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African-American
Village Daily News
50 years ago: Buffalo players stood against racism
By JOHN WAWROW
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - Willie Evans doesn't know if his mind is failing or
whether he's repressed the memories of what happened 50 years ago. For
the life of him, Evans is unable to remember the fateful team meeting at
which he felt the bite of racism and learned about the power of
friendship to overcome it.
If the details have faded, it doesn't matter. When his University at
Buffalo teammates retell the story, they can place exactly where Evans
was sitting in the classroom when the team unanimously rejected a chance
to play in the 1958 Tangerine Bowl, the school's first - and it turns
out, only - bowl bid.
"Well, I'm getting old,'' said Evans, a former coach and physical
education director for Buffalo schools who turns 71 this month. "Maybe,
I've blocked it out. You really don't understand how your subconscious
works all the time or your conscious. But I really draw a blank.''
Evans was the star halfback on the '58 Buffalo team which finished 8-1
to claim the Lambert Cup - awarded to the top small school in the East.
The school initially accepted the Tangerine Bowl invitation.
But there proved to be a problem. Not long after the Bulls agreed to
play, Tangerine Bowl officials informed Buffalo that the local school
district, which operated the host stadium in Orlando, Fla., barred
integrated games.
The players were left to decide whether to play without Evans and
teammate Mike Wilson - the only two African-Americans on the team.
It was quickly evident which way the players were leaning. The vote was
taken before ballots could even be distributed.
"It was, 'Shall we leave the Italians home? Oh my God, really?' There
was a lot of anger,'' former offensive tackle Jack Dempsey said. "We
just threw the ballots on the floor and left. It was, 'Let's get out of
here and go get a beer.'''
Quarterback Joe Oliverio remembers how infuriated he was.
"They insulted two of our teammates, and we were going to hit them back
between the ears by refusing to go without our teammates,'' he said.
History will show that East Texas State defeated Missouri Valley 26-7 in
the Tangerine Bowl that year. To the Bulls, they had scored a big
victory, too.
"Someone asked me if we ever talk about the incompleteness of the season
because we didn't go as far as we could've,'' said Phil Bamford, who
doubled as an offensive lineman and linebacker. "I think now looking
back, if we had given in, caved in, gone to the game and won the game,
we would've never had the camaraderie we have now. We would've always
felt we let our buddies down.''
And Evans was definitely present for that meeting, his teammates said.
"Absolutely, I can picture where he was sitting and Mike Wilson,''
Dempsey said. "I can remember walking out and players putting their arms
around (Evans). ... I can remember it vividly. It wasn't like hearts and
flowers. We just walked out, let's get out of here. Screw it.''
For Evans, his first memory of learning of what had happened came a day
later, when he picked up the newspaper to find his and Wilson's picture
on the front page beneath a headline, "UB Turns Down Bid To Tangerine
Bowl.''
"I started reading it and said, 'Damn, this is weird,''' Evans said.
Evans grew up in an integrated neighborhood in Buffalo, a multiethnic
manufacturing city at the time, with a lively downtown core.
Evans doesn't recall much in the way of racial tensions growing up,
though he vividly remembers seeing the graphic coverage of Emmett Till's
1955 slaying in Mississippi that helped to mobilize the civil right's
movement.
But that occurred in the South, a far-away place for Evans, who was
voted student president of his integrated grammar school, and attended a
high school in the predominantly Polish part of town.
He played basketball and football on integrated teams. And when the
assistant principal attempted to track down Evans and his friends for
cutting class to buy doughnuts at a Polish bakery around the corner, the
owner, Ziggy, would let them sneak out the back way to elude being
caught.
It wasn't a perfect life. Black men in his neighborhood who had returned
from World War II faced barriers to being considered for civil service
jobs. And yet Evans hadn't personally experienced such flat-out bigotry
until Buffalo got the Tangerine Bowl bid.
The experience affected him personally in some ways, leading Evans to
avoid visiting the South for many years despite having many relatives in
Virginia and Mississippi.
"It wasn't a grudge. It was an 'I don't care' attitude,'' Evans said. "I
just didn't want to deal with it.''
Wilson, his African-American teammate who was a backup on defense, died
several years ago.
It wasn't until the early 1990s, when Buffalo was scheduled to play a
game against Central Florida in Orlando, that Evans accepted the team's
invitation to make the trip.
Perhaps it's some sort of cosmic karma, but 50 years later the Bulls
(6-4) - after years of futility and a stretch in which the school pulled
football altogether - are in contention to earn a bowl bid this season.
