Monroe Anderson

My bittersweet Memorial Day memory of Leanita McClain

Twenty five years ago today, I discovered that Leanita McClain, my friend and colleague, was dead. It was a suicide that came as no surprise to me. For more hours than I care to remember, I sat in her office at the Chicago Tribune joking, cajoling and questioning her repeated proclamation that she was going to kill herself.

During these discussions, I'd asked why. "There are black women who'd give their right arm to be where you are," I'd argue.

"But, I'm not happy," she'd counter.

Although a young 32, Leanita was the first black and second woman on the editorial board at the Trib. She had her own signed op-ed page Perspective column and a loyal following of readers. She'd written a My Turn piece for Newsweek magazine, about the complications of being a middle class black, that launched her star as a journalist. Her 1983 freelance commentary for the Washington Post, "How Chicago Taught Me to Hate Whites," about the racially polarized mayor's race in Chicago, is a classic. Professionally, she was on top of the world. In the year of her death, she'd been named by Glamour, magazine as one of America's Top 10 career women. 

None of that seemed to matter. Personally, she was in a lot of pain. She suffered from clinical depression. And, sometime during the Memorial Day weekend, it got the best of her.

I'd hoped it wouldn't have come to such a tragic end. I'd convinced her to get professional help and nearly convinced myself that the psychiatrist was making a difference. 

But on that fateful Memorial Day weekend, I knew something was wrong. I hadn't heard from Lea at all over the holiday weekend. This was out of character. For more than a year leading up to her suicide, we talked every day. I'd occasionally get a 3 o'clock in the morning call when she was stressed out.

That weekend, I didn't hear from her and when I called her home, she didn't answer. The Tuesday after Memorial Day, I dropped by her office only to see it empty, with lights out and newspaper stacked in front of the doors.

I called Clarence Page, her ex-husband, to see if he'd heard from her. He hadn't. Then I called one of our colleagues who lived in Hyde Park not far from her. Within a couple of hours, he called me with the bad news. She was gone. An overdose of pills.

Our editor, Jack Fuller, asked me to write my next Perspective column eulogizing her. It was the most difficult piece I've ever written on deadline. At the time, I thought it was far too inadequate. After it ran, many of my readers called or wrote to tell me how much it had moved them.

This is the first time I've read it in nearly 25 years. It's not as bad as I thought, although it could have been better. I'd like to share my bittersweet Memorial Day memory with you. Here's the column I wrote which ran on Friday, June 1, 1984.

A life cut short, a loss deeply felt

Whenever I had trouble saying what I wanted in a column, Leanita McClain came to my rescue.

"Let me see," Leanita, whose passion was collecting owls, the bird of wisdom, would say. Then she'd give a critical eye to what I'd written. "You're always too hard on yourself. The column's fine."

In short order, with a slight change of a sentence here and a quick word of encouragement there, she'd help me breathe verve into what had been a still life.

I wish she were here to help me with this one. I don't know what I want to say or how I should say whatever I should be saying. I'm not even sure of how I feel except for one thing: a deep loss.

On the day after Memorial Day was observed, the day Leanita, 32, was found in her Hyde Park home, an apparent suicide, I lost a friend, a colleague and a confidante. In addition to being a personal loss for me, Leanita's death was an irreplaceable loss for the profession of journalism and a tragic loss for the voice of reason in Chicago.

Over the last 11 years, both our social and professional lives repeatedly crossed paths as we went through one change after another. Although I first met Leanita at a meeting for black journalists held in the South Side apartment where I lived at the time, our friendship got its start when I left Ebony magazine to come to The Tribune in 1974.

Leanita and my first wife were close friends. Looking back, those days seem so carefree. She and her husband and my wife and I went to restaurants, discos, movies together. We even took a dream vacation to Acapulco together.

As fate would have it, though, it took the deaths of our marriages to change my friendship with Leanita into what if was to become. Leanita, who had been like a sister to my estranged wife, began acting like a mother hen to me.

"Are you eating properly?" she'd ask, by way of looking after my welfare. And that question was just one manifestation of her gentle concern for how I was coping.

Leanita's caring and giving, of course, extended far beyond me. She became involved in such charitable pursuits as tutoring children from the Cabrini-Green public housing project. She helped friends through this or that personal crisis.

At all times, she was concerned about the plight of black journalists in general and those at The Tribune in particular. She'd complain, in her own quiet way, about how few blacks there were in the business, and virtually none in management.

