In 1963 (a year after Nelson Mandela was imprisoned), she testified before the UN and asked them to intervene, give black South Africans rights in their own country, release political prisoners. The UN did nothing and for her trouble, the white minority government stripped her of her South African citizenship.

She finally went back to South Africa after Nelson Mandela became its president. But by that time she was a citizen of the world. She contributed a huge talent to the universe and lived to see South Africa a democracy, Mandela free, and even the son of a Kenyan elected president of the United States.

According to reports, she fought for good causes until the very end, dying from a heart attack earlier today just minutes after performing her signature Pata Pata in Italy on behalf of a writer whose work exposed the mafia-like Camorra.

I’m not a big music buff, but the only singer I’ve heard who has anywhere near the chops of Makeba is Laura Love.

There are lots of YouTubes of Makeba from her long career, but I found many of them had less than acceptable audio. This shows a retrospective of album covers and still photos.

Wikipedia
New York Times obituary

Just by chance today I caught This American Life program on NPR when they were noting the recent passing of Studs Terkel by playing a few of the pieces from his radio series, Hard Times, which was recordings of folks who lived through the depression. The TAL retrospective focused on 1971 recordings from a mother and daughter, Mary Owsley and Peggy Terry, who lived in Oklahoma City from around 1931 till 1936.

I was literally leaning over the car radio and barely able to do my errands while listening, frustrated when I had to leave the car. So I am overjoyed to have found the full (?) Hard Times interviews with Mary and Peggy, and many others, on studsterkel.org. Bless the Internet!

Terkel interviewed hundreds of people across the United States for his book on the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1973, he selected several interviews that were included in his book to be broadcast in eleven parts on the Studs Terkel Program on WFMT radio (Chicago, IL). This gallery includes the interviews in those programs.

Terkel questions people about their recollections of employment problems, the crash of 1929, organized labor issues, “farm holidays” where crops were destroyed, and U.S. President Franklin Delanor Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. He asks them how they managed financially and personally through the economic slump and what personal qualities surfaced as a result. In particular he seems interested in exploring the relationship between their personal plight and values and their awareness of national issues and society’s values.

Mary’s husband was a bonus marcher in 1931, and from what she says about him, he suffered from what we now call PTSD from being a machine gunner in WWI. She explained that there was a big oil boom in Oklahoma in the 20’s, bringing folks from all over to work. Then the crash came and depression went on and on as Hoover did nothing. The suffering was just horrendous, and these interviews really give the listener a sense of what it was like for the migrants, the homeless, the hungry children.

Mary and Peggy talk about not just poverty and hunger, but their personal feelings about despair, economic injustice, and racism. Their stories are so compelling and demonstrate why Studs Terkel, who understood their value and was so skilled at these kind of interviews, received the acclaim he did, in life as well as death.

But the stories are most inspiring because of the examples of kindness and community spirit that were so often found with, or maybe because of, the overwhelming want. Peggy says that there was a community garden in OKC where the residents of a Hooverville grew fresh food. And some of the better off people did share what they could. Mary tells how a black family gave them a ride, and, since they could not eat in restaurants because of Jim Crow laws, they brought food with them, stopping to prepare and eat it. When Mary describes that meal that was shared with her, you can still hear how fondly she remembers it, how good the chicken, sweet potatoes and biscuits tasted.

You know people talk with tangents that are sometimes more interesting that their main point, and in one such aside, Mary tells of being in Montgomery, Alabama, during the bus boycott, and seeing Martin Luther King Jr. being beaten on the sidewalk near the jail. This episode isn’t depression era, but helps to give you an even broader sense of her fascinating life.

Peggy (the daughter) at one point makes one of the most moving cases against racism I’ve ever heard, while recounting her own transformation in thinking about blacks.

And she talks about how much she identified with the epic story of noble migrants, The Grapes of Wrath.

