Saturday, May 4, 2013

Elizabeth Carttlett's sculpture of Sojourner Truth destroyed in Sacramento, CA.



catlett 1catlett 2
catlett 3catlett 4

Francisco Mora Catlett
Marvin, this is one for your Black Bird Press, GET YOUR WEST COAST PEOPLE ON IT.
IS THIS FOR REAL ????

Comment from Marvin X 
Subject: Elizabeth Cattlett Mora statue destroyed in Sacramento

Francisco, this is the most horrible and disgusting shit I've heard in a long time, but you must know Sac is a racist/red neck city, so it is not surprising these cave men would destroy a statue of Sojourner Truth by your Mom (RIP). As you know the Black Panthers ignited Sac when they marched there with guns into the capitol. Sac has a black mayor. I will inform my friend Fahizah Alim who is director of communications for the State gov. and see what she can do about this situation. 
Paz y amor,
Marvin Dos Equis
Comment from Paul Cobb, Publisher, Oakland Post News Group

Marvin:
Why don't we get a committee and meet with the Mayor of Sacramento to get this restored  if they don't want to commission another Black Sculptor, then we should hire Franklin Sirman to negotiate to bring the statue to Oakland and put it in City Hall Plaza or in front of the African American Museum or at the Lionel Wilson Airport (The truth sojourns). I am surprised that the Califronia Legislative Black Caucus and other political leaders and/or the spokespersons for the various Black and/or feminist groups haven't spoken out on this dastardly deed. Maybe Kamala Harris can find the appropriate poetic justice photo-op moment to re-erect Ms. Truth  while re-electing herself or using Truth broken statue as a srpingboard for catapulting herself to a higher position. Ain't the Sojourner Statue our Lady Liberty for Blacks and all other Americans too? Maybe we can shame all of them into action by getting the Republicans to raise the issue and lead an effort to restore it. Truth crushed to earth shall rise again---and since we are nearing the 150th anniversary of her visit with Abraham Lincoln in the white house----It's a propitious time for us to make a RESTORATIVE JUSTICE move for TRUTH.
I'm on my sojourney now.............and I wouldn't take nothing for my journey...
Thanks for the information
I hope you get your eblast group to rally around a plan.
Does Sweeney have a budget estimate? 
If so, I know we can do it. 
Truth be told!
Paul Cobb

Comment by Marvin X

Francisco, I agree with my childhood friend, Paul Cobb, Publisher of the Oakland Post: since certain segments of the population in Sacramento can't appreciate Sojourner Truth and the sacred work of Betty Mora, the people of Oakland who have a revolutionary tradition are willing and able to accept this piece of sculptor in honor of our great ancestor Sojourner Truth. If you can help make this happen, let me know. We know Ancestor Betty is not pleased to know what happened in Sacramento. We know she would surely smile to know her work was appreciated in one of the most radical cities in America and world, Oakland--like Falujah, Iraq, a city of resistance!

--- On Sat, 5/4/13, fmc2500@yahoo.com  wrote:

From: fmc2500@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Elizabeth Cattlett Mora statue destroyed in Sacramento
Comment from Francisco Mora Cattlett
Date: Saturday, May 4, 2013, 4:35 PM

Hey Marvin,
 
David (FYI, David is Betty Mora's son who is a painter and sculptor as well) can fix it / or do a new one, he has the resources to do it... the problem is that it was not fastened and secured to a base (like the monuments in New Orleans) and it was easy to push it and tilted over... (this is terrible)
 
It will be most difficult to destroy the Idea of honoring "Sojourner Truth and her legacy" by vandalizing the monument, now we have to put it back where it belongs !!!
 
I think is a good thing that is in Sacramento as to give this folks a clear example of determination and human value, this is an opportunity to educate Sacramento’s people by putting this Major Art Work where it belongs and it needs to be...
 
We have to let folks know nationally of the crime committed and reinstalled the monument properly and with Dignity. 
 
I'm appalled that it took this long for us to find about it, almost like some one is covering up or hiding this horrible crime to the Art world and especially to the American people.
 
Thanks for your conscientious reply, and lets get moving to put the piece where it belongs and educate folks in the process...
 