"Are things ever going to really change?" she'd ask during discussions about the lack of black editors at one newspaper, or the problems of a black reporter at another.

Finally, things did change for her. Leanita had worked as a reporter, a copy editor, a picture editor and Perspective editor before going on to become the first black and second woman appointed to The Tribune's editorial board.

As editor of Perspective, a section of opinion and analysis, one of her first acts was to recruit black writers to integrate thought. Her dream, like Dr. Martin Luther King's, was to see the Perspective section, the newsroom, the corporate offices, the city, the state, the nation all integrated. Ironically, many of her critics in recent months unwittingly attacked her as a racist, based on her Washington Post article about white resistance to Harold Washington's election as mayor.

Her writing, whether in the "My Turn" column she did for Newsweek magazine on "The Middle-Class Black's Burden," or her columns in The Tribune, consistently addressed the problems of race relations in this nation with fairness and compassion, offering an idealistic vision of how they might be worked out.

Whenever she came to me with a problem column of her own that she needed my advice on, I'd tell her, "Lea, you're equivocating too much on this one. Choose one side or the other."

Most of the time, though, she'd stick with both views, suggesting a moderating, mediating approach even though neither side seemed to listen.

Ending this was as hard as it was starting it or getting through the middle. If Leanita were around, we might be smoothing out some of the rough edges.

Black power and reality in the 21st Century

I've been getting this viral email from white friends, black friends, even one of my Indian friends. It's one of these truths that's been hiding in plain site: Black is In!

I'm old enough to remember the '60s when we were last in. It turned out to be short and sweet. By the 1970s, there was talk of our being treated with benign neglect. In the 1980s, under the Reagan regime, it was no longer benign. And then it got worse.

But I digress. Reportedly, we're the new "it" ethnic group. To make it more palatable to the ignorance-is-bliss crowd, the truth is often packaged as a joke. The fact that black people are now the new black is no exception. Check it out.

"Black is in!" 

The most powerful politician in the world is Black.

The head of the Republican National Committee is Black.

The best known media mogul on earth is Black.

 

The greatest golfer in the world is Black.

 

The top female tennis players in the world are Black. 

The highest grossing actor worldwide is Black.

 

The fastest racing driver in the world is Black.

The brightest Astrophysicist under the sun is Black.

 

The Superbowl-winning Head Coach is Black.

 

The most successful brain surgeon in the world is Black. 

The fastest human on the planet is Black. ... 

Michael Jackson must be kicking himself.

Seriously, folks.  We've got a Dickensonian development--best of times, worst of times--in black America that has created a false reality. Because there is an Obama, Oprah and Tiger, white Americans believe that the playing field is level and that all's fair and square.

It is not.

These monumental achievements by individuals--who happen to be black--aside, depressing disparities between blacks and whites persist.

Consider:

*For the last 25 years, murder has been the leading cause of death among African-American men between the ages of 15 and 34.

*In Chicago, President Barack Obama's hometown, only six out of 100 of the students in Chicago Public Schools, will graduate from college.

*For every dollar of wealth held by a white household, the typical black household has 10 cents.

*While the national unemployment rate was 8.1%, for blacks that figure was 13.4% … and for black males, 16.3%.

*Black males are incarcerated at a per capita rate six times that of white males. Nearly 11 percent of all black men ages 30 to 34 were behind bars as of June 30, 2007.

I could go on and on with the alarming stats but I won't. Reading them makes it easy to understand why Michael Jackson has paid big money to turn himself into something he's not and why the individual accomplishments of the Williams sisters, Steelers' coach Mike Tomlin, Neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and Astrophysicist Neil Tyson are so impressive.

(This post was also published on AgoraVox.com.)

Will hope black out despair?

When I was in junior high, my speech teacher cited an article in one of the popular periodicals of the time--Look or Life magazine, if memory serves me right--reporting that the Negro was the most motivated American in the nation.

            You can tell how long ago that was by the Negro reference. It was in the early '60s when the Civil Rights movement was producing palatable progress. Dr. Martin Luther King was a force to be reckoned with. Malcolm had not yet been murdered. And many a young Negro who was planning of making something of himself wore his hair closely cropped in what was called a "collegiate." 

            In case you're wondering, the collegiate was identical to the hairstyle President Barack Obama sports now.

