some fought with the Nazis (a few even became Lutwaffe pilots)!
Unfortunately, many Black Germans were arrested, charged with treason, and shipped in cattle cars to concentration camps. Often these trains were so packed with people and (equipped with no bathroom facilities or food), that, after the four-day journey, box car doors were opened to piles of the dead and dying. Once inside the concentration camps, Blacks were given the worst jobs conceivable. Some Black American soldiers, who were captured and held as prisoners of war, recounted that, while they were being starved and forced into dangerous labour (violating the Geneva Convention), they were still better off than Black German concentration camp detainees, who were forced to do the unthinkable - man the crematoriums and work in labs where genetic experiments were being conducted. As a final sacrifice, these Blacks were killed every three months so that they would never be able to reveal the inner workings of the "Final Solution".
In every story of Black oppression, no matter how we were enslaved, shackled, or beaten, we always found a way to survive and to rescue others. As a case in point, consider Johnny Voste, a Belgian resistance fighter who was arrested in 1942 for alleged sabotage and then shipped to Dachau. One of his jobs was stacking vitamin crates. Risking his own life, he distributed hundreds of vitamins to camp detainees, which saved the lives of many who were starving, weak, and ill -conditions exacerbated by extreme vitamin deficiencies. His motto was "No, you can't have my life; I will fight for it."
According to Essex University's Delroy Constantine-Simms, there were Black Germans who resisted Nazi Germany, such as Lari Gilges, who founded the Northwest Rann - an organization of entertainers that fought the Nazis in his home town of Dusseldorf - and who was murdered by the SS in 1933, the year that Hitler came into power.
Little information remains about the numbers of Black Germans held in a the camps or killed under the Nazi regime. Some victims of the Nazi sterilization project and Black survivors of the Holocaust are still alive and telling their story in films such as "Black Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust", but they must also speak out for justice, not just history.
Unlike Jews (in Israel and in Germany), Black Germans receive no war reparations because their German citizenship was revoked (even though they were German-born). The only pension they get is from those of us who are willing to tell the world their stories and continue their battle for recognition and compensation.
After the war, scores of Blacks who had somehow managed to survive the Nazi regime, were rounded up and tried as war criminals. Talk about the final insult! There are thousands of Black Holocaust stories, from the triangle trade, to slavery in America, to the gas ovens in Germany. We often shy away from hearing about our historical past because so much of it is painful; however, we are in this struggle together for rights, dignity, and, yes, reparations for wrongs done to us through the centuries. We need to always remember so that we can take steps to ensure that these atrocities never happen again.
For further information, read: Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, by Hans J. Massaquoi.
PLEASE PASS THIS ON, AND ALWAYS REMEMBER...NEVER FORGET Written by A. Tolbert, III
Posted by mbowen at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)
May 09, 2005
FYI
FW: For Your Information
I don't know whether you all have seen the Black Think Tank that Tavis Smiley hosts on C-Span every year, but it is Powerful food for thought. Here are a few of the things learned at the Black Think Tank this month.
Facts: 1. The first Americans or Native Americans going back to 1300 BC were black! Look up the Folsom people who lived in Arizona.
2. One of the best reasons to stop our use of the term African American and say Black. A white person who was born in Africa, who moves to America is An African American and qualifies for financial aid, etc., but will get the jobs/pay privileges afforded to whites.
3. Look up the Slavery Law of 1665 (which stayed in effect until 1968) and the Maryland Doctrine of Exclusion (1638): both laws state that blacks must be excluded from the benefits afforded whites, and that blacks must remain noncompetitive with whites, except in sports and entertainment.
4. Two white men: Bill Gates and Larry Elision, combined have more wealth than the combined wealth of all 36 million blacks in America. Civil Rights did not change the economic landscape or the balance of power in America.
5. Asians received 80% of all government minority set aside contracts. Hello!!
6. Blacks eat more fish than whites by a 4 to 1 margin. For every dollar that whites spend on fish, blacks spend $9 on fish. Fish sold wholesale for $1 will retail at $2.50 - $3.00. Guess what business we should be in as Blacks?
7. There isn't any black owned national cable, or major network television stations. Cathy Hughes, the black woman who owns our only black owned radio stations, plans to sell to white owners after hearing the deal Bob Johnson received for selling BET. (Cathy Hughes is from OMAHA y'all!)
8. There are no black owned companies on the Wall Street Stock Exchange; where blacks own the majority or controlling interest of the stock.
9. Ninety-six percent (96%) of all black inmates are men.
10. Over the next two years 440,000 black inmates will be released from prison. The State has no place to put them as they re-enter society. A profitable business would be a Halfway house!
11. In 1860, 98% of all Blacks in America worked for White people. In 2001, 98% of all Blacks in America still work for white people.
12. In 1860, blacks in America had a combined net worth of one half of 1 percentage point. Guess what, in 2001, after Civil Rights, Jesse Jackson, Oprah, Shaq, NAACP, and Urban League, our combined net worth is half a percentage point.
