Volume 114 No.

25

www.afro.com

50 CENTS

Black History Month Edition

FEBRUARY 4, 2006- FEBRUARY 10, 2006

Coretta Scott King, a leader in her own right

Not many people knew Coretta Scott King. Sure, they knew her face, knew that she was the widow of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but they never really knew her. Too bad it may take her death for some to really see beyond her widows veil. Scott King died on Jan. 30 at a holistic hospital in Mexico at the age of 78. She had been struggling since last August when she was admitted to the Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta with a mild heart attack and stroke that left her unable to speak or walk and with a slight paralysis on her right side. And in a statement the King family said she was also battling ovarian cancer and was told her case was terminal, which prompted them to visit the Santa Monica Health Institute. Doctors there reportedly told the Associated Press that the By Zenitha Prince AFRO Staff Writer cause of her death was respiratory failure, brought on by both conditions. Friends and loved ones said she died just as she lived with dignity but worried that in life, Mrs. King was often underestimated and misunderstood. The public saw this composed, in sense, brilliant myself used to say we belong to a club that nobody should have to join--the widow of club. People have said that we got our notoriety off of our husbands work but Coretta brushed those comments off. I used to ask her, Dont you ever get angry? And she said, My dear, it doesnt really do any good.

INSIDE

woman who was simply Dr. Kings widow [but] she was so much more than that, said friend Myrlie Evers-Williams, former NAACP president and widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers. She, Betty Shabazz [Malcolm Xs widow] and

It was as if she was born for the breadth and depth of responsibility that she incurred as the wife of Dr. Martin Luther King. Indeed, she was strong, if not stronger than he was.
But that is who she was, many said, a quietly confident woman who knew the importance of her role in Dr. Kings life and work. I think people just dont know the role she played Coretta Scott King, shown in this 2004 photo along with a picture of her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speaks during an interview at the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Scott King died on Jan. 30.
AP Photo/John Bazmore

Continued on A11

By Khalil Abdullah Managing Editor

Alito confirmed: Democratic desertions

one Republican, Sen. Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island, felt compelled to break ranks with his party to cast a no vote. Democrats also hewed to their partys line as all but four Sen. Robert Byrd, W.Va.; Kent Conrad, N.D.; Tim Johnson, S.D.; and Ben Nelson, Neb. voted against President Bushs nominee. The four Democratic votes, added to the Republican count, gave Bush the 58 votes he needed to trump the 42 anti-Alito votes mustered by the Democrats, which included the ballot of the lone registered independent in the Senate, Jim Jeffords of Vermont. The real drama in the battle over who would fill the seat of retiring Justice Sandra Day OConnor had occurred before the confirmation vote when Senate Democrats attempted to mount a filibuster against Alito. Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy faced what ultimately was to be a divisive intra-party vote when 19 of his Democratic Senate colleagues broke ranks and joined the Republicans to end the debate over Alitos judicial record and philosophy. Only 60 votes were needed to end the debate. The four Democrats who voted for Alitos confirmation, Byrd, Conrad, Johnson and Nelson, were joined by another 15 Democrats in a vote to end the debate. Those senators were: Daniel Akaka, Hawaii; Max Baucus, Mont.; Jeff Bingham, N.M.; Maria Cantwell, Wash.; Thomas Carper, Del.; Daniel Inouye, Hawaii; Mary Landrieu, La.; Joseph Lieberman, Conn.; Blanche Lincoln, Ark.; Bill Nelson, Fla.; Mark Pryor, Ark.; John Rockefeller IV, W.Va.; and Ken Salazaar, Colo. With the exception of Florida and Louisiana, the 19 senate districts do not have a statistically significant AfricanAmerican population. Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, issued a statement on the Alito vote that clearly showed his disappointment. With the Continued on A2

A6 Vernon Evans appeal continues A2

The U.S. Senate voted along partisan lines on Jan. 31 to confirm Samuel Alito Jr. to take a seat as Americas 110th Supreme Court Justice. The outcome of the vote was a forgone conclusion. Earlier in the day, before President Bushs State of the Union Address, 54 Republican senators voted as a bloc to support Alito. Only

Democrats who voted for Alitos confirmation

Robert Byrd, W.Va. Kent Conrad, N.D. Tim Johnson, S.D. Ben Nelson, Neb.

