Nonprofit Thursday: Voting Rights, The Right Wing, Shona Sculpture, studying vacant lots, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and John Patrick Carney vs. Mariama Whyte …

So I woke up the other day, checked the headline news on my smartphone, and saw that Ohio’s supine, reactionary, and corrupt legislative majority had voted to cut taxes on the wealthy, raise the regressive sales tax, ban Medicaid expansion, and continue the fight against modernity, history, and biology by enacting more restrictive measures against women.

So why would I be surprised that the US Supreme Court decided to cut the heart out of the Voting Rights Act?

The reality is the forces of money, power and privilege in America NEVER TAKE A DAY OFF. That’s what capitalism means. The forces of democracy, liberty, and justice, on the other hand, seem to think that winning a battle means winning the war. If that were so, Ohio would still have the nation’s best set-aside law, an updated Voting Rights Act would still be intact, and we would not have this continued testosterone assault upon women’s reproductive rights.

You’ve heard it before: eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Better instill that piece of Founding Father wisdom in your soul before these Tea Party legislatures rewrite local public school curricula to excise that bit of Americana the same way they are working on whitewashing George Washington’s slave-holding past from school books.

So if you are upset about any of this, you should get busy at: 

1. Keeping yourself informed about what your elected officials are doing, 

2. Informing your friends, neighbors, and social media family about what your local officials are doing, and 

3. Getting involved on some level in fighting for what you say you believe in.

And if you are one of my Republican friends being courted by Ohio’s governor and the chair of the Republican National Committee, you should seize every audience and opportunity you have to challenge the whack social and fiscal policies their brethren are systemically and systematically advancing across the nation.

It would also help to study a little history so that you can respond with facts when people use superficial labels to claim, for example, that the Republican Party of 1854 is the same as the GOP of today or even the GOP of the 1960s.

• • •

On to more pleasant matters. A couple of decades ago, before the World Wide Web was actually worldwide, there was a print version of THE Real Deal. We tried to cover civic, commercial and cultural affairs of relevance to Greater Cleveland’s 350,000 African Americans and perforce to those astute enough to know that what affected them should be of concern to the entire community.

One of the pieces of which we were most proud was a cover story on an exhibit at Cleveland’s Museum of Natural History written by our ace correspondent Evelyn Castillo. The unforgettably spectacular exhibit was a display of Shona Stone sculpture fashioned by artists from Zimbabwe. Some of the pieces were immense; almost all were gorgeous.

What brings this to mind was receipt of a notice from the Deuteronomy 8:3 Café regarding a limited exhibit and sale of Shona Sculpture this coming weekend. Starting tomorrow the café will host a brief display of Shona Stone sculpture from the Zimbabwe Gallery collection in Philadelphia. Gallery owner Collin Thompson will speak at tomorrow’s 7PM opening reception.

The exhibit will close its brief run on Sunday afternoon, June 30. Deuteronomy 8:3 Café is located at 1464 East 105 St, Cleveland OH 44106 at the north end of University Circle. Exhibit hours this weekend will be 11AM-6PM on Saturday and Sunday. For more info, call 216.376.9695 or visit Zimbabwe Gallery, visit www.shonasculpture.com.

Selected pieces for purchase are priced between $100 and $1,000.

********

Learning from vacant lots

Today’s Plain Dealer carried a story on an Ohio State University entomologist who has received a $900,000 grant to study the management of biodiversity in vacant lots, which Cleveland has in abundance thanks to the [unpunished] criminal behavior of those responsible for the housing meltdown and the evaporation of 50% of the wealth of African Americans who, as always, were disproportionately affected.

In any event, the PD headline and story led to the grant from the National Science Foundation being heavily maligned by the usual aggregation of numbskull trollers at www.cleveland.com.

The story does raise eyebrows of course, as the environmental and caretaking cost of vacant lots is higher than one might imagine. So if you want to understand why the grant was made, or just be more knowledgeable about all the vacant lots around us, spend three minutes here.

• • •

Thoughts about Cavs’ draft tonight

The Cleveland Cavaliers have the first pick in tonight’s NBA draft. There is likely no franchise player available so the team needs to go for the surest bet of a frontline player. I would be tempted to take Victor Oladipo of Indiana University. He’s smart, tough, and tenacious, plays hard all the time, and is the kind of guy who will get better and better over time. He would especially fit in with the team’s new emphasis on defense.

