DailyNewsGems

Remembering 1948: Progress in Civil Rights and the World Champion Cleveland Indians

Larry Doby, left, with Satchel Paige, was the American League's first Black player.

Photo Credit: Sporting News, via Getty Images

***

"Our Team: The Epic Story Of Four Men And The World Series That Changed Baseball," by Luke Epplin is more than a book about the 1948 World Series, the last time the Cleveland Indians won a World Series.

It’s actually a splendidly written, meticulously researched, and upbeat social history about the expansion of Black American baseball players into Major League Baseball.

Heaps of attention has historically been paid to Jackie Robinson in becoming the first African-American baseball player in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, while Larry Doby, a 23-year-old outfielder for the Newark Eagles, (the first American League African-American player to smash the color barrier 11 weeks later), often receives little attention or becomes a mere footnote by baseball historians.

Epplin, a New York City writer, centers this American social saga on four individuals: two Black, and two white, all of whom changed the face of baseball forever. Biographical sketches presented of Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, Bill Veeck, and Bob Feller become, knowingly or not, the unsung heroes of the integration of baseball.

Had it not been for Doby and Satchel Paige breaking the color line, many argue, the Indians might not have won the 1948 World Series.

Luckily for baseball, the integration of Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, and others, wouldn’t have been possible without two color-blind owners: Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers and of course, Veeck of the Cleveland Indians, who bought the Indians in June, 1946.

The progressive thinking Rickey reportedly said: “the greatest untapped reservoir of raw material in the history of the game is the Black race.” “The Negro,” Ricky observed, “will make us winners for years to come.”

Bill Veeck, meanwhile, not only wasn’t afraid of welcoming Black players into the big leagues, he enthusiastically widened his net with the hiring of Black security guards, vendors, janitors, groundskeepers, ushers and musicians, along with offering a front office job to Olympic gold medalist, Harrison Dillard.

Despite the overabundance of promising talent in the Negro Leagues, it would take years before the rest of baseball would sign Black players, including the New York Yankees who didn’t sign a Black player until 1955, the Detroit Tigers not until 1958, and the Boston Red Sox were the last to the party, by not signing a Black player until 1959, more than ten years after the game was officially integrated.

Alabama born, Satchel Paige, 42-years-old, came on board in July, 1948 during the Indians stretch run of the pennant race. Epplin underscores how Satch during his first month with the Indians, only surrendered seven runs over 38 and a third innings, while generating rock star status. His first three starts in MLB, attracted more than 200,000 fans, inspiring sports columnist for the Cleveland News, Ed McAuley, to write that Paige was “the greatest drawing card in the history of baseball”

Overall, Paige pitched 21 games in the 1948 regular season, including seven starts with two complete game shutouts. His ERA that year was an impressive 2.48.

Larry Doby became the first Black player to belt a home run in a World Series in Game 4 of the Boston Braves and Indians Series. The Indians disposed of the Boston Braves in six games. Doby additionally led the Indians with a .318 batting average in the 1948 Series.

Not many people associate Iowa native Bob Feller with progressive thinking in race relations, especially in 1948. Rapid Robert, in fact, told reporters during his barnstorming tours that he didn’t think many Black players had the right stuff to make it in MLB, including Jackie Robinson.

Cleveland owner Bill Veeck witnesses the signing of ace pitcher Bob Feller to a contract for the 1948 season. Despite the high hopes for the staff ace, the right-hander won 19 games and led the AL for the seventh and last time, while the velocity on his blazing fastball began to wane. 

Photo Credit: The Rucker Archive

***

But if not for Feller’s widely reported barnstorming tours in the offseason, many in America wouldn’t be aware of the explosive talent of many Black players.

During the barnstorming tours, Joe DiMaggio, the “Yankee Clipper,” would say that Paige was the “best and fastest pitcher he ever faced.” Of course, many mainstream newspapers never published DiMaggio’s comments for fear it would imply Black players were better than whites.

For three consecutive barnstorming tours, Satchel Paige and Bob Feller met head-to-head.

Because of Feller’s major contribution with showcasing marquee Black ball players of the era through different sections of the country, Negro League players invited him to their Negro Baseball League Reunion in Kentucky.

Most fascinating about Epplin’s book of the 1948 World Series is that many of the progressive elements of the 1948 Cleveland Indians was mirroring many events and individuals outside of the diamond during the same year.

In 1948, for example, Atlanta, Georgia hired its first Black police officers at a time when a quarter of the Atlanta police department were reportedly members of the Ku Klux Klan. But much like Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, Black Atlanta police officers in 1948 had to tolerate racial taunts and abuse, they couldn’t lose their temper, they couldn’t ride police squad cars, and they couldn’t arrest white suspects. They had to call for assistance.

