Page 30 - Florida Sentinel 1-18-19

National
White Mother Says She
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And Muhammad Ali 's Secret Friendship
Didn’t Raise Adopted African
Daughters To Be Black
In 1961, an athlete named Cassius Clay prepared for a bout with Duke Sabedong in Las Vegas. The 10-round box- ing match was the young boxer’s seventh, but his swag- ger and charm had already gained him admirers.
That day, the man who would soon become Muham- mad Ali received a telegram- from an unexpected correspondent. “Your youthful good humor, physical prowess, and flippant charm have made you an idol to many American young people,” it read. “May God protect you and your op- ponent in the coming contest.” It was signed “Martin Luther King, Jr.
It was an overture to an un- likely friendship, one that took place on the stormy stage of the Civil Rights Movement. Though it is uncertain how many times MLK and Ali met during their lifetimes, they were friends. But publicly, the two men couldn’t have been more opposed — and their se- cret friendship was only re- vealed to the public through surveillance files that showed the FBI had long been follow- ing them.
Muhammad Ali's Best Fight Moments
Despite their differences, King and Ali had a strong bond.
The bond between King and Ali was surprising: Ali was the world’s most famous
A white writer for the Fed- eralist, a conservative publica- tion, has sparked outrage across social media with her essay about why she is raising her adopted African daughters as Americans — not “Black” girls or “African-American.”
Jenni White used the death of McKenzie Adams, a fourth-grader who committed suicide after she was bullied in a predominantly white school, to justify raising her daughters without knowledge of or their culture, per diversityinc.com.
In her article, titled “The Worst Racism My Children Have Experienced Came From Black Peers,” White writes: “Why would I raise them to identify with a specific race as if being members of the human race weren’t enough.”
“Yes, my daughters are from Africa, and they communicate with their family there regu- larly, but once we adopted them and landed in America together, they became Ameri- cans. Not African-Americans, not Black girls, but girls who
JENNI WHITE
would grow up in a nation where they were afforded the opportunity to become any- thing they wanted to become.”
She also reveals a conversa- tion with her Black pastor 12 years ago, who encouraged her to teach the girls, then ages 4 and 9, about the Black experi- ence in America. She replied to the pastor that her family does- n’t “see color.”
White claims to be a sup- porter of Martin Luther King, Jr. and she follows Candace Owens’ Blexit movement, AKA the “Black exit,” from the Democratic Party.
MUHAMMAD ALI AND REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
TSA No-Shows Increase During Shutdown
boxer, and an outspoken mem- ber of the Nation of Islam, a black separatist group that preached non-integration and revolution. That was the oppo- site of King’s ideals of nonvio- lent protest and integration.
During the 1960s, the men found themselves on two dif- ferent sides of a growing rift between King’s Civil Rights Movement, on the one hand, and the NOI’S turbulent vision of black power, on the other.
But the men had much in common. Both had grown up in the segregated South. They were arguably the two most fa- mous black men in America — King for his protests and preaching, Ali for his astonish- ing athleticism. And by the end of the 1960s, they were two of the most hated men in the United States, too. Racists branded them both with ugly stereotypes. They decried King’s insistence on the dig-
nity and worth of black men and his agitation on behalf of the poor, and derided Ali’s in- sistence on black pride, from his name change in 1964 to his resistance to the Vietnam War as a white man’s fight.
Publicly, the men could not seem more opposed. “Integra- tion is wrong,” Ali said in 1964 when King was at the height of his visibility for nonviolent protests and calls to integrate black people into a white-dom- inated society. “White people don’t want it, the Muslims don’t want it... I don’t join in- tegration marches and I never hold a sign.”
Meanwhile, King repeat- edly declined to engage with the Nation of Islam and turned down an invitation by Mal- colm X, the NOI’s most visi- ble figure, to march together. “I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views,” King said later.
The number of airport secu- rity screeners failing to show up for work around the country is soaring as the partial govern- ment shutdown goes into its fourth week.
No-shows among screeners jumped Sunday and again Monday, when the Transporta- tion Security Administration reported a national absence rate of 7.6 percent compared with 3.2 percent on a compara- ble day a year ago. Monday marked the first business day after screeners did not receive a paycheck for the first time since the shutdown began.
At Hartsfield-Jackson At- lanta International Airport, the world’s busiest, some passen- gers waited more than an hour to get through checkpoints. The airport reported the long lines on its website Monday morn- ing, showing the hour-plus waits at all three checkpoints in the domestic terminal.
“It’s chaos out here,” pas- senger Vincent Smith said as he stood in a line that snaked through the Atlanta airport’s atrium and baggage claim areas. “This line, I’ve been here about 15 minutes and it has moved 2 feet.”
TSA is working with the At- lanta airport and airlines “to maximize all available opera- tional resources at the airport,” TSA spokesman Jim Gregory said.
Hampton University's Marching Band Will
The agency is working with airports and airlines nation- wide to consolidate operations and get the most out of re- sources, Gregory added. He declined to provide absentee figures for Atlanta or other air- ports, saying that would com- promise security by exposing possible vulnerabilities.
“Screeners will not do any- thing to compromise or change their security procedures,” he said.
But Smith said he could re- late to government workers who don’t show up so they can find other ways to make ends meet.
“If I was a government worker, yes, I would probably call in and try to do something else because creditors don’t care if you’re furloughed or not,” Smith said. “They just want to get paid and with a family of six, you have to do what you have to.”
In Rome's New Year's Day Parade
Become The First HBCU Group To Perform
The Marching Force, Hampton University's marching band, will be taking its talents to Rome in 2020 as a part of the city's New Year's Day parade.
According to WVBT, the band will not only march in the parade but will perform in St. Peter's Square both be- fore and after Pope Francis offers his yearly New Year's Day blessing. Hampton is the first HBCU ever invited to take part in the massive pa- rade; according to the event's website, "over 100,000 peo- ple from all over the world" come out each year.
Dr. Thomas Jones, the band director, called the op- portunity “wonderful.”
In a press release sent to ABC 13, Jones wrote, “This trip validates what we’re
HAMPTON MARCHING FORCE
doing. The strength of the program is growing. Travel- ing is a great incentive for new and current students, and we are really looking for- ward to this exciting jour- ney.”
Hampton University Pres- ident Dr. William R. Har- vey praised the band, calling it “'an elite group of talented, young musicians who are also academically accomplished.”
The president added, “This opportunity shows that our band is being recognized internationally. They con- tinue to uphold the standard of excellence as being one of the best marching bands in the nation.”
The invitation was also celebrated on Instagram, where the band called it a "once-in-a-lifetime moment for our students."
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