I will be ok with the likely selection of Georgetown’s Otto Porter Jr. Just don’t bring home Nerlins Noel, who is a foot taller than I am but weighs less. And I’m not as out of shape as I thought I was [I overhauled my five year old grandson in a race last week on a steamy Los Angeles afternoon.].

Two events for tonight:

I haven’t made up my mind between going over to the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Community Center [3450 Lee Road, Shaker Heights 44120] at 7PM to meet John Patrick Carney, a state representative who is probably going to run for State Auditor next year, or to head over to Nighttown [12387 Cedar Road, Cleveland Heights 44106] for a Society of Urban Professionals event featuring live music from Cleveland native Mariama Whyte [5:30PM-9PM].

I’m sure Carney will be coming around again, so …

Nonprofit Thursdays: The Growing Edge

All around us worlds are dying and new worlds are being born;

All around us life is dying and life is being born.

The fruit ripens on the tree;

The roots are silently at work in the darkness of the earth

Against the time when there shall be new leaves, fresh blossoms,

   green fruit.

Such is the growing edge.

                                                                        — Howard Thurman

If one looks with care, there are signs that Cleveland’s black community is slowly awakening from a generation of civic stupor. New leadership is emerging among within many small circles, abetted by new tools of social interaction, eager to find space in the civic common, open to new avenues of approaching persistent problems, and desirous of establishing Cleveland as a hospitable place for African Americans — a goal that history says has largely been mythic for at least a century.

The rise of new leaders over time is a natural process in any community, but whether potential leaders find fertile soil to grow in their area of origin is not a given. New leadership must be nurtured, afforded opportunities to grow, to stumble, to learn, to fail, to succeed.

In Greater Cleveland such opportunities have been uncommonly rare. Civic space can be generative and welcoming or it can be relentless and hostile. Communities make choices about what kind of place and space they want to be. These choices are heavily influenced by a town’s leading businesspeople and and institutions, those folks with money, access, power and prestige. A hundred or so years ago, Cleveland’s leaders established many of our proudest civic achievements, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Orchestra and Severance Hall, the Cleveland Foundation, the Cleveland Clinic and a beautiful and impressive array of public buildings and spaces downtown.

But those civic leaders were also often haughty and hostile towards Cleveland’s newcomers, who were mostly Central and Eastern Europeans, but who also included an initially tiny black community  whose significant growth during and after World War I city fathers found alarming.

Cleveland’s predominant culture — then and now — was top down, politically conservative, and inbred. It struck a bargain with ethnic leaders that allowed the latter, beginning in the thirties, to hold the reigns of political power in Cleveland so long as the establishment’s business prerogatives were unchallenged.

Post-World War II changes in economics, demographics, and culture led to tremendous social and political change in Greater Cleveland in the 1950s. Hundreds of thousands of black people now lived in Cuyahoga County, constrained by a fierce system of de facto segregation that saw almost all of them confined to stultifying existence in just a handful of  neighborhoods: Central, Hough, Fairfax, Glenville, Mt. Pleasant. Only a trickle of black folk lived in any of Cuyahoga’s more than fifty suburbs at the start of the tumultuous Sixties.

This was no accident, as the same individuals who on the one hand prided themselves on their great cultural institutions, used their economic and political institutions to maintain an oppressive two-tiered system that intentionally relegated black people to the economic, social, political, and cultural margins.

This repressive system produced both the problems and the circumstances — the concentration of potential political power — that Carl Stokes harnessed to win the Cleveland mayoralty in 1967. While his stunning breakthrough electoral victory led to the beginnings of racial equity at City Hall, improvement in other areas has remained more elusive, especially on the economic front.

Fifty-eight years ago today, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the unanimous opinion outlawing segregation in public schools [Brown v. Board of Education, 347 US 483 (1954]. There was jubilation in the black community and among its allies at the thought that the nation would move towards a new unity. Few if any anticipated how difficult that would be in the face of massive resistance in the South and smug ignorance in the North.

Over time, some places have gotten issues of diversity, inclusion and equity right. Cleveland and Cuyahoga are not yet among them. The old order still reigns in too many places, resulting in the departure for other more hospitable places of too many of our best, our brightest, our most ambitious, our most creative, our most talented.

There are signs in Cleveland’s black community of impending change, of the possibilities of new leadership. Long dominant forces are receding from pinnacles of personal power, some with grace. The old self-perpetuating insiders at the United Black Fund are doddering away. The Urban League imploded and is now reconstituting itself. And change is even on the horizon at the NAACP, which saw the Forbes’ era end in the same messy, egotistical way it retarded civil rights progress for the past twenty years.

