‘Debt Relief & Reparations for HBCUs’

The enslavement of African Americans in the United States is an atrocity that Orlando Matthews abhors and doesn't mind talking about. He spoke about that desolate period in human history during a recent two-day conference and community town hall meeting in Nashville on "Debt Relief & Reparations for HBCUs."

The conference was held on the campus of Tennessee State University and organized to save Historically Black Colleges and Universities from budget shortfalls, to restore Africana Studies on HBCU campuses, and to keep the focus solely on educating African-American students.

Though Matthews was one of several conference facilitators, there were others of note, including U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), who conducted workshops during the community town hall meeting at Ray of Hope Community Church and emphasized the urgency for reparations to keep HBCUs solvent to avoid going defunct.

The focus of Matthews' discussion, however, oscillated between the birth of reparations, the early proponents of reparations (or government recompense for crimes against humanity), and the movement in Tennessee.

"The United States is guilty of crimes against humanity," said Matthews, pointing to the book "My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-slave Reparations," which he used as a point of reference in his discussion.

"The early reparations struggle in Tennessee was led by Mr. I.H. Dickerson and Mrs. Callie House, who lived and worked in Nashville in the late 1800s," said Matthews, a longtime proponent of reparations and community activist.

Rep. John Conyers, Camille Mabry and Orlando Matthews.

House, an ex-slave, "mulatto," widowed washerwoman and mother of five, lived in Nashville and died 70 years before the advent of the civil rights movement. She was the ringleader of a movement in Nashville that demanded justice and reparations for ex-slaves for centuries of unpaid labor.

Dickerson also was active in reparations for ex-slaves. He and House headed the National Ex-slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, but were investigated by the United States Bureau of Pension for their part in an alleged scheme to defraud "ignorant" blacks.

The movement that House and Dickerson led in Nashville, which preceded Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, was the precursor to the civil rights movement and recently Conyers' unsuccessful attempt to get a reparations bill passed in Congress.

Conyers first introduced bill H.R.40 – Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act – in January of 1989. He has re-introduced the bill in every Congress "and will continue to do so until it's passed into law."

     The conversation about reparations eventually segued into the struggle to keep the country's more than 100 HBCUs on solid financial footing. Matthews said many of them are under attack due to funding shortages and changes in legislation – particularly the dismantling of affirmative action in some states.

"In the last 10 years, they've brought in white presidents and white students into these HBCUs in the name of diversity," said Matthews, a 2001 delegate at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa.

Matthews was one of 400 delegates to address the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade as a crime against humanity. He termed the financial hemorrhaging of HBCUs as the government's change in policy to merge HBCUs into the mainstream of higher education in order to comply with uniform admissions standards.

Have black colleges and universities thus outlived their usefulness? Matthews pointed to past atrocities against African Americans and said HBCUs are still relevant today. Other conference speakers and workshop facilitators agreed.

Dr. Abdul Alkalimat, who teaches Africana Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Campaign, titled his discussion, "Reparations and the Mission Essential Need for Africana Studies at HBCUs." Dr. Raymond Richardson, a professor in the mathematics department at TSU, followed with the topic, "The Maryland HBCU Case Verdict and Its Implications for HBCUs in Tennessee."

In the Maryland HBCU case, U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Black issued a 60-page ruling last year that said in part there was no discrimination in the state's capital expenditures between HBIs (historically black institutions) and TWIs (traditionally white institutions). This was a blow to the HBIs (the plaintiff), who sought more money per student vs. TWIs (the defendant) from the state of Maryland.

In his spiel to the workshop participants, Conyers continued advocating for African Americans to receive reparations and debt relief for the nation's HBCUs.

The conference and town hall meeting were dedicated to House; the late Jackson, Miss., mayor Chokwe Lumumba; the late Dr. Harold R. Mitchell, who taught speech pathology and audiology at TSU; and the late Edward H. Wisdom Jr., director of Management Information Systems for 37 years at TSU.

The dedication read: "They gave the last full measure in the struggle for truth, love, education, justice and reparations for the sons and daughters of 'Mother Africa.'"
Sponsors included Save TSU Community Coalition (STCC), Nashville Black Covenant Coalition (NBCC), African American Cultural Alliance, HERU Fraternity Inc. & Het-HERU Sorority Inc., Tennessee State University College of Liberal Arts – Department of History, Political Science, Geography, and Africana Studies.