… just like my life. I never was so proud of poor people before … Just reading that book has made me a better person. I think that’s the worst thing our system does to people is to take away their pride, and it prevents them from being a human being. And they’re wondering why Harlem and why Detroit and they’re talking about troops and ‘law and order.’ You’ll get law and order in this country when people are allowed to be decent human beings and be able to walk in dignity…

Well, I could go on and on, but your time would be better spent listening to the recordings yourself. The Hard Times page has many I’ll explore later, but here are the ones of Mary Owsley and Peggy Terry (they aren’t in order on the page like they are here):

• Interview with Mary Owsley - Part 1
• Interview with Mary Owsley - Part 2
• Interview with Mary Owsley - Part 3
• Interview with Mary Owsley - Part 4
• Interview with Peggy Terry - Part 1
• Interview with Peggy Terry - Part 2

Sign the online petition at http://www.iacenter.org/stopvotersuppression

Online Petition Text:

To: President Bush, Senator McCain, Governor Palin, Attorney General Mukasey, Governors of Key States, Congressional and Republican Party leaders and members of the media

In the days leading up to a historic election, there has been a massive, illegal attempt to suppress votes, particularly among the poor, communities of color, and students.

These tactics include:

–In Ohio, the Republicans attempted to illegally challenge the registrations of 200,000 new voters.

–Voters, like in West Virginia counties, have reported that electronic voting machines visibly changed their vote to John McCain when they tried to cast their vote for Barack Obama.

–Students in Colorado, Virginia, and South Carolina were told that they would lose their scholarships and that their parents could no longer claim them as dependents on their tax returns if the students voted in their college towns.

–In Georgia more than 50,000 voters were improperly purged from the voting rolls, a clear violation of federal laws that prohibit massive purging within 90 days of an election. Approximately 4,500 of them have been wrongly identified as “non-citizens”.

–In Indiana, Republican officials filed a lawsuit to close down early voting sites in three key Indiana cities—Hammond, Gary and East Chicago. Indiana’s population is only eight percent Black, but Black voters are heavily concentrated in the three cities targeted by the lawsuit.

–In Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin, right wingers are using the Jim-Crow practice of ‘caging,’ where they send out mass mailings to low-income neighborhoods.  If the letters come back unopened, then those voters are challenged at the polling place.

These are just a few of the tactics that have come to light in the recent period which are part of an ongoing pattern of racist disenfranchisement–an illegal campaign to deliberately deprive people of the hard-won right to vote.

I demand:

•    Stop police intimidation of voters.
•    Keep polls open until everyone has the opportunity to vote.
•    Full emergency staffing of polling places to meet the widely-expected massive turnout.
•    STOP all voter suppression – count all ballots.

Make your voice heard NOW! Sign the online petition and send a strong, clear message to the White House, Congress, Governors of Key States, and the media. You can sign online at http://www.iacenter.org/stopvotersuppression

Make an immediate donation to help stop racist voter suppression in an urgent national campaign.  Donate at http://iacenter.org/donate.

This is a followup to my post “Following the elections online” from back in September.

This video is from from Color of Change, an inspiring grassroots group based in New Orleans that grew out of the horrific injustices during and after Hurricane Katrina. They have come up with some great tips for making sure your vote gets counted, and counted they way you intended. It’s a sad fact that there are forces in this country who still seek to disenfranchise groups of people. So it’s important to know how to protect your rights, especially the right to vote as you see fit without hassle, intimidation or unnecessary delay.

5 Ways to Protect Your Vote

If there’s one thing we see every election, it’s that Republicans will try to manipulate the rules any way they can to prevent some people from voting. Don’t be discouraged–be prepared. If we’re armed with the right information, we can beat most of these dirty tricks.