            On June 16, 1966, both the hairstyle and the sense that the whole nation was our oyster went out of vogue--as did Dr. King and his nonviolence movement. That was the day Stokely Carmichael, the 25-year-old fiery orator who had replaced John Lewis as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, defined a new social movement in America. In a stirring speech in Greenwood, Mississippi before 3,000 civil rights volunteers who were gathered to protest the shooting of activist James Meredith, Carmichael expressed his anger in a surefire manner.

            "We been saying 'Freedom' for six years," he said, referring to the chant that movement protesters used as they were beaten by hostile policemen pointing water hoses and unleashing vicious attack dogs. "What we are going to start saying now is 'Black Power!' "

            For me, and many other young Black Americans, "Black Power" and the "Black is Beautiful" mantra that followed were psychologically liberating. But, with the murder of Dr. King and the urban uprisings that followed, inner-city Black  America went under siege; most of the businesses that hadn't been burned out shipped out and with them went far too many of the jobs. 

            Racial integration made it possible for educated and motivated Blacks like me to follow the opportunities, leaving those not as fortunate behind. Drugs invaded and occupied the Black community in overwhelming quantities; unrelenting crime and violence followed.

            Soon, for many poor, unskilled Blacks, the only Good Times was a sit-com on TV.

            As a general assignment reporter for the Chicago Tribune, each year I'd cover the State of Black Chicago speech given by James Compton, the president of the Chicago Urban League. The list was a long litany of depressing facts dressed up in unrelenting despair. On a couple of occasions, I covered the National Urban League's annual conference when I heard more of the same.

            That's pretty much been the state of things and the outlook for things to come until about a year ago. That, of course, was when it became clear that Barack Obama had a real shot at becoming the POTUS.

Now that we have a Black man in the White House, argues Danielle Belton, on her blog, "The Black Snob," we're in a different era.

Some like Tavis Smiley haven't gotten the message. So Belton takes the radio/TV host to task for partying at his annual "State of the Black Union" gathering--as if it was 1999.

       Rather than taking some the same point of view, Belton says that we may want to look up rather than hang our heads down. Take a look at her blog to see how she sees it.>

            Rants: State Of Emergency

The State of the Black Union concluded in Los Angeles this weekend after the input of various scholars, activists, political leaders and pundits, mixed with the fear of the recession (or depression if you're just talking about black people. Economically things have been nightmarish for African Americans for some time) with the optimism of President Barack Obama's election. 

Founded by author/journalist Tavis Smiley, this was the 10th year for the event where 6,000 people attended panels, networked and discussed the state of the race. 

The funny thing about the state of the race: it's bad. 

Depending on where you live it is either horrific or merely annoying, but bad. Yet the other funny thing about black America is that if you've been hearing a car alarm blare at you for more than 100 hundred years, do you start to not even notice that it's there? Do you begin to think that your maladies are just realities? Do you accept the status quo?

All my life I've watched black people "settle." And when I mean settle, I mean it in many, many forms. Some "settle" for the mediocrity. Some settle for the poverty or violence of their neighborhoods (or the neighborhoods they left and now tut-tut as if fixing the old neighborhood was all the matter of Robert Preston showing up with 76 trombones to blow all the gangbangers away). Some settle for the fact that marriage, stability, peacefulness, happiness, good health, mental stability and intelligence is the property of others, not us, not for you. Things that should be natural rights become "something white folks do."

To read the rest, click here.

What President Obama represents for Dr. King's legacy

For nearly half of my life, Black History Month was Black History Week. In 1976, after Carter G. Woodson's initiative had been celebrated during the second week in February for 50 years, it became a month-long observance.  

Although it's not official, not even announced, the Black History Month has quietly become Black History Season. It starts the day after Christmas, with Kwanzaa and runs through the end of February.

Dr. Martin Luther King's national holiday serves as the midway point for this season of recognizing Black History. So, it's befitting that Barack Obama would be sworn in as POTUS this year the day after MLK Day. 

To mark that historical occurrence in these historical times, I was the keynote speaker at the King Day celebration a week ago today in Chicago Heights, thanks to an invitation from Mayor Anthony DeLuca and City Clerk Ethel Taylor invited to speak to their theme, "A Dream Achieved," which tied in Dr. King's dream to the Obama reality.

