Page 5 - Florida Sentinel 10-6-15 Edition

Editorials
Unsung Black Floridians
Gunplay
Umpqua Community College: A Message To Teachers
O ne of our staff writers lived through an experience that would haunt him for the rest of his life. He was a teacher winding down a routine American Literature class. Students were filing past his desk toward the door when one of them, a young white man, heavy-set, wearing all black, asked the teacher to sign what seemed to be a routine form. But what happened next was anything, but routine. The young man handed his teacher a pen then stepped back as the pen ex-
ploded in the teacher’s hand. The student yipped with glee. The teacher, with a blistered hand came close to committing murder. Interestingly enough, when the injured teacher brought the situation before administrators and demanded the young man be jailed or at least expelled, officials were more in favor of suspension and a letter of apology from the young man. Not discussed however, was the fact the school in mention did not have, had never had, and had no intentions of ever having teacher-training in response to deadly violence in the class-
room.
However, perhaps, 9 students at Umpqua Community Col-
lege would still be alive if UCC teachers had been given hand- to-hand training, which is part of a currently available teacher-shooter defense-program, or had been tutored by a comprehensive curriculum entitled, Ways to Bulletproof Your School.
But this editorial is not solely about Umpqua Community College. It’s also about local and regional institutions of educa- tion many of whose educators risk their lives to teach without having been shown how to protect themselves or the students for whom they are responsible. Indeed, was the oversight not so foolish, it would be criminal. So, this is our belief: Teaching is only half of the package. The other half is staying alive.
Any school system that overlooks the latter is an assassin of the former.
When asked to name fa- mous Black Floridians, the names of people such as Zora Neale Hurston, Daniel “Chappie” James, Jr., James Weldon Johnson, Mary McLeod Bethune, Harry T. Moore, and Johnathan C. Gibbs are often among those names re- membered. Many Blacks con- tributed to the rich history of Blacks in Florida, some popu- lar and well-known, others unsung and remembered only by the residents of their local communities.
Today, we will explore the accomplishments and contri- butions of five (5) “unsung” Black Floridians whom I be- lieve are worth being remem- bered and honored in all of Florida’s Black communities. They include: Frank B. But- ler, a St. Augustine business- man; Jose Massalina, a Panama City area free Span- ish merchant marine; Gladys Milton, a Walton County community activist and mid- wife; and Julee Patton, a Black Pensacola woman.
Frank B. Butler (1885- 1973) opened his own busi- nesses in 1914, a grocery store
Here is a very uncomfort- able truth. Everyone reading this right now, at some point, will have their lives touched by violence.
Regardless of how you live, how well you treat others or how much you tithe at church on Sundays, to a certain de- gree, you will be affected by this destructive aspect of life. Like death and taxes, it’s a guaranteed inevitability.
The reality is that the only reason why most of us are still breathing oxygen is due to the grace of God and the mercy of those who we encounter. Sim- ply put, we’ve just been blessed to not have come into close proximity of someone who wouldn’t mind killing us.
This potential threat to our existence hangs over our heads every time we leave the sanc- tity of our dwellings and are forced to mingle amongst strangers. Our fates hinged solely on our ability to avoid crossing paths with that one individual hell bent on leaving Earth behind while taking a few passengers with him.
This is the kind of environ-
and a real estate company. He built a planned community called College Park and bought oceanfront land south of St. Augustine which he de- veloped into a beach area for Blacks during the height of the segregation era. Among Butler’s other accomplish- ments were having the only Black exhibit at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago, being the first Black to serve on a grand jury, and also being the owner of a hotel, casino and café-restaurant by the late 1940’s. Butler Beach area is now a county park and pre- serve for endangered animals.
Jose Massalina, a free Black Spanish seaman is said to have jumped ship at St. Joseph (near present-day St. Joe) in 1836 and made his way to Red Fish Point in the Panama City area. He later traveled to Georgia, bought a slave wife and invited 40 free Black families to return to Red Fish Point to form the first community of free Blacks in the area. He and his son, Nacisco “Hawk” Mas- salina helped Union ships lo- cate Confederate strongholds in the area. In 1941, the U. S.
ment in which we currently live. Unstable. Unpredictable. And highly volatile.