Take a look at some of the following community activities occurring over the next few days. None is necessarily focused on civil rights, or equity, or inclusion. But collectively they suggest the silent “work in the darkness of the earth against the time when there shall be new leaves, fresh blossoms, green fruit” named by Thurman in our preface.

Meanwhile, look for our story on the NAACP tomorrow.

• • •

Tonight, retired judge Sara Harper will lead a discussion leader on the life of the legendary civil rights warrior Ella Baker. Baker was remarkable for many things but we especially like the way she encouraged young people to seize control of their lives and forge new paths. She gave encouragement, support and wisdom to young leaders that contravened the “go slow” approach favored by her chronological peers.

The program will start at 6PM at Deuteronomy 8:3 Café and Bookstore, 1464 East 105 Street, just north of University Circle. Deuteronomy is where PhDs can be found sharing ideas with both retirees as well as the involuntarily unemployed.

Info: call 216.376.9695, email deuteronomy8cafe@aol.com, or visit www.restorativejusticeinstitute.org.

Also tonight, the Northeast Ohio Young Black Democrats are hosting a fundraiser at Tavo Martini Lounge, 815 Rockwell Ave. 5:30PM-8:15PM. NEO OBYD’s flier says it was organized to advance progressive political ideals and to recruit, train and empower emerging new leaders. The flier also promises a special appearance by recording artist Londyn Gaines.

We don’t know much about the group but we have met its president, Michael John Hauser. He is currently pursuing a master’s in public administration at Cleveland State’s Levin College and is clearly a comer on the local political scene.

Tavo’s has become, by the way, a venue of choice for much of Cleveland’s vibrant young professional community. It will be the site of another fundraiser tomorrow [6PM -8PM] to benefit the Hip Hop Caucus, an advocacy group that works to support voting rights, and increase voter registration and participation. The $10 admission opens the door to networking and an open bar. Sounds like a fun way to get political. Check the caucus out here. Paul Sadler Jr. heads the local effort.

Back to tonight, another networking opportunity exists courtesy of The Cleveland Realtists Association. This month’s regular third Thursday membership & business networking session occurs at Jezebels Bayou, 12718 Larchmere Blvd, just off Shaker Square. 5:30PM-8PM. The Realtists have become more active this year under the leadership of Kim Johnson. Cleveland is scheduled to host the national conference of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers this August. Local broker Julius Cartwright heads NAREB. Visit clevelandrealtists.org for more info.

Business, politics and romance will also be shaking hands tomorrow at AFTER FIVE FRIDAY’s, a monthly event "where people, passions and possibilities meet", according to local social engineering hosts Alton Tinker, Donna Dabbs, & Jesse LeGrande. Tinker is a Bedford Heights city councilman, KeyBank exec and social promoter. Dabbs directs a minority program for the Urban League.

This month’s social takes place at Bodega, 1854 Coventry Rd in Cleveland Heights. 5PM-11PM. for more information email after5fridays@hotmail.com

We think these folks have taken lessons from George Fraser, the nonpareil networking guru. Read on for news about the Cash Mobs he is coordinating in several cities across the country this weekend, including, naturally, his hometown Cleveland.

• • •

The Metropolitan Cleveland Alliance of Black School Educators will host its annual scholarship awards program at Greenmont Party Center, 800 S. Green Rd., South Euclid, OH 44121. The program will also honor the late Ed Young, a founder of the Cleveland chapter, former Cleveland schoolteacher and former school board member, and a tireless promoter of a strong black community.

Students from across Greater Cleveland are expected to be scholarship winners; several will speak as part of the program. Tickets are $35. The program begins at 11AM. For tickets/more info: Tillie Colter 216.577-7446; Ike & Diane Smith 216.382.9168; LaVerne Hooks 216.406.2785; Mary Rice 216.570.1200.

Cash Mob a Small Black Business

Nationally known networking expert and entrepreneur George Fraser is part of a nationwide effort encouraging consumers to “cash mob a small black business this Saturday. The latest marketing phenomenon promoted via social media, cash mobs typically encourage customers to descend on a pre-identified business and spend at least $20 per person. Participants then typically gather at a nearby restaurant or lounge where they are expected to spend at least another $20.

Fraser’s company, FraserNet, Inc. is combining with black business advocates nationwide to promote “Cash Mob Noir” in seven major cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Cleveland. The promoters expect the simultaneous event to illustrate the economic value and benefit of supporting local, quality, black-owned businesses.

