King’s Dream of a New South
March 31, 2008
Steve Suitts, Southern Political Report
In early 1965 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told President Lyndon B. Johnson that passage of the federal Voting Rights Act would create a “coalition of the Negro vote and the moderate white vote that will really make the New South.” Congress passed the Act seven months later, but Dr. King’s New South coalition became a long deferred dream as racially divided voting patterns in national elections quickly widened and stayed below the Mason & Dixon line. Millions of new black voters registered and voted as Democrats, but millions of white voters, especially in the Deep South, left the party of their parents for the Republican Party.
In all but one of the 12 presidential elections since 1960 (the first election year when civil rights became a national political issue), Democrats have received a majority of black votes in the Deep South and, in turn, have lost most of those states. Only in 1976, when Georgia’s former governor Jimmy Carter became president, has a Democratic candidate for president won the Deep South with black and white voters. In all other presidential elections, including President Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 and 1996, Democrats failed to muster a coalition that could carry the Deep South.
America lauds Martin Luther King, but undermines his legacy every day
March 30, 2008
Gary Younge, The Guardian (UK)
The National Civil Rights Museum sits in what was the Lorraine Motel, just beyond the shadows of Memphis’s skyscrapers and the garish neon glow of Beale Street - the main drag made famous by the likes of BB King and James Baldwin. The first words of the first exhibit state: “Protest against injustice is deeply rooted in the African-American experience.” Then come pictures of lynchings, burning crosses, martyrs and heroes, alongside mock-ups of Rosa Parks in the bus and lunch counters waiting to be integrated.
About two-thirds of the way through is a replica of the Birmingham jail cell from which Martin Luther King wrote his letter in response to the local white clergy asking him to stop the protests and leave town. “I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate … who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice,” he wrote. “Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Bishop Long to cooperate with Senate inquiry
March 30, 2008
CHRISTOPHER QUINN, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of two recalcitrant metro Atlanta televangelists under investigation by a Senate committee has decided to cooperate.
Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia has indicated he will give the Senate Finance Committee the financial and corporate documents sought by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), said a Grassley spokeswoman.
The Rev. Creflo Dollar and Taffi Dollar of World Changers Church International in College Park had not responded as of Friday to the March 11 letter asking for cooperation, said Jill Kozeny, on Grassley’s staff.
National Black Justice Coalition “Power of Us” Conference
March 30, 2008
Baltimore, MD
For more information, please visit http://www.nbjcoalition.org/events/.
Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 38th Annual Legislative Conference
March 30, 2008
Washington D.C.
For more information, please visit http://www.cbcfinc.org/.
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