Tag Archives: naacp

Ho Sit Down: George Zimmerman’s Dad Lashes Out On Black Community…”African-Americans Are The True Racists”

Robert Zimmerman, Sr.: Blacks Are The True Racists George Zimmerman’s father thought it was a great idea to release a little e-book giving his opinions on the Trayvon Martin shooting death case against his son….and it isn’t pretty…. According to Think Progress: As the murder trial for George Zimmerman begins, his father has released an emotional and highly unusual e-book, publicly opining on all aspects of the case. The book by Robert Zimmerman Sr., called “Florida v. Zimmerman: Uncovering the Malicious Prosecution of my Son, George” was released today on Amazon for $3.99. The most striking chapter is called “Who Are The True Racists,” an apparent effort to rebut claims that his son’s actions were racially motivated. Previously, Zimmerman Sr. “believed generally racism was a thing of the past.” He says that, personally, he hadn’t encountered much racism, even though his wife is Hispanic. But after his son shot and killed Trayvon Martin, however, Zimmerman learned that racism is “flourishing at the insistence of some in the African American Community.” He then goes on to list various black leaders and organizations that he believes are racist: Congressional Black Caucus. “[A] pathetic, self-serving group of racists… advancing their purely racist agenda.” He later adds that “all members of Congress should be ashamed of the Congressional Black Caucus, as should be their constituents.” And finally: “They are truly a disgrace to all Americans.” The NAACP. “[S]imply promotes racism and hatred for their own, primarily finical, interests” and “without prejudice and racial divide, the NAACP would simply cease to exist.” NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. “[W]hat I would expect of a racist.” Trayvon Martin’s funeral director. A “racial activist and former head of the local NAACP.” Benjamin Crump, Natialie Jackson and Darrly Parks, attorneys for Travyon Martin’s family. “The scheme team.” The National Basketball Players Association. Black Chamber of Commerce. National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers. National Black United Fund. United Negro College Fund. While stopping short of explicitly calling President Obama a racist, Zimmerman Sr. does say that Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have “shamelessly” sought to exploit his son’s case “to obtain great advantage in the African-American community.” Zimmerman Sr. says that because of Holder’s decision to investigate whether Trayvon Martin’s death violated federal civil rights laws, the FBI did not have “adequate resources to investigate clearly identified potential terrorist [sic] in the Boston area.” Now, “tragically, we have suffered the consequences of Mr. Holder’s politically motivated decisions.” Really, guy??? Your son killed an innocent young man and this is your reaction to the people trying to get justice from his death?? Ho. Sit. Down! ABC News

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Ho Sit Down: George Zimmerman’s Dad Lashes Out On Black Community…”African-Americans Are The True Racists”

Williams Wells Brown Becomes 1st African-American Published Playwright on This Day in 1858

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Playwright, lecturer, and author Williams Wells Brown (pictured) is recognized for two historic feats in the literary world: He was the first African American to…

Williams Wells Brown Becomes 1st African-American Published Playwright on This Day in 1858

‘Raging Grannies’ Turn Up the Heat on Conservative N.C. Proposals

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Like a motorist swerving to avoid an accident, lawmakers in North Carolina have pulled the state to the far right, proposing a series of laws…

‘Raging Grannies’ Turn Up the Heat on Conservative N.C. Proposals

N.C. NAACP Fights Conservative Agenda Seeking to Weaken Voter Rights and Cut Health Care, Student Aid

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  The NAACP (pictured above is their student chapter) is launching a campaign in North Carolina, challenging a series of government-sponsored proposals that some say…

N.C. NAACP Fights Conservative Agenda Seeking to Weaken Voter Rights and Cut Health Care, Student Aid