Additionally, in 1948, Alice Coachman Davis won the high jump at the Olympics in London, England, becoming the first Black woman to win an Olympic Gold medal.

In 1948, Johnny Ritchey became the first African-American baseball player to play in the Pacific League as a member of the San Diego Padres.

Most importantly, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which directed the armed forces to provide “equality of treatment and opportunity for all personnel without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.”

Epplin chronicles how Larry Doby had to endure the humiliation of segregation in the military while serving his country. Robert H. Meyer, Professor Emeritus at Moravian College, observed that “Black vets, having just fought against Hitler and vicious bigotry, returned to the country to find themselves treated with a similar bigotry.”

Victoria W. Wolcott, Professor of History at the University of Buffalo, tells me, “1948 was an important milestone in the civil rights movement. It was a period of what historians refer to as “racial liberalism” following World War II.” “Because of migration,” Wolcott said, “during the war years large numbers of African Americans migrated to northern cities, where they could vote. The NAACP also grew significantly during the 1940s and even had some successful voter registration drives in southern cities like Atlanta—as well as legal victories that lead up to Brown v. Board of Education.

In his State of the Union address in 1948, President Truman made a major push for civil rights. Such progressive thinking lost him support in different sections of the country, but as it turned out, it was the Black vote he received which decisively helped him win the 1948 presidential election over Republican governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey.

Gregg Ivers, Professor of Government in the School of Public Affairs at American University, depicts the 1940s as a “period underappreciated by the general public and even by educators, journalists, and others, who believe that the civil rights movement began with Brown and Rosa Parks.” “Nothing just happens,” Ivers stressed.

Ivers additionally pointed out that 1948 was the last year of the Negro Leagues, which opened up a fresh pool of Black players who were no longer bound to their teams and their domineering owners. Willie Mays played his last game in the Negro Leagues in 1948 as a member of the Birmingham Black Barons.

Progress with civil rights, however, ran into a major roadblock in the 1950s.

Jim Ralph, Professor of American History and Culture at Middlebury College, said so much of the progress with race relations in the mid and late 1940s, came to a screeching halt with the emergence of the Cold War and McCarthyism, which narrowed the activist tendencies of the country. “Left-leaning CIO unions,” Ralph observed, “which had often been pioneers in fighting against racist practices, were on the defensive.  A powerful voice for civil and workers’ rights like Paul Robeson found himself under attack for his sympathetic disposition toward the Soviet Union. “

As fascinating as Epplin’s book about the four central pillars in the integration of baseball is, the book, from this observer, is more a valentine to the City of Cleveland in 1948 during a time when industry was thriving, the city was prospering economically; a time when downtown Cleveland was bustling with restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues, and when civic pride was at an all-time high. It was the last time the Cleveland Indians were world champs, the toast of the town.

The years after 1948 in Cleveland, would usher in crushing heartbreak and disappointment.

As Epplin points out, “the year after Veeck departed, attendance dipped to below two million. Six seasons later, the Indians drew fewer than a million fans, second worst in the American League.”

Satchel Paige, moreover, would never taste another World Series appearance again. Ol’ Satch  was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1971 as the first electee of the Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues. He passed away on June 8, 1982.

Despite being the first African-American player in the American League, Larry Doby’s number wasn’t retired by the Indians until 1994, four years before he was elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Many argue that Doby, for one reason or another, never lived up to his full potential.

Bob Feller would appear in only one All-Star game after 1948; 1951 would be the last year the Indians one-time staff ace would win more than twenty games (the same year he threw his third and final no-hitter) and would start in only 15 games in his final two seasons with the Tribe before retiring in 1956 with 266 wins, ranking him 28^th in history. Feller never won a World Series game.

Due to an impending divorce and wanting to set up his children with a trust fund, Veeck sold the Indians after the 1949 season. He would later emerge as owner of the St Louis Browns and the Chicago White Sox.

John A. Kirk, Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, summed up the year 1948 best, when he told me: “1948 was certainly a year of hope, in terms of the direction of race relations, and of liberal and progressive movements more generally.”

--Bill Lucey

June 27, 2021

[email protected]

The New Normal: The Destruction of Monuments and Memorials

 

Pulling down the statue of George III by the "Sons of Freedom," at the Bowling Green, City of New York, July 1776.

Painted by Johannes A. Oertel

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Statues or memorials, mostly of historical figures, which once dotted the brilliant landscapes of many U.S. cities, including the nation’s capital, have fallen victim to the sledgehammer for reminding citizens of a time in our unconscionable racist past that’s no longer in tune with 21^st century American values.

Since the death of a black male, George Floyd, 46, on May 25^th, when a Minneapolis police officer (Derek Chauvin) mercilessly kneeled on Mr. Floyd’s neck for eight minutes (and 46 seconds) while arresting him for allegedly using a counterfeit bill, the floodgates opened up.

