The Night I Died

In the summer of 1969 I was 18 and a mere week or two away from going off to college. On the night of August 9, 1969 was shot and killed because I was running and I was black. I can remember it like it was yesterday. It was 11:30 PM on a beautiful star studded Saturday night in Park Slope. I was with John Long my oldest friend; we were running down President Street from 7^th avenue heading down to the Pizza shop on the corner of 5^th to meet up with friends. I remember we started to run, I don’t know why, we were kids and probable a little high. We were good kids. I never got in trouble, I was about to become a college basketball player, life was good.

As we ran down the street laughing in the dimly lit street I noticed a middle aged man standing on the corner. We were about 15 feet from the corner when the man wheeled around and as he did he reached for his side and pulled out a revolver and aimed it at my chest. The sight of a gun me froze me in my tracks. In that moment everything went to slow motion. As I looked up, my eyes connected with the bloodshot eyes of a ruddy faced drunk. I can hear the crack of the revolver’s hammer and the explosion that followed. Fire erupted from the two inch barrel of the detective special. The bullet exploded through my chest with frightening speed exiting well before my body hit the warm flagstone sidewalk.   

I did not die that night in early August. I did not die because the man obviously realized John and I were kids as he screamed “Oh, my God!” grabbed his face with his hands, holstered his gun and ran away.

I don’t know if being white stopped the man from killing me or if he was sober enough to realize we were just kids, I will never know. What I do know if I was black there is a good chance I would have died that night in 1969.

 

Trayvon Martin and other black men and boys have been stopped and in some cases killed just because they are African Americans running down a street, or as they say, walking while black, since they arrived in chains on American soil. The cases are well documented, the lynchings, the assaults, the cruelty and the inhumanity that African Americans have had to endure. In Douglas A. Blackmon’s “Slavery by Another Name” he documented how African American men have been the target of racist and bigots since the reconstruction.

 http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/

The indiscriminate killing of Trayvon Martin throws water on any post racial American society. It is very evident racism and bigotry are alive and well, and in this case, in one, George Zimmerman. There is no place for such hatred and in reality, an unsupported hatred, the hatred based on the color of a person’s skin.

John and I watched the guy run away and we both lost it. As my heart started to slow down and return to normal I realized I came very close to being killed. As I look back on the events of August 9, 1969 I know deep in my heart I would have died on that warm sidewalk if I was Trayvon Martin.

Selma to Montgomery Redux

                                               Montgomery Advertiser, Mickey Welsh, Associated Press

    

I wanted so much to join Rev. Al Sharpton and thousands of others who marched from Selma Alabama to the State Capitol in Montgomery this past week. The idea that 32 States, including the State of Tennessee have enacted Voter ID laws and discriminatory immigration laws flies against everything gained in the 1965 Voter Rights Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Alabama has enacted one the most restrictive voter ID laws and anti – immigrate laws in America. People of color can and are stopped for proof of citizenship for no other reason other than the color of their skin. Many people in rural America especially the elderly do not have the now needed identification to even get the photo ID.

Here in Tennessee an 87 year old woman who had never missed a vote was turned away from getting her Free State ID because she did not have a driver’s license or birth certificate. This is not uncommon. Many poor African Americans from Rural Southern towns were never born in hospitals and never owned an automobile.

The Brennan Center for Justice, estimates up to 5 million Americans will be disenfranchised by these restrictive voter suppression laws. 

http://www.brennancenter.org/content/section/category/voter_id

When you did deep at the root issue of the why for such legislation, a reasonable person can conclude there must have been a voter fraud issue in the past that would generate such time and effort on the part of 32 States Legislatures.

But that was not the case. Minority voters turned out in record numbers in the 2008 election that is true but voter fraud was less than 0.0002% of all of the 2,921,498 votes cast in Minnesota. There were 7 cases of voter impersonation in all of Minnesota and not one conviction was had.

In the Citizens for Election Integrity study conducted by the State of Minnesota, Photo ID was proven to do nothing to stop voter fraud and only voter impersonation would be stopped by the law. The results of the study did not indicate a photo identification requirement would improve election integrity.

http://www.ceimn.org/files/Facts%20about%20Ineligible%20Voting%20and%20Voter%20Fraud%20in%20Minnesota_with%20appendix.pdf

This is the case in the others States that’s enacted Voter ID Laws as well. The amount of voter fraud by individual voters was nil. In every instance of legitimate voter fraud the fraud was perpetrated by Election or State Officials not the general public as portrayed by the Republican led State Assemblies and Senates. 

 Selma-Montgomery March: Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife, Coretta, lead a five-day march to the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery in 1965. (Photo Credit: Bettman/Corbis)

The March to Montgomery II was not a symbolic gesture reminiscent of the Selma to Montgomery March led by Dr. King in 1964. No, this march was to show the world States like Alabama are walking on the Constitutional Rights of American Citizens of all races and creeds.

Human Rights Watch reported the affects the Alabama Anti – Immigration Law has on families of immigrants and to US citizens. The denial of basic human rights threatens immigrants to access to everyday necessities and equal protection of the law the report revealed.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2011/12/14/no-way-live

All Americans want to know the election process is as secure as our borders. There are other was to secure the vote of its citizens without disenfranchising 5 million people and there are other ways to make sure our borders are secure without discriminating against all people of color. 

You can read this and many more articles of interest at www.BorderlessNewsandViews.com

Basketball Eyes

March Madness is not even here and I have basketball eyes. For those of you who have been to the first two full days of the NCAA Tournament you know what I mean and if your experiences are anything like mine you arrive at the stadium of your choice early, find a bar have lunch and probable a pre game adult beverage before you get into the NCAA areas which are tented tailgate parties run splendidly by the host schools. Live music, food, drinks and fans dressed to the nines, in the colors of their champions, dot the landscape. There will be Cats, Jayhawks, Rams, Blackbirds, and Jackrabbits. The talk of who’s going to win and who’s going to get destroyed dins through the tents. Good natured ribbing and trash talk is exchanged and people smile, laugh and check their brackets.

The now 2 and 3^rd rounds of the NCAA Tournament are marathons four games 12 hours, noon to midnight. There is Basketball and more basketball, no other talk, nothing else on any TV in any bar in the host city. Richmond, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Raleigh are wonderful host cities and they really know how to greet and treat fans from all the schools. Welcome parties, dancing and lots of libation are very evident. The feeling, for those who have never experienced the NCAA Tournament is very much like St. Patrick’s Day in Manhattan, at Gleason’s or some other hipster watering hole, with breaks of sobriety while you watch more basketball than you probable ever had before. 

As the night session commences you start to see blank stares in the eyes of fans and the dropping of jaws as exhaustion take hold. This is also exasperated by the Selection Committee matching a Titan against a David and many late, late games, 1 Vs 16 are slaughters at best. By the time the final horn sounds there are many empty seats and many zoned out fans wearing the telltale signs of Basketball Eyes.

You peel off the grime from a very long day as you sit in your hotel room and take a last look at the late games on TV and add up your wins and losses, gearing up to do it all over again, hoping your bracket does not blow up before your eyes.

This year’s Tournament has the potential of being a Bracket buster with Final Four Finalist Kentucky, UConn and VCU returning to the big dance. Get your bracket ready March Madness starts on Tuesday. I am not sure who will be in my final four, but I do know there will be lots of smiles and lots of tears as the tournament  moves from city to city in this year’s version of Basketball Eyes.


You can read this Post and many more at www.BrooklynFans.com