NEWSLETTER
OF THE
LOUISIANA
COUNCIL BATON ROUGE COUNCIL
ON
HUMAN RELATIONS ON HUMAN RELATIONS
Volume
40, Issue 3
Volume 39, Issue 3
Paul
Y. Burns, Interim Editor Third Quarter 2004
Board
Opposes Electronic Voting Without a Paper Trail
The
LCHR Board of Directors met July 17 at the home of Doris and Overton White in
Plaisance, adopting Eva Baham=s motion opposing electronic
voting without a paper trail. Dr. Baham
wrote me after the meeting, listing nine websites on electronic voting and
pointing out that by going to the Google search engine even more material can
be found. One of the websites is http://www.verifiedvoting.org/ .
Treasurer
Paul Burns reported that during the past three months LCHR’s income was $781,
and its expenditures were $378, leaving a checking account balance July 15,
2004 of $779. LCHR also has a money
market certificate in Liberty Bank & Trust valued at $1,713.
In
late July LCHR received a donation of $500 in memory of Kathleen Burns, a
member who joined LCHR along with her husband Paul in 1965. This generous gift will bring our checking
account balance to more than $1,000, a level not achieved since 1997!
The
Board re-elected its current officers for another year: Joseph Dennis,
Lafayette, President; Thelma Deamer, Baton Rouge, Vice President; Paul Y.
Burns, Baton Rouge, Treasurer; Patricia Rickels, Lafayette, Corresponding
Secretary; Leslie Burris, Baton Rouge, Membership Secretary. Burns averred that he would serve only until
the January Board meeting.
Non-officer
Board members are Shirley Burris, Joseph McCarty, John V. White, Barbara
Conner, Rose Mae and Bernard Broussard, Peter Bonhomme, Doris White, James E.
Cross, Anthony Navarre, Huel D. Perkins, Rogers J. Newman, Eileen Shieber,
William Kellner, Eva Baham, Ted Hayes, Elnur Musa, Richard Haymaker, Kathleen
Sparrow, and John Mikell.
The
Board=s
next quarterly meeting was set for 10:30 a.m. October 30 at the home of Anthony
Navarre, 216 Portland Ave., Lafayette.
ULL
Celebrates 50th Anniversary of Racial Integration
Three LCHR members: Joe Dennis, Marion Overton White, and Patricia
Rickels, spoke on a University of Louisiana-Lafayette civil rights panel
September 11 at a symposium commemorating the desegregation of Southwestern
Louisiana Institute, now ULL. Another
panelist, Shawn Wilson, is currently the first black president of the ULL
Alumni Association. Dennis, LCHR
president, commented “…racism, it’s still there. We have too many white people, well-to-do white people, who have
not a clue to what’s going on in the black community.” White is a long-time civil rights attorney
in the Opelousas area. Rickels, LCHR
board of directors’ secretary, joined the faculty a year after the university
had its first black graduate. She and
her late husband and fellow English professor Milton Rickels worked for racial
justice many years.
Another
speaker at the two-day symposium, ULL alumnus Michael Wade, is working on a book
about desegregation of the state’s colleges, focusing on the desegregation of
ULL. Wade is a history professor at
Appalachian State University, Boone, NC.
The symposium organizer, Prof. Michael Martin, pointed out that few
historians know about the university’s integration in 1954.
Muslims,
Jews, Christians Work Together as Volunteers for a Food Bank
On
July 31 nine Baton Rouge teenagers, three Muslims, three Jews, and three
Christians, picked 200 pounds of peas working together on a trip to
Napoleonville. The purpose of the trip,
sponsored by the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank, was to encourage dialogue among
youth of various faiths. One of the
youths commented that the community came together, the Food Bank was helped,
and she met persons of other faiths.
That is good news.
This
worthy project was within the purposes of the Council on Human Relations. In the 1960s the Baton Rouge Council had two
projects to encourage interfaith understanding. One was an invitation from a Jewish Synagogue, led by Rabbi
Marvin Reznikoff, to Council members to join Synagogue members in a Hanukkah
Service, which brought black and white Christians together with Jews for a
novel experience, which I found highly educational and inspirational. The other was a 1969 project in which two-
or three-person teams of mixed religious preferences visited a Sunday morning
worship service. The B.R. Council=s
recent interfaith project, Abraham=s
Salon, was described in our 2nd quarter
newsletter.
David
Duke Attacks Jews
Yes,
Duke, released last spring from a year and a half in prison, is still the
neo-Nazi I remember from his student days at LSU, spewing venom. That=s
the bad news. At a meeting May 29 in
Kenner, Duke attacked Jews in his speech at a meeting of leading international
figures in the anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial movement. Duke now has
a ANew
Orleans Protocol,@ which includes advising his
followers to volunteer as Little League coaches to access impressionable
children. Also to join organizations
such as the American Red Cross to legitimize their hate-filled ideas. Duke=s
aide claimed that more than 580,000 copies of his book Jewish Supremacism
have been sold worldwide.