For Discussion: Black Folks Support Of Gay Marriage Is Growing

Via SF Gate: When Californians voted to outlaw same-sex marriage four years ago, one factor – both revealing and alarming to the civil rights community – was African Americans’ support for the ban. Proposition 8, which passed with a 52 percent majority, had 58 percent support among black voters. It was a different story Nov. 6 in Maine, Maryland and Washington state, where voters endorsed marriage rights for gays and lesbians, and in Minnesota, where state law already prohibits same-sex marriage but voters rejected a Prop. 8-style ban in their state Constitution. Surveys show a majority of African Americans now support those rights, said Ben Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which campaigned hard for same-sex marriage. In Maryland, where blacks make up almost 30 percent of the voters, their backing was crucial. “We’re talking about it as a civil rights issue,” and people are listening, Jealous said in an interview last week during a visit to San Francisco. He also said President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage rights in May, followed shortly afterward by an endorsement from the NAACP, was a “game changer.” If the issue reached the ballot again in California, “we would see majority black support,” Jealous said. “I’m very confident that … we would win.” San Francisco’s NAACP leader, the Rev. Amos Brown of Third Baptist Church, agreed. “People are enlightened,” said Brown, a member of the NAACP’s national board who took part in the Maryland campaign. A different view came from the Rev. Maurice Scott of Oakland, one of many African American clergy members throughout the state who vocally supported Prop. 8. “People of African descent are very religious people,” said Scott, pastor at the Great St. John Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church. “I think that many are supportive of the president but not supportive of homosexuality.” Even today, he said, all the parishioners with whom he has spoken “would not vote for (a) man-and-man, woman-and-woman relationship.” Not all assessments of the Nov. 6 vote in Maryland agreed with Jealous’ assessment of African American support of same-sex marriage. The NAACP leader said surveys just before the election found majority backing for the measure among blacks, but the Washington Post said an exit poll pegged support at 46 percent, compared with 52 percent of all voters. The surveys agree, however, that attitudes toward same-sex marriage among African Americans and other racial minorities have changed even more rapidly than the views of the general population. In Maryland, supporters of same-sex marriage sought to turn the issue of religion in the black community to their advantage. One of their leading ads featured the Rev. Delmon Coates, African American pastor of the 8,000-member Mount Ennon Baptist Church, telling viewers, “I would not want someone denying my rights based upon their religious views; therefore, I should not deny others’ rights based upon mine.” The Baltimore Sun said tests with focus groups found that the ad was a hit with voters of all races and helped the campaign raise crucial funds. Jealous said he was particularly heartened by exit polls in four states – Florida, Ohio, Georgia and North Carolina – reporting that a majority of African Americans in each state would favor a measure establishing same-sex-marriage rights. “When we’re polling majority black support in Georgia,” he said, “the issue has changed permanently across the country.” Discuss…

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For Discussion: Black Folks Support Of Gay Marriage Is Growing

Race Matters: Exit Poll Shows That Blacks Are Increasingly Favorable Toward Gay Marriage, Are You???

Do tell… Polls Show That Blacks Are More In Favor Of Gay Marriage According to Christian Post Recent polls show increasing support for same-sex marriage among blacks. A national exit poll by Edison Research shows that black voters favored their state legalizing gay marriage, 51 to 41 percent. Pew polls have also showed an increase from 36 percent in 2011 to 44 percent last month supporting gay marriage. According to the exit poll conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the NEP, 51 percent of black voters said their states should legally recognize same-sex marriage, compared with 47 percent of whites who favored this idea. It’s a big shift considering that in 2011, the Pew Research Center found that only 36 percent of blacks favored legalizing gay marriage, compared with 49 percent of whites supporting it. A Pew survey found last month that long-standing racial differences in attitudes toward gay marriage were narrowing. Consistently over the past decade, blacks have been far less supportive of legalizing gay marriage than whites. But the latest survey found blacks divided more evenly on this issue than in the past, with 44 percent in favor and 39 percent opposed to allowing gay marriage. Among whites, 49 percent favored and 41 percent opposed same-sex marriage. Says the NAACP: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation’s oldest African-American civil rights group, voted in May to support a resolution endorsing same-sex marriage at its board meeting in Miami, Fla. “The mission of the NAACP has always been to ensure political, social and economic equality of all people,” Roslyn M. Brock, chairman of the Board of Directors of the NAACP, said in a statement. “We have and will oppose efforts to codify discrimination into law.” Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement, “Civil marriage is a civil right and a matter of civil law. The NAACP’s support for marriage equality is deeply rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and equal protection of all people. The well-funded right wing organizations who are attempting to split our communities are no friend to civil rights, and they will not succeed.” Pow! Sounds like the Association is down to make sure that Michael and Matthew can get married and divorced like everyone else in the country. Do YOU support gay marriage? Why or why not? Image via YouTube

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Race Matters: Exit Poll Shows That Blacks Are Increasingly Favorable Toward Gay Marriage, Are You???