I don't believe we're quite there on the achievement piece, so here's the text to the speech I gave to to audience at Chicago Miracle Temple Church in Chicago Heights, Illinois:

The Dream Achieved

It was just a few months ago, when one of those opinion poll crews was canvassing Western Pennsylvania—you know, that area between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that may as well be Alabama?
Anyway, one of the pollsters knocked on the front door of one of those western Pennsylvania homes. A woman came to the door. The pollster asked her if she was voting for John McCain or Barack Obama. The woman turned around and yelled, “Honey, who are we gonna vote for?” A male voice yelled out from the back of the house, “We’re votin for the nigger. The woman calmly turned and repeated to the pollster, “we’re voting for the nigger.”
When I first told my wife, Joyce, this story, she thought that I was joking. I wasn’t. It happened. It was reported in newspapers. It was posted on the Internet.
And, in a backhanded true-life sort of way, it lets us know that what Dr. King was addressing two score and six years ago is actually a dream half done.  

The Pennsylvania couple may not have gotten past the color of Obama’s skin but they were able to see the content of his character.
       Speaking of seeing, I see puzzled looks on some of your faces. Wasn’t this supposed to be a speech about The Dream Achieved?  Where’s this man going with this?  Stay with me, okay?
The original title of Dr. King’s 1963 speech was “Normalcy—Never Again.” That wasn’t exactly a title that would flow off anybody’s tongue or stir anyone’s soul.  So, it didn’t take long or much imagination for Dr. King’s wonderful words to become the “I have a Dream” speech.  Nor did it take long for his speech to get white washed by the mainstream media.
         In his speech, which was delivered at the March on Washington for jobs and freedom, Dr. King talked a little about his dream but a lot more about the American nightmare.  He spoke less about what he hoped our nation would do and much more about what our nation had not done. That’s the part of the speech that gets little play on TV or radio.  So, I’m going to read a key part of what Dr. King had to say.  Before I say what Dr. King said, let me caution you: I’m going to say it without the wonderful flow or rhythm you’re used to hearing in Dr. King’s speech. I want you to hear the words stripped of the passion and flavor.
"In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'"
When Obama takes his oath of office tomorrow I want you to think of it as earnest money…not that we’ve been paid in full. There are still some matters that need to be cleared from the books.
Right now, there are one million black men unemployed.  That’s what Dr. King was talking about.
Right now, half our children drop out city high schools before they graduate. That’s what Dr. King was talking about.
Right now, there are a million black men locked up behind bars. That’s what Dr. King was talking about.
And here’s something he said in his Dream speech that could have been a sound bite from him after Oscar Grant was murdered by an Oakland transit cop two weeks ago: “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”
I’m hoping that President Obama will be hearing Dr. King.
Since he launched his presidential campaign, Barack Obama has been talking Lincoln but I suspect, that he was thinking King.  

Yesterday, when Obama spoke in Washington, he stood in front of the Lincoln Monument but it was at the very spot Dr. King spoke 46 years ago. When I was on the Obama press bus last winter covering his campaign in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, I heard him quote from the Dream speech.  At every campaign stop, Sen. Obama would explain to his overflow crowds that he was running for office because of what Dr. King called “the fierce urgency of now.”
       Well, come tomorrow, the time will be now, for President Obama to cash and carry some of that urgency.
       When he swears in tomorrow, the time will be now for President Obama to also pay some old dues to those African American giants that shed blood, sweat and tears to make his presidential dream come true.  

You know the names all too well. Frederick Douglass. W.E.B. DuBois. Booker T. Washington. Thurgood Marshall. Malcolm X. Rev. Jesse Jackson. Harold Washington. Colin Powell.  And then there are the strong black women whose contributions were critical.  Harriet Tubman. Sojourner Truth.  Rosa Parks. Fannie Lou Hammer. Shirley Chisholm. Barbara Jordan. And even, let me see if I can get this out my mouth, Condoleezza Rice.
If these men and women hadn’t done what they did, Barack Obama wouldn’t have been able to do what he has done—or what he will have to start doing beginning tomorrow.
       Thanks to his predecessor, Obama has a lot of doing—and undoing--to do.  

After all the galas and parties are over and the celebrating has ended, we will still have some difficult days ahead. George W. Bush has left us in one big mess. 