13. For every dollar earned by a Jewish person, that dollar touches 12 to 18 Jewish hands before it leaves their community. For every dollar earned by a Black person it leaves the community soon as he or she earns it.
14. The last week of April 2003 in Washington, DC black teenagers were arrested and booked for eating McDonalds on the metro subway. Cops cited the recent 5-4 court decision as the permission to arrest law breakers even for minor offenses.
15. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of all hate crimes in America are against blacks.
16. After we get through being pleased that we have carpet in our office, a secretary, our name on the door and make six figures, we do not own anything.
17. What will happen if you miss 6 months of work without pay? All we've left for our children is debt not an inheritance. You cannot pass welfare or food stamps onto our kids as a nest egg! We are not even in the race.
18. By the way, the word "race" hit the English language in the 16th century when Europeans held a contest to see who will win the race to gather the most wealth through exploitation of blacks.
19. You must read Powernomics by Claude Anderson. This is a blueprint to create wealth, not just have a job, but be a business owner, so you can hire people, be listed on the stock exchange, develop businesses to meet our needs. This is "Good Food" for thought. Share this with others................ tell your mother, father, sister, brother, children, grand children, best friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, neighbor, e-mail buddies, etc. please pass it on to all of your "Black Friends."
SMILE & THE REST OF THE WORLD WILL SMILE WITH YOU
Did you know?
- New York State's $41 billion Medicaid program is larger than the Medicaid budgets of California and Texas combined?
- Erie County's Medicaid cost has increased by $81 million since 1999 and will rise by another $29 million in 2005.
- That New York State runs Medicaid and sends Erie County the bill.
- That you can help get New York State to reform Medicaid: Contact your state legislator in Albany. Tell them you want Medicaid reform NOW.
Posted by mbowen at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2004
Tough Choices
See Excerpt from Article Below:
As a Financial Professional, the subject of how we choose to use (and ultimately leverage) our massive spending power is one of the rare topics that inspires me to share a forwarded email with others.
This is such a powerful call to action for us within our own contact spheres of family, friends and associates. Please give strong consideration to adding a goal to personally improve and/or to help someone else improve in this area by the end of 2004.
Tough choices for tough times (USA Today) By Yolanda Young
These are tough economic times, especially for African-Americans, for whom the unemployment rate is more than 10%. Alarmingly, rather than belt-tightening, the response has been to spend more. In many poor neighborhoods, one is likely to notice satellite dishes and expensive new cars. According to Target Market, a company that tracks black consumer spending, blacks spend a significant amount of their income on depreciable products. In 2002, the year the economy nose-dived, we spent $22.9 billion on clothes, $3.2 billion on electronics and $11.6 billion on furniture to put into homes that, in many cases, were rented. Among our favorite purchases are cars and liquor.
Blacks makeup only 12% of the U.S. population, yet account for 30% of the country's Scotch consumption. Detroit, which is 80% black, is the world's No. 1 market for Cognac. So impressed was Lincoln with the $46.7 billion that blacks spent on cars that the automaker commissioned Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, the entertainment and fashion mogul, to design a limited-edition Navigator replete with six plasma screens, three DVD players and a Sony PlayStation 2.
The only area where blacks seem to be cutting back on spending is books; total purchases have gone from a high of $356 million in 2000 to $303 million in 2002. This shortsighted behavior, motivated by a desire for instant gratification and social acceptance, comes at the expense of our future. The National Urban League's "State of Black America 2004" report found that fewer than 50% of black families owned their homes compared with more than 70% of whites.
According to published reports, the Ariel Mutual Funds/Charles Schwab 2003 Black Investor Survey found that when comparing households where blacks and whites had roughly the same household incomes, whites saved nearly 20% more each month for retirement, and 30% of African-Americans earning $100,000 a year had less than $5,000 in retirement savings.
While 79% of whites invest in the stock market, only 61% of African-Americans do. Certainly, higher rates of unemployment, income disparity and credit discrimination are financial impediments to the economic vitality of blacks, but so are our consumer tastes. By finding the courage to change our spending habits, we might be surprised at how far the $631 billion we now earn might take us. Yolanda Young's next book is SPADE: A Critical Look at BlackAmerica.
We all send thousands of jokes through e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages regarding life choices, people think twice about sharing. The crude, vulgar, and sometimes the obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of decency is too often suppressed in school and the workplace.
Best Regards,
Albert B. Sullivan, CPA Principal ADValue Financial (707)451-2380 (office) (707)471-6536 (fax) (925)997-3043 (mobile) [ mailto:3sullivan@msn.com ]3sullivan@msn.com
Providing CFO Advisory, Financial Turnaround and Funding Assistance, Accounting, IT and Tax Solutions.
The "finest compliment" I can ever receive from you is a Referral - Thank You
Posted by mbowen at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)