It is a place where random shootings, like the one that oc- curred on the campus of an Oregon community college last week, have become so com- mon that President Barack Obama described them as “routine” while addressing the incident. And the hardest part to swallow about it all is that there doesn’t seem to be any foreseeable relief from the madness on the horizon.
Of course, some people want to believe that govern- ment legislation can somehow stop the slaughter. They naively hold on to the idea that if gun ownership were out- lawed then psychopaths would be less likely to gain posses- sion of weapons that they could use to commit random acts of senseless violence. But, in a country where guns out- number the population, I won- der how they could realistically feel that’s possible?
Anyone with enough cash, and a strong desire to murder, can easily obtain any gun of
government confiscated the property and built Tyndall Air Force Base on the land, forc- ing the community to move across the bay to an area now called Massalina Bayou.
Gladys Milton wore many hats – community ac- tivist for preservation of his- tory, business woman, literary arts advocate and midwife. During segregation, Milton was asked to be trained as a midwife by the Walton County Health Department to serve Black and poor women in their homes in the area. Li- censed to practice in 1959, Milton delivered 3,000 babies between 1959 and 1999. She also advocated for social serv- ices and resources for the women she served. The sub- ject of newspaper articles, tel- evision shows, and documentaries, Milton was inducted into the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994 and had a library named in her honor in early 2000’s.
Not much information is available about Julee Pat- ton, a Pensacola Black woman who lived in Pen- sacola’s only surviving “to the sidewalk” constructed home, built in 1804. A free Black, Patton is known and revered for purchasing the freedom of numerous enslaved Blacks, her home – is now a Black History museum.
They are all examples of one person making a differ- ence. Let us remember and honor them. Harrambee.
choice on the black market. And even if law enforcement were able to, hypothetically, shut down that illegal avenue, it still wouldn’t prevent the guy, who may have been sane enough when he purchased his AR-15, from snapping one day and using his legally bought firearm for nefarious pur- poses.
The fact of the matter is that there really is no viable solu- tion to prevent gun violence on any level. The streets, as they say, are too flooded with gadg- ets that spit bullets. And with gun manufactures like Rem- ington, Smith & Wesson and Winchester providing a never ending supply of weaponry, sticks that go BOOM will con- tinue to find their way into the hands of killers with no con- science.
When it’s all said and done I believe that, ultimately, there only two ways we can survive the insanity of the society around us. Either we side with those who feel as though arm- ing ourselves is the only viable method of self-defense or we develop an elevated level of awareness that will always allow us to spot the shooter be- fore the shooter spots us.
Reality On Ice is © by the Florida Sentinel Bulletin Pub- lishing Company. Anyone wishing to contact Clarence Barr can email him at: realityonice@yahoo.com.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2015 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY PAGE 5
Try Living A Month On Minimum Wage
W holeheartedly, we cheer Representative Victor Torres (D. Orlando) and Senator Dwight Bullard (D. Miami) for fil- ing bills designed to raise Florida’s minimum wage from $8.05 per hour to $15 per hour. Moreover, we congratulate our own Representative Ed Narain for joining 16 other Democratic state legislators in taking on the so-called “minimum wage
challenge” to live on $17 per day for a week (actually 5 days). This amount represents what a minimum wage worker has left after paying taxes, child-care, and housing from an $8.05 an hour paycheck. The question, however, is why didn’t any Republican legislators take the minimum wage plunge? What about our readers? Would you have taken the minimum wage leap? Many of you LIVE the challenge every day, but here’s bet-
ting you still don’t find it a walk in the park.
Indeed, 35 million Americans (26 percent of the American
workforce) earn less than $10.55 an hour. Another 3.3 million workers earn the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour or less. Nearly 28 percent of these low wage workers are heads of households with children; 55 percent of them are women, and 39 percent are Black or Hispanic. They must live on $17 per day or less every day and probably live in less than desirable housing accommodations.
But there is no doubt that having had to live on $17 per day ($34 per day for two wage earners) for a month would have had a greater impact on the legislators. We support the pro- posed minimum wage increase and urge the Republican leg- islators to take the minimum wage challenge (at least for a week) and to support the increase as well. Remember: the more than 181,000 Florida minimum wage workers are also voters. And ballots never lose their value.