There are two wars waging. There’s the deep recession.  There are tens of thousands of Americans losing their homes. There are nearly 50 million of us without health insurance. And nobody knows where the money is coming from or going to.
       And there’s a lot more that we can’t expect a President Obama to take on.  Some of it is on us. Before the Dream can really be achieved, we’ve got to take care of our own business.
       Right now, only 25 percent of black children have a father in the house. That wasn’t Dr. King’s dream.
       Right now, our youth are killing our youth in record numbers. That wasn’t Dr. King’s dream.
       Right now, our senior citizens are afraid to leave their homes at night; afraid they’ll be mugged or murdered. That was not Dr. King’s dream.
       So, right now, I say that when President Obama is sworn in, that we flip the script.  

In our public schools, rather than having the thugs in the in crowd and the brainiacs isolated and ignored, let’s make it hip to be smart.  

Let’s see if our daughters can just say no to knuckleheads who want to see how many babies they can father but not bother to raise.  

Let’s see if we can’t take Dr. King’s wise words and President Obama’s string of accomplishments and make them the new dream for the new generation and the generations to come.
       Let me remind you of the prophetic words in Dr. King’s Memphis speech, he spoke these words the night before he was murdered.
       “I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain top. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land.”
       Obama, obviously, is there. A lot of us are there with him. But there’s still some dreaming to do and work that must be done. None of us can afford to forget about those we’ve left behind. We owe it to Dr. King’s vision.
       Thanks and God bless.

While we're at it, here's the full length version of Dr. King's 1963 speech in Washington.

Martin Luther King - I Have A Dream @ Yahoo! Video

New Obama era expressed by old English

I am not alone in my belief that our 43rd president was the worst ever--Rolling Stone Magazine made that assertion in April 2006. And while some may argue that James Buchanan did a worse job than George W. Bush, only the visually or mentally challenged will think he wasn't the worst president in modern times; he'll leave office with the lowest approval ratings in history, 22 percent

On Inauguration Day, it will be out with the worst and in, I'm hoping, with the greatest.

Nor am I alone in believing that Barack Obama will perform above and beyond the call of duty. You can tell by the numbers; 65 percent of Americans believe #44 will be an above average president. We may be in a deep recession but Brand Obama--from magazine covers to commemorative coins to wacky and weird merchandise--is booming. And you can tell it by the art. There's the iconic portrait by artist Shepard Fairey and a countless number of Obama-inspired art.

There's also a bunch of inspired poetry and music--which brings me to my long-time friend, Joe English.

Joe, a wealthy old hippie who is in his mid-60s, has had faith and hope in Barack since the beginning. In fact, he claims pride of authorship for one of Obama's early campaign slogans--Obama Right from the Start--which is a reference to the Illinois senator's opposition to the war in Iraq. 

Now that the candidate is about to become the president, the muse hit Joe up again. This time, rather than a mere slogan, it turned out to be a poem which then turned out to be a song--Five Fifths Strong: Redemption Song.

The title alludes to the infamous "three-fifths" compromise" of the Founding Fathers when they were constructing the U.S. Constitution in 1787. For those of you who are a little rusty on your American history, the "three-fifths" clause decrees that, for the purposes of counting each state's population to determine its number of Representatives in Congress and the distribution of taxes, African slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a human being.

We now have a man of African descent about to occupy the Executive House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue which is more than a gesture affirming black Americans' rise to full citizenship.

I think Joe's song does an incredible job of capturing the triumph of the moment. While it's Joe's lyrics, the music is by Atiba Jali. Five-Fifths Strong is sung by Ray Balkcom with the All City Elementary Youth Chorus of the Chicago Public Schools.

Take a listen and let me know what you think. Just click on the blue link below.

        Five-Fifths Strong_ Redemption Song

Here are the words to Joe's poem, Five Fifths Strong: Redemption Song

Out of many, we are one, 

Come into the sun of this shining place 

By Amazing Grace, 

Not without sin, and not without stain, 

In pain of lilacs last in the dooryard blooming, 

To claim another New Birth of Freedom, singing, 

We the People, Freedom's Song as never sung before.

 

Five-Fifths Strong: Redemption Song. 

It is fitting and proper, then, 

That we Lift Every Voice and Sing, 

For centuries' chains could not still 

Freedom's will, nor mute rainforests' root. 

With every voice that's newly heard, 

Kola nuts are broken, shared: 

The dream deferred made spoken word. 

Five-Fifths Strong: Redemption Song. 

Forward in this generation, 

Let all the dreamers wake the Nation, 

And, together, build the shining city on the hill. 

From shore to shore, through fruited plain, 

This is our time to live the dream, 

At every patriot's grave remembering 

Yes, we can. 

Yes, we can. 

Yes, we can let Freedom ring. 

