Brown at TCNJ

Reporting Civil Rights: A good resource

2004-07-09T14:41:00.000-04:00

Hi folks,
Here's a resource for information, anecdotes and perspectives of journalists who covered the civil rights movement:Reporting Civil Rights. Here's an interesting anecdote from the website. In July, 1954, pioneering black female reporter Ethel Payne asked Pres. Eisenhower whether he would do something about segregation in interstate travel:

Things came to a head when I asked Ike what he intended to do about ending segregation in interstate travel. The Interstate Commerce Commission has handed down an opinion saying that the time had come when the practice should cease.
But Ike took this as a personal affront. Drawing himself up to his five-star general authority, he proceeded to chew me out as he would one of his top sergeants. "What makes you think," he demanded icily, "that I should do any special favors for any special interest group? I will do what I believe is in the best interest of the country."
His angry reaction startled even veteran newsmen. Ed Folliard of the Washington Post said to me afterwards, "I haven't seen that kind of temper displayed since Franklin Roosevelt almost leaped out of his wheel chair to grab me by the collar because he was so mad at me."
That afternoon, the Washington Evening Star carried a center box on page one with the caption "Negro Reporter Angers Ike." In Chicago, my mother[,] who was an old-fashioned Republican, heard the news on the radio. She telephoned to gently chide me, "Now sister, I don't think you ought to be down there making the President mad." John Sengstacke and Louis Martin's reactions were to call and chuckle, "So you're picking on presidents now."
I was put into deep freeze and given the silent treatment by the White House.
—from Ethel L. Payne, "Loneliness in the Capital: The Black National Correspondent" (1974)

Two Americas

2004-07-06T09:17:00.000-04:00

With the media rumoring this morning that Kerry has picked Edwards as his running mate, the Baltimore Sun ran this OP/ED piece. I think that if W. E. B. duBois were alive today he would say that the problem of the 21st century is the problem of class.

Mort Winston

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.economy06jul06,0,2973575.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines

Two Americas

By Walter Williams

July 6, 2004

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS' compelling campaign theme of "Two Americas" should be returned to center stage. Worsening income disparities - greater than at any time since the 1920s - have produced two critical gaps that threaten American democracy.

Upper-middle- and upper-class families that constitute the top 10 percent of the income distribution are prospering while many among the remaining 90 percent struggle to maintain their standard of living. Further, a widening chasm separates the 13,400 families, who on average earn just under $24 million a year, from everyone else.

Two Americas has undone the historic balance between the nation's two most important values: liberty and equality, which pull in different directions. Liberty implies that people have full freedom to do as they choose with their resources. Equality of economic opportunity requires a fair start for all those in the race toward success.

Today, the continuing imbalance between liberty and equality jeopardizes ordinary citizens' economic opportunities, and hence their middle-class status. Yet democracy in America demands a prospering middle class. The imbalance also raises the specter of an aristocracy of wealth, which was anathema to the nation's Founders.

From 1970 to 2000 (adjusted for inflation), the bottom 90 percent's average income stagnated at $27,000 a year. The top 10 percent experienced an average yearly income increase of nearly 90 percent, from $119,000 in 1970 to $225,000 in 2000. The top one-hundredth percent had their average yearly incomes skyrocket by $20,327,482 between 1970 and 2000.

Education provides a stark comparison between the wealthiest families and those struggling at the bottom. Horace Mann, an elite New York City private school, will have a tuition of $26,100 beginning in September. The price may seem high, but it offers the kind of rigorous educational setting that qualifies its graduates for Ivy League schools and similar top-of-the-line institutions.

At Edward Williams Elementary, the poorest school in Mount Vernon, N.Y., 97 percent of the students were black, 90 percent received free lunches and nearly 10 percent lived in homeless shelters.

When reports were assigned during Black History Month on famous black Americans, the library shelves yielded little help. Despite there being numerous books, New York Times columnist Michael Winerip pointed out, "much of the collection is from the 1950s and 1960s and before, when this was a white school."

The Williams Elementary students likely will work in dead-end jobs rather than graduate from any four-year college.

The limited life chances of these poor black students is so at odds with the country's long-held vision of a fair start in life that it is best described as un-American.

In Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues and Diversity in the Liberal State, the centrist social philosopher William Galston wrote: "The life chances of individuals should not be determined by such factors as race, economic class, and family background." But the many Williams Elementary-like schools around the nation make a mockery of any claim of a fair start.

The statesmen who produced the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution believed that equality of opportunity resulted in national efficiency. They opposed inherited wealth because the heir who took over the family business would not necessarily be the individual most able to run it at maximum efficiency. Hence, inherited wealth could be the enemy of national efficiency.

As the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon Wood wrote: "As long as the social channels of ascent and descent were kept open, it would be impossible for any artificial aristocrats or overgrown rich men to maintain themselves for long." National efficiency further required a strong public education system.

