“Feb. 16, 2010

Dear Friend,

As you may have read in yesterday’s New York Times, we’ve just filed an important new lawsuit against the town of Homer, Louisiana, where an elderly black man was shot dead by a white police officer while standing harmlessly on his own front porch.

Our suit seeks justice for Bernard Monroe’s widow and his five children. But there’s also a larger issue at stake — the pattern of racial profiling and police harassment of African Americans that led directly to Monroe’s death.

Last year, the white police chief in the town told a newspaper: “If I see three or four young black men walking down the street, I have to stop them and check their names. I want them to be afraid every time they see the police that they might get arrested.”

Monroe, 73, a retiree known as “Mr. Ben,” was enjoying a gathering of family and friends on a mild winter day last February when two white police officers pulled up in front of the modest wood-frame house he had called home for the past 25 years.

For no good reason, the officers chased his adult son into the house. They had no warrant, and nobody there was wanted for any crime. When Mr. Monroe walked up the front porch steps during the commotion to check on his elderly wife, an officer who was still inside the house opened fire through the screen door, hitting him multiple times in the chest, back and arms.

This terrible tragedy should never have happened. And it wouldn’t have happened if the police had acted responsibly. But, apparently, this type of police intimidation was well known to African Americans in the town.

Earlier on the day Monroe was killed, the police officer who fired the deadly shots had also searched and questioned other African Americans who were doing nothing more than sitting in their yard, minding their own business.

I’m outraged that this type of racial profiling is still occurring almost half a century after Jim Crow segregation was struck down in the South. The people of Homer deserve a police department that protects, rather than harasses them.

We’re determined to get justice for the Monroe family and to stop unlawful discrimination.

The dangers of bigotry are clear. Please speak out against racial profiling and every form of discrimination. Thank you for supporting our work and for everything you do to promote justice in your own community.

Sincerely, Morris Dees Founder, Southern Poverty Law Center “

If that doesn’t spur some level of disbelief and outrage upon reading, you might want to check your pulse.  The fact that this is 2010 – 101 years after the founding of the NAACP, 44 years after the passing of the Civil Rights act of 1964, and more than a year after the election of an African American man as the President of the United States of America – and this type of blatant discrimination is still occurring, is both disturbing and simply sad.  And, the fact that this instance is not just by American citizens, but by law enforcement officers, makes it all the more unbelievable.

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It is reasons precisely like the story above – that the Monroe family is not alone in their suffering of a death in the family due to a horridly unjust wrong-doing – why Sojourn to the Past was started in the first place.  By showing young people what non-violent, unified people can achieve when fighting for what they know deep-down is right – only then will generations be changed forever, and permanent social movements endure.

Sadly, as generations age, there are always fewer and fewer people who can give first-hand accounts of these huge, and worldly events.  The final survivors of the Holocaust, people who were passengers who survived the sinking of the Titanic… are saying their last good-byes, and unless their stories are begged of, told, and documented, those memories can be lost forever.

For precisely this reason, a recent compilation by The New York Times, honoring heroes of the Civil Rights-era, holds within it more value than anyone can put a price on.  It’s a multi-media experience than students, hard-working family members, and retirees can enjoy together.  That close friends – perhaps with grandparents on opposite sides of the theoretical divide – can share, learn from, and allow to spark meaningful and teaching dialogue toward further understanding.

Within it are contemporary pictures of past milestones and famous and moving faces, historical photographs, interviews, audio clips, and more.

This Valentine’s Day and Presidents’ Day weekend, which always fall during Black History Month, take a moment to explore this moving collage of unforgettable moments in this essential era in American history – the Civil Rights era – when the convictions of many brave people manifested into a fight for equality for all.

The hard copy of The New Yorker periodical should be on newsstands today, Friday, February 12, 2010.

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Morgan Freeman, a presenter at the White House for “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement.” Tapes February 10, broadcasts February 11 on PBS stations nationwide. [Photo Credit: Nigel Parry

Sojourn to the Past is also extremely excited that recently, Joan Baez [who sits on our National Advisory Committee] joined the concert line-up.  She’ll perform “We Shall Overcome” – which is a tune close to Sojourner’s hearts that the students sing nearly daily on their journey.