Five-Fifths Strong: Redemption Song. 

Yes, we can let Freedom ring.

Blagojevich's ploy reveals Obama's seat is black

A chance meeting between a dull kitchen knife and my left hand as I prepared Christmas dinner turned into blood at first sight. So, I'm just now healed enough to be able to type with both hands. In other words, this is a lame excuse on why I haven't posted in three weeks. 

But now, I'm back. Here's a column I wrote for Ebonyjet.com about Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appointment of Roland Burris to Barack Obama's vacated senate seat. The selection may be as much about jury selection as it is about good governance.

Here's what I had to say.

Mr. Burris Goes To Washington


The appointment of Roland Burris to Obama's Senate seat is anything but a simple plan


January 6, 2009 


By Monroe Anderson

I missed the exact moment when Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate post became a blacks only seat.  No one sent me an email declaring it was ours. Nor did anyone hit up my cell or Facebook page. I didn't even get a tweet.

But, apparently, the seat that once belonged to the president-elect now commands exclusive dibs from black pols in Illinois, period.  No whites need apply. Asians or Hispanics shouldn't bother either.Rep. Bobby Rush said as much. During Gov. Rod Blagojevich's news conference last week announcing the appointment of Roland Burris to Obama's vacated seat, the Illinois congressman from Chicago emerged from the press pool to commandeer the mike. "Let me remind you that there presently is no African American in the Senate," Rush said, talking through the media to address state and national Democrats. "I would ask you not to hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer."And while the appointer kept asserting during the news conference that it was all about the appointee, I didn't quite buy it.I believe that it's about Burris as the black appointee as much as it is about the red herring to be introduced at the governor's jury trial.  Blagojevich hasn't been indicted yet, but the big money is betting that he will be come spring.  Anticipating the inevitable, the governor has hired Ed Genson, the high-priced super lawyer who got R. Kelly off, as his defense attorney.When the trial begins, the Burris appointment—if it plays out badly with the Democrats over the next couple of days—may play well in Blagojevich's defense. Think O.J.  If the Senate Dems have a fit, denying the one seat vacated by an African American to be filled by another, then any blacks on the jury may be sympathetic enough to the governor to vote to acquit him—striking another symbolic blow against institutional American racism.I know it sounds a little far-fetched but so does the idea that a governor would try to sell the U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder.  But it also sounds far-fetched that in 21st-century America, blacks have no representation in the U.S. Senate, while there are 13 Jewish Americans, three Hispanics and two Asians.  It is also outlandish that in this time of change, Democratic leaders would ignore the law to play politics.Illinois State Democrats are in a mad rush to impeach their defiant governor and U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald is working overtime to indict him, but so far Blagojevich has not been proven guilty of anything but having a filthy mouth.  That means the governor is lawfully empowered to appoint Burris, who is untouched by any hint of corruption and unquestionably qualified to perform the duties of the post.Thirty years ago, Burris became state comptroller, the first black Democrat elected to statewide office in Illinois. After three terms in that office, he was elected the Illinois attorney general.  Since then, he's become a lovable loser. He has run three times for governor, and one time each for mayor and U.S. senator, each time coming up empty handed.That's why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Dems are doing so much hand wringing.  Although he denies it, Reid has been reported as saying he did not want the seat to go to Representatives Jesse Jackson Jr., Danny Davis or state Senate President Emil Jones because he believes that none of the three black men could win the statewide election in 2010.If the Democrats insist on taking a bad situation and making it worse, it may be a moot point. Secretary of State Jesse White, the highest-ranking black official in Illinois right now, has refused to certify the Burris appointment.  The Democrats in the U.S. Senate insist that they won't seat Burris when he arrives at the chambers today.They may want to rethink that.  Rep. Rush, a former minister of the Black Panthers who is now a Baptist minister, Sunday night called the Senate "one of the last bastions of plantation and racial politics in America," then warned that the Senate Democrats who fight Burris' appointment are "going to ask for forgiveness" from the black American voter.Hmmmm. Come to think about it, that seat may need to be black after all.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Check out his blog at monroeanderson.typepad.com  

Understand this first: Obama is the last one

    When Barack Obama becomes the first President of the United States, African American history will not only be turning a new page or be in need of a new chapter--we'll have to write and read volumes of new books. Here's my personal observation of one way we'll have to reshape our perspective. It's my latest ebonyjet.com post.

I was the first black reporter at the National Observer. 

