The Harvey Journal

Second Suspect Sought in AZ - The Daily Beast

2011-01-09T09:52:00.000-05:00

Second Suspect Sought in AZ - The Daily Beast

Prologue To Mystery

2010-11-09T08:48:00.000-05:00

Tuskegee University Homecoming 2010

2010-11-04T12:18:00.000-04:00

Harold Michael Harvey Discussing Paper Puzzle Motivations

2010-10-26T01:25:00.000-04:00

Paper Puzzle A Book of Substance

2010-08-19T16:05:00.000-04:00

Paper Puzzle Hot Summer Read At Amazon

2010-08-12T12:17:00.000-04:00

Paper Puzzle Excerpt Chapter 6

2010-08-08T01:02:00.000-04:00

Advertisement For Me

2009-10-24T08:02:00.007-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

What does a five year old black boy do when his grandmother warns him he cannot play behind the sales counter with the grandson of the white shop owner in the mid 1950s? If he is Harold Michael Harvey he embarks upon a lifetime journey to understand social mores and how to overcome them.

For the 58 year old Harvey the end result is the publication of his first novel Paper Puzzle. The novel released in the southern fiction genre, is set in Harvey’s hometown of Macon, Georgia, by the largest traditional publishing house in the nation, Publish America. He draws on his past experiences as an award winning journalist and award winning trial lawyer to spin a tale of mystery cloaked in the traditions of the South.

Paper Puzzle introduces dual protagonists, one white, Clay Moore managing editor of the town’s daily newspaper and Jimmy Royal editor of the local black weekly tabloid. Both men as cub reporters covered a gangland styled murder and were pulled off the story by their publishers before anyone was brought to justice.

As time passes the two men kept thoughts of it in the back of region of their minds. Suddenly, Clay Moores’ life is interrupted when he discovers news clippings from the gangland styled murder in his bed each morning. When Clay’s security and career is threatened by a powerful federal judge he is forced to turn to the only other person who can help him solve the paper puzzle laying in his bed. He turns to Jimmy Royal and together the two reporters in the spirit of Woodard and Bernstein uncovers decades of injustice hidden neatly under the guise of the social mores of the times.

Paper Puzzle is on sale everywhere fine books are sold.

Harvey, who lives in Atlanta and writes in the Great Smokey mountains says, “I’ve walked around with this story all my life, it is a relief to finally get it out so others can help me figure out the conundrum of growing up American.

Where Has all the Time Gone?

2009-10-16T23:21:00.004-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

I read with interest of former CNN President, Tom Johnson’s plans for the Miller-Lanier 50th class reunion. Mr. Johnson invited the 1959 Ballard-Hudson class to lunch. Fifty years ago this group couldn’t lawfully sit at a soda fountain in Macon, Georgia or any place else in the south.

It was unthinkable. If the kids had such thoughts, surely their parents would have rushed in; pointing out the social mores prohibiting it.

Tom Johnson and his classmates graduated without knowing any Negroes their age; save perhaps, kids of domestics, who worked in their homes.

Johnson’s class reunion promoted me to reflect on my date with destiny. This June marked the 40th anniversary for the Lanier class of 1969. This class was unique. The graduates, whites and blacks, had gone to school together for four consecutive years.

Bibb County’s high schools were desegregated in 1964 when rising seniors Winifred Anderson and Vernon Pitts enrolled in Willingham and Lanier senior high schools respectively.

But the 1969 classes at the formerly white high schools validated the efficacy of integration. My class culminated the “freedom of choice” plan that permitted Negroes to attend Lanier-Miller and McEvoy-Willingham High Schools which begin with the eighth grades.

In 1965, while I completed my foray into the maze eighth grade can be, Robert Williams, Ballard-Hudson Jr. High School Principal, made an announcement. “Judge Bootle,” he said, “ ruled any Negro student could attend an all white high school.”

A light went off. I read about the football team at Willingham in the Macon Telegraph. I wanted to be a Willingham Ram.

After school I ran the half mile trek to my house, rushed inside to see my mom. She was not there. I found her in the back yard hanging clothes on the clothes line. Out of breathe, I blurted Mr. Williams’ announcement. I asked if I could enroll in Willingham Jr. High School. Without pausing to think, Mom said yes. I was on cloud nine. Then, my brother Gerald found us. He looked excited. He asked to enroll in Lanier Sr. High School. Mom said yes to integration, but we had to attend the same school. Gerald, a rising junior at Ballard-Hudson Sr. High School, and his friends had selected Lanier. Thus, I became a Lanier Poet.

At summer’s end a local civic group sponsored a tutorial session in English and Math at Mercer University. I came under the tutelage of Mary Wilder who ran the tutorial program. I would later, as a journalist, cover Ms. Wilder’s exploits as a member of the Macon City Council and as Macon’s first female candidate for Mayor.

Two days before the start of school in 1965 I visited my grandmother. She gave me a sage piece of advice: “No matter what they say about you, no matter what they do to you, get your education baby, because once you got your education, no one can take that away from you.”

Yet neither Ms. Wilder nor Granny could have possibly prepared me for the first day at Lanier Jr. High School. That morning, Gerald and I dressed in silence. If Gerald was afraid, he hid it. His seeming courage emboldened me. Mom labored in silence to serve breakfast. She saw us off and quickly closed the door. She had just sent her only progenies to integrate the public school system in Bibb County. I have never asked her but I am sure she must have fallen on her knees and prayed.

Gerald and I walked up to Frank Everest’s house on Pio Nono Avenue. Frank had a car and when Mrs. Everest had blessed our journey Gerald, Frank, Tommy Miller and I piled into Frank’s car. Frank kept the group loose by telling jokes. We laughed. We teased. We were unaware history was calling.

Then we came to Henley Avenue. They let me out, as I was the only one going to the junior high campus. I walked towards the horseshoe parking lot in front of the building. I saw from a distance what I perceived at first blush to be a welcoming committee.

As I drew closer to the entrance, I discovered to my horror, they didn’t come out to welcome me on my first day at a new school. I discerned shouts of “two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate.” I turned away from the rage and anger emanating from this sea of white faces.

A man came through the crowd. He took me through this gauntlet and into the principal’s office. My first day at a new school and already I’m being escorted to the principal’s office.

No one spoke to me other than to initially ask for my name. “Harold Michael Harvey,”I said, trembling.

About five minutes later other black boys were brought into the room. In came Ernest Lester, Kenneth Nixon, Sylvester Royal, James Thomas, Larry Carson, Alvin Russell, Hamp Davis, and Carlton Haywood.

When the kids were cleared from the front of the school, we were each escorted to our respective home rooms.

After umpteen racial slurs, a few fist fights, and a burned school building; we emerged from the turbulent 60's, forty years ago.

Tom Johnson’s journey has come full circle. So has ours; it’s high time to sit down at lunch with friends and have a glass of sweet southern ice tea.

For the class of 1969, this unique opportunity occurs this weekend. I’ll miss the gathering of pioneers as I will be celebrating my 58th birthday with the publication of my first novel Paper Puzzle. A novel inspired by much of what I learned about race relations in the 20 th century from the Lanier experience.

And what have we learned in a half century of integration? I think that I have learned that neither black men, nor white men generally consider the viewpoint of any issue through the eyes of the other. As the protagonists in Paper Puzzle grapple with this issue, I have come to realize that much of my countrymen struggle with it, as well.

In 1965 I could not imagine present day America. Nothing in the nuts and bolts of reality suggested that the social order would change. In the early years of this decade my son, Coley Harvey, was a student at The Lovett School, a private Christian school, in Atlanta. Imagine, the same year that I integrated Lanier Jr. High, the two oldest children of Martin Luther King, Jr., were denied admission to The Lovett School.

In high school, Coley was a baseball player of some note. On his team was a white kid who we had never met. This young man’s parents became friends of ours. Before the conclusion of every practice or game, we were sure to spend twenty minutes chatting. Three years later, while chatting about some mundane topic, at an end of season awards event, we learned that the father of this young man, Ken Thrasher, and I had been classmates from 1965-1969 at Lanier.

We did not recognize each other, our hair was grayer and I had taken to using my middle name, but somehow we felt connected. That night, Ken Thrasher confided in me how sorry he felt over the way I was mistreated in English class by the teacher, Ms. Weeda Poe.

We laugh about how much my knees shook as I stood up and conjugated every verb in every sentence Ms. Poe threw in an effort to prove I did not have good command of the King’s English.

But he went on to say that Ms. Poe treated everyone that way. The white kids did not come to my aid out of a sense of racial prejudice, as I had thought back then, but out of relief, as long as, Ms. Poe had her sights on the lone Negro in the class, they were safe from her onslaught.

To hear that explanation 38 years later has helped to heal those old wounds. It’s time to mend some fences. Events like the one organized by Tom Johnson and the conversation held by Ken Thrasher and myself will go a long way to insure a better understanding of the differences in the people with whom we share the planet.

© September 20, 2009

Of A Fire on the Moon and Obama Stuck in the Craw of the Mob

2009-10-10T15:59:00.006-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

I have been missing in action of late, much to the displeasure of my editor. You see my editor has been my sidekick for thirty years. She relishes finding my faults and pointing them out with a sense of humor that both pains and refreshes my writing. I’ve not given her a cathartic vent in recent weeks. Thus she has time to find fault with sundry other aspects of my being, which is a sure prescription for writer’s block.

Not that my absence can be neatly summed up as writer’s block. I’ve been busy fighting my publisher for much needed revisions to the proofs of Paper Puzzle. It seems these days the traditional publishing houses have reduced their editorial staffs in cost cutting measures similar to most other industries. When duties overlap, little editorial miscues can make an otherwise Pulitzer Prize winning manuscript just an ordinary piece of literature. So when the personal editor says to change it, it’s worth slowing down the production process to get the necessary changes implemented.

I’ve also cut down a tree or two in the back yard with the assistance of my son and we are set with fire wood for the winter.

Additionally, my focus has not been on my son’s budding career as a sports writer for my hometown newspaper. A job I would loved to have had when I was his age. So he and I have spent the past few days talking about the importance of social media, as we approach the close of the first decade of this bold century. A century that is vastly different from the century of our birth; as different as his great grandparents’ birth century was from mine.

Big and small town newspapers have perhaps seen their golden days. The model that will survive the Craigslist pandemic will not look anything like the daily paper dropped on the doorsteps and driveways of American families before the advent of the information superhighway. Thus an enterprising reporter has to be on the look out for opportunities to expand his or her career.

“We,” says Mitch Joel, author of Six Pixels of Separation, “are connected to each other” by someone we personally know.

As is my habit, to drive this point home, I resorted to a story from the past. I told my son of walking into the book store my first day on campus at Tuskegee Institute and seeing the shelves loaded with Norman Mailer’s 1959 rant, Advertisement for Myself. It was strange to see the Harvard educated Mailer with more shelf space than the Institute’s own former student, Ralph Ellison, who had penned the brilliant novel Invisible Man.

At semester’s end the shelves were still overflowing with Mailer’s pitch to ensure his “present and future work....will have the deepest influence of any work being done by an American novelist in these years.” Yet I bought and read it. I still have my copy. It is bounded today by a strip of clear tape.

Thus Mailer knew in 1959, any writer worth his or her ink had to engage in the self deception of advertising oneself for public consumption.

Mitch Joel, Chris Brogan and other social media gurus have learned what Mailer knew 50 years ago. So the son and I built a social media platform that says, “ hey world, get your sports news at Coley Harvey-MaconTechTalk on FaceBook and @MaconTechTalk on Twitter”. They are not technical posts, but technocrats are certainly welcome. The Tech in the name stands for Georgia Tech. Coley is the Georgia Tech beat reporter for The Telegraph in Macon, Georgia.

As we talked about Norman Mailer, in the background, a television news anchor waxed on about NASA’s pending aggression on the moon in search of ice beneath its core. My thoughts turned away from Mailer’s seminal work, Advertisements for Myself, to his epic depiction of the first manned moon landing, Of a fire On the Moon.

After the landing, it was not so much that man had visited the moon; what mattered now was getting them back into the lunar atmosphere. The spacecraft that had floated onto the moon’s surface like a singular snow flake on a blustery winter’s morning on earth, would require an enormous fiery explosion to get back to Apollo11, which was orbiting the earth in nervous anticipation, like a cheer leader waiting to be asked out by the captain of the football team.

Why then, with two wars, an economy in recovery and political fanaticism running amuck, is there a national fascination with a bombardment of the moon 40 years later? Could this aggression on the moon, to paraphrase Mailer: represent the core of some magnetic human force called Americanism, or is this exploration simply the knights of a new silent majority emerging from human history, with an African in the White House, in order to colonize distant planets.

We watched this morning in anticipation of the fiery explosion NASA had promised. We saw nothing as depicted in the models; no light, no dust, no plumb of smoke coming from the crater on the moon. What happened this morning may not be known by average citizens for another 40 years. Perhaps Mailer was correct in 1969 when he postulated that machines may possess a psychology of their own. Imagine, machines with minds of their own, so unpredictable in functionality that the massive brain trust at NASA can not predict the outcome.

Which brings me to my closing point. For the third time in history a sitting American president has received the Nobel Peace Prize. This year’s award goes to President Obama. He was preceded by Teddy “Rough Rider” Roosevelt and Thomas Woodrow Wilson. All three American presidents were confronted with at least one war which threatened the economic and political security of the nation.

Roosevelt was the nation’s first strong chief executive. The power of the oval office has increased exponentially since the early 1900s when he first flexed his executive authority. He received the Nobel Peace Prize for volunteering to mediate a dispute which threatened to disrupt Western access to raw materials in the Far East. His efforts led to the end of the Russo-Japanese War.

Wilson, following World War I worked to form the League of Nations, the precursor of today’s United Nations. Although the League of Nations could not hold the peace, Wilson was rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1918.

In his brief time in office, Obama has extended an olive branch to Europe, Asia, Africa and islands of the seas. The common thread which binds these three sitting presidents is a belief that the security of its neighbors means long term economic and political security for America. Their actions were outside the box of conventional thinking.

Yet the nay sayers will not allow President Obama any peace. On the social network, Twitter, I recently mirrored the rants of the fanatical right. I deliberately presented an extreme opposing view to their displeasure over Obama’s selection for the Nobel Peace Prize. After a few rounds of nonsense the mob, as they call themselves, cried they were sick of me and no longer wanted to engage in further discussion. I wanted them to see exactly how they appear to other people. If my conduct was nauseating, theirs was equally vile. One can only hope this group will reevaluate their conduct in light of the assault projected upon their extreme positions.

Mailer prophetically penned the frustration of the present day mob in his 1959 piece titled The White Negro. The consternation of the current day mob causes them to blur the lines between socialism and democracy. Following Mailer’s line of thought, the mob’s fear that the nation will resort to socialism has to do with the ascendancy of the “Negro,” or in our day, a black president.

“It is no accident,” Mailer writes, “the source ..:is the Negro for the Negro has been living on the margin between totalitarianism and democracy for two centuries.” Indeed, Mailer is right, and we are now into our third century of living on the edge. If the Negro has learned anything from the American experience, it is how not to govern; it is how to share power for the betterment of all. It is precisely this fact, that the mob fails to understand.

Thus Obama is stuck in the craw of the mob causing the mob to gag, just like the Twitterer who said I “make her sick”. They gag on Obama’s every success and every seeming failure. This nauseating feeling fuels the mob’s desire to denigrate each of Obama’s presidential experiences. He’s a bad man and must of necessity be thrown out of office either through the rise of the “birth certificate movement,” or by way of a military coupe, this band seems to argue.

Hopefully the mob will be able to extricate Obama from its throat, before they miss the most innovative presidency since fellow Nobel Peace Prize recipient Teddy Roosevelt represented both the GOP and the Bull Moose Party in the White House.

© October 9, 2009

Mommas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Dumb Millionaires

2009-09-18T23:14:00.004-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

I’m a story teller. I learned to tell stories sitting at the side of my granddaddy Charlie. Although I never heard him orally tell a story. He was a very silent man and seldom spoke. When he did speak it was enough to make E. F. Hutton listen. He usually had something profound to say. A white mob once stopped to listen to what he had to say. It threw them off the tracks of the black man they were following and the man’s life was spared. While my grandfather talked to the men, my grandmother huddled the children and cried out, “Lord have mercy!” She prayed for the black man and the white men alike. I don’t know if her prayer diffused the situation or not. What I took away from it was not hatred for either the man running nor the men bent on murder who chased after him. I learned by example to pray in the midst of trouble.

My granddad lived his stories. He taught hard work, honesty, and letting your word be your bond through the manner he lived his life.

I learned to tell stories by sitting next to my grandad when the men in the farming community where we lived would drop by after a day’s work. In the summertime we would gather in a circle in the yard. Someone would light a fire in a barrel to smoke away the mosquitoes and flies. That’s when the stories started. Each man would take a turn telling a story. There was laughter galore. In the winter months we would gather around the fireplace, toss some sweet potatoes under the ashes and listen to tales of ghosts and goblins.