Fraser hopes the nationwide event will also demonstrate the buying power of black consumers. The local participating businesses are B&M Bar-B-Q, 5501 Warrensville Center Rd, Maple Heights OH 44137 • 216.475.8720 [4PM-7PM]  and Opus Restaurant, 20126 Chagrin Blvd. Shaker Heights, OH 44122 • 216.991.6787 • [7PM-9PM for celebration and networking].

 

Pre-registration here is encouraged. Visit www.frasernet.com for details.

  

• • •

Next to last but certainly not least this weekend, August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean” opened Mother’s Day weekend at Karamu and will run through June 3. Purchase tickets online or call 216.795.7070.

• • •

And finally, what may be the nation’s first Minority Biomedical Entrepreneurship Conference opens in Cleveland on Monday, May 21.

The purpose of the two-day conference, according to its organizers, which include The America21 Project, a minority innovation and competitiveness initiative, is to address the issue of underrepresentation and to increase minority competitiveness in the biomedical sector.

Keynoting the conference will be Dr. Frank Douglas, president of the Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron.

“Cleveland, with its rapidly growing biomedical industry and nationally recognized research, clinical and educational institutions, is the ideal location for the first-ever Minority Biomedical Entrepreneurship Conference,” Baiju R. Shah, president and CEO of BioEnterprise and co-chair of the conference, said in a statement. “The entrepreneurial environment is one that embraces and provides an unparalleled support network to biomedical innovators."

Conference planners said attendees would be offered mentoring opportunities with industry leaders and investors, entrepreneurship education, and practical advice on starting and growing a biomedical company. Entrepreneurs looking for financing also will be afforded the opportunity to present before a group of seasoned biomedical investors.

To view the complete conference agenda and register, visit here.

• • •

To our elected officials: either lead, follow, or get out of the way!

To ALL our readers: I hope to see you someplace this weekend!

Nonprofit Thursday: Phillips Exeter and Piney Woods

 A few days ago, I was reintroduced to a fellow longtime Clevelander. As such folk are wont to do, he asked where I went to high school. When I said I had attended a prep school in New Hampshire, he asked which one. When I replied “Phillips Exeter”, he asked how I liked it. There is no simple answer to that question.

I told him that I had learned a lot but that the school in that era had not been ready to meet the needs of the few black students it was admitting, that the personal and psychological adjustments I was called upon to make were a hard price to pay and that my three years there exacted a rough psychosocial toll. When he next asked if there were any black boarding schools in the country, I said I thought there were about four, one of which was fabled Piney Woods Country Life School near Jackson, Mississippi.

Now I probably had not thought or heard about Piney Woods in twenty years, so you can imagine the jolt my sense of karma received when I found the following story in an email I received this morning in support of a joint fundraising appeal for the ongoing work of The National Institute For Restorative Justice and Deuteronomy 8:3 Café Books and Music.

Some quick background on the Institute and the Café:

Deuteronomy opened in Cleveland’s Hough area ten years ago on New Year’s Day, 2002.  Seven years ago, it began a series of public dialogues  that focused on issues of socio-economic and legal justice. The National Institute For Restorative Justice was established last May and incorporated as a non-profit institution as an outgrowth of those dialogues.

In conjunction with the pending celebration of the Institute's first anniversary in May, and the tenth  year of the independent bookstore’s community service,  the two organizations have launched $1, $10 & $60 Friends Campaign.  [The $60 relates to the founder Mittie Jordan’s just attained milestone age.]

Here is the story in Mittie’s email, explaining why even small contributions are important:

When we announced the campaign during a recent program, we were commended by one of our donors for creating an opportunity for every level of participation.  And if you think that a dollar can't make a difference, consider this incredibly inspiring story.

One hundred and three years ago, a young man stepped off the train in Rankin County Mississippi to set out on a daunting journey to start a school for the families of poor, Black sharecroppers.  In his possession: his newly acquired University of Iowa diploma, his Bible, a couple of clean shirts, $1.65, and a noble obligation. 

On first thought, I would say, that was all that he had.  But, knowing the fortitude with which he faced his pursuit over the next sixty-six years of his life, he was also undoubtedly armed with a deep-rooted commitment, and an abiding faith; one that pushed through every conceivable obstacle that got in his way.   A town full of "naysayers," two destructive tornados, a fire, a lynch mob, and the daily reality of lack of funds did not turn him away from his mission.  Today, the unwavering determination and legacy of Laurence Clifton Jones stands firm as The Piney Woods Country Life School. 