Peace,
 
Francisco Mora Catlett...

    



Comment from Evolve Art Gallery, Sacramento CA

 
Not quite sure why we are just hearing about this, but the "Sojourner Truth" statue created by Master Fine Artist Elizabeth Catlett, located at 13th and K in Midtown, Sacramento; was vanadlized back in January of this year. It has been "pushed over and broken into 3 pieces." If anyone has any information on the status of it being repaired or replaced or the investigation to find the suspects, please share with the rest of us. We'll post the updates and you can follow the story on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/evolvethegallery. 

Ms. Catlett passed in April last year. This is a terrible loss, as the work cannot be replaced by her.

The ONLY information/news I found on it was here: 
http://sacpedart.com/?p=3840 (Thanks, Kevin Hellon and Mr. James Sweeney for brining this to our attention.)

catlett 1catlett 2
catlett 3catlett 4


 
ETG
Evolve the Gallery | 2907 35th Street, Historic Oak Park | Sacramento California 95817

Dock of the Bay


Berkeley Marina

Who can take nothing
make something
turn air into a being
full of universal spirit
who can guide the empty handed
broken hearted
into fullness
singing joy joy to the world
We bow before the God of all things
life force of rocks bees babes in the cradle
let us then always and forever
flow with the flow
be renewed and fulfilled
see how thy cup runneth over
do the work
keep the faith
til you win the race!
--Marvin Dos Equis

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Stanford University ponders the Dr. Nathan Hare and the Dr. Julia Hare Archvies






Stanford University Green Library Curator Benjamin Stone, inspects the Dr. Nathan Hare and Dr. Julia Hare archives. Attorney Amira Jackmon, Senior Agent of the Community Archive Project, looks on.

Today, Stanford University perused the Dr. Nathan Hare and Dr. Julia Hare archives, giving much respect to the Honorable Hares for their work in shaping the history of North American Africans in the Bay Area, nationally and internationally. Stanford University Green Library curator Ben Stone, appreciated Attorney Amira Jackmon and her father, Marvin X ( Director of the Community Archives Project), for arranging the Hare archives in a professional manner, although the total cataloging is incomplete. It will exceed 200 cartons.


Marvin X, Director of the Community Archives Project,  Dr. Julia Hare, Dr. Nathan Hare and Attorney Amira Jackmon, Senior Agent of the Community Archives Project.

Stanford University viewed  the Hare papers with great interest for acquisition. Marvin X says, "Our desire is for the archives to stay in the Bay Area, so we are giving Stanford the first option to acquire the archives. We are in contact with Emory University in Atlanta, Harvard, Yale, Umas and the University of Chicago, but we love the Bay! As per the price offered, Stanford curator said, "Well, the price offered is between art and science!"


Marvin X replied, "Well, I am an artist and scientist, so let's work it out. But if you have anyone on a higher level than Dr. Nathan Hare and Dr. Julia Hare, please let me know."



Curator Ben Stone could only mention Dr. Cornel West, a dear friend of Marvin X. "We had Dr. Cornel West at the my concert The Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness," and he sat in the audience for five hours like a child in kindergarten. When I called him up to the mike, he said, "I don't know if I'm a king or queen, there is so much darkness in my life." 


According to Ben Stone, the archives are a rare cross, the work of a multi-disciplinary personality: Dr. Nathan Hare (and his wife as well) represent the genres of Ethnic Studies, Black Studies, Sociology, Clinical Psychology, Literature, Gender Studies, and Media Studies. The Hares are very much a part of the social media. Dr. Julia Hare has received a million hits on Youtube for her appearance on Tavis Smiley's State of the Black World. 

Marvin X told the Stanford Curator that Dr. Nathan Hare writes long emails daily, to him and others in the genres in which  he expounds, e.g., sociology, psychology, Black Studies, literature, male/female relations.