Years later when I left home for college my grand mom, Puella had but one admonishment: “Don’t be down there drinking no dope.” Marijuana was the craze in that day. Granny didn’t know you didn’t drink it. But she wanted to make it clear I was not to do anything that would make me behave less than I had been taught.

From the letters I have received of late, my stories pain some of my readers. I regret that they do. I come from a long line of story tellers, preachers and teachers who took the lemons of life experiences (the good, the bad, the indifferent) and made a lesson plan of lemonade.

When I coached youth league baseball, long before the term “teachable moment” was in the national lexicon, I used the mistakes my kids made to teach life principles. When I halted practice and instructed the infielders in the mechanics of the rundown play, they would say, “here goes coach Harvey with another one of his stories.” The rundown play is a perfect time to teach team work and responsibility, not only for yourself but for your teammates as well. In this way we built moral character and laid the foundation for a championship baseball team. The story was painful at the time because the life experience was oozing ugly before our very eyes. I didn’t let them hide from the fact that a bone-headed play distracted from the team’s goal of winning a championship.

Now, when I encounter a member of the Homestead Grays Youth Baseball Team and Educational Academy, they tell me how beneficial those life lessons were. I have my grandparents to thank for any success my baseball players have had. I will put their moral character up against any group of young men born any where in the world between 1983 and 1986.

Which brings me to the point of this piece. I sat dumbfounded before the television last weekend and witnessed the worst behavior imaginable from three very rich and very spoiled brats. They are in order of meltdown Michael Jordan, Serena Williams and Kayne West.

I’m not going to ask what were they thinking, because obviously they were not. But their behavior does bring forth the question; what were they smoking, drinking, snorting, sniffing or shooting?

Michael Jordan, the greatest pea shooter of his generation made a mockery of his induction into the National Basketball Hall of Fame. He made it a point to denigrate every single person whom he had passed along the way to greatness. His mom was there in the audience, how could she be proud of her progeny? The trouble with Michael happened a long time ago when someone should have periodically taken the basketball out of his hands and substituted a book for the basketball. Someone at the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Wilmington, North Carolina should have read the Book of Micah to him. Instead of a graceful and humble warrior claiming the spoils of war, we get Jordan at age 46 foaming at the mouth because he was able to overcome the obstacles of life and stand atop the heap. It’s a good thing we now have a Harvard educated black man who has a mean left handed jump shot in the White House to emulate.

Serena Williams, so gifted a tennis player that the only person who can consistently beat her is her sister Venus, and herself. She is an object lesson of what happens when you take a small child and put a racket in her hands without occasionally lobbing a book across the net. As success came along the way, there were a lot of empty spaces that were taken up with bad precepts and examples. Thus, when under fire instead of choking down her expressions of outrage from an official call, she, in the vernacular of the day, twittered them to the whole world in 140 characters, more or less. Contrast Serena’s verbal outburst with the glare President Obama gave to Joe Wilson on the floor of the House last week. If looks could kill, Joe Wilson would have been pulverized. Yet Obama knew he could not say or do what he felt at the time. His parents and grandparents put something in his hands, his heart and inside his head. That something seems to be lacking in this world class athlete.

Kayne West, a multi talented and disturbed black man bum rushed Taylor Swift, a 19 year old white girl at the MTV Video Music Awards show last week. He took the microphone out of her hands and told those assembled he thought someone other than Ms. Swift should have won. He is still trying to out run grief, several years after the death of a mom, who tried her best to get him enrolled in college. His behavior was unbelievable, uncalled for and undeniably rude. He has at least apologized and plans to get off the public stage and begin the grieving process. My advice is to also go back to school.

In my time, I have given my mom some proud moments and some not so proud moments. I have pledged to her one more proud moment before she makes her curtain call. I am working hard every day to make good on that promise.

Mommas don’t let your babies grow up to be dumb millionaires, teach them reading, writing, “critical historical thinking” and such.

© September 15, 2009

Joe Wilson the new face of Angry White America

2009-09-13T19:07:00.007-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

I’ve often wondered how the individuals behind the face of angry white America really look. I’ve wondered ever since I attended the 15 April 2009 Tax Day Protest in downtown Atlanta. I have written else where about that angry white mob I found myself in across from the steps of the state capitol (The Three Reasons I Hate Being In A Crowd of Angry White People, The Harvey Journal, 16 April 2009). I wasn’t sure, but I had a hunch it was similar to the faces in the two other crowds of angry white people I had encountered in my short existence on the planet.

When President Barack Obama called a joint session of Congress to discuss his health care reform legislation the other day, it became painfully and shamefully clear just what the angry face of white America looked like.

It is predominately male, southern and bigoted. Just like the group that trespassed on my grandfather’s farm in 1955 and the group that stood outside the Lanier Jr. High School for Boys shouting insults at me back in 1965. I’ve cited these two incidents several times but I’m not sure my readers get the point. The point is not so much that these events occurred. They occurred on a regular basis back then. The object lesson here is, both of these groups thought they were right in their actions.

The mob following a pack of bloodhounds out hunting for a black man in the mid 1950s felt justified in their search and in the swift lynching that was sure to follow had they found him.

The young boys standing outside a public high school yelling “two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate” were absolutely sure they held the moral responsibility to defeat the “communist inspired” move towards the elimination of segregation in the South. Their arrogance led them to defy school authority and menacingly intimidate any black person who dared to cross their protest line that September morning 44 years ago last week.

Time, however, has a way of avenging all. We now know, which is to say that any white person of reasonable intelligence now knows (black people knew all along), that both groups of angry white males were wrong. We also know that what they feared and what roused them to anger cannot stop the turning tide of time. For what angers southern bigots and what they fear is a social order of shared responsibility after centuries of unlimited power and authority.

Male, southern and bigoted, just like Joe Wilson the Columbia, South Carolina congressman who represents the Second District in the United States House of Representatives. He has power. He can debate the issue in committee and on the floor of the House. He has a vote. Yet he resorts to heckling!

What manner of American is this who would sit on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and interrupt an important speech by the president of the United States of America with shouts of “you lie?”

Male, southern and bigoted. Just like the three dozen or more people who gathered outside the congressman’s office in Columbia, South Carolina recently who praised Wilson’s rudeness as an act of heroism. Not only does he owe the president an apology, but he owes an apology to the American people who tuned in to listen to an important policy address on health care reform, only to be distracted by a heckler disguised as a congressman.

Male, southern and bigoted. Just like William Browning, the 55 year old South Carolina man quoted by the Associated Press as saying: “I hope he [Joe Wilson] sticks to his guns. If they reprimand him, so be it.”

Such arrogance displayed by Joe Wilson and William Browning is appalling. The utter disrespect for Barack Obama oozes out of their pores by the pound.

How does one come to hate a person whose policies are different? There is but one simple answer. It is time to stop playing games and call a spade a spade. It’s racism pure and simple. Southern bigoted males have a very low tolerance for Obama’s skin in the game. It doesn’t matter southern bigoted males have rolled out a few black faces at their rallies. The majority of black people see through this ruse and are not taken in by the slight of hand of a band who proclaim an interest in restoring the “American way,” like patriots of old who dodged the race question in their day by counting darker citizens as chattel and worth, according to the federalist of that day, a mere three-fifth of the measure of a white man.

Grow up southerners. You are pouting like little boys pout on the playground. Like those little boys pouted on the steps of Lanier Jr. High School for Boys in ‘65 .

Watching this band of anti-government protesters march in the District of Columbia on 12 September 2009, I saw the same agitated and snarling faces I saw in the mob back in ‘55 and the mob of ‘65. You could contrast these angry faces with the determined, yet peaceable expressions on the faces of the men and women who attempted to marched across the Edmund Pettits Bridge on Bloody Sunday. When one considers this dichotomy of history, one realizes that the arch of justice stills bends towards the metaphysical progeny of Selma.

Alas, we knew this day was coming. We have known since the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. We have known since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. We have known since Martin told the nation about a dream that he had had.

Get over it! America is big enough for all of us to live in peace, harmony and prosperity.

Let’s say for the sake of argument the cause of angry white Americans is right and Health Care Reform will place a huge burden on grandchildren of conservative fiscal minded Americans. The corollary is also true. To do nothing will continue to place a tremendous burden on the families of that other America who are also a part of the grand melting pot that makes us unique in the universal set of world democracies.

Thus the reasonable discourse should be: How do we provide adequate health care for all American citizens without providing future generations with a tax bill that is insurmountable?

Anything else makes great sound bites for the six o’clock news and fodder to increase the great divide between conservatives and progressives, between Christians and the ungodly, between whites, blacks, browns, reds, yellows and the many shades in the box of crayons, that did not exist when the mob hunted for a black man on my grandfather’s farm back in ‘55.

© September 13, 2009

Down at the Cross

2009-09-05T03:44:00.005-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

One day in August 1958, I came to the foot of the Cross. I do not remember the exact day. I was three months shy of eight years of life. I recall I had frolicked on the farm that day. My mom was home from Brooklyn, Philly or Youngstown, Ohio. I can’t remember where she had gone that summer to earn tuition money for college. She couldn’t earn enough doing domestic work in the south and would visit with her cousins in the north where the wages were higher. She was home and I had her for a week before she would depart again for the campus of Fort Valley State College in pursuit of a teacher’s degree.

But this Thursday’s frolicking was topped off with the fourth night of summer revival at the Mount Zion Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. Although the ruling board of the church had changed the denomination’s name to Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in 1954, it was still for all practical intents and purposes the Colored Methodist Church in Crawford County, Georgia.

After the preacher had hooted and hollered, sweat and wiped his brow with a white handkerchief, the adults stood around and talked. I was exhausted, if not from the preaching, from the excitement of having my mom all week. I sat back onto a pew and drifted off to sleep.

The adults’ conversation had continued as they meandered outside and when the night had reached pitch black dark, they decided it was time to walk the five miles or more home while the moon still lit a pathway. Down U. S. Highway 80 they walked. Suddenly Mom realized I was not in tow. The group rushed back towards the church in the stillness of night.

Meanwhile, I had awakened in the darkness of the church. I could not see my hands before my eyes. I did not know where the door was. I sat. I cried. I prayed. Just as I had given my life over to Christ, the door was flung open and I rushed into my mom’s arms.

The next night the pastor opened the doors of the church for new membership. I walked down the aisle and gave my hand to the minister. I was followed by my brother Gerald, cousins Hilda and Larry and perhaps eight other young people. We were given “the right hand of fellowship” the following Sunday and thus began my journey with Christ.

In a few weeks school started and I was in the second grade. My teacher was Miss Colbert. I believe she had also been my mom’s second grade teacher. Some missionary group brought a passel of New Testaments (the King James Version) and distributed them in the classrooms. You could do that then. This was a year before God was chased out of the classroom. I held that little red book in my hands and opened the pages to a world of Elizabethan English that fascinated my youthful intellectual pallet. When it came time to read Macbeth, King Lear and Romeo and Juliette in senior English years later, it was a snap. I had been reading William Shakespeare since the second grade.

I was struck by the sermon on the Mount of Olive at an early age. It is the only recorded speech in the Bible where Christ talked to such a large group of people at once. In the parlance of our day, it would have been Christ’s defining moment. In it he blessed the downtrodden, the dispossessed, the sick, the weary, the widow and those who mourn. He encouraged the nation not to get caught up in the system of things, but to seek the kingdom of Heaven.

There are many today who profess with fervor to be followers of Christ. I have listened to their sermons while sitting in their congregations, in online chat rooms and on YouTube videos. These piped pipers of Christian virtue see an all rightness in wishing ill will on a political figure with whose policies they disagree. Somehow forgetting Paul’s letter to Titus.

Some of these policies were in place before this political figure was born. As previously stated God was chased out of the schools in 1959. Yet the Christian right saddles the president with this malaise. As they do with abortion. To the extent that abortion is legal in this nation, it was and remains the handiwork of the United States Supreme Court in its pivotal Roe V. Wade decision in 1973. The president was eleven and a half years of age that January morning when I heard of the decision while on my way to classes at Tuskegee Institute.

While in the great Smokey Mountains finishing work on my novel “Paper Puzzle” last summer, I attended a white church. Not that race has anything to do with it per se. I have acknowledged the individual love and support I received from them in the acknowledgment section of the novel. Yet what I learned last summer was that although we were reading the same book, interpretations of what Christ wished for the church were vastly different.

This difference was painfully obvious, at least to me, the lone black sheep in the flock, as the summer months wore on and it appeared likely the Democrats were going to nominate Barack Obama rather than Hillary Clinton. Without directing the congregation’s attention to Obama’s race, sermons and prayers at the Friday morning men’s fellowship were centered around stigmatizing the least of society and castigating any candidate who preached, these too should be treated equally under American governance. The twin evils these Christians maintained were homosexuality and abortion. These two were the most horrible in God’s sight. Anyone to the left of center on these two issues was going to hell in a handbasket and taking the nation along with them.

These are not bad people. They are good, salt of the earth, God fearing Christians. Yet the political order of their day was rapidly changing before their very eyes and a new calculus dictated a formula designed to protect the existing social order.

However, the Christ whose words I began reading in the second grade, did not malign, castigate, nor denigrate anyone. Neither did he weave the tax collectors, adulterers, murderers and thieves out of the equation of the Kingdom of God. He constantly wove them into his circle, even on the Cross, much to the consternation of his disciples.

Christ could do this because he knew far better than anyone else that the political system of things were of no consequence to his Father. A fact Judas failed to grasp. Judas continuously sought to politicize Christ and when he could not he sold the faith for thirty pieces of silver.

The Christ consciousness calls us to pray for those with whom we disagree. The command is not to pray that God do harm to them, but that they through the spirit will understand what “thus sayeth the Lord.”

This new wave of hatred and hostility for the president of the United States of America is fueled throughout America at the eleven o’clock hour on Sunday mornings. Small little messages, some intended, others not, that are calling the children of God to use the tools of the flesh in the name of the Spirit.

“Down at the Cross where my Savior died, down at the Cross where he took me in, singing Glory to his name.”

© September 4, 2009

On the Trouble in the Nation

2009-08-29T22:01:00.009-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

It was 2 a .m. I couldn’t sleep. Maynard Holbrook Jackson had just been elected the first African American Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. And by accident of history, his election was the first for any major southern city.

This was October 1973. I was finishing up course work on a Bachelor of Science degree in political science at the famed Tuskegee Institute.

Something beckoned! The muses always seem to beckon from the far recesses of my mind when topsy-turvy events turn the world on its ear and say, “how do you like me now?”

At daybreak, I put on my sneakers, dungarees with a matching Tuskegee Tee and headed to campus. Up Johnson Street and onto U. S. Highway 80 I trod. I sauntered through “The Block” and passed old Man Carter’s Five and Dime store across from the residence of President Luther Hilton Foster.

Reaching Campus Avenue, I encountered Milan Williams, keyboard player for the Commodores. He and the group were just back from touring Japan where their album “Human Zoo” was No. 1 on the charts. The Commodores were perhaps three years from making it to the big leagues. We spoke with a nod of the heads. Williams’ wife at the time, Gwen, was a political science classmate of mine, and his soon-to-be nephew, Kebbi Williams, would later become my godson and a musician in his own right. Neither of us knew any of this in that moment.

At 8 a.m. I was in the old ROTC building in my class on Comparative International Government and Politics, taught by Dr. Dalji Singh. It was the only course I had all semester and the only one remaining between me and a ticket into the job market. If not Dr. Singh’s top student, I was at least the only one who came each morning with eyes wide open. Yet I didn’t believe he could explain why I felt elated over the election of John Wesley Dobbs’ grandson as mayor of Atlanta.

I’ve written elsewhere of the first time I saw a crowd of angry white people (“The Three Reasons Why I Hate Being in a Crowd of Angry White People,” The Harvey Journal, April 16, 2009) when a group descended upon my grandfather’s farm looking for some poor black soul. It was John Wesley Dobbs who had aroused the southern gentry into mob-like action when he came into middle Georgia farm country advocating the tenets of his “Georgia Voters League.” It didn’t take much for any local black man without the blessing of a local white man to run afoul of the law after Dobbs had gotten into the southern nostril and left for the safety of Atlanta.

But this morning, Dobbs’ grandson sat atop the ashes left by General Sherman and was giving form and shape to the city like it had never been seen before Sherman nor since.

Following class, I was done for the day. This being a Wednesday morning, I was done for the week, but I didn’t rush to the Alcohol Beverage Control Store for revery. I headed over to Collins P. Huntington Hall. I was in search of the political historian, Professor W. J. Fluker. Surely he could put this event into perspective. I heard a buzz of activity coming down the hallway behind me. There was a familiar voice, I turned and was overtaken by the entourage of Stokely Carmichael. He smiled, apologized for the rush and invited me to attend his lecture.