1. Be Prepared, and Conquer the Lines. We can’t let long lines stop anyone from voting. There are several ways you can reduce lines and make sure they don’t prevent you or anyone else from voting:
   • Vote early if you can. You can find early voting times and locations at govote.org.
   • Double-check your polling location before you go to vote. You can look it up at govote.org.
   • Have a Plan & Have Fun. Have a plan in case there are lines. Bring some food, drinks, friends, books, games, a chair — anything that will prevent you and other voters from walking away. Have fun while you wait and encourage your friends and neighbors to stay in line so their vote is counted.
   • Don’t give up–don’t walk away without voting.
2. Two numbers you should have in your phone. Put these numbers in your phone so you’re prepared to report problems and help other voters find their polling place:
   • 866-OUR-VOTE is a hotline that’s been set up to collect information about problems on election day–lawyers and election protection advocates are ready to respond. It’s the best way to make sure someone addresses any problems you see.
   • The number for your local election board–in case you need to tell someone where they can vote. Enter you zip code at govote.org, then look for “Contact [your county] election officials” on the right.
3. Beware of lies, misinformation and dirty tricks; spread the truth.
   Republican operatives are spreading plain lies to frighten new voters. In Philadelphia, anonymous flyers in Black neighborhoods have falsely claimed that voters with unpaid traffic tickets or outstanding warrants will be arrested at the polls. If you hear a scary rumor, it’s probably a lie. Call your local election officials to check it out–and make sure your friends and neighbors know the truth.
4. Leave the Obama gear at home.
   In some places, you won’t be allowed into the polling place if you’re wearing clothes and pins that support a given candidate. This isn’t true everywhere, but it’s best to play it safe. You can contact your local board of elections to find out if it’s a problem in your area. If it is, bring some extra plain T-shirts or sweaters to loan neighbors who show up unaware of the rule.
5. Read the ballot carefully, and ask questions!
   Some ballots can be confusing even for smart and informed voters. Read instructions on the ballot carefully, and if you’re not sure you understand something, ask a poll worker to explain. Remember what happened in 2000 in Florida–a confusing ballot caused thousands of people to mistakenly vote for the wrong Presidential candidate. Don’t let that happen to you!

I don’t know that many of these issues exist in Oklahoma — I haven’t heard of any in my time living here — but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Swing states are where the real problems are found, for obvious reasons. But, still, we should be vigilant. If irregularities happened here, what watchdog media would report it? … Yeah, insert crickets here.

This area has been going through a period of reflection and reassessment in the past few years about its rather dark racist history — well some folks in these parts are frantically resisting any reflection and reassessment, but they are the usual suspects who are always on the wrong side of history.

This interview with, Patricia Bernstein, the author of one of the two recent books that looked at this issue was interviewed by the Waco Trib and, though much too brief a discussion, it does reveal quite a lot about local attitudes and in/action on the matter.

From Q and A with Patrica Bernstein: Of Waco, lynchings and the need for community healing

[...] it’s pretty amazing it took this long to get the whole story told and somebody didn’t do it sooner. One of the sources I used was a master’s thesis written at Baylor University in the 1970s by a gentleman whose aunt actually witnessed the Jesse Washington lynching. He had been interested in it ever since he heard her story, and his professors tried to discourage him from writing the thesis because they thought it was too negative and too inflammatory and they just didn’t see the point. But I think this is a story that long needed to be told, not just because it is an atrocity but also because of the heroism involved.

We also learn that a screenplay is being written from the book, which I would love to see be produced into a film. It would be a great vehicle for an actress to portray a relatively unknown heroine, suffragist Elisabeth Freeman and bring more attention to her life of activism. Freeman’s anti-lynching organizing with the NAACP is described here.

In searching for death penalty info in Texas, I found about about the brutal attack on Jesse Washington, a black man, possibly retarded, by whites in Waco — a story most of the locals apparently would rather forget.

But a couple of recent books and newspaper articles feature the story of the lynching, and there seems to be a movement afoot to get the event memorialized, as a symbolic gesture of reconciliation, seems not too much to ask.

Steve Gilliard:

People all over the world know what they’re looking at when they see the Confederate Flag. Regardless of what those who display the Confederate Flag may say it means, the Confederate Flag is never far from the Klan and like groups …

Steve Gilliard sees the school voucher program for what it is: tax-subsidized segregation.

Voucher programs are sold to black parents as a solution, but in reality offer few alternatives but already existing, and increasing broke Catholic Schools, which desperately need the cash. Their ultimate goal is to subsidize white parents in racist white schools and help cover their costs. So they play on the desperation of black parents and hope enough of them swallow the bait and then they can hide behind them.