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I just had a driveway moment, sitting in my 10-year-old car, listening to a 37-year-old speech.
How far has the nation traveled since August 1963, when the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech that posterity has reduced to four words?

I don’t have to tell you what they are.  I may have to remind you that those words didn’t begin the speech, but ended it. Before Dr. King said “I have a dream,” he ordered America to settle its account with its black citizens. “We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now,” he said.

The “I Have A Dream” speech was so much more than a call to brotherhood. It was a defiant rebuke to those who questioned the Negro’s insistence upon equality and racial justice.

Racial integration was not the ultimate goal. King made sure his listeners, both present and future, would understand that struggle went beyond equal opportunities. The prize was justice.
Listen to the speech. You will hear him warn that dissatisfaction ran deep and must be quenched.

“We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one,” he said. ” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Turn up the volume as he talks.

“There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”

As I sat in my cluttered car on a gloomy Cleveland afternoon, I couldn’t help reminisce on where I stood a year ago. I was in front of the Washington monument. I was one in 2 million, straining to hear Barack Obama as I’m sure those who attended the March On Washington strained to hear Dr. King. I snapped photos, hoarding images of joy and hope to sustain me when cynicism seemed to triumph.

Sad to say, I’d given up. I felt defeated and confused, wondering how my faith had evaporated without even a drop to remain as evidence. Then I turned on my radio and heard Dr. King’s voice, rolling through the decades.

How far have we traveled? Far enough to elect an African-American president, but short enough for a 37-year-old speech to sound like it was written yesterday. How far have we traveled? Far enough that I could reflect on victories, but short enough that the speech sounded like it was written for me.

I was hopeful a year ago, but today I have more. I am pragmatic, understanding that hope is nourished by action. And action is stoked by dedication. We cannot grasp the past; we can only reach for the future. But we can hold on to now and keep moving forward.

Thank you, Dr. King, for reminding us. Thank you.

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know who you been listening to, Senator, but this particular black woman is like Barack Obama. I don’t speak no Negro dialect unless I want to.

If anything, I’m a polyglot. I speak Black English, Ebonics and, on occasion, Standard English.

Yes, when necessary, I can speak as well as you can. I know the differences between plurals and possessives. I can use to, too, and two correctly. I can even tell you when to use ” fewer than” and “less than. ”

Still, I slip up and code switch. Then I start sounding like a regular, dark brown-skinned woman from Nashville, Tennessee.  I  drop the final consonants from certain words. I lose the g’s from the -ing suffix, and I even forget to conjugate the verb “to be”

I don’t mean to, but I can’t help myself. Sometimes, it’s hard to watch my mouth…

…But I don’t have to tell you, do I?

I’m working on a series of audio slideshows examining unemployment among African-American males. That means I’ll be posting intermittently,while I conduct interviews and take photos.

I anticipate posting the first slideshow around the beginning of March.Please hang in there;  your patience will be rewarded. And thanks to all who have been following me since I began on Trueslant.

When it comes to African American women and hair, be advised to pick your battles carefully

Calvin Reid, a senior news editor at Publishers Weekly is pulling out strands over the cover of the latest issue.  Unfortunately, his attempt at humor is as stiff as a newly pressed head of hair. (If you have to ask, obviously you’re not a member of the club.)

But bonafide members of the club have a bone to pick with Reid, who is African American. Seems his cover pick is racist

I’m following responses to “Publisher’s Weekly have you lost your mind?” posted on the 26th Story blog at the HarperStudio.com. The high-profile agency’s authors include Toni Morrison, Paul Auster, 50 Cent…

LondyJamel said the cover protrays “black” writing

as tribalistic and single-minded, i think it’s more than a couple decades too late to even be close to accurate.”

Well she’s got a point. Because of Chris Rock, the entire world knows sistas are dropping megabucks in the pursuit of straight, or straightened hair.
Stephanie Denise Brown said:

Well, now we understand. They were just being lazy, too lazy to make a cover for the magazine. As others have noted, it’s unfortunate that the pic is out of context from the cover of its book. Also, why choose this ONE cover to represent African American authors?! No single cover can represent all of our work. From the supernatural to sci-fi to historical to contemporary–our work is just as diverse as our peers. This cover choice is lazy and lame.

I have to admit, I laughed out loud when I saw the cover. It doesn’t offend me as much as, say
the image of the Studio’s Team…

Or Mediaite’s list of 28 important media leaders people who died during the decade

‘Course Mediaite’s editor apologized for her gaffe. Reid has apologized for his. ‘Tis the season, I guess. My bad! According to Richard Prince, editor of the Journal-isms site Reid did not apologize for this column. His boss did. Here’s what Reid told Prince:

“Ha!” Reid replied on Wednesday. “I certainly didn’t use the word ‘apology.’ My editor in chief did, however, in speaking for the magazine.

“. . . I’m happy to talk about it because I think there’s a lot to talk about. Like why are so many black people ashamed of the black pride symbols of the 1970s. What’s up with that!!”

You can read the entire column here.

Cleveland, Ohio – Michelle Mason’s family spared no effort in their search for her. They scoured the city and the suburbs, leaving more than 2,000 posters in businesses and on utility poles. But they concentrated on the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, where Mason lived.
“We put posters… in the surrounding area and the next day, when we’d ride by, they were all gone,”  Adlean Atterberry, Mason’s mother, told a crowd who’d gathered a  neighborhood church to offer financial and emotional support to the families of the serial killer’s victims.

She’d barely made her point when Florence Bray interrupted her.

“My family did the same thing,” said Bray, whose daughter Crystal Dozier went missing in 2007. “We put posters on the east side and west side. He was going around taking them down.”

“He” is Anthony Sowell, who is suspected of killing 11 women and stashing their bodies at his house on 12205 Imperial Ave. in Cleveland.

On Friday, Sowell pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, felonious assault and rape of a woman in September. Police had gone to arrest him for that assault when they discovered the remains of the women. Sowell had already been charged with five counts of attempted murder.  On Friday his bail was raised to $6 million from $5 million. He was taken back to jail, and ordered to undergo an HIV test.

So far, 10 of the victims have been identified.

Bray and Atterberry suspect Sowell because the posters only disappeared in  the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, where he and their daughters lived. The women said posters in other parts of the city and in suburbs were untouched.

The coroner told Mason’s family that she died shortly after disappearing in October, 2008.

“I feel so hurt… that I was putting up posters and she was already dead,” Atterberry told trueslant.com.

Mason’s charge adds more fire to the controversy over what victims’ families did or didn’t do to find their loved ones. Four of the families filed missing person reports within weeks of the victims’ disappearance. Two others said they talked to police and assumed paperwork had been filed.

Crystal Dozier’s family said they went to the police repeatedly, and were shrugged off.

“They said they couldn’t do nothing about it because (Crystal) was grown, and she’ll come home when she gets ready,” Bray said.”

The families believe their searches weren’t taken seriously because the victims were substance abusers who had criminal records. In fact, the women’s backgrounds made them  prey for predators, experts told trueslant.com.

“They prey easily on down and out people who aren’t going to be missed. Unfortunately, women are easy victims.” said James Chriss,  a professor in the department of  sociology and criminology at Cleveland State University.

Nevertheless, Atterberry  urged families to aggressively search for their missing loved ones.  She recounted the rallies and marches they had when looking for her daughter.

“When you got a child missing, the police can do so much, but you can do so much more,” Atterberry said at the church meeting.

(read “Cleveland Serial Murders:  The Mystery of Anthony Sowell, pt. 1)

(read “Cleveland Serial Murders: The Mystery of Anthony Sowell, pt. 2″)