Carmichael’s seminal work, “Black Power: The Politics of Liberation”, co-authored with Dr. Charles V. Hamilton was the catalyst driving Martin Luther King, Jr.’s non-violent protest into the mode of the outdated. Only the assassination of Dr. King one year after the publication of “Black Power” and the unfaltering devotion to King’s strategy by his widow, Correta Scott King, saved his movement as a practical form to achieve equality under the law.

“In 1967, this revolutionary work exposed the depths of systemic racism in this country and provided a radical political framework for reform: true and lasting social change would only be accomplished through unity among African-Americans and their independence from the
pre-existing order,” thus stated the front flap to “Black Power.”

I got in line and followed this icon to the Tuskegee Chapel where within 200 yards of the burial site of Booker T. Washington, he turned on the polemics and urged students to answer all problems through the use of logic. As he spoke, you could have closed your eyes and heard the
reasoned discourse of the television character from Star Trek with the pointed ears, Mr. Spock

Six years after the publication of his book, someone from the Philosophy Department – I believe it was Dr. Herbie Mosher – asked him to quantify “Black Power.” “How do you measure it?”

Carmichael replied, “Yesterday there were no black mayors of a major southern city in the South. Today there is one. That’s progress.”

Thirty-six years later and nearly a decade into the 21st century, African American scholars continue to quantify “Black Power” through the prism of 1960s politics. This to the chagrin of their offspring who benefitted from the civil rights battles of old after the battle lines had been erased. The new “Talented Tenth” does not care to know how “bitter the chastening rod felt in the days when hope unborn had died.” All they care to know is thank God those days are gone. We have moved on up with the Jeffersons in a post-Cosby America.

Why did I digress to get to this point? A “white paper” written by an Atlanta Think Tank surfaced on the Internet last week which threatened to make this fall’s mayoral elections in Atlanta a referendum on race. The memo boldly states in no uncertain terms: “African Americans could lose the mayoral seat in Atlanta, Georgia, especially if there is a runoff.” The memo cites the fact Atlanta has elected an African American mayor since that fall morning in 1973.

Now that the proverbial stink has hit the fan, no one is willing to come forth and take ownership of this “white paper,” but I’m willing to wager it was written by a certain political scientist at Clark-Atlanta University. It smacks of his scholarship. There are five candidates in the non-partisan election: three African American men, one African American woman and one European American woman.

The memo presupposes Carmichael was right in 1973, that the way to quantify black political power is in the number of blacks holding office in the land. It disregards the notion that of the four African American mayors to lead Atlanta since 1974, the last two have had a less than favorable perception by the citizenry. Bill Campbell, who succeeded Maynard Jackson after his second two-year term, was recently released from federal prison just ahead of this fall’s elections. Campbell saddled his successor, Shirley Franklin, with a crumbling infrastructure with which she has put forth a gallant fight to improve, but at the cost of police and fire services.

Thus the key issue in this election is public safety and not the color of skin worn by the mayor. A side issue appears to be boiling underneath the surface in Midtown, home of many of the city’s gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender citizens. It evolves around the issue of gay marriage. Four of the five candidates have spoken in the language of the gay community. The lone exception is State Senator Kasim Reed who speaks in the language of civil unions when discussing the wedlock of gays, etc; although his legislative record reflects a profound commitment to equality under the law. Nevertheless, members of this group are amassing at the border to cut short his bid for mayor.

Of such is the politics of the 21st century: issues revolving around sex, gender and the almighty color of the skin. With the transition of the “lion of the Senate”, Teddy Kennedy, should the politics of the last half of the 20 th century transition with him?

“The Dream,” Kennedy said a year ago at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, “lives on.” Indeed, it does, albeit threatened by black scholars on the left who can not posit it into a workable equation for the 21st century. And by mostly white ideologues on the right who fear a loss of the one thing James Baldwin said white people had that black people should need or want: “Power. “ Baldwin went on to say that “no one holds power forever.”

White conservatives seek comfort in the thought that government headed by an interloper is the enemy of the people and its policies and procedures must be nullified. Their voices are raised in protest, and anger resounds in confusion, frustration, and venom.

Are these citizens patriots, libertarians or revolutionaries? Has their speech gone beyond the constitutionally protected right to free speech? Has their right to bear arms gone beyond the limits of constitutional protection?

To harbor these questions is to give life to them. As Uncle Teddy takes his leave, who then shall pick up his mantle and bridge the great divide?

Something beckons still! Beckons for the bottom line price of the nation’s troubles. Is the price to be paid in the blood of the black Camelot?

Of the souls of the nation, what shall be their drive-out price? Will the calculus of the nation pay the price to progress into something more rather than regress into something less?

© August 29, 2009

Woodstock, Health Care and the New Silent Majority

2009-08-16T10:28:00.007-04:00

By Harold Michael Harvey

“Son, I’m glad you are not here this summer, they’ve got these long haired, hippy type fellows all over the place, they are smoking a funny cigarette that smells like burnt rope, and the white girls are running around naked,” the voice of my mom said on the other end of the telephone. I’d just finished a shift at the old Homestead Hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia where I had helped to accommodate the party of former President Lyndon Baines Johnson, I think, or some such politico, as they were always dropping in for lunch or dinner .

It was Independence Day 1969. I was away from home earning money in the summertime for fall college expenses, as my mom had done when she was my age. The summer before, on the heels of the twin assassinations, I’d read at the family barbeque, Fredrick Douglass’ epic diatribe “What is the Fourth of July to the American Negro?.” My family was perplexed as I’m sure Douglass’ audience must have been.

Mom was not describing Woodstock. That “happening” would occur the following month. She was describing the crowd gathered at the behest of Phil Walden, an enterprising music promoter, who had produced what was billed as the Atlanta International Music Festival at the site of a motor speedway 120 miles south of Atlanta in Byron, Georgia. Byron is about 20 miles south of my hometown of Macon.

News of the concert and naked white girls spread in the region fast. “They got I-75 blocked off and you can’t get to Fort Valley,” my mom continued to lament the fact she could not visit her two sisters in Fort Valley.

Boy, did I wish I was home. That was all I could think about as mom brought me up to date on all I was missing. Not only did I miss the precursor of Woodstock, I also missed an opportunity to meet the afro-haired young woman I would later marry. She was a student at Spelman College in Atlanta and drove down to Byron with other Spelman sisters. What would have become of such a meeting had we stumbled upon each other in Byron? Would we be here together after 28 years? We were destined to meet ten years later. When we did meet she answered two important questions for me: What was “Byron” really like and what made Spelman College a “Packard” school?

But these are stories for another time. What is important about Byron is that it set the groundwork for Woodstock. It is the first venue where the famed guitarist Jimi Hendrix performed his rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner,” giving meaning to Douglass’ speech, which I had delivered in Macon a year before. Hendrix would perform the national anthem for the second time a month later at Woodstock, and receive such acclamation that he extended his time upon the stage and began to play in free style far longer than his gig was suppose to last.

What then was this “happening” called Woodstock. It was more than three days of peace, love and music. It was the birth of a nation. Young people who opposed a war their elders had gotten them into, came together and proved that a half million Americans could co-exist with limited resources by extending a helping hand to their fellow humankind. It was as if the people had returned for a second sermon on the Mount to learn they were expected to display the lessons learned from the first sermon.

Through the rain, mud, sun and heat, they cared for each other and created such a strong bond among themselves, that it extended to other like minded humans who were not present in a way “Byron” did not. This bond created a statement heard throughout the land which said this country belonged to the young as well as the old.

A year before, a rumbling of this energy that exploded in upstate New York, had check mated a sitting United States President, causing Lyndon Baines Johnson not to seek re-election.

Following Woodstock, this energy targeted the War in Viet Nam. It became a loud and vocal advocate for peace. There was unrest in the land, young people were demanding answers and none were forthcoming. The nation’s sagacious new president, Richard Milhous Nixon, before buckling to the drumbeat for peace summoned the “silent majority” of Americans to turn a deaf ear to the protest raging in the nation.

Did the “silent majority” exist? Surely they must have existed amongst the “anyone over 30" set who were members of our greatest generation. They had faced up to Hitler from the east and Japan from our west. The oldest baby boomers in 1969 were a mere 23 years of age. The greatest generation was less inclined to vocalize their support for governmental action. Yet they voted and fought with their baby boomer offspring. A generational divide appeared. Each side went off to do their own thing and no one watched government for nearly two generations, until a baby boomer born of the Woodstock nation decided he wanted to be president.

Health Care Reform was much discussed and debated in last summer’s presidential cycle. No one in opposition at that time seriously believed the forty-fourth president would be Barack Hussein Obama.

He is. And central to his platform for economic revival is lowering the cost of health care. How do you lower the cost of health care?

His idea is to create competition for the insurance companies in order to encourage them to lower their costs to protect their business interest. Obama’s health care plan provides that Americans can elect to be covered by private insurance or by an insurance plan funded by the federal government.

Not very much socialistic about that proposal. Competition is “as American as apple pie” as Huey Newton was fond of saying in the late 60's. Yet critics on the fringe, who themselves are baby boomers, are yelling their lungs out that the government is rapidly heading down the slippery slope of socialism, if not already there.

Where then are the people who support Obama on Health Care Reform? Do they exit? Is the entire nation afraid the United States is in bed with the Kremlin?

Support, perhaps comes from the new “silent majority,” Woodstock nation baby boomers who know what it is like to win a forty year non violent revolution, “live and in living color.”

(c) August 16, 2009

Paper Puzzle: Through the Eyes of Gates and Crowley

2009-08-02T10:02:00.005-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

When I was a mere lad, my family treated me like a prince who would be King. Yet in our brief forays from the farm into town to buy supplies the lighter races of men whom we encountered treated us less like royalty and more like vagabonds. Needless to say images of those times, plague my psyche, perhaps to this very day. It had nothing to do with character. It all came down to skin color.

Seeing the picture of Henry Louis Gates, handcuffed and being removed from his home by the Cambridge Police brought tears to my eyes. It’s not that I felt any particular sorrow for Gates, the W. E. B. Dubois scholar at Harvard. “Skip” can fend for himself. He has friends in powerful places.

Nevertheless, the Gates affair validates the late historian, John Hendrix Clarke’s assertion in the last century that there is “no black man with power who a more powerful white man cannot bring down with one telephone call.”

Clarke’s theory did not take into account in the 21st century an African living in the White House would weigh into the fray and offer a beer to the captor and the captive. Thus Gates’ arrest for essentially mouthing off to a police officer overtook the president’s health care initiative and pushed it on the back burner. The nation as it was, a year ago, became obsessed with race.

I’ve been obsessed with race too, since a day in the 1950's when my grandmother told me I could get arrested for going behind the counter to play with the shop keeper’s grandson. At five years of age, I was perplexed.

Ten years later, I was thrust into the middle of an attempt to eliminate the legal doctrine of “separate but equal” facilities in America. I volunteered to integrate the local Junior High school in Macon, Georgia. I was treated less than equal for the four years it took to smash Jim Crow in the seat of his pants. It had nothing to do with character or smarts. It had all to do with skin color.

Therefore, I became a student of history as it relates to the psychology of race. What I have learned is that neither white men nor black men have the same perspective of a similar event. Alas, neither knows what is in the head of the other. Thus, there is a profound disconnect in discussions of race, because the tendency is to talk at one another and not with each other.

In 1977 I created two mythical characters, one white and one black. Both of them are newspaper reporters. The white reporter works for the local daily newspaper and the black reporter works for the black weekly tabloid. Both of them are good newspapermen. They live to deliver accurate and dependable news to their readers. Their lives are largely segregated. This is not because either reporter designed or desired it to be that way. But because this simply is what it is.

Their worlds are controlled by the social mores of their time, which dictates privileges to the white reporter that are not offered to the black reporter. Their methods of gathering information is different because one does not have access that the other has. It doesn’t have anything to do with education or skill level. It has all to do with skin color.

Both reporters covered a rather bizarre mass murder in a small southern town in Georgia. Each was pulled off the story by their respective publishers before the mystery was solved. They each put the experience behind them but had lingering doubts whether the public really understood what had just occurred.

Each holds pieces of the puzzle inside their heads. But because they do not talk with each other, the mystery goes unsolved for many years, until an event causes them to sit down and discover the humanity of the other.

Gates and Crowley provides the nation another “teachable moment” the president said. Will the nation sit in class and discover the humanity of their fellow Americans or find fault with the conduct of their respective villain?

© August 2, 2009

War: Three Fingers and a Smile

2009-07-22T10:37:00.008-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

Years ago, when I was young enough to die for my country kids grew their hair long, flashed two fingers, and raised them in the air. There was a war brewing in Southeast Asia. MyUncle Sam was adamant that I and others of my age group engage the Viet Cong in battle. Many of us thought it best to make love and not war. We borrowed from the greatest generation a symbol (“V”), which stood for victory over Nazism and Fascism and changed it to represent peace.

Amid that confluence of ideas arose a multi-cultural group of musicians in search of an identity and a name that would bridge a generational gap. They chose three letters from the alphabetic table to represent the oppose notion they sought to achieve. Such was the logic with which the first wave of baby boomers grappled with the world older adults had presented them.

I caught up with the group’s founder, Lonnie Jordan, at a pre-concert jam session yesterday and posed the question to him. What were you guys thinking when you chose the name “War.” Didn’t you know I was trying not to go to Viet Nam, I queried?

“I know it sounded crazy at the time,” he said, but we did not support the war in Viet Nam. We wanted to use the three elements of music to bring peace to the world.”

According to Jordan the three elements of music are rhythm, melody, and harmony. “I don’t care how you arrange the musical elements harmony is the key. Just like the elements earth, wind, and fire; they all have to work together in harmony. Harmony is the key.”

Jordan is the only original member of the band still touring under the name “WAR”. A
right he earned the old fashion way, through litigation.

“It’s a shame,” he said, “the only time I get to speak with the other member now is in court.”

The band was in town to perform at a Summer Benefit Concert presented by Cobb County Kia and hosted at the three acre estate of the dealership owner, Scott Smith. Jordan and Smith are long time friends.

“When Scott asked me to perform at a concert benefitting the Heart Association, I could not turn him down. He visits with me when he is in California and I stop by here when I am in Atlanta,” the group's key board and lead vocalist said.

As the sun set over Atlanta, giving way to the early moon light, which cast its haze over the swimming pool, Sal Rodriguez took his seat behind the drum set at the rear of the stage.
He was followed by Marcos Reyes on percussion, Mitch Kashmar, on harmonia, Francisco “Pancho”Tomaselli on bass, Fernando Harkles, saxophone, Stewart Ziff, vocals and Lonnie Jordan on the key board.

“Music is what we like to play” and the concert was on.

It didn’t end until yours truly, the writer, lead the audience in singing, “all my friends ride a little lower,” from War’s signature tune “Low Rider.”

It didn’t take the audience long to realize I’m no Papa Dee Allen. But it was fun and for a good cause.

Baseball, Life Lessons, and Honoring the ‘99 Homestead Grays

2009-07-12T16:23:00.007-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

In the early 1990's there was much talk about what would happen to young black males. Statistics at the time indicated by the age of 25 every one of three would either be dead or confine to a reservation called a penal institution. The outlook was bleak. Nightly news reports filtered into our homes, scenes of young black men, laying stiff in the streets covered with blood or being paraded to jail with hands cuffed behind backs. It was not a pretty sight.

Our church and community leaders debated what could be done to stem the raising tide of a lost generation. We discovered an absence of fathers in the home on an alarming scale.

Thus, the notion of mentor/mentee relationships took hold of the community. African American men of good moral character and professional standing were called upon to put their hands on as many young boys as they could and steer them into adulthood.

Each February my calendar would be filled to capacity with speaking engagements to local schools. The kids got a chance to talk with a lawyer and could dream, that one day, they too could become lawyers.

Visiting the schools once a year offered little impact to eliminating the absence of male role models in the lives of inner city kids. I needed a way to place my hands on as many young black males as possible for a prolonged period of time.

I didn’t know how to go about doing this until one day in February 1991. I came home from a day of defending several young men in the robbery of a Brinks truck in which the driver of the truck shot and killed one of the robbers. That evening my wife announced she had enrolled our son in the Little League program at Cascade Park in the five and six-year-old division. I had wanted to wait much later to get him involved in baseball. God forbid, I introduce him to the game and he didn’t have my passion to play it at a high level of intensity. To my chagrin, he took to baseball like he was born to express himself through the science of the game.

Coley was drafted by the Pittsburgh Crawfords (under the recommendation of Chico Renfroe League teams took names from teams who played in the Old Negro League).

A schism developed between the coach and the team mom. The coach quit before mid-season. The void was filled by a committee of fathers who had a player on the team. I was the only father who had played baseball beyond high school. I wanted to teach fundamental baseball skills, the others wanted to coach the kids how to beat other five and six year olds. There is quite a difference in the two. I was suspended from the coaching staff. I have a knack for being suspended by people who do not like my point of view.