Loud protests, shameless looting, and the destruction of property, became the order of the day by large groups, young and old, black and white, furious that African-Americans continue to be easy targets of perceived systemic racism within the police departments from coast-to-coast.

Protesters widened their net with another phase of protests when they began to tear down memorials and statues in a number of American cities, mostly Confederate soldier monuments.

By the latest count, at least 22 cities have reportedly removed Confederate monuments, including the statue of general Stonewall Jackson and another of a naval officer, Matthew Fontaine Maury, in Richmond, Virginia. On June 16, a swarm of protesters in Richmond, brought down the statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, 

As of June 9, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were nearly 1,800 Confederate monuments, statues, and other symbols in the U.S. The Southern Poverty Law Center also reports that state and local governments have removed at least 110 publicly supported monuments and other tributes to the Confederacy since the 2015 white supremacist massacre in Charleston, South Carolina.

Historians and civil rights groups point out these Confederate statues were erected during the Jim Crow era (late 19^th century and early 20^th century) to underscore white supremacy over black people. Prior to 1860, you couldn’t find a single enduring image of an African American as a statue—either in marble or bronze form in the United States.

One way to make amends and honor the emancipation of African-Americans after the Civil War was the creation of a statue conceived by American sculptor and musician, Thomas Ball, which was erected in 1876. The monument depicts Abraham Lincoln holding a copy of his Emancipation Proclamation, standing next to Archer Alexander, a former slave.

The sculpture is referred to as Emancipation Memorial or Freedman’s Memorial.

The statue originally faced west towards the U.S. Capitol until it was moved east in 1974 in order to face the newly erected Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial.  A replica of the statue was placed in Boston’s Park Square in 1879.

Many African-Americans, among others, considered the statue and its symbolism demeaning, especially the way it depicts a former slave kneeling in front of his white emancipator. Since the George Floyd protests, there have been revitalized rallies to have the statues removed. The Boston Art Commission recently voted unanimously to have the replica copy removed from Park Square. The date for its removal hasn’t been announced.

The Emancipation Memorial came about in the 19^th century when abolitionists and radical Republicans pushed for a monument that would underscore Abraham Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. The Western Sanitary Commission, then, used funds donated by African-Americans to commission a congressionally endorsed memorial in Washington D.C.

Despite African-Americans initially donating funds for the memorial, many argue they didn’t have the final say about what type of sculpture was ultimately decided upon. After a number of possibilities offered to feature as a sculpture (including black and white military heroes) the Freedmen’s Commission selected Thomas Ball’s depiction of a semi-nude former slave kneeling next to Abraham Lincoln.

Famous, now infamous, Italian explorer and navigator, Christopher Columbus, has been yet another historical figure who has faced the wrath of a great many Americans for his appalling treatment of indigenous people between 1492 and 1504.

Over the last week, a statue of Christopher Columbus was taken down in Columbus, Ohio. Statues of Columbus have additionally been vandalized in Boston, Miami, and Virginia; and most recently, protesters tore down a statue of Christopher Columbus and threw it in the Inner Harbor Saturday in Baltimore.

During his four voyages to the Caribbean and South America, Columbus and his entourage, historians tell us, enslaved many native inhabitants of the West Indies while meting out punishing violence and brutality. Columbus was also implicated with sending thousands of peaceful Taino “Indians” from the island of Hispaniola to Spain to be sold for profit.

Obviously, the amended history of Christopher Columbus is a history many of us were not taught in the classroom as youngsters.

A statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, removed in Richmond, Virginia

Photo Credit: Associated Press

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So, the question becomes, is the recent destruction of historic memorials only the beginning of a long series of staged protests in which statutes (of historical figures with a disreputable past) will come tumbling down like the Wall of Jericho? And will it ever stop? Already, sculptures of our Founding Fathers, those who were slave owners, are in grave danger of having their memorials smashed to smithereens.

“I am not a big fan of pulling down--I would rather the statues be relocated to a museum or some other non-public setting, especially as they have become symbols of oppression and history inequities,” Manish Chalana, Professor of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, said. “I like how Delhi dealt with the statues of the colonial heroes--they were all moved to a forlorn park [Coronation Park] where they have been sitting since India’s independence.”

As a historical backdrop: Chalana notes that the statues erected in the Confederate South were done to advance an alternative view of history after the Civil War in which many believed “the war was about protecting the sovereignty of the southern states and not about preserving slavery.” These monuments, more or less, Chalana says, “came as a result of campaigns organized by the Daughters of the Confederacy or Colonial Dames or other such ‘patriotic’ groups to calm their anxieties around the changing laws and demographics.”