In the eight years it had been around before I arrived immediately after graduating from Indiana University, the weekly Dow Jones publication was a whites only destination.  Its managing editor let it be known that he was not about to hire anyone black for his newspaper. He had turned down, I was told, a young Bob Teague, who went on to be an award-winning NBC network reporter, and a young William Raspberry, who went on to become the Washington Post’s best-known black columnist.

Months before I was all set to slip on my cap and gown, the conservative ME got his gold watch. His retirement was followed by this pledge from the Observer’s younger editors: they would hire the first qualified black journalist that applied. About that time my resume—highlighting my Newsweek Magazine internship in the summer of 1968—arrived in the mail.

I was with the D.C.-based Observer just shy of two years and during my brief stint, it was just me. There were no other blacks. No other black reporters. No black secretaries. No black pressmen. No black janitors. No black anybody but me. In 1972, I left for Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, in truth, not because I was black but because I was too green for the job.

After a couple of years of being mentored and challenged at Ebony Magazine, I went to the Chicago Tribune. When Harold Washington became Chicago’s mayor on April 29, 1983, I became the first black reporter to cover City Hall for the Chicago Tribune; make that the first black reporter from any mainstream media newspaper to cover Chicago’s City Hall and city council. The one thing I brought away from both my Observer and Tribune experiences is that it’s not easy being the first black.

At the Observer, I felt as if I had the weight of the race on my shoulders and that any mistake I made would have negative ramifications far beyond me, setting back any opportunity for any other black reporter that might try to follow me. At City Hall, I was the man in the middle of a racial council war as black aldermen were outgunned and outnumbered by white aldermen who were dead set on torpedoing the political agenda of Chicago’s first black mayor. I was second fiddle to an eight-year younger David Axelrod, who had been named the Trib’s political editor and who, more recently, as chief political strategist, brilliantly helped carry Obama to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

It’s not going to be easy for America’s first black president. But that is so obvious and the reasons are so many that a brief discussion couldn’t begin to address them, right now.

It wasn’t easy for Jackie Robinson either. The name-calling and taunts from the baseball fans and the hostilities from the players are history. Since Robinson became the first black major league baseball player 61 years ago, there has been a long and steady stream of first blacks. There was the first black country and western recording star 42 years ago, the first black NFL quarterback 40 years ago, the first black astronaut 29 years ago, the first black Radio City Rockette 20 years ago, the first black governor 18 years ago, and the first black CEO of a Fortune 500 company seven years ago. And, of course, there’s Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods.

No doubt, there will be other Jackie Robinsons, in other fields and professions in America. Someday, there will be the first black executive editor of the New York Times or Washington Post. Someday there will be the first Black baseball commissioner. Someday we’ll see the first head of a major movie studio and the first black owner of a major TV network.

But, while any and all of these future black first accomplishments will be important and welcomed when they finally arrive, what Barack Obama has pulled off dwarfs them all—past, present and future.

He may not have run as the black candidate for president but he is, in reality, symbolically and metaphorically, no less than that. So when he is sworn in as POTUS on January 20, he will officially—and forever—be America’s last first black.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Check out his blog at monroeanderson.typepad.com

(Illustration by Kyle F. Anderson)

In Search of Intelligence in the Multiverse--Not on Cavuto on Fox

      

        The worst financial crisis in America since the Great Depression was not caused by government deregulation or corporate greed or Republican governmental incompetence as Fox Cable News' Neil Cavuto understands it.

         Apparently, it's the fault of minorities.

        "Loaning to minorities and other risky folks was a disaster," in Cavuto's narrow little mind in his limited, little universe.

         Of course, I've got to wonder which "minorities" did he have in mind. Oprah? Billionaire Bob Johnson, the BET sell-out? Tiger Woods? Michael Jordan? You get the picture.

       In case you don't, Cavuto has footage of Barack Obama on screen while he grills a Democratic congressman.