For Discussion: NAACP Creates 61-Page HIV And AIDS Manual For Black Church Leaders To Share With Their Congregations

NAACP Creates HIV Manual for Black Churches Houston pastor Timothy W. Sloan has felt for years that he needed to talk about HIV and AIDS with his congregation . But he worried the 3,000 mostly African-American parishioners at St. Luke Missionary Baptist Church in Humble, Texas, could be offended and leave the church or curtail their giving. “On a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 6,” he said of his concerns. Then, a year and a half ago, he joined a group of pastors organized by the NAACP to write a manual for church leaders like himself on talking to their congregations about a disease that has a disproportionate effect on the black community. Sloan spoke to his congregation about the issue soon after. They surprised him with a standing ovation. Now, Sloan hopes others can use the manual he helped create to talk to their congregations. This month, the NAACP released it and a 61-page activity manual at the group’s convention in Texas. Shavon Arline-Bradley, the director of health programs for the NAACP, who helped oversee the manual’s creation, said it makes sense for the nation’s largest civil rights organization to be involved in the discussion of HIV and AIDS. “People look at us as just civil rights, and what they’re missing is that health is one of the most pressing civil rights issues of our time,” Arline-Bradley said. Religious leaders who helped with the manual said black churches have been reluctant to talk about the disease. That’s in part because the topic is wrapped up with sex and homosexuality, often taboo topics in the church. “Sex is not something church people like to talk about. It’s something they like to do,” said the Rev. Joseph Smith, the assistant to the pastor of the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va., and one of the people who worked on the manual. Despite the squeamishness, the NAACP said black churches can play a role in combating the alarming impact of HIV on the black community. African-Americans make up almost half of all new HIV infections, and blacks are less likely to get treatment and more likely to die of complications from AIDS than any other race. The guides suggest pastors talk about HIV in sermons, connect their churches with groups that serve people with HIV, promote safe sex and access to condoms, and organize church-based HIV screening drives. The manual also includes facts about the disease and passages from the Bible to serve as inspiration. Discuss… Source

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For Discussion: NAACP Creates 61-Page HIV And AIDS Manual For Black Church Leaders To Share With Their Congregations

A Message From Trayvon Martin’s Mother Sybrina Fulton For Mother’s Day [VIDEO]

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Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mom, released a video asking parents nationwide to support the Second Chance campaign, a new national campaign working to reform, repeal…

A Message From Trayvon Martin’s Mother Sybrina Fulton For Mother’s Day [VIDEO]

Our History Makers: Thurgood Marshall

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The fight to end segregation was a three-pronged attack. The beloved Dr. Martin Luther King Dr. evoked sympathy from the nation, the militant Malcolm X evoked fear, and Thurgood Marshall evoked the law. While King and X gave blacks the courage to stand up to segregation, it was Marshall who fought for these brave people in court. Through a systematic plan of legal attack, Marshall and the NAACP legal defense fund dismantled a system that had shackled blacks since slavery. Before Marshall won his landmark cases in the Supreme Court, he got a little pay-back as a young attorney in Maryland. In 1936, Marshall won a major civil rights case that’s almost forgotten. The case, Murray v. Pearson forced the University of Maryland to accept its first African-American student. It was a sweet victory for Marshall who was denied entrance to Maryland five years later because he was black. The case caught the attention of NAACP leaders and Marshall joined the legal defense fund. As a lawyer for the NAACP, Marshall won 27 of 33 cases that argued before the Supreme Court. His success also brought international acclaim. The United Nations and the United Kingdom asked Marshall to help draft the constitutions of the emerging African nations of Ghana and what is now Tanzania. Before his subsequent nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1967, Thurgood Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. Some of his more recognized triumphs were : Chambers v. Florida , 309 U.S. 227 (1940) Marshall and his team of lawyers persuaded the Supreme Court to overturn a criminal conviction based on a coerced confession. Smith v. Allwright , 321 U.S. 649 (1944) Marshall convinced the Court to strike down a Texas practice which excluded blacks from participating in primary elections. Morgan v. Virginia , 328 U.S. 373 (1946) Marshall convinced the Court to strike down segregation on buses on routes of interstate travel). Shelley v. Kraeme r, 334 U.S. 1 (1948) Marshall convinced the Court to overturn lower court rulings in favor of restrictive covenants which prohibited land from being sold to African Americans. Sipuel v. University of Oklahoma , 332 U.S. 631 (1948) and Sweatt v. Painter , 339 U.S. 629 (1950) Marshall persuaded the Court to require universities in Oklahoma and Texas to integrate their law schools. Marshall’s greatest triumph was in the landmark cases Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), Marshall challenged the constitutionality of “separate but equal.”Marshall’s civil rights lawsuits aren’t the sum of his career. As an attorney and justice, he created new protections under law for women, children, prisoners, and the homeless. Read interviews and more information about Marshall’s career right here .