Another reason for the Confederate statues in the 19^th century, Chalana observed, was a strong sense of xenophobia, which was sparked by the sweeping wave of immigration from eastern and Southern Europe from a diverse group of immigrants who brought with them different cultural practices, and ways of life and religion. “Commentating national heroes through house museums and statues,” Chalana notes, “can be seen as a way to establishing Protestants claim to this country. “

Vivien Green Fryd, Professor of American and Contemporary Art at Vanderbilt University, worries that removing statues is a misguided way of deleting history without engaging in a constructive dialogue about different periods (however scandalous) in America’s complex storyline.

Fryd readily concedes the statues of Confederate generals and of Christopher Columbus are problematic, “but it’s our history,” Fryd said. “Let’s talk about it, about these images showing indigenous people in problematic ways. How these Confederate monuments were commissioned in order to impose white superiority. But what can we do? Do we destroy them? Or can we do something not only in discussing the messages of what they mean. Have talks about what they mean. But maybe you take the Confederate monuments in each state and create a Confederate Monument Park with signage which gives the history of this monument, where they were located, when they were commissioned, and when they were removed. They do this in eastern Europe, it’s not a unique idea.”

Fryd, whose mother was a Holocaust survivor, informed me that if you walk through Germany, there are constant reminders of the Holocaust.  She mentioned that in one particular neighborhood in Germany, there are signs in front of a building which displays the names of persons taken to a concentration camp. It also lists where they were born and which concentration camp they were taken to and which concentration camp they were transported--to be exterminated.

“So,” Fryd explained, “when you walk down the street (in Germany), you become aware of the Jews that once lived here and know the names of those former residents brought to the concentration camps. And you know exactly what happened.” “I think, then,” Fryd cautions, “by removing these things, is then to say, this history didn’t happen. But the history did happen and that’s why we’re having so many problems.”

Fryd additionally notes that even nationally recognized historical museums have evolved to the point that they now include histories of slaves at Thomas Jefferson’s estate at Monticello and George Washington’s home in Mount Vernon. “You’re learning the history of slaves, where they lived, what their cabinets looked like, the food that they ate. And that has been a new development, I would say the last 20 years. And that history is important” Fryd stressed.

Dell Upton, Professor of Architectural History in the Department of Art History at UCLA, contends that many are making too much out of the historical significance of these statues, particularly the Confederate statues. Upton likens the statues to quick soundbites, expressing a particular viewpoint. “Books and teachers teach history. Statues teach attitudes: they try to suggest whom we should venerate or not,” Upton maintains.   “Furthermore, books and teachers’ interpretations of history change over time. Those conveyed by monuments never do.”

When asked whether the demonstrations and protests over statues has gone too far, Upton said he doesn’t think so, but “where it will go from here remains to be seen. Genuine grievances, largely but not only of African Americans, have been ignored or given lip service for decades, even centuries.”

Overall, Upton argues, the removal or destruction of statues has sparked a new dialogue about the kinds of memorials that will be venerated in the future. “I think,’’ Upton said, “that we will come out of this with a very different attitude toward monuments and a very different memorial landscape. What shape it will take, I can’t say.”

Cameras capture a protester in Cleveland, spitting in the face of a police officer.

Source: Fox13Now

***

What statue stays and what statue goes, I believe, will iron itself out in the coming weeks when cooler heads prevail and once many realize no matter how many statues are removed—racism is still very much alive in the United States.

Most importantly, classifying police officers’ as racists, demonizing the institution, and calls to defund them will hardly remove racism from the city streets. Accountability will.

During the infancy of television in the 1950s and 1960s, the only time you saw African-Americans, for the most part, was on the nightly news, when stations reported about crimes, murders, and the raging summer riots--giving the false impression that the vast majority of blacks were criminals and thugs, a menace to society.

More than 50 years later, now it’s the police who are the thugs and criminals, and a menace to society.

Would it be asking too much for national television networks and news organizations to adhere to the twin journalistic tenets of ``balance’’ and ``fairness’’ when it comes to police officers, just as they do any other subject, organization, or institution?

I think it’s reckless for the media to advance the false impression that all police officers are racists--out to kill as many blacks as they can.

I would love nothing more than to be a member of the “in-crowd’’ and demonize and spit in the face of police officers, like so many are doing, both literally and figuratively.

But I know too many police officers and police detectives (especially over the last decade in Cleveland, Ohio), who put their lives on the line to make the streets safer for all of his, regardless of race.

And because of the reckless actions of a minority of racist police officers, we’re being encouraged to spit in their face.

Sorry, I just can’t do it.