The '58 Bulls get together fairly often and there's talk of another
reunion if Buffalo gets a postseason bid.
This year's team is split about evenly between African-Americans and
whites, is led by a Black coach, Turner Gill, and a program headed by a
Black athletic director, Warde Manuel.
Evans was interviewed on Election Day, hours before the ballots were
counted and Barack Obama became the first African-American elected to
the presidency. Sitting at his dining room table in a well-appointed
condominium in a tony part of the city - just around the corner from
where he went to grammar school - Evans reveled in America's
transformation.
The opportunity to cast a ballot for Obama outweighed the outcome, Evans
said, because what mattered most was that a Black man had earned the
right to win or lose the race for president.
And that is all Evans and his teammates were asking for all those years
ago - the chance to succeed or fail on an even playing field.
"Being confronted with the situation of not being allowed to play
because you're Black, I'm saying to myself, 'Well, I didn't do nothing
to these folks,''' Evans said. "In talking with the fellas, we laugh
about it now. And we sum it up and say, 'It was just dumb. It was just
dumb.'''
Xavier president marks 4 decades at the helm
NEW ORLEANS (AP) _ It's yet another honor for Norman Francis. The
77-year-old president of Xavier University in New Orleans will mark his
40 years in that role on Friday night with a gala featuring singer
Gladys Knight and comedian Bill Cosby.
It's one of many personal and public milestones for Francis, who was the
first black student at Loyola University. Francis was the first layman
to serve as president of Xavier, which was founded by an order of nuns.
And he was the first African-American to fill the president's position
at that historically black, predominantly Catholic institution. His
presidency spans years of turmoil and change: he accepted the Xavier
leadership role on the day Martin Luther King was assassinated, and he
remains there as the nation's first black president prepares to take
office.
2008 marks centennial of Richard Wright's birth
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) - Julia Wright bounces and paces across the
front of the library at Lanier High School, a public place of learning
in a neighborhood of neat, modest homes and the occasional building
tagged with graffiti.
Her brown eyes twinkling, the slender 66-year-old has the energy of a
cheerleader and the intellectual intensity of a woman who spends her
life examining and re-examining her place in the world. She faces nearly
three dozen teenagers who have come to the library to hear her talk
about her father, Richard Wright, whose powerful, controversial novels
helped put a face on racism, and who is still one of the most widely
read American writers nearly a half century after his death.
She encourages the kids to follow his example. "Always ask questions.
Always turn things around and look at all facets. Always look at the
flip side,'' Julia Wright tells the students, some of whom lean forward,
elbows on tables, to absorb her words about a man who attended Lanier
decades ago.
This year marks the centennial of Richard Wright's birth, and his
daughter, who lives in Paris, is traveling the globe to honor her
father's literary legacy. Richard Wright conferences, lectures and
public readings are being held in many cities, including his native
Mississippi. The state was once one of the most grotesquely oppressive
in the nation, and Wright - a bright young Black man with a gift for
words - had to leave so he could thrive.
His works, including the 1940 novel "Native Son'' and the 1945
autobiography "Black Boy,'' exposed and challenged the deeply entrenched
system of racial injustice in 20th-century America. "Black Boy'' was a
best seller shortly after its release, and "Native Son'' was the Book of
the Month Club's first selection by a Black author.
Jerry W. Ward Jr., a Wright scholar at Dillard University, said Wright
was "one of the first African-American writers to really challenge a
larger American readership.''
Ward said "Native Son'' shocked World War II-era America and still jolts
readers today. The protagonist, a Black man named Bigger Thomas, lives
in Chicago and is pummeled by a society structured to oppress Black
people. Thomas loses control of his own life after he accidentally kills
a wealthy white woman.
Ward said that in Wright's works, "We discover the entire nation,
through institutions and social habits, might be responsible for major
problems.''
Wright was born Sept. 4, 1908, on a farm near Natchez, a Mississippi
River town with a tourist trade that still centers on elaborate
antebellum planters' homes. He was the grandson of former slaves and son
of a schoolteacher mother and illiterate sharecropper father. In a sign
of how times have changed, the Mississippi Legislature voted this year
to name a road near Natchez for Richard Wright, just in time for a
literary festival that honored his work. In 1945, Theodore Bilbo, a U.S.
senator and Mississippi demagogue, denounced "Black Boy'' in the Senate.