I asked the Cascade Park and Recreational Center to allow me to organize a new team the following year. They agreed and the Homestead Grays Youth Baseball Team and Educational Academy was born. The academy was designed to teach sound fundamental baseball skills and to prepare young men for adulthood.

We started with a group of 15 boys in the five to a six-year age group. The very first kid I drafted was Andre Burgin. Andre was drafted on the recommendation of my son who came home from school one day and proclaimed at the dinner table I had to draft Mr. Burgin. “Why,” I asked?

“Because he is the only kid in the class who can out run me,” Coley said.

So Andre Burgin became a Homestead Gray.

I waited several years to draft a kid I had my eyes on since he was three years of age. Coley and Courtney English met in preschool. We had him on an all-star team I believe the summers of ‘92 and ‘93. He came to us full time in 1998. He was the intellectual on the team. Courtney could be counted upon to alert me when the defense was out of order or when it might be time to get another pitcher warmed up in the bullpen. He was playful, but keep his head in the game.

We picked up the most physically gifted athlete in those years when Teddy Minters’ mom caught a bus with him and her three-month-old baby (seated in a scroller) in order to get Teddy to our first practice. It was cold and windy that February afternoon, and I was impressed with his mom’s commitment to bring him out without the assistance of a man in the house.

Seeing Katrina Minter standing on the sidelines that afternoon, holding onto her baby’s scroller, told me in no uncertain terms, what was at stake. There were far too many women running their households and attempting to be fathers to their sons while maintaining their role as mommy. This dilemma is akin to pulling oneself up by ones own booth straps. Such a task is nearly impossible.

The 1992 Homestead Grays were as hapless as the 1962 New York Mets. We managed to win four games. There were two teams we beat twice. Yet the 1999 Homestead Grays were as amazing as the 1969 New York Mets. We won our first 10 games before losing on the road to our arch nemesis the Forest Park Indians in a disputed call. Later that year this team won the Park Championship, the league championship and the Sandy Koufax District Tournament.

They went off to high school as champions. We stayed together for another four years, until I sent them off to college, scholarships in hand. All of them, that is, who wished to go.

Before it was time for college, we had a lot of work to do. I perceive baseball as a science, but when played well, it is a work of art. Thus we taught team work as a practical reality of everyday life through teaching the art of hitting the cut off man and making an accurate relay throw to nab the advancing base runner.

When it came time to teach the importance of each member of society performing his duty to advance the cause of society, I installed the hit and run play. The hit and run play is different from a straight steal in that the batter must make contact with the baseball to prevent the runner from being thrown out at second base. The batter and runner must execute the play to precision for it to be successful.

Then I talked to them about the ultimate sacrifice was for a teammate to give himself up for the team. This lesson ended in a demonstration on the art of the sacrifice bunt. Wherever we traveled to play, high school coaches, college coaches and professional scouts would approach me after the game and remark how discipline and fundamentally sound the Homestead Grays played.

Sometime after they entered high school, I recalled these sweet little kids suddenly began to use the “N” word. Where it came from, I don’t know. I addressed the use of this word head on and once suspended the team’s top pitcher, Truett ÒNeal, for repeated use of the “N” word. He came back from the suspension after apologizing to the team. I then suggested instead they use the word Negro.

One day I dropped by Fredrick Douglass High School to check on several of my players who were on the baseball team. I was standing behind the dugout and heard someone say, “Negro please . . . ” I glanced inside the dugout to see several Homestead Grays engaged in a conversation. I smiled, said hello and disappeared into the sunset with the knowledge they had picked up something from the Homestead Gray experience.

Ten years ago yesterday these young men culminated an incredible week. They sweep through the state district tournament like Sherman’s march to the sea. Five teams were placed on the field to confront them, including their arch nemesis the Forest Park Indians. None could withstand the precision with which the Grays took the field that week. Eight years of hard work came down to one grand week in ‘99.

The following Homestead Grays hold college degrees today: Andre Burgin, Business, Florida A&M University (now working on a Master’s degree at Clark Atlanta University), Coley Harvey, Journalism, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University (Sports Reporter, The Telegraph, Georgia Tech beat writer), David Reid, Morehouse College, Arnold Relaford, Gordon College (hip-hop artist), Courtney English, Morehouse College (a candidate for Board of Education, Atlanta Public Schools), Calvin Booker, Georgia Tech (a long shot prospect NFL quarterback), Jonathan Harris, Tuskegee University, Billy Lucas, Babson College, Terry Bailey, Oglethorpe University (a second year law student at Mercer University), Melvin Purdue, St. Anselm ( still playing semi-pro baseball in California), Zettler Clay, Georgia State University(a Master's candidate in Journalism, University of Maryland) and Blake Covington, Emory University (currently A working actor). The team catcher, Keith Marsh is currently enrolled in Life University. Jimmy Jucks currently enrolled at Atlanta Metropolitan College as well as Victor Mshindi McIntyre. Three of them are parents Marcus Wilson, Anthony Foster and Keith Marsh.

While we celebrate the accomplishments of these young men, it grieves my heart to think of the few who did not avail themselves of the opportunity to advance their education. My door is always open. My phone number has not changed and I would love to hear from them.

Great things are expected from this group. We will check back in another decade to see how they have impacted society.

© July 12, 2009

Paper Puzzle: A Novel Synopsis

2009-07-05T03:27:00.005-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

Newspaper editor Clay Moore, a bachelor, lives in an upscale golf and tennis community. He cannot afford such luxury on his salary as a newspaperman. The gated community is protected in the medieval sense by a modern day moat and drawbridge nestled in the middle of Georgia.

He is plagued by recurring nightmares where he's stalked by a sniper. Clay wakes up most mornings in a bed surrounded by faded newspaper clippings that mysteriously appear during the night. Clay is befuddled when the news clippings point him back to the biggest news story of his career.

Clay walks into the Macon Tribune & Journal newsroom fresh from College in 1974. He has no idea he holds the key to unraveling the circumstances behind a moonshiner found frozen to death in 1946. The moonshiner, a returning veteran from World War II, ran a successful trade in untaxed whiskey which threatens similar businesses operated by the sheriffs in three adjoining counties.

According to the sheriffs, the moonshiner's death was caused by a bad batch of his own brew. This account of the moonshiner's death goes undisturbed until the red haired stranger appears in 1975 leaving a farmer and his wife dead in his wake. Through some fancy footwork the sheriffs and their financial backers are able to draw the darts away from the moonshiner's death.

While learning the ropes of the newspaper business Clay covers the case of the Red Haired Stranger. The case was abruptly closed after 30 torrid days of news coverage. Clay tucked his notes away thinking that there was more to the story than what appeared at first blush.

A decade later, Clay is the managing editor at the MTJ, living in River North and is finding news clipping from the 1975 double murder in his bed each morning. His security is compromised.

Clay searches for answers.

When the Florida lawyer who represented the red haired stranger in the Georgia court proceedings is appointed to the bench in Florida, he needs to clear a Bar Disciplinary matter from his file. He asks the Court to unseal the records of the 1975 case. The federal courthouse in middle Georgia is frantic.

While interpreting his dreams and making a cork board puzzle of the newspaper clippings, a young Atlanta socialite is murdered gangland style in Atlanta. The young socialite and her husband, a liquor distributor, were the first to live in Clay's house.

Realizing he is in deep danger when he is arrested and ordered to turn over his notes of the red headed stranger's case, Clay turns to someone he has not spoken to in years. He turns to the black editor of a local paper.

Clay's white heritage and the social mores of the time have kept them from professional or personal associations, but now that must change. Against harsh social pressure, both men work together to save Clay's career and to solve the mysterious paper puzzle lying in Clay's bed.

(c) July 5, 2009

Money, Power and Sex

2009-06-29T00:22:00.007-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

Wow, what a week the last one was. In the span of seventy-two hours we saw the transition of three iconic figures from the 1960's and the political demise of a rising Republican star. While pondering what to make of the rapid changes taking place, a young writer, Osei Kwadjoe, living in Accra, Ghana wrote seeking advice on his writing career.

“Do you know of my first president,” Osei asked? His query brought to mind the legendary leader, Kwame Nukrumah, who once penned a primer entitled Money, Power, and Sex. It was Nukrumah’s attempt to spell out the pitfalls to black leaders in emerging African nation-states. His premise seemed an appropriate metaphor for the topsy turvy events last week.

This week the world has much to say about a huge volume of work left in the wake of Michael Jackson’s unexpected transition. Certainly much of what has been said and will be said this week would never have been said last week. Jackson, the enigmatic leader of the Jackson clan, stole his way into the hearts of the American people in the late 1960's as a child entertainer.

At a time when child stars began to fade, Jackson created an international persona which made him the most recognized entertainer in the world. Then his troubles began. There were lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, and criminal charges for child molestation.

It is important to note, Michael Jackson accused twice was never convicted by a jury of his peers of child molestation. Yet his seemingly weird explanation in a television documentary aired days before he was to stand trial on the molestation charges five years ago seemed to suggest Mr. Jackson had an unhealthy appreciation for young boys sleeping in his bed.

But was this explanation so strange? Jackson believed that young people, as a matter of course, sought comfort in the bed of adult parents or in his case, adult figures. He said that kids had a right to be comforted in bed.

The world was aghast! For five years, so was I, until a conversation last week with Terrence Moore, former sports columnist, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, brought to mind how innocent certain jesters were in our youth.

Moore told a story of receiving a pat on the rump from baseball great Billy Martin during a celebrity softball game in Oakland following the Raiders Super Bowl victory in 1980. Moore had made a catch in left field and threw a perfect strike to home plate nabbing the fleet Lester Hayes who had tagged up at third base.

Managers do not pat players on the rump these days. It’s far too easy to be labeled a sexual predator. Billy Martin’s pat didn’t have any sexual overtones. It was his way of saying, “That was a heck of a play young man.”

Such contact is impermissible today. I don’t know when I’ve seen Bobby Cox pat an Atlanta Brave on the rump. Such shows of support became less popular with the MTV generation.

While Mr. Moore told his baseball story, my mind drifted to Michael Jackson, to kids in his bed, to the patter of little feet rushing to get in bed with my wife and me.

Each Sunday morning I heard this patter from the time my son was old enough to get himself out of his bed and race across the hallway into our room until he was about six years old. We would lay there and talk, and laugh and play until it was time to get ready for church.

I thought about my own childhood and falling to sleep nestled between by grandmother and grandfather. I thought about how comforted I felt, how secure it was to be in their bed. I thought, perhaps, Michael Jackson was giving these children an experience my son (and I before him) had taken for granted.

In death Mr. Jackson will likely earn more money than anyone else in a similar state. Surely more than he has earned since 1993 when his record company, on the heels of the first molestation allegations, found cause not to aggressively promote his albums. Perhaps, only in death can we come full-circle and appreciate the genius and gentle spirit reflected from the man in the mirror.

Of the blond haired delight, Farrah Fawcett, not much could be heard of her transition over the buzz of Jackson’s departure. She was Hollywood sexy and a classic bombshell, but not in the Marilyn Monroe fashion.

Farrah had a brain and she used it in business. A simple photo shoot produced a pin up poster of Farrah sitting in a red bathing suit with the flowing blond hair which sold 12 million copies. She had planned a public transition. She agreed to permit her family to video her battle with cancer. I could not bare to watch the Entertainment Tonight episodes as her health began to decline. Like an aging athlete, she could not give up the spotlight. Only the passing of Michael Jackson spared her fans the public spectacle of seeing her travel into eternity. Beauty after all is a passing thing.

Mark Sanford, Governor, South Carolina, and a piped piper for moral virtue, fell head over heels for his Argentine lover. He left the comfort of his martial bed for the arms of his lover in South America. He told his wife and staff he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Neither knew how to get in touch with him. Sanford’s southern bred wife quickly dropped him like a hot potato. She made it crystal clear she would not be standing by her former man. He was on his own.

Stanford argues it is appropriate for him to maintain his office in spite of his moral lapse and dereliction of duty. “King David did not leave his office after his tryst with the wife of his General.”

I once heard former Heavy Weight Boxing Champion Evander Holyfield make this same argument. It didn’t sit well with me then and it doesn’t sit well with me to hear Mark Sanford say it now.

Oh, the arrogance of power, coupled with money and sex.

© June 28, 2009

9-1-1 Call From The Flores Murders

2009-06-25T23:33:00.000-04:00

Something horrible happened in Arizona recently that I want you to know about.

A 9-year-old Latina girl, Brisenia Flores, and her father Raul were killed by anti-immigrant extremists who have been tied to national groups that regularly testify before Congress.¹ Now a 911 tape has been released that recounts the horror of what happened.² Please be aware: the tape is disturbing and should not be heard by children. I’m sharing it because it is a stark reminder of what’s at stake when it comes to anti-immigrant violence. Whether or not you listen to the tape, please join me in calling on Congress to stop legitimizing anti-immigrant hate groups:

http://presente.org/ref/24363/campaigns/flores_911

The alleged mastermind of the murders of Brisenia and Raul Flores is the leader of the vigilante group Minuteman American Defense and has been tied to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).³ Even though these groups have been identified as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center⁴, some members of Congress continue to give them a platform, inviting them to testify as “experts.”⁵ That needs to end now.

I’ve joined Presente.org in demanding that Congress renounce FAIR, the Minutemen, and other anti-immigrant hate groups. You can click the link below to sign the petition and listen to an edited version of the 9-1-1 call from the Flores murders. Please stand with me in this important campaign. It only takes a moment:

http://presente.org/ref/24363/campaigns/flores_911

Thank You!

1. http://tinyurl.com/nmmyzs

2. This tape was edited down from its original version, which you can access here: http://tinyurl.com/n9w5yx

3. http://tinyurl.com/mcmqd7

4. http://tinyurl.com/m6wh6n

5. http://tinyurl.com/ca779z

The Voice and Face of The GOP: Rush Limbaugh

2009-06-24T03:26:00.002-04:00

You won't believe what Rush Limbaugh just said. He accused President
Obama of intentionally trying to wreck the economy, saying that Obama
wants to put more people on welfare and food stamps, and implying that
he wants to redistribute the country's wealth to Black people.[1]

This is not just an ugly attack on President Obama from Rush Limbaugh
-- these are words from the man who is being held up as the face of
the Republican Party. Virtually no Republican leaders have been
willing to denounce his divisive rhetoric, or even disagree with
him.[2] Instead, they say he's an important part of their party, and a
friend.

When Republican leaders refuse to denounce this kind of race-baiting
from someone they call a leader, the message they send is that they
embrace it. It's time to force Republican officials to say where they
stand.

Here's what Rush said about President Obama's economic policies:

"The objective is unemployment. The objective is more food stamp
benefits. The objective is more unemployment benefits. The objective
is an expanding welfare state. And the objective is to take the
nation's wealth and return to it to the nation's quote, "rightful
owners." Think reparations. Think forced reparations here if you want
to understand what actually is going on."[3]

It's a direct appeal to racial fear and paranoia, and it's deeply
insulting to the President, to Black people, and to anyone who cares
about the future of this country.  We've seen this kind of thing from
Rush before.[4,5] But now, Republican politicians are refusing to
denounce what he says, or even disagree with him. When they do, they
usually take it back the next day, begging Rush to forgive them.[6]

Colin Powell is perhaps the only prominent Republican who has
consistently stood up to Limbaugh and urged other Republicans to turn
away from his divisive rhetoric. Powell recently said this: "I think
what Rush does as an entertainer diminishes the party and intrudes or
inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be
better to do without."[7]

The response from Limbaugh and other Republicans? Rush repeated an old
attack on Powell, accusing him of supporting Obama during the election
solely based on race.[8] Meanwhile, Dick Cheney took to the airwaves
to attack Powell and make it clear that he stands with Rush Limbaugh
when it comes to the future of the Republican Party.[9]

Rush speaks.  Republicans in government do the work.

You might think Rush and Cheney merely represent the party's extremes,
but that misses the larger context. The Republican Party has made it
clear that they don't want Obama to succeed--even if it means further
damage to the economy and to the lives of everyday Americans. It's
evident in the 'no' votes Republican members of Congress cast against
Obama's budget, the refusal of Republican governors to allow stimulus
dollars to flow into their states, and their leadership's refusal to
denounce the rhetoric coming from Rush and others. Rush has said
clearly that he wants Obama to fail, and Republican elected officials
have been clear in their actions.