 

-Bill Lucey

[email protected]

July 6, 2020

 

Liberal Lions and Their Racist Past

A photo on Ralph Northam's page in the Eastern Virginia Medical School's 1984 yearbook

Source: Eastern Virginia Medical School

This 1942 poster, titled "This is the Enemy," circulated in the United States following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

**

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) must feel like he’s riding aimlessly on an old dilapidated raft in an ocean of impending peril, circled by ravenous sharks, anxiously waiting their next feeding.

It’s just a matter of time before he’s devoured.

The 73^rd governor of the Old Dominion is being strongly encouraged to resign after pictures from his Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook (1984) emerged showing one person in a black face, another in a KKK robe.

Northam, as widely reported, initially admitted being in the photo; but later retracted his statement, saying that it’s not him in the photo, after studying the photo in more detail.

The Virginia governor, however, does admit to once polishing his face black to make him appear as the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, for a dance competition.

What’s striking about this furor, calling for Northam to resign, is that it happened 30 years ago before he entered the political arena.

Admittedly, polishing your face black, no matter the circumstances, is hard to ignore or downplay as mere youthful indiscretion.

The entire picture is appalling, tasteless, and difficult to look at.

Still, we don’t have to go back in history very far to think of the dumb and insensitive acts people have committed in their youth; only to change course, evolve as they got older, and blaze a new path in their professional careers, far removed from their reckless past.

Racist blunders from politicians isn't uncommon in U.S. 20th century history. From Richard Nixon's endemic anti-Semitism (captured on White House tapes), former Mississippi Senator Trent Lott’s praise for Strom Thurmond’s racist 1948 campaign to Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell posing in front of a Confederate flag (in the early 1990s) have been well documented.

What’s even more interesting is that some of America’s most liberal lions had a racist past; but historians, for the most part, have swept them under the rug for fear it would damage their political legacy.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va), a child from Appalachia’s coalfields, in the 1940's, long before he entered the political arena, recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Crab Orchard, W.Va. Byrd's affiliation with the Klan remained until 1952.

Returning to West Virginia after World War II, he wrote a letter to one of the Senate's most notorious segregationists, Theodore Bilbo (D-Miss.), complaining about the Truman administration's efforts to integrate the military.

Even during his political career when he renounced the Klan and all it stood for-his racism still clung to Byrd.

In 1964, he joined with other southern Democrats to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The W. Va. senator filibustered the bill for more than 14 hours, arguing it violated principles of states' rights. Three years later, he voted against the nomination of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court, a black Solicitor General of the United States.

Interestingly, over time, Byrd’s views on race evolved; so that by the time he died in 2010, he was hailed as not only the longest-serving member of the Senate and longest-serving member of Congress in American history, but one of the liberal icons of the U.S. Senate who became a strong advocate for the working class, ensuring accessibility to health care and greater educational and employment opportunities for constituents back home in W. Va.

Speaking at his funeral in 2010, President Obama said " We know there were things he [Robert Byrd] said, things he did, that he came to regret." “I remember," Obama continued, "talking about that the first time I visited with him. There were things I regretted in my youth. You may know that.’ I said, ‘None of us are absent some regrets, Senator. That’s why we enjoy and seek the grace of God.’ … Robert Byrd possessed that quintessential American quality — the capacity to change, to learn, to listen, to be made more perfect.”

In 1936, 18 African American athletes left the Berlin Olympics with 14 medals. None of them, including Jesse Owens (who came away with four medals) were invited to the White House. Only the white Olympians were invited by President Franklin Roosevelt.

Photo Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

***

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, another liberal lion, who guided America through the Great Depression to a miraculous national recovery; then boldly joining with our allies to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, is often considered one of the greatest presidents to have occupied the White House during his 12 years in office.

But through all the valiant tributes and glorious adorations heaped on FDR by historians, little about his blatant racism is ever discussed.

In 1936, Jesse Owens, an Alabama native, (son of a sharecropper) and Cleveland, Ohio high school and Ohio State University track star, made America proud by winning four gold medals, equaling the world record (10.3 seconds) in the 100-meter race and broke the world records in the 200-meter race (20.7 seconds) and in the broad jump (26 feet 5 3/8 inches).

In 1936, in fact, 18 African American athletes left the Berlin Olympics with 14 medals, a quarter of the total medals won by the U.S. team that summer.

FDR might be remembered for the New Deal; but he gave Jesse Owens and other black Olympians the Raw Deal, by not inviting any of them to the White House. Only white Olympians were invited to the White House. Roosevelt, the “all we have to fear is fear itself,” U.S. President didn’t even send Owens a telegram for his heroic achievement in Berlin.  Possibly, Roosevelt feared a backlash from voters. Owens told reporters, “Hitler didn’t snub me; it was our president who snubbed me."

