Conservatives know next to nothing about the reality of Black family life. BY JABARI ASIM
Agested that slavery may not have been as hellish as we gullible African Americans have been led to believe.
It implied that having a mother and father present—often ideal in normal circumstances—somehow offset the disheartening agony of toiling as unpaid labor and coping with the daily threat of rape, mutilation, torApparently unconcerned about the mental anguish that Sarah Palin’s 2008 candidacy for vice president afflicted upon hard-working Americans, Michele Bachmann, a Republican congresswoman, has announced plans to run for president. The helmet-haired harpy from Minnesota shares with Palin a mind-boggling ignorance of American his- tory and a pungent penchant for weighing in on topics about which she knows nothing. One such instance occurred in early July, when Bachmann rushed to apply her John Hancock to a “marriage vow” sponsored by the Family Leader, an ultra-conservative Iowa-based group. The pledge’s preamble initially sug-
"In every conceivable manner,” Alex Haley once observed, “the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.” When your roots can be traced to a time when efforts to build families were legally prohibited and violently discouraged, the effects of the past on your present-and your future-can often be felt on a daily basis. Where nuclear families were impossibilities, African Americans formed extended, “nontraditional” families that carried us from bondage to an uncertain freedom. Judge Laura Blackburne, the esteemed chair of our board of directors, discusses the strengths of our extended family in her col- umn on the opposite page.
Maintaining family ties also includes enormous challenges, a fact made painfully clear in Stacey Patton’s exclusive interview with Rubin ‘Hurricane” Carter on page 16. The battle for family stability becomes even more complicated when we are forced to confront the thoughtless babblings of the mis- guided right (see “Issues & Views,” page 12) and the insidi- ous ravages of disease (“Faith and AIDS,” page 26). But we continue to rise and to rage, to nurture our loved ones and speak truth to power. Kenneth Braswell, profiled on page 7, promotes responsible parenting through Fathers Incorporated, a nonprofit entity of which he serves as exec- utive director. James Black Sr. practices exemplary fathering through his careful guidance of his son, James Black Jr., a 12-year-old chess champion. Their path to excellence is chronicled on page 5.
In some instances, doing what’s best for your child may require breaking laws.Few know this more than African Americans, whose civil disobedience cam- paigns on behalf of our offspring are the stuff of legend. Tanya McDowell and Kelley Williams-Bolar, two Black single mothers, were jailed for sending their children to wealthier, better school districts where they didn’t reside. Their efforts to secure justice-and the NAACP’s role in that battle-are covered on page 31.
Where fights for justice are concerned, Frankie Muse Freeman has often battled bravely in the heat of combat. Now 94, the legendary civil rights attorney has been as devoted to her biological family as she has been to the African American community at large. Freeman, this year’s recipient of the Spingarn Medal, dis- cusses her dedication to both on page 34.
The bridge to the future that Haley described remains fraught with detours, potholes and bandits poised to hinder our progress. But we continue to build it brick by brick, stone by stone.
Jabari Asim
Editor in Chief
Table of Contents...
Editor's Note
Publisher’s Letter
Upfront
Crisis Forum
NAACP Today
Family Plot
Locked Up, Locked Out
Faith and AIDS
PUBLISHER'S LETTER
A Note from the Chair
The Black Family in North America has been and is magnificently durable and amaz- ingly creative. Our continued existence has confounded the world. We must always remember how our ancestors were torn from Africa and sold into bondage in a land that was alien to them in every way: The climate, the people, the language and, most of all, the unparalleled, inhuman brutality to which they were subjected.
Families were deliberately separated. People from the same village who spoke the same lan- guage were also separated, making verbal communication impossible.The conditions of the Middle Passage were horrific. More than half of the human cargo did not survive the two-month long voy- age across the Atlantic. But once the survivors arrived here on these shores, despite the inhuman treatment they endured and the uncompensated, back-breaking labor they were forced to perform, they persevered for more than three centuries.