       Here's a mind-expanding report and explanation by theyoungturks.com on YouTube.com:

Jesse Helms is dead--Let's bury American racism with him

   

    Arch conservative and rabid race baiter, Jesse Helms, died, ironically, on Independence Day. 
    For most of the 86 years he spent on this earth, Helms devoted way too much of his time and energy preventing African Americans from experiencing the freedom and independence that he, along with other Euro-Americans, took for granted.       
   In 1950, Helms became an unofficial researcher for United States Senate candidate Willis Smith, a conservative Democratic lawyer. While working on the primary campaign against Frank Porter Graham, Helms had a hand in creating an ad that read, "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races."
    When not being outright racist, the five-term North Carolina senator was about as negative as he could get. Not only did he oppose civil rights, he opposed gay rights. Not only was he against communism, he also opposed a woman’s right to choose. Helms was against school busing and opposed giving up the Panama Canal.
    "There was plenty to stand up and say 'No!' to during my first term in the U.S. Senate," Helms wrote in his memoir, Here's Where I Stand.
    By the end of his first term, Helms had earned the moniker “Senator No.” He relished the label, even though it wasn’t meant as a compliment.

    "If there is such a place as hell, then Helms will be fist bumping while hanging out in the deepest, most segregated corner with another one of the right-wing's iconic bigots, Strom Thurmond...."

    Before running for the Senate, Helms was a conservative commentator on WRAL-TV. This is what he had to say about America’s greatest civil rights leader and the SCLC:  "Dr. King's outfit ... is heavily laden at the top with leaders of proven records of communism, socialism and sex perversion, as well as other curious behavior."
    Helms also called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress."
    A conservative icon, Helms defeated former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt—who is African American—in his last two runs for Senate in 1990 and 1996, by running racially loaded campaigns. In the first race, a Helms commercial showed a white fist crumpling up a job application, with these words underneath: "You needed that job ... but they had to give it to a minority."   
    Helms will be remembered, noted Kerry Haynie, a political science professor at Duke University, “for the strong racist streak that articulated his politics and almost all of his political campaigns.”   
    If there is such a place as hell, then Helms will be fist bumping while hanging out in the deepest, most segregated corner with another one of the right-wing's iconic bigots, Strom Thurmond, who died five years ago. Although both racial dinosaurs are gone, unfortunately, their hate-filled beliefs have been passed down from one generation to the next.
    Just go to some of the right-wing blogs where you will see the pack mule mentality that was wrong-headed and outdated when Jesse and Strom were just good old country boys. The blogs, written by hand-me-down haters in this millennium, perpetuate all that is ugly and ignorant in what passes for conservative thought.
    There’s Tightrope, for one example, a blog where “it’s not illegal to be white, yet,” which features four pages of nigger jokes and sells white power t-shirts on the side.
    Fortunately, the nation former Dixiecrats Helms and Thurmond cherished, and the blog mob on Tightrope pines for, is slowly but surely becoming a bad American memory. 
    And Barack Obama’s swearing in on January 20 as the nation’s new leader will be the clearest signal yet that the twisted convictions of Helms and his ilk are those that belong to a dying breed.

McCain Steele the presumptive winner in the November general

    Shelby Steele, like Clarence Thomas, is an accomplished black men, celebrated by the right, who got a leg up thanks to affirmative action, but who now opposes it for any African American who also might need a boost to the next phase.
    A self-described black conservative, Steele crossed over to the selfish side and, like Justice Thomas, has become a darling of the same white folks who believe prisons are more desirable destinations for young black men than colleges and that African Americans ought to be grateful that our ancestors were kidnapped from the mother continent to be enslaved here.
    Through the years, Steele has done well for himself. He is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institute and in 1990 he received the National Book Critics Circle Award for his book, The Content of Our Character, which theorized that it’s not them, it’s us—it’s not racism but our self-doubt that keeps African Americans down and out in the land of plenty.
    Steele's latest theory was revealed Thursday in a washingtonpost.com story, "A Run for the Ages?,” which interviews black historians on Barack Obama’s landmark victory. The good fellow predicts that the Illinois senator won’t best Republican John McCain in the November general election. Apparently, McCain's campaign team is feeling Steele’s sentiments as well. They’re so cocky they’re challenging Obama to have 10 town hall debates with the Arizona senator.
    I half understand why.
    McCain has a tiny campaign war chest while Obama’s runneth over. A series of debates will get McCain exposure on the cheap. But does the GOP standard-bearer really want to be that exposed? Not if his performance is anything like it was Tuesday, the same night Obama became the presumptive Democratic Party nominee. McCain's speech was so embarrassingly bad that even Fox Cable News--the right-wing's unofficial propaganda arm--didn't have much good to say about it.

    And as for Shelby Steele and his prognosticative prowess, in his latest book, Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win, he predicted that Obama wouldn’t beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination.
    If Steele’s really lucky, come November, at least he’ll be half right.