It was 80 years later, that President Obama (in September, 2016) cleaned up FDR’s mess by inviting relatives of the 16 men and two female black athletes of 1936 Olympics to the White House, where they finally received their long overdue recognition by a U.S. president.

FDR’s racism reared its ugly head, yet again, during World War II when he issued Executive Order 9066, which sent 120,000 Japanese expatriates and American citizens of Japan to internment camps. This unconscionable act led to abrupt expulsions, mass detentions and the persecution of thousands, based solely on their ethnicity.

The internment of Japanese Americans was carried out despite the fact that two secret investigations commissioned by Roosevelt himself confirmed that Japanese Americans posed no threat to national security.

Taken together, over 100,000 Japanese Americans were confined to grimy and unlivable concentration camps, which included some Japanese being stripped of property, separated from families, along with a number of deaths due to the appalling conditions of the camps.

President Johnson was known to use racist epithets in private conversation.

***

Lyndon Johnson, the gregarious Texan and 36^th U.S. President, aside from dragging the United States deeper and deeper into the morass in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, is best remembered for the Great Society, a series of domestic programs whose chief objective was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice in the United States. His ambitious domestic agenda included improvements in education, medical care, urban decay, rural poverty, and transportation, among others.

Johnson is additionally remembered for bringing the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 to fruition.

What’s generally overlooked is LBJ’s frequent derogatory term for blacks when talking with colleagues or White House cabinet members.

According to Robert Dallek’s book, "Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times" (1991), when LBJ was discussing the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as associate justice of the Supreme Court, he told an aide in 1965, "Son, when I appoint a nigger to the court, I want everyone to know he's a nigger."

Another time, as reported in Ronald Kessler's book, "Inside the White House (1996)," when discussing the virtues of his 1964 Civil Rights Bill, Johnson supposedly told two governors (their names were omitted), "I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for two hundred years."

So, it’s puzzling that liberal icons like Robert Byrd, FDR and LBJ’s shameless racism are forgiven or barely mentioned--while someone like Ralph Northam watches his political career go up in flames for acting foolishly for one snapshot in his wayward youth.

Northam seems about as much of a racist as Prince Harry is a Nazi, for foolishly dressing up in a Nazi uniform (in 2005) for a costume party.

Much like Robert Byrd, I think Ralph Northam should be allowed to prove his liberal chops in the here and now, instead of judging the man on one foolish act before, long before, he ever became governor of Virginia.

The embattled Virginia governor, after all, while campaigning for governor, reaffirmed his call for Confederate statues and monuments in the state to be taken down and moved into museums. "That means," Northam reportedly said, "memorializing civil rights advocates like Barbara Johns and Oliver Hill, who helped move our Commonwealth closer towards equality."

Northam also said that "Virginia should do more to elevate the parts of our history that have all too often been underrepresented."

During his State of the Commonwealth Address delivered on January 9th, the new governor of the Old Dominion said, "we're a state that supports our veterans, embraces diversity and inclusion, and attracts visitors from around the world. We work every day to make sure that Virginia is a place of opportunity, where everyone can build the life they want to live."

Unfortunately for Northam, the standard bearers of the Democratic Party, like Nancy Pelosi, are using the Virginia Governor as a political football-hoping to score some quick political points with liberals while ignoring that fact some people in this country are permitted the freedom to evolve, and to be judged on what they’ve accomplished during their long arduous journey through the political landscape.

–Bill Lucey

February 6, 2019

[email protected]

 

 

 

Are the Media giving Fair and Balanced Coverage to Police Actions?

Demonstrators rally outside the Minneapolis Police Department's Third Precinct to protest police brutality, on Nov. 25, 2014, in Minneapolis. AP Photo/Jim Mone

 

Chicago police Officers Michael Modzelewski, left, and John Conneely speak to reporters Sept. 29, 2015, about their role in helping save an 11-month-old shooting victim. (Brian Nguyen / Chicago Tribune)

 

If you’re a U.S. law enforcement official, no news, it seems, is good news.

Unless police officers are exposed by national news organizations for profiling minorities, shooting unarmed suspects, employing questionable use of force, or being charged with first degree murder-chances are you’ll rarely hear any positive news about police officers from coast-to-coast.

Unquestionably, national news organizations like PBS and CNN should be roundly applauded for highlighting some appalling police abuse and criminal acts, thanks largely to the growing use of cell phone cameras and dash board cameras mounted on police vehicles.

The appalling rough arm tactics used by police officers in Staten Island, NY in 2014 in the ``chokehold’’ of Eric Garner, which led to his death, leaves you wondering exactly who is training these officers, especially when dealing with unarmed suspects.

The officer who grabbed Garner by the neck, Daniel Pantaleo, was put on desk duty and stripped of his service handgun and badge, while Police Commissioner William Bratton ordered an extensive review of the NYPD's training procedures.

