Page 5 - Florida Sentinel 5-1-18

Columns
FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN
(USPS 202-140)
2207 21st Avenue, Tampa Florida 33605 • (813) 248-1921 Published Every Tuesday and Friday By
FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHING Co., Member of National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA)
S. KAY ANDREWS, PUBLISHER
C. BLYTHE ANDREWS III, PRESIDENT/CONTROLLER ALLISON WELLS-CLEBERT, CFO
GWEN HAYES, EDITOR
IRIS HOLTON, CITY EDITOR
BETTY DAWKINS, ADVERTISING DIRECTOR HAROLD ADAMS, CIRCULATION MANAGER TOYNETTA COBB, PRODUCTION MANAGER LAVORA EDWARDS, CLASSIFIED MANAGER
Subscriptions-$44.00-6 Months Both Editions: $87.00-Per Year Both Editions.
Opinions expressed on editorial pages of this newspaper by Columnists or Guest Writers, do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of The Florida Sentinel Bulletin or the Publisher.
ill Cosby is headed to
prison. Those are six words that, just a few years ago, would have sounded like the beginning of a bad April Fool’s Day joke. But, after the once beloved comedian was found guilty last Wednesday on three counts of sexual as- sault, that appears to be ex- actly where he’s going.
When accusations of Cosby’s predatory behavior surfaced back in 2016, with claims that he gave women Quaaludes before taking ad- vantage of their unconscious bodies, I don’t think anyone believed that this would be the end result. Even with Cosby’s actions being as vile as they al- legedly were, it was hard to imagine the smiling face that once sold us Jell-O Pudding Pops spending the rest of his life behind bars.
Unfortunately for him though, the fact that his charges allow for a sentence of up to 30 years, the jury’s ver- dict made that unlikely sce- nario a very real possibility.
While I’m well aware that this isn’t a bogus “fake news” story made up by some inter-
net troll, as I write this, it’s still hard for me to conceive that this is actually happening. The prospect of Bill Cosby being incarcerated somewhere is about as bizarre of a potential occurrence as a Donald Trump presidency once was. Yet, here we are living during a timeline when both of these twisted realities could be tak- ing place simultaneously.
For Cosby this has to be the worst outcome he could have imagined. I’m sure he was already prepared to deal with his reputation being ir- reparably damaged simply be- cause of the nature of the charges. But there’s little doubt that his greatest fear was being forced to begin doing serious jail time at 80.
Prison is stressful enough for a man 3 quarters of his age. To an octogenarian such as himself, with bad eyesight and poor health, it’s a virtual tor- ture chamber.
As much as someone could argue that Cosby deserves to be severely punished for, in essence, being a first-class sleaze bag, anyone with an ounce of humanity wouldn’t
wish this on him. Not at this stage of his life anyway.
This is not to say that I value his well being over that of his victims. I just believe, if he has to serve a substantial amount of time, that he at least deserves to be placed in a situation where his bid won’t become an automatic death sentence.
Even though I disagreed with many of the stances he took during his tenure as America’s favorite dad and the country’s foremost moral au- thority, it brings me no pleas- ure to see him in this lowly state. I mean, there’s no deny- ing the fact that he brought this tragic ending to his legacy upon himself by allowing his hidden perversion to get the best of him. But it still sucks to see a once proud and re- spected man finish the race so embarrassingly.
What happened to Mr. Cosby should be a cautionary tale to all of us that everything done in the dark will eventu- ally see the light of day. Which means we should all be very careful of what we do when we think no one is looking be- cause there may come a time when we’ll be the ones bitten after our past misdeeds finally catch up to our own tender backsides.
Reality On Ice is © by the Florida Sentinel Bul- letin Publishing Company. You can contact Mr. Barr at: cbarronice@gmail.com.
