Social Justice
Happy Birthday: Malcolm X – 5.19.1925
Malcolm X would have been 85 years today, if he weren’t assassinated.
Malcolm X would have been 85 years today, if he weren’t assassinated.
Born on May 19th, 1925 the civil rights advocate, and minister known for his revolutionary rhetoric, not only took on white society but black leaders as well. Malcolm encouraged black nationalism and Pan-Africanism. A movement he believed in people’s power, pushing back the oppressor, and more Negro leadership – The Progessive.
To his admirers he was considered an advocate for civil rights of African-Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. While his non-supporters would accused him of preaching racism, black supremacy, antisemitism, and violence.
Despite the controversy that surrounded Malcolm X, he is still considered one of the most influential African-Americans in history.
Known for having differences with several black leaders including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., after leaving the Nation of Islam the two were actually growing closer in their ideologies.
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According to The Progressive:
Malcolm was the people’s surrogate in intra-black politics. He championed the “grassroots” in a black polity dominated by clerics claiming accountability to a “higher” authority and heads of secular organizations largely dependent on “white” subsidies…..At the core of Malcolm’s black nationalism was the demand for accountability to the black masses from all those who purport to govern or lead them. The people occupy center stage in Malcolm’s political drama, while “Negro leadership” jockeys for white favor and financing.
Malcolm’s revolutionary black nationalism is people power, pushing back the oppressor and imposing the popular will on collaborationist “leadership.” His relentless critique of the “Big Six” – Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young – freed the black political conversation from the gags of false unity, empowering the rank and file to demand accountability from their “spokesmen.”
CNN writes:
Malcolm X was reaching out to King even before he broke away from the Nation of Islam and embraced Sunni Islam after a pilgrimage to Mecca, says Andrew Young, a member of King’s inner circle at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights group King headed. “Even before his trip to Mecca, Malcolm used to come by the SCLC’s office,” Young says.
“Unfortunately, Dr. King was never there when he came.”
“In the last years of their lives, they were starting to move toward one another,” David Howard-Pitney, author of “Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and the Civil Rights Struggle of the 1950s and 1960s” told CNN. “While Malcolm is moderating from his earlier position, King is becoming more militant.” Pitney says.
Malcolm X, after leaving the Nation of Islam, reached out to King. He offered his support by traveling to Selma, Alabama for a 1965 civil rights march. He had gained a respect for King because he believed that he was risking his life for what he believed in.
“He had come to believe that King believed in what he was doing,” said Peter Bailey, an original member of the group Malcolm X founded, The Organization of Afro-American Unity. “He believed in nonviolence; it just wasn’t a show. He developed respect for him. I heard him say you have to give respect to men who put their lives on the line.”
King also shifted from his early non-violence rhetoric. He earned the scorn of the President by criticizing the Vietnam War. And then, like Malcolm, King got revolutionary and began attacking the broader causes of oppression and seeking commonality. King began organizing a poor people’s march.
“It was more radical to deal with poverty than to deal with segregation so, in that sense, it’s true,” Andrew Young told CNN. “But Dr. King never wavered in his commitment to nonviolence. In fact, he was getting stronger in his commitment to nonviolence. It was a more militant nonviolence.”
King also started wearing a ‘Black is Beautiful’ button, said Pitney. That was clearly the language of the Black Power movement.
The ability to live and learn is such an important lesson here. Malcolm X learned to respect someone that he once handily dismissed. King obviously saw the importance of what Malcolm X was trying to do by improving black people’s opinions of themselves. Could their have been a President Obama without the contributions of King and Malcolm X?
We need more of this type of boldness in our community. We should not be ashamed to question people who want to speak for all black people. We should question the motives of people who fashion themselves as leaders. Are you making backroom deals? Are organizations trying to live off of their names? Although you have a proud legacy from the 1960s, what are you doing today to better the lives of African-Americans?
“King was a political revolutionary. Malcolm was a cultural revolutionary,” James Cone, author of “Martin & Malcolm & America” told CNN. “Malcolm changed how black people thought about themselves. Before Malcolm came along, we were all Negroes. After Malcolm, he helped us become black.”
Crime & Justice
Exonerated man on a mission to rebuild his life
C.J. Rice, a man who served more than 12 years behind bars for an attempted murder he was falsely convicted of, was officially exonerated on March 18, 2024. He is now on a mission to rebuild his life.
Charles “CJ” Rice was just 17 years old when he was convicted of a crime he did not commit.
CJ Rice Exonerated
Now 30 year old Rice is using the injustice of the last 13 years to galvanize the life he almost spent behind bars after being exonerated and declared legally innocent of the crime he was convicted of in 2013 on March 18, 2024.
According to the GoFundMe, CJ wants to “embrace this opportunity” and become a paralegal.
With the help of Dream.org, the GoFundMe aims to help CJ start a new life with everything from a place to stay to clothes to wear as he builds a new future.
The CJ Rice case
CJ Rice, formally known Charles J. Rice, was convicted in a September 2011 shooting for attempted murder and sentenced to 30-60 years behind bars in 2013.