Similarly, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I first laid eyes on a video (April, 2015) showing Michael Scott, a 50-year old black man from North Charleston South Carolina running away from a police officer, Michael Slager, after a routine traffic stop.  Slager who had been with the North Charleston Police Department for five years fired eight shots at the unarmed fleeing traffic violator, three of the shots entering through his back.

After the police reviewed the video, Slager was charged with murder.

Most recently, a Chicago Police Officer, Jason Van Dyke, discharged 16 shots at Laquan McDonald, killing the 17-old black male who was armed with a knife, moving not in the direction but away from police officers.

Van Dyke was slapped with first-degree murder within hours after the video's release, which additionally sparked a U.S. Justice Department investigation into the ``Patterns and Practices’’ of the Chicago Police Department, including a sharp review of its use of force, accountability, and how it trains its force.

Compounding these horrific police officer actions, among others, comes a new poll by CNN and the Kaiser Family Foundation, which reports that one out of five African-Americans said they were treated unfairly because of their race in dealings with the police in the past 30 days. Only three percent of whites, by comparison, said they'd been treated unfairly. http://goo.gl/qcBe7Q

Taken together, the casual television viewer to the nightly news might very well come away with the impression, a false one, that the vast majority of police officers are an unprincipled villainous lot with a predilection for roaming urban neighborhoods shooting unarmed black suspects and harassing minorities.

It is rare, indeed, when viewers or online readers hear or read about heroic and life-saving actions undertaken by police officers, especially on national news.

Why can’t national news organizations sprinkle their broadcasts, every now and again, with some courageous act carried out by a law enforcement official?

Do most viewers and readers know, for example, that according to the Officer Down Memorial Page that 116 police officers died in the line of duty in 2015 alone, including 36 by gunfire, three by assault, and six by vehicle assault? https://goo.gl/T056ae

Would it be asking too much for national television networks and U.S. daily newspapers to adhere to the twin journalistic tenets of ``balance’’ and ``fairness’’ when it comes to police officers, just as they do any other subject, organization, or institution?

When I asked Andrew Rosenthal, New York Times editorial page editor about the imbalance in reporting the good with the bad of police officer actions, he said: ``the idea of balancing “good news” with “bad news” just doesn’t go anywhere. Is it “news" when a cop shoots an unarmed teen-ager''? Rosenthal asked. ``Yes, because that’s not what cops are supposed to do. Is it “news” when a cop does an act of kindness or catches a thief? Not really. It’s just how life is.''

Mr. Rosenthal presented a valid point; but I still argue that in ignoring courageous actions by police officers, the powerful media behemoths like The New York Times and CNN are hammering into viewers heads the misleading notion cops are scum and dregs of society, instead of enforcing laws and protecting people and property from harm, which the vast majority of officers practice 24/7.

In light of the highly publicized and well-deserved pounding the Chicago Police Department is taking over the merciless gunning down of Laquan McDonald; along with the questionable shooting death of Ronald Johnson, a father of five, who lived on Chicago’s South Side, why not mention the efforts of two other Chicago police officers who were involved in a chaotic quintuple shooting scene in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side in September of this year?

The Deering District officers, John Conneely and Michael Modzelewski, abandoned department protocol in order to save a baby, 11-month-old Princeton Chew, who was losing blood after being shot during a family outing, an innocent bystander in which the boy’s mother and grandmother were killed in the melee.

With no ambulance in sight, Conneely and  Modzelewski took the baby to the hospital themselves; Modzelewski held the child in a blanket as the baby cried and bled from the wound on the side of his body, while his partner, Conneely, was navigating the steering wheel with one hand and holding a handheld police radio with the other in order to notify emergency staff that he and his partner were on their way to the hospital with the wounded baby. The officers then made a mad dash into the emergency room where the medical staff took over to save the baby.

The Chicago Tribune, to their credit, reported on the life-saving episode. ``This is just a very small sliver of something that police officers do all over the country that never gets any type of recognition," Conneely told the Tribune, a 16-year veteran of the department. "Stories like this happen all the time that never get recognized."

And just last month, four brave Chicago police officers (Phoebe Flores, Eric King, Josue Pivaral and Shadi Sweiss), pulled two men from a burning car, minutes after a violent crash on the city's south side. The officers fearing the vehicle was about to explode with not enough time to wait for the fire department to arrive-lunged into to action to save the two unconscious passengers.

Another upbeat action by police officers; this time in Boston, which more than likely went unnoticed by national media organizations involved police officers Darryll Vinson and Jeffrey Lynch who responded to shots fired in the area of Sussex and Warwick Streets.  The officers arrived on the scene on the South End of Boston and observed a man clutching his waistband as he fled on foot. They pursued the suspect who ditched his handgun, which was successfully recovered by the officers without incident.