The Death Of A Legacy
POSTMASTER: Send Address Change To: Florida Sentinel Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3363 Tampa, FL 33601 Periodical Postage Paid At Tampa, FL
C. Blythe Andrews 1901-1977 (1945)
C. Blythe Andrews, Jr. 1930-2010 (1977)
Black Organ Donors Needed!
kidney transplants is doing well and managing “a fulltime job. On the other hand, “Tonya, also in her late 50s, is currently rejecting her second kidney transplant, and has opted not to seek a third trans- plant. You may be surprised to hear that both Billy and Tonya are blessed. Why? Because 101,000 Amer- icans are waiting for a kidney transplant, and at least
35,350 (35%) of them are Black.
Furthermore, Blacks are 35 to 76 percent less
likely to obtain a transplant from a living donor. Data shows, 73 percent of donor organs from Blacks were from deceased donors. Of the number of organ trans- plants performed on Blacks, they represented only 17 percent of the number of Blacks waiting for a trans- plant. Indeed, some Black patients wait for organ do- nations up to 12 years or more, and most Black hopeful recipients on the waiting list never receive a donor organ from a living donor or a deceased donor.
Indeed, epidemics of obesity, hypertension, and diabetes rule out the potential for many Blacks to do- nate organs, and increase the risk of their needing a donor organ because of organ failure. Thus, Blacks must reduce their risk of obesity, high blood pres- sure, and diabetes to increase the living donor pool for Blacks, as well as the deceased donor pool.
April was National Organ Donor Month, and we urge that Black people consider registering as organ donors while living or when deceased. Because a new name is added to the donor waiting list every 10 min- utes, you should consider adding your name, today. For, the life you save may be a future world leader.
illy” is in his early 50s and after having had two
Clarence Jones, The Man With The Secrets
ost Black Americans
57 years of age or older remember Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but ask them who was Clarence Jones, and there’s a palpable silence. In fact, few if any of us will know who you are talking about. Who was
Clarence Jones?
Called a lawyer, money- man, speech writer, a trusted lieutenant, friend, and activist legend in his own right, Clarence Jones kept a low profile for decades. Not until 2006 did he share untold tales of wiretaps, Malcolm X and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s Jewish relationships no one else knew with a Van- ity Fair journalist Douglas Brinkley.
Among some of the things he shared, the general public and some of the civil rights in- siders never knew. From 1960 to 1968, Clarence Jones was
King’s adviser, speechwriter, and fundraiser who remained in the shadows of the civil rights history.
Initially, Jones was an at- torney who was widely sought after by major law firms as a means of diversifying their staff. Now a Wall Street guru, Jones owned the Amster- dam News, a New York paper for a while.
Former Atlanta mayor and United Nations Ambassador, Andrew Young described Jones as “the guy King could trust - no leaks and no grand- standing.”
On the Birmingham expe- rience, Jones compared Birmingham to a war zone and said King decided to make the city a national example of seg- regated America. Jones said that if a Birmingham store owner took his WHITES ONLY sign down, Sheriff Bull Conner would cite the
owner for violations of the sanitary code.
When the Southern Chris- tian Leadership Conference (SCLC) didn’t have the money to bail the hundreds of chil- dren and their parents out of jail, after they were arrested for participating in the civil rights demonstrations, Jones flew to a meeting with Nelson Rockefeller at the New York Chase Manhattan Bank with a top bank official on a Saturday where Rockefeller gave Jones $100, 000 cash to bail everyone out of jail. Until that time, Rockefeller had been giving the SCLC checks for $5,000 to $10,000.
While King was in solitary confinement in the Birming- ham Jail, Jones was one of the few people allowed to visit King while he was there. Jones said King wrote the celebrated “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” to em- barrass white clergy who had openly denounced him.
When he and King trav- eled, they ate mostly at the homes of friends and in church basements to keep a low profile. Moreover, when King would check into New York hotels, he would use Jones’ name to shake both the FBI and media types off King’s trail. “Harrambee!”
B
B
M
TUESDAY, MAY 1, 2018 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY PAGE 5