Democrats who voted against a filibuster

Daniel Akaka, Hawaii Max Baucus, Mont. Jeff Bingham, N.M. Maria Cantwell, Wash. Thomas Carper, Del. Daniel Inouye, Hawaii Mary Landrieu, La. Joseph Lieberman, Conn. Blanche Lincoln, Ark. Bill Nelson, Fla. Mark Pryor, Ark. John Rockefeller IV, W.Va. Ken Salazaar, Colo. Herb Kohl, Wisc. Byron Dorgan, N.D.
*With the exception of Florida and Louisiana, the 19 senate districts do not have a statistically significant African-American population.

INSERTS
African Americans On Wheels Character Education Listen to First Edition

By Zenitha Prince AFRO Staff Writer

Was there a conspiracy in New Orleans?

Roderick C. Willis, Host Fridays, 6 p.m.

This is the 3rd of an 8-part series of stories about the Gulf Coast and the road to recovery after Hurricane Katrina. This project is a cooperative effort between the Baltimore Afro and National Newspaper Publishers Association.

See Calendar of Events on B3

New Orleans - On Sept. 12, Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan was in Charlotte, N.C., as part of a

23-city tour to promote the Millions More Movement march in Washington, then mere weeks away, when he made an allegation that has stirred ripples of reaction in the public pool. I heard from a very reliable source, who saw a 25-footdeep crater under the levee breach, Farrakhan said. It may have been blown up to destroy the Black part of town and keep the White part dry. Farrakhan is not alone in believing that the poor and

Black of New Orleans were somehow targeted to sustain the worse of the Katrina. Mother Nature is one thing but this goes beyond Mother Nature, said Raynold Fenelon, Continued on A10

afro.com
Your History Your Community Your News

State of the Union

Reps of color respond

Latinos deserve better than disingenuous promises
Congresswoman Grace F. Napolitano, Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, issued the following strong statement in response to President Bushs State of the Union Address. Last night, President Bush spoke to the nation about the state of the union while painting an optimistic picture of whats to come. Today, the Hispanic community must look beyond the rhetoric of his speech to see the appalling track record he has established with our community since he took office. Tonight, the average working class Latino will go to sleep with a low-wage job, with no health insurance or adequate health care, without a high school diploma or college degree and with less disposable income to afford either the insurance or the degree all this because

Was AFRO FReeped?

Last weeks AFRO.com poll question concerning Sen. Hillary Clintons remark that the House of Representatives is run like a plantation elicited many more responses than the weekly norm. The poll question received more than a 150 percent increase in voter participation, with almost 90 percent voting the same way. This unusually high number of responses and the actual voting pattern raised some questions with the publisher. A full investigation, however, was issued after reading the response of one anonymous voter, Your poll is being hacked by freerepublic.com so the results shouldnt be taken too seriously.

CBC chair says country moving in the wrong direction

Molding web opinion

Some media appear to be agitated by the remarks made by Sen. Hillary Clinton that refer to the Republican leadership as being like a plantation. Their perception of this statement is, apparently,that it is, or should be, offensive to African Americans. Which of the following most accurately reflects your feeling about this so called controversy?

AFROs online poll

Washington, D.C. Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Melvin L. Watt today issued the following statement summarizing the points he made in a State of the Union speech he delivered in Durham, N.C., yesterday. As the President prepares to deliver his assessment of the State of the Union, I think we should focus on the criteria ordinary citizens should use in assessing the state of their families, communities and nation. hese criteria would lead us to answer the following questions: (1) Are we healthy? (2) Are we secure? (3) Are we fiscally and economically healthy? (4) How are we perceived? (5) Are we happy? and (6) Are things getting better? I think most Americans will agree that these are appropriate criteria and most will agree that they are simply not doing very well

Im outraged by her remarks

83% 9% 8%

Hillary gets it. The others are still lost Plantation as a description of Republican leadership is a severe understatement