In "Black Boy,'' Wright recounts the upbringing he endured from the
various relatives with whom he lived, including his mother and a
grandmother who was a strict Seventh Day Adventist. After his father
abandoned the family, Wright skipped from home to home in Memphis,
Tennessee, rural Arkansas and Mississippi.
Because of the frequent moves, his formal education was sporadic, but he
developed an early love of the written word. As a youngster living in a
segregated society, he borrowed a library card from a sympathetic white
man and forged notes from the man so the librarian would allow Wright to
check out books.
In 1925, Wright attended the then-new Lanier High School, but never
graduated. (The school has since moved to a different location, but even
decades after court-ordered desegregation, the school is all Black,
reflecting the surrounding neighborhood.)
He became a published author after moving to Chicago, where, in 1939, he
met Ellen Poplar, a white Communist Party member who was the daughter of
Polish Jewish immigrants. She became Wright's first wife and mother of
his two daughters - Julia, who was born in the United States, and
Rachel, who was born after Wright moved his family to Paris in 1947.
On her father's 100th birthday, Julia Wright sat down for an interview
at the Fairview Inn near downtown Jackson. The stately white-columned
home, now a popular site for wedding receptions, was once owned by the
former head of the Citizens Council - an uptown version of the Ku Klux
Klan that worked to preserve segregation in Mississippi decades ago.
"Oh, my goodness. Maybe that's why my telephone's not working,'' Wright
said with a laugh when told of the inn's history.
The family left the United States, she said, after her father attacked
the Jim Crow society.
"He realized when he wrote 'Black Boy,' that he would have to fear for
his family's safety down South because of what he wrote,'' she said. Her
father had also left the Communist Party and was being pressured from
two sides: Party members were trying to pull him back in, and federal
investigators were trying to force him to provide inside information
about the party, she said.
But a humiliating incident involving a 3-year-old Julia Wright also
caused the family to turn its back on America.
In 1945, a friend of the Wrights, a white woman named Connie, took Julia
shopping at an upscale New York department store. The little girl needed
to use the ladies' room and Connie asked a sales clerk for directions.
"The saleslady behind the counter said to Connie, 'The restroom is over
there.' But when Connie removed herself from the counter, I appeared,''
Julia Wright recalled. "Because I was so small, I was hidden by the
counter. And she saw me, and I was brown .... And the saleslady said,
'Oh, no, not her. You, but not her.'
"So, Connie told me to be a 'good little girl' and go relieve myself on
the sidewalk.''
Julia did as she was told.
"And for being a 'good little girl,''' Julia Wright said, "I got an ice
cream cone.''
Later, at home, Connie told Richard Wright what had happened; Julia was
in another room playing. "All of a sudden, I heard this howl of anger,''
Julia Wright recalled. "I think my father must've become like Bigger
(the enraged central character of 'Black Boy') at that time.''
Walter Dean Myers, a prolific writer for young readers and two-time
National Book Award finalist, said Wright's works and his characters
such as Bigger Thomas illuminated a horrific part of American life that
few wished to correct during the decades between slavery and the
civil-rights movement.
"What he did was to open a door to Black life in America, treating it
very seriously, where previous to that it was not being treated
seriously,'' Myers said in an interview from London, where he lives
several weeks each year.
"You had the whole Harlem Renaissance period. But by the '40s, that was
over and gone,'' he said. "The Black person as a person who protested
and as a person who was a keen observer of American life - you did not
have that until you had Richard Wright.''
Myers, who now lives in New Jersey, was a National Book Award finalist
in 1999 for "Monster'' and in 2005 for "Autobiography of My Dead
Brother.'' He recalled that as a Black teenager in New York in the
1950s, he was taught only the standard canon of works by white authors.
He was a teenager when a relative exposed him to Wright novel.
"And I had not read anything by Black authors prior to that. And I was
really sort of surprised because it was about something that I had never
encountered in school,'' Myers said.
"I didn't know that I needed permission to write about Black life. And
then I read Richard Wright and then later James Baldwin and I said,
'Gee, I can do this, too. I can write about my own community and my own
life.' And that was just like a liberating thing for me.''
Julia Wright was an adolescent before she read one of her father's
books.
"He allowed me to discover that he was famous not by telling me he was
famous but by actually allowing me to discover it. Because what does
famous mean, after all? I mean, he didn't want to turn me into a snob,''
she said.
Richard Wright died in Paris in November 1960 and his ashes are interred
at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, the burial place of other literary
greats, including Wright's friend, Gertrude Stein.