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Joan Baez performs during the “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement” concert in the East Room of the White House, Feb. 9, 2010. [Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton

The concert will also showcase a reunion of three of the original Freedom Singers, who traveled over 50,000-plus miles during the 1960′s – singing for the cause of freedom for all Americans.  During the February 10th concert (taped), the original Freedom Singers will be: Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Rutha Harris, and Charles Neblett.

The President will make opening remarks at this concert, held in the East Room, which will stream live on www.whitehouse.gov, and also result in a one-hour concert special produced by NPR and available starting tomorrow, Feb. 12th.

Take advantage of this wonderful collection of talented performers honoring our nation’s storied history, and share it with your friends and family.  A complete list of performers and guests to participate in the show can be found here.

“The most important thing I can do for the African American community is the same thing I can do for the American community, period, and that is get the economy going again and get people hiring again.”

Jackson, a self-stated Obama supporter, expressed his concern that civil rights leaders were not as involved in the recent jobs summit as he thought they ought to be.  The Obama-Jackson relationship has been tedious at times, with Jackson questioning whether Obama has shown enough concern in his past legislative duties towards the issues uniquely facing the black community; however, since Obama’s election, Jackson’s criticisms have been quelled.  Since Obama’s election, though, he has not directly met with Jackson.

Rev. Jesse Jackson

Jackson – who recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of his own run for the White House – has, independently of the White House, requested a meeting with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to discuss his ideas and the administration’s intention for economic aid for depressed minority communities across the nation – like the suffering Detroit and Milwaukee for example.  A meeting has not yet  been set.

Turning around a nation in an economic recession is certainly no easy task, and won’t happen overnight nor will it be decided by anything less than a large team of minds working together.  What say you, Sojourn to the Past blog readers?  Should extra attention be paid to communities and cities that have suffered the effects of the recession the most?  Should the demographics of those communities be taken into account so that relief can be community-specific?  Or should the government be blind to those characteristics?

Additionally, Young also served a capacity on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations.  Vernon Jordan, noted civil rights leader who advised President Bill Clinton and was head of the National Urban League after Whitney Young spoke fondly of her,

“She was a loving mentor to me,” he recalled, “She always had sound advice, such as ‘Think about this,’ “

Whitney Young, who was Margaret's husband, died in 1971.

In the 50′s, Margaret was a professor in the psychology departments at Spelman College in Atlanta, GA.  When her husband drown in 1971 in Nigeria, she then became the executive director of the Whitney M. Young Jr. Foundation – named for her late husband – an organization that helped academics studying in the arena of race relations, and promoted equal opportunity.  In the New Rochelle, NY public school system, she helped parents make the transition when their children’s schools integrated.

In the 1980′s, Margaret was active in both the arts and in business; she was on the board of NY’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, and the Dance Theater of Harlem – and also was one of very few African-American women to serve on corporate boards (NY Life Insurance Co & the Philip Morris Co.).

Margaret was a 1942 graduate of Kentucky State, and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

Both the unfortunate loss of her husband nearly 40 years ago, and Margaret’s passing are deeply felt losses to the civil rights community.  What these people contributed to the fight for equality in society, education, and beyond for the future African-Americans is beyond what words can describe.  Sojourn students can only hope to be lead by the footsteps the Youngs blazed on their brave paths.

However, with the diversifying population of the country, and increasing immigration numbers, in a post-9/11-America, there is on the the rise other groups towards whom discrimination is being aimed.  Today, the Council on American Islamic Relations announced through their statistics that from 2006-2008, they saw an 11% rise in civil rights complaints against these said citizens.

The full report, the US Muslim Civil rights report, documents civil rights discriminatory instances, anti-Muslim violence, and harassment.