The
good news is that the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane
University has provided Holocaust Education training to more than 200 teachers
in Jefferson Parish alone and has sponsored more than 50 Holocaust survivor
presentations in this parish. Since its
inception 10 years ago the Institute has trained 3,300 teachers from 750
schools in the Deep South. Its website
is Http://SouthernInstitute.info
One
of the programs of the Institute, which I support financially, is its ATeams
for Interethnic Solutions,@ which is communications
training in race and ethnic relations.
Information on training workshops can be obtained from Dr. Lance Hill at
the Institute, MR Box 1692, 31 McAlister Dr., New Orleans, LA 70118, ph.
504-865-6100, e-mail 20-inst@tulane.edu.
Some
good news is that the Southern Poverty Law Center received the Association of
Educational Publishers= Distinguished Achievement
Award for its publication for higher education, 10 Ways to Fight Hate on
Campus. More than 50,000 copies has
been distributed to colleges and universities in this country. The Center also received an award for its
video Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks.
Improvement
in Juvenile Justice?
Governor
Blanco seems to have made improving Louisiana=s
lousy juvenile justice system a priority.
One promising development is the use of a Missouri juvenile justice
expert. At Blanco=s
request, Mark Steward, director of
Missouri=s
Division of Youth Services, assessed the state=s
prison system for young criminals.
Missouri has a juvenile prison system with low rates of violence and of
repeat offenses. Louisiana=s
rates are high in these two matters and has been directed by the courts to
shape up.
In
the past legislative session a new juvenile justice agency, the Office of Youth
Development, was created, with its own budget and reporting directly to the
Governor.
Deacons
for Defense and JusticeB40 Years Later
Civil
rights historians and those of us who are old and have long memories remember
the Deacons for Defense and Justice.
The organization began in 1964, consisting of armed black men who
protected their communities from white supremacy groups such as the KKK. Most of the men who joined were Baptist
deacons, hence the name. Jonesboro,
Homer, and Bogalusa had chapters in Louisiana. They employed a different
strategy for resisting the evil of racial hate crimes than the nonviolence of
Dr. King, but they successfully protected their families because the white
supremacy groups feared them. A book has
recently been published about the Deacons: The
Deacons for Justice: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement, by
Lance Hill. North Carolina. 363
pp. $34.95.
Insurance
Redlining Hurts Low-income Persons and People of Color
Many
of us get insurance without thinking much about it. Others, mainly low-income families and people of color, are
discriminated against by a practice called Aredlining.@ In redlining, insurance companies refuse to write policies in
particular geographical areas where these folks live. An example would be zip codes 70802 and 70805 in Baton
Rouge. A recent ruling by the
California Supreme Court may help ensure equal access to basic insurance by
requiring insurers to make their community service statements public. Now the public will be able to assess the levels
of discrimination in underserved areas. Insurance companies in every state
should provide equal access to insurance.
LSU
Enters Sports History Books, On the Good Side!
Congratulations
to LSU! The formerly racist institution
has broken new ground in hiring Ms. Dana APokey@
Chatman as women=s
basketball coach. She is the first
black woman to become a head coach at LSU. If you aren=t
a sports fan, you may not be aware that Mississippi State University has
recently appointed Sylvester Croom as the first black head football coach in
Southeastern Conference history. Major
congratulations to Mississippi State!
Gender
Bias in Media Sports Coverage
Have
you noticed how TV and print media downplay or ignore high-school sports for
girls? There is gender bias here and
it will continue until enough people complain about it. Speak up!
Media
Justice Movement
About
40 years ago a few civil rights activists, connecting the racism they saw in
the streets to the racism they saw on TV, began to monitor TV in Jackson,
MS. They documented that fact that two
local stations were failing to serve their substantial (45%) African-American
audiences and filed petitions with the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC shafted them (no surprise here), so
they went to court and won; the court established the principle that news
content must reflect in some fashion the actual diversity of local audiences,
and that the public had Astanding@
and could go directly to the FCC.
Currently,
people of color are marginalized in the consolidated world of mainstream
media. There was a meeting in 2002
called the Highlander Media Justice Gathering, which placed new emphasis of
justice in the media. In San Francisco
the Third World Majority encourages women and people of color to engage in
media work. In Mississippi, the Jackson
Advocate, a black-owned, feisty newspaper has had fire bombings because of
its reports on racism and local government.
A Media Justice Summit meeting has been planned for this year.