Please join me in demanding that Republican leaders say publicly where
they stand. Do they reject Rush Limbaugh's divisive fear-mongering, or
do they stand with him? If they refuse to denounce what Rush said,
they'll be making it perfectly clear what the Republican Party stands
for.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References

1. "Rush Limbaugh: 'The Niggers Are Coming for Their Reparations!'"
Jack and Jill Politics, 05-13-09
http://tinyurl.com/oy9x6g

2. "The Man Who Ate the G.O.P." Vanity Fair, May 2009
http://tinyurl.com/dljy8x
 
3. See reference 1.
  
4. "Limbaugh on Obama: 'Halfrican American'," Media Matters, 01-24-07
http://mediamatters.org/research/200701240010

5. The Today Show, NBC News, 05-21-07
http://tinyurl.com/okdvhf

6. "Forgive Me Rush, For I have Sinned," Talking Points Memo,
http://tinyurl.com/cmtxkx

7. "Cheney backs Limbaugh over Powell on GOP future," Associated
Press, 05-10-09
http://tinyurl.com/oloatk

8. See reference 7.
  
9. See reference 7.

Violent Attacks on Latinos: Is It FAIR?

2009-06-20T07:42:00.004-04:00

Nine-year-old Brisenia Flores was sleeping soundly in her bed in Arivaca, Arizona when she was shot and killed in cold blood.

It was no random act of violence.[1] Shawna Forde, the suspected mastermind of the home invasion robbery in which Brisenia and her father Raul were killed, is the leader of the vigilante group Minutemen American Defense and has been tied to the national Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).[2] Both groups have been labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “hate groups” and have a long record of routinely dehumanizing immigrants and vilifying Latinos.

The problem is bigger than FAIR or any other group. Some members of Congress have been legitimizing these organizations for years—inviting them to testify as “experts”—while the rhetoric coming from these groups has given rise to violence against Latinos, like the killing of Brisenia and Raul Flores.[3] That needs to end now.

We should demand that Congress renounce FAIR, the Minutemen, and other anti-immigrant hate groups. such attacks are not fair nor just. We should seek the elimination of this group just like the FBI eliminated the Black Panther Party in the 1970's. These groups are a clear and present danger to American democracy.

FAIR and the Minutemen groups are regularly quoted in the mainstream media—FAIR more than 500 times in 2008—giving them a megaphone to broadcast their hateful rhetoric: like FAIR executive director Dan Stein’s claim that “illegal aliens are more prone to criminal activity than the rest of the population,” or Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist’s assertion that it is “okay to say ‘rapist,’ ‘robber’ and ‘murderer’” when describing “illegal aliens.”[4]

As vile as their rhetoric is, even more disturbing is when our elected representatives applaud their efforts and parrot their messages. Take Ranking Republican Congressman on the House Immigration Sub-Committee, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a long-time friend of extremist groups, who wrote that a day without immigrants in America would mean “the lives of 12 U.S. citizens would be saved who otherwise die a violent death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day.” Those debunked claims were then repeated hundreds of times by FAIR and others, creating an echo chamber of racism and hate.[5]

Or take Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has likened immigrants to terrorists and child molesters, as well as taking money from a group with white-supremacist ties.[6]

Elected leaders like these, together with their allies in extremist anti-immigrant groups, create a climate of hatred that leads to violence – as evidenced by a recent string of hate-motivated killings across the country [7].

Enough is enough. Please join me in holding members of Congress accountable by demanding they stop legitimizing FAIR and the Minutemen.

References

1. http://tinyurl.com/nmmyzs

2. http://tinyurl.com/lblwxt

3. http://tinyurl.com/ca779z

4. http://tinyurl.com/ntc5lg

5. http://tinyurl.com/lgkg5s

6. http://tinyurl.com/dke5ml

7. http://tinyurl.com/mgxjvq

I Stand With Sotomayor

2009-06-18T07:50:00.002-04:00

Ever since President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court,
right wingers have been waging a coordinated attack on her character and
intelligence and spreading disrespectful images of her. I just downloaded a
powerful poster from Presente.org to show my support for Judge Sotomayor.
I hope you will join me!

http://presente.org/ref/24363/cm/sotomayor

Hearings on Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation are only a month away.
[1]In the meantime, right-wing activists have pledged to continue their attacks.
[2] We can’t let them dominate the conversation. It’s up to us to show just how
many people stand behind Judge Sotomayor. So I’m joining Presente.org in a
campaign to distribute this poster everywhere—on web sites, in street windows,
and on office walls.

Please click below to get your copy!

http://presente.org/ref/24363/cm/sotomayor

Thanks,

References

[1]http://tinyurl.com/qsf42y

[2]http://tinyurl.com/lt89xv

Paper Puzzle- A Prologue To Mystery

2009-06-12T03:27:00.007-04:00

Editor's Note: A friend recently wrote to query why I've not posted anything in The Harvey Journal in several weeks. I've been busy getting my manuscript ready for publication and have not had the time to think through any of the great issues of the day. So I've decided to break a cardinal rule and publish the Prologue to Paper Puzzle in lieu of a piece this week. I hope you enjoy it and that it whets your appetite for more.

Paper Puzzle

Harold Michael Harvey

Prologue

Clay Moore awakes. Breathing heavy he trembles. Fear grips his lean torso. Sweat pours from his brow. His sleep wear drenched, chills race along his spine.

It has happened again. The dream has returned. Intervals between the dream are shorter. Yet it interrupts another night’s sleep. This one is similar to others. A stealthy sniper moves quietly, searching for the target. At times the faceless hunter stalks outside Clay's house or office. It is a far too familiar scene with different variations; Clay doesn’t understand the meaning of it.

This morning, just like each morning since the spring, Clay wakes in the cross-hairs of the sniper, cheating death again. The nocturnal sniper grimaces, frustration shows through the stillness of night, the sniper’s motto unfilled: “One shot, one kill!”

Like a stealth bomber, the sniper blends into the surroundings, recedes into the murky backwaters of Clay’s unconscious mind, and waits another opportunity to squeeze off a single round.

Clay slows his breathing to a snail’s pace. His feet find the floor. Another night of broken sleep means fighting to stay awake in the early afternoon, just as the evening news stories are taking shape.

The managing editor, at a local newspaper, Clay needs to be mentally alert around 5 p. m. This is the time decisions are made to go or not go with a story, give a story front-page coverage; instead of burying it on the inside, or killing the story altogether.

News fit to print hang in the balance during the hours between 5 p. m. and the evening dinner break. Coffee isn’t the answer. A coffee break after 3 p. m. makes it impossible for him to fall asleep. Clay doesn’t like staying awake tossing and turning. Coffee is out of the question.

Albeit staying awake relieves him from the dream, because no matter the time Clay drifts off to sleep, he has had some version of the dream.

Clay collects them like a camera collects still images. He jots as much detail as he can remember from each dream. He wants a record in case he decides to get professional help, or worse pay a visit to one of the local dream interpreters.

Seeing a psychic was a fleeting thought. Clay knew he wouldn’t be caught dead coming out of such an establishment.

(c) June 12, 2009

A Historical Vote On My 57th Birthday

2009-05-19T06:33:00.011-04:00

Editor's Note: I am busy editing Paper Puzzle for what I hope is the last time before publication and do not have the time to post a fresh article, so I decided to post one published in another venue last fall. I hope you like it.

I woke up yesterday morning and surveyed my hands, arms, legs, eyes, tongue, teeth, etc. All body parts appeared to be present and functioning as they were designed. All of those, that is, which I had had an opportunity to check out so early in the morning. I was 57 years of age.

My Aunt Lillie called to wish me a happy birthday. She thought I was celebrating my 55th. I'm not sure if there is much difference. I'm a little grayer around the edges these past two years, but I have been graying since age 25. It is a family trait, inherited from my grandfather Charles, a rather distinguish looking farmer of the first half of the 20th century. He was completely gray at age 19.

He turned to farming in 1933 during the height of the depression. He was 36 years of age. His bride of eleven years was 37. They had three children with four more to follow. My mom Maggie Elaine was the oldest at five years.

Prior to farming he worked for the railroad. He had been in that last group of men hired by the railroad before the beginning of the depression.

The railroad offered steady work. Charles was not afraid of hard work. He had learned hard work from his father Paul, a native American, born into the Cherokee nation just after the civil war. Paul refused to be escorted to North Carolina in the trail of tears and wed my great grand mother Minerva, a mulatto, who was born a few months after General Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

In 1933 the railroad had to cut back and my granddad was let go. He had a wife and three children. He found an acre of dirt. This was not an easy feat in 1933. On that one acre of land he built a small house out of wood he could gleam from the saw mill. He raised vegetables for food, cows for meat and butter, chickens for eggs and Sunday dinner. He believed farming was the best way he could ensure his family had the things they needed. He would not become depended upon the railroad or anyone else as long as he could work the land.

He soon gained a reputation for farming and each planting season, he could find work farming and harvesting the farms of his white neighbors in addition to his acre. For more than a quarter century, he could be depended upon to provide produce and meat to the farmer’s market in Macon, Georgia.

We shared well-water with our white neighbor. One day in 1958 my brother and I had gone to the well to secure water for the family. We were attacked by the grandson of our white neighbor. We were children and were unaware of the social mores (a black person could not raise his hand at a white person, even in self-defense). So we fought back and drew blood. The neighbor threaten to have us thrown into the reform school. My mom, wanting a different life for my brother and me, plead her strongest case for closing down the farm and moving into the city. Granddad loved the land and like his father before him, he would not be moved.

Granddad had foot surgery in 1959. It placed a burden on my brother, aunt Lillie’s son Larry and myself to get out and plow the farm after school, until our uncle John could get down to Crawford County from his job at a textile mill in Macon. Since my granddad was old school, plowing meant, hitching a mule to a wooden plow and having at it. We must have been a sight as the three of us held the plow and steered a perfect furrow.

My mom keep up her push to get us away from the farm. In 1960 granddad sold the farm animals, gave away all of his dogs, except for the sheep dog someone had given my mom when she was carrying me and moved into the city.

Five years later, I integrated the local public school system. Up until that point some mystical character named Jim Crow had haunted my existence. When I had the urge to do the things that normal kids my age had the urge to do, I was always told that I could not because of Jim Crow. It was Jim Crow this and Jim Crow that. It was a denial of this and a denial of that. Yet I had first class aspirations in a second class social order.

My knees shook and my heart raced ahead of me the morning in 1965, I walked onto the campus of the Lanier Jr. High School for Boys. I've written elsewhere of the crowd of white kids my age standing outside the entrance of the school shouting insults and calling me names. Being an old farm boy, I had not seem so many angry white faces gathered before in my life.

Yet their antics did not seem to matter, I had just stump old Jim Crow into the ground. They could call me names all they wanted. Because just like my granddad who found the key to his survival through leaving the railroad and taking up farming. I had found my way out of segregation. I walked my way out. Just like my great-granddad, for better or for worst, I'd walked my way into another culture.

So, when I arose on my 57th birthday, I knew what I had to do. I had to get into my car and drive to the Fulton County South Annex and request a General Election Ballot. I waited until my son came up from Macon, Georgia, where he works as a sport’s reporter. He and my mom came up to Atlanta to share my birthday with me. She voted several weeks ago in Macon. While she put the apron on to bake a birthday cake, Coley and I got into the car and drove to the polls.

When we arrived their was a line wrapped around the building, it was hard to find a parking space, so we parked in the Sheriff department’s lot along side the county’s squad cars. It took two and one-half hours to reach the voting booth. I counted 600 people in the line. After I voted, I stood back and savored the moment. What I had just done, I thought I would never have an opportunity to do. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever believe I would participate in a General Election when one of the candidates on the ballot would be a son of Africa-just like me.

The choice, therefore for me, was very clear, Barack H. Obama, the 44th president of the United States of America.

(c) Copyright October 17, 2008

A Mother’s Day To Remember

2009-05-05T09:32:00.007-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

We were driving home from church and my bride of three years pled her best case for Sunday dinner in a white tablecloth restaurant. It was 13 May 1984, within minutes the New York Knicks were set to take on the Boston Celtics in round two of the NBA playoffs all tied at three games each.

By my calculations we had just enough time to drive home, change clothes and turn the television set to what promised to be an exciting basketball game.

But the bride was having none of it. It was a nice Spring day and she did not want to be in the kitchen listening to me yell over the roar of the television set.

Relentlessly she persisted.

“But I have cooked all week,” she said.

“The series is tied three to three,” I retorted.

“It’s too hot to cook and I don’t want to be in the kitchen all day,” she replied.

“Come on,” I appealed, “I missed Friday night’s game because of the Revival, let’s go home and watch the game.”

“But I don’t want to cook.” She was coming in for the kill. It was hard to tell which one of us would be graduating from Law School later in the year.

“Well, I don’t want dinner,” I said.

“But its Mother’s Day,” she roared.

“You are not a Mother,” I chided.

“It doesn’t matter, its Mother’s Day and I don’t want to cook, I want to go out to dinner.”

I had been concentrating on driving home in time for the basketball game. Wives have a way of gaining the upper hand in social matters. The conversation was about to get out of control. I was at risk of not ever having a home cooked meal again.

“I tell you what, if you let me go home and watch this game, next year I will give you a Mother’s Day gift that you will never forget as long as you live,” I predicted with certainty.

She did not say another word. We arrived home. I turned the television on in time to see the Knicks, led by the league’s leading scorer Bernard King, take on the league’s second leading scorer, the Celtics Larry Bird. Boston won the game and later went on to beat the Los Angeles Lakers for the NBA championship. My wife cooked dinner and I had a promise to keep.

Words are such a powerful force of creative energy. No sooner had I spoke those words than I felt a movement toward delivering upon my promise. I had the same mental impression the night I met my bride. When we embraced and said good night, I knew I had met the lady I would marry.

After the game and dinner, we drove out to the local Dairy Queen for ice cream. We were talking again. Time marched on and in August, I graduated from Law School. The bride was seated near me. I was able to turn and hand her my sheepskin. She had worked just as hard as I had for it. I noticed her waist line was beginning to thicken. She had a certain glow. At Thanksgiving we broke the news. We were in the family way.

Two days before Mother’s Day 1985, I got a call at work. “I think it’s time,” she said. I didn’t feel it was time, but it was Friday and I had had enough of drafting personal injury complaints, so I asked the managing partner of the Firm for permission to take the wife to the doctor.

It was not her time, nor the time to fulfill my promise of a year earlier. The doctor informed us that he was leaving that afternoon for a week long medical conference out of state, but not to worry, “none of my patients ever deliver while I am out of town.”

One day before Mother’s Day and I was not any closer to keeping my word than I was when I made the promise. I got up and mowed our two-acre lawn by push mower. The job took all day. After I took a shower, we drove to the local grocery store to stock up on food items before the baby came. When we arrived back home around 6:00 P. M., the bride said, “oh, I think it’s time.” We got the groceries in the house and called the doctor. The doctor on call ordered us to the hospital.

Around 10:00 p.m., I had agreed to make a dinner run for the nurses. Before leaving the nurse checked to see if all was well. Things were changing, the baby who had been in perfect position the entire term suddenly decided to turn into the breach position. The doctor was called and a decision was made “to take the baby.”

By the time my bride was prepared for delivery the doctor came in and at 1:12 a.m., Sunday, 12 May 1985 he handed my son to me. This brand new life force looked at me with eyes wide open as if to say: “I am here dad. What do we do next?” I looked back at him and verbally said: “I don’t know son, but your mother will know, let’s go ask her what we should do now.”

I placed him in the nursery. When I crossed the threshold of my bride’s room, that prophetic feeling I had the night I met her came over me. I knew I had just delivered on the promise to give her a gift for Mother’s Day 1985 she will never forget as long as she lives.

© May 5, 2009

My Fascination With Newspapers

2009-04-27T05:57:00.007-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

It was Easter Sunday morning. I had just broken a 47-day fast. It is my habit to fast during Lent each year. I began this practice in 1975. Some years have been harder than others. Usually the current year is always the hardest. With the family gathered around the breakfast table, we took the bread and when it had been broken we ate it in remembrance of the body which was broken for us. Then likewise, we took the cup, and we drank it in remembrance of the blood that was shed for many.

Following breakfast, it was time to drive down to Macon, Georgia where we would share an Easter meal with my mother and brother. We stopped at the market to pick up a copy of the Atlanta Journal & Constitution (AJC). After all these years, they still publish the AJC. Its pages are not as many as a decade ago. She is a stately old lady, respected as always, yet slowly being passed over as boomers join Generations X and Y in seeking news from the internet. But I am an old newspaperman. I’ve written a novel, Paper Puzzle (soon to be published), about two newspapermen who work for competing newspapers in Macon, Georgia.

Also, I like to get black ink on my hands at least once a week. Sunday is usually the day I reserve for this ritual. I will hold the front pages of my newspaper in my hands, while the other sections are in my lap smearing my pants with black ink.

I developed a fascination with newspapers around ten years of age. I’d be the first one up everyday. I’d run outside and retrieved the Macon Telegraph & News and quickly flipped to the Sports section. I particularly found interesting the exploits of the athletes from Willingham and Lanier Senior High Schools. Oh, how much I wanted to go to Willingham Senior High School. I day dreamed of running touchdowns for the Willingham Rams. My eyes raced across the pages of the Macon Telegraph & News.