Continued on A4

Continued on A4

Continued on A2

Copyright 2006 by the Afro-American Company

A10

The Baltimore Afro-American, February 4, 2006 - February 10, 2006

A recommendation that the city of New Orleans impose a four-month building freeze in neighborhoods worst-hit by Hurricane Katrina has unleashed a firestorm of protest from community residents and activists, who see it as an attempt to keep poor African Americans away from the city. Theyre using the excuse that the land is untenable as an excuse to not bring back Black people to the city. They called it making a smaller footprint; we called it an ethnic cleansing of New Orleans, said community activist Malcom Suber of the Peoples Hurricane Relief Committee. The areas they called for no rebuilding are the predominantly Black and poor neighborhoods in the Lower Ninth Ward, Gentilly and East New Orleans. The moratorium on building permits was suggested by an Urban Planning Committee, part of a special commission tapped by New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin to devise a recovery plan for the beleaguered city, on Jan. 11. And in the following weeks, the commission submitted other plans for shoring up the citys infrastructure, schools and economy among other areas. The Urban Land Institute instigated a similar uproar in November when it suggested that the city first devote its resources to rebuilding nondamaged areas to facilitate a more effective recovery. But many fear that such stuttered recovery opens the way for the government to seize their property through eminent domain. This is a plan that redlines neighborhoods and sets up a land grab by suggesting that

By Zenitha Prince AFRO Staff Writer

New Orleans recovery plan met with protest

some communities should give up their right to rebuild, said former New Orleans mayor and president of the National Urban League Marc Morial. It seems very highhanded and presumptuous. Who makes that decision--is it made by people in a conference room whove never visited the lower Ninth ward or who just visited a couple of times after Katrina or should it be made by the collective will of the citys residents? Fundamentally, everyone should have a right to return, Morial added. But the building freeze is a necessary part of the process, said Ray Manning, owner of a Black architectural firm that is consulting with the commission on the neighborhood recovery plan. The use of the word moratorium has created a lot of excitement in the community but during this period when were doing the initial planning were not suggesting that people who are already rebuilding their homes should stop doing so, Manning said. Were saying that for those areas that are particularly ravaged, there are many factors that will affect our ability to rebuild. For example, Manning said, the city cannot start rebuilding until FEMA issues the new minimum flood insurance levels for those areas. The process is also complicated by the fact that the citys share of the $29 billion in federal storm relief earmarked for the Gulf Coast states will be channeled through another governmental body, Gov. Kathleen Blancos Louisiana Recovery Authority. People are very concerned about the time factor but that is

Water flows out of the breach in the levee in the Industrial Canal into the lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, Sept. 23, 2005. The neighborhood had just been pumped dry from flood waters of Hurricane Katrina when tides from Hurricane Rita caused the temporary repairs to fail. out of the citys hands, Manning said. Were not saying people cant rebuild but were saying that there is going to be a process. For Mayor Nagin, who is not bound by the recommendations, the process will be a hazardous one, muddied as it is by the citys history of dirty politics and racial and class discord. Already, citizens are questioning the validity of the report and the make up of the commission, saying the body is stacked with members of the rich, White ruling class and realty developers, like Joe Canizaro, who chaired the Urban Planning Committee. Nothing legitimate is coming from this process and whatever comes out of it is just to delay the process to force a decision by poor people who may decide they should strike out in another area. They scattered us throughout the country so there is no concentration of our forces in the city to demand something better so it becomes a fait accompli, Suber said. People believe this is a land grab to deprive them of their land and then years down the road develop that property and sell it for millions more than what was paid. Manning said he has been addressing that question ever since the plan was aired and said no developers will benefit from this process. I am Black. Ive lived in this city for 26 years, Ive raised my daughter here, I have friends here, I understand the sentiments of the people in this community but I would not be in this project if the end game was to enrich Joe Canizaro or any other develop-

AP Photo/Ric Francis

er, Manning said. The question of who returns to New Orleans and which neighborhoods are rebuilt can be solved if the creation of a state-of-the-art levee system is made the top priority, Morial said. Katrina didnt come and just dump a lot of rain on the city. The levees broke. If a first-class levee system is put in place there should be no question about not rebuilding. This idea of cordoning off entire neighborhoods is just not sound thinking, he said.

Was there a conspiracy in New Orleans?