Earlier this year, a previously unpublished novel of Richard Wright's,
"A Father's Law,'' was released with an introduction by Julia Wright. In
June, several literary expatriates gathered at Pere Lachaise to pay
tribute to the author of "Black Boy'' and "Native Son.''
Paper flowers with poems that celebrated the author written on them were
available at the grave site.
"People would read it and then go and lay the paper flower down,'' Julia
Wright recalled. "Anonymous people who don't know him could read the
flowers. It was beautiful.''
Black Caucus: No special relationship to Obama
By ERICA WERNER
WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Congressional Black Caucus announced its new
leaders Wednesday without mentioning President-elect Barack Obama until
asked. Members disputed the notion that his historic presidency would
affect their profile or their role.
``Certainly President-elect Obama is a member of the Congressional Black
Caucus, but I think it's important to recognize that he's the president
of the country, he's the president of the United States of America,''
said the group's incoming chairwoman, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
``We've never anticipated any special regard or special relationship
from President-elect Obama,'' Lee added. ``We all are members of
Congress. We have many caucuses in this Congress. All of our caucuses
have a specific agenda.''
Lee succeeded Rep. Carolyn C. Kilpatrick, D-Mich.
Asked whether they planned to meet with Obama, caucus members said they
would, although nothing was scheduled.
``We seek to meet with every president,'' added Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill.
``Each time there's a new president we always seek to establish an early
on meeting.''
The caucus' agenda includes access to health care, reducing poverty and
improving low-income housing _ issues likely to get more attention under
a Democratic Obama administration than they did under Republican
President George W. Bush.
Nonetheless, the group has never had a particularly close relationship
with Obama, who for four years representing Illinois was the only
senator in the caucus. He rarely participated in the caucus' routine
activities, to the disappointment of some black lawmakers who wished he
were more involved.
Obama also conspicuously avoided endorsing Kilpatrick in a tough primary
battle this year while her son, Kwame, was embroiled in a racially
charged scandal over his conduct as mayor of Detroit.
Many caucus members endorsed Obama's rival for the Democratic
presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, before his
candidacy gained momentum. Some, including Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.,
switched their support to Obama under pressure from constituents. Obama
ended up winning 95 percent of the black vote _ a higher percentage than
caucus members can always claim.
The caucus claims 43 members, including Obama, despite his resignation
from the Senate this week.
Before taking questions from reporters, Kilpatrick and Lee opened their
news conference with brief remarks about the legacy of the caucus and
the desire to build upon the work of its past leadership.
Lee paid tribute to the woman she called her mentor, Shirley Chisholm,
the first black woman elected to Congress. Chisholm also sought the
Democratic presidential nomination in 1972.
``We have an opportunity to really continue to lead and also continue to
be the conscience of the Congress,'' Lee said. ``It's an honor to be in
this position at this time.''
Neither one mentioned Obama until a reporter asked about him.
William Jelani Cobb, a history professor at historically black Spelman
College in Atlanta who is writing a book about Obama, said there was
scant evidence at the caucus' annual legislative conference in
Washington last month that Obama even was running for president.
Cobb contended that the caucus has ``tried to minimize the extent to
which Obama's emergence has changed the nature of their position.''
``A good bit of the old politics, the old positioning, was as brokerage.
They have people who can be the brokers, the middle person, between the
Democratic Party _ largely the white Democratic Party and the black
voting base,'' Cobb said. ``Obama is the first president who doesn't
need them for that.''
Obama also emerged on the political scene somewhat unknown to longtime
black activists, instead of coming up through the ranks like more
established black leaders.
Nonetheless, both sides need each other _ Obama to get his agenda
through the House, and black House members to get him to enact theirs.
Senior black caucus members retain some powerful positions in the next
Congress, including Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., as chairman of the
tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., as
Judiciary Committee chairman.
___
Associated Press writer Ben Evans contributed to this report.
Al-Qaida No. 2 insults Obama in new audio message
By MAAMOUN YOUSSEF
and
LEE KEATH
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) _ Al-Qaida's No. 2 slurred Barack Obama with a
demeaning racial term for a black American who does the bidding of
whites in a new Web message Wednesday intended to dent the
president-elect's popularity among Arabs and Muslims and claim he will
not change U.S. policy.
Ayman al-Zawahri's speech was al-Qaida's first reaction to Obama's
election victory _ and it suggested the terror network is worried the
new American leader could undermine its rallying cry that the United
States is an enemy oppressor.