Blacks typically don’t vote GOP, but certain remarks from Republican candidates will keep them at bay

            Super Tuesday is upon us now, and the contenders vying for the Republican Party presidential nomination are hell-bent on booting President Barack Obama and the First Family from the White House by any means necessary. Their rhetoric is simply fodder for op-eds and news reports.

The race has been swift, dirty and almost unforgiving at times. And millions of dollars have been spent thus far. But when three of the contenders -- Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum -- are caught mincing words, or “misspeaking,” on the campaign trail, it does little, in my opinion, to attract voters outside the GOP base.

“I like being able to fire people,” Romney said a few weeks ago. He was castigated for the remarks and other controversial statements as well -- and deservingly so. In front of certain crowds he’s trying to appease, he’s done nothing more than to stir the ire of non-supporters.

Here’s what Gingrich said about poverty: “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash,' unless it's illegal.”

These and other gaffes and incendiary remarks cannot be ignored as media sound bites are replayed over and over and used against each other and by the opposing party. If Romney, for example, is hoping to win the black vote – which I doubt that’s an objective other than trying to secure the Republican base -- he might as well forget it. There are only a handful of black Republicans anyway.

Gingrich might as well forget the black vote as well, particularly after slamming Obama time and time again as “the best food stamp president in history.” That statement doesn’t bode well with African Americans and others who see the allocation of food stamps as a hand up, not a hand out. Of course, there are recipients, black and white, who will continue to choose food stamps over an honest day’s work.  

It also didn’t help “Mr. Money Bags” when he told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien that he is “not concerned with the very poor.” Whether that statement was taken out of context or not, it doesn’t matter. Poor people, I’m sure, took umbrage no matter what Romney’s intentions were.

Think about it, Romney, 15.1 percent of the U.S. population was listed as poor in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In terms of race, African Americans comprise 13 percent of the total U.S. population, but 27.4 percent of them were listed as poor, compared to 26.6 percent of Hispanics, 9.9 percent of non-Hispanic whites, and 12.1 percent of Asians. He mucked that one up pretty bad.

According to slate.com, Romney makes $59,000 every 24 hours and is said to be worth $200 million. Therefore, he wouldn’t understand the plight of the nation’s poor, black or white, and those who are grappling with serious unemployment.

“I’m also unemployed,” the former Massachusetts governor told a group of unemployed workers at a campaign stop in Florida. What was he thinking? The audience may have warmed up to Romney’s remarks, but I’m certain the rest of us didn’t get it. Was it a joke? I didn’t get the punch line.

Although both Romney and Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, hope to win the Republican nomination to take on Obama and the Democrats in the general election on Nov. 6, 2012, they’d better wise up and take seriously the voters who don’t typically vote Republican.

But now they have Rick Santorum to deal with. The former Pennsylvania senator is surging and Gingrich has fallen way behind. He and Romney are now considered the frontrunners. But then in Santorum’s zeal to win the Republican nomination, the self-described conservative has said some stupid things on the stump earlier in the race.

Taking a dig at the President’s health care reform, Santorum told a group of reporters in Iowa, in April 2011, that his daughter, who was born with a genetic abnormality, would not survive in a country where “socialized medicine” is the norm.

“I look at how society with socialized medicine treats children like Bella, and children like Bella don’t survive,” he told The Des Moines Register. “Children like Bella are not given the treatment that other children are given.”

The fact is the Affordable Care Act prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions and disabilities.

And check this one out: During an interview in January 2011 on Christian television, Santorum explained to CNS News editor-in-chief Terry Jeffrey that he found it almost remarkable for a black man to not know when life begins – “to say now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.”

The senator, who is pro-life, hammered away at Obama, who is pro-choice. But Santorum’s comments seemed to suggest, according to writer Igor Volsky of ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, that since Obama is black, he should know that a fetus is a person since black people weren’t considered a full human being when they were enslaved.

The audacity of such statements will continue to inflame the electorate on the opposite side of the GOP. I’m sure that after Super Tuesday and down the homestretch to the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., someone will emerge the nominee.

Whoever he is -- Romney, Gingrich or Santorum – he’d better watch the sordid language that spills from his mouth. African Americans will be watching and waiting for the nominee who’ll try to deny President Obama a second term by any means necessary.