While the journey that students embark on through Sojourn to the Past highlights the key benchmarks of the Civil Rights Movement that happened long before any of these students were born, it’s important to note the goals and mission of our organization.  It is our aim that through teaching students about past wrongs and injustices that were allowed to carry on far too long in our great nation of freedom, that they can become active members of their communities to proactively and nonviolently confront injustices off all kinds – be they rooted in race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, or any identifying characteristic that should not only be accepted in our society, but embraced as uniquely American.

The ad was funded by a group that seeks to “campaign to inform, awaken and radicalize our White American youth.”  The ad itself was seemingly nondescript – the text simply said “Free Music Downloads” – but the link leads to www.victoryforever.com, a site that very clearly promotes a Hate Group-like mentality.  The ad, which cost only $30, reportedly didn’t raise any eyebrows when it was first submitted, and that the web link looked drastically different from the time it was submitted to the time that it ran.  The newspaper’s faculty advisors never even looked into the Website, because they took the “deceptive and misleading” ad at face value.  Purportedly, the creators of the ad intentionally tried to deceive the newspaper faculty and students through the course of the transaction.  District spokesperson Gentle Blythe said that the remaining copies of the paper were pulled, and the mail-out subscriptions will not go out.

A separate anonymous e-mail to The Chronicle [that appears to originate at a computer at Idaho State University], stated, “San Francisco was selected because it has long suffered the ravages of liberal insanity, vile degeneracy and criminal vicitmization of it’s citzens by the very ‘diverse’ populations it seeks to embrace.”

The next week – just after the flare-up around the San Francisco incident was starting to subside – a second school paper was duped.  Parents of students at Carmel High School outside of Indianapolis were warned via mass voicemail about the compromise of their student paper, HiLite, by the same white power hate group, Victory Forever.  Using an e-mail address on the site, IndyStar reports that a response came from a person identifying as ‘Mike Shields’ and claims to be a spokesperson for the group, which is in the midst of a campaign to recruit “white youth all across America to fight for the survival of the white race,” chose that particular high school because it is one of the largest in the state and its paper is widely read and respected, and that combination gave the group “a great opportunity to spread [their] message”.

Parent Marc Allen says, “These neo-Nazis are pathetic excuses for human beings.  Their message is so poor they have to dupe young people into visiting their Web site.”  His daughter, Lauren, 18, said she doesn’t think the group would find many converts among her high school classmates, “I don’t think anyone really looks at the ads, to  be honest.  I don’t think anyone I know would go to the site and say ‘Cool, I’m going to look more into this.’”

Quotes like the one from the above student give promise to all of us working with Sojourn to the Past that discrimination and inequality are on their way to becoming a thing of the past, but incidents like these two, and the people who are behind dishonestly placing these messages in the reading material of impressionable students strengthen our resolve and remind us regularly of the importance of our mission.

Music featured in the work includes musical artists the Roots, the Blind Boys of Alabama, John Legend, and Wyclef Jean.  And the film tells the story of the civil rights movement, focusing on how music played a role in the struggles.

Directors Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman have partnered on the project.

James Armstrong, pictured here at the 40th anniversary re-enactment of the Selma Voting Rights March to Montgomery, known as Bloody Sunday.

One of his most notable and long-standing actions was that Armstrong was the catalyst in initiating the 1957 class-action lawsuit to integrate area schools after wanting to enrolls his sons in the all-white Graymont Elementary school.  Speaking to his dedication to the cause, and to his persistence in the fight for equal rights, when interviewed at one of the anniversary marches that he regularly attended in Selma that commemorate the now-famous march, he’s quoted as saying “I’ll keep coming back as long as I can walk.  One day, I may even come in a wheelchair.”

Armstrong was a WWII army veteran – having been drafted to fight at age 18 – but his greatest fight may have been right here on American soil.  He ran his own business, the barber shop that boasted the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a loyal customer, was beneficial to conduct sit-ins and other demonstrations without fear of retribution from an employer.

Perhaps his biggest disappointment – per Shirley Gavin Floyd, the business manager for the Civil Rights Activist Committee in Birmingham – was that he had to cancel his trip to DC this past winter for the inauguration of President Barack Obama, whose election he saw as a culmination of his efforts.