There were two players I particularly liked, a kid named Allgood, I think. I can’t remember his first name. He was a running back. I read where he scored most of the touchdowns each Friday night.

Then there was perhaps my favorite, a kid named Brad Henderson. He was the quarterback. His father was the head coach. Brad Henderson was a gamer, but suddenly he was killed in a car crash. My first brush with my own mortality. His dad, Billy Henderson, grieved and moved the family to Athens. Coach Henderson was later named to entered the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame. They built a stadium in Macon and named it after Brad.

I developed an interest in Bobby Bryant. He was small like me. He was flat out fast. He received a scholarship to play collegiate football at the University of South Carolina. And four years later he was covering wide receivers in the National Football League for the Minnesota Vikings.

These were my peers, my heroes. Yet they never knew me or knew how much I enjoyed reading about them. Our worlds were separated by the color line. They were white. I was Negro. In 1960, I could not enter a class room or step foot on the football practice field at old Willingham Senior High School.

What brought these memories back to the forefront of my mind was running into my neighbor and congressman, John Lewis, Easter Sunday morning as I picked up my copy of the AJC. He had stopped by to pick up ice. His family was preparing for their Easter dinner. We embraced and remarked how good it was to see each other. We’ve not seen each other in several years. Since leaving my law practice, I don’t get out much anymore.

When we first met, I was a twenty-something idealist. Mr. Lewis was the head of the Georgia Voters Education Project and I had driven up to Atlanta from Macon seeking information on voter education and registration. He was kind. He entertained me for half an hour.

Seeing him brought back memories of reading a newspaper article 47 years ago in the Baltimore Afro-American, about Mr. Lewis being punched in the face by a white man in a South Carolina bus station when Mr. Lewis attempted to enter a rest room marked "White Only."

“That was [will be] 47 years ago next month,” the congressman said. “It’s hard to believe it has been that long ago.”

I applauded him for the manner in which he handled himself that day and earlier this year when the man who hit him wanted to meet and publicly apologize for the punch. “We’ve got to learn to forgive,” he said.

“What can we expect out of congress this Spring,” I hastened to ask? “We’ve got to get the budget worked out, fix social security and get behind our president. The people seem to think that he created this mess. He didn’t and it will take all of us pulling together to get us out of this mess.”

Within an hour I was cuddled up with my second love - baseball being the first - the Macon Telegraph & News. It is smaller these days as well. They no longer print it in Macon. Cost saving efforts have forced management to ship it off to Columbus, Georgia each day by truck and back again in time for the carriers to dropped them on the doorsteps of a shrinking market.

I felt comfortable with the Macon Telegraph & News in my hands and lap. I had an added treat this year. Not only was I reading my favorite sports page in the comfort of my mom’s home, I could read a sports column written by my son, Coley Harvey. Oh my, how times have changed.

© April 27, 2009

Tea Bag Party: Tax Revolt, Revolution or Hot Air Rhetoric?

2009-04-20T07:50:00.005-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

I’ve never been one to reach a snap judgment. I think I got this trait from my grandfather Charlie. He would ponder a thing in silence for several days, and then he would speak with such clarity and strength of purpose you just knew he was taking the family on the right course.

On tax day last week I ventured out to downtown Atlanta as a citizen journalist covering Atlanta’s version of Fox News’ reality Television - Tax Day Tea Bag Party. What struck me the most about being at this rally was the anger expressed by the speakers and applauds given by the crowd. I filed an eyewitness account that centered on the anger coming from this crowd. Many of my friends wrote to express their relief that I was not injured.

Let me hasten to add, I was never in any danger of physical harm. The anger I wrote about was not out of any threats directed at me or the one other African American I saw among these gatherers of essentially tax and Obama protesters. This anger was directed towards the government of the United States of America.

Speaker after speaker made it clear, in no uncertain terms, they were feed up with the American system of governance and recommended toppling the government and its president. I used the term angry white people because save for the other brother and myself there were no other ethnic groups represented. And it is a dangerous thing when a small band of white people come together over an emotional issue or dislike for the behavior of someone else. Similar to the scenario I related about the mob set on vengeance that descended upon Grandfather Charlie’s farm in the mid 1950's.

I’ve mulled over and over what I witness on the steps of the State Capitol the past five days. I have read and seen news accounts of the Tax Day Tea Bag Party from both liberal and conservative news sources. Many of them have missed the boat and miscalculated the source of leadership that drives this continuous protest and the impact it can have on our system.

While the crowd roared their approval of the populist rhetoric of Georgia’s Insurance Commissioner, John Oxendine, using "Twitter", I tweeted: “This is a dangerous crowd.” He urged the crowd to take the government back in a similar fashion I’d heard George Wallace do in Ozark, Alabama 38 years ago. This statement was dangerous.

Just five months ago the government held national elections for Congress, Senators, and a President. The will of the people was clear. It wanted a new direction. It wanted Barrack Obama to get the economy moving again, it wanted him to solve the banking crises, it wanted him to tackle the housing and automotive crises. In short the will of the people said it wanted a sharp departure from the policies of the Bush White House.

Say what? Less than 100 days in office and this angry mob of upper class Yankee carpetbaggers gathered at the State Capitol were urging either an overthrow of the government or succeeding from it as was done in 1860. Speaker after speaker harped upon the legendary Boston Tea Party theme of “Taxation without representation.” Obviously, oblivious to the fact they had a vote and when all votes were counted their side lost.

You can’t reason with a mob, which makes one like this one so dangerous. None of the traditional political analysis works with this group. Government is not responsive to their interest period and thus it must of necessity be abolished. This is the anarchist rationale. The Left, last year, used traditional constitutional means to get the government they wanted. The conservative right posit the constitution is not working and therefore government actions should be ignored, therefore, don’t accept any stimulus money for the unemployed, because “we don’t help the unemployed in our State.” This mob objected to the government cramming stimulus money down their throats, similar to my junior high school classmates objecting to me being crammed down their throats four decades ago.

Let’s make no mistake about it; this mob is not controlled by the Republican Party. It is essentially leaderless at the grass roots level. It is waiting for a George Wallace to captivate its attention, energy and sooth its wounded feeling over losing the election last Fall. Yet the puppeteer’s hands that pulls the strings, perhaps is none other than Rupbert Murdroch, a media mogul from down under who does not have an equitable stake in American democracy as operators of other media outlets do. Mr. Murdroch is on Fortune’s 25 Most Powerful People In Business list. At age 76 he is the Chairman and CEO of News Corporation. His empire spans film, television, print and online (he owns MySpace). He bought the Dow Jones for $5 billion and last year acquired the Wall Street Journal. His goal is to create a globe-spanning financial news powerhouse.

This ambition in and of itself is not troubling, save for the fact when you consider that everything is political from the news we view, to the taxes we pay and the profits we make, you realize the enormous “skin” Mr. Murdroch has invested in the American market.

His business and political moves are worth watching; as well as, this group of Americans, who feels their government does not look like them and suddenly wants to tax their profits.

There is trouble in the land my friends and it has less to do with the state of the economy, than it has to do with an end run around the constitutional safeguards put in place in 1789.

© April 20, 2009

TheThree Reasons I Hate Being In A Crowd Of angry White People

2009-04-16T06:42:00.005-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

I don’t know where to begin this morning. I had quite an experience yesterday attending the Atlanta Anti-Tax Day Tea Bag Party. Seeing a sea of angry white people has never left me with a good feeling.

I saw my first scene like this in the mid-1950's when a pack of angry gun toting white men stormed my grandfather’s farm behind a team of howling blood hounds looking for some poor black soul whom the local Masonic Order was able to steer out of town on a rail car.

A similar scene repeated itself ten years later as I walked down Holt Avenue in Macon, Georgia towards the entrance to the Old Lanier Jr. High School for Boys. It was the first day that a black boy had attended this school and the neighborhood’s finest white boys my age had assembled outside the front of the school to protest their displeasure of having me thrust down their throats. “Two, four, six, eight we don’t want to integrate,” they yelled at the top of their lungs. A federal official came through the crowd and cleared a pathway for me where he carried me to the principal’s office until the other boys were seated in their class rooms.

Six years following this terrifying scene, I woke up from a good night’s sleep in the great State of Alabama. I washed by face and contemplated whether I should comb my Afro. It had not been combed in several days, so I thought better of combing it on this morning. I brushed my teeth and pulled a poncho over my lean upper torso, grabbed my book bag and headed out to political science classes at Tuskegee Institute.

With me on this trek to class was my brother Gerald. He had dreams of becoming the President of the United States and I had dreams of becoming his Attorney General. We were joined by our house mate and childhood friend Steve Duval. Steve was tapped by his family to take the helm of the family owned business when the time came.

As we walked towards the historical campus, Donald Lee, a guidance counselor at Tuskegee Institute drove by and offered us a ride to campus. We climbed into his car and then he told us George Wallace was kicking off his campaign for President in Ozark, Alabama. He thought it was a good idea to take a group of students down to witness this moment in history. Wallace had polled 12% of the national electorate in the ‘68 presidential election which lead to the defeat of Hubert Humphrey and the election of the “law and order” candidate Richard Nixon. Gerald and I thought it was much better to see politics in the making than to read about it, so we persuaded Steve to come along for the ride.

Off to Ozark, Alabama we went. We arrived late in the evening. The crowd was beginning to gather. We immediately came to the attention of the assembled crowd. We were the only Negroes in attendance. As the day gave way to dusk, the crowd swelled. There was a mass sea of white people of all ages. But what struck me most about this crowd were the small new born babies wrapped in bumper stickers that said “States Rights”, “Segregation Today, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever,” and “Wallace For President.” It was as if the supply of my tormentors would never end. Later that night I wrote home to my mom that white people were breeding hatred.

We sensed that the best place for our hands were inside our pockets. We were afraid that if our hands were exposed we might accidentally touch one of the fair maidens of the South and would have to run for our lives. I felt the pack of Kool cigarettes inside my poncho and begin to pull one out. A group of white men to our rear surged towards us, Steve Duval shouted under his breathe, “put that cigarette down,” he nudged my hand back inside my poncho. The surge stopped, but we were surrounded.

We noticed the helicopter carrying George Wallace had been circling the football stadium for half an hour. Something was keeping him from landing. We figured that something was us. Suddenly, a large contingent of heavy set white men flopped down on the bleacher bench behind us. We heard a loud thump in unison. We were all concerned but tried not to show it. Then a black man from the secret service appeared behind the white men. He stood at the exit to the stadium. He gave us a quick look. It assured us he had our backs.

Wallace’s helicopter landed. He gave a rousing speech. He told the crowd “there ain’t a dime worth of difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.” Wallace pushed the State’s Rights agenda and urged the crowd “to send a message to that liberal crowd up in Washington.” The crowd went wild and while they were euphoric, we slowly took our leave. We were careful not to brush up against anyone, particularly any white females. We got to our car tired, frighten and hungry. We dared not stop for food. Steve Duval was so affected by this experience that he stayed in the house for the next three weeks. We could not get him to go to class.

I’ve not told this story and had tried to put it out of my mind all these years; but being in a crowd of angry white people, shouting anti-American government rhetoric yesterday brought back the pains of a Spring day 38 years ago.

© April 16, 2009

Ryla Teleservices Retaining Employee In A Down Economy

2009-04-15T07:03:00.006-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

I’ve often heard about the “RYLA huddle,” but had never witnessed one until yesterday when I drove out to Kennesaw, Georgia to the two tiered campus of RYLA Teleservices, Inc.

RYLA, a privately held Georgia corporation, essentially operates a call center for businesses, governmental agencies and faith based institutions. It is located at the foothills of Kennesaw Mountain where General Sherman encountered his last major resistance before marching down Peachtree Street in Atlanta.

The “RYLA Huddle” is a gathering of company employees in a huddle around the company’s founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Wilson. Mr. Wilson uses the huddle as a masterful football quarterback does. He doesn’t just bark out the next play. He looks into the eyes of each employee and gives them an update of the company’s plans and goals for marching into the 21 st century with a secure future for the company and their families.

Eight years ago Mr. Wilson started RYLA Teleservices with a hope, a prayer and $1,000 cash. He leveraged all three into a $700,000 venture capital investment from SJF Ventures. He has never looked back and knows that the key to his success is providing good customer service to the customers of his customers. For 15 years Mr. Wilson managed call centers for Dun & Bradstreet Corporation. His experience taught him that he had to find a way to retain good employees in order to provide outstanding customer service in the very competitive outsourced customer market.

According to the trade group American Teleservices Association, the national turnover rate in the industry is 43%. Mr. Wilson has consistently maintained a turnover rate under 30%. In 2007 Mr. Wilson told the Wall Street Journal: “The industry has a bad stereotype of sweatshops and high turnover. We’re proving you can overcome that if you take a creative approach.”

Before yesterday’s “RYLA huddle” the staff was treated to pre-game entertainment presented by the drum section of the Clark Atlanta University marching band. At precisely noon time, the band’s drum major blew his whistle and the drummers began to march to the rhythm of their beat throughout the campus. In step to the rhythm of the band were a group of majorettes (company employees) who held placards proclaiming the joys of working at RYLA. When the band reached the crowd assembled over on campus number two, they “parted the sea” so to speak, revealing a 2010 Kia Soul Exclaim automobile. As it turned out the day’s “RYLA Huddle” had all to do with the hottest automobile on the market today.

Thinking outside the box, Mr. Wilson huddled his staff yesterday and told them some lucky employee at year’s end will drive home in the new Kia Soul Exclaim This news was greeted with applause and expectancy. The contest rules are easy to follow: Show up to work on time, flash a broad smile often, and do the job you are expected to do.

Mr. Wilson told his staff he was out to prove “you can be at work and feel like you are at home.” As I drove away from the campus I could feel the synergy taking hold as company employees sized up their chances of winning America’s hottest new car.

© April 14, 2009

Ryan Seacrest And The Cult Of American Idols Before RealityTv

2009-04-13T06:12:00.006-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

Ryan Seacrest, host of the popular ABC reality show American Idol posit in a twit the other day: “Who is the most influential person that you have ever met, it could be someone famous or the baker?

I immediately fired off the names of three people whom I had met who have been very influential on the local and national level. It seemed impossible to name just one. I ticked off a list beginning with Atlanta businessman Jesse Hill, Jr., former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young, and civil rights activist Dr. C. T. Vivian.

Jesse Hill, Jr. Moved to Atlanta in the early 1950's after graduating from Lincoln University. He took up residence in the local YMCA that admitted colored people over on old Butler Street, which is now fittingly named Jesse Hill, Jr. Boulevard. He stayed in the Butler Street Y until he married a young nurse, Vera, from Cuba, who worked at the charity hospital on Butler Street. Mr. Hill went to work as an insurance agent for a black owned insurance company, The Atlanta Life Insurance Company. He so influenced the owner until he moved up the ranks to serve the company as its CEO for much of the last half of the 20 th century.

In 1960 he came to my attention as I read in Jet Magazine that he was selected as the first Negro to head up the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. I was ten years of age and reading this news had a profound impact upon by desire to succeed. In the 1960's Mr. Hill was the money man who raised the funds necessary to support Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s efforts throughout the southeastern United States. In the 1990's we were neighbors. Mr. Hill built a spacious mansion across the street from my humble abode and we worked on several community projects. He was always gracious to seek my counsel on neighborhood concerns and I was overjoyed when he would take my calls and entertain my questions.

I’ve also met former U. N. Ambassador Andrew Young. He came to Atlanta from seminary school to work for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the late 1950's. He had a way of framing a situation and forming a consensus among men who disagreed with him. Dr. King had a tactic of sending Rev. Hosea Williams into a community to rouse the people into action and after Rev. Williams got things stirred up Ambassador Young would go in, defuse the situation and arrange for Dr. King to come in and lead a peaceful demonstration. On the strength of this simple strategy civil rights for the American Negro was won.

I first encountered Ambassador Young in 1975. I was the campaign manager for the first Black candidate to seek the office of Mayor of Macon, Georgia. In fact Rev. Julius C. Hope was the first Black candidate for mayor of a major city in Georgia. One day after canvassing the town Rev. Hope requested that I take a ride with him. We drove out to a shopping complex on the southwest side of the city. Shortly after we pulled into the parking lot, a car pulled along side us bearing a Fulton County license plate (Atlanta is the county seat). We got out to greet our visitor from Atlanta. He was none other than Andy Young. He quickly greeted us warmly, pressed an envelop firmly into Rev. Hopes extended right hand and turned to reenter his car. Although Rev. Hope never told me what was in the envelop, I suspected it was much needed campaign money.

We maneuvered ourselves into a run-off against the town’s top lawyer. It was time for Ambassador Young to ride into town, make sense out of history, and pave the way for victory. A fund raising banquet was held at the old Macon Hilton Hotel. Ambassador Young was the keynote speaker. I had the honor of escorting him to the dais. As was my habit in that day, I handed him a vanilla file folder which contained what I thought needed to be done to enforce the 1968 Voting Rights Act so that African Americans would have the opportunity to win elections in the South.