According to the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, the South Philadelphia shooting left a woman identified as Latrice Johnson, a 6-year-old girl and two others injured.
Johnson called 911 after the shooting and described the suspects as two men running away in hoodies and black sweatpants but couldn’t fully identify them.
Through an initial investigation with victims in the hospital, Rice’s co-defendant, Tyler Linder, was identified as one of the shooters. Detectives interviewed Johnson while she was in the hospital and she identified 17-year-old Rice as one of the shooters running away although she hadn’t seen the teen in a few years. Rice had been friends with Johnson’s son when he was younger, according to the Pennsylvania Innocence Project.
In her description, Johnson said Rice was wearing a hoodie and claimed that she was able to see his full face and long braids poking out the side of the hood. However, Rice’s arrest photo depicted him with shorter cornrows flushed against his head. Despite this, a case against Rice and Linder was built.
According to the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, among the evidence was a theory that the shooting was retaliatory, which wasn’t proven. That’s because Rice was shot and injured a few days prior. It’s alleged the suspects ran from the scene, and Rice’s counsel never used his medical records as evidence to help Rice’s case.
Rice’s case received national attention after CNN anchor Jake Tapper began reporting on it. His father, Dr. Theodore Tapper, is Rice’s former doctor and treated his injuries.
Although it was alleged that the shooters ran from the 2011 crime scene, this is something that Dr. Tapper believed Rice just physically couldn’t do at the time.
Officials believed the 2011 shooting involved gang affiliations, leading the DA’s Gun Violence Task Force to begin their investigation to see whether or not Rice could be re-tried for the shooting or to dismiss the charges in full.
This suggestion of motive and the sole faulty eyewitness identification of CJ led to his conviction on four counts for attempted murder.
A free man
Rice’s defense counsel filed a habeas petition to get CJ out of prison and have his conviction overturned.
On March 18, 2024, the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas granted the Commonwealth’s motion to dismiss all charges against Rice, officially making CJ a free man.
Social Justice
After more than 60 years, a championship HBCU men’s basketball team visits White House
An all-Black Tennessee A&I men’s basketball team won three back-to-back national championships at the height of the Jim Crow era, but were never recognized or invited to the White House. That changed on Friday.
This past weekend, the Tennessee A&I men’s basketball team, an HBCU squad that won a title more than 60 years ago, got a White House visit.
Tennessee A&I made history
The living members of the Tennessee A&I Tigers basketball team were honored by Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House.
“This is the greatest day of my life,” said George Finley, a player on the Tigers team, said to CBS News.
Credit : Tennessee State University
The Tennessee A&I Tigers men’s basketball team was the first HBCU team to win a national championship in 1957, and made history again by becoming the first college team to win three back-to-back national titles from 1957-1959.
“I thought this would never take place,” said Finley, who was part of the 1959 championship team, told the network. “[Winning] the championship was big, but it wasn’t as big as being here with [Vice President] Harris today.”
The challenges
In a time of segregation and the Jim Crow era, Black teams were often not recognized for their achievements but the team finally got their just due.
Harris hosted six members of the team in a meeting along with their family, friends, and those close to the group of former athletes. Henry Carlton, Robert Clark, Ron Hamilton, Ernie Jones, George Finley, and Dick Barnett joined Finley in the Roosevelt Room at the White House.
Tennessee A&I is now known as Tennessee State University.
Crime & Justice
Detroit man awarded $10 million after wrongful conviction
Alexandre Ansari was wrongfully serving a life sentence over claims that in 2012 he shot and killed Ileana Cuevas, a 15-year-old girl.
A Detroit man who was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for over six years was awarded $10 million in damages by a jury.
$10 million for man wrongfully convicted
Alexandre Ansari was wrongfully serving a life sentence over claims that in 2012 he shot and killed Ileana Cuevas, a 15-year-old girl, and wounded two others in Detroit, according to a lawsuit filed by Ansari in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan Southern Division.
Alexandre Ansari (Photo Source: Wolf Mueller Law)
“Once I got the verdict back, my heart dropped. And I’m like, ‘Dang, I got to spend the rest of my life in here for something I didn’t do.’ And you know, I tried to kill myself,” Ansari told Linsey Davis on “ABC News Live Prime.”
“It felt like nobody didn’t put all the evidence together to see that I wasn’t the person in the first place. So things started getting overwhelming for me.”
Exonerated
Ansari, 39, was exonerated in 2019 by the Wayne County Circuit Court after it determined that Moises Jimenez, a former Detroit police detective withheld evidence for Ansari’s trial that would have implicated someone else as the shooter, according to the County of Wayne Office of the Prosecuting Attorney.
Jimenez received an anonymous tip that linked the shooter to the Mexican Drug Cartel, according to the complaint that released Ansari.
The officer withheld the evidence from Ansari’s 2013 trial, according to the lawsuit.
Jimenez’s attorneys told ABC News that the former detective claims that he provided all evidence he uncovered during his investigation and plans to appeal the $10 million lawsuit verdict.
There have been no reported arrests connected to the shooting since Ansari’s exoneration. Ansari was wrongfully arrested for the crime when he was 27 years old.
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