Collection title: The Dr. Nathan Hare and Dr. Julia Hare Archives: 1962-2013

(their archives)

$2,000,000.00 (net)

As a couple, Dr. Nathan Hare and Dr. Julia Hare are the foremost exponents of Black Consciousness and social activism in America. Dr. Nathan Hare is the father of Black Studies and a literary figure in his own right. Dr. Julia Hare is called the female Malcolm X and was highly sought on the speaking circuit. She is an author as well. --Marvin X

Offered for sale by

Amira Jackmon, Esq.
 510-813-3025



Description

The Dr. Nathan Hare and Dr. Julia Hare papers consist of nearly 200 cartons that document the life and work of Dr. Nathan Hare and Dr. Julia Hare from the mid 20th century through the first decade of the 21th century. The papers include correspondence; the Hare writings and speeches; audio/video collection; materials relating to Dr. Nathan Hare's controversial tenure at Howard University and San Francisco State University; works by Dr. Julia Hare, e.g., speeches drafts, book drafts; works by their colleagues. Correspondence includes letters, emails, cards, blog dialogues; correspondents include Queen Mother Moore, Max Stanford (Muhammad Ahmed), Governor Jerry Brown, editors of publications such as Jet, Ebony, Negro Digest/Black World, Black Scholar (Nathan Hare founding publisher), Haki Madhubuti, Robert Chrisman, editor of the Black Scholar and other prominent North American African intellectuals. Critical documents from Dr. Nathan Hare's brief tenure at San Francisco State University, including documents of the first Black Studies program on a major American University. The Hare writings include essays in Newsweek, Mass. Review, Washington Post, Sepia, Phylon, Negro History Bulletin, Sun Reporter Newspaper, San Francisco Chronicle.
Documents include organizational and financial records of the Black World Foundation/Black Scholar magazine; the Black Think Tank, Black Male/female Relations. Resource files contain academic articles, emails, news clippings, notes, photos that contextualize and document Nathan and Julia Hare's involvement as educators, activists, intellectuals and literary figures in the Bay Area, nationally and internationally. The archives document the work of Dr. Nathan Hare as a clinical psychologist and Dr. Julia Hare as a major personality on the speaking circuit as well as a radio talk show host and commentator. Photographs include family, friends, educators, and fellow activists. Dr. Nathan Hare and Dr. Julia Hare stand alone as the most prominent intellectual and social activist couple in North American African history.


‪Background


Nathan Hare (born April 9, 1933) was the first person hired to coordinate a black studies program in the United States,  at San Francisco State University in 1968. Hare was born on a sharecropper’s farm near the Creek County town of Slick, Oklahoma on April 9, 1933. He attended the public schools of L’Ouverture (variously spelled "Louverture") Elementary School and L'Ouverture High School. The two schools were named after the Haitian Revolutionary and General Toussaint Louverture and were part of the so-called “Slick Separate Schools” in the segregated rural milieu of the late 1930s and 1940s.

Early life and education

When Hare was eleven years old, his family migrated to San Diego, California, where his single mother took a civilian janitorial job with the Navy air station. As World War II ended and his mother was laid off, his family returned to Oklahoma. This put on hold his ambition to become a professional boxer, something he had picked up after adult neighbors in San Diego assured him that writers all starve to death.

The direction of his life would change again when his English teacher at L'Ouverture High (later closed after the Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court desegregaton decree, through consolidation into the all-white Slick High School, itself now also closed by consolidation) administered standardized tests to her ninth grade class in English Composition in the search for someone to represent the class at the annual statewide "Interscholastic Meet" of the black students held annually at Oklahoma’s Langston University. Hare represented L'Ouverture and won first prize with more prizes to come in ensuing years; and on that basis the L’Ouverture principal persuaded him to go to college after getting him a fulltime job working in the Langston University Dining Hall to pay his way. By his junior year Hare had moved up in his student employment to Dormitory Proctor of the University Men and Freshman Tutor in his senior year.