He was gracious. He accepted my report. He spoke about change sweeping the South. He told us that in Dr. King’s darkest hour, he never despaired. We lost the run-off election, but the next year Jimmy Carter became president and he appointed Andrew Young as U. N. Ambassador. A post he held until he did the unthinkable and engaged the Palestinians in a conversation about bringing peace to North East Africa. Ambassador Young came home from Washington, D. C. and served two terms as Mayor of Atlanta.

Third on my list is Dr. C. T. Vivian another stalwart of the Civil Rights movement. He first came to my attention on a CBS evening news broadcast. It was sometime in the early 1960's. He was tall, handsome and pontifical as he stood outside of an Alabama courthouse defying the local sheriff who wanted him to shut his mouth or at the very lest was waiting for an opportunity to shut if for him. “You can’t stop these Negroes from registering to vote,” a fearless Vivian proclaimed. “They have a right to register to vote,” he continued until he was shoved down to the ground.

I was in my early teens. I learned from him that it was alright to be shoved to the ground as long as you were right in your convictions. “Truth,” as the Hebrew Prophet said, “crushed to the earth shall rise again.” Dr. Vivian got up off the ground and in a post civil rights age he conducts workshops designed to assist people in overcoming prejudices. He also lives across the street from me.

Although there are many years which separate us in age, he and I share morning conversations regularly, as if we grew up together, whenever our morning walks coincide. Sometimes my wife will send me out to the store and on my way back into the subdivision Dr. Vivian is pulling into his driveway. We will get out of our cars and talk for hours.

On any given night you can find us underneath the street light in front of one of our homes solving the world’s problems.

© April 13, 2009

Its Time To Fix Our Criminal Justice System

2009-04-11T04:11:00.002-04:00

When it comes to issues plaguing Black and low-income communities, a White senator from the South is the last person we'd expect to go out on a limb and sound the alarm. Senator Jim Webb from Virginia just did exactly that when he boldly called out the over-imprisonment of Black folks and the serious problems with our prison system. Most importantly, he's demanding big changes.^[1]

Now it's up to us to seize the moment and create the pressure necessary to achieve true reform.

I've joined ColorOfChange.org in publicly thanking Senator Webb. Our praise will show other politicians that when they take risks and step out on critical issues like prison reform, we will have their backs. It will also show that everyday people stand with Webb and are serious about this issue. Can you join me? It only takes a moment. And then please ask your friends and family to do the same:

http://www.colorofchange.org/webb/?id=1803-853516

In recent years, politicians have lacked the courage to create meaningful prison reform. They've been paralyzed by the fear of being branded as "soft on crime." They've been held hostage by prison guard unions and industry lobbies. And the communities most affected--Black and low-income communities--have had a hard time getting a seat at the table and making our voices heard.

Our country has a clear problem. With just 5% of the world's population, America holds nearly 25% of the world's reported prison population. Our prison population has quadrupled since 1984, and most of the increase comes from people being imprisoned for drug offenses--mostly minor and nonviolent.^[2]

Despite the fact that there is no statistical difference in drug use between different racial groups, harsh drug laws have had a devastating, disproportionate effect on Black communities. While only 12% of the U.S. population is African-American, Black people make up 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison.^[3]

It's surprising and encouraging that someone like Senator Webb is speaking out in this way. Webb is a White politician from Virginia, a Southern "law-and-order" state that has abolished parole and executed more people than any state besides Texas.^[4] He has nothing to gain politically from this--it's an act of true conviction.

By eloquently making the case for reform and calling for a National Criminal Justice Commission, Webb has created a major opening to address these issues. And it comes at a time when there are increasing signs the country is ready for reform. New York's governor and state legislature just struck a deal to reform the state's "Rockefeller drug laws"--some of the harshest laws in the country, and a great example of the failed status quo.^[5] A panel of federal judges has just told California it must reduce its prison population by a third to alleviate the torturous conditions stemming from overcrowding.^[6] And at the same time that more people are recognizing the deep injustices in our system, the economic crisis is forcing elected officials at all levels of government to realize they can't afford to keep directing so many taxpayer dollars toward law enforcement, jails, and prisons.^[7]

We need to make the most of this moment. Please join me in thanking Senator Jim Webb for his courageous stand and support his call for a meaningful commission. And when you do, please ask your friends and family to do the same.

http://www.colorofchange.org/webb/?id=1803-8535

References:

1. http://tinyurl.com/chxaup
2. http://www.parade.com/news/2009/03/why-we-must-fix-our-prisons.html
3. See reference 2
4. http://tinyurl.com/8mgyf2
5. http://tinyurl.com/da2xlw
6. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/us/10prison.html
7. http://tinyurl.com/c36ubb

Five Things President Obama Accomplished On His European Trip

2009-04-08T04:43:00.004-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

I’ve written elsewhere how enormously busy this president has been since taking office less than 100 days ago. He drafted and moved through congress the most massive spending legislation in the nation’s history, fired the president of General Motors Corporation and sent congress a three trillion dollar budget to wrestle with while he traveled across the pond to be wooed on the world stage.

What are the five things the president accomplished in his first major overseas foray?

1. He set a new tone and alerted the world that America came to listen and not to dictate. The strength of his message is that America is prepared to take back the moral authority it lost during the Bush years in the White House.

2. Queen Elizabeth was dazzled by the charm and grace of the president and Mrs. Obama. The Queen in a rare show of emotion hugged the waist of Mrs. Obama, who returned the show of affection without any of the backlash that other visiting officials received in the past.

3. He demonstrated his hand at settling disputes when he came between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Republic of China President Hu Jintao when the two argued over tax shelters in the Republic of China. Sarkozy threatened to walk out of the G-20 conference if he did not get his way. The American president witnessed the exchanged and got the two men to agree on a resolution to this sticky problem.

4. President Obama spoke to the Turkish Parliament and declared that America was not at war with Islam. This message is sure to resonate in the Muslim world and is the beginning of a dialogue between America and Saudi Arabia, a major broker in peace negotiations in Northeast Africa.

5. The president paid a surprised visit to the troops in Iraqi just hours after a car bomb killed several people outside the capital. His message to the troops clearly defined the American mission during his administration. He told the troops that it was time to turn over operations to the Iraqi forces. A sure signal that he will keep his campaign pledge to bring the troops home from Iraqi.

Pundits will spend the next several days talking about the success or failure of President Obama’s first tour abroad using the old paradigms of the 20 th century, but as I discovered last summer on the campaign trail, this president can not be judged by any model we have seen in the past.

There is a new world leader on center stage. He is humble, he is a diplomat. He is a peacemaker. Yet he must change the world to his vision on disarmament, as he did in resolving the dispute between France and the Republic of China, or he will leave his country weaker than it was when he began.

© April 8, 2009

Sunday Mornings Crowning Glories: A Book Review

2009-04-05T19:55:00.006-04:00

By: Harold Michael Harvey

I had been watching the mail box daily. I was expecting a copy of Mariana Titus', SUNDAY MORNINGS CROWNING GLORIES. It seemed like it would never arrive. I had seen glimpses of it on a social network site where I was introduced to the eclectic work of Mariana T. We had talked while she was preparing to leave Santa Barbara for Nevada, or perhaps, she was leaving Nevada for Santa Barbara, or maybe she was leaving Franklin, Louisiana for Nevada. I can not seem to keep tract of the wondering toes of Mariana T.

Then one day I opened the mail box to find the package I had been seeking for weeks. It was January 22, 2009 and as I opened the covers of the book, I found the inscription: “I wanted to sign the book with the election date. It’s a book about some friends back home.” This explains why I had not received the much promised book until two days after the Inauguration of Barack H. Obama, 44th President of the United States of America .

Back home for Mariana is Franklin, Louisiana. A town where time ever marches into infinity, yet when one considers the timeless values imbued in the townspeople, one gets the impression that time stands still in Franklin.

There is something magical about Sunday mornings below the Mason-Dixon Line. And nothing expresses that magic in the air on Sunday Mornings like Colored Church Ladies adorned in the Crowning Glories atop their heads.

I have seen every Sunday morning since October 21, 1951. I was five days old and just home from the hospital. It did not take me long to learn there was something special about Sunday mornings on the middle Georgia farm where I lived with my extended family. On Sunday mornings the men did not get up and go outside to farm. The women were the first up on this day. The ladies were busy getting breakfast cooked and laying out clothes to wear to church. The children could sleep late until awaken by the smell of sausage and the coffee percolating in the coffee pot atop the wood burning stove.

After breakfast, the magic would start. The ladies of the house would get the children dressed for church and then they would put on clothes never worn for any other occasion. But before walking out the door, each lady had a special hat to wear. My mom and her sisters usually kept their hats under the bed in a hat box. They would pull those hat boxes from under the bed and pick the one that was right for their Sunday outfit. We then would walk to church and get caught up on the weeks events.

No matter what racial slights had been endured during the week, when the ladies of the family put on their hats its was as if the weight of the world had been lifted and they were queens for the day. After church service, we would walk back home and the first thing the ladies of the family would do was to take off their hats and put them back up until the next Sunday morning.

Mariana’s journey back to Franklin, Louisiana to honor the ladies of the bayou, evokes memories of my on childhood in a simpler time period. It is an excellent edition to my coffee table collection.

She takes the reader inside Mount Zion Baptist Church, Saint John Baptist Church of four Corners, First Union Baptist Church in Garden City, Shadyside Little Jerusalem Baptist Church, New Mount Horeb Baptist Church in Oaklawn, Charity Baptist Church, New Providence Baptist Church in Centerville, New Saint John Missionary Baptist Church, Mount Zion Baptist in Katy,Nazarene Baptist Church in Pleasant Hill, First Baptist Union Church in Garden City, and Free Will Baptist Church in Kramer.

Through Mariana Titus' lens, the reader senses the spirit of hope and the strength of the women who give vibrancy to "Sunday Mornings, Crowning Glories."

Open the covers and discover SUNDAY MORNINGS CROWNING GLORIES.

Colonel Possum Publishing Co.
P. O. Box 41503
Santa Barbara, Ca 93140
www.bayoutales.com

(c) April 5, 2009

Patron On Ice: Rapper T. I. Gets A Year And A Day In Jail

2009-03-29T05:29:00.004-04:00

BY: Harold Michael Harvey

Rapping to his favorite girl or just another girl he wants to get next to, the self made hip hop mogul, “T. I.”-by any other name-Clifford Joseph Harris, raps she can have anything she likes: “stacks on deck, Patron on ice, you can have anything you like,” he intones to a smooth hip hop beat.

For the next year and one day, Clifford “T. I.” Harris can have anything the federal prison guards will allow him to have. One presumes that will not be unlimited stacks on the prison books for him to buy anything he likes; nor do we expect he will be able to keep any Patron on ice during visitation days.

In his early days trouble seemed to follow Clifford “T. I.” Harris like a hound dog chasing a cotton-tail rabbit. As a teenager living with his mom in Riverdale, Georgia, he turned to the street hustle to aid his mom in paying the family bills. Soon he was making more money on Bankhead Court on the southwest side of Atlanta than he could by flipping burgers at a McDonald’s. So he never went that route. He got into some trouble, landed in jail and received the label attached to his name of a convicted felon.

Then he discovered music and hip hopped his way out of poverty and the stigma associated with being a convicted felon.

In 2006 his best friend and body guard Philant Johnson was gunned down after the “T. I.” entourage left an adult club in Cincinnati, Ohio following a performance earlier that evening by “T. I.” According to police, the shoot-out followed an incident in the adult club when a group of local men felt they were “dissed”- insulted- by “T. I.’s” group when the locals were hit in the face by money thrown onto the stage for the dancing girls by “T. I.’s entourage.

A group of suspects were arrested and charged with the murder of Philant Johnson. It now became necessary for “T. I.” to testify against the bros who had gunned down his friend. Many in his subculture believe that to testify in court under any set of circumstances is tantamount to being a snitch. And in the world of “stacks on deck and Patron on ice” snitching is a low life “mother.” It does not matter the least that the bros just killed your best buddy.

“T. I.” decided he had to break this unwritten and largely unspoken code of behavior and testify against the bros who resorted to deadly violence over wounded feelings. He began to hear threats the Ohio boys were out to get him. “T. I.” had never lived within the law per se and did not rely upon the law to protect him from the streets. He, after all, personified the streets. He would protect himself, as Malcolm “X” Little suggested, “by any means necessary.” He made arrangements to purchase five machine guns and silencers from a street broker, but was caught in a “sting” conducted by the feds in October 2007. Now, he was atop the hip hop charts and was a convicted felon in possession of five dangerous weapons.

His initial plea to the charges was not guilty. He faced up to 10 years in federal prison and a possible fine up to 250,000 stacks. The thought of spending the next decade behind bars and giving stacks upon stacks to the government did not set well with “T. I..” He hired the Ed Garland Law Firm, a Georgia law firm, which had gained national attention in the successful representation of Baltimore Raven’s Linebacker, Ray Lewis against murder charges in Atlanta during a Super Bowl held in the city ten years ago

The Garland Firm did a nifty dance around traditional plea bargains and convinced the U. S. Attorney’s office to recommend a reduced sentence if “T. I.” remained out of trouble for a year and began doing community service prior to the sentencing. This maneuver is practically unheard of in the legal community. There was an agreement in principal and “T. I.” began a series of talks with young people encouraging them to take a different path than the one chosen by him. He starred in a reality tv show entitled “T. I.’s Road to Redemption.”

Prior to sentencing “T. I.” had completed a total of 1,000 hours of community service. Unlike native Atlantan Adam “Pack Man” Jones, “T. I.” flew under the radar and did not create any other bad headlines. The sentence handed down on March 27, 2009 orders him to serve one year and one day in federal prison in the Atlanta area. He will be on probation for three years following his release and will do an additional 500 hours of community service once he is released from prison. Attending his sentencing hearing as a show of support were former U. S. Ambassador and former mayor of Atlanta, Andrew Young and Bishop Eddie Long, pastor of an Atlanta mega church.

In announcing the sentencing, U. S. Attorney David E. Nahmias said that “the community got a break” in this sentencing because of the impact that “T. I.” has on young people. Nahmias said that no one else could reach young people in the same manner that “T. I.” can and has done.

The government expects “T. I.” to turn himself in within the next 30-60 days. In a news conference following the sentencing, “T. I.” encouraged young people to learn from his situation. He went on to say, “I hope that I can keep one if not one million from going down a similar path.”

Good advice as "patron" goes on ice for one year and one day.

© March 29, 2009

Obama's Skin In The Game And The New States Rights Thrust

2009-03-23T07:08:00.008-04:00

Old number 44 is an avid golfer when he is not knocking down three pointers, giving defining moment speeches or passing out money to the American people as if it is water. He recently quipped that the banks had to “have some skin in the game” if they wanted to get more economic stimulus money.

Mr. Obama’s skin is literally in the economic stimulus game and has given new impetus to the age old notion of States Rights embedded in the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights. The Tenth Amendment reserves to the states all rights that are not delegated to the federal government. This amendment was a sticking point in the transformation from a confederation of states into a united government and the justification for the southern states walking away from this union before the nation was 100 years old.

In the 1960's, southern governors and congressmen, fought the federal notion that segregation should be outlawed in public accommodations, housing, education and the American way of life. These men of wealth and education argued they were not racist but proponents of the rights given to the states by the founding fathers in the 10 th Amendment.

Whenever the federal government advocated the liberal notion that all Americans should be treated equally and have an opportunity to enjoy the American dream these southern gentlemen skilled in sophistry turned to the language of interposition and nullification. They rejected and nullified federal legislation that eased the burden of the “Negro” and sought to confer upon them funds from the public treasury.

The States Righters were so pervasive in their quest to stop the progression of time until it caused Martin to cry out in his famous speech: “I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification...”

And time marches to the same drum beat. Today, nearly 41 years after Martin was murdered the southern governors and congressmen are in lock step opposing the president’s plan to provide unemployment benefits to part-time workers who are out of work due to a recessive economy. In their southernness, they argue the federal government does not have the right to require them to take care of their citizens.

The stimulus law requires states to consider recent wage information when determining unemployment eligibility. Also, the law makes workers eligible for benefits if they can prove “compelling family reasons” for quitting their jobs and extends benefits if a worker is in a job training program. The governors and lawmakers who oppose the economic bailout to unemployed Americans posit they have a right to determine who receives unemployment checks in their states. Albeit, checks written on funds received from the federal government.

As in 1860, the great state of South Carolina fired the first salvo becoming the first state to turn down stimulus money geared to pay unemployment benefits. Its governor, Mark Sanford, chairs the Republican Governors Association and has led Bobby Jindal (Louisiana), Haley Barbour (Mississippi), and Bob Riley (Alabama) in rejecting stimulus money.