Obama has been welcomed by many in the Middle East who hope he will end
what they see as American aggression against Muslims and Arabs under
President George W. Bush. Some believe his race and Muslim family
connections could make him more understanding of the developing world's
concerns.
Al-Zawahri dug into U.S. racial history to try to directly knock down
that belief and argue Obama will be no more sympathetic than white
leaders to what the al-Qaida leader called ``the oppressed'' of the
world.
He said Obama was the ``direct opposite of honorable black Americans''
like Malcolm X, the 1960s Muslim African-American rights leader, who is
known among some in the Arab world and seen as a symbol of
anti-imperialism.
Al-Zawahri also called Obama _ along with secretaries of state Colin
Powell and Condoleezza Rice _ ``house Negroes.''
The video included old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he
explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white
masters' house were more servile than those who worked in the fields.
Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not
standing up to whites and discrimination.
Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri used the phrase ``abeed al-beit,'' which
literally translates as ``house slaves.'' But in the video message,
posted on Islamic militant Web sites Wednesday, al-Qaida supplied
English subtitles of the speech that translated the phrase as ``house
Negroes.''
The 11-minute, 23-second video featured an audio message by al-Zawahri,
played over a still image of the al-Qaida No. 2.
The video graphics underlined the contrast al-Zawahri aimed to show: On
one side of the screen was a photo of Obama wearing a Jewish skullcap
and meeting Jewish leaders. On the other side was a photo of Malcolm X
praying in a mosque. Interspersed was footage of Malcolm X talking of a
``worldwide revolution'' against the ``Western power structure.''
Al-Zawahri addressed ``all the world's weak and oppressed,'' and warned
them: ``America has put on a new face, but its heart full of hate, mind
drowning in greed and spirit which spreads evil, murder, repression and
despotism continue to be the same as always.''
He accused Obama of turning his back on his heritage to gain power.
``You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks
of the enemies of the Muslims, and pray the prayer of the Jews, although
you claim to be Christian, in order to climb the rungs of leadership in
America,'' he said.
``It appears that you continue to be captive to the same criminal
American mentality towards the world and towards the Muslims,'' he said.
The Obama transition office declined to comment on the message.
Jeremy Binnie, an analyst with Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center,
said al-Zawahri's message suggests al-Qaida leaders are worried ``that
Obama could be effective in rebuilding America's image.''
``They hated Bush, but Bush was good for them in many ways because he
was such a polarizing figure. But Obama seems at the moment to be a more
uniting figure,'' Binnie said. ``Al-Qaida very much would like the U.S.
to stay with its old policies that put it in opposition to much of the
Muslim world.''
Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said al-Zawahri,
who is Osama bin Laden's top deputy, aimed specifically to keep the
Islamic militant base energized. He's sending them a message, ``don't
believe all this stuff about a big 'change', we have to fight just as
hard as ever,'' Hoffman said.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said the tape is a reminder that
al-Qaida is irrational.
``What we have here is more despicable and pathetic comments by al-Qaida
terrorists,'' Perino said. ``And in America, we are going to have a
smooth transition from one administration to the next, and that will be
a period of change in our country. What won't change is our commitment
as a country to fighting terrorism. And I think that these comments just
remind everybody of the kind of people that we're dealing with.''
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack also called al-Zawahri's
comments ``despicable,'' saying they showed the contrast between
democracies and ``what these terrorists stand for.''
Al-Zawahri proclaimed Obama's victory a sign that Americans had realized
the failure of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He urged Islamic militants everywhere to continue their jihad, or holy
war, saying, ``Your enemy's stagger has begun, so don't stop hitting
him.''
Al-Zawahri said Obama's plan to shift troops to Afghanistan is doomed to
failure, because Afghans will resist.
``Be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your
soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them,''
he said.
Al-Zawahri specifically addressed al-Qaida fighters in Iraq, saying,
``your enemy has admitted defeat,'' and that as U.S. troops withdraw,
``you must persevere, for victory is in an hour of perseverance.''
He also told Islamic militants in Somalia, who have been capturing towns
in an advance against the tenuous central government, ``don't put down
your weapons before the Mujahed state of Islam ... has been set up in
Somalia.''
The authenticity of the message could not be independently confirmed,
but the voice resembled that of al-Zawahri in past messages, and it bore
the logo of al-Qaida's media arm, Al-Sahab. In his speech, al-Zawahri
refers to a Nov. 5 U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan as happening ``last
Monday,'' suggesting the video was made within a week of that date.
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