Our History Makers: Thurgood Marshall

Florida NAACP Members ‘Will Not Be Silenced’ By New Voter Laws

‘The rules are setting up minority and young voters to fail,’ University of South Florida NAACP President Vanity Shields tells MTV News. By Gil Kaufman Vanity Shields Photo: MTV News TAMPA, Florida — It’s fitting that 20-year-old University of South Florida junior Vanity Shields, 20, chose to speak to MTV’s Power of 12 in the shadow of her campus’ Martin Luther King Jr. memorial reflecting pond. Nearly 50 years after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed discriminatory laws that disenfranchised black voters thanks to the tireless work of the civil-rights giant, Shields is preparing for another voting-rights fight in her state. The president of the NAACP chapter on the USF campus and first-time voter is concerned that a new Florida law , ostensibly aimed at cutting down on voter fraud, might leave many young and African-American voters off the rolls this presidential election year . “I personally feel that the rules are setting up minority and young voters to fail,” the health sciences major said of the new law, which carries heavy penalties for third-party organizations trying to register new voters if they fail to comply with the sometimes-byzantine rules. “Now they have 48 hours to fill out this massive amount of paperwork.” A portion of the new law includes restrictions on community-based voter-registration drives that require anyone registering new voters on behalf of organizations such as Rock the Vote or the League of Women Voters to turn all forms in within 48 hours of obtaining a signature or face unspecified civil penalties. Those two groups have been forced to suspend their voter-registration efforts in Florida this year because, according to a press release announcing a lawsuit seeking to block the new provisions, they “include burdensome administrative requirements, unreasonably tight deadlines for submission for completed forms and unnecessarily harsh penalties for even the slightest delay or mistake.” Shields said the USF NAACP chapter has been very active on the issue and planned a general body meeting called “The Colors of Justice” on Monday (January 30) to discuss the new rules and raise awareness about them. There will also be a voter-awareness rally soon, though she said efforts such as the NAACP’s get-out-the-vote “Souls to the Poll” action from years past has been canceled this year because of new restrictions on registering voters on the Sunday before an election. “I am originally from New Jersey, and Hillsboro County in Tampa is a pre-clearance [area]. … What that means is that people who were previously registered are still able to vote, but with this new law, if Hillsboro County were not pre-clearance, I would have to go back to New Jersey to vote,” said Brianna Simms, 20, the second vice president of the USF NAACP chapter. “As a college student, I don’t have the funds or the time to do that, so that would limit my impact on the country in choosing our next president.” Shields said awareness of the voting issue is pretty low at the moment, but she plans to start posting about it on Twitter and Facebook, distribute fliers and ask her fellow students if they know about the changes. “I feel that our demographic is being targeted and that they’re trying to silence us, but we will not be silenced,” she said. “We will speak our minds and keep our right to vote.” MTV is on the scene in Florida! Check back for up-to-the-minute coverage of the primaries and stick with PowerOf12.org throughout the 2012 presidential election season. Related Videos Florida Primary: The Race Is On! Barnstorming The Iowa Caucus With Andrew Jenks

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Florida NAACP Members ‘Will Not Be Silenced’ By New Voter Laws