USA Radical Black

The Incredible Transition of Dr. King

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole Peralta writes

A long time ago in the fabled southlands of America, the authorities told black people they had to use the “colored” restrooms – not the “white” people ones. It was thought at the time that “mixing the races” would lead to rape, diseases or other unfortunate circumstances. One public restroom each in a building’s common area was supplied for colored men, colored women, white men and white women; pretty idiotic, don’t you think?

It did make four “water closets” available, two apiece for each sex, which admittedly allowed for somewhat easier restroom availability. But it also undermined the dignity of the American Deep South, which was thus stuck moving from the lack of fair human rights to the promotion of greater civil rights, and eventually to manifesting independent living rights. After all, the involved country was America, and being a democracy, it couldn’t long maintain such hostile acts of racial segregation – or discrimination against the physically disabled, challenged, or handicapped.

You could say the 1950s and 60s were a time of incredible transition when it came to the full legal rights of American citizens. What was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s role in this so-called “incredible transition?” For one thing, changing racially segregated public restrooms back to the usual men’s and women’s ones was considered to be politically important. This sort of thing, along with the Deep South’s municipal bus boycotts, was to enable “colored” people to get away from such underhanded referencing to their darker and harmless black, brown or mulatto skin color.

Uniting the public restrooms enabled people to continue their normal way of life, unhampered by racism or any presumed “need” for such segregated facilities. Plus, there was the further needed transition of the municipal city buses, where black people had been forced to sit in the far backs of the buses. As with the public restrooms, there was no need for such isolation, which at the time was being corrected by the acting Civil Rights Movement, headed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., so that people could use most public facilities without suffering from further racial segregation. Read More »

Tags: Martin Luther King, Politics

The DFL Political Plantation is not good for Blacks

By Donald W.R. Allen, II – MOI

Minneapolis, MN (Source IBNN.org) – The purpose of the Minneapolis Urban League Glover-Sudduth Center for Economic Development is to do just that. Grow economic development among the Black Minnesotan population. Not to be the DFL political plantation in a cold Jim Crow. The irony is that the top voter turn-outs in Minnesota are cast in the highest populated Black districts. What a way to thank the Black voters!

How can the Minneapolis Urban League reach out to the African American population when the main focus has been to pimp the African American vote for the DFL? African Americans hold the right to vote sacred and the historical importance has been manipulated by those who promise and deliver not much more than a cup of Free Trade Coffee at EJAM’s Founders Day among hippies “slumming it” on the Northside for the day, with their Obama buttons. Community members are only treehuggerinvited when there is a photo opportunity, and when the image of mobilization is needed for organizations such as Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy, which although does work on the policy side does little to help the day to day with the trickle down hopes promised. Only deliver a hot mess of benign neglect. Pimped for grants, and yet nothing ever gets done but then again there is always next year. Another example that poverty pimps have a vested interest keeping the Northside oppressed and earn, a nice notation on their resumes. Read More »

Tags: Congressman Keith Ellison, DFL, IATP, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Politics

Respectfully, A message to the Sharptons, Jacksons, and Farrakhans of the World: The struggle is not over; the gauntlet will be passed back to you

The Collapse of Black America’s Talented 10th, the Deal that made White America Vote “O”

By Donald W.R. Allen,II  – Minister of Information/Editor in Chief – 2009 ©

“This generation will have to learn from damn near scratch what a real social movement looks like.” ~Black Agenda Report 2009

Reports of racism have increased. Black unemployment is sky-high.  The foreclosure crisis has devastated black neighborhoods across the country.  Yet no official stance on race relations in the United States has been taken by our Black President, Barack Obama.

“Is racism only prevalent if you’re a professor at an Ivy League school who is arrested in your upscale neighborhood?”

White America allegedly demonstrated their goodness and racial tolerance in 2008 by voting for a Black man to be president of the United States.  We have learned that a large and decisive number of whites can be persuaded to vote for a certain kind of Black man: one who never speaks about racism, and in no way, resembles Al Shartpon, Jesse Jackson, or Louis Farrakhan. Read More »

Tags: Civil Rights, Color, Obama, Politics, Race, Status