They created “families” in order to give and receive affection, compassion and comfort. They were not allowed to legally marry, and often children and mates were sold away. But even this tenuous kinship system sustained our ancestors, making it possible for us to be here today.
Our tradition of extended families continued even after slavery was abolished. The greatest and largest migration of a people in the history of this nation succeeded because of the support of this kinship of blood and bond. Isabel Wilkerson’s epic account in her NAACP Image Award- winning book, The Warmth of Other Suns, tracks this extraordinary journey.
From the early 1900s through the 1970s, some six million African Americans left the agrarian South for the industrialized North for better paying jobs and a life relatively free from racist oppression and violence.
Today the Black Family is still the vital life force of our people. We journey to distant prisons to visit our sons, fathers and brothers — and now many of our daughters and grandchildren — who are overrepresented in the U.S. criminal justice system, giving them support, encourage- ment and our love. We take in and care for the children of our relatives and “extended family” and neighbors when they experience hardships.
We share our resources to assist when a niece, nephew, grandchild and even great-grandchild goes off to college. We share our home when unemployment, illness, or death leaves a relative, blood or bond, homeless. We commemorate family graduations, weddings, new jobs, new babies and “home goings.”
Many of us look forward to reunions that usually take place during the summer when rela- tives from all over come together to celebrate FAMILY. These gatherings provide an opportunity to celebrate each other and to give thanks for our ancestors; and to acknowledge their accom- plishments as well as ours.
We must renew our commitment to continue the work of the NAACP to ensure that all African Americans get their full and fair share of the American Promise. To secure the future of African American families, WE MUST REGISTER ALL ELIGIBLE FAMILY MEMBERS TO VOTE. We must step up our game so that equal justice, equal opportunities and equal treatment becomes a reality for all of our Family, young, old, sick, jobless, incarcerated, employed and unemployed.
We have arrived at this point because of loyalty, courage and sacrifice. We can only go forward with the continuing devotion and support of our loving, creative and resilient Black Family.
Laura D. Blackburne, Chair
The Crisis Board of Directors
RECENT EVENTS
"The Crisis Magazine presents: Celebrating
100 years featuring W.E.B Du Bois"
The NAACP and The Crisis Magazine celebrated 100 years of the Crisis Magazine on November 17, 2010 in the New York Time Building. The evening featured the sights and sounds of W.E.B du Bois presented by Charles Everett Pace. (Part 2 below)
NAACP TODAY
NAACP works with mothers arrested for sending their children to school districts outside their neighborhoods; The Youth and College Division sponsors a debate between historically Black Howard University and Ivy League Yale University; Frankie Muse Freeman is this year’s recipient of the Spingarn Medal; NAACP continues fight for death row inmate Troy Davis; The Climate Justice Initiative addresses the impact of coal-powered factories in low-income communities; NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous on a new report that shows how states spend more on incarcerating youth than the education system.
NAACP History
June 28, 1910
The Executive Committee hired William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ais director of publicity and research. He created an offical organ, which became known as The Crisis.
November 1910
The first issue of The Crisis published with a circulation of 1,000. Taking its name from a poem by James Russell Lowell, "The Present Crisis," the magazine was created as the official publication of the NAACP. Editor Du Bois declared, "the object of this publication is to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people."
"An Evening with David Levering Lewis"
"An Evening with David Levering Lewis," hosted by The Crisis magazine on Friday, February 19, 2010 at the New York Hilton. (L.toR.) Editor Jabari Asim, Myrlie Evers-Williams, David Levering Lewis, Roger Wilkins, Julian Bond, Chairman Laura D. Blackburne.
VIDEOS
The NAACP and The Crisis Magazine celebrated 100 years of the Crisis Magazine on November 17, 2010 in the New York Time Building. The evening featured the sights and sounds of W.E.B du Bois presented by Charles Everett Pace.