Continued from A1 French Quarter. The current levee system, a 16-foot high wall that covers about 350 miles, was built after Hurricane Betsy in 1965 to counter, maximally, a Category 3 storm. Katrina, at 125 miles per hour on landfall, was a Category 4. I dont think anybody anticipated the break of the levees, President Bush said soon after the storm. However, thats not true. Scientists predicted in publications that the deterioration of natural barriers, a sinking delta and rising sea levels would eventually prove too much for the levees. So did a 2002 Times-Picayune prophetic series that warned that major flooding was just a matter of time. Engineers, scientists and state and city attorneys are now investigating whether malfeasance in design, construction or maintenance caused the flooding. It became obvious to us pretty quickly that the flood walls along the 17th Street Canal had not failed through overtopping, they failed through some other mechanism, said G. Paul Kemp, associate professor of Louisiana State Universitys School of the Coast and the Environment and a member of a state sponsored forensics team investigating the flooding. The preliminary report does show some questionable decisions about the depth that they drove the sheet pile that support the wall. Another preliminary report by a team of engineers from the University of California at Berkeley and the American Society of Civil Engineers concluded: Several major and costly breaches appear to have been the result of stability failures of the foundation soils and/or the earthen levee embankments themselves. In addition, it appears that many of the levees and floodwalls that failed due to overtopping might have performed better if relatively inexpensive details had been added and/or altered during their original design and construction. Still, locals hold on to the theory that the wall was deliberately blown, goaded on by memories of government complicity in the Tuskegee experiment and the Federal Bureau of Investigations COINTELPRO program to undermine civil rights groups. The Tuskegee experiment was a government-sanctioned program that began in 1932 and involved the use of 399 Black men as guinea pigs to discover the effects of syphilis. Though told they would receive free special treatment for their bad blood, the men were left untreated end until the early 70s when its details were exposed during a Congressional investigation. Despite the backdrop of that history, Katrina theories have been mocked by conservative media pundits such as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Larry Elder. Elder said in a Sept. 22 column published in the Jewish World Review online: For many people, past discrimination means present and future discrimination. End of discussion... Though the conspiracy theories may appear outlandish to some, there is proof that something like this happened in the past. It happened when Hurricane Betsy deluged New Orleans in 1965 and in the Mississippi Flood of 1927, as John M. Barry discusses in his book Rising Tide. The book discussed the social and political forces that precipitated the flood and pointed to possible reasons for deliberately flooding St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes where poor Whites and Blacks lived. Back then, a club of rich bankers ran the city and made the fatal decision to blow the levees in order to save their businesses. Daily, hundreds of thousands of dollars were being withdrawn from banks. If the fear grew great enough, if a run developed on the bank, it would hurt, and perhaps destroy, weaker banks. Shortterm credit was disappearing, period. Long term, if the nations businessmen lost confidence in the safety of New Orleans serious damage could result, Barry wrote on page 231. ...Pools bank was the most vulnerable in the city; he had aggressively loaned money to sugar planters. A crevasse on the rivers west bank could destroy them, and his bank. Dynamiting the levee on the east bank might also relieve them. Pool argued, The people of New Orleans are in such a panic that all who can do so are leaving the city. Thousands are leaving daily. Only dynamite will restore confidence. That flood was the final straw for thousands of Black laborers, who left the Delta in droves, forever changing the economic and social structure of the area. Though for different reasons, some see the same forces at work now. Same thing--politicians, corruption, greed...they wanted this area to widen the canal for cruise ships, said Pamela Everage, 39, a Ninth Ward resident who works on a cruise ship in Hawaii. Others see the flood and the subsequent dispersal of poor Blacks to far-flung places across the nation as an ethnic cleansing of New Orleans. Naomi Klein, in article titled Purging the Poor, published in the Oct. 10 issue of the Nation magazine, said New Orleans is already displaying a dramatic demographic shift since most of the people who can return are White. Additionally, she said, given high vacancy rates in many parts of the city--French Quarter, Garden District and Jefferson Parish--many evacuees could be housed in the city. Roughly 70,000 of New Orleans poorest homeless evacuees could move back to the city alongside returning White homeowners, without a single structure being built, she stated. Mayor Nagin and others have said the flood presented an opportunity to restructure and rebuild smaller, better neighborhoods for the citys inhabitants. To many, thats an indirect way of saying it will be a Whiter New Orleans. In fact, the New York Times published a story recently under the headline, In New Orleans, Smaller May Mean Whiter. It noted, ...Race has become a subtext for just about every contentious decision the city faces: where to put FEMA trailers; which neighborhoods to rebuild; how the troubled school system should be reorganized; when elections should be held... Bringing back poor people is rarely discussed. All the talk about a smaller, better New Orleans is tantamount to not rebuilding lowincome public housing, said Robert Bullard, a professor at Clark Atlanta University and an environmental justice activist. And not rebuilding those houses is singularly unfair to Black people, whose lives are often invested in their homes. Ninety percent of Black wealth is tied into their homes so youre not only destroying Black neighborhoods, youre destroying Black wealth. Fenelon, the New Orleans taxi driver, added, The mayor talking about building houses that are better than the ones people lived in but will they be able to afford those houses? They dont talk about that. He continued, It wont be the same...theyre trying to get rid of us, you know, he said. You got White folks that come all the way from Baton Rouge every day to get to work. Think about how much easier its going to be for them to have some property right down here that will take them just five minutes to get to work. In fact, Alphonso Jackson, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said he advised Mayor Nagin to not rebuild the Ninth Ward, according to a Sept. 29 Houston Chronicle article, and predicted that the city would lose a significant portion of its African-American citizenry. African Americans previously comprised 67 percent of the citys residents. Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time, he is quoted. New Orleans is not going to be as Black as it was for a long time, if ever again. Mayor Ray Nagin created a controversy when he said in a Martin Luther King Day speech: Its time for us to come together. Its time for us to rebuild New Orleans -- the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. This city will be a majority African-American city. Its the way God wants it to be. You cant have New Orleans no other way. It wouldnt be New Orleans. Under a barrage of criticism, Nagin quickly retracted that statement. Fenelon, the taxi driver, says he understands the tension over rebuilding New Orleans. I tell you boy, a lot of politics have everything to do with it. Its all politics, he said, and added, There aint no real love for us Black people, especially in the ghetto.