Were the creators of the republic to return for a day, they would be appalled at schools that hold back the stimulation of talent. They would also strongly support continuing the inheritance tax because it was intended to ensure that those with the greatest skills, not less-able heirs, could most efficiently use that wealth.

Restoring the balance between liberty and equality demands that the redistribution of income upward must be redirected toward the bottom 90 percent. The wealthy will cry "class warfare," but it is the wealthy who began that war and created the dangerous imbalance.

The great statesmen of the 18th century would applaud restoring the balance between liberty and equality because it would increase the life chances of most citizens and help breathe new life into a now-diminished American democracy.

Walter Williams, professor emeritus at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs, is the author of Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy (Georgetown University Press, 2003).

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun

A Good Data Source

2004-07-02T07:29:00.000-04:00

The non-partisan polling organization Public Agenda has a concise statistical snapshot of some of the changes that have taken place in the racial attitudes and educational attainment in the 50 years since the Brown decision.

Teaching about segregation: challenging perspectives

2004-07-01T19:17:00.000-04:00

This discussion might be of interest:

An article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal outlined the “outlandish technique” librarian Lora Mazzulla used to teach third graders about segregation, “which involved separating children by skin color and giving preferential treatment to black students.”
...Some of the children were upset, as were their parents and school administrators.

New Commenting System

2004-07-01T17:20:00.000-04:00

I am testing the new system

2004-06-30T11:21:00.000-04:00

Blogger will let you take some shortcuts

The State of Public School Integration

2004-06-30T11:10:00.000-04:00

Check this out. State of Public School Integration

link

2004-06-30T11:09:00.000-04:00

ASLAH

Interview with Dr. Jacqui Norris

2004-06-30T11:05:00.000-04:00

Please read the following interview and identify any aspects of actions taken by Dr. Norris or women in her family that are consistent with, or antithetical to, the tenets of Black Feminism defined by Dr. Patricia Hill Collins.

Link Norris Oral Interview

address link

2004-06-30T11:04:00.001-04:00

ASALH

Kim's Project

2004-06-30T11:04:00.000-04:00

Is there a way to find Kim's classes' work from the tcnj homepage?

By the way, check outSmithsonian

Check this website out

2004-06-30T11:01:00.000-04:00

Brown Matters

The Color of Fear

2004-06-30T10:22:00.000-04:00

I did my homework and read the 2 readings suggested by Kim. Very good and I thought it was easy reading.

Then, last night I watched The Color of Fear. I need to discuss it. It was riveting, but I have alot to learn and undo.

Can we discuss it today?

To the Folks on the other side of the room . . . .

2004-06-30T10:12:00.000-04:00

Hey guys,

I think I've got it! Do you?

ProfCook

2004-06-30T10:11:00.000-04:00

As you can probably figure out from my name, I am particularly interested in food and diversity. The world would be a dull, boring place without all of the wonderful food brought to us by people of varying backgrounds. Perhaps my course should have been on diverse foods, with tastings every week.

This is my first post- hello

2004-06-30T10:02:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone. I brought cherries. Please help yourself.

Gloria

First venture into blogging

2004-06-30T09:48:00.000-04:00

Professor Kim's tutorial for blogging is 21st century for a 19th century thinker!

Improvising on a Riff

2004-06-30T09:47:00.001-04:00

Ellington's great, but personally, I'd go with Oscar Peterson.

First Time User

2004-06-30T09:47:00.000-04:00

Help! I'm lost. I need a map.

Something I Learned

2004-06-30T09:46:00.000-04:00

While on vacation last week in Cape May I learned that the NJ Constitution of 1948 outlawed segregated schools in the state.

New blogger post

2004-06-29T08:47:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone,

I asked Kim to invite me to this Blog site even though I won't be making the workshop later this week. I will be teaching two sections of FYS in the Fall on the theme of human rights. The special focus of this Fall's seminars will be on the right to education. My focus will be largely, but not entirely, international. We will be reading Katarina Tomasevski's Education Denied: Costs and Remedies (she is the United Nations' Human Rights Commission Special Rapporteur on the right to education). I also will assign Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalites. I hope to be able to use some of the Brown related resources and events as well to supplement what I will be doing in my classroom.

My approach to this course is to begin by focussing on the development of the human rights paradigm during the 19th and 20th centuries culminating with the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The UDHR states:

1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

This basic human right has been reaffirmed in many subsequent human rights treaties and conventions, notably the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965); the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979), and in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).

While I certainly do not deny the importance of examining how well this right is being implemented in the USA, I think that one must also ask the question globally, and compare the USA with other peer countries, and with lesser developed countries, to get a complete picture of how the right to education is being realized in the world. It's rather ambitious, but I think I might be able to pull it off. With a little help from my friends.

Best Wishes,

Mort Winston

Testing

2004-06-27T09:55:00.000-04:00

Just testing!

Testing the Blog

2004-06-26T16:53:00.000-04:00

Hi Brownies!

This is Bob Anderson Blog Testing. I am flying blind but hoping to see.

Best Wishes,

Bob Anderson

test

2004-06-26T08:45:00.000-04:00

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