Missing from this list of deep southern state governors to reject stimulus money is Florida governor, Charlie Crist ( R) who has endorsed the president’s plan to stimulate the economy and Mike Easley (D) North Carolina.

Then in another class, there is Texas Governor Rick Perry who has hinted he will reject the perceived federal intrusion in awarding state unemployment benefits and Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue. The southern Republican governors seem content to allow Governors Perry and Perdue to fight the next leg of the States Rights argument, therefore, elimination of the 1965 Voting Rights Acts which requires states to get clearance from the Justice Department anytime there are changes to election laws.

Make no mistake about it, the removal of Justice Department oversight in southern states elections laws is tantamount to the removal of federal troops following the Tilden- Hayes presidential election. The removal of federal troops from the South ended Reconstruction and led to a wave of repression unsurpassed by anything other than slavery itself.

The Supreme Court is slated to hear oral arguments in the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder in April. This case originated in Texas and seeks removal of the pre-clearance requirement. Georgia’s Governor Sonny Perdue last week filed a friend of the court brief arguing that Georgia is not the state that it was in 1965. Mr. Perdue’s brief was filed by a private attorney after Georgia’s Attorney General, Thurbert Baker, a native of South Carolina, refused to file a brief on behalf of the State of Georgia. Mr. Baker is a Democrat and the state’s first African American to win a non-judicial statewide office.

Perdue’s position is underscored by the fact last week Republican lawmakers in his state legislature refused to sign off on a resolution honoring President Obama. The resolution was offered by members of the Black Legislative Caucus in the House of Representative and would have commended Mr. Obama and made him an honorary member of the Black Caucus. Such measures are routinely granted by members of the legislature out of professional courtesy.

African American members of the legislature felt slighted and walked out of Friday’s session. Their departure over language in the resolution that commended Mr. Obama for being an honorable man brought back memories of 1868 when the first Africans to be made citizens in 1865 had been elected to the Georgia legislature and were refused their seats amid talk they were not qualified to be law makers.

Mr. Obama has “some skin in the game” and the skin ain’t green, its black.

(c) Copyright March 23, 2009

The Politics Of Baseball's Doping Scandal

2009-03-16T02:31:00.016-04:00

The thought occurred to me the other day, President Obama, a noted left handed three point shooter, could have an enormous impact on baseball's doping wars. It seems just a year ago the government was all set to bring Barry Bonds, baseball's home run king, to trial on perjury charges and to charge future Hall of Fame pitcher Roger Clemens with lying to Congress.

Both cases stems from the resolve of former Attorney General, John Ashcroft, several years ago to go after Balco Laboratories , largely believed to be a provider of human growth hormones.

Ashcroft went after Balco with the same vigor he utilized to force the Patriot Act into the national lexicon. The Justice Department under Ashcroft cast a wide net and sent the Balco kingpin to jail along with the trainer of baseball's home run king, Barry Allan Bonds.

The Obama administration immediately upon taking office, stepped into several quagmires left over from the Bush years, namely the economy, the housing crises, the war in Iraq and the closing of Gitmo. They also have to contend with what to do about "Barrymo" and "Rogermo."

The government cases are complicated by the fact their investigations commenced long after the alleged drug use occurred. Thus the government has to rely upon the testimony of the trainers who allegedly pricked the stars in the hinney and endowed them with super human powers to hit and pitch their way into the record books.

In the case of Mr. Bonds, his trainer has spent time in jail over his refusal to testify against his boss. The government has not been able to pressure him into testifying and were forced to release him from jail without extracting any concession from him to cooperate at trial.

Mr. Bond's defense team has been successful in getting any evidence that smacks of drug use thrown out of court. What scant evidence the government has remaining at its disposal must have a witness to establish a change of custody back to Mr. Bond's backside. Presumably the only person who can establish the proper change of custody is his trainer. The Bonds case has been put off indefinitely and may never be presented to a jury.

Roger Clemens has denied that he knowingly used a banned substance. Brian McNamee, his former trainer, however, states that Mr. Clemens was injected with a human growth hormone on numerous occasions by him. According to Mr. McNamee, Clemens' wife was also pricked on her posterior by him with a human growth hormone in the pitcher's bedroom. With respect to Mr. Clemens the government has a witness, albeit a tainted witness.

It was presidential politics which threw out the first pitch in the baseball drugging wars with the knuckle ball Mr. Ashcroft lobbed to Mr. Bonds and it may be presidential politics that saves Mr. Clemens.

In late 2007, George Mitchell, a former congressman, submitted his investigation into the use of banned substances to Bud Selig, commissioner of baseball. Listed in that study was one Roger Clemens, a heretofore, sure fire bet to be elected into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Mr. Clemens had refused to cooperate with the Mitchell investigation and had declined an earlier invitation to come to Capitol Hill and discuss any knowledge he had on the use of steroids in baseball.

Following the Mitchell report, Mr. Clemens thought better of the idea and decided to appear before a congressional committee looking into steroid use in professional baseball. He hired a prestigious Washington law firm, Covington & Burling.

When Mr. Clemens retained Covington & Burling a young senator from Illinois was a slight blimp on the presidential radar screen. Mr. Obama was doing so poorly Georgia Democrats did not invite him to speak at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner held in February last year.

One partner in Covington & Burling law firm was a former justice department official, Eric Holder, who represented the National Football League earlier in this decade when the league was clouded with the suspicion of widespread drug use. Mr. Holder is credited with getting the NFL, the player's union, the justice department and law enforcement representatives together in the same room and essentially delayed the investigation into the use of banned substances. His sagacious legal work allowed the league time to police itself without government intervention and a wide scale indictment of its players.

Just as the government was poised to present its case against Mr. Clemens to a federal grand jury, Mr. Obama snaps off a wicked three-two slider at the knees (Steve Caltonques) and appoints George Mitchell, a special envoy and sends him to resolve the dispute between Arabs and the Jews.

Next the president nominates Mr. Holder as Attorney General. He removed himself from the case due to the fact his former law firm had represented Mr. Clemens in this very matter.

Mr. Holder did not personally represent Mr. Clemens, that assignment fell to Lanny Breuer another partner in the firm and yet another Obama justice department nominee. Breuer is waiting congressional approval to become assistant attorney general, in the Department of Justice's, Criminal Division. This is the division that is charged with deciding whether to prosecute Mr. Clemens and whether to continue to prosecute Mr. Bonds.

What makes the government's case against Mr. Clemens problematic is the fact, as Mr. Clemens' defense counsel, Breuer strongly argued McNamee is a "troubled man" who "apparently has manufactured evidence."

Obviously if approved by the senate, Breuer will follow the bosses lead and not have any contact with the government lawyers prosecuting this case. However, knowing the boss has such strong feelings about your key witness must have a chilling effect upon the justice department lawyers called upon to bring Mr. Clemens to justice.

(c) Copyright March 16, 2009

A Rap On Race, Wall Street, Mc Cain And Rush

2009-03-11T01:16:00.003-04:00

I’ve been trying to take the nation’s pulse of late relative to its new president. I keep getting mixed signals, perhaps because the here-to-fore majority culture in America never thought anyone other than a member of the “Club” would occupy the Oval Office.

I'm not sure most Americans quite know what to make of this gentlemen and his sleeveless dress wearing lady living in the White House. It is a paradigmatic shift of volcanic proportions. Yet, a paradigm deeply rooted in the America dream, albeit, a portion of the dream left out of that seminal document, signed under duress by members of the landed gentry.

Usually, at least in my lifetime, the American president is extended a 100 day window to get acquainted with his new digs and to get a feel for the lay of the land so to speak. This is not so in the case of number Forty-Four. He is a mocha light, smooth talking prez, who points to East Africa and not Eastern Europe when ancestry is discussed.

It would be easy to dismiss the enormous attention that number Forty-forty has received in his first month and an half in office on the accident of birth. But that belies the crux of the conundrum, or does it?

The first signal to catch my eye about how the public views this president differently from others is in the downward movement of the stock market. Historically, the stock market, contrary to popular myth, favors a Democratic president over the Republican one. According to Slate, “since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S & P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return.”

Moreover, the majority of bear markets in the 20th century were Republican bear markets; for instance, the stock market crash of 1929, the oil embargo in the early 1970's, and the market correction in 1987. In spite of these market indicators which favor Mr. Obama’s administration, the market lags behind in performance under his first six-weeks watch.

Why is Mr. Obama having a problem instilling confidence on Wall Street? After all, the new president did not wait to see what would develop and bask in the glow of the oval office. He immediately began to address the sagging economy and pushed through a massive spending bill within his first 20 days in office. Was this not a message to Wall Street the president was serious about getting the economy moving again?

Next, Mr. Obama placed all the financial cards on the table and told the America people that the previous administration had one budget for the War in Iraq and another one for everything else American. Still no movement on Wall Street showing it was confident that this “One” was committed to straightening the mess.

Then the president released a plan to help struggling homeowners get a handle on their mortgages. He introduced a plan geared to homeowners who are underwater in their mortgages and another for those who have gotten behind but have the ability to pay once their loans have been modified. He sweetened the pot with $1000 going to the bank for every mortgage the bank modifies.

And the beat goes on.

Thus far, Mr. Obama’s two ardent critics are Sen. John McCain, the first white candidate to lose a presidential election to a visibly black candidate and Rush Limbaugh, a piped piper of conservative Republican thought.

Mr. McCain blind-sided the president with questions regarding the purchase of a presidential helicopter that the president did not order. In his rants with stacks of papers in his hands and on his table, McCain looks to be the perfect sore loser, whining and stubbing his toe over less important issues while the economy tanks. Perhaps, this is a view of what he would have been doing in his first six-weeks in office had he and Gov. Sarah Palin won the job neither, in retrospect, seemed suited to handle.

Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer by trade and by all accounts he is a master at his trade, which appears to be getting primarily white Americans riled up over “them against us” politics. Just when many Americans who did not vote for Mr. Obama were getting into that feel good feeling about the prospects of a black president, Limbaugh rushed to the aid of the conservative cause and publicly stated concerning the president’s plans to stimulate the economy: “I hope he fails.”

What’s that? He hopes the president fails to stimulate the economy so many of Limbaugh’s listeners can get back to work, stay in their homes and profit from their 401 ks. How callous How insulated from the dire straits of his listeners Rush must be with his contract worth $400 million just extended through 2016?

What then fuels these willy nilly assaults on number Forty-four? Could Eric Holder, Attorney General, be correct in his assessment “we are a nation of cowards,” when it comes to race?
I’m just asking. But it wouldn’t be fair to posit this question and leave it to our collective thoughts for clarity.

When I was a criminal defense lawyer, I was often confronted with the dichotomy of race in jury selection. How do you get twelve people to put aside a lifetime of internal biases and prejudices which they do not know they have? I knew that if I could select an impartial jury panel, the presumption of innocence would remain with my client throughout the trial and he or she would walk out of the courthouse doors with me.

I began the first week of this brave new century driving up to northwest Georgia to select a jury in a capital murder case. My client was the oldest of three brothers who along with a friend, were accused of shooting to death a white teenage male and severely wounding his black friend.

When the trial began, I was certain that someone sitting at the defense table was guilty of murder, and I was equally certain my client was not the guilty person. The prosecution had poisoned the jury pool with pretrial talk of “them” and “they”, which were code words for the black defendants.

Conversely the media, as far away, as Atlanta was full of the pristine life lived by the teenage wrestler who ventured out one Saturday afternoon to pick up the family dog from the veterinarian and ended up in a gully with a bullet in the side of his head.

My job was to get the jury not to see race, but to see the defendants individually. We had several hundred to voir dire ( to interview) where we hoped to select a fair and impartial panel of twelve and one alternate. The judge put twelve citizens in the jury box at a time and the other several hundred were in the courtroom.

The State and defense took turns interviewing the panel. I quickly asked for a show of hands if anyone had any bias or prejudice against my client because he was accused of murdering a white person. I did not get any show of hands, nor did I expect people to open up in a room full of strangers and admit they harbored ill-will toward someone just because of race.

I followed this up by telling a true story of a lesson I learned on the baseball field. It was my last collegiate season of baseball at Tuskegee University. We were playing Savannah State University one Saturday in April of 1973. I had reached base on a single and promptly stole second base. The next batter hit a ball in the gap in left center and I half-heartedly ran towards third, where Coach Martin yelled at me to put it in gear and score. As I approached home plate, I could feel the baseball beaming toward me, like a heat-seeking missile. I saw the catcher come up to block the plate and I went into a fade away slide and entered the home plate area in a cloud of dust.

When the dust cleared, the catcher was coming towards me to tag me, I was not sure if I was safe or out. I did not want to be out, because I had not hustled on the play and Coach Martin had to yell to get me to turn the juice on; so I moved towards the catcher, picked him up and dumped him on the ground. The umpire called me safe and the fans went wild.

I reached the steps of the dugout, my teammate, Steve Duval, came over to me and pointing his finger in my face said: “You are a racist.” I had never thought of myself as a racist before that day. My mom did not raise me to be a racist. Nothing in my past suggested that I should react in a racist way. Yet between innings, I had to come to grips with what my friend had said.

There was no reason I dumped the catcher other than the fact he was the only white person in the ballpark. None of the adults involved said a word to me. Not one, including my coach who always taught us to make good moral choices. Nor the umpire who worked for the post office and was well respected in the Tuskegee community.

After telling this story I did not ask the jury for another show of hands, but you could tell from the expressions on their faces I was calling upon them to dig deep and root out any sign of prejudice. I told this same story to every panel of twelve citizens we interviewed and the whole courtroom heard the same story over and over again. During the recess the deputies came up to me and would say: “I’ve heard that story several times and I still can’t figure out if you were safe or out.”

Then on Wednesday, after a long day of jury selection, the judge sent everyone home and asked the lawyers to remain. He then proceeded to tell me earlier in the day a deputy came forth and told him of a conversation he had with a certain juror on the first day of jury selections. He said juror number 68 asked the deputy “what do you think of that Nigger lawyer from Atlanta.”

Juror number 68 was stricken from the panel. On the ride back to Atlanta, my wife, whose keen insight into human nature helped me select this jury, said we had won the panel because the deputy had held on to that information for three days and only decided to reveal what he knew to be wrong after being confronted over and over with my public admission of how easy it is to be prejudice without giving a thought to it. She was right, three weeks later, my client was acquitted of malice murder.

What should this tell us? It should tell us that racism grows deeper than the surface denial that oh “it doesn’t have anything to do with his skin color.” “I have lots of black friends, besides that he is half white.” “I just hope the man will fail... just like I hoped that Kurt Warner would fail to rally the Cardinals and win the Super Bowl.” Can’t you just see the banality in these shallow responses?

As if he sensed America is about to blow a tremendous opportunity to escort the world into the 21st Century, British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, flew across the pond recently to address a joint meeting of congress. He urged this August body to put aside petty bickering and get behind the leader of the free world. Perhaps, that is as it should be. A Brit telling his American cousins it is time to bury the slave mentality of the 18th Century, for the world waits to get behind America as America exhibits the best in all of humanity.

(c) Copyright March 11, 2009

IsThe Republican Party In Disarry?

2009-03-10T05:16:00.003-04:00

Is the Republican Party in disarray following the 2008 presidential election in which it was unable to hold onto the White House. The Grand Old Party will go down in history as the first political party to lose a presidential election to a political party whose standard bearer was an American of African decent.

Perhaps this single fact prompted the Republican National Committee (RNC) to elect, Michael Steele, the first African American to lead its post election fund raising efforts. Steele is an accomplished conservative politician in his own right and brings an enormous talent to this post.

Many in the African American community see the selection of Mr. Steele as mere window dressing and lacks the real substance necessary to attract members of this community to the Republican Party.

This assumption was underscored recently by the tongue lashing that Mr. Steele received from the darling of the conservative right, Rush Limbaugh. The stinging barbs of the radio talk show host caused Mr. Steele to take back within twenty-four hours a rather stinging barb he hurled at Mr. Limbaugh after Limbaugh's much publicized tirade hoping the president fails to stimulate the economy.

A recent national poll by Rasmussen Reports which was conducted on Monday shows that among voters who identified themselves as Republicans, a total of 68 percent say their party does not have a clear leader four months after the presidential election. A total of 17 percent are simply undecided who if anyone is in charge of the GOP. A mere 5 percent view either Mr. Steele or Sen. John McCain as the leader of the party and 2 percent believe the true leader of the party is Mr. Limbaugh. While Sen. McCain's running mate in last year's election, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin comes in with 1 percent. Neither the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell from Kentucky or Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio were able to garner 1 percent of the votes.

Interestingly, the president's approval rating mirrors the percentage of Republicans who say they are not certain who runs their party. While 66 percent of Democrats view President Obama as the head of the Democratic Party. Only 4 percent of Democratic voters view Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House as their party's head. Sir Edward Kennedy, Sen. Mass., received 2 percent of the votes and 1 percent went to the Democrat's media darling, Jon Stewart.

(c) Copyright March 10, 2009