When Hare enrolled at Langston University (now only "historically black"), Langston was the only college Black students could attend in the state of Oklahoma. Named for John Mercer Langston, one of only five African Americans elected to Congress from the South before the former Confederate states passed constitutions that essentially eliminated the black vote, the town was a product of the late nineteenth century black nationalist movement’s attempt to make the Oklahoma Territory an all-Black state. In fact, Langston, Oklahoma laid claim to being the first all-black town established in the United States. One of Hare’s professors, the poet Melvin B. Tolson, was mayor of the town for four terms, was named poet laureate of Liberia, and eventually his spectacular style of teaching would be portrayed in "The Great Debaters." Graduating from Langston with an AB in Sociology, Hare won a Danforth fellowship to continue his education and obtained an MA (1957) and PhD in Sociology (1962) from the University of Chicago. Hare received another PhD in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco, California (1975).
[edit]
Black Studies
Hare wrote the “Conceptual Proposal for a Department of Black Studies" and coined the term “ethnic studies” (which was being called “minority studies”) after he was recruited to San Francisco State in February 1968 by the Black Student Union leader Jimmy Garrett and the college’s liberal president, John Summerskill. Hare had just been dismissed from a six-year stint as a sociology professor at Howard University, after he wrote a letter to the campus newspaper, The Hilltop, in which he mocked Howard president James Nabrit’s plan (announced in the Washington Post on September 6, 1966) to make Howard “sixty per cent white by 1970.” James Nabrit had been one of the civil rights attorneys who successfully argued the 1954 “Brown vs. Board of Education” case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The “Black Power” cry had been issued just two month’s earlier by one of Hare’s former Howard students, Stokely Carmichael (another of Hare’s students at Howard was Claude Brown, author of Manchild in the Promised Land). Hare had taught sociology at Howard since 1961, the year before he obtained the Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago.
On February 22, 1967, Hare stood at press conference, with a group of students calling themselves “The Black Power Committee,” and read “The Black University Manifesto,” which Hare had written with the input of the Black Power Committee. The manifesto expressly called for “the overthrow of the Negro college with white innards and to raise in its place a black university, relevant to the black community and its needs." Hare had previously published a book called The Black Anglo Saxons and coined the phrase “The Ebony Tower” to characterize Howard University.

In the spring of 1967, he invited Muhammad Ali to speak at Howard and introduced him when the controversial heavyweight champion gave his popular “Black Is Best” speech to an impromptu crowd of 4,000 gathered at a moment’s notice outside the university’s Frederick Douglass Hall after the administration padlocked the Crampton Auditorium in the days leading up to Ali’s refusal of his military draft. Following Hare’s dismissal that June, he briefly resumed his own aborted professional boxing efforts, winning his last fight by a knockout in the first round in the Washington Coliseum on December 5, 1967.

At San Francisco State, where the Black Student Union demanded an “autonomous Department of Black Studies,” Hare was soon involved in a five-month strike for black studies led by The Black Student Union, backed by the Third World Liberation Front and the local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. Black, white, and Third World students and professors participated in the strike, which also included community leaders and the Black Faculty Union, headed by Hare. The late actor, Mel Stewart was a member of the Black Faculty Unon, but Hare was the only faculty member invited to become a "quasi-member" of the Central Committee of the Black Student Union, which included a student named Danny Glover, who would go on to become a successful Hollywood actor. One of the speakers almost daily at the noonday rallies of the strike was Ronald Dellums, who was later elected to the U.S. Congress and later Mayor of Oakland, California.

After one San Francisco State College president (the late John Summerskill) was fired and another (Robert Smith) resigned, Smith was replaced by the general semanticist S.I. Hayakawa (who would later become a U.S. Senator). Hayakawa used a hard-line strategy to put down the five-month strike, declaring “martial law” and arresting a crowd of five hundred and fifty-seven rallying professors and students (the overwhelming majority of them white). Weeks later, on February 28, 1969, Hayakawa dismissed Dr. Nathan Hare as chairman of the newly formed black studies department, the first in the United States,“to become effective June 1, 1969.” Hare stayed on until June at the request of the Black Student Union and remained for many more months in an unofficial capacity of “Chairman in Exile.”

Hare then teamed with Robert Chrisman and the late Allen Ross (a white printer and small businessman in Sausalito who had immigrated from Russia) to become the founding publisher of “The Black Scholar: A Journal of Black Studies and Research" in November 1969. The New York Times would soon call The Black Scholar “the most important journal devoted to black issues since ‘The Crisis.'” Ten years earlier, in 1959, Hare had briefly been a clerical assistant to the editor of the Journal of Asian Studies then being edited by Andrew Hacker, a white history professor at Northwestern University, where Hare developed a dream of someday editing a “Journal of Negro Studies” ("Negro" was the word still in fashion for blacks in 1959). In 1968, during a break in a television panel including Nathan Glazer, co-author of The Lonely Crowd, Glazer wrote a note to Hare on a white index card saying "Needed: a Black Scholar journal." Before starting The Black Scholar, Hare had written and published articles in magazines and periodicals that included: EbonyNegro Digest,Black WorldPhylon Review, Social Forces, Social EducationNewsweek, and The Times.