The story of Laurence Jones, his wife Grace Allen Jones, and the brave youth, men and women who succeeded against all odds - including threat of life and limb - is one that must be told again and again.  It is the story of a young man who recognized that the privilege of his education could not be for his sake alone.  For Jones, this realization became crystal clear during the commencement services for the University of Iowa Class of 1907, a class of which he was the only African American.  He later wrote that during the speaker's address, the significance and challenge of "Noblesse Oblige” was raised.  The notion resonated in Jones heart.

Nobility Obliges.  The French origin of the term refers to the obligation of the wealthy and privileged nobility to help those of less fortune.  A Noble Obligation.  Or, in the words of one of my favorite sermons by Reverend William B. McClain, "Much Obliged."  Our children may not hear that saying these days, but at sixty I can assure you that I heard it echoed often by the elders of my youth.  When much has been given, you "ought to be grateful," surely enough to feel obligated to give in return.  "Much Obliged."  "Noblesse Oblige."

So, with his noble obligation, his $1.65, his diploma, his Bible, and a clean white shirt, he began his school with one student; a sixteen year old boy who could neither read nor write.  For his desk, a tree stump,  his bench, a fallen log - both granted on the land of a former slave in the back woods of Mississippi.  Ed Taylor, the freed black owner of that land, would later deed Jones the first 40 acres for his school.  Log by log, brick by brick, Jones, his students - young and old - and every black man, woman and child in those back woods would build every building with their own hands.  Storms would come - literally - and tear them down.  But this mighty people, unfettered by fear or misfortune, would persevere, until Piney Woods Country Life School would come fully into being. 

Along the way, others would engage the campaign.  African-Americans from surrounding counties and beyond, Anglo Iowans who learned of their native son's efforts, even Anglo sympathizers right there in the racist deep woods delta south.  Indeed, it is told that the very mob that corralled to lynch him in 1918, freed him after hearing out his story, and subsequently contributed to his cause. 

Nearly a half-century into his journey, an incredible blessing came.  On December 15, 1954 Laurence Jones was featured on Ralph Edward's popular television show, "This Is Your Life."  After sharing Jones story, Edwards appealed to the watching audience to send at least $1.00 to the Piney Woods School.  The outpouring was so overwhelming, that the post office had to set up a sub-station to handle the mail.  Within days, Piney Woods received enough money to seed its endowment, $700,000.00.

Today, The Piney Woods School has an endowment of over $7 million, and sits on 2,000 acres, which along with its academic, communal and residential buildings includes a 500-acre Instructional Farm, five lakes, managed timberland, and Mississippi's only rock garden Amphitheater.  It is one of only four accredited African American boarding schools in the United States, and was ranked amongst the top ten boarding schools by US News & World Report.  Its enrollment comes from all over the nation and from abroad, and 98% of its graduates go on to college.

While I've had the great privilege of preaching at Piney Woods, I did not have the good fortune of ever meeting Dr. Jones.  He passed in 1975, nearly ten years before I first set foot on the Piney Woods campus.  But from that first stepping - walking the paths of his footprints, sitting in the clearing where it all began, praying by the graves of Jones and his wife, Grace - I became filled with his spirit; a spirit of resilient determination, commitment and service.  Indeed, he became one of my "Spirit Guides."   In return, I have contributed what I could, when I could, to Dr. Jones dream.  In the mid 1980's I organized and sponsored winter term projects for Oberlin College students to volunteer as interns and tutors at Piney Woods; through the 1990's I passed on "The Pine Torch," recruiting friends and associates to join me in visiting and contributing to the school; I've attended the school's "Cotton Blossom Singers" tour concerts whenever I find myself nearby.

You see, at my own graduation from high school, the words "Noblesse Oblige" rang clear in our Cleveland East High Alma Mater song.  "Noblesse Oblige, we will live long, always, always true."  I got it.  Maybe not right away, but over the years, as with Dr. Jones, the challenge became crystal clear.  While I have never been a woman of great wealth in material ways, I have been abundantly blessed with the foundation of the rich traditions of strong family and faith, an excellent education, and many talents and skills.  And like Laurence Jones, who had more profitable opportunities, I submitted early in my life to my calling and commitment to render my gifts to the needs and causes of the least of us.

Given nearly a century of inflation, I probably had less than Laurence Jones' $1.65 when I set out to build  a bookstore and café in the heart of our deprived black community ten years ago.  It came into being only through the goodwill and confidence of family and friends.  We opened on January 1, 2002 with a mission of "doing good, while doing well."   The good, we've done.  No doubt.  The well... well, we could do better.  Nonetheless, our history reflects a decade of engaging community in critical and strategic thinking about the circumstances and challenges of our collective lives.