Because of the officer’s diligence, they apprehended, identified and arrested a dangerous felon, who was swept off the streets, preventing an act of violence to the community.

It may seem trivial to many news editors to profile fearless efforts by police officers, but it actually goes a long way in building trust within communities that law enforcement officials are working for them in order to make their neighborhoods safer when they see it on television or read about in the newspaper.

Attempting to give some sense of balance in reporting on police conduct, additionally smashes stereotypes that view the police largely as villains when pursuing black or minority suspects.

According to David A. Makin, a Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University ``the police need to be examined with scrutiny because they work for the people. However, that light also needs to shine on those other outside actors. We are quick to blame the police. However, the legislature fails to properly fund and commit to the programs we create. The police are only one institution within a fractured system. You cannot reform the police without reforming the very laws that created the issues we are struggling with today.''

-Bill Lucey

[email protected]

December 8, 2015

Melissa Click's Appointment in Danger of Being Revoked from UM School of Journalism

Melissa Click, a faculty member in the department of communication at the University of Missouri, who additionally holds a ``courtesy appointment’’ in the school of journalism, is in the process of having her appointment revoked by members of the journalism faculty, according to Brian Brooks, Professor and Associate Dean Emeritus at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Click was shown on video https://goo.gl/y59u3R ordering an Asian American photographer, Tim Tai, a student photographer on freelance assignment for ESPN away from the campus squad where a student activist group (Concerned Student 1950-who bring increased awareness to racial issues around campus) indicated they didn’t want reporters near the encampment.

Crowds are seen thickening around the photographer, while Melissa Click is heard screaming: “Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here.”

When pressed to leave, Mr. Tai held his ground, saying, “I am documenting this for a national news organization…the First Amendment protects your right to be here and mine.”

Because Professor Click acted in a ``belligerent manner’’ that could have resulted in a mob turning on the photographer, Professor Brooks said ``she has been reported as a racial harassment violator of the Title IX Act.’’

``That’s all we in Journalism can do'' Professor Brooks said. `` Her department chair is responsible for any further punishment or reprimand.''

David Kurpius, dean of the Missouri School of Journalism, meanwhile, recently issued a statement, which states that the ``Missouri School of Journalism is proud of Photojournalism senior Tim Tai for how he handled himself during a protest on Carnahan Quad on the University of Missouri campus.''

``The news media,'' Kurpius went on to write `` have First Amendment rights to cover public events. Tai handled himself professionally and with poise.''

According to one colleague of Click,  ``she has unplugged herself from conversation and no one has been able to talk to her.  We're all willing.’’

Sandra Davidson, who teaches communications law at the Missouri School of Journalism, said she was hoping to talk with Click before the day is out.

``Asking for "muscle" was clearly a mistake, and my understanding is that she has acknowledged that it was a mistake.’’

In struggling to understand her motivation, Davidson said ``perhaps fatigue played a role in the incident.  Again, I have not gotten the chance to hear from her but hope to do so soon.  A lot of people on this campus are tired and perhaps not thinking too clearly.''

Campus life has been torched with months of protests over the lack of response to racial tensions by university officials, which culminated in Timothy M. Wolfe, president of the University of Missouri System and the chancellor of the flagship campus in Columbia, R. Bowen Loftin to step down on Monday.

According to her home page at the University of Missouri, Melissa A. Click earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research interests center on popular culture texts and audiences, particularly texts and audiences disdained in mainstream culture.

In 2010, she received the Provost's Outstanding Junior Faculty Teaching Award. MU's Association of Communication Graduate Students has additionally recognized her as an “Outstanding Mentor” (2011) and as “Graduate Advisor of the Year” (2013).

Click teaches classes in ``Television Criticism’’, ``Television Program Analysis and Criticism’’, and ``Visual Literacy’’, among others.

-Bill Lucey

[email protected]

November 10, 2015

****

UPDATE

Melissa Click, assistant professor of the Department of Communication, recently issued a statement of apology regarding the Carnahan Quad protests:

``Yesterday was an historic day at MU — full of emotion and confusion. I have reviewed and reflected upon the video of me that is circulating, and have written this statement to offer both apology and context for my actions. I have reached out to the journalists involved to offer my sincere apologies and to express regret over my actions. I regret the language and strategies I used, and sincerely apologize to the MU campus community, and journalists at large, for my behavior, and also for the way my actions have shifted attention away from the students’ campaign for justice.

"From this experience I have learned about humanity and humility. When I apologized to one of the reporters in a phone call this afternoon, he accepted my apology. I believe he is doing a difficult job, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with him. His dignity also speaks well to the Journalism program at MU. Again, I wish to express my sincere apology for my actions on Carnahan Quad yesterday.”