After leaving The Black Scholar in 1975, in a dispute over the changing direction of the journal, and obtaining a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology, San Francisco, Nathan Hare began the private practice of psychotherapy, with offices in San Francisco and Oakland. He also focused on forming a movement for “A Better Black Family” (the title of a popular speaking out editorial he wrote for the February 1976 issue of Ebony magazine) shortly after completing a dissertation on “Black Male/Female Relations” at the California School of Professional Psychology.

By 1979, in collaboration with his wife (Dr. Julia Hare, author of How to Find and Keep a BMW (Black Man Working), Hare formed The Black Think Tank, which published the journal of “Black Male/Female Relationships” for several years. After the journal folded, Hare went into the full-time practice of psychology and the development of the Black Think Tank. In 1985, a small book written by him and his wife ("Bringing the Black Boy to Manhood") was disseminated by The Black Think Tank, issuing the call and becoming the catalyst for the contemporary rites of passage movement for African-American boys that emerged as the Hares lectured and spread the idea of the rites of passage for black boys throughout the United States.

Publications

In addition to dozens of articles in a number of scholarly journals and popular magazines, from The Black Scholar and Ebony to NewsweekSaturday Review and The Times, Nathan Hare is the author of several books:
   The Black Anglo Saxons. New York: Marzani and Munsell, 1965; New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1970; Chicago: Third World Press edition, Chicago, 1990)0-88378-130-1.
Books in collaboration with his wife, Julia Hare (the former radio talk show host and television guest, who also is a graduate of Langston University) have been published and widely distributed by The Black Think Tank, headquartered in San Francisco. They include:
   The Endangered Black Family, San Francisco: The Black Think Tank, 1984, ISBN 0-9613086-0-5.
   Bringing the Black Boy to Manhood: the Passage, San Francisco: The Black Think Tank, 1985, ISBN 0-9613086-1-3.
   Crisis in Black Sexual Politics, San Francisco: The Black Think Tank, 1989, ISBN 0-9613086-2-1.
   Fire on Mount Zion: An Autobiography of the Tulsa Race Riot, as told by Mabel B. Little. Langston: The Melvin B. Tolson Black Heritage Center, Langston University, 1990, ISBN 0-9613086-1-4
   The Miseducation of the Black Child: The Hare Plan to Educate Every Black Man, Woman and Child, San Francisco: The Black Think Tank, 1991, ISBN 0-9613086-4-8.
   The Black Agenda, San Francisco: The Black Think Tank, 2002, ISBN 0-9613086-9-9.
While publisher of The Black Scholar from 1969–75, Nathan Hare co-edied two books with Robert Chrisman:
   Contemporary Black Thought, Indianapolis: Bobs-Merrill, 1973, ISBN 0-672-51821-X.
   Pan-Africanism, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974, ISBN 0-672-51869-4.


Dr. Julia Hare

Dr. Julia Hare is widely regarded as one of the most dynamic motivational speakers on the major podiums today.

At the Congressional Black Caucus's 27th Annual Legislative Conference chaired by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Dr. Hare was one of three speakers invited to address the Caucus's kickoff National Town Hall Meeting on Leadership Dimensions for the New Millennium. Her collaborators included distinguished historian, Dr. John Hope Franklin, Chair of President Clinton's Advisory Board on Race, and Dr. Cornel West, Harvard professor and author of the critically acclaimed Race Matters.

Dr. Hare has appeared on "Geraldo", "Sally Jesse Raphael", "Inside Edition", CNN and Company, "Talk Back Live", "News Talk", Black Entertainment Television (BET), "The Tavis Smiley Show", ABC's "Politically Incorrect", CSPAN, and major radio and television affiliated throughout Australia and America. Her commentaries, lectures and topics include: politics, education, religion, war, foreign and domestic affairs, sexual politics and contemporary events.