As we approach the first anniversary of The NIRJ as an autonomous entity, we have firmly established our mission to educate for the purpose of nurturing advocates for social, economic and legal justice.  Over the next decade, The Institute roots its focus in three campaigns:  The Municipal and Media Monitoring Movement;  Sustainable Community Controlled Development; and  The Eradication of Constitutional Clauses for Slavery and Voter Disenfranchisement.  In visiting our web site you can learn more about each of these initiatives and ways in which participate, and contribute to our cause on line and by mail.  The link follows, along with one to The Piney Woods School. 

Indeed, it is our hope that whatever your financial capability, you will feel comfortable in giving, and encouraging your family, friends and associates to give as well.  $1, $10, ten times $10.  Whatever your contribution, we are thankful.  Who knows, perhaps you will help "pour out a blessing" that is too great for our post office station to handle.  It could happen.

Until then, as always, we wish you all the peace, joy and blessings that come with God's abundant love.

Faithfully,

Mittie Imani Jordan

Founder & Chair

 www.restorativejusticeinstitute.org     www.pineywoods.org

Mittie, my check will be in the mail [in the words of another great Mississippian  — my favorite blues singer, Keb’ Mo’, who performed at the White House blues gala last month] “Soon As I Get Paid”.

We invite Real Deal readers to visit the cited websites and to consider contributing to either the Institute or the School, or both!

Thoughts on Black History

If you haven’t participated in or supported at least two events by today’s halfway point in this Leap Year African American History Month, then get your act in gear. And this injunction is intended for you irrespective of your race, ethnicity, place of national origin, gender, age, or sexual orientation. [See the last paragraph].

Black history is of course American history. I, for one, would hate to be ignorant of a substantial portion of my fellow neighbors. I never cease to be amazed at how little so many of us know about so much of American history, especially as it relates to black people. It’s simply not possible to understand much of anything in today’s world without an appreciation for what has taken place.

This country is home to just about the most ahistoric people on the planet. An American culture that exalts youth, instant gratification, and the next big thing, has little appreciation for the traditions that inform far older cultures on distant continents, i.e. Europe, Asia, and Africa.

We give only lip service to history in our society. We’re so far out of touch with the country’s origins that we credit folks who offer up pseudo historical accounts [think Newt Gingrich and George Will] as having big brains or being super smart, when all they are doing is relying on some coded account of events that supports their present day political views.

All too often those historical accounts are coded to express American superiority and exceptionalism, the notion that the United States is uniquely virtuous, indisputably blessed by Providence, justifiably entitled to rule over lesser nations, and endowed with a right of  supreme veto.

February, thanks to Carter G. Woodson, offers us at least four weeks a year when healthy antidotes to that warped view are at least on the agenda.

You may already have missed one of this month’s best such antidotes, “Slavery By Another Name”, which aired this past Monday on PBS television. Based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning book by Douglas A. Blackmon, the show offered an understanding of how southern state governments colluded with private enterprise to establish a system of peonage after the Civil War that in some ways was more brutal than slavery had been.

It was hard to watch the program and not relate the world it revealed to today’s system of incarceration. It seems that we are becoming increasingly exceptional in our knack for the forced rendering of a distinct segment of humanity into an alternate or surplus labor force for private economic profit. Read either Blackmon’s original work or that of Michelle Alexander [The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness]   And we offer a hat tip to Deuteronomy 8:3 Café for hipping us to this work, a predecessor to Blackmon’s: Slavery Revisited: Blacks and the Southern Convict Lease System, 1865-1933 by Milfred C. Fierce.

If you missed last week’s panel discussion of “Slavery By Another Name” at Karamu last week featuring both the book’s author and the film’s producer, you have a second chance to view a portion of the documentary and participate in a community discussion. On Saturday, Feb. 25 there will be a panel conversation at New Bridge, 3634 Euclid Ave., Cleveland OH 44115 around the film and related topics. Guests and panelists include: Susan Hall, community relations director for the Western Reserve Historical Society,  county councilman Julian Rogers, civil rights attorney Dennis Niermann, motivational speaker Basheer Jones, radio/tv personality Sandra Bishop, and filmmaker Marquette Williams. Call 216.867.9775 for info.

Finally, we commend to all Real Deal readers this recent piece from Diverse Issues in Higher Education: Why Ethnic Studies Courses Are Good for White Kids Too.