At
LSU, the Manship School of Mass Communication (formerly Journalism) has
launched a Forum on Race and the Media.
The forum has a Website, http://www.lsu.edu/raceandmedia, which has an
annotated bibliography on race and media with more than 400 articles.
Speaking
of media bias makes me think of what I and many others have discovered. The one TV channel and program that can be
counted on for news honesty in the U.S. is the Comedy Channel=s
ADaily
Show,@
Jon Stewart host, on the Comedy Channel at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. He pokes fun at
Democrats and Republicans.
Bias
Against Indians?
I mean persons from India, not
Native Americans. An LSU student wrote a
letter to the editor of the student newspaper recently, stating several
instances where he has been given a hard time by other students because of the
dark color of his skin. As a white,
retired LSU professor I have not been close to Indian and Pakistani students,
and I have wondered about racial discrimination against them. Can anyone enlighten me on this
subject? I have noticed that some of
them have very dark skin.
Voices of Civil Rights Bus Tour
Comes to Baton Rouge
Starting in Washington, D.C. and
stopping at 39 cities along the route of the 1961 Freedom Rides to Mississippi,
this group stopped in Baton Rouge August 26.
The tour, a project of the AARP, included interviewers and journalists. Among those who told their stories in video
interviews were Baton Rouge Council members James E. Cross, Marjorie Green,
Richard Haymaker, and Paul Y. Burns.
Storytellers on the program were Johnnie Jones, Sr., Hazel Freeman,
Mildred Clark, and Freddy Pitcher. The
History Channel did the filming, planning a one-hour documentary to air in
February 2005.
Haymaker, BRCHR President, brought
the new BRCHR website, www.brchr , to the
attention of the project leaders, hoping it will become a link on their
website. The BRCHR website has our
history posted with many stories.
Please log on the Voices website, www.voicesofcivilrigts.org. Tell your story.
Stories
will be archived by the prestigious Library of Congress.
Meetings Planned by Baton Rouge
Council on Human Relations
The BRCHR is planning to have a
presidential forum in collaboration in cooperation with the LSU Wesley
Foundation. The date is October 28,
Thursday. Time 7 p.m. The Wesley Foundation building is located at
333 Chimes St.
A Baton Rouge Mayor-President forum
is planned in collaboration with the Children’s Coalition. Mayor Bobby Simpson, a Republican, and state
Sen. Melvin “Kip” Holden, D-Baton Rouge recently won places in the November 2
runoff election. The BRCHR does not
endorse candidates, but over its 39-year life it has held many political
forums, to which all candidates are invited.
The date, time, and place are not yet set.
For more information on the details
of these forthcoming BRCHR meetings, contact Phil Woodland, BRCHR’s Immediate
Past President, at 336-9801 or jpwood929@aol.com.
, East Baton Rouge Parish
Mayor-President Election Has Racial Aspects
The Mayor-President’s race is of
interest to the BRCHR because of its racial aspects. Holden is black, and all previous Mayor-Presidents, including
Simpson, have been white. The city of Baton Rouge’s population is majority
black, and the E.B.R. Parish is majority white. If the upcoming runoff election
is like past elections, Simpson will get a lot of white votes and some black
votes; Holden will get a lot of black votes and some white votes. Four years
ago Holden ran first in the primary election and Simpson was second. In the runoff, Simpson won, 57% to 43%.
Recently I discovered in listening
to a group of white Baton Rouge intellectuals who were interested in the
Mayor-President’s race but who knew little of the complicated politics. They did not realize that Zachary and Baker,
separate cities which along with Baton Rouge are in E.B.R. Parish, each elects
its own Mayor, but Baton Rouge does not elect its Mayor: She or he is elected
by the votes of the entire parish and then carries the title of
Mayor-President. The “Mayor” title
applies to Baton Rouge only; the “President” title means that he or she
presides over the parish-wide MetroCouncil.
Dues
are Due
Dues
are due for the year July 1, 2004 - June 30, 2005. Members of the Baton Rouge Council (a chapter of LCHR) are
automatically members of LCHR. Dues are
$20 family, $15 individual, $1 student or low income. Members who paid dues after March 1, 2004 are considered to be
paid up through June 30, 2005.
Contributions over and above dues are appreciated, especially those
given in memory of someone who has had a significant impact on human relations.
New members are soughtBthose who agree with our purposes of equality of opportunity and improved human relations.
Baton
Rouge area: Make out checks to B.R. Council on Human Relations. Send to: Richard Haymaker, 254 Nelson
Dr., Baton Rouge, LA 70808.
Others:
Make out checks to LCHR. Send
to: Paul Burns, 2137 Cedardale, Baton Rouge, LA 70808.
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