A prime innovator on issues affecting the black family and society as a whole, Dr. Hare is mentioned or quoted in national newspapers, including "The New York Times", "The Washington Post", "Sun Reporter", "San Francisco Chronicle", "Miami Herald", "Louisville Courier Journal" and "The Oklahoma Eagle" among others. She has appeared in "Ebony", "Jet", "Dollars and Sense", "Heart and Soul", "USA Today", "Today's Black Woman", "Essence" and other periodicals. She is co-author with her husband, Dr. Nathan Hare, of "The Endangered Black Family"; "Bringing the Black Boy to Manhood"; "The Passage"; "The Miseducation of the Black Child" and "Crisis in Black Sexual Politics". Her most recent best-selling book is "How to Find and Keep a BMW (Black Man Working)".
Her work has brought her many accolades and honors, including Educator of the Year for Washington, D.C. by the Junior Chamber of Commerce and the World Book Encyclopedia in coordination with American University; the Abe Lincoln Award for Outstanding Broadcasting, the Carter G. Woodson Education Award; the Marcus and Amy Garvey Award; the Association of Black Social Workers Harambee Award, Third World Publishers' Twentieth Anniversary Builders Award; Professional of the Year from "Dollars and Sense" magazine; Scholar of the Year from the Association of African Historians; Lifetime Achievement Award from the international Black Writers and Artists Union; as well as a presidential citation from the national Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. Dr. Hare has also been inducted into the Booker T. Washington Hall of Fame.

Extent: Number of containers: 200 cartons

Howard University, 1 carton
San Francisco State University, 2 carton
Awards and Certificates, 2 cartons
Personal, 1 carton

Photos, 1 carton
Letters/correspondence, 3 cartons
Black Scholar Magazine, 2 cartons
Male/Female Relations, 2 cartons

Articles in Newspapers/magazines

Notes/news clippings
Manuscripts,
Drafts

Writings in Johnson publications:
Ebony, Jet, Negro Digest/Black World
Dr. Julia Hare’s writings, notes, speech drafts
Audio/video tapes/
cassette, VHS
Floppy disks
Finance
Practice
Misc. articles
SF State University, Black Studies
Who’s Who books, 
Address books, 
Message books, 
Misc. magazines
Programs
Black Think Tank books





In Defense of Russell Maroon Shoatz, 30 years in solitary confinement in the American Gulag




Marlene Lily
807 Silva Ave.
Santa Rosa, CA 95404
April 30, 2013
Mr. John Wetzel, Secretary
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
1920 Technology Parkway
Mechanisburg, PA 17050
Dear Secretary Wetzel,
I am writing to demand that Russell Shoatz AF-3855 be immediately removed from solitary confinement and returned to the general prison population.
The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits the imposition of “cruel and unusual punishments.”
In 1969, I attended a conference in Oakland sponsored by the Black Panther Party, called “The United Front Against Fascism.” The Panthers could see signs of emerging fascism 43 years ago. I am now 71 years old. I once thought that my father’s generation defeated fascism in 1945, when I was three years old. Now I am certain that was not the case.
The ghost of Adolph Hitler still roams the United States in the form of those who hold public office but never take the time to read and understand the legal basis for their employment. You are a public servant, paid by the people of Pennsylvania, the state known as the birth place of the Constitution. Yet you are condoning, and perhaps even ordering, a practice forbidden by the Law of the Land. In my view, that makes YOU a criminal. You are endangering the Rule of Law. Whatever Russell Shoatz may have done, I know he didn’t do that!
If you are, or anyone in your family is, a veteran of military service, you, or they, took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That oath is not revoked when one leaves military service.
Our Constitution is under attack from many quarters within the United States, and it appears that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections is one of those quarters.
I urge you to read the Constitution today, and to give serious thought to what it means that you and the Department of Corrections are violating that precious Law.
In the meantime, release this man from solitary. I’m ashamed to be an American, at a time when torture has become an everyday practice. Whether it happens in Abu Grahib, Guantanamo, or the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, torture is WRONG! And the Founders knew that and forbade it in 1776!
Sincerely yours,
Marlene Lily