You Think What?

“A young black man can’t understand what it means to have something he’s never been denied. I can’t make them understand the mental relief I feel at the rights we have. It almost infuriates me that people don’t understand what integration has done for this country.”
~ the late Benjamin Hooks in an interview with
U.S. News & World Report~

Benjamin Lawson Hooks was a son of the American South. (more…)

“Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to play around in.”

“In their sties with all their backing
They don’t care what goes on around
In their eyes there’s something lacking
What they need’s a damn good whacking.
“Everywhere there’s lots of piggies
Living piggy lives…” ~ George Harrison

All this talk about Goldman Sachs— the fraud, greed and malfeasance associated with the so-called financial experts at the world’s largest global investment banking and securities management company has brought to mind a tune written by the late George Harrison a member of the Beatles and recorded by the the Fab Four many years ago, 1968, for the White Album. How prescient those mop-headed Brits were.

The decision makers at Goldman Sachs, have been since 1869, (more…)

“Jessye Norman said not long ago that she simply “would like it to be that it made a difference to some people that I came and went, that I was here.” She has made a difference to anyone who loves music, and indeed it matters quite a lot that she is here: Jessye Norman, a great American singer.”~ from Kennedy Center: Biographical Information for Jessye Norman

We echo those sentiments. Ms Jessye Norman, is the youngest recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors

Norman’s vocal range is uncommonly wide, encompassing all female voice registers from contralto to high dramatic soprano.

When she was 16 years-old, Norman was entered in to the Marian Anderson Vocal Competition in Philadelphia. (more…)

Philadelphia Judge Raymond Pace Alexander (RPA) has been called by historian Darlene Clark Hine, one of the “black legal soldiers … who transformed constitutional jurisprudence to embrace the primacy of civil rights over states rights, and replaced the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ with one of equality.”

Raymond Pace Alexander born in Philadelphia in October 1898 into a working class family, the grandson of slaves was destined to beat the odds to become a distinguished Philadelphia lawyer, who later was to serve as a judge as well as advisor to other lawyers including the future federal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Raymond Pace Alexander with his talented wife, Sadie T. M. Alexander, worked to transform a segregated society in order to afford opportunity for those who had been denied.

Early on in his education Alexander, influenced by historian Carter G. Woodson, chose to study black history and use it as a tool to vigorously oppose racism and develop better relations between the races. (more…)

Once again we ask,  “Who let the dogs out?!”

For more information visit:
MySpace.com/BoilingFrogs101
FlexYourRights.org
Police Abuse.com~ Good Cops
RateMyCop.com
Google: Cop Watch

“Realistically, the only way to solve our problems at this point in our history is by planning our future, clearly and objectively, and then working to make that plan a reality.” Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, author Alternatives to Despair 1972

Back in 1972 the late Leon H. Sullivan, author and innovator of Philadelphia’s  Opportunities Industrialization Center, (OIC), was sounding the call to make definitive plans for our future.

“Strangely enough in Philadelphia, the big metropolitan city, you think people had work, but discrimination was still very strong . . . I decided to confront discrimination, again, because businesses were not employing blacks in Philadelphia, blacks couldn’t even get jobs as waiters in the good hotels.”~Rev. Leon Sullivan

Choosing to confront the racial discrimination he witnessed in hiring practices in Philadelphia, he organized 400 other ministers to implement a successful boycott of companies that did not support equal employment opportunity. This demonstration of  “selective patronage” resulted in more than 4000 jobs open to dark skinned African Americans. However many still lacked the necessary training to perform the jobs now available.

That is when in 1964 founded in an abandoned jailhouse, the OIC was born. (more…)

Japanese auto makers, still angry about the loss to America of the Second World War, are now unleashing their revenge on the American driving public with terrorist Toyotas, nasty Nissans, and horny Hondas; none of which know when to stop!

We hear they will be installing plastic brake pedals made from really hard plastic. You remember-flashback to forty or fifty years ago like the toys made in Japan were of a hard plastic substance so hard it would splinter and shatter into a gazillion pieces. Today in the 21st Century modern technology brings you brakes guaranteed to break when you step on the pedal to apply them. (more…)

We found the following video on another site on the Internet. We read the back-story. It goes something like this: difficult, demanding bride becomes upset when shop owner will not acquiesce to her demands. She makes threats on one day–even called the police to make the owner do as she asked; and returns the following day to insist the shop comply with her unreasonable requests by changing its policy. As we read the story we thought, “Planning for events like weddings often brings out some peculiar behaviors.”

However, when we viewed what happened we could not believe our eyes. Of all the reports we found we liked this one video report because of the fairness of the presentation–both sides were told and we liked the frumpy looking anchor’s closing remarks. Watch and you’ll see what we mean…

There is no doubt this is a family (more…)

“We must teach our children to dream with their eyes open. The chances of your becoming a Jerry Rice or a Magic Johnson are so slim as to be negligible. Black kids must learn to distribute their energies in a way that’s going to make them productive, contributing citizens in an increasingly high-technology society.”
~ Harry Edwards, author and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley as quoted in Time Magazine March 6, 1989.

Sociologist, scholar and author Harry Edwards, born 1942, is from East St. Louis, Illinois; he received his doctorate in sociology from Cornell University.

Harry Edwards stated desire is to be a role model of “the promising athlete who gave up the possibility of a career in professional sports to become a scholar instead.” (more…)

“If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight.” Tommie Smith U.S. Track and Field Olympian Mexico City, 1968

It was October 16, 1968 at the Olympic Games in Mexico City where John Carlos and Tommie Smith, along with white Australian Silver medalist Peter Norman, who wore a human rights badge on the podium in solidarity of the Americans’ protest, made headlines around the world. (more…)