a New Orleans cabdriver. They blew that levee. I believe the Canal Street levee broke but they blew that one by the Ninth Ward. Then they talking about a barge hit the levee...These people are full of st. There is no question that the 9th Ward was an unsightly scene. Black bodies floated in the poisonous stew of gasoline and sewage; Black men, women and children were marooned on roofs and ignored by passing helicopters, Black people were crammed into a putrid Superdome by the thousands going for days without food or water and Black homes sustained the worst of the damage. Many believe it was planned. The rumor that officials purposefully breached the levees to sluice water away from majority White, rich areas like the French Quarter has flooded the blogosphere. Andrea Garland, a former resident now living in Texas, wrote in her blog at Getyouracton.com: Also heard that part of the reason our house flooded is they dynamited part of the levee after the first section brokethey did this to prevent Uptown (the rich part of town) from being flooded. Apparently, they used too much dynamite, thus flooding part of the Bywater. So now I know who is responsible for flooding my house-not Katrina, but our government. And the rumors have spread on a tide of discontent and anger to Capitol Hill. In a Dec. 6 hearing conducted by the House Select Committee on Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans resident Dyan French testified that she actually heard the explosion. I was on my front porch. I have witnesses that they bombed the walls of the levee, boom, boom! Dyan said, gesticulating with her hands. Ill never forget it. Mayor Ray Nagin in a Sept. 11 ABC News report rejected the rumors as untrue. That storm was so powerful and it pushed so much water, theres no way anyone could have calculated, would dynamite the levee to have the kind of impact to save the

and attempts to obtain treatment elsewhere were stopped. The story did not reach the public until 1972. Even then, neither the men nor their families received an apology. President Bill Clinton finally offered an apology in 1997 25 years later. COINTELPRO, an acronym for Counterintelligence Program, was a covert operation initiated by the FBI in 1956 under the directorship of J. Edgar Hoover to neutralize domestic political groups like the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party but was almost immediately extended to so-called dissident organizations including, the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Through surveillance, wiretaps, blackmail and other unsavory means, the FBI attempted to discredit and disrupt Black civil rights organizations. In one scheme, the FBI sent tape-recordings of Dr. Kings extramarital sexual activity to King and urged him to commit suicide or risk being publicly exposed as immoral. The covert program did not

Min. Louis Farrakhan is not alone in believing that the poor and Black of New Orleans were somehow targeted to sustain the worst of the Katrina.

Photo by Aaron Roberts